Circle of Flight (25 page)

Nevertheless, I stayed as polite as I could while she studied the fridge and sniffed the chicken and pulled out the salad drawers. Then came the dreaded ‘I’d like to see the sleeping arrangements now please.’

‘Well, it’s all a bit of a mess,’ I said nervously, hoping she’d say, ‘Oh well, don’t worry about it for today then, I’ll come back another day when you’ve had a chance to clean up.’

Fat chance. She stood there staring at me, waiting for me to buckle. I buckled and led her down the corridor, cursing myself and Gavin for not taking the time to make the beds or tidy up this morning. Most days we kept it in pretty good shape. Unfortunately this was not one of those days. Gavin’s room had the doona on the floor, about fifteen items of clothing scattered around, along with Lego, half a jigsaw (the other half was in the sitting room), the chain off his bike, a pile of bleached white bones that he was making into the skeleton of some creature of his own invention, and the cover of a violent M15+ DVD called
Inn of the Thirteen Corpses
or something like that.

I was pleased to see a book next to the bed, opened up and facing down like he was actually reading it. Gavin didn’t read a lot. But this was one I’d liked,
Man-Shy
, about a cow, and I thought he might get into it, even though it was pretty old. I picked it up and said to Ms Madeleine Randall, ‘I’m always encouraging him to read, to help him with his school work,’ which must have sounded lame.

At that moment I noticed Marmie in the middle of the wreckage that was supposed to resemble Gavin’s bed. She had made a snug little home for herself, using his sheets and the end of his pillow, and was gazing at me with guilty eyes, trying to make herself inconspicuous. She knew I didn’t let her in there but she also knew Gavin smuggled her in every chance he got.

‘I hope the dog doesn’t sleep on the bed,’ said Madeleine, which was one of the stupidest sentences I’ve heard in my whole life, considering that Marmie was lying there in front of us both.

I wanted to say ‘Oh no, that’s just a hologram’, or ‘Do you think that’s a dog?’, or ‘Bed? Is that what you call it down at the Department?’ But I succeeded yet again in biting my tongue, and instead came out with a sentence as stupid as hers.

‘No, no, I don’t know what she’s doing. Marmie! MARMIE! Get off there, go on, outside!’

I chased her out of the house and returned to the bedroom. In that short time Madeleine had managed to fill at least a page with more notes. My heart sank further. I didn’t know how much worse this could get. At least she didn’t demand to see my room. I’d been wondering if there were any limits to her rudeness, but maybe we had now reached the outer boundary. Still, we had more areas to explore, starting with the bathroom. If Gavin’s bedroom was a disaster zone, our bathroom was possibly similar to the way the bathrooms on the Titanic would be looking, after sitting on the ocean floor for a hundred or so years.

I didn’t bother to say anything. I couldn’t see the point. And I had enough dignity left to realise that anything I said would sound feeble.

By the time we’d finished the trip through the corridor of horror all I wanted was to see her car go down the driveway so I could try to process what had happened, what was happening. But it wasn’t over yet. When we got back into the kitchen she had the cheek to say, ‘Any chance of a coffee?’

I couldn’t believe it. I gaped at her for a moment, but again reason got the better of me and I thought that if I gave her a coffee she might go easier on us. Or, to put it another way, if I refused to give her a coffee she would probably not react well. So I gaped and stammered and choked, but made her a coffee. Then of course, once she was comfortable, she launched into the kidnapping.

I sat there pale-faced, trying to think of what to say. We’d done a major snow job with the cops when we got back, using what was pretty much a script given to us by Bronte and which I think she’d been given by her father or mother. Basically we said that Gavin had snuck away from the men who’d kidnapped him and been found by a guy who brought him back to the border and helped him get through the fence. Gavin understood the importance of keeping it quiet, because I and the members of Liberation had broken about ten thousand laws, and of course Gavin’s personality meant he was extra good at blocking anyone he wanted to block. His deafness was a bonus. He could talk fairly well when he wanted but he could also make a whole lot of gibberish noises when he wanted. When the police talked to him, as they did three times, he basically just grunted and made vague comments and looked confused.

