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‘Did you get through?’
‘Yes. They’re fine. A couple of patrols have been past, but no convoys. Oh Ellie,’ she said, turning suddenly to me, ‘do you really think we can do this?’
I tried to give her a confident grin. ‘I don’t know, Fi I think maybe we can. I hope we can.’
She nodded and faced forward again. We drove towards the next corner. ‘I’ll walk from here on,’ she said, ‘and call you from each corner. It’ll be just as quick. Turn the engine off while you’re waiting each time though, do you think? It’s pretty noisy.’
‘OK.’
We made two blocks that way, but at the next I saw her take one look down the street to the right then draw back and come sprinting towards me. I jumped down from the truck and ran to meet her. She gasped just one word: ‘Patrol’, and together we went over a low fence into someone’s front garden. There was a huge old gum tree right in front of us. I was so nervous that it seemed to be the only thing I could see. My eyes and mind focused entirely on it; nothing else existed for me at that moment. I climbed it like a possum, scratching my hands but not feeling any pain. Fi followed. I got about three metres up before I heard voices from the corner, which slowed me down, made me quieter, more cautious. I inched out along a branch to take a look. I didn’t know if getting up here had been a mistake or not. I remembered Dad, one day when he’d put a big ugly patch on a hole in the eaves that possums had made, saying ‘The human eye doesn’t look above its own height’. At this moment in my life I sure hoped he was right. The trouble was that if they did see us we’d be, not like possums up a tree, but like rats up a drainpipe. There was no escape from here.
We waited and watched. The voices continued for a while, then we heard them grow in volume as they turned towards us. I felt intense disappointment. This marked the end of our Grand Plan. It could mark the end of us, too, because once they saw the tanker their first reaction would be to seal off the area and search it. I was surprised they hadn’t seen it already. They’d stopped talking now, but I could hear the scuffle of their boots. My mind was racing; too many thoughts going through it too quickly. I tried to grab one of them to see if it might be any use in suggesting a way out of here, but I was panicking too much to get a grip on it, on anything except the tree. Fi, I slowly realised from the steady pain in my left leg, was gripping onto me as though she were a possum on an insecure branch. She had her talons dug in so hard that I was sure I’d end up with bruises. I saw a movement now, through the foliage, and a couple of moments later the soldiers slowly came into view. There were five of them, three men and two women. One of the men was quite old, at least forty, but the other two looked about sixteen. The women were maybe twenty. They were dawdling along, two on the footpath and three on the road itself. They’d stopped talking to each other and were just gazing around as they walked, or looking down at the ground. They didn’t look very military. I guessed they were conscripts. The tanker was on the other side of the road, about fifty metres from them. I couldn’t believe they hadn’t seen it yet, and braced myself for the sudden cry of discovery. Fi’s fingers had now cut off the circulation in my leg; it was only a matter of time before my whole limb, from the shin down, dropped off into the garden below. I wondered how the soldiers would react if they heard it drop, and almost let out an hysterical giggle. The patrol kept walking.
And they kept walking. They went right on past the truck as though it didn’t exist. It wasn’t until they were a hundred metres past and Fi and I were out of our tree and peering at their distant dark backs that we allowed ourselves to believe that we were safe. We looked at each other in surprise and relief. I was so happy that I didn’t even mention the bruises on my leg. I shook my head.
‘They must have just thought it was another parked vehicle,’ I said.
‘I guess if they hadn’t been along this particular street before ...’ Fi said. ‘I’d better call Homer.’
She did so, and I heard his soft reply quite quickly.
‘We’ve been held up for a bit,’ Fi said. ‘Ellie wanted to climb a tree. We’ll get under way again in about five minutes. We’re three blocks away. Over.’
There was a snort from the receiver, not of static either, before she signed off.
We waited nearly ten minutes, to be safe, then I turned the key, and heard the shrill beep of the brake warning before the engine rumbled into life again. We made two more blocks; when Fi signalled me from the last corner I switched the engine off and tried coasting silently downhill towards her. This was a big mistake. The brake warning began beeping and flashing redly at me again and I realised I wouldn’t have any brakes. A moment later the steering wheel gave a shudder and locked itself into position, so I didn’t have any steering either. I tried for a gear, to clutch start it, but missed the one I wanted and got only a crunching sound that set my teeth on edge. The truck lurched over the gutter and began to veer further and further left, aiming for a row of fences. I remembered Fi’s warning: ‘That’s petrol in the back, not water’, and felt very sick. I grabbed at the ignition key, turned it, and got nothing, turned it again and, with the fences now just metres away, got the beautiful sound of the beautiful engine. I swung the wheel. ‘Not too hard, you’ll jack-knife.’ That was my voice. The trailer sideswiped something, a row of somethings, fences or small trees or both, nearly sideswiped Fi, then juddered to a halt just a metre from the corner. I switched off the ignition, then pulled on the handbrake, wondering what would have happened if I’d thought of doing that before. I leaned back in the seat panting, my mouth open to get air into my tight aching throat.
Fi jumped into the cabin. ‘Gosh, what happened?’ she asked.
I shook my head. ‘I think I just failed my driving test.’
Our plan had been to park further across, behind some trees in the picnic area I didn’t know whether to do that, which meant taking the noisy risk of starting the engine again, or to stay where we were, out on the open side of the street. Finally we decided to move. Fi slipped across to where she had a view of the bridge and watched until all the sentries were at the far end. It was twenty minutes before that happened. Then she signalled to me and I moved the truck into the dark shadows of the trees.
We contacted the boys by radio, and made our preparations. We climbed the ladder to the top of the tanker again and loosened the lids of the four tanks. Then we fed the rope into one tank until it was submerged, all but the end of it, which we tied to a safety handle beside the lid. We climbed down again.
Now there was nothing to do but to wait.
Chapter Twenty-one
Oh, how we waited. We talked softly for a little while. We were well away from the truck, for safety’s sake, sitting up among the trees looking out over the gas barbecues. It was very quiet. We talked about the boys mostly. I wanted to hear as much about Homer as I could, and I certainly wanted to talk about Lee. Fi had become totally infatuated with Homer. It amazed me how she felt. If anyone had told me a year ago, or even a month ago, that this would happen, I would have asked for their Medicare card. They would have been headed for a long stay in a private ward. But here she was, elegant, Vogue, designer label, big house on the hill Fi, completely in love with rough as guts, King Gee, one of the boys, graffiti king Homer. On the surface it looked impossible. Except that it was no secret now that there was more to both of them than I’d ever realised. Fi seemed delicate and timid, and she even claimed herself that she was, but she had a determination I hadn’t recognised before. There was a spirit to her, a fire burning inside her somewhere. One of those Avgas fires maybe, that burn invisibly. And Homer, well, Homer was the surprise of my life. He even seemed better looking these days, probably because his head was up and he walked more confidently and carried himself differently. He had such imagination and sense that I could hardly believe it. If we ever did get back to school I’d nominate him for School Captain – then hand out smelling salts to the teachers.