Tomorrow When The War Began (16 page)

At the doorway of the hut I had to pull away a
lot of creeper and some tall berry canes. I wasn’t too sure if I
wanted to go in there. It was a bit like entering a grave. What if
the hermit was still there? What if his body was lying on the
floor? Or his spirit waiting to feed on the first living human to
come through the door? There was a brooding atmosphere about the
hut, about the whole place, that was not peaceful or pleasant. Only
the roses seemed to bring any warmth into the clearing. But my
curiosity was strong; it was unthinkable that I could come this far
and not go further. I stepped into the dark interior and looked
around, trying to define the black shapes I could see, just as a
few minutes earlier I’d had to define the shape of the hut itself,
from its wild surroundings. There was a bed, a table, a chair.
Gradually the smaller, less obvious objects became clearer too.
There was a set of shelves on a wall, a rough cupboard beside it, a
fireplace with a kettle still hanging in it. In the corner was a
dark shape, which gave me palpitations for a minute. It looked like
a sleeping beast of some kind. I took a few steps and peered at it.
It seemed to be a metal trunk, painted black originally but now
flaking with rust. Everything was like the chest, in decay. The
earth floor on which I stood was covered with twigs and clods of
clay from the walls, and litter from possums and birds. The kettle
was rusty, the bottom shelf hung askew, and the ceiling was
festooned with cobwebs. But even the cobwebs looked old and dead,
hanging like Miss Havisham’s hair.

My eyes had adjusted to the murky light by
then. There was no body on the bed, I was relieved to see, but
there were the rotten remnants of grey blankets. The bed itself was
made of lengths of timber nailed together, and still looked fairly
sound. On the shelves were just a few old saucepans. I turned again
to look at the chest and hit my head on a meat safe hanging from a
rafter. It struck me right on the temple with its corner. ‘Hell,’ I
said, rubbing my head hard. It had really hurt.

I knelt, to look into the chest. There seemed
nothing else in the hut which would offer more than it had already
shown me. Only the inside of the chest was still concealed. I tried
to lift the lid. It was reluctant, jammed by dirt and rust, and I
had to pull then shake it to get it a few centimetres open. Metal
ground against metal as I slowly forced it up, warping it so much
that it was never going to close neatly again.

My first reaction when I peered inside was
disappointment. There was very little there, just a pathetic pile
of tattered odds and ends at the bottom of the chest. Mostly bits
of paper. I pulled everything out and took them back outside into
better light. There was a belt made of plaited leather, a broken
knife, a fork and a few chess pieces: two pawns and a broken
knight. The papers were mainly old newspapers, but sheets of
writing paper too, and half of a hardbound book called
Heart of Darkness,
by Joseph Conrad. A large black
beetle came crawling out of the book as I opened it. It fell open
to a beautiful colour plate of a boat penetrating the jungle. It
was actually two books in one; there was a second story, called
‘Youth’. But the other papers were too tattered and dirty and faded
to be of any interest. It seemed that the Hermit’s life was going
to remain a mystery, even now, so many years after his
disappearance.

I poked around for another ten minutes or so,
inside and out, without finding much. There had been other attempts
to grow flowers: as well as the roses there was an apple tree, a
sweetly scented white daisy, and a big wild patch of mint. I tried
to imagine a murderer carefully planting and cultivating these
beautiful plants; tried, and failed. Still, I supposed even
murderers must have things they liked, and they must do something
with their spare time. They couldn’t just sit around all day for
the rest of their lives and think about their murders.

After a time I picked up the belt and the book
and waded back into the creek, for the hunchbacked shuffle through
the tunnel to our camp. It was a relief to emerge back into
sunshine from that gloomy place. I’d forgotten how hot the day was,
out in the sunlight, but I almost welcomed its fierce glare.

As soon as I appeared Homer came striding
over.

‘Where have you been?’ he said. ‘We’ve been
getting worried.’ He was quite angry. He sounded like my father. It
seemed I’d been away for longer than I’d thought.

‘I’ve been having a close encounter with the
Hermit from Hell,’ I answered. ‘A guided tour will leave soon;
well, as soon as I’ve found the Iced Vo-Vo’s. I’m starving.’

