Incurable ec-2

by John Marsden

  The third thing is that you do get mobbed a bit, which might look quite glamorous when you see it happen to superstars on TV but is a bloody nuisance when you’re in a hurry and in a bad mood, and it does seem like the girls who most want to mob you are often the obnoxious ones. I’m talking about the ones I knew from the swimming pool or I knew their sisters or brothers or parents, or they were on my bus and their main reason in coming up to me seemed to be to show off to their friends that they knew me. Most of them could talk to me just about any time, so I don’t know why they suddenly had to make a big deal about it. This is pretty horrible to the nice ones, because of course there were plenty of those, but I was too stressed to notice them.

  So I was motoring across the yard like a car through floodwater, throwing up a wake that consisted of Year 4 and 5 girls saying, ‘Hi Ellie, what are you here for, Ellie, you here to see Gavin’s teacher, are you coming to Brendan’s eighteenth, Ellie?’ and it was all I could do not to turn around and screech at them, ‘Bugger off, the lot of you.’

  I knew her name was Mrs Rosedale, and of course I’d seen her plenty of times, but we’d never talked for more than a minute. And even then it was only about basic things like, ‘We could do with some rain,’ ‘Did Gavin give you his excursion money?’ ‘Sorry he was away yesterday but we had a couple of trees down after the storm,’ ‘Thanks for finding his library book.’

  You’d think someone with a name like Mrs Rosedale would be really nice. I mean, it’s like that book where the kid stays with Aunt Bridget Wonkham-Strong, and then at the end he goes off to live with Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet, and you figure he’s got to be better off. Like, it wasn’t as if she was Mrs Grumpybitch or Mrs Sourtits. Gavin seemed to like her well enough. He never said much about her really, but then he never said much about school. She seemed nice enough from what I’d had to do with her, just one of those straight-down-the-line, you-know-what-you’re-getting, middle-of-the-road primary school teachers.

  I didn’t even know what I wanted to say to her, just, more than anything I think, to talk to an adult who knew Gavin well and could give me some idea of how to deal with him. That nice dream of us all living together as a family, and Gavin being the brother I never had, was disintegrating fast, now that I had to be his mother and father as well as his sister.

  I was actually a bit pissed off at my parents for leaving me with this problem, conveniently forgetting that I was the one who had lumbered them with ‘this problem’ in the first place.

  Mrs Rosedale was in the library and she didn’t give me the brush-off, like I expected. I thought I’d have to make an appointment and come back later. ‘Sure, the kids have got Music,’ she said. ‘I’ll just be five minutes.’

  While I was waiting I wandered along the shelves having a little nostalgic meander. The library had survived the war almost untouched: I remembered one of the teachers telling Mum that although people had obviously borrowed books, they’d returned them too. There were about sixty that they couldn’t find. That was weird, all these invaders borrowing books from the Wirrawee Primary School library and returning them, like regular people.

  It seemed in pretty good order now. I got a little thrill out of seeing my old friends, The Magic Faraway Tree, Who Sank the Boat? Tiger in the Bush, Charlotte’s Web, Robinson Crusoe, Where’s Wally? The Long Red Scarf… I ran my finger along their spines, wondering why I hadn’t shared more of them with Gavin. With each book came a film clip that ran in my mind: curled up in a cubby reading Tiger in the Bush, being in bed with Dad reading The Magic Faraway Tree, spilling orange juice on The Long Red Scarf.

  ‘Now, what can I do for you, Ellie?’ Mrs Rosedale said, and it was like a little slap, startling me back into the real world.

  She led me into the side room. Before I could sit down she said, ‘I’m hoping you can give me a few tips on dealing with young Gavin.’

  I felt like I’d been given a quick elbow to the stomach. I’d been rather hoping that she would sit down, open the inner taps of wisdom that most adults seem to have, and pour out wonderful words of advice that would solve all my problems.

  ‘Has he been a bit difficult?’ I asked. I felt embarrassed, as though Gavin’s behaviour was entirely my responsibility, so I should feel ashamed if he was not one of the best kids in the class.

