Digging Up Dirt

by Pamela Hart

  ‘So it’s all right for the police to suspect an innocent person as long as the party’s out of it?’ I asked, a snap in my voice.

  ‘The things the Party is trying to do are more important than any one person,’ she parroted.

  ‘Sounds like what the communists used to say,’ I said. I was aware of Patience standing in the doorway, listening intently.

  ‘How dare you!’ That was genuine anger, twenty-four carat. Eliza’s eyes flamed, her cheeks went bright red. She slammed the loaf down on the counter. ‘How dare you even mention that word in this house! Godless, evil—’ She was practically foaming at the mouth.

  Patience moved forward soundlessly, as though preparing to intervene if it got physical.

  ‘The Lord Himself guides my husband!’ Eliza declared, getting control back.

  Patience froze.

  Eliza bowed her head. ‘Lord, help this poor misguided girl to understand Your work. Help her to find her way to You and be set free by Your Holy Spirit. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ Patience whispered.

  Being prayed over was strangely disquieting. I’d been prayed for lots of times: when I was sick, when I was studying for an exam, when I was involved with a boyfriend my parents didn’t like. But that took place decently in private or, at worst, in silence in church. This public declaration was profoundly alien, and it unsettled me more than I would have expected.

  ‘You should come to one of our services,’ Eliza said, almost desperately. ‘Then you’d see how important our work is.’

  ‘All right,’ I found myself saying. What was I thinking? The last thing I wanted to do—but the idea of seeing Matthew Carter in full flight was intriguing. Know your enemy, I thought, and didn’t stop to ask myself why the Carters were my enemy.

  Patience was staring at me with astonishment. I shrugged.

  ‘Research,’ I said.

  Eliza beamed at me. ‘Call it what you like,’ she said. ‘The Lord is leading you.’

  I so hoped that was true. But not in the way she meant.

  As though my agreement to attend service had made us best friends, Eliza insisted on making me coffee and produced it, steaming, accompanied by homemade cake. She sat me down at the breakfast bar, apologising for the informality, and hummed as she finished the loaf and set it to rise.

  Patience refused cake but her mother insisted on her having a large glass of milk.

  ‘You’re not well?’ I asked.

  She shrugged, uncomfortable.

  Eliza shot me a conspiratorial look and dropped her voice. ‘Her friend is visiting.’

  It had been so long since I’d heard that particular euphemism that I actually looked around to see if Patience’s friend was there. Then I realised. Her period.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. I was seized by a desire to call a spade a spade, but I suppressed it. ‘You know, Eliza, there’s something I still don’t really understand.’

  ‘Mmm?’ she asked, eyes on the bench as she ruthlessly eliminated every speck of flour.

  ‘I’ve known Julieanne Weaver for a few years now. And I don’t really understand how she—er … insinuated herself into Australian Family. She’s—she was so different from the other party members I’ve met.’

  Eliza’s hands stilled. Every part of her stilled. Then she began to move again, sweeping the flour fragments into her hand and turning to dump them in the bin.

  ‘She approached my husband at the electoral office,’ she said, her voice very even. ‘He thought … he thought that she might be suitable. An example that the party wasn’t, um—’

  ‘Misogynist?’ I offered helpfully.

  It did help, too. She pulled herself together.

  ‘“Old fashioned” was the way my husband put it.’ She turned back, face calm. Patience let a breath out. ‘But I think he was misled,’ Eliza said.

  ‘She could be very convincing—to men,’ I said. Something flickered across Eliza’s face. Hatred? Scorn? Something strong, but gone too fast to identify.

  ‘Men are not cursed, as we women are, with a natural understanding of evil,’ she said. Straight-faced.

  I looked at Patience. Is this what she was taught? That women were naturally evil? Well, it was an old idea. But in this modern, shining kitchen, with the sun beaming through the windows and the microwave cheerily displaying the time, it was frightening.

  ‘The service starts at ten on Sunday,’ Eliza said. She looked me over—the old jeans, the cotton top—and visibly refrained from asking me to smarten up for the occasion.

