Текст книги "Tomorrow, When the War Began"

Автор книги: John Marsden

Соавторы: John Marsden
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Chapter Twelve

There’d been a few visitors in the short time we’d been away. Looters had come, and like at Chris’s they had taken jewellery and a few other bits and pieces. My watch, some silver photo frames, my Swiss Army knife. They hadn’t done much damage. I felt sick about it but was too tired to feel the full impact. Corrie and Kevin and Fi had come too – all the stuff on our list had been removed, and they’d left a message on the fridge: ‘Gone where the bad people go. See you were!’ I laughed and then rubbed at it till it was completely removed. I was getting really security conscious.

Homer and Robyn had Lee’s dressing off and were inspecting his wound, Robyn with her newfound fascination for blood. I peered over their shoulders. I’d never seen a bullet wound in a human before. It didn’t look too bad though. Mr Clement had done a good job, for a dentist. There were only a few stitches, but there was heavy bruising all around it, lots of interesting blue and black and purple colours. Some fresh blood had seeped out from the bottom of the row of stitches; that was obviously the blood I’d seen on his bandage.

‘It looks swollen,’ I said.

‘You should have seen it yesterday,’ Lee said. ‘It’s improved a lot.’

‘Must have been the physio I gave it in the shovel.’

‘What’s it feel like to get shot?’ Chris asked.

Lee put his head on one side, and thought for a moment. ‘Like someone’s stabbed a big hot piece of barbed wire through your leg. But I didn’t realise it was a bullet. I thought something in the shop had fallen and hit me.’

‘Did it hurt?’ I asked.

‘Not at first. But suddenly I couldn’t walk on it. That’s when Robyn grabbed me. It didn’t hurt till we got inside the restaurant and I lay down. Then it felt like it was on fire. Really killed me.’

Homer had washed the whole wound site down with Dettol and now started putting the bandage back on. Robyn inspected my face and found a gash above my hairline that she Band-aided. Seemed like they were our only wounds. When she finished I went looking for the Landrover, and found it, neatly packed and hidden where we’d agreed, about half a k from the house, in the old orchard where my grandparents had built their first home on this land.

We had the whole day to waste before we went on up into the mountains to join the others. Sleep was everybody’s first priority, except for Chris, who’d had quite a lot of it compared to us. He got dumped with the first sentry duty. And the second, third and fourth. It was too dangerous to sleep in the house, so we got blankets and set up in the oldest, furthest away haystack. I made everyone nervous by going and getting the firearms from the Landrover, but always in my thoughts now was what had happened at Corrie’s and how Homer said we had to learn from that; we had to learn new ways.

Then we slept and slept and slept.

They say teenagers can sleep all day. I often used to look at dogs and be amazed by the way they seemed happy to sleep for twenty hours a day. But I envied them too. It was the kind of lifestyle I could relate to.

We didn’t sleep for twenty hours, but we gave it our best shot. I stirred a couple of times during the morning, turned over, had a look at Lee, who seemed restless, glanced at Robyn beside me, who was sleeping like an angel, and dropped back into my heavy sleep. For once, I can recall my dreams vividly. I didn’t dream of gunshots and smashing into vehicles, and people screaming and dying, although I know I’ve dreamt of those things often enough since. That morning I dreamt of Dad barbecuing for a whole lot of visitors, at home. I couldn’t see what he was cooking, but he was working away busily with his fork, pricking sausages or something. It seemed like all the town was there, wandering through the house and garden. I said hello to Father Cronin, who was standing by the barbecue, but he didn’t answer. I went into the kitchen but it was too crowded with people. Then Corrie was there, asking me to come and play, which was fine except that she was eight years old again. I followed her and we went down to a river and got in a boat. It turned out most of the townspeople were there, and Dad and Mum were captaining the boat, so as soon as Corrie and I were aboard they cast off and we sailed away. I don’t know where we were going, but it was hot, everyone was sweating, people were taking off clothing. I looked back at the shore and there was Father Cronin waving goodbye – or was he shaking his fist angrily because we were all stripping off? And I didn’t know now if we were stripping because we were hot, or for other reasons. Corrie was there still, but we weren’t eight-year-olds any more, and then she had to go somewhere, with someone, and in her place Lee was standing. He was undressing too, very seriously, as though it were some holy ritual. We lay down together, still being very serious, and began touching each other, gently and lovingly. We were still doing that when I woke up, sweating, and found that I was now in full sun. The day was getting really hot. I turned and looked at the others, and the first person I saw was Lee, watching me with his dark eyes. I was so embarrassed after the dream that I blushed and began talking quickly.

