The Telegraph's outdoor area reflected the coastal playground of Port Water with space-age sails and palm trees. The gurls, shaded by these, assimilated, seemed to choose their own eddy, which was in its way as strict as if they signed, paid and joined a constituted club. Dedicated drinkers, whose rules of loyalty and honour when broken consume most of the conversation, gossiped.
Sal Strauss, Wilma Woods, Xena Kia, the Larrikin and Milt were at a table in the beer garden of the pub, which overlooks the harbour of Port Water, the Sea Wall Sea World and the Lions park. I sat down with them. They were more subdued here, waiting for gurls from the land to turn up.
'Margot, you know Chandra won't have anything to do with an ex-cop.' I couldn't believe my ears. They were talking about my private feelings.
'It's true,' said Milt looking up from the racing form. I knew the Larrikin's contacts were far-reaching, but I did not expect this.
'Chandra,' the Larrikin insisted, 'flattened Meghan over something like baby-farming in South America. And multinationals rile her, right?'
'Here we have Margot smart as! in her Nikes with the subtle tick on all her gear, crisp, pure,' Sal plucked my T-shirt. 'And bought! While the company is exploiting women workers in poor countries. And children. Chandra would not approve of Nike, Margot. Their underpaid workers have to breathe in solvents that kill them, forced to work overtime, for a pittance, suffer humiliation and physical punishment and all the rest. She would say we should boycott their shoes.' Sal seemed to have a personal drum to beat; her irony had a bitter tinge.
'You were so proud of your Nikes, weren't you?' said Xena.
'Well, I didn't care,' responded Sal. 'They could have been Reebok, but they were great shoes.'
'Glue is glue. You can't get stuck without it,' Wilma made a joke.
Sal turned to me. 'Chandra could not go with either an ex-cop or someone in the pay of Nike International, regardless of the lust involved. Take it from me.'
'Here it is,' Milt found what she was looking for. 'They are Songstress in the fourth. In a quinella with Crestfallen. How's that?' She got up to place her bets.
'Who wants a beer?' I offered.
A session of gossip, casual observation; the odd question might yield something. I bought a round and asked for the docket. Expenses. Though on whose account I wasn't quite sure. Lonely Penny with her shiny surfaces was the type of woman who would love the give and take of family trivia about who is marrying who, buying presents at Christmas, but as far as I knew she had none. Family, for the Campbells, was everything, past, present, future, ideology, work, hobbies, possessions, values; one solid block. Sharp shards of difference threatened to cut the community of the gurls to shreds out of which, I guessed, new patterns of friendship would emerge. Resilient enough to withstand the dogged, ignorant dynamism of the Campbell bulldozer? I wondered. I went back to the group feeling the uncertainty of individuals bright as knives, treacherous as broken glass, for I knew the moment they mentioned it that I was in love with Chandra. And it was her passionate idealism that attracted me, as much as the chemistry between us. Yet they were right. I was paid by Nike. I was an ex-cop. Chandra could never be a hypocrite. She herself told me about her fight with Meghan. Meghan worked for the filthy captains of industry selling her soul, and in so doing, sold out women as well. Betraying solidarity between women Chandra could not forgive. I sat with such kin as I had, waiting for the gurls from the land, working. My instinct told me Alison Hungerford or Jill David would turn up.
Bikes lined up like horses at the rein-rail of a wild west saloon, helmets on the saddles in the centre of the street. The Larrikin loudly expressed the code she lives by. 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. And know who owes.' She cooeed to the gurls who arrived. Yvonne and 'Ti for Trouble'. Jay, Dee, Dello and Maz. Milt wandered over and ended up talking with the bikie blokes.
Gig, driving Alison's car, pulled up. Tilly hopped out of the back, and Alison opened the passenger door. I drank full-strength beer. The enlarged group chatted about Maz's birthday party, rationalising some fairly disgusting sado-masochistic practice.
'It is as if I have found my inner nature,' Alison said.
'Not a pretty sight,' joked Dello.
'Call it self-hatred, but its found its home,' Alison cried.
Xena asked, 'Yeah, where?'
'Coming to power,' mused Maz. 'I am a top with a slave and it is so easy! She is so willing, so guilty. I can't resist the temptation to tie her up.'
