On the Jellicoe Road Page 8

  There seems to be nowhere to hide except under the stretcher bed in the middle of the room. The space beneath it is tiny, but I squeeze myself under and take a deep breath and then there’s total silence. From where I’m lying, I can see half the manuscript sitting on the floor. The other half’s with me. I reach out my hand until it aches, trying to touch it to drag it over, but as I do, my shoulder lifts the stretcher bed above me. I drop my arm and the stretcher bed hits the floorboards. Suddenly the footsteps begin again, slowly ascending.

  Whoever it is has reached the second landing. I can imagine them standing there, looking up at the hole in the ceiling, taking hold of the ladder—one step, two steps, three steps, four. And there it is. The back of a head appears through the trapdoor but I can’t quite make out who it is. He lifts himself up and then crouches to pick up the pages on the floor and I know what his next step will be. To turn around and look in the only place there is in the room to hide.

  I know it’s the Brigadier. I know because of that thumping sound inside of me and the only option I have, apart from being caught, is to lift the stretcher bed across my head and just throw it. Quietly I roll up the papers in my hand and stick them down my jeans and I get ready. The footsteps come closer and the boot stops right in front of my nose. I can hardly breathe but I need to move. Just do it, I tell myself. Just do it and bolt!

  “Are you okay under there?” I hear him ask. He uses a soft tone, like he’s trying to entice me out with the good-guy approach. But good guys don’t smash windows to get into someone’s house and good guys don’t freak me out as much as this man does.

  “It’s okay. You can trust me.”

  Just do it, I tell myself again.

  “I don’t want to scare you but I’m coming down,” he says, and I block out his voice because it is so familiar and the familiarity makes my heart beat fast and I know I have to get out. Just do it, I tell myself. Slowly I watch him crouch and then there is his hand on the sheet ready to pull it up, ready to grab me out of that space and do whatever he wants to do, whatever he may have done to Hannah. The rage inside of me at the idea of it makes me scream and I shove the legs of the stretcher to the side. I hear the impact of steel on his head and a grunt of surprise and next minute I bolt, crawling to the trapdoor, down the ladder, down the stairs, out the front door, and racing for my life, my hands flailing as if I am trying to grab as much air as possible to pull me forward, like freestyle swimming on land. When I feel as if I’ve run as much as I can without being winded, I take a detour off the track and huddle under one of the oaks and I stay there. Just breathing. Softly.

  I realise, after a moment or two, that I am not alone. Slowly I look up, beyond the tree trunk, higher than the branches, to the very top. There, in broad daylight, is the boy in my dream staring down at me. It’s like he has climbed out of that nocturnal world that I refuse to visit anymore and has decided to track me down. The sun blinds me as I look up, trying to cover my eyes, but then I hear a sound and I realise that he has brought the sobbing creature from the tree.

  I feel hunted, with no place to hide. No solace, no belonging. Just an empty need to keep moving away from whatever or whoever it is that’s after me.

  As usual, what awaits me when I get home is dependency. Ten questions before I can even get to the bottom of the stairs. About maths equations and parent pick-ups and permission to go to town and laundry crap. Then there is the nightly job of looking through every item of clothing and through the cupboard of our latest resident arsonist, checking to see if she has attended her weekly counselling session and having her sign a contract stating that she won’t burn us in our beds that night.

  Once I’ve been assured of that I go to the kitchen to see if those on duty have prepared dinner. There are about sixty kids in the House usually, but with the year twelves gone we’re down to fifty until next year’s year sevens arrive. For dinner, mostly, we have spaghetti bolognese or risotto, and jelly for dessert, so hampers sent by parents are quite popular, as are the recipients.

  On most days the roster works perfectly and on other days it is a total disaster. By six that night I haven’t even reached the stairs to my room and when word comes that our House co-ordinator is coming around to check our rooms, the juniors especially are in a frenzy.

  Later, I pass the phone stand and give it a glance before I begin walking up the stairs and I see two words on the notepad that stop me dead in my tracks.

