‘Yes?’
‘Have you ever known emotion dealt with so coldly as in that report?’
‘No, I don’t think I have.’
I turned more, so that I could nuzzle into his chest, and I whispered, ‘I don’t want to end up like a coroner’s report.’
‘No.’ He stroked my hair, then felt up under it and squeezed the back of my neck softly, like a massage. After a few minutes more he said, ‘Let’s get out of this creek. I’m freezing by slow degrees. It’s up to my knees and rising.’
I giggled. ‘Let’s go quickly then. I wouldn’t like it to get any higher.’
Back in the clearing it was obvious that something had happened between Homer and Fi. Homer was sitting against a tree with Fi curled up against him. Homer was looking out across the clearing to where one of Satan’s Steps loomed high in the distance. They weren’t talking and when we arrived they got up and wandered over, Homer a little self-consciously, Fi quite naturally. But as I watched them a little during the rest of the afternoon – not spying, just with curiosity to see what they were like – I felt that they were different to us. They seemed more nervous with each other, a bit like twelve-year-olds on their first date.
Fi explained it to me when we managed to sneak off on our own for a quick goss.
‘He’s so down on himself,’ she complained. ‘Everything I say about him he brushes off or puts himself down. Do you know,’ she looked at me with her big innocent eyes, ‘he’s got some weird thing about my parents being solicitors, and living in that stupid big house. He always used to joke about it, especially when we went there the other night, but I don’t think it’s really a joke to him at all.’
‘Oh Fi! How long did it take you to work that out?’
‘Why? Has he said something to you?’ She instantly became terribly worried, in her typical Fi way. I was a bit caught, because I wanted to protect Homer and I didn’t want to break any confidences. So I tried to give a few hints.
‘Well, your lifestyle’s a lot different to his. And you know the kind of blokes he’s always knocked around with at school. They’d be more at home hanging out at the milk bar than playing croquet with your parents.’
‘My parents do not play croquet.’
‘No, but you know what I mean.’
‘Oh, I don’t know what to do. He seems scared to say anything in case I laugh at him or look down my nose at him. As if I ever would. It seems so funny that he’s like that with me when he’s so confident with everyone else.’
I sighed. ‘If I could understand Homer I’d understand all guys.’
It was getting dark and we had to start organising for a big night, starting with another hike up Satan’s Steps. I was tired and not very keen to go, especially as Lee wouldn’t be able to come. His leg was still stiff and sore. When the time came I trudged off behind Homer and Fi, too weak to complain – I thought I’d feel guilty if I did. But gradually the sweetness of the night air revived me. I began to breathe it in more deeply, and to notice the silent mountains standing gravely around. The place was beautiful, I was with my friends and they were good people, we were coping OK with tough circumstances. There were a lot of things to be unhappy about, but somehow the papers I’d read in the Hermit’s hut, and the long beautiful kiss with Lee, had given me a better perspective on life. I knew it wouldn’t last, but I tried to enjoy it while it did.
At the Landie we set about constructing a new hideaway for the vehicles, so that they’d be better concealed from anyone using the track. It wasn’t easy to do, and in the end we had to be content with a spot behind some trees, nearly a k further down the hill. Its big advantage was that to drive in there you had to go over rocks, which meant no tracks would be left, as long as the tyres were dry. Its big disadvantage was that it gave us a longer walk to get into Hell, and it was a long enough walk already.
Fi and Homer were going to wait up there for the other four, whom we were expecting back from Wirrawee at about dawn, but I didn’t want to leave Lee at the campsite on his own for the night. So, for that charitable reason, and no other, I filled a backpack to the brim, took a bag of clothes in my hand and, laden like a truck, put myself into four-wheel drive and trekked back into Hell on my own. It was about midnight when I left Fi and Homer. They said they were going to stretch out in the back of the Landrover for a few hours’ sleep while they waited.
That’s what they said they were going to do, anyway.
The moon was well up by the time I left. The rocks stood out quite brightly along the thin ridge of Tailor’s Stitch. A small bird suddenly flew out of a low tree ahead of me, with a yowling cry and a clatter of wings. Bushes formed shapes like goblins and demons waiting to pounce. The path straggled between them: if a tailor had stitched it he must have been mad or possessed or both. White dead wood gleamed like bones ahead of me, and my feet scrunched the little stones and the gravel. Perhaps I should have been frightened, walking there alone in the dark. But I wasn’t, I couldn’t be. The cool night breeze kissed my face all over, all the time, and the smell of the wattle gave a faint sweetness to the air. This was my country; I felt like I had grown from its soil like the silent trees around me, like the springy, tiny-leafed plants that lined the track. I wanted to get back to Lee, to see his serious face again, and those brown eyes that charmed me when they were laughing and held me by the heart when they were grave. But I also wanted to stay here forever. If I stayed much longer I felt that I could become part of the landscape myself, a dark, twisted, fragrant tree.
I was walking very slowly, wanting to get to Lee but not too quickly. I was hardly conscious of the weight of the supplies I was carrying. I was remembering how a long time ago – it seemed like years – I’d been thinking about this place, Hell, and how only humans could have given it such a name. Only humans knew about Hell; they were the experts on it. I remembered wondering if humans were Hell. The Hermit for instance; whatever had happened that terrible Christmas Eve, whether he’d committed an act of great love, or an act of great evil ... But that was the whole problem, that as a human being he could have done either and he could have done both. Other creatures didn’t have this problem. They just did what they did. I didn’t know if the Hermit was a saint or a devil, but once he’d fired those two shots it seemed that he and the people round him had sent him into Hell. They sent him there and he sent himself there. He didn’t have to trek all the way across to these mountains into this wild basin of heat and rock and bush. He carried Hell with him, as we all did, like a little load on our backs that we hardly noticed most of the time, or like a huge great hump of suffering that bent us over with its weight.
I too had blood on my hands, like the Hermit, and just as I couldn’t tell whether his actions were good or bad, so too I couldn’t tell what mine were. Had I killed out of love of my friends, as part of a noble crusade to rescue friends and family and keep our land free? Or had I killed because I valued my life above that of others? Would it be OK for me to kill a dozen others to keep myself alive? A hundred? A thousand? At what point did I condemn myself to Hell, if I hadn’t already done so? The Bible just said ‘Thou shalt not kill’, then told hundreds of stories of people killing each other and becoming heroes, like David with Goliath. That didn’t help me much.
I didn’t feel like a criminal, but I didn’t feel like a hero either.
I was sitting on a rock on top of Mt Martin thinking about all this. The moon was so bright I could see forever. Trees and boulders and even the summits of other mountains cast giant black shadows across the ranges. But nothing could be seen of the tiny humans who crawled like bugs over the landscape, committing their monstrous and beautiful acts. I could only see my own shadow, thrown across the rock by the moon behind me. People, shadows, good, bad, Heaven, Helclass="underline" all of these were names, labels, that was all. Humans had created these opposites: Nature recognised no opposites. Even life and death weren’t opposites in Nature: one was merely an extension of the other.