by John Marsden
After the awful thing with the cat, and my visit to the school, he became painfully, painfully good. Not just doing his homework, but doing it conspicuously — coming and asking me for help every five minutes, and using some fake excuse to show me what he’d done, so I would realise how hard he was trying. Not only that, but doing all his chores like he loved them, going to bed without any fuss, getting up early in the morning, and being on time to the bus. I felt like gently pouring a cup of water over his head and saying, ‘Don’t worry, just be yourself again, it’s OK,’ but there were two reasons for me not to do that. One was I figured I might as well enjoy the peace while it lasted, and the other was my deep fear that maybe it wasn’t OK.
Anyway, doing something reasonably normal seemed like a good idea. At first Gavin didn’t want to go but he gradually changed his mind. We decided we’d make a picnic of it, and in the end we both got quite revved up by the whole thing. I’d made some relish the weekend before, using an old recipe of Mum’s, with ginger plus the usual tomatoes and onions and vinegar. We had some cold roast lamb from Mrs Yannos, which she’d sent over on Thursday, so I made sandwiches out of that, with some cos lettuce from the supermarket. Sometimes I get sick of beef, but never lamb, and Gavin’s totally carnivorous, so I knew we’d both be happy with that.
Climbing, climbing, climbing. There were a few steep bits that I really hated, but most of it was good, even when it was hard work. I stopped once to let Gavin catch up, but I think he saw that as an insult, because he went on past me without a word, and from then on continued to lead.
Everything felt so familiar. The gum trees, the spur, the sky, and Gavin’s stocky little body, head down, relentlessly ploughing forwards. I often felt grateful that we could walk through the bush in broad daylight again, and almost as often I wondered how we could have been so mobile at night. Of course, when the moon is good, you can go just about anywhere, but on those dark nights you can hold your own hand up in front of your face and say, ‘How many fingers?’ and you don’t have a clue.
As we got closer to the spot where I’d packed it in last time I wondered if Gavin would react. It must have held the same memories for him as it did for me. I fixed my gaze more and more steadily on the back of his neck, trying to concentrate on it. Not for the first time I appreciated the strength in him. I knew I was sweating more than the sun and the physical effort of climbing could explain. I just kept shoving one foot in front of the other. My heart was fluttering in my chest like the beating wings of a little bird that you find on the ground after a storm and hold in your cupped fist. Gavin didn’t look left or right. I felt like he was towing me through the danger zone.
And suddenly, much faster than I would have expected, we were at the top. I broke into a huge smile and bopped him on the head. I felt like the mountains were mine again. I forgot about mangled cats and farm mortgages and war and put my head up and threw back my arms and drank in the sky instead. I ran in zigzags among the rocks and moss and tufty grass, then ran straight until I had almost lost sight of Gavin. Perhaps if Gavin had not been there I would never have come back. The sight of his sad little figure, watching me from the top of the track, didn’t change my mood completely but it reminded me that I was still connected to the world. I couldn’t fly. My wings were working well again but the anchors were holding fast.
I ran back and tackled him and we rolled down the hill a few metres, wrestling and laughing. I really had to fight to get the better of him these days. Just when I thought I’d pinned him he wriggled out and somehow got on top of me and sat on my head. I scrabbled my legs up under me and used my neck muscles to throw him off, then went after him again. I was on my hands and knees. He jumped up and ran straight backwards, with his arms out, like he was fending me off, still laughing, and he went straight over the edge like that, still laughing, still with his arms towards me.
Sickness ran through me. Every spot on my skin prickled, every hair on my head and neck and arms stood, and all the saliva in my mouth and throat dried. I tried to call as I ran forwards, and couldn’t, then realised it was a waste of time anyway with Gavin being deaf. I saw the crumble of fresh dirt, the smear of it, where his shoes had scraped the edge, and only just stopped myself from following him over.
