The Dead of Night (25 page)

"You should write 0800," I pointed out. "That's the military style."

In each house half of the sentries took up positions at
the front and the others disappeared around the back. We could see some activity starting inside the houses too. On the upper floor of the place next to Fi's, a man came to the window dressed only in jocks, and stood there looking out for a minute. Fi collapsed in giggles as the man lifted one arm, then the other, spraving his armpits with deodorant. A woman dressed in a green and white tracksuit came out of another house and jogged off down the street.

It seemed that the officers kept office hours. Maybe that's why they were called officers. Anyway, at five to nine, people started coming out of the houses. Some were just dressed in ordinary soldiers' clothes, but six looked like big shots. One of them was the one Fi and I had seen in the Jaguar. They all converged on a big old brick house halfway along Turner Street.

"Doctor Burgess's place," Fi said. "Nice house."

As the morning wore on it was hard to remember that we were doing anything dangerous. It was like watching a normal business in full swing. Cars came and went, people hurried in and out of houses, we could even hear the phones ringing sometimes when the street was really quiet. Lunch started at 12.30, when people wandered back to different houses. Some sat out in the street in the weak sunshine, eating from little plastic lunchboxes. Delicious smells wafted from kitchens, making our mouths water and our tummies make little snoring noises. Mournfully we turned to our own lunches: Vita Brits spread with jam or Vegemite or honey. It wasn't bad, although I missed little luxuries like butter and margarine. I longed for hot food, and for
something with meat, like the meals the soldiers were preparing.

Not a lot else happened until 4.35, and then we saw something that made us nearly swallow our tongues. I was watching while Fi did a few laps of the church to warm herself up. She'd just returned and was leaning against the wall beside me, panting hard. "Oh Fi, nobody'll buy your fitness video if you don't lift your game," I said. "Hello, here comes another car."

Fi turned towards her window and watched with me as the car pulled up. It was one we hadn't seen before, a Range Rover. "That's the Ridgeways' car," Fi said indignantly. She sounded quite outraged, as though this was the most serious crime committed during the whole war.

"Go and make a citizen's arrest," I said, still watching the car. There was a driver, who looked like an ordinary soldier, and two people sitting in the back. One was another senior officer, wearing a peaked cap, and with gold piping on his uniform jacket. I couldn't see much of the other one.

The car pulled up outside Fi's neighbours,' and the two men in the back got out. An archway covered with a leafy creeper topped the front gate of the house and beyond it a winding path through the garden led to the door. This meant that once people went through the gate we only had one more glimpse of them. To make matters worse, the Range Rover had pulled up very close to the front gate. The man in the right-hand rear seat had to walk around the back of the car, so we got a good look at him. But the other man was out of the
vehicle and through the gate without us having any view. There was just that moment when he was walking along the path towards the door and would pass between two redbud trees. I craned to get a good look. Then, with a horrified squeal, I clutched at Fi, who was just beyond clutching range.

"What?" she said. "What?" She hadn't been looking very hard and already it was too late to see the man.

"Oh God, I don't believe it. Oh my God."

"What?" Fi asked again, getting impatient, and maybe a bit scared too.

"That was Major Harvey!"

"Oh Ellie, don't be ridiculous."

"Fi, I swear. I swear to you, that was Major Harvey."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Well are you sure or do you just think so?"

"I'm ninety per cent sure. No, I'm ninety-five per cent sure. Fi, honestly, it was him. Didn't you even get a glimpse?"

"Well, just a glimpse. It could have been him, I suppose. He was about the right size."

I leaned against the wall, trembling.

"Fi, if it is him, what do you think it means?"

"I don't know. Oh gosh Ellie." Fi started to realise the implications. "Do you think...? Oh no! Maybe ... maybe he's just pretending to be with them so he can spy on them."

I shook my head. Why did I know instinctively that there was something in Major Harvey that would make him incapable of that kind of courage? How did I know
that he had some fatal weakness that would always find him out, like water found the weakest spot in a tank, and sheep the one hole in the fence?

I knew though; as surely as I knew that we had unfinished business with Major Harvey.

