While I live

CHAPTER 25

Bronte’s father was a bit of a surprise. For one thing he was really young, compared to the parents of my friends. Compared to the age my parents had been for that matter.

It had been difficult getting in to see him. I didn’t think a major was as important as all that, but by the time I’d talked my way in there I was quite nervous. The security was full-on. It was like when Mr King was on bus duty after school.

Major Gisborne wasn’t all that friendly at first; not exactly unfriendly, just acting like he was too busy for this. I was already uncomfortable enough, after being interrogated about twenty-six times by men and women with guns, having to stand around while they rang each other to check that I had an appointment.

Eventually I got to the biggest building on the place, a concrete hangar half the size of Wirrawee, and was interviewed by Major Gisborne in a room the size of a washing machine. Life’s full of contrasts, that’s what I love about it.

There was no small talk, just, ‘You’ve got some papers? Let’s have a look,’ and then I sat there wondering what I could do while he read everything. The choice was between studying the heavy wire mesh on the window, the light globe on the long cord from the ceiling, the scratches on the old brown desk, or the poster on the wall headed ‘EVACUATION PROCEDURES ’. There were a lot of posters like that around these days, but somehow it seemed funny to see one on an Army base. I’d figured Army people would know how to do that stuff without needing to be told on a poster, like the rest of us.

Major Gisborne took another piece of paper out of the inside pocket of his uniform jacket. I recognised it as the summary I’d done for Bronte, of what had happened since my parents died. Bronte had told me to be brief. ‘My dad says the Gettysburg Address was two hundred and seventy-two words long, so nothing else needs to be longer than that.’

‘That’s a long address,’ I said. ‘What state did they live in?’

But it turned out the Gettysburg Address was a famous speech by Abraham Lincoln, and all Bronte knew about it was that it included the words ‘government of the people, by the people, for the people’.

Major Gisborne read through my sheet of paper, taking another three or four minutes. This time I stared at the top of his head, trying to count the number of hairs. For a guy who looked about twenty he was pretty bald.

Suddenly he looked up, catching me staring at him.

‘So let me get this straight,’ he said, gazing at me over the top of his glasses. ‘You wanted your neighbours as your guardians, and the court appointed the executor instead, but you’ve taken a dislike to him.’

I was already a bit red and now I blushed more. Put like that it all sounded pathetic. ‘Well, yes, but when I got this stuff, it made it look like I was right.’

‘This is illegally obtained evidence,’ he said. ‘Not admissible in court.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You opened his files, took papers from them, copied them on his paper using his chemicals in his photocopier powered by his electricity. That’s theft. You might think it’s silly, but courts have sometimes convicted people for stealing a couple of sheets of paper, or a few cents worth of electricity, when they can’t get them on any other charge.’

‘Really?’

‘For instance, if an employee steals an idea from his employer but there’s no law covering the situation, it might be possible to get him for stealing the sheets of paper that the idea’s printed on. And that then gives the employer a legal remedy.’

I gaped a bit at that. ‘Well, I don’t want to be arrested for stealing a few sheets of paper.’

For the first time he smiled. ‘I don’t think you’re on the “Most Wanted” list.’

‘So, what can I do? Surely I can do something.’

He launched into a long speech about what he recommended, which included going to the Law Society or Law Institute or something, and making a complaint about Mr Sayle’s behaviour, or lodging an appeal with the court against him being my guardian. Or, I could ask him for the contents of my file and sue him if he wouldn’t hand it over. But he didn’t have to give me his personal notes anyway. Then he explained that any of those remedies might take years and that wasn’t the only problem.

‘If you appeal against the guardianship order, you have two main grounds,’ he said. ‘One is that your friend Sayle seems to have prior knowledge of a development plan for the property, and what’s worse, a plan in which he may have a financial interest. And the second is that he seems to have malice towards you, as demonstrated by the handwritten memo, which he’ll never let you get. You need to find admissible ways of proving both those points in court. A lot would depend on the secretary you’ve mentioned being prepared to give evidence.’

