My eyes had adjusted to the murky light by then. There was no body on the bed, I was relieved to see, but there were the rotten remnants of grey blankets. The bed itself was made of lengths of timber nailed together, and still looked fairly sound. On the shelves were just a few old saucepans. I turned again to look at the chest and hit my head on a meat safe hanging from a rafter. It struck me right on the temple with its corner. ‘Hell,’ I said, rubbing my head hard. It had really hurt.
I knelt, to look into the chest. There seemed nothing else in the hut which would offer more than it had already shown me. Only the inside of the chest was still concealed. I tried to lift the lid. It was reluctant, jammed by dirt and rust, and I had to pull then shake it to get it a few centimetres open. Metal ground against metal as I slowly forced it up, warping it so much that it was never going to close neatly again.
My first reaction when I peered inside was disappointment. There was very little there, just a pathetic pile of tattered odds and ends at the bottom of the chest. Mostly bits of paper. I pulled everything out and took them back outside into better light. There was a belt made of plaited leather, a broken knife, a fork and a few chess pieces: two pawns and a broken knight. The papers were mainly old newspapers, but sheets of writing paper too, and half of a hardbound book called Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. A large black beetle came crawling out of the book as I opened it. It fell open to a beautiful colour plate of a boat penetrating the jungle. It was actually two books in one; there was a second story, called ‘Youth’. But the other papers were too tattered and dirty and faded to be of any interest. It seemed that the Hermit’s life was going to remain a mystery, even now, so many years after his disappearance.
I poked around for another ten minutes or so, inside and out, without finding much. There had been other attempts to grow flowers: as well as the roses there was an apple tree, a sweetly scented white daisy, and a big wild patch of mint. I tried to imagine a murderer carefully planting and cultivating these beautiful plants; tried, and failed. Still, I supposed even murderers must have things they liked, and they must do something with their spare time. They couldn’t just sit around all day for the rest of their lives and think about their murders.
After a time I picked up the belt and the book and waded back into the creek, for the hunchbacked shuffle through the tunnel to our camp. It was a relief to emerge back into sunshine from that gloomy place. I’d forgotten how hot the day was, out in the sunlight, but I almost welcomed its fierce glare.
As soon as I appeared Homer came striding over.
‘Where have you been?’ he said. ‘We’ve been getting worried.’ He was quite angry. He sounded like my father. It seemed I’d been away for longer than I’d thought.
‘I’ve been having a close encounter with the Hermit from Hell,’ I answered. ‘A guided tour will leave soon; well, as soon as I’ve found the Iced Vo-Vo’s. I’m starving.’
Chapter Fifteen
After our inspection of the Hermit’s hut we kept working on into the evening. Lee, being less mobile, got to do the paperwork, in particular a system of food rationing that would preserve our supplies for close to two months, if we had the self-control to stick to it. Homer and Fi and I made a few little vegie gardens, and when the long day at last cooled we put in some seeds: lettuce, silverbeet, cauliflower, broccoli, peas and broad beans. We didn’t much fancy eating those all the rest of our lives, but ‘we need our greens’, as Fi said firmly, and with Lee’s cooking skills, broccoli could be turned into chocolate chip ice cream, and cauliflower into a fairy coach.
It had been a long day, a hot one, and a hard and tiring one. We’d started so early. My talk with Lee hadn’t made it easier either. There was a bit of a strain between us now, which I hated, and there was a general strain caused by everyone snapping at each other in the final few hours of daylight. The only exception was Homer, who hadn’t snapped at Fi. He’d had a go at me, about the amount of water I was putting on the vegetable seeds, and at Lee, over whether soccer was a better sport than footy, but Fi was immune. He wasn’t immune from her though. When he broke off a big piece of fruit cake (Mrs Gruber’s) and ate it, she burned his ears with a string of words like ‘greedy’ and ‘selfish’ and ‘pig’. Homer was so used to being told off in his life that you might as well have told a rock off for being sedimentary, but when Fi went for him he stood there like a little kid, red in the face and wordless. He ate the rest of his slice of cake, but I don’t think he enjoyed it. I was so glad she hadn’t seen me with the Iced Vo-Vo biscuits.
Yes, finding the hut had been the only highlight of the afternoon.
Fi had moved into my tent while Corrie was away, and that night, as we lay in bed, she said to me, ‘Ellie, what am I going to do about Homer?’
‘You mean the way he likes you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Mmm, it’s a problem.’
‘I wish I knew what to do.’
This was my specialty, sorting out my friends’ love lives. When I left school I was going to take it up as a career; open a business where people could come in off the streets and tell me all their boyfriend and girlfriend problems. It was just a shame I couldn’t figure out my own.
So I rolled over to where I could see Fi’s small face in the darkness. Her big eyes were wide open with worry.
‘Do you like him?’ We had to start somewhere.
‘Yes! Of course!’
‘But I mean ...’
