While I live ec-1

by John Marsden

  These guys had stacked up everything valuable they could find and even divided it into five piles, one for each of them I suppose. It’s good to share.

  And then they’d shared Shannon.

  Alastair heard them coming and hid in his room. They’d locked Mr and Mrs Young and Sam in the basement and after a while Alastair started turning the light on and off. Then he decided he wasn’t achieving anything so he tiptoed downstairs to try to get to the phone. Pretty brave I reckon. But they’d grabbed him.

  I don’t think the Youngs’ life expectancy was looking too good when we turned up.

  It seemed ages before I had time to think about my own situation again. But in fact it was only two days later that I found myself back in the office of Mr Sayle, or, to be more accurate, in the waiting area. That mightn’t sound like an important difference, but it turned out to be all-important.

  Mrs Samuels was there again of course. I glanced at her as I came in. This time she had a newspaper open and she seemed to be grappling with the crossword. She hadn’t done much though: I think she’d only got one word.

  Once again I wasn’t in the mood for Mrs Samuels. She could be so over the top. I mumbled, ‘Hello, Mrs Samuels,’ as I headed for the scruffy out-of-date magazines on the coffee table in the corner.

  But there was something about her voice when she answered, ‘Hello, Ellie.’ I don’t know quite what it was. She sounded off-key, awfully off-balance, for someone just doing a crossword.

  I looked at her properly then, not sure what I’d see. She had dropped her pen and was staring at me like someone with a fever of forty-two. She even had the little red spots on her cheeks.

  I couldn’t help staring back. Her hair was a mess, like she hadn’t washed it in a week; either that or she’d been doing a lot of sweating. Instead of not wanting to look at her, now I couldn’t take my eyes off her. It was, well, to use another word I don’t mind, perplexing. I was perplexed. This went on for forty seconds maybe. Then, sounding even more unusual, she said, ‘Ellie, I just want to say again how sorry I am for causing you so much trouble back in Camp 23.’

  ‘That’s OK, Mrs Samuels. It worked out fine in the end.’

  Mind you, I didn’t mention the young doctor, Dr Muir. As far as I could find out, no-one had seen him again after he’d helped me escape.

  She nodded. She lifted up a folder and put it on the edge of her desk, where I could see it easily. Then she said, ‘Mr Sayle’s running a bit late. He rang to say he’s down at the Council office and won’t be here for another ten minutes or so.’

  ‘That’s OK, I can wait.’

  ‘And I have to go across to the chemist. I’ll be ten minutes too.’

  ‘Oh. OK.’

  Without looking at me again she went out the door, shutting it firmly behind her.

  I sat there, puzzled. Perplexed. Why had she been so keen to let me know where she was going and how long she’d be? Then I noticed the folder again. Why had she put it there like that, so conspicuously, drawing my attention to it? Surely she didn’t mean me to…?

  I got up and went over to her desk, nervously. I saw my name on the folder. I hesitated a moment. Then I opened it.

  It took me a while to work out what the first sheet of paper was all about. It was some sort of document for the Council, a planning application, but it was so complicated, and the longer I kept looking at it the more nervous I got, so that made it harder and harder to concentrate. I recognised the name of our property, and the map on the third page was definitely our place, but it seemed to be called something else: Kelsey Resort, the Gateway to the Mountains.

  I couldn’t make any more sense of it, and I skipped anxiously to the next lot of papers. I tried to concentrate. Riffling through them I saw one that caught my eye, because it was handwritten. It was signed Murray, and addressed to someone called Kelvin. Mr Rodd’s first name was Kelvin. The first sentence was ‘Don’t worry about it mate, I’ve got her wrapped up tighter than a Sumo jockstrap’.

  I’d lost any sense of how much time had passed. Over against the wall was a photocopier. I grabbed the letter and the next few pages and rushed to it. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. I’ve never understood that expression. Why is a sheep more guilty than a lamb? I thought it should be ‘Might as well be hung for a wolf as a lamb’.

