The Ellie Chronicles (27 page)

I thought about the little typed note from Major Gisborne.

Unconsciously maybe I was planning to do something this very lunchtime, because I did have my ‘J’Accuse’s with me, in my backpack. I grabbed my pen and wrote another note, the one I needed Sayle to sign.

Mrs Samuels was blowing her nose. I saw her eyes go big and wide over the top of her handkerchief. I knew how awkward it was for her, and I could guess how frightened she was at the thought of being busted by Mr Sayle for what she’d done. I wasn’t in the mood to hesitate but I realised I’d have to tread a bit more carefully than I’d planned.

‘Ellie,’ she said, sniffling a little. ‘How are you, dear? I’m afraid Mr Sayle’s busy at the moment . . . Ellie? Oh Ellie, you can’t –’

That was the last I heard of her voice as I opened his door and marched in. I probably wasn’t feeling quite as confident as I hoped I looked. But at the same time I was mad enough to take this all the way, and to hell with the consequences.

Mr Sayle was sitting at his desk. He was leaning back with his hands behind his head, elbows out like wings, telling a joke I think, because the words I heard were: ‘So then Napoleon hits his shot, and it goes straight in the hole.’

He didn’t move when he saw me, just stopped speaking and gazed at me, still with his arms behind his head. I think he knew straight away that this was going to be ugly.

After a long pause he said, ‘Hello, Ellie.’

Only then did Mr Rodd turn around. He wasn’t as cool as Mr Sayle. He heated up real fast. I could see the red rising in his face. His eyes went narrow and he glanced back at Mr Sayle. A lip-reader couldn’t have read his words, ’cos his lips didn’t move. All you needed was a bit of telepathy. ‘Get this girl out of here’ wouldn’t have been far off the mark. I was trembling but I tried to stop my body ratting on me. I had to keep it fixed in my head that these guys were the ones who’d called me a tough little bitch. Might as well prove them right.

I pulled out the note I’d just written outside.

Before I could do anything more, Mr Sayle spoke again. No-one else had said anything yet. He was still off-balance; he didn’t know what I wanted, what I had on him. That was good. I had to keep him like that. I sensed that Mr Rodd was out of his depth; it all depended on my being able to fake out Mr Sayle.

‘What can I do for you, Ellie?’

‘I’m here with your resignation as my trustee,’ I said as evenly as I could. I looked at the note. My father had told me that courts like plain language, even though they never use it themselves. He’d said that if you don’t have a lawyer you just use the simplest words possible.

I read it to both of them. ‘I, Murray Sayle, resign as executor of the Linton estate and as guardian to Ellie Linton.’

I could see Mr Sayle lean back a little more, relax just a little. I could see the smile start to break out. I had to go in fast. I ripped the pile of photocopied sheets out of my bag. These were my ammunition and I needed to blow this office up, with both these men in it. I had to make every shot count. I kept one and threw the others onto the desk. My single reason for spending all that money to copy so many was so they would make a big thump when they landed. They did. It had been worth the sacrifice of the chicken and the oyster sauce.

After a moment Mr Sayle leaned forward and picked one up. After another moment Mr Rodd took one too. Fifteen-love to me. As they started reading I said: ‘I’ve done four thousand of these. My friends are going to distribute them tonight. They’ll go into every letterbox in Wirrawee, and then some. Tomorrow afternoon kids who live out on properties will take them home and spread them round their districts. They’ll go like a wildfire.’

‘I’ll get an injunction,’ Mr Sayle said, but it was kind of automatic, like he wasn’t even listening to himself. He was too busy reading.

He was reading these words:

My name is Ellie Linton and I live on a cattle and sheep property twelve kilometres from Wirrawee.

My parents were murdered earlier this year.

Before they died they appointed Mr Murray Sayle, a solicitor in Wirrawee, as executor of their estate.

When I was orphaned Mr Sayle got permission from the court to be my guardian as well.

Since that time Mr Sayle has set out to steal my property from me.

I knew when Mr Sayle reached this part. He suddenly stood up. He went quite white and said, ‘You can’t say this.’

But he didn’t even look at me. I didn’t reply, and he kept reading.

