While I Live (3 page)

There were certainly heaps of rumours. Wirrawee these days was a regular gossip factory, spewing out stories the way the Stratton Smallgoods Factory spewed out sausages. But border raids were one of the biggest talking points, almost from the day the war ended. Some of them were reported in the news but there were plenty of people to tell you that the media only mentioned one in every ten. It was impossible for us, living so far out of town, busy trying to rebuild the farm, to know what was really happening.

It seemed pretty clear though that there were people from both sides sneaking across the border for all kinds of illegal reasons. I would say that from our side people were doing it for thrills, to steal stuff, to get revenge for the war, and looking for unreturned prisoners who were rumoured to be hidden in hard-to-reach places.

From their side, I’d say they were doing it for thrills, to steal stuff, to get revenge for the war. And some of them were pissed off about the peace settlement, and thought they should have kept the whole country.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s another reason people from our side were going over the border. Maybe they thought we should have got the whole country back, so they decided to take it a little bit at a time. A lot of people on our side, Mr Purvis included, were sure that we should have got more land. They even said we’d ended the war too early, accepted peace terms that were one-sided. I don’t know about that. Seemed to me like neither side won this particular war, but the big New Zealand counterattack at the end got us the best terms we could have hoped for. Without that we’d have ended up with Flinders Island. Twenty million people on Flinders Island. Could have been tricky. Anyway, what would I know?

But considering the experiences I’d had in the war, hanging out in the bush and fighting like a tiger cat, staying alive even with half an army chasing us, I can hardly believe, looking back, that I didn’t take more care. Dumb, dumb, dumb. You make a lot of mistakes in life. You leave your bus pass at home, you forget to take the scones out of the oven, you lose a library book, you call Mrs Mackenzie ‘Mum’ in a moment of absent-mindedness. None of those things matter an awful lot.

You don’t take the idea of a raid on your place seriously, and as a result your parents and Mrs Mackenzie are killed.

I knew a lot more about guerilla fighting than my parents did. I should have been the one to think this through.

I don’t know how to describe those first few days. I don’t know how to describe those first few minutes. Gavin went into shock. I mean real, serious shock. I’d seen a kind of shock before, during the war. My friend Kevin had it, especially when a group of us, as we ran feral and loose around the countryside, blew up Wirrawee Airfield as a contribution to the war effort. Kevin had been a mixture of catatonic, sulky and terrified while that was happening.

Now Gavin was a complete mess, lying on the verandah like he was having a fit, white-faced and shaking, his eyes way back in his head, his teeth chattering. It was completely distracting, coming back towards the house, trying to get my head around what had happened, trying to come to terms with the bodies and the blood and the death and the way my life had changed, and in the middle of all that suddenly realising that I had to look after Gavin. He didn’t reply to anything I said. He wasn’t unconscious, but he might as well have been. I had to make myself function, go to the linen press and get a blanket, and then another blanket when he still didn’t stop shaking, and sit with him and hold him and talk to him and sing to him.

I don’t suppose he heard any of what I said but I don’t think it mattered. There were times when I resented Gavin’s arrival in our family, even though I was the cause of it, but this wasn’t one of those times.

From time to time I had glimpses of Homer. He was holding Dad’s rifle and first I saw him hurrying through the kitchen, then prowling around the outside of the house, eyes searching the garden and the trees, occasionally stopping to poke into a bush or throw open the door of a shed and look inside. It was brave that he did that: if anyone was there, they would have got him pretty easily I think.

The phone in the house rang but I didn’t answer it and eventually it stopped.

After a while Gavin got some colour in his face and his skin felt a bit warmer. He’d more or less stopped shaking and I thought he might have gone to sleep. I got up. It was hard: my legs had certainly gone to sleep, and I didn’t seem able to walk properly. Gavin moved when I got up, but he didn’t open his eyes, so I took a few steps away. When he still didn’t move I hurried back into the house. Homer burst in from the other side, giving me a fright because for a moment I didn’t know who was coming through the door. He had a second rifle, obviously taken from a dead soldier, and he gave it to me and together we carefully checked each room. I was in automatic mode; I think I quite liked having something to do so I didn’t have to think, didn’t have to feel.

