'No,' I admitted. 'I don't know what you mean.'
'Can anything shatter your complacency? Your Protestant work ethic, your tough physical regime, your immaculate diet? Early to bed, early to rise, healthy, wealthy and wise.' Rory was not so much sarcastic as slightly sour, yet with a bark of a laugh she seemed to apologise. 'The rest of us are bickering at the breakfast table, grabbing the marmalade before anyone else, yelling to Mum to settle the sibling squabbles, but Mum ain't there. The provider is off having a nervous breakdown,' she joked.
We passed a stump with Girls Rule OK burnt into it. Dogs barked with hysterical squeaks in their woofs. 'Someone visiting. First the dogs warn, then they greet. They don't have the vindictive feuds which follow intimate relationships in their memory of friendship, so their enthusiasm can be embarrassing. Sometimes.' Rory felt to the need to explain.
Dolphin Suzuki came into view before I was prepared for it. It stood on the road in front of us like a gift box, a shining cube of Western civilisation. The other cars had gone. Seeing it shocked me back to who I really was: a cyclist, a swimmer, a runner, an investigator, an independent lesbian. A worker. The afternoon sun lit up the aqua car with golden lights. I keep it polished, not from vanity, but to preserve the duco as much as I can, living near the sea. Rory was not so wrong about me. I looked after things, myself included. As I searched the mountains with my eyes for what it was I felt there, I thought perhaps I look after things too well, am too straight, cautious, careful and that my staid qualities might prevent me from knowing that which has no scientific basis, no logical staircase to it. I even needed proof that there were such things as a goddess, a spaceship, ghosts, aliens invading the planet, visitations from the nether-world. All that sort of stuff left me completely cold and relatively bored. But I had a sense of sisterhood, both fractured and potent.
'Fear is fear of fear. I know that,' I said.
Rory grinned at me and shrugged as she reignited the sturdy engine of her tank. She tugged on the slim steering wheel and waved. There was a little sadness in her farewell. I felt brittle as I unlocked my car, got in and turned towards the road to the coast. On the drive I let my mind float about as I looked at the countryside changing colours. By the time I got home it was after dark. No moon. Houses both sides of mine were empty of light, almost invisible.
31
…the thrill of killing…
Africa, a woman Sofia does not know, has taken over the cooking. She is tall, statuesque, with a neck as elegant as any swan's, like a model in the glossiest fashion mag. The house near the railway is busy with the warmth of women coming and going, creating friction, music and story-telling; myth-making. All nothing to Africa. She relates to the gurls as sisters, cousins and aunts grouped for a family tragedy, elegantly walking about, quietly performing chores like an actress being filmed. Sofia tracks her, making her fingers and thumbs into a camera-viewer, framing her shot by shot. Africa disturbs her.
Sofia speaks intensely, 'Who is she?' Grasping the hand of any listener, her grip is amazingly strong. When she is told, she says, 'No, that isn't right.'
Africa pours fresh coffee into the mug proffered, and says vaguely, 'Women are bound by chains of have-tos, it doesn't matter what society you are in.'
The conversation she bent into continues without her as she moves on. 'Maria was everybody's friend.'
'Look at her pride, her head held high,' Sofia whispers to Fi whose is the closest ear. She chases the stranger. 'Who are you? Why don't you speak to me?'
Africa replies in an American accent. 'Betrayal of the inner self has no words in any language,' she says, and pats the head of the younger woman with gentle indifference. 'Why speak?'
Sofia would prefer her humiliation covered up with a large number of euphemisms. Yet the noble beauty remains cryptic even though it is plain she has the knowledge. Her silence pisses Sofia off. She wants her to talk with her of Cajun dishes, of anything. How dare she take over the sink and stove and not say why? Then Sofia thinks she has it: the magnificent creature is disgusted with herself. She sees it so clearly, her story, as well, is the tragic tale of being too beautiful.
'She hasn't done anything wrong.' Mary Smith takes Sofia aside to explain, 'Africa is staying with me a while, travelling the world. She is passing through, and came, because, er um, Maria and she had a short affair a long time ago. I thought it would be all right.' The eyes roll in Sofia's head, and a flood of memories laden with unresolved emotions threatens to swamp her, but Cybil has an announcement to make. She addresses the whole company from the top of the steps.
Having just been on the phone, she shares the news, 'That was Jake and Jessy Freeman! Maria's parents!'
Sofia, jolted back to reality, expletes, 'Ohmygod, they are so creepy.'
'Anyway,' continues Cybil, 'We have a problem. They are Christians and for religious reasons demand that Maria be buried, not burnt. We, as you know, have organised a cremation.'
The peace and serenity, the companionship of conformity to their own rules, their plans and excitement at creating a gurls' ritual, all shatter. Shocked stillness. Cybil goes on, 'As compensation for our dreadful deed I offered them a compromise.' She pauses to take in what is around her, and sees curious faces. 'They can choose the words for the memorial. The alternative is…'
Sofia interrupts, 'No, I object.'