  I slapped the first page onto the copier and stabbed at the green button. The machine took forever. The light slowly slid across, blinding me for a moment. I did four more but although I still had a few pages in my hand the tension was too much. This was worse than being upstairs in a house watching gunmen coming along the corridor to kill you. I raced back to the folder and shoved the papers in, trying to get them into some vaguely neat shape.

  I heard a voice from outside, and a footstep. I sprang away from the desk, trying to get as close to the opposite wall as I could. The door swung open. Mrs Samuels came in, followed immediately by Mr Sayle. He looked cross, she was red-faced and apologising. She didn’t look at me; her eyes went straight to the folder. Mr Sayle, however, came across to me with both arms out. ‘Ellie! Very nice to see you. I’ve been hearing about your heroics. Well done. Come in.’

  He ushered me into the office. As we went in I suddenly realised that in rushing to put the originals back in the folder I’d left the copies on the tray of the machine.

  I know I went white, and my mind went blank. I sat numbly in the chair and I hardly heard the first two or three minutes of what he said. How could I get the papers back? What if Mrs Samuels found them? Had she meant me to see that folder? But even if she had, it didn’t mean I was allowed to photocopy them. Geez, I was in a tough spot. And I couldn’t think of a single way out of it.

  Then Mr Sayle caught my attention. He was pushing some papers at me. ‘The company’s called Kelsey Pty Ltd, but don’t take any notice of that. It’s just a private company who’ll take it off your hands and let you live in town with your debts paid and enough left over to rent a place.’

  My mind still racing furiously, I took the papers and tried to read them.

  ‘What is this?’ I asked stupidly.

  ‘Well, as I said, it’s a contract of sale. Just a copy for your records. You’ll have the money in ninety days.’

  ‘What money?’

  He frowned and sat back in his big swivelling leather armchair. ‘Ellie, I’m very busy. I can’t keep repeating myself. All you need to know is that the property has been sold, not for the kind of money that we would have liked, but beggars can’t be choosers.’

  I stood and hurled the papers back at him.

  ‘I’m not a fucking beggar,’ I said.

  I started walking out, then decided that I really needed the contract after all. Without looking at him I went back and picked up the pages from his desk. He stayed sitting there, rigid. From the corners of my eyes I saw his white knuckles. I thought, ‘At least I can get out and try to grab the stuff from the photocopier.’ But just as I got to his door he jumped up and came after me.

  ‘Look, Ellie,’ he said, ‘this is ridiculous. There’s simply no need for this kind of unpleasantness. I’m sorry I used the word “beggar”. It’s just an expression.’

  By now we were out in the reception area. Mrs Samuels stared at us like her eyes were ping-pong balls. She had such a guilty expression that I thought, ‘If Mr Sayle takes one look at her he’ll know she’s been up to something.’ I probably looked pretty guilty myself. I just had to get to the photocopier. I couldn’t leave that office with the papers sitting in the out tray. It’d cost Mrs Samuels her job. And I needed whatever information was in the documents to try to stop this stunt Mr Sayle was pulling on me.

  All I could think of was a completely outrageous bluff. I got myself close to the copier then rounded on Mr Sayle. In as angry a voice as I could manage I yelled, ‘I’ve got one thing to say to you and I’m going to put it in writing!’

  I grabbed a sheet of blank paper from the feed tray for the copier, took a pen o
ut of my pocket and, using the copier as a desk, started writing as fast as I could. I had no idea what I was going to say and I knew it didn’t matter much. I scrawled something like ‘You are never to sell my property, never, never, never’. I signed it Ellie Linton, then screamed at him, ‘And I’m going to take a copy home with me, to prove it.’

  I don’t know what I was supposed to be proving, but using my body as a shield between Mr Sayle and the out tray I ran the note through the photocopier. Then I opened the top again, threw the original at Mr Sayle to distract him, grabbed the whole pile of papers from the out tray, trying to make it look like it was just one sheet, and stormed out through the door so fast that I was just a blur of movement.

  I have never in my life been so totally embarrassed, but I also knew I’d got away with it.

  CHAPTER 24

  Gavin was in tantrum territory, and looked likely to be there for quite some time. What is it with guys and tantrums? I mean, not counting me with Mr Sayle, most girls have grown out of them by the age of four. I think for boys it’s around twenty, maybe: best case scenario.

