While I live ec-1

by John Marsden

  ‘So how’s Jeremy?’ I asked.

  She’d got back her cool. ‘Sexy as ever.’ She laughed. ‘I’m making some progress. I’ll keep you posted.’

  Bronte opened the lid of her lunchbox. It looked pretty interesting in there. Riceballs and something a bit sushi-ish, and silver beet and something light green. Not the typical contents of a Wirrawee lunchbox. ‘What’s that stuff?’ I asked, pointing to one of the vegetables.

  ‘Celeriac,’ she said.

  ‘Celeriac.’ Nice word. Up there with insouciance, tissue and alligator.

  When the first bell rang I walked back with her. But as we arrived at the lockers I saw Ms Maxwell striding towards me. My heart suddenly sagged inside my chest.

  ‘Oh, Ms Maxwell,’ I said.

  ‘Ellie, you were meant to come and see me at recess.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Ms Maxwell, I clean forgot.’

  ‘Well, you can come and see me now, thank you.’

  ‘But Ms Maxwell, we’ve got Drama.’

  ‘I’m sure Mr Elliot can do without you for twenty minutes.’

  I followed Ms Maxwell along the corridor, staring gloomily at her back. She wore one of those tailored suits, an olive green pattern that looked like wallpaper. It made her bum look big. One side of her bum was having a pillow fight with the other side.

  In her office she settled herself comfortably at the desk. I settled uncomfortably on the other side. She checked a file then looked over her glasses at me. ‘Ellie, I know life has hardly been easy for you lately.’

  She seemed to expect an answer so I nodded obediently. ‘Yes, Ms Maxwell,’ I said, not really thinking much, because people said stuff like that to me so often these days that it no longer had an impact.

  ‘And we have every sympathy for you, and every desire to help you.’

  ‘Yes, Ms Maxwell.’

  ‘But at the end of the day we have to operate within guidelines laid down by the Department.’

  ‘Yes, Ms Maxwell.’ Teachers mentioned the Department in the same way that priests mentioned God.

  ‘And, Ellie, I have to say that I can’t see how you are going to meet the Department’s minimum requirements for a pass.’

  I sat there numbly. So much to deal with, and now this.

  ‘You’ve missed so many classes, you’re way behind on assignments, you’re scoring failing grades right across the board.’

  I’d given up saying ‘Yes, Ms Maxwell.’

  ‘There is one thing. You can plead special circumstances. Certainly in your case there are a lot of special circumstances. There’s your wartime experiences — and of course nearly everyone can claim some kind of special circumstances as a result of the war — but more particularly there’s the death of your parents.’

  I nodded.

  She waited quite a while but I couldn’t think of anything to add. So she went on: ‘To tell you the truth, Ellie, I’m a traditionalist. Yes, if you put in for it, I have no doubt you’d get special consideration. But where does that leave you? You’d get a pass without earning it. You’d get a pass even though you don’t have the same knowledge other students have. And what happens next year, and the year after that? For how many years would you keep getting special consideration?’

  She leaned forward and looked at me earnestly. ‘I know a lot of people would say I’m being hard on you. And I’m not saying you should “get over” your problems and “get on” with life. You can’t force that, believe me, I know. It will only happen when it happens. I am saying that if you can’t pass this year you should repeat the year, and see how you go the second time around. Better that than to get credit you haven’t earned, better that than to go on to university and have lecturers assume you know things you don’t.’

  I left her office in a state of confusion. I thought the idea of special consideration was that you would have passed the exams except for some disaster. That seemed fair enough. I mean, if I got that and eventually went to university, I might have problems. But not in all subjects. I didn’t think it would matter so much in English or History, for example.

  I didn’t want to seem like I was looking for excuses though. Maybe Ms Maxwell was right. I didn’t know. It was awfully confusing having to think a problem like this through, to work it out on my own. I wanted to sit with someone at the kitchen table for hours, exploring it inside out and upside down, then taking it on a long walk through the paddocks. But instead it just had to take its place in the queue.

