Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  Alison Hungerford slaps the plastic gloves together in her palms before she sits down at the computer in the boy's room of the house on a canal in which she works. Canisteo Bayou is a relatively new extension to the town of Port Water. Although anti-static, non-streaking, non-abrasive cleaning wipes are handy, the screen is blotchy from familiar sticky fingers. She takes out of her pocket a pair of surgical gloves and lights up the computer after she has put them on.

  She types www.webset.wimmin.com.au/WebsighTlines into the address field of the Internet software and loses herself. Alison never has enough time, yet she doesn't notice how quickly it passes.

  Finesse the bluff with a bluff.

  Of course we want to take over the world. BUT HOW?

  Be chameleon.

  Crop circles are roped in with clandestine Government experiments in mind control and microwave weaponry. Ley lines are disturbed. Aliens have landed with their white stone. Women, u must ride our great eagle, honour/Jezebel, fly to the wilderness, be nourished from the face of the serpent.

  God's vengeance upon the goddess.

  Colonisers and killers at heart are an introduced species to the earth. That they want the destruction of women and the planet is proved.

  Anyone had their home page tampered with?

  Alison shoots her bullets through chevrons into cyberspace. If life from outer galaxies, or extraterrestrials of any sort, are making contact then the superhighway is their route. They will find no biospheric barriers there. Beyond the earthbound strife, the boring and depressing concerns of her own people, Alison seeks freedom through the radon gateway of the monitor. She clicks the Favourites icon on the toolbar. Then out of curiosity she looks up incoming email and regular sites. Messages from facilitator@whymen.com.vu she finds intriguing; why would such a young kid be interested? Soon she discovers the answer. Boy-Lovers, a photo album showing candid shots of youths in beach-wear, and a menu where the browsers can pick and choose. Code-words are required before she can get further into the channels of communication, but she deduces that the next step is credit card numbers. She finds the file set up to download material from the whymen site. Ach-Mem. She ponders the strange pages of numbers and abbreviations, trying to figure out what they could mean. 'Assholes' is the only full word and it is repeated at the end of each transcript. She feels her way through a stranger's mind as in an unlit house a newcomer searches for the light switch. Uncovering the lad's recently sent email, she notes his pseudonym, Innarestd, and service provider, Hotmail. From the tenor of his letters, the kid was posing as a pervert, boastfully claiming to be a lecturer in higher mathematics and electronic engineering. Anyone with a brain could see it was make-believe. The facilitator at whymen in Vanuatu, however, didn't seem to care as he responded to Innarestd as a bone fide client.

  She carefully wipes and tidies the room the way a cleaner should. Alison goes into the kitchen and screams when she sees the time. She races to get the mopping finished, hares through the place with a feather duster, flashes around with a carpet sweeper, not bothering to lug out the vacuum cleaner, and has a lightning idea. Pay a friend to do the job she is being paid for so that she can access the on-line computers in the house. Iris, Lenny's aunt, is just the ticket. She has a key.

  Ideas themselves are hits of speed. She is logs onto the other computer, because, for no other reason, she can't resist.

  The phone rings. Alison is caught out. She shivers with a flush of guilt. It is Chandra. 'What about Tilly?'

  Fucken meat street, Alison is furious, as she closes down and checks the house.

  Public phones. Must ring Penny, with what? Reassurances. Must do a workout at the gym. I put the notebook down, brought out the little black book, flipped through, found Margaret Hall's mobile number and slashed the phone-card through the slot.

  Margaret answered. 'Yes?'

  'Margot here. How's the CyberCage?' When seeking information in the friendship network it is always best to ask how they are, what they're doing, how their friends, children, mother, whomever, are. It is excellent to remember the last thing they said the last time you met.

  'Oh, cool,' she replied. 'Been teaching the Internet to women.'

  'Anyone I know?' I bantered lightly.

  'A few,' she acknowledged, then continued. 'I had Judith Sloane the other day.'

  It did not strike me as odd that anyone would want to learn the intricacies of the World Wide Web, even though for myself it was only too aptly named, and I hate cobwebs. 'Judith Sloane? The singer?'

  'Two old dykes from the bush. Virginia White knew what she was doing. But Judith, well, you know?, hates all things modern. Like we should live like the monks in the Middle Ages, growing, spinning, weaving, subsistence and all that.' Margaret dropped her voice. 'I got the feeling she had been online before and didn't really want me to know that. Could be bullshitting. Anyway, what can I do for you, Margot?'

  'Nothing much,' I said. 'Just a couple of phone numbers. Jill David? An address will do.'

  'Her caravan? She was in here yesterday. Ready?' Margaret Hall gave me Jill's mobile phone number and I carefully wrote it in my black book.

  'And Alison? Tilly's mum?' I requested.