  She stretched her arms wide, rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘A bit difficult!’ she agreed. ‘He’s the original barrel of monkeys. Little bugger. We have a fight just about every day, but he still gets away with a lot, because with these big classes you can’t keep an eye on half of what’s going on.’

  She got up and opened a window, then, still standing beside it, took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘I can get away with this in here, just,’ she said with another laugh. I started to think that she was rather a nervous person. ‘Ellie, the farm you live on, there wouldn’t be any empty houses, would there? That you’d be interested in renting? Or my partner could do some work around the place in exchange for rent?’

  I felt more and more dejected. I wanted to get this conversation back on track. It was like going to the station and expecting to catch the seven forty-five to Stratton, only to find yourself on the eighty-thirty to Cobbler’s Bay.

  ‘No, sorry, there’s nothing like that,’ I said. It was awkward being put in this position, although it had happened a few times already, with the demand for housing, not to mention all the people who wanted a nice house in the country with fresh air and space. ‘Do you think Gavin’s been getting worse?’

  ‘Gavin? Well, possibly, a little, yes. He wasn’t too great to begin with.’

  ‘Has he been violent?’ I asked.

  Violent!’ she said, puffing on her cigarette and pushing a strand of hair away from her eye. ‘God, every story he writes and every picture he draws. Mind you, there’s a few of them who see life that way, which won’t come as any surprise to you. But he is among the worst.’ She gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘If you had to read the number of gory stories I’ve marked since school started again… severed limbs and decapitated torsos and blood gushing like fountains. And some of the pictures are just collages of tanks and guns and body parts. Even the kids who didn’t see much violence during the war have been infected by it.’

  ‘So what am I meant to do about Gavin?’ I asked, feeling more helpless with every minute. ‘He seems to be acting a bit violently at times too.’

  I wasn’t really being honest about him, but I didn’t want to give him too bad a name.

  She had that teacher suspicion thing though, where they can smell a copied essay or a cruel joke or a fake excuse from a kilometre away. She frowned at me through the cigarette smoke. What’s he done now?’

  It was too early in the morning for me to avoid teachers’ suspicious questions. And after all, I had come there for a bit of comfort and support. ‘Something to a cat,’ I stammered. ‘He was staying at Mark’s, and they did something pretty horrible to a cat.’

  She pressed her lips together and looked away. ‘It might be time to do something about him,’ she said. ‘In the old days he would have been at the therapist’s long ago, but the resources are few and far between at the moment. Still, I think he’s about ready for some intervention. It’s a scandal that there are no integration aides.’

  ‘I don’t want to get him into trouble,’ I said. ‘I just want some ideas on how to handle him.’

  ‘Oh God, I’ve got every sympathy with you,’ she said. ‘And with him too for that matter. I haven’t got much idea of what he went through in the war, but I know it was horrendous, and then there was the terrible thing out at your place…’

  ‘The terrible thing’ — seemed like that was its new name.

  ‘Yeah, that came at the worst time,’ I agreed, and a moment later thought, ‘What a stupid comment.’ As if there’s ever a best time.

  Mrs Rosedale looked at the end of her cigarette. ‘You know, I’ve really got to give these up,’ she said. A whole lot of children’s voices, lau
ghing and squealing and chattering, suddenly came through the other row of windows behind me. It sounded like a horde of wasps setting out for a day in the garden.

  ‘You just have to try to ignore the bad behaviour and reinforce the good,’ Mrs Rosedale said. When he does something good, give him lots of praise, and don’t take any notice when he’s been naughty. And I’ll have a chat to Mrs Howell about him. That business of the cat sounds serious.’

  Walking back to the high school, I felt pretty miserable. It wasn’t only that Mrs Rosedale had been no help, but there was the feeling that I might have made things worse. The last thing I wanted was a whole bunch of people who didn’t know anything much about our situation to come poking around. I knew I wasn’t doing a very good job with Gavin on my own, but I had the feeling that they might do worse.

