Tomorrow 7 - The Other Side Of Dawn (35 page)

And would he have called the Kiwi commandoes my friends? He might have. Sometimes people used expressions like that kind of loosely. But on the other hand he might have been referring to some other people.

I couldn’t allow myself to feel any hope. Just couldn’t. But I realised my feet had started moving faster. Suppose General Finley knew that someone out of our group was still alive?
Someone out of Homer and
Fi
and Lee and Kevin.
And suppose he just assumed that I knew that too. That might explain the way he’d spoken on the phone.

Another thing; contact with him had been pretty much impossible, true, but how come he hadn’t asked me anything about Homer and the others? I’d been a bit disappointed with him, that he hadn’t. But if he knew they were prisoners, and assumed
that I knew,
too ..
.

Suddenly I was running. I had to: it was all I could do with the excitement and adrenalin and fear pumping through my system. I knew it was only the faintest of chances, and I knew if I was wrong it would be devastating, but I also knew that if any of them had by some miracle survived, then I could too: I could cope with all the confusion and depression and tension of this post-war world.
And what about Gavin?
Oh how I wanted to see him again. He was so young and his life had been hard, and he was such a feisty character. He deserved a second chance at life.

But then I remembered it was no good asking General Finley about Gavin, because it wouldn’t have meant anything to him: General Finley would never have heard of Gavin.

I was pretty rude when I got to
Shannons
’, just burst in, said, ‘Can I use the phone?’ and grabbed it. Then I went through the usual infuriating and frustrating business, calling over and over again, getting every possible recorded message, from ‘All overseas lines are currently in use, please try again later’, to ‘The number you are calling is no longer connected’. I ignored them all and just kept hitting that redial button.

Every ten minutes one of the
Shannons
poked their head in the door, took a look at my red, frustrated face, and retreated again. I’d say it was three-quarters of an hour before I at last heard the ringing tone. I’d become so used to hanging up on every call that I almost hung up again, automatically. Luckily I didn’t. I waited, sweating, thinking, ‘If only I still had our radio, to call up New Zealand any time we wanted.’

A man answered, and when I told him my name he said: ‘Wait on please; I’ll find him for you.’

Almost immediately General Finley’s voice was in my ear, as usual getting straight to business.

‘Well, Ellie, we’ve tracked them down for you.’

My heart stopped as I said: ‘
Who
, exactly?’

I actually had my fingers in my mouth.

‘Well, everybody really.’

‘For God’s sake,’ I screamed at him, the infuriating tears starting in my eyes.
‘Who?’

Unlike just about every adult I know, General Finley didn’t launch into a little speech about how you get on far better in life if you show some basic courtesy, and how when you scream at people you don’t achieve anything.

He started reading a list of names beginning with Homer, Lee, Kevin,
Fi
, Iain, Ursula, Bui-
Tersa
, Kay and then half-a-dozen others whom I didn’t know or didn’t remember, but whom I guessed were the other New Zealand commandoes.

I wasn’t listening too hard after the first six.

At the end he added: ‘There’re three of our people who have now been confirmed killed or died of wounds. There’s also a little boy with a hearing disability, who apparently was caught with your friends. I can’t work out from this list which one he is.
There’s
a hundred and forty-three names. But Fiona said you’d want to know about him.’

‘Is he all right?’

‘Apparently.
They’ve all had a hard time, and the youngster has been with your friends in an adult prison, so I don’t imagine he’d be in the best shape, but they’re being examined by one of our doctors today.’

‘When can I see them?’

‘We’re rushing them back. I’m not sure how far
Wirrawee
is from Absalom, where they’ve been held, but I’m told they’ll be in
Wirrawee
at 0800 tomorrow.’

Eight o’clock in the morning. Seventeen hours.

An afternoon and a night.
One sleep.
A sleep I wouldn’t be having. Seventeen hours.

It seemed so fast. One minute they were dead; the next, they were brought back to life, the next they would be standing in front of me.

