Jeremy had a confidence that even Steve didn’t have. He just took it for granted that I was going to like what he was doing, and that I liked him. For a moment I tingled like I didn’t want to be touched. But his firm fingers and strong arms… soon they felt too good to push away. To be honest, I think anyone with those hands and arms would have done OK with me when I was so tired mentally and physically. I let myself lean back and enjoy the calm pressure. I even closed my eyes, which I don’t do with most guys. The thought, the memory, of the boy in New Zealand who had practically raped me at the party came back for a moment but I blocked it. I knew Jeremy had a good heart. His hands were good too, and his body was even better.
I can’t describe people very well so I normally don’t bother. But I’ll have a go with Jeremy. He was one of those people who’ve got all their parts in the right proportion to each other, if you know what I mean. Well, I don’t mean all their parts, but his legs and arms were the right length for the rest of him, and his head was right too. He wasn’t tall or short, just average I suppose, which sounds awful, but he was a very nice average. He looked like one of those boys who’d be good at every sport that came along — he had the balance, the co-ordination. I remember him saying once that he’d played fly half when he lived in New Zealand, and one of the boys who was listening and who knew a lot about rugby laughed and said, Yes, you’re such a fly half,’ and I said, What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘Fly halves are like dancers, plus they can kick with left foot or right foot.’
I liked the sound of that.
Jeremy had a real shine in his eyes, which his father had too, even in the middle of a war. You knew he was alive when you looked into his eyes. He was growing a bit of a goatee, which didn’t exactly work, but I don’t know, on a lot of boys it looks so bad, and I used to think if a boy with a beard wanted to go with me the first thing I’d say to him was, ‘The beard comes off.’ But on Jeremy there was something kind of cute about it. Like it seemed really sincere, or it made him look like a really sincere person, which I know makes no sense at all.
Oh yeah, and he had brown hair and brown eyes and a bit of that acne that comes with scars and his feet were size nine, and that’s about the longest description of anyone I’ve ever tried to do since I started writing about the war, so long ago.
So there I was with the fly half giving me a neck massage and he hadn’t said a word. His hands worked their way across my shoulders and down my back. I leant back a bit more and purred. In a way there was nothing sexual about it and in another way it was one of the sexiest things I’ve ever had a boy do. The only tension I felt was the tension of hoping he wouldn’t stop, that I could lie there forever, and that somehow he’d never get tired of massaging me and he’d never want me to do anything in return.
That’s the really annoying thing in relationships: you have to actually do something for the other person once in a while, instead of lying back and waiting for them to peel another grape and drop it in your mouth. Maybe robots would be better.
The funny thing was that Jeremy left again, about twenty minutes later, and in all that time we didn’t exchange a word, but when he left there was a new vibe between us. I went to bed excited for the first time in ages, and realised, lying there in the dark, that I didn’t feel that way about Lee any more, or rather, that Lee didn’t make me feel that way any more, which may be the same thing. I hadn’t planned on complicating my life any further, but love, I guess it strikes like lightning and suddenly there’s a stampede. What am I talking about? That’s not just love, that’s life in general.
Oh, Jeremy. I was so tired but I couldn’t sleep. I ran through all his beautiful qualities, over and over. His warm eyes, his firm hands, the pleasing way he stood and sat and walked, his sense of humour, his intelligence, the way he knew so much about history and was so strong and passionate when he talked about it. I love people to be passionate about something. I’d rather they were passionate about football than about nothing. I’d rather they were passionate about tractors or pigshooting or Dalmatian dogs or making marmalade. About the only exception is computer games. I don’t find passionate computer nerds all that sexy.
