She soon lost interest and went to reconnoiter the veranda. She found Tanya sitting on an upended wooden keg grinding some sort of yellow-brown substance to a powder in a large stone mortar. There were a dozen tin cans lined up in front of her. Dinah pulled up a chair and watched. As each batch was pulverized, Tanya funneled it into an empty can, dropped a fresh clump of the stuff into her mortar and began working her pestle.
“What is that?”
“Limonite oxide.”
The mineralogical exactitude took Dinah aback. “What’s it for?”
“It’s ochre.”
“For paint, you mean?”
Tanya’s snort was obviously Aboriginal for duh.
Dinah laughed. “Are you an artist?”
“I find the ants’ nests and dig out the limonite for the ones that paint. Not much money, but not that much work either.”
“My brother’s an artist, but I guess you know that already.”
“Hmmph.”
Dinah considered explaining that the work currently on Lucien’s easel wasn’t nearly as good as the rest of his work, but thought better of it. Tanya wouldn’t have occasion to view Lucien’s other work and maybe her contempt had more to do with the subject matter of the piece than the style or execution. Taipan was, after all, one of Tanya’s ancestors and a god, to boot. Who knew how much leeway she’d grant to a foreigner to portray him?
The sun felt warm and reenergizing. Dinah shaded her eyes and gazed across the untended yard at the encroaching woods, no doubt teeming with ancestral fauna. Wombats and bandicoots, Tasmanian devils and deadly vipers. And painted trees. “What are those red and yellow bands on the trees about, Tanya? Is it part of some Aboriginal…” she thought twice and edited the word superstition…“tradition?”
“Wouldn’t mean anything to you.”
Ooh-kay. From the moment she slopped the Charleston bisque into the bowls last night, Tanya had made it plain that sociability was not her nature and food service was not her first love. Dinah held neither of these aversions against her. She closed her eyes, turned her face to the sun and listened to a medley of unfamiliar birdsong and the rhythmic grating of Tanya’s pestle. It took her back to her childhood, sitting beside her Seminole grandmother on her ramshackle back porch beside the Okefenokee as she shelled beans or wove reeds and reminisced about her childhood on the Big Cypress Reservation. There was a beauty in that placid, simple way of life. Of course, it would bore anyone under the age of ninety wild.
Tanya didn’t look much past fifty, but there was an intimation of antiquity about her, as if she’d been misplaced in Time. Perhaps it was her serenity. She was a lot more serene grinding limonite oxide than she was cooking and serving.
Dinah’s curiosity finally got the better of her and she tried to draw her out. “Will you stay on with Mack or is this a temporary position?”
Tanya didn’t deign to respond.
Dinah tried again. “I worked for a caterer once, drudging all day in a hot kitchen. It was miserable. I’d rather work outside in the fresh air anytime.”
Still no comeback.
“It must be a good feeling to know you provide the artists with their colors. It makes what they paint partly your creation.”
“Don’t be a nong.” She whanged her pestle on the side of the mortar a few times and surprisingly, her stolid face cracked into a smile. “I’m the yellows.”
Dinah felt the thrill of conquest. She’d broken the ice. “You’re a whole spectrum of colors—yellow to brown to orange to red. The artists would be lost without you.”
“Not all of them use the true ochre.”
“Still, the demand must be high. So many people in the Territory are artists.”
“Not many jobs around. People need money. Most do woodcarving or painting or some kind of art. Some I could name take advantage. Commerce men. They buy cheap and sell high to rich tourists who don’t know what they’re looking at.”
With the frame of reference between them this small, naming names wasn’t necessary. Dinah let a minute go by. “Mack certainly has a beautiful collection of paintings.”
“Hmmph.”
Was that a judgment on his principles or his taste? Or was hmmph just a verbal tic, no more pejorative than I hear you? Whatever it meant, Tanya didn’t explain.
Dinah persevered. “It’s terrible that he was taken away from his mother and deprived of his Aboriginal heritage, but he seems dedicated to learning everything he can about the culture and reintegrating himself into the community.”
