While I live

CHAPTER 10

‘Lee! ’ Gavin yelled. He was off his stool and across the kitchen and into Lee’s arms before I had time to put down the spatula and turn around from the stir-fry. Gavin always seemed to beat me to the hugs these days.

‘Good timing,’ I said. ‘I’m doing Thai.’

‘Yeah I know. I smelt it from the city.’

I met him halfway across the kitchen and we had our hug. He’d put on another inch or two, and he’d been tall before that. I felt off-balance. His intensity filled the room already. When I thought of Lee it was always images of the brilliant piano player, and the effective killer of enemy soldiers that came to mind. The pianist and the killer existed in him side by side.

I had no memory of his being at the funeral so as far as I was concerned I hadn’t seen him for ages. Except in my dreams. And I wasn’t sure if that counted.

‘Better get back to the stir-fry,’ I said. I needed an excuse and that lame effort was the best I could do. ‘Have you eaten?’

‘Only if you count a ham and tomato sandwich on the bus. Cost me seven bucks and tasted like a Chux. A very old Chux. The stir-fry is looking pretty good right now.’

I think he was nervous too.

‘I’ll do more noodles.’

I put some of the stir-fry aside for Gavin then chucked about a kilo of chillies in what was left. I knew how Lee liked his food, and I don’t mind the odd sinus clean-out myself.

‘So, where are your brothers and sisters?’ I asked. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve brought them with you?’

‘No, called in a few favours. A lot of favours actually. They’re all at sleepovers for the weekend. Sorry I didn’t ring but I couldn’t confirm it till this morning, and then when I did ring I didn’t get an answer. Guess you were at school.’ He slumped down on a chair. Not the broken one.

‘You guessed right.’

‘Geez, Ellie, how are you doing all this? Running the farm, looking after Gavin, going to school? I know you’re Superwoman but even she got knocked out by kryptonite. Or did she? Come to think of it I don’t know much about Superwoman.’

‘Neither do I,’ I said, serving up the stir-fry. ‘Gavin get over here and stuff this down your gob.’

‘How’s he been?’ Lee said as Gavin slid into the seat beside him.

‘Well, obviously better for you being here. Normally I have to tell him six times to come to the table.’

‘Are you having fun with him?’

‘Fun?’ I looked at him in shock, the spatula in mid-air. ‘What’s fun?’

He laughed. ‘Yeah, took me a while to figure that out too. But I finally got it with my brothers and sisters. I woke up one morning and thought “I’m not their father and I’m not their mother. I’m their brother and what’s more, I’m a teenager. Why am I trying to be a parent?” ’ He grinned at me. ‘I mean, of course we are like their parents. But we’re kids ourselves. We’ve got to do both, be their parents for some stuff but at the same time, muck around with them. It makes it harder in some ways, but it’s the way to go.’

I was eating slowly, listening to this. I realised almost at once how right he was. It had been the same in the later stages of the war. I’d lost my sense of humour, become tough and intolerant. I remember Fi telling me exactly that, one day up near Tailor’s Stitch. Now here was another friend, pointing me in the same direction. I could see how I owed it to Gavin to fill about fifty different roles in his life. And those roles included being a teenage big sister who had fun with him once in a while.

Lee was gasping for breath. ‘Wow, this is some stir-fry. Have you just brought in the chilli harvest? Look, I know this isn’t a very good time to be talking about fun, with your parents being killed and all, but in the long run…’

Yes, he was right. But at the same time I started to feel incredibly depressed. I pushed the rest of my meal away.

He watched for a minute before saying anything. Gavin kept eating but he was watching me too, between mouthfuls. I put my hand over my face, with my elbow on the table.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lee asked after a while. ‘Too much chilli?’

‘Nothing much. Just missing Mum and Dad. Oh, and wanting to be perfect. I think that’s all.’

‘Oh, that’s all? I don’t see the problem then.’

‘Very funny.’

‘You know the way life works?’ he said. ‘You’re on this moving footway. It starts with everyone telling you that you’ve got to get to the end. There’s a big pot of gold waiting, but if you don’t get there you’re a failure. So you try and try but you don’t make it. So you feel bad. So you try even harder. You still don’t make it. You feel worse. Some people try even harder after that. Some people give up and let themselves slide back to the start. So it goes on. That’s it. That’s life.

‘Oh, and by the way, you’re one of the ones who keeps trying harder.’

He leaned back. ‘And you know the big joke?’ He fixed his dark eyes on me. ‘There’s no pot of gold. Never was, never will be. It’s just an illusion. They show you photos of film stars going to the Oscars and billionaires on their yachts to make you think that they’ve found the pot of gold, but if you talked to them they might tell you the truth. Or they might still be running along the moving footway themselves.’

