by John Marsden
I pushed down with the bouncy motion we’d been taught. Two or three centimetres was the rule, I thought. I remembered they said not to be afraid of pushing pretty hard. Her pigeon chest felt tiny, and I thought I would break her ribs. The instructor had said something about that too, but I couldn’t remember what. Did she say not to break them, or that it didn’t matter if you did? I gritted my teeth and kept pressing and bouncing. A sudden thought: I was meant to have her head tilted back. To clear the airway. I stopped the massage and did it, but even as I did I felt another wave of despair. Her body was so limp. It wasn’t exactly cold, but it wasn’t warm either: just felt like something had left it. And I knew what that something was.
I breathed into her again. I breathed desperately, trying to transfer my oxygen, my life, into her. Then I resumed the CPR. I heard running footsteps and felt rather than saw Lee standing next to me. At some point Homer must have left, but I hadn’t noticed.
‘Do you want some help?’ Lee asked.
‘Am I doing it right?’
‘I think you should have your hands up a bit higher.’
I moved them to where he suggested. He watched for a minute then said, ‘You’re doing fine, but I’d better get the water to the others.’ I nodded. I knew that was the right thing to do. I heard his footsteps running on again and felt terribly alone and deserted. I hadn’t even asked him how Natalie was. Kevin ran past without stopping: he just yelled, ‘Are you OK?’ and when I didn’t answer he kept running. There was no sign of Fi.
Darina had felt cold from the start but she seemed colder and colder as the minutes passed. I started to feel angry, more than angry: enraged. I know my anger affected the way I was doing the CPR – I was pressing harder, doing it more jerkily – but I don’t think that made any real difference.
I didn’t give up until suddenly the coldness of her lips made me feel ill. Like, nauseous. One minute I was still going all right; the next I wanted to throw up. I felt guilty about stopping but in another part of my mind I knew it was no use, I’d known from the start it was no use. I didn’t have the slightest clues how long I’d been trying, but I was fairly sure it was a long time, maybe as long as half an hour. I sat back on my haunches, wiping my mouth. It’s a terrible thing to say, but I felt like I’d been drinking milk that was off. I didn’t cry. Maybe I’d had enough time during the CPR to get used to the idea that she was dead.
After a time I stood up and looked along the track in both directions. There was no sign of anyone. I fell something then, by God I felt something: another of those unbearable floods of loneliness that rushed through me, that had been rushing through me since this war began. It happened in the Hermit’s hut down in Hell, it happened in the school in Wirrawee, it happened in the middle of the bush at night when my horse was shot dead from under me. Each time it happened I thought it was the worst ever. I didn’t know any more if this was the worst; I only knew it felt absolutely devastating to be alone on the rough old overgrown bush track with the cold body of a child whom I hardly knew. Somewhere Darina probably had parents, maybe a brother or sister, friends, a home, a school, a street she once played in. Now, thanks to a horrible war, she had lost her life among these grey-green trees, in an anonymous patch of bush that looked like any other patch. If you went back along the track, around the corner, you’d see a stretch of scrub that looked exactly the same as this. If you went on ahead, around the next corner, I was willing to bet it’d look the same again. I suppose it didn’t matter but right then it seemed tragic and hopeless that Darina had died in such a boring featureless patch of bush, that this was the last view her eyes had seen before they closed forever, instead of somewhere beautiful or unique or memorable.
I cursed all rotten foul and ugly wars.
I didn’t want to go after the others. They could be anywhere. I most wanted to go back to Fi, to see how she was getting on with Natalie. Well, I told myself that was the reason. Of course the real reason was I needed the comfort of being with Fi again, the only person I wanted at times like this, despite the telling off she’d given me on the way down to Hell. That seemed like weeks ago. It was actually only a few days ago.
I should say, Fi was the only person nearby who I wanted to be with. It was no good dreaming of my parents or grandmother. Might as well wish for the man in the moon.
