While I Live (16 page)

I gave up at that point. ‘I’ll be honest. I don’t know.’ I said to Homer, ‘So, how’d I do?’

‘Why do you want to make your life more complicated than it is already?’ he asked, putting the chops onto a plate.

I waved at Gavin to get his attention. When I was his age the smell of food was enough to bring me running, but not Gavin. This time he was absorbed in trying to teach Marmie to fetch a ball. I had to go and tap him on the shoulder. By the time I got back I had the distinct feeling that Lee and Homer had quickly agreed what they would tell me and what they wouldn’t.

I settled into a chair opposite them. ‘So, what am I going to be allowed to know?’ I asked them, taking my first mouthful of food and smiling sweetly across the table.

Lee shrugged. ‘Hey, don’t look at me. I know bugger-all.’

‘Bugger’s a rude word,’ Gavin chipped in.

‘Yeah, like you really care,’ I said. ‘Eat your vegetables.’

‘Look,’ said Homer. ‘It’s true, I do know something about them. And I am just a little bit involved. But the deal is that none of us is allowed to talk about it to anyone not in the group, for obvious reasons. So the thing is, do you want to join the group? You say I’m always wanting to tell you how to live your life. Well, I don’t know about that, but I did figure you wouldn’t want to get into any heavy scenes while you’re trying to cope with what happened to your parents, as well as run this place, and look after Gavin, and the whole thing.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said.

That rocked him, although he didn’t like to have me see it. But I meant it. I understood the sense in what he was saying.

‘I read the book, you know,’ I told him.

‘What book?’

‘
The Scarlet Pimpernel
.’

‘Oh, that one.’

‘So what I want to know is, in the book, there’s this guy who’s like the idiot, the clown, and he turns out to be the genius who’s the secret leader. Is that the way it is with your group?’

‘It’s not my group,’ Homer complained.

‘So you’re not the leader?’

‘An idiot who’s really a genius? Does that sound like me?’

‘Just give me a yes or no answer. Are you the leader? Are you Mr Pimpernel?’

‘No I’m not.’

I believed him.

‘OK, but is there a secret genius who’s the leader?’

Homer considered. ‘You could say that.’

And you’re not going to say who it is, right?’

‘Right.’

‘Is it Jeremy? Jeremy Finley? I mean, he’s the one who’d have access to the kind of military information you’d need.’

‘Doesn’t mean he’s the leader.’

‘No. But I think he is.’

H
OMER AND
L
EE
were pretty boring that afternoon, both of them sleeping for a couple of hours after lunch. They weren’t much help. I took Gavin off to do a bit of stick collecting in Parklands, but my heart wasn’t in it. I did think a lot about this group though. Liberation. It was a cool idea. But I had very mixed feelings about getting involved in anything like that. Of course on the one hand I wanted to avenge my parents’ death. Theirs, and Mrs Mackenzie’s. My whole body burned with a primitive desire to take the guys who’d killed them in such a foul and filthy and cowardly way and tie them to a railway track and have a train approach them very very slowly before running over them a millimetre at a time. Or tie each of their arms and legs to a different tractor and have the tractors drive away in opposite directions. Like the nice old-fashioned method of drawing and quartering people with horses.

Oh yes, I was in a bloodthirsty mood that afternoon. A couple of times I smashed poor innocent sticks against tree trunks and broke them into matchsticks, just to express my frustration.

By the end of the day I could have throttled Gavin too, as he was in a really aggravating mood. I think having both Lee and Homer there stirred him up. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help, and I had bitter thoughts about the promises he’d made: all the work he was going to do to keep the property in our hands.

Then I got home and found no-one had even started cooking dinner. By then I’d had enough: more than enough. I’d had enough with strawberries and whipped cream on top. I stood in the middle of the kitchen and screeched at Homer and Lee like I was a white cockatoo separated from the flock at sunset. Neither of them looked too bothered. When I’d finished, Homer said, ‘But no-one’s hungry, Ellie. We thought we’d have dinner in an hour or two.’

He was probably doing it to stir me and I was so tired that it actually worked. I stormed down the corridor to my bedroom, then had a shower, which cooled me off a bit. By the time I got back to the kitchen they’d put together a spinach and ricotta tortellini, and I’ve got to admit I’ve had worse.

