Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  Sofia, who had scrutinised my every action, and reaction, explained, 'Homoeopathic. She took that whenever she got drunk.'

  I knew that strychnine was poisonous alkaloid, derived from nux vomica, which has a powerful effect on the central nervous system and was formerly used in small quantities to stimulate the appetite. I pocketed the jar. Sofia did not mind.

  'How can someone know you all your life and not really know you at all?' she asked me.

  As if I could answer that!

  Grief. Maria. Chandra's tears flow, swamping, choking her. She sobs with her head down, grasping the steering wheel. Shoulders heaving, she repeats her old rival's name over and over, remembering. Twenty-two and half years ago, Maria broke her heart. She stole the love of Chandra's life ten years after the death of her mother. In those days, Maria was big but not fat. She laughed a lot and took the podium at conferences. At demonstrations she loved to rabble-rouse and wear the marshal's armband, and lead the chant: what do we want; when do we want it. Maria could sing and knew all the protest songs. Maria, then, like Dolly Parton's Joylene, could have had anyone she wanted. But she took Mary Smith. Mary Smith was slim and other-worldly, with a sly sense of humour, skin colour she said she got from moon-baking, and a very sharp mind. Every so often, Chandra hears Mary Smith on the radio talking about the latest sociological study in the area of her expertise, a cautious interpreter of statistics. Then, she was cheeky, witty. It was at a dance. Maria had a hearty ego, though in later years you wouldn't have guessed it, really. Maria and Mary fell to kissing on the dance floor. Chandra could not kiss or even hug on a dance floor. In fact, she rarely danced. When she did she needed her sticks. A great pleasure of her life, up until that moment, was watching other women dance and move their bodies in rhythm. Mary and Maria snogged the night away and all the time Chandra had to see it because, at that time, Mary and she lived together and she did not drive. In the car going home that night, Mary told her she had been having it off with Maria for a couple of months but she didn't know how to tell her. She guessed she had to see for herself. Chandra was devastated. For three years she troubled herself over the cowardice and profligacy of Mary Smith. Her broken heart galvanised her mental processes. She threw herself into reckless and endless activities to shatter the bones of her Saturn Return. Worthwhile years, she now realises, as that is when she really developed her edge, on the eve of the Age of Aquarius. Released from chains of Saturn onto the wings of Uranus, she kept abreast of technological change, updating hardware, facile with software and, incidentally, earning a good living as a programmer.

  Now Maria is dead. The tragedy of Maria was that she would never face her own guilt, preferring relentless compensation out there in the world. She had a daughter at the age of sixteen whom she had to give up. Even when she got her back, she would take off, trying to live a life of her own, come back with presents or apologies and promises.

  In the thirty-seven months and eight days, Chandra was getting over Mary Smith, Sofia was a young dyke of eighteen and nineteen, who lived with Maria and Mary on and off. She idolised Mary and copied her in everything. She came around to Chandra's quite often because of her recent closeness to Mary. She became more Mary than Mary, not so white in the skin, with fairer hair, but in identical clothes; Virginia Woolf grey cardigans and drippy skirts. Chandra heard the story of her childhood and comprehended, later, a component of Maria's guilt. Mary betrayed Sofia's devotion with cowardice and scorn and lying. Sofia learnt to hate. Chandra grins to herself now: there is no hater on the circuit quite as good at it as Sofia. Without Mary, Maria and Sofia took different paths again. Maria went to America for a few years, and Sofia sank into the rough trade of heroin and alcoholism and mental breakdown in various Australian cities. About seven years ago, Maria took Sofia out of the asylum where she was tortured by psychiatrists, the claustrophobia and psychotropic medication. She promised her she would never go back inside again. Or be locked up anywhere. Since they have lived in the area, Chandra has very little to do with Maria. A short affair and a long friendship with Sofia, notwithstanding. After Mary, Chandra never forgave Maria, until now. The biography of her contact in Maria's life plays through Chandra's head like a little wake.

  Her tears are spent. Life goes on. Death means change. Now is the time to step out of cyberspace, where she is fleet of foot, back into the community, where she in her chair can be relied upon. She toots her horn. Rory and Virginia respond, walking slowly up to the car.

  They organise a gathering, with the gurls they find at Sofia's, to arrange Maria's funeral, for tomorrow. Dee answers the phone from Margot about when the body will be released. No police interest. General relief ripples through the mob. Virginia leaves in Cybil's car; she can pick hers up at Chandra's after the meeting. With Chandra and Rory there, Jill David gone and Dello and Maz still playing music out the back, the dynamics change for Sofia. She goes outside and finds they have lit a fire in half-barrel. Rory and Dee close the door on the chaos Sofia has made of Maria's things.

  As soon as Mary Smith arrives from Sydney, along with others from Lismore, Tamworth and Brisbane, Chandra leaves for her appointment with Margot.

