On the Jellicoe Road

  “It’s because they don’t have coverage out here,” Griggs tells him.

  “No,” I say, looking up at Griggs. “It’s actually because my heart belongs to someone else.” And if I could bottle the look on his face, I’d keep it by my bedside for the rest of my life.

  Chapter 21

  One day Tate was there, a ghost of Tate, sitting by the river where Webb had planned to build a house—a dead look in her eye, a thin grimace to her lips, a sick pallor to her skin that spoke of despair. The next day she was gone—bags packed, no note. And for Narnie, hours without them went by, and then days, and then weeks. And in between those seconds and minutes and hours and days and weeks was the most acute sense of loneliness she’d ever experienced. Sometimes she knew that Fitz was watching her and she would call out, “Fitzee. Please! Don’t leave me!”

  But no one came back.

  Except Jude.

  As predicted, the Club House is profitable and after three nights we split the money between the three factions and then we split it again between the Houses. The leaders have a meeting about what their Houses are going to do with the funds and I nod with great approval as everyone is united in their maturity and pragmatism.

  Richard has made plans for a maths computer tutor for his house while Ben buys a guitar for his. Trini organises a year’s subscription with Greenpeace and I mumble about some books and DVDs for our library or maybe some software for the computer.

  “Let’s get something we can have the bestest fun we’ve ever had with,” Jessa begs one night when we’re on washing-up duty.

  “We’re not here to have fun,” I say.

  “Who said?” one of the year tens asks me. I think about it for a moment and then shrug.

  “I actually don’t know. It’s not that effective when you don’t know, is it?”

  So we get a karaoke machine.

  On the first night, the year tens stage a competition, insisting that every member of the House has to be involved, so we clear the year-seven and-eight dorms and wait for our turn. Raffy is on second and does an impressive job of “I Can’t Live, If Living Means Without You” but then one of the seniors points out to her that she’s chosen a dependency song and Raffy spends the whole night neuroticising about it.

  “I just worked out that I don’t have ambition,” she says while one of the year eights sings tearfully, “Am I Not Pretty Enough?” I start compiling a list of all the kids I should be recommending to the school counsellor, based on their song choices.

  “I think she’s reading a little too much into it, Raf.”

  “No she isn’t. Because do you know what my second and third choices were? ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ and ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself.’”

  “Mary Grace chose ‘Brown-eyed Girl’ and she’s got blue eyes and Serina sang ‘It’s Raining Men’ and she’s a lesbian. You’re taking this way too seriously. Let it go.”

  “What have you chosen?”

  “I’m doing something with Jessa. Apparently her father was a Lenny Rogers fan.”

  “Kenny,” she corrects. “‘Coward of the County’?”

  I look at her suspiciously. “Why that one? Are you implying I’m a coward?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just one of his well-known ones.”

  “Why didn’t you say ‘The Gambler’? That’s pretty well known, according to Jessa. I’d rather be a gambler than a coward.”

  “It’s just a song,” she insists. But I’m not convinced.

  I get up and sing “Islands in the Stream” with Jessa. As usual, she takes it all very seriously and she does these hands expressions as if she’s clutching her heart and then giving it out to the audience. I refuse to follow but I do enjoy it. We have knockout rounds throughout the week after dinner and it’s during this time that I truly get to know my House. Their choices make me laugh so much at times that I have tears running down my face and other times they are so poignant that they make me love them so much without even trying.

  Raffy and I spend every other night in the Prayer Tree with Santangelo and Griggs. Each time we set out an agenda, which lists the Club House and the territory boundaries as items for discussion, but it never quite happens. We just end up talking about stuff, like the meaning of life or the importance of karaoke choices.

  “Do you think they define you?” Raffy asks them.

  “Hope not. I always end up singing some Michael Jackson song,” Santangelo says.

  “What did you pick?” Griggs asks me.

  “Kenny Rogers.”

  “‘Coward of the County’?”

  I sit back and don’t say a word. I am wounded. Griggs looks at me and then at Raffy. “I said the wrong thing, didn’t I?” he asks.

  She doesn’t say anything out loud, but I know she’s mouthing something to him because next minute he says, “I meant ‘The Gambler.’”

  I still don’t say anything.

  “At the end he saves Becky.” Santangelo tries to help. “Remember? Everyone considered him the coward of the county but he actually wasn’t one.”

  “It’s frightening that you’ve put so much analysis into it,” Griggs says.

  “It’s not me,” Santangelo says. “You know what fathers with bad taste in music are like.”

  Except Griggs doesn’t, and I can tell Santangelo feels like shit for saying it.

  “My mum’s boyfriend listens to Cold Chisel,” Griggs says, trying to make Santangelo feel better. “He’s taught my brother all the words to ‘Khe San.’ They sing it all the time.”

  Santangelo doesn’t say anything and I can tell he’s angry with himself.

  For a while there is silence. Outside, the first cicadas of the season are humming and it’s like there’s no one else in the world but the four of us. It’s Griggs who breaks the silence.

