'It's time to go to the beach. We do all our business on the beach. This,' he implied the shed, 'is only for telephone bookings. And a change room.' He closed the door, pushed off his shorts, he had no underpants on and turned my way when he pulled off his T-shirt. Then I tasted the lukewarm concoction in the mug. From the back of the door he took down a set of robes, like sheets, and a sheik's headgear. The bank clerk was now T.E. Lawrence, or Peter O'Toole in the role. Still barefooted, he opened the door and emerged into the sunlight of his dreams. Susie's face was thunder. She grumbled as she handed over the caravan of tourist camels and stamped into the office to man the phones, picking up my dirty mug as she passed. We had not been introduced, so I didn't say goodbye. I followed Nigel and standing beside him I was taller. He tapped the knee of the leader with his riding crop. She sank slowly down to mounting height. Nigel smiled with seductive generosity and told me to get onto the back part of the saddle. I shrugged okay. He took the front and we hit the track to the beach at a swinging walk.
It was a pleasant trip through a patch of coastal rainforest on the dignified ships of the desert. The luxurious pace fascinated me. Nigel, aloft, did not talk much. When we arrived at his station on the beach, he erected a flimsy Bedouin tent with bamboo poles and cloth matching that on his camels, advertising his safari in gold lettering.
Now, on the sand, he began talking again. 'You would have thought that Neil was going to grow into a poofter. Well he wasn't. Even during the divorce, Neil and I shared what we had when he was a child. I don t think Penny knows how much time we spent together. At first, she was kind of morbidly curious and would grill him every time he got home about what he did with me, apparently suffering each word with self-flagellating envy, until he began to feel sorry for her. Then he lied about where he had been. Well, what we said to one another was still Biggles and Luke Skywalker. We talked of heroes and heroism. He had so much information and such a head for it. It didn't, like, stagnate either. He wanted to do something. The last time I saw him…'
Nigel stopped speaking because tears overtook his voice. I looked up and down the beach for paying customers. They still had half an hour to arrive.
'Ever heard the inside story of that Dolly Dunn business. The one where reporters discovered that sick man in his motel room in the Bahamas or wherever?' These New Age men who gossip were a worry. 'Ever wondered where their millions came from? Neil found out on the Internet that not only were they using and buying boys for pleasure, they were testing drugs on them. This got up Neil's nose. He told me, "Dad I've found it".'
'Found what?' I inquired.
'The battleground where he could fight evil!' Nigel was overcome with sentimental tears again, 'Fucking fight evil. All my best parenting ends in this. He was bloody murdered by those bastards.' A tourist couple were examining the camels. Automatically I cautioned the hero's father, with a jerk of the head at them. He lowered his voice. 'We bloody enjoyed our tales. I didn't think he would really take them on. But he has, he did, and they did him in. His name should be put alongside the great failures of Tobruk, Gallipoli and so on. They should erect a statue to him.'
A brightly coloured double-decker bus parked on the cliff above us. Equally effulgent trippers giggled their way down the steps onto the path through the coastal scrub and grasses. I strolled along the row of kneeling camels, patting their necks and saying hello to their eyes and superior noses before their customers arrived, checking out the too-obvious tourist couple. I went down a hole someone had dug in the sand and put my Achilles tendon injury right back on the agenda. Shit.
T.E.Lawrence, the bank clerk hippie, aka Nigel Waughan, was now greeting tourists like a professional actor, his voice taking on the ring of a town crier and the warm concern for frailty and fear that the magnanimous manage for lesser beings.
Back beside him, I said, 'Thanks for the conversation, and please accept my sincere condolences for the loss of your son. Goodbye.' I was responding to that bank teller side, a readiness to accept formality as a means of chatter, of dismissal. A large American woman overheard me and proceeded with the renowned tact of that nationality to demand to know why our sheik was accepting sympathy. I limped away, not wanting to hear Nigel's reply.
It was a painful walk back through the rare remaining rainforest to my car. I did manage to think between 'ouches' of Neil and Nigel. I could not decide whether the latter was worse than my greenie neighbour, the same or better, but there was something about these libertarian men that gave me the creeps. A woman couldn't feel safe around them, they would be always wanting it, like apes in the zoo. Their sexuality was slimy. I find macho boys like Philippoussis easier.
Neil, the cyber-spy, going under cover to do what, exactly? Give me a break. I preferred the bitter, pragmatic superwoman dressing her boy in women's clothing to the unmitigated romance of this man. My heel hurt like hell as I backed my car towards the shed-office in a three-point turn. Susie benefited me with a look of undisguised envy, which I didn't deserve beyond not saying hello or goodbye. I have no interest in your sensitive New Age guys, they're not my cup of tea, nor my soy de-caf.
