Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  Maz says, 'It reminds me, Ali. Remember? Suddenly we have to deal with death. It's with us all the time, but it's sudden.'

  'Really sad,' says Dello. 'Two deaths in one month.'

  'Maria and the poor kid,' Maz metaphorically takes the speaking stick.

  Virginia lets her mind wander, trying to retrieve some comfort from her love of Cybil. She is too vibrant to daydream in company. She joins the conversation, forces her uncompromising position on them, talks about the things she wants to.

  'Co-dependency, like co-counselling, like the ideals of androgyny, makes my lips curl.'

  'Don't criticise Maria, now!' pleads Alison.

  'But I cried my eyes out,' pleads VeeDub. 'I felt the loss so deeply. She was one of us, one of my belonging. My grief surprised me, I felt I didn't know her well enough. I didn't even know who she was sleeping with.'

  Ci, still impudent, says, 'Go on, Beetle you do want to know. Tell her.'

  'I was her lover,' Alison addresses Virginia fiercely.

  Virginia is floored.

  'But she put her primary energies into Sofia,' Maz expands.

  'No. Why? She's not interested in who did this, who did that, are you, VeeDub? You want to know why?'

  'Oh, gimme a break.'

  'Anyway, All didn't kill her.'

  'Are you saying someone murdered her?'

  The company shrugs. Someone mumbles, 'Maybe.'

  Music becomes louder, suddenly. Acid house.

  Two strong torches swing around the gurls like searchlights. They focus their lights on the users.

  A constrained and vicious voice, 'Where's my packet of Drum? You smoked it didn't you? Now I get the dregs of Winfield Blue. I don't even like it. You bludge and bludge and you say you're going to pay us back, but it's always next cheque.'

  'Oh, chill out.'

  'Get over it.'

  Jay is very angry. 'I think the Drum was the straw that broke the camel's back.'

  'Ha ha.'

  'Don't ridicule me. You've always got money for your junk but you've never got any to pay your debts.' It is said so loudly, Judith wakes up.

  Yawning and stretching, she joins in, 'What about the rates?'

  'So, it costs.'

  'Fuck you, it costs! It costs you nothing. Because you scam here, you steal there and you borrow from women who are too kind to say no and probably don't have as much money as you do anyway, without any intention of paying it back.'

  'We got our reasons, didn't have nice comfortable middle-class childhoods like you, no sweet elocution lessons.'

  Jay steps across and smashes Ti across the face with her torch.

  Dello screams, 'Take your shit out of here.'

  The thrashing goes on, Ti fights back. The aggressors fuelled by righteous anger and the victims taking the blows with sarcasm, screeches and curses rip through the night. Owls move from their perches and possums escape up the tree trunks. Maz pushes the fight out of the circle, but the four of them continue tormenting each other with maledictions and expletive-coloured character assassination as they go away down into the valley. Virginia feels an increase in her heart rate. She has no defences against what was coming into her, no valve system in her social epidermis to stop absorption of the behaviour of women to women. Heat builds up in her cheeks.

  Sudden quiet. The mood mellows. Aftermath comments are dismissive.

  Virginia gets herself more to drink. The darkness of the night has her jailed here, but even so she wonders why she stays. She sits on the arm of the armchair and asks, quietly, 'What happened that Friday night, Dello? A young girl died, right? Who was she?'

  'It turns out it was a boy in drag!'

  Judith crouches, arms around her knees listening.

  Virginia asks her, 'When can we go?'

  Judith doesn't move, hugging her calves as if she's cold, 'I want to hear this.'

  Virginia says, 'You have great night vision, can I take your torch?'

  'We'll go in a minute.'

  'But the funny thing,' Dello continues, 'The really funny thing, is, Cybil took her/him onto the beach, we assumed, for carnal gratification. She wouldn't have known he was a guy until well into it.'

  'Cybil?'

  'Yes, Beetle, Cybil.'

  Judith, in eliciting every detail she can, says, 'I was on the beach.'

  'Well, what did you see?' Alison asks.

  'Nothing.'

  A thousand arrows pierce Virginia's heart. Although nearly all the candles have burnt away and the glow of embers throw red light onto a few close to the fireplace, she is conscious of blushing. Hot blood hits her face like lava from the erupting volcano inside.

  'I love Cybil!' she explodes to shut their gossip up. 'On top of the vicarious whipping, the violence over money, the insult to my notion of community, the abuse to my sense of being a part of a lesbian collective, the disgust at being connected to such unwholesome self-wastage as is smack, I feel betrayal right in the middle of my guts. I know Cybil is perverse,' Virginia mutters ashamed. The red blood of rage starts pumping up her body. She breaks into immediate, all-over sweat. Her teeth clench, her hands fist, knees lock.

  'It's true.'

  Judith gets to her feet, mollified. Virginia would have become paralysed if Judith hadn't suggested they go home. The two follow the torchlight, showing rocks, tussocks and sticks like a piece of film, away from the scene of the gathering in silence. Virginia stumbles into Judith's heels. She is panting.

  'I thought you were the Amazon,' Judith says, sarcastically. 'The great triathlete! You're drunk!'

