by Jean Bedford
He nodded and took the copy. He rang his office to cancel his morning appointments, then stood still in the middle of the room, unusually indecisive.
‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Sharon asked finally.
‘What? No, thanks, love. Jesus wept.’ He gave her a light kiss as he went out the door and she heard his car start up.
*
‘I don’t believe it,’ Rosa said, staring at the copied note. ‘I don’t believe he’d kill himself,or that he’d just disappear. He wouldn’t do it to me — or to the kids.’
Mick had caught her as she was leaving for work and now they sat on her sunny back verandah. She was still pale and shaking after a strong sweet coffee.
‘Rosa,’ he said, hesitantly. ‘What is it that I should ask you about? You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t feel able to
‘He seems to want me to,’ she said, waving the paper at him. ‘And if you don’t get it from me, you’ll get it fromher. But it’s got nothing to do with Paddy, Mick, it couldn’t possibly have.’
‘There’s someone called Diana,’ he said. ‘Someone Paddy knows, a possible alibi, and Tom seemed to know something about her, too.’
She frowned. ‘Diana? No. I don’t think he ever mentioned her. Who is she?’
‘Don’t know. I’m not even sure if sheis a she. But a hooker, I think. Hey, Rosa, careful.’ He grabbed her arm as she seemed about to slump sideways off the chair. ‘Here, put your head down between your knees, I’ll get some water.’
When he came back with the glass she was sitting up, her white face blotched with mauve patches. She gulped at the water.
‘What is it?’ he said. ‘You remembered something.’
‘Tom was a secret transvestite, Mick. That’s what he wants me to tell you. He told me he used to visit prostitutes, of both sexes. It hurt so much, when he told me, it seemed like such a betrayal of everything I thought was real in my life. I ... sort of buried it until just then. But obviously this Diana could be one of them.’ She spoke coolly, as if she was distancing herself from the conversation, the bright fragrant backyard, the two of them sitting there.
He wished she’d cry; this cold abstraction was troublingly unlike the Rosa he’d always known. And what she’d said — he was still absorbing that. Tom, too, had never been the person he’d thought he was. Had any of them?
‘Holy hell,’ he said. ‘Rosa, we’ve got to find him. Have you got any idea at all where he’d go?’
‘You’ve answered it,’ she said, still in that light preoccupied voice. ‘Hell. That’s where he’s gone. It’s where he’s been for a long time; where I thought he was dragging me, too. Oh, Jesus, Mick,’ she suddenly emerged from her trance. ‘I never understood. I never even tried to understand. I told him it disgusted me, that it was ridiculous. I cut away every possibility from under him.’ Finally her shoulders heaved and she began to weep.
Mick put his arms around her and let her sob on his chest. ‘You’re not responsible, Rosie,’ he said. ‘No-one is, in the end. Not for what other people do.’
‘I could have tried.’ She gave way to a heaving paroxysm of crying while he held her, stroking her vigorous hair back from her forehead, noticing the wiry filaments of grey and silver all through the faded auburn.We’re getting old, he thought.All of us. ‘Another forty-odd years’, Tom had written. An optimistic prognosis, yet still fewer years of life than there had already been.
When she finally quietened she struggled free of his embrace and glared at him. ‘Iwas trying, towards the end,’ she said. ‘That’s why I still can’t believe ... this.’ She brushed at the note. ‘He knew I was willing to try. I suppose he didn’t think it would last, or he didn’t trust me to go on with it.’ Her voice was bleak; she scrubbed at her wet cheeks with the hem of her shirt, making dark stains like ink in the red silk.
‘Well, we’ve got to find this Diana,’ Mick said. ‘She seems the key to it, somehow.’ He’d been convinced, finally, the previous night that Tess really knew nothing about the flat in Elizabeth Bay, and that she had more or less lost touch with Paddy. She and Judith had seen him to the door in hostile silence. He wondered if Tess would ever forgive either of them for what they’d implied. For what they’d apparently thought her capable of.
‘And we’ve got to find Tom,’ Rosa said. ‘Isn’t that the most important thing?’
