Well, Kellyanne wasn’t getting any better and she wasn’t saying anything except muttering the names of Pobby and Dingan, and Mum and Dad were spending all their time by her bedside taking her temperature and telling her everything was going to be all right and making her soup which she never ate. And Dad was still pacing up and down clutching at this letter from the hospital which said that Kellyanne had to go there immediately, and that they needed to do some tests. My folks, I reckon, were beginning to think hospital was the only way out.
When the blanket everybody calls night was tucked in all snugly over Lightning Ridge I stayed in my room and hung my head out of the window and said a sort-of-a-prayer. I said something like: “Please let people go looking for Pobby and Dingan!” And I squeezed my hands together. When I’d finished the prayer, I realized I hadn’t put no address on it, and I was just whispering, “P.S. This prayer is for God or anyone powerful who can hear me,” and wondering if it wouldn’t be better to pray to someone cooler like James Blond, when I was distracted by the sound of Mum and Dad shouting at each other in their bedroom. And I only caught a few words, because it sounded muffled, like they was shouting with bits of cake in their mouths. But I heard Mum say she was tired a lot and homesick for England and Granny Pom and fed up of working at the checkout at Khan’s and not being able to look after her family for herself. And then I heard my dad shouting something about Her Royal Highness, and he kept repeating a man’s name, but I can’t remember what it was exactly. Probably some bloke who’d called Dad a ratter again and got him all upset and irritable.
5
The next day I got up early, gobbled my breakfast, attached bits of cardboard to my spokes with clothes-pegs and rode into town in fourth gear, sounding like a motorbike. There was no streams of trucks driving out early in the morning, and no sounds of the drilling rigs going at all. It seemed like the whole town had stopped mining or something. Then, just as I was going down Opal Street, I saw that there was a bunch of people crouched down on the roadside looking under bushes and cars and over fences and everything. When they saw me riding by on my souped-up Chopper, some of the people saluted me like I was some sort of general and shouted out: “Young Ashmol! Go tell Kellyanne we’re searching as hard as we can!” I almost fell off my bike with surprise. The first part of my plan had worked. People were actually looking for Pobby and Dingan, they really were! I pedalled home like a maniac to tell my family.
When Dad heard what I’d gone and done he patted me on the head and said: “Good thinking, son.” I told him it was important that Kellyanne saw what was taking place and Dad managed to persuade her to get out of bed. He lifted Kellyanne up in her sheet and took her out to the ute. Mum drove, because Dad wasn’t comfortable about going out and being seen by people yet.
I sat in the back watching everything, and when I got into town I made Mum pull over so Kellyanne could see the special notices I had put up on the fences and gates and trees. She smiled a little when she saw them. I said, “Sorry, Kellyanne. I didn’t know how to describe them proper. I mean, what do they look like?” And Kellyanne whispered that they didn’t look like anything in particular, but Dingan had a lovely opal in her bellybutton, only you had to be a certain kind of person to see it. And Pobby had a limp in his right leg.
There were now lines of people all over the dirt roads, and people out with their dogs, and we pulled up alongside them and waved out of the windows. They came up to the ute and said: “Hey, Kellyanne, we’ve been looking for six hours now and we’re not giving up until we find Pobby and Dingan. So don’t worry your head about it.” My sis smiled weakly. One boy asked her: “Do Dobby and Pingan speak Australian?”
“No,” said my sis, “they speak English quietly. And they likes to whistle. But you have to be a certain kind of person to hear them.” It was the first time Kellyanne had done this much speaking for a long while and it brought a look of hope to my mum’s face.
Well, everywhere we drove we saw little groups of people out and about hunting or pretending to hunt around the trees. I saw some of the line-dancers had a banner saying
Pobby and Dingan Search Party.
One big black bloke was standing on a mullock heap looking through a pair of binoculars. I recognized he was the man who brought Kellyanne home one time when his son kicked her in the shin and pulled her long hair when they were playing out behind the service station. Dad called him “the good coon” because he was dead-crazy about opals, and one time I’d seen him doing a traditional mating dance at the wet–T-shirt competition. When we drove up in the ute he came over and poked his head through the window on Kellyanne’s side and did a big grin and said: “Don’ worry, girl. I’ll find Pobby and Dingan in a flash for ya. I ain’t Lightning Dreaming for nothing. I’m gonna go walkabout ’til I find them.” And then he walked off into the bush. After that I didn’t see him again for weeks, but.
Well, I think Kellyanne was pretty amazed by all this, because her eyes were wide open. She turned and whispered to me: “Are all these people looking for Pobby and Dingan?”
“That’s right,” I said. “Even the abos.”
