Tomorrow When The War Began (23 page)

And they kept walking. They went right on past
the truck as though it didn’t exist. It wasn’t until they were a
hundred metres past and Fi and I were out of our tree and peering
at their distant dark backs that we allowed ourselves to believe
that we were safe. We looked at each other in surprise and relief.
I was so happy that I didn’t even mention the bruises on my leg. I
shook my head.

‘They must have just thought it was another
parked vehicle,’ I said.

‘I guess if they hadn’t been along this
particular street before ...’ Fi said. ‘I’d better call Homer.’

She did so, and I heard his soft reply quite
quickly.

‘We’ve been held up for a bit,’ Fi said.
‘Ellie wanted to climb a tree. We’ll get under way again in about
five minutes. We’re three blocks away. Over.’

There was a snort from the receiver, not of
static either, before she signed off.

We waited nearly ten minutes, to be safe, then
I turned the key, and heard the shrill beep of the brake warning
before the engine rumbled into life again. We made two more blocks;
when Fi signalled me from the last corner I switched the engine off
and tried coasting silently downhill towards her. This was a big
mistake. The brake warning began beeping and flashing redly at me
again and I realised I wouldn’t have any brakes. A moment later the
steering wheel gave a shudder and locked itself into position, so I
didn’t have any steering either. I tried for a gear, to clutch
start it, but missed the one I wanted and got only a crunching
sound that set my teeth on edge. The truck lurched over the gutter
and began to veer further and further left, aiming for a row of
fences. I remembered Fi’s warning: ‘That’s petrol in the back, not
water’, and felt very sick. I grabbed at the ignition key, turned
it, and got nothing, turned it again and, with the fences now just
metres away, got the beautiful sound of the beautiful engine. I
swung the wheel. ‘Not too hard, you’ll jack-knife.’ That was my
voice. The trailer sideswiped something, a row of somethings,
fences or small trees or both, nearly sideswiped Fi, then juddered
to a halt just a metre from the corner. I switched off the
ignition, then pulled on the handbrake, wondering what would have
happened if I’d thought of doing that before. I leaned back in the
seat panting, my mouth open to get air into my tight aching
throat.

Fi jumped into the cabin. ‘Gosh, what
happened?’ she asked.

I shook my head. ‘I think I just failed my
driving test.’

Our plan had been to park further across,
behind some trees in the picnic area I didn’t know whether to do
that, which meant taking the noisy risk of starting the engine
again, or to stay where we were, out on the open side of the
street. Finally we decided to move. Fi slipped across to where she
had a view of the bridge and watched until all the sentries were at
the far end. It was twenty minutes before that happened. Then she
signalled to me and I moved the truck into the dark shadows of the
trees.

We contacted the boys by radio, and made our
preparations. We climbed the ladder to the top of the tanker again
and loosened the lids of the four tanks. Then we fed the rope into
one tank until it was submerged, all but the end of it, which we
tied to a safety handle beside the lid. We climbed down again.

Now there was nothing to do but to wait.

Chapter
Twenty-one

Oh, how we waited. We talked softly for a
little while. We were well away from the truck, for safety’s sake,
sitting up among the trees looking out over the gas barbecues. It
was very quiet. We talked about the boys mostly. I wanted to hear
as much about Homer as I could, and I certainly wanted to talk
about Lee. Fi had become totally infatuated with Homer. It amazed
me how she felt. If anyone had told me a year ago, or even a month
ago, that this would happen, I would have asked for their Medicare
card. They would have been headed for a long stay in a private
ward. But here she was, elegant, Vogue, designer label, big house
on the hill Fi, completely in love with rough as guts, King Gee,
one of the boys, graffiti king Homer. On the surface it looked
impossible. Except that it was no secret now that there was more to
both of them than I’d ever realised. Fi seemed delicate and timid,
and she even claimed herself that she was, but she had a
determination I hadn’t recognised before. There was a spirit to
her, a fire burning inside her somewhere. One of those Avgas fires
maybe, that burn invisibly. And Homer, well, Homer was the surprise
of my life. He even seemed better looking these days, probably
because his head was up and he walked more confidently and carried
himself differently. He had such imagination and sense that I could
hardly believe it. If we ever did get back to school I’d nominate
him for School Captain – then hand out smelling salts to the
teachers.

‘He’s like two people,’ Fi said. ‘He’s shy
with me but confident when he’s in a group. But he kissed me on
Monday and I think that broke the ice a bit. I thought he’d never
do it.’

Right, sure, I thought. I was embarrassed at
how far Lee and I had progressed beyond our first kiss already.

