by John Marsden
We walked fast for fifteen minutes. The sudden exercise, coming after so much sitting around, was a shock to my system. I was soon panting and blowing. My nose started running too, which was a nuisance as I couldn't reach my handkerchief. I had no idea who was behind me or who was in front, except that I knew it was a woman in front. It took ages for me to get my second wind—in fact I've never been sure that there's such a thing as second wind—but after a while I got in a bit of a routine and started to travel more easily.
Then, bump, my nose hit the soldier in front. We'd stopped. I moved forward a little, feeling important. This would be my cue. Sure enough Iain was already looking for me. "Good on you, Ellie," he whispered. "You know where we are yet?"
"No, I'll have to take a look around."
"OK, you do that. Kay'll go with you. I'll just check the troops."
As everyone gathered around him, Kay and I moved off into the darkness. I strained my eves looking for landmarks. There was no way of knowing where we were. If Sam had been a centimetre out with his calculations we could be several k's from where we'd been heading. The ground we were on was still rough and broken. We were going downhill most of the time: that suggested the eastern boundary, near the foothills. There were plenty of sheep droppings, which probably meant one of the there big paddocks along that edge of the property, but with new owners there was no telling what they might have allowed. The sheep could be running wild in the bush.
"Anything?" Kay muttered.
I shook my head and we pressed on. I was hoping Kay, with her army training, could lead me back to the others eventually. The further we got away from them the less confident I was of finding them again.
I felt the ground getting spongy. I knelt and pressed it with my fingers. It was damp all right. I felt a sense of great relief. I hadn't wanted to let these people down. I hadn't wanted to look a fool. A lot of pride was tied up in this. But I still had to make sure. I said to Kay: "We'll walk a hundred metres this way, and we should hit the corner of a paddock."
Often now when I want to give myself a boost, to feel good, I think back to that moment when I led Kay straight to the intersection of two fences, in pitch blackness, at 4.45 a.m., after being dropped in the middle of nowhere by a helicopter. I tried to look completely casual about it, as though I'd always known it'd be there, and I tried not to look too smug when Kay said: "My God, you really do know your way around."
We hurried back to the others. We didn't have any trouble finding them.
"How'd you go?" lian asked.
He always sounded so unflappable. It didn't matter that we were in the middle of a war zone, a thousand k's from New Zealand and possibly lost. He sounded like he was asking how I'd got on in the hundred metres at the school sports.
"We're not where we aimed for. But we're in quite a good spot. About a k and a half from the track. It's a bit of a bush-bash to get to it. There's no way there'll be any soldiers around here though. It's the wildest part of the property."
I was all set to lead them straight off into the bush but Iain pulled out his thin little flashlight and made me show him on the map where we were. I think he wanted to reassure himself that I knew what I was talking about. But Kay helped when she said: "She knows the place backwards, Iain. She bent down, touched the ground, then told me exactly where the fence was."
I realised that to Kay, who was from Auckland, it must have seemed like magic. She probably hadn't even noticed the spongy grass under her feet. Of course I knew every spring on the place—well, you have to—so once I'd felt that dampness on a downhill slope surrounded by rough ground I knew we had to be in a corner of Nellie's, our biggest paddock on the eastern side.
I kept it to myself though. True magicians never give away their secrets.
Iain, being ultra-cautious, got a compass bearing, although the map he had wasn't accurate enough really, but as soon as he'd finished we were ready to go. swung my pack on my back and, full of energy at last, took the only position I'm really comfortable with: the lead. And away we went.
It only took ten minutes before they had to ask me to slow down. I was proud of that, too. I was charged up all right. My mood had changed completely. Fi, behind Iain, who was behind me, was shocked. As we stood waiting for the others to catch up she said: "Ellie, they ought to drug test you."
I shrugged and laughed. "Being back home, that's my drug."