Instead I got down on my stomach and slid forwards and looked down. Jesus! What a place to pick. There weren’t many sheer cliffs along here but this was as sheer as they got. I saw him straight away. He’d fallen, I don’t know, twelve or fifteen metres. Somehow he’d been caught on a bump of earth and somehow he’d stuck there; somehow it had held. I didn’t know what damage he’d done himself but he was still alive. He was lying face down over this bump sticking out from the face of the cliff but it wasn’t big enough to reach even halfway under his body, so he was tipping over it quite a bit. Like someone not lying properly on a sofa and about to roll onto the floor.
In Gavin’s case the floor was a long way below. I don’t know how far, whether it was sixty metres or eighty or a hundred. It didn’t matter. It was enough.
His arms were moving as he tried to find some way to hang on to this bump of earth without disturbing it. Little showers of soil were falling from it, so it wasn’t handling the weight very well. He had a bit of a grip with one hand on a root or something that was growing out on his left, but the other hand wasn’t having much luck.
I stared down at him. I know my eyes must have been the size of DVDs. I could feel how big they were. He looked up at me suddenly. He stopped groping with his hand and gazed into my face. I saw the same determination he had always shown. He always wore it so proudly. Now I saw also his utter terror, the expression of someone who is about to die and knows it. I had one of those little insights you get sometimes, when you look at your friends and for a moment see them age fifty years. I saw Gavin age fifty years, then a hundred.
I tried to make my face mirror only the proud determination in his. My panic would do him no good. I tried to make my mind work. We had no rope, no mobile phone, no walkie-talkie, no helicopter. He was about to die and I would try to reach him and I would probably die in doing so. But at such a moment you have no doubt and almost no fear. Everything becomes completely and utterly focused on the moment. The weather, the view, the picnic, and beyond that, the farm, your friends, your school, your life, none of those have any priority any more. They have no existence.
I slid back a little, trying to think of tools, props, miracles. Nothing, nothing. My eye contact with Gavin, that extraordinary moment of contact and clarity, was over and my mind was starting to race again. I knew I had to start down that cliff in a millisecond and I wanted to do something before I went that would give me, us, some little chance, some tiny hope. I looked at our pack. Roast lamb sandwiches? Not much there. I had to be better prepared next time, except there wasn’t going to be a next time. There weren’t going to be any next times.
I looked around. Already I was backing towards the cliff, thinking I had to get going, I couldn’t leave it any longer. Nothing but roast lamb sandwiches and a bit of salad in the packs, nothing but trees and rocks along Tailor’s Stitch. We had brought nothing with us that I could use and the bush offered nothing either. That’s the way of the bush.
I was at the edge of the cliff, not far from where Gavin had gone over. In a state of complete terror I eased myself over too. What did I know about rock climbing? I knew one thing about this climb. I had no real thought of saving him, of either of us coming out alive. I had some vague half formed idea that I would try to get to him to comfort him, to be with him, and that would be the end of the story. I glanced down. He was still there, thank God. Now he was starting to show his terror. He gazed at me. He’d realised, I think, that he couldn’t move, couldn’t cry out, couldn’t beg, because it would take only a slight movement to collapse the clump of dirt that was holding him. In fact, as he stared at me he did shift a little, and I gasped as a cascade of dirt showered down from his feet. Soon the whole thing would give way. Even so he s
hifted again. I wondered if he was starting to cramp up.
I did know one thing about rock climbing, and one thing only. I couldn’t remember who’d told me. A teacher at school, I thought. ‘Use the toes and fingertips.’ That was the whole thing. My entire knowledge summed up in five words. Oh yeah, and face into the cliff. More knowledge, more memory was coming back. Something about, ‘No matter what your instincts tell you, you’ve got to face into the cliff.’
My instincts were telling me not to face into the cliff. They were telling me to go down with my back to it. My brain battled with my instincts. My brain said, ‘Someone somewhere has given you good advice. You must follow it.’ My instincts said, ‘You need to see where you are going. If you face out you’ll be in charge of the situation. You’ll control what happens. That’s what you want, isn’t it?’