  “I loved him, you know,” he says quietly. The admission doesn’t surprise me as much as the fact that he’s speaking about it. “That would probably shock people. But I did. I look exactly like him. Same build, same face. I know every part of my personality that I got from my father. He was a prick, except even pricks don’t deserve to be smashed over the head with a cricket bat.”

  “That’s debatable,” Raffy says.

  “Do you want to know the worst part?” he asks. I can tell this is so hard for him because he won’t look at us. “Sometimes I forget just how bad he was, so all I can remember is that he’s dead because of me. It’s unnatural, what I did. Sometimes I’m thinking about it in the middle of class and I’ll walk out and ring my mum and say, ‘I remember that he took us to the circus, and that we were laughing, so why did I do what I did?’ She always has an answer. ‘And that night he smashed my head against the glass cabinet, Jonah. Do you remember that? And when he burnt your brother with the cigarettes, Jonah?’

  “Other times I’ll wake her in the middle of the night and say, ‘He told me that no one loved us as much as he did.’ And she’ll say, ‘And then he walked around the house holding a gun, threatening to kill us all, because he wanted us to be together forever.’”

  Griggs looks up at us. “What happens when she’s not my memory anymore? What happens when she’s not around to tell me about his belt leaving scars across my two-year-old brother’s face or when he whacked her so hard that she lost her hearing for a week? Who’ll be my memory?”

  Santangelo doesn’t miss a beat. “I will. Ring me.”

  “Same,” Raffy says.

  I look at him. I can’t even speak because if I do I know I’ll cry but I smile and he knows what I’m thinking.

  “So, getting back to the karaoke thing,” says Griggs, not wanting to deal with too much emotion. “I’d have to go with…” He thinks for a moment. “Guns n’ Roses, ‘Paradise City.’”

  “Oh, please,” I say. “I’d rather be the coward of the county.”

  “Guns n’ Roses have such skanky hos in their film clips,” Raffy says.

  “And the problem being?”
Santangelo asks.

  It’s after midnight when Griggs takes something out of his pocket and puts it in front of me.

  “You dropped them in the Brigadier’s tent.”

  I stare at the photos in front of me. I’m not ready for more photos. Not after we’ve been talking about Jonah’s father and unprofound lyrics and skanky hos.

  “You can take them home with you,” he says, “and look at them there.”

  I still don’t say anything. I want to but I can’t. I want to explain everything that’s going on in my head but I can’t find the words.

  “Who are they of?” Raffy asks quietly.

  “Just a bunch of kids our age,” Jonah says.

  I reach over with a shaking hand and put the pictures face up on the ground between us. So I can introduce them to the original five.

  They are everything I imagined and more.

  “Hannah,” I say, pointing to one. She’s much younger but I’d know her anywhere. “This is the Cadet,” I say to them. “He helped them plant their poppies at the spot where their families died.”

  “Is that Fitz?” Raffy asks, pointing to the tallest of them.

  I nod, swallowing hard. “Who came by on the stolen bike and saved their lives.” My voice cracks, just a bit.

  I look at Fitz for a long time. He is as wild as I knew he would be but so cheeky-looking. I almost expect him to leap out of the photograph and tap me on the face.

  “I feel like I know him and I don’t know why,” Raffy says.

  “He was a Townie,” I say.

  Santangelo looks at the photo and then at me, slightly puzzled. “Is he…”

  I nod.

  “Who?” Raffy asks.

  Santangelo holds the photo in his hand and I see a blurry tear that he, embarrassed, quickly dashes away.

  “The Hermit,” I say, and I hear a sound come from Raffy but before I react, I see something else. Standing next to him in the picture, with an arm around his neck, is Webb. A smile from ear to ear, a look in his eyes so joyous that a second wave of grief comes over me. To be that boy, I think. To feel whatever he was feeling. It makes me feel sick and overwhelmed at the same time.

  “Webb,” I say. “He began the territory wars,” I tell them. “But it was a joke. I mean, his best friends were Cadets and Townies and the only reason the boundaries came about was because they were bored and just wanted to hang out with each other.”

  “Who’s that?” Griggs says, pointing.

  It’s like my heart stops beating. All because of the person standing at the edge. Tate. Looking up at Webb with a mixture of love and exasperation, as if they are the only two in the world. She is so beautiful that it makes me ache and I can hardly breathe. The others look at me questioningly because there are tears in my eyes and I’m just shaking my head.

  “She’s so beautiful,” I whisper.

  I look up at them. “See how beautiful she was.”

  “Was? Who is she?” Griggs asked, confused by my reaction.

  I pick up the photo and study it closely. But her eyes refuse to meet mine because, for her, there was never anyone but Webb.

  “Her name’s Tate,” I tell them. “She’s my mother.”

  I lie in my bed, still clutching the photos. It’s one in the morning and I know what I have to do. All this time I thought the answers were here. But now I know that Tate took those answers with her and that somehow Hannah’s caught up in it. If I had to wish for something, just one thing, it would be that Hannah would never see Tate the way I did. Never see Tate’s beautiful lush hair turn brittle, her skin sallow, her teeth ruined by anything she could get her hands on that would make her forget. That Hannah would never count how many men there were and how vile humans can be to one another. That she would never see the moments in my life that were full of neglect and fear and revulsion, moments I can never go back to because I know they will slow me down for the rest of my life if I let myself remember them for one moment. Tate, who had kept Hannah alive that night, reading her the story of Jem and Mrs. Dubose. And suddenly I know I have to go but this time without being chased by a Brigadier, without experiencing the kindness of a postman from Yass, and without taking along a Cadet who will change the way I breathe for the rest of my life.