I have to admit, though, it was a tough bush-bash. For all my sudden confidence I missed the stockyard, probably by less than a hundred metres, but I did miss it. When we came out of the bush we hit the fence between Nellie's and Burnt Hut, the next paddock, instead of the stockyard. That meant we'd overshot the spur, so my little mistake added about twenty minutes to the trek. I didn't say anything to anyone, because there was no way they would have known, and why make myself look bad? I just gritted my teeth, swung to the left, and led them up the fenceline.
We hit the track at about 5.30. Daylight was too close for us to be able to have a break. Iain just grunted "good girl," when he saw the red-brown dirt in the dim light, then quickly detailed two soldiers to go ahead of the others, in case of enemy activity. He didn't want me to go but I told him they'd need me. I knew the road better than anyone. I knew where it curved, where it dipped, where enemy troops might be camping or resting if they were out on patrol.
Anyway, the odds of them being up in this country were about one in a thousand.
It wasn't like I'd lost my fear in these couple of hours. It was just that I'd been able to push it down. It was still in me somewhere. But there wasn't room or time for it at the moment.
So the three of us slogged on. Wc kept climbing. I'd forgotten how much of war was like this. So much hard yakka, grunting up and down mountains, carrying weights that felt like every textbook I'd ever owned had been plonked in my backpack, and then some. Trying to remember that every bush, every tree, could contain death. Relaxing for a minute or two, letting your mind wander, daydreaming, then suddenly thinking, "Oh my God, I haven't been concentrating; that daydream could have cost me my life."
Ploughing on hour after hour, day after day sometimes, just so at the end of it you could kill someone or be killed.
Well, we ploughed on, until by 9 a.m. we were standing on the top of Tailor's Stitch.
Four
So much had happened, since the first time we'd stood there as a group, the seven of us, Homer, Fi, Robyn, Lee, Come, Kevin and me. And later, Chris. Two, and possibly three, of that group would never stand there again.
But the rest of us had returned.
And suddenly it seemed very important that we had returned. Sure, now we were hiding in the shadows. The first time we had stood in the open, relaxed, laughing, fooling around, feeling we were at home, this was our land. We'd never questioned that. Took it for granted.
Now we took nothing for granted. Especially our lives.
The five of us who were left, the five survivors, stood in a group, using a clump of old wizened twisted gum trees as cover. We ignored the Kiwis for a minute and stared down into Hell. No one said anything. The only sounds were the normal bush sounds: the whispering of leaves, the moaning of crows, the faraway scream of a parrot. I don't know what the others were thinking but I was thinking that this was where I belonged, this was my dreaming. I'd become a gum tree, a rock, a parrot myself. I'd resisted coming back here but now that I was here I never wanted to leave it again.
On my right Iain said: "That is a wild place."
Ursula, who was also a Captain, and who was second-in-charge to Iain, said: "I've done a lot of tramping in New Zealand, but this is as wild as anything I've seen."
"Tramping" sounded so funny to me, but all the Kiwis used it.
"And can you really get us down in there?" Iain asked me.
"Sure thing," Homer answered. "No trouble at all."
"I didn't even feel my lips move," I thought, but I didn't say anything. It wasn't the right time to start another fight with Homer, B
ig Man I-always-have-to-be-Leader Homer. Instead I said to Iain: "If we go along the ridge, towards Wombegonoo there's a way in."
It seemed like we were earning our keep. This was why they'd brought us. This was the best hiding place for a hundred k's in any direction. And we were the only people in the world who knew about it.
We shouldered our packs again and, keeping off the ridge, staying below the tree-line, made our way towards the hidden path that led down into Hell. It was terribly difficult walking that way because the sides of Tailor's Stitch are so steep and every second step started a miniature landslide. But we had no choice. In broad daylight we were completely exposed on the top. Walking like this was just one of the many prices to be paid for allowing invaders into our country.
When we got to Wombegonoo we pointed out the tree to Iain. The problem was that there was no cover between us and the tree. A sheet of rock, quite smooth, bare as a bitumen playground, stretched from the summit of Wombegonoo to the old gum tree. I think we five, if we'd been on our own, would have gone for it. We were so used to feeling safe up here. But Iain didn't like the risk. He decided we'd have to wait till dark.
