by John Marsden
Even Casey and Natalie gave me a present: a bracelet made from plaited grass and twigs, using different colours. I think Casey had done most of the work. It was a nice bracelet; Casey was a talented kid, and she’d done a good job for someone with a broken arm.
They had another one for Fi, and similar for the boys, except theirs went around the neck. Unfortunately Lee’s fell apart as soon as he picked it up, but he covered it quickly and no-one else noticed.
Jack and Gavin weren’t so organised. They didn’t have presents for anyone. I don’t know whether it was because they didn’t think of it, or because they still didn’t feel very positive about us, but they looked a bit embarrassed when Casey and Natalie produced their gifts.
For lunch we had a feast. When I’d dug into the two packs from the Whittakers’ I’d found that a few treats had survived. I’d snuck them into my tent and hidden them. The meal started with another surprise though. Kevin and Lee had gone off to get a lamb and returned with four chickens instead. They’d raided my place, and come back triumphantly holding a chook in each hand. A couple of them were old boilers but the other two were youngish. The boys had taken quite a risk, although our chook shed is a long way from the house. They’d lifted its fence at the bottom and dug under it, to make it look like a fox had tunnelled in there.
They were very full of themselves, very cocky, probably from hanging around with roosters. ‘We’re just lazy,’ Lee said. ‘We couldn’t be bothered carrying a lamb all the way back here.’
I think they wanted to prove something, after the drama we’d got into at the Whittakers’.
It was early in the morning when they arrived and I was the only one up, so we took the chooks off into the bush and plucked and gutted them. It was a long boring job and we didn’t do it very well, leaving an awful lot of the little end bits of the feathers in them, but face it, no-one was going to be too bothered by that.
We’d made a meat safe ages back, with a bunch of flyscreen I brought in when we were still using the Land Rover. I’d built a frame from light tree branches and nailed the flyscreen to it, then stitched some old towels to the wire. I put a tray on top of the safe and ran the towels up into that. Then I stood the whole thing in the bottom of a drum and ran a little pipe out of the drum so the water dripped into a bucket. The physics of this is a bit beyond me, but I think the water condenses or something and that makes it cool. Whatever, as long as we remembered to keep filling the tray at the top, the inside of our meat safe stayed nearly as cold as a fridge. Admittedly it did run dry a couple of times, especially one day when there was a hot wind, but the chooks stayed in good shape and the lamb was still OK after three days.
Our secrecy had worked, and I thought it was worth the trouble when I saw everyone’s faces as we unwrapped the chooks from our underground oven. For the first time in Hell we had a choice of food: lamb or chicken, although of course we all ended up going for the chicken. It was so long since we’d smelt that irresistible golden brown aroma. I closed my eyes as I sniffed it and for a moment thought I was back in the Wirrawee Supermarket.
As well as meat, Kevin – who’d become our vegetable specialist – had brought back beans and carrots. I think the kids must have been starved of whatever vitamins are in beans and carrots, because they actually wolfed them down. I couldn’t believe it.
Then I produced my coup de grace, if that’s the right word. Half a packet of Oreos, and a bag of little Mars Bars. The writing on the outside was not English but Mars Bars taste the same in any language.
I was watching Jack as I produced them. I’ve never seen so much pure joy. It was like someone switched on a light behind his face. It shone through his eyes, his mouth, his skin. At that moment I definitely forgot the war, and I think he did too.
‘Oh,’ he breathed, ‘are they really for us?’
I don’t know who he thought they were for, the possums maybe.
My best Christmas present was yet to come though. Fi and I had done most of the preparation and cooking, in true female tradition, and in true Christmas tradition we graciously made it clear to the boys and kids that we expected them to do the cleaning up. Preferably before the flies, who were as keen as anyone to have a good Chrissie and who had swarmed over every bone and scrap of food that was left.
To my surprise though, Lee got up, grabbed a pile of the weird bits and pieces that we called plates, and said, ‘Ellie and I’ll do it. Come on Ellie.’
I hesitated, bit back the sharp comment I was about to make, and stood. I joined Lee in piling the plates. As we marched away to the creek with our arms full, followed by a swarm of optimistic flies, Casey actually wolf-whistled. Little brat! I was glad I had my back to them, so no-one could see my red face.
Down at the water we started soaking the plates and scrubbing them. Neither of us spoke for a while. Casey’s wolf-whistle had made me self-conscious. It seemed like no time before we were down to the last plates and I was getting worried that nothing would happen after all. I cursed Casey.
Finally however, as I was looking down at the water, watching the shreds of lamb wash away, I heard a nervous cough, and looked up into Lee’s brown eyes.
‘Ellie, I just want to say ...’
He paused. I stood, staring into those eyes, hoping he’d go on, hoping he wouldn’t lose courage.
After a moment, he managed to finish the sentence.
‘... I know I haven’t done the right thing by you.’
I’d been red before; I must have been crimson by now.
‘I’ve made you suffer, for something that wasn’t your fault. The whole thing was totally me being selfish and stupid.’
‘Unbelievable,’ I thought. ‘When Lee apologises, he really apologises.’
