The Third Day, The Frost (19 page)

The truck was only moving at walking pace, and
it stopped now on a big bitumen square near a building marked
‘Administration’. I wondered who we’d be sharing Stratton Prison
with – prisoners of war, or the ‘normal’ criminals from before the
invasion: the murderers and rapists and bank robbers.

We continued to sit in the back of the truck
and wait. I became aware of a lot of movement around us, and
looking out the back I realised what it was. Soldiers were coming
from different buildings. I could see fifteen or twenty of them.
But they were not aggressive soldiers with rifles, coming to
torture or shoot us. It took me a while to figure out their mood.
But finally it hit me. They were tourists. They were spectators. At
last I understood something that only the radio conversation with
Lieutenant Colonel Finley had given any clue to: we were
celebrities. This was like the arrest of Ned Kelly. Not that these
people would have heard of Ned Kelly, but our capture was on about
the same scale.

We sat there in shock as the soldiers crowded
round the back of the truck, staring at us and talking to each
other. Their voices amazed me. They were so hushed, like they were
in church. They pointed to us and made comments, then people at the
back of the crowd pushed their way through. They were all shoving
and crowding, trying to get the best views.

I just hoped we wouldn’t get the same
punishment as the Kelly gang. I cursed the Jackaroo. If we hadn’t
been caught in it we might have been able to bluff, to pretend we
were normal kids who’d been hiding in the bush since the invasion.
But now we had no hope, especially when we weren’t getting any
chance to put a story together, a story we could all stick to.

After twenty minutes sitting there shivering,
being studied like specimens in the zoo, a senior officer appeared.
He had more gold on him than you’d see in a jewellery shop window.
The crowd parted and this man, a little guy with oiled black hair,
walked up, took one look at us and rattled off a series of orders.
Our guards jumped to their feet and started waving their rifles and
yelling. I think they were trying to impress the officer. We didn’t
have the spirit to resist any of them.

When we were untied we stumbled down from the
back of the truck, one by one, and stood in a little group on the
bitumen. They prodded us with rifles to get us into single file and
marched us to one of the covered walkways. A guard with keys opened
a gate and in we went, leaving the tourists behind.

When the gate was locked behind us we were
marched along the walkway. I kept looking around trying to suss
things out, but there wasn’t much to see. Every few metres we
passed rooms but it was hard to tell what they were used for.
Obviously some, the ones with steel bars in small windows set into
the doors, were cells, but a lot seemed to be just offices or
storerooms. One looked like a lunchroom for the warders; another
was a control room, with video monitors and telephones and people
sitting at desks looking at screens with lots of green and red
flashing lights. We went through another gate, waiting as it was
unlocked for us and locked behind us, then we turned left and
straggled along to a low fawn-coloured building that was sealed off
by yet another gate.

When we had passed through that gate we found
ourselves in our new home. This was E Wing, the maximum-security
section of the maximum-security prison. In peacetime it was the
home of serial killers. Well, maybe that’s what we had become.
Whether we deserved to be there or not, our lives were now out of
our control. Whether we lived or died would be decided by
others.

Chapter
Twenty-three

At that point I was separated from my friends,
and marched to a little concrete room. From the glimpses I’d had of
the other cells I’d say they were all identical. Mine was five
paces by four and pretty bare. There was a bed, low to the ground
and on a solid base, so that nothing could be hidden under it, I
guess. There was a toilet and washbasin, both of which worked, as I
quickly, and with relief, found out. Only cold water in the
washbasin – and it was freezing – but I was grateful to have that
much. A desk and chair were the only other furniture and they were
fixed to the floor by big steel bolts. All the furniture was
gleaming white but the walls were a light pink. The bed was neatly
made, as though it had been waiting for me. I checked it out. The
sheets were striped flannelette and the bedspread was a cheap white
cotton thing with a crisscross holey pattern.

I had the trivial thought that at last I’d be
able to sleep in a proper bed again. I couldn’t imagine how long it
had been since I’d done that.

But there was nothing else in the cell. It was
the coldest, barest, starkest, most boring room I’d ever been in.
There wasn’t even a light switch. The power must have been
controlled from outside. There were two lights, both set in the
ceiling, both covered by thick glass that I guessed was
unbreakable. When I was put in there the lights were on, and the
room was almost unbearably bright. Later I found that when the
lights were off it was almost unbearably black.

My eyes ranged around, trying to find
something to look at, to break the monotony. In a corner of the
ceiling, almost invisible in the dazzle of the lights, was a lens,
like a thick glass eye. I guessed there was a camera behind it, and
remembering how I’d just used the dunny I blushed with
embarrassment.

With much rattling of locks and clatter of
mechanical parts the door was unlocked, and three guards came in.
All were women, one in officers’ uniform, the other two in
soldiers’ gear. The officer had a handgun at her waist in a highly
polished leather holster, and her offsiders carried handguns which
they held pointed at me. I still couldn’t believe how respectfully
– well, fearfully – they were treating us.

