The Dead of Night (13 page)

"Now we haven't got any girls your age," Mrs Hauff said to us as she pointed out the tents. "And we don't want any nonsense. I've raised three girls myself and I know what goes on. You'll pull your weight the same as everyone else. Don't waste your time expecting it any other way."

I was too subdued by all these adults to say anything. I crawled into the tent, pushing my pack ahead of me, and unzipped it. All I wanted to do was sleep. I moved the sleeping bag that was already there, before pulling out my own one and laying it down the right-hand side. Stuffing a few clothes into a shirt to make a pillow, I lay down slowly, like a tired old lady with arthritis. For a few minutes I was too weary to think about anything. I watched the light glowing green through the sides of in
the tent. The day was ending, and as I lay there the light changed quickly, to a darker, dimmer shade. A shadow, large and distorted, passed across the fabric as someone went past outside. I shrank away from it, remembering the shadow that had clung to me after I'd shot the soldier. As my mind began to settle I asked myself what I was thinking, what I was feeling. Slowly I realised it was relief. I didn't care how stupid these people were, how unreasonable, how prejudiced. They were adults, they could do all the worrying and make all the decisions. I could leave it to them. I didn't have to fight with these awful choices any more. I'd just do what they told me: be a good girl, shut up, veg out.

My eyes were closed by then and I welcomed the slow drift into sleep.

I was woken by someone bumping around in the tent beside me. I opened my eves abruptly, but unwillingly. It was too dark to see anything except for occasional glimpses of a figure struggling with the bits and pieces scattered around the tent: the boots, the toilet bags, my pack.

"Sorry," I said, reaching out sleepily to move my jeans.

The girl didn't look around, just said, "You'll have to be a lot neater than this if you want to stay in this tent."

"Sorry," I said again. She sounded older than me, and irritated, but it must have been a drag for her to find a stranger suddenly sharing the little tent.

I lay there watching, as my eyes adjusted to the light. She was arranging everything in neat lines. She pulled off her jeans, folded them, and placed them so they
were square to the base of the sleeping bag. "Jeez," I thought, "I'll have to lift my game." All these weeks without Mum had left me pretty slack about stuff like that.

I slept again and woke at daylight. It was shivery cold outside but I got up anyway and dressed quickly, hoping to trap as much heat in my clothes as possible. As I dressed I kept glancing at the girl in the other sleeping bag. In the dim dawn light it was hard to pick out the details of her face. She had red hair, which immediately reminded me of Corrie, but they didn't have any other features in common. This girl looked about twenty-five and had a small, thin mouth, with her lips pressed together even in sleep. She had mascara on, or the remains of mascara—it could have been just the dark circles of tiredness, but I didn't think so. The idea of make-up still seemed amazing to me. First Mrs Hauff, now my tent-mate. It had been a long time since I'd seen anyone with it, or even thought of it. This place was a beauty parlour.

I left her to her sleep and hopped outside to a cold damp log, to finish putting on my boots. It was always such a struggle to get them on but once they were on, they were comfortable. The morning wrestle was worth it. I did them up and went for a walk around the campsite, past the brush fence and along the tent lines. I could see Major Harvey's tent and as I caught further glimpses of it through the trees I saw him sitting at his desk in full uniform, head over a pile of papers, writing steadily. He didn't see me. I headed on down through the trees, where there seemed to be more light. I was
curious to see what lay beyond this bush, to get another glimpse of the Holloway Valley perhaps. I went a hundred metres but although the bright light gave the impression that at any moment I would burst through into the open, that didn't happen. The trees continued, as thick as ever. After ten minutes I stopped and gazed around. Sometimes the bush seemed like an ocean, the same in every direction. Perhaps if I had a better sense of smell I could have noticed more differences. The earthy smell of soil rich with moisture and growth; the musty smell of mist; the faint eucalyptus tang from the gum leaves: I knew these varied from tree to tree, from place to place, but I never seemed to have the time or patience to explore them properly. Suddenly curious, I got down on all fours and snuffled at a heap of damp leaves. I felt like a wombat, and started wondering if I might turn into one. I scuttled across the slope for a few metres, trying to imitate the rhythmic trot of a wombat on a mission. I dug my snout into another pile of brown and black wet leaves.

There was a cough behind me, unmistakably human.

