He didn’t say anything for a long time, just stood there tapping my card against his fist and looking at me. Finally, when I was about to burst, he gave me back the pass and said, ‘OK, you go.’
I’d lost interest in shopping. I walked away, trying to keep my head high, hoping I looked calm, from behind at least. I knew I didn’t look calm from in front. Heading towards the next corner I passed Toddy’s place on the other side of the street. There was no way I could go there right now, not with the possibility that two pairs of eyes were boring holes into my back. I came to the corner and randomly turned right. This road was a lot clearer. With a burst of hope I saw the two boys I’d noticed earlier about thirty metres ahead, just hanging out it seemed like. I accelerated and caught them as they rambled along.
‘Hey guys!’ I called.
They turned around. They looked friendly. I hoped I wasn’t going to get them into trouble. ‘Can you do me a huge favour?’
‘Depends,’ the black-haired one said, but he was still being friendly. I had the feeling they were those very cool kind of kids who can be friendly with girls who are older than them and girls who are younger than them and boys who are older and boys who are younger… and old ladies and grandpas and people working in shops and migrants who can’t speak English and teachers and babies… God I love those sorts of kids, who just don’t feel threatened the way someone like Gavin does. Gavin approaches everyone like they’re holding a samurai sword behind their back and they’re about to pull it out and use it on him. Trouble is, in his life, that’s more or less exactly what’s happened.
‘I’m getting hassled by a couple of soldiers back there and I’m worried they might be following me.’ I paused. They looked at each other. ‘I just wondered if you might go and have a look around the corner. See if they’re coming.’
They looked at each other again and the red-haired one shrugged and said, ‘OK.’
It was as easy as that for them. They headed back there with no great fuss, quite quickly. Just as they got to the corner the two soldiers came around it and nearly ran into them.
Were they following me? I think so. I thought so. There was a moment when all five of us were frozen in surprise. The soldiers had to step out onto the road if they were going to get around the boys. The boys had nowhere to go except backwards. I could have gone in any direction but I was meant to be an innocent Paula on a walk through the streets, not a fugitive from justice.
The dark-haired boy swung around and waved to me. ‘Don’t forget to tell Mom,’ he called. Mom? Where were they from? Then he and his friend both moved a little, like they’d planned it, so they were blocking the soldiers. It was a beautiful piece of choreography. The red-haired one folded his arms and said something to the soldiers like he was asking a very serious question. Maybe for directions. That was the last I saw. I waved back to them and walked on quickly. Coming up on the right was a coffee shop. It had a sign in English out the front: American coffee, 20. We take cards. Relax with friend. I dived in there. It was tiny. A very funky young woman with long black hair was sitting at a computer. She stood as I came in. There was a little bar, but I swear, there was room for about four customers. She saw my confusion and pointed to the stairs, which were also very funky, but narrow. Made of stainless steel. ‘Upstairs,’ she said. ‘Coffee upstairs.’
‘Can I use your toilet?’ I asked. I was already heading for a door behind the bar. She blushed and put her hand to her throat. ‘No, is not allowed,’ she said.
‘Sorry, I’m really busting,’ I said. Seemed like Paula had pretty bad manners. I opened the door and slipped through it, closing it behind me. I was in a very narrow corridor, made even narrower by boxes and tins. There was a big stack of Lavazza coffee. They must do good business for a tiny shop. Maybe there was a chain of them and this was the headquarters. I reached the end of the corridor and opened the next door. Behind me the girl opened the first door. I heard her start to say something, but even as she drew breath for the words I was through the next door and closing it again.
Now I was in their sitting room. God this was embarrassing. Another funky-looking girl was there and a thin pale-faced guy who looked British. Who the hell was he? ‘Just looking for the toilet, sorry,’ I said, and went on by while they looked at me like I was a complete freak. This was getting seriously surreal. Down another corridor and at last out into, well, not fresh air, but as close to it as I was likely to find in Havelock.