  'Right. I've got two Alisons. I've got her work number. Hungerford. The phone was cut off from her flat after a month. Didn't pay the bill,' Margaret gossiped, being generous with information. I wrote down a number that seemed familiar.

  'Do you know how I can contact Dello and Maz?' I prayed hopefully.

  'Sorry, don't know them,' Margaret said.

  I noted that and wrapped up the conversation with, 'Thanks. See you.'

  'Yeah, bye.'

  One mystery was solved immediately. I found I had written down Penny Waughan's home telephone number for Alison.

  I dialled the college and asked for Mrs Waughan. While I waited, I saw Broom, Brunhilde Geiser, walking along the street with Libby Gnash. They stopped at the bus stop and sat down on the bench. As the diminutive solicitor was carrying a brief-case which she immediately opened to bring out papers, I thought they must be talking business. An odd coupling of women that I knew. Not seeing Lola anywhere I let my eyes rest on Broom as I waited for Penny to come onto the line. Her exaggerated hand movements and facial expressions were familiar, but now I found them overdone, like garish colours. Libby, in contrast, seemed to say little and moved her hands only to smoke a cigarette, a habit Broomhilda completely abhors.

  Penny was speaking. 'Hello?'

  'Penny? It's Margot Gorman,' I explained.

  'Yes?' She sounded tentative.

  'Are you all right?' I have a cop-educated voice sometimes that tends to step forward rather than backward when someone shows doubt.

  'As well as can be expected,' Penny said. 'It's just that I am in a bit of a hurry. I have to get to the bank and pay my cleaner in cash before she leaves my house.'

  'Okay, just one thing. When can I visit you at home?' I asked.

  So Alison worked for Penny Waughan, as a cleaner?

  'Sometime of an evening would be best,' she hesitated. 'I won't ask you how you are going, because.'

  'I understand,' I reassured her. 'You get to the bank. I'll ring you either tomorrow or the following night.'

  The grieving mother was sharp and hard all of a sudden, 'I must go. Goodbye.'

  'Of course.' I jumped to attention. 'See you then.'

  The dense bush outside Rory's house is busy with movement. Black cockatoos in a flock fly overhead squealing 'weird, weird'. Being close to the waterfall and perched on rock above the meeting of three streams, the place is full of tree-spirits.

  The pixie woman, Hope, appears. Rory does a double take. Rory is really tired of all the incurably curious, incredibly stupid, albeit, often, immensely nice, young women who turn up all the time. Sometimes they are amusing. Always Rory offers a cup of tea and gives food if they happen to arrive when she is preparing supper. Lately, she has been very busy.
As if she were park ranger, her home the café for tourists, not a counsellor, though a fundamentally decent individual, Rory is forced to indulge their egocentricities, their untested fantasies, to answer their questions, even though, knowing from long experience, they will not take advice, anyway.

  'Go,' she pleads silently, through the streaky window to the figure on her verandah.

  She gets up and says, 'Hey, I am not in the mood for visitors.'

  The gurl is mad with the monologues of wandering around Lesbianlands alone.

  Hope Strange says, 'I have a present for you, Rory.'

  Another Kiwi accent, Rory sighs, where are the dinkum Aussies?

  Hope hands Rory a white stone. This sort of gesture is not new. The land is full of gemstones and natural wonders. The white rock glistening with translucent green fits comfortably in her hand. The vibration is strong, but Rory has passed the stage of the rocks on Lesbianlands, just as she has dealt and finished with the circular Tarot cards she enthusiastically read a couple of years ago.

  She thanks her and asks, as a matter of interest, how she got here. The gas roars from the bottle as she turns the knob. Rory strikes a match and holds it to the burner, thinking it is interesting to know the paths of gossip and personal contact which impel women to arrive in the remote Australian bush where man-hating dykes are said to live like savages. Whether or not this distracted seeker will respond logically is a gamble. You always make them tea. One, because long-term landswomen never know at first who is a sundowner and who a genuine swaggie. Sundowners arrive for the tucker and shelter and leave having given nothing. Swaggies chop a load of wood.

  Hope replies quickly, 'Stayed a night at Meghan's and Judith brought me out, and left me at the gate. That was weeks ago.'

  Putting the cup down, Rory nods.

  Hope takes no notice of the brew in front of her even though she had nodded yes to honey. Hope begins talking about Virginia's sculpture. Rory fills her own mug and makes herself at ease in her chair, with a shrug. The goddess will provide. She hasn't been up to see Virginia's work herself. It is a steep climb. Lately, Virginia visits her, not the other way around.

  'At first I thought it was just a fallen tree, magically showing the female essence of trees. Just nature, you know. But then, it was like an ancient wreck.'

  Rory listens.