It’s all about control. It’s always about control.
It took a lot of courage to turn my back on the world so I was facing into the rock. I don’t think of myself as brave very often, but I suppose when you force your instincts to obey your brain it takes something, and you might as well call that courage.
I started down. One part of me was already out of control and that was my breathing. I hadn’t noticed it but suddenly I heard myself, heard frantic squeaking gasps. I tried to stop them. Breathe in, breathe out. I did that three times then forgot about it. There was too much else going on.
I found to my surprise that the toes and fingertips thing worked better than I’d expected. I pressed into the face of the rock with all the force I could, then decided I was overdoing it and eased off. The first part wasn’t too bad, as it was still sloping, but I soon realised to my horror that it was getting sheer. I glanced across at Gavin again. He was watching every move I made. He never made a sound. They used to call deaf people deaf and dumb. I don’t know about other deaf people but Gavin was as noisy as a lost cockatoo. He chattered away all day to himself, and when he was with me and people he trusted he tried really hard to talk properly. The only time he was quiet was when he was with strangers, and then he’d try to let me know with subtle gestures what he wanted.
He was quiet now. There was something odd about his sudden stillness. The rabbit in the spotlight thing maybe. For his sake I tried to concentrate on the climb. I had no hope for myself and perhaps I would have thrown my life away if it had been just me alone, having to climb down the cliff for some other reason. But I didn’t want to, couldn’t, abandon Gavin, not after what we’d been through together, not after all the other times he’d been abandoned.
With each foot, each hand, I searched for a little hole, a crack, a mound. It’s amazing how the tiniest cranny can support a human body. I got my left fingers into a dent in a rock, my right into a crack that was full of sand and gravel. My left foot was resting on a small stone and my right toes were sticking into a curve where some stone showed through.
Then the little stone under my left foot went, and both my hands suddenly came out. My stomach lurched. I felt the blood leave my face. I grabbed at the cliff, at the same time trying to see something that could hold me. It was weird, my mind was still working, even in the middle of my panic. While my hands grabbed wildly they were also trying to grab carefully. I had a sudden dizzying glimpse of the ground a million miles below. I don’t think I actually saw it, just saw it in my mind. My fingers found something, nothing really, just tiny indentations that would hold me for a few seconds if I was lucky. I kicked around with my loose foot trying to find something better, but not able to kick very hard, because I’d dislodge myself with my own action. Action would bring reaction, just like they say in Science.
I grabbed the cliff, sobbing with terror. I knew I was on the verge of death. Not for the first time, but usually the threat was from enemy soldiers with guns. Now it was down to me and nature, me and gravity. I tried to think of something, some thought to die with, something that would be worthy of death. I didn’t want to die with my mind full of nothing, because that’s what panic is, a whole lot of nothing going around and around at a very fast speed.
All the time while this was going on, another part of my mind, a reflex part I guess, kept making one hand grope for a better spot. Not with any hope, probably the same way a fox with a bullet through its chest tries to drag itself into the bushes, like you’re suddenly going to lose interest and walk away and then it’ll get better.
I found something that felt more secure, glanced at it, and thought it looked like nothing, just a slight swelling of the rock, but I trusted my fingers more than my eyes and dug my fingers into it and took a little pressure off my other hand. With the last shreds of my self-control I tried to make my body stop its trembling. I looked down quickly, not at the ground but searching for another hold. I thought if I could get myself moving maybe that would help me get calmer. It was that getting-back-on-the-horse-after-you-fall thing again.
Funny, I never thought for a moment of going back up. Instead I shifted down to another stone, still slow to learn that these soft little protruding stones were death traps. At least it fell immediately, doing me a favour, because I hadn’t yet put any real weight on it. I hastily pulled my leg back up and tried to get it back to its previous position, but it was too late. I’d already lowered my centre of gravity too far. I had to find another foothold, and fast. I saw a button of rock away to the right and stretched across to it.
