by John Marsden
He used his arms on me, though. He invited me to a party that same night, and I went. It was a big mistake. It was so long since I'd been to a party that I'd forgotten how to act. I hadn't bothered to eat before I went, because I figured they'd have food there. And there was food all right: a packet of chips, a bowl of jellybeans and half-a-dozen over-ripe bananas. That's the kind of party it was. Then, to make matters worse, I had three BLS's in the first half-hour. Another big mistake. By eleven o'clock, after a few more BLS's, and more than a few slurps from Adam's beer glass, I was gone. I'd had it.
And he changed really suddenly. One minute we were just joking around like old buddies, the next he had his tongue in my mouth and was walking me backwards down the corridor to the bedrooms. I was trying to say, "Hey, what happened to beautiful old-fashioned romance? What happened to foreplay even?" but it's hard to talk with a tongue in your mouth. Sure I was kissing him back at first, but it wasn't working at all for me, I was just doing it, I don't know, because I was expected to, I suppose, he expected me to. Sort of automatically. I've never been less turned on in my life.
When we got in the bedroom he fell backwards on the bed, taking me with him. It wasn't very graceful. I felt dizzy and sick. He was tonguing my ear and all I could think was, "God, when was the last time I cleaned the wax out?" but I felt too sick and drunk to stop him, to even try to stop him. Next thing he's undoing my zip. I'm not saying I was too drunk to do anything about it, it wasn't like that, I mean that'd be rape', no, it was just that I couldn't be bothered. Oh, I tried for a minute, tried to pull my jeans back up, but in the end I thought, "Who cares,'what does it matter, just get it over with and then I can go home."
I don't understand what guys get out of sex like that; not very much, I would have thought, but they obviously get something out of it or they wouldn't do it. The only good thing I can say about him was that at least he used a condom. But only because he thought he might catch something from me. I'm sure it wasn't because he wanted to protect me.
All I got out of it was a terrible feeling that I was a disgusting human being. It was so against everything I stood for, everything I believed in. The next day I felt awful. I had a terrible headache anyway, and my stomach felt like it was still doing slow spins, but worse, far worse, was the way I felt such a slut. I felt sick at myself. I couldn't talk to the others about it, couldn't talk to anyone, except about three o'clock I got the bright idea of calling Andrea, the psychologist.
She was good, like always. It took me about an hour to get it out but in the end I told her everything. I started crying as I got to the end of the story, and then I couldn't stop. I felt so ashamed. Not of crying, but of being so cheap. I was bawling into this mustard-coloured cushion in Andrea's biggest armchair and using her tissues like they were five cents a box. And they're not, of course—everything in New Zealand's so expensive. Five cents a tissue'd be more like it.
Andrea didn't say anything for ages. She's the only person I've ever met who lets you have time to think about what you want to say. She never puts pressure on you in that way. She just sits there and watches and waits.
But finally I was sitting up a bit and hiccupping and blowing my nose. She explained how I was still reacting to Robyn's death, using different things as anaesthetics, and that was all really. She had another appointment to go to, so the next thing she'd left. I did actually feel a bit better—it surprised me, but it's true. I'd never thought of any connection between Robyn's death and the way I'd acted.
But I was angry at Adam. I thought, "If I ever see him again he'll get more than wax in his mouth."
I didn't want to write about it here, and I wouldn't have, except I think maybe it's one of the reasons I ended up not putting up so much of a fight about going back. I just felt awful about how I'd behaved and how I'd let myself down and everything.
Maybe I thought going back would be a way of making up for that.
I was desperate for some self-respect.
Two
It was only a day later that the bushfire started burning stronger. There'd been the rumour about using refugees as guerillas, then the next thing, the five of us were called up for medicals.
We got the full treatment, not just a physical but a mental as well. About three thousand questions, from "What did you eat for breakfast?" to "Do you still want to be a farmer when the war is over?" from "What's your favourite TV show?" to "Which is more important, honesty or loyalty?"
