While I live

CHAPTER 20

We chose a wooden stepladder because it would make less noise than a metal one. I had a quick look out the door and the coast seemed clear. Now was as good a time as any other. I swallowed hard and did a dash to the tank. I felt incredibly exposed. At least the ladder was light. I reached the first tank and leant against it, trying to get some oxygen into my lungs, which felt empty of everything. At the same time I tried to press myself so far into the corrugations that I would disappear.

Homer and Gavin arrived at speed beside me. Immediately they started peeping around the sides of the tank. I left them to do the looking, but really, what was the point of looking anyway? If hostiles suddenly turned up and Homer and Gavin saw them, well, it would give us extra time to hold our hands up and surrender, but that would be about the only advantage.

As soon as I had some breath I turned towards the tank, propped the ladder against it, and scrambled up.

Putting my head over the top, I was aware again that I was totally exposed. I got up there anyway. The top was all muddy and covered with leaves and dead insects, like the top of every tank in Wirrawee I’d guess. But I wasn’t bothered by that. I crouched down and waited for Homer and Gavin.

When the three of us were there Homer and I hauled the ladder up, as quietly as possible. Unfortunately complete silence wasn’t possible. It knocked and banged against the tank a couple of times, and to make it worse the tank sounded empty, so there was a booming echoing effect which probably wasn’t all that loud, but to me could have been a tenpin bowling alley on a busy day.

There was no point waiting though. We tiptoed to the part of the tank roof closest to the house and set the ladder against the wall. I looked up at it and swore quietly to myself. There seemed like an awful big gap between the top of the ladder and the window, and I’m not that fond of heights anyway. But I knew if I waited any time at all Homer would try to beat me up there and I didn’t want that. Only because the suspense would have killed me if I’d had to watch him go into the house first.

I gulped again, put my foot on the bottom rung, settled the ladder a bit more, nodded at Homer to thank him for holding it, and started on up.

Standing on the second rung from the top was difficult. I had to try to get a grip on the bricks because there was nothing else. I was so close to the wall that I couldn’t use the lean of my body for balance. And what was worse, I still had to get onto the very top rung, and even then it would be a stretch to the sill.

I forgot the famous advice about not looking down, glanced in that direction, saw Homer and Gavin’s anxious faces, and wished I hadn’t. I knew I had to get onto that top step fast. To keep my balance I needed a lot of energy. I couldn’t hang around until I got tired. But I’d be pressed flat against the wall and then have to try to reach the win-dowsill. I wasn’t sure if that would be possible: in fact I thought it probably wouldn’t. But I knew I had to try it.

Suddenly into my imagination came an image of me reaching for the window, failing, and falling backwards, breaking my spine in a dozen places when I hit the unforgiving top of the tank.

Sometimes I hate having an imagination.

I hoped Homer was holding that ladder with maximum power. I had nothing to grip with my hands, so all I could do was press them against the bricks. I slid them up the wall inch by inch, feeling the rough surface scrape my palms. As I did I brought my right foot out and, trying to keep perfect balance, trying not to let my leg tremble too much, I eased it up.

Slow slow slow. It would have been hard enough doing this under any circumstances, but to know that at any moment an armed hostile might appear below me, or even at the window above, made my whole body tremble, not just my leg. That phrase of my father’s, ‘Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted’, floated into my mind again and became like a litany, till it was a meaningless jumble. ‘Time spent on reconnaissance.’ Stay calm. ‘Seldom wasted.’ Nice and calm.

I got my right foot onto the top step. ‘Time spent.’ I was surprised at how I rose. I’d now moved about twenty or twenty-five centimetres higher. ‘Reconnaissance.’ The sill was still an awful way above though. Pressing my sweaty hands hard against the wall, but not too hard, I kept going. ‘Seldom wasted.’ It wasn’t easy to take that left foot off its rung. It hadn’t been feeling too safe on that rung but it was a lot more comfortable there than it was in mid-air.