At some point I realised what was happening. All those stories on the news about drownings… so often it seemed like one person would get in trouble, be carried out to sea by the rip, and one or two or even three others would jump in to save him, men usually: fathers and uncles and brothers, who could not swim and knew that they could not swim, but in their hearts was another knowledge, that they could not stand and watch, they had to be with the person in the water and share whatever was coming to them.
I had to be with Gavin, or as close as I could get. I decided I could not take so long to move down towards him. If I did I would lose too much strength and energy and by the time I reached him I would have nothing left to offer. Already my arms and legs were vibrating with the nervous and physical energy I’d put out. I couldn’t just go crazy and skedaddle across the cliff face. I’d fall to my death with the first false move. But I had to do better than this.
I tried so hard to get some control of my mind. I told myself that I had to become a skilled rock climber. I had to learn on the job. I tried to concentrate on technique. I had a vague memory of a moment with Jeremy, when he’d been talking about rugby and how he’d won some best-and-fairest awards, or man-of-the-match awards, whatever, and I asked him how, when he’d already told me that his main job was to pass the ball to other players, to be a link, and he said it was because of his tackling. This was an unusual conversation with Jeremy by the way, cos if there’s one thing he is, it’s modest, but anyway, he managed to get across the idea that he was a pretty good tackier. And he said something about how he had been too scared to tackle properly when he first played rugby, so I asked him, ‘How did you get over that? How did you make yourself not scared?’ And he said he would look at the player and think about how he was going to tackle him, what would be the best way to go about it, and somehow while he was doing that he didn’t get frightened.
I said to him, ‘So you concentrate on technique?’ and he said, ‘Yeah I guess.’
It was the struggle between the mind and the instincts again.
I didn’t hang on the cliff for half an hour having a good think about that conversation with Jeremy. I thought about it for as much time as it took to write two words of it. But the little flicker of memory helped.
I got grim. I used my eyes with more concentration, more focus. I fixed on a crevice, a crack, about four metres to my right. If I could get there I could just about get to Gavin. What happened after that didn’t bear thinking about so I didn’t think about it. I knew now about the soft stones so I avoided those. I concentrated on technique, getting fingers and toes to grip
little indentations and bumps. Funny how these tiny freckles, invisible normally, of no interest or importance to any human in the history of this mountain, were now major features for me. As big and important as mountains themselves.
My hands were getting tired and my fingers were forcing themselves into a more open position. Spreading, like I couldn’t control them. Cramping, kind of. I had to keep moving. Halfway to the crevice I got in such a good position that for a moment I could give my left hand time off; my right hand and both my feet were secure, so I stretched my fingers and shook them, trying to make them work better. Even my mind took a few seconds off.
During the war there had been a time when I turned from Ellie into someone or something else. I guess the long and the short of it is that I became a soldier. At first I’d done a lot of blundering around, all the time in danger of being caught or killed or both. I’d thought I was being very professional and clever, but later, when I looked back on those months, I couldn’t believe how we survived. Then one day I changed. I no longer had to think so much about what to do and how to do it. I became part of the environment, as much as a fox or a brown snake or a tawny frogmouth. But I was different to them. I became part of the environment of a war. After that I always moved quickly and quietly. From then on I was always aware — deeply aware — of every sound and smell and tiny movement. I didn’t disturb anything, because I didn’t want to leave any trace of where I’d been. I was cunning and scared and angry and determined and awake. It became second nature.
Sometimes younger kids say they wish they could have done what we did during the war, but with most of them I think, ‘You don’t notice enough, you’re so super-aware of yourself you wouldn’t notice a dozen blokes with rifles coming at you from fifty metres away, let alone a freshly disturbed bit of rotting wood on a track, or a cry of alarm from a magpie who’s been distracted.’
For me, the change happened quite suddenly, I think when we were escaping at maximum speed from the airport we’d trashed, somewhere just after that, when we abandoned the truck and took to the river.
