them from Mr Yannos’s manager, and from Jerry, but my bank manager, although she’d promised to have it ready, had gone to Stratton for the day and her assistant couldn’t find any trace of it in her office.
Mr Sayle stood up and said pretty much the same things he’d said last time. I handed up the statements from Mr Yannos’s bank and the letter from Jerry saying my cattle had gone up in value, but the magistrate only glanced at them. She seemed to be in a bad mood. ‘Great,’ I thought. ‘My future gets decided by a judge with PMT.’
I told her again how much I wanted Mr and Mrs Yannos to look after me, how I didn’t know Mr Sayle, and I added that I thought it was good to have three different points of view instead of just one. I knew I couldn’t say anything about Mr Rodd because I’d only just heard about it, and I didn’t know whether it was true. I wasn’t sure if there was anything wrong with him being Mr Sayle’s brother-in-law anyway.
When I’d finished, the magistrate wrote a lot of stuff. She seemed to take forever. I knew Mr Yannos would approve. Finally she looked down at me.
‘Ellie, I know this is difficult for you to understand, but at your age you don’t require the amount of parenting a young child would need. The main function of a guardian for you is to look after your financial interests. It seems to me that Mr and Mrs Yannos, who are obviously very good friends and good neighbours, will be there for you no matter what order I make today. But I’m not convinced they have the financial sophistication to look after your parents’ estate. Therefore I am going to assign Mr Sayle as your guardian. Obviously your parents felt comfortable with his judgement, to make him trustee of their estate, so I’m sure they would approve of his having the legal care of you as well. And in the fullness of time you will appreciate that this is in your best interests.’
I didn’t hear the rest of it, just sat there gaping at her. How could she? How dare she! How dare Mr Sayle! What kind of stupid morons made up these laws anyway?
My eyes stinging with rage I followed Mr and Mrs Yannos outside. Mr Sayle came up, looking as smug as a bull who’s fetched top price at a stud sale. ‘Well, there you are,’ he said. ‘I have to say it’s a very sensible decision, Ellie. As she said, you’ll soon realise that it’s the best solution. Now why don’t you give Mrs Samuels a ring and arrange an appointment and we can have another look at your affairs?’
I couldn’t even answer him, and after an embarrassed silence he went off again, saying, ‘Oh well, I can see you’re a bit upset, but you’ll soon be over it.’
I was meant to go back to school but I couldn’t face it. I said goodbye to Mr and Mrs Yannos, who were looking bewildered and upset, and I got a cafe latte at Juicy’s, in Barker Street. I was meant to be saving money but I didn’t care at that stage.
The cafe was half full of soldiers. That was another thing we were slowly getting used to, soldiers everywhere. Conscription had started a month ago. Only limited at this stage. There would have been more but the Army couldn’t cope with hundreds and thousands of new recruits yet. By the time we left school there was a fair chance they’d be ready to take us, although because of our family circumstances both Lee and I would get exemption. Special consideration again. If we wanted it.
To my surprise I saw Bronte hurrying along the street. I called to her and she came over straight away.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘God, so many soldiers.’
‘Yeah. It’s giving me the creeps.’
‘Hey, careful.’
‘Sorry,’ I said automatically. Then I wondered why I had to be sorry. ‘What, are you connected with the Army or something?’
‘My parents are both in the Army.’
‘Really?’ I realised how little I knew about her. ‘What do they do?’
‘God, how would I know? What does anyone in the Army do? I don’t think it’s anything very exciting though. They seem to spend their time with piles of folders and reports. And they both look pretty bored when I go onto the base to see them.’
‘You don’t live on the base?’
‘No, it’s all so new out there, and there aren’t many houses. But eventually we’ll move, if we’re in Wirrawee long enough.’
‘So what rank are your parents?’ It was a relief to have something else to think about.
‘They’re both majors. I call them Major Major.’
I must have looked a bit blank because she added: ‘It’s a joke from a book. Catch 22. It was about the American Army in World War II, and there was a character in it called Major Major, because that was both his rank and his surname.’
‘I get it. Like Doctor Doctor. You want a coffee?’
She looked at her watch. ‘Sure.’
‘So what are you doing out of school?’ I asked again, when I’d finally fought off half the Army and come back with a black coffee and a latte.
‘Oh, I just had to go to the doctor. Nothing much.’ She brushed her hair from her forehead. ‘I get dermatitis and I was picking up a new prescription. I keep hoping for the miracle cream to turn up and cure it but I think I’m stuck with it. I get rashes and stuff all the time. Then I scratch them and make it worse.’
‘So where did you live before the war?’
‘Before the war. That’s our benchmark for everything now, isn’t it? Well, we lived everywhere. Typical Army kid. I’ve been to eight different schools. Mostly with other Army kids, depending on where we were stationed. Sometimes we went to normal schools. It was good in a way, because you’d turn up at a new school in, say, Darwin, and there’d be three kids you’d been in Grade 3 with in Holsworthy and two you’d been in Grade 4 with at Puckapunyal and one you’d remember from Grade 1 in Townsville, and so it went on.’
‘The paths kept recrossing?’
‘Exactly.’
‘Have you got any brothers or sisters?’
‘I had a brother but he was killed in the war.’
‘Killed?’
‘We were being evacuated to New Zealand by helicopter. He was in the one ahead of me. We got separated at the last minute. I tried to switch to his one but they wouldn’t let me so I just called out to him, ‘Don’t worry, you go on that one, I’ll meet you at the other end.’ I thought he’d be OK. He was with his friends and he’d been on a helicopter before. He just waved back. There was such chaos.’ She shrugged.
‘So what happened?’ I was gripping the cup as my latte got colder and colder. She seemed so calm.
‘It hit powerlines, just after take-off. Pilot error I guess. The weather was good enough. It fell on its side. And of course it was full of fuel so it exploded. We weren’t even allowed to get out of ours. We took off about two minutes later.’
I tried to imagine how that would be, going up in one helicopter as you saw your brother killed in another one. I tried and I failed.
‘How old was he?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Was he a nice brother?’
Her face broke into a huge smile. ‘Oh he was so cool! I know you’re meant to fight with your brother and say he’s a nuisance and all that stuff, but Michael and I were the closest friends you could ever be. He was so gentle and kind. He played guitar and he’d just started writing his own songs. I think he would have been famous one day. The songs were great. It was like someone a thousand years old had written them.’
Her eyes were moist now, but she shook her head and had a long sip of her coffee.
‘Anyway, what are you doing out of school?’ she asked.
‘It seems almost insignificant now,’ I said.
‘Is it insignificant to you?’
‘No.’
‘Well?’
‘This lawyer who’s in charge of my parents’ money, he wanted to make himself my guardian as well. I didn’t want him, I wanted Homer’s mum and dad. But this morning the court handed me over to him.’
‘They did? Even though you didn’t want him?’
‘Yeah. Seems like that’s the way it works around here.’
