Circle of fight

CHAPTER 20

Am I a lightning rod? Do I attract storms? Are there violent forces of nature zigzagging around the heavens looking for a way to get to earth and then they see me and they go, ‘Oh good, there’s Ellie, now’s our chance.’?

It was only a couple of weeks after we got back from Havelock, bruised and more battered than a piece of fish. I was in the kitchen, making a fruit salad; there was a call on the walkie-talkie from the soldiers down the road — we had the honour of patrols around the district all the time now — and they told me there was a lady from the Department of Something-or-other coming my way.

Now I didn’t think much about that. There were always government departments turning up for one thing or another. Checking the water, checking for GM crops, checking the road, checking our fire precautions and tractor emissions and the way we store our chemicals and whether our rifles and shotguns are in childproof safes… For a long time after the war everything was in chaos and we could do pretty much what we wanted — no, that’s not true, some things, like land redistribution, happened pretty fast — but in most ways it was a land without laws. Sometimes I rather liked it like that, because it meant that as soon as anything went wrong we could all say, ‘Why doesn’t the government do something about it? How come those people can get away with so much?’

But gradually the world began to get organised again and all the official stuff started to happen the way it used to, only worse, because with much less land to go around everyone was more crowded, so there were more regulations and a stronger sense of POS, ‘parent over shoulder’, of being watched and controlled and supervised. Bit by bit, detail by detail.

One part of my life had been completely ignored though, and I didn’t think about it much, didn’t let myself think about it, because I knew that things could get horribly complicated if a government department started snooping around it. So even though the name ‘Department of Social Responsibility’ didn’t mean anything specific to me, I did feel a strange tension in my stomach as I worked away on the fruit salad. I heard the car pull up outside and for a moment didn’t want to go see who it was or what she wanted. But I made myself put down the knife and go to the door.

She’d parked her Falcon next to my ute and was just straightening up from having a peep into the cab of the ute as I opened the kitchen door. She was about thirty, I’d guess, although I’m pretty hopeless at working out people’s ages. She had a face that — I don’t want to be rude, but I will be — was like a particular type of fish, except I don’t know the name of them. Round, with little eyes and a little mouth, and ears that were flat to the sides of her head. On top of that was a heap of blonde curls. She carried a blue folder and she walked towards the house as though she owned it and was about to take charge. I’m not saying all this with hindsight; this is exactly what I thought as I watched her approach. I took an instant dislike to her.

‘Ellie Linton, is it?’ she asked. She didn’t offer to shake hands. ‘Madeleine Randall. I’m from the Department of Social Responsibility. I notice the vehicle’s got its keys in the ignition?’

‘Er, yes, I suppose it has,’ I said, feeling completely off balance. It was as bad as the conversation with Jeremy already. I was totally astonished when she opened her folder and started writing in it, like she was recording the fact that the ute had its keys in it. I didn’t know whether to laugh or crack it with her big time.

She looked around, along the wall of the house. Marmie had done a poo quite a way further down. When Madeleine saw it she frowned and tossed her curls. ‘Dog faeces?’ she asked.

‘What is this?’ I said. ‘What’s it got to do with you whether the dog’s done a crap or not?’

She went a little red and looked at me coldly. ‘We understand that you have a child here who is not under the jurisdiction of his parents.’

‘Oh God,’ I thought. ‘They’ve caught up with us at last.’ It was the one fear that I hadn’t let myself think about. Occasionally I had a flicker of ‘I can’t believe no-one’s ever checked on Gavin’ in my brain, but it was rare.

I couldn’t think of what to say. It was hard to argue with her about Marmie’s bowel movements. I guess I was a little red myself as I stared back. ‘Let’s have a look inside the house,’ she said, starting for the back door.

I wanted to say, ‘What right do you have to march into my home without an invitation?’ but although I had no problem standing up to enemy soldiers, getting involved in gun battles, fighting a guerrilla war, I’d never met anyone as chilling as this lady. So I didn’t say anything, just followed her meekly inside.

