Mad Men, Bad Girls

by Maggie Groff

  ‘Serene Cloud is the chap on the Bacchus Rising website,’ I said, thinking aloud. ‘The one who transfuses things with the supreme profluence of Bacchus.’

  ‘Bearer of the Herald,’ Marcia murmured.

  The flyer advertised a weekend ‘Infinite Pathways to Light’ retreat at Bacchus Rising this coming Saturday. For a thousand dollars one could feel the unconditional love from the Mystic Master, reach a higher cosmic plateau and experience enhanced self-esteem and fulfilment of pure desires through meditation, lectures, thought transference, group therapy, light therapy, sound baths and readings. No address was given, but a name—Titania Pearl—and a mobile phone number were provided for bookings.

  ‘I think it’s him. Do you think it’s him?’ Marcia said, holding the flyer up next to the images of Heavenly Brother Excalibur on the computer screen.

  I nodded. ‘The retreat is an avenue into the cult, which is what we need.’

  Marcia shuffled forwards in her chair, reached into her shorts pocket and extracted a large bundle of fifty-dollar notes.

  ‘I’ve got the thousand dollars,’ she announced. ‘Obviously I can’t go on the retreat as Tildy would recognise me immediately, and if you go, it’s only fair that I pay. It’s a done deal.’

  ‘They paid you for the painting in cash?’ I was astonished.

  ‘You bet,’ Marcia said. ‘The other thousand’s in this pocket.’ She slapped the left side of her shorts.

  ‘Oh, Marcia,’ I said, laughing, ‘you’re such a trick.’

  We sipped tea and looked at the photographs of the women Harold had identified as being cult members. All wore the trademark blue dresses and Judy Jetson ponytails, and most of them had vacant expressions, as though their internal lights had been extinguished. Several women were pregnant, but I didn’t voice this observation, and neither did Marcia.

  ‘You haven’t seen anyone dressed like these women?’ I asked Marcia, but she wasn’t listening. She was leaning forward staring intently at the picture of Harold’s granddaughter, Casey, standing outside the courthouse holding a baby. The picture switched to the next image.

  ‘Go back!’ Marcia cried.

  I reversed the slide show and paused on the image of a slim young woman holding an infant. She was beautiful with ash-blonde hair, wide blue eyes, a broad mouth and perfect teeth. Somehow Harold had caught her smiling.

  Marcia raced to the kitchen and returned with her camera, sat down and flicked urgently through the images.

  ‘I’m sure I saw a girl who looks like her. It’s the shape of her head, her bearing. She walked like a ballet dancer, with her feet pointing slightly outwards. And she had the saddest eyes. Yes, yes, here it is.’

  Marcia passed her camera to me. The picture showed a young woman of medium height and slim build entering a doorway. She was wearing jeans and a white T-shirt. Her thick blonde hair was loose about her shoulders.

  ‘I can’t see her face,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell.’

  ‘You don’t really need her face,’ Marcia assured me. ‘Sometimes it’s easier to identify people from the back. From their outline and the way they move. Most mothers can identify their offspring or family members a hundred metres away simply from outline and movement.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t see it,’ I repeated.

  ‘Trust me, Scout, I’ve been drawing people for years—it’s her, it’s Harold Steinman’s granddaughter.’

  Chapter 30

  Marcia and I agreed that it served no purpose, at this point, to inform Harold Steinman that a young woman who resembled his granddaughter had been seen in Australia. Although Marcia was ninety per cent sure that it was Casey, she didn’t want to risk upsetting Harold while she had ten per cent uncertainty.

  We were packing chicken, salad, brie, crackers, olives and watermelon into the esky when I heard a key in the front door. The only other people who have keys to my apartment are Miles, Toby, Harper, my daughters, my parents and my three eldest nephews. Only a few! Chairman Meow zipped to the top of the stairs to see who it was.

  ‘Hey, Aunt Scout, are you home?’

  It was Sam, Harper’s twenty-one-year-old son; he of the long blond curls, manly build and devastating charm. Sam was holding my black Saks suit on a hanger, dry-cleaned and covered with clear plastic.

  ‘Whoa, new hair,’ he said brightly. ‘You look like Grandma.’

  ‘Thank you. If you tell your mother I look fabulous you can come on a picnic.’

