Jellicoe Road (20 page)

During this time I start to get to know my mother again by piecing together fragments of our lives, snippets of Hannah’s story and Sam’s miserable memories. What kills me most is my inability to remember much of that journey when she drove me to the Jellicoe Road. And I want to. I want to remember the look in her eyes when she realised that she had to let go of the person who was her closest link to Webb. Did she look at me and tell me she loved me? Or did she not speak at all because the words would slice her throat, leaving her to bleed to death all the way back?

While I sit in the foyer of St. Vincent’s hospital, waiting for the receptionist to finish on the phone, I think of everything I have always wanted to say to my mother and how in the past twenty-four hours
all of it has changed.

“You ready?” Griggs asks, coming back from ringing Santangelo.

I shake my head.

“How about I go up and ask?”

I look at him, trying to manage a smile.

“What are you thinking?” he asks. I’ve been piecing together tiny details about him as well. That he always asks that question because he has to see a counsellor every week at home and that’s what his counsellor asks him. And that sometimes he’s a bit shy, like he is at the moment and has been all morning. It makes me feel shy back. I wonder if everyone else is shy the morning after or whether they chat and laugh as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I wonder if we’re unnatural.

“I’m thinking that after last night you shouldn’t have to spend your morning in a hospital finding out if my mother has tried to OD.”

“And I’m thinking that after last night I want to be anywhere you are and if that means being in a hospital asking about your mother, then so be it.”

But we know that we’re both thinking about much more than what we’re doing here now.

“Just say after Wednesday we never see each—”

“Don’t,” he says, angry.

“Jonah, you live six hundred kilometres away from me,” I argue.

“Between now and when we graduate next year there are at least ten weeks’ holiday and five random public holidays. There’s email and if you manage to get down to the town, there’s text messaging and mobile phone calls. If not, the five minutes you get to speak to me on your communal phone is better than nothing. There are the chess nerds who want to invite you to our school for the chess comp next March and there’s this town in the middle, planned by Walter Burley Griffin, where we can meet up and protest against our government’s refusal to sign the Kyoto treaty.”

“Gees, Jonah,” I say in mock indignation. “I wish you’d put more thought into our relationship.”

“And then we make plans.”

“As long as you don’t have an affair with Lily, the girl next door.”

“Her name’s actually Gerty. She’s bigger than me and can beat me in an arm-wrestle. There is no way in this world that I will ever,
ever
go out with
someone called Gerty because if I married her and she wanted to take my name, she’d be called Gerty Griggs.”

I laugh for the first time in days and then I take a deep breath and stand up. “I’m ready.”

We walk to the counter and I ask politely for Tate Markham, hoping she’s under that name. The receptionist looks on a written list in front of her and shakes her head.

“Are you sure she’s here?” she asks.

“No, but we were told she was.”

She taps her keyboard and I’m beginning to feel sick. Don’t let me have to start again, I pray. She shakes her head and I hear Griggs clear his throat.

“Is there a St. Vincent’s hospice around?”

“Next door.”

I breathe a sigh of relief and thank her before walking away.

“What’s the diff?” I ask him.

He shrugs.

When we walk into the hospice, I go through the same routine again. After a moment I can see the receptionist has come across the name and she peers at it closely. “She was here,” she says.

I feel Griggs’s arm around me.
Was
. What does
was
actually mean? The verb
to be
. Past tense of
is
. Does it mean that someone is no longer
being
?

“She checked out.”

The relief almost sends me over the counter to hug her. “Checked out? Like not a euphemism ‘checked out’ but a real one?”

The woman looks confused. “She checked out six weeks ago.”

Six weeks ago everything changed in my world. Hannah left. Griggs arrived. The boy in the tree in my dreams began to bring a sobbing creature to our nightly tête-à-tête.

“What was the date?”

She looks at us and I can see the shutter go down. “We have privacy laws and we can’t just give out information….”

“Please,” I beg her, taking out my wallet and showing her my student card. “Our names are the same. I can show you a photo of her. She’s my mother and I haven’t seen her for six years.”

She looks at me and then at Griggs and I feel as if she’s going to get emotional as well but then she taps on her keyboard again.

