by John Marsden
‘Why not?’
He didn’t answer that, just sat there a bit longer. Suddenly he said: ‘Look, you’re not going to like this, but how would it be if they surrendered to the authorities? If they waited a day or two until I was well gone and you were safely out of the area? I don’t think it’d do any harm. They probably wouldn’t get asked too many questions. People would assume they’re just kids who’ve been living rough. And they won’t be prisoners for very long, because the peace settlement’ll come before they know it.’
I couldn’t believe my ears. Ask Gavin to surrender? I could just picture his face when we told him.
I searched for the words to explain to Ryan why they couldn’t surrender. Not after all they’d been through. And they wouldn’t obey us if we told them to anyway.
But I couldn’t find the words, so in the end I just said: ‘Look, you take them in the chopper, or there are no deals. It’s as simple as that.’
Before he could say anything else I added: ‘It’ll be hard enough for us to get them into the helicopter, believe me. It’ll take all the influence we’ve got, just to achieve that.’
‘That’s exactly right,’ Homer said.
I was relieved when Homer spoke, because no-one else had said anything and I didn’t know if they were going to support me.
Ryan just shook his head again. ‘There’s got to be another solution,’ he said. ‘Taking them in the chopper is simply not on.’
After a long silence from us he added: ‘Let’s leave it for a while. We’ll come back to it later.’
‘It’s impossible for us to help you in any way unless you take them,’ I said firmly.
‘I can’t!’ he said. He almost wailed it. ‘Sweet Mary! You don’t know what you’re asking.’
I pressed my lips together, folded my arms, and refused to say any more.
He tried reason then.
‘The helicopter takes me straight from here to a base behind enemy lines,’ he said. ‘I’m there fifteen hours and then off again, to meet another group like yours. Put yourself in my position. How can I do anything with a bunch of kids?’
‘There must be people going backwards and forwards to New Zealand all the time,’ I guessed. ‘You can send them on one of those flights.’
‘Those flights are always packed to the gunwales.’
‘They’re only little kids. They don’t take up much space.’
Ryan’s shoulders slumped and he said: ‘Colonel Finley’s going to kill me.’
Now no-one said anything, and I guess Ryan realised he was on his own. As a matter of fact I didn’t envy him a trip in a helicopter with that bunch of monkeys. They’d probably hijack it and make him fly to Disneyland.
The meeting seemed to be over so I went back to get the kids. When I saw them sitting there with their drawing and colouring in, what I’d done suddenly hit me. I’d just arranged to send away these little ankle-biters, and what shocked me was that I’d gotten so fond of them I didn’t know how I was going to survive without them. I stood staring at Jack and Gavin in amazement, till Casey looked up and said: ‘What’s wrong, Ellie?’
‘Nothing,’ I mumbled.
‘Has that man finished yet?’
‘Yes. Yes, you go back there. I’ll be along in a minute. I’m just going to the toilet. Don’t pig out on all the chocolate, OK?’
Before they went though they made me admire their artwork. Even the promise of chocolate wasn’t enough to stop them wanting praise and attention. To make matters worse Casey kissed me and put her arm around my neck before running off to catch up with the others.
After she’d gone I sat there feeling like I’d been rammed in the guts by a boar with a blowtorch up his backside. How had this happened? How had I become so caught up in the lives of these little tackers? One minute they’d been a hopeless nuisance, marching off on their own, getting lost, causing Darina’s death; the next they had wound fifty metres of baling twine around my heart and pulled it so tight that I wasn’t sure I could survive the pain of losing them. I had an intense desire to rush back to Ryan and say, ‘Look, I’ve changed my mind again, sorry, but the kids’ll have to stay, and we’ll make other arrangements’.
I knew I couldn’t do that though. A little bit of it was my pride, but most of it was knowing that the kids would be better off safe in New Zealand – safe for the first time in over a year. I knew for the sake of the war I had to do this.
Another bloody sacrifice. Sacrifices suck. But you don’t achieve anything without a sacrifice. Nothing’s gained unless you give something up. According to Ryan we were on the brink of bringing this horrible war to an end. If that meant letting go of the kids for a while, then I had to bite back my feelings and say goodbye.