‘Yes, of course it is.’ He pulled himself out of his uncharacteristic lethargy. ‘If you’ll ring the motel and say I’m on my way, I’ll see if he’s left anything there that might give us a clue. Meanwhile, you could go through his stuff here, try to find any reference to Diana, or Paddy ... or anything.’
‘Can’t Paddy tell you anything about her?’
‘He’s off the air, Rosa. Under full-time psychiatric observation since yesterday, deteriorating rapidly. The DPP’s admitted they probably won’t be able to take him to trial. They actually rang me yesterday afternoon to tell me.’
‘Then what does it matter whether you can produce an alibi for him or not? I thought you believed he did it, anyway.’
‘I’m not so sure, now. Neither’s Sharon’s little pal, Noel, apparently, and she’s been right about other stuff. If Tess is telling the truth — always a doubtful proposition, I admit — then there’s another agenda somewhere. I don’t know whose. But it could just be that Paddy’s being expertly framed for this. And it matters whether he’s falsely accused, don’t you think? If he was someone’s dupe? And if that’s the case, then it has to matter who actually did murder Justine Riley. It might matter somewhat to Paddy whether he’s in psychiatric detention or a decent place.’
She grinned faintly, tears still spangling her eyelashes. ‘No need to be sarcastic. Come on, then. Let’s at least look as if we’re doing something.’
He waited while she rang the motel and assured them Mick was her solicitor, and Tom’s, and they agreed to let him into the room, then he gave her a hug and left.
He called in at home to collect his briefcase and found a note on the kitchen table from Sharon, telling him she’d just heard about Paddy’s condition and that although it might be now a moot point, she still thought it would be best if she moved out for a while. She gave her friend’s phone number. She’d taken her things from the bathroom, and packed a small case, he noticed. He ran a hand across the clothes she’d left in the wardrobe, stirring a faint reminiscent smell of her. ‘Damn and blast it all to hell,’ he muttered, collecting his papers and his suit jacket and slamming the door as he left the flat.
PART 4
AUTUMN-WINTER
They all came out of the chapel in twos and threes and stood awkwardly apart, not yet forming groups, shielding their eyes against the sudden sunlight. Hardly anyone wore black — not even Rosa, who had on a light blue cotton jacket over a darker dress.
Mick saw Carly walking rapidly towards the car park, not joining the others or waiting to be part of the hugs and tearful greetings that were now breaking up the tableau on the lawn. He reached her as she was getting into her car. He put his hand on her arm. ‘Rosa says to invite you back for drinks, if you’d like.’
She squinted at him, surprised. ‘That’s ... forgiving of her. No, I don’t think so, Mick. I’d be in the way, and with the kids there, too. But thank her, will you. Tell her I appreciate it.’ She wiped her eyes with a wadded-up tissue and they hugged each other. ‘Take care,’ she said. He stood and watched her drive away, then went back to where the others were also making for their cars.
‘For once I feel sorry for Carly,’ Mick said to Sharon as she drove them to Rosa’s place. ‘She’s got the same grief as Rosa — there’s no doubt how much she loved Tom. But she can’t claim any of the privileges of widowhood. Rosa’s getting all the sympathy.’
‘Well, she deserves it,’ Sharon said coolly. ‘I think Carly behaved like a total bitch all through this.’ But she privately acknowledged Carly’s charm, and wondered whether Mick was moved at all by his old feelings for her.
<
br /> ‘Yeah, perhaps.’ Mick fell silent, gazing morosely out of the window at the sundrenched streets, the bright suburban gardens. ‘Why are funerals always on such glorious days?’ he said finally.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been to all that many of them. Your speech was great, Mick. I cried and cried. Especially when it looked as if you were going to break down and bawl, too.’
‘I nearly did. I hated having to say that about Tom wanting to live as a woman, and dying as one instead, but Rosa insisted.’
‘It helped her,’ Sharon said. ‘She felt as if she was acknowledging something she’d denied him when he was alive.’
‘Wise little thing, aren’t you? Still, at least she didn’t want the kids there to hear it.’
‘They’ll find out. It was in the papers.Drag suicide of philosopher in Kings Cross motel of sleaze, and all that. She can’t keep it from them forever — once school goes back they’ll cop heaps from their friends, for a start.’
