LITMIR.BIZ

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were on the floor, actually.’

      The van cleared the ABC grounds and was in the back streets of Artarmon when they heard the sirens out on the highway. The girl turned to Miki.

      ‘They’ll be running all over the place chasing their tales. It’s a rabbit warren, that old joint. Hundreds of places to search.’

      ‘Great,’ said Jamie, his head turned to check the back window. ‘Have fun, guys!’

      ‘My Dad will see to that!’ she said with a grin, checking her rear view mirror.

      ‘Your Dad?’ asked Miki.

      ‘Emmanuel Sachs. Hi, I’m Rachel, by the way.’ She hung her arm over the back of the driver’s seat and made contact with theirs.

      ‘Oh.’ It came as a shock to realize Manny had a private life. And such a pretty, feisty daughter into the bargain. She would never have guessed. Or maybe she ought to have known he’d be married. All the good men were. No one was still single at their age. Man or woman. If she spent less time polishing her rifle and more time polishing her nails, maybe she wouldn’t scare men off. She'd felt a certain pleasurable frisson tonight, knowing Manny was up in his booth, looking down at her. Pity.

      By the time they came out onto the Pacific Highway, heading for the safe-house in Lindfield, she smiled to see her young charge climbing over awkwardly into the front seat to sit beside their lovely chauffeur.

      Silently, she gave thanks to Emanuel Sachs for being a swashbuckling media man prepared to take risks. Somewhere out there, somewhere in the country, she hoped her son had caught the drama.

      ~~~

      'C’mon, girl, catch up. Day dreaming, were we?’ Bernie called out to her from further along the beach.

      Miki picked up pace.

      ‘Old slowcoach!’ Bernie gave her a friendly whack on the backside.

      ‘I was thinking about the TDT business. And before you start cackling again and wetting yourself, just listen to––’

      ‘It made you a bloody cult figure, Mik.’

      ‘Made me an enemy of the state, more like it.’

      ‘You’re a hero to these kids, y’know that don’t you?’

      ‘Bernie, it was never my intention to have a trail of kids beating a path to the Resistance’s front door. You know why I did it.’

      ‘One of those journo snoops was always gonna ferret out your connection with the bookshop. Soon as you gave your name. Why'd ya do it?’

      'I had to. Jamie gave his. But now poor Rex reckons the shop's become the headquarters for every disaffected kid in the country. Like a pilgrimage to the shrine. I'll tell you what, though, Rex is wallowing in it. His own little gang of political subversives sitting at his feet.’

      She was silent for a moment before putting her arm out and pulling Bernie into her with a laugh. ‘It was “some heavy shit, man”, according to Rex. Some “heavy shit” bringing a Cabinet Minister’s son into my fight with the Draft Board.’

      ‘But that Rex bloke, he don’t know the half of it, does he?’

      The laugh vanished. No, thought Miki. The American knew little about her past. Not that it would matter if he did. There was only one person in the world who had a right to judge her. Only one.

      She was serious, once again. ‘What if Dominic does come to the Resistance looking for Caroline Patrick, Bernie?’

      ‘Looking for the legend?' She studied Miki's face. 'That was the plan all along, wasn't it? Be honest. A cooee?'

      'What use, though? Even if he does show up, he wouldn't know it was me, his mother. I wouldn't know it was him, my own son. Would I?'

      'Give it up, Mik.' Bernie shook her head and started back up the beach.

      She watched the large, graceful woman duck in under the mangrove fringe, watched her tread between the low branches of the unwieldy trees as she moved in and out of their spindly shadows, searching among the fallen coconuts, no doubt for the ripest of the fruit. She saw Bernie pick up a large coconut and weigh it in her hand, rattling it to her ear, sniffing it then grinning as she indicated her prize by waving it high above her head. And then, cradling her win, she turned and disappeared inside the denseness of the rainforest.

      If only she had brought her camera, thought Miki; to capture Bernie’s triumphal smile. The black woman, the white sand and the lengthening shadows cast by the setting sun. An image of a strong woman. A life lived decently, able to find joy in a ripe coconut, having learned long ago to mask pain by coming to terms with the nature of mankind.

      The water had been lapping her bare feet for some time before she noticed it, but she stayed staring up at the sky now, trying to capture some of Bernie’s philosophical approach to life.

      In her rational mind, she knew that with a hundred-eighty-three marbles going into the barrel tomorrow night and only around fifty needing to be drawn in order to fill quotas, the odds were against his number being among them, but she knew so many kids whose number did come out of the barrel, so why shouldn’t his? As she said to Andrew Clarke, conscription is a giant maw. It chews up the nation’s best, and thousands of kids are robbed of their youth.

      The colour of the sky was changing. To the east, a purple horizon, ocean and sky blending, and overhead and across to the west, an exuberant spread of orange cumulus. She wished again for her camera but the impulse passed. She felt invisible to the universe. How long the strange feeling of detachment could last, she didn’t know but it felt liberating while it did. In this timeless landscape, under this endless sky, it wasn’t much of a stretch to see one’s self as no more than a grain of sand on the beach, no more or less important than a single speck of this infinite whiteness.

      And if this is so, then nothing is worth fretting about. It all ends in nothing, anyway. The way life works out is the way life works out, she concluded.

      Tomorrow night would come and go. His number would be drawn out or it would not be drawn out. He would be called up or he would not be called up. Answer the call and go to Vietnam, or resist the call and not go to Vietnam. Survive, or not survive the jungle and the rifles, and there was not a single thing she could do about it. How could she? Who was he? Where was he? Her infant son had become a young man, of an age sought by the Army. He might be marching off to war any day but as the one who had carried him in her womb, nursed him at her breast, loved, fed and cherished him, she did not have the right to know or to query these things.

      Grains of sand––she mused as she stood up and brushed herself down––it's all we are. Infinitesimal in the scheme of things. No one gives a fuck that life isn’t fair. What’s fair, anyway?

      She scooped up handfuls of sea water and threw it over her head and used more of it to pat the back of her neck. The sun was down but the day still held its heat. She buttoned her shirt, grabbed her socks and boots and headed up the beach to join the others back at the camp. She was determined to put on a happy face for her comrades.

      –2–

      Bernie stood alongside what was left of the fire, pouring tea into enamel mugs from her blackened billy and handing them around.

      ‘Thanks,’ said Miki as Bernie passed her one of the steaming mugs, an offering she knew would be too white and far too sweet for her taste because Bernie loaded her brews with truck loads of milk and sugar. She only knew one other person who took their tea that way.

      She could feel her friend’s eyes boring into her, even as the kindly woman moved around the camp with her billy offerings. While Bernie wasn't looking, she tossed the tea out. She loathed sweet tea.

      Jimmy and the boys stood about with their hands out for their cha and some of the hard-crusted damper

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