  There was a particular energy running around my nervous system like an electrical current as I readied myself to be taken out to dinner by Chandra. She said, her car, disabled parking spot. She was in my driveway within a minute of when she said she'd be. I went out to greet her. She swung herself out of the driver's seat of her Subaru station wagon, taking most of her weight on the right stick and using the door frame.

  After a few words about Maria, I said, 'Let's forget that for now.'

  'Yes,' she concurred.

  Lightly, then, I told her I was fascinated by her sticks. They were beautiful red wood snakes. I expected the hospital callipers. These were hand-crafted and individual. The right one curled right up to her elbow, the left just over her wrist. Although the straight parts were a little bent, they were extraordinary pieces of wood, and wonderfully carved and polished, with solid rubber butts. Her going-out sticks!

  'Virginia made them for me. She searched for months in the rainforest for the perfect shaped branch, this one is a branch. This is a sapling. She has an affinity with wood.' Chandra said proudly, 'These are the product of a labour of love.'

  I wondered whether they were lovers once, but not aloud.

  'Sculptures,' I admired.

  'Well, she is a sculptor. You know Virginia? Of course you do.'

  'Not really,' I shook my head, 'Not well.'

  Chandra, for her part, was determined to see every bit of my property and took great interest in my renovation of the chookhouse. I laughed when she noted as I had that the people who built it must have loved their fowls. The pitched roof and hardwood frame, the proportions and balance, all gained her attention. They probably had show hens, she decided. She spoke of agricultural shows, her mother, and horses. She understood the pride people have in the breeding of livestock. She named exotic types of chooks. Then she was curious about what I was going to do with it when I finished.

  'Wine cellaring and photograph-developing, I don't know. I might learn something else.'

  She cross-examined me on the wine and photography. 'A pity to waste such a beautiful studio spot.'

  I knew she was assessing my artistic potential, as if every woman worth her salt had to be in some way creative. While I was humble about cameras, I could not hide my arrogance about wine. So we discussed cellar potentials for a while. And then triathlons.

  'Rory told me all about it.' Chandra searched for somewhere to rest her arms.

  'I thought Beetle was a mermaid,' I said. 'Swim! At first I thought she had a lazy left arm, but then I noticed the right hardly cleared the water either, and fast! What a lovingly cared-for bike! An antique.' I called as I went to get two bottles of wine from beneath my bed. I showed her the labels. A McLaren Vale 'Futures' Shiraz, 1994 Release. The crust had developed near the neck. I shook my head as I saw it.

 
; 'I really should decant this before drinking,' I sighed. 'But it is a sensation.' The other was a Traminer White for dessert. I anticipated, because Chandra couldn't, at this stage, her pleasures in these tastes.

  Margot and Chandra are attracted to each other, sexually. Both being happiest with honesty and intellectually excited, one by investigation, the other by organisation, Chandra decides, they could not be in bed together, after having made love, keeping secrets from each other. Not for long. How can she trust Margot? She fraternises with men, reasons Chandra, counts them, or several individual males, as good friends. She sees humanity as one grouping and would consider it insanely criminal to want to kill half of it. Her philosophic question comprises: are people fundamentally evil, or good? Boring, but Chandra likes her.

  'Sure it is right to fight evil, but look at the facts, girl, see the inconsistencies: every man benefits from the evil of other men, and the evil of women, from the good of men and his god. And women don't!'

  They argue vigorously. The delicious taste of romance on Chandra's tongue, there is nothing so erotic as knowing someone fancies you. Physically, Margot is gorgeous, each line, outline, profile, the hue of her skin, the way she moves, the grace of fitness. Chandra could eat up that Amazonian beauty. Chandra knows she would throttle Margot, eventually, if they ever became intimate partners. Or lose her own higher purpose.

  The seaside looks peaceful for a moment. A woman and two children walk along the water's edge calling to each other about kelp and shells. The sunshine is on its last rays. Margot is showing her where the beginning of her first murder investigation happened. The toilet, the car park, the beach.

  We had already decided on the restaurant. We went in her car, stopping where Neil died, because she asked me and I was gratified that she recalled the night she comforted, counselled, me, in such detail. After dark we took up our booking and made ourselves comfortable, starting with a light beer and a plate of entrees while we examined the choices. Giving the menus to the waitress, we settled back.

  Wine works wonders for conversation, over dinner. 'There is a vitriolic side to Meghan,' Chandra told me, in the midst of my speculation on the cause of the ransacking of her house. 'Not to say, a vicious and violent one. Ask Jill.'

  Megs had beaten Jill up, at least once, but then she had probably provoked it. They had sought counselling. 'Lesbian DV is an issue, Margot.'

  Later, she asked me about Penny Waughan.

  'Perhaps her son died because someone else was meant to,' I said.

  'Who?' Chandra's eyes were very direct. Even though the matter was serious, Chandra and I managed to laugh. 'Someone with fat fingers, according to Alison's predictions.'