‘Oh, it’s gone up about ten degrees. I’m baking away here. I’ll have to move. I must have been asleep longer than I thought.’ I picked up my blanket and moved to the other side of Lee, but about the same distance away. I kept gabbling. ‘Do you want anything? Can I get you anything? Did you sleep much? Is your leg hurting a lot?’

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

I calmed down a bit now that I was out of the sun. From my new position I could see right across the paddocks to the bush, and on up into the mountains. ‘It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Living here all my life, some days I don’t even notice how beautiful it is. I still can’t believe we might be about to lose it. But it’s made me notice it all now. I notice every tree, every rock, every paddock, every sheep. I want to photograph it in my memory, in case ... well, in case.’

‘It is beautiful,’ Lee said. ‘You’re lucky. There’s nothing beautiful about the restaurant. And yet, I feel the same way about it as you do about your property. I think it’s because we did it all ourselves. If someone smashes a window they’re smashing glass that Dad cut, glass that I polished a thousand times, and they’re tearing curtains that Mum made. You get an attachment to the place, and it becomes special to you. I guess maybe it does take on a kind of beauty.’

I wriggled a bit closer to him. ‘Did you feel awful when you found it all wrecked?’

‘There was so much to feel awful about I didn’t know where to start. I don’t think it’s hit me even yet.’

‘No, me neither. When we got here this morning and I found they’d been here ... I don’t know. I’d expected it, but I still felt awful, but I didn’t feel awful enough Then I felt guilty about not feeling worse. I think it’s like you said, too many things. Too much has happened.’

‘Yes.’ Only one word, but I’ll always remember the way he said it, like he was really involved with everything I’d been saying. I rolled around a bit so I was even closer to him, and kept talking.

‘And then I think about Corrie and how it must be terrible for her, much worse than for me. For all you guys with little brothers and sisters. That must be terrible. And imagine how Chris’s parents would feel, being overseas, probably not being able to get back into the country, not having a clue what’s happened to Chris.’

‘We don’t know how widespread this thing is. It could involve a lot of countries. Remember that joke we made, up in Hell, about World War Three? We could have been right onto it.’

He put his arm around me and we lay there looking up at the old wooden rafters of the hayshed.

‘I dreamed about you,’ I said presently.

‘When?’

‘Just now, this morning, here on the haystack.’

‘Did you? What did you dream?’

‘Oh ... that we were doing something like what we’re doing now.’

‘Really? I’m glad it came true.’

‘So am I.’

I was too, but I was confused between my feelings for him and my feelings for Homer. Last night I’d been holding hands with Homer, and feeling so warm and good about it, and now here I was with Lee. He kissed me lightly on my nose, then less lightly on the mouth, then several more times, and passionately. I was kissing him back, but then I stopped. I didn’t have any plans to become the local slut and I didn’t think it was a good idea to get involved with two guys at once. I sighed and shrugged myself free.

‘I’d better go and see how Chris is getting on.’

Chris was getting on all too well. He was asleep, and I was furious. I shouted, screamed, and then kicked him, hard. Even while I was doing it I was shocked at myself. Even now, as I think about it, I’m shocked at myself. The thing that scared me most was the thought that maybe all the violent things I’d been doing, with the ride-on mower and the truck, had transformed me in the space of a couple of nights into a raging monster. But on the other hand, it was unforgivable for Chris to have gone to sleep. He’d risked the lives of all of us by being so slack. I remember on our Outward Bound camp, talking one lunchtime, someone had said that in the Army the penalty for going to sleep on guard duty was death. We’d all been so shocked. We could see the logic in it, but maybe that was the shocking part, that it was so utterly logical. Cold-blooded, merciless, logical. You don’t expect real life to be like that, not to that extreme. But I really felt for a moment like I could have killed Chris. He certainly looked scared of me when he rolled away and stood up.

‘Geez Ellie, take it easy,’ he mumbled.

‘Take it easy?’ I yelled into his face. ‘Yeah, that’s what you were doing all right. If we take it easy any more, we’re dead. Don’t you understand how it’s all changed Chris? Don’t you understand that? If you don’t, you might as well get a rifle and finish us all off now. Because you’re as good as doing that by taking it easy.’