But then I couldn’t postpone it any longer. I went back into the kitchen.

Homer and I still hadn’t exchanged a word. I took another look at the two bodies in there, as if I wanted to see whether they might have come back to life. Then I went to the linen press again and got two more blankets.

‘Do you want to go after them?’ Homer asked. He meant the soldiers. I don’t know why I call them soldiers. They were murderers. I shook my head. I was even angry at him, that all he could think of was punishment and revenge. It was unfair, but I was filled with such rage and despair that anything would have made me angry. To be honest I was angry that he’d even spoken. A house spider ran across the kitchen bench and I slammed it so hard with an old copy of
Vogue Living
that its little black body disintegrated.

I sat down in Mum’s favourite chair with my head on my arms. I stayed like that for a while then got up and called the police. I felt listless. When they answered I said, ‘My parents have been shot. And Mrs Mackenzie. They’re all dead.’ Then, stupidly, I hung up. A moment later they rang back. I don’t know how they worked out I was the one who’d rung them. And I didn’t know the guy. I think his name was Elliott. He said, ‘Is this right? There’s been a shooting? At the Linton place?’

I gave the phone to Homer and went back to look at Gavin. He still seemed asleep. I took yet another blanket, from Gavin’s bed this time. One thing we did still have was a lot of blankets. I went outside. All the time I could hear Homer’s voice, low and urgent, talking to the cops. I wondered how he was feeling. He loved my mother and idolised my father. I went outside to my father and put the blanket over him. Blood was still seeping from his body but it seemed to be coagulating now. Surprisingly there was only one fly buzzing around him. I was grateful for that. I returned to the house.

I’m not sure what we did until the police came. It seems like it took them quite a while but I’m not sure about that either. Homer told me to sit with Gavin. ‘Shock can kill people,’ he said. ‘Keep him warm. Look after him.’ I guess he knew it was good for me to have something else to do.

After a while Gavin did wake up. He didn’t say anything. I just sat there rubbing his head and stroking his hair. I knew how much he loved this, like a dog, and how it calmed him. I thought about the strange route he had taken, from the wild streets of Stratton to being on our verandah as a member of our family, and I wondered if I’d done him any favours. Maybe I should have left him back there to live or die on his own.

Occasionally a little tear ran down his face, leaving a track like a snail trail, and a fit of trembling shook his body.

The police arrived and the ambulance about a second later. I’m not sure if Homer rang the ambulance; I don’t think he did. The police probably arranged that. There wasn’t much for the ambos to do.

There were two police cars, three men and one woman. I had this feeling that I only wanted to talk to the woman so I stuck pretty close to her.

Not that there was much to say. We’d been heading up the spur for a picnic on Tailor’s Stitch, just the three of us. First time we’d been up there for ages. Heard the shots, came running back. Found dead people everywhere. End of story.

There was a lot of activity. People moving around, talking in hushed voices, photos, and in the middle of it Homer got everyone coffee. I thought I didn’t want it but he made me take it and maybe the caffeine helped.

The ambulance went away again. I had thought it would take the bodies, but it didn’t, just left them. Bodies.

It seemed weird to think of my parents as being bodies. Like they had become objects. Homer’s mum, Mrs Yannos, arrived, and other neighbours and friends, I can’t even remember who they were. Gavin came in and tried to crawl into my lap but he was really too big and I didn’t have enough compassion left for him now. Mrs Yannos gave me lots of hugs but I hardly felt them.

Two more cars arrived, station wagons, and some men in grey suits. They spoke to me in voices that were so hushed and oily that I felt a little ill, like I’d eaten a sausage that wasn’t cooked properly. They gave me forms to sign and I signed them. It took me a long time to figure out who they were and what they wanted. Then I realised they were undertakers. I stood up and screamed at them, but Mrs Yannos grabbed me from one side and Homer from the other, and I had to stand and watch as they took what was left of my mother and Mrs Mackenzie away, on metal stretchers. Then to torture myself, or to do him honour, or for both reasons, I went out on the verandah and watched as they got my father. They came back for one of the killers.