Although none of them seemed to speak English
they made it clear what they wanted. I had to get undressed and
they searched my clothes, emptying the pockets, then carefully
checking the hems and linings. They were so thorough. When they’d
finished they started on me. That was embarrassing and painful, but
I put up with it. Not that I had a choice. Then they let me get
dressed again. I thought I’d start to try my luck, so I mimed
eating, to show that I wanted food, but they didn’t react at all.
When I was dressed they left, taking the contents of my pockets
with them. I realised numbly that I’d now lost everything, even my
little bear, Alvin, that Lee had retrieved for me from the wreckage
of the Harvey’s Heroes campsite. Alvin had survived that, but it
looked like he wouldn’t survive this.

I lay on the hard bed. It did feel funny to
have a bed under me again. I wondered if anyone had ever made a
cell aerobics video, and if so, where I could get a copy. Maybe I
could make one and become a millionaire, selling it to mass
murderers all around the world.

The next thing I knew I was waking up. I’d
been asleep? How was that possible? What if I were about to be
executed and I’d wasted the last few hours of my life by sleeping?
How stupid and tragic was that?

But I’d been woken by sounds from the cell
door again. The lights were still on and they were hurting my eyes.
But a smell was coming in that had me sitting up in excitement. I
realised I was about to be fed. I couldn’t believe my luck. One of
the female soldiers came in carrying a tray, while the other two
stood at the door covering her with their guns. She put the tray on
the desk and went out again without looking at me. I hardly noticed
her. I was still barely awake but I hobbled across to the desk and
sat on the white chair. The cold metal woke me in a hurry. I peered
at the plates and cup. There was a bowl of boiled rice and a plate
with three small pieces of steamed fish. Another plate held two
slices of dry white bread. The only colour contrast came from the
cup, which held weak black coffee. It was not an attractive-looking
meal, nor a big one, but it was something, and I was grateful
enough for it. I took my time, chewing each mouthful dozens of
times before swallowing, to make it last, and having sips of coffee
in between. But the coffee was only lukewarm, as was the rice and
fish, so it wasn’t too good. We’d eaten better meals out in the
bush, rough and ready though those meals were.

Still, the fact that they were prepared to
feed me was encouraging, suggesting they weren’t about to kill me
straight away. I ate everything, then – I swear this is true – with
a guilty look at the camera, I licked the plate. Yes, Ellie the
Fearless was embarrassed to be seen with bad table manners. I think
that’s when I knew for sure I wasn’t a natural born terrorist.

After that there was just nothing to do. I
tapped on the walls a few times but got no answer. Every half hour
or so a face appeared at the inspection panel in the door and
stared at me. I didn’t know what to do with myself. The camera made
it worse, not knowing whether someone was watching every move. At
one stage – probably about midmorning, there was no way of telling
– I caught myself actually wishing something would happen. Then I
realised that any something that happened was bound to be bad, so I
started wishing nothing would happen. I lay on the bed again and
stared up at the ceiling.

One of the awful things was the silence in the
cell. It must have been well soundproofed. From time to time I’d
hear a door slam but that was the only sound that penetrated. I
hummed to myself, then started singing under my breath, just to
make a little noise. I wondered how long I’d spend in the cell and
how long it’d take before I went mad. I’m a person of the mountains
and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that’s me, and I knew
if I spent too long away from all that I’d die; I don’t know what
of, I just knew I’d die.

At lunchtime the breakfast tray was taken away
and a lunch tray put in its place. The food was much the same: rice
and dry bread, but they’d added about half a cupful of curried meat
and a small apple with ugly black spots on it.

‘Dear God,’ I thought, ‘how long can I last?’
I could feel a terrible dark depression slowly moving into me, not
like any depression I’d had before, more like a physical thing, as
if some dreadful black fog was drifting into my landscape and
wasn’t going to go away. It was a disturbing, uncomfortable
feeling. I ate my lunch as slowly as I’d eaten my breakfast,
thinking about my situation. I decided I had to get myself
organised. If I was starting to sink into depression after a few
hours, what would I be like after a week or a month or a year?
People had told me how strong I was, and now I had to prove it. I
knew that more than any other time in my life I was on my own. My
survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did
have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my
feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things. I
remembered the poem Robyn had in her bedroom at Wirrawee, the one
about the person saying how when she looked back along the beach
she saw two sets of footprints, hers and God’s, except at the tough
times, when there was only one set of footprints. And she says to
God, ‘How come at the times when I most needed you, you weren’t
there?’ And God answers, ‘My child, I was there. Those footprints
were mine; I made them when I carried you.’

When I’d first read the poem I’d thought it
was nice, but that was all. It was only now, when I needed it, that
the poem became important to me. During the time I spent in the
cell, that poem became about the most important possession I
had.