Tanya emptied the last of the ochre into a can, stood up and brushed off her apron. “If you’re hungry, there’s bread in the pantry and cheese in the refrigerator. I got no time to cook for you special. Have to start dinner soon as Mack and the lady come back from town with the groceries. Soup, two kinds of fish, beef in red wine, some kind of meringue pie and she’ll want it all poshed up and garnished with flowers and leaves. Too much to remember and people in and out all the time. The old man wanting olives for his martinis, the cripple wanting a poultice for his leg. Always somebody wanting something.”
Neesha’s insistence on four-course, gourmet dinners mystified Dinah as much as it aggravated Tanya. Much as he loved his martinis, Cleon had always been a meat-and-potatoes, no-frills kind of eater and the rest of the family should have gotten its fill of haute cuisine in Sydney. But Neesha had been living in Atlanta unconstrained by Cleon’s likes and dislikes for the last six months. She fawned and kowtowed to him still, but maybe these banquets were a passive-aggressive statement that she intended to spread her wings when he was gone and do as she pleased.
The thing that would please Dinah right now was a heart-to-heart with Lucien. “Did Lucien and Eddie go into Katherine, too?”
“Them, the old man, the doctor. They all went. Wendell took my nephew, Victor, with him and the young ones. Victor sees them spending money like water, he’ll think we should be able to do the same. He’ll come home wanting an iPod and forget who he is.”
Dinah felt a stab of guilt. Tanya had no rich relatives to mooch off, no one to hit up for a loan, no inheritance to hope for. It put Dinah’s troubles in perspective. She resolved to stop sniveling about her little setbacks and be thankful she didn’t have to raid ants’ nests or bake meringue pies to make ends meet.
Chapter Twelve
Bored and at loose ends, Dinah hung around on the veranda thinking about the many twenty-first century amenities, diversions, and time killers not on the menu of services at Crow Hill. She couldn’t zone out in front of a mindless soap opera because there was no TV. She couldn’t pop around the corner to a Baskin Robbins and choose from 31 flavors of brain freeze. She couldn’t read a newspaper or surf the Net or go window-shopping. There was a deck of cards on the bar, but she was too antsy for solitaire. She should go for a jog and work off some of her pent-up nervous energy, but the sun was too hot.
She kicked around the backyard for a few minutes, on the qui vive for death adders, and had a closer look at the colorful bands painted on the trees at the edge of the woods. In Native American mythologies, trees were sometimes regarded as ladders to the Sky World. She’d have to ask Mack if there was a similar belief among the Aborigines.
Around the side of the house, partially hidden by brush and trees, she spotted a green shed and went to investigate. The door was padlocked. There was one window, but it had been boarded up. Next to the shed, someone had stacked a hodgepodge of empty wine crates bearing the names of various Australian wineries. Balthazar, Kellermeister, VineCrest. The ones on the ground looked as if they were about to disintegrate. There was an old tabletop, also disintegrating, and a large metal dumpster.
Archaeologists loved middens. You could learn a lot about people by the things they threw away. Mack’s dumpster didn’t rank up there with the middens of ancient Mesopotamia, but it didn’t stink and Dinah’s curiosity was whetted. Using a stick to lift the dumpster’s lid, she stood on on
e of the sturdier wine crates and peered inside.
She pushed a raggedy cotton throw rug out of the way and dug among the discarded artifacts. A broken cornice, a dried-out bucket of paint, a small lamp in the shape of Michelangelo’s David with a risqué on-off switch, an empty economy size box of Omo Laundry Detergent. If there was a washing machine hidden away in the shed, she’d ask Mack for a cup of Omo and the key. This was probably the detritus of a serious housecleaning as Mack rushed to get ready for his first guests.
Stuffed around the sides was a miscellany of old magazines and newspapers. Since her arrival, she’d seen no evidence of mail delivery to the lodge. She pulled out a not-too-moldy issue of the Northern Territory News and noted the label. It was addressed to Mack at a post office box in Katherine. There were also quite a few issues of the Katherine Times. She sat down on her wine crate, and dipped into the news that had transpired in the Top End over the last few weeks. Politics, bush fires, power outages. Queensland was teed off at the Top End for letting droves of wild swamp buffalo range into its territory. The Top End was teed off at Queensland for letting a scourge of toxic cane toads overspread its territory.