The trembling was getting worse. I broke into an all-body sweat. The ladder gave a jolt. I bit my lip, cursed Homer and every molecule in his big stupid body, but knew it was too dangerous now to look down. My left foot got to the top step and I tried to stand straight and tall, even though I didn’t want to.

I stretched higher and higher. ‘Reconnaissance seldom wasted.’ Oh God where was that windowsill? My face was pressed into the wall and I didn’t dare look up.

‘Time seldom.’ My fingertips brushed the bottom of the sill. And that was at full stretch. This was my worst nightmare. I knew exactly what it meant. The only way I could reach was to take a jump and try to hang on. If I missed I was dead. OK, not dead, just a paraplegic. My hands were now so sweaty that I didn’t know how I could hang on to the windowsill even if I did catch it. The danger was that I’d just slip off. Funny, I’d survived aerial bombing, a train wreck, a bullet, and captivity — and now a few centimetres between my fingertips and a piece of painted wood could kill me.

But I had to go, and I had to go now, because every moment I waited would make it harder. ‘Seldom reconnaissance.’

I reminded myself that I had to reach right in and grab all of the windowsill, not just the edge of it. I crouched as much as I could — which wasn’t much — to get a bit of spring. ‘Wasted.’

I took off.

I seemed to fly upwards for an amazing period of time. Yet I knew I wasn’t getting much height. My fingers touched the windowsill. I couldn’t tell which part of it. It didn’t seem like enough. I scrabbled for another inch or so. Like I’d feared, my palms were so wet that they slipped, slipped, slipped. I grabbed harder. I felt every little crack and bubble in the paintwork. It too was rough but very different to the bricks of the wall. I grabbed again for the last time and gripped.

I hauled myself up. The muscles in my arms were bulging. My armpits were as sweaty as my palms. I got my head over the sill, my right shoulder, wriggled the left shoulder over, and at last knew I’d made it. I still hadn’t been able to give a thought to what might be waiting. Enemy soldiers with guns? No good thinking about that until I was safe from falling. Sam Young with a camera trying to focus, at the same time as he was rolling around laughing? No good thinking about that either. In a truly stupid and bizarre way I would actually have preferred to find enemy soldiers than Sam Young laughing at me.

I was in a bedroom. I realised it was Shannon’s. I took it in with just one glance but even that was enough to appreciate how good it looked. Three walls were light mauve, the other lime green. The cornices were dark purple, good enough to eat. Doesn’t sound like it should have worked, but it did. She had a big bed made of some reddish-brown timber, maybe jarrah, and a desk to match. There were some fascinating paintings on the walls. One of them was a face of great beauty, a woman who looked at the same time peaceful, wise and worried. Shame I didn’t have time to look closely.

It seemed almost too serious a room for Shannon, because she was always laughing, but still, it had to be hers. I knew that because, as I ran to the bed and ripped a sheet off it, I saw a drawing I’d done for her just a week ago: a kind of tangram thing. She’d pinned it to a curtain, right next to the bed. I was pleased about that.

I rushed back to the window. Peeping out I saw Homer and Gavin, looking up anxiously. I trailed the sheet down the wall so they’d have something to hang on to as they came up the ladder, then hung on to it myself as hard as I could.

Gavin came up first. It wasn’t a problem holding him — he weighed about as much as a newborn calf — but Homer was more like a Grand Reserve bull at the Wirrawee Show.

Homer came through the window, grunting with the effort. As soon as he was in the room I said, ‘Grab my legs,’ and started going back out again, head first. He got the idea fast enough. I felt his strong hands grip me around the knees, then the ankles, as I dangled down. Down and down I went, like I was on an elevator. ‘Don’t drop me, Homer,’ I pleaded silently as I got closer and closer to the top of the ladder. On my first swing towards it I missed by a couple of centimetres. On my next, my fingertips brushed against it. I still needed a few more centimetres. I tried to look up, but couldn’t very well. It wasn’t comfortable, with the blood running to my head. I had a sense of Homer leaning dangerously far out of the window. I hoped he didn’t overbalance. I hoped no enemy soldier grabbed him and suddenly took him away.