And the cold harsh reality was that with Hell lost to us there was nowhere safe we could hide them.
I looked at the scrub without seeing it. My mind was a mess. If I’d sat in the middle of a room with speakers all around, one playing Power Without Glory, one playing Beethoven, one Slim Dusty, and one the Stratton Municipal Brass Band performing ‘Advance Australia Fair’, then I couldn’t have been more confused.
Sometimes looking at the bush, sensing its strength, knowing how little it cared about the stupid squabbles we humans got caught in, helped me cope with the chaos of this war. Not this time though. The speakers in my head were going at maximum decibels. They were playing the howl of the falling woman, the voices of the feral kids, the explosion that killed Robyn, the last words my parents said to me, Corrie’s cry when she saw her house destroyed, the sounds of the gunshots when I pulled the trigger in the barracks at the airfield, the cellophane-crackling of the flames in the barn the night when Lee betrayed me. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t get my mind to be peaceful. An enemy patrol could have marched past with guns ready, and I might have nodded ‘G’day’, but I don’t think I would have noticed them.
It was all very well for Ryan to drop in on us for twenty-four hours and announce that we had to become full-time guerillas. It was easy for him. He’d get plucked out of here again early tomorrow morning. If the war did end in a matter of weeks you could be sure he’d be all right. He’d be safe. But us: we had every chance of being cold corpses in our graves by the time the last shot was fired. What Colonel Finley and Ryan were asking us to do was incredibly bloody dangerous.
If the war did end, Ryan’d be somewhere close to a fridge, and you could guarantee the fridge would be full of champagne. And Ryan would have a corkscrew. He might drink a toast to us, as our bodies rotted away somewhere in Cavendish, but that was about all we could expect.
Then I remembered you don’t need corkscrews to open champagne. I gave up then. Seemed like my brain was rotting away already.
Chapter Four
Nothing in the war amazed me more than the reaction of our four ferals when we told them they had to go with Ryan. Basically they went off their heads. Natalie sobbed and sobbed, and clung to Fi so hard I think she left bruises. Casey lost all her colour and turned away. She walked across to a tree trunk and leaned against it, facing into it. Her good arm went around her back as though she were hugging herself. Jack sank into a little heap on the ground. He rocked backwards and forwards, whimpering like a baby.
Gavin, he was the biggest surprise. He exploded. He ran around the clearing then grabbed a branch that was twice his size and ran straight at Homer like he wanted to kill him, using the branch as a battering ram. If Homer had stood still I think the branch would have gone right through him. Homer at least had the sense to jump aside, but Gavin just gave a little cry of frustration and tried to turn around and have another go. It didn’t work, because the branch stuck between two trees and he couldn’t get it out without stopping and doing it patiently. He wasn’t in the mood for that. He let it go and headed for the edge of the clearing, where we had piles of stuff sitting: Ryan’s pack, and more food, weapons, and bits of clothing. Before we realised what he was up to he started kicking all this stuff around li
ke he’d gone mad. I was upset about our stuff, and then suddenly terrified about the plastic explosive. Sure the explosive was tough and all, but that tough? I rushed towards Gavin but Ryan beat me to it, grabbing him and swinging him off his feet before I’d got halfway.
Ryan was strong, but Gavin kept him honest. He kicked and punched and struggled and bit, until Homer helped by grabbing Gavin’s arms. They held him for five minutes, Gavin rigid and swearing at us in his funny throaty voice. Ryan tried to reason with him, but of course he was behind Gavin and none of us had bothered to tell Ryan that Gavin was deaf. So all his calm patient words of advice were wasted.
In the end we decided to divide and conquer. We were getting nowhere arguing with them, our group against theirs. So we made a secret agreement to split them up. Homer scored Gavin. Fi got Natalie, Lee got Jack, and I ended up with Casey.
