The Other Side of Dawn

by John Marsden

  That’s how it’s worked out between us girls, but it hasn’t been the same with the boys, none of whom have any contact with each other. It’s a bit sad, but I think they needed a break. I still see Homer every day at school, and most weekends, and we’ve gone back to that same sort of friendship we had before the war. But we don’t often talk about the war. I suppose when I think about it more, when I really look at it honestly, we don’t have the same sort of friendship: it’s just that I’d like to believe we do. I’m a bit nervous with him somehow; like there’s too much that’s happened for me to deal with properly, and I’m too aware of other stuff that’s getting in the way.

  To be really really honest I think I like him too much. I just need to work out what the next stage of our friendship will be; where we go from here. It’s all complicated by Fi. She says she wants to end it, that she doesn’t love him any more, but she can’t bring herself to tell him. She doesn’t want to hurt him. He still talks like he’s got this big thing going with her, but I get the feeling he knows deep down that it’s over. When I told him Fi was coming to stay with me he didn’t look as excited as you’d expect. I mean, he was pleased, but he sure didn’t act like Romeo when he sees Juliet on the balcony.

  Strangely I don’t feel the way I used to about Lee. It just died suddenly, some time, without my even knowing it. That day they got back to Wirrawee, when everyone was hugging like writhing masses of sawfly larvae, I think I still loved him then, and perhaps I did the day at the creek, but that seemed to be the end of it.

  He’s gone to live in the city, with his little brothers and sisters. They’ve been helped quite a lot by a programme for war victims. They’ve been given a little apartment, and Lee’s doing an accelerated course to get into uni early. He rings every couple of weeks, but I can’t say I enjoy the calls that much. I think they’re more important to him than they are to me. I know he gets lonely and depressed an awful lot.

  Casey and Jack and Natalie all got reunited with their families. I haven’t even seen them, but I had a few cute little letters from Casey. I’d love to see her again, only travel’s so difficult and expensive.

  I suppose it sounds awful, like I haven’t done anything about her, I haven’t kept the promises I made in the little patch of bush near the creek in Nellie’s or even as I forced her into the helicopter. Well, that’s true, I haven’t, and I don’t want to make excuses for myself. But I will. It’s the way things happen I suppose; in the heat of the moment, in the passion of great danger or great love or great anger, you say things, you make promises. Then the circumstances change. I wasn’t totally neglectful with Casey; I rang General Finley quite a few times about her, and I wrote to her. But once I knew she’d found her parents, I was out of the picture. Obviously she was better off with them than with me.

  As for Gavin, well, wouldn’t you know it, we’ve ended up with him here. In fact it’s pretty crowded at our place, because Corrie’s mum, Mrs Mackenzie, is living with us too. After the war Mr Mackenzie walked out on her, and I guess with their house destroyed there wasn’t much for her to come home to. She’s been very ill, with nervous shock and stuff, the same as Mum, and like Mum she looks about fifty years older, but she seems a little happier.

  The funny thing is that Mum and Gavin get on so well. Lucky they do, because Gavin infuriates everyone else at least ten times a day. Dad takes him out into the paddock most mornings but loses his temper with him well before lunchtime. You can always tell, when you see Gavin backing away and Dad yelling about the broken eggs or the broken tail-light on the tractor or the broken irrigation pipe or the screwdriver that’s broken because Gavin’s been using it as a chisel.

  I think Dad secretly likes him though. Whenever he goes to do a job he looks for Gavin, and he’s always a bit disappointed if he’s off playing footie or at Homer’s place.

  I don’t know how long we’ll have Gavin. They’re still searching for his family. The last time I talked to the Red Cross they said there was a report that his mother had been murdered by enemy soldiers during the war, and they couldn’t find his little sister. But we haven’t said anything to Gavin yet, and we won’t until we know for sure.

  He hardly ever asks about them.

  I suppose it is possible that General Finley’s suggestion about adoption might come true yet, but not quite in the way he suggested. If we end up with Gavin permanently I guess most of the work would fall on Mum and Dad. I’m not planning on being here much longer.

  Gavin is seriously difficult though. All that killing and violence, why wouldn’t he be? Why wouldn’t we all be? He’s so aggressive, and loses his temper so easily. The school’s always complaining about him beating up other kids. I’m trying to teach him to calm down, to play normally again. Today was good. We built a haystack in the shape of a fortress, and stuck flags in the turrets. The flags are pillow cases we pinched out of Mum’s meagre supply in the linen closet, and I don’t know what she’ll do when she realises where they’ve gone.

  He’s propped my only remaining teddy up as the guard at the entrance, with a long stick for a spear. He does have an imagination, Gavin, no doubt about that.

  Despite the fact that he annoys Dad he’s pretty handy. He’s quick at fixing things, even if mostly they’re things he broke in the first place. But he’s thorough. And he’s excellent at handling the different poultry. I think he likes bossing them around.

  I wish Gavin could go and talk to Andrea, my counsellor from when I was in New Zealand. I wish I could go and talk to her. Maybe one day. We’ve chatted on the phone a couple of times, that’s all. I know General Finley said he’d obey my every wish, but it wouldn’t be fair to ask for something as selfish as that. There’re heaps of people with bigger problems than me: people who are seriously schizo as a result of the war, and I can’t jump the queue. Anyway, things are too busy here.

