by John Marsden
The truth was that we couldn’t do much about the enemy visitors. For one thing, we still didn’t know a lot about them. They could have been a patrol searching for us. They could have been a patrol having a general look around the mountains, making a routine inspection. They could have been a group of off-duty soldiers taking a stroll to admire the beautiful scenery. All three theories were equally possible. But if there was one thing that made me lean towards the first theory it was my fear of the results of our airfield attack. That attack took us out of the nuisance category and put us into the category of major dangers, who must be caught and eliminated. At all costs. That’s the way they’d be thinking. ‘If they’re there, find them. No matter what it takes, kill them.’
If they also connected us with the hit on Cobbler’s Bay and the breakout from Stratton Prison we were lucky they hadn’t nuked half the country in their determination to get us.
Our only real hope, in the long term, was that they’d think we’d gone away. A long way away. Like, to Alaska.
Preferably Northern Alaska.
I didn’t want to have to put sentries on Tailor’s Stitch every day and night. The cost to us would have been too great. Hell was where we came to rest and recover. If we needed one of the five on duty all the time there’d be no real rest for anyone.
Our biggest advantage was the geography of Hell itself. It was such a wild place, a casserole of trees and rocks. From above, standing on Tailor’s Stitch, you could see only the tops of the trees, and a glimpse of huge boulders. I had lived all my life on the other side of Tailor’s Stitch – the position of our farm made us the closest humans to Hell – and I had never heard of anyone finding their way into it. Except for the vague rumours of the Hermit, a hundred or so years before. Certainly no-one I knew had found the route. We’d fluked it.
So the chance of soldiers, men and women unused to the bush, making the same lucky discovery were pretty thin. Nevertheless we weren’t going to take the risk lightly. When Lee and I got back to the others we had an emergency meeting. We agreed to double and triple check our security. We covered the first two or three hundred metres of the track from Wombegonoo with bark and dead leaves, to make it look like an old animal path. We put a lot more camouflage over our tents and cooking area, so that planes or helicopters would be even less likely to see our campsite. When we had a cooking fire one of the kids got the job of standing over it with a piece of stiff bark, fanning the smoke away. I knew smoke could be visible for a couple of kilometres, but flames can only be seen from a few hundred metres.
As time passed and we did all the obvious things, and as we (and the kids) started getting bored, we got more creative. Or sillier, depending on how you look at it. Lee wanted to do booby traps, and of course Gavin and Jack thought that was a very cool idea. After all, they were specialists. I must admit though, I was impressed by how clever the ferals were. All those months in Stratton, surviving in a totally hostile environment, had taught them a thing or two. Gavin started digging a huge hole in a dark shadowy part of the track, that he planned to cover with branches and fill with sharp sticks. He was a bloodthirsty little boy. Jack was a bit more practical. Instead of trying to dig one huge hole he dug four little ditches, each one just wide enough for an adult foot. His idea was that someone running along the track, chasing us, would put a foot in the ditch and break an ankle. Cute. He also got Lee to help him string some tight wires on steep downhill sections of the track, at neck height. He and Gavin made lots of grotesque jokes about soldiers breaking their necks, or even getting their heads ripped off by these wires, if they hit them at high enough speed.
The problem for us was to remember where they’d put these things, because when it was dark, or you were tired, you’d stomp along the track forgetting all their little surprises. I seriously did nearly break my ankle in one of Jack’s ditches. When I’d finished swearing at him and his stupid booby trap I felt impressed that it worked so well. Jack was secretly delighted I think, although he was smart enough not to show it while I was going off at him.
Needless to say, Gavin never got around to finishing his huge hole.
Fi and I didn’t get too involved in the booby trap operation. We had our minds on something else.
I’d been thinking for a while that I wanted to do something good, something happy and positive for the kids. Maybe for us too. I remembered again the time I stood in my grandmother’s kitchen peeling potatoes, trying to work out when it was Christmas. I’d been quite bitter and depressed that the invasion had stolen our birthdays and Christmas. But now it occurred to me that we were kind of conspiring in the process. No-one could steal Christmas without our permission. We were stealing it from ourselves.