‘And then there’s death.’

‘Yes, sorry, left that bit out. You’re right, that’s the end of the walkway.’

I got up and filled a jug with water. I brought it back to the table and poured glasses for the three of us. He drank most of a glass without stopping. ‘I’d forgotten how good rainwater tastes,’ he said. ‘The city stuff is terrible. It’s got so much chlorine. Smells like a swimming pool.’

‘Yeah, well this has got wrigglers. Always has.’

‘Wrigglers I can live with.’

‘I guess I worry that if I let myself off the hook, if I don’t keep trying to be perfect, I’ll get too slack,’ I said. ‘I use that to motivate me.’

‘Ellie, trust me, you’re never going to get slack. Anyway, you can aim high and get a glimpse of the end of the footway once in a while and be satisfied with that. Instead of trying to be perfect.’

I didn’t say anything. I looked at the plates on the table and wondered if I had the energy to load the dishwasher. Then Lee got up and started clearing away. I’ve got to admit, that made me feel good. Gavin wasn’t too strong on household chores.

‘What have you got planned for tomorrow?’ Lee asked.

‘Saturday? Pick up sticks in Parklands so I can put the slasher into the baby broom. Prepare One Tree for a crop of lucerne. Clear more rocks in Nellie’s. Check the cattle, of course. We’ve got thirty-six baby calves. That’s not so bad, considering none of the cows exactly looked like they were lining up for Mother of the Year competitions.’

‘Good on you.’

‘Then there’s the usual jobs. Cleaning. Laundry. Shopping. Cooking. I try to make a lot of stuff over the weekend and freeze it for during the week.’

‘So how much of the stuff you’ve got lined up is urgent?’

‘Oh well,’ I said reluctantly. ‘Checking the cattle. Doing the laundry. The shopping.’

‘If I give you a hand with those, why don’t you take the rest of the weekend off? Have a holiday?’

‘Yeah!’ Gavin cheered. ‘A holiday!’

‘This sounds like a conspiracy.’

Gavin made a face at me. ‘What’s that?’

I sighed, grabbed his notepad, which for the first time in about a month he had with him, wrote the word down for him, then struggled to explain what it meant. But I was too tired. Finally I said, ‘Ask Uncle Lee.’

Gavin wouldn’t go to bed and I didn’t care much, seeing it was Friday night. So we watched TV and talked till quite late. To tell the truth I was getting nervous about where Lee planned to sleep. It had been so long since I’d seen him, and even longer since we’d had sex, and I had no idea where we’d parked our relationship. Although I’d been thinking about him so much recently, and with a lot of longing, I didn’t want to jump straight back into bed with him. I was still too upset about my parents to have sex with my boyfriend, or ex-boyfriend, in their home, such a short time after they’d died.

I didn’t really want to have sex with anyone anywhere. Maybe not for the rest of my life. I think that was one of the effects of the murders on me. I hadn’t felt that way before.

At about eleven o’clock I got up and said, ‘Well, better make you up a bed.’

Lee didn’t move a muscle, just kept that poker face. ‘I’ll do it,’ he said, getting up.

I put him in the spare room, said a quick safe good-night, then headed back out through the TV room, where Gavin was gazing at re-runs of ‘Touched by an Angel’. He looked up at me. ‘Isn’t Lee going to sleep in your bed?’ he asked, with a cheeky grin.

‘What? What did you say?’

I grabbed a cushion and attacked him, pounding him without mercy. Somehow he got out from under that and before I could turn round he jumped on my back and grabbed another cushion and laid into me. I raced around the room trying to throw him off. Eventually I went into a death roll on the old sofa and loosened his grip until I could break free. By then we were both panting and sneezing with the dust. Made me think I hadn’t been doing enough house cleaning. But we were both armed with cushions and we closed in on each other, in a no-holds-barred fight-to-the-death world-championship-wrestling duel. God that little tyke was a fighter. I backed him into a corner but only by using my bigger size and strength. And even when he was stuck firmly in the corner he never let up. After a while I let him fight his way out again, and just then I got ambushed by Lee from behind, so from then on I didn’t have a hope.

Later, in bed, I thought about how much fun it had been and realised that Lee was right. I couldn’t be a parent to Gavin the whole time. I had to remember to be a kid sometimes too, for both our sakes.

Next day I chucked a load of laundry in the machine, while Gavin and Lee checked the cattle. Then we went into Wirrawee and did the shopping. For a start I had to stock up on chillies. And bloody expensive they were too. I didn’t get any refrigerated or frozen stuff, because this was meant to be our holiday so I didn’t want to go back home just to put groceries in the fridge.

