ABC Local Radio, Gibber’s Creek, 11 November 1975
. . . as tens of thousands of workers around Australia begin an indefinite strike until the Whitlam government is reinstated, ACTU president, Bob Hawke, appealed for calm among ALP supporters . . .
SCARLETT
Her world had ended.
Scarlett O’Hara, who could overcome any obstacle, was an illusion. Her birth family had abandoned her once, and now they had abandoned her a second time.
Go back to Jed? Beg her pardon, hope for the charity Jed would offer? Remain the elf of River View, pretending she could survive without the hands of others? Stay here with Leafsong, washing dishes, waiting tables? Which was not the life she wanted, and everyone would know it, from the girls at school to Jed. To become a waitress at the Blue Belle would be nothing more than a childish act of defiance.
There was nowhere . . .
‘One day you will walk.’ She had half forgotten the words. Words so stupid she had dismissed them.
There was one place left. The community of the Chosen of the Universe. Even if Ra Zacharia couldn’t heal her — and despite her desperation, she had no faith that he might — they would give her a room, food, help. Time to work out what she could do, and what she couldn’t. A world beyond Jed, beyond charity, because she could cook, weave, be part of the work there.
Had she misjudged Ra Zacharia? Even Jed’s investigator — how DARE she! — hadn’t found out anything bad about him. He had never even asked Jed for money. Mark had accepted the fading of their friendship as her exams took more of her time and dreams of a new life at uni replaced what was mostly pride that a young man might like her.
Scarlett flushed. What was the phrase? A handbag. Was that how she had used Mark, as a handbag to wear on her arm, to show off to those who pitied her? Could she repay him by accepting his community as a place of refuge?
Her promise to Jed not to go out there had ended when she left Jed’s house. This was, in fact, the best way of all to show Jed that now she had left school she was truly free.
She turned to her friend, watching her steadily as she peeled the skin from baked capsicums. ‘Leafsong, please, could you drive me to the Chosen of the Universe?’
The pale blue eyes gazed at her. Leafsong shook her head.
‘Please! Please, Leafsong.’
Another headshake. A gesture . . . But Scarlett had no patience for gestures now. The last rag of her control shredded. ‘If you’ve something to say, then say it! You can speak! I know you can speak!’
Again the pale blue gaze; again the silence. Once more, a slow shake of her head.
Scarlett wheeled her chair around. ‘I’ll hitchhike then. I’ve done it once before. If I can get a lift to the turnoff, I can make my own way down the track.’
Could she? Could her chair handle the ruts? If it tipped over, she couldn’t get it upright again. Or could she? She had never tried. PROBABLY it would not work. Today she didn’t care about probablies.
She pulled open the door, then found a hand on her shoulder. Leafsong held Carol’s car keys in her other hand.
Scarlett bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry. Thank you.’
Another headshake. A look as if to say, ‘Are you sure?’
Suddenly hope overcame all knowledge and analysis. ‘I want to walk! I have to try! Jed wouldn’t let me!’ No, that wasn’t true. Her own trust in the medical profession had stopped her trying. And fear too, maybe.
It didn’t matter now. One try, that’s all. And if that failed, at least she would have a place to stay for a few days, out of sight of Jed, the Thompsons, the girls from school. Time to work out what to do next. A place where she could phone the dean of the Women’s College, once her exam results were out and she had the scholarship she knew she’d get. Time to work out how to cope with university in a wheelchair if — when — Ra Zacharia failed to heal her.
She let Leafsong fold the wheelchair. Her hands shook as she clicked her seatbelt fast, watched Gibber’s Creek slide by, a dog lifting its leg outside the newsagency, the utes with hay bales, a new tank, a sparkling unfaded petrol pump outside the stock and station agent. Bitumen, and then the ruts.
The open gates between the high wire fences.
She was crying. She bit her lip to stop the tears. The car topped the rise. Scarlett gazed around. What had happened? Sun-whitened plastic on the community’s greenhouses flapped in the wind. The gardens were choked with weeds, thistles the only green in the overgrazed brown paddocks.
Was the community abandoned?
Suddenly she remembered what day it was: 11 November. The day the aliens were landing. Had they all gone to the landing place already? Scarlett had a sudden hysterical vision of all the Chosen filing onto a flying saucer. But there would be no flying saucer, so how long would they wait there? Days?
She could not even get up the front steps without help. Please, let someone be here, she thought. Please, this is my last chance.
Please. Please.