  “Who wrote this?” I manage to say, breathlessly.

  No answer because I don’t think they’ve heard me.

  “Who wrote this?” Still nothing. “Who fucking wrote this note?”

  Silence. But a different kind. The year nines, tens, and elevens appear on the second and third landings, their faces shocked. The juniors come out of study, standing in the corridor watching me.

  “I…I did.” Chloe P. stands there, Jessa next to her, an arm on her shoulder like some kind of angel of mercy.

  “When did she ring?”

  “I don’t…I could hardly hear…”

  I walk over and grab her by the arm. “What did she say?” I’m shaking her. “I told you to call me if she rang. Doesn’t anyone listen to me around here?”

  I don’t realise until she’s crying that my fingernails are pinching into her and Jessa is gently trying to dislodge me. She’s crying as well, as are half the year sevens. The rest of my House are looking at me like I’m some kind of demented monster. I leave them standing there and start to walk upstairs, my hands shaking, clutching the note, wanting it to have more than the words HANNAH CALLED on it. I want a number or a message. I want anything.

  Raffaela comes down the stairs towards me. “You look terrible. What’s happening?”

  I want to slow down the pace of my heart but I can’t. The more I hear her speak, the harder it beats.

  “Everyone’s…” she begins.

  “What? Everyone’s what? Disappointed? Thinks I’ve lost it? Thinks someone else should be doing this?”

  She stares at me for a moment, a cold angry look on her face. A look I’ve never seen before. “You know your problem?” she asks quietly. “It’s that you’re never interested in what anyone else is feeling. What I was trying to say before you rudely, as usual, interrupted me, is that all of us are worried about you, not about this situation, and we think you should just try to get some sleep and let us take over but you don’t care because the difference between you and us is that you fly with…with…I-Don’t-Give-a-Shit Airline and we fly with a friendlier one.”

  It draws a crowd. I think Raffaela raising her voice tends to do that. It’s mostly seniors and year tens, but I know that the juniors are listening from downstairs. The past leaders of my House would be rolling in their graves if they knew about the shouting and mayhem that has taken place in this House since they left.

  “You’re right,” I say, walking up the rest of the stairs. “I don’t give a shit.”

  In my room I lie on my bed, sick to the stomach, and I want to cry because my mind is working too much. All I know is that there is something not right. It’s in my dreams, it’s inside my heart, and without Hannah here, it’s an all-consuming feeling of doom. Like something’s coming and it’s something bad. I try to feed the cat but he scratches me until my arms are red raw, and I let him because I want to feel something other than this emotional crap. Sometimes we sit, the dying cat and I, staring at each other like in a Mexican stand-off and more than anything I want to ask him what he has seen. What was the last thing Hannah said to him? But he stares at me; even in his sickly old age he is feral with fury, his hair matted beyond the point of no return. I try again and even though he seems as if he’s going to drop dead at any moment, he scratches until I feel tears in my eyes, my bloody hands trembling with despair.

  Chapter 11

  It is dark, surreally dark, and I’m hanging upside down from the tree. My legs are hooked over a branch and my arms stretched as far as they can go. From upside-down I
see the silhouette of the boy, but this time he is on the ground.

  “If I fall, will you catch me?” I call out to him.

  He doesn’t answer and begins to walk away. I feel myself slip. One leg first, the position so painful that I am perspiring like hell.

  “Hey!” I call out again. “Will you catch me?”

  He turns around. “Catch yourself, Taylor.”

  I can no longer hold on. My scream hurts my own ears. The ground comes quickly and I hit it with a sickening thud.

  I avoid the House front. I notice that most of the students have started eating dinner in their rooms. Probably to avoid me. The common area is empty and silent. News has already hit the streets that I’m losing control of my House and Richard is all ready to take the reins.