Kellyanne didn’t say anything after that. We took her back home and she went to sleep a little more peacefully. But when Jack the Quack came around later in the evening my mum was in floods of tears. I knew then that he must have told her that my little sis was really very ill and that my plan to make her feel better had failed. I went and hid in my room, feeling like there was a rock in my throat.
My dad went walkabout that night. I heard him leaving. He was sniffing and sobbing and breathing heavy like a kettle.
6
I woke up in the middle of the night all restless. I got out of bed, pulled open my car door and slid out of the room. A light was on in the living room and my mum was sitting on the floor with her back towards me and her chin resting on her knee. I tiptoed up to her and saw she had something rectangleish in her hand. “What you looking at, Mum?” I asked.
My mum almost blasted off like a rocket. She jumped up onto her feet and turned around to face me all in one move. She was holding her hands out in a weird kind of karate chop. But when she saw it was me she calmed down and stopped trembling. She said: “Hey, Ashmol! It’s you! Not sleepy?” I noticed she had put the thing she was holding behind her back.
“What were you looking at, Mum?” I said.
Colour went over her cheeks like rolling-flash. “Oh. It’s just a photograph, Ashmol.”
“Mind if I see? I really need something to knacker-out my eyes so as I can sleep.”
Mum paused for a while, and then handed me the photograph with a trembling hand and sat back down on the floor. I sat down opposite her, cross-legged. The photograph was of four people standing in a line with their arms around each other. Two blokes and two women. Behind them was a sort of a hill with trees on it and the side of a building. And the hill was covered with purple dots. The sky was a mixture of blue patches and very bulging sorts of grey clouds. But the most amazing thing about the photo was the purple dots.
“What are those?” I asked, pointing at the dots.
“Bluebells,” said Mum. “It’s a photograph taken in England, Ashmol.”
“And who’re those guys in the line?” I asked, scanning over their faces. The girls were very pretty and the blokes looked smart and rich and totally into themselves. And the blokes had expensive black suits and sharp noses, and the sheilas had flowers in their hair and pale skin and dresses like they wear at the Opal Princess competition.
“That’s me, Ashmol,” said my mum, in a whisper. “Aged nineteen. In Granny Pom’s paddock before the Castleford Ball.”
“What?” I said. “Which one?” And I looked again at the photo and saw her immediately. But she looked so different it was amazing. Much sparklier and cleaner in the photograph. Slimmer and with longer hair, but not as pretty as now, that’s for sure. And then I noticed one of the blokes was holding his face next to my mum’s, and was looking at her real close, and his hand was on her bare shoulder.
“Who’s that bloke?”
“Which one?”
“That one.” I pointed to the man in the photograph with the side parting and the hand.
“Peter Sidebottom.”
“Peter what?”
“Peter Juvenal Whiteway Sidebottom.”
“That’s a funny sort of a name,” I said. “Was he a mate of yours?”
“Yes. He was.” My mum paused and did her long-look-out-of-the-window thing. “He was my boyfriend before I met your father, as a matter of fact,” she said.
“Oh,” I said, a bit embarrassed and not sure what to say next. “Did he know the Queen?”
My mum laughed. “You’re a funny boy, Ashmol! What do you mean:
Did he know the Queen?
”
“Well, he looks sort of rich,” I said, “and like he might know the royal family and go shopping with them or something,” I said.
“No. He didn’t know the Queen,” said my mum. “But you’re right, Ashmol. He was rich. Well, his parents were, anyway. Now he’s left England and gone to live in a place called New York in America.”
I felt a bit hot under the hair and I sort of didn’t want to be in the room any more. But my legs weren’t going nowhere and my mouth was still wanting to talk.
“Mum, were you going to marry this Juvenile Side-bottom?” I asked.
My mum thought long and hard about this one and then said: “Perhaps. But that was before your father swept me off my feet.” I felt sort of sick inside when I heard this.
“I bet that Juvenile Sidebottom’s a total dag,” I said. “And I bet he’s not half as happy in New York as we are here at the Ridge.”
“Are you happy here at the Ridge, Ashmol?” my mum asked, not taking her eyes off herself and Peter Sidebottom in the photo.
“Sure as hell am,” I said, forcing out a big smile. “And you want to know why? Because here there’s always opal waiting to be found, and there’s always something to dream about, like another Fire Bird or a Christmas Beetle or a Southern Princess or an Aurora Australis.”
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s true,” said my mum a little sadly.
“And I reckon my dad is going to find something real special pretty soon,” I went on, “because he may not have been first in line when the money got handed out, and he may have rocks in his head, and he may have the rough end of the pineapple at the moment, but he’s a pretty amazing sort of a dad all in all.” Well, then I stood up and walked back towards the door, but before I went out I said, “One thing’s for sure, I’m bloody glad I ain’t called Ashmol Juvenile Sidebottom!” Then I walked out of the living room and closed the door behind me, and I heard my mum call out in a wobbly voice: “Good night, Ashmol Williamson! See you in the morning, hey?”
