The couple of days with Homer and Fi and Lee had promised to be interesting and that’s the way they were turning out. In fact they were almost too interesting – it was getting to be a strain on my emotions. We were all edgy anyway, wondering how the other four were getting on. But Tuesday started cooler and proved to be cooler in most ways. It was an intriguing day; a day I won’t forget.
We’d agreed to get up early again. I’d noticed that the longer we stayed in Hell, the more we fell into natural rhythms, going to bed when it was dark and getting up at dawn. That wasn’t the routine we had at home, no way. But here we gradually started doing it without noticing. It wasn’t quite that simple. We often stayed up after dark to light a fire, to do some cooking for the next day or even just to have a cup of tea – quite a few of us missed our cups of tea during the day – but before long people would be yawning and standing and stretching and throwing out the dregs in the mug, then wandering away to their tents.
So, when it was still cold and damp on that Tuesday morning we gathered at the dead fire, talking occasionally, and listening to the soft voices of the magpies and the startled muttering of the chooks. We had our usual cold breakfast. Most nights now I soaked dried fruit in water, in a tightly covered billy so the possums couldn’t get at it. By morning the fruit was juicy and tasty, and we had it with muesli or other cereal. Fi usually had powdered milk, which we also reconstituted the night before, to have it ready for the morning. We’d scrounged a few more tubes of condensed milk on our trip to the Grubers’, but again they hadn’t lasted long: all we diabetics-in-training sucked them dry within twenty-four hours.
Our major job that morning was to get firewood. We wanted to build up a big pile, then camouflage it. It sounds crazy with all the bush around us, but firewood was quite hard to get, because the bush was so dense. There were lots of little jobs needed doing too – chopping wood, digging drainage trenches around the tents, digging a new dunny (we’d filled our first one), making up tightly sealed packs of food that we could store around the mountains, as Homer had suggested. Because Lee was still not very mobile he got the last job, as well as the dishwashing, and cleaning the rifles.
The plan was to work hard most of the morning, have a break after lunch, then go out that night to bring more loads in from the Landie. And we did get a lot done before the day warmed up enough to slow us down. We got a stack of firewood that was about a metre high and three metres wide, plus a separate pile of kindling. We dug our trenches and dunny, then put up a better shelter for the chooks. It was amazing how much work four people could get through, compared with what Dad and I could achieve. But it did worry me that we were still so heavily dependent on supplies brought up in the four-wheel drives. That was a short-term solution. Even with our own vegetables, even with the hens, we were a long way off being self-sufficient. Suppose we were here for three months ... or six ... or two years. It was unthinkable – but it was very possible.
Over lunch, when the other two were busy for a minute, Lee said to me, in a low voice, ‘Would you be able to show me the Hermit’s hut this afternoon?’
I was startled. ‘But yesterday, when the other two came ... you said your leg ...’
‘Yes, I know. But I’ve used it quite a bit today. It feels quite good. Anyway, I was in a bad mood with you yesterday.’
I grinned. ‘OK, I’ll take you. And I’ll do a Robyn and carry you back if you need it.’
There must have been something in the air, because when I told the other two that if Lee’s leg was good enough we’d be away for an hour or two, Homer gave Fi a swift wink. I think Fi must have given Homer some encouragement during the morning, because it wasn’t the ‘Ohhh, Lee and Ellie’ type wink; it was the ‘Good, we’ll get some time together’ wink. It was very sneaky of them. I’m sure if we hadn’t given them the opportunity they would have come up with some lie to get away on their own. It made me feel jealous though, and I wished I could cancel our paddle so I could stay back and chaperone. Deep down in my heart I really didn’t want Homer and Fi to be together.
There was nothing I could do though. I’d been neatly trapped. So, at around two o’clock, I set off towards the creek with Lee limping beside me. The journey was surprisingly quick this time, because I knew how to do it now and went there more deliberately and confidently, and because Lee was moving more freely than I’d expected. The water gurgled along, refreshingly cold, and we just went with the flow.
‘It’s the perfect path in,’ Lee commented, ‘because we don’t leave any tracks.’
‘Mmm. You know, on the other side of Hell is the Holloway River and Risdon. There must be a way through from here. It’d be interesting to try to find it, by following this creek maybe.’
We got to the hut but Lee’s first priority was to talk. He sat down on a rather damp log by the edge of the creek.
‘I’ll just give my leg a rest,’ he said.
‘Is it hurting?’
‘A little. Only an ache from being used again. I think exercise is probably the best thing for it.’ He paused. ‘You know, Ellie, I didn’t ever thank you properly for coming to get me that night, from the restaurant. You guys were heroes. You really put it on the line for me. I’m not too good at big emotional speeches, but I won’t forget that, for the rest of my life.’
‘That’s OK,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘You did thank me once already. And you’d have done the same for us.’
‘And I’m sorry about yesterday.’
‘What’s to be sorry about? You said what you wanted to say. You said what you thought. Which is more than I did.’
‘Well, say it now.’
I grinned. ‘Maybe I should. Although I wasn’t planning to say any more.’ I thought for a minute, and decided to take the plunge. I was nervous, but it was exciting. ‘All right, I’ll say what I think I think, but just remember, it’s not necessarily what I really think, because I don’t know what I think.’
He groaned. ‘Oh Ellie, you’re so frustrating. You haven’t even started and already you’re getting me churned up. This is the same as yesterday.’
‘Well do you want me to be honest or don’t you?’
‘All right, go on, and I’ll try to keep control of my blood pressure.’
‘OK.’ Having said that I wasn’t even sure of where to start. ‘Lee, I do like you, very much. I think you’re interesting, funny, smart, and you’ve got my favourite eyes in Wirrawee. I’m just not sure that I like you in that way, you know what I mean. That day in the hayshed, my feelings got the better of me. But there’s something about you, I don’t know what it is, but you make me nervous a little. I’ve never met anyone quite like you. And one thing I wonder is, suppose we started going round together, and it didn’t work out? Here we are, the seven of us, no, eight now, living in this out-of-the-way place in these really strange times, with the whole world turned upside down, yet we get on pretty well together – most of the time. I’d hate to spoil that by us two suddenly having a falling out and deciding we didn’t want to see each other, or we were embarrassed to be together. That’d be awful. It’d be like Adam and Eve having a fight in the Garden of Eden. I mean, who would they talk to then? The apple tree? The snake?’
‘Oh Ellie,’ Lee said. ‘Why do you have to reason everything through all the time? The future is the future. It has to take care of itself. You can sit here all day and make guesses about it, and at the end of the day, what have you got? A lot of dead guesses, that’s what. And in the meantime you haven’t done anything, you haven’t lived, because you’ve been so busy reasoning it all out.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said, getting annoyed. ‘The way we got the truck and rescued you, that was all done with reason. If we hadn’t figured out all the possibilities first, it never would have worked.’