Tomorrow 7 - The Other Side Of Dawn (32 page)

It wasn’t there either, but I wasn’t discouraged. I went up again, to the fifth floor. I’d completely forgotten what was happening outside; didn’t give it a thought.

My mother was listed in

Apartment

5A12

, along with a heap of other people. But all the apartments were like that, a crowd of names scribbled together in the same way that the people must be squashed into the rooms. I ran along the corridor, looking at the letters and numbers on the doors. It wasn’t easy, because half of them – more than half of them – were missing. A lot of the doors were damaged too. This place looked like it had seen some hard times. I still couldn’t work out the lettering and numbering system. On one door was 5A17, but the next one was 5A22. I turned a corner to the right and the very first door was 5A12. I felt a tremble run through me, a deep, deep shiver like an underwater earthquake. I paused, said some sort of prayer without words, opened the door and walked in.

If you don’t believe in destiny, how do you explain that of all the huge numbers of people in those flats, my mother must have been about the only one actually home? I suppose it was the way the war affected her. But there were plenty of other people who’d suffered terribly in the war, and they were outside, milling around the front gate.

A lot of things had changed during this war. But apparently my footsteps weren’t one of them. My mother came out of a side room like a snake had bitten her. The light in there was dim – I found out later it was always like that because the authorities were too stingy to supply enough electricity for the apartments – but dim light or not I could see how pale her face was. No, not pale, white.
As white as vanilla ice-cream.
She grabbed me by the arms, so tightly she left bruises. I can still feel the pressure of her hands. ‘Hey, take it easy,’ I said. ‘It’s only me.’ She was terribly thin. She’s always been thin, but now she looked like one of those concentration camp photos. I put my arms around her. She started making
these
kind of whooping sounds, a bit like – I don’t mean to be rude – a bit like koalas during the mating season.

It wasn’t the way I’d pictured our reunion. I thought I’d be the one falling into her arms. I lowered her into an armchair and squeezed in beside her, half on the arm of the chair. It was a battered old chair, and it barely coped with both of us.

‘I’ll get you a cup of tea,’ I said, but I didn’t get up. I’d started remembering the shambles at the gate outside and I was wondering what was happening out there.

‘I thought ... I’d never see you again,’ she said. Her voice was really croaky, like an old lady’s. She sounded like her mother.

‘We did say we were only going for five days,’ I said. ‘We got held up. Sorry.’

She was trembling so much, and it wasn’t getting better.

‘Hey,’ I said, realising I sounded a bit like Mum when I said it. ‘Come on. It’s OK. You’re OK. It’s over now.’

‘How are the others? How’s Homer?’

There was no gentle way I could answer that question.

‘They didn’t make it.’ I said, holding her closer and feeling her body shake.

She gave a sob and put her hand to her mouth. Homer had always been a big favourite of hers.

When she didn’t say anything else I asked: ‘How’s Dad? Do you know where he is?’

‘More or less.
He’s mucking out stables on a stud near Absalom.
Last I heard, he wasn’t too bad.’

‘Oh God,’ I breathed. At last I could let myself hope that he had survived.

There was a noise from outside. I jumped up nervously. With the briefest of knocks, a couple of people hurried in. I recognised one of them as Don Murray, a farmer from
Wirrawee
, but I didn’t know the woman. She was short and dark-skinned, and she gave me a great warm smile.

‘It is you,’ Don said. ‘Fantastic! This is just wonderful.
The first good thing that’s happened in this whole damn war.’

‘What’s happening outside?’ I asked nervously.

‘It’s under control,’ he said. ‘We convinced the officer that it wouldn’t be a good idea to shoot you. Every last one of us assured him we’d testify to the UN that he was a murderer. He’s basically not a bad bloke. He didn’t take much convincing. Mind you, he doesn’t seem to know who you are. I don’t think he heard the dickhead, excuse my French, who called your name out. He knows something’s a bit suss; he’s just not sure what. But you’re safe now.’