When I realised that I went looking for Fi.
And that’s how we started to prepare for the strangest Christmas ever. It wasn’t just strange because it was a little late. It was more that it was a Christmas of our own invention, because we didn’t have too many of the traditional props. No midnight Mass, no angel sitting at the top of the tree, no holly or ivy, no turkey and stuffing, no plum pudding with old-fashioned coins hidden in it, no stockings to hang on the end of the beds. No beds. If Santa was going to visit Hell he’d have to find something else to shove the pressies in.
It was strange in at least one other way too. There we were getting ready for the peaceful time of Chrissie, when a kilometre or so up the track Lee and two of the little boys were happily making booby traps designed to maim or kill.
For all that though, the kids were genuinely excited when we told them it was time for Christmas. They had no idea what month it was – in fact they hardly knew what year it was – so they took it for granted that we were talking 25 December. It didn’t matter. Oh, it might have mattered to a priest or someone religious like that, but Father Cronin wasn’t around, so we just decided to go for it.
We realised early on that we’d need to raid a house or a farm. Mainly because our food supplies were disappearing fast, with nine mouths to feed. I couldn’t believe how fast they were going. Fi and I – I don’t know why it was still always the girls who did these jobs – sat down and did the big stocktake the day after we brought the kids into Hell. And then we worked out a rough menu. We thought we’d be right for ten days if we were careful. We were quite proud of ourselves for being so organised. But after six days, almost every container I picked up was empty, or near enough to it. I said to Homer, ‘Have you guys been pigging out again?’
‘Me? No way. Look how thin I am.’
‘Well someone must be. We’re going through the food like there’s no tomorrow.’
‘Don’t look at me. I’m innocent, as usual.’
‘Might be the kids.’
‘I haven’t noticed them eating that much. No more than you’d expect from a bunch of half-starved little piglets.’
‘What about Kevin and Lee then?’
‘Doubt it. Why don’t you ask them?’
He had me there. ‘I don’t talk to Lee much these days. Or Kevin for that matter.’
‘Yeah, I’d noticed.’
There was a bit of a silence. I could guess what Homer would think of my poor communications with Kevin and Lee, but I sort of wanted to hear him say it. I don’t know why. The only person who gave me advice these days was Fi, and sometimes that wasn’t enough. I needed to hear what a guy thought, and the guy I respected most in the world, outside my father, was Homer. I wanted to know if he agreed with what Fi said to me on our way down into Hell that time.
After a while Homer said, ‘I thought you two might have sorted things out on Tailor’s Stitch when you were looking at that campfire.’
‘I guess we should have. We were too busy trying to work out who’d been hanging around up there. Looking for clues. Anyway,’ I laughed, ‘it was too cold and wet.’
Homer ignored my laugh. He was reading a book that we’d had down in Hell for ages, Red Shift. I think Chris originally brought it in. Homer
only read a book when he was desperate, but we’d banned any activities that might make noise. Most of the stuff Homer liked doing involved noise. So some days now, when he wasn’t operating his child-care centre, he was reduced to reading to pass the time.
Now he sat playing with the corners of the pages, riffling through them like he was shuffling cards.
‘You’re not a happy camper at the moment, are you Ellie?’
‘Well, I don’t see any of us actually laughing for joy with every passing day.’
‘You know what I mean.’
I tried to think, not of what to say, but of how to say it in a way that wouldn’t frighten Homer off. I had to translate it into his words. What I mean is, you can’t say stuff to Homer like ‘I’m in love with Lee but I don’t think I can trust him any more.’ The way you talk to Homer is a lot different to the way you talk to Fi.
Eventually I said, ‘I still can’t believe the way Lee went off with that chick in Stratton.’
‘Well, he’s a guy. That’s the way we are. Learn to live with it.’
