by John Marsden
We struggled on way into the night, hour after weary hour. At times Major Harvey shouted and screamed, at times he reasoned with a kind of fake patience, at times he became emotional. ‘You’re an attractive young girl, Ellie,’ he said, in a way that made my skin crawl, ‘and the last thing I want is to see your life ended at such an early age. But you’ve got to tell me the truth or I can’t help you. I know you’re holding out on me. I know young people, you see. I’ve had a lot to do with them over the years, and I know when they’re telling the truth and when they’re not. I’ve developed a sixth sense about that kind of thing. Now, Ellie, please, help me, help yourself, help your friends, by telling me who organised these attacks.’
Thinking that anything was worth a try I started acting repentant.
‘I know we did the wrong thing, Major Harvey,’ I said, hanging my head. Mr Kassar’s drama lessons in body language were quite useful sometimes. ‘But we didn’t know what was best. We didn’t have anyone to tell us, you see.’
He became instantly pompous. It was like adding boiling water to coffee. For someone who claimed to be an expert in young people he didn’t seem too smart to me. ‘Yes, but Ellie,’ he said, ‘when I gave you the chance to learn from me, to carry out orders in a proper well-organised military environment, you adopted a sullen and resentful attitude. You can’t dispute that.’
‘But I didn’t know what I was doing then,’ I said. I nearly added: It was just a stage I was going through. ‘I admit, I was disobedient. But I’ve learned better now. I won’t be like that again, I promise. Just give me a chance and you’ll see.’
He looked away, and I sensed with a sad stale sense of despair that there was no hope.
‘It’s not in my hands,’ he said stiffly, and I knew, with my highly advanced expertise in dealing with adults, that for once he was telling the truth. ‘Those decisions are made by others. My job is to persuade you to tell us where the terrorists are, and I have been instructed that if you do, there may be some chance for clemency.’
‘I can’t tell you because they don’t exist,’ I said wearily, and for the hundredth time. Then I lost my temper.
‘What’s it matter to you anyway?’ I screamed. ‘You disgusting filthy heap of shit! What are you helping them for? You’re a traitor. At least we tried. At least we did the best we could. I don’t care if I do die, I’d rather be dead than end up a complete and utter arsehole like you.’ I was standing and screaming, aware that little flecks of spit were flying out of my mouth and hitting his red shocked face. Not that I cared about that. Then the guards were in the room, grabbing me and throwing me onto the floor.
Soon after that I was marched back to my cell. It was dawn, and great grey clouds were being lit by a stormy grey light. I walked along with my head back, my eyes as wide as I could make them, marvelling at the vastness and wildness of it all. I didn’t know how many more skies I would see. In my cell, there was no trace of nature at all, so this couple of minutes was very precious, something to be thought about and relived for hours to come. All my life I’d been surrounded by sky and earth and trees and to be cut off from them now, to be cut off so suddenly and completely, was very hard.
The Slaters had a Japanese lady visit them a couple of years back. She was about twenty-three, twenty-four. She told them that until her trip out to Australia she’d never seen the horizon. Twenty-three years old and she’d never seen the horizon! It was a modern-day horror story. I’d realised then how lucky I was.
Chapter Twenty-five
I sat in my cell in a state of expectation, waiting for the next summons to Major Harvey. I was all tensed up, unable to sleep, though I felt unbearably exhausted. Breakfast came and I ate it and then made myself go through the exercises that I’d decided on the day before. But already, less than twenty-four hours after making those resolutions, I found myself struggling to keep them.
All day I waited for the summons and all day it failed to come. Around midafternoon I dozed off at the desk, my head on my arms. When I woke, my head felt heavy and achey, and my left leg had gone numb. I felt worse instead of better.
Tea arrived, brought on the tray by the same group of three women. I was starting to notice the different guards now. The one who carried the tray each time was the shortest of the three. She was a plain-looking dumpy woman with a flat face and sparse black hair. She looked about forty. Her uniform was the least adorned of any of the guards; no stripes, and only one small badge sewn to the left shoulder, so I suppose she was pretty junior in rank. Despite her plain looks she had a kind face. I thought that in her own country she was probably a cleaner or a maid, the same job that she was doing here, except that now she was in uniform. The two women at the door, with guns drawn, were younger and slimmer. They looked like sisters. One seemed nervous, as though she thought I might attack her at any moment. The other, the officer, was more confident, more relaxed. She always watched me with interest, like she was curious about me.
So this time, when the woman put the tray down, I tried making a joke. I was already desperate for human company, for warmth, for friendship. I didn’t want to be their enemy. I waved at the tray and said, ‘What is it this time, a Big Mac?’ The woman carrying the tray looked startled, then gave a little smile and shook her head. ‘No, no, no Big Mac,’ she said. The officer laughed out loud. The other one just looked even more nervous, as though making a joke was really, a kind of attack. They went out again, shutting the door, but I felt encouraged by my first attempt to be friendly, warmed by that moment when we’d laughed together. I ate my tea in a slightly better spirit.