Somehow he found another centimetre or two because I lurched down again. I tried not to panic, and grabbed the top rung. He waited a moment, I guess to be sure I’d got it. There was no way I could give him a signal. Then he started hauling.

It was heavy for me. I don’t know what it was like for him. And somehow I had to get in through the window without dropping the ladder. Homer ended up on the floor with me off-balance and the ladder sticking out from the house at ninety degrees. Gavin came to the rescue, holding it till Homer and I got our balance back enough to take it from him.

We manoeuvred it in. Seemed like Shannon now had another piece of furniture for her bedroom. I left Homer to move it away from the window and turned around to see what Gavin was up to. Typical. He’d already opened the door and was peering down the corridor.

‘Geez, Gavin,’ I said, which wasn’t a lot of use as he couldn’t hear me.

I raced to the door. Standing above Gavin I did my own peering.

My eyes had to get used to the light but I couldn’t see any movement. I tapped Gavin on the shoulder. He looked up. I gestured ‘Do you see anything?’ and he shook his head.

Between us we eased the door open. We took our first step. By now Homer was right behind us. I thought this was a bad idea. If a soldier suddenly appeared he would be able to take all three of us with no trouble. I turned around and whispered to him, ‘You should hide. Just while we check out this floor.’

He thought about it for a moment. He looked disappointed but he knew I was right. After all, he’d forced us to make some tough decisions in the past. Now he made a face, looked around, and then opened a door right next to me. It was a kind of hall closet, where they stored their suitcases and winter clothes. With a little smile at me he shrugged, disappeared in among the coats, and closed the door behind him.

Gavin and I tiptoed forward. I didn’t want to do much, didn’t want to take on an army of hostiles. I just wanted to know what was going on. I could see the head of the staircase and I moved carefully towards it. I thought the stairwell would amplify any sounds from downstairs.

In fact the first sound I heard would have reached any corner of the house. A door opened downstairs, to the left, and a roar of laughter came out. I grabbed Gavin by the arm, hard, and we both stopped dead.

Maybe the Youngs were having friends for afternoon tea? I didn’t think so. I snuck closer to the edge and peeped over. I caught a glimpse of the man. He didn’t look like one of the Youngs’ friends. He walked across to a pot plant in a big blue and white tub, unzipped his daks, and started pissing in the plant.

I grabbed Gavin’s arm again, just as he tried to grab mine. As the man sprayed all over the broad green leaves he kept talking in a loud voice to other people in the room he’d left. Someone answered him and there was another shout of laughter, even louder.

I couldn’t believe him. I hated him, the way he was so calmly and arrogantly taking over my friends’ house. Plus my most hated thing is people spitting in the streets and here was this guy going about a hundred degrees worse.

The pungent smell drifted up to us and I wrinkled my nose. Seemed like these guys urinated every time I got near them. I thought of yelling out ‘You’re killing the flamingo flower’, just so I could see his expression.

The man finished and started back to the room. The door closed and everything went quiet again.

I looked at Gavin and shook my head. He looked at me. His eyes were the size of my watch face, which is big. Without saying a word we both snuck back a metre. Then we tiptoed down the hall to the cupboard. I knocked on the door, which might seem stupid, but I didn’t want Homer bopping me with a walking stick. I opened the door and Homer emerged from the coats, brushing them away from his face.

‘They’re here all right,’ I whispered. ‘Downstairs. Sounds like they’re having a party.’

‘How many of them?’

‘I don’t know. We only saw one. They’re in a room to the left, the sitting room I think.’

‘Any sign of the Youngs?’

‘No.’

‘We should check the rooms up here, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, absolutely.’

We knew Shannon’s bedroom was clear, so we started with the next one. We didn’t go about it like the professionals — well, the professionals we’d seen on TV anyway, the ones who bust down the door and cover each other while they search. We didn’t have any weapons to speak of, so we quietly turned the knob of each door and let it swing open, then waited a minute. If nothing happened we snuck in and had a good look.

