On the Jellicoe Road

“You’re supposed to close your eyes,” he says, a little u

“I’m not supposed to do anything,” I say, moving away from him and looking into the river, waiting for Raffy and Santangelo to come back up.

“Is there a problem here?”

“There’s nothing here.”

“Really? Because that wasn’t the message you were giving me last Saturday night.”

“And between last Saturday and today there have been at least six days, so let’s just say that I’m going by the message that you’ve been giving me since then.”

“We’ve been surrounded by the Santangelo circus and that little pest who is either attached to you surgically or me and then, when they’re not around, Casanova Cassidy is hanging off every word you say or Raffy is giving me one of those ‘girl zone only’ looks,” he says. “So if I haven’t been giving you the attention—”

“So you’re admitting it. That you can just switch this on and off?”

“Yeah, whatever you say. I’m over it.”

“Good, because I was never into it!”

I feel like someone off Jerry Springer. Any moment now I’m going to be saying “boyfriend” with a bit of Afro-American attitude thrown in but I can’t help it.

Santangelo emerges and I feel horrible because I’ve almost forgotten that they’re down there. He swings around looking for Raffy and I move closer to the river until her head appears.

“Anything?” I ask, as if there was a likelihood that they would find something constructive, just because we were looking for it.

“No,” Santangelo says, dragging himself out. “But there are heaps of tree trunks lying on the bottom and anything could be stuck in or under them.”

Santangelo comes up with yet another idea about getting some diving material for a better search, but I’m not listening anymore and neither is Griggs.

Santangelo and Raffy drop us off on the Jellicoe Road and I get out without saying a word and walk away, but Griggs is right behind me.

“So explain to me again what I did wrong.”

I don’t stop. “You know what? You didn’t do anything wrong. I did. It’s this dumb thing I do. I look into things and see more than I’m supposed to.”

“You’re implying that last week meant nothing to me.”

This time I do stop, staring at him. “It’s not an implication. It’s a fact. Just like when we ran away. No big deal, Griggs.”

“It was a big deal, so why are you pretending that it isn’t?”

“No. It wasn’t. It was just a coincidence. We were waiting for the same train, for the same reason—to go see our mothers—and maybe being together meant more to me than it did to you. Maybe I’ve got to stop believing that everyone feels the same way I do about things.”

Like my mother, I want to say to him. Like Ha

“I wrote to you for a year and you never wrote back,” he says. “I rang you over and over again and you would never come to the phone. What part of that gives the impression that I didn’t care?”

“You know what I think,” I tell him. “You thought I was too much baggage. Or maybe you got bored. Like she would have. She’d get bored being good. She’d get bored trying to go clean. She got bored being my mother. And I wanted to ask her why, but you switched off and you rang the Brigadier to come and get you when I was so close to where I wanted to be and I can’t believe that you preferred to miss out on seeing your mum and brother just so you wouldn’t have to spend another moment with me.”

He shakes his head like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. “I didn’t ring the Brigadier,” he snaps. “I didn’t even know him at the time and one day, when you’re interested, I might tell you why I rang my school. But for the time being why don’t you just continue feeling sorry for yourself and comparing the rest of the world with your mother. That will make you popular.” He crosses the road, but not without a parting look of such hostility that it makes me ill.

“There will be no ‘one day,’” I yell. “Because holidays are over, Griggs, and you and I are never going to cross paths again. Not in the next ten days. Not ever! Have a fantastic life.”

He walks back towards me and I take a step back, not because I’m scared but because he doesn’t give me much room and this is Griggs without control. Apart from the train and that time in the scout hall, I’ve never seen him like this. I’ve seen measured Griggs who provokes the fight, who is never taken by surprise, who walks at his own pace to the beat of life. But not Griggs like he is now.

“Be careful what you wish for,” he says with quiet menace, “because I’m about this close to telling you to get the fuck out of my life.”

I stare at him.

“What do you want from me?” he asks.

What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.

More.

But I don’t say anything and neither of us move.

“What if I told you that I lied that day on the platform?” he says after a moment.

“You’re lying now,” I say angrily. “Don’t you dare try to get out of the fact that you were missing your mother and brother and you wanted to see them. You were a mess. I was there, remember?”

He shakes his head. “I lied.”

“Am I supposed to think you’re all tough because you don’t need people, Griggs? Is that what you’re trying to do here?”

“No, that’s your thing.”

“Then stop lying, and admit you were there because you missed your family.”

“I’ve missed my mother and brother every day that I’ve been out here this time round. But not that day.”

There is something in his eyes that frightens the hell out of me and I want to walk away. I don’t want to hear another word because I know that whatever he has to say is going to destroy a part of me.

“I knew who you were before that day,” he says. “Some morbid prick pointed you out to me in the street when I arrived here that first year. Told me how some Hermit had whispered something in your ear and then blown his brains out.”

The words are brutal. I’ve never really heard it described that way. I block my ears for a moment but when you block your ears you tend to close your eyes and when I close my eyes I see blood and brain-matter and I smell the sickly scent of blood.

“So you were at the train station and saw me come along and you thought I’d be a fun person to hang out with for a weekend?” I say snidely. “And you made up some story about wanting to see your mother and brother?”

“No, I was waiting for the train. The three forty-seven to Yass. Comes every afternoon and, according to the station master, it’s never late and I knew that. And then you came along and you spoke to me and nobody had looked me in the eye for years. My mum wouldn’t. She told me later that she couldn’t, because she was scared to see that I might hate her. She feels like she didn’t protect me from him. But I remember you that day and you looked at peace with yourself and it made me reconsider everything I had pla

“Do what to me? I don’t think that leaving me on that platform would have changed my life, Griggs,” I lie.

“You being on that platform changed mine.”

This isn’t romance. This isn’t a declaration of love or affirmation of friendship. This is something more.

“I wasn’t there that day to get on the three forty-seven to Yass,” he says. “I was there to throw myself in front of it.”

Chapter 18

On the last day of the holidays, Santangelo sends word through the Cadets that he has something I want. Which makes me wonder: how the hell does Santangelo know what I want when I don’t even know? And does getting what I want just mean more confusion?

“It’s a trick,” Raffy says. “He just wants to talk Club House and he thinks the territory wars are over because you and Griggs pashed. Let’s not go.”