Henry, the cop who’d been in charge, had visited a couple of times. He didn’t say much, but he always made me nervous when he appeared. He looked at me with his eyebrows lowered, like he knew everything, and I had the feeling that he did know an awful lot, and what he didn’t know he probably guessed. Heaps of people had told me about the two men killed by Col McCann’s bull, but no-one had any suspicions, and no sympathy for them either. Henry talked about them but I couldn’t tell what he thought.

During the last interview he did say to me, ‘People who treat us as fools usually regret it sooner or later.’ I went bright red but said nothing. What could I say? I knew we weren’t being fair to him or the police, but I couldn’t admit to being involved in private wars on both sides of the border. At least I didn’t have any injuries visible to him.

Now I wondered if he’d dobbed us in to the Department. It’d be a pretty fair bet.

I don’t think Ms Randall suspected for a moment that only a few weeks earlier I’d been dragging myself out from under a dead body on a staircase while I tried to rescue Gavin, but she knew of course that he’d been abducted. There wasn’t much I could say to that either. It was true he’d been the victim of a major crime. She was using it to say that he wasn’t safe living with me, that he wasn’t being properly looked after. I suppose it did sound pretty bad. She seemed to think I’d been negligent because I hadn’t arranged counselling and stuff like that for him, but Gavin would never have talked to a counsellor, and to be honest, after all we’d been through, all he’d been through, he didn’t seem like he needed counselling. I was the same. We’d found our own ways to deal with stuff, and we just got on with it, like people have done for thousands of years I suppose. Well, except for the ones who fall to pieces. I’ve got heaps of sympathy for them. It so happened that things didn’t affect Gavin and me that way. Gavin just seemed happy to be back. He did stick even closer to me than normal, especially at night, but he was in good shape.

I don’t think anyone but us and our closest friends could understand how our relationship worked, and how right we were for each other. He needed me and I needed him and we got on in a funny way that we’d sorted out between us and which worked even though I’m sure it broke all the rules. I was certain there was nothing in the handbook of the Department of Social Responsibility which fitted our case. I had to hope they’d make up a new chapter.

‘It’s a completely unsafe environment for him,’ she said, ‘living in a place where your parents were killed and he was kidnapped.’

‘I know that,’ I said. I took a deep breath and told her what I’d decided back there on the staircase in Havelock. She was the first to know. But if I was in for a fight to keep Gavin then this would be the first shot. ‘I’ve decided to sell this place. Then I’ll use the money to buy us a home in town, where he’ll be safe.’

M
ADELEINE
R
ANDALL WOULD
never understand what it cost me to say that to her. How could she? After we got back from Havelock, that day I’d walked all around the property, walking the boundaries, the day I’d stood there looking at the wisteria and the roses, the lagoon and the tip, and the swallows, the day I’d remembered the brown snake and the dog getting bitten and the poddy lambs and mustering Coopers, well, I’d put myself through those memories for a reason. I wanted to stuff my head full of memories so that I could keep them forever. I don’t think it really works that way, at least that’s what the logical part of my brain told me, any more than it would make sense to eat three kilos of sausages because you know you’re going to be starving in a week’s time. My memories were either there already or they weren’t, and overdosing now wasn’t going to make much of a difference.

But it wasn’t just about memories. It was also about getting permission from my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents to sell the property. I needed some sort of peace of mind before I did this thing. It was my family who had created this place, and every fence post, every planted tree, every metre of guttering on every shed, was put there by a member of my family who had spent hours or days or weeks doing it. They’d thought about it, they’d left the house to do it, they’d worked in the hot sun or the cold wind, they’d come in for lunch and then gone out again to continue the job . . . They’d concentrated on it and given it energy and imagination and skill . . . and now I was going to throw it all away.

Your family are so much to you. Too much sometimes. They give you roots and they give you wings. Some families give you roots that are too shallow, and some clip your wings. My family had given me roots that went so deep I didn’t know if I could ever pull them out. I suppose in a way that meant they hadn’t given me wings. It was always kind of taken for granted that I’d own the farm one day. If my mum and dad had lived and I’d said at some point that I didn’t want to get into farming, they would have been totally cool about that – depending on what I wanted to do instead of course. Lying in a hammock in Fiji wouldn’t have impressed them much. But if I’d said I wanted to be a doctor or a carpenter or a computer programmer or to start my own business Mum in particular would have been fine about it. Dad would have too, except he would have done a bit of private grieving, shed a tear behind the cattle yards maybe. But he’d never have told me.