It was Lee.

OK, I felt really stupid, but I'm sure people do stuff like that all the time when they're on their own. But maybe not pretending to be wombats. Maybe not sniffing at leaf litter either. OK, maybe they don't do anything like that.

We sat on a log and he put his strong lean arm around me.

"What were you looking for?" he asked, trying hard not to laugh.

"Oh, the usual. Roots, shoots and leaves. Were you looking for me?"

"No, you're a bonus. I wanted to get away for a few minutes, to think. It's good early in the morning, isn't it?"

"Mmm, if you can talk yourself into getting up."

We watched the light getting stronger and harder as the day got drier.

"What do you make of this mob?" I asked.

"Huh! Some of them are weird! They entertained me for two hours last night, telling me what heroes they are. Seems like their biggest thrill was setting fire to a truck that had broken down. They'd seen the soldiers leave it there and drive off in a ute, so the danger level was about two on a scale of nought to a hundred."

"Did you tell them what we've done?"

"Nuh, they just wanted to talk about themselves, so I sat there and listened. Homer was the smart one; he'd gone to bed. I don't know why I didn't. Didn't have the energy, I guess."

"The women wear make-up."

"Yeah, I noticed."

"I guess living on this side of the mountains, it's not the same as Wirrawee, where everything's so tightly held. It's like Major Harvey said, this is not an important area, militarily. So Harvey's Heroes probably haven't had to be too heroic."

"'Harvey's Heroes'! It's such a sterile name."

"I reckon."

"What does it make us? Homer's Heroes?"

An hour later we wandered back to the camp, and
found ourselves in trouble. We were greeted by my tent-mate, who came marching towards us as soon as we appeared out of the trees. She didn't look at Lee, just at me.

"Where have you been?" she asked me. "And what are you doing with him?"

"Him? You mean Lee?"

"Look, you'd better get a few things straight. You don't go outside the boundaries without permission. You don't go into the men's camp. The only place you can mix with the men is at the campfire and in the cooking and eating area. There are jobs to be done here, and you're meant to be helping."

"Sorry," I said stiffly. "Nobody told me any of that."

I knew I was being a wimp, but I didn't have the strength to stand up to her. The fight had gone out of me. It had fled, the moment we found ourselves surrounded by adults. I'd gone back to being eight years old. It's not so surprising. For some time now we'd been running at higher revs than we were built for. At last I could turn my engine off. I just wanted to get into a hidey-hole and stay there. So I didn't mind making a few compromises to stay with these people, and I certainly didn't want to get on their bad side. I winked at Lee and followed the girl to the cooking area, where she thrust a tea towel at me. Seemed like I'd missed breakfast, and the sight of bits of food floating in the greasy grey washing-up water made me feel nauseous. But I did the drying-up without complaint, and hung the tea towels out on a line behind the tent. Then I went looking for the others.

Two days later we were at a meeting called by Major Harvey. I was sitting towards the back, separated from Fi by my tent-mate, Sharyn, and Fi's tent-mate, Davina. Robyn was two rows ahead of me and the boys were right up the front. All the males sat in the front section of the meeting area and the females at the back. Major Harvey stood on a stump, with Captain Killen at his right hand and Mrs Hauff at his left.

For those two days my only conversations with the other four had been brief and unnatural. We were made to feel that we were doing something wrong by talking to each other. Sharyn seemed to hover around me all through every day. I felt like I was a skydiver and she was my parachute. In one way I hated it, but in another way it was addictive. I was starting to depend on her for even little decision. "Sharyn, do you think I should sleep with my head up this end of the tent?" "Do these jeans need washing?" "Sharyn, will I put the potatoes in the blue dish?"

She was a big girl, Sharyn, and always wore black jeans which were too tight for her. Like many of the women, she wore a lot of make-up. Although she tried to get me to put some on I couldn't bring myself to do it. It seemed too unnatural, wrong for our environment.

The only decision Homer and I made, after a quick
conversation with the other three on our second evening, was that the two of us would go back the next morning to get Chris. Only an hour after we'd made the decision I happened to see Major Harvey slipping through the trees towards his tent. I thought it would be a good idea to tell him what we were going to do, so I intercepted him.

"Excuse me Major Harvey, could I see you please?"

"I was under the impression that you already were."

