Authors: John Marsden
To be honest, I think I was on the point of being hysterical, so any little thing struck me as crazily funny, and I remember my friends looking at me a bit strangely and saying, ‘Actually that wasn’t especially funny, Ellie,’ when I laughed till I nearly wept over someone dropping the ball in PE.
Wirrawee High School could have been called Wirrawee psychiatric hospital that week I think, because I wasn’t the only one cracking up. The first time I saw Jeremy I made a little noise without meaning to; one of those little ‘Oh’ noises of shock or surprise that only humans seem to make. I’ve never heard any of the cattle make a noise like that when they’re in the paddock chewing the cud and having a yarn to a neighbour about the price of clover and then they turn around and see me. That’s probably one reason other creatures survive better in the wild than we humans. Those little ‘Oh’ noises give us away every time.
Dealing with relationship issues, apart from my relationship with Gavin, was not something I particularly wanted to do right at this point. But I had to do something about Jeremy. I was still bewildered by the complete change in him, the way he’d gone from nice and modest and strong and intelligent to mean and jealous in one conversation.
He frowned at me when I did the ‘Oh’ thing to him, then looked away again. He was in the concrete area near the canteen, outside the boys’ toilets, leaning against a post. He looked terrible, which is why I went ‘Oh’. I don’t know whether it’s possible for a person to lose five kilos in a week, but if it is I want to know about it. I shouldn’t try to be funny, though, because he really looked gaunt. That’s a nice word, gaunt. I don’t think I’ve ever used it before, although there are plenty of times when I could have, during the war. Or even when Gavin and I came home after being locked up in the house in Havelock. I hope we didn’t look as bad as Jeremy, although we probably did. It wasn’t just that he’d lost weight. Jeremy was normally so neat and clean, but now he looked like he’d been lending his clothes to a homeless person and just got them back, and what’s more, he’d run out of shampoo last Christmas and was still waiting to get a new bottle.
I went to him, feeling the anger I’d built up against him leave my body in a rush, because he really didn’t look well. He turned away quickly and made it obvious that he wasn’t hanging out for a long friendly chat.
‘Hi Jeremy.
‘Do you want to talk about the other day?
‘Cos it would be good if we could talk about it.
‘I guess you’re not in a mood to talk, huh.
‘Are you okay?
‘When’s your dad taking you back to New Zealand?
‘I’ll miss you if you go.
‘Your dad was great in the court case. I think he really made a difference. The judge is announcing his decision on Monday. I don’t know what my chances are. And the sale is on tomorrow. I really should be home getting ready for it.’
Well, I got that right. I should have been home preparing for it. But it was too lonely there with Gavin gone. I drifted away from Jeremy, embarrassed that people had been lounging around listening to my attempted conversation and staring at us like we were interesting specimens at the zoo. Instead I went and found Bronte and Homer to see if we could nick off at lunchtime. They had promised to help me do all the last-minute stuff for the sale, but Homer wanted to go to Maths after lunch, so I went with him and then wished I hadn’t because it just reminded me of how far behind I was and how little I understood. I was really down to two choices now with school: either repeat or seek special consideration. Or drop out, I guess that was the third choice.
Back on the farm, down in the old farmyard, Bronte and I started with a swift gardening job while Homer vacuumed the house. It was an honour to be weeding with the Scarlet Pimple. I told her that and then asked her about Jeremy.
‘I don’t think he’s too well,’ she said. ‘He’s cutting a lot of classes and not talking to anyone. Not even you by the sound of it. Poor guy.’
‘What do you think’s going on?’
‘I don’t know. I guess he’s depressed. There’s a lot of it going around. Highly infectious apparently. You should have worn a mask while you were talking to him.’
‘Ha ha very funny,’ I said automatically.
‘How come you didn’t get depressed with all the stuff that’s happened to you?’ she asked.
‘Are you kidding? I got depressed all right. I’m depressed at the moment about Gavin. But no, I know what you mean, I never get it the way some people get it. It’d be terrible to have what Jeremy’s got. I don’t know why I don’t. Some people are made that way and some people aren’t, I guess.’
‘There must be more to it than that.’