'I don't mind fantasising,' commented Ti. 'We don't mind that.' She reached out, but Yvonne pulled her hand away.
'I don't care if she hits up,' Yvonne gave as good as she got. 'It makes her so pliable. I adore stupidity.'
'She is proud of being selfish!' Gig stated.
'Apart from sticking it up the arm, she has got nothing to do except what I say. I understand lust, I understand passion.' Yvonne pulled Ti into a kiss. They moved away together and whispered under a palm tree. Then Ti returned and Yvonne hurried off.
I was not gaining much, but I stayed.
'Stupidity, that's it,' Alison snapped her fingers. 'It's dumb to be a genius.'
'What about you, Margot? Do you see your folks?' the Larrikin jabbed.
'No.'
'The ideal slave is a Christian with dreams of sainthood and admonishing the flesh and wearing hair coats and crowns of thorns.' Maz talked rubbish.
'Dream on,' said Dello viciously.
'You are, secretly, a good girl,' Maz teased.
Dello became angry. 'Well then that is the end of my ever really loving women. Cut.'
Maz continued, undisturbed. 'Love is impossible for me to even feel emotionally. Ever again. But I love feeling powerful.'
Xena said, 'You're full of bullshit.'
Gig wanted to know, 'Why is the violence never directed at the enemy, but at the lover or friend?'
Sal conciliated sarcastically. 'Maz is always talking about how women do each other in while happily doing it herself. You know lesbian relationships are four times more intense than het. One year equals four years.'
'Any more of those pills?' asked Alison. 'I want to dumb out. There is only one person who knows my genius. And I shot him.'
'Ask Larry,' said someone, while I wondered who Alison shot.
Xena stated, 'Marijuana saved my life.'
Alison looked well out of it. Grief. The company studiously omitted mention of Maria. Nor had they shown any shock over the confession of shooting.
'Women have different levels of tolerance, like the Cuban cigar after dinner.'
'To be stoned all the time means you are pretty much wasting your time,' judged Dee. 'This is cool if you've got nothing to do.'
'But sooner or later someone pays the tab,' Xena remarked.
'When they legalise marijuana, we should set up an industry, clothes, face cream, you name it,' Dee said enthusiastically. 'It's our future. The goddess plant.'
'Shut up.'
'Keep your voice down. We'll get busted. The drug warriors are all about town. Aren't they, Margot?' The Larrikin addressed me.
'It gives me the shits,' spat out Alison. 'What about psychiatric drugs! They make you into drongos.'
'You ought to know,' Maz smiled. 'Thought you wanted to dumb out.'
'Heroin started as a wonder drug,' Gig informed. 'In the laboratories.'
'I love it,' confessed Ti.
Dee completed the pair, 'And I hate it.'
'Why don't they give it to those who want it?' asked Ti.
'What I hate is the rip-off mentality,' Maz opined. 'You can't trust anybody any more.'
'People can get addicted to anything,' observed Dello. 'I reckon.'
Tilly was playing on the swings with holiday-makers' kids.
'Where did Tiger Cat get the pills that were given out on that Friday?' I suddenly asked Maz. 'Do you know?'
'They came from a bush laboratory somewhere near here,' Alison answered.
'How do you know?' the Larri
kin barked.
'Read it on the net,' Alison replied.
I tossed in a lure. 'Tiger Cat. She's a narc.'
The Larrikin glared at me.
'Let's get it clear here,' Xena laid down her glass like a gavel. 'Do you know where we can get some more? Rik?'
'Eat your heart out.'
The Larrikin hotted some coins to use the public phone in the bar.
Sparrows hopped in for the crumbs of potato chips. On the aqua water a flock of terns pursued a sturdy craft. Fat sea gulls squabbled near the fisherman's cleaning table.
'Hey, dig that. Judith Sly-bones in tête-à-tête with whatsername,' said Sal.
'Cybil, the cradle-snatcher.'
'Cradle-snatcher?' I wanted Wilma to expand, even though I had just been told by Lenny what Cybil had done.
'She doesn't care how young they are, I hear.'
