by Tony Parsons
“They told me.”
“That will give you some idea of what Clay’s like. Clay doesn’t have any false values. He’d never consider owning a flash car so he could pilot Shelley to all the places she wanted him to take her. And if Clay let Shelley get close to him, she’d have seen what he’s really like… a very special kind of man. She must have loved him to behave like she did. Or maybe, to put the worst aspect on Clay’s walk-out, Shelley’s ego was dented. Not many men would walk out on Shelley Carruthers,” Camilla said.
“Is she really so amazing?”
“They don’t come much better looking in face or figure than Shelley. And she isn’t just a nice-looking blonde. She has a university degree, so I’m told. But I had the distinct impression that Clay felt he was only marking time with her. She wasn’t into roughing it. She wouldn’t camp out at the hut with him because she was scared stiff of snakes and spiders and lying on the ground. I reckon that Clay worked out Shelley wasn’t the woman for him and called it quits,” Camilla said.
“Do you know where Clay’s hut is?” I asked.
“My father took me there once. I was a very small girl and I have no recollection of where it is or how to find it. Clay was always going to take me but we never got around to it,” she said.
“So you have no idea where your brother might be?”
“None whatsoever. That is, unless he’s at the hut. He wrote his first book there and he could be there working on another book for all I know. But reading between the lines of his note, I don’t think so. He said there was something he had to attend to and what that might be Lord only knows. It could be anything from an anti-whaling protest to a book about what’s happening to the Amazon rainforests. Clay being Clay, you just wouldn’t know,” Camilla said.
“It’s infuriating, isn’t it?”
Camilla grinned. “I can see that it would be for anyone who doesn’t know what makes Clay tick. I grew up with him so I’m more or less attuned to his behaviour. As talented as I may be as a painter, I’ve lived in Clay’s shadow without it concerning me one iota because we’ve always been so close. Being only a year and a half different in age, I was always his best friend. If he had problems, we talked about them. That was until I became a hot shot painter and acquired a collection of odd bod friends which meant that I saw less and less of Clay. But I’m seriously miffed that he’s cleared out without telling me why.”
“I would be, too,” I agreed. “I thought I might put his books under the microscope, so to speak, and see if I could come up with any answers.”
“That’s a good idea,” Camilla agreed. “Are you going to try and see Shelley?”
“I’ll try but there seems to be a big question mark there.”
“I’ll phone her and tell her that you’re trying to locate Clay. It might help and it might not. Shelley must still be carrying a torch for Clay because she’s rung me a couple of times to check if Mother or I have heard from him.”
“That signifies that she hasn’t,” I suggested.
“Dead right. She hasn’t had a word other than that one brief note. But it seems that Shelley can’t believe that it’s all over. It beats me how it ever began. Well, I know how it began. Shelley interviewed Clay and fell for him, and she wasn’t the first to do that. But she isn’t Clay’s type. Not that I think she’s unintelligent because she interviews some bright people, but her values wouldn’t be the same as Clay’s. Maybe, he recognised that when he gave her the flick.”
“So, you think their affair is definitely over?” I asked.
“It certainly appears so. I’d say that Clay has other fish to fry. A smart fellow like Clay would realise that there’d be plenty of men trying to make it with Shelley. She’s a great-looking girl, the kind wealthy men like because it boosts their ego and makes them look good,” Camilla said with unashamed honesty.
Camilla wasn’t a bad-looking woman herself, though in her profession, looks didn’t matter a stuff if you couldn’t paint… In Shelley Carruthers’ profession, looks were important. It helped if you were smart, but if you had both looks and brains, the sky was your limit. Shelley had made it in that domain, but her man had walked out on her and she seemed to be having a hard time getting used to it.
Camilla’s introduction must have helped because Shelley Carruthers invited me to visit her at her harbour-side unit a few days later. It was a lovely home but one of the first things I noticed after I’d taken in Shelley, her clothes and the view were four of Clayton Steele’s books, and these alone, propped between two fancy book-ends on the top of a very sleek glass cabinet.
It seemed that Shelley had herself together because she showed no obvious emotion when we began to talk about Steele. She was blonde with beautiful features and very expressive brown eyes, and she’d been well-schooled in how to use them. She was dressed in black slacks and a cream blouse and not many young women could have shown them off to better advantage. Her only concession to homeliness was a pair of black slip-ons. She was as tall as me and moved with all the grace of a Hollywood diva.
“I understand that, like Camilla and Mrs Steele, you also received a brief note from Mr Steele,” I said by way of opening the conversation.
“That’s all I’ve received,” she said quickly. “I believe Camilla showed you her note but I’m not going to show you mine. I regard it as personal and nobody else’s business. I realise you’re on a mission to try and locate Clay, but showing you my note wouldn’t assist you,” Shelley said firmly.
“Fair enough. Have you any idea why Steele pulled the plug?” I asked.
“I didn’t when it happened because I was too upset to think rationally, but on reflection, he could have had his reasons,” Shelley said.
“Are you prepared to discuss them?” I asked.
“Not at the moment.”
“Have you any idea where he might have gone? I mean, nobody has seen him during the last year.”
