Jellicoe Road (23 page)

He takes her hand and draws her to his side. They don’t say anything as they walk with me, but I’ve been here before, so I know that words aren’t needed. I remember love. These two people taught it to me and when I see Hannah lean over and kiss Jessa’s sleeping head, I know that for the rest of my life, no matter what, Hannah and Jude are going to be there. Like they always have been. And tomorrow I’ll need them more than ever.

When my mother returns home for the last time to the Jellicoe Road.

Aftermath. Everyone uses it all the time so I get very used to the word. In the aftermath we face the reality that the downstairs area of Lachlan is gutted. No photos, no posters, no fish, no clothing, no books, no diaries. Everything’s gone. In the aftermath, when the walls of my world are blackened and the taste in my mouth is of ash, my mother is due to re-enter my life for what will be the last couple of weeks of hers. In the aftermath Jonah Griggs prepares to leave and I have to take it on good faith and a great gut feeling that we will see each other, maybe for the rest of our lives. In the aftermath I finally accept that my father is dead and that the legacy left behind by the person who killed him is a thirteen-year-old kid who clutches my arm as we look at the space around us and whispers, “I knew you’d come and get me, Taylor. I
told Chloe P., ‘Don’t worry, Taylor will find us.’”

I hear Mr. Palmer tell Hannah that it was an electrical fault. Five arsonists in one school and it ends up being something so technically boring. They promise us that the dorm and kitchen will be complete by the time we return from the Christmas holidays in a couple of months’ time and I miss the girls already. I miss everything in my world already.

We spend Griggs’s last day at Hannah’s house with Santangelo and Raffy. It’s the first time he meets Hannah, apart from when we were fourteen, and the mood is cool and almost hostile.

“You seem to have a problem with me,” he says in typical Griggs fashion.

I can tell he regrets saying it when he is treated to one of Hannah’s long cold gazes.

“I think it will be a while before I forgive the trip to Sydney,” she says flatly.

“Fair enough. I think it will be a while before I forgive you for what you put her through over the past six weeks.”

I watch them both and for the first time it occurs to me that I’m no longer flying solo and that I have no intention of pretending that I am. I have an aunt
and I have a Griggs and this is what it’s like to have connections with people.

“Do you know what?” I ask both of them. “If you don’t build a bridge and get over it, I’ll never forgive either of you.”

From the verandah I watch Griggs inside, through the window, chatting to Raffy and Santangelo.

I can feel Hannah’s gaze on me and I ignore it for as long as I can.

“I know what you’re thinking,” I say.

She doesn’t speak.

“Say something,” I say, wanting to take every bad feeling I have out on Hannah because she’s so convenient.

“What do you want me to say?” she asks with that ever-patient voice of hers.

“What you’re thinking.”

“Okay. Why does it have to be so intense between you two?” she asks.

“Because I have an aunt named Narnie and a mother named Tate,” I snap, and I want to stop myself from being like this but I can’t. I’m too sad. I look at her and I can feel tears in my eyes. “Do you
think I don’t want him to be gone more than you do?
I do
. Because I need to know that I can still breathe properly when he’s not around. If something happens to him, I have to know that I won’t fall apart like Tate did without Webb. Even you and Jude. It’s not just my father or Fitz or even Tate you’ve missed all this time. It’s Jude not being in your life.”

“Jude is in my life, Taylor.”

“Then why aren’t you together?”

“He’s a soldier, Taylor,” she says tiredly. “He goes where they send him. East Timor. Solomon Islands. Iraq. Wherever they need to keep the peace. Why is it that we always have to fight?”

“We’re not fighting, Hannah. I just don’t want to hold back anymore and I don’t want you to, either. I’m your only living relative and one day I’m going to have to visit you in a nursing home and spoon-feed you custard and jelly, so I think I’m entitled to know what makes you tick.”

She stares at me and I get this feeling of love because I know her history now and understand how it has made her the way she is at times.

“What makes me tick? Tate. Jessa. You. Jude.”

“When you look at him, he thinks you’re think
ing that you’d rather he was Webb or Fitz or Tate. Did you know that?”

“He knows how much he means to me. He wouldn’t think that.”