‘I don’t know if she’d do that,’ I said.

He stood up and handed me back the papers. ‘I can see it’s a lot to take in,’ he said. ‘I’ll write a summary and send it via Bronte.’

‘That’d be really nice of you,’ I said. But before I could thank him any more he’d gone again, straight out the door.

I was a bit off-balance after this. He sure didn’t muck around. He seemed so cold compared to Bronte.

I went back to school, counting the number of periods I’d missed this week. I was nowhere near my record but I wasn’t doing badly. So many missed periods. I should have been pregnant.

I looked for Bronte but couldn’t find her till the next day. When I did, she was in the library, in the middle of a Chemistry lesson with Mr Bracken. I don’t know why they were doing it in the library. Bronte gave me a wink and gradually sidled over to where I’d sat myself at a computer.

To my amazement she already had a letter from her father.

‘Wow, that was quick,’ I said.

‘He’s Major Action Man,’ she said and sidled back to her class.

I stayed there and read the letter. It spelt things out pretty clearly, although it was longer than 272 words. The only part that was fuzzy was the bit about how I got the papers. He’d written: ‘The origin of the documents is uncertain’.

But most of the time he was outlining the different strategies I could use. They all seemed incredibly long and incredibly legalistic, not to mention expensive and not even guaranteed to work. A lot seemed to depend on whether Mrs Samuels would testify. He didn’t spell it out, but it was obviously because I’d got the papers illegally, and he was saying that if she testified it’d solve that problem.

I didn’t think Mrs Samuels would testify. She seemed scared enough when she left that file out. If she testified, she’d lose her job, for a start, and she might find it hard to get another one.

I didn’t realise Bronte had been watching me, but as soon as I put the letter down she appeared again.

‘Finished?’ she asked.

‘Yeah. It’s all a bit depressing.’

‘That’s what he said you’d think.’ She gave me another piece of paper. ‘This is from him too but he didn’t sign it, because it’s kind of unofficial.’

I opened it. It was a brief message, all typed. ‘Forget the legal approach, Ellie. You know how effective direct action is. You’ve proved that often enough. Use your brains and your imagination and you’ll come up with better solutions than these.’

I knew what he was getting at. Even before the war I guess I was pretty straightforward. I preferred to go at life full-on, not to sneak around the edges. I got sick of people at school who got into corners with their friends and bitched about how Chelsea had said something to Ilka about the way Meg had treated Simone. I preferred to march over to Chelsea and demand, ‘Has Meg been getting up your nose?’

Maybe it’s just another of those farm things. When you find a cow who’s decided to have her calf halfway up an eroded cliff, and the calf has fallen into one of the cracks and he seems like he’s only got minutes to live, there’s not much point going for a walk around the paddock and thinking that God can be very cruel sometimes. You go as fast as you can to get a shovel and you start digging your butt off, and the only thanks you get is that the cow licks your arm all the time you’re doing it, and later, when you see them together in the paddock, you get a nice warm feeling.

In the war we had times when we had to be sneaky, sure, and times when we planned attacks, but mostly we made it up as we went along. And mostly that meant fighting flat out, going at the enemy with everything we had, whether it was on an airfield or up among the rocks of Tailor’s Stitch or on a train-ride to hell.

So that approach does kind of suit me I guess.

I still couldn’t think of a direct solution. But later that morning I was sitting in History while Mr Baddiley went through his overheads, doing a big number on the Korean War. Because of the shortage of projectors he told Jake Douglass to pretend he was an overhead projector, and Jake sat there holding up each bit of plastic while Mr Baddiley talked about it.

It was boring, but the thing about Mr Baddiley was that if you got him distracted he could be quite interesting. That particular day I was so inattentive that I don’t know who got him distracted or how he could jump from the Korean War to France in 1898, but I realised suddenly he was talking about a guy called Dreyfus, and a writer called Emile Zola.

