I’d grown cold. ‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.’
‘Why ever not? You and Darcy are friends, aren’t you? Patrick said the two of you think so much alike.’
‘Where the show’s concerned, we do.’
My negative tone seemed not to trouble her; or perhaps she didn’t notice it. ‘He’s opened up whole new understandings for Patrick and me. Mysteries.’ She capitalised the word.
‘Maybe you’d be safer with the Church’s mysteries.’
My tone had been one of mild sarcasm; but she took me seriously.
‘You do sound a prim Catholic. I thought you gave all that up long ago.’ It was her free spirit tone, now. ‘What’s the Church ever given us? I’ve had the Micks, darling, they’ve brought me nothing but guilt and misery. You shouldn’t be critical of Darcy, he really respects you.’ Her voice sank again, thrillingly serious, almost longing. ‘And he approves of us, darling, you and me. Do you know he did our horoscopes, and they matched perfectly? What do you think of that?’
‘I don’t believe in astrology.’ I had the sensation of going down in a fast lift; my body betrayed me, when my true attitude was contempt.
‘You’ve become awfully rigid, haven’t you? I’m sorry, Richard, I shouldn’t say these things, I know. You’re devoted to your Continental wife — but is she devoted to you? It’s not very fair, the display she puts on with Brian Brady, is it?’
I said nothing, and she sighed.
‘Well, that’s your affair — but don’t be hostile to Darcy; he’s really changing our lives.’
‘You’d better be careful he doesn’t change them too much.’ The iron bands were around my head again; I wanted to hang up the phone. I would, in a few more moments.
But she went on as though I hadn’t spoken. ‘He’s showing us ways to be free from repression and guilt. He’s making us see how many paths lead to the centre.’
She sounded like a born-again Christian quoting from Scripture; from the faint slur in her speech, I guessed that she’d been drinking sherry, as she did almost every afternoon.
‘I’ve learned to love the physical world, through talking to Darcy. The invisible forces in the earth. I feel them all around me.’ She gave a small, excited laugh. ‘He told us the other night that the way to make contact with the earth-spirit was to go into the garden naked, and sit on the ground in a circle holding hands. We did — the four of us. But only in our bathing suits, I’m afraid; I insisted on that. I couldn’t have everyone starkers, with Fiona there. We sat under the tamarisk, with the moon on the Harbour, and we felt this incredible power from the earth go through our bodies — almost frightening. Patrick said it was like being back on Aegina, where the old earth-spirits are close.’
Darcy had been moving quickly with his games, I thought; now he was showing Deirdre and Patrick a way to make their own games permissible. Did it have to concern me? I decided that it didn’t.
She went on, her voice becoming quaintly and incongruously authoritative. Already, with Dillon only dead a week, it was a rich woman’s authority: one who was free to pursue whatever whims she chose, and to have others approve. ‘It’s known as the ecstasy of the Goddess. Darcy says only a few people have the talent for it, and that I’m one of them. He calls me Daeira. Next time he comes, he’s bringing some magic mushrooms. If we eat them, we’ll have actual visions, he says. I’m not sure that I’ll risk that, or that Patrick will either, although Darcy says it’s safe. He’s incredibly pagan, isn’t he? A Dionysiac. Did he really leave school at fourteen?’
When she finally went off the phone, I sat thinking. I believe I had some vague sense of disaster, that afternoon, but I didn’t take it seriously; one seldom does. Looked at objectively, the situation was far more comic than disastrous. There was no one like an ex-Catholic for responding to the call of other mysteries, any mysteries; and I glimpsed what was happening. The circle had been formed; the hands had been joined; the little gate had been opened. The sly lane between the worlds stretched away: empty, twilit, and irresistible, leading back to Eleusis, saying: Come.
She and Patrick were about to be free; or so they thought. Their money would make this freedom enormous, leading them towards limits that few ever crossed. What mightn’t they buy, in the strange old bazaars of the spirit? Darcy would become their guru; they would join the new tribe who wandered in search of cut-price revelations: instant deities and devils, ingested through pills or plants. She could be the daughter of Oceanus; Patrick could be the child-god: why not?
But it was now that Burr began to become alarming.