Chapter
Fifteen

After our inspection of the Hermit’s hut we
kept working on into the evening. Lee, being less mobile, got to do
the paperwork, in particular a system of food rationing that would
preserve our supplies for close to two months, if we had the
self-control to stick to it. Homer and Fi and I made a few little
vegie gardens, and when the long day at last cooled we put in some
seeds: lettuce, silverbeet, cauliflower, broccoli, peas and broad
beans. We didn’t much fancy eating those all the rest of our lives,
but ‘we need our greens’, as Fi said firmly, and with Lee’s cooking
skills, broccoli could be turned into chocolate chip ice cream, and
cauliflower into a fairy coach.

It had been a long day, a hot one, and a hard
and tiring one. We’d started so early. My talk with Lee hadn’t made
it easier either. There was a bit of a strain between us now, which
I hated, and there was a general strain caused by everyone snapping
at each other in the final few hours of daylight. The only
exception was Homer, who hadn’t snapped at Fi. He’d had a go at me,
about the amount of water I was putting on the vegetable seeds, and
at Lee, over whether soccer was a better sport than footy, but Fi
was immune. He wasn’t immune from her though. When he broke off a
big piece of fruit cake (Mrs Gruber’s) and ate it, she burned his
ears with a string of words like ‘greedy’ and ‘selfish’ and ‘pig’.
Homer was so used to being told off in his life that you might as
well have told a rock off for being sedimentary, but when Fi went
for him he stood there like a little kid, red in the face and
wordless. He ate the rest of his slice of cake, but I don’t think
he enjoyed it. I was so glad she hadn’t seen me with the Iced Vo-Vo
biscuits.

Yes, finding the hut had been the only
highlight of the afternoon.

Fi had moved into my tent while Corrie was
away, and that night, as we lay in bed, she said to me, ‘Ellie,
what am I going to do about Homer?’

‘You mean the way he likes you?’

‘Yes!’

‘Mmm, it’s a problem.’

‘I wish I knew what to do.’

This was my specialty, sorting out my friends’
love lives. When I left school I was going to take it up as a
career; open a business where people could come in off the streets
and tell me all their boyfriend and girlfriend problems. It was
just a shame I couldn’t figure out my own.

So I rolled over to where I could see Fi’s
small face in the darkness. Her big eyes were wide open with
worry.

‘Do you like him?’ We had to start
somewhere.

‘Yes! Of course!’

‘But I mean ...’

‘I know what you mean! Yes, I think I do. Yes
I do. I didn’t at school, but honestly, he was such a moron there.
If anyone had said to me then that I’d end up liking him, well, I’d
have paid their taxi fare to the psychiatrist. He was so
immature.’

‘Yes, remember that water fight at the
Hallowe’en social?’

‘Oh, don’t remind me.’

‘So if you like him now, what’s stopping
you?’

‘I don’t know. That’s the hard part. I don’t
know if I like him as much as he likes me, that’s one thing. I’d
hate to get into a relationship with him where he assumed I felt as
strongly as he does. I don’t think I ever could like him that much.
He’s so ...’ She couldn’t think of a word to end the sentence, so I
supplied one. ‘Greek?’

‘Yes! I mean, I know he was born out here, but
he’s still Greek when it comes to girls.’

‘Do you mind that he’s Greek, or part Greek,
or whatever you call it?’

‘No! I love it. Greek is sexy.’

‘Sexy’ sounded funny coming from Fi. She was
so well brought up she didn’t normally use words like that.

‘So is that the only thing stopping you, that
you don’t feel as strongly as he does?’

‘Sort of. I feel like I have to keep him at
arm’s length or he’ll just take over. It’s like, you build a dam
upstream to stop the village being washed away. I’m the village,
and I build a dam by being cool and casual with him.’

‘That might just make him more
passionate.’

‘Oh, do you think so? I never thought of that.
Oh, it’s so complicated.’ She yawned. ‘What would you do if you
were in my position?’

