Fi asked me about Lee then and I said simply 'I love him'. She didn't comment, and I found myself going on. 'He's so different to anyone I've ever known. It's like he's coming out of my dreams sometimes. He seems so much more mature than most of those guys at school. I don't know how he stands them. I guess that's why he keeps to himself so much. But you know, I get the feeling that he'll do something great in life; I don't know what, be famous or be Prime Minister or something. I can't see him staying in Wirrawee all his life. I just think there's so much to him.'
'The way he took that bullet wound was incredible,' Fi said. 'He was so calm about it. If that had happened to me I'd still be in shock. But you know, Ellie, I'd never have picked you and Lee as a likely couple. I think it's amazing. But you go so well together.'
'Well how about you and Homer!'
We both laughed and settled down to watch the bridge. The hours ground slowly on. Fi even slept for twenty minutes or so. I could hardly believe it, although when I challenged her she denied furiously that she'd even closed her eyes. For me the tension grew as the time passed. I just wanted to get it over with, this mad reckless thing that we'd talked ourselves into doing.
The trouble was that there was no convoy. Homer and Lee had wanted to come in behind a convoy to guarantee themselves a period of grace before the next lot of traffic came along. But as the time got close to 4 am the road stayed frustratingly empty.
Then suddenly there was a change in the pattern of activity on the bridge. The sentries were all down the Cobbler's Bay end but even from our distance I could see them become more alert, more awake. They gathered in the centre of the bridge and stood looking down the road, in the opposite direction to us. I nudged Fi.
'Something's going on,' I said. 'Might be a convoy.' We stood and looked, straining our eyes to peer down the dark highway. But it was the behaviour of the sentries that again told us what was happening. They started backing away, then their little group broke up and they split, half going to one side of the bridge, half to the other. One ran in little circles for a moment, then started running down the road towards Wirrawee, then changed his mind, and he too fled to the side.
'It's the cattle,' I said. 'It's got to be.'
We sprinted for the tanker, leaving the silent, useless walkie-talkie behind. There was no time to wonder about a patrol coming down the street. We leapt into the truck and started the engine. I put it in gear and looked up, and although speed was now vital to us, I couldn't help but lose a second as I caught the wonderful view on the bridge. A hundred or more head of beef, prime Hereford cattle, beautiful big red beasts, were steaming onto the old wooden structure like a mighty train of meat. And they were steaming. Even at this distance I could hear the thunder of the hooves on the timber. They were going like wound-up locomotives.
'Wow,' I breathed.
'Go!' screamed Fi.
I pressed the accelerator and the tanker lumbered forward. We had about five hundred metres to go and I was pumping adrenalin so hard I felt immune to danger, to bullets, to anything. 'Go!' cried Fi again. As we came in under the bridge I slid the tanker as far across to the left as I could get it, so that it was nestled under the lowest section of the superstructure. The trick was to do it without sideswiping the pylon and causing sparks, which might have finished Fi and me off quickly and horribly. But we got in there nice and close, leaving less than two metres clearance between the top of the tanker and the bridge. That was the first time any of us had thought of the possibility of the tanker not fitting under the bridge at all; it was a little too late by then to consider that problem. We'd been lucky. Fi couldn't get her door open because she was so close to the pylon, so she started sliding across to my side. I half leapt, half fell out of the cab. Above my head the bridge shook and thundered as the first of the stampeding cattle reached our end. I was going up the ladder to the top of the tanker as Fi came out of the truck and without looking at me sprinted for the motorbikes. This run, which I too would have to do in a moment, was our greatest risk. It was across clear ground for about two hundred metres, to where we'd hidden the bikes in the bushes. There was no cover, no protection from any angry bullets that might come buzzing after us. I shook my head to clear the frightening thoughts, and ran along the walkway on top of the trailer, crouched over to avoid hitting the bottom of the bridge. When I reached the rope I glanced up. Fi had disappeared and I had to hope she'd made the bushes safely. I started pulling out the rope, coil after sopping coil, throwing it to the roadway below. The fumes were terrible in that confined space. They made me giddy and gave me an instant headache. Another thing we should have thought of, I realised: a sinker to tie to the end of the rope that had to stay in the tank, to stop it being pulled out when I ran off with the other end. Too late for that now. All I could do was jam the lid down as tightly as possible and hope that would hold it in.
