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At the doorway of the hut I had to pull away a lot of creeper and some tall berry canes. I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to go in there. It was a bit like entering a grave. What if the hermit was still there? What if his body was lying on the floor? Or his spirit waiting to feed on the first living human to come through the door? There was a brooding atmosphere about the hut, about the whole place, that was not peaceful or pleasant. Only the roses seemed to bring any warmth into the clearing. But my curiosity was strong; it was unthinkable that I could come this far and not go further. I stepped into the dark interior and looked around, trying to define the black shapes I could see, just as a few minutes earlier I’d had to define the shape of the hut itself, from its wild surroundings. There was a bed, a table, a chair. Gradually the smaller, less obvious objects became clearer too. There was a set of shelves on a wall, a rough cupboard beside it, a fireplace with a kettle still hanging in it. In the corner was a dark shape, which gave me palpitations for a minute. It looked like a sleeping beast of some kind. I took a few steps and peered at it. It seemed to be a metal trunk, painted black originally but now flaking with rust. Everything was like the chest, in decay. The earth floor on which I stood was covered with twigs and clods of clay from the walls, and litter from possums and birds. The kettle was rusty, the bottom shelf hung askew, and the ceiling was festooned with cobwebs. But even the cobwebs looked old and dead, hanging like Miss Havisham’s hair.
My eyes had adjusted to the murky light by then. There was no body on the bed, I was relieved to see, but there were the rotten remnants of grey blankets. The bed itself was made of lengths of timber nailed together, and still looked fairly sound. On the shelves were just a few old saucepans. I turned again to look at the chest and hit my head on a meat safe hanging from a rafter. It struck me right on the temple with its corner. ‘Hell,’ I said, rubbing my head hard. It had really hurt.
I knelt, to look into the chest. There seemed nothing else in the hut which would offer more than it had already shown me. Only the inside of the chest was still concealed. I tried to lift the lid. It was reluctant, jammed by dirt and rust, and I had to pull then shake it to get it a few centimetres open. Metal ground against metal as I slowly forced it up, warping it so much that it was never going to close neatly again.
My first reaction when I peered inside was disappointment. There was very little there, just a pathetic pile of tattered odds and ends at the bottom of the chest. Mostly bits of paper. I pulled everything out and took them back outside into better light. There was a belt made of plaited leather, a broken knife, a fork and a few chess pieces: two pawns and a broken knight. The papers were mainly old newspapers, but sheets of writing paper too, and half of a hardbound book called Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad. A large black beetle came crawling out of the book as I opened it. It fell open to a beautiful colour plate of a boat penetrating the jungle. It was actually two books in one; there was a second story, called ‘Youth’. But the other papers were too tattered and dirty and faded to be of any interest. It seemed that the Hermit’s life was going to remain a mystery, even now, so many years after his disappearance.
I poked around for another ten minutes or so, inside and out, without finding much. There had been other attempts to grow flowers: as well as the roses there was an apple tree, a sweetly scented white daisy, and a big wild patch of mint. I tried to imagine a murderer carefully planting and cultivating these beautiful plants; tried, and failed. Still, I supposed even murderers must have things they liked, and they must do something with their spare time. They couldn’t just sit around all day for the rest of their lives and think about their murders.
After a time I picked up the belt and the book and waded back into the creek, for the hunchbacked shuffle through the tu
As soon as I appeared Homer came striding over.
‘Where have you been?’ he said. ‘We’ve been getting worried.’ He was quite angry. He sounded like my father. It seemed I’d been away for longer than I’d thought.
‘I’ve been having a close encounter with the Hermit from Hell,’ I answered. ‘A guided tour will leave soon; well, as soon as I’ve found the Iced Vo-Vo’s. I’m starving.’
Chapter Fifteen
After our inspection of the Hermit’s hut we kept working on into the evening. Lee, being less mobile, got to do the paperwork, in particular a system of food rationing that would preserve our supplies for close to two months, if we had the self-control to stick to it. Homer and Fi and I made a few little vegie gardens, and when the long day at last cooled we put in some seeds: lettuce, silverbeet, cauliflower, broccoli, peas and broad beans. We didn’t much fancy eating those all the rest of our lives, but ‘we need our greens’, as Fi said firmly, and with Lee’s cooking skills, broccoli could be turned into chocolate chip ice cream, and cauliflower into a fairy coach.
It had been a long day, a hot one, and a hard and tiring one. We’d started so early. My talk with Lee hadn’t made it easier either. There was a bit of a strain between us now, which I hated, and there was a general strain caused by everyone snapping at each other in the final few hours of daylight. The only exception was Homer, who hadn’t snapped at Fi. He’d had a go at me, about the amount of water I was putting on the vegetable seeds, and at Lee, over whether soccer was a better sport than footy, but Fi was immune. He wasn’t immune from her though. When he broke off a big piece of fruit cake (Mrs Gruber’s) and ate it, she burned his ears with a string of words like ‘greedy’ and ‘selfish’ and ‘pig’. Homer was so used to being told off in his life that you might as well have told a rock off for being sedimentary, but when Fi went for him he stood there like a little kid, red in the face and wordless. He ate the rest of his slice of cake, but I don’t think he enjoyed it. I was so glad she hadn’t seen me with the Iced Vo-Vo biscuits.
Yes, finding the hut had been the only highlight of the afternoon.
Fi had moved into my tent while Corrie was away, and that night, as we lay in bed, she said to me, ‘Ellie, what am I going to do about Homer?’
‘You mean the way he likes you?’
‘Yes!’
‘Mmm, it’s a problem.’
‘I wish I knew what to do.’
This was my specialty, sorting out my friends’ love lives. When I left school I was going to take it up as a career; open a business where people could come in off the streets and tell me all their boyfriend and girlfriend problems. It was just a shame I couldn’t figure out my own.
So I rolled over to where I could see Fi’s small face in the darkness. Her big eyes were wide open with worry.
‘Do you like him?’ We had to start somewhere.
‘Yes! Of course!’
‘But I mean ...’
‘I know what you mean! Yes, I think I do. Yes I do. I didn’t at school, but honestly, he was such a moron there. If anyone had said to me then that I’d end up liking him, well, I’d have paid their taxi fare to the psychiatrist. He was so immature.’
‘Yes, remember that water fight at the Hallowe’en social?’
‘Oh, don’t remind me.’
‘So if you like him now, what’s stopping you?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the hard part. I don’t know if I like him as much as he likes me, that’s one thing. I’d hate to get into a relationship with him where he assumed I felt as strongly as he does. I don’t think I ever could like him that much. He’s so ...’ She couldn’t think of a word to end the sentence, so I supplied one. ‘Greek?’