  ‘You do look fabulous. Mum said to say thanks.’ Sam passed me the suit and kissed me on both cheeks. From behind his back he produced a bunch of cornflowers.

  ‘From Mum,’ he added. ‘They’re real, I think.’

  Sam turned to Marcia and smiled warmly.

  ‘How do you do,’ he greeted. ‘I’m Sam Blaine-Richardson, not the most handsome of my aunt’s nephews, but certainly the biggest disappointment.’

  Marcia laughed. I introduced her as the mother of one of Tasha’s friends and they shook hands.

  ‘Are you driving home or staying the night?’ I asked Sam. ‘I’ve ginger beer if you’re driving back. And there’s a water bubbler at Watego’s.’

  ‘I’m going to a friend’s twenty-first at the Buddha Bar. Is it all right if I crash here?’

  ‘Sure, just you though,’ I warned. ‘Text your mother and tell her you’re staying.’

  Sam played with Chairman Meow while I loaded more food and a couple of beers into the esky and packed picnic plates, glasses, cutlery, serviettes, corn chips, bug spray and the bottle of red wine into the basket.

  I left Marcia arranging the cornflowers in a blue vase that Toby had brought me back from Turkey and went to the bathroom to test my blood sugar. The level was good and I gave myself an insulin shot in preparation for the picnic.

  It was probably time to tell Marcia that I was an insulin-dependent diabetic, although it’s not something I advertise and, in reality, there was no practical need for her to know. However, I’ve found that the longer I leave it before telling someone, the more incensed they are that I haven’t told them sooner. It’s almost as if I’ve been disloyal or untrusting. And sometimes the mere fact that I’ve withheld the information gives it greater importance.

  Sam insisted that we initiate Chairman Meow into ‘Aunt Scout’s Picnics’ and he attached the cat’s lead to his collar and we all piled into the Lexus for the short drive to Watego’s Beach. We scored a picnic table by the ocean, right in front of Rae’s where a lucky few were having dinner.

  Watego’s is possibly the most beautiful beach in Australia—a small sheltered cove with tropical trees, soft white sand and a crystalline sea. Truly, it’s paradise, but please don’t tell anyone, as then I’ll never get a parking space.

  Chairman Meow went into complete trembly meltdown when he saw the ocean and cowered under the picnic table. Every time a wave broke on the shore he flinched, so I took him back to the car and settled him in the back seat with the windows down.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ Sam remarked. ‘He’d have been a real chick magnet.’

  ‘You couldn’t afford the chicks around here, Sam,’ I said jokingly.

  It was a perfect evening, warm with a hint of an onshore breeze. Brush turkeys foraged among the picnic tables, and a lone kookaburra sat in a gum tree watching for abandoned food. A child’s birthday party was in progress at another table and someone had tied balloons to the table legs. The grown-ups drank and laughed while youngsters whooped with joy as they kicked a ball on the sand.

  In a flash of wings the kookaburra swooped onto the electric barbecue and flew off with a sausage, eliciting shrieks of laughter from the partygoers. The kookaburra settled in a tree and repeatedly slammed his sausage against the branch to make sure it was dead.

  The subject of my diabetes came up in the easiest way.

  ‘Has Aunt Scout told you that she’s an insulin-dependent diabetic and could die at any moment?’ Sam said to Marcia as we unloaded food from the esky. He was looking expe
ctantly at both of us for a response.

  Marcia looked stunned. ‘It hasn’t come up so far,’ she said slowly.

  ‘I knew it,’ Sam said. ‘She never tells anyone.’

  ‘So now you know,’ I said to Marcia. ‘And I’m not going to die at any moment, Sam. I’m well controlled. And it’s my business to tell people, not yours.’

  Playfully, I punched his shoulder.

  ‘Now you know why I’m the biggest disappointment,’ Sam told Marcia. He leaned towards me, placed his arm around my shoulders and apologised.

  I kissed his forehead. It’s impossible to be mad at the boy.

  We swam, ate and talked, then as darkness closed in we packed up the Lexus, woke Chairman Meow, who’d fallen asleep on the driver’s seat, and headed home.

  At the top of my back steps, wedged into the wooden slats of the gate, was a red hibiscus flower.

