Sylvia Johnson - Watch Out for Me

Acknowledgements

T o the earliest readersAnne Fletcher, Bruce and Laura Cunningham, Anne-Maree McDonald, Stuart Maunder, Anita and Andy Harmon and Michelle Morganmy love and gratitude for your insights, suggestions and constant support.

To my agent Gaby Naher, to Jane Palfreyman and to Catherine Milne, Ali Lavau, Sandy Cull, Ann Lennox, Simone Ford and all at Allen & Unwin, my thanksyou made the book shine.

BOOK ONE

BOOK THREE

On the jetty, near a lighthouse, is a boy.

He leans against the guardrail, shielding his eyes from the sun. His face is raw and swollen and there are flies, gnats, midges, little things sucking his eyes and clustering at his nose.

He thinks of the goat moth caterpillar with its body turned to wood bit by bit, or perhaps of the Gordian worm that can make grasshoppers drown themselves in a pond of water, or perhaps he thinks of his mother, who knows that the devil can get inside living things and make them weak and evil. And he wonders if it was him the devil got into, or the other kids in the tunnelor whether the tunnel itself might have called them in like a magnet, a black north pole; and once they were there in the darkness they became powerless.

BOOK TWO

The Lighthouse

T here is darkness. There is light. Between darkness and light there are shadows and imprints; impressions, interpretations.

A man boards a train. He sits. He looks out the window.

Remember him.

You will hear a sound, running feet, a shoutyou will turn towards the noise. You will obey the orders, you will stand and run and when you look back you will see him surrounded by gunmen and pushed to the floor and you will not help him.

Remember. Remember his face. You will see it explode like a flower, a soft red flower. Remember him.

Its a long story, this, a glimpse of a longer story. There will be blood and fear and anger and there will be darkness.

And there will be light.

I

Toby Woods

Sydney, Australia, 1967

W hen he went with the others to tell the story they had agreed on, people were already gathering at the police station. It wasnt a crowd yet, because everyone knew each otherbut to him, being new, they were almost-strangers, and what they were going to hear rose up in his stomach and made him sick. It was the first sign he had of the power this lie would contain: in the rising and churn of his gut, he could feel it beginning. But it was not the kind of warning a child could interpretand after all, he was only eight years old.

Once, long ago, hed been shown a goat moth caterpillar. The cordyceps fungus had grown inside it, eating the grub alive bit by bit, turning the soft fat body into wood. He had touched the caterpillar husk, the wooden wrinkles and folds, the wooden mouth.

The parasite shoot had pushed through the creatures head, and it was still growing.

InterviewSgt Marron 7/1/67

Peter WoodsMy name is Peter Woods. This is my nephew Toby. He is eight years old. He has been staying with us for the holidays. His mothers been ill.

Toby WoodsMy name is Toby Woods. I am eight years old. I am staying with my cousins. They are nice. My aunt is nice. My uncle is nice. [My cousin] Hannah is nice. [My cousin] Richard is nice. [My cousin] Lizzie is nice.

Toby WoodsI did go to the park yesterday morning. I went with the others. I do not know what time.

Toby WoodsWe played in the shed. I do not know where else we played. We played at the spaceship first and then we played up at the shed.

Toby WoodsWe did not play at the sandpit. I did not see a baby at the sandpit.

Toby WoodsI want to go home.

Interview halted.

Lizzie Woods

Fs, Morocco, 2005

T he gates are closed. For the first time, Im really afraid. Its 4.30 am, still dark, and the streets are empty. Ive been all the way down to the Bab Rcif gate and back again on my own. Im up on the roof but I cant see across the medina. The town is blacked out and its cold, so cold my hands are shaking.

When I was eight, I thought fear could make me invisible.

I followed along the walls till I got to the square. The gates to the square were blocked by military trucks: outside the walls there was screaming and I could hear gunshots. In forty-six years, Ive never heard terror like that.

The tourists were packing and leaving Fs all through yesterday. The Spanish group left as soon as the rumours began. The New Zealand family never came back from Sefrou. Most of the tables were empty at dinner last night.

The Germansthe bus groupleft an hour ago, in the predawn blackness. They crept down the unlit stairs, not speaking, not even whispering to each other. Ali was waiting for themhe was frightened for once into silence. I watched them count heads and slip through the doorway and into the alley outside. They were very quiet, they were wholly terrified. They only took what they could carry themselves.

Ali was there to lead them down through the black maze of lanes to the gates.

He is eight years oldhe cant be dangerous.

There are things I need to explain or you wont understand; there are things you have to know about this place. You have to know before you come in that Fs is an ancient town, small, medieval, walled; that there are four entry points through the walls, four gates which are huge stone arches. The gates dont shut but they can be blocked. The walls stretch around us, encircling the Old Town entirely; and the cobbled alleys and lanes inside the walls are so narrow and twisting that cars cant come in at all, only donkeys and carts. Sometimes the lanes become tunnels, lost in the darkness of ancient houses that clasp at each other and form a roof four or five metres over the cobblesso if there is fighting, tanks and trucks wont help. It will be all on foot, lane to lane and alley to alley, and there are children.

There are children. They run through the Old Town, steering the tourists through tracks and tunnels that cant be learned, cant be remembered. They are watchful, resourceful, they know the town, and Ali cant be more than eight years old.

Allahu Akbar! God is great!

The mosque is calling. The muezzin sings the call at the first sign of daybreak; but he catches the morning star from the top of the hill. Down here in the Old Town were still in the grip of the night.

Allahu Akbar!

When I was eight, the cottage burned down, and I slapped Ray Kane who grew up to be that Raymond Kane, the radio shock jocktough on border control and anti-asylum seekers, unmoved by the plight of refugee children and babies. When I was eight, the war began between me and the nuns who wouldnt believe in my grandfathers little moss piglets.

The Germans never mentioned they were leaving. We were together at dinner last night and they said nothing, not to me, not even to Kate, or she would have been down there this morning to see them off whatever the hour, because they were guests and she would have been loading them up with tea and bread and fruit for the journey. I was awake in the darkness, I heard them, I opened my door and saw them gather and leave. And then, because I am a foreigner too, because I dont belong in this town, because there is no-one here to watch out for me, I slipped out and followed them down.

InterviewSgt Marron 7/1/67

Elizabeth WoodsMy name is Lizzie Woods. I am eight years old. Yesterday I was down at the park. I went with Hannah and all of the others. Hannah is my sister.

Elizabeth WoodsWe played on the spaceship and then on the merry-go-round. We played on the centipede swing.