As far as I could put the story together, what happened was that a French Army officer called Dreyfus had been outrageously framed as a spy. The real spy was a member of the ruling classes but they didn’t have the guts to go after him, so they blamed Dreyfus instead, partly because he was Jewish. Dreyfus got kicked out of the Army, which had been the great love of his life, God knows why, and he was sent to an island prison to live on cockroaches and his own fingernail clippings.

OK, OK, I made that bit up.

Anyway, as time went on, some people in France got more and more convinced that Dreyfus had been ripped off. It didn’t matter what they said though, the government wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t do anything.

Well, along came this writer called Emile Zola. He was mega-famous, like, we’re talking Charles Dickens, Tim Winton, J.K. Rowling. He wrote this letter called ‘J’Accuse’. He called it that because he was French. If he was English he probably would have called it ‘I Accuse’. ‘The most famous letter ever written,’ Mr Baddiley said, which was a big call when you think of Princess Di’s love letters to James Hewitt.

‘J’Accuse’ was a public letter, saying stuff like ‘I accuse the three handwriting experts of making lying and fraudulent reports… I accuse the War Council of deliberately and dishonestly convicting an innocent man…’

It created a huge storm. Zola got chucked in prison for it. But it did build up such pressure on the government and the Army that eventually they gave in and held an enquiry that found out the truth and Dreyfus was brought back and everyone said sorry and kissed him on both cheeks, many many times, the way the French do.

So I listened to this with a lot of interest. The roar of the pen, I thought. Louder than a submachine gun or a B52 or a surface-to-air missile. I picked up my pen and, as Mr Baddiley went back to the Korean War, I tried writing my ‘J’Accuse’.

I kept it short and simple. It was less than 272 words, but it was no Gettysburg Address.

When I’d finished I sat there figuring out what to do with it. Then I nicked off to the library and tried to negotiate a low price for multiple photocopies with the new library assistant. Didn’t have any luck though. Their rates weren’t as cheap as Mr Sayle’s.

It was so annoying that Mrs Fisher was off sick, with jaundice. I could twist her around my pinkie with one easy twirl of the fingers. As it was I had to spend most of my cash, the money I was saving for chicken, and oyster sauce and tomatoes and snakes. Looked like dinner would be out of the freezer tonight. But now I had some ammunition. Unfortunately I had no confidence about using it, and no confidence about it working.

At lunchtime I had to go down to the supermarket. I couldn’t afford much, except the essentials: milk and bread and spuds. The way it worked was that I shopped at lunchtime and they kept the stuff in the coolroom till I picked it up after school. In the afternoons I got the bus from school like normal, and Barry dropped me at the supermarket while he went to Our Lady of Good Counsel, the Catholic primary school, then he picked me up again as he went past to get Gavin and the others from the state school. It was a good system.

The walk downtown was right past Mr Sayle’s big dark red door. I scowled at it as I went past, but on the way back I did more than scowl. I stopped in my tracks.

Parked right outside was Mr Rodd’s Audi. I knew it almost as well as I knew our vehicles. He’d had it a long time and after the war he’d found it dumped in Stratton with a couple of bullet holes in the driver’s door and a lot of dried blood on the floor. No-one knew what the car had been through, but it had no other damage, so unlike a lot of people Mr Rodd got his car back.

I stood there looking at it and the longer I looked the madder I got. I thought about the long letter from Bronte’s father and the long conversations with Fi’s mother and the court hearings about my guardianship and I realised that, yes, I really was sick of it and, yes, it was time to take action.

It would have been nice to sit down with a counsellor and work out a win-win solution that would leave all of us feeling good about ourselves. To share our feelings so we could work together better. To understand how to turn our weaknesses into strengths and our obstacles into opportunities. But at this stage I was more into the idea of invading Sayle’s office with an AK-47 and detonating him to kingdom come.

