While I Live

by John Marsden

  I couldn’t even answer him, and after an embarrassed silence he went off again, saying, ‘Oh well, I can see you’re a bit upset, but you’ll soon be over it.’

  I was meant to go back to school but I couldn’t face it. I said goodbye to Mr and Mrs Yannos, who were looking bewildered and upset, and I got a cafe latte at Juicy’s, in Barker Street. I was meant to be saving money but I didn’t care at that stage.

  The cafe was half full of soldiers. That was another thing we were slowly getting used to, soldiers everywhere. Conscription had started a month ago. Only limited at this stage. There would have been more but the Army couldn’t cope with hundreds and thousands of new recruits yet. By the time we left school there was a fair chance they’d be ready to take us, although because of our family circumstances both Lee and I would get exemption. Special consideration again. If we wanted it.

  To my surprise I saw Bronte hurrying along the street. I called to her and she came over straight away.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘God, so many soldiers.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s giving me the creeps.’

  ‘Hey, careful.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said automatically. Then I wondered why I had to be sorry. ‘What, are you connected with the Army or something?’

  ‘My parents are both in the Army.’

  ‘Really?’ I realised how little I knew about her. ‘What do they do?’

  ‘God, how would I know? What does anyone in the Army do? I don’t think it’s anything very exciting though. They seem to spend their time with piles of folders and reports. And they both look pretty bored when I go onto the base to see them.’

  ‘You don’t live on the base?’

  ‘No, it’s all so new out there, and there aren’t many houses. But eventually we’ll move, if we’re in Wirrawee long enough.’

  ‘So what rank are your parents?’ It was a relief to have something else to think about.

  ‘They’re both majors. I call them Major Major.’

  I must have looked a bit blank because she added: ‘It’s a joke from a book. Catch 22. It was about the American Army in World War II, and there was a character in it called Major Major, because that was both his rank and his surname.’

  ‘I get it. Like Doctor Doctor. You want a coffee?’

  She looked at her watch. ‘Sure.’

  ‘So what are you doing out of school?’ I asked again, when I’d finally fought off half the Army and come back with a black coffee and a latte.

  ‘Oh, I just had to go to the doctor. Nothing much.’ She brushed her hair from her forehead. ‘I get dermatitis and I was picking up a new prescription. I keep hoping for the miracle cream to turn up and cure it but I think I’m stuck with it. I get rashes and stuff all the time. Then I scratch them and make it worse.’

  ‘So where did you live before the war?’

  ‘Before the war. That’s our benchmark for everything now, isn’t it? Well, we lived everywhere. Typical Army kid. I’ve been to eight different schools. Mostly with other Army kids, depending on where we were stationed. Sometimes we went to normal schools. It was good in a way, because you’d turn up at a new school in, say, Darwin, and there’d be three kids you’d been in Grade 3 with in Holsworthy and two you’d been in Grade 4 with at Puckapunyal and one you’d remember from Grade 1 in Townsville, and so it went on.’

  ‘The paths kept recrossing?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Have you got any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘I had a brother but he was killed in the war.’

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘We were being evacuated to New Zealand by helicopter. He was in the one ahead of me. We got separated at the last minute. I tried to switch to his one but they wouldn’t let me so I just called out to him, ‘Don’t worry, you go on that one, I’ll meet you at the other end.’ I thought he’d be OK. He was with his friends and he’d been on a helicopter before. He just waved back. There was such chaos.’ She shrugged.

  ‘So what happened?’ I was gripping the cup as my latte got colder and colder. She seemed so calm.

  ‘It hit powerlines, just after take-off. Pilot error I guess. The weather was good enough. It fell on its side. And of course it was full of fuel so it exploded. We weren’t even allowed to get out of ours. We took off about two minutes later.’

  I tried to imagine how that would be, going up in one helicopter as you saw your brother killed in another one. I tried and I failed.

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Was he a nice brother?’