'Do we, or do we not, have an item growing?' We all blatantly watched Judith and Cybil walk towards the park along the path on the sea-wall. Gliding on the water behind them, pelicans.
Cybil is suspicious of Judith. What does the hermit want with her? Her curiosity would only be answered by turning up, by having a meeting. Cybil is conscious of being watched as she listens to Judith's soft tones. Her ears burn. Margot Gorman is there. Although it feels deliciously covert, like boarding-school girls in the corners of halls, there are no walls. They are seen by eyes as wise as if they hear. Cybil is not listening. She is more comfortable as the watcher, not the watched. The secrets fall on deaf ears. She cannot trust Judith Sloane because she knows too much about her. All of it heard from Virginia White in Sunday morning pillow talk. Maybe truth is relative to each person's perception of it, she revises. From her own point of view Judith is probably none of the things Virginia said of her. While Cybil is insatiably inquisitive, she does have a strong faculty of discernment. While ready to take in hearsay, she wants the evidence of her personal impression. Cybil tries to walk away. Judith follows, speaking seductively.
'Will you have dinner with me?' The voice is husky, with attractive rounded vowels. Cybil cannot shake her, she has the insistent cling of a leech.
'Why?' She puts it rudely. 'Why should I?'
Judith will not take no for an answer. She is unfazed by rejection, convinced of her own significance. Her speech is a monologue. She has one idea, a purpose, all her energies geared its end. She hangs on until Cybil says, 'I've got an appointment, a conference, I have to go.'
'We have things to discuss,' Judith suggests conspiratorially.
Cybil nods. Despite her distrust, she names a place, and notes the pathetic satisfaction in her pursuer. For some people, getting what they want outweighs the way they achieve it. Fair, foul, flattery, cajoling insensitivity, outright aggression or bloody-minded determination they try, as if there were no meaning in the means. Cybil doesn't know why, but, instinctively, she dislikes her.
'Apart from that,' Judith smiles. 'You're quite gorgeous.'
Cybil says nothing and abruptly walks away, busily adjusting the padded shoulders of her ladies' shirt. She stops at the conveniences further down the park because she suddenly feels a shiver of fear. She checks her mascara. As she looks at herself, she admits that she needs Virginia. Not just anyone. But they are so alike. Perhaps Judith can become something for Cybil that is a compromise, morally speaking, and take away the loneliness.
Judith Sloane leans back on the grass in a pose, well aware that she is in view. She sits up, hugs her legs, looks at her scratches and pays attention to the sea-birds diving from a height into the shallows of the estuary. Then she takes out a tissue and wipes the make-up from her face. She marches up the hill to the beer garden, vaults the little brick fence and sits down at the table.
'You know what happened to me after the party?' The gurls shake their heads.
'Well, look. She indicates her yellowing black eye under the make-up. 'And there are more.' Her hands rub her ribs and she groans in pain.
'What happened?' asks Dee.
'Virginia, VeeDub happened. She turned on me and lashed out. She thrashed me and I hadn't done anything,' Judith, the innocent victim, is indignant.
Gig inquires, 'Why?'
Judith is tolerant, understanding, 'She hit the wall, I suppose and I was it.'
'Shit eh?' Wilma sympathises.
Margot returns with a round of drinks with Milt, who has fresh TAB tickets. She laughs genially. 'Been in the wars?'
'I don't think it's funny, actually,' Judith responds humourlessly. 'It has made my place feel unsafe, I don't know when she'll appear again, carrying the adze or the sharpened chisel she works with. The woman has gone mad. I am warning you. Her mind has detached itself from reality and is floating free. Why? She has always been jealous of me.'
'Are you drinking?' the Larrikin queries, genially.
'Of course not. I wouldn't even have their plastic orange juice. I'm not staying. Here look, up the back of my shirt? See?'
'Got any broken ribs?' Sal asks philosophically, 'Because if you have they will take ages to heal. I'd go to a doctor and get some strong painkillers. Make you feel better.'
'I might do that.' All look at her as she leaves them, carrying her hand-woven dilly-bag as if it were an Oroton purse.
'Looks like the Beetle clobbered the wrong snake,' Maz says. 'I shouldn't have told her.'
'Told her what?' Margot wants to know.