‘Yes . . . well I suppose my parents gave me really strong foundations. I’ve always thought I could cope with everything that came along, eventually. Like, sure there’s the short-term pain, the short-term agony even, but I always feel like I’ll come through it.’
‘Light at the end of the tunnel.’
‘Yeah, corny, but that’s it. Let’s do the circular garden now.’
As we picked up the little forks and took our gloves off I continued the conversation. ‘I talked to this girl once about Tao, that was good.’
‘Yeah, you told me about that. I meant to look it up but I forgot.’
‘And I do know that emotions always change sooner or later, so I use that a lot when I’m feeling depressed.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, you can’t tell the future with emotions, that’s another way of putting it. So if it’s five o’clock Friday, which it is, and I’m going for a run at six o’clock which I wouldn’t mind doing by the way, if you’re up for it, it’s a waste of time for me to moon around now saying, “Oh I hate the idea of going for a run, I’m so tired and it’ll be so hard,” because I don’t know how I’ll feel at six o’clock. At one minute to six I may get a sudden rush of energy and think there’s no better idea in the universe than going for a run.’
‘But you may feel totally exhausted at one minute to six and think it’s the last thing you want to do.’
‘Oh sure. And in that case I probably won’t go. Or I will if I think I really need to. Which I do. So sometimes emotions clash with your duty or your logic or what you know you really need to do. I’ll give you a better example. The sale is at three o’clock tomorrow, and right now I could feel really depressed about it. But I tell myself, “Well Ellie, as you have no idea how you’re going to feel when it actually happens, why not wait till then before you get depressed?”’
‘But you must know some experiences are more likely to get you down than others,’ Bronte said. ‘I mean, I don’t want to depress you now but the chances of your feeling wildly happy tomorrow probably aren’t too good.’
‘Well you know, I’m not so sure about that,’ I said. ‘Great though the wisdom of the Scarlet Pimple undoubtedly is, she’s not always right. I’ve actually been getting the feeling that it might almost be a relief. I’m just too young to run this place. It’s not that I make a lot of mistakes, everyone does that, even Dad did, and I haven’t made any terminal ones. I’ve probably done an OK job, considering. But I don’t have the emotional something for it yet. Like I said, my parents gave me strong foundations and life’s added quite a bit to that, but there’s something I still don’t have. I can’t even name it. Being able to carry a whole big thing on your own for a long time, that’s what it’s about. I can carry a lot, and I can carry big stuff for a short time, but to do it on your own, for years and years, I’m not ready for that yet. I will be some day, and if I win the court case I’ll have to do it with Gavin, and I’m a bit scared of that to be honest, but I can’t imagine we’ll win the case anyway, so it mightn’t be a problem.’
We weeded on in silence for a while, after my long speech. Then we took the piles of thistles and sorrel and God knows what else to the dump, in the back of the ute. It’d be someone else’s dump after tomorrow. Someone else would see the discarded packing of our lives. As I swept the last bits out of the back Bronte propped herself on a rake and looked at me.
‘Are you still in love with Jeremy?’ she asked.
‘No, I don’t think so. Not because he’s got mental problems. I don’t know. I don’t think I was ever that in love with him in the first place.’
‘But you are in love.’
I paused. Yes I was. And always had been. I just hadn’t noticed for a while. Trust Bronte. She was the cleverest person I’d ever met. She knew everything.
‘He loves you too,’ she said.
‘Do you think so?’
‘I know it.’
‘Has he said something to you?’
‘Not specifically. Not that. But when he talks about you, especially when he talks about what you went through during the war, it’s like he’s bursting with love. He adores you.’
‘Wow. Wow. Are you sure? Oh wow.’
We got in the car and drove back. Luckily the ute knew the way to the house without my having to do anything. If I’d needed to navigate we might have ended up at Uluru.
I
WAS UP
bright and early. Well, early anyway. Bronte had stayed the night and Lee turned up for breakfast, along with Homer. Fi arrived about ten, so we had a good chance to get a lot done, although there were heaps of interruptions. I knew that no matter how much work we did, the place wasn’t going to be perfect, so I just had to accept that.