  CHAPTER 15

  My first date with Jeremy was a wild and exotic experience. We didn’t limo into Stratton for an expensive dinner and the movies, we didn’t helicopter to New Zealand to spend the weekend with his father, we didn’t camp on Taylor’s Stitch and feast on lamb and wild mushrooms, we didn’t even go to McDonald’s.

  We met under a tree at lunchtime, at the scoreboard end of the Wirrawee High School footy ground. I swapped him one of my curried lamb shanks for one of his cheese and Vegemite sandwiches. That’s what you do when you like someone.

  It wasn’t a very good date, because I was depressed and irritated but trying to be bright and positive, not wanting Jeremy to see my worst side too early. But he seemed kind of distracted anyway. Neither of us even touched each other. It was hard to remember how warm and strong his hands had felt on my skin. Ten minutes before the bell we finally agreed to be honest and say what was bugging us, because by then it had become pretty obvious to each of us that the other one was pretty bugged.

  Of course, as always, Jeremy, being the guy, got to go first. That increased my bugging just slightly, only by a couple of clicks, but I figured I’d be lucky to get two or three minutes by the time we’d sorted out his problems.

  ‘It’s this Liberation thing. It’s all getting pretty crazy. I think what we did was worth doing, because we basically prevented major terrorism, and there’s no way anyone official could have gone over the border and done it. But it’s getting out of hand. Have you seen all the stuff in the papers?’ His eyes were really beautiful, so full of life and intelligence.

  I shook my head. ‘Haven’t had time.’

  ‘Well, I read papers, and my father keeps me up to date. Every drunken lunatic who wants to be a hero is charging across the border and attacking people. It’s still easy to get across, as you know better than anyone, and it’ll be ages before they manage to put up decent fences and all the rest. They’re talking about a DMZ, which could be quite wide, and filled with mines even-’

  ‘What’s a DMZ?’ I interrupted. Jeremy had slightly curly hair and it was quite mussed up. I wanted to comb it into shape with my fingers.

  ‘De-militarised zone,’ he said. ‘A neutral area, but no-one’s allowed into it.’

  ‘Tell that to the kangaroos.’

  ‘Yeah, well, there won’t be any of those if it’s mined. Anyway, there were three guys from Stratton killed two nights ago when their car got shelled.’

  ‘On our side of the border?’ His skin, when his shirt was open, looked brown and smooth.

  ‘No, on their side. No-one even knows why they were over there, but there’s a theory that they were just joyriding. They’d been drinking or smoking or both. And then last weekend there was a revenge attack at a truck stop near Cobblers Bay, with this bunch of anonymous people who sure looked like they were enemy soldiers and they acted like they were enemy soldiers except they weren’t wearing uniforms, and they came out of the bush, killed six people, took their money and nicked off down the highway in a large new Mer.’

  Yes, I heard about that one.’ I loved the pattern the sunlight and leaves made on his face. I shook my head, trying to concentrate on what he was saying.

  ‘So my father’s pushing pretty strongly for Liberation to do more, because they’re organised and efficient, and he thinks that strength is good, weakness is bad, and history shows you have to fight stuff like the attack at Cobblers. He’s not interested in the other stories, the ones about unprovoked attacks from our side. I keep telling him that history always repeats itself and history never repeats itself. Every situation-’

  ‘Hey that’s a paradox.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘History always repeats itself and history never repeats itself. Paradox.’

  ‘Yeah, well every situation’s different, even if it does have similarities to what’s happened in the past. And then-’

  ‘So every situation’s the same and every situation’s different? There’s another one.’

  ‘Ellie, we don’t have much time. I was going to say that it’s complicated by the fact that he doesn’t want me personally to get involved, which is really hypocritical of him, although he says it’s not, it’s just because I’m too young and inexperienced. But he knows that half the people in Liberation are young, and the ones who have experience train the ones who don’t.’

  ‘What does the Scarlet Pimple think?’ I asked, with a little smile just to show that if Jeremy was the Scarlet Pimple, I already knew, if that makes sense.

