Tomorrow 2 - The Dead Of The Night

by John Marsden

  One thing that I hadn’t expected was the sense of being alive that I felt all day. It was strange but nice. I think it was a reaction to all the death and deteriora­tion that had surrounded us for so long. Now I’d done something positive and loving, that wasn’t destruc­tive. That made a big change from the way we’d been living. I know babies are a nuisance, and having them is meant to be eleven on a pain scale of one to ten, but I did have a little daydream about maybe having a few, one day, in fifty years or so.

  I just had a feeling that people like us had to keep life moving forward.

  The time was to come though when I found myself doing something cold-bloodedly destructive again.

  Fi and I were having a prowl that night through the streets of Wirrawee. We were heading for Fi’s pace. She wanted to see her house, to pick up a few things, and to make herself feel good (or bad) by walking through its deserted rooms. Fi’s parents, being solicitors, had heaps of money, and they lived in the best part of Wirrawee, a big old house in a street of big old houses up on the hill. We didn’t hurry to get there. We must have been in the mood to take risks. It was early to be out, but we wanted some fresh air. Although it had been raining all day again, and although the streets gleamed with puddles, it wasn’t raining when we left the music teacher’s house. The cloud was low and that kept the temperature up a bit. We sneaked along for a few blocks, going from garden to garden, so we didn’t have to spend much time on footpaths. When we got to Jubilee Park we settled into the band pavilion and talked, looking out across the unmown grass and the weed-ridden flower beds. The first thing that was obvious was that Fi knew what I’d done with Lee.

  ‘How’d you know?’ I said.

  ‘Homer told me.’

  ‘Oh, he would! I was so burned off at Lee for telling him. Anyway, I thought you and Homer weren’t hav­ing too many intimate conversations these days.’

  ‘Mmm, well, it’s not like it used to be. But we still get on OK. I don’t think he’s into long-term relationships.’

  ‘I hardly seem to have talked to him for ages. Most of my conversations are with you and Lee.’

  ‘Must have been a pretty good conversation with Lee this morning.’

  ‘Get out of it! It just happened, OK? Don’t give me a hard time.’

  ‘Sounds like Lee gave you a hard time.’

  ‘Oh, excuse me!’

  ‘Was it good?’

  ‘Mmm, not bad. Some of it was fantastic. The actual you know, was a bit awkward. It’ll be better next time.’

  ‘So there’ll be a next time?’

  ‘I don’t know! Well of course there will eventually. But I’m not saying that I’m going to do it every night.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘A bit. Nothing too terrible.’

  ‘It sounds so messy,’ said Fi, who always wanted life to be like a magazine. ‘Was there heaps of blood?’

  ‘No! It wasn’t, like, agony. Some of it, the first bit, hurt, and I was nervous, but after that there were some nice feelings. Lee didn’t last long. But I still think it’s better for the guy, the first time anyway.’

  ‘Are you sure it was his first time?’

  ‘Yes! He didn’t know much.’

  ‘Is he ...’ Fi went into heaps of giggles, difficult, as we were talking in whispers, surrounded by the damp quiet darkness. ‘Is he ... how big is he?’

  ‘I knew you’d ask that! I didn’t get out a tape measure you know.’

  ‘Yes, but ...’

  ‘He’s big enough, believe me. I don’t know what the average is, but he’d be up to it.’

  We both got the giggles then.

  At ten o’clock we snuck on up the hill towards Turner Street. It wasn’t till we got to the last corner that we had any idea things had changed.

  There were about twelve houses in the street and all had lights on. There were even four streetlights. Two houses seemed to have lights in every room but the others were only showing one or two. Fi stood there making little whining noises in the back of her throat, like a puppy that’s been hurt. I couldn’t believe it. It was like coming on a scene from Disneyland, or walking into Sideshow Alley. It seemed like a kind of fairyland. The only trouble was that for us this was no fairyland. This was dangerous. I pulled Fi back, and we retreated behind a tree.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked her.

  She shook her head, tears in her eyes, a sob in her voice. ‘I hate them. What are they doing here? Why can’t they just go back where they came from?’

