John Marsden - While I live

‘Given so much away!’ I shouted back over my shoulder. ‘It wasn’t theirs to give away! It wasn’t theirs in the first place.’

Boy, that Jess, she had an answer for anything. I put a piece of bark on the spider’s web. It still didn’t break.

‘OK, OK,’ she said. ‘Keep your shirt on. Bad choice of words. Although I suppose it was theirs to give away, really, because they had a whacking great slab of it and we didn’t. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.’

‘So,’ said Bronte, in the voice of someone who’s had this discussion quite a few times before. It was like a teacher asking a class for the seventeenth year in a row, ‘So, class, what do you think our rules should be for this year?’ Bronte went on, ‘What do you think they’d do if they invaded again?’

I stacked a twig on the web. It sagged but it held all that weight without snapping.

‘Well, what they started doing in some places before. Resettle as fast as they can and turn us into fringe dwellers. We’d live in the crap places and do all the crap jobs and anyone who gave trouble would be locked up or they’d mysteriously disappear.’ She paused, then added, ‘According to the rumours, that’s why they’re not returning some prisoners. It’s because they’ve identified certain people, certain prisoners, as troublemakers, the people who’d give them a hard time if they invaded again. They figure “Why create extra problems for ourselves? Let’s just announce that these guys are dead, or we don’t know where they are, and that way we’ll make it all the easier when we launch the next invasion”.’

‘Next invasion,’ I snarled back at her. ‘No way is there going to be a next invasion. Not if I have anything to do with it.’

But even as I said that I knew I couldn’t have anything to do with such a big issue. Nobody was going to come to me asking for permission to invade.

I karate-chopped the cobweb with my hand. It broke.

I’ve never felt so young and inadequate as when I sat in the bank manager’s office the next day. It was lunchtime at school and I’d belted down to the bank for this appointment. I was meant to be meeting Mr Yannos but he hadn’t turned up. Much as I liked Homer’s dad I had to admit he wasn’t the most reliable person in the world. So suddenly I found myself in the manager’s office having to explain why she should lend me a little matter of another hundred grand or so. For the first few minutes I could hardly get my breath to ask for anything except a glass of water but somehow my desperation to keep the farm got my tongue working enough to stammer out a few words. And once I started the words flowed a bit better.

I already owed the bank a breathtaking gobsmacking heartburning $480 000. Nearly half a million. But as I said to her, that was safe for the bank, because of the mortgages over the farm and the cars and machinery. Plus I had the cattle, which were now up to ninety-six head with the new calves. Before they’d calved, Mr Sayle had valued them at $180 000, but if I kept the calves a couple of years they’d be worth another $100 000 or so at current rates, and provided the market held up. So far it had risen like a ruckman taking a speccie.

I hadn’t been game to go and see Mr Sayle or even to ring him, but I’d written him a quick letter to tell him what I was going to do. I hadn’t heard back yet. I think lawyers were so overworked as a result of the war that they paid most of their attention to the urgent stuff.

‘So what do you want to do with the extra money?’ the manager asked.

‘Buy more stock,’ I said promptly. ‘I need to build up the herd, in quality and quantity. These cows and steers were pretty poor when my father bought them, but they’re putting on some condition. When Dad got them there was nothing else available. But there’s some better stock coming onto the market now. I’d love to get one of these New Zealand bulls that they’re shipping over but I don’t know if I could afford them. They’ll be fetching top dollar. But even if I miss out on them, I think I could get a decent bull from one of the studs that wasn’t so badly affected by the war, and then another fifty or so cows.’

‘Hmm.’ She didn’t look impressed. She sat back in her chair and started ticking off points on her fingers. She even spoke in point form. I don’t think I’d ever met anyone who did that. She seemed to be talking to the wall, not to me. ‘One, you’re exceptionally young for such obligations. Underage to be signing contracts — guardian would have to guarantee it. Which reminds me, guardian also must guarantee existing loan. And he’s not here now. Not good.’

She got up and stood looking out of the window, hands behind her back.

‘Two, cattle market, unreliable at best of times. These are hardly the best of times. Three, cattle highly susceptible. Disease, bushfire, drought, all could take them out.’

She didn’t seem to notice that she’d just rhymed. I gave a little grin but I was getting worried about the fate of my loan.

‘Four, lack of experience in running operation like this. Five, no diversification. All cattle operation. Eggs in one basket. Hmm.’

Before I could start sticking up for myself she turned around, came back to the desk, sat down, took a pen from her pocket, and twirled it in her fingers. Now she looked at the ceiling.

‘On the other hand, as you say, loans quite well secured. Repayments uncertain at best. Don’t know how much more the bank wants to tie up in this property.’

I broke in, urgently. ‘You know what everyone says about farming. Get big or get out. Ninety-six head means I’ll always be on the borderline. You might as well close me down now as leave me on ninety-six head. We have good pasture, good paddocks. We’ve had good rainfall the last month. I could carry six hundred head through summer if I could afford them.’

She sat there staring. It was the first time she’d looked right at me. Finally she said, ‘You know, loans depend on the borrower more than anything. More than security, more than paper, more than forecasts, more than promises.’

At that moment her phone rang. She picked it up and listened for a moment. Then she said to me, ‘Your guardian is here.’

I didn’t think it was necessary to tell her that he wasn’t officially technically my guardian quite just yet. But I was massively relieved to hear that Mr Yannos had finally arrived. I’ll never know whether the manager was about to give me my loan or not, but when Mr Yannos agreed that he would guarantee it she went ahead and got the papers and I had to sit there and watch Mr Yannos put his farm and his life on the line for me. I didn’t like seeing him do it, but God I was grateful. People talk so casually about friendship, as though it’s something you can pick up at the 7-Eleven like a Slush Puppy or a hot dog. But what Mr Yannos offered was the kind of friendship that you can only buy with invisible coins. I used to think that joining our farm with theirs would be a good idea, and maybe our parents would like Homer and me to get married just to create a super-farm. But despite Homer’s jokes, that wasn’t in Mr Yannos’ mind. He did it for my mum and dad and he did it for me and he did it because of the war and most of all he did it because he was a good human being.

In the bus on the way home I finished the book I’d borrowed from Homer, The Scarlet Pimpernel. I really liked it! For an old book it was pretty cool. It is about a group of Englishmen who rescue prisoners from the French Revolution. The Scarlet Pimpernel is the nickname their leader uses, so he can stay anonymous. Like Superman is really Clark Kent, although I’ve never quite figured out why Superman has to hold down a second job as a reporter anyway. Maybe he needed the money.