The Ellie Chronicles (57 page)

Ignoring the fact that he’d told me I’d be safe to walk down the street – but also ignoring the fact that he’d told me not to go out unless it was necessary – I did quite a lot of grovelling. It took us a while to get to the point where we could actually move on. The whole thing was difficult and embarrassing. Toddy now thought I was unreliable, irresponsible. It would be hard to reverse that. It’s like school – so easy to get a bad name, so hard to get your good one back. Homer could testify to that. Quite a few teachers still thought he was a complete idiot, although my books had helped to improve his reputation a bit. Trouble was that he didn’t do much for his own case. Plus so many new teachers kept turning up that there weren’t many left who had actually read the books.

There were some people Toddy wanted me to go meet. He said they had information but were slow to deliver it. He thought my being there might help push them a bit, encourage them. But now he obviously wasn’t sure if I was going to be safe out there or whether I might suddenly start singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ in the middle of the street.

‘I know I was an idiot to go for a walk,’ I said, feeling more and more aggrieved at having to keep apologising. Funny about that, even when you’re totally in the wrong, after a while you start to resent the person who’s in the right. ‘But what’s the damage? I feel sorry for the real Paula, if those soldiers remember her name from my ID card. They might be round there now checking on her for all I know. But her parents will just have to sort that out for themselves. The worst-case scenario for me, for us, is that if they do go talk to her parents, the cops might be alerted to look out for a teenage girl with false ID papers, and that’s not good, but it’s gotta take a while before all that happens.’

We decided to go ahead with the visit, but not till after dark. That meant fairly late, as the days were getting longer. In the meantime I had nothing to do except hang around the building. I borrowed some paper from Toddy and did some writing. Somehow it calms me down when I put stuff on paper. I got sick of that eventually though, and ended up looking at a copy of a fashion magazine in a language so different to mine that I couldn’t even work out the title.

By then Toddy was like those moths you see in the mornings, the ones who come into the house the night before, while the lights are on, then realise some time after sunrise that they made a bad call, and they spend the rest of their short and tragic lives fluttering against a window trying to get out. Toddy wanted to go, he came into the room a dozen times an hour, but he knew we had to wait.

I tried to ask him questions about his life, but he didn’t like answering them. I especially wanted to know why he did this. Why would he betray his country, help the enemy? For money? I couldn’t imagine that. He seemed like someone who wasn’t too bothered about money, although his motorbike would have cost a bit. Maybe he had some philosophical belief that motivated him, but if that were so, he’d have to agree that the invasion was wrong and they had no business being in places like Havelock. Toddy gave me the impression that he was pretty happy to be in Havelock.

I think he didn’t want to tell me anything personal because he didn’t want me to know too much about him if I got caught. That was fair enough, especially as he now obviously expected me to get myself caught at the first available opportunity, but it was annoying, cos I like to know everything about everyone. Still, I did find out that he had two sisters, both older, and his mother was a tailor. There wasn’t much more than that.

When it got dark enough he came bounding down the stairs. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said.

I had thought that we’d be on the motorbike again, with the wig and the sunglasses, but he took me out into the street behind his place and told me to walk ahead of him for three blocks and then turn left, go two and a half blocks, and wait outside a fire hydrant. ‘I’ll go past you then come back then you follow me.’

It took us a while to work out what he meant by fire hydrant, cos he didn’t have the word for it, but eventually I got the message.

I set off. A couple of glances behind showed Toddy at a safe distance. At an extremely safe distance. Like, a hundred and fifty metres behind. I had no illusions. I knew that if I got caught Toddy would become about as solid as an illusion. ‘Ellie? Paula? She said that? Never heard of either of them. C’mon! Man, that’s one crazy girl you’ve got yourself there!’