In the movies when someone died away from ambulances and doctors, their faces always got covered with a handkerchief. That’s what I remembered them doing. I looked at Darina and felt no wish to do that. Her face was calm and pretty. Her mouth was a bit slack. The tension had gone out of her lips. I gazed down at her, trying to get used to the idea that she was dead. Death was the weirdest thing in the world. How could she be living, thinking, dreaming, laughing one minute, and the next minute nothing? A complete stop. I wanted to believe in stuff like reincarnation, but being on a farm makes it hard, because there’s so much death. I couldn’t quite believe that all those locusts and European wasps and mosquito wrigglers in the tank got reincarnated, and if they didn’t, then why should people? What made us so special?
Without thinking about the emotional side of it, how I was leaving Darina there – even more alone than I felt – I started off along the path after the others. I was so lost in my thoughts I didn’t do it consciously. I’d gone around three or four bends before I realised I’d left Darina and was on my way forward, instead of going back to Fi. I guess it was the urgency of the search. There were still three missing children and only the three boys looking for them. I had to try to shake off the memory of Darina for the time being and catch up with the other searchers, do all I could for anyone who was still alive.
Wearily, feeling as tired as death myself, I started jogging again.
Luckily for me I didn’t have to go far. Even with the motivation of the lost kids I couldn’t do much better than a tired stumble. My steps were so short I felt I had elastic tied between both ankles, and it only stretched fifteen centimetres. It wasn’t just the physical tiredness either; it was the terrible emotional weariness. Death, death, death, that seemed to be the story of my life these days. Story of all wars I guess. Talk about walking through the valley of death. For a while I forgot the successes we’d achieved, the applause of the people in New Zealand, the bond that Fi and Homer and Kevin and Lee and I shared. The senseless death of one little girl had taken all that away.
A kilometre further on my search came to a sudden end. It was a shock to come upon such a crowd after being on our own for nearly seventy hours. Six people in a tiny clearing, a clearing the size of our front porch at home, seemed quite a crowd. I went through an awful minute trying to work out if any of the three kids were alive. Then I saw Gavin sitting up and struggling to drink from Lee’s water bottle. I looked frantically for the other two. Terror sat on my shoulder ready to grab me around the throat at any moment. Casey was lying on her back. Homer wiping her face with a wet handkerchief. I saw Jack curled in a little ball, Kevin holding him. Just as I got to them the water Kevin was forcing between Jack’s lips reached something, and the little boy coughed and spluttered and retched some of the water back up. He started groaning like he had stomach-ache. Then I saw Casey’s eyes blinking, and suddenly she was breathing with fast shallow breaths.
I sat down next to Homer and Casey. ‘How’s Darina?’ Homer asked, glancing up at me. I think he knew as soon as he saw my face, but I said it anyway. I wanted to know how the words would sound, the strange words coming out of my mouth. I tried to say, ‘She died, she’s dead,’ but my voice wouldn’t form those words. I found myself saying, ‘We lost her,’ but even that wasn’t accurate enough because I felt like I was the one who had lost her; her death somehow belonged especially to me.
There was no time to explore that idea right there and then though. There was too much to do. I patted Casey and held her hand for a minute, then checked the boys again. It seemed like they were doing OK. I said to all of them, ‘I’m going back to find Fi and Na
talie.’ No-one answered or even looked at me, but that was fair enough. They had enough to think about.
I hurried back along the track. I passed Darina’s tired body but hardly had the courage to look at it now. I felt scared of it somehow. I guess it’s just the effect death has on you. There are so many superstitions about it. Halloween and headless horsemen and haunted houses and swagmen drowned in billabongs. They can’t help but get to you, in one way or another. So I hurried past Darina, feeling guilty as I did, and pushed on down the interminable track, through the endless monotonous bush, looking for Fi and Natalie at every new turn. I was starting to realise how long Fi had been back here, alone with Natalie. What if Natalie had died too? I didn’t like to think of poor Fi alone with a dead child. It had been bad enough for me, but I always thought I was stronger than Fi.