I thought about the little typed note from Major Gisborne.

Unconsciously maybe I was planning to do something this very lunchtime, because I did have my ‘J’Accuse’s with me, in my backpack. I grabbed my pen and wrote another note, the one I needed Sayle to sign.

Mrs Samuels was blowing her nose. I saw her eyes go big and wide over the top of her handkerchief. I knew how awkward it was for her, and I could guess how frightened she was at the thought of being busted by Mr Sayle for what she’d done. I wasn’t in the mood to hesitate but I realised I’d have to tread a bit more carefully than I’d planned.

‘Ellie,’ she said, sniffling a little. ‘How are you, dear? I’m afraid Mr Sayle’s busy at the moment… Ellie? Oh Ellie, you can’t — ’

That was the last I heard of her voice as I opened his door and marched in. I probably wasn’t feeling quite as confident as I hoped I looked. But at the same time I was mad enough to take this all the way, and to hell with the consequences.

Mr Sayle was sitting at his desk. He was leaning back with his hands behind his head, elbows out like wings, telling a joke I think, because the words I heard were: ‘So then Napoleon hits his shot, and it goes straight in the hole.’

He didn’t move when he saw me, just stopped speaking and gazed at me, still with his arms behind his head. I think he knew straight away that this was going to be ugly.

After a long pause he said, ‘Hello, Ellie.’

Only then did Mr Rodd turn around. He wasn’t as cool as Mr Sayle. He heated up real fast. I could see the red rising in his face. His eyes went narrow and he glanced back at Mr Sayle. A lip-reader couldn’t have read his words, ’cos his lips didn’t move. All you needed was a bit of telepathy. ‘Get this girl out of here’ wouldn’t have been far off the mark. I was trembling but I tried to stop my body ratting on me. I had to keep it fixed in my head that these guys were the ones who’d called me a tough little bitch. Might as well prove them right.

I pulled out the note I’d just written outside.

Before I could do anything more, Mr Sayle spoke again. No-one else had said anything yet. He was still off-balance; he didn’t know what I wanted, what I had on him. That was good. I had to keep him like that. I sensed that Mr Rodd was out of his depth; it all depended on my being able to fake out Mr Sayle.

‘What can I do for you, Ellie?’

‘I’m here with your resignation as my trustee,’ I said as evenly as I could. I looked at the note. My father had told me that courts like plain language, even though they never use it themselves. He’d said that if you don’t have a lawyer you just use the simplest words possible.

I read it to both of them. ‘I, Murray Sayle, resign as executor of the Linton estate and as guardian to Ellie Linton.’

I could see Mr Sayle lean back a little more, relax just a little. I could see the smile start to break out. I had to go in fast. I ripped the pile of photocopied sheets out of my bag. These were my ammunition and I needed to blow this office up, with both these men in it. I had to make every shot count. I kept one and threw the others onto the desk. My single reason for spending all that money to copy so many was so they would make a big thump when they landed. They did. It had been worth the sacrifice of the chicken and the oyster sauce.

After a moment Mr Sayle leaned forward and picked one up. After another moment Mr Rodd took one too. Fifteen-love to me. As they started reading I said: ‘I’ve done four thousand of these. My friends are going to distribute them tonight. They’ll go into every letterbox in Wirrawee, and then some. Tomorrow afternoon kids who live out on properties will take them home and spread them round their districts. They’ll go like a wildfire.’

‘I’ll get an injunction,’ Mr Sayle said, but it was kind of automatic, like he wasn’t even listening to himself. He was too busy reading.

He was reading these words: My name is Ellie Linton and I live on a cattle and sheep property twelve kilometres from Wirrawee. My parents were murdered earlier this year. Before they died they appointed Mr Murray Sayle, a solicitor in Wirrawee, as executor of their estate. When I was orphaned Mr Sayle got permission from the court to be my guardian as well. Since that time Mr Sayle has set out to steal my property from me.