I rang
Fi’s
parents, who were the only ones on the phone. I can’t remember what I said to them, can’t remember a word of the conversation. Then I stumbled out of the
Shannons
’ house and started running all the way to Kevin’s. The further I ran, the lighter my feet became, and the last three kilometres I didn’t even notice. I wish the Olympic trials had been on that day. I would have blitzed them.

It was two o’clock in the morning before I got home, and even then I only went back because I knew Mum and Dad would be out of their minds with worry. It was lucky my news got me off the hook. If I’d had any other excuse for being so late I think they would have really cracked.

It was funny being on curfew when such a short time before I’d been out all night launching attacks, killing people. I quite liked it though.
Made life feel more normal again.
Made me feel like I really was home, back with my parents, back to the way it had been before the war, when I was just a kid.

Mum and Dad wanted to talk, when I told them the news. But I’d had enough talking. I’d talked and listened and talked some more at the Holmes’ and again at the
Yannos
’. I’d never had so many hours of talking. We’d screamed and laughed and babbled and hugged and talked and talked and talked. God sure knew what he was doing when he gave human beings language. Without it we’d have been stuffed. Or we would have had to do a lot more dancing.

So I went to bed. I didn’t sleep, surprise
surprise
. I tossed and turned, I wriggled and squirmed,
I
tumbled and twisted. I rolled over to a new position every thirty seconds. One minute I was a tight little ball, the next I was sprawled across the bed.

Round about 3.30 in the morning I realised what I was feeling as much as anything.
Terror.
Terror?
How could that be? Terrified of the people who were probably closer to me than my own parents? Well, that scared me for a start. I didn’t want anyone to be closer to me than my parents. I got a shock when I realised, there in the darkness, just how close
Fi
and the others had become to me.

But that was something to think about long-term. It wasn’t really that which had me kicking and flailing around the bed.

No, it was the fear that they would come back as monsters.
That whatever had happened to them in those last few weeks of the war, and even since the war ended, might have been so horrible, so bestial, that they would come towards me out of a kind of hellish glow, with a green light shining from their mad eyes.
Like the woman up on Tailor’s Stitch.

After going through so much together we had suddenly been separated. They had a whole lot of new experiences they’d shared, and all those experiences excluded me. The prison they’d been in might have set a new low. General Finley said they’d had a tough time. Just how tough was it?
Enough to change them forever, so they would come back as strangers?
Was it worse than Camp 23?

Worst of all, would they blame me for being caught? Had I done anything wrong? Should I have gone in a different direction, that night in the bush when I ran away from the truck stop? Should I have found Lee and the others again? Should I have led the soldiers away from our packs? Did I do the wrong thing by jumping onto the train? At the time I felt I had no choice, but maybe I was wrong about that.

I got up about 5.45 and sat in the kitchen shelling peas.
Very good therapy, shelling peas.
Normally anyway.
This morning I felt too tired and heavy-eyed and sluggish and stupid.

Eventually Dad got up and came in, grunting something at me that sounded vaguely like ‘Good morning’. He put some toast on, put the kettle on,
got
out the poor variety of jams available these days. When the toast popped he spread me a slice with Vegemite. If I’d had to do it myself I wouldn’t have had any breakfast, but seeing he’d gone to the trouble, and seeing it was right there in front of me, I ate it. And I did feel a bit better.

‘Are you nervous?’ he asked.

‘Yeah.
Don’t know why. But I am.’

‘I thought you were. Guess you don’t know what shape they’ll be in.’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’

There was much more to it than that, but I couldn’t be bothered explaining. Once you’re a teenager it’s like your parents so often just don’t get it, and that’s one thing that war doesn’t change.

Although when I came stumbling back from Tailor’s Stitch, bruised and grazed all over from the fight on the cliff top, they were great then. They held me and petted me and let me cry. Afterwards Dad took me into
Wirrawee
to report it. I had to write out this huge statement and answer heaps of questions, and I was glad I had Dad there. He’s good with stuff like that.