He and Mr Kelvin Rodd, also from Wirrawee, have a plan to set up a resort on my place, offering luxury mountain holidays. They have a company called Kelsey Developments Pty Ltd. They made a secret agreement for Kelsey to buy my place at a dirt-cheap price. Because Mr Sayle is my guardian I can’t stop him. Then the two of them will set up their resort, and make a huge profit.

These men are criminals. What they are doing is illegal. If you deal with them, expect to be ripped off. If you’ve had any dealings with Mr Sayle, you should get another lawyer to check what he has done, in case he’s stolen from you too.

At the bottom was my signature and the date.

Well, there was no shit to hit the fan, and no fan. But it seemed for a few moments that everything else hit everything else. Mr Sayle threw the sheet back at me. Mr Rodd tore his up. Mr Sayle started around the corner of his desk but then stopped again. It was like he suddenly realised it mightn’t be a good idea to stomp me to death on the floor of his office. Instead he grabbed the pile of papers I’d put in front of him and threw them at me too. He followed up with a newspaper and a couple of finance magazines. Then he started shouting at me. It was hard to understand some of it but in general he was saying that he would sue me for defamation, that he’d ruin me, that I could even go to prison.

I didn’t think prison was too likely, given how old I was, and that I was an orphan, and assuming that Mr Sayle’s behaviour wouldn’t look too good under close examination. Zola yes, Ellie no.

I had thought this through quite a bit, even in the short time since I’d had the idea of doing it. So I took a step forward, trying to stay calm. I’ve noticed a few times now how powerful it is if you stay calm when someone else has lost his temper.

‘Sure,’ I said, ‘go ahead and sue me. If you can sue a minor for defamation.’

That rocked him right to his Reeboks.

I followed up fast. ‘I don’t know if you can or not. But suppose you can. What happens then? Either you win, and you get some money from me, but I won’t have much left anyway by the time the case is finished. And your reputation will be shot and you’ll have a stain the size of California on your name. Or you’ll lose, and your reputation’ll be even more shot. And face it, you’re a good chance of losing. There’s nothing in my letter that isn’t true.’

Mr Rodd sneered at him: ‘I told you what she’s like.’

‘I’ll get an injunction,’ he said again.

‘We’ll ignore it,’ I said. ‘We’re teenagers. We don’t do injunctions. We’ll scatter these notices like confetti. By tomorrow morning you won’t be able to walk down the street. You’ll need an umbrella to keep the spit off your head.’

I’ve got to hand it to myself, he was definitely whitefaced. I decided Zola was a pretty good role model. He’d known what he was doing.

I couldn’t give Sayle any more time to think. I pulled out my pen. ‘Sign it,’ I snarled. ‘And then I’ll try to get to my friends and stop these papers going out. But I’ll have no hope of doing anything after three thirty. It’s now or never.’

Mr Rodd was still sitting there sneering. Then he suddenly saw the look in Mr Sayle’s eyes. ‘Don’t sign,’ he said, jumping up.

‘I have to, Kelvin,’ he said. ‘Her family’s been here forever. Everyone knows them. Especially after that stuff she did in the war. These local yokels are going to read her bit of paper, the ones who can read that is, and it’ll be the end of the story. No-one’s going to listen to us.’

With the signed statement in my hand I turned and headed for the door. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to run but I expected at every step to get a letter-opener buried in my back or a wastepaper bin shoved down on my head. I couldn’t believe it when I got to the door without a word being said, and I couldn’t believe it even more when I opened the door and left, and nothing and no-one followed me down the street. It had been as bad as any encounter with enemy soldiers in wartime. All the way back to school I shook like a tissue in a typhoon.

BLOODY HOMER. How often have I put those two words together? It’s like the official adjective for Homer is bloody. Or, to put it another way, there are two words for Homer, and the second is Homer. And the first one needn’t necessarily be bloody, either.

He really wasn’t interested in my great victory over Mr Sayle and Mr Rodd. Oh, he listened of course, because he knew he was expected to, but because it wasn’t about him he only half listened, and the moment I was finished he went back to talking about Liberation, which was all he seems to care about these days.

