Guilty that I hadn't told her much, I felt a sudden twist of loyalties. I had not mentioned the women and their barbecue. Certainly not that Alison, her cleaner, was there. Their involvement truly bothered me, especially since I had the intuition that something fishy went on, from Cybil Crabbe. He was accidentally there, that I gleaned from Dello and Maz. Picking him up was a spontaneous move. They had no idea of his gender, his identity, not even where he had come from. I watched Penny rocking herself and howling like a dingo, paralysed by dismay, while my mind played ball. If it was murder, he could not be the intended victim. I knelt down beside Penny and fiercely hugged. I turned her around and pushed her face into my neck and resumed the rocking with her.
Penny was calming down in my arms. She began to pull away. I grabbed her in a bear hug and said, 'Yes, I don't know what it feels like.' Information, perhaps would be a better comfort, so I said. 'He was picked up as a hitch-hiker and taken to a party near where he was found, where I found him. The interim toxicology report on both him and Hugh Gilmore show the existence of drugs in their blood on the night. But, as I said, a full police investigation is not finished, so all the paperwork, including forensics… Well, it's not conclusive.'
She sat back on her heels and wiped her eyes, pulled her lips together in a narrow line. 'Oh no, Neil promised me…' She silenced herself, shaking her head.
'It is possible they were administered without his knowledge.' I sounded very formal but Penny sighed with some kind of relief.
'How close are you to your cleaner?' I asked, as I looked at a large poster of the Marilyn Manson group on the wall of the teenager's room, and another of a magician in a cloak with a white face looking menacingly Gothic.
'Alison? I don't know her at all. She is rather distant and formal and I am intimidated by her movie star looks. I pay her in person sometimes and she leaves. I know nothing about her. Should I?'
I lifted the fax sheet I had found in the bundle and wiggled it.
'The date? Who is it from? It might have nothing to do with Neil. Someone tore it out. Must have been Alison.'
Attention Mrs Beeton. Confirm toad. Witches' brew!!! Ditto white sugar. Big mess. Megacrap!! The village is riddled with corruption. Conscience is corruption. Copy?
I put it in the folder with the other printed emails and the graphic.
'Looks like she was using your son's computer for her own fun.' I tried to sound light, appealing to possible generosity in my client. Meanness disappeared from her thin mouth to a sort of self-criticism. Penny got up with energy, dusted herself down and lit a cigarette.
'The situation is embarrassing, you see. I am basically a very shy person. I come from a working-class family where work is honoured. My mother's house was a new pin. Alison is a natural aristocrat, the way she walks, carries herself, her accent! for chrissake. I'm never sure that my taste is to her liking. When I have time I clean up before she comes. But when the two of us, Neil and I, were here, and there were his friends, the housework got on top of me. Neil.' Penny could not stop the tears now the floodgates had opened.
'Of course,' she sobbed, 'I was suspicious.' She gestured the neatness and breathed out. 'I can't stay here any more tonight, Margot.' She quickly went through the procedure with the mouse until the computer rested on its exit line and switched it off. She went to the power point and turned off that as well. She unplugged the modem and the fax, with an attitude of that's that then. I had missed my chance to examine the Favourites menu so I had to figure another way to access this gate to cyberspace. I noted quickly with a felt pen: did P.P. know of N.W.'s heart condition? Grill Alison!!!
We went back upstairs. She offered me food. Just as I was refusing I changed my mind because I felt if I didn't stay she wouldn't eat. She poured the wine with a little apology about its quality. I don't have a problem with quaffing wine when the fare is spag bol done the Australian way. She had prepared enough for two. We ate. Afterwards we sat on the lounges and talked about drugs. Teenagers. Video games, and skateboards. She talked about Neil for hours. Nigel got no mention, even when we covered Neil's young years when Nigel had said he did most of the child care. She kept opening wine. I wanted to bring up the subject of their play with make-up and dresses but I did not find the opportunity. She kept repeating that she wanted to protect him, that she had to stop herself smothering him, depending on him. It turns out he had far more time to himself than most teenagers are allowed. A responsible latch-key kid.
When I got to my car I prayed I would not meet a booze bus on my way home. I didn't. Having missed the last ferry, I had to go the long way. I stopped by the little white cross and the plastic flowers lit by my car headlights and knelt down to give my respects and feel the fresh night air on my hot cheeks. Fairly drunk, at the site of Hugh Gilmore's death, I cursed myself for my incompetence. I hadn't asked Philippoussis who was heading the reconstruction team. An average of $80,000 is spent per fatal accident to give a report to the coroner, and the deputy coroner can direct the cops to do more investigation. Why were these two lads' deaths being treated so lightly? Where was that stuff about the plant, the drug, on the computer, leading? How far can I trust Philippoussis or his freedom to act fully in the cause of justice?
37
…a vertical drop…
In the rainforest, Virginia hears. 'Cooee, VeeDub. Cooee.' It sounds like an opera singer's vocal exercises, using vowels.