We’d only talked about the war a few
times,
I mean, like sat down and had a full-on serious conversation. That’s the kind of family we are. We talk about stuff, and always have, but there’s stuff we don’t talk about too. We referred to the war all the time of course, how couldn’t you? But apart from one conversation that went till after midnight, our second night back in the house, we didn’t go on about it. It seemed so incredibly unreal, so totally unbelievable, that I could have done the things I did, killed so many people. I think I was scared that if I started talking about it too much it would create a gulf between me and my parents that we would never be able to bridge. So we kind of played it safe, talked about other people, about the present and the future rather than the past.

Mum appeared and as soon as I’d cleared away the breakfast stuff I went and started the Land Rover, and drove it round to the front door, just to give them the hint.

The drive into
Wirrawee
seemed to take longer than any of the trips we’d done during the war.
Even when we’d walked there.
I
drove,
Dad sat beside me, Mum in the back seat. The only time anyone spoke was when Dad looked at a mob of cattle in a paddock on the left of the road and said: ‘You can’t beat hybrid vigour.’

I parked half a block down from the Post Office. We were way too early of course. A few minutes later Homer’s parents arrived, with George driving, then I realised Kevin’s parents were there already with their two little boys. They were parked on the other side of the street, another block up.
Fi’s
parents and Victoria were the last to arrive.

I felt sad that there was no-one I could tell about Lee. I’d still had no word about his little brothers and sisters.

Gradually, as eight o’clock got closer, we all got out of the cars, and gathered outside the Post Office. The mood was strange. I don’t think too many of us had slept. No-one said much. You could see the suppressed excitement in their clenched hands, in the way they gazed down the street, in the nervous dancing of the kids.
Most of all in everyone’s eyes.
But there were so many other things in their eyes too.
So many shadows.
All the parents looked about twenty years older since the start of the war. Everyone, adults and kids, looked thin and tired and sad and hungry, even on this special day. It was just the way people were now. Maybe it would change again as time went on, and they would start to look like they had a year and a bit ago. I couldn’t wait for that to happen. I wanted to wipe away the worry on their faces, and see their cheeks fill out again.

I still remember the screaming of brakes as the bus stopped. It was like a knife into my heart. I saw faces peering out of windows, but couldn’t see anyone I knew. Then I saw Kevin, looking gaunt and unshaven, waving at me from the back. Suddenly I knew it was going to be all right. I waved madly at him then ran around to the door. I nearly knocked
Fi
over. She looked so exactly the same that it was disconcerting. Even with the scar on her face, it was like this war hadn’t changed her at all. We hugged, but only briefly, before
Victoria
, sobbing and wheezing, clutched her. Homer came off the bus but he was engulfed in people before I could reach him. He gave me a huge grin,
then
disappeared into a human knot of half-a-dozen bodies. Someone grabbed me from behind: it was Kevin, hugging me with his big hands and long arms. When he let me go I saw Lee behind him, waiting.

Perhaps that’s what had made me most nervous. With no-one else there to meet Lee I knew it had to be me. I felt like I had to be mother, father, sister, girlfriend to him, to welcome him home. It seemed like an awful lot of roles for one person. I didn’t think I could fill all those vacancies. He deserved to have all those people there, and then some. He should have had an avenue, a whole town of yellow ribbons on old oak trees. Instead he only had me.

I tried to be everything I could to him. I hugged him, kissed him all over his smooth face,
held
him tight. As I did, it struck me that Lee was in many ways our true hero. Lee was the one who did the dirtiest jobs, quietly, without fuss, without going into big emotional scenes. He was so efficient, so reliable,
so
brave. Wherever we fell short, he made up the gap. I’m not just talking about the red-hot moments, when enemy soldiers were shooting at us, when we were within a moment of death. I’m talking about the sourer times too, when we were so tired we could hardly remember to breathe, or we were so bored we’d pick at each other just for something to do, or so distressed we’d wish a soldier would come along and blow us into oblivion with an Ml6. At all those times Lee stood strong. He was like the
Wirrawee
grain silo. You could see the grain silo from miles away, tall and reliable. It stood for
Wirrawee
, and it gave you a safe comfortable feeling to know it was there. That was how I’d felt about Lee during the war.
Most of the time anyway.