  ‘I bet I know who that’s from,’ Marcia said.

  ‘Who?’ Sam said.

  ‘None of your business,’ Marcia and I said in unison.

  Chapter 31

  Marcia left at eight o’clock and Sam went to nap before the party, leaving instructions to wake him at ten. Chairman Meow followed Sam into the bedroom and I switched on the TV, fetched the key from my desk drawer in the study and undid the padlock on the large blue steamer trunk in front of the sofa.

  The steamer trunk had been my grandfather’s when he was in the British Merchant Navy, many years ago. These days, it was the repository for all my Guerilla Knitters Institute paraphernalia, hence the padlock. I’d cunningly disguised it, with a coat of Wedgwood blue paint, as an unusual and interesting coffee table. If anyone ever asked about the padlock, I’d say that it was full of junk and I’d lost the key.

  I took out my knitting and closed the trunk. There was one more purple rectangle of 60 × 10 cm to finish, and then we’d be right for tomorrow night’s mission.

  At 10 pm I hid the finished knitted rectangle back in the trunk, locked it, put away the key and shook Sam awake.

  ‘Party time!’

  I picked up Chairman Meow, carried him to the lounge and flicked through the channels searching for a show where people said nice things to each other. Silly me. Eventually I settled on a rerun of QI.

  A short while later, Sam came into the lounge and stood in front of the television.

  ‘How do I look?’ he asked.

  Sam was wearing black shorts, a black Che Guevara T-shirt and a large shark’s tooth on a leather thong around his neck. The simplicity of the outfit accentuated his abundant blond corkscrew curls.

  ‘Like a dangerous Shirley Temple,’ I said.

  He frowned. ‘I look like a drink?’

  Give me strength . . .

  ‘You look fine,’ I told him. ‘Will you be telling impressionable young females that you caught the shark yourself?’

  Sam grinned. ‘Only the foreign ones.’ He kissed my cheeks and said he’d try not to disturb me when he came in.

  The phone woke me at 1 am. The girls? Toby? My parents? Sam?

  Adrenaline shot through me and I grabbed the handset from the bedside table. It was Dan calling from Saratoga, New York.

  ‘Sorry to call you so late, Scout. My patient has agreed to answer your questions, but she won’t tell you anything about herself, her name or contact details. Is that okay with you?’

  ‘How am I going to talk to her if I don’t have contact details?’ I asked, climbing out of bed and heading for the study, Chairman Meow in hot pursuit.

  ‘She’s with me now,’ Dan explained.

  ‘How long have I got?’ I felt the familiar rush and tingling in my veins. In a heartbeat I switched into investigator mode.

  ‘As long as it takes. It’s morning here.’

  ‘Thanks, Dan. It’s great of you to do this.’

  Opening my notebook, I grabbed a pen and waited. I could hear Dan talking, then a door closed.

  ‘Hi, the doc tells me you got questions ’bout Heavenly Brother and the cult.’ Her accent was mild and her enunciation clear. She sounded as if she was in her early twenties.

  ‘Yes, I do. And thanks for agreeing to talk to me. I know it can’t be easy and I hope my questions don’t . . . don’t . . . bring back unpleasant memories for you.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve had help and, uh, it might be kinda good to help someone else.’

  Looking at the mind map, I used notations in the boxes to inform my questions.

  ‘Do you know Heavenly Brother’s real name, or his nationality?’ I made an effort to speak clearly so that my own accent didn’t confuse her.

  ‘I never heard his real name, miss, but he’s Australian, for sure. He used to watch that Crocodile Hunter, made himself homesick.’

  ‘Do you know why Heavenly Brother and the cult left Saratoga? Or when they left?’

  ‘They moved away ’bout a year ago, but I quit before that. Heavenly Brother, he sold the ranch and houses and then everyone quit. Some folk went to North Carolina, and some, I guess, to Pennsylvania. Heavenly Brother, he went to Australia and took himself all the money and his three wives. He made out like they were goin’ on vacation, but it looks like they got a one-way ticket. It would have killed them mommas leavin’ their kids behind like that.’

  ‘What happened to the kids? How many were left behind?’ I said, writing quickly.

  ‘There was six got split up and moved someplace else. Guess some’s in the Carolinas and some’s in Pennsylvania. Poor critters, losin’ their mommas like that.’