  We watched for nearly an hour. Occasionally a soldier came out of one house and went into another. We were going to move in closer and have a better look, but as we started we heard a vehicle coming up the hill. We ducked back behind our tree. A large, late model Jaguar cruised past and turned into Turner Street. In its headlights I noticed something else: that there were sentries posted inconspicuously outside a couple of the houses. We were very lucky that we hadn’t gone sneaking along there. The Jaguar stopped outside Fi’s neighbours’, a brightly lit two-storey white wooden house with a high gable. As it stopped, a sentry came trotting out of the bushes and opened one of its rear doors, saluting a man in uni­form who got out. Although this man wore jungle greens like everyone else, his peaked cap distin­guished him from them. He was an officer, and we began to realise what the houses were being used for. This was the Executive Suite of Wirrawee. Snob Hill was still Snob Hill.

  We retreated to the music teacher’s house to report to the others but Homer was asleep, and so was Lee, to my secret relief. We were so wrecked ourselves that we didn’t wake the two boys. Robyn, who was on sentry duty, was awake, so we talked to her for a few minutes, then headed for bed. I slept with Fi, which saved me from having to make any difficult decisions about my love life, and it wasn’t till nine o’clock the next morning that we all sat down and discussed what the two of us had seen in Turner Street.

  We sat in a bow window, where we could watch the street, and we talked. It was a good conversation, one of the best we’d had as a group for quite a while. I was lying with my head in Lee’s lap, and from there I told the two boys what we’d told Robyn the night before. After Fi added her bit, Robyn started talking.

  ‘I deserted my post for a few minutes last night,’ she said. ‘The only way I could keep awake was to go for a walk. So I went down to the park at the end of the street and came back again. It’s funny, there’s something there that I must have been past a thou­sand times and never noticed. But I noticed it last night.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘OK,’ Homer said at last. ‘I give up. Was it animal, vegetable or mineral?’

  Robyn made a face at him.

  ‘It was the war memorial,’ she said.

  ‘Oh that,’ Homer said.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Fi said. ‘I knew that was there. I had to put a wreath on it when I was in Year 6.’

  ‘But have you ever looked at it?’ Robyn asked. ‘I mean, properly?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘Me neither. But I did last night. It was sad. There’s so many names on it, with asterisks for the ones who died. There’s four wars altogether, and there’s forty men who died, just from this little district. And down the bottom there’s a message, from a poem or some­thing. It says ...’ Robyn looked at her wrist and with some difficulty read the lines of tiny writing that she’d jotted there:

  ‘“War is our scourge; yet war has made us wise,

  “And, fighting for our freedom, we are free.”’

  ‘What’s “scourge” mean?’ Homer asked.

  ‘It’s when something bad happens to you, isn’t it?’ Fi said to me. ‘Something really really bad.’

  ‘Mmm, Attila the Hun, they called him the Scourge of God,’ I said, with a vague memory of a History lesson in Year 7.

  ‘Say the thing again,’ Lee said.

  Robyn repeated it.

  ‘I don’t know if it’s made us wise,’ Lee said. ‘And I don’t think it’s made us free.
’

  ‘Maybe it has,’ I said, trying to get my brain enmeshed in the idea. ‘We’re a lot different to the way we were a few months ago.’

  ‘How?’ asked Lee.

  ‘Look at Homer. At school he was like Attila the Wog. I mean, honestly Homer, you have to admit, you were hopeless, just lounging around all day with your shirt out, making smart comments. The day this started, you changed. You’ve been a bit of a star you know. You’ve had all the good ideas and you’ve made us do things we wouldn’t have done without you. I think you’ve lost a bit of steam since the ambush of that convoy, but I don’t blame you for that. It was an ugly scene.’

  ‘I was wrong about those guns,’ Homer said. ‘I shouldn’t have had them on me without you guys knowing. That was dumb.’

  Homer was quite red in the face and looking over our heads. It was so rare for him to admit he was wrong about anything that I bit back the joke I was going to make. In fact he hadn’t been entirely wrong about the guns – he’d convinced me of that when we’d argued about it in Hell. But he had just proved how much wiser he was these days. I gave him a wink and felt for his hand, getting a good grip on it. I was now touching the two boys I loved most in the world, and I thought how lucky I was.

