Superstitions actually bore me. I set my imagination aside for practical purposes, inspired guesses. The Gaelic song washed in tide, smoothing the sand, enabling me to leave concerns about Alison's welfare there on the beach, find my way to my car, and be on with my business. Life is a gambler's winnings, held in the fist for a minute, then lost. Or like fingered names written in the sand between the ebb and flow of time. I stood and wrote 'Maria' between waves and watched it slowly wash away.
Sean Dark's dinky ute was not in its usual spot and the main gym was locked, although Friday evening basketball training was under way. I considered stopping at the RSL Club; would Jill be there? The casino room was lively with the tinkle of poker machines. Family groups played their weekly flutter. Meat trays were being laid out on trestles in readiness for the raffle, and the man on the microphone was encouraging people to buy tickets, offering bonus specials for scattered aces and the like. As I was driving away, I saw her further down the street. I did not need to be told here was a woman who had lost all the cash in her wallet. Jill was fairly cagey but she did confirm that Meghan had beaten her and they had been to counselling. I did not reveal that I had breached privacy codes by being in their house when no one was home. She refused a lift.
At home I rang Newcastle, hoping to catch the absentee landlord, the neighbour of Lesbianlands, at dinner time. As it happened, the South African would be checking out his property tomorrow. We made an appointment. Before bed I rang Chandra who expressed the opinion that all intelligent women who had the time should educate themselves on fundamental feminism. It was, according to her, necessary for their self-knowledge. While it was a veiled criticism of me, I dealt with it lightly, not interested in abstract philosophising but confirming that, at least, part of the Alison act was fact. Chandra made her read the books. Ergo, Chandra made all her lovers read the books?
29
…the colour of gingerbread…
The delta was lively with craft fanning out from the marinas and canal developments of Port Water with tourists, trippers and retirees aboard; a flat-bottomed house-boat; an adventure launch called Campbell Discovery; guided fishing excursion vessels and numbered rental dinghies; small and large speedboats with outboard motors. Saturday morning. It was positively surreal seeing an airborne water-skier suspended from a technicoloured parachute glide by in the sky above the muted olive greens of low-lying bush.
The dentist had a thick South African accent, a Dick Smith-ish character. The tiny packet of humourless energy actually did own a whirly-bird. He landed it away from the main terminal, at an end of the airstrip I had never had occasion to visit before. Hangars, warehouses for hire, joy-flight operators and flying schools were along a road parallel to the mangroves which fringed an arm of the estuary. I went the back way from my place along rutted tracks gridded across the wetlands, chiefly servicing oyster leases. That, in itself, was an education: wooden bridges I did not know about. All this was inland from the ferry-crossing I usually took, yet within the other route which meets a major black-top further north. I supposed that there were worlds within worlds; even familiar stamping grounds were full of surprises and the mystery of others' lives, priorities, hobbies. Topped by the appearance of a private helicopter, a bubble of glass seating two at most, my appreciation of wealth, the things and activities that money can buy, begged questions that insight had yet to answer.
Arriving by helicopter to tracts of land bought because he could afford it and for no other purpose than to keep it pristine, he was obsessed with conservation, an eco-maniac, an environmentalist. A man with a mission. To protect endangered species. To discover some parrot, last sighted in 1972, or something. To disprove, or prevent, extinction. To snap up every opportunity to spread his message. To put his binoculars to his face to name and note, discard with impatience if the specimen were common. To speak nineteen to the dozen. To get rid of all cats, especially fat suburban moggies, who live near bushland, as here, and kill for pleasure, thus dispatching more lizards and quail than feral cats. To lobby against the interests of cattle-farmers, cotton-croppers and rice-growers. Why I needed to know this was anyone's guess, but I expected everybody who came within range got the spray.
'Yes, Margot?' As busy as a bird, he eyed me with an avian gleam for the second he interrupted himself, then grasped his binoculars and studied a speck in the true blue distance, said, 'Kite. Brahminy,' and expected me to continue without wasting his time.