  He laughed. ‘Huh. The Scarlet Pimpernel. Well, the Scarlet Pimple thinks that we should lie low for at least a week or two, to get a whiff of which way the wind is turning. But if something desperate comes up, something really important… And to make it more complicated, the whole thing scares the crap out of me. Like, it was a totally insane rush when we were out there, and even after we came back in a way, but there’s also the total terror and the feeling that I aged about twenty years, and the fact that I couldn’t stop choking for about a week afterwards.’

  ‘You hid that pretty well.’ Those two little ridges, from your nose to your mouth, I don’t know if they’ve got a name, Jeremy’s were a little longer and more prominent than most people’s.

  ‘Well, you do don’t you? Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Oh, am I? Sorry.’

  ‘Anyway, it’s time for you to spill your guts. There’s only about two minutes left.’

  Yes, there was, just like I’d expected.

  ‘Oh, it’s just Gavin,’ I said lamely. ’He’s getting in more trouble than normal. He and his friend Mark did something pretty horrific the other day.’

  The bell rang. Jeremy started getting up, brushing bits of grass and leaves off him. ‘Yeah, I can imagine he’d be a bit of a problem,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you do with a kid like that.’

  Deep down I had known that Jeremy wasn’t perfect, but the only reason I’d known that was because no human being is perfect, and sometimes, especially when you meet someone new, you try to keep that in mind. But at least now I knew for sure that he wasn’t perfect even if he was good looking. I tried not to grind my teeth as we walked back towards the lockers. Teeth grinding is so unattractive.

  I tried again with Homer on the way home on the bus. He laughed when I told him that Gavin was being difficult. To be fair, I had made the same comment to him quite a few times before. I’m not saying that Gavin or Jeremy or Mrs Rosedale or anyone else was insensitive or uncaring. I think it was partly that people were so busy in their brave new worlds. Dealing with their own war scars, physical and mental, the injuries and the damage, was enough to keep everyone busy. And I guess I always understate things, so when I tried to tell people I was worried about Gavin, I didn’t pitch it strongly enough.

  When I mentioned something about the cat, Homer launched into a monologue about cow-tipping. This quickly became a conversation, because Sam Young got involved. Sam leant up from the seat in front of Homer, turned around, and they started comparing notes.

  Cow-tipping is illegal, according to Shannon Young, who was sitting next to me. I suppose I should mention that cow-tipping is when you go
up to a cow who’s sound asleep in the paddock, give her a push in the right spot, and she just rolls over and lies on the ground, still asleep. It is pretty funny, because their legs stick out, but it’s very bad for cows, although I’m not quite sure how. Probably bruises their meat for one thing, and even more probably gives them bad sleep patterns. I mean, how would you be if every time you went to sleep you did so with the fear that in the middle of the night some teenage idiot might sneak up to you and tip you over? Probably about the same as I felt every time I went to sleep since the war started, not sure whether some guy with a rifle might appear in the middle of the night and do something a lot worse than tipping me over.

  Maybe that’s why, when it came to cow-tipping, I took the side of the cow. Since the war anyway.

  It was time to have a second attempt at the mountains. I was determined not to let them get the better of me. After all, what would they know? Just because they’d been around for thousands of years, just because they were made of rock, just because they covered thousands of k’s, didn’t mean that I, made of skin and bone and squishy internal bits like heart and liver, weighing as much as a fairly small boulder, but with a vast experience of life, couldn’t conquer them. After all, I was a mountain girl. Just call me Maria.

  This time I took Gavin, because I figured it would be harder for me to run away if he was there. And I thought it might be a good idea for us to have a break, spend an afternoon somewhere beautiful, even do a bit of bonding. A positive time, far away from Mark’s place, and the poor dead cat.

  Not that we actually needed bonding. Our relationship was good, despite all the frustrations and arguments. I could see how he still had big issues, was carrying a lot of baggage, was being inappropriate, etc, etc, but neither of us let that poison what we had. I knew he loved me, and if he didn’t know that I loved him, then he couldn’t tell the sun from the moon.