The trip to the Providence Gully Road gate is exactly four kilometres, or a bit over, depending on which speedo you use. Most days it tends to be a race between us and the bus. Occasionally the bus has gone; quite often it’s waiting for us; most often it’s in sight and waiting for us by the time we hide the ute, grab our stuff and lock the car. These days we’re never quite sure who’ll be driving, out of Mr Gruber, who used to be our nearest neighbour but who retired after the war and is now living in Wirrawee and is really nice; Mrs Nelson, who lives a few k’s down the road and is really pretty horrible; and Jerry, who’s about twenty-five and is no Otto, but is a thousand light years closer to Otto than the other two.
Mr Gruber and Jerry wait for a few minutes, even if they can’t see us, but Mrs Nelson only waits if she can see the cloud of dust, and then she scowls at us as we get on. I mean, fair enough, it’s up to us to get there on time, and most days we do, even though I’ve made it sound like we’re hopelessly disorganised, but we do live in slightly difficult circumstances, and most of the days we’re late because of ‘unforeseen circumstances’, like someone else’s cow wandering up the driveway, or a fallen branch blocking the road, or a koala injured by a fox or a dog.
You can’t control nature and you can’t control your neighbours, as my father used to say.
And I couldn’t control Gavin. Sitting on the bus, the morning after the conversation with Mark’s mum, I watched the back of his head and wondered what on earth I could do with him. These days the paper was full of stories about post-traumatic stress. There was a post-traumatic stress advice column, there were articles by doctors about post-traumatic stress, there were post-traumatic stress support groups. It seemed to me that Gavin was a post-traumatic stress kid in a posttraumatic stress world.
He was digging around in the seat, aggravating the boy next to him, chipping at the rubber lining of the window with his fingernails. Then he did something to the girl in the seat in front, a Year 6 from the primary school. She suddenly turned around and knelt up and yelled over the top of her seat, ‘Stop it, you little faggot.’
My problem with Gavin was simple enough. Was he just a typical naughty kid or was he deeply disturbed and needing a lot of help? I knew one thing: I was deeply disturbed about him and I needed a lot of help.
CHAPTER 14
GAVIN NEARLY DISINTEGRATED when he realised I was getting off the bus with him. His eyes rolled around like they weren’t attached to anything any more, and suddenly he was too weak to pick up his bag. I hadn’t said anything to him the night before about his being sent home early, or about the cat, but when I got up and headed down the aisle towards the door he knew that this was D-Day, this was the hour of power, and he was about to be nailed to the wall like the fox skins pegged out in the barn.
For a moment it seemed like he was going to stay on board, but then he realised he couldn’t do that, so he followed me off. But as soon as we were standing on the grass he ran up to me, turned me around and tried to push me back onto the bus. I wouldn’t let myself be pushed.
Instead, I set off for the school gate. He darted around and got between me and the gate, dropped his bag and, with both hands, grabbed me by the elbows.
Again he tried to push me back.
‘Gavin,’ I said into his furious eyes, ‘I have to talk to your teacher.’
I wasn’t trying to be smart by doing it this way. But if I’d told Gavin the night before, or at breakfast, he would never have got on the bus. Now, with so many kids streaming past, he was in a tough spot. He couldn’t throw too spectacular a tantrum without embarrassing himself big-time. Even so, he threw a very intense small one. His hands dropped down and grabbed my forearms, and he held and squeezed them so tight that I had bruises for four days afterwards. He tried to outstare me but I knew I couldn’t let myself be outstared so we locked eyes and, trying not to blink, I said, ‘I’ve got to find out what’s going on with you.’
He shook me then shook his head. Again he tried to push me away, this time down the street towards the high school, but other kids started to notice and stop and look. That didn’t stop him but it did slow him down a bit and make him more self-conscious. I felt sorry for him, but I felt sorry for the cat too. I said, ’Listen, kid, I’ve been bullied by experts,’ and I pushed him off and walked into the school.