‘We haven’t got room for the others,’ they said. ‘We’ll pick them up in a couple of hours.’

Clutching myself around the stomach I nodded. I didn’t want the murderer’s body in the same vehicle as my parents so I made the man put him in with Mrs Mackenzie, which was totally gross of me.

Mrs Yannos, along with Mr and Mrs Sanderson, the people who were still farming part of our old property, starting cleaning the kitchen. I took a Chux thinking I would help them but instantly felt so sick at cleaning up my mother’s life blood and fragments of her body that I had to go outside and gulp in fresh air. Homer came after me and put his arm around me and I leaned into him but I couldn’t cry. On my other side Gavin was leaning into me and I suddenly thought, ‘These are about the two most important people left in my life,’ and I felt desperate at how alone I now was.

T
HE NEXT FEW
days passed like some gruesome dream. Or a bad drug trip. Not that I’ve ever had a bad drug trip. Or a drug trip full-stop. A dozen times a day I felt revolted at finding yet another drop of blood or something worse in a corner or crevice or cranny of the kitchen. I couldn’t believe how far blood spreads, how it splatters. I’d already learned during the war how much blood there is in the human body but I’d never had to live with the results of that before. I didn’t want to go into the kitchen. I shuddered every time I went through the door, but I knew I had no choice. And every time I felt like I could see the bodies of my mother and Mrs Mackenzie, still lying on the floor.

Poor Mrs Mackenzie. In the middle of everything I found time to think about her and her family. It was almost easier to think about her than it was to think about my own parents. Mrs Mackenzie had lost her child, her husband, and now she had gone to join Corrie. It was like suddenly there was hardly any trace of her on the planet. I hoped for her sake, as well as for my sake, for everyone’s sake, that there is an after-life, and that she and Corrie had been reunited there.

Although I used the kitchen when I had to, I hardly ate anything. I picked up food and looked at it and felt sick and put it down. I had no appetite. At least I didn’t need to cook. People left food, lots of it. Mrs Yannos and Mrs Sanderson came in every day, bringing casseroles and cakes and soups and sandwiches. And Gavin kept eating, so he had to be fed. I used the kitchen to make his breakfast and to heat up the food the neighbours left and to microwave hot chocolates for him.

Homer and the Anglican priest from Wirrawee sat down with me and told me we had to work out the details of the funerals. I said I couldn’t do it but when they got up to go I changed my mind. I realised that if I didn’t do it, they would. And I knew I couldn’t live with myself if someone else made the arrangements. Homer probably would have started with The Vines, and finished with The Strokes.

So that evening I found it quite therapeutic to sit down and write out what I wanted. Father Berryman had left a bunch of poems and prayers, and there were a few that I liked. One of them started

Everything slips away. The river goes to the ocean
And joins that great mystery.
Now I too. You cannot hold me,
Any more than you can hold water. Let me go . . .

The trouble was that although I liked this one I didn’t want to listen to it. Letting them go? I ached for them, hungered for them. My bones were sore with the pain of their not being here. I wanted to grip them to me.

I went looking in my mum’s books, and found a poem that she’d marked with a little cross. Somehow it seemed to fit better, and I knew Father Berryman wouldn’t mind.

All things uncomely and broken, all things worn out and
     old,

The cry of a child by the roadway, the creak of a lumbering
     cart,

The heavy steps of the ploughman, splashing the wintry
     mould,

Are wronging your image that blossoms a rose in the deeps
     of my heart.

The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be
     told;

I hunger to build them anew and sit on a green knoll
     apart

With the earth and the sky and the water, re-made, like a
     casket of gold

For my dreams of your image that blossoms a rose in the
     deeps of my heart.

Their deaths seemed to fit with ‘the wrong of unshapely things’.

As well as the poem I remembered all the times my mum had told me about ‘their song’, the song Dad and she had first danced to, the one that always got them smiling when they heard it again. It was pretty well known I think.