Tomorrow, When the War Began

by John Marsden

  Then we slept and slept and slept.

  They say teenagers can sleep all day. I often used to look at dogs and be amazed by the way they seemed happy to sleep for twenty hours a day. But I envied them too. It was the kind of lifestyle I could relate to.

  We didn't sleep for twenty hours, but we gave it our best shot. I stirred a couple of times during the morning, turned over, had a look at Lee, who seemed restless, glanced at Robyn beside me, who was sleeping like an angel, and dropped back into my heavy sleep. For once, I can recall my dreams vividly. I didn't dream of gunshots and smashing into vehicles, and people screaming and dying, although I know I've dreamt of those things often enough since. That morning I dreamt of Dad barbecuing for a whole lot of visitors, at home. I couldn't see what he was cooking, but he was working away busily with his fork, pricking sausages or something. It seemed like all the town was there, wandering through the house and garden. I said hello to Father Cronin, who was standing by the barbecue, but he didn't answer. I went into the kitchen but it was too crowded with people. Then Corrie was there, asking me to come and play, which was fine except that she was eight years old again. I followed her and we went down to a river and got in a boat. It turned out most of the townspeople were there, and Dad and Mum were captaining the boat, so as soon as Corrie and I were aboard they cast off and we sailed away. I don't know where we were going, but it was hot, everyone was sweating, people were taking off clothing. I looked back at the shore and there was Father Cronin waving goodbye—or was he shaking his fist angrily because we were all stripping off? And I didn't know now if we were stripping because we were hot, or for other reasons. Corrie was there still, but we weren't eight-year-olds any more, and then she had to go somewhere, with someone, and in her place Lee was standing. He was undressing too, very seriously, as though it were some holy ritual. We lay down together, still being very serious, and began touching each other, gently and lovingly. We were still doing that when I woke up, sweating, and found that I was now in full sun. The day was getting really hot. I turned and looked at the others, and the first person I saw was Lee, watching me with his dark eyes. I was so embarrassed after the dream that I blushed and began talking quickly.

  'Oh, it's gone up about ten degrees. I'm baking away here. I'll have to move. I must have been asleep longer than I thought.' I picked up my blanket and moved to the other side of Lee, but about the same distance away. I kept gabbling. 'Do you want anything? Can I get you anything? Did you sleep much? Is your leg hurting a lot?'

  'I'm fine,' he said.

  I calmed down a bit now that I was out of the sun. From my new position I could see right across the paddocks to the bush, and on up into the mountains. 'It's beautiful, isn't it?' I said. 'Living here all my life, some days I don't even notice how beautiful it is. I still can't believe we might be about to lose it. But it's made me notice it all now. I notice every tree, every rock, every paddock, every sheep. I want to photograph it in my memory, in case ... well, in case.'

  'It is beautiful,' Lee said. 'You're lucky. There's nothing beautiful about the restaurant. And yet, I feel the same way about it as you do about your property. I think it's because we did it all ourselves. If someone smashes a window they're smashing glass that Dad cut, glass that I polished a thousand times, and they're tearing curtains that Mum made. You get an attachment to the place, and it becomes special to you. I guess maybe it does take on a kind of beauty.'

  I wriggled a bit closer to him. 'Did you feel awful when you found it all wrecked?'

  'There was so much to feel awful about I didn't know where to start. I don't think it's hit me even yet.'

  'No, me neither. When we got here this morning and I found they'd been here ... I don't know. I'd expected it, but I still felt awful, but I didn't feel awful enough. Then I felt guilty about not feeling worse. I think it's like you said, too many things. Too much has happened.'

  'Yes.' Only one word, but I'll always remember the way he said it, like he was really involved with everything I'd been saying. I rolled around a bit so I was even closer to him, and kept talking.

  'And then I think about Corrie and how it must be terrible for her, much worse than for me. For all you guys with little brothers and sisters. That must be terrible. And imagine how Chris's parents would feel, being overseas, probably not being able to get back into the country, not having a clue what's happened to Chris.'