We watched TV for a while. About the only thing we’d agreed on all day was that the stuff on TV since the war was absolute crap.

I went to bed about nine thirty and slept solidly.

The next morning Homer and Lee weren’t there. It took me a while to realise. Half an hour before we had to leave I said to Gavin, ‘You’d better go and wake Homer and Lee before they miss the bus.’

He came back and said, ‘They’re not there.’

I thought they must be in the bathroom.

With fifteen minutes to go I started to think it was a bit odd that I hadn’t seen or heard anything of them.

I said to Gavin, ‘Do the boys want any breakfast?’

Gavin was looking worried. He said anxiously, ‘They’re not there.’

I put down the knife I was using for the sandwiches and, feeling a little sick, went down the corridor to their room. Their beds had been slept in, but not for a while. They were cold.

‘Where are they?’ Gavin, behind me, asked.

I was fighting with panic, and a choking, slippery wrestle it was. Had they been abducted in the middle of the night by soldiers? Abducted and killed? I had a memory of my parents and the Websters and the McGills sitting around the barbecue one summer Sunday afternoon and Mr Webster telling the story of the Gurkhas in World War I. ‘Gherkins’, I thought he had said. I was only nine or ten. But the Gurkhas were from Nepal and they were the world’s fiercest soldiers. With shining eyes Mr Webster described how one night the Gurkhas crept across no-man’s-land into a tent filled with German troops, where they cut the throat of every second soldier. And they did it without waking the others.

That story had haunted me. What went through the minds of the men who’d died, as they died? But almost worse than that, what went through the minds of the others when they woke in the morning? Did they have minds left after that? Did they ever sleep again?

Sometimes the brain has to cope with events and thoughts so awful that it feels like it must explode: there is no other possibility. Like a balloon, like bubble gum, like a bloated cow.

I actually gripped both sides of my head with my hands as I stared at the empty beds. It seemed like the only way to keep a massive blast from happening, deep in my brain. Through the window everything looked cold and grey, and the light was poor: it was not as though they would have set off for a run, or gone to check the cattle.

My head no longer felt like it might explode but my mind was completely out of synch. I had to try to get the bits back together, into the right pattern. To line them up again. I fought to do it. Homer and Lee could not have been abducted. I locked up every night. I was obsessed with doing it since the killing of my parents and Mrs Mac. The windows were secure. No-one had got in. The two boys had let themselves out, closing the door behind them . . . and taking the spare key from the hook in the pantry.

There had to be a reason. It wasn’t to visit anyone. They wouldn’t do that to me. And it sure as hell wasn’t to check out the Wirrawee nightclubs. Think, Ellie, think. But in the back of my mind, and already forcing its way to the front, came the reason. It was just that I didn’t want to recognise it. Those bloody Liberation people. It had to be that. I knew Homer was mixed up with them and now he’d taken Lee as well. And whatever they were doing, wherever they were, something had gone wrong. They had planned to be back by the time I woke up. That’s why they took the key. They’d made it clear they would be on the school bus. They wouldn’t have willingly left me in a situation of ignorance and raw terror.

Gavin watched me closely. He studied my face like he did when he was anxious, as though I were a map and he a geographer with a magnifying glass. He was trying to read every contour line, every creek and river, every hill and gully. He said to me, ‘Where are they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Yes you do.’

He said it so clearly, like he knew it for a fact. I was completely taken aback. But I couldn’t lie to him, and right from the start, when we first met in Stratton, there’d been no point treating him like a little kid. So I said, pointing into the distance then putting my fists up, ‘I think they might have gone across the border, to fight.’

He nodded, like he’d suspected that.

I went back to the kitchen, trying to think. Still trying to force my brain into logical patterns. My brain was resisting that strongly. It was telling me: ‘Throw your hands in the air. Run crazily around the kitchen table. Smash all the plates on the dresser. Scream.’

I said to Gavin, ‘Can you check the vehicles? See if they took any? I’ll try to ring someone who might know where they are.’

