Watching Dad and Little Eric leave as the ferry pulled out from the jetty was a bit like watching Dafty being taken Banjo and I decided it was about time we went up to Shangri-la, our secret hiding place above the army jetty to check on the war preparations. We needed to make sure the army was well prepared for when the invasion happened.
‘How’re you feeling? How are your ribs?’ he asked as we trudged up the hill.
‘All right.’ But I had to stop every so often to get my breath. If I didn’t, my chest started burning.
Banjo ran ahead to chase a quokka that bounded off up the roadway.
I was bent over holding my knees and gasping a bit when I heard rustling in the bushes. It wasn’t a snake or a lizard. It had to be something much bigger. Oh no, not the Jap soldier! And here we were, all alone. No, here I was, all alone. Banjo was at least two hundred yards ahead by now. I froze on the spot and didn’t move a muscle. Any moment the Jap was going to plunge a bayonet straight into me. That, or something worse. I couldn’t outrun him in the state I was in. I couldn’t even outrun my little sister.
I didn’t know what to do. If I called out to Banjo I might scare the Jap and he’d kill us both. I felt my heart pounding in my chest and my hands turn sweaty. My mouth went dry, and cold and fear filled me. I was so scared I thought I’d die of fright, there and then.
‘Jack?’ I heard only that one word but my spine chilled. It couldn’t be. I knew that voice as well as my own. As well as I knew Banjo’s.
‘Jack?’ the voice repeated.
I turned around slowly, still half-expecting to be killed. And there he was, standing right in the middle of the road dressed in a torn Australian Army tunic and tight school shorts.
‘Banjo!’ I yelled as loudly as I could. ‘Banjo! Come back here. Quick!’
Banjo’s feet slapped the ground as he ran back down the hill.
I stared at the figure in front of me. The army tunic was stained, his feet were as black as tar and he seemed taller than I remembered. He’d developed muscles on his arms, his legs seemed more solid and his hair had grown much longer and was matted. He blinked at me several times and then spoke.
‘I been watching you, Jack. You were nearly killed. Out by the big gun.’
‘You were drowned,’ I said incredulously. It was the only thing that came into my head. ‘You jumped overboard and drowned. We buried you. Well, we buried your shoe.’
Banjo arrived, gasping, hardly able to speak. I didn’t need to look at him—I knew the joy that’d be on his face.
‘You’re alive!’ he shouted. ‘After all this time, you’re alive.’ He grabbed Dafty in his arms and hugged him, lifting him off the ground. ‘I knew it. I knew it. I just knew it.’
‘But Dafty, how?’ I asked.
‘I can’t be seen,’ said Dafty, ignoring my question. ‘They’ll send me back. Away. To the land. To the loony bin.’
‘No,’ said Banjo. ‘No, we’ll keep you hidden. We have to. We’ll get on up to Shangri-la, above the army jetty. No-one will ever see us there. It’s completely surrounded with huge boulders and thick trees and branches all the way to the ground. We’re the only ones who know the way in.’
‘I stay there, in the days,’ Dafty said. ‘You showed me, remember? I thought you might come there and find me.’
We headed back up the hill toward Shangri-la, Banjo with his arm round Dafty’s shoulder. I’d forgotten all about my sore ribs.
We reached the narrow hollow between the tree roots and slid along on our stomachs into the shelter. Sunlight barely filtered through the thick branches, but I noticed several kero drums, planks of wood and corrugated iron Banjo and I hadn’t brought in. Tin cans and bits of paper also lay about on the thick grass, as well as several grey army blankets and the remains of a fire.
‘But Dafty, you jumped overboard off the ferry and drowned,’ I repeated as soon as we sat down.
‘I don’t know,’ said Dafty, looking confused. ‘I woke up on the beach. In the night. I was cold and sick. I had to sleep in a cave. It was so cold. So cold. I kept spewing up. So sick. Spewing, spewing. For hours and hours. Spewing.’
‘You’ve kept hidden all this time? How? How did you eat? Where did you sleep?’ asked Banjo. It was still so unbelievable.
‘Sometimes I slept in the empty houses. You know, the ones where the holiday people used to live. Before the war. Sometimes here, sometimes at West End caves.’
‘And no-one saw you? Ever?’ asked Banjo.
‘Someone did once,’ replied Dafty. ‘They tried to shoot me. When I was getting food. In a rubbish bin. Near Jack’s house. I had to hide under a house all night and the next day. The army keeps looking for me. I don’t want them to shoot me.’
‘You’ve been eating rubbish from the bins?’ Banjo screwed up his face, but I’d seen what his dad often served up for dinner, and rubbish would’ve been loads better. Banjo and his dad seemed to live on shark and dripping and sometimes even quokka. I couldn’t count the number of times Banjo came to school with quokka fat-and-salt sandwiches.
‘Sometimes. From the bakery,’ said Dafty. ‘Sometimes I’d cook a snake. There are lots of snakes. They’re still slow at this time. Tiger snakes taste the best.’
‘And the cricket ball at my place? That was you? You put it outside our place?’
Dafty nodded.
‘And the seashells and the bullets?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Banjo, what’re we going to do? Dafty’s right. If they find out they’ll send him straight to the loony bin.’
I still could hardly believe what I’d heard, that Dafty had managed to live so long by himself. I realised he couldn’t be as stupid as everyone thought. To be able to survive, living wild out in the open, you’d need to be clever and cunning, like Mowgli in The Jungle Book.
I thought of poor Mad Martha at the end of the jetty, out of her mind with grief. ‘Dafty, you mum thinks you’re dead. It’s killing her. I’ve seen her.’
Dafty smiled. ‘I leave her Christmas presents. In the night when everyone’s asleep. On the doorstep. So she knows I’m not. The teacher. I left him a present too. A poo on his doorstep.’ Dafty laughed at his wicked little joke.
‘A poo on his doorstep? Wish I’d seen that.’ I chuckled.
‘We’ll tell her,’ announced Banjo. ‘We’ll tell your mum and it can be a secret between us all. Then we’ll look after you. We’ll get you some clothes and proper food and somewhere to sleep, dry and warm. And no-one need ever find out. Ever.’ Banjo had that determined look in his eyes he got when something important was happening.
‘You wait here,’ he told Dafty, ‘and Jack and I will bring you some things tonight after it’s dark. It won’t be too long.’
‘You have to watch out for the army men,’ replied Dafty. ‘They look all over, all the time, wanting to shoot me.’