So suddenly, after all the tension and fear and excitement, there was nothing much. We set up a bit of a camp on the western side of the ridge and, because it looked like being a hot day, we hung a few tent-flies for shade, down in among the scrub where aircraft couldn't see them. Iain posted three sentries and everyone else, including me—especially me—went to sleep.
Boy, did I sleep. I can't think of any reason I would have 'slept so well and so long. I mean, sure, I hadn't slept for nearly a week, but you'd think I'd have been even worse now that I was back in the heart of danger. Maybe I was having a reaction to all the stress of the night. But whatever, I slept more than four hours, which I never do normally. Not in the daytime.
After that, after I woke', there was just a lot of sitting around. It got pretty boring. Some of the soldiers, and Kevin and Homer, were playing cards. One was reading a book he'd borrowed from Fi —I don't think they were allowed to bring books and stuff like that themselves, they were meant to travel light—and a couple were talking about rugby, which I've noticed New Zealanders do quite a lot. Just before we left, the New Zealand Government announced the suspension of all rugby for the duration of the war, because all the young guys had been conscripted. Even in World War Two they hadn't cancelled rugby. So they were all whingeing about that.
It was like a school camp in some ways. You could almost forget that we were in the middle of a war zone.
The day dragged on. I was anxious to get down into Hell. It was home to me now, in some ways. Home in Hell. What did that say about me? Who lived in Hell? I knew the answer to that. The devil and the tortured souls. Which one was I? Most times I thought I knew the answer to that, too. But sometimes I felt like I had become a devil. The things we'd done made me shudder, made me sick. I'd talked about them to Andrea, and that helped. A little. She kept saying, "Talking always helps." It was like a motto to her. But I don't think even she understood exactly what it was like. How could she? It doesn't matter how much training you've had, you're not going to suddenly become an expert in helping teenagers who've killed people. There aren't a huge number of cases around for you to practise on.
All this stuff had made such a difference. It wrecked my relationship with Lee, for a start. I still looked at him longingly sometimes, wanting to get back what we'd enjoyed so much, wanting to hold him in my arms again, to feel the excitement, his and mine—because his excitement was one of the things that excited me—and wanting the wonderful warm feeling of being naked together. It had been so different with Adam. Nothing but aggression and selfishness and grog. It didn't feel like he loved me. It was more like he hated me, wanted to attack me. Even in the old days, at school in Wirrawee, I'd noticed that a lot of boys who made a big deal about their girlfriends and their great sex lives seemed to have almost a hatred for girls. All at the same time. It was weird. But I felt the same thing in Adam.
Lee was never like that. I was the one who'd stuffed him around. He'd always been generous with me. Like at the airport in New Zealand, walking back to the waiting area after we'd had our coffee. Somehow with all the terrible things happening around us I'd become dead inside, in the loving part of me anyway. I couldn't feel anything for him. I couldn't feel anything for anyone, except Fi, and mv parents. Oh, and Andrea. But it was my parents I longed for mostly. I wanted to be a little girl again and cuddle into them, wriggling in between them like I'd done in their bed when I was three or four, snug and warm in the safest place in the world.
Instead I had Hell.
I went for a walk that afternoon. Again I had to fight Iain to get permission. I didn't like that, having to ask permission to walk around my own land. It reminded me too much of life with Major Harvey. Of course it was a lot different with Iain. He was relaxed and friendly and easy to talk to. But I still had to persuade him that it was OK.
"There's no chance of enemy soldiers up here, Iain."
"Well, the chances are minimal, yes."
"And I'm not going to get lost. I know this area like the back of my hand."
"New Zealand Search and Rescue spend most of their time saving experienced trampers."
"I'll be careful, I promise. No bungee jumping, caving, rock rolling. Trust me."