  'Really weird experience. I felt like I was in a tomb. But it had a rhythm, a pulse, a heartbeat. Fluid and rigid. It was wood. Grotesque, but…' Hope had come to try and make sense of what she is feeling, Rory realises. 'Sitting on damp earth, the boundaries of my being opened like floodgates. I flowed about the curves and angles like water, investigating the spaces beneath. Like viewer like artist. It was a kind of key. I wanted to sit up there and play my flute, preen like a pussy cat rubbing its back on the snake shapes of growing things. Like the strangler fig. I saw a snake in a patch of sun, big lump in its belly. Trying to pull back my brain was like fingering water into a bowl.'

  Rory's mouth is slightly open.

  'I don't know,' the gurl's eyes question the middle distance. 'The mighty tree had been pushed over by loggers of the past, bands of men with bullock drays and long two-handled saws, chains and precious axes, but it fell into a difficult ravine and they gave up. Its girth is so wide Virginia has constructed a step ladder to climb its side to work in the centre, scrapping away the villages and towns of termites.'

  'At least you're full of appreciation,' Rory says.

  'I saw a classical symmetry in a flash then it was gone. This tree had frightened the men who disturbed it. It's like a ship. It has a vertical aft like a car ferry, and a bow narrowing elegantly with swimming limbs. Pitching in stormy seas. The squat lateral roots are being shaped into bodies. A couple, love-making, entwined about each other. Unmistakably, there is a proud figure holding a stringless bow up straight and high, the other elbow bent back to a quiver of arrows, yet she has no face. Her head is part of the tree itself. When she is finished everyone will know her.'

  'Why do you say that?' asks Rory intrigued.

  'Like the attitude is clear,' Hope trembles like a fawn. 'I will love her when I meet her. Then, like right away, I had to move, to go. Scuttled off down the hill in a hurry. I needed to run, to draw myself with me, like a clinging sheet, like lurex changing to water. And to blood, as it passed the portals of my skin. I needed to come here. To be one. Of many. Not insane.'

  'I understand,' Rory says, solidly. 'Men are sculpted as they see themselves, women rarely.'

  'Yes,' Hope nods. 'I find it freaky. It is a ship of fools.'

  'Are we fools?' smiles Rory, rhetorically. 'Flopping about trying to create ourselves?'

  'Yes, I reckon,' Hope frowns. 'Virginia was angry. It is an angry work.'

  Rory shakes her head. 'Incredible.'

  'But,' qualifies Hope. 'Brilliant really, that sculpture hidden in the depth of the forest, isolated and yet challenging. Because, like pain, it's the truth.'

  'For women's eyes only, she told me.' Rory wants to bring the exchange to the level of her sanity.

  In this, she is disappointed, as Hope begins quoting the Bible. 'And here is the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sitteth.'

  'I must look that up.'

  'Revelation. Chapter 17, verse 9.' Hope drains her cold, honeyed tea.

  Rory nods and keeps nodding. Grimacing. She handles the greenish white stone, feels its weight in her palm and asks, 'Where have you set up camp?'

  Hope is so young, at rest there is not a line on her face. She makes her own furrows with her frowns and her smiles. They are there for a moment, then gone.

  'Not far from here, just up on the ridge. In the burnt-out shelter. That is where I got that.' She points to the piece of quartz.

  'Uh ha,' Rory knows where she means. 'That used to be Trivia's place.'

  'Yes, I know that. I found her notebook in a tin.' Hope gets up, walks around and asks, 'Have you got a computer? Can anyone use your phone?'

  'If you pay for your calls and note it down in the book there,' explains Rory. 'When I don't feel like trusting women, I lock it up when I go out.' Rory follows her with her eyes. 'Funny you should mention it. I'm getting a computer. I suppose you were a cyberchick at school?'

  Hope nods. 'That's what I miss more than anything. Even cheese-burgers.' They stand at the open door, the threshold.

  'Hope,' Rory asks, 'you didn't happen to see anyone else when the bridge was broken, by any chance?'

  'All I saw were those two horrible women on horseback with their skinny dogs and stock-whips. One of the dogs had a paw tied into its collar so it had to walk three-legged. They had a look at the bridge, but that's all.'

  'Wilma and Barb. That poor little bitch runs away as soon as she gets onto this property. That's why they tie up her leg, so she can't take off.' Both agree the dog would prefer to belong to one of the gurls.

  Hope Strange leaps off the verandah with the lithe energy of enviable youth. 'Be seeing yer.'

  Rory waves goodbye, wondering how she always has this settling effect on women, even when she does not feel hospitable. Wilma Campbell is Willy Campbell's wife and Barb is Willy's sister. Rory writes their names down for Margot. Because they're women, they come onto Lesbianlands whenever they want. Rory doesn't trust Wilma and Barb, but without proof will not judge them.

  She sweeps out the leaves from her satellite dish, eventually warming water to begin cleaning the solar panel of birdshit, after which she makes a phone call. She wants Chandra to help her find the computer to suit her needs. Happy in anticipation of a new contact, she gets herself ready to go to town.