It’s a bit strange going back to your old primary school. For one thing, they look like the same kids you were at school with and you have a weird feeling that you’ve jumped back a few years and they really are the same kids – that’s Fi over there with her back to you, Homer running past, Kevin hunched over a Game Boy with another kid who didn’t look like anyone I knew. But the ones who did look a bit like Fi and Homer and Kevin, when I saw their faces, it was quite disconcerting.
For another thing, you feel like a giant. Everything’s smaller, including the students of course, and you get a sense of just how much you have grown in the last few years. The doorways are smaller, the classrooms are smaller, the lockers are smaller, and how I ever managed to sit in those chairs is beyond the freakiest imagination.
The third thing is that you do get mobbed a bit, which might look quite glamorous when you see it happen to superstars on TV but is a bloody nuisance when you’re in a hurry and in a bad mood, and it does seem like the girls who most want to mob you are often the obnoxious ones. I’m talking about the ones I knew from the swimming pool or I knew their sisters or brothers or parents, or they were on my bus and their main reason in coming up to me seemed to be to show off to their friends that they knew me. Most of them could talk to me just about any time, so I don’t know why they suddenly had to make a big deal about it. This is pretty horrible to the nice ones, because of course there were plenty of those, but I was too stressed to notice them.
So I was motoring across the yard like a car through floodwater, throwing up a wake that consisted of Year 4 and 5 girls saying, ‘Hi Ellie, what are you here for, Ellie, you here to see Gavin’s teacher, are you coming to Brendan’s eighteenth, Ellie?’ and it was all I could do not to turn around and screech at them, ‘Bugger off, the lot of you.’
I knew her name was Mrs Rosedale, and of course I’d seen her plenty of times, but we’d never talked for more than a minute. And even then it was only about basic things like, ‘We could do with some rain,’ ‘Did Gavin give you his excursion money?’ ‘Sorry he was away yesterday but we had a couple of trees down after the storm,’ ‘Thanks for finding his library book.’
You’d think someone with a name like Mrs Rosedale would be really nice. I mean, it’s like that book where the kid stays with Aunt Bridget Wonkham-Strong, and then at the end he goes off to live with Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet, and you figure he’s got to be better off. Like, it wasn’t as if she was Mrs Grumpybitch or Mrs Sourtits. Gavin seemed to like her well enough. He never said much about her really, but then he never said much about school. She seemed nice enough from what I’d had to do with her, just one of those straight-down-the-line, you-know-what-you’re-getting, middle-of-the-road primary school teachers.
I didn’t even know what I wanted to say to her, just, more than anything I think, to talk to an adult who knew Gavin well and could give me some idea of how to deal with him. That nice dream of us all living together as a family, and Gavin being the brother I never had, was disintegrating fast, now that I had to be his mother and father as well as his sister.
I was actually a bit pissed off at my parents for leaving me with this problem, conveniently forgetting that I was the one who had lumbered them with ‘this problem’ in the first place.
Mrs Rosedale was in the library and she didn’t give me the brush-off, like I expected. I thought I’d have to make an appointment and come back later. ‘Sure, the kids have got Music,’ she said. ‘I’ll just be five minutes.’
While I was waiting I wandered along the shelves having a little nostalgic meander. The library had survived the war almost untouched: I remembered one of the teachers telling Mum that although people ha
d obviously borrowed books, they’d returned them too. There were about sixty that they couldn’t find. That was weird, all these invaders borrowing books from the Wirrawee Primary School library and returning them, like regular people.
It seemed in pretty good order now. I got a little thrill out of seeing my old friends, The Magic Faraway Tree, Who Sank the Boat?, Tiger in the Bush, Charlotte’s Web, Robinson Crusoe, Where’s Wally?, The Long Red Scarf . . . I ran my finger along their spines, wondering why I hadn’t shared more of them with Gavin. With each book came a film clip that ran in my mind: curled up in a cubby reading Tiger in the Bush, being in bed with Dad reading The Magic Faraway Tree, spilling orange juice on The Long Red Scarf.
‘Now, what can I do for you, Ellie?’ Mrs Rosedale said, and it was like a little slap, startling me back into the real world.
She led me into the side room. Before I could sit down she said, ‘I’m hoping you can give me a few tips on dealing with young Gavin.’