A report of a suspicious death caught her eye. A young woman had been found dead in her home and her boyfriend was being detained for questioning. But the police wouldn’t name the community or the woman “because of cultural reasons.” Dinah presumed that the culture in question was the Aboriginal culture. Was the Times bending over backwards to avoid any imputation that the community was violent or unsafe or did Aboriginal culture inhibit the mention of death? Mack hadn’t been inhibited from talking about the Melville Island murder, but then he was a Brit. His cultural sensitivities weren’t so easily bruised. From what he’d said, there’d been reams of stories about that murder. Of course, the victim was also a Brit and a newspaperman, besides.
With so much coverage, surely one of these papers would have something about the murder. She began to sort through the stack of papers, skimming the front pages for anything about Melville Island. When she finished with one stack, she went back into the dumpster for another. Her fingers were black and her butt tired of the wine crate, but finally she hit pay dirt.
NO LEADS, NO ARRESTS,
NO SUSPECTS IN JOURNALIST’S MURDER
A full week following the discovery of the body of noted British journalist Bryce Hambrick on an unfrequented beach on Melville Island, the police have found no witnesses and no evidence. Without either, hopes of solving the crime dim with each passing day. The police are asking the public to come forward with any information they may have concerning Mr. Hambrick, who had no permission to be on the island.
There have been many rumors about why Mr. Hambrick was murdered. One NT politician has advanced the idea that Hambrick was one of the thousands of commercial and industrial spies working throughout Australia for Beijing and Moscow and that his murder was the work of foreign agents. The minister has submitted a letter to both the Chinese and Russian Consulate-Generals in Sydney demanding full disclosure.
Others in government and the media blame extreme elements of the conservation movement. Mr. Hambrick was a harsh critic of environmental activists and, in some quarters, that does for a motive. There have been numerous instances of ecotage in recent years, including the sugaring of trucks by groups opposed to logging, and damage and destruction to fishing boats and nets by groups opposed to the use of seines. Environmentalists counter that unsubstantiated claims of ecotage by industry officials and politicians are rubbish disseminated to incite violence against lawful protesters.
Dinah thought, the poor man’s murder has spawned a national guessing game. There were several other stories about the murder, one or two with photographs of Hambrick. He looked to be in the neighborhood of forty, with a pudgy face, a cumulus of pale, flyaway hair, and pronounced laugh lines around the mouth. Not the staid, censorious Brit she’d imagined.
She stood up and tossed the newspapers back into the dumpster. She was about to close the lid when she noticed a painted pole like the burial poles in Mack’s library. She pulled it out and turned it around and around in her hands. It looked as if it had been whittled by a novice and the painting was careless and only half-finished.
Chapter Thirteen
As the sun dipped behind the enclosing wall of trees, a caravan of dusty cars rolled up in front of the lodge. Dinah looked up from her sixth game of solitaire, which she’d laid out on an itsy-bitsy table on the itsy-bitsy front porch. Wendell, Neesha, the twins and the Aboriginal boy she’d seen lock-picking with Thad piled out of the first car. No doubt this was Tanya’s nephew, Victor. The kids’ hair was wet and the outline of their damp swimsuits showed under their clothes. Thad and K.D. shoved each other and traded insults. Each carried a shopping bag. Victor walked behind them cradling a bag emblazoned “Wizard of Oz Videotronix.” His euphoric smile proclaimed that he was now Podded up or otherwise on his way to becoming a typical adolescent cyborg. Tanya could blame Wen if Victor coveted more expensive toys in the future.
Neesha wore a beige linen pantsuit, an Hermes scarf tied under her chin, and huge, retro-chic white sunglasses. She had a sort of Jackie Kennedy-fleeing-the-paparazzi apprehensiveness about her.
Mack got out of the second car and called out to Victor to help him unload several sacks of groceries and boxes of wine. Victor’s smile drooped. He entrusted his prize to Thad and sulked off to do the servant thing as Neesha and the privileged twins continued into the house.
“What a retard,” sneered Thad, jostling Dinah out of his way. “Like a stupid camera phone is so cool it’s off the chain.”
