by John Marsden
The prisoners seemed to know what to do without being told. Some took bags from the back of the hardware truck and set off for the fruit trees. A few went into the house, and two to the machinery shed. A soldier accompanied each group; the fourth soldier stayed at the trucks and lit a cigarette.
I looked across at Homer. ‘What do you think?’
‘It’s another work party.’
‘Yes. Good chance to gather some info, maybe.’
‘Let’s just watch for a while.’
‘Time spent in reconnaissance, huh? One of them looks like Corrie’s Mum.’
‘I don’t think it is,’ Fi said. ‘It’s just the silver hair. She’s too thin. And too old.’
We returned to our holes and cracks, and kept watching. I saw glimpses of the people in the orchard, but there were no signs of the ones in the buildings. But after ten minutes the soldier who’d gone into the machinery shed came ambling out and joined his mate by the truck. He was obviously trying to bot a cigarette. It took him a few minutes but finally the first man pulled out the packet and handed one over.
Then they both got in the cab of the bigger truck and sat there to have their smokes.
‘We’d better get out of here,’ Robyn said. ‘We’ve got these guns with us. We don’t want any more trouble.’
‘OK,’ Homer said. ‘Do a clean-up first. We can go out the end door and up through the trees.’
‘You guys do that,’ I said. ‘I’m going down to the machinery shed.’
The others looked at me doubtfully.
‘I don’t think ...’ Robyn started.
‘It’s a really good chance,’ I cut in swiftly. ‘We haven’t heard anything for weeks. I want to know how Corrie is. And our families. Robyn, can you take my stuff?’
She reluctantly nodded.
‘I’ll come too,’ Lee said.
I was tempted, because I would have felt more confident with some company. But I knew it wouldn’t work.
‘Thanks anyway,’ I said. ‘Two’d be a crowd.’
Lee hesitated, but I wasn’t in the mood. I wanted to do something, to prove to myself that I still had some courage, that the terrible night in the Holloway Valley hadn’t turned me to junket. And all those weeks of rain had made me impatient. The last time I’d tried to be independent and strong I’d lost my fingertips. Now I was anxious to try again, to do better, to get back some self-respect. Maybe some respect from the others too.
The other four began packing, moving quickly and quietly. I went out of a window at the side and hurried deep into the gum trees, to get around the sheep yards. There was a belt of trees running all the way down the hill that gave good cover, and I stayed in its shadows till I had the machinery shed between me and the trucks. Then I started edging closer to the shed, using it as my shield. My problem was that there was no entrance to the shed except the eastern side, which was all entrance: it was completely open. I had to come out of the trees and creep along the side of the shed, aiming for the only cover left to me, a water tank at the corner.
Reaching the tank was nerve-racking. The hard thing was to calm myself, to stop my chest taking on its own life and breathing like a set of bagpipes. I had to clench my fists and yell at myself, silently, in my head, to get control and calm down, to get ready for the tough part. I went down on my hands and knees and wriggled under the tankstand. Then, with agonising slowness, a millimetre at a time, I put my head out land peeped around the corner. I don’t mind saying it was one of the braver moments of my life. A soldier could have been standing a metre away. But there was no one there. Bare ground stretched away, brown and wet. I could see the trucks about fifty metres from me, looking huge and deadly from my position. I wriggled out a little further, twisting to the left as I did. From there I could see into the deep, dark machinery shed. There was a tractor and a header, and an old ute. Further back was a stack of wool bales. I couldn’t see any people, but I heard a clink of tools and a murmur of voices away in the far corner. I hesitated another few seconds, then took a breath. I steeled myself, like I was at the School Sports waiting for the gun, then took off, running silently for the wool bales, using the tractor as cover. If I’d had a bit of white fluff on my bum I would have passed for a rabbit. But I got there safely and waited, trembling, pressed against the smooth skin of a bale. The voices kept talking, rising and falling like a river. I couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like English. I started sidling along the bales, glancing at the entrance all the time so I could see if anyone came in. At the corner of the bales I stopped again. Now I could hear the voices clearly. I trembled and sweated, and tears smarted in my eyes as I recognised one of them. It was Mrs Mackenzie, Corrie’s Mum. My first instinct was to sit down and bawl like a little kid. But I knew I couldn’t give in to such weaknesses. They were for the old days, the innocent days, when we lived a soft life. Those days were lost, along with paper tissues and plastic supermarket bags and jars of moisturiser – all the useless luxuries that we took for granted before the war. Not only had we taken them for granted, we’d even thought they were important. Now they were as foreign and far away as the luxury of crying with relief at a familiar voice.