The calm of the throng becomes intense discussion, division, as if the paddle-wheel suddenly starts, churning up the mill-pond of subdued mourning. The eruption of contention and tensions, noise, disagreement, movement, changed atmosphere takes some time. Each gurl has a point of view. Eventually the decision is made on a vote. Sofia loathes her grandparents. She has her supporters, but they are in the minority. Loyal but useless. Cybil is back on the top step.
'You want to hear the words they've chosen?' Of course, everybody does. 'I'm sorry. There was no alternative, because we would have had a legal wrangle on our hands.'
'Quaint.'
'Don't want that.'
'We couldn't keep out the cops then.'
'Disobedience was unconscionable,' Sofia says. 'They tortured her!'
'Do you want to hear or not?' asks Cybil, taking command. 'They wanted something simple, took ages to decide.'
'What is it?'
'"Gone to live with God" it is.'
'You can't be serious.'
'That is, like, the worst?'
'Bullshit.'
Sofia feels a horrid loneliness, complete rootlessness. Yet her house is full of faces, overrun by control-freaks making alliances with the grand-daddy of them all. She goes to curl in the caucus of her peers, to toke on a joint, to pop a serrie, to mutter and listen to impotent criticism, to feel better than frazzled and hassled. Sofia fights the pressure to surrender her rights, but what can she do? Her allies offer the space-ship. Africa notices her vacant eyes and says, 'Dear, that is not the sort of trip you should be taking right now.'
Ilsa Chok Tong waits on the road near the mailbox, expecting a copy of The Man Without Qualities in the post. She is eager to read a novel about a world, a hegemony, a lifestyle that disappeared into the vaults of history before the novelist finished his book, to be thoroughly entertained by her own questions. She is studying the turn of the last century and may be fascinated by the way that fact is regurgitated in literary form. Her thoughts are disrupted by the clip-clop of personal transport that has survived millennia. A mounted figure rides towards her. Ilsa sighs. Every time she emerges from her reclusion, she anticipates being annoyed by social interaction. She really doesn't know what to say. Small talk is not her forte.
'Whoa,' says Wilma Campbell to her horse.
Ilsa and Wilma discuss the Sydney Blue Gum. Both agree that it is becoming a weed, though for directly opposing reasons. Ilsa has decided, after much love and observation, that the silver-grey eucalypt is intruding on the diversity of native forest, while Wilma sees bush out of control and better cleared with a heavy chain strung between two bulldozers.
Ilsa's domestic squabbles with her stubborn possums and brush turkeys taking many hours of her daily life, and her noticing greater trees being replaced by lesser species, are expressed with gentle impatience, giving Wilma the familiar impression of the naive attitude of dickhead greenies. Would not know a grey gum from a blue gum, especially now the new bark is ageing. In this instance she is tolerant. Cunningly, with a broad smile, she takes what Ilsa says as an arrangement. It's okay with the gurls to fell that variety. The sophisticated, serene escapee from the wealthy middle class of Melbourne probably doesn't quite understand the truncated, monosyllabic language of the Australian bushie. Ilsa simply wonders why the equestrienne is so friendly. Wilma, on her muscly steed with its shiny coat, is as impressive, to Ilsa, as the chivalric knights of the Crusades. The horsewoman making dust as she canters away is as idyllic as a Hans Heysen oil painting.
Having finished typing up notes of my meeting with the dentist, and my visit to Lesbianlands, I dealt with my mail. I dashed off a reply to the food label, subsidiary of a corporation probably listed on Wall Street, expressing my interest in the audition for the television advertisement. If they also harvest tuna to can, killing dolphin by the thousands, then I had to consider what part of my soul I was selling for use of my body. But I needed the money. Meghan Featherstone's work lay neatly by. I flipped through it again, looking for the scrap of envelope I had assumed was Meghan's scribble before I noticed it was signed another name, Judith Sloane, to check it against the other dodgy signature on an insurance policy. Different hand again. Or Meghan in another mood? But there was something else worrying about the message: Thanks, Judith. Unlike Rory's elegant script, Meghan's handwriting was an unattractive scrawl. The dollar sign was the only bit readily legible. She paid an awful lot for a greasy wool sweater. One, at least, was a false Meghan signature. I slipped the two relevant pages into a plastic sleeve, ready to photocopy, along with the ridgy-didge example on my cheque, and send off to a handwriting expert.
What the hell is a forensic geologist? Forget forensic for the minute. Judith noticeably changed when we talked about Meghan. Meghan is a geologist and geologists know their stones. The very small actions and omissions indicate the inner workings of a being. Liars are conscious of what they say and what they obviously do, but not usually the incidental. The little thing, and it could so easily be overlooked like a Freudian slip of the tongue, was her putting my two investigations together: 'What has the broken bridge got to do with Meghan?' She should not have said that to me because it is my job to suspect everybody. Rory told me the place is rich in mineral and gemstones. And so did Vanderveen.
Out in the chookhouse—busywork helps me think—I was mucking around with this thought, picking up old newspapers which I had put to work in my renovations and now did not need, when I read in bold, PACKER SITTING ON A RIVER OF RUBIES.