Mass occultism was only just beginning in that year, and Darcy was one of the first through the door; something of an achievement for a Tasmanian provincial, and at first it intrigued people.
But combined with his will and ceaseless ambition, it also began to worry them. Once the notion is established that someone is dedicated to a strange set of systems, ease is no longer possible, and a chain reaction begins. There were people now who were actually afraid of Darcy.
When we’d begun the first series of Rymers programmes, his relations with the technicians had been good; they’d respected and consulted him. But he was becoming more and more perfectionist; it began to be said that he couldn’t be crossed, and that he flew into rages. Then he conceived the notion that Len Green, the chief sound tech, was refusing to get the balance he wanted in certain songs.
Len was more sour and obtuse than self-opinionated, and he was plainly out of his depth with Darcy’s demands. No doubt Green was irritating and obstructive; but I began to be really concerned when I passed the door of the empty studio one evening, and saw them talking together.
Len was standing against the wall of the control-room, and Darcy was frankly bullying him. Talking hard into the tech’s face, he seemed on the verge of violence; a busy nerve jumped in his cheek, and he clenched and unclenched his big hands. Len had paled; and this was plainly caused by fear, not anger. Seeing me, Darcy stopped and walked away.
But later, Green came to me and complained. Burr had made threats to him, he said, and if it happened again, he’d ask to be taken off the show.
‘That bloke’s mad,’ Len said. ‘I ought to report threats like that to the union — or else the cops.’ His fingers were shaking as he lit a cigarette.
I tried to defuse it; I asked what sort of threats Darcy had actually made; but now Len became evasive and sullen. He didn’t want to press it, he said, he just wanted me to make Darcy stop; and I had the impression that he was still frightened.
A week later, he managed to get rostered elsewhere. This was unusual. Technicians were usually intimidated by no one, their union being a strong one; we all trod carefully with them.
I spoke to Darcy about it; but he smiled dismissively. ‘Doesn’t give us any more trouble, does he?’ he said. ‘He’s gone, right? I can’t stand idiots. This show’s got to be perfect.’
He seemed to me lately to look unwell; to have lost weight and become more sallow, with dark shadows under his eyes. He was plainly under a tension which swung him in some rhythm between elation and irritability: a pattern of obsession. I imagined that this revolved around the hopes he’d pinned on the IRC release of the LP in Britain, and above all on the talent scout on his way from London.
The album was out in Australia now, and one of the tracks — ‘Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight’ — had become so popular on radio, despite its esoteric nature, that it looked like becoming a hit. The new breed of hippies — mysteriously exact reproductions from originals in California — were said to be finding hidden meanings in the ballad, which were only fully apprehended if it was listened to while smoking grass. But none of this satisfied Darcy. All that mattered now was the marvellous envoy from the northern hemisphere: the man who had the power to transport the Rymers to that zone where ultimate fame was possible, instead of this provincial miniature of it — but who could also shut the door and deny it. Local success hadn’t brought Burr contentment,
but its opposite; he was tantalised constantly by his dream of swinging London, the great ancestral metropolis which had lately become a powerhouse of pleasure, resonating to the music of the Beatles: that group who were more than a group, who breathed an air of myth.
Would the Rymers breathe it too? Becoming possible, the dream grew tormenting; all his longing was focused there, and gave him no rest.
Another week went by; we were into March now, with only two more shows to record, and the man from the International Recording Company was due in two more weeks. I was curious to know whether Darcy had moved out to the Dillon house as a permanent lodger; I gathered he spent more and more time there with Patrick, but hadn’t yet moved in. Meanwhile, Brian Brady had quit the flat in Victoria Street, and had taken an expensive bachelor apartment in a tower in Elizabeth Bay. He could afford this now, he said; and Victoria Street was dreary. But I sensed that there were other reasons for his move, related to Darcy.
Usually, Brian wouldn’t talk much about Burr; but sitting with Katrin and me in our living-room one evening, just after he’d moved, he did give some hints. He was fairly drunk that night, and probably said more than he intended.
‘I didn’t like the set-up there any more,’ he said; and he dwelt on the mess the flat was in — all except for Darcy’s room, which was off limits.