  Her face broke into a huge smile. ‘Oh he was so cool! I know you’re meant to fight with your brother and say he’s a nuisance and all that stuff, but Michael and I were the closest friends you could ever be. He was so gentle and kind. He played guitar and he’d just started writing his own songs. I think he would have been famous one day. The songs were great. It was like someone a thousand years old had written them.’

  Her eyes were moist now, but she shook her head and had a long sip of her coffee.

  ‘Anyway, what are you doing out of school?’ she asked.

  ‘It seems almost insignificant now,’ I said.

  ‘Is it insignificant to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘This lawyer who’s in charge of my parents’ money, he wanted to make himself my guardian as well. I didn’t want him, I wanted Homer’s mum and dad. But this morning the court handed me over to him.’

  ‘They did? Even though you didn’t want him?’

  ‘Yeah. Seems like that’s the way it works around here.’

  ‘That sucks.’

  ‘You mind going down to the Courthouse right now and saying that to the magistrate?’

  ‘What about the little boy, Gavin, who’s his guardian?’

  ‘Well, you know, I’m not sure. I think it was my mum and dad. I think they got some sort of court order about it. No-one seems to care much about Gavin, I mean no government department. No-one’s asked about him since my parents died. His school just acts like I’m suddenly his mum and dad rolled into one.’

  ‘So it sounds like this lawyer guy might now be Gavin’s guardian as well as yours?’

  ‘Maybe. Sheez. God, that’s terrible. This gets worse every minute.’

  ‘But can’t you do something about it? Come on, Ellie. You’re a fighter. That’s the way to be. I did boxing before the war. When you get knocked into the ropes you bounce off them and come back twice as hard and twice as fast. You use the ropes to work for you instead of against you.’

  ‘You did boxing? Real boxing?’

  ‘Sure. I mean mainly with the bag, but some practice rounds too, with real people.’

  This girl was full of surprises.

  ‘Can’t you appeal?’ she was asking. ‘Or go to the papers? Or get some dirt on this guy? Tell them he dragged you behind the filing cabinets and felt your boobs? Why don’t you fire-bomb his office?’

  ‘Bronte!’ I thought for a minute. ‘There is one thing. Mrs Yannos said she thinks he and Mr Rodd are brothers-in-law. Mr Rodd’s a farmer who lives near us. He’s a real bastard, and Mrs Yannos reckons he wants to buy my place. So if Sayle – that’s the lawyer – has complete control he could sell to Rodd at a cheap price and get me out of his hair.’

  ‘Well, that’s got to be illegal, surely?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’d think so.’

  I kept thinking how generous she was to care about my problems after what she’d been through. We finished our coffees and walked back to school. By the time we reached the gates there wasn’t much school left for the day. I sighed. Another day for Ms Maxwell to mark off on her calendar as a backward step in Ellie’s education.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE CONVERSATION WITH Bronte gave me some heart but by that night I was really down about it again. The situation seemed hopeless. There were too many forces on too many fronts to battle again
st. It was all very well for Bronte to say ‘Fight’, but I’d never had enemies like these before.

  I needed someone else to talk to so I rang Lee. He wasn’t always the first person I called when I was up to my neck in mud, but in my life there were Lee-times and Fi-times and sometimes even Homer-times, and this felt like a Lee-time.

  His little sister, Pang, answered. I’d only met Lee’s sisters and brothers a couple of times but I’d talked to Pang a lot on the phone, and she was my favourite. She was nine, and as bubbly as Lee was still, as noisy as he was silent, as funny as he was grave.

  ‘Hi, Pang,’ I said, ‘how’s life? Is Lee being good to you?’

  ‘No, he’s being horrible. He’s always yelling at us and he picks on me and he’s the worst cook in the world.’

  ‘Why, what’d he give you for tea tonight?’

  ‘Tonight. We had burnt newspaper and bits of old carpet, and . . . um . . .’ Pang was obviously looking around the room for inspiration. ‘And then we had the budgie for dessert.’

  ‘You did? What’s that I can hear singing in the background?’

  ‘He was reincarnated.’