  The mockery spins her into tempest, she savagely pushes her back. Judith falls forward onto her torch. It goes out. In total darkness Judith hits Virginia. They punch each other and fall into an inarticulate wrestle, a savage fight, years overdue.

  Virginia's body is as impervious to pain as the heroin girls', and Judith's abiding jealousy has her pulling her hair and head-butting her forehead and squeezing as many bruises into her arms as she shakes her. Virginia kicks and punches. Judith throws her backward, hissing through her teeth. Virginia in trying to regain her balance falls down a steep but short incline. She lies in a bowl of dead leaves. Judith goes. Judith can find her way better than any other woman on the lands at night. She has cat's eyes.

  When Virginia finally feels the pains and aches, she begins to cry. She curls herself into a ball, bawling. She is not frightened even though she doesn't know where she is and it is possible in this country to lose yourself for days. The canopy blacks out the stars. Soreness alone is not the reason for her tears. The anger not entirely spent on Judith comes back with a vengeance when she comprehends Cybil's betrayal. Tears turn into a torrent. Irrationally, she wants to kill the alluring, transvestite boy who is already dead. The ferocity in the outer circle of her sisters on the land and then between Judith and her has invaded her body with cuts and bruises as her heart and mind tear each other to fragments. She feels her self-worth torn to pieces. She cannot anaethsetise herself against the pain of sexual betrayal. Fifty years on earth trying to reconcile the wild mind-soul with the unco-operative flesh to be in the present, she had become whole, for Cybil! And now through gossip she is flattened by the sword of her lust. Dismembered by the visualisation of the sensual Cybil casting her liquid eyes upon the young butch in a dress, enticing her away from the crowd, Virginia visualises her spinning her sexual magic, stroking with chubby hands, cunningly undoing her costume, seeking her private parts, finding a penis there, probably erect, and keeping on going.

  Eventually Virginia begins walking. There is water beneath reeds. Swamp, a billabong she does not recognise. A night in the forest, scented darkness, she climbs. She turns around. And around. Dizzying herself, spiralling down, moving until she is exhausted and covered in fine threads of sticky cobwebs. Spiders crawling on her scratches and abrasions, she falls over on dry earth, begins to slip, and to lose grip. Virginia tumbles and knocks herself out. There is a vertical drop. A mine shaft. Or the burnt-ou
t root-system of a huge tree. When she comes to, she is in a cave.

  Book Six

  transsexualism

  Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

  Thursday's child has far to go

  38

  …the blood of the daughter…

  In my dreams I fell like Alice through the looking glass, pursuing someone who kept disappearing around the next bend, being distracted by talking red herrings, mad hatters, benevolent dictators, despotic school-teachers and resplendent queens stripping to reveal cocks. Feeling that I had lost a vital connection, I got down to work as soon as was reasonable. Needed to arrange another trip to Lesbianlands. Interview a member of the Campbell family. Find Alison. Rory's number was engaged. Chandra did answer and I told her that I wanted to go out to Rory's. She asked could come with me. That was good. The weekend would suit her.

  What was the nightmare telling me? I drummed my fingers by the telephone, thinking of people to call. Meghan's work number was answered by a male with an American accent responding cautiously and politely. Dr Featherstone's whereabouts were not known. 'I'll take that with a grain of salt,' I said. 'Excuse me?' he replied in the way Yanks have which means 'I beg your pardon'. 'Thanks a lot,' I rang off. I went back to her papers. The simple forgeries of her signature, money taken out of her accounts from different banks, at ATMs in different places on the same dates, not enough to make her notice in the short term, but she would eventually, by which time, I assumed, the embezzler would have got in her ear. Meghan's impostor jumped their gun a little so I became a fly in the ointment. From the evidence I had it worked out in total to be at least ten thousand dollars. But it could be more. A lot more, if she frequently received these sizy fees. I whizzed a conjecture through the calculator. There was enough of a clearly laid pattern for me to find an aggravating tip of the iceberg.

  The accountant was hedgy. But she was probably that way with everyone. Rosemary Turner struck me as the type of person you needed to know the answers before you questioned.

  More paperwork arrived in the mail. Whether it came from Meghan herself or the trickster who sent the first lot I had no idea. No covering note. In it was a photostat of a contract signed by Meghan and her witness, handwriting surprisingly similar, and for the Nadir Group of Companies, Seth Friedan and Joshua Conrad. Meghan had given exclusive rights to her work to these people. She is called the proprietor and her work is defined as, amidst mystifying technical terms, laboratory and field analysis. In short, any discovery she made in her work for them as a forensic geologist was entirely theirs. In return, again couched in impenetrable jargon, she receives half-yearly lump sums to be paid into a merchant bank in Brisbane. I found out that Nadir Mining Explorations was a subsidiary of Falcon registered in Malta. I felt like Humphrey Bogart. I turned the manila envelope around in my hand. Same as the original, just as chaotic. I remembered the cap I picked up as ugly as hell and as common as muck with no glamour whatsoever. Evil is banal. But there are clues in the obvious and the coincidental. Nadir is a clue. I rang her lawyer. Ms Hardface informed me that Megs had changed her solicitor. She was now represented by Libby Gnash.