Chris walked off, red-faced and muttering under his breath. I sat down in his spot. After a minute or two I think I did go into some sort of delayed shock. I’d blocked off all my emotional reactions because there hadn’t been the time or the opportunity for those luxuries. But it’s like they say, ‘emotion denied is emotion deferred’. I’d done so much deferring, and now the bank had called in the loan. Most of that afternoon is a blank to me. Homer told me much later that I’d spent hours wrapped in blankets, sitting in a corner of the haystack, shivering and telling everyone to be careful. I guess I went down the same path as Corrie had, just in a slightly different way. I have a clear memory of refusing all food and becoming very hungry, but not eating because I was sure I’d be sick if I did. Homer said I was ravenous and I ate so much that they thought I would be sick and they refused to give me any more. Weird.

I was very upset when they wouldn’t let me drive the Landrover, because I’d promised Dad so faithfully that I wouldn’t let anyone else behind the wheel. Suddenly though I got tired of arguing, crawled in beside Lee in the crowded back section, and went to sleep. Homer drove it up to Tailor’s Stitch. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have given up the argument so suddenly and so completely.

Somehow I walked into Hell late that night, crawled into a tent beside Corrie, who was hysterical with joy to see us, and slept for three days, waking only for occasional meals, toilet trips, and brief mumbled conversations. I do remember consoling Chris, who was sure that he’d been the cause of my having a nervous breakdown. I didn’t think to ask how Lee had got in to Hell, but when I gradually got my wits back I found that they’d made a bush stretcher and carried him in; Robyn and Homer taking turns at one end of the stretcher and the lightly built Chris carrying the other, all the way down in the dark.

So I guess he atoned.

During my three days I had the nightmares I hadn’t had that morning on the haystack. Demonic figures ran screaming from me, I felt skulls crush under my feet. Burning bodies stretched out their hands, begging for mercy. I killed everyone, even the people I loved most. I was careless with gas bottles and caused an explosion which blew up the house, with my parents in it. I set fire to a haystack where my friends were sleeping. I backed a car over my cousin and couldn’t rescue my dog when he got caught in a flood. And although I ran around everywhere begging for help, screaming to people to call an ambulance, no one responded. They seemed uninterested. They weren’t cruel, just too busy or uncaring. I was a devil of death, and there were no angels left in the world, no one to make me better than myself or to save me from the harm I was doing.

Then I woke up. It was early in the morning, very early. It was going to be a beautiful day. I lay in the sleeping bag looking at the sky and the trees. Why did the English language have so few words for green? Every leaf and every tree had its own shade of green. Another example of how far Nature was still ahead of humans. Something flitted from branch to branch in the top of one of the trees – a small dark-red and black bird with long wings, inspecting each strip of bark. Higher still a couple of white cockatoos floated across the sky. From the cries I could tell that there was a larger flock out of my sight, and the two birds were merely outriders, strays. I sat up to see if I could glimpse the rest of the flock by leaning forward, but they were still out of sight. So I shuffled out of the tent, clutching my sleeping bag to me like some kind of insect half-emerged from a chrysalis. The cockatoos were scattered across the heavens like raucous angels. They drifted on, too many to count, until they were out of sight, but I could still hear their friendly croaks.

I shed the sleeping bag and walked down to the creek. Robyn was there, washing her hair. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hi.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Good.’

‘Hungry?’

‘Yes, I am a bit.’

‘I’m not surprised. You haven’t had anything since teatime the day before yesterday.’

‘Oh. Haven’t I?’

‘Come on. I’ll fix you something. You like eggs?’ I had cold boiled eggs – we couldn’t have a fire during the day – with biscuits and jam, and a bowl of muesli with powdered milk. I don’t know if it was the cockatoos or Robyn or the muesli, but by the time I’d finished breakfast I felt I could maybe start to cope again.

Chapter Thirteen

One of the small rituals that developed each day was Corrie’s Testing the Trannie. This was a solemn ceremony that took place whenever Corrie got the urge. She’d get up, look at the tent, give a little murmur like ‘I think I might give the trannie another burl’, and walk over to the tent. A moment later she’d emerge with the precious object in her hands and go to the highest point in the clearing and, holding the transistor to her ear, carefully turn the dial She wouldn’t let anyone else touch it, because it was her father’s radio and no one but her could possibly be trusted with it. It was the only thing of his that she had. Although we laughed at her a little there was always some tension when she did it, but days passed with no result and Corrie reported that the batteries were gradually getting flatter.

One evening I happened to be sitting near her when she went through another fruitless search of the dial. As usual there was nothing but static. She turned it off with a sigh. We were chatting about nothing in particular, when she casually said, ‘What are all these other things for?’