I decided to divide the time between meals
into shifts. I had no way of telling the time, because they’d taken
my watch. And in the cell I couldn’t tell day from night. So meals
were the only measure I had. I decided I’d spend time on physical
activities, and time on mental, and time on creative. I started
with the physical, because I guess I’m a physical kind of person.
My first session of cell aerobics consisted of stretching
exercises, followed by a dance of my own invention, which had a lot
of stepping backwards and forwards. I had to avoid anything that
would aggravate my knee, because it was still tender and swollen.
But apart from that I went OK. The worst thing was that the air was
not fresh enough. There was so little new air coming in. Normally
it didn’t matter much, but as soon as I started working out I used
it all up. Within sixty seconds I was sweating heavily.

After that I made my brain sweat a bit. I went
through some Maths, multiplying fractions in my head –
three-eighths by two-thirds equals a quarter, that sort of thing –
then went on to Social Ed, mentally listing things like the three
main types of erosion, the major causes of erosion, the definitions
of terminal moraines, stuff like that. That part was all memory
work.

I also set out to remember the words of four
different songs. That was quite fun. I chose ‘Public Friends’,
‘Bananas in Pyjamas’, ‘Sitting on the Dock of the Bay’, and ‘Reason
for it All’. I deliberately chose ones that were a real variety,
some from my parents’ tapes, some from my CDs. It was amazing how
when I worked at it, when I made myself go over the songs four or
five times, more and more bits came back into my memory. By the
time I’d finished I’d remembered nearly all of them, ‘Reason for it
All’ giving me the most trouble. ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’ wasn’t too
hard.

Quite a lot of time had passed, or so it
seemed to me. I’d almost stopped being obsessed with thoughts of
imprisonment and death, which was good. So I was taken by surprise
when I heard the locks on my door being worked open again. I didn’t
think it could be tea time already, and I was right. When the door
opened, two men in uniform were standing there, with two women
behind them. They motioned for me to get up from the bed, which I
did. They then stood back, inviting me to step out from the cell. I
walked into the corridor, beginning to tremble uncontrollably. Was
this my death? Had I spent my last afternoon of life trying to
think of the words to ‘Bananas in Pyjamas’? Was I going to die
without the chance to say goodbye to my family, my friends?

My escort fell in around me and we started
along the corridor. For the first few steps I was so frightened I
could hardly walk, but by the time we reached the first security
gate I was in more of a rhythm and moving a bit more easily.

We marched back past the cage, through the
gate on my right that we’d come in before. We walked almost the
full length of the prison, stopping at a light green building on
the left. All the colours in this place seemed to be mild, pastels.
This building looked a bit like the new library at Wirrawee. It
seemed to have more glass than the other buildings in the compound.
There was a guard on the door who ticked a list on a clipboard
before letting us in. The four guards and I marched inside. It was
more like a doctor’s waiting room than a library: a row of chairs
and a coffee table. All it needed was a stack of magazines. But
none of us sat down. We stood there uncomfortably. I said to the
guards: ‘What are we waiting for?’ I didn’t expect them to answer;
I was just trying to kid them that I wasn’t scared. And they didn’t
answer. I don’t even know if they understood English.

We waited at least half an hour. It was
incredibly boring. My greatest hope was that it really was a
doctor’s waiting room. It was possible that they would give us a
medical examination. That would have been normal prison procedure
in peacetime, surely. Maybe they would still do it.

But no, I couldn’t be that lucky. A door
opened along the corridor to my left and the guards prodded me down
towards it. All my terror returned in an instant and I wallowed
along as though I were a waterlogged boat in a heavy sea. Sick deep
in my stomach, I turned at the doorway and stepped across the
threshold.

And there he was. Someone I’d never expected
to see again. Someone I’d almost forgotten about. Someone I
despised so much I felt giddy and faint at the sight of him.

‘Ellie, my dear girl,’ Major Harvey said. ‘Do
come in. How nice to see you.’

There was a horrible silence. Although I hated
to seem weak I had to put one hand on the frame of the door to hold
myself up, to keep from falling over. I started to realise now just
how deep was the trouble we were in, just how dangerous was our
situation. I felt defeated and hopeless.

Major Harvey was sitting at a big shiny black
desk. There was nothing on it but a clock, a ruler, a fountain pen
and three piles of paper, arranged with perfect precision. Behind
him were two officers. One was the man with the gold braid, whom
we’d seen when we arrived; the other was a woman with almost as
much gold. They were standing and gazing at me with expressionless
faces.

I forced myself to look at Major Harvey’s
eyes. They were dead and empty. I wondered if there was a person
inside, or if he was just a dark devil from Hell itself. At least
the soldiers were fighting honestly, under their own flag. This man
was a foul shadow of a human being. I knew he would crush me as
easily as I would kill a blowie, and I also had an inkling that he
would get some kind of perverted pleasure from doing it.

I made myself stand a little taller. He hadn’t
taken his eyes off me; those black beady eyes that seemed not like
eyes at all. It was like his skin had been pierced at those two
points in his face and I was getting a glimpse of what lay inside:
an empty ugly darkness.