I don’t know what tactics the others used. At first I was pretty unscrupulous with Casey. I promised her anything and everything. The war would end in a couple of weeks, I’d come and get her from New Zealand, I’d bring her back here, she could stay on our farm ... I felt my heart sink lower with each promise, wondering what would happen if I couldn’t keep them, which seemed more likely than not. I pictured Casey’s tragic face as she sat in front of a hostel in Wellington waiting year after year for me to turn up ...
I guess I’d read too many V.C. Andrews novels. But I was seriously worried about the future for Casey and her friends. I didn’t know how well they’d be looked after in New Zealand, with so many refugees there and everyone frantically busy. And after the war, there’d be a whole new set of problems. How on earth I’d get back in touch with her, and what I’d do then, if she hadn’t found her parents, I hated to think.
Making it worse was the little voice inside me saying, ‘You only want her here for your sake, because you’ll miss her so much. You know the best thing for Casey is to go to New Zealand, even if she doesn’t know it.’
The whole time I was talking Casey sat there with the most miserable expression. It was all very well for me to imagine her looking tragic while she was in New Zealand: she was doing a pretty good job right now. I sat gazing back, wondering what on earth I could do. A strange memory came into my mind. It was of me at the age of seven wanting to know where Mum was. I knew something funny was going on, because when I got home from school Dad was in the kitchen looking at recipe books, trying to work out what we could have for tea. He was acting really oddly, and when I asked where Mum was he said she’d gone away for a bit of a rest. He stuck to that story till she came home a week later. And when I asked her, she said she’d needed some time off. I guess they’d had a fight, but what really annoyed me was that they didn’t tell me the truth. I might have been only seven, but I knew something complicated was happening, more complicated than having time off, or going away for a rest. And I felt that whatever it was I could understand it, I could deal with it. What I couldn’t deal with was being treated like a stupid kid who had to be fed a lot of lies and doubletalk.
I think if you grow up in the bush you can deal with the truth. After all, you see it all around you, all the time. I stopped believing in Santa when I was still pretty young. I couldn’t believe in a guy who gave you something for nothing. You never get that when you’re dealing with Mother Nature. So I took a deep breath and told Casey the truth.
‘Case, I love you so much that it’s like you’re my own sister. If it was up to me, maybe I would just stay with you somewhere safe until the war’s over, one way or another. But the thing is, we all belong to something bigger than ourselves. We belong to our families, our friends, our country, our religion ... oh, help, I think I put those in the wrong order. Anyway, I don’t think it matters what the order is. The main thing is that life isn’t as simple as me saying “I want it, I’ll have it”. While my parents, and your parents, and your brother and sister, and even your guinea-pigs, are prisoners, while this country’s still in the hands of our enemies, we can’t put ourselves first. We can’t even put ourselves second. About three thousandth’d be more like it. That’s why you have to go back to New Zealand. I couldn’t fight this war properly, do what I have to do, if I was worrying all the time about whether you were safe or not.’
I walked her back to the clearing, telling her again how good life in New Zealand was: how she could watch TV and eat McDonald’s and no-one’d try to kill her. It seemed like a pretty good deal we were offering, and although she was still teary I think she’d finally accepted that it was going to happen.
Our tactics had worked fairly well. By convincing each one individually we’d robbed them of the power to resist us as a group. Natalie and Jack were red-eyed, Natalie whimpering every twenty seconds or so, and Gavin was sulky, but the fight had gone out of them.
Casey’s last comment on the situation was to walk up to Ryan, kick him hard in the ankle, and walk away again. She didn’t look at him again from that moment on.
We had to reorganise our packs. In our scramble to get out of Hell we’d grabbed anything and everything, and now we had to sort ourselves out. Every item we carried had to be carefully chosen, because by the time we added some of the stuff we’d hidden in the wetlands we’d have a lot of weight. So we spent half an hour doing that while Ryan kept watch. I smiled as I watched Fi carefully rolling a jumper and stuffing it deep into her pack. For a moment I thought back, remembering how Fi had been so hopeless about packing when we first set out for Hell. Had she really brought a dressing gown? I could hardly believe it, but when I searched my memory, there it was: Fi on the top of Tailor’s Stitch, looking embarrassed as we gave her a lesson in outdoor living.
