Sydney Bridge Upside Down by David Ballantyne Page A

visit the wharf. Eh, Dibs?’
    ‘I don’t care,’ Dibs said. ‘I got nothing else to do.’
    ‘Come on then,’ I said. And I led them to the other track, then down it to the clearing.
    Caroline sat on the grass in the shade as soon as we were there. ‘It’s a lovely spot,’ she said.
    ‘We used to have picnics here,’ I told her.
    ‘I’ve never been on a picnic,’ she said.
    ‘Never!’ I cried. ‘Never in your whole life?’ I wasn’t really amazed, of course; I just wanted to stop her thinking of lunch and heading home, the longer we talked in the clearing the more chance Mr Wiggins would be gone when we got home.
    Caroline laughed. ‘Never, never, never!’
    ‘What do you know?’ I said to Dibs.
    ‘What do you know?’ he said back.
    We wasted some more time in the clearing, talking ofpicnics and what we liked best about them. Because of the way she sat, I had to keep trying not to look at Caroline; she sat with her knees up and the light was much better here than in the cave. It would have been good, I guessed, if I’d been the only one looking; Dibs being there too made it different. I was a bit relieved when Caroline got up and strolled towards the railway line. She must be wondering about Sam Phelps and Sydney Bridge Upside Down. Well, I wouldn’t mind her being with them—not as much as I would mind her being with Mr Wiggins. So I decided we could now go to the wharf.
    I pointed out that one way to reach the wharf was to go across the rocks and along the timbers under the wharf as far as the funny steps. The other way, I said, was to walk along the track beside the line.
    ‘What say we have a race?’ I said to Caroline. ‘You go along the railway track, Dibs and I go across the rocks.’
    ‘That sounds like fun,’ she said.
    Dibs and I did not move very fast because he agreed with me that it would be polite to let Caroline win.
    ‘She’s a good sport, eh?’ he said as we went across the rocks. ‘Likes having fun, eh?’
    ‘I bet Cal will wish he hadn’t missed this fun,’ I said. ‘Wonder where he got to. Hope that kid doesn’t fall in the river. I’ll get the blame if he does. Dad will chase me with his whip.’
    ‘I wouldn’t like to be chased with a whip,’ Dibs said.
    ‘It doesn’t happen often,’ I said, sorry now that I had used Dad to stop Dibs from thinking about Caroline. Dad was all right, he’d understand that it would be Cal’sown fault if he was washed out to sea.
    By the time we were at the top of the steps, Caroline was chatting to Sam Phelps and stroking the horse’s hollow. Sam Phelps looked hard at Dibs and me, but didn’t tell us to beat it. We praised Sydney Bridge Upside Down and agreed with Caroline that only a very strong-hearted horse could keep it up the way he did.
    In fact, the horse was what Sam Phelps and Caroline chatted about for the next fifteen minutes. I was disappointed, I thought they’d chat about other things.
    Maybe they saved the other things for when we were heading back along the line, Caroline up front beside Sam Phelps, Dibs and me inside the wagon.
    All the way along, I kept hoping Mr Wiggins had gone.
    Sure enough, when we reached the road I saw that his van was no longer outside our house. I was so pleased I began to whistle.
    I stopped whistling when I reached our front gate. Because I saw Susan Prosser staring at me from her veranda. It was the meanest stare I’d ever seen.

5

    T HERE WERE several reasons why the picnic Mrs Kelly held in Caroline’s honour was different from the picnics my mother used to hold. One reason was that my mother was not at Mrs Kelly’s picnic. Another reason was that Caroline was not at my mother’s picnics. I thought of more reasons while Sam Phelps was drinking Mrs Kelly’s lime juice in the clearing, but those two were enough to be getting on with. What started me thinking of differences was the memory of something that happened at one of my mother’s picnics. I remembered we were