We got weighed, measured, pinched and probed, inspected and injected. My bad knee and my bad vertebrae. My eyesight and hearing and reflexes and blood pressure.
At lunch, munching on Saladas and cheese, breathing on the celery to warm it because it had just come out of the fridge, I said to Homer: "What do you think that was all about?"
"I don't know," he said slowly. "It's like they're checking us out. Seeing if we're in good shape again. Maybe the holiday'll be over soon."
That's the first time I took it a bit more seriously. But only for a minute or two. I'd almost forgotten that rumour, and Lee's comment about the shopping list. I said to Homer, "We're still a bunch of wrecks. They won't want us to do anything for ages vet."
I believed that too. Secretly I thought they'd never ask us to do anything again.
What was next? Another interview with Colonel Finley, I think. That was quite unusual. He was a busy man. But at five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon he rang Homer and asked if we could come for a meeting.
You don't say no to Colonel Finley so we cancelled our plans for a wild Saturday night—in other words we turned off the TV—and went to see him. It was quite some meeting. There were six officers, two Australian and four from New Zealand. They weren't even introduced to us, which seemed a bit rude. Everyone was too busy, I suppose. But one of them had so much gold braid on his uniform that he could have melted it down, sold it, and retired on the proceeds.
It was amazing we all fitted into Colonel Finley's little office, with its nice old-fashioned pictures on the walls and the clouds of blue pipe smoke. Maybe it was bigger than it looked. It must have been, because it always looked tiny. Somehow we all found chairs. I perched on the edge of Fi's. We sat there for half an hour getting grilled about a whole lot of stuff. They had maps of the Wirrawee district and Cobbler's Bay and Stratton, but they wanted all kinds of other information, down to details like the size of the trees in Barker Street and the condition of the four-wheel-drive track going into Baloney Creek.
The questions came thick and fast and everything should have gone fine, but somehow it didn't. We know most of that country pretty well, or we thought we did, but the officers wouldn't have been too impressed. The five of us managed to disagree on every second answer. Homer and I managed to disagree on every answer.
"There's a service station on the corner of Maldon Street and West Street."
"Maldon and West? No, there isn't!"
"Well, what is there then?"
"I can't remember, but it's definitely not a service station. Which service station do you reckons there?"
"You know, that old one, Bob Burchett or whatever his name is."
"Bob Burchett? That's on the corner of Maldon and Honey, and it's Bill Burchett, not Bob."
"Kevin, I'm right, aren't I? It's Maldon and West."
It was like that most of the time and when we got back to our quarters Homer wouldn't even speak to me.
Sunday a guy dropped in after lunch for no reason that any of us could quite work out. His name was Iain Pearce, he was in his mid-twenties, he was obviously something military—you could tell by the way he walked—but he was wearing jeans and a grey Nike T-shirt, and he just sat there chatting away like a new neighbour who'd come in for a cup of coffee. He had one of those honest uncomplicated faces, steady eyes, and a very straight black moustache. Kevin liked him at first sight, so for a while they did most of the talking. And most of it was guy talk: rugby and cars and computers. It wasn't too interesting but I didn't have the energy to move,
so I sat there half-listening, trying not to yawn. Fi was even ruder: she was reading a magazine called Contact, a newsletter for refugees like us who'd escaped to New Zealand. So she ignored them completely. Lee joined in a bit, but not Homer. Homer was still sulking, so when he talked it was in mumbles and grunts.
Gradually, though, Iain turned on the charm. I think he must have done a PR course or something, because after he'd talked to Kevin for a while he went to work on the rest of us. I quite enjoyed watching him do it. First he asked Fi about the music she liked and, because Fi loves music, she couldn't resist that. Then he found out that Fi and Lee and I had gone to a new New Zealand movie called The Crossing, which he hadn't seen but he knew the guy who did the special effects—maybe I should have worked out from that what kind of work Iain was in—so we told him a bit about the film. And somehow a few minutes later the subject was pig farming and Homer, who's always been mad about pigs, was talking nonstop about how he wanted to build up a herd of Poland Chinas, a breed I'd never heard of.