‘Am I?’ I asked feeling a sickness in my heart. ‘With everyone in the place knowing I’m here? I don’t think so.’

To me it was like a replay of Camp 23.

‘Even if the war is over, I don’t think I’ll be safe as long as there are enemy soldiers around.’

Don came to a shuddering halt. ‘Yes. Yes. I see what you mean. Well, you’ll be safe until the morning. No-one’s allowed out till then. But if the radio’s
right,
and the war is over, I don’t think they’ll come in here looking for you. I’d say you’re safe for as long as you want to stay.
Though why anyone should want to stay in this God-awful rat-infested apartment block I have no idea.’

The woman who was with him tugged his sleeve. ‘Let’s go, Don,’ she said. ‘I’m sure we’re in the way here.’

‘What?’ Don said, looking puzzled, and then gradually realising what she meant. ‘What? Oh yes.
Of course.’

The door closed behind them, and I went into the kitchen to make the cup of tea I’d promised Mum. It took a few minutes to find the stuff, although God knows it wasn’t because there was so much to choose from. The kitchen was as neat and clean as scrubbing could make it, but it sure was short of food and drink. The only reason it took me so long to make the tea was that I had to open at least a dozen empty containers before I found a cupful of tea-leaves.

When I went back to the main room I found Mum slumped down in the chair, with her eyes closed. I got a terrible fright. I put the cup down quickly and ran to her. When I lifted her she woke straightaway, but I couldn’t control the pounding of my heart. I sat beside her, shaking like a Saint
Andrew’s Cross
spider.

‘It’s all right,’ she said, putting her hand on my arm, ‘it’s going to be all right now.’

But she was so shaky and weak that I had to become like a nurse. I made some soup out of some old soft spuds. At least there was plenty of salt and pepper. I put her to bed, then, because it was such a narrow bed that I couldn’t sleep next to her, I got in at the other end. For the first time in the war I slept without dreams, and when I woke the sun was shining and the war was over.

Chapter Sixteen

 

 

For two reasons we were in the first lot of people sent back to the reclaimed territory. One was that people with illness or disability had priority. Mum qualified under that, because she’d been really ill. A nervous breakdown I guess you’d call it. Don Murray told me, the morning after I arrived, that she’d hardly said a word for four months.

That’s why Mrs Samuels had been so guarded when she spoke to me, back at the prison camp.

Irrationally, in the middle of my concern about Mum, and my fear that she might get worse, was my anger that she wasn’t there for me. Instead of fussing over me and nursing me, which was the picture I’d imagined all through the war, she dragged herself around the place looking awful, and somehow I had to find the strength to look after her.

She had no energy, no stamina: she kept fainting all the time. So she sure qualified for the first bus, just on those grounds alone.

The other reason we got selected was that the committee in charge of the flats wanted me out of there, for my good and for everyone else’s.

‘If they know you’re here, there’s a chance they’ll try to abduct you. The sooner you’re gone, the better.’

I sure was happy to go. I found the overcrowded and smelly apartments extremely depressing and with every fibre of my being I longed to be home.

We left on a convoy of buses, on a Tuesday morning. It was a wonderful moment. The people who couldn’t get onto this first convoy gave us a huge send-off, cheering and clapping and throwing flowers. As the buses started up everyone sang ‘Auld Lang
Syne
’. That song had never meant much to me before. It always seemed like such an oldies’ song. But to hear it that morning, from people who had been through so much together, who had suffered in this war for so long, brought the tears to my eyes.

Then they sang the Maori Farewell as we headed out of the gates, and I bawled.

It seemed that now the war was over I could let go a little. I had the window seat, next to Mum on the aisle, and I rested my head against her and let the tears run onto her sleeve, in a steady flow, like a quiet spring. In my head I was going, ‘
Fi
, Homer, Lee, Kevin, Gavin’, in no particular order. I remember hearing once that when someone close to you dies, it’s like you’ve had a limb amputated. It never grows back, it never gets fixed, but after a while you learn to live with three limbs instead of four.