‘I know what you mean! Yes, I think I do. Yes I do. I didn’t at school, but honestly, he was such a moron there. If anyone had said to me then that I’d end up liking him, well, I’d have paid their taxi fare to the psychiatrist. He was so immature.’
‘Yes, remember that water fight at the Hallowe’en social?’
‘Oh, don’t remind me.’
‘So if you like him now, what’s stopping you?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the hard part. I don’t know if I like him as much as he likes me, that’s one thing. I’d hate to get into a relationship with him where he assumed I felt as strongly as he does. I don’t think I ever could like him that much. He’s so ...’ She couldn’t think of a word to end the sentence, so I supplied one. ‘Greek?’
‘Yes! I mean, I know he was born out here, but he’s still Greek when it comes to girls.’
‘Do you mind that he’s Greek, or part Greek, or whatever you call it?’
‘No! I love it. Greek is sexy.’
‘Sexy’ sounded funny coming from Fi. She was so well brought up she didn’t normally use words like that.
‘So is that the only thing stopping you, that you don’t feel as strongly as he does?’
‘Sort of. I feel like I have to keep him at arm’s length or he’ll just take over. It’s like, you build a dam upstream to stop the village being washed away. I’m the village, and I build a dam by being cool and casual with him.’
‘That might just make him more passionate.’
‘Oh, do you think so? I never thought of that. Oh, it’s so complicated.’ She yawned. ‘What would you do if you were in my position?’
That was a tough question, because I was half in her position anyway. It was my feelings for Homer that were stopping me from taking the plunge with Lee. It would have been just my luck to be a castaway on a desert island with two guys and to like both of them. But Fi’s saying ‘sexy’ had made me realise that with Homer it was pretty physical. I didn’t want to spend hours with him talking about life; I wanted to spend hours with him making animal noises, like sighs and grunts and ‘Press harder’, or ‘Touch me there again’. With Lee it was something else. I was fascinated by his ideas, the way he thought about things. I felt I would see life differently, the more I talked to Lee. It was like I could learn from him. I didn’t know much about his life, but when I looked at his face and eyes it was like looking into the Atlantic Ocean. I wanted to know what I could find in there, what interesting secrets he knew.
So in answer to Fi’s q
uestion I just said, ‘Don’t string him along forever. Homer likes excitement. He likes to get on with it. He’s not the world’s most patient guy.’
She said sleepily, ‘So you think I should try it?’
‘“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” If you go for it and it doesn’t work, well, what have you lost? But if he loses interest, so you never have anything with him, then you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering what might have been.’
Fi drifted off to sleep, but I lay awake listening to the night sounds, the breeze in the hot trees, the howls of feral dogs in the distance, the occasional throaty call of a bird. I wondered how I’d feel if Fi got off with Homer. I still couldn’t quite believe that I suddenly liked Homer so much. He’d been a neighbour, a brother, for so long. I tried to think back to the way he’d been a month ago, a year ago, five years ago when he was just a kid. I wanted to work out when he’d become attractive, or why I hadn’t noticed it before, but I couldn’t feel anything much for the way he’d been in those days. It was like he’d metamorphosed. Overnight he’d become sexy and interesting.
A dog howled again and I started wondering about the Hermit. Maybe that howl was the Hermit coming back to his violated house, coming to look for the people who’d trespassed into his secret sanctuary. I wriggled closer to Fi, feeling quite spooked. It had been strange, finding that little hut, so skilfully concealed. He must have really hated people to go to so much trouble. I’d half expected the place to feel full of evil, satanic powers, as though he’d huddled there for years holding black masses. What sort of man could do what he’d done? How could he have gone on with his life? But the hut hadn’t felt all that evil. There had been an atmosphere there, but one that was hard to define. It was a sad, brooding place, but not evil.
As sleep crept up on me I turned my mind to my evening ritual, that I performed now, no matter how tired I was. It was a sort of movie that I ran in my head every night. In the movie I watched my parents going about their normal lives. I made sure to see their faces as often as possible, and I pictured them in all kinds of everyday situations: Dad dropping bales of hay off to sheep, waiting at the wheel while I opened a gate, swearing as he tightened the belts on the tractor, in his moleskins at the field days. Mum in the kitchen – she was a real kitchen person, Mum; feminism had made her more outspoken maybe but it hadn’t changed her activities much. I pictured her looking for her library books, digging up spuds, talking on the phone, swearing as she lit the fuel stove, swearing that she’d change it for an electric one tomorrow. She never did. She claimed she was keeping the Aga because when we started taking tourists for farm stays they’d think it was picturesque. That made me smile.
I didn’t know if I was making myself feel bad by trying to make myself feel good, thinking about my parents, but it was my way of keeping them alive and in my thoughts. I was scared of what might happen if I stopped doing that, if I let them start drifting away, the way I was drifting away now, into sleep. Normally I’d be thinking about Lee, too, at about this time, hugging him to me and imagining his smooth brown skin and firm lips, but tonight I was too tired, and I’d already thought about him enough today. I fell asleep and dreamt about him instead.