  I begin to develop a pattern. During the day I hide outside Hannah’s house. The peace I feel here is overwhelming. Monkey Puzzle trees and rose bushes are scattered all around and the result is a mix of scents and colour and sounds of birds flying low and nature in such perfect harmony that it seems wrong that the very person who created it is nowhere to be found.

  There’s a point just outside Hannah’s house where the river makes a sand bar. I sit there often and one day I see Jonah Griggs standing on the bank on the other side, against a gum tree. I don’t know what to feel. For a moment it seems like the most natural thing in the world for him to be there, for one of us to call out a hey rather than ignore or accuse each other. The distance between us is no more than twenty metres and neither of us move for what seems like hours. There is a question in his eyes; I can see. That and something more. I can hear the ducks in the distance but no one stirs, except for the finches, which have no idea about the territory wars and boundaries. They leave my side and make their way over to his, as if to say, “Don’t involve us in this; we’re just enjoying the view.”

  At night the Prayer Tree becomes my shrine. I spend most of my time searching the carvings on the trunk while the rest of the world is dead silent, sinister phantoms seemingly absent from their sleeping dreams. Unlike mine. I look for anything. Links, I’d call them. There are phrases that sound like song lyrics and the biblical references are there and as I shine my torch on every single carving, I come across another piece of the puzzle. I find the names. Narnie. Jude. Fitz. Webb. Tate.

  All scattered but there. Like they exist, not just in Hannah’s imagination but in real life. A little voice tells me that the Prayer Tree could easily be the inspiration for her story but I know deep down it’s more than that. Worse still, one of them is dead. I know that from the story. And I grieve like I’ve known them all my life. I copy down the song lyrics and back in my room I enter the words in a search engine. I find the bands and the songs and in one there’s a line about Brigadoon and a rain-dirty valley that reminds me of something in Hannah’s manuscript. I download them all, creating a soundtrack of the past. When I finally hear the song that the boy in the tree in my dreams plays to me, I cry for the first time since being on the train with Jonah Griggs. I wrap myself in the music, curled up in my bed, thinking of Hannah, eyes wide open, forcing myself to keep awake. Unlike Macbeth, who has sleep taken away from him, I take sleep away from myself. And Hannah’s sick pathetic cat sits in the corner, still huddled in its state of fear.

  Chapter 12

  Over the weekend Ben gets word through Raffaela that the Townies and Cadets want to meet at the scout hall in town. It’s about the last thing I want to do but these days I can’t give Richard any more of an excuse to take over and I certainly don’t want to be at home.

  I don’t talk much on the walk there. Ben keeps on stealing glances at me, about to say something a few times and then changing his mind before finally giving in.

  “Rough week?”

  I shrug.

  “Raffy’s worried that the Townies and Cadets will have more to bargain with,” he says.

  “I don’t think Raffaela has much faith in me.”

  “Well, you’re wrong,” he says, serious for a change.

  “I don’t think anyone in my House does.”

  He grabs my arm gently and stops me from walking any farther. “Don’t say that. Because I know it’s not true.”

  “You weren’t there this week, Ben,” I say quietly.

  “No, but they told me stuff and all I remember hearing was concern in their voices. And I remember something else. Hanging out with you and Raffy in year seven, skating around that Evangelical church car park. All those Christians were praising the Lord at the top of their voices and you stopped for a moment and asked us, ‘Who do you believe in?’ I wanted to be all mystical and Mr. Miyagi-like from The Karate Kid. Do you remember what Raffy said?”

  But we reach the scout hall and I see Raffaela waiting there for us.

  “People like Raffy don’t lose faith,” he says quietly as we walk in.

  Santangelo and the Mullet Brothers, who are clutching guitars, are sitting on the stage and then Jonah Griggs enters with his second-in-command, Anson Choi, and we all sit down at a trestle table.

  “You guys don’t seem happy,” Santangelo says.

  “It was a long walk. We need some of those trails,” I say.

  “I’ve got a proposition, so can we begin?” Santangelo asks.

