Darkness, Be My Friend

  Darkness, Be My Friend

  John Marsden

  * * *

  Houghton Mifflin Company

  Boston

  * * *

  Copyright © 1996 by John Marsden

  All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce

  selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin

  Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  First published in 1996 by Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited,

  St. Martins Tower, 31 Market Street, Sydney

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  either are the product of the author's imagination or are used

  fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,

  events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The text of this book is set in 12-point Transitional 521 BT.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Marsden, John, 1950-

  Darkness, be my friend / by John Marsden.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: A killing frost.

  Summary: As survivors of an enemy invasion of their homeland,

  Ellie and her friends return to Australia as guides for soldiers from

  New Zealand who plan an attack on the Wirrawee airfield.

  ISBN 0-395-92274-7

  [1. Survival—Fiction. 2. War—Fiction. 3. Australia—Fiction.]

  I. Title

  PZ7.M35145Dar 1999 98-38493

  [Fic]—dc21 CIP

  AC

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  QUM 10 9 8 7 6 5

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  Much thanks to Charlotte and Rick Lindsay, Roos Marsden, Felicity Bell, Paul Kenny, Jill Rawnsley, Julia Watson and students of Hale School, for help so generously given.

  * * *

  For Neil Elliot Meiers

  Born 10th January 1984

  Left 29th December 1995

  for another adventure

  * * *

  An Aussie Glossary

  Aga: wood stove

  Ag. bike: motor bike used on farms

  anfo: ammonium nitrate (fuel oil)

  B&S's: dances for young rural people

  bikkies: biscuits

  bitumen: asphalt, tar

  blowies: blowflies

  BLS: brandy lime soda

  blue heeler: cattle dog

  boot: car trunk

  Buckley's: if you have Buckley's chance, you have no chance at all

  bugger: something difficult or unpleasant

  bush: uncleared Australian countryside

  bush-bash: to force a path through the bush

  cactus: trashed, a mess

  Charolais: breed of cattle

  chook: chicken

  circle work: to drive a vehicle in tight circles for sport

  crack a mental: to become angry

  crack onto: to make a sexual advance toward someone

  creche: baby-minding facility

  crocodile: straight line of children walking in pairs

  dag: eccentric, amusing person

  dingoes: wild dogs

  dobbed: told on, tattled

  dreaming: Aboriginal word which expresses a close affiliation with an area of land

  dunny: toilet

  fair dinkum: the truth, the real thing

  flat-chat: as fast as possible

  the flick: the brush-off

  footy: Australian Rules football

  good nick: good condition

  goss: to gab

  graziers: farmers who have sheep or cattle

  hit-out: strenuous exercise

  hooning: acting wildly

  hotted up: modified to go faster

  hypo: hypochondriac

  jillaroos: female apprentice farmers

  jocks: underpants

  jumper: sweater

  k: kilometre

  kitbags: duffel bags

  Kiwis: New Zealanders

  kookaburra: Australian bird

  lollipop lady: crossing guard

  Macquarie: a brand of dictionary

  merino stud: farm that breeds Merino sheep

  milkbar: small corner store, mini-mart

  nappies: diapers

  nick: naked, also condition

  one-tonner: small tray-top truck

  paid her out: teased her

  perv: to look at a person in a sexual way

  poddy lambs: lambs raised by hand

  rapt: delighted

  Ratsak: rat poison

  recce: reconnaissance

  ride-ons: lawn mowers that people drive

  roo: kangaroo

  Saladas: biscuits

  sherbert: a sweet white powder eaten as candy

  shout: to pay for everyone's drinks

  slaters: beetles

  a snack: an easy task

  spur: a ridge on a mountain

  sultanas: fruit that is similar to raisins

  sussed out: examined, checked it out

  tacker: kid

  tech: school that teaches technical skills

  texta: marker pen

  torch: flashlight

  tray: the back section of a truck—the flat part that the load sits on

  uni: university

  ute: utility vehicle

  wethers: castrated male sheep

  whinge: to whine

  yakka: work

  One

  I didn't want to go back.

  That sounds pretty casual, doesn't it? Like saying, "I don't want to go to the movie," "I think I'll give that party the flick," "I don't feel like it today."

  Just one of those comments you make.

  But the truth is, I felt so sick at the thought of going back that my insides liquefied. I felt like my guts would pour out of me until my stomach caved in. I could even picture it: my ribs touching my backbone.

  But my insides didn't pour out. After they told us what they wanted I'd go and sit on the dunny, but nothing happened. Sitting there holding myself,'wondering if I'd ever feel good again.

  And it was because my life was at stake. My life. I thought there should be a long time to think about that, a lot of careful thinking, a lot of discussion. Everyone giving their opinions, heaps of counselling and stuff, then me going away and spending weeks weighing up the options.

