Tomorrow When The War Began (19 page)

Chapter
Seventeen

Robyn and Kevin and Corrie and Chris were
beaming. It wasn’t hard to beam back. It was such a relief, such a
joy, to see them again. I hugged them desperately, only then aware
how frightened I’d been for them. But for once everything seemed to
have gone well. It was wonderful.

They hadn’t told Homer and Fi much, because
they were tired, and because they didn’t want to repeat themselves
when they reached Lee and me. All they’d said was that they hadn’t
seen any of our families, but they’d been told they were safe and
at the Showground. When I heard this, it was such a relief that I
sat down quickly on the ground, as though I’d had the breath
knocked out of me. Lee leant against a tree with his hands over his
face. I don’t think anything else mattered to us much. We did have
lots of questions, but we could see how exhausted everyone was, so
we were content to let them have their breakfasts before they told
us any more. And with a good breakfast in them – even a few fresh
eggs, cooked quickly and dangerously on a small fire, which we put
out just as quickly – they settled down, full of food and
adrenalin, to tell us the lot. Robyn did most of the talking. She’d
already been their unofficial leader when they left, and it was
interesting to see how much she was running the show now. Lee and I
sat on a log holding hands, Fi sat against Homer in the V formed by
his open legs, and Kevin lay on the ground with his head in
Corrie’s lap. It was like Perfect Partners, and although I still
wondered if I might have liked to swap places with Fi, I was happy
enough. It was just too bad that there was no chance of Chris and
Robyn getting off together, then we really could have had Perfect
Partners.

Chris had brought back a few packets of smokes
and two bottles of port that he’d ‘souvenired’, as he called it. He
sat on the log beside me, until he lit up and I politely asked him
to move. I couldn’t help wondering how far we could go with this
‘souveniring’ idea. It made me reflect on what I’d been thinking
about the night before. If we were going to ignore the laws of the
land, we had to work out our own standards instead. I had no
problem with all the laws we’d broken already – so far we could
have been charged with stealing, driving without a licence, wilful
damage, assault, manslaughter, or murder maybe, going through a
stop sign, driving without lights, breaking and entering, and I
don’t know how many other things. It seemed like we’d be committing
under-age drinking soon too, not for the first time in my life, I
have to admit. That didn’t bother me either – I’d always thought
the law on that was typical of the stupidity of most laws. I mean,
the idea that at seventeen years, eleven months and twenty-nine
days you were too immature to touch alcohol but a day later you
could get wasted on a couple of slabs wasn’t exactly bright. But I
still didn’t like the idea of Chris picking up grog and cigarettes
whenever and wherever he felt like it. I suppose it was because
they weren’t as essential as the other things we’d knocked off.
Admittedly I’d taken some chocolate from the Grubers’, which wasn’t
much different, except that at Outward Bound they’d given us
chocolate for energy, so there was at least something good you
could say about chocolate. There wasn’t an awful lot you could say
for port or nicotine.

I wondered what would happen if Chris brought
anything stronger into Hell, or if he tried to grow dope or
something down here. But meanwhile Robyn was starting on the big
speech, so I stopped thinking about morality and started
concentrating on her.

‘OK boys and girls,’ she began. ‘Everyone
ready for story time? We’ve had a pretty interesting couple of
days. Although,’ she added, looking at Lee and me, and Homer and
Fi, ‘you guys seem to have had an interesting couple of days
yourselves. It mightn’t be safe to leave you here alone again.’

‘OK Mum, get on with it,’ Homer said.

‘All right, but I’m watching you, remember.
Well. Where do I start? The first thing, as we’ve said already, is
that we haven’t seen any of our families, but we’ve heard about
them. The people we talked to swear they’re all OK. In fact
everyone in the Showground is meant to be in good nick. What we
said jokingly a while back is quite true: they have got plenty of
food. They’ve eaten the scones, the decorated cakes, the sponges,
the home-made bread, the matched eggs, the novelty cakes ... Have I
left anything out?’

‘The fruit cakes,’ said Corrie, who was an
expert on these subjects. ‘The jams, preserves and pickles. The
Best Assorted Biscuits.’

‘OK, OK.’ About three people spoke at
once.