  'We don't know how widespread this thing is. It could involve a lot of countries. Remember that joke we made, up in Hell, about World War Three? We could have been right onto it.'

  He put his arm around me and we lay there looking up at the old wooden rafters of the hayshed.

  'I dreamed about you,' I said presently.

  'When?'

  'Just now, this morning, here on the haystack.'

  'Did you? What did you dream?'

  'Oh ... that we were doing something like what we're doing now.'

  'Really? I'm glad it came true.'

  'So am I.'

  I was too, but I was confused between my feelings for him and my feelings for Homer. Last night I'd been holding hands with Homer, and feeling so warm and good about it, and now here I was with Lee. He kissed me lightly on my nose, then less lightly on the mouth, then several more times, and passionately. I was kissing him back, but then I stopped. I didn't have any plans to become the local slut and I didn't think it was a good idea to get involved with two guys at once. I sighed and shrugged myself free.

  'I'd better go and see how Chris is getting on.'

  Chris was getting on all too well. He was asleep, and I was furious. I shouted, screamed, and then kicked him, hard. Even while I was doing it I was shocked at myself. Even now, as I think about it, I'm shocked at myself. The thing that scared me most was the thought that maybe all the violent things I'd been doing, with the ride-on mower and the truck, had transformed me in the space of a couple of nights into a raging monster. But on the other hand, it was unforgivable for Chris to have gone to sleep. He'd risked the lives of till of us by being so slack. I remember on our Outward Bound camp, talking one lunchtime, someone had said that in the Army the penalty for going to sleep on guard duty was death. We'd all been so shocked. We could see the logic in it, but maybe that was the shocking part, that it was so utterly logical. Cold-blooded, merciless, logical. You don't expect real life to be like that, not to that extreme. But I really felt for a moment like I could have killed Chris. He certainly looked scared of me when he rolled away and stood up.

  'Geez Ellie, take it easy,' he mumbled.

  'Take it easy?' I yelled into his face. 'Yeah, that's what you were doing all right. If we take it easy any more, we're dead. Don't you understand how it's all changed Chris? Don't you understand that? If you don't, you might as well get a rifle and finish us all off now. Because you're as good as doing that by taking it easy.'

  Chris walked off, red-faced and muttering under his breath. I sat down in his spot. After a minute or two I think I did go into some sort of delayed shock. I'd blocked off all my emotional reactions because there hadn't been the time or the opportunity for those luxuries. But it's like they say, 'emotion denied is emotion deferred'. I'd done so much deferring, and now the bank had called in the loan. Most of that afternoon is a blank to me. Homer told me much later that I'd spent hours wrapped in blankets, sitting in a corner of the haystack, shivering and telling everyone to be careful. I guess I went down the same path as Corrie had, just in a slightly different way. I have a clear memory of refusing all food and becoming very hungry, but not eating because I was sure I'd be sick if I did. Homer said I was ravenous and I ate so much that they thought I would be sick and they refused to give me any more. Weird.

  I was very upset when they wouldn't let me drive the Landrover, because I'd promised Dad so faithfully that I wouldn't let anyone else behind the wheel. Suddenly though I got tired of arguing, crawled in beside Lee in the crowded back section, and went to sleep. Homer drove it up to Tailor's Stitch. If I'd know
n that I wouldn't have given up the argument so suddenly and so completely.

  Somehow I walked into Hell late that night, crawled into a tent beside Corrie, who was hysterical with joy to see us, and slept for three days, waking only for occasional meals, toilet trips, and brief mumbled conversations. I do remember consoling Chris, who was sure that he'd been the cause of my having a nervous breakdown. I didn't think to ask how Lee had got in to Hell, but when I gradually got my wits back I found that they'd made a bush stretcher and carried him in; Robyn and Homer taking turns at one end of the stretcher and the lightly built Chris carrying the other, all the way down in the dark.

  So I guess he atoned.