“I’m afraid I don’t. Clay gave no intimation that he was going anywhere.”
“You wouldn’t have the teeniest idea what was in his mind? You were his girlfriend and must have discussed a range of topics,” I suggested.
“I thought he might have gone to visit his mother but he hasn’t. Not yet, anyway. Initially, I thought he might have gone to his hut in the Blue Mountains and was probably at work on another book, but nobody has seen him there either. Clay could be working his way round the world or he could be in Nepal for all I know. But if I had to make a guess, I’d say that he was still in Australia,” Shelley said.
“What makes you say that?” I asked with lifted eyebrows.
“Clay loves Australia. He was always quite passionate about it and used to say that Australia could be the hope of the world if the politicians and bureaucrats didn’t stuff it up. Sure, he criticised some aspects of Australia but that was mostly to do with gutless politicians who’ve messed up so many things.” Shelley smiled weakly. “His words, not mine. I doubt that Clay would be happy to live anywhere else. Not long-term, anyway,” she said.
“That’s interesting. Why do you think he’s so passionate about Australia?”
“It’s difficult for me to put into words. Into Clay’s words, I mean. There’s the fact that Australia has progressed further in two hundred years than some other countries have in two thousand years. Clay used to say that Australia was created by a mixture of hard work and hope. A lot of people had nothing when they came here and from an unlikely beginning created a nation. Then, there’s what being an Australian used to mean. That was before so many people became urban dwellers and the national character changed somewhat,” Shelley said.
I decided then and there that Shelley Carruthers wasn’t simply a slick blonde with a wardrobe of very expensive clothes. It seemed that she had some grey matter to go with her bombshell looks.
“So, you were dumbfounded when you received Steele’s note?”
“I certainly was. I remember now that Clay told me he’d like to visit a fe
w places – I mean overseas places – before he settled down, but he never mentioned where they were. The last time I saw him, he told me he was feeling tired and needed a rest. He looked tired, too. He’d slogged away to write four books with hardly a break of any kind. I was his only relaxation,” she said and expressed it with some degree of pride, as if it had been something special to be the partner of so celebrated a writer.
But the words that stayed in my mind were, He was feeling tired and needed a rest. He looked tired, too. That’s what Shelley had said. And those words sparked something in my journalist’s brain. Maybe, Clayton Steele had had a legitimate reason for clearing out. Maybe, just maybe, he had a medical problem; a medical problem he didn’t want to talk about or have discussed. That opened up a whole new line of enquiry.
“Did Steele ever discuss his books with you?”
“Occasionally. I’m not up to Clay, brain-wise, but I like to think I’m not just a pretty face either. I have a degree in Arts and apart from the journalism involved, I did a creative writing course at university. The media is a very competitive business and there’s always new and younger girls, gorgeous some of them, snapping at one’s heels, so to speak,” she said.
“I guess there are. So, how are you coping with Steele’s absence?”
“I’ve more or less got accustomed to it now. It was very tough at the beginning because it was hard to come to grips with the fact that Clay left me the way he did. I loved him. I really did. I guess I still do. Clay is something special and he was so kind to me that I’ve come around to the conclusion that he had a very good reason for leaving me; a reason he didn’t want to discuss,” she said with the first genuine trace of emotion she’d exhibited.
“Where does it leave you?” I asked.
“Scarred to some extent because any way I look at it, I can’t help but feel I failed Clay. He simply didn’t think enough of me to explain why he left. I suppose there’s no good way to end a relationship but to end it without any pre-emptive warning was very un-Clay-like and that’s what stunned me,” she said.
I wondered if I could ease her mind a little by throwing at her what my brain was telling me. “Could it have been that Steele had something seriously wrong with him, something that he didn’t want known?” I asked.
Shelley looked at me with sudden interest. Maybe, she all at once considered that I might be a bit more than a hack reporter looking for a sensational story. “I can’t imagine what it would be.”
“There are medical problems that could account for Steele’s tiredness before he disappeared.”
Shelley tossed her blonde hair and huffed. “If you have a health problem, why would you run away from the people closest to you?”
“I don’t know, Shelley. I’m looking for answers so I’m really clutching at straws. Because nobody has been able to provide me with any real answers for Steele’s disappearance, I have to look at a range of possibilities. The health angle is one of them. I think there had to be a major reason why Steele flew the coop, to put it bluntly.”
Shelley shook her head. “Not necessarily, Gillian. In some respects, Clay was a law unto himself. On one occasion, he went bush for some months and sent me two brief scribbled notes. When I told him what I thought of his behaviour, he told me that that was the price I had to pay for knowing him. He went away to write and didn’t want any distractions. I was a distraction,” she said.
“Why didn’t you tell him to get lost? You wouldn’t be short of admirers,” I said.
“There’s men and then there’s men. And then, there’s Clayton Steele. He’s not like any other man I’ve ever known. And there were other compensations,” Shelley said with a catch in her voice.
“You mean, he was a great lover,” I suggested boldly.
“Super. Well, almost up to the end,” she said with some hesitation.
“Which you’re missing a lot?”