‘What other things?’

‘All these other settings.’

‘How do you mean?’

She embarked on a long explanation about how the few times her father had lent her the radio he’d said that her stations would be on PO or FM.

‘PO and FM? What are you talking about? Let’s have a look.’

She handed it over a little reluctantly. I realised from the writing on it that it was a French one. I started translating for her. ‘“Recepteur Mondial a dix bandes”, that’s “world reception to ten bands”. FM’s FM, obviously. PO’s probably AM. “OC Etendue”, well, “etendue”, that’s extended or expanded or something.’ The implications of all this slowly began to dawn on me. ‘This is no ordinary transistor, Corrie. This is a short wave.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘It means you can pick up stations from all around the world. Corrie, do you mean you’ve only been trying the local stations?’

‘Well, yes, PO and FM. That’s what Dad told me. I didn’t know about all that other stuff, and I didn’t want to flatten the batteries, mucking around with it. They’re nearly dead now, and we don’t have any more.’

I felt wildly excited and called to the others, ‘Come here you guys, quick!’

They came quickly, drawn by the urgency in my voice.

‘Corrie’s radio can pick up short wave but she didn’t realise it. You want to listen in? The batteries have nearly had it, but you never know your luck.’ I selected ‘OC Etendue 1’ and handed the little black transistor back to Corrie. ‘Give it the gun, Corrie. Just spin the dial the same way you did before.’

We crowded round as Corrie, tongue sticking out of the side of her mouth, slowly began to rotate the knob. And a moment later we heard the first rational adult voice most of us had heard in a long time. It was a female, speaking very fast among the static, but in a language we didn’t understand.

‘Keep going,’ Homer breathed.

We heard some exotic music, an American voice saying ‘You welcome Him into your heart and only then can you know perfect love’, two more foreign language stations – ‘That’s Taiwanese,’ said Fi, surprisingly, of one of them – then, as the radio started to die, a faint voice speaking in English. It was a male voice, and all we could hear was this:

‘... warned America not to get involved. The General said that America would find herself in the longest, costliest and bloodiest war in her history if she tried to intervene. He said his forces have occupied several major coastal cities. Much of the inland has been taken already, and losses have been below expectations. Many civilian and military prisoners have been captured and are being held in humanitarian conditions. Red Cross teams will be permitted to inspect them when the situation stabilises.

‘The General repeated his claim that the invasion was aimed at “reducing imbalances within the region”. As international outrage continues to mount, FCA reports sporadic fighting in many country areas and at least two major land battles ...’

And that was about it. The voice faded quickly. We heard a few scattered words, ‘United Nations’, ‘New Zealand’, ‘twenty to twenty-five aircraft’, then it was gone. We looked at each other.

‘Let’s everyone get pens and paper and write down what we think we heard,’ Homer said calmly. ‘Then we can compare notes.’

We met again ten minutes later. It was amazing how different the versions were, but we agreed on the important details. What we could infer was as important as what the man had said. ‘For one thing,’ said Homer, sitting back on his heels, ‘we can tell it’s not World War Three. Not yet, anyway. It sounds like it’s just us.’

‘The part about the prisoners was good,’ Corrie said. Everyone nodded. It sounded genuine somehow. It had helped all of us, a little, though awful fears still kept leaping up and attacking our minds.

‘He’s trying to remind the Americans of Vietnam,’ Fi said. ‘It’s meant to have been their national nightmare or something.’

‘Bigger nightmare for the Vietnamese,’ Chris commented.

I glanced at Lee, whose face was impassive.

‘The Americans don’t like getting involved with other countries.’ I remembered something we’d done in Twentieth Century History. ‘Woodrow Wilson and isolationism, isn’t that one of the topics we’re meant to be preparing, over the holidays?’

‘Mmm, remind me to do some work on it tonight.’ That was Kevin.

‘“International outrage” sounds promising,’ Robyn said.

‘That’s probably our biggest hope. But I can’t imagine too many other countries rushing in to spill their blood for us,’ I said.

‘But don’t we have treaties and stuff?’ Kevin asked. ‘I thought the politicians were meant to organise all this. Otherwise, why’ve we been paying their salaries all these years?’

No one knew what to answer. Maybe they were thinking the same thing I was, that we should have taken an interest in all these things a long time ago, before it was too late.

‘What does it mean “reducing imbalances within the region”?’ Kevin asked.

