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‘Oh Mr Mathers, you’re invited, as long as you’re under thirty, OK?’ ‘That’s discrimination Ellie.’
We kept standing and looking for quite a while, as if staring at the tumbled rocks would cause a path to appear, as if this were Narnia or somewhere.
‘What if we can’t get back?’ ‘What goes down must come up,’ Homer said, making it clear how much attention he’d been paying in Science over the years.
No, Hell wasn’t anything to do with places, Hell was all to do with people. Maybe Hell was people.
And like Robyn said before, if we’re wrong,’ he was struggling to get the words out, his face twisting like someone having a stroke, ‘if we’re wrong you can laugh as long and loud as you want. But for now, for now, let’s say it’s true. Let’s say we’ve been invaded. I think there might be a war.’
‘OK then,’ I said. ‘All for one and one for all. Let’s go. The three musketeers.’
That’s it! I thought. I’ve done it! It was a dance of courage. I felt then, and still feel now, that I was transformed by those four steps. At that moment I stopped being an innocent rural teenager and started becoming someone else, a more complicated and capable person, a force to be reckoned with even, not just a polite obedient kid.
felt that my life was permanently damaged, that I could never be normal again, that the rest of my life would just be a shell.
Don’t feel so bad. This is war now, and normal rules don’t apply. These people have invaded our land, locked up our families. They caused your dogs to die, Ellie, and they tried to kill you three. The Greek side of me understands these things. The moment they left their country to come here they knew what they were doing. They’re the ones who tore up the rule book, not us.’
We believed we were safe. That was the big fantasy. Now we know we’re not, and like you said, we’ll never feel safe again, and so it’s bye-bye innocence. It’s been nice knowing you, but you’re gone now.’
We’re not going to be safe anywhere, any time, until this thing is over. All we can do is to keep calculating the odds. And if it goes on long enough we’ll be caught. But if we do nothing we’ll get caught even sooner. The biggest risk is to take no risk. Or to take crazy risks. We’ve got to be somewhere between one and the other.
That was Homer’s genius. He combined action with thought, and he planned ahead.
‘Never reverse an inch more than you have to.’ We’re using metrics now Dad, in case you hadn’t noticed. Inches went out with paddle steamers and black and white TV.
I was a devil of death, and there were no angels left in the world, no one to make me better than myself or to save me from the harm I was doing.
“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
I can understand why these people have invaded but I don’t like what they’re doing and I don’t think there’s anything very moral about them. This war’s been forced on us, and I haven’t got the guts to be a conscientious objector. I just hope we can avoid doing too much that’s filthy and foul and rotten.’
I guess true courage is when you’re really scared but you still do it. I was really scared, but Fi was really really scared. I did just hope that when the chips were down she wouldn’t stand there frozen with fear. We didn’t want frozen chips. Ha ha.
Loyalty, courage, goodness. I wonder if they’re human inventions too, or if they just are.
We’ve got to stick together, that’s all I know. We all drive each other crazy at times, but I don’t want to end up here alone, like the Hermit. Then this really would be Hell. Humans do such terrible things to each other that sometimes my brain tells me they must be evil. But my heart still isn’t convinced. I just hope we can survive.