An hour later Iain had gone and we still didn't have a clue why he'd come in the first place.
The fire was raging now, only we didn't know it.
We knew it the next day, though. Oh boy, did we know it. The Monday. Black Monday. Fi and I had been for a run at about three in the afternoon. We went through the pine trees and along an old track to a hill that I always liked. There wasn't anything much up there, nothing spectacular, but it was a nice round smooth soft hill where the grass was always wet and green, and the fences were exactly the same as a couple of our older ones at home: dry stone walls with a single strand of barbed wire on top.
It's a hard run up there but easy coming back, except that Fi always cheats, cutting off the corners at every bend. I make it tough for myself by sticking to the track. I can still beat Fi, even when she cheats, but she doesn't really try; she mainly comes to keep me company.
OK, be honest, she comes because I bully her into it.
Anyway, this particular Monday we got back about half past three, a quarter to four, and there they all were: Colonel Finley, Homer, Lee and Kevin. They were standing in a circle, like mourners at a funeral, and the expressions on their faces were like mourners at a funeral too.
When I found out what Colonel Finley wanted I realised they were at a funeral.
Ours.
Fi and I walked up to them quite innocently. I had my hands on my hips, I remember that. We were hot and red-faced and panting, but I soon forgot my lack of oxygen and my heaving chest and my sweaty top. Before I could ask what was happening Homer told me.
"We're going back," he said.
That's Homer. If you want to understand Homer, and sometimes I don't know why you'd bother, those three words tell you everything you need to know. "We're going back." Even as I write them again now I can feel myself starting to scowl and grind my teeth. The thing about Homer is that he'd know exactly how angry it'd make me when he said that, but he couldn't stop himself. He'd say it to prove to himself that he was the Man, no one was going to tell him what to do. And of course the "no one" he was worried about was me. All our lives we'd been competing. Even now, at this critical moment, he wasn't going to give me the satisfaction of letting me think I had any say.
Our lives at stake, and Homer still wanted to make the decisions for us.
So there I was, my blood draining away through my feet, flooding out so fast I thought I would faint. I was churned up with anger at Homer, shock at what he had said, and sheer stark total terror. I felt for a minute like it was Fi and me against the four males. Funny, I knew exactly what Homer meant when he said "We're going back," I didn't have to ask. I knew he wasn't talking about going back to the pool for another swim, or going back to the cinema on Customhouse Quay.
In the end all I could do was walk past them and into the house. Colonel Finley was trying to talk to me: I think he was mad at Homer for jumping the gun like that, but I wouldn't listen, just kept walking. I assumed Fi was right behind me; it was only when I reached the bathroom that I realised she wasn't. That got me even madder: I swung right round and charged straight out again. They were still standing there, in their little huddle, Fi with them now.
I screeched to a halt and screeched at them, "What the hell is this all about?"
"Look," Colonel Finley said, in his very patient voice that he hardly ever used, "I think we'd better go inside and have a chat."
Three cups of coffee later he'd finally gone and we were left to our argument. And did we have a doozey. I ranted and raved and screamed. It was stupid really, because deep down I knew we had to go. I suppose maybe, looking back, I wasn't screaming at them; I was screaming at everything: at life, at the unfairness of it. Above all, with the fear that I might be killed, that what I saw happen to Robyn might happen to me.
But there were two compelling reasons for us to go. Two reasons that meant we didn't have a choice. One reason was the one that mattered to Colonel Finley: the sabotage they planned for Wirrawee. Sabotage that was getting more important every day now that Cobbler's Bay was back in action and Wirrawee was used more and more heavily as the centre for the whole district. Little Wirrawee, on the map at last. We were going to try to put it off the map. And with the New Zealand Air Force losing out badly in the sky, bombing was getting too dangerous. There were hardly any bombing missions any more. Guerilla activity was seen as the best hope. "Cost effective" were Colonel Finley's cool dry words.
