On the Jellicoe Road Read online

  “You’re not privy to that type of information, Taylor,” Mr. Palmer says gently but firmly.

  “She’s been my House co-ordinator for five years, sir. She brought me to this school. I think that entitles me to be privy to something. Added to that, I have a House of kids who need her.”

  He’s nodding, like it’s all occurred to him already. “Ms. Morris will be staying at the cottage just outside Lachlan House, so anything you need, you just call her.”

  “Do you know whether Hannah’s coming back? Did she put in notice or warn you? Anything?” I am desperate for something.

  “Let’s just say that she was in a rush. She left a letter saying that she had something to attend to in Sydney and that she’d contact us when she knew her plans. She apologised for any inconvenience and signed it.”

  “Can she just do that? Walk out on her job without an explanation? Has she been picking up her salary?”

  “Taylor,” he says, a perplexed look on his face. “Hannah’s not an employee. She doesn’t work for the school. She owns the property by the river and has helped out around here for as long as anyone can remember. She can come and go as she pleases, something she hasn’t elected to do in the past, so I’m certainly not going to turn around and demand that she return here, even if I did have her number. You know Hannah better than I do; it would have had to be something important for her to have left. She’ll ring you at your House any day now. You’re panicking for nothing.”

  “Did she mail the letter?”

  “It was hand-delivered by a friend of hers.”

  “Who? Who’s her friend? I know all her friends. I promise. Ask me any question about her and I’ll be able to answer. Just let me speak to this friend of hers.”

  He leans forward in his seat. I am humiliated by the pity in his eyes. “I promise you that if she contacts me I will tell her that you want to speak to her.”

  I nod again, swallowing. “Can I just see the letter?” There’s a pleading tone in my voice and suddenly I am every pathetic kid who has ever been dumped in this place. I’m the pining in Jessa McKenzie’s face and the desperation in those poor kids who would hang off every one of Hannah’s words just because she took notice of them. I always felt that I was above that. I’m not sure why until this moment. From the day Hannah picked me up from that 7-Eleven I knew I meant more to her. That we were somehow connected.

  Mr. Palmer walks away for a moment and retrieves something from a filing cabinet. He returns with an envelope in his hands, which he shows me and I take in every detail. On the envelope, in writing not belonging to Hannah, are the words TO BE GIVEN TO JOHN PALMER. The writing is amazingly neat and precise. Mr. Palmer sees the look of doubt on my face and takes the letter out of the envelope and I recognise the handwriting instantly. Hannah’s.

  I stand up, nodding again. “I’m sorry.”

  “What’s there to be sorry about Taylor? That you miss a friend?”

  There’s been too much sentimentality for me already, so I walk to the door. “If you hear from her…”

  “You have my promise.”

  When I get back to the House the juniors are doing their homework.

  “If Hannah rings,” I say from the door, “you make sure you call me.”

  Jessa McKenzie looks up and, like every single time she looks at me, I get a sense of familiarity. She holds up her hand and gives a small wave. Unexpectedly, a fierce sense of protectiveness comes over me. Except I fight it back because I can hardly look after myself these days.

  I lie in bed and words silently tumble out of my mouth. Some people say their prayers at night. I don’t. What I say is always the same. My name is Taylor Markham. I live on the Jellicoe Road.

  In the tree hanging over the ridge, Webb made his plans to build a house. He’d make it out of gopherwood, like Noah’s ark, two storeys high, with a view he could look out on every day with wonder. His father had built their home on the farm. It was one of the things Webb had loved about him and the times he missed him most were when he remembered the sounds of hammering and the humming of a saw and his father’s voice joining in the harmony of some song that seemed to play in all their minds. Webb remembered how he and Narnie would hold nails between their teeth just to be like him, tapping away with their hammers, knowing they were part of something big.

  He told Narnie and Tate his plan. Sitting in that tree, he told them he was going to build a house and that he needed their help. For a long time Narnie didn’t say anything. She just curled up around the branch, staring into the valley below. She told him that from this angle the treetops looked like cauliflower and she had once heard them beckon her to jump, promising her that if she did, they’d bounce her back in the air again. Some days, like today, he was petrified she’d listen to them.

  So he made them both stand on the branch, tightly holding their hands.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll never let go.”

  “What can you see?” Narnie asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Know what I can see?” Tate said. “From this distance everything is so bloody perfect.”

  Chapter 7

  The next afternoon I walk to Clarence House to find Ben. With hands shaking, I knock on the door and wait. The kid who answers looks at me nervously and I wonder why, until I remember how often I’d come across the UC leader in the past. Rarely. They didn’t do house calls. Even within their own Houses they became deified. The kid doesn’t move, still staring at me, and thankfully Ben appears and puts his hand on the kid’s shoulder.

  “Go back to study,” he tells him. “I’ll be in soon.”

  Ben doesn’t say anything to me, but his look says, And?