“She was signed out on the sixteenth of September.”

I look at Griggs. “Last time I saw Hannah was on the fifteenth.”

“Are you sure?”

“We have the Leadership Council on the fifteenth of September every year and I saw her the morning after. We had an argument.”

I turn back to the receptionist. “Did she sign herself out?” I ask.

“No,” she says, reading the screen.

“Did Hannah Schroeder sign her out?”

“No,” the receptionist peers closer at her screen. “Jude Scanlon did.”

“Jude,” I whisper, excited. “Oh my God, Jonah. I’m going to meet Jude.”

“Jude Scanlon?” Griggs says. “You never mentioned a Jude Scanlon.”

“Yeah I did,” I look up at the woman and smile. “Thanks.”

“Good luck,” she says.

“He’s the Cadet,” I explain as we walk away. “The one I told you about who planted the poppies.”

“Taylor,” he says, and I can tell by the look on his
face that something is not right. “Jude Scanlon is not just the Cadet. He’s the Brigadier.”

I’m in shock but everything is starting to make sense. We go back to where we parked the car and it doesn’t start. While Griggs attempts to fix it, I sit on the kerb and use his phone to ring home. One of the year nines answers and she puts me through a mini third-degree, questioning me about where I am and when I’m coming back and if I’m coming back and something about Mr. Palmer and the Army man taking Jessa that morning. I ask her to give the phone to Raffy and a few seconds later I hear her familiar voice.

“Where are you?” she asks, and there are five different tones in her voice, including shittiness and concern and relief.

“What’s happening there?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she sighs. “Mr. Palmer and the Brigadier took Jessa this morning and they haven’t returned her. Please tell me they aren’t the serial killers.”

“No, they’re not. Promise me that you’ll never repeat that theory.”

“Promise me that you’re coming back.”

“Of course I am. Why have they taken Jessa? Can’t you find out through Chaz’s dad?”

“Chaz’s dad is furious. I mean big-time furious with a big fat F.”

“Did he find out that Chaz broke into the police station?”

I can see Griggs looking up from what he’s doing and waiting for the answer.

“Chaz is in so much trouble,” she says.

“What? In gaol or painting the town,” I try to joke.

“Taylor, his dad won’t talk to him.” I can tell that Raffy is in no mood for any kind of humour.

I look at Griggs and cover the mouthpiece. “Chaz’s dad isn’t talking to him. Did he tell you that?”

“Shit, no,” he says, shocked. “He’s not going to cope with that.”

I get back to Raffy who is still talking. “…and Chaz is really cut about it and worse still, he won’t tell them where you guys are so it’s like the Cold War over there. He says his father reckons he’ll never trust him again. Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Are you?”

“Well, how can I be? You’ve run away, Jessa’s been taken by someone you’ve both told me is a serial killer, Ben’s reading the Old Testament and keeps quoting vengeance scenes and Jonah Griggs in the same breath, and Chaz is so down that he didn’t speak for half the time I was with him last night.”

“What did you do for the other half?” I ask.

“Very funny, Taylor. Come home and stop making things complicated,” she says angrily.

“I can’t find my mother and things
are
complicated.”

“Then make them simple and come home.”

“Just get Jessa back. I’ll be there soon.”

Griggs sits on the kerb with me, holding something that he’s yanked out of the engine. I can tell he has absolutely no idea what to do with cars and the more he looks at it, the more confused he is. I don’t know what to concentrate on and in what order. Should I begin with my mother, who checked out of a hospice for God knows what reason? Or with the Brigadier, who I’ve just discovered is one of her beloved childhood friends? Or maybe with Raffy, who is worried about Chaz? Or Jessa, who is being questioned as we speak? Or should I begin with
Griggs, who I…who I what? I don’t even know what terminology to use. Did we have sex? Did we make love? Did we sleep together? Is he my boyfriend? And Hannah? Where’s Hannah in all this?

“We’re going to have to take the train to Yass and then make our way from there,” Griggs says. “We’ll have to leave the car here.”

I look at him and shake my head. “You’ve officially given me an aversion to trains leading to Yass,” I say. I dial directory assistance. “The Jellicoe Police Station,” I say.