"I'm sorry?"

"You're looking right at me, so I assume you're seeing me. Or perhaps it's darker here than I realised."

I ground my teeth. His sharp eyes glanced at me, then looked away again.

"Well could I speak to you for a minute please?"

"Go ahead."

"Well it's just that we've got one other friend, Chris, who we left back at our campsite, and so tomorrow morning Homer and I thought we'd go and get him. It shouldn't take long. We'll be back by tea time."

There was a long silence. Suddenly it seemed like it had got much darker. I could hardly make out the major's features any more: his eves had become just little black sockets.

At last he said something, but it wasn't much. All he said was "Follow me," as he turned on his heel and walked quickly away. I followed, all the way to his tent, then stood in front of his desk and waited as he seated himself and lit a candle. He didn't ask me to sit. The flickering light of the candle made shadows dance on his face. Occasionally, as he moved his head slightly.
there'd be a glint from his eyes, but most of the time he didn't move at all.

Only when the candle was burning steadily did he speak.

"What was it I said to you and your friends in this very spot, just twenty-four hours ago?"

"Um, well, you said that things weren't as bad here as in Wirrawee, and, urn, that you'd blown up some power stations, and all about how this was, urn, a military," I suddenly realised why the major was so mad, "a military operation."

"Exactly. A military operation. And what does that mean, in practical terms?"

"Well, that we have to obey orders and stuff."

"Exactly." His voice strengthened. "Do you know what's wrong with this country? Do you know why we've been invaded?"

Now he moved. His head came forward like a snake that's heard a dangerous noise. "I'll tell you what's wrong with this country. We've become slack, we've become soft, we've lost our way. If you ask me, these people have done us a favour by invading. We can learn a lot from them. They're a disciplined organised force of well-led soldiers. You won't hear any talk of consensus from them. You won't hear any talk of 'individual rights,' or 'personal freedom.' They know what's what. If we can stiffen the spine of this country we might end up with a nation to be proud of, instead of a self-indulgent bunch of whingers." The candle flared, and showed for a moment the dark anger in his face. "I'll tell you what we want here. I'll tell you what people
need." He was starting to shout now. I just stood there numbly. "They need strong leadership, leaders they can respect. They need leaders they can look up to. This country took a wrong turn years ago, and it's time to put things right again!"

Uh yeah, whatever you say, I was thinking, backing away a little.

The major sat back in his chair and picked up a file of notes. "Now," he said, talking in a calm reasonable voice again, "I am prepared to consider your request. Your young friend, I assume he has adequate food and shelter?"

"Oh yes."

"Then there is no great urgency?"

"Well, we didn't want to leave him there on his own for too long, that's all."

"You should have thought of that before you set out. You people who just make things up as you go along have a lot to learn. You may make a written request to me for permission to go back to your camp to collect him. Include a detailed map, estimates of the time required, and the supplies and personnel you will need. That is all. You may dismiss."

I left, feeling a little shaky. I didn't have the energy to cope with this. But the other thing, almost more disturbing, was the relief I'd felt when he turned down our plans. I knew we had to go back and get Chris, but that was the only reason I was doing it, because I knew we had to. Secretly, I had no enthusiasm for the gruelling trek, and no enthusiasm for Chris either at the moment. I felt really guilty about that, because I knew how I'd feel if I were back there on my own, and I also
knew how important it was for us to hang together, the six of us. A lot depended on that.

Then, the next morning, the morning of the meeting, I'd had another ugly session with the major. Sharyn had given me a bucket of cleaning materials and told me to go clean his tent. Looking back now I can sec it was a set-up, but I didn't realise that at the time. Instead I trudged off to his tent feeling resentful. I was thinking about Harvey's Heroes, and thinking that their problem was that they were trying to pretend there was no war. Underneath all the military disguises was just a group of ordinary middle-aged townspeople who were trying to live out here in the bush the way they had always lived in their nice brick-veneer houses in Risdon. They gossiped; they swapped gardening tips and talked about their children; they cleaned or cooked or pottered around doing odd jobs. One of them had asked me the day before if I played bridge. Only Major Harvey was different. He was driven by some lust that the others didn't have. I think he enjoyed his power over them but at the same time was frustrated by the fact that they weren't combat-hardened troops whom he could throw into the front line of some huge battle.