John Marsden - While I live

Slow slow slow. It would have been hard enough doing this under any circumstances, but to know that at any moment an armed hostile might appear below me, or even at the window above, made my whole body tremble, not just my leg. That phrase of my father’s, ‘Time spent on reconnaissance is seldom wasted’, floated into my mind again and became like a litany, till it was a meaningless jumble. ‘Time spent on reconnaissance.’ Stay calm. ‘Seldom wasted.’ Nice and calm.

I got my right foot onto the top step. ‘Time spent.’ I was surprised at how I rose. I’d now moved about twenty or twenty-five centimetres higher. ‘Reconnaissance.’ The sill was still an awful way above though. Pressing my sweaty hands hard against the wall, but not too hard, I kept going. ‘Seldom wasted.’ It wasn’t easy to take that left foot off its rung. It hadn’t been feeling too safe on that rung but it was a lot more comfortable there than it was in mid-air.

The trembling was getting worse. I broke into an all-body sweat. The ladder gave a jolt. I bit my lip, cursed Homer and every molecule in his big stupid body, but knew it was too dangerous now to look down. My left foot got to the top step and I tried to stand straight and tall, even though I didn’t want to.

I stretched higher and higher. ‘Reconnaissance seldom wasted.’ Oh God where was that windowsill? My face was pressed into the wall and I didn’t dare look up.

‘Time seldom.’ My fingertips brushed the bottom of the sill. And that was at full stretch. This was my worst nightmare. I knew exactly what it meant. The only way I could reach was to take a jump and try to hang on. If I missed I was dead. OK, not dead, just a paraplegic. My hands were now so sweaty that I didn’t know how I could hang on to the windowsill even if I did catch it. The danger was that I’d just slip off. Funny, I’d survived aerial bombing, a train wreck, a bullet, and captivity — and now a few centimetres between my fingertips and a piece of painted wood could kill me.

But I had to go, and I had to go now, because every moment I waited would make it harder. ‘Seldom reconnaissance.’

I reminded myself that I had to reach right in and grab all of the windowsill, not just the edge of it. I crouched as much as I could — which wasn’t much — to get a bit of spring. ‘Wasted.’

I took off.

I seemed to fly upwards for an amazing period of time. Yet I knew I wasn’t getting much height. My fingers touched the windowsill. I couldn’t tell which part of it. It didn’t seem like enough. I scrabbled for another inch or so. Like I’d feared, my palms were so wet that they slipped, slipped, slipped. I grabbed harder. I felt every little crack and bubble in the paintwork. It too was rough but very different to the bricks of the wall. I grabbed again for the last time and gripped.

I hauled myself up. The muscles in my arms were bulging. My armpits were as sweaty as my palms. I got my head over the sill, my right shoulder, wriggled the left shoulder over, and at last knew I’d made it. I still hadn’t been able to give a thought to what might be waiting. Enemy soldiers with guns? No good thinking about that until I was safe from falling. Sam Young with a camera trying to focus, at the same time as he was rolling around laughing? No good thinking about that either. In a truly stupid and bizarre way I would actually have preferred to find enemy soldiers than Sam Young laughing at me.

I was in a bedroom. I realised it was Shannon’s. I took it in with just one glance but even that was enough to appreciate how good it looked. Three walls were light mauve, the other lime green. The cornices were dark purple, good enough to eat. Doesn’t sound like it should have worked, but it did. She had a big bed made of some reddish-brown timber, maybe jarrah, and a desk to match. There were some fascinating paintings on the walls. One of them was a face of great beauty, a woman who looked at the same time peaceful, wise and worried. Shame I didn’t have time to look closely.

It seemed almost too serious a room for Shannon, because she was always laughing, but still, it had to be hers. I knew that because, as I ran to the bed and ripped a sheet off it, I saw a drawing I’d done for her just a week ago: a kind of tangram thing. She’d pinned it to a curtain, right next to the bed. I was pleased about that.

I rushed back to the window. Peeping out I saw Homer and Gavin, looking up anxiously. I trailed the sheet down the wall so they’d have something to hang on to as they came up the ladder, then hung on to it myself as hard as I could.

Gavin came up first. It wasn’t a problem holding him — he weighed about as much as a newborn calf — but Homer was more like a Grand Reserve bull at the Wirrawee Show.

Homer came through the window, grunting with the effort. As soon as he was in the room I said, ‘Grab my legs,’ and started going back out again, head first. He got the idea fast enough. I felt his strong hands grip me around the knees, then the ankles, as I dangled down. Down and down I went, like I was on an elevator. ‘Don’t drop me, Homer,’ I pleaded silently as I got closer and closer to the top of the ladder. On my first swing towards it I missed by a couple of centimetres. On my next, my fingertips brushed against it. I still needed a few more centimetres. I tried to look up, but couldn’t very well. It wasn’t comfortable, with the blood running to my head. I had a sense of Homer leaning dangerously far out of the window. I hoped he didn’t overbalance. I hoped no enemy soldier grabbed him and suddenly took him away.

Somehow he found another centimetre or two because I lurched down again. I tried not to panic, and grabbed the top rung. He waited a moment, I guess to be sure I’d got it. There was no way I could give him a signal. Then he started hauling.

It was heavy for me. I don’t know what it was like for him. And somehow I had to get in through the window without dropping the ladder. Homer ended up on the floor with me off-balance and the ladder sticking out from the house at ninety degrees. Gavin came to the rescue, holding it till Homer and I got our balance back enough to take it from him.

We manoeuvred it in. Seemed like Shannon now had another piece of furniture for her bedroom. I left Homer to move it away from the window and turned around to see what Gavin was up to. Typical. He’d already opened the door and was peering down the corridor.

‘Geez, Gavin,’ I said, which wasn’t a lot of use as he couldn’t hear me.

I raced to the door. Standing above Gavin I did my own peering.

My eyes had to get used to the light but I couldn’t see any movement. I tapped Gavin on the shoulder. He looked up. I gestured ‘Do you see anything?’ and he shook his head.

Between us we eased the door open. We took our first step. By now Homer was right behind us. I thought this was a bad idea. If a soldier suddenly appeared he would be able to take all three of us with no trouble. I turned around and whispered to him, ‘You should hide. Just while we check out this floor.’

He thought about it for a moment. He looked disappointed but he knew I was right. After all, he’d forced us to make some tough decisions in the past. Now he made a face, looked around, and then opened a door right next to me. It was a kind of hall closet, where they stored their suitcases and winter clothes. With a little smile at me he shrugged, disappeared in among the coats, and closed the door behind him.

Gavin and I tiptoed forward. I didn’t want to do much, didn’t want to take on an army of hostiles. I just wanted to know what was going on. I could see the head of the staircase and I moved carefully towards it. I thought the stairwell would amplify any sounds from downstairs.

In fact the first sound I heard would have reached any corner of the house. A door opened downstairs, to the left, and a roar of laughter came out. I grabbed Gavin by the arm, hard, and we both stopped dead.