There were four bedrooms and a bathroom and a sewing room. Each of the kids had a bedroom. Occasionally as we slipped from one to the next we heard more noise from downstairs. There were shouts, laughter, even, once, breaking bottles. They had occupied the house and were enjoying themselves. I was sure they were getting well and truly into the grog supply.

I just wished I knew what they had done with the Youngs, and I had the worst fears about that.

We ended up in Alastair’s room. He had a poster of Terri Boswell on the wall, and a few photos of her on his cupboard, and more sports equipment than I’ve seen outside a branch of Rebel Sport. Apart from that and the basic bed, desk and dressing table, there wasn’t much else. It was such a boy’s room.

‘So, what do you think?’ I asked Homer as we crouched in a corner.

I’d been thinking desperately and hadn’t come up with the beginning of a plan. But I knew we had to act fast, because if the Youngs were still alive, we had to get to them soon. Their chances would be lower with each minute that passed.

Homer pulled out his phone. ‘Call the cops,’ he said.

‘Oh yeah!’

It seemed so obvious. But I was really startled. For so long we’d lived in a world where police did not exist. I’d gotten out of the habit of thinking of the police: I was used to a life where either you solved your own problems or you died. I rather liked the idea of handing this over to the cops.

I should have known it was optimistic though. No sooner had I said ‘Oh yeah’ than I heard someone coming up the stairs. I made a face at Homer. He went white and put the phone away. I made the same face at Gavin but there was no need — he was always so quick to pick up on what was happening.

I grabbed Alastair’s cricket bat and Homer and Gavin each took a stump. We tiptoed to the door. Homer took one side of it, with Gavin behind him, and I took the other. I had the wardrobe behind me, which wasn’t so good as I wouldn’t be able to get a good swing.

The footsteps outside sounded confident. And they sounded like they were coming straight towards Alas-tair’s room. I had the horrible feeling that it might be Alastair and we were about to knock him into another dimension, but the steps sounded too old and heavy for Alastair.

The handle turned. I have no idea why an enemy soldier was coming into this room, unless he’d suddenly decided on a game of cricket with his mates, but he didn’t hesitate. The door opened and he started to enter. Homer took a swing straight away, before the man was right inside, which was a mistake as it gave him an opportunity to back out again. Nevertheless Homer got him across the forehead, with a hell of a crack. The man put his hands to his face and staggered backwards. Blood spurted between his fingers. But now he was out in the corridor again. He was having trouble standing but he let out a noise, a sort of cry and yell at the same time. I’d followed him but I couldn’t stop him doing that. There wasn’t time for much of a backswing there either, but I belted him as hard as I could, on the top of his head. There was a terrible clunking noise, like I’d hit a solid rock. His eyes rolled and his mouth opened and he dropped to his knees. Homer hit him again with a full backswing, this time to the side of his head. The whole thing was pretty disgusting. I hauled off Gavin, who was sneaking round to my other side so he could have a go. Gavin had been corrupted by the war enough already; I didn’t want him to get even worse.

The man fell sideways and lay on the carpet. Blood poured from his scalp. You could see the stain, the lake, quickly spreading across the carpet. His eyes were now closed.

We waited anxiously, watching over the stair railing, to see if anyone had heard. The door downstairs was still shut, so that was in our favour. But I saw it open again. I darted back. I heard a man’s voice, in a foreign language, calling out what sounded like a name. And he was aiming his voice right up to us.

‘Oh geez,’ I thought. ‘He’s calling for his mate.’ The same mate who was lying on the floor to my left, bleeding so freely that the carpet was already wet and soggy.

I glanced at Homer. He’d picked up my cricket bat and was on the other side of the stairwell. It seemed like a huge gulf suddenly stretched between us. We all retreated a bit, Homer towards Shannon’s room, Gavin and I towards the door of Alastair’s room. A floorboard creaked under me and I shuddered at the sound. The man called again. This time he seemed puzzled.