At once I could see in painful detail just how unsatisfactory everything was. It was like I was suddenly seeing it through her eyes. And there was no doubt she saw every fault. She gave a running commentary as she walked around the kitchen, but she was writing all the time, and I don’t think she mentioned a lot of stuff that she wrote down. Half the time she was more or less talking to herself. ‘Microwave has food stains… chopping board looks too old to be hygienic…’ She looked into the corner of the pantry and came out muttering about the rat poison I had in a little bowl in there.

‘Gavin’s not stupid enough to help himself to Ratsak,’ I said. Neither was Marmie, although I thought I’d better not mention the possibility of Marmie ever being in the pantry.

She didn’t answer that, but when she went to the door of the fridge and said, ‘Let’s have a look in here,’ I thought I’d blow more than a fuse. Probably an entire transformer.

‘What’s this all about?’ I asked. ‘Have you really got the right to walk into people’s houses and start checking out their fridges?’

‘I’m from the Child Protection Unit,’ she said. ‘We have the right to go into any premises where we have reason to believe that a child is living in unsatisfactory circumstances.’

I was on fire inside and struggling not to breathe it out of my mouth. I knew already that if I erupted it would be bad for Gavin. Bad for me. I didn’t want to lose Gavin. I knew it would be unbearable for both of us. I was just glad he was over at Homer’s for the afternoon, but he was due back any time, and if he walked in and realised what this lady was on about, I hated to think what he might do and say.

On the other hand I didn’t know how much longer I could cope with this witch — and I’m not sure if w is the right way of starting that word — without going completely and utterly off my head. But maybe this was part of the test, to see if I was a calm, competent person. I suspected pretty strongly, though, that it didn’t matter much what I did. I was under-age, I had a guardian myself, and there was no way in the world I was going to be allowed to officially take charge of a kid. I could be Mother Teresa or Joan of Arc or the Virgin Mary herself and the Department of Social Responsibility would still knock me over the head with a dozen kilos of documentation and leave me unconscious while they took Gavin off to a foster home or an orphanage or something.

Nevertheless, I stayed as polite as I could while she studied the fridge and sniffed the chicken and pulled out the salad drawers. Then came the dreaded ‘I’d like to see the sleeping arrangements now please.’

‘Well, it’s all a bit of a mess,’ I said nervously, hoping she’d say, ‘Oh well, don’t worry about it for today then, I’ll come back another day when you’ve had a chance to clean up.’

Fat chance. She stood there staring at me, waiting for me to buckle. I buckled and led her down the corridor, cursing myself and Gavin for not taking the time to make the beds or tidy up this morning. Most days we kept it in pretty good shape. Unfortunately this was not one of those days. Gavin’s room had the doona on the floor, about fifteen items of clothing scattered around, along with Lego, half a jigsaw (the other half was in the sitting room), the chain off his bike, a pile of bleached white bones that he was making into the skeleton of some creature of his own invention, and the cover of a violent M15+ DVD called Inn of the Thirteen Corpses or something like that.

I was pleased to see a book next to the bed, opened up and facing down like he was actually reading it. Gavin didn’t read a lot. But this was one I’d liked, Man-Shy, about a cow, and I thought he might get into it, even though it was pretty old. I picked it up and said to Ms Madeleine Randall, ‘I’m always encouraging him to read, to help him with his school work,’ which must have sounded lame.

At that moment I noticed Marmie in the middle of the wreckage that was supposed to resemble Gavin’s bed. She had made a snug little home for herself, using his sheets and the end of his pillow, and was gazing at me with guilty eyes, trying to make herself inconspicuous. She knew I didn’t let her in there but she also knew Gavin smuggled her in every chance he got.

‘I hope the dog doesn’t sleep on the bed,’ said Madeleine, which was one of the stupidest sentences I’ve heard in my whole life, considering that Marmie was lying there in front of us both.

I wanted to say ‘Oh no, that’s just a hologram’, or ‘Do you think that’s a dog?’, or ‘Bed? Is that what you call it down at the Department?’ But I succeeded yet again in biting my tongue, and instead came out with a sentence as stupid as hers.

‘No, no, I don’t know what she’s doing. Marmie! Marmie! Get off there, go on, outside!’