‘So,’ Lee went on, ‘seeing it’s Christmas, I thought it was now or never to say sorry.’
I almost smiled, because it wasn’t really Christmas at all, just our choice of a day to call Christmas. But it didn’t matter.
I sat on my haunches and sighed. A great weight rolled off my back. I gave him a little grin and said, ‘Thanks.’
I could guess what it cost him to say what he had. All the guilt and sadness I’d dammed up seemed to flow away in a quick flood. Somehow, all this time, there’d been a guilty voice in my head trying to tell me that Lee going off with the black-haired girl was my fault. The voice wouldn’t shut up, even while another voice inside me told me not to be stupid.
Our conversation didn’t end with me throwing myself on him and the two of us making passionate love there by the creek. Sadly our life in Hell wasn’t much like Hollywood. I felt so awkward, I guess because it was awkward listening to Lee being humble and embarrassed. I didn’t say much more. We went back to the others. I know my mood was different though, because for the next hour and a half I played crazy games with the kids, stuff like hide-and-seek and pin-the-tail on Homer and British bulldog, which I normally wouldn’t have done in a pink fit. Then we went down the creek, and played pooh-sticks, which Gavin always won.
One quite strange thing happened though. When I went to put away some food we hadn’t used: the nuts and the cooked rice and a tin of corn, I found a lot of it missing. All the almonds and macadamias for a start. It was weird. At first I thought someone had just developed an urge for more food, but it was against all our rules for people to help themselves, even on Christmas Day. And when I asked around they all denied it. Then I thought, ‘Bush rats, possums, magpies?’ But I knew it wasn’t them. The nuts had been neatly plucked out of a pile of stuff; no mess left behind. It had to be a human magpie. It was infuriating, because if we couldn’t trust the people in Hell, life would get very complicated.
Chapter Twelve
Honestly, kids. Sometimes they made me feel like a parent. I found myself stuck with the role of storyteller, and the stories they seemed to want over and over were the ones of my childhood on the farm. It reminded me painfully of when I was their age, on long car trips, or at the kitchen table, or in bed,
asking for the stories of my parents’ early days. How Mum stood her little sister against a wall with an apple on her head and threw darts at her, until their mother found them at it. She made Mum stand against the wall while she picked up the darts and walked to the other end of the room, then she took aim and made like she was going to open fire. How Dad, at the age of nine, put a wallet on the road with a fishing line attached to it, then hid in the bushes and waited. Every time a car stopped and someone got out to pick up the wallet Dad jerked it away with his fishing line. How when Mum’s team lost a game of hockey she persuaded all her teammates to spit on their hands before they shook hands with the opposition. How Dad had his first cigarette, with his mates, and was trying so hard to be cool as he got it out and lit it, but then spoilt the effect by putting the lit end in his mouth. How Mum and Dad met when Dad went to sleep in the back of Mum’s ute at a B&S.
So I found myself telling my own stories. It was strange: as I did it I realised how much we get shaped by our stories. It’s like the stories of our lives make us the people we are. If someone had no stories, they wouldn’t be human, wouldn’t exist. And if my stories had been different I wouldn’t be the person I am.
My stories were often simple things but often they were the ones the kids liked most. For example they loved hearing how in Grade 5 we had a craze on Perkins Paste. It was incredibly trendy to have your paste nice and runny. We’d go down at recess and add water to it, and then when the teacher read to us we’d take out our pots and stir them. It got even more exciting when Fi had the brilliant idea of adding texta to hers, and within a day everyone had lurid shades of colour in their Perkins Paste. Totally bizarre, but that’s what we did. I can’t remember who started the craze or how it ended, but it kept us entertained for weeks.
The farm stories were their favourites though, and they were usually about animals: like the heifer who hung herself. She caught her hind hoof in a rabbit hole and fell over a bank. The story about our cattle dog who got kicked by a bull one day at the saleyards. He flew twenty metres across the yard, got up, shook himself, came in again, got kicked again, flew another twenty metres, got up, slunk away to the truck and never went near another beast as long as he lived. Needless to say he didn’t live very much longer, but I didn’t tell the kids that. Sometimes you have to be ruthless on a farm, but I thought they’d already heard and seen enough of death.
The time we had a cat bitten by a snake. She was paralysed in the back legs, and we had to feed her with a dropper.
The time I came home from school and found a snake asleep in the kitchen sink, enjoying the stainless steel, so warm from the sun shining through the window.
These were town kids, city kids, all from suburbs of Stratton. As time went on – especially after Christmas Day – they started to tell me their stories.
Casey grew up on the edge of Stratton in a house her father and mother built, staying in a caravan for three years while they built their dream home. She had a brother and a sister and a pair of guineapigs, named Black and Blue. For a few days after the surrender Stratton was left alone but then the soldiers came. After another week everyone was loaded into trucks and trains and taken away. In the chaos Casey was separated from her family and put in a cattle truck. When the trucks stopped at a railway crossing just out of town she slipped through the side and ran back, looking for the truck her family were in. But the convoy started again and rolled away before she could find them.