Natalie, tough little bugger, looked in better shape than any of them. She was sitting up and talking to Fi, in her baby voice, sounding more like a three year old than a seven year old. I couldn’t blame her though. Maybe that’s what happens when you go close to death: you go backwards in age. When you reach zero you die. Whatever, we’d got to Natalie just in time.
We’d definitely got to the other kids just in time. I’m no doctor but I think if we’d been another half an hour we’d have lost the lot of them. That’s how close it was. I never want to be that close again.
Chapter Seven
I had to learn even more patience in the next few days. There had been times before the war when I was patient. If a pump at home needed priming I’d stand there trickling the water in for twenty minutes. And getting rid of possums in the roof: that was a different kind of patience. It could take a week in our big house to work out how they were getting in, and another week to block their hole successfully. They were crafty and persistent and bloody-minded.
Since the war started my patience had come and gone, in fits and starts. But with these kids in such a bad state we had to grit our teeth and have the patience of saints. Just getting them up the mountain and into Hell was a major operation. It took three and a half, nearly four days, and of course during that time we had to supply them with food and water. I made three trips up and down the hill to the top of Tailor’s Stitch and three trips down into Hell and up again. My legs just refused to carry me sometimes, I was so tired, but even when they felt like useless lumps of dead meat I had to keep going, and I did.
We all gradually took on different roles, without ever planning it that way. It just happened, as a result of our different personalities. I became the pack-horse. Kevin was the cook. Fi was mother. Lee was the security guy, because after all, we were still in a war. No way could we relax our defences.
One of us certainly took on a new role. A role that no-one knowing him before the war could have predicted. A role that didn’t seem related to his personality. Homer became father. In fact when he was in a good mood we called him Big Daddy to his face. It was the most amazing transformation. You just never saw him away from the kids. From dawn till dusk he was feeding them, clucking over their cuts and sores and bruises, trying to get them moving around, trying to get them to play a game or laugh at a joke or show a bit of interest in life.
It was hard work, and I’m glad he was the one doing it, not me. I might have shown plenty of patience at times, but I knew I hadn’t got enough to cope with that kind of stuff.
I thought the kids’ biggest problem would be coming to terms with the death of Darina, but it was really the opposite. They were almost unaffected by that. They must have seen so much death in this war that they didn’t register much reaction at all. We buried her under a river red gum, a very beautiful, very big tree that I thought would protect the thin little body we placed there. Fi and I were a mess. We bawled. But the kids didn’t cry. They stood around looking awkward and depressed as we said a few prayers, but they didn’t join in. Didn’t even say ‘Amen’. Even if they’d never been to church in their lives, they must have known that you end a prayer with ‘Amen’. It made me angry, a bit, that they could be so unfeeling about their friend, although I understood why. But I couldn’t help thinking that they would be the same about any of us, if we were killed, and that didn’t impress me one bit.
Natalie was the one who would have irritated me the most, if I were Homer. Anyway she irritated me. She wanted attention all day long. The moment she wasn’t getting it she started whingeing. That thin little voice wailing across whatever clearing we were camped in at the time got on my nerves faster than anything. Worse than fingernails down a galvanised iron roof. If I ever had kids, I vowed, whingeing would be the one totally illegal activity. Any kid who whinged would be sold off to Mr Rodd to be trained as a sheep muleser.
I guess I should admire Natalie’s imagination, because she was so good at finding new things to whinge about. ‘I’ve lost my gumnuts,’ she would cry. ‘There’s too much Vegemite on the biscuits.’ ‘Jack hit me.’ ‘My shoe’s hurting.’ ‘I’ve got ants on my legs.’
Ants on her legs! It didn’t seem to occur to her that maybe she could brush them off.
At least the shoes were fair enough to complain about. They were a serious problem for all the kids except Gavin. They just weren’t made for the kind of punishment they’d been put through during the trek to nowhere. All of them were split or worn away or falling apart. Only Gavin had what my grandmother would call ‘sensible’ shoes.