  The problem was that Homer had officially invited me to join Liberation, but he’d done it in front of Gavin. Gavin hadn’t quite figured out who or what Liberation was — neither had I for that matter — but he knew they were to do with fighting the enemy, and they were to do with Homer and Lee, and it was a secret society where either you were in or you were out.

  That was enough for him. But to make matters worse, when he asked if he could join, Homer said, ‘No, you’re too young.’

  This was not helpful, and not really fair, as Gavin had proved time and time again how brave and useful he was. But other people wouldn’t understand that, and I could see how Gavin might lower the average age of the Liberation members by a year or so.

  Homer had delivered the invitation as we sat around the kitchen table after lunch Saturday afternoon. ‘They’ll understand if you don’t want to,’ he said, ‘but they’d love it if you did. Face it, you’ve been involved in exactly half the stuff they’ve done in the last couple of months.’

  ‘Would I get to find out who the Scarlet Pimple himself is?’ I asked.

  ‘Hmm, maybe. You might be that lucky,’ he said, smiling like there was a secret joke going on. I wondered, not for the first time, if Homer himself was the Pimpernel.

  That’s when Gavin announced that he wanted to join, and Homer brushed him off with the ‘you’re too young’ bit.

  The kitchen table was the place for so many of our — wait for it, another of my favourite words coming up — confabulations. Gavin stood up, shoved the chair back, looked for a moment like he was going to cry, then kicked the chair over, swept everything within reach onto the floor and headed for the door, pausing only to chuck a half-empty jar of SPC raspberry jam at Homer, who caught it one-handed without blinking.

  ‘That was tactful of you,’ I said.

  From the other end of the house I heard a door slam as Gavin sealed himself off from the world.

  Homer shrugged. ‘It’s the truth. Anyway, he just proved he’s not old enough. Anyone who acts like that isn’t ready for what we do.’

  ‘Oh, cut him some slack,’ I said, getting up. ‘He’s done more in his short life than most people do in a hundred years.’

  I went down the corridor and tried to open his door. It’s difficult when someone’s deaf: it’s a waste of time knocking, so you keep violating his privacy by charging in. Only a week before I’d violated Gavin’s privacy big-time, and caused him great embarrassment. I backed out thinking, ‘God, he’s starting young.’ I thought it was pretty funny but Gavin was red-faced all morning and I didn’t dare mention it or make jokes about it.

  I thought that maybe it was time I bought him a book and left it lying around, because I couldn’t see myself actually giving him the big talk, but someone had to do something, and who else was there? I could have asked Homer, except Homer would have taught him that ‘Get over here’, ‘Sit’, ‘Heel’ and ‘Beg’ were not just for cattle dogs but for girls as well. If Gavin grew up with the same attitude to girls as Homer had, I’d be seriously worried.

  Anyway, this time Gavin had used a wedge or something to stop me getting in. I rattled the door a few times, hoping it would let him know I was there, then wrote him a note and slipped it underneath. There wasn’t any more I could do, short of shooting the door down. There were times when Gavin made me feel like doing stuff like that, proving again that I was perfectly capable of having my own tantrums.

  Back in the kitchen I asked Homer some more questions about Liberation but I didn’t get very far.

  ‘You know me,’ he said, holding his big hands out, palms up, and making a face. ‘I keep secrets. I’m not like you girls. If someone asks me not to repeat something, I don’t repeat it.’

  ‘Stop doing all the Greek body language,’ I said, flicking his nearest hand with the flyswat. It was true though, he didn’t repeat stuff. You could trust him that way. You could trust him most ways actually. ‘So what happens if I join? Do I have to practise the secret handshake? Learn the passwords? Dress up in uniform and go to a weekly meeting?’

  ‘Yeah, all of the above. You wear a mask and go as your favourite superhero, so no-one knows your true identity.’

  ‘Who do you go as?’

  ‘I’m the Phantom, Ghost who Walks. Phantom never die. Phantom King of the Jungle. You can go as Princess Cattle-drencher. You get to wear an Akubra and a Driza-Bone and a flynet over your face.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s me, Princess Cattle-drencher, does a hundred bullocks an hour, all on my own. But I want some corks for my hat.’