'Yeah, but who is Judith getting at, Cybil or the Beetle?' Gig ignores Margot's question.
'Both,' opines Ti. 'Stirring shit.'
'Why would she want to stir Cybil up? She is just her type,' Xena thinks.
'Maybe they are on-side, as you put it,' Margot observes.
'What's she up to?' Gig remains dubious.
'Why didn't you ask her?' Sal says idly.
'It's obvious,' Margot asserts. 'She takes you for a bunch of suckers. She shows you her bruises, tells you who did it, and Virginia's name is mud because you'll report the fact and it'll take off on the grapevine. And you don't even know if she's telling the truth or not.'
'What Judith should do,' Xena Kia opines, 'is sing more. Put on another concert.'
'Yeah,' agrees Wilma Woods. 'Good idea.'
'Give it a break,' scoffs Gig. 'She has locked her voice up in a bank vault.'
'Hey, Cybil would be the one to organise something like that,' Wilma continues her thought. 'Maybe that's what they were doing. Getting together some cultural activity for us gurls.'
'You wish.'
'One of the town gurls was into smack. Real cool and quiet about it,' Ti says.
'Who?' Margot asks.
'That's for me to know and you to find out, isn't it?'
'What about Cybil?' the Larrikin kids Margot. 'Could be her.'
'No. Too straight,' Milt reckons.
'Talk about straight and bent,' Maz interrupts. 'Like, take a line, there's only one straight one and how many bent? How many types of straight? How many types of bent?'
'We are all bent, airhead!' Dello exclaims.
'Got to go,' Alison groans. 'Where's Tilly?'
Dello brought Tilly back from the playground. The assembled drinkers seemed glad I took the sickest of them away. I do that sort of thing. If I'm around I can be relied upon. I needed more information about this laboratory that Alison read about on the Internet—as reliable a source as someone on the street, could be an expert, could be a bullshit artist. No knowing. The ethics of detecting concerned me quite a bit. Slander slid into gossip so easily. Judith was the expert. She wanted to show off her bruises while they were fresh because Virginia was responsible for them. It was a godsend and she was going to milk it for all she could get.
Alison was the most mercurial person I knew. She sat erect in the passenger seat. We left her car with Gig, and Tilly came with us.
'Devils, like fire, strangers, get inside my body, into my blood. I can feel it burning up, then nothing hurts. You wouldn't know the pain of nothing hurts,' Alison was trying to ex
plain how mad she felt.
'Where to?' said I, waiting for instructions.
Alison, in response, asked me to take her to Chandra's. It was a good idea to get her to bed in the barn. She was silent for a long while.
As I slowed down to take the turn to Lebanese Plains, I finally asked, 'Who did you shoot?' I don't want to die guessing what I was too shy to find out.
'My father.' She spoke without the slightest qualm.
'Dead?' I glanced in the rear-vision mirror at Tilly, the image of her mother. She was looking at the paddocks, uninterested in our conversation.
'Oh no. He is a magistrate in a wheelchair. I was twelve. Nothing ever happened to me except my mind exploded. It was his betrayal of trust, not mine,' she screamed. 'What he could give me was lost. I shot to pieces whatever I was going to be. And gave my mother a nervous breakdown.'
Curiosity was stronger in me at that moment than any other emotion. 'Why are you so different now? Is it about Maria?'
'Just drive. I'm sick,' she ordered. 'I haven't eaten for days.'
The erstwhile equestrian helped me to get her mother to bed on the mattress under a cheerfully patterned doona in the barn at Chandra Williams' place. Tilly told me that Alison got sick now and then. She was certainly hot in the forehead when I laid my palm across it, and clammy. I left the young nurse carrying out instructions, drove my car up to the house, and explained the situation to Chandra. I took over some chicken soup, fresh bread, chamomile tea and Milo for Tilly, then went home. The half moon was high in the sky as the ferry chugged across the river. Out of the car, I let the stiff breeze blow up my fringe and cool my skin. I was exhausted.
Cybil, habitually a flirt and snappy dresser, anticipates her dinner with Judith Sloane with the suspicion that Judith wants more than her body. Cybil does not know what it is. She fears the worst.
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