Gavin was the exception to everything. We never could work out why the kids marched off in the first place, but it seemed to be something to do with a fight between Gavin and Lee. I didn’t ask too much about it, because Lee never got around to mentioning it, so I figured he didn’t want us to know. I thought the whole thing might be best buried and forgotten. Lee was so independent, and Gavin was fiercely independent too, a tough little guy who had been doing things his own way for a year now, since the war started, and he wasn’t going to let a bunch of Strangers come along and give him orders. It wasn’t a big surprise when Casey told me Gavin had chucked a rock at Lee, back in the clearing when Lee was looking after them. Apparently Lee had told the kids to stop making so much noise.
The other kids trusted Gavin and took their lead from him. If he’d told them to follow him into a Whitewater rapid with only their floaties they would have done it, no questions asked.
Even while Natalie was clinging to Homer and Casey was asking him to teach her how to pluck a pebble out of her ear (the only trick Homer knew) and Jack was tying Homer’s bootlaces together and thinking he was a hell of a smart operator, Gavin kept away. He was good with a knife and spent most of each day whittling: carving animals and cars and people. I’d go over and pick one up and admire it and he’d put down his knife and gaze into the distance and not say anything, just wait for me to go.
We’d been landed with a funny little group of refugees. Gavin was short for his age, but solid as a four-wheel-drive vehicle. His right eye was always slightly closed, like he was about to wink. He was one of those guys who didn’t really have a neck, which made him look all the tougher.
Natalie was a dark-skinned kid, with a pretty doll-face. She could have been Maltese or Lebanese. There was a blush of pink in her cheeks, even when she was pale and exhausted. Like all the kids she had lots of evidence of the rough life they’d led, and the lack of adults to look after them. With Natalie, the main thing was ulcers down both her legs. They were pretty horrible, half-a-dozen big open sores, all red and weepy. No wonder her eyes were always red and weepy too.
The first time I’d seen Casey was in the big house where they’d been playing, and for that moment as I’d grabbed her I felt really close to her. She had an intelligent face, a kind of sensitive look, with deep hazel eyes. Of all the kids she was the one we were most worried about. Her broken arm seemed to take so much life out of her. We had to work hard to get her to eat. I thought there was a real danger that we might lose her like we lost Darina. She didn’t seem to have much will to live.
She ha
d brown hair, but it was hacked around by someone who’d played hairdresser. I couldn’t wait to get her down into Hell, so I could fix it up. I had a pair of scissors, but I didn’t bring them back on any of my trips; I thought I’d wait till we were down there before I set up my salon.
Jack reminded me of Steve, my ex-boyfriend, when he was a little tacker in Wirrawee Primary. Brown hair, kind of lanky build, typical rural kid I would have said, except that Jack had lived in Stratton all his life. Jack must have been to the same hairdresser as Casey. If his haircut had been done with a proper pair of clippers it would have been a number two. The way it looked it could have been done with a chainsaw. The effect was pretty wild. It wasn’t just his haircut though: he had a kind of cheeky face, little nose turned up and a scatter of freckles on each side. One of those boys you imagine out playing cricket, telling everyone else where to stand and sledging the opposition, wanting to bat first, and complaining loudly when the umpire gave him out.
So that was our bunch of passengers; the four kids who’d changed our lives with all the power of a cyclone.
We’d been with them a day and a half after the rescue before we found out Gavin’s secret. I can hardly believe we were so unobservant. I can hardly believe I was so unobservant. But on that second afternoon I was sitting against a tree, totally exhausted, having just staggered in from my second trip to Hell in two days. I was digesting lunch, which didn’t take long because there wasn’t much of it. Nine people went through food so fast, and we’d put ourselves on fairly strict rations. Gavin was sitting against another tree, on the opposite side of the clearing. Behind Gavin, coming out of thick scrub, probably after going to the toilet, was Jack. I’d just caught my first glimpse of him when suddenly he jumped sideways and screamed, ‘Snake! Snake!’