  Homer made himself another coffee.

  ‘Drink it fast,’ I said, ‘and then you can help me move those steers to Burnt Hut. Now that you’ve taken Gavin out of the running for the day, it’s the least you can do.’

  As we walked up there and I looked across at the farm, the cattle cropping at the short grass in Parklands, the patches of bracken in Nellie’s, the blackberry at the back of the barn that should have been sprayed months ago and was now a nice little suburb for snakes, the heap of firewood waiting to be stacked, I made my decision about Liberation.

  ‘I don’t want to join,’ I said. ‘Not yet anyway. There’s too much else going on, keeping this place afloat, trying to get some school work done, looking after Gavin. Once this thing with Sayle has been sorted out, then I might give it a go. But even so, even though we agreed that it’s a buzz, I don’t know how much more I can take. Walking on the edge of death all the time, it gets a bit unnerving. I haven’t slept too well since I saw what they did to Shannon. And you know, it worries me with Gavin. I thought I’d be able to protect him from all this once the war ended, give him a normal life, let him grow up away from the violence.’

  ‘Just what my parents wanted for me. Just what your parents wanted for you. Shame life can’t be a choose-your-own-adventure book, where if you don’t like the way it’s going you pick a different path.’

  ‘Choose-your-own-adventures’d be the only books you’ve ever read,’ I said. ‘Oh, sorry, plus The Scarlet Pimpernel.’

  ‘No way. I’m reading Alibrandi even as we speak.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Sure. Good book. That Josephine needs a good smack though.’

  I just laughed but I was impressed that he was reading so much. You never knew with Homer. I mean, the guy was wearing a T-shirt with the words ‘Tomorrow is just a fiction of today’. I didn’t even know what it meant and I’m pretty sure Homer didn’t either.

  After we’d moved the steers we hung on the fence for a while and talked. ‘So are you going to tell me what’s happening with Sayle?’ Homer asked. ‘I mean, the full story.’

  ‘Don’t think I’d better tell you the full story. I don’t want to get someone in trouble. Let’s just say I got access to stuff he didn’t want me to see. I don’t know whether it’ll change things but I think it will. I’ve been trying to talk t
o Fi’s mum but now she’s on the Advisory Council it’s bloody hard to track her down. Poor Fi, she’s going crazy trying to get her mum to ring me. She keeps apologising to me and feeling guilty and I tell her not to worry, but of course she does.’

  ‘So what kind of stuff have you got exactly?’

  ‘Some papers. I can’t understand all of it, but what I can understand is pretty nasty. You want to see them?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  I went back to the house. Gavin had emerged and was in the kitchen. That was pretty good for him. I don’t know what his record sulk was, but there were times when you could go climb Everest, come back and write a novel, then diet and lose ten kilos before Gavin would come out of his bedroom. Or maybe he was amusing himself in there and it was nothing to do with sulking at all.

  I said, ‘I told Homer I’m not joining Liberation because there’s too much else to worry about at the moment,’ but he didn’t react, although I’m sure he understood.

  I went back to Homer with the papers. I was glad I’d photocopied that handwritten note. The full wording was nasty all right. Don’t worry about it mate, I’ve got her wrapped up tighter than a Sumo jockstrap. The magistrate is all for me, and the courts are that clogged up it’d take a Scud missile to get an appeal through. She’s a tough little bitch but mate, I wrote the book on tough. You’ll have the place in three months, and it’ll cost you about five bucks for her and a slab of stubbies for me.

  ‘Charming,’ Homer said.

  ‘I thought you’d approve. “Tough little bitch.” That’d be your wording, wouldn’t it?’

  He gave me a funny look but didn’t say anything.

  The Council document was definitely a planning application, like I’d thought. I’d had a proper look through it now, and it seemed that a company called Kelsey Developments Pty Ltd was going to turn our property into a luxury hotel called Kelsey Resort, the Gateway to the Mountains.

  ‘What is it with that “Pty Ltd” stuff?’ Homer asked. ‘They’re all called that. Even our family company.’