That was a tough question, because I was half
in her position anyway. It was my feelings for Homer that were
stopping me from taking the plunge with Lee. It would have been
just my luck to be a castaway on a desert island with two guys and
to like both of them. But Fi’s saying ‘sexy’ had made me realise
that with Homer it was pretty physical. I didn’t want to spend
hours with him talking about life; I wanted to spend hours with him
making animal noises, like sighs and grunts and ‘Press harder’, or
‘Touch me there again’. With Lee it was something else. I was
fascinated by his ideas, the way he thought about things. I felt I
would see life differently, the more I talked to Lee. It was like I
could learn from him. I didn’t know much about his life, but when I
looked at his face and eyes it was like looking into the Atlantic
Ocean. I wanted to know what I could find in there, what
interesting secrets he knew.

So in answer to Fi’s question I just said,
‘Don’t string him along forever. Homer likes excitement. He likes
to get on with it. He’s not the world’s most patient guy.’

She said sleepily, ‘So you think I should try
it?’

‘“Better to have loved and lost than never to
have loved at all.” If you go for it and it doesn’t work, well,
what have you lost? But if he loses interest, so you never have
anything with him, then you’ll spend the rest of your life
wondering what might have been.’

Fi drifted off to sleep, but I lay awake
listening to the night sounds, the breeze in the hot trees, the
howls of feral dogs in the distance, the occasional throaty call of
a bird. I wondered how I’d feel if Fi got off with Homer. I still
couldn’t quite believe that I suddenly liked Homer so much. He’d
been a neighbour, a brother, for so long. I tried to think back to
the way he’d been a month ago, a year ago, five years ago when he
was just a kid. I wanted to work out when he’d become attractive,
or why I hadn’t noticed it before, but I couldn’t feel anything
much for the way he’d been in those days. It was like he’d
metamorphosed. Overnight he’d become sexy and interesting.

A dog howled again and I started wondering
about the Hermit. Maybe that howl was the Hermit coming back to his
violated house, coming to look for the people who’d trespassed into
his secret sanctuary. I wriggled closer to Fi, feeling quite
spooked. It had been strange, finding that little hut, so skilfully
concealed. He must have really hated people to go to so much
trouble. I’d half expected the place to feel full of evil, satanic
powers, as though he’d huddled there for years holding black
masses. What sort of man could do what he’d done? How could he have
gone on with his life? But the hut hadn’t felt all that evil. There
had been an atmosphere there, but one that was hard to define. It
was a sad, brooding place, but not evil.

As sleep crept up on me I turned my mind to my
evening ritual, that I performed now, no matter how tired I was. It
was a sort of movie that I ran in my head every night. In the movie
I watched my parents going about their normal lives. I made sure to
see their faces as often as possible, and I pictured them in all
kinds of everyday situations: Dad dropping bales of hay off to
sheep, waiting at the wheel while I opened a gate, swearing as he
tightened the belts on the tractor, in his moleskins at the field
days. Mum in the kitchen – she was a real kitchen person, Mum;
feminism had made her more outspoken maybe but it hadn’t changed
her activities much. I pictured her looking for her library books,
digging up spuds, talking on the phone, swearing as she lit the
fuel stove, swearing that she’d change it for an electric one
tomorrow. She never did. She claimed she was keeping the Aga
because when we started taking tourists for farm stays they’d think
it was picturesque. That made me smile.

I didn’t know if I was making myself feel bad
by trying to make myself feel good, thinking about my parents, but
it was my way of keeping them alive and in my thoughts. I was
scared of what might happen if I stopped doing that, if I let them
start drifting away, the way I was drifting away now, into sleep.
Normally I’d be thinking about Lee, too, at about this time,
hugging him to me and imagining his smooth brown skin and firm
lips, but tonight I was too tired, and I’d already thought about
him enough today. I fell asleep and dreamt about him instead.

The couple of days with Homer and Fi and Lee
had promised to be interesting and that’s the way they were turning
out. In fact they were almost too interesting – it was getting to
be a strain on my emotions. We were all edgy anyway, wondering how
the other four were getting on. But Tuesday started cooler and
proved to be cooler in most ways. It was an intriguing day; a day I
won’t forget.

We’d agreed to get up early again. I’d noticed
that the longer we stayed in Hell, the more we fell into natural
rhythms, going to bed when it was dark and getting up at dawn. That
wasn’t the routine we had at home, no way. But here we gradually
started doing it without noticing. It wasn’t quite that simple. We
often stayed up after dark to light a fire, to do some cooking for
the next day or even just to have a cup of tea – quite a few of us
missed our cups of tea during the day – but before long people
would be yawning and standing and stretching and throwing out the
dregs in the mug, then wandering away to their tents.

