‘You’re not a Young Farmer,’ I said.
‘No, but Adam is,’ she said, looking faintly embarrassed.
When our immature wolf whistles and animal noises had died down, she continued, undaunted.
‘But there’s been a few developments,’ she said. ‘They’ve now got work parties going out of the Showground each day. They go in groups of eight or ten, with three or four guards. They do jobs like cleaning the streets, burying people, getting food – including the greens – and helping in the Hospital.’
‘So the Hospital is running? We thought it was.’
‘Yes. Ellie’s been keeping it busy.’
As soon as she said that, she looked like she wished she hadn’t.
‘What? Did you hear something?’
She shook her head. ‘No, no, nothing.’
‘Oh come on, don’t do that Robyn. What did you hear?’
‘It’s nothing Ellie. There were some casualties. You know that.’
‘So what did you hear?’
Robyn looked uncomfortable. I knew I’d be sorry but I’d gone too far to stop. ‘Robyn! Stop treating me like a kid! Just tell me!’
She grimaced but told me. ‘Those three soldiers hit by the ride-on mower, two of them died, they think. And two of the people we ran over.’
‘Oh,’ I said. She’d said it flatly and calmly, but the shock was still terrible. Sweat broke out on my face and I felt quite giddy. Lee gripped my hand hard, but I hardly felt it. Corrie came and sat on my other side, where Chris had been, and held me.
After a minute Chris said, ‘It’s different from the movies, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m OK. Please, just go on Robyn.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Well, the Hospital’s had a few other casualties. The first day or two there was a lot of fighting, and a lot of people got hurt or killed. Soldiers and civilians. Not at the Showground – the surprise was so complete that they took the whole place in ten minutes – but in town and around the district, with people who hadn’t gone to the Show. And it’s still going on – there’s a few groups of guerillas, just ordinary people like us I guess, who are hanging around and attacking patrols when they get a chance. But the town itself is quiet. They seem to have flushed everyone out, and they’re confident that they’ve got it under control.’
‘Are they treating people well?’
‘Mostly. For example, the people who were in hospital the day of the invasion have been kept there, and looked after. The people we’ve talked to say the soldiers are anxious to keep their noses clean. They know that sooner or later the United Nations and the Red Cross’ll be wandering around, and they don’t want to attract a lot of heat from them. They keep talking about a “clean” invasion. They figure that if there’s no talk of concentration camps and torture and rape and stuff, there’s less chance of countries like America getting involved.’
‘That’s pretty smart,’ Homer said.
‘Yes. But for all that, there’s been about forty deaths just around Wirrawee alone. Mr Althaus, for one. The whole Francis family. Mr Underhill. Mrs Nasser. John Leung. And some people have been bashed for not obeying orders.’
There was a shocked silence. Mr Underhill was the only one of those I knew well. He was the jeweller in town. He was such a mild man that I couldn’t imagine how he might have aggravated the soldiers. Perhaps he’d tried to stop them looting his store.
‘So who have you been talking to?’ Lee asked at last.
‘Oh yes, I was getting to that. I’m telling this all out of order. OK, so this is what happened. We cruised into town the first night, no problems. We got to my music teacher’s house about 1.30 am. The key was where she always left it. It is a good place to hide out, like I said, because there’s so many doors and windows you can get out of. There’s a good escape route out of an upstairs window, for example, where you can go across the roof, onto a big branch, and be next door in a couple of seconds. Also, the sentry has a great view of the street and the front drive, and there’s no way anyone could get over the back fence without a tank. So that was cool. The first thing we did after we sussed out the house was to get some gear together and go and set up the fake camp under the Masonic Hall. That was quite fun – we put in a few magazines and photos and teddy bears to make it look authentic. Then Kevin took the first sentry duty and the rest of us went to bed.
‘At about eleven in the morning I was on sentry duty and suddenly I saw some people in the street. There was a soldier and two of our people. One of them was Mr Keogh, who used to work at the Post Office.’
‘You mean the old guy with no hair?’
‘Yes. He retired last year I think. Well, I woke the others fast, as you can imagine, and we watched them working their way along the street. There were three soldiers altogether, and six people from town. They had a ute and a truck, and it seemed like they were clearing stuff out of each house. Two of them would go into a house while the soldiers lounged around outside. The people spent about ten minutes in each house, then they’d come out with green garbage bags full of stuff. They’d chuck some bags straight into the truck, but other bags were checked by the soldiers and put in the ute.
‘So what we did was, when they got close to us we hid in different parts of the house and waited for them. I was in the kitchen, in a broom cupboard. I’d been there about twenty minutes when Mr Keogh came in. He opened the fridge door and starting clearing out all this smelly, foul stuff. It was the job we hadn’t been able to bring ourselves to do on an empty stomach when we’d got there at 1.30.
‘“Mr Keogh!” I whispered. “This is Robyn Mathers.” You know, he didn’t even blink. I thought, this guy is cool. Then I remembered that he’s quite deaf. He hadn’t even heard me. So I opened the door of the broom cupboard and snuck up behind him and tapped his shoulder. Well! I know Chris said a few minutes ago that war’s not like the movies, but this sure was. He jumped like he’d touched a live wire in the fridge. I had to hold him down. I thought “Help, I hope he doesn’t have a heart attack”. But he calmed down. We talked pretty fast then. He had to keep working while we talked – he said if he took too long the soldiers would get suspicious and come in. He said his job was to make the houses habitable again, by cleaning out mouldy food, and dead pets, and to pick up valuables, like jewellery. He told me about our families, and all that other stuff. He said the work parties would be going out to the country too, starting any day now, to look after the stock and get the farms going again. He said they’re going to colonise the whole country with their own people, and all the farms will be split up between them, and we’ll just be allowed to do menial jobs, like cleaning lavatories I suppose. Then he had to go, but he told me they were doing West Street after Barrabool Avenue, and if I got into a house there we could talk some more. And off he went.
‘Well, when the house was empty again we had a quick conference. Kevin had talked to a lady called Mrs Lee, who’d come into the bedroom where he was hiding and he’d got more information from her. So we agreed to go to West Street and try again. We got there fairly easily, by going through people’s gardens, and we tried a few different houses. The first two were locked still but the third one was open, so we spread ourselves around it. I got under the bed in the main bedroom. Chris kept watch and told us when they were getting close, which wasn’t for nearly two hours. It was pretty boring. If you want to know how many cross-wires the people at 28 West Street have got on the underside of their bed, I can tell you. But finally someone came in. It was a lady I didn’t know, but she had a green bag and she went to the dressing table and started scooping stuff out. I whispered “Excuse me, my name’s Robyn Mathers”, and without looking round she whispered “Oh good, Mr Keogh told me to watch out for you young ones”. We talked for a few minutes, with me still under the bed, but sticking my head out. She said she hated having to do this work, but the soldiers occasionally checked a house after they came out, and they got punished if they’d left anything valuable behind. “Sometimes I’ll hide something in the room if it looks like a family heirloom,” she said, “but I don’t know if it’ll make any difference in the long run.” She also told me that they were picking the least dangerous people for the work parties – old people and kids mainly – and they knew that if they tried to escape or do anything wrong their families back at the Showgrounds would be punished. “So I don’t want to talk to you for long dearie,” she said. She was a nice old duck. The other thing she told me was that the highway from Cobbler’s Bay is the key to everything. That’s why they hit this district so hard and so early. They bring their supplies in to Cobbler’s by ship and send it down the highway by truck.’