I suppose if you weren’t there you wouldn’t realise how difficult it was, and how it felt so dangerous, and how much it meant to me to have succeeded. Not only for the obvious reason that it looked like I’d saved the farm, for a short time anyway, but also because it proved that I could win my battles in the adult world of post-war Wirrawee, against the movers and shakers and lawyers and developers and sharks.

It gave me more hope that I could make a go of things by myself.

I shouldn’t say by myself, because Gavin was doing it too, and it was Gavin who seemed to understand how much it meant to get that letter of resignation from Mr Sayle. When I showed it to him he ran around the kitchen three times waving it in the air and making noises like a train that’s trapped in a tunnel.

He then kissed me, which shocked both of us I think.

So now I’m in the kitchen looking around, one minute thinking, ‘This is mine, I’m in charge, I own it all, it’s my kitchen, my house, my farm,’ and the next minute I’m, ‘Oh my God I’m too young, this is the scariest thing that’s ever happened, I can’t do this.’

Can I do it? ‘I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.’

Well, I’m not a train, and anyway, even a train can be derailed by a landslide. Or blown up. I’m just me, just Ellie, sitting at the kitchen table, trying to make my life work, barely holding it together some days, some days feeling too big a flood of grief for the house to hold, but some days feeling pride and strength.

I know my life’s different to other people’s but everyone’s life is different to everyone else’s. All I can do is keep living it, keep moving it forward every day I can. Lots of days it’s three steps forward, four steps back. If at the end of every month I’m a step or two ahead – well, I’ll settle for that.

INCURABLE

WHEN THE COCKIES spread their wings and float from one branch to another they hang for a moment, like they’re caught in an eddy of air. Then they choose their landing pad and settle, with a squawk and a shrug of their shoulders. They go for a strut along the branch, their yellow crests flaring. If they had hands they’d beat their chests. They’re pretty smug. You can chase them off a fruit tree or a barley crop or the back of a wheat truck but you never defeat them: they’re the birds of defiance.

Against an overcast sky it’s shocking to see how white they are. They’re the whitest things in the world, not that there’s ever been a World Cup for whiteness. Not as far as I know.

We were moving a mob of cattle along a dirt road in the bush, over the ford where the winter water flows, through the gum trees, underneath the cockatoos screeching the neighbourhood news.

It was a big mob, three hundred head, cows and steers, and there were some big beasts among them. But they were in no hurry. I had plenty of time to look up at the cockies.

On the left was Mr Farrar’s place, where his fat black cattle grazed. I dribbled with love and envy every time I saw his main paddock. It was protected by lines of old manna gums, had a bit of a hill in the far corner, and the creek was its western boundary. I’ve never seen that creek dry up and I’ve never seen that paddock bare. The grass grew like it was showing off. You could run a hundred head in that paddock and not need to go near them from one year to the next, except to take their photographs for centrefolds in cattle magazines. In the whole district this was my favourite paddock.

Mr Farrar’s bull waddled to the fence to check out the passing talent. He had a body the size of a furniture van and balls the size of truck tyres. All the sluts in the mob wanted to have a chat. I could imagine the conversation. ‘Nice bit of rump steak on you, sweetheart.’ Well, thank you. You doing anything tonight?’ Why wait till tonight? Just jump this barbed wire and I’m yours.’ ‘Oh yes, the barbed wire. We could have a problem with the barbed wire . . .’

Then this annoying human comes up on a noisy Suzuki and kicks out at the lady’s attractive ass and yells something like, ‘Come on you old bag of hamburger meat . . .’ and romance dies.

The annoying human was Alastair Young, helped by me banging my hand on the side of the ute or yelling or, in extreme cases, stopping the ute and getting out to flush a steer from a thicket of young trees and blackberries. The cattle belonged to Alastair’s father, who was in his ute at the front of the mob. Keeping them moving was Alastair’s sister, Shannon, on horseback, and Gavin, the little guy who lives with me. Gavin had our Yamaha. Mr Young had his dogs and I had Marmie, but I kept her in the cab of the ute most of the time.