I believed Jeremy Finley to be the leader of Liberation, the Scarlet Pimpernel himself in fact. But I didn’t know how to contact him. Sure the phone system was working fairly well these days. But it wasn’t working very well. In particular, Directory Enquiries was putting in a shocker. I’d almost given up ringing them. They sounded like they were staffed by a bunch of semi-literate alcoholics who saw telephones as Satanic devices.

But this time I had no choice. I dialled the number, and waited. And waited. At least before the war you got recorded music. I’d never appreciated it enough.

Gavin came back. ‘The Yamaha and Homer’s Honda are gone,’ he said.

‘The Yamaha?’ I thought. ‘Well thanks, Lee, thanks for asking me. Just feel free to help yourself.’

‘Who are you ringing?’ Gavin asked.

‘Jeremy Finley.’

‘Who?’

‘You remember, he came here that Sunday night with Homer and two girls.’

‘Why would he know where they were going?’

We could have had a three-hour conversation but suddenly an operator came on line. I was so not expecting a human voice that it took me a moment to realise. ‘Uh, I’m wanting a number in Stratton.’

‘What name?’

‘Uh, Finley.’

‘What initial?’

‘Um, I don’t know.’ Damn. If Jeremy’s mum had remarried, or gone back to using her maiden name, I was sunk.

‘What address?’

‘Well, I’m not sure actually.’

‘I’ve got six Finleys in Stratton. I’d need more information.’

Click. The sound of a truck reversing. Beep, beep, beep.

I slammed the phone down.

I had a feeling Jess was involved in this too, like I’d said to Homer the night before, but there were two problems ringing her. One was that she had a common surname –Lewis – and it would mean another battle with Directory Enquiries, a battle I was most likely to lose.

The other was that I wasn’t sure enough that she was involved. I could cause more problems than I solved by calling her.

In the middle of that I had a sudden image of Homer or Lee lying dead. I clutched my stomach and turned away from the phone. Gavin, looking frightened, took a couple of steps towards me. I realised that I couldn’t give in to thoughts like that. Not yet anyway. I had to stay strong.

We’d missed the school bus. I briefly thought of going into school and finding Jess and sussing out what she knew, but it would take half the morning. Reluctantly I came to admit the obvious: that I would have to wait here and see what happened. I was in the role I hated most: helpless, ignorant, passive.

Furious with Homer, with Lee, with wars, with life, I went for a quick run round the cattle, to check on them and distribute a bit of hay. To be honest, if half the cattle had been down with bloat I don’t think I would have noticed. But while I was doing that I did at least decide on a timetable. I would wait till lunchtime. If they didn’t turn up I’d go into school and see if I could find out anything there. If that failed I’d have to go all the way to Stratton and track down Jeremy. At the very least Jess should be able to tell me how to get in touch with him. I was halfway certain that those two had something going between them.

Back at the house I literally walked around in circles. Well, in rectangles. I did laps around the house. After a while I thought there was a good chance Gavin and I would send each other crazy. I had to do something. But I couldn’t think of a single thing that would not cause awful complications for the two boys if I guessed wrong. All I could do was curse them for not being more open with me the night before.

It was just after ten when I heard a low buzzing sound like a very big and aggressive mosquito. It could have been a low-flying aircraft but I knew straight away it was a motorbike, our motorbike, the Yamaha. Except it was being ridden harder than I’d ever heard it ridden before. Dad would have chucked a fit.

I ran outside. Gavin bolted after me.

‘What?’ he said as we panted up the slope, where we’d get the first view of it. ‘What? What?’

‘The Yamaha.’

We saw it just a moment later. ‘Lee,’ Gavin said. He’s got astonishingly sharp eyes, Gavin. We hurried down to the track, where we could cut him off. I couldn’t tell whether he’d seen us or not, as he gave no sign, but at the last moment he hung out the back wheel and skidded to a halt.

The first thing I noticed was the rifle slung across his back. He switched off the ignition and sat there, slumped over the handlebars. It was as if switching off the ignition took all the energy he had. He glanced at me and I was shocked at how thin his face looked, at the way his eyes had become dark sockets. All in not much more than twelve hours. I was frightened to see him. It was as though he was about to tell me very bad news.