So, when it was still cold and damp on that
Tuesday morning we gathered at the dead fire, talking occasionally,
and listening to the soft voices of the magpies and the startled
muttering of the chooks. We had our usual cold breakfast. Most
nights now I soaked dried fruit in water, in a tightly covered
billy so the possums couldn’t get at it. By morning the fruit was
juicy and tasty, and we had it with muesli or other cereal. Fi
usually had powdered milk, which we also reconstituted the night
before, to have it ready for the morning. We’d scrounged a few more
tubes of condensed milk on our trip to the Grubers’, but again they
hadn’t lasted long: all we diabetics-in-training sucked them dry
within twenty-four hours.

Our major job that morning was to get
firewood. We wanted to build up a big pile, then camouflage it. It
sounds crazy with all the bush around us, but firewood was quite
hard to get, because the bush was so dense. There were lots of
little jobs needed doing too – chopping wood, digging drainage
trenches around the tents, digging a new dunny (we’d filled our
first one), making up tightly sealed packs of food that we could
store around the mountains, as Homer had suggested. Because Lee was
still not very mobile he got the last job, as well as the
dishwashing, and cleaning the rifles.

The plan was to work hard most of the morning,
have a break after lunch, then go out that night to bring more
loads in from the Landie. And we did get a lot done before the day
warmed up enough to slow us down. We got a stack of firewood that
was about a metre high and three metres wide, plus a separate pile
of kindling. We dug our trenches and dunny, then put up a better
shelter for the chooks. It was amazing how much work four people
could get through, compared with what Dad and I could achieve. But
it did worry me that we were still so heavily dependent on supplies
brought up in the four-wheel drives. That was a short-term
solution. Even with our own vegetables, even with the hens, we were
a long way off being self-sufficient. Suppose we were here for
three months ... or six ... or two years. It was unthinkable – but
it was very possible.

Over lunch, when the other two were busy for a
minute, Lee said to me, in a low voice, ‘Would you be able to show
me the Hermit’s hut this afternoon?’

I was startled. ‘But yesterday, when the other
two came ... you said your leg ...’

‘Yes, I know. But I’ve used it quite a bit
today. It feels quite good. Anyway, I was in a bad mood with you
yesterday.’

I grinned. ‘OK, I’ll take you. And I’ll do a
Robyn and carry you back if you need it.’

There must have been something in the air,
because when I told the other two that if Lee’s leg was good enough
we’d be away for an hour or two, Homer gave Fi a swift wink. I
think Fi must have given Homer some encouragement during the
morning, because it wasn’t the ‘Ohhh, Lee and Ellie’ type wink; it
was the ‘Good, we’ll get some time together’ wink. It was very
sneaky of them. I’m sure if we hadn’t given them the opportunity
they would have come up with some lie to get away on their own. It
made me feel jealous though, and I wished I could cancel our paddle
so I could stay back and chaperone. Deep down in my heart I really
didn’t want Homer and Fi to be together.

There was nothing I could do though. I’d been
neatly trapped. So, at around two o’clock, I set off towards the
creek with Lee limping beside me. The journey was surprisingly
quick this time, because I knew how to do it now and went there
more deliberately and confidently, and because Lee was moving more
freely than I’d expected. The water gurgled along, refreshingly
cold, and we just went with the flow.

‘It’s the perfect path in,’ Lee commented,
‘because we don’t leave any tracks.’

‘Mmm. You know, on the other side of Hell is
the HollowayRiver and Risdon. There must be a way through from
here. It’d be interesting to try to find it, by following this
creek maybe.’

We got to the hut but Lee’s first priority was
to talk. He sat down on a rather damp log by the edge of the
creek.

‘I’ll just give my leg a rest,’ he said.

‘Is it hurting?’

‘A little. Only an ache from being used again.
I think exercise is probably the best thing for it.’ He paused.
‘You know, Ellie, I didn’t ever thank you properly for coming to
get me that night, from the restaurant. You guys were heroes. You
really put it on the line for me. I’m not too good at big emotional
speeches, but I won’t forget that, for the rest of my life.’