Right along here somewhere was the Le Cote de Paradiso caravans, camping, cabins and whatever. It was tucked into the back of the very same rainforest I had walked through. I pulled up beside a recent model Hyundai Excel with the number plate, CC. Cybil Crabbe. Iridescent pink-mauve in colour, the small car was shiny clean on the outside and a tip inside. I entered the office and saw a caricatured image of myself. She had exactly the same haircut, same hair really, colour, weight and straightness. Here was a me who had sat down all my life, eating. She was chubby with heavy legs and about six inches shorter.
I registered shock with my eyebrows and said self-deprecatingly, 'And I thought Lois did me an exclusive.'
'Excuse me?' She pretended not to know who I was but she had the kind of eyes that soaked in everything. She had seen me break down during a triathlon. She was the one who egged on Beetle to keep running and leave me be. She said the 'excuse me' to disconcert me, or make me blush. I was truly lame again and asked if I might sit down.
'Lois,' I repeated, 'you must have the same hairdresser, Lois.' She looked at me and didn't reply, wondering what card to play from a hand held close to her chest.
'I'm afraid my Achilles tendon is still a bit of a worry. Remember a couple of days ago?' I reached over her desk to shake her hand. 'Margot Gorman, you're Cybil Crabbe? Yes?'
A softness about Cybil was reinforced by fleshy bases to the short pointed fingers. She smiled and became quite pretty.
Cybil was obviously comfortable seated; her elbows rested on her desk but she didn't seem to lean forward.
'What can I do for you, Margot?' She looked me up and down, all the boldness of middle-class confidence.
'You could probably do a lot for me, Cybil. If you told me what happened in the evening of Friday before last.'
She barked a mirthless laugh, 'I doubt it.'
Notwithstanding the educated voice, this was no lady. This was a brick wall. Posters detailing Marine Life of Eastern Australia described and identified fish to be caught in the area. One for sea. One for fresh water. Tackle for hire, and purchase. The office catered for holiday-makers' needs very efficiently. Even the camel tours had a brochure. I began to talk about Lois, and her cousin and Thrust, and fish, fishing. I let my knees slip apart and leant back in the chair with my hands behind my head, just to watch what she did with her eyes. They went to my crutch and up to my face. I lifted my sore foot onto my left knee and began rubbing it and talking about the barbecue and the women who were there. 'You were there.'
She busied herself with a pen. 'I was?' Before she was going to give any information, she had to know what I knew.
'You know Cybil, the funny thing about secret-keepers, is they think they keep themselves secret…' I let the sentence hang, to watch her reaction. Her eyes went blank. She won, I lost. I explained. 'Well, possibly they do keep secrets, but they don't know
much.'
'So?' She had not stopped work on my account. She addressed an envelope.
'They haven't got the mental room, if you see what I mean?' I went on.
'I'm sorry, I don't,' she remarked disinterestedly. She was riveted.
'Their secrets are relatively easy to guess. Their lives are narrow, you see. Ninety-five per cent of a person you can read from the outside, body language, behaviour, aura, more if you have a good nose. Less than five per cent is controlled by the will-power of the individual. Less than that by someone presenting an image of herself, especially if it's false. It's rather pathetic when you think about it.'
She put that envelope aside and picked up another.
'You have a nice new car out there. Now here's an example. I bet it's fully paid for. I guess that it's fully paid for, no loans. No loans on the car.' She had a choice here, whether to crack that laugh that would fool a lot of people into thinking she saw the funny side or lie about the car.
She laughed, really jolly. 'You're right. No loans on the car. But I don't know what interest it is of yours.'
Looking straight through her, I frowned. 'This is not a social call, Cybil. I am an investigator.'
Cybil got up busily on her solid legs and went to a filing cabinet. An admirable way she had with files, her fingers quick and eyes busy.
'My other guess is,' I continued—she brought out the butch in me—'And this one also doesn't matter, while most people who own places like this work them themselves, you don't own it or part-own it. You are just a worker here. I measure you as a worker, a worker anywhere, a woman who has a job most of the time.'
'So?' She shrugged.
'It doesn't matter, I'm just showing you how much I could know about you or anyone who chooses not to say anything. A big white silence about the other Friday night looks to me like a great cloud of guilt.'
She stopped fiddling with the manila folders, but grabbed one anyway. Cuddled it to her breast, her eyes greedy, her lips sealed.
Getting up, I said, 'I've just got to go and find out what you're so guilty about.'
She didn't move until I had opened the door and then she said sweetly, 'Margot? What are you investigating?'
'That's not hard to answer. The death of a boy that night there. His mother thinks it was murder,' I revealed. And so, incidentally, does his father.'
'Boy? Who hired you?' Cybil Crabbe stepped towards me. She flicked the long fringe out of her eyes and let the hair fall back. I have been known to do that one myself.
'The mother,' I threw over my shoulder with a glance. I saw Cybil pale slightly. I knew she would stop me so I moved very deliberately, limping, to give her time to think, to make up her mind, to keep me talking.