‘And,’ said Robyn, ‘they’re eating their way
through the livestock. It’s a shame really, because it’s some of
the best stock in the district. So they should be getting some top
quality tucker. They bake bread in the CWA tearooms every morning –
there’s a couple of stoves in there. For a while they were running
short of greens, once they’d eaten the Young Farmers’ display,
which I might add I helped set up, the day before we went on our
hike.’

‘You’re not a Young Farmer,’ I said.

‘No, but Adam is,’ she said, looking faintly
embarrassed.

When our immature wolf whistles and animal
noises had died down, she continued, undaunted.

‘But there’s been a few developments,’ she
said. ‘They’ve now got work parties going out of the Showground
each day. They go in groups of eight or ten, with three or four
guards. They do jobs like cleaning the streets, burying people,
getting food – including the greens – and helping in the
Hospital.’

‘So the Hospital is running? We thought it
was.’

‘Yes. Ellie’s been keeping it busy.’

As soon as she said that, she looked like she
wished she hadn’t.

‘What? Did you hear something?’

She shook her head. ‘No, no, nothing.’

‘Oh come on, don’t do that Robyn. What did you
hear?’

‘It’s nothing Ellie. There were some
casualties. You know that.’

‘So what did you hear?’

Robyn looked uncomfortable. I knew I’d be
sorry but I’d gone too far to stop. ‘Robyn! Stop treating me like a
kid! Just tell me!’

She grimaced but told me. ‘Those three
soldiers hit by the ride-on mower, two of them died, they think.
And two of the people we ran over.’

‘Oh,’ I said. She’d said it flatly and calmly,
but the shock was still terrible. Sweat broke out on my face and I
felt quite giddy. Lee gripped my hand hard, but I hardly felt it.
Corrie came and sat on my other side, where Chris had been, and
held me.

After a minute Chris said, ‘It’s different
from the movies, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m OK. Please, just go on
Robyn.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘Well, the Hospital’s had a few other
casualties. The first day or two there was a lot of fighting, and a
lot of people got hurt or killed. Soldiers and civilians. Not at
the Showground – the surprise was so complete that they took the
whole place in ten minutes – but in town and around the district,
with people who hadn’t gone to the Show. And it’s still going on –
there’s a few groups of guerillas, just ordinary people like us I
guess, who are hanging around and attacking patrols when they get a
chance. But the town itself is quiet. They seem to have flushed
everyone out, and they’re confident that they’ve got it under
control.’

‘Are they treating people well?’

‘Mostly. For example, the people who were in
hospital the day of the invasion have been kept there, and looked
after. The people we’ve talked to say the soldiers are anxious to
keep their noses clean. They know that sooner or later the United
Nations and the Red Cross’ll be wandering around, and they don’t
want to attract a lot of heat from them. They keep talking about a
“clean” invasion. They figure that if there’s no talk of
concentration camps and torture and rape and stuff, there’s less
chance of countries like America getting involved.’

‘That’s pretty smart,’ Homer said.

‘Yes. But for all that, there’s been about
forty deaths just around Wirrawee alone. Mr Althaus, for one. The
whole Francis family. Mr Underhill. Mrs Nasser. John Leung. And
some people have been bashed for not obeying orders.’

There was a shocked silence. Mr Underhill was
the only one of those I knew well. He was the jeweller in town. He
was such a mild man that I couldn’t imagine how he might have
aggravated the soldiers. Perhaps he’d tried to stop them looting
his store.

‘So who have you been talking to?’ Lee asked
at last.

‘Oh yes, I was getting to that. I’m telling
this all out of order. OK, so this is what happened. We cruised
into town the first night, no problems. We got to my music
teacher’s house about 1.30 am. The key was where she always left
it. It is a good place to hide out, like I said, because there’s so
many doors and windows you can get out of. There’s a good escape
route out of an upstairs window, for example, where you can go
across the roof, onto a big branch, and be next door in a couple of
seconds. Also, the sentry has a great view of the street and the
front drive, and there’s no way anyone could get over the back
fence without a tank. So that was cool. The first thing we did
after we sussed out the house was to get some gear together and go
and set up the fake camp under the Masonic Hall. That was quite fun
– we put in a few magazines and photos and teddy bears to make it
look authentic. Then Kevin took the first sentry duty and the rest
of us went to bed.