  I could hear Lee saying, ‘C’mon, Pang, is that Ellie? Give me the phone,’ so I said a quick goodbye as she handed it over.

  But when Lee came on I suddenly dried up. It had been an effort to be light and chatty with Pang. Now I couldn’t keep making the effort. I heard Lee gradually getting more concerned. ‘Ellie, are you OK? . . . Hello, Ellie . . . Ellie, what’s wrong?’

  Finally I whispered, ‘I think I’m going to lose the farm.’

  ‘What do you mean? Why? Are you broke?’

  ‘No, not yet.’

  ‘Was today the court case?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Oh sorry. I would have rung. I thought it was next week.’

  ‘Well it wasn’t.’

  ‘And you lost?’

  There was another long silence. I said, ‘Why is the world so awful?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Everyone’s so greedy. Everyone only looks after themselves. They’re just out for all they can get.’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘Well, take Mr Sayle for instance.’

  ‘Take Robyn Mathers.’

  ‘Take Mr Rodd.’

  ‘Take Mr and Mrs Yannos.’

  ‘Take the women in the prison ward, when I was shot. During the war.’

  ‘Take Mrs Xannides.’

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘The lady in the next apartment. She comes in and looks after the kids when I’m going to be late home.’

  ‘I still think I’m right though. What about Hitler?’

  ‘What about Nelson Mandela?’

  ‘Stalin.’

  ‘Martin Luther King.’

  ‘Pol Pot.’

  ‘I’ll see your Pol Pot with Mother Theresa and raise you a Pastor Neimoller.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He was in a concentration camp in World War II and he volunteered to take the place of a guy who was about to be shot, because the other guy had a wife and kids.’

  ‘God is there anything you don’t know?’

  He ignored that and ripped off another string of names, most of which I’d never heard of: ‘Ralph Nader. Gandhi. John Lennon. Paul Robeson. Marie Curie. Bob Brown. Lassie.’

  ‘Oh I don’t know, Jack the Ripper. Stop being so annoying.’

  He laughed, and I did too.

  I rang Mrs Yannos and got loads of sympathy but when I started asking about any relationship between Mr Sayle and Mr Rodd I got nowhere. She just went all vague again. So I took a bit of a risk and rang Mrs Sanderson. I was really working the phone that night. I guess it was my way of fighting back, a little bit at least.

  Mrs Sanderson was new to Wirrawee but she already knew ten times more about the district than I did. We talked about rainfall, cattle prices, and government rules and regulations, which had all become compulsory topics around here. After a while I got onto the subject of Mr Rodd’s life and times, and just asked her straight out: ‘Is his brother-in-law Mr Sayle, the lawyer in town?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. No, there’s no real relationship there. Mr Sayle’s wife has a sister and she lived with Mr Rodd for a while. But that broke up pretty fast. I think it only lasted a couple of months.’

  ‘That seems to happen a lot to Mr Rodd.’

  ‘Yes, he’s not my favourite person.’

  I was exhausted after talking to her. I don’t know why shopping, sitting in class and talking on the phone are all so tiring, but they are, especially shopping. Still, I wasn’t ready to give up yet. My last call was to Fi’s mum. I told her everything that had happened, including the bit about Mr Sayle being connected to Mr Rodd.

  At the end she said what I expected: ‘It’s not looking good for you, Ellie.’

  ‘But there must be something I can do.’

  ‘Oh yes, you can lodge an appeal. But to be honest I’d be surprised if they agree to hear it. Appeal courts decide for themselves which cases they’ll hear. I mean, the courts are so clogged and you haven’t got any new evidence and I doubt if the magistrate’s made any errors in law.’

  ‘What about the connection between Sayle and Mr Rodd?’

  ‘That’s nothing by itself. His sister-in-law . . . And she and Mr Rodd aren’t even together anymore. You’d have to prove a conspiracy, and you won’t be able to do that. Look, I’m not sure of the law in this area, but I suspect that as your guardian he can probably sell the property to Mr Rodd at any halfway fair price. If he sells it at twenty cents a hectare obviously you can stop that. But as long as it’s in a reasonable range he’d probably get away with it.’