“He told me. I asked him why you weren’t together and he said you’ll always be together but that’s bullshit. I’ve worked it out and I’m presuming that you were a couple until I was seven, but in the past ten years you’ve been apart and the only time you see each other is when it has to do with me. You wrote the book on all of this, Hannah. Did you never notice that he always felt left out? It’s like he wanted to be in that accident or he wanted to be crazy like Fitz. Like being Jude Scanlon wasn’t good enough for any of you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Why won’t you marry him?”

“Because he hasn’t asked me. Maybe it was never meant to be that type of relationship. Maybe it was because we survived. The bond—”

“Hannah, Jude and you don’t have a bond because you’re the only survivors. Jude and you have a
problem
because you’re the survivors. It’s like you can’t forgive each other. How come you can forgive Tate
for what she did and Webb for dying? And Fitz! How come you can forgive him? He killed your brother! He shot him out of a tree! You can forgive all of them but you can’t forgive you and Jude for living.”

Hannah looks stunned. “What do you want me to say? That if he asked me to marry him, I’d say yes? Okay. Yes. But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes, Taylor, and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can’t forgive yourself for.”

But I won’t let it go. “I’d forgive myself. To be with Jonah I’d do anything.”

Jude pulls up at the same time that Griggs comes out of the house.

“I’ve got to go,” Griggs says from the door. Hannah turns and I notice that she’s more fragile than I’ve ever seen her. She’s nursed a drug addict for the past six weeks and I can tell by her gauntness that it hasn’t been good for her. What went down between her and Tate, I wonder? Was Tate forever envious of the bond between Webb and Narnie? Is that why she wouldn’t let Hannah mother me all those years?

“Have a safe trip, Jonah,” Hannah says quietly.

“Thank you.”

He waits for me. “I’ll catch up,” I tell him as Raffy and Santangelo walk towards Jude, shaking his hand goodbye.

The plan is that Jude drives down with the Cadets and returns tomorrow with my mother. It’s what he always seems to be doing—saving us from ourselves. I remember the saints from Raffy’s books in year seven. St. Jude was the patron saint of the impossible—lost and desperate causes. I think he hit the jackpot in that department when he met the Markhams and Schroeders.

“You need anything?” Jude asks from the bottom of the steps.

Hannah shakes her head. “Don’t drive if you’re tired tomorrow.”

“I’d better be going,” I say quietly, walking down the steps. When I reach him, I stop.

I want to say a lot of things to Jude and Hannah. I want to thank them and tell them that my life would be like Sam’s if it wasn’t for them. I want to tell them that the brilliance of that memory of lying between them won’t be easily surpassed and that the stories of their love for each other touch me in a way I didn’t think possible. I want to convince them that
my father comes to speak to me at night and that his love for the two of them is never-ending.

“Jude,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Hannah reckons that if you ask her to marry you, she’ll say yes.”

I pat him on the shoulder and walk away, breaking into a run when I reach the clearing. Griggs is waiting. He takes my hand and we walk.

The Cadets leave from the general store. There is a crowd outside the buses while goodbyes are said and much-needed munchy provisions are purchased. I stay close to Griggs while he talks to people around him and although we don’t say a word to each other, we are never more than an inch apart. Every now and again, while he’s speaking to Santangelo’s mum or some of the Townies, our eyes meet and I dare not open my mouth in case I cry.

One of their teachers calls them from the bus and they begin to file on, calling out last-minute goodbyes. I watch Ben give instructions to Anson Choi, and the Mullet Brothers argue with them at the bus window. They have some gig planned in Canberra and they can’t agree on the songs or their order. But I can tell they all like one another so much even if one
of the Mullet Brothers has Ben in a headlock, pretending to hit his head against the side of the bus.

Ben pulls away and walks towards us, putting his arm around my shoulder ever so innocently.

“I think you guys need to be on the bus,” he says to Griggs.

“And I think you may end up under it,” Griggs says, gently pulling me away from Ben.

We stand looking at each other and, as usual with Griggs, it’s much too intense.

“So are you going to tell your mother about me?” he asks.

I look around to where Teresa, the hostage from Darling, is crying while her Cadet watches miserably from the bus window.

I shrug. “I’ll probably mention that I’m in love with you.”

He chuckles. “Only you would say that in such a I-think-I’ll-wash-my-hair-tonight tone.”

He leans down and kisses me and I hold on to his shirt, wanting to savour every moment.

