Maybe it was the heat. I sat in the shade of a red gum and allowed everything, with me as an outsider brought into the intricate dance when they learned what I was bringing to it, just the means to ends I would never fully discover. I could only wait to see what this identical but different day would bring.
Between ten and eleven, Carlo had said.
I tried to recall what I could of Tomaso Risi from the party, but there had been so many people. I remembered little more than the grinning, balding, affable man in a white shirt, dark trousers with festive red and gold braces, highly polished black shoes. He’d spoken Italian mostly, or Sardinian to make the important distinction, and had seemed to join in the spirit of the naming contest wholeheartedly.
But soon, soon, I would meet him again, share in his role in these events and—walk-on part or otherwise—match it to my own.
They arrived fifteen minutes later, Carlo surprising me by turning in at the front gate rather than calling to me from the top of the hill. I’d been expecting them to cross the Risi property overland from their side, park close to where Raina had had the picnic, then walk through the forest to the tower.
But this made it easier for Tomaso, I realised, and gave me an even better reason to be involved.
I saw the old man get out to open and close the Rankins’ gate, watched as they drove up the hill, then turned off the driveway and crossed the grass and bracken to the first trees.
I gave a hearty wave and went to meet them.
Carlo gave me a big grin. ‘Buon giorno, David!’ he cried as he switched off the engine and got out, grabbing a torch from the seat. ‘Come sta!’
‘Hello, Carlo. It’s good to see you again.’ We shook hands.
‘You remember Tomaso, my uncle.’
‘Of course. From the party. Buon giorno, Tomaso.’ And I shook the old man’s hand. It felt dry and strong.
‘Buon giorno,’ Tomaso said, and seemed easy enough.
Carlo pointed up the hill. ‘I am showing him the tower this morning. Taking a look inside. It’s been a long time. You are welcome to join us.’
‘I don’t want to intrude.’
‘Not at all. It’s for old time’s sake. Papa and Tomaso used to come here all the time. It’s like a nuraghe, like—ah, how do you say?—like a watchtower.’
‘Well, if it’s okay.’ I had to smile at Carlo; he was certainly being the genial Sardinian pig-farmer this morning.
Carlo spoke quickly to Tomaso. I understood none of it except the old man’s ‘Sì. Sì.’
‘It’s fine,’ Carlo told me. ‘You will get a chance to look inside too.’
So I had been omitted from the account of Saturday’s visit.
‘I’d like that.’
We headed up through the forest together, taking it slowly in the heat. When I tried a pleasantry with the old man, he shrugged and smiled. Carlo came to his rescue.
‘Scusi, David. You will remember from the party. My uncle doesn’t speak English too well.’
‘I understand. Tell him I am hopeless with Sardinian too.’
I could tell Carlo was pleased I had not said Italian, that I had remembered. He relayed my comment. Tomaso grinned, gave a comical shrug and murmured something.
Carlo translated. ‘He’ll give you another week, but only because you remembered his name at the party.’
We all laughed and continued up the hillside, surrounded by the constant burr of cicadas, the bruised silence of this fierce summer morning. Both men seemed glad to be doing this, and I was too. There was purpose here, a sense of need, even—to use the buzz word of the decade—closure. The mysteries of Madame Sew, Gemma and Zoe, gumnuts and black pages aside, I felt a genuine contentment at sharing something so completely beyond language for once.
The glade was quiet but for the cicada song. The cross—the stulos—was empty. The tower stood in the hard light like a theatre set, seeming oddly impermanent for once.
We went closer. Carlo and Tomaso chatted in dialect all the while, rapid exchanges accompanied by sudden gestures, and again I was happy not to be included.
I saw Carlo indicate the cross, then gesture at me. Obviously the mamuthone’s appearance on the hillside, the blood on the bells, had been mentioned, though obviously not my part in the follow-up visit to the tower. I made sure I was looking elsewhere for much of their conversation, but what I did catch showed Tomaso speaking sharply and eloquently, with none of the folksy old man about him. Something serious had happened here, was happening even now in their talk.
