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The Life You Choose and That Chose You Page 2

Chelsea nods and tries to look busy.

  She polishes glasses and waits. Half an hour until the race. Maybe she should ring him, she thinks. But she can't. It's a rule.

  Jim watches the news as stock footage of southern right whales plays in a loop.

  ‘Tragedy. Little calf.’ He nods in Chelsea's direction. ‘They're called calf, like the cows. The mothers carry them for more than a year in the belly.’

  ‘Yeah, right,’ Chelsea says, not listening. Twenty minutes to go. She swallows tears.

  At 3pm the horses are lured into the stalls and Chelsea switches the television away from the whale calf. Everyone in the club sits in a cluster in front of the screens. He still hasn't come.

  Donna blows in just before the gun goes off. ‘You should go down to the beach and check it out,’ she says, face blotchy from the cold. ‘There are three news crews.’ She shakes her head in wonder.

  As the race starts, Chelsea takes a shortcut over the bowling green and through an empty lot. The noise of people yelling and spitting and slapping their thighs slowly fades. At the end of the road she can see about 100 people standing on the grass around the inlet. As she gets closer, the wind bites at the flesh around her hips which is not quite covered by her jumper.

  All she can see are people huddled together and women with no jackets on, talking to cameras. Four-wheel drives crawl around on the grass. She eases herself into the crowd and too late realises that she is next to Roy and Jeanette. Blood rushes to her ears.

  Jeanette is wearing tight jeans and gumboots and the sort of earrings you can't buy in Nowra. Tahnee is in her arms, writhing and yelling, bubbles of green snot stretched across her face. Jeanette smiles at Chelsea with vague recognition, jiggling her own tiny body under her daughter's weight. ‘Hi, how are you? Come to see all the action?’ Chelsea waves too fast at Tahnee and thinks, I've seen what kind of hair removal cream you use.

  ‘Mumumumum,’ Tahnee warbles. Jeanette touches her nose to the baby's. ‘Yes, you are very clever. You are very clever.’ She turns to Chelsea, smiling big square teeth. ‘Her first word, she's getting a lot of mileage out of it,’ she explains. She slides her spare hand into Roy's back pocket. He shifts his weight towards her, so easily.

  Chelsea smiles. Tugs at her jumper. Tahnee shrieks. ‘Come on Tahn, come on little one,’ Jeanette says. The wind pushes the smell of her into Chelsea's face without warning: mild and powdery, like laundry hot out of the dryer, brand new make-up. Chelsea remembers her face being pushed into a pillow that smelled just the same and her mouth dries up.

  She can barely hear the noise of the crowd over the ringing in her ears. She can't see the whale. She stands on tip-toe, looking over the windswept heads, but all she sees are tyre tracks on sand and people in yellow raincoats stamped with ORRCA. She looks back at Roy, desperate, her face hot. He is talking to Jeanette, pointing to something behind her.

  Chelsea looks around and realises the news crews have angled themselves the other way. Around her, people stop cooing and tugging at each other and stand, watching. She follows their gaze to the calf's drumstick body in the tray of a reversing truck, wrapped in hessian and bound with rope. As the truck backs slowly over the grass, the calf's dead weight doesn't bounce. Tahnee flaps a fat hand and says, ‘Chelsea’.

  We marched along the road, me with my Bren gun and Woodsy with his armalite and Pete had his rifle too, and it was getting pretty hot, but Sarge wouldn't let us stop, not until we got to the new estate where the enemy were. And while we marched Sarge was doing the usual.

  Left. Left. Left, right, left.

  Sometimes Woodsy gets his feet going the wrong way round and then Sarge gets angry and shouts at him to march in step. Woodsy pretends he can't, but at the last minute, when Sarge is about to explode, he does a double-step and then he's in time with the rest of us and Sarge goes quiet because he can't complain any more. Then he'll stop the march and walk up and down in front of us, telling us we need to be a team and work together because everything depends on us. We have to stand there, looking straight ahead, not even blinking. It can go on for ages.

  Anyway, we crossed the fields between the end of our road and the hill where the new estate is. It was all green, and you couldn't see the furrows where the tractor went and that made it hard to keep in formation. For some reason Sarge thought it would be good for us to run up to the fence near the first house and then turn around and run back to where he was standing.

