“No, Tate, you climbed through the window to hold our hands. You cut your arm, remember? Just to be with us.”
Jude watched Narnie put her arm around Tate. He didn’t know this Narnie. Her voice was stronger and he had spent the last two days not being able to look at her because her gaze was so sharp and focused that it pierced through him.
“Maybe he decided—” the cop started.
“No,” Narnie said, staring at him as if warning him against saying anything that would upset Tate. “My brother would never in a million years leave us. You quote all your statistics and what you’ve seen on this job but you don’t know Webb.”
The constable picked up his pen and began to record details, adopting an air of professionalism but deep down he felt a sorrow for these kids that made his insides churn.
“I need a photo,” he said, “and can I suggest a GP? My wife’s having a baby as well, you see.”
Narnie looked at Tate and nodded.
“Let’s start with his name,” the constable said.
We attend another meeting with the Townies and Cadets in the scout hall, ready to talk real issues and make intelligent demands. When Raffaela, Ben, and I arrive, some of the Townie girls are hanging around the entrance where Jonah Griggs and Anson Choi are just about to walk in. One of the girls approaches Jonah Griggs and just hands him her phone. No warm up, no “Hi, how are you, can I call you sometime?” She just hands over a mobile phone so he can record his number. I want to be petty and tell them we don’t have coverage out off the Jellicoe Road but that would just mean I cared.
“Sorry, we don’t have phone coverage off the Jellicoe Road,” Jonah Griggs says, handing it back and disappearing beyond the doors.
As I walk past the girls, I hear one say, “That’s his girlfriend,” and I stop and face them.
“What did you say?”
They ignore me with that wide-eyed how-uncool-is-this-girl-for-responding look on their face.
“I’m not his girlfriend,” I say forcefully.
“Well, good for us,” one of them says snidely.
“Not really,” Raffaela tells them. “He’s got a girlfriend and he’s madly in love with her. She lives next door back home.”
I am surprised by this news. Even more surprised that Raffy knows but then again Raffy has this way of knowing everything. As we enter the room, I ask the burning question as indifferently as I can. “How did you find out all that stuff about Griggs and his girlfriend?”
“It was easy. I lied.”
The meeting is a farce from the moment things get started. Santangelo is babysitting three of his sisters and they practise Beyoncé dance movements while the Mullet Brothers insist on playing their guitars.
“Your mother told my mother that she wants Jessa McKenzie for the holidays,” Raffaela tells Santangelo above the noise. “Do you guys know her?”
It’s the first I’ve heard of the plan and I feel an anxiety that I can’t explain.
“Oh, bloody wonderful,” he says bitterly. “Because there just aren’t enough women living in my house already.”
The Mullet Brothers fight amongst themselves the whole time and at one stage Anson Choi and Ben are trying to keep them off each other while having an argument themselves about musical pitch and when Jonah Griggs yells, “This is ridiculous! I’m not coming back,” I have to agree for once.
Outside, the Townie girls are still hanging around and while we wait for Ben, I notice them speaking to Griggs, who is very amused at what they have to say, which has to be fake because there is no way these girls would be witty.
We walk home, the Cadets behind us and, not really wanting the Cadets to listen to our conversation, Ben, Raffaela, and I walk in silence.
“You know what I’m going to do when I get back to camp, Choi?” Griggs says a bit too cheerfully.
“What, Griggs?”
“I’m going to write a letter to my next-door neighbour. She’s my girlfriend. We’re madly in love.”
Raffaela gives me a sideways glance and I can tell she’s trying not to laugh and I realise what Griggs found so amusing when he was talking to the Townie girls.
“I didn’t know you had a girlfriend, Griggs.” Anson Choi feigns surprise. “What’s her name?”
“I didn’t actually catch her name,” Griggs continues.
“Lily,” Raffaela says over her shoulder and this time I give her a sideways look.
“Great to know that I’m in love with a girl with a cool name.”
“It’s Taylor’s middle name,” Raffaela calls back again.
Placing Raffaela in the path of an oncoming car becomes one of the major priorities of the next ten seconds of my life.
“So apart from writing letters home to your fantasy girlfriends,” Ben says, walking backwards, “what do you guys do out here without television and phones?”
“Men’s business. Bit confidential,” Griggs says patronisingly.
“Wow, wish I were you,” Ben says, shaking his head with mock regret. “All I’ll be doing tonight is hanging out in Taylor’s bedroom, lying on her bed, sharing my earphones with her, hoping she won’t hog all the room because it’s such a tiny space.”
He gives them a wave. “Now you have fun with your men’s business and spare a thought for my plight.”
Griggs and Ben compete in a who-can-outstare-each-other-longer competition until Anson Choi drags Griggs away to the other side of the road.
I look at Ben then Raffaela. “What was that all about?” I whisper angrily. “The Lily thing and the hanging out in Taylor’s bedroom?”
They both have a what-did-we-do look on their faces.
“He just went from a zero to a two in my eyes for not smashing you, Ben!”