‘He’s got these little teenage girls coming in and out all the time,’ he said. ‘They camp there in droves, as if it’s their bloody home. It is their home, they reckon. Some of them can’t be older than sixteen, and Darcy gives them pot. He’ll get busted, some day, and I don’t want to be there when it happens. One of them’s in love with him. He calls her Pipsqueak.’
We both questioned him. What made the girls move in there? What attracted them? Was it the music — the glamour of the Rymers?
Brian shifted restlessly, not wanting to pursue it, and stirred the coffee Katrin had made him. ‘Most of them are in trouble in some way, and they reckon Darcy’s got all the answers,’ he said. ‘They’re like bloody disciples. You know how he is. He psychs them out. He keeps harping on things and they believe him. He calls up spirits for them, and you can feel the spirits hanging about the flat all the time, now. In corners of the rooms. It was getting on my nerves.’
Katrin and I looked at each other, as though we were humouring a child. Like Darcy, Brian appeared unwell, lately; he seemed thin, sallow and strained, and had developed a habit of clenching and unclenching his hands that was new. He was doing it now.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said. ‘The other night I saw a face in the mirror.’
I laughed. ‘Anyone we know?’
But he didn’t seem to notice my amusement. ‘I don’t know who it was. It wasn’t clear. I’d cut myself shaving, and I looked into the mirror in the living-room to dab at the cut. I was by myself; just on my way out. And I saw two reflections; another one besides mine. There was a bloke standing behind me. But when I turned around, he’d gone.’
‘Too much grog and not enough sleep,’ I said.
‘That’s right. You weren’t yourself,’ Katrin assured him. Moving out to the kitchen, she reached from behind Brady’s chair as she passed and straightened the collar of his rumpled jeans jacket; a small, wifely action that brought all my doubts back with a sickly rush. And yet it could have been seen as merely maternal.
Patrick now had a second home, I gathered; he spent more and more of his time at Victoria Street. I seldom went there, lately; but one evening after work I called to leave Darcy a script, and received a glimpse of his new household.
The front door was opened by a girl in the costume of the folk-music groupie: black shirt, long red corduroy skirt, wooden beads, bare feet. She was perhaps seventeen — skinny, small-boned and sandy, with quizzical, empty grey eyes which were not in focus, and a small mouth turned down in a bitter U-shape. I guessed that this was Pipsqueak. A now-familiar smell came to me; she held a joint of marijuana in her right hand, suspending it at shoulder-height like a dart.
I asked for Burr, but she said nothing; instead she examined me with contempt; I wasn’t even sure she saw me properly, and I wondered if it was only pot she was using. When she finally answered, her voice was piping and scornful: a weak flute. ‘Who wants him?’
I told her, and she smiled. ‘Oh, the producer! The boss man! Darcy’s not here.’
‘Come in, Dick.’ It was Patrick’s voice, calling from the living-room.
He greeted me from a couch where he lay smoking a joint of his own, clad in a long cheesecloth shirt and jeans. On him, this looked like fancy dress; he belonged in tweeds or a suit. ‘Darcy’ll be back soon,’ he said, and I found myself a chair.
The girl sat cross-legged on the stained carpet, picking at the loose skin on her bare foot, drawing on her joint and squinting. Once she held it out to me, but I refused.
‘Square,’ she said, and appeared to retreat into a trance.
‘Dick never smokes it,’ Patrick said respectfully. ‘You really should try,’ he told me. ‘It does make everything simple and clear. I’ve understood myself, now, as well as people I care about.’
A curious conversation followed between the two of us, while Pipsqueak ignored us. He wanted, like Deirdre, to talk about Darcy’s visions; he had the blank, joyful expression of the convert, and no cynical comments of mine would stop him: he looked at me with holy forgiveness and love, his soul made beatific by the dope. Much of it I’ve now forgotten, but fragments remain.
‘There’s a new age dawning this year,’ he told me. ‘An old cycle’s ending and a new one begins, in 1966. Did you know that, Dick? The earth-forces will come into their own, and people will be liberated.’
He went on expounding his second-hand insights, while I paid them little attention. The year’s numerological and astrological significance was his main theme, but I’ve forgotten the details. A new religion was to be born, it appeared, and Darcy Burr was one of those chosen ones who had grasped it.