Corrie’s Mum. Mrs Mackenzie. I’d had a thousand cups of tea and five thousand scones at her kitchen table. She’d taught me how to make toffee, how to giftwrap Chrissie pressies, how to send a fax. I’d told her about my cat dying, my crush on Mr Hawthorne, and my first kiss. When my parents got especially annoying or frustrating I’d pour it out to her and she’d soak it all up, like she understood exactly how I felt.
I peered around the side of the bales. I had a good view of the back corner of the shed. I was looking at the workbench, with the tools neatly arranged on the walls above it. With no power connected, the area was dark and gloomy but I could see the two people working at the bench. A man with his back to me was tinkering with something. I didn’t recognise him from his back, and I wasn’t so interested in him anyway. My enthusiasm was all for Mrs Macca. I looked at her hungrily, and felt at once the disbelief in my stomach. She was side-on to me, cleaning out a carburettor with a toothbrush. A shadow was on her face, but I could hardly believe she was Mrs Mackenzie. This person was old and thin, with silver hair, long and straggly. Mrs Mackenzie was middle-aged and nicely plump, red-headed like her daughter. I kept staring at her, my disappointment giving way to anger. I really thought it wasn’t her after all. But gradually, as I looked, I began to see traces of Mrs Mackenzie in her face, in the way she stood, and in the way she moved. Then she put down the toothbrush, wiped her hair away from her eyes, and picked up a screwdriver. And in the movement of her hand as she brushed her hair aside, I saw Corrie’s Mum. In shock and love I cried out, ‘Mrs Macca!’
She let go the screwdriver, which fell to the floor, bouncing and clattering. She spun round, her mouth and chin dropping, which made her face even longer and thinner. She went very white and clutched her throat.
‘Oh. Ellie.’
I thought she was going to faint, but she leant quickly and heavily against the bench, putting her left hand to her forehead and covering her eyes. I wanted to go to her but knew I mustn’t. The man, glancing out at the trucks, said to me, swiftly, ‘Stay there.’ I was annoyed, because I’d worked that out for myself, but I didn’t say anything. I already knew I shouldn’t have called out. Mrs Mackenzie bent down and picked up the screwdriver, but it took her three tries and she seemed like she wasn’t seeing it properly. Then she looked across at me, yearningly. We were half a dozen metres apart but it may as well have been a hundred k’s.
‘Corrie, are you all right?’ she asked. I was shocked that she’d called me Corrie and hadn’t seemed to realise it. But I tried to act naturally.
‘We’re fine, Mrs Mac,’ I whispered. ‘How are you?’
‘Oh, I’m just fine, we’re all fine. I’ve lost a bit of weight, Ellie, that’s all, but I’ve needed to do that for years.’
‘How’s Corrie?’ I felt that awful dre
ad in my heart again, but I had to ask, and now that Mrs Mackenzie had called me Ellie again I thought it was OK. But she took a long time to answer. She looked half asleep, strangely. She was still leaning against the workbench.
‘She’s OK, Ellie. She’s lost a lot of weight too. We’re just waiting for her to wake up.’
‘How are my parents? How’s everybody?’
‘They’re all right. They’re fine.’
‘Your parents are in good shape,’ the man said. I still didn’t know who he was. ‘We’ve had a bad few weeks, but your parents are fine.’
‘A bad few weeks?’ I asked. This conversation was taking place in urgent whispers, with many glances at the trucks.