I thanked him and agreed with his passionate sentiments and asked if he had noticed anything odd happening near his property up in the catchment of the Campbell.
'How would I know what is odd? I have only owned it a few months. And it's all odd. Odd, my dear! This country—I mean the land—is managed by the stupidest people on earth!' His commitment to his cause was overwhelming. 'Nothing they do is right. Fancy giving this magnificent estate, unique on the planet, to morons!'
'You mean cattle-farmers, your neighbours?' I pressed.
He aired an exasperated sigh, 'And ferals! People ferals. Pig ferals.'
'Lesbians? Are you referring to them? Your other neighbours?' I stood with my weight on both feet and crossed my arms.
'No,' he said, 'when I say pig I mean pig. When I say feral I mean feral. I do not mean tree-sitters. I bought that place because it is the last known habitat of a rare marsupial.'
I listened with interest to the description and Latin name and when a pause presented itself I told him about the explosions. When he heard a fact that was not already in his encyclopaedic brain he was silent.
'You know about them?' I sounded surprised.
'No no no,' he denied. 'I do not know about explosions, or any mining explorations in the area, although, of course, I have had a geological survey done, and the place is rich in mineral. Gold, tin, copper, gemstones, precious metals. That is not unusual, necessarily. But if anything is done in that regard, for the moment, it is illegal.'
Now he was itching to go. I had worried him. He saw no need to disguise his mood-change. I, too, had to be on my way, so I relaxed my stance and began, incidentally, chatting on his favourite subject. What methods he would use to improve things? He was forthcoming on organisations and projects, successes here and there. One north Queensland sugar farmer had incorporated owl boxes to keep his rodent pests down, et cetera. We strolled across the tarmac to his flying machine, which reminded me of a small sedan, except with rotors and landing plates attached.
'Margot,' he said in parting, 'if you think something is vermin, it is very easy to kill. In fact, it is thrilling.'
'Really?'
'Ask any gardener,' he tried to smile. 'They pull weeds, and poison insects, with righteous zeal. But, my dear, it is a matter of proportion. How big is your garden?' He was on board and waving me off before I could reply. 'An acre.' But I took his point. He was a zealot and I could only guess at how large he considered his garden, his own hectares, his adopted homeland, the planet?
Cybil leans up against the pillows on Virginia's bed in state with her crossword being brought treats from the kitchen, saying things like, 'My pooteeful poodle,' to Puddles. Virginia, for a while, lies beside her, cuddling into her soft curves. She reads other parts of the paper before she folds it neatly to put it in a box near the fireplace. Cybil does not want to get out of bed all morning. Originally, Virginia tells her, she wanted to make her home half in and half out of the ground, an organic house, the rock and daub walls a dome made from the rocks and clay removed. She saw it in a book. If nothing else, Lesbianlands is a place where adult women come to build cubby houses dreamt up in the restricting time of tomboyhood. Cybil says she was never a tomboy. And outside doesn't interest her.
Amazed by such an admission, Virginia White must get away from Cybil's sticky presence lolling in the warm sloth of the doona, to find herself. She walks through the lilly-pilly forest, scanning the ground for brown snakes which look like sticks. She does not step on any twigs or broken branches. Cybil's sensuality is
alluring and, here, strange; almost exotic. Virginia comes to the hole she dug for her cubby. It is now a place she meditates. She watches the tiny beauty of insects on the walls of her depression. Intense menopausal moments have Virginia questioning everything while her chief concern is her sexual relationship with Cybil.