  ‘Then there’s Lee,’ I continued. ‘Before, you seemed so bound up in your own life. Violin and schoolwork and the restaurant and not much else. Now, well, you’re still a very complicated guy Lee, but you’re much more outgoing, and you’re very deter­mined and strong.’

  ‘And horny,’ Homer added quietly. I gave him a hard slap on the hand. I think Lee gave him a dirty look too, judging by Homer’s expression.

  ‘Robyn,’ I said, ‘you were always strong and you were always smart, so I suppose you haven’t changed much. You still stick to what you believe in though, and I think that’s amazing. You seem calmer and surer than the rest of us. I think you’ve got the wisdom that it talks about on that memorial.’

  Robyn laughed. ‘I’m not wise,’ she said. ‘I just try to figure out what God would want me to do.’

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I moved on to my last subject. ‘Fi, I think you’ve become more free in a way. I mean, you think about your life before, living in that big house, going off to your piano lessons, mixing with the rich and the famous. Now you’ve been camping in the bush for months, fighting in a war, racing round blowing things up, looking after chooks and growing vegetables ... It is a kind of freedom compared to what you used to have.’

  ‘I could never go back to that life,’ Fi said. ‘I don’t want to keep living like this either, of course. But if the war ended tomorrow, I couldn’t suddenly start wor­rying about flower arrangements for Mum’s dinner parties, and having the right paper for answering invitations. I don’t know what I’d do, but I’d try to find something useful, something that would stop this stuff happening again.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn, Ellie,’ Robyn said.

  ‘Oh yeah, OK, who’s going to do me?’ I asked; then, realising what I’d said, gave Homer my best ‘Don’t you dare’ look. I was just in time: his mouth was already opening to say the obvious.

  ‘I will,’ Robyn said. She thought for a moment, then began. ‘You’re better at listening than you were. You’re more sensitive to other people. You’re brave. In fact I think you’re the bravest of any of us. You’re still a bit pig-headed sometimes, and you don’t like admitting when you’re wrong, but you’ve been a tower of strength, El, you really have.’

  I glowed with pleasure. I’m not used to compli­ments. I’ve never had a huge number of them.

  ‘I’ve been braver since that big speech of Homer’s ages ago, down at the creek,’ I said. ‘I think about that now, when I’m in a scary spot.’

  ‘What speech?’ Fi asked.

  ‘You know. When he said that it’s all a mental thing. When you’re scared you can either give in to the panic and let your mind fall apart, or you can take charge of your mind and think brave. I agree with that.’

  ‘See, that’s wisdom,’ Robyn said.

  ‘Well, what are we going to do next?’ Homer asked. He sat up a bit straighten ‘It’s time we did something again. We’ve had a long holiday. We did nothing with Harvey’s Heroes, and it’s time we got a move on. Those radio bulletins have been quite encouraging. There’s lots of places where people have been fighting back, and the Kiwis have made a difference. We can’t let Wirrawee become a strong­hold for these scum, and we’re about the only people who can stop it happening. So what’s it to be?’

  ‘You tell us,’ I said, grinning. I knew Homer would already have an idea.

  ‘OK,’ he shrugged. ‘What Fi and Ellie saw last night gives us our first real chance in a long time. It sounds like they might be using those houses as a headquar­ters. That’s logical enough – they’re the best places in town. We need to check it out more carefully though, till we know what’s going on. I suggest we spy on them for a couple of days, or however long it takes. And Fi, can you draw up maps of the houses, using every­thing you remember? And then we’ll add to those maps whenever we can.’

  We decided that we’d sneak into St John’s, the church diagonally opposite Fi’s, and use the tower for our lookout post. That was Robyn’s church; she knew it as well as my mother knew her kitchen. She was sure she could get in there, through a small window in the vestry that she said was held in place by a brick because the church hadn’t had the money to fix it. Using the tower was an unattractive deal in a lot of ways because we’d have to go in at night and stay there till the next night. We’d have to take food and drink and, because there was no toilet, we’d have to take a few containers for emergencies. I don’t know what God would have thought of that.