Griggs is looking at me as if I’m insane. They connect me and I wait for someone to answer. I say who I am and then I ask for Santangelo’s dad. I wait less than three seconds and he’s on the line.

“Taylor? Where are you?” Shitty tone.

“In Sydney. Is Jude Scanlon there?”

“No. Is Jonah with you?”

“Yes.”

I hear the first sigh of relief. Two missing kids located. Tick.

“Can we expect you back soon?” He’s now using a measured tone.

“Depends on the Brigadier. Can you give him a
message? Tell him that we’ll be at the hospice. The one he signed my mother out of six weeks ago. He can ring us there or he can ring us on Jonah’s phone. Tell him I want to know where my mother is and where Hannah is and I want Jessa McKenzie back in the dorms ASAP.”

“Anything else?” Now it’s a dry tone.

I’m about to say ‘No’ and hang up but I change my mind. “Yes, actually there is something else,” I say. “I met this boy here who I knew as a kid and his mum left him with a pedophile for two weeks when he was eight years old and I’m presuming you know everything there is to know about Jonah’s father, and that my father is dead, and my mother hasn’t been around for years, and God knows Jessa’s real story. So what I’m saying here, Sergeant, is that we’re just a tad low on the reliable adult quota so you have no right to be all self-righteous about what Chaz did and if you’re going to go around not talking to him when his only crime was wanting me to have what he has, then I think you’re going to turn out to be a bit of a dud and you know something? I’m just a bit over life’s little disappointments right now. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He’s silent for a moment.

“We just want you back here.” The caring tone in his voice makes me want to cry but I need to keep my anger focused or I’ll stop moving forward.

“Why?”

“Because it’s what your mother wants and if she knew you were somewhere out there meeting up with God knows who, it would—”

“No lectures,” I say. “Just answers.
Please
.”

I hear him sigh.

“I’ll talk to Chaz and I’ll give Jude your message. He’ll have the answers, Taylor.”

I hang up, and Griggs looks at me, stunned.

“You are very scary sometimes.”

I give him back the phone and lean my head on his shoulder.

“Do you think the Brigadier will come and get us?” I ask.

“It’s eleven thirty,” he says. “It’s a six-to seven-hour trip, tops. I’ll bet you two trillion dollars that he’ll be here by six
P.M.
on the dot.”

When he wins the bet, I tell Griggs that it will take me a lifetime to save up two trillion dollars and he
tells me that he’s only giving me seventy years.

The Brigadier pulls up in front of the hospice and as he gets out of the car, it’s very clear that he’s not happy. Like Griggs, it’s the first time I’ve seen him out of uniform and it’s really the first time I’ve got a proper look at him. I must shiver because Griggs leans over and whispers to me not to worry. The Brigadier notices the exchange and I can tell he’s unimpressed. There’s a look in his eyes that says
I know what you did last night.

“Hannah’s out of her mind with worry.”

“Really?” I say. “Well, now she must know how I’ve felt for the past six weeks.”

He dismisses me with a look and turns to Griggs. “I’ll drop you off at your home, Jonah. We’ll be back in two days, anyway, so there’s no point you coming all the way back.”

I can’t move. I’m stuck to Griggs, not wanting to let go. I hate this man for even suggesting it but Griggs gently pushes me to the front passenger seat.

“I’d prefer to return, sir.”

“It’s not really an option, Jonah,” he says quietly.

“Sir, whether you drive me there or whether I hitch, I’ll be returning to camp.” Griggs doesn’t even
raise a sweat, which is amazing because I know how he feels about the Brigadier. He gets into the back seat and calmly puts on his seatbelt. The Brigadier looks at him through the rear-view mirror.

“It would have been better to have left this where it was three years ago.”

“This,” I presume, is my relationship with Griggs.

“Like you and Narnie did?” I ask. “You had a choice. You could have kept away but you came back.”

He sits, staring ahead.

“Where’s my mother?” I ask.

The Brigadier starts the car and pulls out of the narrow street.

“Where are they? My mum and Hannah?”

“We can’t see them for now.”

“Stop the car!” I say angrily.