  ‘Training,’ he said. ‘It's important. Discipline. Off you go. Hup, hup.’

  My gun is pretty heavy and sometimes I get splinters from the barrel because it's only rough wood with a nail for the trigger. Still, as Sarge says, a soldier is his rifle, so we all carried our rifles as we ran through the grass.

  I didn't care that I was getting hot. I didn't care that Sarge was standing there, shouting at us, in the shade of the tree at the edge of the field. What mattered was that we were all together, me and Woodsy and Pete.

  Pete's my brother. Sometimes I hate him because he's so small and also he copies me all the time. And what makes it worse, he doesn't know he's copying me. When I got a new army jumper with my own pocket money, a green one with patches on the shoulders, Pete wanted the same thing. He cried and cried. He wouldn't eat his tea. Mum said she wasn't going to spend any more money on him. What about his pocket money? Where was it? Pete said he didn't know where it was. Had he bought anything? Sweets? Toys?

  I was going to say that Pete was a loser and he'd never be able to buy himself anything if he didn't look after his pocket money, but before I could Mum sort of snapped and shouted at him.

  ‘It doesn't grow on trees, Peter. For goodness sake, you have to be more careful.’

  Pete ran upstairs crying. Even after that he kept on whining and in the end Mum got him an army jumper and he was really happy. I didn't wear mine so much after that. I just wore my other jumper, my blue one. When Sarge asked me where my uniform was I said this was my uniform and I was in plain clothes. I was a partisan. Woodsy smiled when I said that, but Sarge didn't. He said nothing, he just ordered us to do extra drilling in the road outside our house. He said it was discipline.

  Anyway, we got to the top fence where the estate is and then we ran back down to the tree where Sarge was standing. He was flicking a stick against his trouser leg. He wore a proper army shirt and a beret which he had sort of sideways on his head. He looked really good—just like a paratrooper or something—except the beret wasn't red. The shop in town doesn't have red berets, just black ones. He stood there glaring at us as we got into formation. Only Pete wasn't there.

  ‘Where's Pete, Corporal?’ Sarge asked Woodsy.

  ‘I dunno,’ Woodsy said.

  ‘Where's your brother?’ Sarge asked me.

  I said I didn't know either. I said he'd been behind us as we ran.

  ‘Well, soldiers,’ Sarge said. ‘You'd better go back and find your comrade.’

  Me and Woodsy turned around. We could see a small figure sitting up in the grass halfway up to the estate. I looked at Woodsy.

  ‘Now,’ shouted Sarge. ‘On the double.’

  I threw my gun over by the fence and that was when Sarge exploded.

  ‘Never leave your rifle, soldier! Carry it with you at all times.’

  I didn't think I really needed my gun when going on a mission to rescue my stupid brother, but Sarge didn't seem to be in the mood for a discussion. I went and picked it up. Then me and Woodsy half-ran and half-walked up the hill.

  ‘Run, run. On the double.’

  We sped up a bit.

  By the time we got to Pete, he was lying down in the grass. We were both panting, me and Woodsy.

  ‘You all right, mate?’ Woodsy said.

  ‘No,’ Pete said.

  ‘Come on, get up,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Pete said.

  ‘What's wrong?’ Woodsy put his gun down and squatted. ‘Want some water?’

  He took the water bottle from his belt. Woodsy always
had the right equipment. The water bottle was olive green and the lid was held on to the bottle by a chain. Plus it had a camouflage cover that looked really good. And a clip that held it on to his belt, which of course was green, like his jacket. He held out the bottle to Pete.

  ‘No,’ Pete said.

  ‘Just get up, lazy toe-rag,’ I said. ‘He's going mental.’

  ‘My foot,’ Pete said.

  ‘What about your foot?’ I said.

  Woodsy set his water bottle on the ground and put his hand on Pete's ankle.

  ‘The other one—ouch! I have to go home.’

  Woodsy looked up at me. ‘Twisted. Not serious. We'd better get him back.’

  ‘What about the operation?’ I said. ‘We have to clear the Jerries out of the houses.’

  Me and Woodsy looked over at the new estate. It's such a great place to play army. Some of the houses have walls and some don't. Most of them have roofs. The best thing is all the building equipment lying around there—bulldozers, cement mixers, all that kind of thing. It's rough terrain, but there are advantages. You can throw sand grenades which explode on the piles of bricks. You can scout around for new barrels and shoulder stocks and ammunition clips for the guns. Knock up a sten gun as easy as pie.