Sex, she won't talk about it. She just does it. For Virginia it is as if her body betrays emotions in and of itself, as if feelings originate in the hormones. She suffers a churning sort of unease, only marginally related to outside stimuli. 'These days,' Virginia speaks quietly, but succinctly to the insects around her, 'I am so serious, laughter and jokes not so easy any more. I've got to accept something about myself and am resisting it. At menopause I should be getting dry and tight. I am very sexual, open, wet, but not all the time. In fact, at this moment, my cunt is aching as if a hot poker is up it, and has been since she entered me, sawing, pushing, forcing my orgasm which was as hollow as outer space, hardly allowing me to manipulate her clitoris. My way. She had to have all the giving, the power. When I am making her come, my vagina opens and is lubricant and likes being occupied. I should be happy. She is here. But onanism leaves me dry. Yet my need for sex, as if my body is boss, is good, because I am discovering something in my nature that will rid me of doubt and shame of being a woman, disentangle what is learnt from what is truly there. And Cybil is my vehicle, she knows something I don't. But I am sore.'
Cybil in her bush shack, probably getting angry at being left alone, is a magnet, and Virginia has to force herself to think. Female orgasm without the male organ entering to propagate the species happens independently of any other need apart from pleasure. And that pleasure seems to need love. It is, too, the sensual excitement of nerve endings and erectile tissue, blood rushing around sending messages, melting feelings, swamping thought. 'With this involvement I've allowed myself to be open, to dive into my femininity, and feel a pain I've not known before. I will have to keep it entirely to myself because I don't want to damage her ego. I can't tell her I feel as raw as if it was a rapacious man inside me. Relations between women are so delicate, so strange, so strained we are too quick to blame ourselves, hence hurt each other.'
She goes back to Cybil determined to reveal herself, to nut it out.
'More coffee?' she calls.
'How about that milky sweet cha you make?'
'Okay.' When she brings the mugs to the bedside, she starts, 'I am not good at talking about sex. Individual difference, talents, education, tastes, hang-ups all come into it, so that the one who has, say, biology or a medical background might be better at understanding some aspects of sex than another, though that woman may not be so good at the relationship side and so on.'
Cybil enjoys her embarrassment, but Virginia continues. 'Power in a lesbian community enters our personal sexual relationships. The private does in fact remain private, as public as the gossip-merchants want to make it. Fear of truth is relative but, I'd say, pretty general, because so much is painful when women are so damaged and so quick to slide into the habits of that damage.'
Cybil says, 'It goes with the rest of the self-indulgence. Why should anyone care? This place is off the map. You're in a world of your own.'
'My inability to discriminate what is damage to my female being from the society and what is my real self matters! There are assumptions made shared by others that I'm not aware of even though I've been all ears and attention in most of my encounters. I must understand,' Virginia pleads.
But Cybil shakes her head, 'You are so critical, you're obsessed. Worry is the old maid's curse.'
Her troubled mind fails to arouse Cybil's interest, yet Virginia herself is refreshed. Too energetic to lie down again, she begs her to come and see the sculpture.
The walk up the hill to the log has never been so slippery or so slow for Virginia before, but hilarious. When they eventually reach the spot, Cybil asks, 'Where is the boat?'
'This is it,' Virginia opens her palms to the mossy wood. The lines of the figure she now calls Penthesilea stands tall in the stern, her windswept hair a suggestion of Medusa, the chunky tiller-woman beside her dipping her long oar into the sea of mud on the forest floor; the gestures of the half-formed figures down the trunk of the ship express a breath-taking variety of personality.
'Where?' Cybil says, 'I don't understand. There is nothing here.'
Virginia is devastated. She explains. She shows. She leaps around. She sweeps her arms around elongated limbs and stunted crones. But Cybil stays blind.
'Don't worry about it,' she concedes, eventually giving up.
'I'm not.' Cybil smiles, conciliates. 'Maybe when you've done a bit more work on it, I'll see what you mean. Look at those beautiful stag-horns, are they? Elk-horns?'
Virginia stares at the figures on her ship, never clearer to her. In this light, from this angle, from this stunned stillness, she sees more definition, more need for scraping away, uncovering, than ever before. Yet she can't do it. Not only must she take Cybil home, she hasn't the heart. She collects her heavier tools and secures them in a cabin of the vessel, a hole in the log, half-way to the creek. She dislodges the ladder and lies it flat. Cybil does not seem to understand that she has dealt a blow that has taken the wind right out of Virginia's creative sails. The discoverer feels a lesser woman. She is Cybil's lover. The cramp is in her emotional muscle. She lets Cybil enjoy herself skidding and sliding back to the shelter. She accepts that she is her servant, her guardian, protector.