‘At about eleven in the morning I was on
sentry duty and suddenly I saw some people in the street. There was
a soldier and two of our people. One of them was Mr Keogh, who used
to work at the Post Office.’

‘You mean the old guy with no hair?’

‘Yes. He retired last year I think. Well, I
woke the others fast, as you can imagine, and we watched them
working their way along the street. There were three soldiers
altogether, and six people from town. They had a ute and a truck,
and it seemed like they were clearing stuff out of each house. Two
of them would go into a house while the soldiers lounged around
outside. The people spent about ten minutes in each house, then
they’d come out with green garbage bags full of stuff. They’d chuck
some bags straight into the truck, but other bags were checked by
the soldiers and put in the ute.

‘So what we did was, when they got close to us
we hid in different parts of the house and waited for them. I was
in the kitchen, in a broom cupboard. I’d been there about twenty
minutes when Mr Keogh came in. He opened the fridge door and
starting clearing out all this smelly, foul stuff. It was the job
we hadn’t been able to bring ourselves to do on an empty stomach
when we’d got there at 1.30.

‘“Mr Keogh!” I whispered. “This is Robyn
Mathers.” You know, he didn’t even blink. I thought, this guy is
cool. Then I remembered that he’s quite deaf. He hadn’t even heard
me. So I opened the door of the broom cupboard and snuck up behind
him and tapped his shoulder. Well! I know Chris said a few minutes
ago that war’s not like the movies, but this sure was. He jumped
like he’d touched a live wire in the fridge. I had to hold him
down. I thought “Help, I hope he doesn’t have a heart attack”. But
he calmed down. We talked pretty fast then. He had to keep working
while we talked – he said if he took too long the soldiers would
get suspicious and come in. He said his job was to make the houses
habitable again, by cleaning out mouldy food, and dead pets, and to
pick up valuables, like jewellery. He told me about our families,
and all that other stuff. He said the work parties would be going
out to the country too, starting any day now, to look after the
stock and get the farms going again. He said they’re going to
colonise the whole country with their own people, and all the farms
will be split up between them, and we’ll just be allowed to do
menial jobs, like cleaning lavatories I suppose. Then he had to go,
but he told me they were doing West Street after Barrabool Avenue,
and if I got into a house there we could talk some more. And off he
went.

‘Well, when the house was empty again we had a
quick conference. Kevin had talked to a lady called Mrs Lee, who’d
come into the bedroom where he was hiding and he’d got more
information from her. So we agreed to go to West Street and try
again. We got there fairly easily, by going through people’s
gardens, and we tried a few different houses. The first two were
locked still but the third one was open, so we spread ourselves
around it. I got under the bed in the main bedroom. Chris kept
watch and told us when they were getting close, which wasn’t for
nearly two hours. It was pretty boring. If you want to know how
many cross-wires the people at 28 West Street have got on the
underside of their bed, I can tell you. But finally someone came
in. It was a lady I didn’t know, but she had a green bag and she
went to the dressing table and started scooping stuff out. I
whispered “Excuse me, my name’s Robyn Mathers”, and without looking
round she whispered “Oh good, Mr Keogh told me to watch out for you
young ones”. We talked for a few minutes, with me still under the
bed, but sticking my head out. She said she hated having to do this
work, but the soldiers occasionally checked a house after they came
out, and they got punished if they’d left anything valuable behind.
“Sometimes I’ll hide something in the room if it looks like a
family heirloom,” she said, “but I don’t know if it’ll make any
difference in the long run.” She also told me that they were
picking the least dangerous people for the work parties – old
people and kids mainly – and they knew that if they tried to escape
or do anything wrong their families back at the Showgrounds would
be punished. “So I don’t want to talk to you for long dearie,” she
said. She was a nice old duck. The other thing she told me was that
the highway from Cobbler’s Bay is the key to everything. That’s why
they hit this district so hard and so early. They bring their
supplies in to Cobbler’s by ship and send it down the highway by
truck.’