He’d got me nervous, along with what had happened that afternoon, and now I walked along like I expected to be shot at any moment. Like there’d be snipers in the trees and on the roofs of buildings. He’d sent me down a quiet street, which was fine by me, and I got nearly a full block before I passed anyone. One man, in dark clothes, was walking towards me, but as he approached I became aware that there was a second person coming up behind, walking quite quickly. I risked a glance and saw another man in a dark suit. ‘This is it,’ I thought. ‘This is where the whole game ends.’ I fully expected to be arrested. I took another glance, this time across the street, and thought, ‘I’ll try to make a run for it, if one of them puts his hand on me.’

The man coming towards me seemed to veer a little as he got closer, as though he were getting ready to grab me. Then he straightened up again and went on by. A moment later the man behind overtook me and went on.

Had there been a signal between them? Since the girl on the motorbike that morning I’d felt watched, suspected, threatened.

I kept going, but with my eyes on the man in front as he continued to accelerate. Was he an agent of the police or the government? Or just an office worker making his way home after a late finish? Toddy was a long way back and I felt very alone. I could almost see myself from behind, through his eyes, a solitary figure walking in darkness, occasionally dappled by the dim light from the few street lamps that worked. Walking a little more quickly than normal, my instincts and my body wanting to go faster but my mind keeping on the brakes.

I wanted to get there, I always wanted to get there. And there was always a Toddy in the background, reining me in, and all around me the invisible watchers, saying ‘Hello, who’s she, looks like trouble, stop her, get in her way.’

I turned left, following instructions, and a block later was crossing the main road again. It was still busy. This part was very bright, very commercial. The neon signs were orange, red, blue, yellow, pink. I couldn’t read most of them but some were in English as well as their own language.
Best Chinese Food
.
Handy Supermart
.
American hamburgers
.
National Security Bank
.
Top Indian Food
.

It was strange crossing this river of light and cars and colour and people. It seemed a long way from a paddock filled with cattle. A group of four middle-aged women hurried past, no-one talking. They looked like they were too tired to talk. They looked sad. I wondered if one or two of them might be the mothers of the men Lee and I had driven to their deaths at the hands of the bull. At the hooves and horns of the bull. Getting from one side of the street to the other was pretty wild. Traffic rules didn’t seem to matter much. A funny little white taxi zipped around another car, happily going over the double lines to do it. Further up the street a man stood in the middle of a pedestrian crossing waiting for someone to stop or maybe even slow down a little so he could continue his brave journey. The way things looked, he might be there most of the night.

I did me some slipping and some sliding between cars, letting this one go, taking a chance on that one, ducking between those two, and making it onto the footpath with a feeling that wasn’t much different to the feelings I’d had after some of my near-death experiences during the war. I was past the halfway point, with only two blocks and a half to go. No-one seemed to have paid me too much attention in the busy road. Now I plunged back into the quiet semi-darkness of the side street. There was a different smell along here, sweet but not pleasant. The kind of sweetness that makes you feel slightly nauseous. Something fermenting, something on the verge of being rotten. A woman squawked on my left and startled me. The sound had come from one of the houses. She was angry at someone. She rattled off a string of abuse that could have been about the way her husband drank or the way her teenage daughter answered back or the way no-one would take out the garbage and she had to do all the work around here. I hurried on. I passed a church that was closed and dark. A block of flats where a man was pressing numbers into the security pad. A place that sold huge pottery vases, all crammed in together, standing like dull people waiting to be told what to do.

And at last the fire hydrant. I slipped into the shadows, using an overhanging tree for cover. A few minutes later Toddy’s footsteps approached. In real life footsteps are never the way they’re described in books, unless someone’s on a wooden floor maybe. You hear more than the actual feet. You get the sense of a physical presence, with the noises that come from the feet, sure, but the clothing and I suppose the arms as well. There’s an array of sounds coming towards you. Toddy made light sounds considering he was a big guy, and he sounded nervous, but then I’d expect that anyway, given the dangerous place I was in. This was totally a ‘Trust Toddy’ exercise. Trust a complete stranger, someone you met for the first time that very morning. If he was betraying his own country for money, it figured that he’d betray me right back to them for even more money.