  Homer and Robyn wanted to do the first shift and we decided Fi and I would do the next one, then Homer and Lee. But we all went up there that first night to install Robyn and Homer. We waited till four o’clock. That was hardly a problem for us now. We were so used to functioning at night that I no longer felt tired during 3 am and 4 am operations.

  We came up to St John’s from the rear, climbing over the fence from Barrabool Avenue. It was safer that way, protected from prying eyes in Turner Street. Robyn got the vestry window out with no problems; in fact it had fallen backwards and was resting against its brick. But getting through it was a problem. Robyn had forgotten how small it was. Fi was the only one who had any hope, so Homer lifted her and fed her through, head first. When it came to her hips she had to turn and twist and wriggle. We could hear her giggling and panting, then a thump as she hit the floor head first.

  ‘Ouch,’ I squealed. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Shhh,’ Homer went.

  ‘Yes, no thanks to Homer,’ Fi whispered back.

  She opened the door. We tiptoed in. It was very dark of course, but the thing that struck me most was its smell. It was so musty and dank and cold. Robyn led us out of the vestry and into the main body of the church. The stained-glass windows looked like dark etchings, but some light from the lamps in Turner Street lifted the gloom. I haven’t spent a lot of time in churches in my life – we live too far out of town, that’s my excuse – but I like the atmosphere in them. They’re always restful. I looked around this one, narrowing my eyes to try to see the details. The altar, up in the distance, did look kind of holy. It made me nervous. There was a crucifix, too, on a pillar near me. A square of light from a window crisscrossed the crucifix. I peered closer to try to see the face on it, but it was turned away from me, and in shadow. I didn’t know what that meant.

  Robyn called us to come into the tower. I walked down the aisle with Lee, wondering if we might do it properly one day. I didn’t know what my parents would think of the idea and I knew from something Lee had said to me ages ago that his parents would never want him to marry an Anglo.

  As we got to the back of the church Lee surprised me by saying ‘I hate these places.’

  ‘Churches?’

  ‘Yes.’

&n
bsp; ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. They smell of death. They’re like dead places.’

  ‘Mmm. I quite like them.’

  Homer and Robyn found little windows halfway up the staircase, which they could use for spying. They made themselves as comfortable as possible. I couldn’t help a little nasty thought, which had snuck into my mind like a worm, that maybe the reason Homer had been so adamant about doing this first day was Robyn’s comment that I was the bravest of our group. Homer wouldn’t have liked that. In his thinking, guys were always the heroes, always that little bit better than girls.

  Maybe that was why I made sure I never let Homer get the better of me.

  We’d brought paper and pens, to write down what we saw during the day. We’d been a bit nervous about doing this. Just like with the guns, a long time earlier, we knew the difference between a group of teenagers hiding in the bush and living off the land, and a group of armed guerillas collecting and recording informa­tion about enemy movements. We’d seen enough war movies and read enough books to know how that worked. But we found a gap in the stonework of the church tower where we could shove the bits of paper if we got busted, and once dropped in there we figured they’d stay lost forever.

  We did want to get a good idea of the movements in and out of the houses, to see what was really going on in Turner Street. Although no one had spelt out details, we all had in mind that we were in the first stages of our next attack. It would be a tough one, our most difficult and dangerous yet, and we had to plan with maximum care.

  At five o’clock Fi and Lee and I left the other two to it. They would have a cold and boring and uncomfor­table day. Just like Fi and I would have the following day. But back at the music teacher’s house we had a pretty boring time anyway. One of us had to keep watch there too – it was just unthinkably dangerous doing it any other way – so most of the time we hung round with the person on sentry, playing Trivial Pursuit and stuff like that. When Fi was on sentry, Lee and I went off to the sitting room and made out a bit. I wanted to go for it, full on, but Lee seemed distracted. I think the knowledge that we were build­ing up to another attack on the enemy, another chance to get injured or killed, put him on edge. No bloody wonder. I was nervous too. But I seemed able to put it out of my mind better than him. It was strange: back in the old days I got nervous waiting to play Netball or give a prepared speech in English. Compared to that, what we were doing now should have had me in a straitjacket.