The Third Day, The Frost (3 page)

Behind me I could hear Robyn giggling and
Homer and Lee making outraged noises at us: ‘This is R rated,’
Homer hissed. ‘Cover your eyes.’ We ignored him as a variety of
male shapes and sizes were suddenly revealed. It was very
interesting. Then there were lots of pale bums as the men ran
full-tilt into the lake, yelling and swearing at the shock of the
cold water. Some of them were out again in thirty seconds, after
quickly splashing themselves; others dived right under. The guards
threw a cake of soap in and quite a few guys used that, passing it
around like a football. But no one stayed in longer than ten
minutes.

It was good to see that despite everything
that had happened they could still laugh.

There were no towels. They had to use their
clothes to dry themselves. I felt sorry for them doing that: I hate
putting on wet clothes. The game of football with the soap that
started in the water developed into a game with a shoe on land, as
they tried to get warm again. Then, floating across the air towards
us we heard one man ask the guard ‘Can we run back? To warm
up?’

The guard looked at his mate, then back at the
prisoner. ‘How many?’

The prisoner turned to the others and called
out: ‘Who wants to run back to the house?’

Four hands were waved in the air. One of them
was Kevin’s.

‘Go like stink,’ Homer whispered. He didn’t
need to tell us twice. We started withdrawing, wriggling back
through the undergrowth. When we were well clear of the lake we
turned and sprinted, heading for the house and sheds where the
prisoners lived. Robyn led. She wasn’t the fastest over a short
distance, but she had stamina. I stuck with her fairly well, then
came Fi, then Lee, then Homer, who was too heavy for long-distance
running. Robyn set a cracking pace, yet when we got within sight of
the buildings, she wasn’t even short of breath. She was getting her
fitness back faster than I was.

She stopped behind a big tangle of
blackberries in a little gully, and we looked anxiously for Kevin
and the others. ‘There they are,’ Fi said, as she arrived beside
us. I saw them then, too. They were slowing down as they approached
their cottage, three still jogging, the other two, Kevin and
another, walking. A moment later they were in among the sheds and
out of sight.

‘Let’s go for it,’ Homer panted. ‘We mightn’t
get another chance for ages.’

‘Not everyone,’ I said.

‘You go,’ Robyn said. ‘And Lee.’

The others didn’t say anything, so I took that
for agreement and, with an anxious look towards the lake, crouched
low and ran down to the buildings, using them as cover to hide me
from anyone up in the main house. We came in through a gap between
a galvanised-iron shed and a carport and arrived, breathing fear,
quivering like working dogs as they watch their boss approach. We
were in a small courtyard, very old, with wallflowers and lavender
piled up around a huge well. The stonework around the well was
collapsing, but it was a pretty little spot. Lee grabbed my arm.
‘This way,’ he whispered. I followed him, realising as I did that
he could hear their voices. We ran a few metres around an old wall
and came to a half-open door. I heard someone say, ‘Yeah, but he
had an average of sixty in Sheffield Shield, you know,’ and then
Lee pushed the door open.

Chapter Four

At first I didn’t see Kevin. I saw four
astonished faces, four open pairs of eyes, four startled mouths.
One man, a small middle-aged bloke with a thin moustache, started
saying, ‘Who the ...?’

Then Lee shut the door and I saw Kevin, who
till then had been hidden by it.

I’ll always treasure the look on Kevin’s face.
Sometimes life really can be like the movies. This time it was.
Kevin did one of those dumb double takes that they do in comedy
films, and it was a beauty. He was casually asking, ‘What’s the
problem?’ but he didn’t get to finish the word ‘problem’. His chin
dropped and his eyes looked like they would pop. His mouth started
trying to form a new word but his bottom lip couldn’t get around it
and just kept wobbling uncontrollably. The only sound that came out
was a sort of ‘wo, wo, wo –’

I flung myself on him. For a minute he was too
shocked to do anything, but eventually he remembered how to hug.
Lee joined in and we formed a clump of three, arms around each
other, having a good rock. My old hassles with Kevin were all
forgotten at that moment.

When we’d had our hug, I took a look at the
other men. They were watching and smiling, but as I brushed my hair
back and wiped my eyes, the little guy with the moustache spoke up
again.

‘Sorry to be a party pooper folks, but you’ll
have to get out of here. They’ll be back at any moment.’

‘Can we take Kevin?’ I asked.

They looked suddenly alarmed. ‘No, no way,’
one of them said.

‘They’re right,’ Kevin said. ‘I can’t come
with you.’

‘But we, we were hoping ...’ I said.

‘Look,’ Kevin said, ‘you’ve got to go.
Tomorrow we’re working at the piggery. It’s over to the ...’

‘Yes, we know where it is.’

‘OK, be in the bush behind it, on the top of
the little knoll there, about lunchtime. I’ll get away somehow and
meet you for a few minutes. We can talk then.’

‘OK.’