The main thing was to stop the stock spreading out over too great a distance, but it wasn’t difficult. They were pretty well-behaved. We’d have to work a bit when we got them to the main road, where there’d be traffic, but no-one used this road much. I could just poke along, sneaking up behind Alastair and bumping his bike with the ute when he was distracted by a noisy cow, chatting to Shannon for a minute when she came back to get a drink, waving to Gavin in the distance.

Gavin must have been in a good mood. He waved back and gave me a huge smile. Normally if I made any contact with him in public he looked at me like I was a demented stranger suffering from impaired vision. We were all skipping school, and for Gavin that was a good start to any day; besides, he had taken to life on the land like he was born wearing a Drizabone and an Akubra. For him this was better than a trip to Disneyland. Well, OK, maybe not a trip to Disneyland, but it was the kind of stuff he loved to do.

How strange his life had been already, and how unpredictable. From the little I’d learnt about him, he’d been brought up in a pretty crappy suburb in a pretty crappy family, no dad, just a stepdad who he’d mentioned once and then stopped with an expression like he’d bitten into an unripe olive.

Then he had survived a war, firstly by living like a rat in the ruins of Stratton, then by getting picked up by my friends and me and taken to a valley in the bush, and if that wasn’t enough, gatecrashing our guerrilla campaign when he refused to catch a rescue helicopter to New Zealand. After the war no trace of his family could be found, so he moved in with me and my parents.

And just when his life was starting to settle a bit, he and I were hit by an event so awful I couldn’t even think about it that moist winter morning, as we moved the cattle from the Youngs’ place to ours.

It’s no good though. When you decide you won’t think about something you can think of nothing else. It’s like Tolstoy’s brothers telling him that the secrets of the universe would be revealed if he stood in the corner of the room without thinking of a white horse. As I tried not to think about the death of my parents the mist moistened my face. The cockies suddenly sounded like they were a kilometre away and their squawks became desperate and savage.

Where does the salt in tears come from? Do we have little salt mines behind our eyes? Does the body somehow extract it from Vegemite and pump it from the mouthful of toast in your tummy, up to the head, storing it for future use? Tasting a tear as it trickled down my cheek I wondered about that. Fi had said to me just the other day, on the phone, ‘You seem to have a fit of sadness suddenly, and after a while it goes and you’re back to normal until the next one.’

‘Is that strange? What do other people do?’

‘I think they’re probably depressed all the time for a while and then they gradually start to improve again.’

‘Oh, OK.’

‘What does that mean? Are you offended?’

‘Oh no, not at all. I was just thinking about it and wondering if you were right.’

But privately I thought I had both kinds of sadness.

I stopped the ute and went back for a cow I hadn’t noticed, a little red scrubber who’d found a yummy patch of herbivorous matter in a dip beside a fence. I swatted at her and she took off with a clumsy stumble of the front legs, lurching up the slope.

We were using the Youngs’ walkie-talkies and as I got back to the ute Mr Young called me up. It was a relief to hear his voice after the endless swearing of the truckies. No matter what channel you used on the walkie-talkies, you got the endless swearing of the truckies.

‘We’re just coming up to the bitumen, Ellie. How are you going back there?’

‘The last ones are . . .’ I looked around for a landmark. I’d nearly said, ‘At the ute,’ which wouldn’t have helped much. ‘Near that old windmill on the Farrar place.’

‘OK, that’s pretty good. Shannon and Gavin and I’ll hold them here till you bring them up. I don’t like this moisture though. It’ll make the road slippery, and some of these trucks are flying.’

Alastair and I started to push a bit now, leaving the cockatoos behind. When we caught up with the others Mr Young gave me the signs to put out on the road. They were hand-painted, just two words,
Slow Stock,
a bit ambiguous I thought but I didn’t think Mr Young would appreciate a lecture about punctuation.

As well as encouraging semitrailers not to plough into the mob at a hundred k’s an hour, my other job was to shut the gates. Each driveway or paddock got its gate shut, to stop the cattle wandering into places they shouldn’t go. You just hoped people didn’t want to get out of their own driveways while we were going past.

There was plenty of feed here to keep the mob happy, and a rest would do them good. They’d already come eight kilometres.