'Lois did a lovely job of your hair. I've been with Lois ever since she got her certificate,' she turned chatty. 'She used to be at Liz's Scissors?'
'I've never been there. If you don't want to give me any information, I'd better let you get back to your invoices.' I acted, for want of a better word, hurt.
'What exactly did you want to know?' She opened the door for me and followed behind. Clever now she'd had time to arrange her disinformation.
I shot a guilt trip from left field. 'Well, for instance, was Virginia White there?'
'Virginia was out in the bush. Virginia is too obsessed to party,' she explained, strangely defensive.
'Ah,' I exhaled with comprehension, 'To party. Drugs were there, hard ones, thank you. What drugs, exactly?'
'The usual, I suppose.' Cybil conveyed that she didn't indulge, even though she was hip with the jargon. Which means, she could well deal.
'I saw Alison, Maria, Sofia,' I said. 'Not you. Dello and Maz, who else was there, Cybil? Do you know Jill David?'
'Well,' she turned back to the office, 'Tiger Cat was big-noting herself giving away designer drugs for free, a sort of combination E, acid, crack, I don't know. I don't do them.' The wire door sprang itself shut.
I followed her back in, 'Yes, you do, sometimes. But did you that night?'
'No. I don't do drugs. Your instinct is wrong there,' she said smartly.
'Why were you there?' I almost begged, 'Cybil?'
'As it happens, I heard it was on, and I was on that side of the river. Having a haircut as a matter of fact. I saw the gurls come off the ferry and, well, I went.'
'Okay,' I took my notebook from my pocket. Cybil described Tiger Cat perfectly, dishing out the pills. Ingratiating herself to all and sundry. That was the most accurate thing Cybil had to give me. She had gone to the Spiders' do out of curiosity, alone, and went home alone. She would not reveal her private address, or phone number.
As if I couldn't find it for myself! I left her place of work dissatisfied, but not as much as she would have wished. Staring at the iridescent mauve car, its bubble shape, its polish, I felt she could be guilty of something as simple as not cleaning the car. Just then I saw a red Saab leave the caravan park, but I wasn't quick enough to follow it.
Sofia stares at the train passing listening to the messages in its percussion: excuses, excuses, excuses. Her crop has turned to weed. The goddess plant has betrayed her and turned into a boy with balls. With the money she could have bought the computer with a modem. The Internet was going to save her sanity. It gave her Shulamith, her toad.
Old feminists, like Maria, romanced telepathy, pathenogenesis, transspatial, trans-temporal connection of the sisterhood, but here was a real web of electronic and instantaneous intercourse, a network. Clogging up the esoteric ley lines in the earth's natural magnetism, no doubt, but on the tangled World Wide Web, she can move like a spider. 'Why should SCUM care what happens when we're dead? Why should we care that there is no younger generation to succeed us?'
But the crop is a loss. Cyberspace is the safest place. Who knows if you're stoned? Everyone is stoned. The only place she can be herself and tell the truth, gone. No money this year. Sofia lives in an urgent present, a deep, intriguing, eternal present. Her world is collapsing.
Excuses, excuses, excuses, rattles the train.
Maria smothers Sofia. Everyone thinks Maria takes drugs, but she doesn't. Sofia knows. Maria wants to appear cool, tolerant, so both keep up the pretence. Maria does not want to be judgemental, moralistic. But she eats. Food without manners, food without rituals. Although she sits like a monolith and mouths off, Maria lives in the dead past. She swallows Sofia. 'She munches away, consuming me.' The feminist history Maria devours sucks Sofia's future, creates a hungry gorge that sits like a hiatus. Maria knows her so well, it destroys Sofia, while it sustains her. A good mind making excuses; what kind of conversation is that? Sofia loves and hates Maria, the Internet is her chance. Was. Escape from breaking bread, discussing Andrea Dworkin, another fatty, sorting out resentments, getting down to party lines and agreeing. Sofia's individuality, her rampant creativity, is sat upon by dinosaurs. Cyberspace is pure, crystal clean, away from the vomit and shit, the germs and mould. If anyone needs a computer, it is Sofia. She cannot be a have-not. It is not fair. Sofia is as radical as Maria. More so, she has talent.
Fat is a feminist issue. Schmissue. Sofia picks up the bag of useless leaf and goes into the house talking to herself.
'The need the greed to heed. Hunger? Thirst? Quest? Thrills? The impatience for it is driving me over the edge. I'm sick of waiting. I'm sick of fear. I don't care. I want to get to the fling of not caring, not caring a fig, doing a jig of not caring. I know, I've got it. By jingo, Dingo. I've got it. With the pounds of leaf, male leaf, I'll make this cake, I'll bake this cake. It's something to do. Why should I care? I don't care. It'll blast us off our little rockers like rockets. Get off this planet and fly back home.'
Sofia is careful and thorough. When it is in the oven she feels she can face the world again. She has a weapon. She can socialise.
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