I felt like I’d been given a quick elbow to the stomach. I’d been rather hoping that she would sit down, open the inner taps of wisdom that most adults seem to have, and pour out wonderful words of advice that would solve all my problems.
‘Has he been a bit difficult?’ I asked. I felt embarrassed, as though Gavin’s behaviour was entirely my responsibility, so I should feel ashamed if he was not one of the best kids in the class.
She stretched her arms wide, rolled her eyes and laughed. ‘A bit difficult!’ she agreed. ‘He’s the original barrel of monkeys. Little bugger. We have a fight just about every day, but he still gets away with a lot, because with these big classes you can’t keep an eye on half of what’s going on.’
She got up and opened a window, then, still standing beside it, took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘I can get away with this in here, just,’ she said with another laugh. I started to think that she was rather a nervous person. ‘Ellie, the farm you live on, there wouldn’t be any empty houses, would there? That you’d be interested in renting? Or my partner could do some work around the place in exchange for rent?’
I felt more and more dejected. I wanted to get this conversation back on track. It was like going to the station and expecting to catch the seven forty-five to Stratton, only to find yourself on the eighty-thirty to Cobbler’s Bay.
‘No, sorry, there’s nothing like that,’ I said. It was awkward being put in this position, although it had happened a few times already, with the demand for housing, not to mention all the people who wanted a nice house in the country with fresh air and space. ‘Do you think Gavin’s been getting worse?’
‘Gavin? Well, possibly, a little, yes. He wasn’t too great to begin with.’
‘Has he been violent?’ I asked.
Violent!’ she said, puffing on her cigarette and pushing a strand of hair away from her eye. ‘God, every story he writes and every picture he draws. Mind you, there’s a few of them who see life that way, which won’t come as any surprise to you. But he is among the worst.’ She gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘If you had to read the number of gory stories I’ve marked since school started again . . . severed limbs and decapitated torsos and blood gushing like fountains. And some of the pictures are just collages of tanks and guns and body parts. Even the kids who didn’t see much violence during the war have been infected by it.’
‘So what am I meant to do about Gavin?’ I asked, feeling more helpless with every minute. ‘He seems to be acting a bit violently at times too.’
I wasn’t really being honest about him, but I didn’t want to give him too bad a name.
She had that teacher suspicion thing though, where they can smell a copied essay or a cruel joke or a fake excuse from a kilometre away. She frowned at me through the cigarette smoke. What’s he done now?’
It was too early in the morning for me to avoid teachers’ suspicious questions. And after all, I had come there for a bit of comfort and support. ‘Something to a cat,’ I stammered. ‘He was staying at Mark’s, and they did something pretty horrible to a cat.’
She pressed her lips together and looked away. ‘It might be time to do something about him,’ she said. ‘In the old days he would have been at the therapist’s long ago, but the resources are few and far between at the moment. Still, I think he’s about ready for some intervention. It’s a scandal that there are no integration aides.’
‘I don’t want to get him into trouble,’ I said. ‘I just want some ideas on how to handle him.’
‘Oh God, I’ve got every sympathy with you,’ she said. ‘And with him too for that matter. I haven’t got much idea of what he went through in the war, but I know it was horrendous, and then there was the terrible thing out at your place . . .’
‘The terrible thing’ – seemed like that was its new name.
‘Yeah, that came at the worst time,’ I agreed, and a moment later thought, ‘What a stupid comment.’ As if there’s ever a best time.
Mrs Rosedale looked at the end of her cigarette. ‘You know, I’ve really got to give these up,’ she said. A whole lot of children’s voices, laughing and squealing and chattering, suddenly came through the other row of windows behind me. It sounded like a horde of wasps setting out for a day in the garden.
‘You just have to try to ignore the bad behaviour and reinforce the good,’ Mrs Rosedale said. When he does something good, give him lots of praise, and don’t take any notice when he’s been naughty. And I’ll have a chat to Mrs Howell about him. That business of the cat sounds serious.’