  Well, I’m nearly finished. I’m sitting at the desk in the office. I want to knock this off then get outside. It’s a nice day. Mum’s painting the outside of the house, with a bit of help or hindrance from Mrs Mackenzie. She’s painting it yellow, which I thought was a terrible idea, but I must admit, from a distance it looks good. Up close I’m not so sure.

  From here I can see the old fountain, where there used to be a statue of a lady with an umbrella, before someone vandalised her during the war. I can see the white bridge over the creek, the fake stone goanna at the foot of the gum tree, the carport with the grapevine growing over it, the flat green stretch of grass leading to the little waterfall, the Japanese maple and the old barn and the Dumpmaster and the rows of hydrangeas and the duck dam with its stone bridge and little island and wire arch of wisteria. And I know I’m home.

  In a way though it’s an illusion. It looks so safe and familiar and comfortable. The truth is that everything’s unstable. No-one knows if the peace will last, if the settlement will hold. Already there are lots of problems. Accusations and counteraccusations. ‘Incidents’, they call them on the television news.

  As if that wasn’t enough to remind me of the war, there are constant reminders all the time anyway, all over the place. Little reminders and big ones. Damaged buildings, damaged fences, damaged gardens, damaged trees. Damaged roads and bridges. We’re still waiting for a new bridge in Wirrawee, and not a day passes at school without some smart-ass giving me a hard time about it.

  Damaged people. People bursting into tears for no apparent reason, then you find their mother or father, their brother or sister, was killed during the occupation. Different faces in some shops, in some houses, because the person who used to work or live there is dead.

  Yesterday I found another souvenir, another reminder. I found Kevin’s little Corgi, Flip, whom we’d had to abandon at Corrie’s place, in the first week of the war. I didn’t find much of her. She had apparently made her way to our place. I don’t know how or why. She couldn’t have followed our scent, because we came here in the Land Rover after dumping her, and she’d hardly have tracked that
. But it seems like she made a little nest for herself under our shearing shed, in the way dogs do when they’re sick or injured. I guess that’s where she died, because I found the remains of her coat, a pathetic mess of reddish hair, and her dark brown leather collar, that I bet Kevin made himself. It even had a little brass disc with her name on it. Kevin might have engraved that too. Probably in Metalwork class at Wirrawee High.

  I don’t know what happened to our remaining dog, Millie, the only one to survive when Mum and Dad didn’t come home from the Show. I guess she died somewhere, probably within a day or two of my finding her, that terrible horrible no-good day when we came back from our happy little camping trip to Hell. She was in critical shape the last time I saw her.

  Not long ago Mum said, ‘Do something for yourself, Ellie’, so this is what I’ve been doing. I went down into Hell, on my own, which was not exactly an easy thing to do. But no-one else wanted to come, which isn’t surprising seeing I didn’t think I ever wanted to see it again either. I went because I wanted to get all the writing I’d hidden in the Hermit’s hut, and that was a powerful enough motivation to drag me down there. Then I rang Andrea in New Zealand and got her to send me the stuff I’d done there, that I’d given her to look after, and then I sat down and started writing this last part. And I swear to God, once it’s finished I’ll never pick up a pen again.

  Well, maybe if we ever get back to the point where we can afford a computer, I don’t know, I wouldn’t mind trying my hand at a novel or something, seeing I’ve given myself so much practice with all this stuff. It wouldn’t be bad being an author, I reckon. Better than digging up spuds.

  Sometimes I say to myself: ‘A lot of people died because of you in this war, girl. You’d better do something special with your life, to make up for all those deaths.’

  So yeah, I’ll be out of here pretty soon I reckon. Now that I’ve had some time at home again, now that I’ve had a good drenching from the mist that rolls off the hills, and the mud in the duck dam, and the dew off the long grass in the gully, I’m ready to leave. I don’t know where to, but probably America. I’d love to see it, and with the help General Finley’s offered, and if I agree to do a couple more interviews over there, I reckon I can make it.

  School’s the only problem. Homer and I are doing an accelerated course that they brought in especially for people like us. Not as accelerated as the one Lee’s doing, but then he’s smarter than us. Still if I get through it I could graduate in two months. It’s a hell of a lot of work though, and it’s been so hard to get into work mode after a long time with no mental activity. I wish now I had read some of those set texts for English, like My Brilliant Career that Robyn was reading in Hell, way back, when we told her she was wasting her time.

  Once the exams are over, I should be free. A different kind of freedom.

  The old stories used to end with ‘They all lived happily ever after’. And you’d often hear parents saying: ‘I just want my kids to be happy.’

  That’s crap, if you ask me. Life’s about a hell of a lot more than being happy. It’s about feeling the full range of stuff: happiness, sadness, anger, grief, love, hate. If you try to shut one of those off, you shut them all off. I don’t want to be happy. I know I won’t live happily ever after. I want more than that, something richer. I want to go right up close to the beauty and the ugliness. I want to see it all, know it all, understand it all. The richness and the poverty, the joy and the cruelty, the sweetness and the sadness. That’s the best way I can honour my friends who died. That’s the best way I can honour my parents, who brought me into this world. That’s the best way I can lead a life I can be proud to call my own. I want to experience everything it has to offer: LIFE!