I didn’t bother to jump at that bait. And Homer didn’t expect me to. He was just going through the motions. Old habits die hard, and he wasn’t going to give up stirring girls when the chance came along. But his mind was already ahead of itself. Without waiting for me to reply he said, ‘The thing is, how many mistakes do you let a bloke make?’
‘Only one, if it’s big enough.’
That stopped him for a while. He actually started making little rips in the side of one of the pages, which shocked me. I never like to damage books. I got in trouble for scribbling on my grandmother’s encyclopaedia when I was three, and I guess I learned my lesson.
But after a few minutes he came back at me again. Very stubborn guy, Homer, kind of dogged.
‘So do you hold this against him for the next fifty years?’
I tried to explain.
‘If it was just a bad call, Lee losing his brains and his balls for a couple of weeks, I can get over that. But what if it shows that he’s got some huge character flaw, like so serious that he can never be trusted? That’s what sticks in my throat. I’m scared there’s a side to him that I didn’t know about before.’
‘Do you think there is?’
‘No.’
I felt a great sense of relief when I said that. It was something I’d never been able to confront, never been sure about.
‘You could at least talk to him about it,’ Homer grumbled.
He sounded so like his father, trying to persuade my dad to go see the local member, and make him do something about the bad roads or the wool stockpile or petrol prices. I almost laughed again.
But I was grateful to Homer. I found myself getting quite sentimental about him. Once again he’d proved himself a true friend. I just couldn’t get a handle on how to solve my problem with Lee.
In the meantime I sat down with Fi to plan Christmas Day in more detail. It wasn’t easy, because of the mess our food supplies had got into. Our first decision was that we had to raid a farm for new stocks of food. We could leave the details until a group meeting, but I figured we needed to get going within forty-eight hours. If the raid failed we could forget about Christmas.
How I longed for a trip to the supermarket. I tortured myself with memories of aisle after aisle crowded with canned peaches and All Bran and Snack chocolate and Jatz biscuits, and the refrigerated section, with the ham and salami and King Island Brie, and then there was the freezer: Sara Lee Chocolate Bavarian and Paul’s Ice-cream and chicken nuggets. When I was tired of those sections I’d start on the deli and the meat and fish and the bread and the fruit and veg. The supermarkets of my mind gave me more pleasure than the real ones ever had before the war.
But I had to push daydreams away. It was time to put our tired imaginations to work.
‘Let’s do the brainstorm,’ I said to Fi.
‘Butcher’s paper,’ she said automatically. ‘Textas.’
‘That’s my joke. Come on, get serious. Let’s start with the essentials. Santa Claus?’
‘Absolutely. For Natalie’s sake,’ Fi said firmly, then added, ‘And for mine.’
‘But what’s he going to bring? I mean, it’s not going to be mountain bikes and roller blades and a box of Milk Trays.’
‘No. I suppose when we raid a farm for food we could try to get something ...’
‘Oh sure. We’re really going to pass up an armful of pasta for a Barbie camper van to give Natalie.’
Fi laughed for about five minutes. It gave me quite a shock. That kind of laughter was rare these days. I was glad I could still make her laugh, considering how angry she’d been at me. She said, ‘I can just see Homer with bullets whistling around his ears, stopping to pick up one of Barbie’s sandals.’
‘Well, if Santa’s going to bring pressies we’ll have to get busy. What can we get for Gavin?’
‘Nothing would please Gavin.’
It took two and a half hours but we finally nutted out a list. Not just presents, but everything: decorations and food and drink and games. We had to give up on a few things, like wrapping paper and plum pudding, but I thought we’d done OK. I was exhausted though, and we hadn’t even done any of the work. I began to realise why parents weren’t always quite as excited about Christmas as we were.
The other problem we had while we talked was keeping it secret from the kids. Casey in particular was a sharp little operator. She knew we were talking about Christmas and she always wanted to know everything that was going on. We kept sending her off on fake errands but she tried to sneak up on us, dodging in and out of trees, so she could eavesdrop. That year in Stratton had taught the ferals tricks that would stay with them a long time. Luckily our year in the bush had taught us a few tricks too, so I think we stopped Casey hearing too much.