I knew when Mr Sayle reached this part. He suddenly stood up. He went quite white and said, ‘You can’t say this.’

But he didn’t even look at me. I didn’t reply, and he kept reading. He and Mr Kelvin Rodd, also from Wirrawee, have a plan to set up a resort on my place, offering luxury mountain holidays. They have a company called Kelsey Developments Pty Ltd. They made a secret agreement for Kelsey to buy my place at a dirt-cheap price. Because Mr Sayle is my guardian I can’t stop him. Then the two of them will set up their resort, and make a huge profit. These men are criminals. What they are doing is illegal. If you deal with them, expect to be ripped off. If you’ve had any dealings with Mr Sayle, you should get another lawyer to check what he has done, in case he’s stolen from you too.

At the bottom was my signature and the date.

Well, there was no shit to hit the fan, and no fan. But it seemed for a few moments that everything else hit everything else. Mr Sayle threw the sheet back at me. Mr Rodd tore his up. Mr Sayle started around the corner of his desk but then stopped again. It was like he suddenly realised it mightn’t be a good idea to stomp me to death on the floor of his office. Instead he grabbed the pile of papers I’d put in front of him and threw them at me too. He followed up with a newspaper and a couple of finance magazines. Then he started shouting at me. It was hard to understand some of it but in general he was saying that he would sue me for defamation, that he’d ruin me, that I could even go to prison.

I didn’t think prison was too likely, given how old I was, and that I was an orphan, and assuming that Mr Sayle’s behaviour wouldn’t look too good under close examination. Zola yes, Ellie no.

I had thought this through quite a bit, even in the short time since I’d had the idea of doing it. So I took a step forward, trying to stay calm. I’ve noticed a few times now how powerful it is if you stay calm when someone else has lost his temper.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘go ahead and sue me. If you can sue a minor for defamation.’

That rocked him right to his Reeboks.

I followed up fast. ‘I don’t know if you can or not. But suppose you can. What happens then? Either you win, and you get some money from me, but I won’t have much left anyway by the time the case is finished. And your reputation will be shot and you’ll have a stain the size of California on your name. Or you’ll lose, and your reputation’ll be even more shot. And face it, you’re a good chance of losing. There’s nothing in my letter that isn’t true.’

Mr Rodd sneered at him: ‘I told you what she’s like.’

‘I’ll get an injunction,’ he said again.

‘We’ll ignore it,’ I said. ‘We’re teenagers. We don’t do injunctions. We’ll scatter these notices like confetti. By tomorrow morning you won’t be able to walk down the street. You’ll need an umbrella to keep the spit off your head.’

I’ve got to hand it to myself, he was definitely whitefaced. I decided Zola was a pretty good role model. He’d known what he was doing.

I couldn’t give Sayle any more time to think. I pulled out my pen. ‘Sign it,’ I snarled. ‘And then I’ll try to get to my friends and stop these papers going out. But I’ll have no hope of doing anything after three thirty. It’s now or never.’

Mr Rodd was still sitting there sneering. Then he suddenly saw the look in Mr Sayle’s eyes. ‘Don’t sign,’ he said, jumping up.

‘I have to, Kelvin,’ he said. ‘Her family’s been here forever. Everyone knows them. Especially after that stuff she did in the war. These local yokels are going to read her bit of paper, the ones who can read that is, and it’ll be the end of the story. No-one’s going to listen to us.’

With the signed statement in my hand I turned and headed for the door. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to run but I expected at every step to get a letter-opener buried in my back or a wastepaper bin shoved down on my head. I couldn’t believe it when I got to the door without a word being said, and I couldn’t believe it even more when I opened the door and left, and nothing and no-one followed me down the street. It had been as bad as any encounter with enemy soldiers in wartime. All the way back to school I shook like a tissue in a typhoon.