  During my three days I had the nightmares I hadn't had that morning on the haystack. Demonic figures ran screaming from me, I felt skulls crush under my feet. Burning bodies stretched out their hands, begging for mercy. I killed everyone, even the people I loved most. I was careless with gas bottles and caused an explosion which blew up the house, with my parents in it. I set fire to a haystack where my friends were sleeping. I backed a car over my cousin and couldn't rescue my dog when he got caught in a flood. And although I ran around everywhere begging for help, screaming to people to call an ambulance, no one responded. They seemed uninterested. They weren't cruel, just too busy or uncaring. I was a devil of death, and there were no angels left in the world, no one to make me better than myself or to save me from the harm I was doing.

  Then I woke up. It was early in the morning, very early. It was going to be a beautiful day. I lay in the sleeping bag looking at the sky and the trees. Why did the English language have so few words for green? Every leaf and every tree had its own shade of green. Another example of how far Nature was still ahead of humans. Something flitted from branch to branch in the top of one of the trees—a small dark-red and black bird with long wings, inspecting each strip of bark. Higher still a couple of white cockatoos floated across the sky. From the cries I could tell that there was a larger flock out of my sight, and the two birds were merely outriders, strays. I sat up to see if I could glimpse the rest of the flock by leaning forward, but they were still out of sight. So I shuffled out of the tent, clutching my sleeping bag to me like some kind of insect half-emerged from a chrysalis. The cockatoos were scattered across the heavens like raucous angels. They drifted on, too many to count, until they were out of sight, but I could still hear their friendly croaks.

  I shed the sleeping bag and walked down to the creek. Robyn was there, washing her hair. 'Hello,' she said.

  'Hi.'

  'How are you feeling?'

  'Good.'

  'Hungry?'

  'Yes, I am a bit.'

  'I'm not surprised. You haven't had anything since teatime the day before yesterday.'

  'Oh. Haven't I?'

  'Come on. I'll fix you something. You like eggs?'

  I had cold boiled eggs—we couldn't have a fire during the day—with biscuits and jam, and a bowl of muesli with powdered milk. I don't know if it was the cockatoos or Robyn or the muesli, but by the time I'd finished breakfast I felt I could maybe start to cope again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  One of the small rituals that developed each day was Corrie's Testing the Trannie. This was a solemn ceremony that took place whenever Corrie got the urge. She'd get up, look at the tent, give a little murmur like 'I think I might give the trannie another burl', and walk over to the tent. A moment later she'd emerge with the precious object in her hands and go to the highest point in the clearing and, holding the transistor to her ear, carefully turn the dial. She wouldn't let anyone else touch it, because it was her father's radio and no one but her could possibly be trusted with it. It was the only thing of his that she had. Although we laughed at her a little there was always some tension when she did it, but days passed with no result and Corrie reported that the batteries were gradually getting flatter.

  One evening I happened to be sitting near her when she went through another fruitless search of the dial. As usual there was nothing but static. She turned it off with a sigh. We were chatting about nothing in particular, when she casually said, 'What are all these other things for?'

  'What other things?'

  'All these other settings.'

  'How do you mean?'

  She embarked on a long explanation about how the few times her father had lent her the radio he'd told that her stations would be on PO or FM.

  'PO and FM? What are you talking about? Let's have a look.'

  She handed it over a little reluctantly. I realised from the writing on it that it was a French one. I started translating for her.' "Recepteur Mondial a dix bandes", that's "world reception to ten bands". FM's FM, obviously. PO's probably AM. "OC Etendue", well, "etendue", that's extended or expanded or something.' The implications of all this slowly began to dawn on me. 'This is no ordinary transistor, Corrie. This is a short wave.'

  'What's that mean?'

  'It means you can pick up stations from all around the world. Corrie, do you mean you've only been trying the local stations?'

  'Well, yes, PO and FM. That's what Dad told me. I didn't know about all that other stuff, and I didn't want to flatten the batteries, mucking around with it. They're nearly dead now, and we don't have any more.'

  I felt wildly excited and called to the others, 'Come here you guys, quick!'