Fi brought a lot of flowers with her, because there weren’t too many in our garden compared to when my mother looked after it, so she started putting those in vases all through the house. Homer and Lee got stuck into the machinery shed, tidying it up a bit more, and Bronte and I cleaned away breakfast. Then I did a mow while Bronte cut back the grass around the dog pens. Fi started baking scones, so there’d be a nice smell through the house for the final inspection. Not everyone can cope with our stove but Fi handled it with ease.
Marmie ran around and got in everyone’s way, while I tried to check that she wasn’t doing a dump anywhere.
After Madeleine’s report I was very self-conscious about dogs doing stuff they weren’t meant to. Well, doing it in places they weren’t meant to, anyway.
At least the auction and all the preparations were taking my mind off Gavin. I hadn’t seen him since Thursday and I’d told him I probably wouldn’t be able to visit today, although maybe I’d get there if the sale was over quickly. The cottage he was in didn’t look too bad and he said the other kids were OK, but they were all older than him, and I noticed he didn’t mix with them. He said the food was crap, but Gavin always says that, even about the meals I make sometimes. Which admittedly aren’t always perfect.
We’d already had a couple of open days for buyers to come and have a look, plus Jerry Parsons had been bringing people for private inspections almost every day, so the place wasn’t really too messy. At one-thirty they were allowed to poke around again, so we had to be done by then. It was such a violation, having all these strangers trample around making loud comments on the way you do things, but that’s the way it was and if all went well I wouldn’t have to worry about it again after today.
Mr Parsons was good, he got there at about noon, with his son and daughter, who came along for the ride. They even brought their own lunch. I knew Justin from school. He was a good kid who was into outdoors stuff and wanted to be a farmer. They pitched in and helped too, moving a pile of roofing iron which we hadn’t had time to move ourselves. Don’t know how many snakes they found under it but I reckon there would have been one or two. The crowd started coming in early, about one-fifteen. Jerry Parsons had an assistant at the front gate, and they were in contact by walkie-talkie, but it got to the point where he said he couldn’t hold them much longer, so in they stampeded. It was like an endless convoy coming up the driveway. I didn’t know there were that many people in Wirrawee. But there’s nothing like an auction to get people out and about. Everyone loves an auction, except when it’s your own I guess, cos I wasn’t too much in love with this one.
I was glad Gavin wasn’t there to see it. His bedroom was the neatest it had ever been, thanks to Fi, but he wouldn’t have recognised it. There could have been three hundred people go through it during the afternoon. As Homer said, I wish I’d sold tickets. Homer was great and I stuck close to him. Lee kept a low profile. This kind of thing wasn’t his scene.
I saw people I hadn’t seen in years, along with all the old familiar faces of course. Homer’s parents were there, being potential bidders, not to mention being my guardians. But really, it was like Ms Randall had picked up on, they didn’t often waste too much time with that. There were all the other neighbours: the Youngs, whom I’d grown to love like they were a second family; the Lucases; the Nelsons, who were as bad as Mr Rodd. Mrs Rowntree, from Tara, with her new husband, a horse trainer. They were turning their place into a horse stud. Young Tammie Murdoch, who was as wild as her grandmother, and had inherited the family property just the other day. Jodie Lewis, from Wirrawee, who’d been run over ages ago, and was in hospital for ages, and she still wasn’t right, even though she was walking again. The McPhails and Randall, the big lout, still living at home and sponging off his parents. Col McCann. I felt so guilty about his bull. I wondered if he’d sent it to the abattoir. He’d never mentioned the two dead men to me, but I hadn’t asked either. Mr Roxburgh, from Gowan Brae, one of the best farmers in the district; Mrs Leung, who’d lost her husband in the war; and Mr Jay, who must have been ninety-five but hadn’t aged a day in the last five years and who I was now convinced would live forever. Sal Grinaldi was there, wanting to tell me a joke, and Mr George, and Morrie Cavendish complaining about rainfall, and my good mate Jack Edgecombe. Even the Kings came down from the hills.
At the same time, though, there were so many people I didn’t know, most of the crowd in fact, that it made me realise even more forcefully how things were changing. The old days were gone, that was for sure, and after today they’d be a bit more gone.
I don’t know how many people were actually thinking of buying the place. Could have been none. It wouldn’t have surprised me. No, the Linton place was the main tourist attraction in the Wirrawee district this weekend and everyone had turned up for the free entertainment.