After we’d been riding silently for a few minutes Homer came up beside me to ride two abreast. ‘Hold my hand Ellie,’ he said. ‘Can you ride one-handed?’
‘Sure.’
We went like that for a k or two, nearly colliding half a dozen times, then had to let go so we could make more speed. But we talked a bit, not about bombs and death and destruction, but about stupid little things. Then we played Categories, to pass the time.
‘Name four countries starting with B, by the time we get to the turn-off.’
‘Oh help. Brazil, Belgium. Britain, I suppose. Um. Bali? Oh! Bolivia! OK, your turn, five green vegetables, before we pass that telegraph pole.’
‘Cabbage, broccoli, spinach. Slow down. Oh, peas and beans of course. Now, five breeds of dog, by the signpost.’
‘Easy. Corgis, Labradors, German shepherds, border collies, heelers. Right, here’s a Greek one. Name three types of olives.’
‘Olives! I wouldn’t know one type!’
‘Well there are three. You can get green ones, you can get black ones, or you can get stuffed.’ He laughed so much he nearly ran off the road.
At the five k sign we started getting serious again, keeping to the edge, staying quiet, Homer riding two hundred metres behind me. I like taking charge – that’s no secret – and I think Homer had had enough for a while. Approaching each curve I’d get off and walk to it, then wave Homer up if the road was clear. We passed the ‘Welcome’ sign, then the old church, and were into what Homer called the suburbs of Wirrawee. As the population of Wirrawee would barely fill a block of flats in the city, the idea of suburbs was another Homer joke. The closer we got to Robyn’s, the more tense I became. I was so worried about her and Lee, had been missing them so much, was so scared at the prospect of any more confrontations with soldiers. So much had happened during the day that there’d hardly been time to think of Robyn and Lee, except to say to myself the trite and obvious things, ‘I wonder where they are. I hope they’re there tonight. I hope they’re OK.’
They were true thoughts though, for all that they were trite and obvious.
The last k to Robyn’s we moved very very carefully, walking the bikes and ready to jump at anything, the movement of a branch in the breeze, the clatter of a falling strip of bark from a gum, the cry of a night bird. We got to the front gate and looked up the drive. The house was silent and dark.
‘I can’t remember,’ Homer whispered. ‘Did we say we’d meet at the house or on the hill at the back?’
‘On the hill, I think.’
‘I think so too. Let’s check there first.’
We left the bikes hidden behind a berry bush near the front gate, and detoured around the house, through the long grass. I was still in front, moving as quietly as I could, except for a couple of surprises – like bumping into a wheelbarrow and falling painfully over a tall sprinkler. After the ride-on mower at Mrs Alexander’s that had got Corrie I began to wonder if anyone ever put anything away. But I couldn’t see any hope of converting the wheelbarrow or the sprinkler into weapons. Maybe we could turn the sprinkler on and wet the enemy? I giggled at the idea, and got a startled look from Homer.
‘Enjoying this are you?’ he whispered.
I shook my head, but truth to tell I was feeling more confident and relaxed. I always prefer action; I’m happier when I’m doing things. I’ve always found TV boring for instance; I prefer stock work or cooking, or even fencing.
At the top of the hill nothing had changed. The view over Wirrawee was the same, the lights were still on at the Showground, and in a few other places. One of those places, as Homer pointed out, was the Hospital. It looked like they had it functioning. But there was no sign of Robyn or Lee. We waited about twenty minutes; then, as we were both yawning and getting cold, we decided to try Plan B, the house.
We stood, and started down the hill. We were fifty metres from the house when Homer grabbed my arm. ‘There’s someone in there,’ he said.
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw a movement in one of the windows.’
We kept watching for quite a time, but saw nothing.
‘Could have been a cat?’ I suggested.
‘Could have been a platypus but I don’t think so.’
I began to inch forward, not for any particular reason, just because I felt we couldn’t stand there forever. Homer followed. I didn’t stop till I was almost at the back door, so close I could have reached out and touched it. I still wasn’t sure why we were doing this. My biggest fear was that we were about to be ambushed. But there was a chance Robyn and Lee were in the house, and we could hardly walk away while there was that possibility. I wanted to open the door, but couldn’t figure out how to do it without making a sound. I tried to recall some scenes in movies where the heroes had been in this situation, but couldn’t think of any. In the movies they always seemed to kick the door down and burst through with guns drawn. There were at least two reasons we couldn’t do that. One, it was noisy; two, we didn’t have guns.
I sidled closer to the door and stood in an awkward position, pressed backwards against the wall and trying to open the door with my left hand. I couldn’t get enough leverage however, so instead turned and crouched, reaching up with my right hand to grip the knob. It turned silently and smoothly but my nerve failed me for a moment and I paused, holding the knob in that cocked position. Then I pulled it towards me, a little too hard, because I had half expected it to be locked. It came about thirty centimetres, with the screech of a tortured soul. Homer was behind me, so I could no longer see him, but I heard, and could feel, his breath hang in the air and his body rise a little. How I wished for an oilcan. I waited, then decided there was no point in waiting, so pulled the door open another metre. It rasped every centimetre of the way. I was feeling sick but I stood and took three slow careful steps into the darkness. I waited there, hoping my eyes would adjust and I’d be able to make some sense of the dull shapes I could see in front of me. There was a movement of air behind me as Homer came in too: at least, I hoped it was Homer. At the thought that it might be anyone else I felt such a violent moment of panic that I had to give myself a serious talk about self-control. But my nerves sent me forward another couple of steps, till my knee bumped into some kind of soft chair. At that moment I heard a scrape from the next room, as though someone had pushed back a wooden chair on a wooden floor. I tried desperately to think what was in the next room and what it looked like, but my mind was too tired for that kind of work. So instead I tried to tell myself that it hadn’t been the scrape of a chair, that no one was there, that I was imagining things. But then came the dreadful confirmation, the sound of a creaking board and the soft tread of a foot.
I instinctively went for the floor, quietly slipping down to the right, then wriggling around the soft chair that I’d just been touching. Behind me I felt Homer doing the same. I lay on the carpet. It smelt like straw, clean dry straw. I could hear Homer shuffling around, sounding like an old dog trying to get comfortable. I was shocked at how much noise he was making. Didn’t he realise? But in front of me came another noise: the unmistakable sound of a bolt being drawn back in a breech, then slid forward to cock the rifle.
‘Robyn!’ I screamed.
Afterwards Homer said I was mad. And even when I explained, he said it wasn’t possible I could have worked all that out in a split second. But I could and I did. I knew that the soldiers who’d chased us had modern automatic weapons. And the weapon I’d heard being cocked was just a typical single-shot rifle. Also, I remembered that Mr Mathers had gone hunting with Dad quite often, and he did have his own rifle, a .243. So I knew it had to be Robyn or Lee, and I thought I’d better say something before the bullets started flying.
Later I realised it could have been someone else entirely, a looter, deserter or squatter, or someone on the run from the soldiers. Luckily it wasn’t, but I don’t know what I would have done if I’d thought of that at the time.