‘I don’t think she wants to keep it from them,’ he said. ‘She told me she’s going to try to explain it to them as soon as she’s a bit more together. That’s if she ever gets it straight herself. Perhaps she can explain it to me, too.’
‘It doesn’t seem all that big a deal to me,’ Sharon said. ‘So what if he liked dressing up as a woman sometimes? What difference does it make to anything that matters? Haul out some money for the bridge, will you.’
He rummaged in his pocket and handed her a coin. ‘You don’t think it’s weird?’
‘I suppose it’s a bit weird, but no more so than lots of other things. I had a mate at the Police Academy who was like that,’ she said, braking and handing the money to the toll-collector. She peered at the signs as she drove on, and swerved in front of a truck to catch the right exit.
‘Jesus, watch it,’ Mick said. ‘So — tell me about him, your friend.’
‘Nothing much to tell. I used to go shopping with him sometimes, for frocks, give him advice about what colours went with what, make-up, that sort of thing. It was fun.’ She laughed, remembering. ‘He’d come to my room and dress up some evenings and we’d be like two ladies having a tea party.’
‘Christ, I bet that went down well with the other cops,’ Mick said.
‘Well, he didn’t do it on parade. But most of the guys knew about it — he was pretty upfront about the whole thing. He’d tart up for parties quite often. The other blokes laughed, but they didn’t get heavy about it — I used to think some of them envied him. Mind you, it probably helped that he was the star of the police rugby team. He’s a detective now. Dunno if he’s still into drag, but he’s married with a couple of kids.’
‘Must be a generational thing,’ Mick said, shaking his head.
‘What? Not to think it’s a huge nasty secret that cows like Carly can trade on? That it’s worth wrecking your life over —ending your life over? Perhaps. Still, your generation’s heroes did it in the open a fair bit, too. Look at Mick Jagger. And what about Barry Humphries?’
‘Yeah, but that’s theatre,’ Mick said. ‘Real life’s different.’
‘And men are men and women are women, and one wears pants and the other wears skirts, and never the twain shall meet,’ she said in a mocking chant. ‘No wonder you lot are all so fucked up.’ She was driving into Leichhardt now, concentrating in the heavy traffic on Parramatta Road. ‘That was Fran with Rosa down the front, wasn’t it?’ she asked suddenly.
‘Yeah. Apparently Rosa was seeing her for a while, professionally, and now they’re mates. Fran’s moved to Leichhardt, too. I don’t think they ever knew each other in the old days — Tom was already living with Carly when I met Fran, and our marriage only lasted a couple of minutes.’
She parked outside Rosa’s house and shot him a quick glance. ‘Did you speak to her?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, getting out of the car. ‘It’s been ten years,’ he said, surprise in his voice. ‘She’s changed — she’s much thinner and she doesn’t seem as brittle and nervy as she used to be.’ In fact, he’d thought she looked ill.
‘Perhaps it was living with you,’ she said, giving him a light punch in the ribs. They walked up the path arm in arm to where the door was open, loud music spilling out and muffling the subdued laughter, the conversation and the other noises of a party.
*
Rosa and Fran were on the back verandah. The children were watching television and the two women had cleaned up after the wake. Now they sat with a glass of champagne each.
‘I still don’t believe it,’ Rosa said with a heavy sigh.
‘It takes a while. A year, they say, to properly grieve. Those old rituals of mourning were based on reality.’ Fran spoke absently, thinking this was the last champagne she’d have for a while. Once they started the radiotherapy she wouldn’t be able to drink at all.
‘No, I don’t mean it that way. I mean I don’t believe the actual scenario. I believe Tom’s dead, all right. I just can’t accept that he’d kill himself.’ She took a sip of her drink and put out a hand to touch Fran’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear all this. Not with tomorrow looming up.’
Rosa was going with Fran to the hospital and bringing her home for a night or two. She was the only person Fran had told. She’d explained to her patients that she was winding down the practice because of illness, though she hadn’t been specific. But strangely, she thought now, she’d had an almost overwhelming impulse to tell Mick when he’d hugged her after the funeral.