  Pete moaned.

  ‘Okay, mate,’ Woodsy said. ‘C'mon, let's get you back.’

  Woodsy and me got on each side of Pete and lifted him up. He's pretty light as well as being small, so it was easy to hold him up. He sort of skipped with his good leg and leaned on us with the other one raised.

  ‘Probably a landmine,’ Woodsy said. ‘They're bad them ones.’

  I said I didn't think so. ‘Just tripped on a furrow.’

  ‘It was a landmine,’ Pete said. ‘Big one. Took the whole foot off.’

  Woodsy laughed.

  ‘Shame it didn't take your head off,’ I said.

  We got back down and Sarge was sitting on the ground chewing a piece of grass.

  ‘Took your bloody time didn't you, soldiers? Had a nice tea party then, eh? Let the entire bloody army chain of command wait, is that it?’

  Pete started to say he was sorry, but Woodsy interrupted him.

  ‘C'mon, Sarge, we had to take it easy. Landmine. Probably a cluster bomb. Took out the whole foot. He's badly hurt. We have to get him back—’

  ‘No,’ Sarge said.

  ‘I can go myself,’ Pete said. ‘I'll be okay.’

  ‘No-one's going back,’ Sarge said. ‘We have a mission. We can't stop for a scratched soldier.’

  The three of us all looked at Sarge, even Pete.

  ‘What?’ Woodsy said.

  ‘Turn around soldiers. You're in the army now.’

  I was hot. I'd been up and down that field twice and I was looking forward to a nice glass of cold milk when I got home. I started to say we should just go, but Woodsy was picking up his armalite and turning back towards the estate.

  ‘Fall in, soldier,’ Sarge said.

  Pete was already standing behind Woodsy. He seemed to be okay. I picked up my Bren gun and joined them.

  ‘Squad, atten-shun! By the left, quick, march!’

  And off we went, back up the hill, with Pete limping. This time Sarge kept with us, walking beside us, keeping time again, even though it was hard in the long grass.

  ‘Left. Left. Left, right, left.’

  When we got there and we'd ducked through the barbed wire and got Pete's green army jumper unstuck from the barbs, we decided to take the top house first. This was the first one they had built and it had tiles on it before any other. They put temporary wooden doors on it to stop people getting inside, but of course there's always a way. From up on the second floor you got a great view over the estate and the fields and the town below, all the way to the river at the bottom and the hill on the opposite side. It was a good place to spot tanks and troop transports. We'd already seen several columns of Germans, and last week we surprised some Japanese infantry squads even though they had air cover from Singapore. We took out almost all of their men with an anti-tank bazooka mounted up there and the Zeroes never found us.

  Pretty soon we were at the windows.

  ‘Still no glass,’ Woodsy said, throwing a square piece of wood out. It landed with a clunk on the roof of a bulldozer below. Pete kicked a big plastic tub of something.

  ‘Hey, guys.’ Sarge was at the back. ‘See what I see?’

  We all went to the back window. Sure enough—dust raised by movement behind the back of the estate.

  ‘Tanks?’ I said.

  ‘Maybe,’ Woodsy said. ‘What do you think, Sarge?’

  ‘I dunno,’ he said, his voice slow. ‘We'd better go and investigate. Split into two groups.’

  Before, I used to have to go with Pete. But lately Sarge had been choosing Pete. I didn't mind. Woodsy was more fun.

  ‘Pete, you're with me,’ Sarge said. Pete didn't say anything.

  Me and Woodsy stood together. I was pretty pleased.

  ‘Okay, guys. Here's the plan,’ Sarge said, and he described how we'd cut from house to house until we got near the target area. We had our hand signals for things like, ‘get down on the ground’ and ‘cover me while I run to the next hiding place’, just like real soldiers.

  ‘But before we go,’ Sarge said, ‘we need ammunition. C'mon, guys, rifles don't fire thin air.’