I scrambled back down the ladder. It seemed to have taken forever to get the rope out. All that time I'd been oblivious of the thunder just centimetres above my head, but now I noticed that it was starting to lessen. I could make out individual hooves. I broke out in an instant sweat, found the loose end of the rope, grabbed it and ran. I had petrol all over me, had been breathing petrol, and felt very odd as a result, as though I was floating across the grass. But it wasn't a pleasant float, more the sort of floating that made me seasick.
I was about a hundred metres from the bushes when I heard two sounds at once; one that was welcome, one that was not. The welcome sound was the throbbing of the motorbikes. The unwelcome one was a shout from the bridge.
There are sounds the throat produces which may not be in English, but which have an unmistakable meaning. When I was little I'd had a dog called Rufus, who was a border-collie springer-spaniel cross. He was just a natural rabbiter, and I used to take him out most afternoons for the joy of seeing him at full stretch after a fleeing rabbit. Whenever he was in hot pursuit he uttered a peculiar high-pitched yelp, that he never used at any other time. It didn't matter where I was or what I was doing, when I heard that sound I knew Rufus was chasing a rabbit.
The shout from the bridge, although not in my language, was unmistakable too. It was a shout of 'Alarm! Come quickly!' Although I had a hundred metres to go it suddenly looked forever. I felt that I would never reach my target, that I could never cover so much ground, that I could run for the rest of my life and not get to safety. That was a terrible moment, when I came very close to death. I entered a strange state when I felt as though I was now in the territory of death, even though no bullet had struck me. I don't know if a bullet had even been fired. But if a bullet had struck me then I don't think I would have felt it. Only living people can feel pain, and I was floating away from the world that living people inhabit.
Then Fi appeared and screamed, 'Oh Ellie, please!' She was standing in the bushes but she seemed right in front of me, and her face looked huge. It was the word 'please' that reached me I think: it made me feel that she needed me, that I was important to her. Our friendship, love, whatever you want to call it, reached across the bare ground and reeled me in. I became aware that there were bullets stinging through the air, that I was pounding hard across the ground, that I was gasping for breath and that my chest hurt, and then I was in the safety of the trees and stumbling towards the motorbikes, dropping the end of the rope for Fi to gather it. I would have liked to hug Fi, but I was rational enough to know that I was a petrol-soaked leper, and a hug from me would have been a death sentence for Fi.
I grabbed the furthest bike and kicked it off its stand, then swung it round to face Fi. As I did there was a whoosh, and a string of fire began to speed across the grass. Fi came running back. To my surprise her face was alight, not with flame but from within. She was utterly elated. I began to wonder if there was a secret pyromaniac lurking inside her somewhere. She grabbed her bike; we wheeled them around and spun the back wheels doing takeoffs that dug gouges in the well-tended grass of the Wirrawee picnic grounds. Fi led the way,
with wild war whoops. And yes, I admit now that we were the ones who did the wheelies on the seventh green of the golf course. I'm sorry. It was very immature of us.
Chapter Twenty-two
When we met Homer and Lee, up in a gully behind the Fleets' house, there was a babble of noise for about ten minutes, with everyone trying to talk at once. Relief, excitement, explanations, apologies.
'Everybody shut up!' Lee finally yelled, using Homer's tactic, and in the sudden silence said, 'There, that's better. Now Fi, you go first.' We told our stories, then the boys told theirs. Feeling safer on their side of the river, they had stayed to watch the explosion; the earthquake that we had only heard and felt.
'Oh Ellie,' Homer said, 'it was the greatest thing I've ever seen.' I began to fear that we'd turned him into a pyromaniac too.
'Yeah,' said Lee. 'It was a real blast.'
