remember during the war Homer saying to me, ‘I’m an atheist,’ and then adding, ‘Thank God.’
The paradox about love is that it hurts and it heals. It makes you feel better, only to make you feel worse. You go into it knowing it will betray you but you go into it anyway. And another paradox is that you go into it as an individual, because you as an individual are in love with someone, but from the start you lose so much of your individuality. I was starting to fall seriously in love with Jeremy, so right away, what happens? I start worrying about what Jeremy thinks of me, trying to guess what he likes and doesn’t like about me, thinking about ways of changing myself so that he will like me even more. It’s pretty dumb when you think that I’m the person he seemed to like, not the me I was contemplating changing myself into.
I’d always had this image of myself standing on top of Tailor’s Stitch singing ‘The Sound of Music’. Not really. But I did go to the hills when my heart was lonely. If people are either mountain people or ocean people then I’m a mountain person. I love the ocean, the few times I get a chance to see it, but I’m a mountain girl. When the weekend rolled around and Gavin got a rare invitation for a sleepover, from Mark, even though Mark was born standing up and talking back, even though Mark would choke a chook that clucked the wrong way, I thought, ‘This is my chance,’ and pushed Gavin out the door with his bag packed.
As soon as he’d gone, I took the long walk up the spur. It’s a bit strange, I suppose, but I hadn’t connected that spur with the deaths of my parents and Mrs Mackenzie. I mean, it’s not like they were killed there, but I was climbing it when I heard the shots that ended their lives and ended my world. As I got close to that place again I started to feel quite weird. My legs got heavy and didn’t want to do what they were paid for; my arms tingled; my throat blocked up and started saying no to oxygen.
Melissa Carpenter, who lived about three k’s from us and got the same bus, was one of those mad horse people, along with her parents. Everyone knows the thing about how you gotta get back on the horse after you fall off. When Melissa was twelve she fell off big-time. Her favourite horse bucked at a snake and threw her. She knew right away she’d done some serious damage, and in fact it turned out she’d broken three bones in her back. She’s been lucky — at one stage they thought she was heading for life in a wheelchair. So anyway, she’s lying on the ground, waiting for the ambulance and wondering if she’s ever going to walk again, and her father kneels beside her and whispers, ‘Honey, I know you’re in a bit of pain but do you think you could manage to get back on Barney for a minute, just so you don’t lose your confidence?’
I thought about that as I stood a hundred metres from that place on the spur and sweated with memories and fear. It was kind of funny the way Mr Carpenter had been so determined to get Melissa back onto Barney, because even though we all laughed when we heard the story (and once we knew Melissa was going to be OK), in a way Mr Carpenter was right, because from that day on Melissa never got on Barney or any other horse again.
Now here I stood gazing at the spur, suddenly awash with memories and wondering if I would ever be able to get up on Tailor’s Stitch again. Because I couldn’t get past that spot where I’d been when I heard the shots. I was dumbfounded. I hadn’t known this was going to happen. The violence of my life was threatening to close the mountains to me. The war and the fighting and the killing were blocking the promise of good things in the future. I needed to get up that rocky slope and walk the high ridge.
I took a few more steps but my legs wouldn’t move any further. I knew I couldn’t do it. I hadn’t been beaten by many things over the last eighteen months but I could not make this simple climb. The air wouldn’t give way for me, the paralysis was too powerful.
I was lonely and I wanted to go to the hills and hear the songs I had heard before. I wanted my heart to be filled with the sound of music. I felt that if my future were to include love I’d have to find a way to get past that spot on the spur. But it wasn’t going to happen today. It mightn’t ever happen again.
Seemed like it hadn’t been a very successful sleepover either. Gavin was already home, which wasn’t in the script. I didn’t realise for a while. Normally I could tell where he was, as he often didn’t know when he was making a noise. He’d figured out of course that certain sounds attract attention and certain sounds were louder than others, but he forgot.