  Actually our rifles did fire thin air, but we pretended that we needed ammunition for them. First you had to go to the big yellow bulldozer to get hand grenades. Sarge stood there and he'd give you two each as you walked past. Next you had to pick up clips of ammo plus a long belt which you wore over your shoulder so you looked like a real soldier. Then we had to pick up a handful of sand, real sand, and put it into the fuel pipe of the bulldozer. I don't know if that bulldozer ever actually moved, but if it did it must have had a pretty good fuel filter.

  ‘Okay,’ Sarge said, once Pete had dusted his hands and picked up his rifle again. ‘Everyone, move out!’

  We stuck to our allocated areas. Me and Woodsy to the right, Sarge and Pete on the left. We were not to cross over into the wrong zone.

  ‘You could get shot,’ Sarge said. ‘Friendly fire.’

  It might be friendly, but the bullets aren't.

  We crept around a bit. Sometimes we saw Sarge and Pete in the street. No signals from them.

  After a while I was getting bored. I think Woodsy was too. He said he wanted a cigarette.

  ‘Do you have one?’

  I said no. We carried on.

  ‘I need a pee,’ he said.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘go behind the house there, then. Hurry up.’

  He walked off, whistling.

  I watched him go and then I walked on a bit. I wondered how long it would take him to catch up. I realised, then, that I'd crossed into the wrong zone, but I didn't care. Sarge and his stupid discipline. I kept going.

  That's when I saw them through the window frame of one of the houses. Sarge was holding Pete's arm behind his back and Pete's face was screwed up. Sarge was talking quietly to him. I saw Pete shake his head. He winced and looked away, shook his head again. Then he just went limp and Sarge let go. Pete took something out of his pocket and gave it to Sarge. I knew what it was. Sarge checked it before stuffing it into his jeans. Pete was rubbing his arm and Sarge turned my way. They both saw me.

  ‘Look what we have here,’ Sarge said. He pointed his pistol.

  Pete didn't look pleased to see me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I said to him.

  ‘Shut up, traitor,’ Sarge said.

  ‘C'mon, Sarge.’

  ‘Be quiet. Speak when you are spoken to.’

  ‘Pete—’ I began. But Pete was looking away now.

  ‘In our midst,’ Sarge was saying, ‘a spy.’

  Woodsy came around the side of the house, still whistling. ‘That's better,’ he said.

  ‘Woods,’ Sarge said, ‘take hold of the prisoner.’

  ‘Prisoner?�


  ‘You heard me. Caught him red-handed. Spying on military operations. Working for the enemy. Gestapo, I expect. Maybe the KGB.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘That's not—’

  ‘I told you, be quiet. Speak when you're spoken to. Otherwise, silence.’

  Now the three of them were facing me. Woodsy first, holding his armalite level. Then Sarge, his pistol ready. And then Pete. He had his rifle too, but it wasn't really pointing at me. I wanted to tell him I knew what had happened. He'd be okay. I'd explain to Mum.

  But Sarge wasn't going to let me speak. He walked up to me.

  ‘So,’ he said, speaking quietly. ‘You dared to infiltrate our ranks, eh?’

  No-one said anything.

  ‘You dare,’ and he was louder now, ‘spy on military communications, do you?’

  I just stared at him.

  ‘You turn your back on your friends. And we don't even know it. What do you have to say for yourself? Huh? Traitor?’

  My mind was racing and I couldn't get the right words.

  ‘Nothing to say, eh? I should have realised. A soldier without a uniform. You know what that means don't you?’

  I did know what that meant, but I wasn't going along with him. I said again I was a partisan.

  ‘He thinks we're stupid.’ Sarge had turned his back on me and was talking to the others.

  ‘How stupid do you think we are? Huh?’ He turned and stabbed a finger in my chest.

  ‘Get lost,’ I said to him.

  He strode up and down between me and the other two.

  ‘We know what a soldier without a uniform is, don't we, men?’

  They nodded. Woodsy was smiling. Pete didn't look very sure.

  ‘Private,’ Sarge said, ‘what's a soldier without a uniform?’

  Pete mumbled something.

  ‘Louder, man. What did you say?’

  ‘A spy, Sarge. A soldier without—’

  ‘That's right. A spy.’

  He walked up to the wall and back again.

  ‘And what do we do with spies?’

  Woodsy and Pete looked at each other.

  ‘Well,’ Woodsy said, ‘normally we kill them. But not really—I mean we've never caught a real spy before.’