  We went through characters with chubby fingers. Cybil and Maria being the obvious ones. Had Maria been murdered? Chandra did not know Cybil, only that she was Virginia's lover and Rory could not stand her. Even the lanky Meghan had chubby bases to the fingers of her hands. Rory has long, artistic digits, I had noticed when she drew the map.

  'But Maria.' I told Chandra of my arrangement with the cops and how I managed to arrest suspicion from that quarter. She called me a smart alec, but the warmth left her eyes.

  'Maria? Her own fears, her phone calls,' I said. 'Do you think she had a premonition?'

  'Doesn't make sense.' She poured some more wine into our glasses.

  'I had heard on the grapevine that Maria had a thing going with Alison. Where did I hear that?'

  'I heard it quite recently from Alison herself.' Chandra lapped up lemongrass sauce with a spring-roll. 'If we keep on that subject, we'll destroy our appetites.' So practical.

  We talked and talked over expensive Thai food and my wines, and while snatches of what we said, of what was exchanged, come back at me when I least expect them, it is all, if I try to put it in sequence, a bit of a blur. A pleasurable blur. Chandra seemed to despair of most of the bush women and admire a certain stamina at the same time. 'Virginia,' she said, 'when accused of being left high and dry with her moral outrage, responded that she would not like to be swamped in sewage and dragged down by the quicksand of gossip.'

  'But,' she continued, with different emphasis. 'It's the hub of the community we have here, a lesbian community under siege. Not a healthy community but a community nevertheless. Our own reality, a shared reality of living and inter-relating, is better than being in bourgeois units invisibly notched in the grids of the malestream.'

  While I did put short notes in my brain to follow up at a later stage, I did not tell her what I had done so far about Rory's job. Although the bulldozer and the bridge and the explosions came to mind, I tried to slough the job. There would be paths I could chase starting here, but it felt like the ground had shifted. I felt I could go back to Chandra any time and ask her to expand. I didn't forget, but I looked into her eyes, and somewhere in the subliminal sense of smell, the chemicals started adjusting those in my head and heart, and so on. I was getting off on this woman.

  She helped me sort through the details I had of Neil, in between long diversions into her past loves, last of whom was Alison. She had worked out the glitch; the email had come from Neil's computer. Alison Hungerford, apparently, had several distinct personalities: witch, nymphomaniac, genius. She was abstract, earthy; political, amoral, inspired, weak, energetic. But could she trust herself? No. Could she pursue the puzzle of Neil's Internet life? Yes, for a while. The print-outs intrigued Chandra. She was going to bring them but, of course, forgot, the greater event of death in the community having overwhelmed incidental things.

  'Plainly, the boy, and now Alison, were onto some kind of ring of boy-lovers who are not nice, and possibly preying on lads, not only for sexual favours, but also testing drugs,' Chandra opined. 'I have heard that doctors, lawyers, magistrates are in some weird cult around here.'

  'There is also the coastline, being a landing place for big-time drug importers.'

  Looking in her bag, she said with some excitement, 'I found one of the sheets.'

  And handed it to me. 'This is a yacht. The name, the identification number. This could be code for place, and time.'

  Chandra using a highlighter pen had signalled out the dates. 'This one, look, that is the day you found the body!'

  'Which would explain all this activity near the beach and the mangroves. They would just have to motor up the river, weigh anchor and hide in one of the side-waters.'

  'Separate the dates before and after Neil's death,' she suggested.

  'And Hugh's,' I added. Instead of being enthused by my work, I wanted her to look at me, in the eye. But she was avoiding it, like crazy.

  'Yes, what exactly did he know?' she asked, fiddling with a pen and a serviette.

  'Where had he been before Dello and Maz picked him up?'

  'The yacht!' We said it together.

  The passion for detecting infected Chandra and swamped the need to physically dissolve into our mounting mutual attraction. As soon as I mentioned Philippoussis, she cooled off, told me she had to be home in the morning because of the demands of her farm, her commitments, the meeting, and made too many excuses.

  When she dropped me off at my front door, Chandra pulled me to her again and gave me a big, sympathetic hug. I responded. Chandra came inside.

  'They were mother and daughter you know,' she whispered.

  'Who?'

  'Maria was Sofia's mother.'

  'What?' How could I have been so stupid not to have seen that? Or simply known it, somehow? Could it be the difference in their relative size? Am I that conventional? That was what Sofia's search was about!

  Chandra left about three in the morning. We did not make love, although, I think, both of us wanted to. While we had been fond and kissed, I was confused about how Chandra felt about me. Certainly the evening had connotations; indications of something she was not sharing with me. Could be anything. I placed it in my head, hoping my dreams would sort through the material of the day. Conscience is corruption, meaning? Because Chandra distracted
me when I wanted to pursue this aphorism, my mind hung on it. What did she distract me with? It worked. What was it? Something theoretical: drugs and paedophilia were boys' war games which negated women yet again, sapped female energy, further preventing self-realisation. I think I wanted her to stay, for me to say, 'I need you more than I let on tonight.'