  Nadir, the lowest point, beneath the observer, diametrically opposite the zenith. Hell as opposed to heaven. The pin-dense centre of the earth as opposed to the infinite surround of outer space. Dark as opposed to light. Mess as opposed to neatness. Confusion as opposed to clarity. Letting lateral logic apprehend the connections of where I had been and what I had seen, my mind ranged. A single locality, Meghan's place. I had been at the mid-point, the observation deck: Meghan and Jill at home sharing food, then mess, then neatness, both beyond the awareness of the couple. This bunch of stuff, I thus concluded, came from the raid. Definitely not from Meghan herself. I went through it again, and as the joint was left in disarray, a mad mess similar to the order of the these papers, I knew that whoever cleaned up was another person. Anyway Meghan was not in town at the time. Whoever it is was still forging her signature, therefore does not know of my arrangement with Meghan.

  Apart from the contract there didn't seem to be anything else that was relevant: a lot of receipts for clothes, feed, household things, hardware, solar panels, incredibly expensive binoculars, dirty bits of paper, and a couple of snaps. Another one of the dodgy UFO, and a picture of the sisters, Meghan and Trina, about eighteen and seventeen years old sitting formally at a festive family table. The pupils of their eyes as red as rats' in the flash, both in white shirts of different design, Trina's frilly, Meghan's tailored, Trina's hair long, Meghan's short, both the same height, the same facial structure, and as skinny as each other. Trina has a cigarette. Meghan less slumped, but they are so alike they could be twins. The room behind them is very brown, bookcase, teak sideboard, a few Christmas cards and an understated silvery table decoration, and holly on a perfect pudding. Surprisingly unmessy for a Christmas snap, no children, no scrunched-up coloured wrapping, starched tablecloth. I got the feeling these girls were well-behaved in the strict formality of familial duty. Nothing much was to be gained from staring at the photo. Except why was it sent to me? I searched through the junk for the handwriting that had flummoxed me. No match this time. Different forgers? I went back to the contract.

  There was a vicious secrecy clause. Her witness was said to be Hope O'Lachlin. High on my hunches, I suspected that there was no witness, that Meghan, if it were indeed Meghan herself, had forged the witness signature. Hope O'Lachlin was a New Zealander whose birth certificate I had found. The gurl Virginia had introduced was too young and bald. Anyway her surname was Strange. Plainly this other Hope's name was being used. I flicked through the sheath of Dr Featherstone's papers with a impatient sense of annoyance and lethargy. The forged signature did not jump out at me as it had before. I rang my friend, the handwriting expert; she hadn't got around to it yet. I had cashed the cheque, but thought I kept a photocopy. Maybe I had put that scrap of paper in another pile, another file. I could not find it, therefore, it took on the proportions of being the key to the whole matter.

  Classic: dissemblance, deceptions, disguises. Handwriting, voice on the telephone and, now I had a picture of Trina, impersonation was possible. Meghan Featherstone could, for whatever intents and purposes, be in two places at once. I should not forget the acting ability of Jill David, either. I was frustrated. Who was wearing hat? I wrote. Anything to do with M.F.'s work? Whereabouts does Judith fit?

  The scribbles on the back of grubby receipts were meaningless out of the context of the time at which they were written. I thrust the untidy bundle of mismatched business back together and tied it into a labelled folder. Who has given this to me if not the woman herself? I cannot find out who is ripping Meghan off if I do not have the full picture, or, who wants me to think she's being ripped off? Someone must have all the information, or access to it. Knowing I had a clue and lost it made me talk this over and over to myself, ending up rationalising that any work I did on that job until further notice from the client would only thicken the plot and confound the mystery of where all this money had gone. Of course, Meghan could be involved in telephone banking, day-trading, paperless transactions which were, for me, like looking for substance where there was nothing but a hole. I picked the manila folder up and walked it to another place. I rang Libby Gnash and left a message on her machine.

  Now Neil, the young white male, dead. White virgin? The pinched features of his mother, Penny Waughan, pleadingly needing answers, to appease her distress, for her intellectual comfort, to keep at bay the despair behind her eyes before it drove her to a kind of hopeless emptiness, at one with the sterile mansion. However, she is an energetic woman, one worth working for, whose son, her joy and pride, had been torn out of her life before a close adult friendship could begin. The basic pain of it was enough. I refuse to blame the mother for the son's deviance. He was a person in his own right; if he wanted to dress up in feminine garb it was his choice. Penny did not know about it. Did not endorse it, no matter what games they played toget
her when he was younger.

  Is there any relationship between the death of Hugh Gilmore and Neil? Too pure heroin on the market always brings a spate of overdoses, generally means the police have busted big-time, then skimmed and got rid of their cut on the streets within twenty-four hours. A multi-million dollar stash was found in the false bottom of a cruising yacht's dinghy. Why were you wearing women's clothes, boy? A party? Dress-ups? Was there a school function? Where had Neil been earlier that night?