‘We’ve lost quite a few people.’
‘How d’you mean “lost”?’ I almost choked on the question.
‘They’ve got a new bloke,’ the man said.
‘How d’you mean?’
‘They brought in an Australian bloke from out of town. Some chalkie. He keeps picking people out for interrogation, and a lot of them get taken away after he’s finished with them.’
‘Where to?’
‘How should we know? They won’t tell us. We just hope to God it isn’t a firing squad.’
‘Who does he pick?’
‘Oh, first it was all the people who’d been in the Army Reserve. He knew who they were. Then it was the cops, and Bert Heagney, and a couple of your teachers. Anyone who’s a bit of a leader, you know what I mean? He doesn’t know everyone, but he knows a lot of people. He does about five a day, and we’re lucky if three of them come back in the evening.’
I said, ‘I thought there were informers at the Showground already.’
‘Not like this bloke. There’s people who suck up to them, but they don’t do this kind of thing. They don’t help with interrogations. Not like this mongrel.’
There was so much anger in the man’s voice at the end of his answer that his voice rose sharply in volume. I cowered down in the shadows for a moment, but no one came. I knew I’d have to go soon, but I wished Mrs Mackenzie would say more. She seemed so gaunt and tired and washed out. ‘How’s Lee’s family?’ I asked. ‘And Fi’s, and Homer’s? How are Robyn’s folks?’
Mrs Mackenzie just nodded.
‘They’re good,’ the man said.
‘What do you have to do here?’ I asked.
‘Get it ready. There’ll be colonists moving here in the next few days. You kids’ll have to be careful. There are work parties out everywhere now. We’re expecting hundreds of colonists soon.’
I felt sick. We were getting hemmed in. Maybe one day I’d have to accept the unthinkable, the unfaceable, that we’d be slaves for the rest of our lives. A future that was no future, a life that was no life. But I had no time for thought. I had only time for doing.
‘I’ve got to go, Mrs Macca,’ I said.
To my horror she suddenly burst into wild sobs, turning away from me and falling forward onto the workbench, dropping the screwdriver again as she wept. She was sort of screaming and crying at the same time. My scalp felt like I’d had two-hundred and forty volts applied to it. It was like I’d been given an instant crewcut. Frightened, I backed away fast, scurrying to the far end of the wool bales and ducking behind them. I heard a truck door open and a soldier come walking into the shed.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know,’ the man said. He sounded quite convincing, like he didn’t really care. ‘She just started crying. It’s those bloody Swedish carburettors, I reckon. They’d drive anyone to tears.’
I almost grinned as I crouched there in the darkness.
Nothing seemed to happen for a while. The only sound was Mrs Mackenzie’s sobbing, which had now become quieter. I could hear her gulping, as she tried to get some air in her lungs, get some control back. ‘Come on, love,’ the man said. I heard more footsteps, which sounded like the soldier again. They went out of the shed and faded away towards the house.
‘Go for your life Ellie,’ the man said in a normal conversational tone, as though he were talking to Mrs Mackenzie.
I had to rely on his judgement, so I took off, without saying anything, slipping around the corner of the shed, past the water tank, and into the bush. I greeted the trees like they were my friends, my family. I hid behind one for a while, embracing it while I got my breath back. Then I toiled on up the hill, to find my friends.
Chapter Fourteen
We saw our first colonists only two days later. More rain had blown in and we’d retreated to the shearers’ quarters for protection, huddling there as the timber creaked and whined and muttered. The rain came in squalls, rattling on the galvanised iron as though we were being roof-rocked. We took it in turns on sentry duty, keeping a twenty-four hour watch, but the weather was so bad that the work parties didn’t return. We went and inspected what they’d done: the house was clean and tidy and the beds made. It was all ready for strangers, aliens, to move in and take over. It scared and upset me, trying to imagine these people sleeping in the Holmes’ beds, eating in their kitchen, walking their paddocks and sowing their seeds in the Holmes’ earth. I supposed that our farm would go the same way soon.