Their yard was about the same size as their sitting room. I scuttled straight for the back gate and was through it and gone before anyone could follow me from the building. I threw a left and headed down the alley to the street and started a long circumnavigation of the suburb. I couldn’t hear any police sirens or tracker dogs but I was playing it pretty carefully, so I went half-a-dozen blocks further round than I probably needed. My confidence to walk down the main street was gone so I kept to side streets and lanes, although at one point I cut across a big park. The only way to get through this whole thing was to look confident, but I felt like I’d turned into cheese gratings and could melt at any moment.
By the time I got back to Toddy’s he was there and not very happy. When I came through the back door he practically leapt down the whole staircase in one jump and grabbed me with both arms. ‘Where have you been? Are you all right? Did anything happen?’
I told him the whole thing, not feeling very proud of myself, and he wasn’t too happy. ‘Are you sure you weren’t followed?’ he asked me three times, till I got to the point where I wasn’t sure if I had been or not.
Ignoring the fact that he’d told me I’d be safe to walk down the street — but also ignoring the fact that he’d told me not to go out unless it was necessary — I did quite a lot of grovelling. It took us a while to get to the point where we could actually move on. The whole thing was difficult and embarrassing. Toddy now thought I was unreliable, irresponsible. It would be hard to reverse that. It’s like school — so easy to get a bad name, so hard to get your good one back. Homer could testify to that. Quite a few teachers still thought he was a complete idiot, although my books had helped to improve his reputation a bit. Trouble was that he didn’t do much for his own case. Plus so many new teachers kept turning up that there weren’t many left who had actually read the books.
There were some people Toddy wanted me to go meet. He said they had information but were slow to deliver it. He thought my being there might help push them a bit, encourage them. But now he obviously wasn’t sure if I was going to be safe out there or whether I might suddenly start singing ‘Waltzing Matilda’ in the middle of the street.
‘I know I was an idiot to go for a walk,’ I said, feeling more and more aggrieved at having to keep apologising. Funny about that, even when you’re totally in the wrong, after a while you start to resent the person who’s in the right. ‘But what’s the damage? I feel sorry for the real Paula, if those soldiers remember her name from my ID card. They might be round there now checking on her for all I know. But her parents will just have to sort that out for themselves. The worst-case scenario for me, for us, is that if they do go talk to her parents, the cops might be alerted to look out for a teenage girl with false ID papers, and that’s not good, but it’s gotta take a while before all that happens.’
We decided to go ahead with the visit, but not till after dark. That meant fairly late, as the days were getting longer. In the meantime I had nothing to do except hang around the building. I borrowed some paper from Toddy and did some writing. Somehow it calms me down when I put stuff on paper. I got sick of that eventually though, and ended up looking at a copy of a fashion magazine in a language so different to mine that I couldn’t even work out the title.
By then Toddy was like those moths you see in the mornings, the ones who come into the house the night before, while the lights are on, then realise some time after sunrise that they made a bad call, and they spend the rest of their short and tragic lives fluttering against a window trying to get out. Toddy wanted to go, he came into the room a dozen times an hour, but he knew we had to wait.
I tried to ask him questions about his life, but he didn’t like answering them. I especially wanted to know why he did this. Why would he betray his country, help the enemy? For money? I couldn’t imagine that. He seemed like someone who wasn’t too bothered about money, although his motorbike would have cost a bit. Maybe he had some philosophical belief that motivated him, but if that were so, he’d have to agree that the invasion was wrong and they had no business being in places like Havelock. Toddy gave me the impression that he was pretty happy to be in Havelock.
I think he didn’t want to tell me anything personal because he didn’t want me to know too much about him if I got caught. That was fair enough, especially as he now obviously expected me to get myself caught at the first available opportunity, but it was annoying, cos I like to know everything about everyone. Still, I did find out that he had two sisters, both older, and his mother was a tailor. There wasn’t much more than that.
When it got dark enough he came bounding down the stairs. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he said.