  ‘This is so wrong,’ I wailed. ‘It’s so unfair.’

  ‘Ellie, have you ever thought that maybe you’re being a bit paranoid? He may have no intention of cheating you. After all, your father obviously trusted him. You’re not going to like this, darling, but he may be right about the property. It may not be possible to keep it. He may just be acting in your best interests.’

  Nothing in my heart or mind would let me accept this idea. I went to bed feeling that the only person on my side was Gavin, and I hadn’t even been able to tell him what happened in court yet. I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

  I was so caught up in the whole thing, worrying myself into a coma, that I could have completely missed what was going on the very next day at the Youngs’ place.

  ‘Adderley’ was about six k’s from us. The Youngs had three kids: the twins, Shannon and Sam, and their younger brother Alastair, who was ten. All the kids were funny, which in itself was funny, because Mr and Mrs Young had as much sense of humour as a John Deere four wheel drive tractor. They seemed constantly baffled by their children. Mrs Young’s brother had owned the property next door but he’d been killed in the war, on the first day. The Youngs inherited it but it was taken off them again in the redistribution, so they basically ended up back where they started.

  ‘Adderley’ was a small place but it was on the river, so it had good soil. It was well fenced, with a famous old shearing shed that hadn’t been used for decades, and the biggest machinery shed I’ve ever seen. Mrs Young’s family had owned it since the fifteenth century or something like that.

  You had the feeling that nothing ever changed on ‘Adderley’ which is why, the day after the court case, I should have noticed that something was different. But it took Gavin’s sharp eyes to pick it up. We were both on the school bus, sitting three seats apart. Homer and we were the only kids left on board. The first footy match between Wirrawee and Keating since the war was happening back in town, so a lot of people had stayed on for that. But Homer hated team sports and I had too much stuff to do back home.

  I was three-quarters asleep and Homer, behind me, was completely asleep. Suddenly Gavin was standing next to me. He looked puzzled.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

  ‘The Youngs’ house,’ he said, nodding backwards.


  ‘What about it?’

  ‘There’s a light upstairs. It keeps going on and off.’ He demonstrated with his hands.

  ‘It what?’

  ‘On and off. All the time.’

  ‘What do you . . . ? But that’s weird.’

  He stood back while I got up and went over to the other side of the bus, but of course the house was already out of sight.

  I only had a moment to make a decision. I didn’t have a clue what might be going on. It was probably Alastair, mucking around, but we’d been warned so often to be on guard. There’d been lots of ads saying things like ‘Every bell is an alarm bell.’ ‘Be super alert.’ A light turning on and off was probably nothing. But ignoring it seemed like a bad idea.

  I told Gavin to wake Homer, which I knew he’d enjoy, and I ran forward to stop the bus. Barry was driving. He was pretty easygoing and when I told him we wanted to get off he just shrugged and pulled over. I didn’t tell him why, because I was already feeling a bit stupid. I mean, what were we doing? Getting off in the middle of nowhere because the Youngs’ house had a problem with electricity? How were we meant to get home?

  Homer was really grumpy, like a bear who’s just come out of hibernation. The bus galumphed away down the road. ‘What’s this all about?’ Homer asked.

  ‘Gavin said there’s a light upstairs at the Youngs’ place that keeps going on and off.’

  ‘So what?’ He hesitated, then relented a bit. ‘Oh well, I suppose we’d better check it out, seeing we’re here now.’

  ‘We’re getting like Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys or something, solving mysteries.’

  ‘Well, it does sound a bit odd. The light, I mean.’

  We walked quite quickly down the road. As we went Homer pulled out his mobile and dialled a number. To me he muttered, ‘I’m going to tell Liberation what we’re doing. We need to tell someone.’

  ‘Good idea.’

  I couldn’t hear who answered, though I wished I could. Homer did all the talking anyway, then the other person said something, and that was the end of the conversation.

  ‘You could ring the Youngs,’ I suggested.

  ‘OK.’