Then we went to Juicy’s, the new coffee shop in Barker Street, where Gavin ordered this revolting bowl of chocolate ice-cream, lime flavouring, nuts, wafers, banana, malt and cream. All it needed was tomato sauce. I sat looking at it as I drank my cafe latte, thinking, ‘You know you’ve grown up when you realise that whatever looks good isn’t necessarily good.’ Then I said to the waitress, ‘I’ll have what he’s having.’

We wandered down to Jubilee Park to have a look at the market. Markets are kind of cool. I bought a candle for Lee and a balaclava for Gavin. Lee bought me a pair of uggies. I talked for quite a while to the girl who sold me the balaclava. She was into Taoism, which is a faith I’d never heard of, but it’s all about how everything has its own nature and the more you try to interfere with stuff the more you mess it up. That’s more or less what I thought she said, anyway. The bush and the ocean and everything from elephants to buttercups have their own inner rightness, but humans keep wanting to improve them, or change them into something that will be useful for the humans, but this isn’t actually a great idea. And she talked about wu wei, the Chinese name for the idea that you let things follow their natural laws.

She said something which struck home with me. She said, ‘It’s only humans who believe in mistakes. Nature doesn’t have any understanding of mistakes. If a branch falls from a tree, it doesn’t mean the tree’s made a mistake. Nature just reorganises itself around the fallen branch. So now it becomes a home for the insects that live on the ground. Its leaves rot down and make the soil richer. If the branch falls into a creek, fine, the water now flows in a different way.’

‘Yeah, I guess that’s true,’ I said.

‘So, life goes on. Things happen. If you let things happen, they do.’

‘So,’ I said, feeling myself go a bit red, ‘if people you love die, or get killed, what does Taoism say about that? How are you meant to cope with that?’

I waited on her answer as though it would be very important.

‘You do nothing,’ she said. She shrugged. ‘This has happened. It doesn’t matter in the long run how they died. They’ve died, so your life reorganises itself. It will affect you in different ways. So, let it affect you. Feel what you feel, do what seems right to you. Don’t imagine there is a right way to act or a wrong way. Just let your life continue according to its own inner nature.’

‘OK,’ I said.

I turned away to leave.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘good luck.’

‘Bit of an angel encounter, that one,’ I thought.

We went to a four o’clock movie, not a very Taoist one I’d say. But Gavin chose it. It amazed me that after all he’d seen in the war, all he’d experienced, he still liked violent movies, but they were always his first choice. He was still quite violent by nature, as he’d proved with the cushions last night — not that I could talk — but I don’t think his violent behaviour came from the violent movies. The movies must have seemed a bit tame sometimes, compared to what he’d gone through.

It wasn’t a bad film. The special effects were cool, and it had Jed Barrett, who I can look at for quite a long time without getting a headache.

It had been a good afternoon and it had been fun. We went to Macca’s — sign of the times, Wirrawee had grown so much since the war that it now had a Macca’s — then headed home.

That night in bed I was thinking about the way creeks and streams operate. They start off little, gurgling and bubbling and jumping over rocks and stuff, full of energy, going all over the place. Then they get older and bigger, become rivers, take a more definite course, stick to their path, know where they’re going, get slower and wider. And eventually they reach the ocean and become part of this vast mysterious world of water that stretches away forever.

Yep, just like people.

My parents had joined the ocean. I was back up in the hills, bubbling around. What I’d seen and done in the war had made me grow up pretty fast, and what had happened since, even faster, but I was still a kid and I had a way to go yet before I became one of those slow old rivers just cruising along, not noticing too much and not bothering about the rocks and the rapids.

The next morning, as we walked through the paddocks checking the cattle, Gavin far in front on the left and Marmie far in front on the right, Lee began the big conversation. It had to happen sooner or later, I knew that, but I was not looking forward to it. He was nervous too. I still didn’t know if he’d been expecting a weekend of wild sex but he would have been sadly disappointed so far. And he had to go back early in the morning, catching the school bus into Wirrawee and the bus to the city from there.

I don’t know, I was probably doing him an injustice though. It wasn’t fair to assume that he’d come all this way for selfish motives. I still had huge respect for Lee. He was a generous guy and I think his first, second and third reasons for visiting were to see how Gavin and I were going, and to help in any way he could.

His fourth reason could well have been to do with sex. But he had helped a lot.

Anyway, as we wandered up the hill, leaving the ute behind, watching the cattle totally engrossed by their breakfast sandwiches of hay, he said nervously, ‘So, are you like, with anyone else? Anyone new?’

‘No,’ I said, then, after a pause, ‘How about you?’

‘No, no-one.’