We kept watching on into the evening, but the man did not come out again. From five to six o'clock, people seemed to finish work and drift back to the other houses. At eight o'clock we saw our fourth sentry change and at ten o'clock we withdrew, slipping out through the vestry door and tiptoeing through the graveyard. I couldn't wait to tell the others what we'd seen. Lee and Homer were asleep but we woke them straightaway. And the five of us spent hours discussing the possibilities. We agreed though: the first thing we had to do was confirm that the man I'd glimpsed really was the ex-commander of Harvey's Heroes.

We didn't see anyone who looked like Harvey for two days. As far as we could tell the man didn't leave the house for that time, but on the third day, when Robyn and I were in the tower, we saw him quite clearly. The Range Rover pulled up about ten metres short of the gate, so when Harvey stepped into the street he had to walk that distance to the car. As he emerged through
the gateway, we got a perfect view: a small tubby man in a dark suit; the only person we'd seen in Turner Street who wasn't in military uniform.

Robyn gazed at me in amazement. "It really is him," she breathed.

I'd been starting to doubt my own eyesight and my own memory, and it was exciting to be proved right. I was so pleased with myself that I just stood there gazing triumphantly at Robyn. The Range Rover U-turned and began to accelerate slowly away, still in first gear. I glanced out the window again. Major Harvey, sitting on the left side of the rear seat, as before, was chatting to the driver, an ingratiating smile on his face.

As the car turned out of Turner Street I leaned against the wall of the tower and stared at Robyn.

"That bastard," I said. "That..."

"Don't swear, Ellie," she said, looking uncomfortable. "Not in a church."

"All right," I said, with a big effort. "All right. But wait till we get out of here. I'll swear like you've never heard. I'll swear like a bullock driver with a team of camels. I tell you what, we're in the right place being in a church, because Judas Iscariot is in the Bible, isn't he, and this guy is a fair dinkum honest-to-goodness Judas Iscariot."

"But surely he couldn't have ... he wouldn't have betrayed Harvey's Heroes ... would he?" Robyn asked.

"I don't know." I tried to think, but I was too tired. "I just don't know. I don't think he would have set that ambush up at the tank, 'cos if he had, he wouldn't have allowed the spectators. I mean the soldiers obviously
had no idea we were above them in the bush. All I'm sure is that if he was on our side before, he isn't now."

It wasn't till next morning that I figured out the vital clue. I suddenly remembered the conversation with the man in Kevin's machinery shed, when I'd had my reunion with Mrs Macca. In the middle of breakfast, fruit juice dribbling down my chin as I choked on my cereal, I excitedly asked Robyn, "Listen, what's a chalkie?"

"A chalkie? I don't know."

"Where's a dictionary?"

"I don't know."

"Thanks for your help." I rushed off to the sitting room, where I found an Oxford dictionary and a Mac-quarie dictionary. But they were no more help than Robyn had been. All they said was that chalky meant having the consistency of chalk. I had a strong suspicion of what it really meant but I needed confirmation. Homer supplied it that night when he got back from sentry go. We were sitting on our own, in the bow window.

"A chalkie? It's a teacher of course; everyone knows that."

"Is it? Is it really? Well there you go then. The man in Kevin's machinery shed said there was a bloke who used to be a chalkie putting the finger on people at the Showground. He said people were being taken away on his say-so." I got more excited as I remembered something else. "Plus, whoever it was, he knew all the people in the Army Reserve. That's a perfect fit for Harvey. A perfect fit!"'

When we told the others they all reacted in different ways. Fi sat there white with shock, unable to speak. It was like she'd never dreamt that people could do such terrible things. Lee jumped to his feet, equally pale-faced, his eyes burning. He slammed his fist into the wall. "He's dead," he said. "That's it. He's dead." He walked across the room and stood with his hands tucked into his armpits, staring out the window, his whole body trembling.

Homer'd had a while to get used to the idea. He seemed almost gentle about it. "It does all fit," he said. "It makes a lot of things clear."

"Where do we go from here?" I asked. "If we're going to attack these houses in some way, then what do we want? Do we want to destroy the houses and all the stuff they've got in them? Do we want to destroy Fi's house? Do we want to kill people? Do we want to kill Major Harvey?"

"Yes," said Lee, without turning round. "All of the above." He'd plunged straight back into his psycho state, like when he'd stabbed the soldier. He scared me when he was like that.