He hurried us through the door and we ran back
past the well and the galvanised-iron shed. Kevin went out onto the
muddy brown track, then gave us a signal. ‘Hurry,’ he called. As we
ran past he slapped my back. ‘Take care, Ellie,’ he whispered. I
was moved that he said that. I waved to him when I got into the
treeline. Then the little procession of prisoners appeared from the
direction of the lake and Kevin immediately turned around and
walked casually back to the sheds.

Lee and I hustled on up to the others, who
were busting to hear what we had to say. We were all wildly
excited. I think we were so sick of each other’s company that the
possibility of welcoming Kevin back was wonderful for all of
us.

‘What’d he say? Can we get him out? How’d he
sound? How’d he look? He’s lost a few k’s, hey? What did the others
say?’

It took an hour before we calmed down, and
then we spent half the night trying to figure out what we could do.
At least it helped keep us warm – that night was even colder than
the one before. Then, about midnight, it started to rain. We crept
down to a hayshed and burrowed in there for a sleep, but it meant
we had to post a sentry. That was a drag. I did the first one but
didn’t sleep much after it, anyway. When dawn came I got up and
went over to Homer who was taking his turn. ‘You go back to bed if
you want,’ I said, ‘I’m wide awake so I might as well do
sentry.’

‘I couldn’t sleep either. Let’s just talk.
That way we might talk each other to sleep.’

So we talked, first time in a long time. We’d
always been friends – we were practically raised together – but I’d
been finding him suffocating in recent months, so I’d given him
more room. Sometimes I just wanted to breathe my own air. Wherever
there was Homer there wasn’t room for much else. We didn’t seem to
have the time for relationships these days. No, not the time: the
energy. That’s what we were missing. We were more selfish, I know
that much. I used to have strong feelings about Homer but now my
strongest feelings were reserved for me, for keeping myself
going.

But we talked, mainly about what our world
would be like if we ever won back our country. It had always been
an article of faith with us that we would win. These days, though,
seeing colonists looking so settled, so comfortable, we had to
admit that the odds were starting to tip against us. The effect on
Homer was to make him more warlike. ‘After it’s over,’ he said,
‘we’ve got to turn this country into a fortress. Everyone should be
trained to use weapons, to fight. If anyone tries to invade us
again we’ve got to be ready. And if they do come, we’ve got to
fight for every house, every street, every hectare. That’s what
we’ve got to do.’

Me, I had the opposite reaction. I told Homer
my favourite story.

‘Once upon a time there was a village near a
cliff. The road to the village was dangerous, and lots of cars went
over the cliff and crashed on the rocks below. The people in the
cars got mashed up whenever that happened; some of them even got
killed. But eventually the village got a government grant to do
something about it. Only trouble then was that the village split
into two groups, the people who wanted to build a fence around the
top of the cliff, and the people who wanted to buy an ambulance to
put at the bottom of the cliff, to cart the casualties off to
hospital.’

‘Yeah, they shouldn’t have waited for a
government grant,’ said Homer, being smart. ‘They should have done
something about it themselves. That’s a good story.’

‘Oh, Homer! You don’t have to play dumb any
more! You’re not at school now.’

‘Oh, you mean I’ve missed something? What kind
of fence did they want to build?’

‘Very funny. I just think that it’s no use
having invaders pour into the country and then trying to do
something about it. What we need to do is to help other countries
get better incomes, so that they don’t feel any great urge to rush
in here.’

‘That’s easier said than done.’

‘How do we know? We never really tried.
Anyway, turning the place into a fortress is hopeless. We haven’t
got enough people to do it properly, even if we wanted to, which I
don’t.’

‘I used to think there were too many people
here before. Now look at it.’

‘Yeah, they’re packing them in. “Populate or
perish”, that was the motto in Grandma’s generation. These guys are
carrying it out for us.’

‘You and Lee are sure doing your best.’

‘What? What did you say?’ I started belting
him around the head with my gloved hands. ‘You take that back.’

‘Why, don’t tell me he’s still got some
condoms left?’

‘Homer!’ I hit him a few more times. When I’d
beaten him to a pulp, I said, ‘Anyway, I bet Fi’s just waiting for
you to ask her.’

He looked embarrassed at that. ‘I don’t want
to get too serious,’ he mumbled.

‘Well, it’s either her or Robyn. You don’t
have a lot of choices.’

‘Robyn’s a bit of a suck, don’t you reckon?
She’s so perfect all the time. She reckons she’s so good.’

‘No, she doesn’t,’ I said loyally.

‘Ah well, I wouldn’t ever want to go with her.
She’d always be telling you what to do. She’d drive any bloke
crazy.’

I was shocked at anyone criticising Robyn. She
was one of my role models – along with Marilyn Monroe and Emily
Dickinson. But Homer always had trouble getting on with
strong-minded people. Except me. No, even me sometimes.

We could hear Robyn and Fi talking, back in
the hay, so I went and joined them.

‘This hay sticks into me so badly,’ Fi
complained. ‘In all those kids’ books people used to sleep in
haystacks and it sounded really comfortable. But there’s nothing
comfortable about it.’