Stuart was busy. I bought torch batteries, candles, plenty of fresh fruit, a packet of dried fruit and nuts, some biscuits, pâté, brie and a supermarket fruitcake. I had brought a bottle of wine and I remembered the newspaper.
After an hour and a half on the highway, I spied the turn-off just as I was about to pass it and breathed a sigh of relief. I stopped after that for a few moments to look at Rory's lovely map. The temper of my thinking changed with the terrain. Now I was entering the Great Dividing Range, hills started falling steeply either side of me. While some were thickly wooded, others were paddocks of stumps. Herefords blocked my path, occupying the roadway as if they, like humans, preferred to stand on flat land. One heifer with a creche of calves proved particularly mulish. I had to almost run into her before she slowly took herself to the right, glaring at me all the time. I travelled along the graded gravel for a fair while, going up into one ridge of hills then down to rise more steeply into another, the road getting increasingly rougher and narrower until it split into two equal dirt tracks. I braked, picked up the map for clarification and discovered that, for all its artistry, this map did not tell me which prong of the fork to take. I gazed around me.
The mailbox was plastered with purple stickers, like My Other Car Is a Broom, and Magic Happens. These were remote parts, no houses in sight. I got out, stretched, took an apple from the box, munched and figured north, south, east and west from the position of the sun. A passenger plane high in the sky seemed, thus, to be carrying people from the Pacific Ocean to the Western Tablelands. A sight to enhance my better mood appeared around the bend of the track to the left, a dense rectangle of colourlessness, no windows, no delineation except for the manic movement of a sharp-eared dog.
The vehicle lumbered towards me, rattled over a wooden cattle grid and pulled up. 'A most unusual truck,' I commented.
'Land Rover Guntractor,' Rory answered succinctly. Proudly. It had no roof and a serviceably large tray carrying short logs and a Farm Boss chain-saw. A galvanised steel lock-up tool box was bolted to the floor. My Suzuki Sierra looked like a little girl in a tutu. Rory reached into it and picked up the box of goodies and the paper and wine, without instructions. My empty back-pack became unnecessary. All I had to carry was my jacket and change of clothes. She asked about the bike.
'I was going to ride it around Lesbianlands,' I explained. 'I didn't know you meant to pick me up here.'
'That's why there were no more directions, just L and R.' Rory was wearing khaki pants with numerous pockets
and a camouflage-patterned shirt along with her badge-proud Akubra. I smiled as I enjoy irony and appreciate big statements. She was appropriating the military, so there.
'I see', said I. A bit embarrassed.
She laughed good-humouredly. 'You'd be better off walking, any rate. Follow me and I'll show you where to stow the wee beach buggy.' She jumped into her Guntractor and forwarded and backed until she was facing the way she had come. We halted near some cattle-yards where one white Holden and two near identical brown Ford panel vans were parked. I locked my car and climbed, using both hands and a big hop with my good leg, into the passenger seat. This was a woman who loved being bush, a kind of joy came off her. She changed gears carefully and the engine ran smoothly, if a bit rattly. She told me again the story of Rory, R.O'R, her initials. Having been christened Rosaleen, she got Rory as a nickname early in life in country Victoria where she was as good as the boys at Aussie rules footy. She could talk the leg off an iron pot, once she started. Nervous, I wondered. I watched the track get more and more difficult and the trees close in and the sun set and rise again as I listened. My ears popped as I swallowed saliva. We passed a Combi van parked in a clearing that looked exactly like one parked at the beach. Being reminded of the corpse made me go cold. I glanced at Rory as she chatted and decided not to interrupt. When I looked beyond her to the view, it was as if Maria had lain down and become land mass; the boobs, the belly, neck, chin. A matter of proportion as the man said.
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