I made her sit on a tree stump while I checked her arm again. It was hard to know what to do about it. As far as I could tell it was healing fairly well but I didn’t like to mess with it too much. I was a lot more nervous dealing with injured people than injured farm animals. I took the strapping off again. I’d been doing that daily, and washing it in the creek with my own laundry. The arm looked pale and a bit thinner than the other one, but you’d expect that. It wasn’t totally straight, but I didn’t know if that meant anything. The lump had definitely gone down.
‘How is it?’ I asked her.
‘I don’t know. I guess it’s getting better. It doesn’t hurt as much.’
‘Well, as long as you don’t knock it again.’
The day before, she hit it when she was chasing Natalie through the trees, and the screams of pain brought us all running. It wasn’t just scary because I thought she might have damaged her arm; it was scary because the noise she’d made was so dangerous. If there was an enemy patrol lurking on Tailor’s Stitch, they would have heard her for sure.
It did seem like she had a way to go before the arm was OK.
By the next day the food supplies were looking very bare. The boys had been avoiding the whole subject, because we were so dog-tired, and the thought of trudging up to Tailor’s Stitch again, and down the other side, into yet another horribly dangerous situation, wasn’t attracting any of us. But I told myself that there’s no point postponing pain. If you’ve got to suffer, you might as well get it over and done with. I wasn’t totally convinced about this, but I blocked off any dubious thoughts and waited till the five of us were together, after tea.
We were washing our plates by the creek. The kids were up at the fireplace. We didn’t have enough plates to go around, so for messy meals, which you couldn’t eat with your fingers, we had two shifts, the kids first, then us. But as I scrubbed hard at a bit of burned noodle I said very firmly, ‘We’ve got to go out tonight to get food. It’s no good putting it off any longer. We’re going through it like possums in peach trees.’
I bullied them into agreeing. The only trouble with that was that I seemed to be the one automatic me
mber of the group chosen to go. After a bit more talk we agreed we’d need two others. Homer and Fi were the lucky candidates. No-one said out loud why it had to be them, but I knew why. It was because we couldn’t leave Fi and Kevin back in Hell on their own. If something went wrong, which was horribly possible with enemy soldiers prowling around on Tailor’s Stitch, we couldn’t be sure Fi and Kevin would cope. Fi was strong enough in her own way, but like the rest of us she had her limits, and dealing with a situation like that, with only Kevin to help, would be outside her limits.
Somehow we found ourselves standing on top of Tailor’s Stitch without me noticing that I’d got there. It happened quite quickly once we made the decision. And it was a lot easier having empty packs and no rifles. I floated up the steep sides of Hell wishing life could always be this easy. The pack on my back was so light; only the load in my mind was heavy, and I was getting used to that. So much unfinished business was in there. The kids of course. Casey’s broken arm, Natalie’s incessant crying, Jack’s long silences. And Gavin’s deafness. That was a new one for me. I didn’t know anyone who was deaf, except Mr Jay, and he was about a hundred and ten.
Then there was my fight with Lee, the things Fi and Homer had said to me, the presence of strangers on Tailor’s Stitch, the shortage of food ... the list seemed like it would never end.
But somehow, standing in the clear night air, under a sky that glowed like a shower of sparks, none of that stuff mattered. It slipped off me. It was like shedding your clothes before you step in the shower. I felt I was down to essentials again. In fact I felt very close to God at that moment. I guess if you’re ever going to feel close to God it’ll be while you’re looking at the heavens. I wondered sometimes how it must have looked in the old days, before pollution started drifting into the sky. Even up here, in this pure air, there was a heap of invisible pollution. We were looking at the stars through a dirty, murky screen. A thousand years ago the stars at night must have burned almost as fiercely as the sun by day. No wonder all those old civilisations were so into stars when they told their stories and thought about their gods. It’d have been hard to ignore a sky that glowed with a billion fires.