This time roles were reversed: Fi caught me sneaking in the rock Lee gave me for Christmas.
‘Oh you can’t take that!’ she said.
It was such a beautiful rock though. The size of a tennis ball, but flatter, and green or grey or shades of both, depending on the light. And on the back, down in the corner, in impossibly tiny writing, a message that I had only seen a couple of days ago: Lee’s initials and mine in a tiny heart. I’d been lying on my bed when I saw it, and fair dinkum, I prickled like I was wearing a woollen blanket against my bare skin. I felt myself go red and hot. If Lee had been there at that moment he might have got lucky, for the first time in a while. He hadn’t said a word about the message when he handed me the rock.
So no way was I leaving it behind. But Fi caught me by surprise and I couldn’t think of anything to say. Fi just sighed and shook her head. ‘This is the most complicated relationship since Romeo and Juliet,’ she complained. ‘You’re both hopeless. I mean, what is the big problem? You love him. He adores you. You get together and live happily ever after. Any questions? No, of course not. That’ll be ten dollars, thank you.’
‘It’s the war,’ I said.
‘No it’s not,’ Fi said.
‘Oh really? Well, OK Miss Smartypants, you tell me then, if you’re such a big expert all of a sudden.’
Without so much as pausing in her packing Fi said: ‘It’s because you’re scared that this is for real, you love him to the max, and you’re running away from that. This isn’t just kidding around any more, this is serious business.’
I stood there with my mouth open like a baby maggie. After a minute Fi looked up from her pack, gave a little sly grin and said: ‘See? I’m not as stupid as you think. I’m right, aren’t I?’
‘I don’t think you’re stupid,’ I said automatically, trying to buy time, but not sure that Fi was as right as she thought.
Fi, who was obviously in an extremely aggravating mood, just shrugged and started rolling up her black T-shirt.
‘I was in love with Steve,’ I said.
‘No you weren’t. Oh, you liked him, and you had a crush on him, and he got you hot, but it wasn’t serious love like this.’
‘How do you know what I feel for Lee? I never talk about it.’
‘No, but you talk about him. Three-quarters of your conversatio
n is about him. Even if you’re criticising him, you’re still talking about him. You’re obsessed with him. Sometimes I wish you’d find someone else to talk about.’
I stood there sucking on the corner of my sleeping bag. It was true that I thought about Lee a lot. I was always watching him. When he appeared on the scene I’d straightaway be distracted from whatever I was doing. When I was teaching the kids about question marks and all that punctuation stuff, in our homemade bush school, I’d lose the thread as soon as Lee came walking through the trees. I’d have one eye on the kids and one eye on Lee. If he brushed a fly away I’d be wanting to know what kind of fly it was.
Was that love? I didn’t know. Maybe it was. It sure was something.
A lot of the time I was extremely irritated with him, but I’d learned enough to know that irritation could be just another symptom of love.
I felt like I was on my toes more when Lee was around. If I was half asleep and he wandered in from somewhere I’d snap wide awake. Every time he said something I’d respond, either in my mind or out loud. Usually by arguing with him, but sometimes I was moved, or deeply impressed, by what he said.
Sitting there thinking about all this I told myself not to be so silly: it was the worst possible time to be getting emotionally involved again, just as we were going out to fight. I needed my full concentration to stay alive; never mind this love stuff. It was no good thinking about love as a storm of bullets came at you.
That didn’t work though. Shoving my sleeping bag into the pack I sighed. You couldn’t escape your feelings. I just wished I knew what my feelings were. I thought again of the two steers on the ramp going up to the abattoir killing floor. One mounting the other; the two of them still trying to mate, even though the conditions weren’t exactly ideal, in more ways than one. We were on the ramp to the killing floor too, but at least we weren’t steers. I ought to be grateful for that much.
I finished the packing without much thought. After all the fussing I’d been doing, now I didn’t care much what went in. Fi didn’t say another word, which was lucky for her.