At last Carlo slapped his pockets, letting me know that he was looking for the key, his way of involving me again.
‘Let us do this. David, you will be interested.’
He made much of inserting the key and opening the old door, pushing it back on its hinges. Then he switched on his torch and led the way inside.
I half-expected the carving to be gone, the whole block replaced or swivelled cunningly about like you saw in movies and television thrillers. But when Carlo shone light on the spot, there it was: the table with the pointed legs, the starwheel formed by the rim of the sun glyph meeting the rays of the star.
‘Ah ma!’ Tomaso cried. ‘Dio benedetto!’ He continued rapidly in Sardinian, speaking excited, even frantic words. Carlo’s answers were mollifying, reassuring, always appropriately respectful. For Tomaso the carving was clearly a violation, an unacceptable intrusion. He was gesturing, pointing, touching the lines and curves as if to make them real. How much of it was for my benefit, or Carlo’s, I couldn’t say, but it seemed genuine.
I took the opportunity to look up into the darkness again, locating the cross beams in their heavy dark squares, wondering what else sat up in that cool emptiness. No stairs, no rooms, it seemed, just a hollow throat set here on a forested hilltop, rising up in the day. And, when the door was shut, making night in day.
That was it. So obvious. It was something that kept night here in this blazing summer morning. So, a church? A temple? What had been its purpose; what could be its purpose still?
They were talking in Sardinian again, arguing, remonstrating, the tones were clear enough, so I wandered out into the glade, replacing my sunglasses as I moved over to the stulos.
The cicadas roared. The sun was a hard core of light, a bright fist giving life and snatching it back, beating it down. Not too much. Not too much.
I wondered how it was for Tomaso, for the lot of them. It was all so different here. Instead of cork oaks and helm oaks and the tough Mediterranean macchia covering the hillsides, the hot dry summers and the mistral blowing cold on the coasts in winter, there was apple-box and forest red gums, humid nor’easters and cooling southerlies in hot, comparatively wet summers, chill winter southerlies as the year turned. Instead of moufflons, deer and Sardinian kites, there were kangaroos and rainbow bee-eaters, spotted pardalotes and goshawks. It was a different world, and yet a true place as well, as profound and abiding as anything in the old country, with the same uncaring reality, the same changing yet changeless constancy.
I didn’t need to stay. Tomaso’s message was clear enough: he may have helped build the tower, but—at least overtly—he knew nothing about the sign. It was a violation of this special place and it concerned him greatly. Carlo was right. Involving Tomaso had been a way of providing a resolution for our talk yesterday, so there would be enough hope, enough of a sense that things were being brought to a conclusion. But in real terms, it was a way of deflecting me, of putting me off a while longer.
All I knew was that I needed to be away. If there were some ulterior purpose for the meeting, it would become apparent in time. I’d had enough. And had enough in that other sense. Tonight there would be Gemma.
‘Carlo, Tomaso, I should be getting back to the house. That wind yesterday. There’s tidying up to do. It was good to see you again, Carlo.’ I shook Carlo’s hand. ‘Good to see you, Tomaso.’ I shook hands with the old man. ‘Arrivederci.’
‘Ciao, David,’ Tomaso said. �
�Piacere di conoscerla.’
Carlo echoed him. ‘Ciao, David. We shall speak, ne?’
‘Please. If you learn anything at all, I’d like to know.’
‘Sicuro. Of course.’
Then, instead of returning to the driveway, I crossed the glade and headed down through the forest.
It was probably a wrong decision, because I immediately felt that I was being watched, that Carlo and Tomaso had slipped away, had perhaps retreated into the tower to carry out their real business, and that now dark clowns watched from off in the green distances, rising up from behind burnt-out trees.
I couldn’t avoid it. So much had happened; there’d been so much talk, too much talk. All I could do was make quick time of it. Alert for snakes, I plunged through the bracken, navigated between closely packed trees, finding what seemed the most direct route back to the house. Let them talk; let them have their secrets. I would deal with this my way.