Dinah sighed. Loathing Thad had been so satisfying before she found out his problems had a clinical cause. As she watched him flaunt his faux-faded, designer-ripped, Abercrombie-jeaned ass up the stairs, she decided that some prejudices were worth the extra guilt.
K.D. and Neesha jogged up onto the porch. Dinah held open the door and K.D. charged in toward the kitchen. Neesha tipped Dinah a small, automatic smile and hurried after K.D.
“Where’s Cantoo?” cried K.D. accusingly. An outbreak of frenetic yipping ensued. “Oh, no! How could you keep her penned up in there all day?”
Dinah was still standing against the open front door as Cantoo spurted outside and disappeared around the side of the house in the tall grass.
K. D. charged out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Before the kitchen door banged shut, Neesha wailed, “Oh, Tanya, you’ve curdled the remoulade!”
Dinah’s heart went out to Tanya, but she didn’t have the stomach or the standing to get between the chatelaine and her cook.
Alone in the third car, Margaret alighted with a testy hauteur and called out to Wendell. He went back to her and they swapped what seemed to be divergent views. He followed her into the house with an uneasy diffidence, as if fearful she might turn and lob a grenade.
“You were smart to stay here,” Margaret said as she swept past Dinah. Over her shoulder, she said, “Wendell, I’d like to see you in my room. Now.”
Wendell’s face was frozen and impassive. He gave Dinah a curt nod and followed his mother meekly up the stairs.
Dinah continued to hold the door open for Mack and Victor as they schlepped in the groceries. She wondered if she should add “doorman” to her resumé.
Mack was chipper and full of pleasantries. “G’day, Dinah. Beautiful day to lay back and bask in the sunshine, isn’t it?”
“Lovely, so long as a cool drink is within reach.”
“It’s normally much cooler at this time of year. After all my years in London, I’m still getting used to calling June winter.” He scurried off to the kitchen after Victor.
Cleon and Dr. Fisher sat talking together in the fourth car. Neither looked as if he were enjoying the fellowship. After a minute or so, the doctor got out and walked toward the house carrying an old-fashioned medical bag. It must have been weighted with rocks because he listed to the side like a
mast in a storm. Cleon followed, head down as if lost in thought.
Dinah couldn’t hack another of the doctor’s sermons on death and, after Cleon’s surliness last night, she had no desire to cross his path before she had to. She crept inside, ducked into the great room, and hid behind the bar, remembering too late Cleon’s proclivity for gin.
He strode into the room and stepped behind the bar. “What’re you doin’?”
She grabbed an ice bucket off a shelf. “Getting some ice.”
He reached for the cocktail shaker. “Well, you’re just the gal I want to see.”
“Why’s that? Am I on your list of people in line for a whuppin’ today?”
“Naw. What makes you think that?” He was all surprised innocence.
Now that she’d admitted to herself that she wanted something from him, it was hard to be completely artless. But she couldn’t bring herself to brown-nose or act as if his bullying behavior was hunky-dory. “You weren’t exactly adorable last night, Uncle Cleon. You should be shoring up relationships with your children, not tearing them down.”
“I know, I know. The boys and I got crosswise of each other, but we’ll work things out in the next day or so. It ain’t no biggie. Now let’s you and me mix ourselves some refreshment and go upstairs. I got somethin’ to show you.”
“I was waiting for Lucien. Where is he?”
“Out vulturin’ up the culture, I expect. Dez removed the catheter and changed the dressin’ on his leg this mornin’ and I ain’t seen hide nor hair of him since.” He sprayed a fine mist of Vermouth into the cocktail shaker, added ice, emptied in a pint of gin and shook twice. “You fetch the glasses and that jar of olives there.”
Holding the shaker in front of him like a lantern, he propelled her upstairs to the second floor. He led her down the hall to a numberless room, adjacent to the room she’d seen Thad and Victor burgle, and opened the door. He turned on the overhead light and pushed aside the flowery chintz curtains over the window. She looked around and again thought, why here? The room was larger than hers or Lucien’s, but a far cry from luxe. The bedspread was a tatty blue, the walls a dingy gray, and the furniture oppressively dark and grimy. On the floor next to the bed was a newspaper and a biography of Mark Twain with the edge of a letter poking out. She wondered if it was her mother’s farewell letter.
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