Circle of fight

CHAPTER 19

‘So how on earth did you get involved in Liberation?’ I asked the Scarlet Pimple as we sat on the grass overlooking the oval, shivering as we ate our lunch. It was one of those grey-blue days, more grey than blue, and the wind wore away our clothes till we might as well have been wearing nothing. I don’t know why we were out there really. To get away from the boys, I suppose. Not to mention the teachers.

She laughed. ‘It wasn’t any deliberate plan. I realised my parents were doing stuff that was clandestine, my father mostly…’

‘What’s clandestine?’ I asked, annoyed that anyone knew a word I didn’t, especially when she was a year below me.

‘Oh, you know. Secret, sneaky, undercover. So naturally I listened and asked questions, started snooping around. It was very exciting to think that my father was some sort of spy. Quite a lot of it got done from home. They’d go for walks in the park next door and sometimes I’d be allowed to go along. The good thing about my parents is that they’ve always trusted me. They know I don’t repeat stuff. And of course as I got to know how this stuff was working, I noticed that most of the people in Liberation weren’t much older than me. The war changed everyone’s ages I think. So after a while I became pretty good friends with some of them, and they talked to me completely openly, because they assumed I knew everything. Then I got asked to do little jobs, like take a message to someone, or pick up a parcel, or meet someone at a coffee shop and look after them until a member of Liberation turned up.

‘And then, drum roll, it all went horribly wrong. My parents were out and I got a phone call at the house from Oliver, this young guy who was in charge of one of the units. They’re never never meant to ring the house, so I knew he must be desperate. I told him to ring back in ten minutes and I raced down to the public telephone at the corner and got the number from that and when he rang again I told him to call that number in five minutes. So I raced back to the public phone and took the call, and when he explained what had gone wrong I gave him some suggestions and then spent the night working the phone, organising a whole lot of people and stuff to help him. My parents were out of mobile range, but by the time they got home, which was 1 am, I was still down at the corner using all the coins I’d found in the house, but everything was under control. I’d fluked a few pretty good outcomes with the suggestions I’d made to Oliver, so I was suddenly flavour of the month. Oliver wanted me as his second in charge and when he moved to Stratton I found myself running the group. It was only a little group, mind you, but then it started growing a lot. My father finds that quite disconcerting. I think he gave in to Oliver and let me do it because he thought he could control the whole thing, but it hasn’t worked out that way. We’ve become one of the biggest units around, and because we’ve been successful at a lot of the stuff we’ve taken on, we keep getting asked to do more. Most of it doesn’t come through my father at all now. It’s exciting but it’s also terrifying.’

She didn’t look at all terrified. I decided it would take a volcanic eruption to scare Bronte, and even then it would have to be in her back yard.

‘Your father’s playing a dangerous game, isn’t he?’ I asked. I was still bothered by this idea of people running a secret war, which could have big consequences for us all, even though we hadn’t voted for it and had no say in it. Like I said, I’d never thought about this before. I don’t think it bothered Bronte though. I guess when it’s your parents you follow them blindly, to some extent anyway. I guess that’s how those Mafia families, where there’s, like, six generations of crims, get to be the way they are.

‘Both of them are.’ She frowned. ‘It’ll all blow up sooner or later and there’ll be a scandal and they’ll have to take early retirement from the Army. But my dad’s prepared for that. It’s already happened to a couple of his friends. He likes the Prime Minister’s attitude though. You never sack anyone, or admit you could possibly be guilty of anything, even if you’ve bashed a baby or hijacked a plane, because by this time next week there’ll be a bushfire, or an old lady’ll win a million bucks in the lottery, or a pig’ll give birth to a twoheaded piglet or something, and it’ll all be forgotten.’

‘Yeah, he’s got that right,’ I couldn’t help but agree.

‘But you know, Ellie,’ she said, looking at me hard over her chicken and avocado sandwich, ‘I don’t think you should join Liberation. The opposite. I think you should take a break from all this stuff. It’s not good for your health. In wartime, pilots are only allowed a certain number of sorties, and then they have to take a rest. I think they do twenty before they get sent for a holiday. And that’s for guys who don’t even see the enemy, most of them anyway. You’ve been doing stuff on the ground, close up, face to face. You’ve seen too much blood.’

I nodded. My eyes filled with tears. That was happening all too easily these days. She patted me then hugged me and we sat in silence for a while. In the distance the bell rang, like it always does sooner or later. She squeezed me and we got up and collected our bits and pieces and headed off, me to English her to PE.

Bronte was an amazing person, not only because she was strong and clever, but because she understood people and she had… I don’t know… I was going to say sympathy, but that seems like a weak word sometimes. I guess compassion is better. I wasn’t sure her father had that. Her mother might have but I’d only met her a couple of times. I reckon you could probably be a really good leader without compassion, as long as you were great at strategy and analysis and all the rest, but to be one of the all-time greats I think you’d have to add compassion to your repertoire.