I hated rushing on in fear like this and stopped, made myself stand quietly in the thick bushland, making it mine, this tree, this spread of fern, this fallen log. I went to the log, checked that no snakes were using it for shelter, then sat, made myself sit and consider what was happening.
It was true. I had been the clown here, the puppet, manipulated, jerked this way and that, factored into schemes. Leaving Carlo and Tomaso now had been a new start: my first act of stepping away, a fresh repudiation of all that was forced and imposed. Perhaps Carlo had anticipated it, but I had made the decision.
Maybe it was therapy. Again, the thought was there. Maybe Jack and the others were staging this elaborate re-acclimatisation of David Leeton, bringing him in out of the darkness by putting him into a dark world of another kind. Aversion. Saturation. Rejection. Wasn’t that how it went? It made sense.
Well, no more. If Gemma wasn’t there this time, that would be it. I had savings, royalties coming in. I could go north, go west, be a writer anywhere, re-locate outside Jack’s ambit for a time. My agent wouldn’t care; my editor wouldn’t. Rollo Jaine would probably gain by it. The band would.
I sat on the log and watched the hot light filter down. The cicadas sounded far off again, somewhere over there. It was the right silence for the next ambush, the next appearance of a mamuthone or whatever else they had planned.
Yet it was odd. I’d been on the way to quarter-clown just thinking of what might be lurking close by. Now there was a peace. A true tranquillity had settled.
I was choosing this place, this moment, choosing to stay at Starbreak Fell. We had so much power, any one of us. The power to choose was always so powerful: to step away, to stay, to accept the reasons for staying—all choices, even when yoked to compromise and procrastination. Choosing until next time. Such power.
Then it came, came from the silence, made of the silence, perhaps from inside me as anywhere else. It was profound, vital and indescribably sinister. No, not sinister, complete, that was the word. It had a darkness to it, yes, but in the way that all complete things must have a dark edge or be lacking.
It was what you felt when you pulled over by the side of a country road on a deep summer’s day and stood listening, feeling winter and death drawn thin and sharp in all the burgeoning light and life, when you waited in a museum or art gallery when everyone had moved off a ways. It was what I felt now as I sat in this warm sun-littered spot and waited.
Apposite night. Incipient darkness. What Shakespeare had talked about: making midnight day and noontide night. This was the vivid other. Eloquent with what else it gave—deep down in the self. Read as fear and loss but more. Completeness. I was on Prospero’s island surrounded by Calibans, tired sad monsters laden with bells, tormented by Mirandas, at least one, teased by countless Ariels and, yes, by the edge of greatest knowing.
All that was there with the fear, in the fear. Such appropriate fear.
All the result of chemicals, I knew. All wrought by neurotransmitters sorting, shifting, bringing forth their payloads: feelings and perceptions, making whatever was for the self camera to record.
I stood and pushed through the ferns, continued down towards the house, certain that whatever happened now would be according to my choices. I would be as reactive and mercurial, as elusive, ruthless and absolute as the chemicals that determined fright and rapture—what was Carlo’s word: athesauriston?
There were no ambushes. No clowns stood off in the gloom. And just to be sure I was in the world, I didn’t slip under the electrified cattle fence. I jumped the thin white strand, then turned and touched it deliberately. The jolt was like a brutal corking of the arm, a sharp blow with a stick, but it felt good, felt real. Right then, just then, it put me four-square in the world I was choosing.
I had jaffles for lunch: my parents’ name for toasted sandwiches from a sandwich maker, an old Aussie childhood favourite. Moving about the kitchen, I realised what my next step with Gemma would be. I needed to see Raina, Raina who was always over in Lismore, always off visiting friends whenever I visited by day. While Carlo recited his spiels, embroidered all sorts of things so richly into our lives, what was Raina doing, Raina with her picnics and her fear of the tower, her unfailing support and her marvellous cooking? She was staying apart, being on hand only to reassure Carlo and set the cat among the local pigeons by mentioning someone named Zoe. But what else?