I didn’t know where that left me though. All the friends I’d lost, it was like I didn’t have any arms or any legs.

But under that grief something else was stirring. I wasn’t yet ready to look at it, but I guess I did have a sense that my life would go on. For better or worse I had survived. Maybe that was the main reason I was crying, because I had survived.

We went home via Stratton. At that point the buses were going to split up and go in different directions, but everyone on our bus was from
Wirrawee
, so that’s where we headed. We knew already that
Wirrawee
had been included in the area handed back under the peace treaty. That was the good news. The bad news was that
Wirrawee
was on the very edge of the reclaimed territory, so we didn’t know how much of the countryside would be returned. In other words, we didn’t know whether our property was on the right side of the new border or the wrong side.

I was again amazed at the damage we saw as we rolled along. Time and time again we had to make major detours because of destroyed bridges or roads with huge craters in them or unexploded bombs. But that was nothing compared to what we found in Stratton. I’d seen more damage in Stratton every time I’d gone there, but now there was virtually nothing left. Street after street was a mess of rubble. Hardly a building was left standing. Only in the outer suburbs were there occasional streets that were reasonably intact. I didn’t think there was much chance Grandmas house had survived.

I couldn’t help wondering how much of this damage was indirectly – and sometimes directly – the result of what Homer, Lee,
Fi
, Kevin, Gavin and I had done. It was frightening, horrifying – and exhilarating. I sat in silence staring out the window.

I’ll never forget the homecoming to
Wirrawee
. By the time we arrived we were all tired and hungry and fed up. But we still managed to raise a cheer as we went past the 60
k’s
sign. Everyone crowded to the windows to have a look. Most of them hadn’t seen
Wirrawee
in over a year.

As we pulled up outside the Post Office a few people started coming out of houses to see what was going on. A day earlier these houses had been occupied by our enemies. The colonists had been evacuated already, no doubt complaining bitterly as they went, no doubt feeling hard done by and victimised. The few prisoners left in the
Wirrawee
Showground had been released at the same time. They’d wasted no time reoccupying their homes and farms. It was these people who came into the street now, wondering about the big bus pulling up in the centre of town.

Before we got to
Wirrawee
if you asked anyone on that bus how they felt about a party you’d have got a poor response. But when we arrived something possessed us. A charge ran through the bus, through the crowd. For one night we forgot the war, forgot the suffering, the deprivations, even the friends and family we’d lost. Sometimes you’ve got to give yourself credit just for enduring. And we had endured.

Mum and I at least had something very specific to celebrate. Our property was confirmed as being in the returned territory. We were right on the edge, right on the border of the two new countries that now had to exist side by side, where for over two hundred years there had been only one, but for now we were happy enough with that. We didn’t want to think too much about the problems it would bring.

Just after dawn, as people sat around fires that had been lit in the middle of the main street, still talking, still reminiscing, still asking each other questions that no-one could answer, we heard another big vehicle grinding its way towards us, coming down the hill.

‘It’s a bus,’ someone yelled.
‘Another bus.’

We all jumped up and ran to the end of the street, if only to stop the bus rolling straight into our fires. Sure enough it was another load of ‘returnees’. And waving to us from a window near the back, with unshaven face and dark-rimmed eyes, was my father.

‘What are you bludgers doing? I thought you’d be home, getting a killer in.’

They were his first words.
Typical.

He and Mum hugged,
then
it was my turn. He’s never been a good hugger, my dad, but he put up with me, rocking me backwards and forwards like we were in some sort of slow waltz. I clung to him like a little baby. Eventually we separated again, but not by much. I kept one hand resting on his back, using the other to wipe my eyes.

He already knew most of Mum’s news, having been kept in touch by the people transferred from one place to another. It had been a pretty good grapevine, carrying news backwards and forwards across the country.

Just an hour later came the next bus. It brought a problem I knew I’d have to face eventually, but which I’d pushed firmly to the back of my mind. Not just pushed it firmly to the back of my mind but locked it in, sealed the door with cement, and thrown away the key.

Homer’s mum was on that bus.