  They came quickly, drawn by the urgency in my voice.

  'Corrie's radio can pick up short wave but she didn't realise it. You want to listen in? The batteries have nearly had it, but you never know your luck.' I selected 'OC Etendue 1' and handed the little black transistor back to Corrie. 'Give it the gun, Corrie. Just spin the dial the same way you did before.'

  We crowded round as Corrie, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth, slowly began to rotate the knob. And a moment later we heard the first rational adult voice most of us had heard in a long time. It was a female, speaking very fast among the static, but in a language we didn't understand.

  'Keep going,' Homer breathed.

  We heard some exotic music, an American voice saying 'You welcome Him into your heart and only then can you know perfect love', two more foreign language stations—'That's Taiwanese,' said Fi, surprisingly, of one of them—then, as the radio started to die, a faint voice speaking in English. It was a male voice, and all we could hear was this:

  '...warned America not to get involved. The General said that America would find herself in the longest, costliest and bloodiest war in her history if she tried to intervene. He said his forces have occupied several major coastal cities. Much of the inland has been taken already, and losses have been below expectations. Many civilian and military prisoners have been captured and are being held in humanitarian conditions. Red Cross teams will be permitted to inspect them when the situation stabilises.

  'The General repeated his claim that the invasion was aimed at "reducing imbalances within the region". As international outrage continues to mount, FCA reports sporadic fighting in many country areas and at least two major land battles...'

  And that was about it. The voice faded quickly. We heard a few scattered words, 'United Nations', 'New Zealand', 'twenty to twenty-five aircraft', then it was gone. We looked at each other.

  'Let's everyone get pens and paper and write down what we think we heard,' Homer said calmly. 'Then we can compare notes.'

  We met again ten minutes later. It was amazing how different the versions were, but we agreed on the important details. What we could imply was as important as what the man had said. 'For one thing,' said Homer, sitting back on his heels, 'we can tell it's not World War Three. Not yet, anyway. It sounds like it's just us.'

  'The part about the prisoners was good,' Corrie said. Everyone nodded. It sounded genuine somehow. It had helped all of us, a little, though awful fears still kept leaping up and attacking our minds.

  'He's trying to remind the Americans of Vietnam,' Fi said. 'It's meant to have been their national nightmare or something.'
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  'Bigger nightmare for the Vietnamese,' Chris commented.

  I glanced at Lee, whose face was impassive.

  'The Americans don't like getting involved with other countries.' I remembered something we'd done in Twentieth Century History. 'Woodrow Wilson and isolationism, isn't that one of the topics we're meant to be preparing, over the holidays?'

  'Mmm, remind me to do some work on it tonight.' That was Kevin.

  '"International outrage" sounds promising,' Robyn said.

  'That's probably our biggest hope. But I can't imagine too many other countries rushing in to spill their blood for us,' I said.

  'But don't we have treaties and stuff?' Kevin asked. 'I thought the politicians were meant to organise all this. Otherwise, why've we been paying their salaries all these years?'

  No one knew what to answer. Maybe they were thinking the same thing I was, that we should have taken an interest in all these things a long time ago, before it was too late.

  'What does it mean "reducing imbalances within the region"?' Kevin asked.

  'I guess he's talking about sharing things more equally,' Robyn said. 'We've got all this land and all these resources, and yet there's countries a crow's spit away that have people packed in like battery hens. You can't blame them for resenting it, and we haven't done much to reduce any imbalances, just sat on our fat backsides, enjoyed our money and felt smug.'

  'Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles,' Kevin said uncomfortably.

  'And now they've taken the cookie and crumbled it in a whole new way,' Robyn said. 'In fact it looks like they're taking the whole packet.

  'I don't understand you,' Kevin said. 'You sound like you don't mind. You think it's fair enough, do you? Let them walk in and take everything they want, everything your parents have worked for. Help yourself guys, don't mind us. Is that what you get out of the Bible? Do unto others, or whatever it is? Remind me not to go to your church.'