Judith Sloane is sitting at her table when she enters her shelter. In front of her are an unopened bottle of tequila and two other bottles of something in a paper bag. As Judith is as tight as a miser's purse-strings, the surprise makes Virginia smile.
'Hello. What's this?' she asks.
'We're going to the party,' Judith says, all innocence.
Virginia suspects an ulterior motive, and she is feeling seedy. She makes excuses. 'There will be no moon tonight. My battery's had it.'
'I have a torch. The wake is still happening. We should be there. Both the Tibetan and the Egyptian books of the dead…'
Virginia interrupts, 'Spare me.'
Judith insinuates that she has been meditating and that being morbid is not what Maria would have wanted. 'She needs her pals to help on her journey on the other side.'
Judith's nonsense makes VeeDub feel weary. In the galaxy of her home, she is a black hole sucking in energy like matter. However, she is under her roof and in the White family civility to guests was a must. For all her faults Virginia's mother was unfailingly hospitable, gracious to all and sundry. Most of the day Virginia has been sitting in her chair reading, and snoozing, vulnerable to influence in that she hasn't been driven or busy, rather hungover.
'Tequila?' Virginia picks up the bottle and has a look at the Mexican in his hat.
'Well, with an old soak like you who's stubborn, I had to bring an enticement,' Judith admits disarmingly. 'Have a jar and a jaw with the gurls, what do you say?'
The prospect of drinking with Judith alone against having a hair of the dog in broader company, incidentally taking her negative vibe away from her place, sways Virginia to say, 'Okay.'
The late afternoon sun burnishes the blue-green leaves and the slice of moon higher in the western sky give a sense of silver and gold to the spectrum. Birds collect about their nests, bickering. While Virginia is amazed by the brazen disregard of their past antagonism in Judith's invitation, they share custodianship of land, of residence, of habitat. They are attached like vine and tree.
Judith says, 'You know, I don't approve of your sculpture. Word will get out. It always does with this place. It becomes a magic Shangri-la to women all over the world. When they hear that there's this thing to be discovered deep in the rainforest, in the wilderness, they'll make expeditions. You're putting out bells and whistles and beating your drum saying "Here we are!" "Look at us!"'
'It's my work. I'm driven to do it.' Virginia feels helpless.
'You are just drawing attention to us,' Judith says confidently.
Virginia d
oes not know why Judith brought it up, except to make sure Virginia has no kudos for being an artist, no greater role than any of the other gurls. Snake vine, clinging and curling, is as much a part of the forest as orchid, or dead man's toilet paper, the gimpie gimpie. They walk through corkwood, lilly-pilly, ferns, lomandra, acacia, coachwood and bracken. They cross the plateau and the paddocks. Judith strides like an Englishwoman on the moors. Following single file, having relinquished her plans for an early night, Virginia tells herself, 'after all we're sisters'. The hour walk is pleasant. Virginia's headache goes. She trusts Judith exactly as far as she could throw her.
Em, Ci, Zee, Bea and Kay are at the ex-farm-house on the hill. Gig and her new girlfriend put purple crepe paper on the verandah posts. Serena, Venus, Cassie and various younger kids are running about with some of the dogs, screaming. Dello sits in an armchair dragged from a shelter for the occasion. Olga is making hot potato chips in a wok on the open fire. True to her word, Judith fixes Virginia a drink which she soaks up like a dry sponge. Then she gets her another. Virginia supposes she should suspect funny business, but doesn't care. She is one of the gurls, she belongs.
Yvonne arrives, squats beside her and they chat. Yvonne is very knowledgeable. Virginia and she enjoy sparking off each other.
A mob from Stuart turns up with cartons of beer, nuts, take-away chicken, tubs of margarine and logs of white bread. Dello is given a huge box of chocolates, which she comments about to everyone but does not open. It is her birthday. Lanterns are set about the bush, large brown paper bags with sand in them set in black plastic plant pots, each with a candle to be lit when it gets dark. Dusk in the day, Autumn in the year, the B minor chord, the evensong of birds, company, a little alcohol in her system, Virginia feels harmonious wave-motions. But there's an irritating tic in her knee.
The stars begin to show as the blue deepens perceptibly. Emma and Helen have houses quite near in dry sclerophyll scrub with clay earth and black wattles and white cedars and tussock grasses. The number of children increases. Yvonne is replaced by Alison, in leopard skin, at Virginia's side.
They talk about the Internet. 'This woman believes in women violently overthrowing the present ruling class, transnational capitalism, and taking over the means of production?' Virginia asks, half-jokingly, as Alison recounts Chandra's concerns and clumsy questions of yesterday.
'She's not the only one.' Alison continues, 'Gargantuan accumulations of wealth in the hands of a few men at the expense of everyone else, mass propaganda pacifying whole populations with misogynist stupidities. It's out of control. Immoral, but what can we do?'
'Demonstrations against globalisation are starting to happen on the streets,' Virginia comments, idly. 'Synchronised by the Internet.'
'It is possible,' says Alison, 'to wage electronic guerilla warfare.'