We had no need to move until eleven o’clock,
so I got back in my sleeping bag and talked to them for a while,
before dozing off into a light sleep. We’d been trying to make do
on two meals a day, to save supplies, and breakfast was the meal I
usually skipped. So there wasn’t much incentive to get out of the
sleeping bag again.

With the rain still falling and the
temperature feeling close to zero we didn’t know if the prisoners
would be taken off to work. But sure enough, right on nine o’clock,
we saw a little bedraggled file of men slopping across the paddock,
followed by the guards in their ute. We let them go, glad that we
could at least stay dry. Being a prisoner looked worse than working
for my dad.

As lunchtime approached my nerves got more and
more frayed. Kevin had the answers to a lot of questions that we
had been fretting on for a long time. If he could get away on his
own for a few minutes we would be able to have our first ever safe
conversation with someone who’d been in the Showground. I got so
excited I found myself chewing on a corner of my sleeping bag. Of
course we all hoped he’d be able to rejoin us, to bring our numbers
back up to six, but we knew there was some problem with escaping,
or he would have done it yesterday. That was one of the things we
wanted to ask about.

We were in position above the piggery well
before noon. The ute was parked there, so we assumed they were all
inside, although it was twenty minutes before we saw any activity.
Then one of the prisoners came out and got a couple of paintbrushes
from the back of the ute. He gazed searchingly up the hill towards
us for a minute – they must have all known we’d be there – but we
didn’t dare show ourselves. He soon went back inside.

The next one to appear was Kevin. He came
hurrying out holding a shovel over his left shoulder. He came
straight towards us, head down, like a man on a mission. As he got
closer I realised what the mission was. He had a roll of toilet
paper in his hand. I started laughing.

When he was only a couple of metres away from
me I called out softly: ‘Not here you don’t.’ He grinned but he
didn’t slow down or raise his head until he was well inside the
belt of trees, out of sight of the piggery.

Then Robyn, Homer and Fi had the chance that
Lee and I had had the day before. There was heaps of hugging. It
was only the fear of time that put a stop to it but, even so, the
whole time that Kevin was talking Fi stood beside him holding his
hand and stroking it. We were very happy to see him. But soon the
questions started flooding in, till Kevin had to put his hand up to
stop them.

‘Whoa, whoa, guys, hold the phone, one at a
time.’

‘How’s Corrie?’ I asked quickly, before anyone
else had a chance to ask anything else.

‘Depends on who you talk to. I haven’t seen
her since the night she got shot. In fact, I heard that you guys
have seen her since I have. Look, I’d say she’s about the same,
still in a kind of coma. Some people say she’s worse, because she’s
still losing weight, but other people say they’re sure she hears
them when they talk to her. I don’t know. People think what they
want to think. No one’s got any definite info.’

‘How are all our families?’

‘Not bad, the last time I saw them. I’ve been
out with these work parties quite a while, but everyone was looking
OK a few weeks back. I mean, it’s all relative, isn’t it? You guys
look a lot healthier than anyone at the Showground, but now that
people are getting out and working again they’re starting to pick
up.’

Kevin seemed older and more mature somehow;
more intelligent even. He’d never have said ‘it’s all relative,’ or
‘people think what they want to think,’ when he’d been camping with
us in Hell. This war had changed us all, and not always for the
worse.

‘What’s it been like?’ Homer asked.

Suddenly, at this simple question, Kevin
seemed to fall apart. His face crumpled and for a minute he
couldn’t get his words out. Fi gripped his hand tighter and I
patted his back. He hardly needed to say anything; he’d already
answered the question.

‘Sorry,’ he stammered. ‘Sorry.’

‘Has it been terrible?’ Robyn asked
gently.

Kevin just nodded. ‘They’re OK as long as you
do what they say. But the moment you do something they don’t like
...’

I was thinking again of how badly Kevin had
been beaten up when he arrived at Wirrawee Hospital with Corrie. I
didn’t know any details, but my imagination made up for that.

‘I’ll have to go back in a sec,’ Kevin
said.

‘Can’t you escape?’ Homer asked urgently.
‘What’s stopping you?’

Kevin shook his head. ‘They keep hostages.
Members of your family. If you escape they execute them. They’ve
got us by the balls. The only reason they guard us is to stop us
sabotaging or stealing things, and to make us work hard. There’s no
way anyone can escape.’

He turned to go back. I felt desperately sorry
for him. He looked so lonely and miserable at having to return to
such a rotten life.

‘If it could be managed, would you want to
escape?’ I asked. ‘Would you want to join up with us again?’

He looked shocked. ‘Of course. But if you can
think of a way to do it I’ll say you’re a genius, Ellie. I’ll even
put that in writing.’

I grinned. Privately I was thinking, ‘Get your
pen out.’ I didn’t say it, because I didn’t want to raise his hopes
too much. But I already had the glimmerings of an idea.