'Have I said something to upset you? Or done something?'
'No, no. It's just me. I don't know what I'm doing half the time, so I do things and I don't always mean what I think I mean. Do you know what I mean?' I asked, hopefully, because I wasn't sure myself.
'So you're saying it didn't mean anything?'
'I don't know. It meant something, at the time, and it means something now, but I don't know if it means what you seem to want it to mean. Why don't we just say I was being a slut, and leave it at that.'
He looked really hurt and I was sorry I'd said that. I hadn't even meant it.
'It's a bit difficult sitting down here,' he said. 'If you want to get rid of me, you're the one who'll have to go.'
'Oh Lee, I don't want to get rid of you. I don't want to get rid of anyone. We all have to get on, living in this place the way we are, for God knows how long.'
'Yes,' he said. 'This place, Hell. It seems like Hell sometimes. Now for instance.'
I don't know why I was talking the way I was. It was all happening too unexpectedly. It was a conversation I wasn't ready for. I guess I like to be in control of things, and Lee had forced this on me at a time and a place that he'd chosen. I wished Corrie were there, so I could go and talk to her about it. Lee was so intense he scared me, but at the same time I felt something strong when he was around—I just didn't know what it was. I was always very conscious when I was near him. My skin felt hotter, I'd be watching him out of the corner of my eye, directing my comments at him, noticing his reactions, listening more for his words than for anyone else's. If he expressed an opinion I'd think about it more carefully, give it more weight than I would, say, Kevin's or Chris's. I used to think about him a lot in my sleeping bag at nights, and because I'd be thinking about him as I drifted into sleep I tended to dream about him. It got so that—this sounds stupid but it's true—I associated him with my sleeping bag. When I looked at one I'd think of the other. That doesn't necessarily mean I wanted him in my sleeping bag, but they had started to go together in my mind. I nearly smiled as I sat there, thinking about that, and wondering how he'd look if he could suddenly read my thoughts.
'Do you still think about Steve a lot?' he asked.
'No, not Steve. Oh I mean I think about him in the same way I think about a lot of people, wondering if they're all right and hoping they are, but I don't think about him in the way you mean.'
'Well if I haven't offended you and you're not with Steve any more, then where does that leave me?' he asked, getting exasperated. 'Do you just dislike me as a person?'
'No,' I said, horrified at that idea but getting a bit annoyed too, at the way he was trying to bully me into a relationship. Guys do that all the time. They want definite answers—as long as they're the right answers—and they think if they keep at you long enough they'll get them.
'Look,' I said, 'sorry I can't give you a list of my feelings about you, in point form and alphabetical order. But I just can't. I'm all confused. That day in the haystack was no accident. It meant something. I'm still trying to figure out what.'
'You say you don't dislike me,' he said slowly, like he was trying to figure it out. He was looking away from me and he was very nervous, but he was obviously leading up to an important question. 'So that does mean you like me?'
'Yes Lee, I like you very much. But right now you're driving me crazy.' It was funny how often I'd thought of us having this conversation, but now that we were having it I didn't know if I was saying what I wanted to say.
'I've noticed you looking at Homer kind of ... special since we've been up here. Have you got a thing for him?'
'It'd be my business if I did.'
'Cos I don't think he's right for you.'
'Oh Lee, you're so annoying today! Maybe you shouldn't have tried walking on that leg. I honestly think it's weakened your brain. Let's blame it on that, or the weather or something, because you don't own me and you don't have any right to decide who's right or wrong for me, and don't you forget it.' I stormed off in a hot passion to the other side of the clearing where Fi and Homer had been making a yard for the chooks. The chooks were in it, looking shocked, maybe because they'd heard me chucking my tantrum; more likely because they were wondering what the hell they were doing there.
Oh. 'What the hell.' I just made a joke.
I watched the chooks for a while, then cut across the clearing again to where the creek wandered back into thick bush and lost itself in a dark tunnel of undergrowth. I'd been thinking for a few days I might try to explore down there a bit, impossible and impassable though it seemed. This might be the time to do it. I could work off some anger and get my mind onto something else. Besides, it looked cool in there. I took my boots and socks off, stuffed the socks in the boots, and tied the boots round my neck. Then I bent over and tried to pretend I was a wombat, a water wombat. I'm the right shape for that, and it was the only way to get under all the vegetation. I was using the creek as a path, but there was a definite sensation of going along a tunnel. The greenery arched so low that it scraped my back even when I was almost kissing the water. It was cool—I doubt if the sun had penetrated the creepers for years—and I hoped I wouldn't meet too many snakes.
The creek was narrower through here than it was in our clearing, about a metre and a half wide and as much as sixty centimetres deep. The bottom was all stones, but smooth and old ones, not too many with cutting edges, and anyway my feet were getting tough these days. There were quite a few dark still pools that looked very deep, so I avoided them. The creek just chattered on, minding its own business, not disturbed by my creeping progress. It had been flowing here for a long time.
I followed it for about a hundred metres, through many twists and turns. The beginning of the journey had been sweet, like most new journeys I suppose, and there was the hope that the ending might be sweet also, but the middle part was getting tedious. My back was aching and I'd been scratched quite sharply on the arms. I was starting to feel hot again. But the canopy of undergrowth seemed to be getting higher, and lighter—here and there glints of sunlight bounced off the water, and the secret coolness of the tunnel was giving way to the more ordinary dry heat that we'd had back in the clearing. I straightened up a little. There was a place well ahead where the creek seemed to widen for ten metres before it turned to the right and disappeared into undergrowth again. It spread out into a wider channel, because the banks were no longer vertical there. They angled gently back, and I could see black soil, red rocks, and patches of moss, in a little shadowy space not much bigger than our sitting room at home. I kept wading towards it, still bent-backed. There were little blue wildflowers scattered along the bank. As I got closer I could see a mass of pink wildflowers deeper in the bush, back from the creek. I looked again and realised that they were roses. My heart suddenly beat wildly. Roses! Here, in the middle of Hell! Impossible!
I splashed along the last few metres to the point where the banks began to open out, and sploshed out of the creek onto the mossy rock. Peering into the wild of the vegetation I struggled to distinguish between the shadows and the solid. The only certainty was the rosebush, its flowers catching enough sunlight through the brambles to glow like pieces of soft jewellery. But gradually I started to make sense of what I was seeing. Across there was a long horizontal of rotting black wood, here a pole serving as an upright, that dark space a doorway. I was looking at the overgrown shell of a hut.
I went forward slowly, on tiptoe. It was a quiet place and I had some sort of reverential feeling, like I did in my Stratton grandmother's drawing room, with its heavy old furniture and curtains always closed. The two places couldn't have been more different, the derelict bush hut and the solemn old sandstone house, but they both seemed a long way removed from living, from life. My grandmother wouldn't have liked being compared to a murderer, but she and the man who lived here had both withdrawn from the world, had created islands for themselves. It was as though they'd gone beyond the grave, even while they were stil
l on Earth.
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.