‘You know,’ Fi continued, ‘he told me he had a
crush on me in Year 8. And I never knew. Maybe it’s better I didn’t
though. I thought he was such a reptile then. And those kids he
used to hang round with!’

‘He still does,’ I said. ‘Or at least he did
before all this happened.’

‘Yes,’ said Fi, ‘but I don’t think he wants to
have much to do with them any more. He’s changed so much, don’t you
think?’

‘God yeah.’

‘I want to learn all I can about farming,’ Fi
said, ‘so when we’re married I can help him heaps and heaps.’

Oh my God! I thought. You know they’re beyond
help when they talk like that. Not that I hadn’t had nice little
fantasies of Lee and me travelling the world together, the perfect
married couple.

But it occurred to me as I listened to Fi,
that the real reason I felt attracted to Homer lately, attracted in
powerful and puzzling ways, was that I was jealous of losing him.
He was my brother. As I didn’t have a brother and he didn’t have a
sister, we’d sort of adopted each other. We’d grown up together. I
could say things to Homer that no one else could get away with.
There had been times, when he was acting really crazily, that I’d
been the only person he would listen to. I didn’t want to lose that
relationship, especially now, when we’d temporarily or permanently
lost so many other relationships in our lives. My parents seemed so
far away; the further away they got, the closer I wanted to bind
Homer to me. I was quite shocked to have such an insight to my
feelings, as though there was an Ellie lurking inside me that I
didn’t have much knowledge or awareness of. Just like there’d been
Homer’s and Fiona’s lurking away inside them. I wondered what other
surprises the secret Ellie might have for me, and resolved then and
there to try to keep better track of her in future.

Fi asked me about Lee then and I said simply
‘I love him’. She didn’t comment, and I found myself going on.
‘He’s so different to anyone I’ve ever known. It’s like he’s coming
out of my dreams sometimes. He seems so much more mature than most
of those guys at school. I don’t know how he stands them. I guess
that’s why he keeps to himself so much. But you know, I get the
feeling that he’ll do something great in life; I don’t know what,
be famous or be Prime Minister or something. I can’t see him
staying in Wirrawee all his life. I just think there’s so much to
him.’

‘The way he took that bullet wound was
incredible,’ Fi said. ‘He was so calm about it. If that had
happened to me I’d still be in shock. But you know, Ellie, I’d
never have picked you and Lee as a likely couple. I think it’s
amazing. But you go so well together.’

‘Well how about you and Homer!’

We both laughed and settled down to watch the
bridge. The hours ground slowly on. Fi even slept for twenty
minutes or so. I could hardly believe it, although when I
challenged her she denied furiously that she’d even closed her
eyes. For me the tension grew as the time passed. I just wanted to
get it over with, this mad reckless thing that we’d talked
ourselves into doing.

The trouble was that there was no convoy.
Homer and Lee had wanted to come in behind a convoy to guarantee
themselves a period of grace before the next lot of traffic came
along. But as the time got close to 4 am the road stayed
frustratingly empty.

Then suddenly there was a change in the
pattern of activity on the bridge. The sentries were all down the
Cobbler’s Bay end but even from our distance I could see them
become more alert, more awake. They gathered in the centre of the
bridge and stood looking down the road, in the opposite direction
to us. I nudged Fi.

‘Something’s going on,’ I said. ‘Might be a
convoy.’ We stood and looked, straining our eyes to peer down the
dark highway. But it was the behaviour of the sentries that again
told us what was happening. They started backing away, then their
little group broke up and they split, half going to one side of the
bridge, half to the other. One ran in little circles for a moment,
then started running down the road towards Wirrawee, then changed
his mind, and he too fled to the side.

‘It’s the cattle,’ I said. ‘It’s got to
be.’

We sprinted for the tanker, leaving the
silent, useless walkie-talkie behind. There was no time to wonder
about a patrol coming down the street. We leapt into the truck and
started the engine. I put it in gear and looked up, and although
speed was now vital to us, I couldn’t help but lose a second as I
caught the wonderful view on the bridge. A hundred or more head of
beef, prime Hereford cattle, beautiful big red beasts, were
steaming onto the old wooden structure like a mighty train of meat.
And they were steaming. Even at this distance I could hear the
thunder of the hooves on the timber. They were going like wound-up
locomotives.

‘Wow,’ I breathed.

‘Go!’ screamed Fi.