  When I get to the end of the clearing that leads to the Jellicoe Road, a part of me is not surprised to see Griggs standing there. Even though it’s two in the morning and pitch black, I know it’s Griggs. We stand looking at each other, not able to see much in the darkness, but I can feel his presence.

  I ask the inevitable. “What are you doing here?”

  “What are you?”

  “I asked first.”

  “Does it matter who asked first?”

  I begin to walk away. “Don’t follow me, Jonah.”

  “I’ve got a car,” he calls out after me. “And you’ve got somewhere to go.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I have this amazing ability to read your mind, that’s why.”

  I stop for a moment. “Do you want me to remind you what happened last time? I don’t ever want to be that angry with you again, Jonah. I just want to get past Yass this time and find her.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”

  “Oh, so you were reading her mind back then, too, were you? Is that why you called your school?”

  “No, but just say I was reading yours and it was kind of saying, ‘Whatever I find out there is going to kill me a bit inside.’ And I know what you’re thinking now. That if you can find Hannah, you can find your mother.”

  “You’re wrong,” I say, but I walk back to him and we take the track that leads to the garage.

  And he is wrong. Because I was thinking the exact opposite. If I find my mother, it will lead me to Hannah.

  Once we get off the Jellicoe Road, we stop at Santangelo’s and text him to meet us outside. He comes out, barefoot and bleary-eyed, holding something in his hands, and Griggs gets out of the car to greet him. They talk for a while but I don’t want to join in. I’m scared that everyone’s going to try to talk me out of this. Santangelo comes to my window and pokes his head in.

  “Soon as I got home I burnt you a CD,” he says, handing it to me.

  I nod.

  “Take this,” he says, putting some notes in my hand. “It’s the Club House share. GI Joe won’t take it.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. Pay me back later. The petrol alone will cost you a fortune and I can’t promise this car will last.”

  Griggs opens the car door. “We’ve got to go.”

  Santangelo leans through the window and hugs me. “Raffy will kill me,” he whispers.

  He goes around to Griggs’s side and they do that awkward thing where they can’t acknowledge that they actually have a friendship. After standing around for a moment or two, they shake hands.

  “You know shit’s going to hit the fan, all in your direction,” Griggs says to him as he gets into the car.

  “I’ll deal with the sergeant. But I’ll tell you this. I’m giving you three days. If you aren’t back in three days, I’m going to tell them exactly where you are.”

  “Fair enough,” Griggs says, and I nod.

  Chapter 22

  Somewhere on the highway to Sydney I begin to cry and it’s like I can’t stop. Griggs reaches over and touches my face, then reaches down and takes hold of my hand. We stay like that for a while in silence. Like that time on the train, I feel whole and again it surprises me that I can feel so together when I am revisiting the most fragmented time of my life.

  We listen to the CD that Santangelo burnt for us. A bit of Guns n’ Roses and Kenny Rogers and the Waterboys and at least three or four of the most tragically dependent love songs of all times. I see a smile on Griggs’s face and I am smiling myself.

  We don’t have much of a plan. An easy option would be to stay at his house but he knows his mother will call the Brigadier as soon as we arrive and he has promised me
three days without voices of reason or authority. So the next seventy-two hours are in my territory with my rules. But remembering is difficult. Living with my mother meant we moved at least eight times, because she was obsessed with the idea that someone was after us. Once, I remember falling asleep in a squat in Melbourne and next morning I woke up in Adelaide. Another time I stayed with a foster family. I’m not sure how old I was but I remember kindness. I remember another time, waking up in a police station when I was about seven years old. I don’t know how I got there, except that the trip back to my mother seemed a long way and now, when I think of it, I realise that police station was the one in Jellicoe.

  My first clear memory of time and place was being in a hospital when I was four because of my asthma. The walls were painted with animals and trees and as I stared at one of the trees, I could swear there was a boy hiding in the branches. I didn’t see that boy again until I got to Hannah’s. Except I was never frightened of him or thought it strange, because I thought all people lived the way we did. Then my mother taught me to read during one of her more lucid times and I realised that there was something a bit dysfunctional about our existence. When I think back to it now, it amazes me that even when my mother left me at the 7-Eleven off the Jellicoe Road she was only about twenty-eight years old. Stranger still, that Hannah was even younger.

  I sleep, one of those crazy sleeps where you think you’re awake but it ends up being like you’re in a time machine and you look at the clock and it’s three hours later. The morning sun is blinding and there’s a foul taste in my mouth.

  “You were dribbling,” Griggs says. He looks tired, but content.

  “Thanks for mentioning it.”

  “Anson Choi dribbled on my shoulder the whole way down,” he says. He looks at me for a moment and I know he wants to say something.

  “What?” I ask.