I chased her out of the house and returned to the bedroom. In that short time Madeleine had managed to fill at least a page with more notes. My heart sank further. I didn’t know how much worse this could get. At least she didn’t demand to see my room. I’d been wondering if there were any limits to her rudeness, but maybe we had now reached the outer boundary. Still, we had more areas to explore, starting with the bathroom. If Gavin’s bedroom was a disaster zone, our bathroom was possibly similar to the way the bathrooms on the Titanic would be looking, after sitting on the ocean floor for a hundred or so years.

I didn’t bother to say anything. I couldn’t see the point. And I had enough dignity left to realise that anything I said would sound feeble.

By the time we’d finished the trip through the corridor of horror all I wanted was to see her car go down the driveway so I could try to process what had happened, what was happening. But it wasn’t over yet. When we got back into the kitchen she had the cheek to say, ‘Any chance of a coffee?’

I couldn’t believe it. I gaped at her for a moment, but again reason got the better of me and I thought that if I gave her a coffee she might go easier on us. Or, to put it another way, if I refused to give her a coffee she would probably not react well. So I gaped and stammered and choked, but made her a coffee. Then of course, once she was comfortable, she launched into the kidnapping.

I sat there pale-faced, trying to think of what to say. We’d done a major snow job with the cops when we got back, using what was pretty much a script given to us by Bronte and which I think she’d been given by her father or mother. Basically we said that Gavin had snuck away from the men who’d kidnapped him and been found by a guy who brought him back to the border and helped him get through the fence. Gavin understood the importance of keeping it quiet, because I and the members of Liberation had broken about ten thousand laws, and of course Gavin’s personality meant he was extra good at blocking anyone he wanted to block. His deafness was a bonus. He could talk fairly well when he wanted but he could also make a whole lot of gibberish noises when he wanted. When the police talked to him, as they did three times, he basically just grunted and made vague comments and looked confused.

Henry, the cop who’d been in charge, had visited a couple of times. He didn’t say much, but he always made me nervous when he appeared. He looked at me with his eyebrows lowered, like he knew everything, and I had the feeling that he did know an awful lot, and what he didn’t know he probably guessed. Heaps of people had told me about the two men killed by Col McCann’s bull, but no-one had any suspicions, and no sympathy for them either. Henry talked about them but I couldn’t tell what he thought.

During the last interview he did say to me, ‘People who treat us as fools usually regret it sooner or later.’ I went bright red but said nothing. What could I say? I knew we weren’t being fair to him or the police, but I couldn’t admit to being involved in private wars on both sides of the border. At least I didn’t have any injuries visible to him.

Now I wondered if he’d dobbed us in to the Department. It’d be a pretty fair bet.

I don’t think Ms Randall suspected for a moment that only a few weeks earlier I’d been dragging myself out from under a dead body on a staircase while I tried to rescue Gavin, but she knew of course that he’d been abducted. There wasn’t much I could say to that either. It was true he’d been the victim of a major crime. She was using it to say that he wasn’t safe living with me, that he wasn’t being properly looked after. I suppose it did sound pretty bad. She seemed to think I’d been negligent because I hadn’t arranged counselling and stuff like that for him, but Gavin would never have talked to a counsellor, and to be honest, after all we’d been through, all he’d been through, he didn’t seem like he needed counselling. I was the same. We’d found our own ways to deal with stuff, and we just got on with it, like people have done for thousands of years I suppose. Well, except for the ones who fall to pieces. I’ve got heaps of sympathy for them. It so happened that things didn’t affect Gavin and me that way. Gavin just seemed happy to be back. He did stick even closer to me than normal, especially at night, but he was in good shape.

I don’t think anyone but us and our closest friends could understand how our relationship worked, and how right we were for each other. He needed me and I needed him and we got on in a funny way that we’d sorted out between us and which worked even though I’m sure it broke all the rules. I was certain there was nothing in the handbook of the Department of Social Responsibility which fitted our case. I had to hope they’d make up a new chapter.

‘It’s a completely unsafe environment for him,’ she said, ‘living in a place where your parents were killed and he was kidnapped.’

‘I know that,’ I said. I took a deep breath and told her what I’d decided back there on the staircase in Havelock. She was the first to know. But if I was in for a fight to keep Gavin then this would be the first shot. ‘I’ve decided to sell this place. Then I’ll use the money to buy us a home in town, where he’ll be safe.’