After two days the rain had stopped, though the sky was still grey, the air cold, and the ground wet and muddy. We’d decided to walk to Chris’s place again when we got a chance, in case he’d turned up there. So at dusk, and despite the cold rotten weather, we took our gear and marched off across the paddocks. Roads were too dangerous, so early in the evening, but we knew we could bypass Wirrawee and strike Meldon Marsh Road without much trouble, and that would put us close to the Langs.
It was a silent walk for a while. Being cooped up for two more days hadn’t improved our tempers. But the open spaces were good: it was nice to be able to breathe again. I felt myself relaxing after the first couple of k’s. I held Lee’s hand for a while, but it was too hard to walk along in the dark like that; we needed both our hands for balance, after our frequent stumbles. I dropped back and left Lee on his own, and talked to Robyn about movies we’d seen: which ones we liked and which ones we didn’t. I had a great longing to see a movie again; to be able to look up at a vast screen in the darkness and watch beautiful people, beautifully dressed, saying clever and romantic things to each other. I supposed that in other parts of the world people were still making these films and other people were still watching them, but it was a hard thing to comprehend.
We skirted around Wirrawee and got onto Meldon Marsh Road. It was now well after ten o’clock and we thought we were safe on the road. It was a relief to be able to walk on it, and we made much better time. But about two k’s from Chris’s we saw a house with lights on. It was a shock to us; it was the first we knew that power was being reconnected to rural houses. We stopped and looked in silence. It wasn’t a welcome sight at all. In one way it should have been comforting: to see something that was so like old times. But life was different now. We were used to being feral animals, used to roaming the dark country at nights, used to running wild in the wild. If the colonists spread through the farmlands, reclaiming them with their lights and electricity and their own form of civilisation, we would be forced further and further out to the edges, having to skulk in caves and burrows, among the rocks.
Still without a word being said, we moved towards the house. We’d become human moths. The house wasn’t one I knew, but it was a comfortable looking place, solid brick, with big wide windows and at least three chimneys. Shade trees grew around it, and a neat garden with brick borders made a geometric pattern at the front. The borders nearly proved my downfall; I trod on one of the bricks and felt a spasm in my knee, which had been free of pain for several days now. But I recovered my balance, and when I tested my knee it felt OK. I caught up with the others, who had bunched behind a tree and were looking towards one of the lit windows. Bad strategy, I thought. A soldier with a gun could wipe them all out in less than a second. I whispered that to them wh
en I got to the tree; they looked startled, but quickly spread out to the cover of other trees.
I went around the eastern side of the house and found a peppercorn tree with wooden slats nailed to it, leading up to a kids’ cubby, a treehouse. I scaled the ladder and sat in the first fork. It gave me a dress circle view of the kitchen. I watched grimly. There were three women working in there. They looked quite at home. They were reorganising everything. They had all the jars and plates and saucepans and cans out of the cupboards and spread across the tables and benches. They were wiping things down and putting them away, stopping every now and then to take a closer look at something, or to draw the attention of the others to it. There was a gadget with orange plastic handles made for getting the lids off jars, and that seemed to fascinate them. I guess they couldn’t work out what it was for. They were putting their fingers through the hole in the middle and waving them around, then trying to screw each other’s noses off with it. They were laughing a lot. I could just hear their voices through the wall, sounding thin and high-pitched, almost a little nasal. But they looked like they were having a lot of fun; they seemed happy and excited.
I felt such a mixture of feelings, watching them: jealousy, anger, fear, depression. I couldn’t bear to see any more: I slipped down from the tree and went and found the others. Then we stole away through the garden and back to the road.
Comparing notes as we walked along, we worked out that there were at least eight adults in the house. I’d been assuming that they’d put one family on each farm, but perhaps they thought we were extravagant, having so much land between so few people. Perhaps they’d build houses all across the Wirrawee valley, till there was one family in each paddock, farming the land intensively. I didn’t know how the earth would cope with that. But then, maybe we hadn’t been making enough use of it.