  I took the last swallow of my coffee. It really was very good; Tol would like it. Eliza swooped almost before I’d put the cup back in the saucer and whisked them and the empty plate to the dishwasher. The interview was over.

  ‘Patience will show you the way out.’ She forced herself to smile. The MP’s wife was back in force, every hair in place. ‘I look forward to seeing you on Sunday.’

  Patience took me silently to the door, which sprang open just before we got to it. Two little boys in school uniform—private school uniform, I noted—rushed in, calling, ‘Mum, Mum, we’re starving!’

  It was the most normal thing that had happened since I’d walked in and I smiled involuntarily. Carter followed them in, and smiled back as though I’d aimed the look at him personally. Erk. I wondered how ready he’d been to be persuaded that Julieanne should join the party. And what kind of party had she joined?

  ‘Poppy,’ he said, with a question in his voice. ‘How nice to see you.’

  ‘Eliza has convinced me to join you on Sunday at the church,’ I said.

  There was no doubting the genuine enthusiasm that brought out. His whole face lit up and he grabbed my hand and shook it. ‘That’s wonderful. Wonderful. We’ll see you then.’

  The two boys rushed back and took hold of his arm, chattering about how getting a dog wouldn’t really make any more work for anyone, and ‘we’d look after it, Dad, really we would’. He grinned and shrugged, following them into the kitchen. Patience opened the door.

  ‘Bye,’ I said.

  She waited until I was almost through before she said, ‘I thought you didn’t like my father.’

  ‘I don’t,’ I said. ‘And I feel sorry for your mother and you.’ I looked at her, but she was staring at her feet, clad in sensible sneakers. ‘Women aren’t naturally any more evil than men, you know.’

  She looked up sharply. ‘That’s evil enough,’ she said, and closed the door in my face.

  Fair comment.

  Despite the cake, I was still hungry. I got drive-thru on my way back to lodge my shooting schedule with Jennifer Jay. It tasted even more delicious because I was sure that Eliza Carter would have disapproved.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  ‘Do you think women are naturally evil, Mum?’

  My mother snorted and handed me the teapot and the milk. ‘Original sin’s in all of us,’ she said, and paused. ‘But if you think about who causes the most misery in the world …’ She looked at the photo of her brother George on the wall. George had been killed in Vietnam. Mum shrugged, as though she didn’t have to finish the sentence.

  I considered it as we watched the news and drank our tea. Were men more likely to kill? Statistically, yes, no doubt about it. I’d written an episode on unlawful death for the Legal Studies program, and the statistics had been fascinating. The person most likely to die by violence in our society is a young drunk man. They get into fights, and they get killed. The interesting thing was that it didn’t matter who started the fight. That doesn’t have any correlation to who gets hurt.

  For women, the statistics are more sobering. The most likely person to kill a woman is her partner, especially if she’s about to leave or has just left. The most likely place is her own bedroom, closely followed by the rest of her house. Which made Tol and Paul the most likely suspects in Julieanne’s death. But why couldn’t she have been killed in her own house? I thought bitterly.

  The thought stayed with me. Yes, why? An
d why hadn’t I considered that before?

  I went to bed wondering why Julieanne had been in my house late at night. In her dress-to-impress blue outfit, and her respectable expensive court shoes. She wouldn’t have gone there to dig dressed like that, and the police hadn’t mentioned other clothes being found there. Would they mention it? I decided to ask Detective Chloe. She might even tell me.

  The most reasonable explanation was that she had gone there to meet someone. An empty house was a great place for an assignation. I really hoped nothing physical had happened before she was killed. Somehow I found the idea of Julieanne having illicit sex in my house more off-putting than the memory of her corpse. But surely the police wouldn’t suspect me if there was evidence of Julieanne’s sexual activity?

  I would scrub the upstairs floors when the police let me back in, though. Just in case.

  The next day I spent doing interviews with workers at Luna Park. It was Saturday, when Luna Park is at its best. That’s the way it works during the shooting season for a show. You do the work when you need to, and take time off later. It was a hectic, full-on day and I found it very restful. No one died. No one called me unexpectedly. No one questioned my motives or my innocence.