  ‘Was Heavenly Brother their father?’

  She laughed aloud. ‘Kids in the cult had lotsa daddies. Heavenly Brother, he picked who we lay with, and when, so most any of ’em could be the daddies. Sometimes he watched, too, messing with himself, and telling us to do . . . dirty things . . . filthy things. Other times, when new guys joined, he made us chicks go the whole darned day without our shirts on, like some jungle tribe.’

  Instantly I was reminded of something I’d read about another cult—as a birthday treat for one of the men, young pubescent girls had been lined up, naked to the waist, so the man could walk along the line and fondle their breasts. I gave an involuntary shudder.

  ‘Go on,’ I urged.

  ‘Any young marrieds joined the cult, he split ’em up, and didn’t let the man near his own woman, sayin’ that it’s written she must lie with Heavenly Brother.’

  ‘What happened to the older couples who joined?’

  ‘He only took older folk for their money. He separated older gals and put ’em someplace else with the kids. Then he made us young chicks lie with the old guys, to make sure they stayed, and he watched us to make sure we did it right. He used us young ones to recruit the rich old ’uns. Most all the older gals quit.’

  ‘Any kids involved in . . . in the sex?’

  ‘Nah. Heavenly Brother, he hates kids. Kids and gals over forty. He said it’s written, he said lotsa shit was written. ’Course I knows now it was all lies. I figured it out myself.’

  ‘When you say “written”, do you mean he was referring to the Bible?’ I said.

  ‘The Bible! Are you kiddin’? That shithead—’scuse me, miss—wouldn’t know a Christian if he fell over one. He said he was in direct contact with cosmic elements. My ass! It was him that written the stuff in the first place.’

  ‘Do you know a woman named Harmony Bliss?’

  ‘Sure. We’d both lie with him together. He made us drink his cosmic juice.’

  I squirmed, hating to hear this information but knowing it was vital. It was providing a clear picture that Heavenly Brother’s intent was to gain money and sexual gratification through indoctrination. It was amazing that this woman was being so candid.

  ‘Did Harmony Bliss come to Australia?’

  ‘Yeah. She’s a favourite, ’cept he knocked Harmony’s front teeth out when she wouldn’t let her baby go to live with the older gals.’

  I cringed. That poor girl . . . and her grandfather would be d
evastated.

  ‘She had a baby?’

  ‘Sure. A boy. He’d be almost two now. She called him Clark, like Superman.’ She laughed at her joke, and then started to cough.

  I waited until she’d recovered, then asked, ‘Do you know where the child is now?’

  ‘North Carolina or Pennsylvania be my guess. Harmony right loved that baby, miss. It woulda killed her leavin’ him behind like that.’

  ‘Tell me about the shoplifting ring,’ I said, turning the page on my notebook.

  ‘It got him right excited when we’d take stuff, you know, turn him on. It didn’t matter what we took, and I know now it gave him something on us. Heavenly Brother, he used to pretend he was the shopkeeper and catch us, and then we’d do him and he’d let us go. Like it was a game.’

  ‘What did the women wear?’

  ‘He had us all in baggy blue dresses, long like prairie clothes. We sewed them ourselves. They had big pockets inside to hide the stuff we took.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about the end of the world? About you being the only ones saved? Anything like that?’

  ‘All the time, and then some. It’s why we were all scared to leave. Everyone ’cept us was gonna die, he said, but we were the true believers and we’d be saved. He said the police and the government were the soldiers of Satan, and they were gonna stop us being saved. Any of us that asked questions were accused of working for Satan and locked in a room for a month with water and soup. He beat us with sticks and did other stuff so we’d remember not to ask questions.’

  ‘What other stuff?’

  There was a long silence and then she said, ‘Just stuff.’ Obviously she’d decided not to tell me, so I pressed on.

  ‘Do you know the names of the other women who came to Australia?’

  ‘You give me names, I’ll tell you if they were there. Otherwise I ain’t givin’ you no names,’ she said. ‘No way.’ Her manner had abruptly changed; it was tinged with fear now.

  ‘Was there a woman called Cinnamon Toast?’

  ‘Never. Not when I was there,’ she said.

  I sensed we’d come to the end.