I’d been thinking, of course, of ways of making a dramatic escape. At one stage I’d thought of telling Major Harvey that there really were New Zealand commandos, and I’d take him to them. Then, when I was out in the open air, I’d wait for an opportunity to grab a gun or something, or run away. One of the many problems with that was I could hardly escape from the prison and leave my friends inside.
I told myself it would have been easier if I’d known definitely that I was going to be killed. Then I’d have done anything, even staged a suicide escape attempt, because I’d have had nothing to lose. But while there’s life there’s hope I guess, and I couldn’t bring myself to accept that my execution was such a certainty.
Another escape method would have been to take a hostage. Hold a knife to a soldier’s throat and make her lead me to the front gate and let me out. There were a few problems with that too, one of them being the fact that the only weapons they’d given me so far were plastic forks.
After tea I did my exercises again. For one thing, I wanted to wear myself out physically, so I’d have more chance of sleeping when the lights were turned off. So I did more aerobics, flinging my arms out, kicking my legs, chanting songs to myself. This time I just ignored the camera.
When I was pretty puffed I sat on the bed. I realised that what I wanted most was something to read or, failing that, something to write on. I decided to try getting the guards’ attention. I was curious to see what would happen and, again, I didn’t have much to lose. So I went to the door and banged on it with my fist. The door was so thick and heavy that I couldn’t make a loud-enough noise. So I tried shaking it, which didn’t work either, as it was too solid, too well fitted. Then I yelled for a bit, first at the camera, then through the door. I wondered if my friends could hear any of this. I hadn’t seen or heard a glimpse of them since we’d entered our separate cells. But it didn’t seem likely that anyone would hear me as my voice sounded so muffled, even to me. It was frustrating, and a bit scary. I felt so cut off, and wondered what would happen if there were a fire in the prison. It wouldn’t be a healthy place.
I yelled for ten minutes. There wasn’t much else to do; it helped pass the time. Just as I was about to give up I heard the locks start to rattle. The door swung open and I found myself looking at the two younger women who were always there when my meals were brought. One was standing well back, with a gun train
ed on me. The second one, the officer, who’d laughed at my Big Mac joke, was right at the door, and she spoke. To my surprise her English was very good.
‘Stand against the wall.’
I went back a few paces but she waved me further, till I was touching the furthest wall from the door. Then she came in a couple of steps, though her buddy stayed out in the corridor.
‘Now,’ she said. ‘I teach you correct ways. You want guard, you press button there.’ To my surprise she showed me something I’d never noticed: a white button beside a ventilation panel close to the door and up high. I felt sorry for short prisoners. She continued: ‘Then you go to back wall, you stand there and wait, OK? You understand?’
I nodded. I understood.
‘Some things you not allowed. You not allowed make noise. You not allowed read books. You not allowed make mess in room. You not allowed make names on walls. OK? You understand?’
I nodded again. No making names on walls.
‘Can I have a shower?’ I asked.
‘Sorry, no shower. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Can I see my friends?’
‘No, no friends. Maybe tomorrow.’
‘Can I get a toothbrush?’
‘Toothbrush, yes, OK, I bring.’
‘And soap?’
‘Yes, yes, toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, towel, all those things, I bring.’
‘Can I have some paper, and a pen?’
‘What for?’
‘Um, I want to, I want to write …’
I was trying to think of some good lie that would satisfy her, but I couldn’t think of anything, so ended the sentence, rather lamely, with the truth. ‘I don’t know, I’ll go crazy if I don’t have something to do.’
There was a silence while she considered my request. It was obviously outside the guidelines. But then she made up her mind. ‘OK, pen, paper, OK. That all now?’
‘Yes, thank you. Thank you very much.’
It was two hours before the things she’d promised arrived, but it was very exciting to get them. They were brought in by a different guard, one of the ones who’d marched me off to meet Major Harvey. It was like Christmas. I pored over each item in turn. The toothbrush was blue, with twenty-eight clumps of bristles, nine rows of three plus one at the tip. The soap was small and yellow, the size of a matchbox, with a strong, unpleasant smell. The toothpaste was Colgate, in the familiar red, green and white colours, but apart from the word ‘Colgate’ nothing else on it was in English.
I also scored a thin frayed lemon handtowel with a green stripe running across it at each end, a vinegar-coloured comb, and a cheap plastic disposable cup. So many possessions! I felt rich.
The most important things, though, were the paper and pen. There was just one sheet of paper, lined, very thin, and a cheap blue ballpoint pen that ran dry on almost every downstroke. It was frustrating but it was better than nothing. Suddenly the long empty night that stretched ahead wasn’t so long or empty any more. I sat at the desk and in tiny writing, filling the paper as slowly as possible, I wrote a letter to my parents. I knew the chances of their getting it were as good as those of bark in a bushfire, but it was something I wanted to do, so I did it.
Next day there was still no call from Major Harvey. After being in such demand from him it seemed that now I wasn’t wanted at all. The morning dragged by, a minute at a time. Breakfast was delivered with a joke from the older lady. As she put down the tray she said, ‘No Big Macs today, I sorry,’ and we both laughed. There was no sign of the shower I’d been promised though, and when I pressed the button late in the morning and asked for one I was given the brush-off very quickly. It was the same officer who’d brought me the paper and pen, but today she seemed unfriendly, uninterested. With so much time to think, I wondered if maybe I was going to be executed soon, and she was distancing herself from me, like I would have done in her situation.