‘I guess he’s talking about sharing things more equally,’ Robyn said. ‘We’ve got all this land and all these resources, and yet there’s countries a crow’s spit away that have people packed in like battery hens. You can’t blame them for resenting it, and we haven’t done much to reduce any imbalances, just sat on our fat backsides, enjoyed our money and felt smug.’

‘Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles,’ Kevin said uncomfortably.

‘And now they’ve taken the cookie and crumbled it in a whole new way,’ Robyn said. ‘In fact it looks like they’re taking the whole packet.’

‘I don’t understand you,’ Kevin said. ‘You sound like you don’t mind. You think it’s fair enough, do you? Let them walk in and take everything they want, everything our parents have worked for. Help yourself guys, don’t mind us. Is that what you get out of the Bible? Do unto others, or whatever it is? Remind me not to go to your church.’

‘Not much chance of that,’ Corrie said, smiling and putting her hand on Kevin’s knee, trying to calm him down. But Robyn wasn’t put off.

‘Of course I mind,’ Robyn said. ‘If I was a saint maybe I wouldn’t mind, but I’m not a saint so I mind rather a lot. And its not as though they’re acting in a very religious way. I don’t know any religion that tells people to go in and steal and kill to get what they want. I can understand why they’re doing it but understanding isn’t the same as supporting. But if you’d lived your whole life in a slum, starving, unemployed, always ill, and you saw the people across the road sunbaking and eating ice cream every day, then after a while you’d convince yourself that taking their wealth and sharing it around your neighbours isn’t such a terrible thing to do. A few people would suffer, but a lot of people would be better off.’

‘It’s just not right,’ said Kevin stubbornly.

‘Maybe not. But neither’s your way of looking at it. There doesn’t have to be a right side and a wrong side. Both sides can be right, or both sides can be wrong. I think both countries are in the wrong this time.’

‘So does that mean you’re not going to fight them?’ Kevin asked, still looking for a fight himself.

Robyn sighed. ‘I don’t know. I already have, haven’t I? I was right there with Ellie when we smashed our way through Wirrawee. I guess I’ll keep fighting them, for the sake of my family. But after the war, if there is such a time as after the war, I’ll work damn hard to change things. I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life doing it.’

‘You were the one who thought we were taking too big a risk going to look for Robyn and Lee,’ I said to Kevin. ‘You didn’t seem so fired up then.’

He looked uncomfortable. ‘I didn’t mean that,’ was all he would say.

Homer spoke up. ‘Maybe it’s time to decide what we’re all going to do. We’ve had a chance to rest up, get our breath back, think about things. Now we should decide if we’re going to stay here in hiding till the war sorts itself out, or if we should get out there and do something about it.’ He paused, and when no one spoke he continued. ‘I know we’re meant to be schoolkids, too young to do much more than clean a whiteboard for a teacher, but some of those soldiers I saw the other night weren’t any older than us.’

‘I saw two who looked a lot younger than us,’ said Robyn.

Homer nodded. No one else spoke. The tension was heavy, like a humid night. Here in this secret basin we’d been insulated for a little while from the fear and sweat and bleeding of the outside world. People were keeping each other prisoner, hurting each other, killing each other, but we’d retreated to the paradise of Hell.

It was a bit irrelevant to what Homer was saying, but I spoke anyway. ‘I can understand why the Hermit chose to live down here, away from it all.’

‘Away from the human race,’ Chris murmured.

‘It’s our own families,’ said Corrie. ‘That’s what everyone’s worried about, isn’t it? I guess I’d fight for my country but I’m going mad wondering what’s happened to my family. We don’t know if they’re alive or dead. We’re thinking and hoping that they’re at the Showground, and we’re thinking and hoping that they’re being well treated, but we don’t know any of that. We’ve only got Mr Clement’s word to go on.’

‘Seeing Mr Coles at the Showground helped,’ I said. ‘He looked healthy. He didn’t look too terrified or injured. That made a big difference to me.’

Fi spoke up. ‘I think we should try to find out more about the Showground. If we know that everyone’s there, that they’re unhurt, that they’re being fed properly and all that sort of thing, it’d make such a difference.’ Homer was about to interrupt but she went on. ‘I’ve been thinking about what Robyn and Kevin were arguing about. If I could get my family and friends back, healthy, I’d let these people have the stupid houses and cars and things. I’d go and live with my parents in a cardboard box at the tip and be happy.’

I tried to imagine Fi, with her beautiful skin and soft polished voice, living at the tip.