"I hate them living in our house," Fi said. "I feel like we'll need it disinfected when they leave. But I don't want to wreck the house. Mum and Dad would kill me."

"Your neighbours wouldn't be too impressed if we burnt down all the houses except yours," Homer said. "It'd be a bit unfair."

Fi looked even more miserable. "I saw Corrie's house get blown up," she said. "I saw what it did to her."

"Let's worry about that side of it later," Homer said. "Let's see whether we can attack these places first. If we
can't figure out any way to do it, then there's no point Fi getting upset."

"You mentioned burning," I said. "I don't know if there's any easy way to do that."

"It's just the first thing that came to my mind," Homer said.

"Are we going to kill people?" Robyn asked.

"Yes," Lee said again.

"Lee!" Robyn said. "Stop talking like that! I hate it when you talk like that. It scares me."

"You didn't see what they did at Harvey's Heroes' campsite," Lee said.

"Come back and sit down Lee," I said. After a moment he did at least do that, sitting next to me on the sofa.

"I think there's a difference between setting fire to the houses, knowing people might die, and deliberately setting out to kill people," Homer said. "But the fact is, if we kill Harvey and some of their senior officers, we'll help our side a lot in the war. We could be saving other people's lives. That's a fact, and there's no point even arguing about that. The real question is, do we have the stomach to do it?"

We disappeared into our own thoughts for a minute. I imagine the others were doing what I was doing: searching inside myself to see if I had the guts to kill in cold blood. To my surprise I decided I probably did. Although I hated how this war was brutalising me so quickly, I also felt that it was expected of me, that all the people held prisoner at the Showground—my parents, our friends, our neighbours—would expect it. All the poor harmless nice people who'd belonged to
Harvey's Heroes would expect it. Throughout the country people would expect it. Somehow I would just have to do it, and worry about the effects on me afterwards. Strangely, for once I didn't think about the danger to me, about my own safety.

"I'll do what I have to do," I said.

"And if that means deliberately killing people?" Homer said.

"Yes."

"Could you put a gun to one of them and pull the trigger?" Homer asked. "I'm talking in cold blood now. We know what you can do in hot blood."

Robyn started to protest but Homer cut in quickly. "We have to ask these questions," he said. "We have to know. It's no good going in there and finding at the critical moment that someone can't do what we planned for them to do. That way we'll all end up dead."

"God, sometimes I wish we'd been taken prisoner like everyone else," I said. "Why do we have to be the ones who have to do all this? I don't know what I can do until I'm in a particular situation. But I think I could shoot one of them."

"OK," Homer said. "Lee?"

"I won't let anyone down," Lee said.

"What does that mean?" Robyn lost her temper. "Does that mean that anyone who won't kill people is letting the side down? Get real Lee. Sometimes it takes more guts not to do something than to do it."

Lee didn't say anything, just sat there brooding, ignoring my hand rubbing his leg. Homer watched him for a minute, then sighed and turned to Fi.

"Fi?"

"I'll do everything I can," she said. "Even if it means wrecking our house, I suppose. But honestly, I don't see why we need to. They only seem to be using it as accommodation for the peasants. None of the VIPs seem to be using it."

"Could you shoot someone?" Homer asked.

"No. You know I've never fired a gun in my life. I've practised loading them and aiming them and everything, but I don't want to have to fire one."

"Well OK," Homer said. "But could you push one of them off a roof, or could you stab one, or could you throw a radiator in their bath to electrocute them?"'

"I think I could do the last one, maybe."

"So you could kill someone if it didn't involve you having to come into physical contact with them?"

"Yes, I suppose that makes the difference. I could probably even shoot them if I was used to guns."

"Robyn?"

"What Ellie said made me think," Robyn said, unexpectedly. "When she asked why we were the ones in this position, why we hadn't been taken prisoner like everyone else. Maybe this is a kind of trial for us, a test, to see what we're made of." She stood and walked to the window and turned to face us. "At the end of it, maybe we'll be judged to see how we've handled ourselves. And I think we'll only pass that test if we've acted with honour, if we've tried our best to do the right thing. If we don't do things out of greed or ambition or hatred or a lust for blood, if we keep testing all our decisions against our own beliefs, if we try to be brave and honest and fair ... well, I think that's all
that's expected of us. We don't have to be perfect, as long as we keep trying to be perfect."