“How does he get to be a ten?”
I look over to the other side of the road and watch Griggs as he walks. It’s a lazy walk but so full of confidence that you want to be standing behind him all the way.
How does Jonah Griggs get to be a ten? He sits on a train with me when we’re fourteen and he weeps, tearing at his hair, bashing his head with the palm of his hand, self-hatred pouring out of him like blood from a gut wound in a war movie, and for the first time in my whole life I have a purpose. I am the holder of the grief and pain and guilt and passion of Jonah Griggs and as we sit huddled on the floor of the carriage, he allows me to hold him, to say, “Shhh, Jonah, it wasn’t your fault.” While his body still shakes from the convulsions, he takes hold of my hand and links my fingers with his and I feel someone else’s pain for the first time that I can remember.
The knock at my window that night frightens the hell out of me. I’ve used the window for years as an exit point, but nobody has used it as an entry and for a crazy moment I convince myself that the boy in the tree in my dreams is coming after me.
I get up from my computer and peer out and there, crouching on the ledge, is Griggs. He doesn’t ask to be let in. He just stands up, expecting me to step aside. Technically this could be considered against the rules of the territory wars but I open the window. He looks down at my singlet and underpants and stares for a long time as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Then he climbs in and looks around the room without commenting.
I walk to my drawers and put on my jumper, which hardly reaches my thighs.
“Hope you didn’t do that on my account.”
I don’t say anything and he casually leans against my desk, picking up the novel that’s sitting there.
“It’s bullshit,” he tells me, flicking through it. “There’s no such thing as Atticus Finch.”
I shrug. “It’d be good if there was, though. Why are you here?”
“Why else? The Club House,” he says.
I nod. “If we agree on this, we need to explain the rules to the Townies,” I tell him.
“Okay,” he says. “No ridiculous dress codes concocted by irrational women.”
It’s like he’s making things up off the top of his head.
/>
“It’s our men who are irrational,” I explain to him. “We prefer to be labelled as pragmatic and long-suffering.”
“So how do they get in here?”
“Who?”
“Your irrational men. Cassidy? The rest?”
For a moment I get a sense of why he’s really here. I feel my face flushing and see that his is, too.
I clear my throat and get back to business. “Ban for life on anyone who gets drunk.”
“No boy-band music.”
I don’t know what to say to that one because I’m making all this up as well.
“No…Benny Rogers.”
“Kenny,” he corrects.
“We insist that the Mullet Brothers don’t play every night.”
“Mullet Brothers?” After a moment he works out who I’m talking about and he nods. “We call them Heckle and Jeckle.”
“And you never step on my second-in-command’s fingers ever again.”
He nods once more. “My second-in-command? Choi? He DJs. He’ll want to do that at least once.”
I nod. Lots of nodding. It’s all too awkward. A few days ago I had brought up one of the most taboo subjects of his life and he had me pinned against the wall and here we are pretending it never happened.
“If this backfires, there’ll be a war,” I say.
“There already is a war. I think you forget that at times.”
“And you don’t?”
“Never. And you can’t afford to either.”
“Is that a warning?”
“Maybe. But let’s not make it complicated. Let’s just make sure it doesn’t backfire.”
He holds out a hand and I shake it and as I do he stands up from where he’s leaning against my desk and it’s like he hovers over me, which is strange because I’ve always been at eye-level with the boys around here.
I feel his fingers on my collarbone, faintly tracing the marks where my buttons scratched my skin when he grabbed me days before.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” I say quietly. “I don’t know why I did.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t come here to ask or give forgiveness.”
And it’s like a trigger word, making every pulse inside of me throb. “Forgive me,” I whisper, dizzy from the sensation.
He leans forward and our foreheads are almost touching and for a moment, a tiny moment, a slight vulnerability appears on his face.
“Nothing to forgive,” he says.
I shake my head. “No. That’s what he said. ‘Forgive me.’ It’s what the Hermit whispered in my ear before he shot himself.”
“My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted. It happened on the Jellicoe Road, the prettiest road I’d ever seen…”
Jude sat still, listening to a memory so sad that he wondered how Narnie could tell it so calmly, with so much clarity and detail. Over the years he’d had a fair idea of what had happened that night on the Jellicoe Road and sometimes he hated himself for wanting to be part of something so tragic. He wanted to be the hero riding by on a stolen bike. He wanted to be the one carrying their parents and Tate’s sister out of the cars. He wanted to belong to them. With them he found solace.
They sat by the river and he wanted to take Narnie’s hand but didn’t dare.
“Do you know why I couldn’t count how long it took my mother to die?”
As much as he knew that he didn’t want to hear the answer, he shook his head.
“Because she flew out that window. I could see her the whole time. From where I was sitting. And I knew she was dead straightaway because she didn’t have a head, Jude, and I stayed in that spot, not moving a single inch and everyone thought I was scared but I wasn’t. Because if I moved an inch, Webb would see her and you don’t know how much Webb loved her, Jude, and I would have died right there if I knew that Webb saw her like that. I would have…I would have….”