‘It sounds like we should try to find out more about the Showground then,’ Homer said. ‘But it won’t be easy.’ He added modestly, ‘Do you realise that every group that’s gone into town has been spotted, except Fi and me?’

‘Were you striped?’ I asked, and got the groan I deserved.

Lee was lying on my left, against a rock that was still warm. It seemed to be his turn to speak. ‘I don’t think they’ll be into tortures and mass executions. The world’s changing, and any country that does that stuff knows there’s going to be a stink about it. I mean, I know it still happens, but not as much as it used to. Nowadays they seem to do things unobtrusively, over a long period of time. These guys are obviously trigger-happy, but there’s a big difference between shooting in hot blood and shooting in cold blood. We know that they’re firing off endless bullets in hot blood – they’re wild that way, and I’ve got the hole in my leg to prove it. But that’s sort of normal in a war, and a lot of it’s self-defence. It doesn’t mean they’re into concentration camps. The two things don’t automatically go together.’

‘I hate them,’ said Kevin. ‘I don’t know why you’re all being so understanding. I just hate them and I want to kill them all and if I had a nuclear bomb I’d drop it right down their throats.’

He was really upset, and he’d stopped the conversation as though he had nuked it. But after a few moments of awkward silence Homer started in again.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘do we want to check out the Showground more thoroughly? Can we do it with the stealth and finesse that Fi and I showed, or are we going to march in like a heavy metal band at a bowling club?’

‘We could tunnel in,’ I suggested.

‘Yeah, or pole-vault over the fence. Anyone got a serious suggestion? And how badly do we want to do it anyway?’

‘Badly,’ I said.

‘I won’t pretend the thought doesn’t scare the skin off me,’ Corrie said softly. ‘But it’s what we have to do. We’ll never sleep again at nights if we don’t.’

‘We’ll never sleep again at nights if we’re dead.’ Chris said ‘Look, with my parents overseas, I’m not quite as involved as you guys. But I’ll have a go, I suppose.’

‘I know what our parents would say,’ Fi said. ‘They’d say that the most important thing to them is our safety. They wouldn’t want us dead in exchange for them living. In a way we’re what gives their lives their meaning. But we can’t be bound by that. We have to do what’s right for us. We have to find meanings for our own lives, and this might be one of the ways we do it. I’m with Corrie; scared out of my skin, but I’ll do it because I can’t imagine the rest of my life if I don’t.’

‘I agree,’ Robyn said.

‘All day and all night,’ said Lee, ‘I pray for my leg to get better so I can go and find my family.’

‘I’m with the majority,’ Kevin said.

We looked at Homer. ‘I never thought I’d have to hurt other people just so I could live my own life,’ he said. ‘But my grandfather did it, in the Civil War. If I have to do it, I hope I’ll have the strength, like Ellie did. Whatever we do, I hope we can do it without hurting anyone. But if it happens ... well, it happens.’

‘You’re getting soft,’ Kevin said.

Homer ignored him. He continued, briskly. ‘I keep thinking of that quote Corrie mentioned the other day, “Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted”,’ he said. ‘The stupidest thing for us to do would be to charge in like Rambos with our little .22’s popping away. Fi’s right, our families don’t want us stretched out cold on a slab in the morgue. If we take a few extra days, well, that’s the way it has to be. The only reason we should take big risks is if we found that something terrible was about to happen to them. Of course it could have already happened, and if it has, well, we can’t do anything about it.

‘So, what I’m thinking is, we need some kind of observation place, somewhere hidden and safe, where we can watch the Showground. The more we know, the better our decisions will be and the more effective we can be. Judging from the radio, the whole country hasn’t been a pushover, and there’s a lot of action still going on. We ought to talk to anyone we can find in town, like Mr Clement, and even try to link up with the Army, or whoever’s still fighting in other districts. We should set ourselves up as a real guerilla outfit, living off the land as much as possible, mobile and fast and tough. We might have to survive like this for months, years even.

‘For example – you mightn’t like this, so say so if you don’t – suppose we sent two or three people into Wirrawee for forty-eight hours. Their job would be to get information, nothing more. If they’re really careful they honestly shouldn’t get seen. They’ve just got to become totally nocturnal and triple-check every move they make. The rest of us can start organising things more efficiently here. We’ll never get a better base camp, but we should get more supplies in and make it a proper headquarters. It’s frightening how quickly we’re going through the food. We should start organising rations. And I’d like to set up other little hideaways through the mountains. Stock them with food and stuff, in case we get cut off from this place. Like I said, we’ve got to get more mobile.