A women’s mystery, Carlo had said, wanting me to know that. Dionysos was brought to Athens by women, why not brought here too? That meant Raina’s fear of the tower, her being unwell when we found the petroglyph, might all be a ruse. Though perhaps the Night Sun glyph had surprised her as well; I had to allow the possibility. What else could it mean—not in itself, but for them? That was the real issue here.
But how to speak with Raina without Carlo being present? I recalled how cleverly I’d been manoeuvred out of being alone with her when we’d first found the carving. All I could think of was a letter left in the mailbox. I grabbed a page from the printer and wrote a quick note.
Dear Raina,
I’d like to talk with you privately about Gemma. I need a woman’s advice. It’s important. Please phone.
David
It was innocent enough. No mention of the tower or Dionysos. If she showed it to Carlo, or if he were present when she phoned, I’d have the perfect excuse to request a private meeting. No postmark, but that made it look hand-delivered in the usual rural way. It was the best tactic I could think of.
I worked through the afternoon, first on the Mind Fields piece, then on some new lyrics, Breakheart Moon and Reaper’s Treat, finally on the novel. The morning’s mood provided new energy for all of them.
At 6:20, I made myself a snack, then answered emails and watched television. When I set off to see Gemma at 8:52, I pulled over near the Risis’ front gate and left the envelope in the mailbox. Then I continued on into Kyogle.
There were lights on this time, or rather soft candle flames flickering behind insect screens in the open windows. Mood lighting.
When I knocked, Gemma answered almost immediately.
‘Hi. Perfect timing. I just got home. Come in.’
‘Thanks, Gemma. It’s good to see you.’
She took the bottle of wine I handed her and closed the door behind me.
It was happening. I was seeing her flat at last. The large living room had bookcases along two walls, stuffed with books and magazines, with lots of interesting objects on the shelves and atop cupboards. A comfortable, well-used lounge suite covered in cushions stood before a richly coloured rug, quite worn in places but obviously much-loved. There was a kitchen to one side, with a wooden kitchen table and chairs by one window, then a door to what was probably the main bedroom. A short hall led off to the bathroom and a laundry.
Next to a candle in a small ceramic holder on the kitchen table was a half-empty bottle of wine and two glasses.
‘Let’s sit over here,’ Gemma said, indicating the table rather than the sofa and armchairs. ‘You can do the honours.’
We sat across from each other, just as we would in a restaurant. It did seem like that, with the soft lighting and the wine, and I realised that it was the best way to proceed. I removed the cork and poured us each a glass of chardonnay.
‘Thanks for this, Gemma,’ I said, handing her a glass. We raised them in a silent toast, each took a sip, then set them down to the side, away from our hands. It seemed we both wanted our senses undulled.
I regarded the large comfortable room, liking the Matisse print above the pleasantly cluttered bookshelves, and the two Rick Amor prints on the wall opposite, even approving of the fridge magnets and the dishes in the rack by the sink. They were all parts of a busy person’s world. ‘Did you have to put much away?’
‘Not at all. No masks. No clowns. Mr Baggins is in the bedroom; he’s a teddy bear. There are some figurines over there, but I doubt they’ll harm you much. I hope not anyway.’
‘Thanks.’
We small-talked then, Gemma about work and Melanie’s accident the night before, me about my novel and how the song lyrics were coming along. It was good to do, so normal, so easy considering. I didn’t want to mention Madame Sew or discuss private horrors. This was what I needed. The rest was for later, for another time. Curtains stirred in the gentle breeze. Crickets chirruped. Now and then there came the sound of traffic on Summerland Way. After ten, fifteen minutes at it, the conversation inevitably led back to our meeting in the car on Thursday evening. But before I could broach the subject, Gemma anticipated me.
‘Please don’t ask about Zoe,’ she said. ‘Not tonight. Please. Keep it easy for now.’
‘All right. But since I want to protect this, you probably should do most of the talking.’
Clowns At Midnight Page 23