When we started off again the atmosphere was totally different. Now we were out on the Wirrawee-Holloway Road, and we needed to move these beasts along. I went in front, still driving the ute, then came Shannon on her horse and Gavin on the Yamaha, keeping the stock off the road, then Alastair opening the gates again, and finally Mr Young bringing up the rear, driving like me, slow and flashing, hazard lights going with that monotonous, annoying, loud
tick-tock
that could give you a headache if you listened for long enough.

I didn’t feel like having a headache though. It was too good a day, even if it was flavoured with sadness.

Alastair was using his dad’s dogs. As well as opening the gates I’d closed, he and his gaggle of mongrels had the job of picking up any cows that fell back and were at risk of dropping behind the ute. Some of them were tough-looking dogs, so I kept Marmie with me, although it caused her a lot of grief. She made it obvious that I wouldn’t be forgiven, until the next mealtime at least.

Probably the busiest out of all of us was Alastair, but that’s only a guess, as I was too far ahead to know. I heard the occasional comment on the walkie-talkie though. ‘Get behind her, Alastair.’ ‘She’s trying to get through the fence.’ ‘There’s a couple of cars coming through.’ (That was me.) ‘Mr Nelson coming through in his Landrover.’ (That was Mr Young.) ‘Watch for that big ugly red girl, Alastair.’ ‘They’re all ugly, Dad, hadn’t you noticed?’

Alastair was shining with pride. Normally his big brother would be doing this job, but Sam was away at Brogan, the Ag College, checking it out for next year.

‘Ellie, did you say the cattle-truck gate into the Perreiras’ was open?’

‘No. Leave it shut, Alastair.’

There was a bit of fine mist for a while but not proper rain. The cows drifted along, grabbing at tufts of grass, trying to meander across the road occasionally and being given huge discouragement when they did.

Gavin rode past me with another grin and a wave then went back to his position, leaving me feeling good. Gavin had been so hot and cold lately, but mostly cold. I thought he’d be literally cold on the motorbike but he didn’t seem too bothered. He looked a bit damp. Thank goodness I hadn’t tried to make him go to school.

A grey car came towards me. I picked up the walkie-talkie. He was coming too fast and I flashed my high-beams. I realised a moment later who it was. Mr Rodd. Not my favourite person in the world. In fact on this side of the border he probably ranked dead last in my book, a little lower than Mr Sayle, the solicitor, and not much higher than the rats who got in the bathroom the other day and ate the last piece of my mother’s favourite soap.

Bit by bit, piece of soap by peanut cookie, the memories of my parents were being nibbled away.

Mr Rodd’s eyes met mine as his Audi got closer, but he immediately looked away again. And he didn’t slow down. I grabbed the walkie-talkie. ‘Mr Rodd’s coming through, way too fast.’ This was dangerous. Rodd was mad enough to smash into a cow deliberately, just to get revenge. Not to mention getting himself a brand-new car from someone else’s insurance company. He probably thought they were my cows. It’s a big problem with farming that you’re responsible for any of your stock that are on the road. You just hope they aren’t hit by a Rolls-Royce, or a busload of millionaires on a tour of the wineries. A couple of years back Mr Yannos had a steer that escaped one night and a car hit it. Mr and Mrs Yannos were the only ones home and they raced down there and luckily the people were OK. But the car was damaged and the steer was dead. While Mrs Yannos waited with the people for a tow truck Mr Yannos snuck home, got a knife, went back down and cut the ears off his dead beast, so no-one could say it was his. I don’t think he’d like me telling that story, but it’s true.

In my rear-vision mirror I saw the brake lights of the Audi come on, and the car slew a little to the right as Mr Rodd finally decided not to smash into a cow out of sheer bloody-mindedness. I heard the blast of the horn too, then Shannon in my walkie-talkie saying, ‘Jeez, what’s he think he’s doing?’ and Mr Young saying, ‘Honestly, sometimes I wonder about that man.’

That was extreme for Mr Young.

The car straightened up again and took off, still pretty fast. I shook my head. What was his problem? Wouldn’t you think we’d all had enough violence to last us half-a-dozen lifetimes?