The couple of days with Homer and Fi and Lee had promised to be interesting and that’s the way they were turning out. In fact they were almost too interesting – it was getting to be a strain on my emotions. We were all edgy anyway, wondering how the other four were getting on. But Tuesday started cooler and proved to be cooler in most ways. It was an intriguing day; a day I won’t forget.
We’d agreed to get up early again. I’d noticed that the longer we stayed in Hell, the more we fell into natural rhythms, going to bed when it was dark and getting up at dawn. That wasn’t the routine we had at home, no way. But here we gradually started doing it without noticing. It wasn’t quite that simple. We often stayed up after dark to light a fire, to do some cooking for the next day or even just to have a cup of tea – quite a few of us missed our cups of tea during the day – but before long people would be yawning and standing and stretching and throwing out the dregs in the mug, then wandering away to their tents.
So, when it was still cold and damp on that Tuesday morning we gathered at the dead fire, talking occasionally, and listening to the soft voices of the magpies and the startled muttering of the chooks. We had our usual cold breakfast. Most nights now I soaked dried fruit in water, in a tightly covered billy so the possums couldn’t get at it. By morning the fruit was juicy and tasty, and we had it with muesli or other cereal. Fi usually had powdered milk, which we also reconstituted the night before, to have it ready for the morning. We’d scrounged a few more tubes of condensed milk on our trip to the Grubers’, but again they hadn’t lasted long: all we diabetics-in-training sucked them dry within twenty-four hours.
Our major job that morning was to get firewood. We wanted to build up a big pile, then camouflage it. It sounds crazy with all the bush around us, but firewood was quite hard to get, because the bush was so dense. There were lots of little jobs needed doing too – chopping wood, digging drainage trenches around the tents, digging a new dunny (we’d filled our first one), making up tightly sealed packs of food that we could store around the mountains, as Homer had suggested. Because Lee was still not very mobile he got the last job, as well as the dishwashing, and cleaning the rifles.
The plan was to work hard most of the morning, have a break after lunch, then go out that night to bring more loads in from the Landie. And we did get a lot done before the day warmed up enough to slow us down. We got a stack of firewood that was about a metre high and three metres wide, plus a separate pile of kindling. We dug our trenches and dunny, then put up a better shelter for the chooks. It was amazing how much work four people could get through, compared with what Dad and I could achieve. But it did worry me that we were still so heavily dependent on supplies brought up in the four-wheel drives. That was a short-term solution. Even with our own vegetables, even with the hens, we were a long way off being self-sufficient. Suppose we were here for three months ... or six ... or two years. It was unthinkable – but it was very possible.
Over lunch, when the other two were busy for a minute, Lee said to me, in a low voice, ‘Would you be able to show me the Hermit’s hut this afternoon?’
I was startled. ‘But yesterday, when the other two came ... you said your leg ...’
‘Yes, I know. But I’ve used it quite a bit today. It feels quite good. Anyway, I was in a bad mood with you yesterday.’
I grinned. ‘OK, I’ll take you. And I’ll do a Robyn and carry you back if you need it.’
There must have been something in the air, because when I told the other two that if Lee’s leg was good enough we’d be away for an hour or two, Homer gave Fi a swift wink. I think Fi must have given Homer some encouragement during the morning, because it wasn’t the ‘Ohhh, Lee and Ellie’ type wink; it was the ‘Good, we’ll get some time together’ wink. It was very sneaky of them. I’m sure if we hadn’t given them the opportunity they would have come up with some lie to get away on their own. It made me feel jealous though, and I wished I could cancel our paddle so I could stay back and chaperone. Deep down in my heart I really didn’t want Homer and Fi to be together.
There was nothing I could do though. I’d been neatly trapped. So, at around two o’clock, I set off towards the creek with Lee limping beside me. The journey was surprisingly quick this time, because I knew how to do it now and went there more deliberately and confidently, and because Lee was moving more freely than I’d expected. The water gurgled along, refreshingly cold, and we just went with the flow.
‘It’s the perfect path in,’ Lee commented, ‘because we don’t leave any tracks.’
‘Mmm. You know, on the other side of Hell is the Holloway River and Risdon. There must be a way through from here. It’d be interesting to try to find it, by following this creek maybe.’
We got to the hut but Lee�
��s first priority was to talk. He sat down on a rather damp log by the edge of the creek.
‘I’ll just give my leg a rest,’ he said.
‘Is it hurting?’
‘A little. Only an ache from being used again. I think exercise is probably the best thing for it.’ He paused. ‘You know, Ellie, I didn’t ever thank you properly for coming to get me that night, from the restaurant. You guys were heroes. You really put it on the line for me. I’m not too good at big emotional speeches, but I won’t forget that, for the rest of my life.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘You did thank me once already. And you’d have done the same for us.’
‘And I’m sorry about yesterday.’
‘What’s to be sorry about? You said what you wanted to say. You said what you thought. Which is more than I did.’
‘Well, say it now.’
John Marsden - Tomorrow 1 Page 17