“You can say that again. It’s a great feeling being made love to by a man like Clay. He must have seen something in me or he wouldn’t have kept seeing me. I mean, he could have had plenty of other women. There’d been women before me. Camilla told me that Clay had had women chasing him back in his high school days,” she said.
“It sounds to me as if he has a big ego, expecting you to put up with his eccentric behaviour,” I suggested.
Shelley shook her head. “He never big-noted himself, Gillian. When we were together, Clay was always kind and considerate. He was a beautiful man. Sure, he was preoccupied when he was writing but I could live with that because he was so special at other times. I found it hard to accept that Clay would do something so inconsiderate as to simply walk out on me without any explanation. That wasn’t like him. He could have taken me into his confidence and told me what he was going to do. Once, when he told me he might go away for a year or so, I told him I’d go with him. He wouldn’t hear of that because he said it would ruin my career. Yes, he used to go away to write but he always came back and tried to make up for his absences. If I wanted him, and I did, I had to put up with that sort of behaviour. Do you know that he has an IQ approaching genius level?”
“No, I didn’t know that. Does it excuse Steele’s behaviour?” I asked.
“I’ve been trying to decide if ordinary standards apply to people like Clay. If he’d been an ordinary man working at an ordinary job, I wouldn’t have tolerated his eccentric behaviour. But Clay isn’t an ordinary man. I understood that right from the beginning. Camilla isn’t an ordinary woman either. She’s very creative and can write as well as paint and although she is to some extent other-worldly, she isn’t quite as other-worldly as Clay. I asked him once if he’d ever done anything really ordinary or practical like making something or having a garden and he said that he hadn’t but he’d like to settle down, have a garden and grow his own vegetables at some stage in the future,” she said.
“Now, that is interesting.”
“I wouldn’t read too much into it, Gillian. Clay was a thinker, not a doer. Well, he was a doer to the extent that he wrote books but he wasn’t a practical man like my father,” Shelley said.
“Hmm,” I murmured. I wondered how well Shelley really knew Steele. It seemed to me that the last remark she’d attributed to Steele, along with his disappearance, could have been an indication that he was going to drop out and had some intention of starting a garden. A few more such chance remarks might very well lead me to some sort of conclusion about his current whereabouts.
“How are you feeling now?” I asked.
“I’m not too bad. I still miss Clay, but I’ve started dating again. Nothing serious and nothing in the nature of an affair. I felt strongly about Clay and I don’t plan on letting another man into my life for a while. There’s always the chance that Clay will surface again,” she said with a fleeting smile.
I looked at her and shook my head. A young woman with Shelley’s looks and figure, and in the public eye as she was, would get plenty of attention from men. It couldn’t be otherwise. Yet she appeared to be waiting for Clayton Steele’s return.
“I know what I’ve had to put up with since I left school, so I can imagine what kind of attention you get.”
Shelley nodded. “You have beautiful eyes, Gillian. So intensely green. I can well imagine that you get men’s attention.” She tossed her blonde hair back in what I took to be an unconscious habit. “I like being admired and I like being respected for being good in my field, but I don’t like hands on my behind in the lift… that sort of thing. Clay wasn’t like that at all. He was all man where it mattered, but he was, well, a gentleman and very attentive when we went out. Not that we went out a lot. Clay was mostly too engrossed in his writing. I realised that if I wanted him, I had to accept him on his terms. And I surely wanted him,” she said.
Shelley was a very attractive woman earning big money in a highly competitive field, yet she’d accepted Steele on worse terms than she would have had from a galaxy of men. Notwithstanding, Steele had walked out on h
er. No wonder she’d been shattered.
“Do you think you’ll ever see Steele again?” I asked. It was an inane question but some such questions often reaped remarkable rewards.
“I’d like to think so. What I’d say to him is another matter. Clay could turn up any old time and expect me to be here waiting for him. Well, maybe that’s unrealistic. A fellow as smart as Clay surely wouldn’t expect that. My friends say I should forget Clay because a man who’d clear out as he’s done isn’t worth worrying about. But my friends didn’t know Clay like I did. He was really something and I felt wonderful when I was with him.”
I nodded as though I understood what she meant, though I didn’t. As I hadn’t ever felt that way about a man, I didn’t really appreciate what Shelley was trying to tell me.
I climbed out of Shelley’s luxurious white leather lounge and held out my hand. “Thank you for your time, Shelley. You’ve been very sweet and very honest,” I said.
“You will let me know if you make any progress, won’t you?” she asked.
“Of course, though it might take a while. Steele obviously had a reason for disappearing and for not letting anyone know his intentions. As of right now, I don’t have a clue where to look for him. Maybe there’s a clue or two in his books, and I’ll be going through them very thoroughly,” I told her.
Shelley invited me to visit with her again and I thanked her and left. Despite the glitz, she was a nice young woman and under other circumstances, one I wouldn’t have minded having as a friend. Shelley’s looks and the money she was being paid hadn’t turned her head. Her problem was that a man she’d loved and considered almost god-like had walked out on her. For a young woman with her assets, that wasn’t an experience she would get over in a hurry.