  “So what did you tell your House co-ordinator,” I ask, pointing to his face, “about that.”

  “That I’ve taken up football.”

  I nod. “Naturally. You look like a footballer.”

  “He was very grateful for the lie. Means he doesn’t have to investigate.”

  We look at each other for a moment and for once I feel awkward. It’s not that I’m not into humility; I’ve just never had to practise it.

  “You want me to come out there with you?”

  “Yes I do,” I say honestly, realising there is no point beating around the bush.

  “Year eight have assignments due tomorrow,” he says, pointing behind him. “It’s not really a good time.”

  “You do homework with them?”

  “I’m their House leader.”

  “My House leaders never did homework with us. Hannah did.”

  “And my House leaders used to flush our heads down the toilet. Consequently I’m going for a more pastoral approach.”

  “Consequently? I would have used ‘naturally.’”

  “You’ve already used it. Anyway, as a consequence of how I was treated I have chosen to act in the exact opposite way, so I’m sticking by ‘consequently.’”

  “If I send Raffaela over to help these kids, then will you come?”

  “Raffaela’s probably sitting there helping your year eights.”

  “Naturally.”

  More silence. Humility now has to give way to begging.

  “Ben, my first seven days on this job are over and I have nothing to show for it. In the past, our leaders have always made contact with the Cadets and succeeded in at least re-establishing boundaries. I don’t even know what to say to these guys. I’m admitting that to you, and I don’t know why I’m admitting it to you.”

  “Because you have no respect for me and you don’t care whether I think you’re weak or not.”

  I resign myself to the fact that I’m down to one ally: Raffaela. But Raffaela isn’t a House leader, she’s my second-in-charge, and there’s no way she can save me from defeat at the hands of Richard and his five signatures.

  “Fine,” I say, turning away. I make it to the bottom stair and turn to find him still there at the door. “And for your own information, I don’t know whether I have respect for y
ou. But I chose you over Richard and the others because I trust you. That’s my motive and at this moment, trust is beating anything else in my life and if it’s not good enough for you then I don’t know what to say.” I begin walking.

  “What’s in it for me?” he calls out.

  “Nothing,” I call back to him. “I’m not even going to pretend there is.”

  He catches up with me. “No. That’s what you have to say to them when you negotiate. I always used to hear the leader say it. ‘What’s in it for me?’”

  He keeps on walking farther away from his House and I experience a sense of relief when we reach the clearing and he’s still with me. My stomach begins to twitch and I realise I’m nervous about the prospect of the Cadets.

  “We could be lucky,” Ben says, sensing my nervousness. “They might be carving up a pig they’ve just slaughtered for dinner and ripping the flesh off the bones with their teeth as we speak and—”

  “—as a consequence?”

  “—Won’t be interested in us lurking around.”

  I’m unconvinced.

  We’re out there for quite a while, marking the map with all the important checkpoints. For most of the year we don’t have to worry about boundaries, but come September the map is our bible. I follow its instructions and I don’t realise how close I am to the edge of the ridge until Ben grabs my shirt and pulls me back. But I like being this close. Just one step and those cauliflower trees below could bounce me right back up again.

  Ben is staring at me. “Are you blind? You almost went over.”

  I’m about to tell him not to be ridiculous when he holds up a hand.

  “Did you hear that?” he whispers.

  “What?”

  “That?”

  He looks at me and I open my mouth to say something but he puts two taped fingers to his lips. “I think we’ve crossed the boundary without realising,” he continues, whispering.

  “According to the map, this eucalyptus tree is the boundary.”

  “According to the map there are two trees this size and we passed the other one about ten minutes ago.”

  I stand still for a moment. Birds sing, trees rustle in the wind, but there’s something else. The feeling of being crowded in, despite one hundred acres of bush around us, stretching as far as the eye can see.

  I hold up one finger, then two, then three, and we bolt. But not even one step later I’m flying through the air. I make contact with the ground in no time, face first in an exfoliation of dirt, leaving my face feeling scratched and bruised.

  I try to kneel but I realise that some kind of trap has grabbed hold of my foot and then I see the boot in front of me. Big, black, laced-up, army regular, polished clean, with the ability to wipe out a whole universe of ants in one step. I look a tiny bit farther up and I see the khaki pants tucked in but I stop there. This is not the position I want to be in for this meeting. So I keep my eyes forward as I slowly raise myself, and then we’re eye to eye, give or take the ten centimetres he has on me.

  Jonah Griggs is a tank. His face is blunter, meaner than I remember. Hair cropped. Eyes cold. Arms folded. He has perfected the art of looking straight at someone while avoiding eye contact.

  Two of his Cadets have Ben by the arm and I can tell by the look on Ben’s face and the angle of their strongholds that he’s in pain.

  “Let him go,” I say.

  Jonah Griggs looks over my head, as though he’s contemplating my request. As if. He ponders for a moment, placing his thumb and finger on his chin, and then shakes his head.