He went on by, a dark shape, not looking to right or left. I leant against the wall, waiting for him to come back. I heard a sound above my head and, looking up, saw the shape of a possum outlined against the light from a small block of flats across the road. It was stretching from one branch to another, but the distance was a little too far. ‘Great heavy thing, possum,’ I thought. I’d never seen a squirrel but I imagined they were much more nimble. The possum was in silhouette, but as I watched, it connected with the other branch and hauled itself across. ‘Good job,’ I told it.

I turned my attention back to the street. Someone was approaching from the left, the direction Toddy had gone. I hoped it was him. But the sounds were heavier. An older man walked past slowly, out for his evening walk perhaps. I stayed still, hoping he wouldn’t notice me, but he glanced at me as he went past and I thought I saw a little change in his expression, like he was startled. It was really too dark to tell and I hoped I’d been wrong. It was a bugger that he’d seen me. I must have looked awfully suspicious. Another three or four minutes passed. Where was Toddy? God he was taking his time. Then with a quick light rush of movement he was there.

‘Come on, anyone see you?’

‘Yes, an old man out for a walk. He looked a bit surprised.’

‘Oh damn, couldn’t you stop him?’

I was starting to get irritated by Toddy, the way everything was always my fault. ‘How?’ I asked. ‘Blind him? Kill him? Hypnotise him? “You’re not seeing a girl, you’re seeing a chicken”?’

We were hurrying along the street. Toddy didn’t answer. We reached a block of flats and turned left down a side alley, then hung a sharp right into a foyer. There was a lift but we didn’t take it. We went up a grimy staircase, three levels. I was struggling. Toddy moved fast.

He gave a soft knock on a door marked
31
, opened it and went straight in. I just kept following, past a couple of bedrooms, past a tiny kitchen, and into a sitting room.

Three men were sitting there playing cards. They all looked to be in their early twenties. The cards looked a lot older. They were grease-stained and dog-eared. The curtains were drawn and the lighting was dim. Everyone seemed to be smoking and the place stunk of dead cigarettes.

It occurred to me that the people who had kidnapped Gavin wanted me and the Scarlet Pimple in exchange for him and now they had me, possibly. If Toddy had made a mistake here, or worse, if Liberation had been wrong about Toddy, then I was now a prisoner. Very handy for them. They hadn’t lifted a finger. I’d just arrived and handed myself over.

Toddy said a whole lot of stuff to them but they didn’t look particularly interested, just kept playing cards. Occasionally one of them would grunt a comment or an answer. They held the whip hand, that was obvious. Toddy seemed even more nervous. I wondered when my turn would come and whether I would be expected to speak.

Then Toddy turned to me. He cleared his throat. ‘These men know a bit about the group who are holding your brother. They don’t get on with them at the moment. There’s a – I think in New York they would say a “turf war”. These men don’t know who you are or who your brother is but they know there’s a little boy being held as a hostage. But they don’t trust me very much. They think I’m running an operation of my own. I brought you here as proof that I’m not involved in some double-cross or even triple-cross.’

I felt like I was in Sleazeville. The idea of a bribe seemed to have floated in through the door. I didn’t know if this was the right time to do it so I asked Toddy, ‘Should I offer them money?’

‘You have some?’ he asked quickly. He was sure onto that fast.

‘A little,’ I said.

‘No, don’t talk about that yet. Tell them a bit about yourself and why you’re here.’

It was a weird situation. I had to make a speech in a language these guys didn’t know and the life of a child might depend on it. I wasn’t feeling too inspiring in this grotty smoke-filled room with a bunch of guys who were apparently gang members of some kind. But I had to be inspiring. I just started off slow, feeling my way, trying to put some words together. Pausing at the end of each sentence for Toddy to translate was good in one way, bad in another. The good part was that it gave me time to think about what I wanted to say next. The bad part was that I couldn’t get a flow going. It soon became obvious that I wasn’t going to have them swaying in the aisles shouting ‘Halleluiah’ while I inspired them with a sermon about giving their life to the Lord Jesus.