The Dead of Night Read Free

stunts. What you have to do is to put a bridle on it, rein it in. It's a mind game. You've got to be strict with your own head. Being brave is a choice you make. You've got to say to yourself: I'm going to think brave. I refuse to think fear or panic."
    Homer, pale-faced and eager to convince us, was talking earnestly at the ground, only glancing up occasionally.
    "We've spun our wheels for weeks. We've been upset and we've been scared. It's time for us to take charge of
our heads again, to be brave, to do the things we have to do. That's the only way we can hold our heads up, walk proud. We've got to block out those thoughts of bullets and blood and pain. What happens, happens. But every time we panic, we weaken ourselves. Every time we think brave, we make ourselves stronger.

    "There's a few things we ought to be doing. We're heading into autumn; the days are getting shorter already, and the nights are sure as hell colder. We've got to keep building up our food supplies, stockpiling for winter. Come spring we can plant a lot more vegetables and stuff. We need more livestock, and we have to work out what's practical to keep down here, given that there's no pasture. We've got enough warm clothes, and we'll never run out of firewood, even though it's not easy to get sometimes. But they're only the basic things, the survival things. What I'm talking about is not just hiding in here like a snake in a log but getting out and acting with courage. And there's two things in particular I think we should do. One is to go and find some other people. There's got to be other groups like us, and all those radio reports keep talking about guerilla activity, and resistance in the occupied areas. We should try to link up with them and work together. We're operating in such ignorance: we don't know where anything is or what's happening or what we should be doing.
    "But before we go looking for them I want to look for someone else. I think we should go find Kevin and Corrie."
    To anyone watching (I hope there wasn't anyone) it
must have resembled an outdoors ballet class. We all slowly began to unfurl and turn towards Homer. Lee dropped his piece of wood. Chris put down his pad and pen and stretched out. I stood and moved to a higher rock. Find Kevin and Corrie? Of course. The idea infused us with hope and excitement and boldness. None of us had thought anything about it because it had seemed impossible. But Homer's saying it had brought it within the realms of possibility, till suddenly it seemed like the only thing to do. In fact, his saying it made it seem so possible that it was almost as if it had happened already. That was the power of the spoken word. Homer had put us back on our feet and got us dancing again. Words began to pour from all of us. No one doubted that we should do it. For once there was no argument, no debate about the morality of it. All the talk was about how, not whether.

    Suddenly we'd forgotten about food and livestock and firewood. All we could think about was Corrie and Kevin. We realised that we might actually be able to do something about them. I felt stupid that it hadn't occurred to us before.

Two
    Already, just a couple of months since the invasion, the landscape looked different. There were the obvious
changes: crops not harvested, houses lifeless, more dead stock in the paddocks. Fruit rotting on trees and on the ground. Another farmhouse, the Blackmores', had been destroyed, maybe by accidental fire, maybe by soldiers' shells. A tree had fallen onto the roof of the Wilsons' shearing shed and still lay there in a cradle of galvanised iron and broken rafters. There were more rabbits around, and we saw three foxes, which is unusual in daylight.

    Some of the changes weren't so obvious. A gap in a fence here, a broken windmill there. A tendril of ivy curling in through a window of a house.
    There was something else too, an atmosphere, a change in the feel of the land. It felt wilder, stranger, more ancient.