The search is on in earnest in the remote backblocks of the sprawling playground of Australia's wealthiest man for subterranean riches of biblical proportions. The ASE confirmed yields of 1,600 carats of ruby from a relatively small alluvial sample from the easternmost point of Packer's Hunter Valley polo retreat and cattle fiefdom. And ground magnetic surveys indicate the presence of a far richer volcanic gemstone reserve within a 10 kilometre catchment. But there's nothing the mogul can do to get his paws on his own gem-quality rubies, unless the small exploration company empowered by exploration licence decides to deal the big man in, harnessing his persuasive powers to counter the mining's bureaucratic maze to promote their product. The ASE has reported the recovery of 1,630 carats of ruby, 250 carats of blue sapphire and 390 carats of green sapphire from 223 tonnes of alluvial material.
If 'subterranean riches of biblical proportions' were in the Hunter region, then the likelihood of equivalent wealth in the catchment of the Campbell was pretty bloody strong. Beneath the subdued greens of that unsullied bush fire-red rubies waited in the ground glistening with tempting allure. The gurls' commitment to their collective ideals, their freedom in commune, their joint ownership, whatever their reasons for living that difficult life, would be severely challenged by the availability of personal fortune a stick or two of dynamite away. I felt I could vouch for the moral character of Rory and Virginia, but what did I really know about the others? And I needed my time over again searching Meghan's ransacked ex-dairy, maybe there was an exploration licence I missed.
Dropping the yellowing broadsheet on my unfinished work, I decided to verify my intuition on site at the Featherstone mansion-in-the-mind's-eye. And drove straight out there.
The dairy was still in the shade of the hills to the east. There were no goats about. No car was there. Neither a white Daewoo Leganza nor a burgundy Honda Integra, both currently and comprehensively insured in the Featherstone name, on one side of the creek, nor Jill's van on the other. Both doors were secured. The kitchen-laundry was padlocked. I looked in through the windows. All signs of disturbance were cleared away yet it no longer had the semblance of a home. Things were missing. Bits of sculpture, a picture on the wall, a poster, I couldn't quite place the exact thing missing. A presence. Habitation? Gumboots, raincoats. I returned to the little porch at the back. One pair of boots and one coat, old goat tack and a few rusty tools. Staring at the wellies gave me the idea of funnel-web spiders, which like dark places like that. There were no new tell-tale webs near the doors and windows on the ground floor. I checked. The bedroom loft window, which must surely be open when anyone sleeps there, showed signs of a cobweb at the corners of the glass.
Back in the car, I reflected on the spiders' art. The logic of it. Now you see me, now you don't. The Featherstone job was a wretched cobweb. Sticky and tricky. If I had been set up, whoever was doing it had not taken into account my uninvited visits, or if they had they were too clever by half. The problem of the financial maze of disorganised book-keeping was compounded by the riddles from my surreptitious ingenuity in discovering first, a tempestuous search and second, a soulless cleaning. Beside the murder investigation set me by Penny Waughan the whole thing looked immature, silly. Even if Meghan were vague about money, she must know her own movements. Her whereabouts might be a mystery to the whole damn world but not to herself. Unless more obscure forces than money and relationship were at work. UFO snaps. Now that was going into fantasy land. The Twilight Zone! Why does she need a detective at all? If she is up to something, why draw attention to herself? Why is someone else drawing both her and my attention to her finances? Someone's spinning a net to tangle me up. I hate being jerked around by nonsense. Evidently the dairy-house was not the primary place of residence for either party. It was what it is, a folly.
As I was close, why not call on Chandra?
There was no answer at the main door so I went around the other side, through terraced and trellised gardens. I looked about and heard her wheelchair on the verandah boards. She spun away when she saw me. Chandra was a prickly character. Angry at being interrupted? I found the steps to the front door, even though they were plainly not used, being for the most part support for a tangled passionfruit vine. Her hostility may have been about the illegal plants bristling with fat heads. I could allay her fears on that score.
'Enter if you must.' The call came from several rooms away in the rambling old farm-house. What had I done, I wondered.
By the time I found her the screen she was sitting in front of showed the home page of Microsoft Internet Explorer. She moved the mouse around quickly, the arrow flicking here, there, click, click. Then the screen dissolved itself into bending and twirling patterns of cyberart. There was a spot flying around in it.
While she was calmly proficient in her efficient home office, with all the electronic gadgetry at arm's length, I felt I was not one hundred per cent welcome, but that made me want to stay. I confessed to being a phobic of webs, including the World Wide Web. She reeled off a string of swear-words.
'Mossies,' she spat. 'Arse-holes. We have come a long way from The Electronic Salon and, even Systers, b
ulletin-boards dealing womenstuff, exclusively female forums. Of no interest to men but they've got to take them over, don't they?'
'I know what you mean,' I sympathised as she manipulated the mouse and caught the gnat. It led to an on-going chat. 'How do you know how old they are? Or where they live?'
Darkness more visible Page 53