It was a despair he could not comprehend, spilling from her mouth. Not knowing any other way to stop her, he covered her mouth with his hand but she pulled it away.
“If he doesn’t come back, there’s no one left, Jude,” she whispered, the horror of it all there on her face. “They’re all gone. Everyone’s dead.”
He held her against him and for once he understood what she had felt every day that he had known her.
“Hold my hand,” she said, sobbing against him. “Hold my hand because I might disappear.”
Chapter 15
It’s peaceful like this, on my back. A loving sun caresses my face and it wraps me in a blanket of fluffy clouds, like the feeling of my mother’s hands when she first held me. For a moment I’m back there, in a place where I want to be.
But then somewhere up-river, a speedboat or Jet Ski causes a ripple effect and miniature waves slap water onto my face, like an angry hand of reprimand, and the shock of it almost causes me to go under. I fight hard to stay afloat and suddenly I remember the feeling of fear in my mother’s touch. Some say it’s impossible because you remember nothing when you’re five seconds old but I promise you this: I remember the tremble in my mother’s body when the midwife first placed me in her arms. I remember the feeling of slipping between those fingers. It’s like she never really managed to grab hold of me with a firmness that spoke of never letting go. It’s like she never got it right.
But that’s my job.
My body becomes a raft and there’s this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow. To close my eyes and let it take me. But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes—the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life.
For a moment I sense something flying menacingly low over me and I start with fright, losing my balance and this time I do go under. But the sky is a never-ending blue, no birds, no clouds. Just a stillness that tells me I’m the only person left in the world.
Until I see Jonah Griggs.
On my side of the river.
I breaststroke over and attempt to get out with as much dignity as possible. One is always at a disadvantage when standing dripping wet in one’s bathing suit, no matter how modest it is.
I try to think of the rules and begin to say in a strong assertive voice, “The Little Purple Book…”
“…states that any negotiated land must not be accessed by the enemy and, if caught, the handing over of territory is to take place with alacrity,” he finishes for me.
“You know the water access belongs to us. You are tres—”
Before I can say another word, a body comes flying over the river and lands, expertly, just next to me. Griggs and Anson Choi shake hands, the enjoyment so evident in their faces. For a moment I’m reminded that Griggs is just a typical guy our age. There’s a softness to his face that’s almost painful to see because it makes him vulnerable and to think of Jonah Griggs as vulnerable is to imagine him as a ten-year-old boy at the mercy of his father.
“So who does the air belong to?” he asks me. “Can’t recall that being in the Little Purple Book.”
“This is private property.”
“According to rule four-four-three of the Little Purple Book, private property is neutral ground.”
Nodding. Like I know rule four-four-three well. We are standing approximately one kilometre away from the Jellicoe Houses. The leaders would have a fit if they knew the Cadets were this close. If they get inside our Houses, we have to trade. If we get inside their tents, they have to trade.
I’m shivering from the cold and he must read a little panic in my eyes.
“Don’t worry,” he says before his whistle pierces my eardrum. A rope comes flying across and he grabs it. “Today, we’re just practising.”
Ben and Raff
y are dumbfounded.
“They’re planning an invasion, aren’t they?”
I nod.
“Pretty gutsy,” Ben says with a whistle.
“How about the Townies?” Raffy asks. “We can ask for their help and finalise this deal.”
I shake my head. The Townies would want something from us. We don’t have much to give.
“Just say they get into the Houses?” she asks.
“Tell me the rule about invasion?” I say to her.
“You need six enemies in your territory to confirm it as an invasion. If they attempt twice and fail both times, we get to negotiate diplomatic immunity for the rest of their stay.”
“Today’s attempt was just two of them, so it doesn’t count.”
I look outside the window. Any movement sets me on edge. We’re studying Macbeth in Drama and any moment I expect Birnam Wood to come to Dunsinane. That would be just their thing.
“I’m going to Hannah’s,” I say.
I see the disappointment on both their faces.
“Taylor, please. This isn’t the time. We need to concentrate on the territory wars just for this week,” Raffy says.
I begin walking out of the room and they’re on my tail. “I want cows,” I tell them.
“Cows?”
Outside the House they are still trying to keep up. “This isn’t going to be like…that cat thing, is it?” Ben asks.
I see Raffy signal Ben to be quiet. Any talk of the drowning of the cat has been off-limits. Like an unwritten rule.
“Hannah wanted me to work on the garden and I never did.”
“Hannah’s house isn’t the issue here, Taylor,” Raffy says.
“Yes it is.” I continue walking.
Ben grabs my arm. “Then I’m taking over,” he says angrily. “Go work on Hannah’s house but I’m working on those Cadets not getting within one metre of us. All you can think of is planting—”
“Manure,” I tell them. “All over her front garden. Perfect for growing vegetables.”
It’s like he wants to hit me with frustration. “You’re losing it!” he shouts. “No one wants to tell you that, but you…” I see the light go on. “…You are a genius.”