Walking back to the high school, I felt pretty miserable. It wasn’t only that Mrs Rosedale had been no help, but there was the feeling that I might have made things worse. The last thing I wanted was a whole bunch of people who didn’t know anything much about our situation to come poking around. I knew I wasn’t doing a very good job with Gavin on my own, but I had the feeling that they might do worse.
CHAPTER 15
MY FIRST DATE with Jeremy was a wild and exotic experience. We didn’t limo into Stratton for an expensive dinner and the movies, we didn’t helicopter to New Zealand to spend the weekend with his father, we didn’t camp on Taylor’s Stitch and feast on lamb and wild mushrooms, we didn’t even go to McDonald’s.
We met under a tree at lunchtime, at the scoreboard end of the Wirrawee High School footy ground. I swapped him one of my curried lamb shanks for one of his cheese and Vegemite sandwiches. That’s what you do when you like someone.
It wasn’t a very good date, because I was depressed and irritated but trying to be bright and positive, not wanting Jeremy to see my worst side too early. But he seemed kind of distracted anyway. Neither of us even touched each other. It was hard to remember how warm and strong his hands had felt on my skin. Ten minutes before the bell we finally agreed to be honest and say what was bugging us, because by then it had become pretty obvious to each of us that the other one was pretty bugged.
Of course, as always, Jeremy, being the guy, got to go first. That increased my bugging just slightly, only by a couple of clicks, but I figured I’d be lucky to get two or three minutes by the time we’d sorted out his problems.
‘It’s this Liberation thing. It’s all getting pretty crazy. I think what we did was worth doing, because we basically prevented major terrorism, and there’s no way anyone official could have gone over the border and done it. But it’s getting out of hand. Have you seen all the stuff in the papers?’ His eyes were really beautiful, so full of life and intelligence.
I shook my head. ‘Haven’t had time.’
‘Well, I read papers, and my father keeps me up to date. Every drunken lunatic who wants to be a hero is charging across the border and attacking people. It’s still easy to get across, as you know better than anyone, and it’ll be ages before they manage to put up decent fences and all the rest. They’re talking about a DMZ, which could be quite wide, and filled with mines even–’
‘What’s a DMZ?’ I interrupted. Jeremy had slightly curly hair and it was quite
mussed up. I wanted to comb it into shape with my fingers.
‘De-militarised zone,’ he said. ‘A neutral area, but no-one’s allowed into it.’
‘Tell that to the kangaroos.’
‘Yeah, well, there won’t be any of those if it’s mined. Anyway, there were three guys from Stratton killed two nights ago when their car got shelled.’
‘On our side of the border?’ His skin, when his shirt was open, looked brown and smooth.
‘No, on their side. No-one even knows why they were over there, but there’s a theory that they were just joyriding. They’d been drinking or smoking or both. And then last weekend there was a revenge attack at a truck stop near Cobblers Bay, with this bunch of anonymous people who sure looked like they were enemy soldiers and they acted like they were enemy soldiers except they weren’t wearing uniforms, and they came out of the bush, killed six people, took their money and nicked off down the highway in a large new Mer.’
Yes, I heard about that one.’ I loved the pattern the sunlight and leaves made on his face. I shook my head, trying to concentrate on what he was saying.
‘So my father’s pushing pretty strongly for Liberation to do more, because they’re organised and efficient, and he thinks that strength is good, weakness is bad, and history shows you have to fight stuff like the attack at Cobblers. He’s not interested in the other stories, the ones about unprovoked attacks from our side. I keep telling him that history always repeats itself and history never repeats itself. Every situation–’
‘Hey that’s a paradox.’
‘Huh?’
‘History always repeats itself and history never repeats itself. Paradox.’
‘Yeah, well every situation’s different, even if it does have similarities to what’s happened in the past. And then–’
‘So every situation’s the same and every situation’s different? There’s another one.’
‘Ellie, we don’t have much time. I was going to say that it’s complicated by the fact that he doesn’t want me personally to get involved, which is really hypocritical of him, although he says it’s not, it’s just because I’m too young and inexperienced. But he knows that half the people in Liberation are young, and the ones who have experience train the ones who don’t.’