Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  Ti shouts, 'That's fucken dynamite!'

  Women hold their dogs in an instinctive reaction and a shudder of fear ripples through the mob like a charge of electricity. Friends seek each other out to speculate on the whereabouts of the eruptions. Any damage to the earth makes Virginia fall into a rage these days. Hope mutters a verse from the Apocalypse. Roz and Xena exchange fantastic jokes about an alien invasion. 'Let's go,' Helen says, 'Before the helicopters come,' confusing, as always, any threat with a drug bust. Victoria Shackleton goes around hugging each and being farewelled before she saddles up, mounts her horse and rides to her car and float.

  'It is probably on another property,' opines Gig, hopefully.

  Fiona and Dee swear they are going to find out where it is, but they sit down and share a joint.

  Ilsa and Helen go off together talking of terror. They convince each other that there is a firing range for the shady activities of a right-wing gun lobby group nearby. They scuttle home to their shelters.

  Ian Truckman is the very picture of masculine serenity, standing in ebb of the surf with his long, thin rod arching with the flow of the tides. The lone fisherman receives the call he had been dreading.

  'Bring in the Scania.'

  He drives the rigid semi out of the paddock behind the caravan park and along the dirt roads to the meeting place. There he is given a sedan for a few days with instructions to be at the airport at five a.m. Sunday.

  Lenny is with his father's mother. Tilly is still at Chandra's. Harold has gone west in his new car. Alison, free of her children, invites Maria to dinner in her Housing Commission flat in the old fishing port district of Port Water. Maria goes over the top with compliments at the effort she has made, as she tucks in to the salad and fish, rock melon and grapes. She tells her she is beautiful. Alison watches Maria eat with relish. 'You are like a South Sea Island queen,' she says.

  Alison relates to her women as if they were all the same person, a huge enveloping mother-goddess, with many faces and body shapes. After such a lovely meal, Maria is dumbfounded when Alison demands, 'How did you get into my head?' As far as Maria is concerned they are only just getting to know one another.

  Are we in each other's heads? Is that why it's mutual?' Alison changes personality in front of her, from stunningly sunny to thunderously furious, as if she had whipped up a storm inside herself.

  'Don't be so insulting.' Maria tries to regain some sense of comfort.

  'How can we relate fully to each other when we are both mothers?' Alison lets fly. Maria is frightened.

  Alison changes again, 'The way you let everyone walk all over you disgusts me. I don't want lies. I want the flattery to be thought out and accurate. I want you to die for your words of appreciation of me. I don't own my own beauty.'

  'We have to prop each other up. What harm is there?' Maria begs.

  'I'm not beautiful, really I'm ugly.'

  'If this is self-hatred,' says Maria firmly, 'I don't want any part of it.'

  The ebb and flow of argument and affection take several hours.

  'Be free, Maria,' pleads Alison. 'That you are a victim is noxious to me.'

  'That's going a bit far, Ali,' explodes Maria. 'Don't make me shout. I hate shouting. Don't do this, please,' she begs.

  'I saw you as some kind of goddess, from a long-gone matriarchy.' Alison's dreamy words have a bitter edge.

  Maria hugs the adipose eiderdown of herself, her protection.

  And that makes me murderous. I feel evil. I'm a bad person.' Alison sighs, 'Not to say, bad mother.'

  'You don't mean that.' Slow tears roll down Maria's round cheeks. Will there never be an easy love? She just wants to relax into the sensual moment and leave her thinking to her times with her books.

  Alison swings into a sinuous long-fingered pose. 'I am destructive like a goddess. Ruler of birth and death, Kali.'

  'You're being dramatic.'

  'No, if you are blaming me, I am,' Alison picks up a broom and wields it like a weapon.

  'I am not blaming you, Ali. You are not evil. It's the mental illness, it's not you. Who you are.'

  'Kindly get out of my head or one of us is going to commit suicide, or the other thing? Sistercide, perhaps?' She laughs, and flops. She drops the broom and lifts Maria's hand and places it on her heart. Trusting Maria allows Alison to spill so much bile, she cuddles up to her big bosom, trying to bury herself.

  'So much of our time is taken up with guilt,' Alison whispers.

  Maria experiences Alison's elfin presence like rose petals on her skin. Maria is both attracted and repelled by awareness of danger. Then gives in to passion. As they devour each other, she feels the thorns.

  Alison is surprisingly cold and businesslike after the hot sex, not sighing with satisfaction. She cannot sleep. Nor will she let Maria sleep, who, irritated, simply gets dressed and leaves Alison's flat.

  Maria, when she gets home, wants to talk to someone. She doesn't want to disturb an old friend in her sleep. Anyway, who? And what would she say? If she could afford it, she would call America. She often has nightmares. Maria rings Margot Gorman.

  Sofia tosses and turns.