‘Sharon seems a nice young woman,’ she said.
‘Who? Oh, yes. She’s OK, I guess. Mick seems to think so, anyway.’ Rosa stared into space, twiddling her champagne flute.
‘Fran,’ she said suddenly. ‘Are you frightened? Do you want to talk about it?’
‘Reversal of roles,’ Fran said with a faint grin. ‘No, I’m more angry than scared. Just when I thought I had my life together finally, the new house, contentment. It seems like a gratuitous act of cruelty from the gods, this.’ But she was lying, she thought. She was terrified of dying; terrified of the long months of treatment and pain that might precede death.I’m always lying, she told herself.Pretending I’m in control and things are fine.That’s probably what gave me cancer.
‘Rosa,’ she said, unable to overcome her long habit of counselling, ‘you have to let go all this business with Tom. That you don’t believe he’d do it. Stop agonising over it, and get on with a bit of plain honest grief that he’s dead. What you’re doing now is common. You’re looking for a different scenario, one that excuses Tom, excuses you, from any blame. Don’t. Face your guilt. Face Tom’s despair. Then put it behind you.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ Rosa said. ‘I don’t feel actual grief at the moment, though — I feel almost euphoric, speedy. As if I’m high on something. Ienjoyed the wake. It felt like a great party. I wished people didn’t leave so early — I could have gone on all night.’
‘Endorphins,’ Fran said. ‘They’ll wear off after a few weeks, when your brain thinks you can deal with it. It’s a wonderful thing, the human body. When it works.’
She stood up. ‘I’d better go. I’ve got things to organise before tomorrow. Do you want something to help you sleep tonight?’
Rosa shook her head and began to rise.
‘No stay there. I’ll let myself out.’ She bent swiftly and kissed Rosa’s cheek. ‘I’m glad we’re friends,’ she said, surprising both of them.
Rosa sat on outside for a while, sipping the flat champagne, trying to find the sadness that must be inside her.It will come, she told herself, knowing it and half welcoming it. But meanwhile there was a faint relief that she was ashamed of. That she didn’t have to be jealous, any more, of Carly or anyone else. That she would not, in the end, have to deal with Tom’s problems, have to try to live a life that would be a radical denial of her own instincts.
She heaved herself out of the garden chair finally, tired of self-analysis, and went inside to make a scrappy
meal for herself and the children.
Marseilles
...I’m very comfortable here.I have a job at a Catholic hospital,where they are delighted to have someone of my experience withles pauvres enfants,and I’ve taken an apartment high up in the old town,where I can see the fort and the harbour from almost every window.My rusty schoolgirl French is coming back to me rapidly now that I have to communicate in the language every day.
I have changed my name again,of course.No more Diana;no more Carly/Kali(you would have recognised that pun immediately;you were interested in the significance of homophones),though I still hunt and destroy.I must.Because the demons know no frontiers;the oceans are no barrier to them.
They came again,last night.Fortunately,I have already marked the possible sacrifices—evil,too,knows no boundaries;and there are those here—everywhere—who must be saved.And those who must he punished.
*
I go for long walks,in my time off,up the great hill through the dank,overhung park to where the gigantic gold Madonna garishly crowns the cathedral on the mountain.I climb the hundreds of steps and I stand on the basilica esplanade looking down over the islands and the sweeping blue of the sea or back across the park to the city and the hills in the distance.Sometimes I go inside the church to stand a long while contemplating the crude little mosaicAnnunciation;the stupid,blissful look on the virgin’s face as she listens to the angel.
There are places in the park where a small body might lie for days undiscovered.There are swings and slides where children might be led all unsuspecting,by someone they trust.There are narrow winding paths and secret shadowy spaces beneath strange enormous European trees.
And in the old city,particularly the Arab quarter,there are rubbish-strewn alleys and abandoned buildings enough.A new corpse there would hardly surprise anyone.
First I was Danuta,then Diana,that old familiar secret self who first appeared to keep me from terror through the long nights in the dark cupboard.When I escaped to my new life I became Carly.You would have seen the further implications there.