  I came home cheerful and spent a few hours knocking together a rough script for the archaeology show from Mirha’s production notes of what shots we had. Working a way around the footage with Julieanne in it was tricky, but fortunately Terry’s one of those camera operators who believes in ‘coverage’—that is, taking several shots of the same images from different angles and directions. So I had a reasonable amount to play with, and we could fill in with an interview with Tol back at the house. I pushed down an image of the two of us standing close together in the pit. Control yourself! I had Stuart, and Tol was going back to Jordan.

  But I couldn’t control my dreams.

  At seven am on Sunday, I opened one eye and debated whether or not I really wanted to see Matthew Carter operating in his natural habitat, the conservative Christian church. I decided no, rolled over and went back to sleep.

  At eight, my mother woke me up ‘because you’ll be late for church if you don’t get a move on’.

  Even though my mother had woken me every Sunday morning of my childhood with more or less the same words, this morning it sounded like a message from God, so I rolled out of bed and blearily made my way to the bathroom. A hot shower, a cup of tea and some cereal later, I felt human enough to explain to my parents that I was going to church elsewhere.

  ‘Why?’ my mother demanded.

  ‘I’ve got to recce the Radiant Joy Church for the NewsCaff people.’

  She didn’t look happy. Going to church didn’t count unless it was Catholic.

  ‘They might want to do another story on The Daily Report,’ I added, only a little mendaciously. Tyler had been making noises about a follow-up.

  Her face cleared a little. She’d enjoyed my brief doses of fame. I hadn’t been able to bear watching the Australian Family interview, but she had, and so had the rest of the family. And if it was work—that excused a lot. People talk about the Protestant work ethic, but the Catholic one isn’t too shabby either.

  ‘I suppose you can go to Mass tonight,’ she said.

  Right. Twice in one day was too much for me. I’d figure out how to get out of that one later.

  I doubted that skipping Mass was going to put me in Hell, as my parents believed. As for Heaven, I vacillate between the classic Christian image and reincarnation, which seems to me so much fairer than giving you just one shot at getting the whole being-human thing right. I like the idea of reincarnation; I find it soothing and reassuring. It makes me a heretic, of course, so it’s best not to talk about it at home. And the only priest I raised it with backed away so fast he almost left skidmarks, so I’ve just filed it as one of those things I approve of that the Church doesn’t, like contraception and gay relationships.

  I drove west hoping it wouldn’t be as bad as I expected.

  The Radiant Joy Church looked a bit like a shopping mall from the outside. Not quite as big. Blank concrete walls, the lower floor all glass and automatic doors, a big lobby—actually, I thought, walking up the dark blue–carpeted stairs, it was more like a cinema than a mall. It had a lot of screens, just like a cinema, showing only the empty stage—sorry, altar: it featured a very simple wooden cross.

  I passed a yellow-painted room with big glass doors labelled CHILDREN’S MINISTRY. It was filling fast with small, mostly blond, children who ran in happily and greeted what I presumed were the Sunday School supervisors (teenage girls) with enthusiasm. I’d checked out the very, very slick website—there was a Children’s Ministry, a Youth Ministry, a Seniors’ Ministry and something called a ‘Happy Homes Ministry’ which, on closer examination, turned out to be a school for brides-to-be to help them become submissive wives.

  Lots of people smiled at me as I made my way into the huge horseshoe-shaped auditorium and slid into a seat at the back. Lots of white people—male, female, old, young—were smiling at me and nodding as though they recognised I was a newcomer. They all seemed to have very shiny teeth.

  At ten o’clock sharp, the service started with a rousing rendition of ‘Giving It All For Jesus’, which everyone but me seemed to know and love.

  One of the things I do like about the Catholics is that no one asks you what you’re thinking. There’s none of that standing up and witnessing business, no public confessions, no thought police. As long as you turn up to Mass, you’re counted as one of the flock, and no one probes your private beliefs—which is how most Catholic women happily go to Communion and take the Pill as well, and live with the supposed dichotomy without the slightest qualm of conscience—even my sisters, who were virgins when they got married and would describe themselves as good Catholics.