'Tell us everything,' I said. 'Take your time. We've got all day.' The morning had begun and we were breakfasting on cans from the Fleets' pantry. I had baked beans and tuna. I was feeling pretty good; I'd had a predawn swim in the dam and was glad to have washed the last of the petrol from my skin. I was in the mood to be treated gently, and was looking forward to snuggling into Lee for most of the day. But in the meantime I was happy to lie back and close my eyes and hear a bedtime story.
'Well,' Homer said. 'It went so well at first. We got to the stud with no hassles, although pushing those bikes for the last few k's was hard work.' Homer had done it twice; taking his bike to the hiding place, then going back for Lee's. 'As you know,' he went on, 'our plan was for me to do the mustering and get them out to the road nice and quietly. Then Lee was going to hide on the road and jump out at them with the flash, while I used the prod to stampede them.'
'We'd only been able to find one prod and we'd ruled out the aerosol can as too dangerous, but we'd found a battery-operated flash attachment for a camera, and Homer was confident that the quick, blinding flashes of light would do the trick.'
'So there we were,' Homer continued. 'Nicely set up, just lying back in the paddock, watching the stars and dreaming of huge fresh T-bone steaks. We had a few chats to you, as you know, and we were happy to wait for a convoy to roll through. Then we hit our two big problems. One was that no convoy came. That wouldn't have been so bad maybe, if we could at least have called you and told you we were going ahead anyway. Although there was still the big danger that we'd suddenly find a convoy up our backsides. But the other problem was that the bloody walkie-talkie packed it in. We couldn't believe it. We tried everything—in the end Lee just about took it to bits—but it was as dead as the dinosaurs.
'Well, we were pretty desperate. We knew you'd be sitting there, in a lot of danger, waiting for a signal that wasn't going to come. We got close to panic at that point, I guess. We had two choices—to go ahead with the cattle and hope you'd be able to react in time, or to call it off. But we couldn't call it off without telling you—that would have left you in an impossible situation. That was a weakness in our planning—we relied too much on the walkie-talkies. That's one thing I've learnt—don't put too much trust in machines.'
'So we only had one choice really. It was getting so late we couldn't wait any longer for a convoy. Lee went out in the road to do his flashing, and I got the cattle moving.'
'How?' Fi asked.
'Eh?'
'How? How do you get a big mob of cattle to do what you want, in the middle of the night?'
I remembered she'd wanted an answer to this question before. She was serious about becoming a rural.
'Well,' said Homer, looking a bit silly. 'You hiss.'
'You what?'
'You hiss. Old cattleman's trick. Old Miss Bamford taught me. They don't like hissing, so you walk around behind them making like a snake.'
I half expected to see Fi take out a notebook and earnestly write it down. Having given away one of his professional secrets, Homer went on.
'Our big ambition was to hold them in the road until the sentries were at the right end of the bridge, but it was hopeless. The cattle were too restless and we were scared that a convoy or a patrol would turn up. So we got the prod and the flash and away we went.'
'It was fun,' Lee said reflectively. 'Except for the first few seconds, when I thought they were going to charge me.'
'But the guards were at the right end of the bridge,' I said. 'They were in the perfect spot.'
'Were they? Well, that's the best bit of luck we had in the whole business then. That was totally unplanned. We just worked the cattle up to a frenzy, till they were outrunning us, then we raced back and got the bikes. Next thing we saw was when we stopped the bikes along the riverbank to have a look. And I tell you what, I wished we'd brought the camera as well as the flash. It was unbelievable. The last cattle were rumbling off the bridge, and the soldiers were still hanging off the sides of it, but they were firing at you Ellie, like it was the duck season. Ellie, to the end of my days I'll never understand how those bullets didn't hit you. The air must have been just full of them. We were screaming: "Go Ellie, go, go!" You were still holding the rope, that was the amazing thing. We could see the tanker sitting patiently under the bridge, waiting to be blown up. Then you disappeared into the bushes. Tell the truth, you seemed to float into them, like an angel. I had this bizarre idea that you'd been hit and you were dead and I was watching your spirit.'
I just laughed and didn't say a word.