Lunch came and went, and the afternoon passed even more slowly than the morning. I wrote a poem on the back of the piece of paper and decided I’d start a short story that evening. My writing was so small I could hardly read it myself, but I still had three-quarters of one side left. I did my physical and mental exercises again, but my head felt stuffy and my whole body was slow and lethargic. I wondered even more about my future. To die would be such a terrible, unthinkable, unfair thing. But to be locked up in a cell like this for years and years, maybe decades ... that would be completely unbearable. I suspected these people weren’t like us. I didn’t know much about them, but I guessed they’d think little of throwing people into a cell and forgetting them. At least in our system you got a proper trial and you knew what was going to happen to you – usually, anyway. Maybe Major Harvey thought our country had become too slack, but I knew which set-up I preferred.
Nothing else really happened and I got more and more depressed as the evening ground on. I couldn’t wait for the lights to go off so I could get some sleep, but when they did and I lay down I didn’t seem able to sleep at all. It was a miserable rotten night; I probably only slept for two or three hours and I did quite a lot of silent crying – silent because I didn’t want to give the guards the satisfaction of knowing how deep I was sinking.
Despite the warning about ‘making names on walls’ I used the top of the biro to make some little scratch marks on the base of the bed, to show how many days I’d been there. If I was going to be there for ten years I didn’t want to lose count of the days.
If I’d known then that there would be no real change in my routine for the next week I’d have been even more depressed. But seven little scratches had been added in the shiny white paint before anything interesting happened. The only highlights were two showers that I was allowed to have in a little shower room in our maximum-security block; the grudging gift of another sheet of paper halfway through the week; and the middle-aged lady who brought my trays in and out giving me a packet of chewing gum one day and telling me I was a ‘brave girl’.
Her kindness moved me very much.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the other five and wondering how they were doing. I was so afraid for them. I could picture Homer, frustrated and angry, walking round and round the tiny cell, banging his head against the wall, quickly going crazy. I thought Fi would be like a heron suddenly locked in a cage, sitting there timidly and in her mind’s eye still seeing the sky and the hills and the wild places. Robyn I didn’t know about. She seemed to have been cracking up again in the last few weeks. Sometimes, if I hadn’t seen evidence of it for a while, I forgot just how angry and depressed she could get.
I thought Lee would be a danger both to himself and the guards. I pictured him getting more resentful by the hour, sitting in the middle of the floor brooding, and then suddenly leaping at a guard’s throat in a fit of madness. And Kevin, in my imaginings, would be a mess. I couldn’t see how he would occupy his mind for all these weary hours. He relied on other people so much for his interests, not seeming to have ideas of his own. He needed lots of action, things happening around him all the time, or he quickly became bored. These cells weren’t made for people like Kevin.
They were the mental pictures I developed as I thought about my friends. But I thought about many other things too, of course. The poem about God carrying the person along the beach. My family and the people of Wirrawee. I started to understand why they had become so depressed and sour, locked for month after month in the Showground.
I thought more than anything about death; my own, how much warning I would get, how I would face it, what it would feel like, and what would happen to me afterwards. I did a lot of thinking but I also became very sullen. I couldn’t help it. I so badly needed to breathe fresh air, to see the sky, to do physical things. I even thought about suicide but the irony was that even if I’d wanted to commit it there was no possible way of doing it.
Chapter Twenty-six
When they came for me an hour after breakfast I had no idea what to expect. Desperate for any cha
nge to my routine, I followed them eagerly. The shock of fresh air on my face was so strong that I felt like a corpse coming out of a grave. The air was viciously cold – it was a freezing day – but I could have kissed it as it bit at my face.
The route they took me along was what I was used to: straight along the covered walkway to the building where Major Harvey had questioned me for so long. I lingered as long as I could on the walk but the guards had no interest in the bracing air: to them it was just a nasty winter day, I guess. They hurried me into the building and down the corridor to the same office, and there he was again, the same dark face and dark eyes. He seemed more jumpy, more nervous, his eyes not settling on me when he spoke, but looking away all the time, to places around the room. I thought he’d lost weight, too.
‘Ah, Ellie,’ he said. ‘This won’t take long. Just a small duty I want you to perform. Take a look at this, please. In fact you can read it to me.’
He handed me a sheet of paper with a couple of typed paragraphs on it. I took it and began to read it out loud: ‘I am making this statement voluntarily to apologise for my actions in recent months. I have been involved in terrorist activity which has led to a great deal of property damage and caused injury and death to many innocent people. In acting in this irresponsible way I have insulted those who are helping to rebuild my country and who I now realise are creating a new and better society for us all.
‘Unfortunately some misguided people in other countries are still engaging in attacks on us. I must ask them to desist. They are causing a great deal of unnecessary suffering. They are committing war crimes in violation of international law. It is time for everyone to work together in our new society for the betterment of all people. I ask for the support of all people in achieving this.’