The second reason was the one that was racing around our minds, whizzing like go-karts. It didn't matter much to Colonel Finley, but it meant everything to us.
Our families, families, families. That was the argument that suffocated everything else. It drew us all back home. And I mean the five of us. At one stage Colonel Finley suggested we didn't all have to go: a couple could stay behind. He didn't name anyone in particular, and we didn't ask. We unanimously rejected any talk of splitting the group. We needed each other too much.
For a few clays I almost hated my parents for being locked up in Wirrawee Showgrounds.
If they hadn't been there, if they'd been safe in New Zealand, for example, would I still have agreed to go back?
It was a horrible question and one I'm glad I didn't have to answer. But all the same, I think I knew deep down what the answer would be.
Sometimes there's really only one answer.
So, would I have gone back?'
Yes.
Three
Funny, I write this stuff, I quite enjoy it. I don't know, it's probably good for me or something.' I remember Andrea hinting that once, but I don't care about that, I've just gradually grown to like it. So I sit here and rattle off page after page. Sometimes it seems like an effort; sometimes it flows like water. My record for a day is nearly ten pages.
But that one word at the end of the last bit, just that one word: it took me a whole day to write that.
Anyway, I'm not going to say any more about it.
They wouldn't tell us much about what they wanted us to do, but I gradually realised we would start by going into Hell, our beautiful natural hideout, so well hidden from the rest of the world. I had to mark places on a map where I thought a helicopter could land on our property, so I figured a chopper ride would be part of the deal. We knew we had to guide some New Zealand soldiers: that was our main function. But that was all we knew.
The day before we left, though, I got taken to Colonel Finley's office. On my own this time. Then he told me in detail what I'd have to do: how from the moment we landed sixteen other people would be depending totally on me. But I wasn't allowed to tell anyone where we were going. Not until we'd taken off from Wellington.
The other thing Colonel Finley said really annoyed me. Infuriated me. He started in on this speech about how we had to be ready to take orders when we got there; we had to realise that we would be under the command of professional soldiers. We couldn't go off half-cocked, or start "doing our own thing," as he called it. It reminded me of Major Harv
ey, so that put me off right away, but I also thought it was an insult to my intelligence. I wondered why he wasn't giving this lecture to the others.
So I told him.
"Colonel Finley, I know all this. We're not idiots. We're not going over there to play games."
He seemed a bit taken aback. I don't think his own soldiers spoke to him like that.
"Of course, Ellie, I didn't mean to suggest that..."
The interview didn't go much longer. I think he was glad to get me out of his office.
Surprise surprise, who should be at the airport but Iain Pearce. Captain Iain Pearce that is, as we soon found out. And eleven others like him. Not totally like him, seeing four of them were women. But they did have a sameness about them. As I got to know some of them better I learned that of course they were all different. OK, sure, I know everyone's different, but this bunch did look alike, dress alike, sound alike. They'd all gone through the same training programme, I suppose. Or maybe they were picked in the first place because they fitted the mould that the army wanted. They were so correct about everything: that bugged me a bit. Everything they said was correct, they never slopped around saying the first thing that came into their minds, they never said anything that we would be offended by, they only swore when the radio wouldn't work or they cut themselves shaving. You couldn't help feeling that they'd all go to the toilet at the same time, and the same stuff would come out, if you know what I mean.
We stood on the tarmac at the RNZAF base, shivering. A dozen professional saboteurs and five amateur guides. A dozen soldiers, highly trained, carrying everything from automatic weapons to Band-Aids, and keyed up for action. And five pale-faced kids, scared from their tonsils through their large intestines all the way down to their toes.