'Then,' Homer said, 'a second later along came this flame. I don't think the soldiers could work it out. They just stood there, pointing at it and calling to each other. They couldn't see the tanker, cos it was tucked very nicely in under the bridge. But then they all suddenly decided that they were in danger. They turned around and went belting off the bridge. They were just in time. You'll be glad to know,' he said, looking at me, 'that I don't think any of them were hurt.'
I nodded a thank-you to him. It meant a lot to me, but not everything. If I knowingly did things like blowing up bridges, then the fact that by sheer good luck no one was hurt didn't let me off the hook. Once I'd made my decision to go with the tanker I'd been ready to live with the consequences, whatever they were.
'There was a pause of another second,' Homer went on. 'And then she blew. I tell you, I've never seen anything like it. The bridge lifted about five metres at the tanker end. It actually hung in the air for a few seconds, before it fell back. But when it fell back everything seemed just slightly out of alignment. Then suddenly there was a second explosion and bits flew everywhere. This massive fireball went straight up, then there were two more explosions, and all we could see was fire. There were spot fires everywhere, as well as the main fire. The whole park seemed to be burning, let alone the bridge. Like Lee said, it was a real blast.'
'Well, Wirrawee's been wanting a new bridge for a long time,' Lee said. 'Looks like they'll have to get one now.'
Homer's bedtime story had been exciting, and I'd enjoyed it, even though I was almost scared by the power of what we'd done, and what we were able to do. The only thing Homer had left out was the way he'd wept when he'd found us both safe. I saw the sweetness of Homer then, that he'd had as a little guy, but which some people probably though he'd lost as a teenager.
We went off to some shady spots in among the rocks. Lee had first sentry duty. I wanted to sit up with him, to keep him company, but suddenly a wave of fatigue hit me, so powerfully that I really did buckle at the knees. I crawled into a cool gap between some boulders, and with a purloined pillow made myself comfortable. I went into a sleep so deep that it was more like unconsciousness. Lee told me later that he'd tried to get me up to do a sentry turn, but he couldn't wake me, so he did my shift for me. I didn't wake till 4 o'clock.
It was nearly dark before any of us showed much life or energy. The only thing that got us going was a desire to get home, to see the other four again. We decided it was safe to use the bikes—we worked out a route that would both take us back to my place, where we'd left the Land
rover, and a leapfrog pattern of travelling that should protect us from unwelcome patrols.
It's funny, when I look back on that trip, I wonder why I didn't feel any premonition. We were all too tired I suppose, and we felt that the worst was over and we'd done our job and now we deserved a rest. You're sort of brought up to believe that that's the way life should be.
So, at about ten o'clock we set off. We were careful, we travelled slowly, we were as quiet as possible. It was about midnight when we rode up my familiar driveway, bypassing the house and going straight to the garage. The Landrover was hidden in the bush, but I wanted some more tools from the shed. I switched the bike off and put it on its stand then turned the corner into the big machinery shed.
What I saw there was like one of those Christmas tableaus at church, with Joseph and Mary and the shepherds and stuff, standing in their positions, lifelike but frozen. The tableau in our shed was lit by a dim torch, its batteries starting to weaken. Kevin was sitting against an old woolpress that was up against the wall. Crouched beside him was Robyn, with one hand on his shoulder. Chris was standing on his other side, looking down at Corrie. Corrie was lying across Kevin's lap. Her eyes were closed and her head was back and there was no colour in her face. As I stood there Kevin and Chris and Robyn all turned their faces towards me, but Corrie still didn't open her eyes. I couldn't move. It was as though I too had joined the tableau.
Then Kevin said, 'She's been shot Ellie'.
His voice broke the spell. I ran forward and knelt beside Corrie. I heard the exclamations from Homer and the others as they came into the shed, but I had eyes only for Corrie. There was a little blood coming out of her mouth, tiny bright bubbles of pink blood.
'Where was she hit?' I asked them.
'In the back,' Chris answered. He seemed almost unnaturally calm. Robyn was sobbing soundlessly; Kevin was shaking.