Still going backwards I got a better idea. On hands and knees I scuttled back to the unconscious body. I knelt beside him and checked his pocket, the one I could reach. Just a packet of cigarettes and some coins. I tried to roll him over. He let out a low groan. Gavin helped me. I glimpsed the triumph in his face as we saw, at the same time, a big bulge in the left pocket. Either this guy was glad to see… but no. He was unconscious. It had to be a gun.

I worked it out of the pocket. I wasn’t sure if the man downstairs had heard the groan. But I had to assume the worst. I mightn’t have much time. Thank God the war had taught me how to use a hand gun. It was all right for Gavin to think our troubles were over, now that I had a revolver, but it wasn’t that easy. I didn’t know if the thing was loaded, let alone how many bullets were in it, how many enemy soldiers were down there, whether the gun even worked.

Homer was next to the hall cupboard again. Gavin had retreated to the doorway of Alastair’s bedroom. I thought I heard a creak, a step, on the staircase. I gestured for Homer to go into the closet and Gavin into the bedroom. Neither boy moved. I heard another sound from the staircase. I gestured at the two boys again, furiously, and this time they seemed to take some notice.

I couldn’t waste any more time on them. I had to know about the revolver, whether it was loaded or not. I pulled back the slide as quietly as I could, and felt relieved to see the dull gleam of the shiny little metal cap. But the noise as I closed it again sounded like a car door slamming. I glanced up. The man was almost there already. I could see the top of his head. He didn’t seem too suspicious yet — he was just walking up the stairs. Well, he was about to become suspicious as hell. If only we’d had time to move the body. But the patch of blood would have been there. Anyway, the whole war was full of ‘if onlys’. Couldn’t think about them, not now.

I was crouched over the body when the man reached the top of the stairs. He looked to his left first. Luckily Homer had disappeared. It gave me time to see that the man had a gun in his hand. I had been thinking of something like ‘Put your hands up’. Now I decided I’d say ‘Drop your gun’. But as he turned towards me and I tried to speak, I couldn’t. The words stuck in my throat. My throat felt like a rusted-up hinge. And I had no WD40. I knew no sounds would be coming out of there.

I saw the light of understanding flame in the man’s eyes. Understanding and fear. He started to leap to his lef t. He didn’t have much room to move. He raised his revolver.

That’s when I shot him. I didn’t mean to shoot more than once, because I knew I might need every bullet in the magazine, assuming there were any bullets in the magazine, but my finger kind of spasmed and I let off two shots before I could get control again.

The guy spun around to his left, almost a complete revolution. His mouth opened but his eyes seemed to open even wider. He fell backwards, landing on the top couple of steps. His knees were sticking up and they stopped him from sliding down the staircase. His head suddenly fell to the left and the life went out of him. You could see it go.

I was still frozen, still kneeling on the carpet. I think I would have stayed there half an hour but Gavin burst out from Alastair’s bedroom and grabbed me by the shoulder. I’m sure he heard the shots.

At the same time the door of the room below opened, and a cacophony of voices flooded out. There were shouts directed upstairs and a scrabble of boots across the polished floor. I assumed they were calling to the two missing men. I suppose at that stage they didn’t know whether the shots had been fired in error, from one of their friend’s guns, or whether someone like me was in the house and cutting loose.

When no-one answered their calls they figured out that things were not going according to their script.

By then Gavin and I had moved quickly, as quietly as we could, down the corridor. We were outside Homer’s closet. I opened the door a little and whispered, ‘They’re coming, we’ll go in Sam’s room,’ and closed the door again. We went on a few steps. We were now opposite the bedroom. I pushed Gavin in there and I stood in the doorway, trying to keep him behind me, and at the same time keeping a watch down the corridor.

Now I had time to check the magazine and the chamber. Three rounds. Sheez. It sounded like at least three men were coming up the stairs. But the revolver was all we had. Suddenly those other little weapons, the cricket bat and stumps, seemed a waste of time.