  The Catholics know where private thoughts belong—in the confessional.

  That idea occurred to me very strongly at twenty minutes past ten, while I was listening to Pastor Amos Winchester invite his flock to ‘come forward and witness to Jesus’. This means, apparently, coming to the state-of-the-art microphone and telling a story about how your life had been shit before you found religion and now it’s fantastic, while your face is projected up onto a big screen, so we can all see the tears in your eyes. Then we’ll sing a hymn praising Jesus.

  I learnt far too much about total strangers. Ex-drug addicts, ex-prostitutes, ex-alcoholics. Even, to my astonishment, a supposed ex-schizophrenic whom Winchester had exorcised of the demons that had made him seem mentally ill. It was like Eliza Carter talking about the evil of women in her sunny kitchen—the combination of medieval thought and sleek, streamlined, modern setting made me very uneasy.

  And the music! A full band, a percussion section bigger than the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, a choir (though not, to my disappointment, any gospel singing—it was all soft rock) and a sound system as sophisticated as the last Wiggles concert I took my nephews to.

  The auditorium was almost as big as the Wiggles’, and it was just as full, although the kids were older. These young people sang and clapped and listened attentively. They didn’t lounge in their seats or look bored, they didn’t surreptitiously check for text messages, they didn’t roll their eyes when one of the witnesses choked up—and they sang loud and strong.

  It was disgusting.

  It was invigorating and inspiring.

  It was profoundly disturbing.

  I love to sing in church. I really enjoy singing hymns. I used to be in the choir, all that stuff. But although the songs at Radiant Joy were catchy and the words were all up there on the big screen so everyone could sing along, I just couldn’t. I’d felt more at home in the Buddhist temple where we’d filmed a segment for a program on multiculturalism.

  Then Winchester got up for his sermon. I relaxed a little. Winchester was familiar, at least. I felt like I’d been thrown a lifeline. But his American accent just crystallised why I was so uncomfortable. This approach
to religion, it was an import, like American cop shows and McDonald’s. There was something deeply alien—dare I use the word ‘unAustralian’?—about all the … the sincerity. I’d been to church in America—Baptist church, with my friend Raquel, in Washington, D.C.—and there the clapping and the raptness of the congregation had seemed just right. But not here.

  It got worse. According to Winchester, God wanted His chosen people (that is, the Radiant Joy worshippers) to be prosperous—to have abundance. ‘Pressed down and running over,’ he kept repeating. My parish priest had always said that that part of the Gospel referred to spiritual wealth, but Pastor Amos took it more literally. He believed—strongly believed, by the look of him—that it referred to material wealth, and he assured his congregation so.

  ‘God loves you!’ he purred, his lapel microphone picking up every syllable as he strode from one side of the stage to the other. ‘God loves you and He wants you to be happy. How do we know? Because He sent His only begotten Son to save you. Each and every one of you! You think He did that because He wants you to suffer? No! Suffering is a tool of the Devil! Accept Jesus into your life and suffering is at an end! Live as God wanted you to live, and you will prosper. Share your prosperity as God intended and it will grow tenfold!’

  Sharing prosperity, it transpired soon afterwards, meant tithing to the church. Ten per cent, right off the top. I looked around at the hundreds of well-fed, well-dressed, apparently well-off people. If Amos Winchester got a tenth of everything they earned … shit, that was a lot of money. No wonder the church could afford to bankroll a political party.

  The Carters, minus the little boys, were sitting right down the front, next to Samuel Stephenson and his wife, dressed all in brown again, who listened raptly to Pastor Amos. You could tell that Ruth was a leading example of the submissive wife. Occasionally she glanced up at Stephenson’s craggy profile with adoration, and when he went to the podium to deliver a short address about the church financing a new ministry reaching out to ‘troubled teens’, she positively glowed with pride. He spoke well, I had to give him that, with authority and even a bit of charisma. But he didn’t have Carter’s charm. When Carter gave a speech of thanks to everyone who had been supporting Australian Family and invited them all to a fundraising barbecue, you could hear female hearts fluttering all over the auditorium.