I pressed the accelerator and the tanker
lumbered forward. We had about five hundred metres to go and I was
pumping adrenalin so hard I felt immune to danger, to bullets, to
anything. ‘Go!’ cried Fi again. As we came in under the bridge I
slid the tanker as far across to the left as I could get it, so
that it was nestled under the lowest section of the superstructure.
The trick was to do it without sideswiping the pylon and causing
sparks, which might have finished Fi and me off quickly and
horribly. But we got in there nice and close, leaving less man two
metres clearance between the top of the tanker and the bridge. That
was the first time any of us had thought of the possibility of the
tanker not fitting under the bridge at all; it was a little too
late by then to consider that problem. We’d been lucky. Fi couldn’t
get her door open because she was so close to the pylon, so she
started sliding across to my side. I half leapt, half fell out of
the cab. Above my head the bridge shook and thundered as the first
of the stampeding cattle reached our end. I was going up the ladder
to the top of the tanker as Fi came out of the truck and without
looking at me sprinted for the motorbikes. This run, which I too
would have to do in a moment, was our greatest risk. It was across
clear ground for about two hundred metres, to where we’d hidden the
bikes in the bushes. There was no cover, no protection from any
angry bullets that might come buzzing after us. I shook my head to
clear the frightening thoughts, and ran along the walkway on top of
the trailer, crouched over to avoid hitting the bottom of the
bridge. When I reached the rope I glanced up. Fi had disappeared
and I had to hope she’d made the bushes safely. I started pulling
out the rope, coil after sopping coil, throwing it to the roadway
below. The fumes were terrible in that confined space. They made me
giddy and gave me an instant headache. Another thing we should have
thought of, I realised: a sinker to tie to the end of the rope that
had to stay in the tank, to stop it being pulled out when I ran off
with the other end. Too late for that now. All I could do was jam
the lid down as tightly as possible and hope that would hold it
in.

I scrambled back down the ladder. It seemed to
have taken forever to get the rope out. All that time I’d been
oblivious of the thunder just centimetres above my head, but now I
noticed that it was starting to lessen. I could make out individual
hooves. I broke out in an instant sweat, found the loose end of the
rope, grabbed it and ran. I had petrol all over me, had been
breathing petrol, and felt very odd as a result, as though I was
floating across the grass. But it wasn’t a pleasant float, more the
sort of floating that made me seasick.

I was about a hundred metres from the bushes
when I heard two sounds at once; one that was welcome, one that was
not. The welcome sound was the throbbing of the motorbikes. The
unwelcome one was a shout from the bridge.

There are sounds the throat produces which may
not be in English, but which have an unmistakable meaning. When I
was little I’d had a dog called Rufus, who was a border-collie
springer-spaniel cross. He was just a natural rabbiter, and I used
to take him out most afternoons for the joy of seeing him at full
stretch after a fleeing rabbit. Whenever he was in hot pursuit he
uttered a peculiar high-pitched yelp, that he never used at any
other time. It didn’t matter where I was or what I was doing, when
I heard that sound I knew Rufus was chasing a rabbit.

The shout from the bridge, although not in my
language, was unmistakable too. It was a shout of ‘Alarm! Come
quickly!’ Although I had a hundred metres to go it suddenly looked
forever. I felt that I would never reach my target, that I could
never cover so much ground, that I could run for the rest of my
life and not get to safety. That was a terrible moment, when I came
very close to death. I entered a strange state when I felt as
though I was now in the territory of death, even though no bullet
had struck me. I don’t know if a bullet had even been fired. But if
a bullet had struck me then I don’t think I would have felt it.
Only living people can feel pain, and I was floating away from the
world that living people inhabit.

Then Fi appeared and screamed, ‘Oh Ellie,
please!’ She was standing in the bushes but she seemed right in
front of me, and her face looked huge. It was the word ‘please’
that reached me I think: it made me feel that she needed me, that I
was important to her. Our friendship, love, whatever you want to
call it, reached across the bare ground and reeled me in. I became
aware that there were bullets stinging through the air, that I was
pounding hard across the ground, that I was gasping for breath and
that my chest hurt, and then I was in the safety of the trees and
stumbling towards the motorbikes, dropping the end of the rope for
Fi to gather it. I would have liked to hug Fi, but I was rational
enough to know that I was a petrol-soaked leper, and a hug from me
would have been a death sentence for Fi.

I grabbed the furthest bike and kicked it off
its stand, then swung it round to face Fi. As I did there was a
whoosh, and a string of fire began to speed across the grass. Fi
came running back. To my surprise her face was alight, not with
flame but from within. She was utterly elated. I began to wonder if
there was a secret pyromaniac lurking inside her somewhere. She
grabbed her bike; we wheeled them around and spun the back wheels
doing takeoffs that dug gouges in the well-tended grass of the
Wirrawee picnic grounds. Fi led the way, with wild war whoops. And
yes, I admit now that we were the ones who did the wheelies on the
seventh green of the golf course. I’m sorry. It was very immature
of us.