It’s only imagination, really, when it’s all said and done.

The very next day, in almost exactly the same spot, I had another conversation with another one of my friends, but this one worked out quite differently. It was with Jeremy and it was different to every conversation we’d had before. Pretty early on, ignoring my lunch, which I didn’t feel like eating, I said, ‘Bronte thinks I should take a break from violence for a while.’

‘Huh?’

‘You know, not join Liberation but go for nice picnics instead. Something like that.’

‘Oh! Yeah, that sounds good. Good advice I mean.’

He didn’t sound very interested, but he did add, ‘Bronte’s amazing.’

I’d heard him on the theme of Bronte before, except that I didn’t know it was Bronte he was talking about, back then. It was just the Scarlet Pimple, whom I’d always thought, in a totally sexist way, was a boy. Now I felt slightly annoyed to hear him talking about Bronte with such feeling. ‘You’re not so unamazing yourself,’ I said, getting closer and using my left hand to tickle and tease him and make him feel good.

I was feeling guilty about Jeremy. I’d hardly seen him since the day of the big rescue. I suppose I was a little pissed, though, that when I did get back, one of the first things he did was to ask me for the money he’d handed me before I left. He’d been so like an accountant for a minute there. Even Jess, who was in my kitchen with us, had said, ‘Geez Jeremy, give her a break, I don’t think that’s the main thing on her mind right now.’

Of course I didn’t have the money. It had disappeared during that first escape attempt, when they’d caught me and bashed me. I wondered if Jeremy would make me fill out a tax form or a receipt or something.

Anyway, on the bank above the oval, he seemed like he was probably still thinking about the money and not about me. Then suddenly he sat up and said, ‘Ellie, there’s something I’ve got to say to you.’

I took my hand away real fast. There are different ways you can say a sentence like that, but when a boy says it in the tone Jeremy used, and when his face is all red and he can’t look at you, you know you’re not about to have a conversation about what a fantastic person you are. And how totally in love he is. Nuh uh. For the first time in our relationship I felt doubt. I looked hard at him, which was easy, because like I said, he wasn’t looking at me, but I had the feeling he knew where my eyes were.

I thought he was going to say that he’d fallen out of love with me, but it was more complicated than that. In a voice I’d never heard him use before, speaking fast and loud, he said, ‘I’m sick of the way you hang around Homer and the way you talk about him and the way you never take your eyes off him and you listen to him more than you listen to me. You’ve got to decide, Ellie. You’re meant to be in love with me but anyone’d think Homer’s the only thing in your life, I mean the only guy. I’ve had enough of it.’

I felt sandbagged. I think that’s the right word. When you feel as though you’ve been clobbered across the head by someone wielding a large and heavy sandbag. I’d been physically beaten not all that long ago and now I was getting beaten up with words and thoughts. I swayed over to one side, like I really had been clobbered.

‘Jeremy!’ I gasped.

‘Well, it’s true. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. You’ve gotta decide who you want to be with. I know he’s your childhood friend and all that, but now I’m on the scene and things are different. Things should be different! Things have got to be different.’

I just kept gaping at him. He was like a whole new person. Before I’d seen someone calm and intelligent and thoughtful and kind of perfect really. Now I saw someone selfish and possessive. It was like I’d put on a new pair of glasses. It wasn’t a black and white thing — I didn’t immediately fall out of love with him and think he was a complete dickhead — but I realised there was much more to him than I’d realised.

‘Jeremy, I don’t know what you’re even talking about. I’m not in love with Homer but I’m not going to change my relationship with him just because you don’t like it. Why should I?’

‘You have to choose,’ he said. ‘I can’t keep going like this.’

‘Like what? Nothing’s changed!’

‘No, except that I’ve started to realise that I’m just number two or three or four on your list. I want to be number one. I want to be the only one. I’m offering you something pretty good Ellie, total love, and that’s not something that comes along too often.’

He started striding up and down in front of me. I stared at him, wondering what had got into him. One thing for sure, I wasn’t about to hand over my life to him. I wasn’t some possession that he’d picked up at the summer sales and from now on was going to be what he wanted me to be. It was the opposite. He’d fallen in love with the person I was, so it’d be more than dumb of him to change me into someone different, and dumb of me to try to change into someone I thought he wanted.

And if he had made a mistake about the person I was, if he’d been seeing someone else every time he looked at me, well, tough toadies for him.

‘Jeremy, the bell’s gonna go in a sec, and I don’t know what to say to you, but my relationship with Homer isn’t something for you to control, and if you think it is, then you don’t understand much about me or about relationships. I’m too upset to talk about this any more, but maybe you better ring me tonight or something.’

And off I went, my head feeling like a shaken-up bottle of Coke had just been opened in it. All I could think was, ‘I hope he doesn’t ring. I don’t think I can cope with any more of that today.’