Jeremy was calm as well as strong. He was a bit like his father in that way. He was kind and gentle and nice to everyone. I don’t think he was too like his father in that way though. I got the feeling in New Zealand that Colonel, sorry, General Finley was pretty tough on anyone who wasn’t doing what General Finley wanted. I wondered if that included his son. He would be a pretty strict father, I think. He had Jeremy’s shining eyes without the humour. And if Jeremy was the Scarlet Pimple, well, that would be impressive. I would like that. He would have to be a real leader to do that. He’d have to be someone who could take charge and make stuff happen. He’d be respected by everyone.
Oh, if my hands could only be his hands. I drifted off to sleep a while later, smiling for the first time in a long time.
C HAPTER 12
I don’t know whether this is anything to do with love but over the next few days I made a fool of myself a zillion times, except that luckily most of the time no-one was there to notice. Maybe it was just total exhaustion, but I managed to spray the griller with eucalyptus instead of cooking oil, then I left nearly a dozen eggs on top of the stove when I was doing a roast, which didn’t do much for their freshness. The eucalyptus spray had been standing around in the kitchen for as long as I could remember. We used it for pretty much everything, like spraying around the room after I’d made a sardine sandwich (Mum hated the smell of sardines), spraying on burns, spraying on beds to get rid of dust mites, spraying on Gavin when he was being a nuisance.
Lee and Pang left and I missed Pang’s bright friendly chatter but I didn’t miss Lee much. I was scared of the way he looked at me, those dark brooding eyes, sombre and impenetrable. I didn’t know what he expected of me any more, but whatever it was, I was fairly certain that I couldn’t provide it.
I didn’t hear from Homer but I assumed he was chained to the bed and banned from leaving the house again until 2050. Then he rang and said he’d had to tell his parents a bit about Liberation, and they weren’t happy, and Liberation wasn’t happy, but the Scarlet Pimple was trying to get him a new motorbike and he’d asked for a four- wheeler for me.
Jess rang twice and Bronte twice a day. Bronte and I talked a lot. I told her about Jeremy but needless to say I didn’t tell Jess.
I didn’t see Jeremy, or hear from him. In a way that didn’t matter to me. I felt a kind of security, knowing that he was out there. I felt like now we had an understanding and it wouldn’t go away in a hurry. I was in a strange mood. I felt a great tiredness after escaping from the shopping centre and the helicopter. Suddenly I was eighty years old. I’d been tired plenty of times during the war, but never like this. This was in my bones. I wandered the house, looking after Gavin but not after myself. I travelled the paddocks dreaming of life with Jeremy. I didn’t know if I was in love or just distracted for a short time by his warm hands and strong presence. The thing I found strange was that most of the time I felt not happy but sad. Is that love? Or was it just the sadness of living my life?
Sometimes a river of sadness flowed through me. Not depression, not grief, not despair, just sadness. I moved heavily and I was clumsy, I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t laugh very much. I wanted my parents back. I wanted them so badly that nothing else mattered. And all the time, shadowing my sadness, was a terrible fear, the fear that I would never recover. If only someone could have assured me that one day the sadness would go, that one day I would charge up the hills running and puffing and laughing, one day I would roll down the hills giggling and wheezing and hurting myself on rocks and thorns. I wanted to see a hill that was warm and bright in the full open light of the sun. I knew I couldn’t be on that hill yet, but I wanted someone to tell me, ‘Ellie, you will play there one day. It is your hill and you will be there.’
I think the worst thing is to know that you will be sad forever. When parents lose a child, isn’t that what they know from the moment the policeman opens his mouth? When a sister loses a brother, isn’t that the truth that fills them in an instant? There is no cure for that kind of sadness.
Laughter and carefree love, all the bright things, it seemed like they gleamed and glistened for other people.
I think I was starting to understand one of the great paradoxes. I love paradoxes. I think they contain all the truth in the world. The only trouble is that I can’t understand them. ‘The more things change, the more things stay the same.’ ‘The greater your knowledge, the less you know.’ ‘Most people aren’t brave enough to be cowards.’ ‘Every exit is an entry to somewhere.’ ‘Less is more.’ I mean, I understand those, but I have to work at it. I