Jack lived in a block of flats which we worked out were part of a public housing development near the centre of Stratton. He was an only kid and his parents were divorced. He lived with his dad. One day, after the soldiers had taken over the city, his dad didn’t come home. Jack had no idea what to do as they didn’t really know anyone in the housing development, and his dad didn’t like him mixing with the neighbours. So he fed himself and fell asleep on the sofa. The next thing there was noise everywhere outside. The soldiers had arrived to take people away. Jack was terrified. He hid in a big trunk in the bedroom, and although they broke the door down they were only in the flat a minute. When Jack finally emerged the blocks of flats were deserted.
Gavin followed these stories, including mine, with fantastic accuracy. When it was his turn, he described the soldiers coming to his house. His face burned with anger as he remembered. He told us how one of them hit his little sister because she was too slow getting in the truck, and he charged across the clearing to show how he’d attacked the soldier. Then he sent himself sprawling into the dust, as though the soldier was knocking him down all over again. A moment later he went into such grief as he explained how the truck drove away without him that I didn’t know if he was acting it out for us, or going through the real mourning for his family. Probably both.
Gavin only had a mother and sister; his father died in a factory explosion when Gavin was three years old.
The saddest thing about the kids’ stories was that Natalie had so little to say. She had already forgotten most of her life before the war. She couldn’t remember her parents’ first names, for instance. She knew her surname was Keast and she knew she’d lived in Summer Crescent, but she couldn’t remember the number. She couldn’t remember the name of her school, or her teacher’s name, or her friends’ names, or her telephone number, or anything about her aunties or uncles or cousins. She knew she’d been in Grade 2 in her last year of school, that her nanna and pop had a horse, that she’d broken her collarbone once when she fell off a swing, and that her favourite toy had been called Night-night Nellie because she took it to bed with her each night. There wasn’t a lot more.
It scared me to realise how shadowy our memories can be. In English we’d read a book called Night and Mrs Kawolski told us how the author once said that the opposite to identity is Alzheimer’s Disease. Now I wondered if the opposite to identity was war. By separating us from our pasts, by tearing out all the previous pages of our lives, war had left us with nothing. I felt my life began last January and what went before was a vague dream, growing vaguer every day. And if it was like that for me, how much worse was it for Natalie? She had barely begun her life, barely begun to grow into a human being, and already her world was being dismantled around her.
I was keen to get them to tell me what happened in Stratton during the last year but it took a long time before they’d say much about that. I never did get a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Instead there were fragments, bits and pieces, random comments that I gradually put together into a history.
None of our four kids had been in the group from the start. They’d all survived on their own for different periods of time, before getting caught up with the gang of ferals who’d mugged us in the alley. It seemed like they’d had as many as twenty in that group for a while. But the numbers kept changing. People came and went. Some were arrested or killed. Three got sick and died.
A kid called Aldo had held them together. I got the impression that he was a real dictator, but he must have been quite a personality. The kids complained that he was ‘bossy’ but they obviously admired him, and I couldn’t help thinking that their survival might have been due to Aldo. Without a strong leader I doubt if they would have lasted five minutes. Aldo was full of ideas for getting food, for avoiding the soldiers, and for protecting themselves with booby traps and sentries. Gavin had been one of his main men but our other three seemed to have been very small-time in the organisation.
And despite Aldo’s efforts they’d been through some awful times. They’d all had illnesses, and it seemed like no-one cared for them much when they did. Ordinary things that would have been easily fixed in peacetime, like colds and coughs, dragged on for weeks. They had endless bouts of gastro; in fact it sounded like two of the dead kids had died from that. They got infections. Casey told me how a cut on her leg was infected for weeks: her leg swelled to twice its normal size and got red and hot, until she had fever and delusions. I think she must have been quite lucky to survive that. The other kids had similar e
xperiences.
They told wild stories about one boy who they obviously hated, but who sounded like he was a bit mad, probably because of the war. He stabbed another boy with a pair of scissors, and Aldo kicked him out of the group, but he kept hanging around for weeks, saying strange things to them when they met him on the streets. Then he disappeared, and they never saw him again.
I suppose really they’d done quite well. Face it, anyone who’d survived this long had done well. They knew that being kids gave them a slight edge, because the soldiers weren’t going to waste a lot of time and energy chasing kids. As long as they didn’t give the soldiers too much grief they had a better chance than adults of escaping capture.
At first they did get help from various adults they ran into but it wasn’t long before those people became rarer and rarer. Then a man who befriended them tried to rape one of the girls and after that they didn’t trust adults. They mugged a few people and stole odds and ends, but by the time we came along they hadn’t seen anyone outside their own group for months. A few times they found food left in really obvious places, but when they ate it they got sick, and they were sure it had been poisoned: a deliberate attempt by the enemy to finish them off. That’s why they ignored the food I left for them.
The one thing they found extremely embarrassing was the attack on us. Every time I mentioned it, even in a joking way, they went red and mumbled and suddenly found something important they had to do. One thing for sure, we didn’t get any of our stuff back. I knew I’d never see my watch or ring again.