  But it wasn't like that. They pretended there was a choice, but they were just, you know, doing it to make me feel good. And OK, maybe the truth is there couldn't be a choice, because the whole thing was too important. But I didn't want to know about that. I wanted to scream at them, "Listen to me, will you! I don't care about your big plans, I just want to hide under the bed and wait until the war's over. All right? That's all I want. End of story."

  And I wanted someone, anyone, to acknowledge that I was being asked to put my life on the line. That what they wanted me to do was enormous, gigantic, ginormous.

  Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;

  But young men think it is, and we were young.

  That's from a poem a World War One guy wrote. A teacher in Dunedin gave it to me, and OK, I'm a young woman not a young man, but I still don't want to lose my life. I don't know much about anything but I do know that.

  So, there I was, wanting weeks to think, to concentrate, to feel. To get used to the idea of going back. To get ready.

  Wanting weeks and getting days. Five days to be exact. Five days between Colonel Finley asking us, and our arriving at the airfield.

  If anything, I guess I felt angry. Cheated. They were treating me and my life like I was a plastic toy. Pick it up, play with it a moment, chuck it aside. Ple
nty more where that came from.

  Colonel Finley always talked to us like we were soldiers under his command. Like there was no difference between us and his troops. But they had signed up to take risks and fight wars and shoot people. We hadn't! Seemed like only yesterday that we'd needed a lollipop lady before we could even cross the road outside school. And yes, I know, people have told me a thousand times how in some countries kids are in the army when they're eleven years old, but I didn't care about that.

  "That's not how we do it," I wanted to shout at them. "We're different."

  That was all that mattered to me.

  Only Fi seemed to understand how I felt. Up to a point, anyway. I couldn't help thinking that she didn't see it quite the way I did. That surprised me, I've got to admit. I didn't want to look like a wimp, compared to the others. I wanted to be stronger than everyone. Fi had her own strengths; I knew that, of course, but I liked to think that I was more of a leader than her. Yet here she was saying pretty well straightaway that she'd go, while I sat there in shock, dithering, wanting to go off for a few years and think about it.

  I was actually angry at her, that was the crazy thing.

  Or maybe not so crazy. After all, I was angry at everyone. Might as well include her.

  It started when we'd been in New Zealand almost five months. We'd escaped from a nightmare, or we thought we had. The truth is, there's no escape from some nightmares. This one followed us across the Tasman. They'd air-lifted us out of our own country after it was invaded. We'd arrived in New Zealand burnt and injured and shocked, with broken bones, and scars inside and out. We'd lost contact with our families, we'd seen friends die, we'd caused other people to die by our own deliberate actions.

  We were just typical survivors of war, I guess.

  And then it all started again.

  It was the end of spring, moving into summer. The bushfire season. And that's appropriate because the whole thing began a bit like a bushfire. You know how it is. First you hear warnings on the radio, then you hear a rustling in the distance, like bark in a breeze, then there's white smoke, could be clouds, maybe not, can't be sure, but at last comes the smell, the never-could-be-mistaken smell of burning.

  And suddenly it's on you. Suddenly there are trees exploding a hundred metres from the house and the heat's like you've opened an oven door and sat in front of it and there's the sound of roaring wind and in among the grey and white smoke you see the wild wicked flames dancing.

  For us the first hint, the first warning, was a rumour going round the refugees that some of them would be dropped back into occupied areas. Either with Kiwi troops or, in some cases, on their own. Either to carry out a particular job, or to be guerillas, doing the sort of stuff we'd done around Wirrawee and Cobbler's Bay.

  I must be dumb, because I didn't think they'd ask us. It never crossed my mind. Lee heard about it first. "Bet we're on their shopping list," he said. But I didn't take any notice: I think I was reading at the time. Emma, as I recall.

  I've got to keep on trying to be honest here, because I have been, ever since I started writing stuff down, so I'd better say that the reason I thought they wouldn't ask us is that we'd done so much already. God, hadn't we done enough? Hadn't we gone for it, time and time again? Hadn't we blown up a ship and wrecked Cobbler's Bay and killed a general in Wirrawee? Hadn't we had Lee shot in the leg and the other three? (I can't even say their names right now.) And hadn't we stared death right in the face and felt its cold fingers tightening its grip on the backs of our necks? What would satisfy them? Did we all have to die before they'd say, "OK, that'll do, you can have the rest of the war off"?

  How much did we have to do?

  It gets me so upset thinking about it.

  I know there's no logic in this. I know when there's a war on they can't just say, "Look, we'll carry on without you guys for a while, you give it a miss for a year or two."

  But somewhere along the line, somewhere way back in childhood, we'd been taught that life is actually fair, that you get out of it what you put in, that if you want something badly enough you can achieve it.

  That's garbage. I know that now.

  Suddenly at the time in my life when I most wanted things to be fair, suddenly no one was mentioning the word any more. It wasn't on our spelling list; there was no Pictionary card for it; the Macquarie went straight from "faint" to "fairy."