  Ghosts people the swampy landscape of nightmares, sliding about like turds among dried apricot waterlilies. Sofia's subconscious plays filthy tricks on her. She, a thin wisp of spirit, is pursued and forgotten by the stream of humanity in dreams. She is the terrorist in the refugee camp, tortured by fascists who shine bright lights in her face, play deafening music, demand her time, wanting her to betray someone, but all the precious jewels of her intellect along with her insights fall before swine. She tries to tell the uniforms but they will not believe her. Credibility depends on what you wear, she learns.

  Another distress call interrupted my sleep. Maria was in danger from her lover. The likelihood of actual murder was improbable. Because of incompetence caused by too much alcohol, vagaries of mood when tiredness meets drug, psychiatric drug meets sedative, sedative stimulant, the stumbling, the clumsiness, would make the threat of manslaughter fairly mutual. Sofia was in danger, too. The constant beer, the marijuana, tobacco, fatty foods; the nights with tequila, or harder drugs, or other people dropping poison, punchy people, gossip, rumour and accusations flying about. Frustration, I imagine, grew to rage, led to desperate phone calls in the early hours. With what they've consumed by three p.m. I'd be flat on my back. Even as a cop, armed and in uniform with a fair idea who was the victim and who the aggressor, I did not like going to domestics.

  Margot assumes the lover Maria is so distressed about is Sofia. It is actually Alison Hungerford. While Margot harshly judges her, Maria is grasping at straws.

  Multiple personality syndrome is Alison's excuse for the broken glass on the floor and the splashes of red wine like the blood of Ghengis Khan's enemies on the wall and in the carpet. Maria, a scorned witch with powers as well as wisdom, would never kill children like Medea. Or rivals like Lady Macbeth.

  'But I could,' Alison talks to herself. 'I've gone off the track again. If I lash myself with the bit of barbed wire in the yard I can add blood to the mess I'm in. My guilt. Wasn't it a spot of blood I wanted to get out of the carpet? If I am hurting you, I can assure you, I will hurt myself even more.' So she paces until dawn. Then she walks barefooted to the beach in her loose nightgown. Alison returns a different woman. She showers and puts on her blue overall.

  The phone rang again. The answer machine took it. No one was there. Just silence. I put on the boxing gloves and belted the bag for half an hour until I was dog-tired.

  15

  …the spaces beneath…

  The wind was really up today, a snarling southerly. Lightning out to sea. Sand stinging the cheeks. Salt in the eyes. Sea pounding, spray thickening the air with a grainy mist. It made me exhilarated. Lean, hungry, willing to work.

  When I was carefully grating carrot and apple to put in my muesli with yoghurt, the phone rang. It was Meghan saying she would be away for a week or so. She sounded l
ame, defeated or tired. Catching her before she speedily disconnected, I asked could she please send me a cheque for expenses before she went. I didn't really want the money but I did need her proper signature. And nothing like hard cash to get down to brass tacks. Facts.

  'Meghan?' I said, 'Don't tell anyone about me. Don't give anyone your mail to post, okay?'

  'Sure,' she sighed.

  'Or collect,' I instructed, laying it on thicker, because I didn't know whether the 'sure' was affirmative or ironic. After breakfast, I found the names of her solicitor and accountant. Had she lost money on some property trust scheme or unsecured bridging finance? Paying off some mysterious debt, or loan? Best to get the simple explanations face to face. Get my nose into action. If I'm on a wild goose chase following the scent of red herrings of possible scenarios, then that is exactly what I'll be paid for. Her professional consultants were suspects in this cruel world. She struck me as a regular Pollyanna in rose-coloured glasses. But when forced to look at something she doesn't like, does she just cover her eyes, ears and blot it out, or turn into a vengeful virago? Is she really one of life's true eccentrics? A divine fool or a clever devil?

  Busy day on the ferry. My neighbour and his extended family were in the queue. Behind their ratty-looking Volvo was an old four-cylinder sedan with the mismatched doors of amateur panel-beating efforts.

  The solicitor would not see me. I had a little stoush with one of those sweet-as-pie, hard-as-nails receptionists who is just about to lose her looks and fears for her job. During our exchange, we both overheard an exasperated, aggressive expletive from the inner office, 'How incompetent!' Happy client? 'I'll sue.'

  Pregnant pause, then, as cool as you please, the secretary intoned, 'I'm sorry Ms Gorman, he is unlikely to see a private investigator at any time.'

  I had not said I was a private investigator, I'd said I was investigating a private matter.

  Standing in the doorway, amused no doubt but glaring, were Libby Gnash and Lola Pointless (I don't know the correct way to say or spell her surname). I had run across Libby before in the course of a piece of detection I was doing a few months ago. Libby is less than five feet tall, became a lawyer in her forties having been educated in the school of hard knocks. Starting out with such underprivileged working-class credentials as could never be challenged, she was in the Communist Party, then into Gay Lib, battle-worn by anti-Vietnam and Women's Liberation street protests and still fighting. Her CI file was a meaty read. Going to the university through her thirties, graduating with a law degree, she carried on the struggle in the courts. She was the solicitor every woman with a legal problem on the coast wanted. She took the woman's side, no matter what. The ass of the law was Rosinante to her Quixote. A health problem forced her out of Sydney, where she had more work than she could deal with alone. Couldn't keep partners, apparently. She sold up, bought a hobby farm and runs her practice from a one-room office off the mall with her lover as office manager, the off-sider who hires and fires cute little computer operators at an alarming rate. Lola is tall and stupid, adept at making enemies, a gorilla on a rope. A formidable team. They hate me because I found out the truth that the woman was at fault in that case.