I wondered now what would have happened if they’d kept running the place and I’d bailed out when I got to twenty or twenty-five or whatever. It was one thing we never talked about, but I suppose they would have just stayed here until they were tottering around on walking frames and then they would have sold up and moved into Wirrawee. That’s the trouble with only having one kid. You’ve got too much invested in them, and if they don’t come through for you, then you’re stuffed.

So here I was, with dead people controlling my life. That’s putting it brutally, but I had to say stuff like that to myself, to convince myself that it was OK to do this. ‘Tradition is rule by the dead,’ Jeremy had said to me a few months back when we were talking about them bulldozing the gym and the library at Wirrawee High School. I don’t think it was his own original saying, but I remembered it.

At the same time as it didn’t make sense for dead people to control my life, I also wanted to honour and respect those people, the work they’d done, the energy they’d spent, the way they’d made it possible for me to live the life I led. Without them I could have been living in a little suburban house, seeing the neighbours’ wall on one side and the other neighbours’ wall on the other side. The view from my bedroom window could have been bricks and more bricks instead of a huge gum tree and a messy garden bed overflowing with daisies and roses and hollyhocks and evening primrose. I’m not disrespecting people who live in suburbs, because I was about to join them, but I was glad I’d had the chance to experience space and freedom and open fresh air for so many years, and that was only because some people I’d never met, and some people I knew very well indeed, had worked their butts off to make it possible.

One of the hardest things would be telling my friends and neighbours and having to put up with everyone’s comments and advice. But the hardest thing of all would be telling Gavin.

He came home with Homer at about four-thirty. I’d thought about whether I should say anything about Ms Madeleine Randall and had decided that I should. He was going to find out sooner or later anyway, and I’ve never been a big fan of secrets. Fair enough I’d had to keep a lot of secrets during the war and since then, but given a choice I’ll always vote for things to be out in the open. And when Gavin came into the kitchen, with Homer trailing not far behind, I thought it was a good chance to get Homer’s opinion on what we should do.

I started in on the story. When I got to the part about Marmie on the bed, Homer’s face went quite black. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so angry, and that’s saying a lot. Believe me, a very large lot. I was glad for everyone’s sake that Madeleine had left the building. Gavin on the other hand – well, Gavin surprised me. Not for the first time of course. But looking at them I honestly wondered for a moment who was the older. Homer swept a row of stuff off the bench, including the telephone, stomped up and down the kitchen swearing that he’d drop a hand grenade on anyone who tried to take Gavin away. It was quite some tantrum. Finally, though, he threw himself into an old armchair that I’d dragged in for Marmie and said, ‘OK Ellie, come on, time for another brilliant idea.’

I just shrugged, and Homer then came up with his own brilliant idea. ‘Let’s go down into Hell again. We can hide out there for years, like the Hermit. They’ll never find us.’

I assumed this was a joke, although I must admit there were things about it that did appeal to me.

Through all this Gavin had stood there watching Homer and frowning and now he said, ‘That’s no good. We have to tell them Ellie’s good at looking after me. I’ll go and tell them she’s the best.’

Tears filled my eyes. Gavin so rarely said or did anything affectionate, and fought me over so many issues, and complained bitterly that I was unfair and horrible and cruel. Deep down I knew he loved me like I loved him, but it was nice to hear it from him occasionally.

‘Sounds like you better go back to the lawyers,’ Homer said, calming down a bit now he had Gavin as his role model for calmness under pressure.

‘I guess so. God, I had enough of lawyers last time.’

My own guardianship battle had been such an ugly experience. Like I said before, one of the local lawyers, Mr Sayle, had tried to get the right to handle my money, basically so he could steal as much of it as possible. I won that case, and in the end Homer’s parents agreed to be my legal guardians, but I couldn’t ask them to take on Gavin as well. To be honest they weren’t his biggest fans. They were very strict and old-fashioned, and they already had two wild boys. They put up with him for my sake, but every time he went over there they complained about him. The idea of Gavin moving in with them – not to mention me as well – wasn’t a good one.