  The New Zealanders had been good to us before this, I've got to admit. Of course that made it even harder to refuse Colonel Finley. But yes, they'd been good to us. Right from the start they'd arranged a lot of counselling and stuff. We all ended up getting that, even Homer and Lee who once upon a time wouldn't have gone to a shrink if you'd paid them. The psychologist they gave me, Andrea, I got really close to her. She became like a second mum.

  And we did actually have holidays and everything. I'm not kidding, we were like heroes. Anything we asked for, they gave us. Fi and I made a sort of game of it for a few weeks, asking for everything we could think of. Then suddenly I got sick of that game.

  But we went to the South Island, and skied the Remarkables, and we flew to Milford Sound and drove out through a tunnel, and we checked out Mt. Cook, then followed the east coast down and went across to Invercargill.

  Andrea said I was "in denial," rushing around like a maniac because I didn't want to look at the things that had happened to us. Not that she said "like a maniac." It wouldn't be very tactful for a shrink to say that.

  The funniest thing was when we were meant to go on these jetboats, near Queenstown somewhere, and we all chickened out. Like, I'm talking major cowardice. None of us had bothered to ask what jetboats were; we thought they were some little fun riverboat cruise thing. But when we got there we started to realise they were monster boats that went roaring down the river at about a hundred k's an hour, in water that was, like, five centimetres deep.

  And once we realised that, none of us would go in them. We stood on the banks of the river, shivering, like a pathetic little mob of sheep waiting to be dipped, and the driver of the first boat was saying, "Come on, let's go, hockey players," and we couldn't move.

  It was so embarrassing. The driver started looking at us like, "What the hell is wrong with these people?" and finally Corporal Ahauru, who was in charge of us back then, took her aside and had a long conversation with her and I knew exactly what she was saying, exactly, down to the commas and full stops. It'd be, "They're the ones who've been in the news, those teenagers who did the attack on Cobbler's Bay, in Aussie, and they've all got major emotional problems, poor things, and I think right now they're seeing this little bit too threatening, a bit more than they can cope with."

  Corporal Ahauru is a nurse, did I mention that before?

  So we didn't go on the jetboats and the driver probably still thinks of us as cowards and frauds and at that stage not even Colonel Finley would have sent us back into a war zone.

  Somewhere along the line, though, we must have got marginally better. I'm not sure how or when it happened, but I suppose after a while there were one or two good days and then, after a bit longer, nearly as many good days as bad ones. I can't speak for the others but for me it never got to be more than three good days in a row, and that only happened once. We made a few friends, and that helped, although I admit I was insanely jealous when the others started mixing with new people. It was all right for me but not for them. I wanted them—Homer and Lee and Kevin and Fi—I wanted them all for myself.

  Next thing, someone got the intelligent idea that we'd go to schools and give talks to help raise money for the war effort. We tried three times, then unanimously canned it. It was a disaster: well, three disasters. I'm going red even now, thinking about it. We were over-confident, that was one problem. We thought it'd be a snack. That was the way we were for quite a while, going from wild over-confidence to total terror, like with the jetboats.

  The first talk was at a primary school and it was a Friday afternoon and the kids were rioting even
before we got there. They were in the gym, waiting for us. There'd been some mix-up about the time, so we were twenty minutes late. We could hear them yelling as we came in the gate. We thought it must still be lunchtime, judging from the noise. OK, if we'd given brilliant speeches maybe we could have turned it around, but we didn't give brilliant speeches. Lee was so soft no one heard him. Homer had more "urns" than words, Fi spoke for thirty seconds, looking like she was about to start crying the whole time, and Kevin tried to make a joke, which failed dismally and all the kids made sarcastic noises—like fake laughter and stuff—and Kevin lost his temper and told them to shut up. That was extremely embarrassing.

  I'm not going to say what happened with my speech.

  The second time was a bit better, because at least we prepared for it, and also it was a secondary school, but now we were too nervous to make it work properly. Lee was the best because this time he had a microphone. Homer's sentences went: "And we, urn, we ah, we walked, urn, to this, like, urn, er, silo, I think that's where we went then, is that right, Ellie, or was that before we got Kevin back?"

  The third time Kevin refused to do it at all, and Lee knocked over a jug of water when he stood up to speak. Fi gave a great speech, but the rest of us hadn't improved much.

  That's when we dumped it.

  But I did meet Adam at the last school, Mt. Burns High School in Wellington, just off Adelaide Road. We were in the Year 12 (Sixth Form they call it) common room after the talks and this guy handed me the Mallowpuffs and started chatting me up. He was a prefect and he was wearing a school blazer that had so many badges I'm surprised he could stand up straight. Seems like he was the local hero. Swimming, rugby, debating, he'd done it all. Lots of boys in New Zealand wear shorts to school. They have a Seventh Form too and even some of the Seventh Formers wear shorts. It looks kind of silly, because they seem too old for it, but it gives you a good chance to perv on their legs. And Adam did have swimmer's legs. Someone told me later that he could swim a fifty-metre pool in sixty-five seconds without using his arms. I was impressed.'