I hear a few wolf-whistles but he ignores them and we linger.

My insides are in a million pieces and I feel like
someone out of one of those tragic war movies.

The bus driver honks the horn.

“You know on the Jellicoe Road where there’s that tree that looks like an old man bent over?” he asks, holding my face between his hands. It’s this feeling I’ll miss most.

I nod.

“That’s the closest mobile phone coverage to the School.”

“Griggs, they’re waiting,” Santangelo says quietly.

“Let them wait.”

We kiss again and I don’t care who is watching or how late they’ll be.

Slowly he untangles himself from me and turns to the others. “See you, Raffy,” he says, lifting her off the ground in a hug. He looks at Santangelo. “You drive them down at Christmas,” he says. “Promise?”

They grip each other’s hands and hug quickly and then he kisses me again and he’s on the bus. I can see him walking down the aisle, giving someone the finger, and I can imagine what’s being said inside.

Teresa is sobbing beside me and Trini is trying to console her.

“He’s in year eight, Teresa,” I remind her. “That means he’s coming back at least another three times.”

“But just say he forgets about me or meets someone else or pretends I don’t exist.”

I look at her and then at Trini and Raffy.

“Teresa, Teresa. Have we taught you nothing?” Raffy says in an irritated voice. “It’s war. You go in and you hunt him down until he realises that he’s made a mistake.”

Teresa looks hopeful.

“It’s not as if men haven’t gone to war for dumber reasons,” Trini adds.

The Mullet Brothers join us and we watch the bus as it leaves. I can sense everyone’s sadness.

We all walk towards town together.

“You want us to be there tomorrow?” Santangelo asks quietly.

I nod.

“Done.”

I feel tears running down my face and Raffy takes my hand and squeezes it.

“What are you so sad about?” Santangelo says to me. “We’re going to know him for the rest of our lives.”

The car pulls up in front of the house and I stand up. In the photos, when she was seventeen, she had lush black hair, white white skin, and dark blue eyes and a plumpness that spoke of good health. When I was young she had bleached the hair, her skin was pasty, her eyes were always bloodshot, and she was skinny. I can hardly ever remember her eating, just nervously smoking one cigarette after another. I don’t know which image is stronger in my mind but I know I want the girl with the black hair and the glow in her cheeks.

The person who emerges, though, has neither, courtesy of the chemotherapy. She’s even thinner than I remember and I’m amazed that she is actually as young as Hannah and Jude. But I can see from here that her eyes are sharp and bright. She looks beyond the house to the oak tree by the river, a ghost of a smile on her face, and I know she’s imagining him there, like Hannah does on those breezy afternoons when it’s just her and her thoughts. And like I do when he visits me in my dreams.

She smiles at something Jude says and then she walks towards the house, slowly. I stand at the top
of the stairs, looking for any sign of me in her face. I wonder how hard it was for her all that time seeing Webb and Narnie’s face stamped on mine and not one single mark of her. When she’s almost at the steps, she notices me and stops. There is wonder in her face, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. I think she’s expecting the sullen eleven-year-old that she left behind and for a moment I’m scared that she doesn’t know it’s me. But then she starts to cry. Not dramatically but with such sadness, clutching at her throat, looking at me like she can’t believe her eyes. She tries to speak but she isn’t able to. I walk down the steps of the verandah towards her and with shaking hands she holds my face between them, sobbing, “Look at my beautiful girl.”

I take in every inch of her face, the sick pallor of her skin, the dryness of her lips, and I lean forward and I press my lips against hers, like I want to give them colour again. I touch her face and the bristle of her hair that’s growing back. I like the feel of it under my fingertips, like a massage.

“It’s not good for Tate to be outside,” Jude says quietly.

I take her by the hand, up the stairs and inside the house, and she looks around again in awe.

“It’s just like he planned it,” she says in a hushed tone as Hannah comes over and kisses her gently. I introduce her to Santangelo and Raffy and then Jessa comes running into the house, her arm in a sling, beaming that crazy beam of hers.

“I’m late and I didn’t want to be but they had to fix my cast and Mr. Palmer was late picking me up.” She looks at my mother. “Did they tell you about the fire and tunnel and how Griggs broke my arm?”

I take Jessa’s other hand and bring her forward. “This is Jessa McKenzie. She belongs to Fitz.”