‘It is beautiful,’ Lee said. ‘You’re lucky. There’s nothing beautiful about the restaurant. And yet, I feel the same way about it as you do about your property. I think it’s because we did it all ourselves. If someone smashes a window they’re smashing glass that Dad cut, glass that I polished a thousand times, and they’re tearing curtains that Mum made. You get an attachment to the place, and it becomes special to you. I guess maybe it does take on a kind of beauty.’
I wriggled a bit closer to him. ‘Did you feel awful when you found it all wrecked?’
‘There was so much to feel awful about I didn’t know where to start. I don’t think it’s hit me even yet.’
‘No, me neither. When we got here this morning and I found they’d been here ... I don’t know. I’d expected it, but I still felt awful, but I didn’t feel awful enough Then I felt guilty about not feeling worse. I think it’s like you said, too many things. Too much has happened.’
‘Yes.’ Only one word, but I’ll always remember the way he said it, like he was really involved with everything I’d been saying. I rolled around a bit so I was even closer to him, and kept talking.
‘And then I think about Corrie and how it must be terrible for her, much worse than for me. For all you guys with little brothers and sisters. That must be terrible. And imagine how Chris’s parents would feel, being overseas, probably not being able to get back into the country, not having a clue what’s happened to Chris.’
‘We don’t know how widespread this thing is. It could involve a lot of countries. Remember that joke we made, up in Hell, about World War Three? We could have been right onto it.’
He put his arm around me and we lay there looking up at the old wooden rafters of the hayshed.
‘I dreamed about you,’ I said presently.
‘When?’
‘Just now, this morning, here on the haystack.’
‘Did you? What did you dream?’
‘Oh ... that we were doing something like what we’re doing now.’
‘Really? I’m glad it came true.’
‘So am I.’
I was too, but I was confused between my feelings for him and my feelings for Homer. Last night I’d been holding hands with Homer, and feeling so warm and good about it, and now here I was with Lee. He kissed me lightly on my nose, then less lightly on the mouth, then several more times, and passionately. I was kissing him back, but then I stopped. I didn’t have any plans to become the local slut and I didn’t think it was a good idea to get involved with two guys at once. I sighed and shrugged myself free.
‘I’d better go and see how Chris is getting on.’
Chris was getting on all too well. He was asleep, and I was furious. I shouted, screamed, and then kicked him, hard. Even while I was doing it I was shocked at myself. Even now, as I think about it, I’m shocked at myself. The thing that scared me most was the thought that maybe all the violent things I’d been doing, with the ride-on mower and the truck, had transformed me in the space of a couple of nights into a raging monster. But on the other hand, it was unforgivable for Chris to have gone to sleep. He’d risked the lives of all of us by being so slack. I remember on our Outward Bound camp, talking one lunchtime, someone had said that in the Army the penalty for going to sleep on guard duty was death. We’d all been so shocked. We could see the logic in it, but maybe that was the shocking part, that it was so utterly logical. Cold-blooded, merciless, logical. You don’t expect real life to be like that, not to that extreme. But I really felt for a moment like I could have killed Chris. He certainly looked scared of me when he rolled away and stood up.
‘Geez Ellie, take it easy,’ he mumbled.
‘Take it easy?’ I yelled into his face. ‘Yeah, that’s what you were doing all right. If we take it easy any more, we’re dead. Don’t you understand how it’s all changed Chris? Don’t you understand that? If you don’t, you might as well get a rifle and finish us all off now. Because you’re as good as doing that by taking it easy.’
Chris walked off, red-faced and muttering under his breath. I sat down in his spot. After a minute or two I think I did go into some sort of delayed shock. I’d blocked off all my emotional reactions because there hadn’t been the time or the opportunity for those luxuries. But it’s like they say, ‘emotion denied is emotion deferred’. I’d done so much deferring, and now the bank had called in the loan. Most of that afternoon is a blank to me. Homer told me much later that I’d spent hours wrapped in blankets, sitting in a corner of the haystack, shivering and telling everyone to be careful. I guess I went down the same path as Corrie had, just in a slightly different way. I have a clear memory of refusing all food and becoming very hungry, but not eating because I was sure I’d be sick if I did. Homer said I was ravenous and I ate so much that they thought I would be sick and they refused to give me any more. Weird.
I was very upset when they wouldn’t let me drive the Landrover, because I’d promised Dad so faithfully that I wouldn’t let anyone else behind the wheel. Suddenly though I got tired of arguing, crawled in beside Lee in the crowded back section, and went to sleep. Homer drove it up to Tailor’s Stitch. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have given up the argument so suddenly and so completely.
Somehow I walked into Hell late that night, crawled into a tent beside Corrie, who was hysterical with joy to see us, and slept for three days, waking only for occasional meals, toilet trips, and brief mumbled conversations. I do remember consoling Chris, who was sure that he’d been the cause of my having a nervous breakdown. I didn’t think to ask how Lee had got in to Hell, but when I gradually got my wits back I found that they’d made a bush stretcher and carried him in; Robyn and Homer taking turns at one end of the stretcher and the lightly built Chris carrying the other, all the way down in the dark.
So I guess he atoned.
During my three days I had the nightmares I hadn’t had that morning on the haystack. Demonic figures ran screaming from me, I felt skulls crush under my feet. Burning bodies stretched out their hands, begging for mercy. I killed everyone, even the people I loved most. I was careless with gas bottles and caused an explosion which blew up the house, with my parents in it. I set fire to a haystack where my friends were sleeping. I backed a car over my cousin and couldn’t rescue my dog when he got caught in a flood. And although I ran around everywhere begging for help, screaming to people to call an ambulance, no one responded. They seemed uninterested. They weren’t cruel, just too busy or uncaring. I was a devil of death, and there were no angels left in the world, no one to make me better than myself or to save me from the harm I was doing.
Then I woke up. It was early in the morning, very early. It was going to be a beautiful day. I lay in the sleeping bag looking at the sky and the trees. Why did the English language have so few words for green? Every leaf and every tree had its own shade of green. Another example of how far Nature was still ahead of humans. Something flitted from branch to branch in the top of one of the trees – a small dark-red and black bird with long wings, inspecting each strip of bark. Higher still a couple of white cockatoos floated across the sky. From the cries I could tell that there was a larger flock out of my sight, and the two birds were merely outriders, strays. I sat up to see if I could glimpse the rest of the flock by leaning forward, but they were still out of sight. So I shuffled out of the tent, clutching my sleeping bag to me like some kind of insect half-emerged from a chrysalis. The cockatoos were scattered across the heavens like raucous angels. They drifted on, too many to count, until they were out of sight, but I could still hear their friendly croaks.