  CHAPTER 18

  I couldn’t believe how quickly the court case snuck up on me. So much had happened since the first one, and I’d almost forgotten Mr Sayle was doing his level best to get control of my farm, my money, and my life.

  Two days before the next hearing I rang Fi’s mum in the city and was devastated to hear that she couldn’t come.

  ‘I’m sorry, Ellie, but I’ve got a meeting of the Advisory Council. Did I tell you I’d been elected to the Advisory Council?’

  ‘No, congratulations.’

  I felt bitter. I hardly heard my own voice. All at once the death of my parents, always so close at hand, welled up again, and I was filled with anger at the way I’d been deserted. At the same time as I knew ‘deserted’ was a desperately unfair word I felt it pounding inside my heart and aching in my head. I’d had the same feelings when I thought Homer and Fi and the others had been killed in the attack on the petrol station during the war.

  ‘To be loved is nothing; it is to be preferred that I desire.’ So many times since my parents died I’d wanted to have the total undivided attention of a large number of people, including Fi’s mother, Homer’s parents, Homer, Fi, Lee, and half the teachers at Wirrawee High. Now, as I leaned against the kitchen bench, glaring at the Aga, the phone hanging off my ear, holding a mental rollcall of all the people who had betrayed me, Gavin wandered past, grabbed a banana, peeled it and sat there grinning at me and eating it like he was a monkey.

  I couldn’t help grinning back. For better or for worse he was still around.

  ‘So what do I do about Mr Sayle?’ I asked Fi’s mum.

  ‘It seems to me that the main issue for the magistrate was that she didn’t have much confidence in Mr Yannos to look after your finances. So you’ve got to convince her that she’s wrong about that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Now come on, Ellie, you’re one of the more resourceful young people I’ve ever met. I’m sure you can think of ways. References, evidence of successful financial activity, whatever. I’ve got to go. That bank loan you got, the one Mr Sayle didn’t like, if you can prove that was a good move, it’d help a lot. Sorry, Ellie, I really have to run.’

  The following night I went over to see Mr Yannos. While Mrs Yannos fussed over Gavin, giving him cup-cakes, which he loved, and Turkish delight, which he didn’t love, I sat down with Mr Yannos. He was very methodical, but slow. He wrote everything on a pad of green writing paper. He took ages, and I got quite frustrated waiting for him to finish each point.

  I explained how we needed evidence that he was a good manager, with sound financial sense. He immediately got insulted at the idea that anyone would think he wasn’t. I had to keep calming him down. But eventually he said, ‘OK, I get the bank manager. He tell everyone I am no fool with money.’

  ‘That’d be a great idea. And I’ll try to get my bank manager, to say the loan I took out was a smart move.’

  He pointed his pen at me. ‘You know what? You get Mr Jerry Parsons and he say you bought cattle good at the sale. What you pay for those cattle?’

  I told him.

  ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Already you up a hundred dollars a head.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Sure! Where you been? You not looking at prices? Prices are crazy. Them cattle, you up a hundred bucks easy.’

  Even so, it wasn’t until we were standing outside the Courthouse waiting to be called that Mrs Yannos dropped her bombshell.

  ‘I don’t know why Mr Rodd want your place,�
� she said. ‘What he want more land for? He got enough.’

  ‘Mr Rodd? What are you talking about?’

  She looked at me doubtfully.

  ‘You know Mr Rodd!’

  ‘Yes of course I do. He’s a pig.’

  Mr Rodd lived down the road. Somehow he’d kept virtually all his land after the war. There were ugly rumours going around about how he’d managed that, but I’m not going to repeat them here, the reason being that my dad had got really mad when I tried to tell him about them.

  Mrs Yannos was still looking at me in puzzlement.

  I frowned back at her. But you have to be patient when you want to find out stuff from Mrs Yannos.

  ‘Are you saying Mr Rodd wants to buy my place?’