  “Maybe another time,” he says, his voice so unlike the one about to break three years ago.

  “We might just take him around for a tour of the boundaries and when he comes back, he can pass them on to you,” his second-in-command says.

  “I’d prefer you took me for that tour.”

  Jonah Griggs feigns contemplation again and leans forward as if he didn’t hear but still there’s no eye contact.

  So I grab his face and look straight in his eyes and it’s like a punch in the gut holding that stare. “You want to make this personal, Jonah? Then let him go.”

  I don’t know what possesses me to say his name but it slips off my tongue easily and I watch him flinch.

  “No deal,” Ben calls out. “I don’t go without you.”

  “That is very touching,” Jonah Griggs says, shaking free of my hand. “There is so much love in this space.”

  Ben blows him a kiss and all hell breaks loose. The impact of boots on fingers makes it clear what happened the night before. I jump on Jonah Griggs’s back but I can’t even pull his hair because Cadet regulation haircut doesn’t allow for it. He shrugs me off easily and I land on the ground for the second time in less than five minutes.

  “What happened to the scary folk that we were warned about?” he mocks, looking down at me. “You and the Townies are making this too easy for us.”

  “You want scary? We can do scary.” I pick myself up. “Let’s go,” I say to Ben, who is almost speechless from the pain.

  “Scare me, then,” I hear Jonah Griggs say.

  I turn around to face him. “The treaty? The one that says we control any access with water? The one that you guys have been able to violate for the last four years because there has been no water? Well, while you were away it rained. That means there’s a river. That means you have no access unless we give it to you. That means you are restricted to a tenth of the land you’ve been used to using in the past.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “This is war.”

  Griggs shrugs arrogantly. “Well, I guess we’re better dressed for it.”

  Chapter 8

  She stood at Webb’s door: Tate, with the wild hair and the grin that went on forever. Sometimes Webb believed that he would never experience a better feeling than when he was looking at her, would never see anything or anybody bursting with more life and spirit. Sometimes he felt he needed to inhale it and place it in a storage area in his soul. Just in case.

  When he said that to Tate she’d be perplexed. “But Webb, I’m like this because of you. You’re everything to me.”

  On Narnie’s sad days, he wished he could be all that to her, too.

  “Is that what you want?” his sister had asked once while they sat dangling their feet in the river.

  “In a different way because you’re my sister but yeah. If it keeps you happy…or wanting to live, yeah, I’d want to be everything to you.”

  “You do all the work, Webb,” she said tiredly. “Don’t you get sick of that?”

  He shook his head. “Not if you and Tate are okay.”

  “But what happens to all of us when you’re not okay? What then? We’ll become pathetic. Even more than I am now. So why would I want someone to be my everything when one day they might not be around? What will be left of me then?”

  “I’ll never ever leave you, Narnie. You’re my sister. You’re all I’ve got.”

  And Tate, standing at his door now, smiling her hypnotic smile. “The Cadets are here,” she said. “This is going to be our last year doing this. Let’s go get Narnie and make some trouble.”

  The three of them stood their ground on the Jellicoe Road, directly in front of a bus-load of Cadets. In the distance the sound of a shotgun rang out and a cloud of dust hovered just above the trees in front of them.

  “Townies,” Tate said. “At full throttle, by the looks of things.”

  The bus driver kept his hand on the horn, lazily.

  “Surrender,” Webb yelled. “Send out your leader!”

  “You get off this road or you’ll be the ones surrendering your little arses,” the driver yelled back.

  The doors opened and after a moment a boot appeared on the road and then another.

  Tate and Webb exchanged looks. Narnie felt her heart knock against her chest.

  A Cadet stepped out from behind the bus door, dressed in full military school uniform. He strode towards them,
only looking back once when he realised that the car that had been making the ruckus up the dirt road was almost upon them. He reached the trio and searched their faces.

  “I’ve never understood the strap across the chin,” Webb said. “It has to be the most moronic thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “How can we take you seriously?” Tate said.

  “Bloody uncomfortable, too,” Jude agreed, taking it off.

  When the shooting got louder they all turned in the direction of the on-coming car.

  “Fitz?”

  “Psychotic as ever. He got expelled from his school about three times this year.”

  “And you know how excited he gets when you come a-calling.” Tate grinned.

  Jude grinned back. He punched Webb in the shoulder and Webb punched him back.

  “Where are the others?” one of the Cadets called from the bus window.

  “Parent weekend,” Webb called back. “We’re the only ones around.”

  As the bus drove off, a car swerved around it, twisting to a halt. Then Fitz was out of the car, jumping on Jude’s back with the feverish madness they were all used to.

  “Why haven’t they arrested you yet?” Jude said, throwing him off and diving on top of him. They wrestled until Fitz victoriously had Jude straddled.

  “Loving that position, are we?” Tate laughed.

  Webb helped them both up and the five of them made their way down the Jellicoe Road towards the school.