When he eventually did agree and I went for my walk I spent the first fifteen minutes fuming about the conversation. It was annoying being so sure of something but then having to convince someone else. At home my parents had always trusted my judgement. That had been one of the big shocks when I got to school, finding that things were a bit different there. It depended, of course. Depended on the teacher. At Wirrawee Primary, for instance, if we hurt ourselves we'd go to the staff room and borrow the first-aid kit and fix ourselves up. Then this new Principal came when I was in Grade 3. I was sitting outside the staff room with the first-aid box, and I was digging a splinter out of my finger with the needle. The new Principal came past, asked me what I was doing, then cracked a mental when I told him. He didn't only tell me off, he told the teachers off. I could hear him in the staff room, raving about legal consequences and stuff. I thought he was stupid, but after that if we got a splinter we had to ask a teacher to take it out.
You can never stay angry for too long in the bush though. At least, that's what I think. It's not that it's soothing or restful, because it's not. What it does for me is get inside my body, inside my blood, and take me over. I don't know that I can describe it any better than that. It takes me over and I become part of it and it becomes part of me and I'm not very important, or at least no more important than a tree or a rock or a spider abseiling down a long long thread of cobweb. As I wandered around, on that hot afternoon, I didn't notice anything too amazing or beautiful or mindbogglingly spectacular. I can't actually remember noticing anything out of the ordinary: just the grey-green rocks and the olive-green leaves and the reddish soil with its teeming ants. The tattered ribbons of paperbark, the crackly dry cicada shell, the smooth furrow left in the dust by a passing snake. That's all there ever is really, most of the time. No rainforest with tropical butterflies, no palm trees or Californian redwoods, no leopards or iguanas or panda bears.
Just the bush.
Iain wouldn't move over Tailor's Stitch until it was completely dark. He was right, of course: even in the dimmest light we risked our silhouettes being seen by anyone who happened to be looking in the right direction. But it was frustrating, sitting there waiting, every minute thinking, "OK, it's dark enough now, let's go," then thinking, "Oh no, there's still a streak of grey in the sky, right across the ranges, better wait a few more minutes."
Then suddenly we were all on our feet, hoisting packs, stuffing pockets, shaking hair out of our eyes. Iain called me over and told me to lead again, which pleased me a lot, although Homer pretended he didn't even notice.
And so, when everyone was ready, we began the trek, back up the
steep side of the ridge, over Wombegonoo, and into my sanctuary of Hell.
Getting in and out of Hell was never easy because of the steepness and narrowness of the track. Also, it was very slippery in places where the creek flowed along it for a few metres, so that the creek and the track became the same thing. Doing it in complete darkness was really annoying. All that slipping and sliding and, just as you recovered, getting hit in the face by a branch. Then Iain, behind me, would lose his footing and crash into my back. It was like babysitting Kevin's brothers. You felt you were in a wrestling match half the time. There was no doubt about those Kiwis, though—Colonel Finley told us they'd been handpicked for their initiative and guts, and they did handle it well. Lots of jokes and stuff.
I handled it OK, I guess, but I was pretty tired. I didn't have much to say.
It was just before ten o'clock—2200 hours—that we "landed safe and sound, at the bottom of that terrible descent."
Or, to put it another way, we found ourselves home again, in the depths of Hell.
Five
I don't know what the others did that first night. I think they all went to bed. I know Fi and I did. We put up our tent—pretty roughly—crawled into it and stayed there.
One good thing about having professional soldiers around was that we didn't have to do sentry duty. That was such a bonus. In the past we'd dragged ourselves out of warm beds and sleeping bags at all hours of the day and night, in wet weather and dry, moaning and whingeing and swearing and hating it. So far though no one had mentioned that we should do anything so uncomfortable and unpleasant. Fi and I were giggling about it that first night. We agreed that volunteering would be silly: after all, these guys were paid to do it. And they were so gung-ho, so fired up. Half of them had never been on active service before, and the rest of them hadn't done much. It would be a pity to cut them out of their fun.