  The receptionist set her jaw into a stubborn clench. A skirmish between Libby and her would be worth paying for. A sumo wrestle of female wills. I tried to pass shortie and lofty, but they blocked my way.

  'Private investigator, hey?' Libby sneered.

  'Got a licence yet, bitch?' hissed Lola.

  'Have you, Lola? I believe if you're spayed they're fairly cheap,' I said sarcastically, referring her guard-dog role.

  'Read the new tax laws, Margot?' asked Libby.

  Beaten, I frowned and ducked between them.

  In a new edifice, a monument to business, with carpeted stairs and framed prints, Meghan Featherstone's accountant was far more approachable. Rosemary Turner was a lady with big hair and little eyes as grey as ball bearings. And she had a big laugh, at nothing funny. The office was tastefully bare. On the desk were a foolscap, pink, lined lecture-pad, a Parker pen and a computer. She informed me that she was aware of the discrepancy in Meghan's finances. Still except for a restless hand on the keyboard, she exuded confidence.

  'At first, I thought Meghan had a habit, you know?' she expounded. 'That she was hiding. Cocaine? Speed? Whatever, something expensive. What the hell, she could afford it. I only do her tax. She handles her investments herself.'

  'Investments?' None of the paperwork I had been given suggested a share portfolio.

  Rosemary dismissed my query as naive with a flop of her chunky wrist.

  'After a while,' she continued, glancing at her screen, 'it became harder to write it off.' Big laugh. A big woman with a big laugh, and big bare office, so neat and grey there was nothing to gaze at but the large flowers on her shirt. Her focus pinned you in silhouette against the plain backdrop. I wondered how careful the lighting design was and how hard it really was to 'write off' money legally acquired.

  'You spoke to her about it?' I urged.

  Rosemary was not as generous as she seemed. 'Client confidentiality, Margot.'

  'I mean,' I coughed, sensing that I was dealing with one of the best runners in the deception stakes, 'Meghan knew she was being ripped off?'

  Broad, colourful shoulders shrugged. 'I wouldn't put it like that. Your mistake could be forgiven, on appearances,' Rosemary Turner said, patronisingly. 'But she strikes me as clean as clean can be. Too nice.'

  'That's the trouble. No vices.' I tried to indicate that I'd done more work on this case than I had.

  'Well,' Turner appeared to give in, 'Meghan didn't know about it.'

  The voice at the back of my head nagged, could this woman being lying to me? And if so, why? 'You're the accountant,' I said, 'Do people, clients, often not know how much money they've got?'

  Apparently, I'd made the most amazing joke. Tears came to the accountant's eyes. The laugh and the loud shirt dominated the room. I felt small, as if my question were stupid. She reminded me, morally speaking, of one of those obsessively clean people who smoke, not a speck of dirt on the outside and filthy black lungs.

  'So, anyone else could do it, you reckon?' I asked easily. 'Personal friends, professional advisers, credit-card hackers?'

  'I doubt it,' Ms Turner said as if she were talking to a moron. I wondered if she were married. I'd hate to be her husband.

  'Why not?' I let my confusion show, ingenuously. Instead of eliciting sympathy from Rosemary Turner for my ignorance, I got smug satisfaction. And the silent treatment.

  'No kind of unsecured finance that went bust or anything?' I asked.

  'Would I know?' she countered merrily. That was a cheerful mockery, since she knows money and that money is everything.

  'What, exactly, was the discrepancy you brought up with her? May I ask?' I addressed the power in her steely eyes, and explained reluctantly. 'She has employed me to sort this out.'

  A suspicious gleam in the ball bearings warned me to watch myself.

  'Well, income and expenditure were not exactly tallying,' explained Rosemary Turner. 'To put it mildly. She could not produce receipts. Gifts to charity, according to her tax. Over the years. She was spending like mad!'

  'But you said she didn't know,' I whined. Although I didn't trust this woman, I could think of no way to shake her. 'She is being ripped off. Surely? Not by you by any chance?' I had to prick this smirking dirigible.

  'Nope. Afraid not,' she quipped, sharply. No big laugh now, I noticed her mouth, as it pursed, was too little for her face. I stared at it, waiting.

  'My time is expensive, Miss Gorman.'

  Summarily dismissed, I walked out, the phrase 'laughing all the way to the bank' jingling in my brain. Doctor M.Featherstone's previous tax returns would be interesting. I wondered how long it was since this accountant had been audited. The sulphurous smell of money for money's sake hung in the air-conditioning and permeated the whole building.