  “It would be smart of you,” Griggs tells him. “Because out of everyone here you’ve got the least to offer.”

  There’s a silence between them and I know that at any minute there will be a full-on brawl.

  “Wouldn’t you say that letting any of you walk down our streets on weekends is a great deal to offer?” Santangelo threatens icily.

  “You can’t control that. Too many of us belong here,” Raffaela says.

  “You haven’t belonged here for years.” He sneers.

  “What are you implying?” Raffaela asks, and I see hurt there as well as anger.

  “Accusing, not implying. Would you like me to point out the difference?” he asks.

  “He beats me in one spelling bee and now he’s Mr. Intellectual,” she says, looking at me as if I’m really going to get involved in this ridiculous exchange. “In second grade,” she continues. “Get over it, Chaz!”

  “Are we finished?” Griggs asks politely. “Because we’d like to get into a discussion about having access to at least one of the water ways.”

  I look at him, shaking my head. “No chance. It’d be like cutting off our hands.”

  “Then learn to live without your hands.”

  “No, because then we won’t be able to do this,” Ben says, giving him the finger. Jonah Griggs calls him a little bastard and almost leaps across the table and everyone’s either pulling both of them back or swearing or threatening.

  “Let’s talk about the Club House!” Santangelo says forcefully.

  “Then talk!”

  “I don’t want to talk about the Club House,” Griggs says. “We want water access. That’s what we’re here for.”

  Santangelo is shaking his head. “You know what you are? You are a—”

  “What? Say it!”

  They are both on their feet now, fists clenched and it’s on for young and old. Yet again.

  “Santangelo!” I yell above it all. “The proposition. Now. Or we walk and we are not coming back. Ever.”

  It takes him a moment to calm down and I point to the chair.

  “No interruptions,” he says, sitting down. He stares at Raffaela and I turn to her and put my finger to my lips. She takes a deep breath and nods, as if it’s the most difficult thing she’ll ever have to do. Anson Choi gets Jonah Griggs back into his chair and it’s semi-calm again.

  “Okay. Seniors only and that means year eleven. We open three nights a week, hours eleven thirty to two A.M. Cover charge five dollars. No more than a hundred people per night. For each of those nights, one of us is in charge so that means organising entertainment, food, alcohol, et cetera.”

  “Alcohol is an issue,” I say. “First, how do we get hold of it, and second, w
hat happens when some moron gets plastered, breaks his neck trying to get back into dorms and Houses or…tents, or drives back to town under the influence? The teachers will be on us like flies and we’ll get stuck inside forever.”

  “She’s got a point.” This from Jonah Griggs. “Anyway, Cadets signed a contract saying no drugs or alcohol while we’re out here. If we get caught, it’s zero tolerance expulsion.”

  “Where’s the fun?” Ben asks.

  “It’s not as if we have to give up alcohol, Ben,” Raffaela says. “We never had it in the first place.”

  “But if we’re going to socialise and there’s going to be live music….”

  “Hold on, hold on. What live music?” Santangelo asks.

  “As if there isn’t,” one of the Mullet Brothers argues. “We’ve got a band…kind of.”

  “What you have is not a band. It’s two guitarists,” Santangelo says to them.

  The Mullet Brothers are offended beyond words, staring at Santangelo as if he has betrayed them, and without even having to consult each other they turn and walk away towards the stage in a huff.

  “Let’s get back to the plan and work out the lack of entertainment later,” Jonah Griggs says. “We might contemplate sharing the Club House, but it’s them that control most of the space around it.”

  Then they’re all looking at me. “Seventy foreigners on our land three nights a week? That’s a lot to agree to.”

  “Plus access to the river,” Jonah Griggs persists.

  On the stage the Mullet Brothers are rehearsing and the amps are so loud we can hardly hear ourselves.

  “I want to know one thing,” I say. “What’s in this for me? For us?” I say, pointing to Ben, hoping he likes the fact that I’m using his line. Except Ben is too wrapped up in what’s happening on stage.