'Revolution,' states Virginia, 'I believe in. Uncompromising hatred, no.'
'Anyway, Chandra kept asking, who is Mop?'
'That an Internet handle?' Virginia watches Alison nod. 'Well, I wish her revolution all the best, but I think it is unrealistic.'
'Do you now?' Alison grips Tilly by the hand saying, 'Come on, sweetie.'
Em and several women say, 'Say goodnight', and take the kids to the visitors' hut to bunk them down. Dogs find safe places to circle, soften and slumber. Beer in the baby's bathtub full of ice succeeds tequila as Virginia's drink. She does not want to eat. Premonitions disquiet her. The mood is quite different from similar parties of old, where there might have been drugs but there was music and wholefood cooked in cast iron on the fire. The mellow togetherness has been replaced by a cynicism, a toughness. The wake, now over twenty-four hours, is getting out of hand. Aggression.
A bunch of gurls start whooping, yelling and cracking whips. 'Go get her.' Dello is lighting a joint when they grab her. Roughly. They tie her up with leather straps. They carry her to a nearby tree and hang her from a branch by her feet and ankles and then start whipping, singing a profane version of 'Happy Birthday'. They give her the number of her years in lashes.
Virginia is horrified. 'This really is obscene.' Judith is beside her, disparaging the sadomasochistic tendencies among young lesbians, but her final words let them off. 'They needed to shock someone.'
'But you don't have any excuse!' Virginia is angry.
'It's a generational thing.' The measured cadence in her ear, cheeky Ci with her sharp, dark features catches her eye, Judith and Ci seem to be a team.
'It's abuse!' Virginia is affronted. 'You know where we've come from, Judith. You can't turn your back on your own rage.'
'They want to be like gay boys,' Ci teases. 'Everyone has a bum-hole. No one has a cunt any more.'
Maz is dragged into the darkness to be a part of the act. There are squeals and someone rushes back to grab a lit candle from a lantern on the ground. They seem frenzied. Bea and Ti are quietly heating up a teaspoon over a burning branch from the fire, noticing but not caring.
Virginia turns to Judith and says, 'I have to go. I am not a part of this. This is rape!'
Ci goads, 'Cool it, Beetle. Maz is enjoying it.'
'Well, I'm not going yet, and you're not taking my torch. Here, have the rest of the tequila.' Judith hands her the bottle which she grabs by the neck and skols. Every fibre of her being is revolted by what was happening with and to other women. The alcohol makes her nerve ends stand up, she wants to throw up.
The sadomasochists come back into the circle somewhat subdued. Dello, while grimacing with pain, expresses gratitude, 'Well, thanks gurls. I can't say it was a pleasure, but so far as pain goes, it beats self-mutilation with razor blades.'
Virginia stands up and asks, 'Has Separatism created space for women to do this to each other?'
No one answers her. They have shocked the old gurls. 'Party on, people.'
There is no dancing. The festivity is about getting out of it. Virginia lays her spine along the ground, bends her knees and rests her eyes in the stars. She drags her mind into play like a life-belt by thinking, trying to recall the analysis of Ti-Grace Atkinson which she read way back in the early 1970s. It was about the human dilemma: rationally our imagination requires freedom but there is always the limitation of the body; there is a shortfall between possibility and actuality. Ti-Grace, Virginia thinks, argued that man resolves 'his divine predicament' by cannibalising the consciousness of women, through the will to power. The female counterpart, should she be in control of resolving her own human predicament, is self-annihilation. Feminism has never wanted equality with men because that is appropriating the hierarchical and exploitative pattern. Men are not the only bearers of the social relations of male supremacy. Those into power are any subjectivities that are domineering and contemptuous. Separatism is about women making conditions for themselves that withdraw their female energies from the regimes of male supremacy, as much as they are able. If you include sex, and you don't have to because we can never achieve whole separatism and anyway it is not an aim in itself, it stands to reason, separatists are lesbian. But erotic domination, indulging in pain and inflicting it, is heterosexual in its worst meaning and value.
Virginia rises, her mental rigour sobering her a little. If she asked, someone would probably admit openly to wanting masculine power, or, if a bottom in the S and M duality, to wanting subjugation. Several of these gurls, ironically, are members of proud dykes calling themselves, The Neverhets.
The justification of coming to power does not rationalise this behaviour for her. It is past now. Dello holds court from her armchair and the noddy effect of heroin blanks out expressions on faces around her. Talk ambles on. There is no reflection in it, no motivation, no cause and effect, and few feelings enter the story of it. It will be a footnote while the plot becomes a secret. 'Keep it a secret, keep it alive.'
Virginia fetches a drink from the baby bath and returns to the shadows. Judith is asleep. Judith finds sleep easy. Virginia does not, even though her conscience is clear. Certainly not in
this unsafe space.
Maz whispers to Dello and takes her seat. The women are lounging, sitting, squatting, smoking either tobacco or marijuana. Or both. Alison walks back into the circle.
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