When I heard a thump from his bedroom I thought we were being attacked. I grabbed the rifle, which nowadays I kept close at hand. It was behind the kitchen door. I broke out in a sweat, wondering whether to head for the bush or check out the bedroom. Marmie was asleep on the kitchen floor, which was a good sign, so I hesitated. I loaded half-a-dozen rounds into the magazine and slid one into the barrel, all of which was difficult to do quietly. But it did make me feel more confident. Another thump from the direction of Gavin’s room. Marmie opened one eye and yawned. She wasn’t the greatest watchdog in the world but she should do better than this.
I stole out of the kitchen into the corridor, only a metre, and swung open the door of the linen press so I could hide behind it. Standing there put me into a totally different theatre of sounds. Now the vibration of the fridge motor, Marmie’s breathing, the buzzing of the early blowie, the flapping of the fly strips in the doorway… all of these were in the background and instead I could hear a magpie in the distance, beyond the end of the house, a moth flapping against the lead-light window in the door that led onto the little lawn, and the drone of a light plane.
Thump. What the hell was going on? If it was an invasion of the house they’d be doing more than hanging around Gavin’s room kicking the furniture. I decided to take one more step. This could be extremely dumb, but I was getting more and more convinced that the biggest problem in Gavin’s room could just be Gavin. OK, he wasn’t due home until tomorrow, but he was a kid who made his own rules, and besides that, a sleepover at Mark’s was as likely to last one hour as it was the whole weekend.
I took the one step, and as I did heard Gavin’s distinctive voice yelling one of the most powerful swearwords in his vocabulary, and trust me, when it comes to swearing, Gavin has been hanging around Homer too long. I assumed that he was not talking to a terrorist who had climbed through his bedroom window. I sighed, flicked the safety catch forwards, unbolted it and let the bullet in the barrel slide out. I really didn’t feel like a big discussion with Gavin about why on earth he was home when he was meant to be having a good time at Mark’s. But a whole lot of thumping was going on and I couldn’t walk away from that.
I put the rounds into my pocket, propped the rifle against the wall so that Gavin wouldn’t think I was going to shoot him, and went into the room. Where Gavin was concerned there wasn’t much point knocking. He was standing with his head in the corner, like he’d sent himself there already, like he was one jump ahead of the teacher. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was rocking up and down. As I stood there, he drew back, then snapped his head forward into the wall. Now I knew what those thumps had been. I couldn’t hear any Metallica, and neither could he, so it wasn’t their fault. I picked up a cushion and chucked it at him. He spun around and glared at me. If looks could have killed I might as well have lain down then and there and got ready for the autopsy.
I was in the mood to be compassionate, forgiving and understanding.
‘Gavin, what the hell did you do this time?’
He hurled the cushion back, following it with a volley of Lemony Snickets. All hardbacks unfortunately. ‘Ow! Gavin! You little shit! That hurt.’
The ringing of the phone saved innocent blood from being shed. I’m just not sure whose blood it would have been.
‘Ellie! I’ve been trying to get you all afternoon. I left three messages.’
Mark’s mother. I felt like I’d suddenly put on three or four kilos and it was all around the heart. She was definitely not ringing to tell me about Gavin’s lovely manners.
‘Yes, sorry, I was out in the paddocks.’
‘I had to leave Gavin at the house. He said you wouldn’t be far away. Did you find him all right?’
‘Yes, no problem. He’s in his room. I haven’t talked to him though. I thought he wasn’t coming back till tomorrow?’
‘Yes, well, that’s what I’m ringing about.’
I sighed and sat on the little leather stool next to the phone. I could almost hear her lips pressing tighter and tighter together.
‘Ellie, I don’t know what that boy’s problem is, but I think he needs help, and the sooner the better. I’ve never seen anything like what he and Mark got up to today. I know he hasn’t had an easy life, but I’m afraid I can’t have him here again.’
I didn’t know Mark’s mother too well, but I had the impression she was always a bit confused, trying to do six things at once and not finishing any of them. I’d never really thought about it before but it struck me then that one of the things she never quite finished was looking after Mark.