  She pressed her lips together and shook her head. ‘I know what I know,’ she said. ‘But maybe I wrong about this.’

  ‘Well, maybe you’re right.’

  She raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘He’d be a very difficult neighbour,’ I said, trying to tempt her into talking.

  ‘Is not for me to say who you should sell to, Ellie, if God forbid you sell at all.’

  ‘I don’t want to sell to Mr Rodd.’

  ‘Yes, and what I say is, why his brother-in-law tell you what to do? Is not right I think.’

  ‘His brother-in-law?’ I was getting more and more confused.

  ‘Well, you know Mr Sayle is brother-in-law to Mr Rodd.’

  ‘Mrs Yannos! Who have you been talking to?’

  But I’d scared her off again. ‘Just what people say,’ she said.

  A moment later my case was called. I walked in with my mind spinning. Already things were tough enough. Both the bank managers and Jerry Parsons had been unavailable. I’d asked them for written statements, and got them from Mr Yannos’s manager, and from Jerry, but my bank manager, although she’d promised to have it ready, had gone to Stratton for the day and her assistant couldn’t find any trace of it in her office.

  Mr Sayle stood up and said pretty much the same things he’d said last time. I handed up the statements from Mr Yannos’s bank and the letter from Jerry saying my cattle had gone up in value, but the magistrate only glanced at them. She seemed to be in a bad mood. ‘Great,’ I thought. ‘My future gets decided by a judge with PMT.’

  I told her again how much I wanted Mr and Mrs Yannos to look after me, how I didn’t know Mr Sayle, and I added that I thought it was good to have three different points of view instead of just one. I knew I couldn’t say anything about Mr Rodd because I’d only just heard about it, and I didn’t know whether it was true. I wasn’t sure if there was anything wrong with him being Mr Sayle’s brother-in-law anyway.

  When I’d finished, the magistrate wrote a lot of stuff. She seemed to take forever. I knew Mr Yannos would approve. Finally she looked down at me.

  ‘Ellie, I know this is difficult for you to understand, but at your age you don’t require the amount of parenting a young child would need. The main function of a guardian for you is to look after your financial interests. It seems to me that Mr and Mrs Yannos, who are obviously very good friends and good neighbours, will be there for you no matter what order I make today. But I’m not convinced they have the financial sophistication to look after your parents’ estate. Therefore I am going to assign Mr Sayle as your guardian. Obviously your parents felt comfortable with his judgement, to make him trustee of their estate, so I’m sure they would approve of his having the legal care of you as well. And in the fullness of time you will appreciate that this is in your best interests.’

  I didn’t hear the rest of it, just sat there gaping at her. How could she? How dare she! How dare Mr Sayle! What kind of stupid morons made up these laws anyway?

  My eyes stinging with rage I followed Mr and Mrs Yannos outside. Mr Sayle came up, looking as smug as a bull who’s fetched top price at a stud sale. ‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘I have to say it’s a very sensible decision, Ellie. As she said, you’ll soon realise that it’s the best solution. Now why don’t you give Mrs Samuels a ring and arrange an appointment and we can have another look at your affairs?’

  I couldn’t even answer him, and after an embarrassed silence he went off again, saying, ‘Oh well, I can see you’re a bit upset, but you’ll soon be over it.’

  I was meant to go back to school but I couldn’t face it. I said goodbye to Mr and Mrs Yannos, who were looking bewildered and upset, and I got a cafe latte at Juicy’s, in Barker Street. I was meant to be saving money but I didn’t care at that stage.

  The cafe was half full of soldiers. That was another thing we were slowly getting used to, soldiers everywhere. Conscription had started a month ago. Only limited at this stage. There would have been more but the Army couldn’t cope with hundreds and thousands of new recruits yet. By the time we left school there was a fair chance they’d be ready to take us, although because of our family circumstances both Lee and I would get exemption. Special consideration again. If we wanted it.