‘So we’re both single, huh?’

‘Desperate and dateless,’ he said.

‘Speak for yourself. Just dateless, thanks.’

‘For a guy, we can’t be one without the other.’ But he grinned as he said it.

‘Have you met anyone you’ve liked?’ I asked.

‘Oh yeah, you know how it is. You see someone from the bus window, or in the canteen queue at school, or a new girl comes into your class. But there’s no-one who’s totally grabbed me.’

I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t trying to be rude. I was just thinking about the Taoist girl yesterday, and how she’d talked about letting things follow their natural laws, not trying to force people or anything — relationships for that matter — into a different rhythm, or an artificial shape.

Lee said, ‘So, are we still, like, together, or what? I’m a bit confused.’ He said it gently but I could hear the tension in his voice.

I gulped. ‘I wish I knew. To be honest I kind of thought it was over but when you walked into the kitchen the other night, I’ve got to admit, it felt pretty good to see you.’

He didn’t say anything so I kept going. ‘When you moved to the city — and you had to look after your brothers and sisters, and you sounded so stressed in those phone calls — it just seemed like we were going in majorly different directions. I got caught up in the wild lifestyle of Wirrawee, and you were drifting out of sight. Now… well, I’ve enjoyed this weekend a lot. But it doesn’t mean I’m ready to jump straight back in. Can we just let things drift a little longer? Would that be OK?’

‘We’re pretty good together.’

It was unusual for Lee to press like this. Normally his pride wouldn’t let him.

‘Well, I guess. But we’re young. And we’re coping with a lot of stuff. God are we coping with a lot of stuff.’

‘Has it struck you that we’re both orphans?’

I had to blink back the tears then. We were sitting on an outcrop of rock, at the highest point in the paddock. Below us Gavin was using a stick like a golf club and trying to hit cattle dung up the hill towards us.

‘Oh I hate that word,’ I said, when I could trust myself to speak. ‘I haven’t let myself think that word.’

He put an arm around me. ‘I’ve had longer to get used to it than you have.’

But I didn’t want his arm around me and I shrugged it off.

‘Orphans!’ I said angrily. ‘That sounds like Anne of Green Gables, and Little Orphan Annie. I can’t think of myself like that. I can’t think of you like that.’

But he seemed to want to rub it in.

‘Gavin’s an orphan too, as far as anyone knows. Three orphans in the one field. What are the odds on that?’

‘Oh come on,’ I said, standing up. ‘I’ve had enough of this. Let’s go home.’

When we got there, Homer was waiting. He’d rung the day before about coming over, staying the night, and catching the bus from my place with Gavin and Lee and me the next morning.

I told them that they could make lunch themselves, so they broke out the barbecue. I got some chops and sausages from the freezer. Our stocks were getting low. I realised that if I wanted more meat I’d soon have to kill a beast myself. I’d helped my father often enough but I didn’t like the thought of doing it on my own. Plus all the butchering afterwards. It made me feel a bit sick. Maybe I’d have to come up with a different way of getting meat.

After I’d found them the Dickhead matches — a name which always made me smile — I sat and watched them cook, giving regular helpful advice which I feel they deeply appreciated. But I got their sudden and undivided attention when I said to Lee, ‘Get Homer to tell you about Liberation.’

Two heads whipped around towards me, two sets of eyes gazed at me intently.

‘What do you know about Liberation?’ Lee asked. I was a bit shocked at their reaction. I was surprised that Lee had even heard of them.

‘I know quite a lot,’ I said. ‘But not as much as Homer.’

It was a complete bluff, but I hoped it might get me somewhere. Unfortunately these two guys knew me too well.

‘You don’t know nuffin,’ Homer said, turning back to the sausages.

I thought I might as well go for broke. ‘They’re a group from around here,’ I said to Lee, but watching Homer for his reaction. ‘Well, there’s groups in different areas, but there’s one based in Wirrawee. They sneak over the border and do stuff, rescue people.’ I decided to push a bit harder. ‘Homer’s involved, but he doesn’t want me to know about it, because he thinks I’ve got enough to worry about for the time being. You know Homer, always wanting to make my decisions for me.’

Homer had his back to me but he stabbed a sausage with a fork, so hard that it broke in two.

‘So who else is in it?’ Lee asked. He was watching me closely. Now he was off-balance. He wasn’t sure what I really knew.

‘Jeremy Finley,’ I said. ‘General Finley’s son.’ I was fairly sure of that one. ‘And Jess, this girl who came here a few weeks back with Jeremy, and hit me with a whole lot of questions.’ I asked Lee, ‘Do you know her? Or Jeremy Finley?’

He shook his head. ‘So, who else?’

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.’