7
The next day people came up to our camp saying they had found Pobby and Dingan. When I made my plan I hadn’t reckoned people would actually claim they had found the imaginary friends and come for their reward. The trouble was I hadn’t got a reward to reward them with, because I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I always just sort of thought Kellyanne would find Pobby and Dingan by herself when she realized other people were taking an interest, like. But no. At nine o’clock in the morning Fat Walt, who owned the house-made-completely-from-bottles, came and knocked on the door, calling out: “Hey, little Kellyanne Williamson! I got yer Pobby and Dingan right here wi’ me!” He strode in holding his arms outstretched like he was carrying a bundle of dirty washing or something. I looked at him with a doubtful expression, knowing it wasn’t going to work. “Found them out at Coocoran, I did,” he said proudly.
I led him through to Kellyanne’s bedroom. I said: “Kellyanne! Fat Walt’s here! Says he’s found Pobby and Dingan.”
Kellyanne opened her eyes and I helped her sit up.
Fat Walt came through into the bedroom. “Here they are, Kellyanne,” he said. “They’re asleep. I found them out at Coocoran. They was shooting roos and they must have dozed off under a tree.”
Kellyanne closed her eyes again and pulled up the covers. “Stop pretending,” she said. “You haven’t got Pobby and Dingan there, anyone can see that. Pobby and Dingan don’t sleep and they don’t shoot. They’re pacifists. You’ve got nothing in your arms but thin air, and you know it.”
Walt looked defeated. He said something like, “Well, have it your way, then, you little Williamson brat!” and walked out. I felt sort of sorry for him all in all.
An hour later the legendary Domingo from the castle came in all excited, mopping his forehead with a cloth. His hands were all blistered from all that lugging of rocks and castle-building he had been doing and he wore a pair of boots and blue socks pulled up to his knees. He yelled, “Hey, you fellas! You’ll never guess what I found roaming around the dungeon in my castle, all lost and bewildered? Yup—your friends Pobby and Dingan. They said they’d walked twenty miles back from some opal fields. Well, you can relax now, mate, because Domingo has found them and now I’ve come to claim my reward. They’re back at the castle waiting to be collected.”
“What did Pobby and Dingan say when you found them?” asked Kellyanne in her weak little voice.
Domingo thought carefully and scratched at his chin, and said, “Hmm, well, they said they were very relieved and they wanted to see their best friend, Kellyanne Williamson, and have a big meal of steak and chips, because they were bloody starving.”
“No they didn’t,” said Kellyanne. “Pobby and Dingan only eat Cherry Ripes and Violet Crumbles and lollies.”
Domingo looked a mite desperate. “Maybe they’ve outgrown them now,” he said. You had to give him points for quick thinking. But Kellyanne wasn’t having any of it. She rolled over in her bed saying, “I wish people would stop making up such stupid stories about finding Pobby and Dingan. This whole town is going crazy. They should go back to their mines. I need to get some more sleep.”
I led Domingo out, saying I was real sorry and thanks for trying at least, and he sloped off back to his half-built castle shrugging his shoulders and kicking at the dirt, saying, “Seems to me she doesn’t want to find them at all.” I was worried he was also thinking: “I reckon Rex Williamson’s a ratter.” But anyway he shook my hand and went off to work on his turrets and to wait for his dream princess to arrive on her flying horse.
All in all about ten people came that day claiming they had found Pobby and Dingan. One old lady turned up with a little jar saying she had caught them in it. Ken from the chemist’s came in all stooped over saying he was giving Dingan a piggyback. He made out he had found her with a broken leg. He said he hadn’t found Pobby yet but would go back to the same place he found Dingan and have a scout around. Joe Lucas, who won the log-throwing competition the year before, reckoned he found Pobby and Dingan drunk in his grandpa’s wine cellar. He spent about twenty minutes doing this conversation thing in front of Kellyanne to try and make her laugh. He pretended to be trying to keep Pobby and Dingan under control and cracked lots of good jokes. A girl called Venus turned up with her Alsatian saying her dog had sniffed out the imaginary friends. Even the little boy with the Eric-the-ninja-platypus came along, claiming that his own imaginary friend had found my sister’s friends. He reckoned it was only possible for imaginary friends to be found by other imaginary friends. He did the best job of all of them. But at the end of the day Eric and him were sent away with their tails between their legs. Kellyanne said that there was no way Pobby and Dingan would come back with a giant ninja platypus, because giant ninja platypuses don’t exist. Anyone knows that.