When I smiled, Patrick came as close as he’d ever done to being indignant. ‘It’s true, Richard, don’t laugh. Darcy says Australia’s especially suited to the new religion. There are places of power in the desert where it can all be understood, where the forces reveal themselves. Darcy’s going to take us on a trip there, when the show’s all done. He knows the places to look for, out near Alice Springs.’
I smiled at the idea of Burr leading his followers into the desert, but Patrick leaned forward earnestly, propped on one elbow. ‘No, but why not here, Dick? Why not here, among these pagan rocks?’ I imagined he was quoting; probably from Burr.
‘Right,’ Pipsqueak said suddenly, and nodded. ‘Right. Darcy knows.’ She looked at me now, and seemed actually to see me. ‘Darcy’s our father,’ she said. ‘He takes us to the circle between the worlds.’
‘How?’ I asked. ‘By dropping acid?’
The emptiness of her eyes became hostile. ‘You think you’re in charge of the Rymers, don’t you, boss-man? It’s Darcy who’s in charge. He’s in charge of everything.’
Patrick looked faintly embarrassed. ‘Pipsqueak’s awfully stoned,’ he explained. ‘She worships Darcy.’
‘Tell him I called,’ I said.
It was during those weeks that my repeated nightmares began.
Little of their content comes back now, and it’s hard to account for the extremity of fear they created during sleep, except to say that a true fear hid at their centre: the dread of losing Katrin which I couldn’t even voice, let alone justify.
Somehow this had now been increased because of my talk with Darcy on the steps; and it perhaps explains why he stood at the centre of the whole series of nightmares. But it doesn’t explain their peculiar nature.
Even now, I puzzle over the strength of the conviction I developed that these weren’t normal dreams; that Burr was somehow sending them to me, telegraphing them into my sleeping brain from the flat in Victoria Street. This notion, ridiculous though I knew it to be, would not be d
ismissed at the time; and perhaps it took its force from the fact that Darcy addressed me directly in the dreams — in tones which alternated between cajoling and frank bullying.
He wasn’t in the forefront of the action; instead he commented on it for me, like the narrator of one of my radio productions. Yet I felt that the action was somehow his to control. He usually smiled, but sometimes he frowned; and I was afraid of this frown in a way I’d certainly never been in waking life. I felt that the dream Darcy was the true one, not the one I met by day; and his frown threatened my whole being. It faced me with dissolution; with the loss of myself, as well as Katrin. I was sinking, and he talked and talked; he never stopped talking, and his commentary created all my terrors and temptations.
The temptations concerned Deirdre Dillon. She appeared in the dreams as often as Katrin and Brian did, and at the heart of each nightmare Burr was assuring me I belonged with Deirdre, not with Katrin, and that I’d already made my choice.
Deirdre stood naked in the bathroom window at Greystones, looking out at me with a light, hard gaze, beautiful as any Renaissance divinity in Karl Miller’s books. ‘I haven’t a stitch on, darling.’ I’d been hearing her voice for some time, mingled with Burr’s talk; and now I knew that while I’d watched her, he’d watched me. My longing became nausea then; a nausea quickly transformed into dread. Desire and dread were the same, because what I felt was already known to Burr. I was guilty, and he would make me pay; and all the time Katrin and Brian looked at me with sad understanding from a distance, standing together decently, in their Rymers’ costumes. These two belonged together, I was told; I didn’t deserve Katrin’s vigour, her optimism, her health. She looked at me with tragic regret.
But Brady smiled. He’d raided me as he’d once done in Trent Street — taking my wife with his old, cheerful casualness, as though it were no great thing. If Deirdre had been my waking dream, Brian, I saw now, was Katrin’s: he was Geza Lukacs, come back in a new guise.
The panic one feels in nightmare is rarely in proportion to the facts it contains; sometimes, on waking, one can see no reason for the horror at all. This, despite the seriousness of the issues tormenting me, was my case. Little in the facts of the dreams could explain the sheer degree of their terror and oppression, or my certainty that I was lost beyond recovery. When I was fortunate enough to wake, finding Katrin asleep beside me, I would hold her until her body-warmth dispelled the dream’s iron truth.
The Doubleman Page 31