  To my surprise I saw Bronte hurrying along the street. I called to her and she came over straight away.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘God, so many soldiers.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s giving me the creeps.’

  ‘Hey, careful.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said automatically. Then I wondered why I had to be sorry. ‘What, are you connected with the Army or something?’

  ‘My parents are both in the Army.’

  ‘Really?’ I realised how little I knew about her. ‘What do they do?’

  ‘God, how would I know? What does anyone in the Army do? I don’t think it’s anything very exciting though. They seem to spend their time with piles of folders and reports. And they both look pretty bored when I go onto the base to see them.’

  ‘You don’t live on the base?’

  ‘No, it’s all so new out there, and there aren’t many houses. But eventually we’ll move, if we’re in Wirrawee long enough.’

  ‘So what rank are your parents?’ It was a relief to have something else to think about.

  ‘They’re both majors. I call them Major Major.’

  I must have looked a bit blank because she added: ‘It’s a joke from a book. Catch 22. It was about the American Army in World War II, and there was a character in it called Major Major, because that was both his rank and his surname.’

  ‘I get it. Like Doctor Doctor. You want a coffee?’

  She looked at her watch. ‘Sure.’

  ‘So what are you doing out of school?’ I asked again, when I’d finally fought off half the Army and come back with a black coffee and a latte.

  ‘Oh, I just had to go to the doctor. Nothing much.’ She brushed her hair from her forehead. ‘I get dermatitis and I was picking up a new prescription. I keep hoping for the miracle cream to turn up and cure it but I think I’m stuck with it. I get rashes and stuff all the time. Then I scratch them and make it worse.’

  ‘So where did you live before the war?’

  ‘Before the war. That’s our benchmark for everything now, isn’t it? Well, we lived everywhere. Typical Army kid. I’ve been to eight different schools. Mostly with other Army kids, depending on where we were stationed. Sometimes we went to normal schools. It was good in a way, because you’d turn up at a new school in, say, Darwin, and there’d be three kids you’d been in Grade 3 with in Holsworthy and two you’d been in Grade 4 with at Puckapunyal and one you’d remember from Grade 1 in Townsville, and so it went on.’

  ‘The paths kept recrossing?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Have you got any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘I had a brother but he was killed in the war.’

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘We were being evacuated to New Zealand by helicopter. He was in the one ahead of me. We got separated at the last minute. I tried to switch to his one but they wouldn’t let me so I just called out to him, ‘Don’t worry, you go on tha
t one, I’ll meet you at the other end.’ I thought he’d be OK. He was with his friends and he’d been on a helicopter before. He just waved back. There was such chaos.’ She shrugged.

  ‘So what happened?’ I was gripping the cup as my latte got colder and colder. She seemed so calm.

  ‘It hit powerlines, just after take-off. Pilot error I guess. The weather was good enough. It fell on its side. And of course it was full of fuel so it exploded. We weren’t even allowed to get out of ours. We took off about two minutes later.’

  I tried to imagine how that would be, going up in one helicopter as you saw your brother killed in another one. I tried and I failed.

  ‘How old was he?’

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Was he a nice brother?’

  Her face broke into a huge smile. ‘Oh he was so cool! I know you’re meant to fight with your brother and say he’s a nuisance and all that stuff, but Michael and I were the closest friends you could ever be. He was so gentle and kind. He played guitar and he’d just started writing his own songs. I think he would have been famous one day. The songs were great. It was like someone a thousand years old had written them.’

  Her eyes were moist now, but she shook her head and had a long sip of her coffee.

  ‘Anyway, what are you doing out of school?’ she asked.

  ‘It seems almost insignificant now,’ I said.

  ‘Is it insignificant to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘This lawyer who’s in charge of my parents’ money, he wanted to make himself my guardian as well. I didn’t want him, I wanted Homer’s mum and dad. But this morning the court handed me over to him.’

  ‘They did? Even though you didn’t want him?’

  ‘Yeah. Seems like that’s the way it works around here.’

  ‘That sucks.’