Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  'You're a coward, Pam. All for a bit of pussy. You shouldn't muck around with them!' The distant voice yelled.

  Pam was a shorter, younger version of Beetle, the triathlete, with a lower forehead and dark chestnut hair. She had a pygmy possum in her shirt and talked to it. 'My Poss, she wants to get away from me, but my guts are churning, frenzied and frantic. How do you get on with women? Hey, Poss? The piper comes with his intentions to ecstasy hoping to make you, to make you a fool, an addict, a beggar, and the woman comes all flirt and kindness, dressed in the rainbow colours of confessions contrived to make you trust an easy goodness as you give away your freedom, blaming me. My sin was. Okay, she can blame me, Poss, and punish me as much as she likes, but I'm right. Too good to be true gurls, dark as sewers sucking at your springs of fresh water, your generosity. Braininess is worthless without compassion, and I am a liar, whereas her jealous rages are truth, Ruth. True as death and gluttony, and the lie that prostitution is the oldest profession. Just because she is a woman doesn't mean you can't become her sex slave or she can't be brutal and odious and cruel and all the rest. Men are happy to share their values. Poss, I didn't lead him on. I just wanted a good time for a change.' What she said gave her an idea. She stood up and shouted, 'A destruction upon your houses!' She calmed down, 'But that is not what I want. Now I see the fear in your face. It's okay, Poss, my little friend. The fear in my face excited her as much as it excited him.'

  Pam turned around and caught me writing. She walked up to me. 'How can you tell the truth when there are no words for the magic of nature?' Pam asked, as if in the middle of a conversation with me, whom she didn't know. 'Now I can give up, slough the lot. Her actions are reactions to bloody gossip. You want to see my house?'

  'Sure,' I accepted.

  We walked across the creek, which, lower here than at Rory's, if indeed it was the same one, ran quite broadly, a shallow stream. Pam talked to herself, to me, to her possum, to the trees. 'I am to blame. I must be deadly.' Pam was one of the gurls who hardly emerged from the bush, and when she did, apparently, she went to the local pub and got drunk. While she was easily twenty years younger than Virginia, the softer features of her face were worn with the travails of the rustic life-style. Incredibly skinny, she walked with a stoop.

  We stopped. She pointed to a big old native fig. In the shadows of its branches and hanging roots, I could identify, after a second, a rope ladder between the flat buttresses.

  'You live in a tree?' I was amazed. 'A cubby house?'

  'Yeah.' Her fireplace, pots, billy and plates, however, were on solid ground. Corner ropes tied to convenient trees stretched a tarpaulin slung over a cross beam resting in the forks of two planted poles into a roof, protecting the utensils from rain. Untie the knots, slip out the ridge-pole, pull off and fold the canvas over the neatly packed essentials and one would see practically nothing. A truly demountable kitchen. Pam dropped to a cross-legged sit and rolled tobacco from a leather pouch, still talking aloud. Amid chattering to herself, she suddenly asked, 'You are?' Her piercing eyes looked straight at me.

  'Margot,' I answered.

  'Margot, you're the detective. You want the culprit. He is in her bed dressed as a woman. The culprit,' she said the word several times, liking it. Pam saw my curiosity at how she shared her life with the frogs, birds, possums and thousands of insects. 'Have a look if you want.'

  The rope ladder attached to the bough and floor-joists came up to a hole, then you crawled. I climbed into her wooden kennel perched in the arboreal growth. Her living quarters contained no more than a foam mattress and bedding, a fruit case beside it on which was a candle and a book on magic, and low rough shelves made of the same. I was examining the home of a real tree-dweller. Tidy, bare, a monk cell. Would-be windows and doors opened on to the trunk and limbs of the fig, making the branches a lounge, roomy with sitting-places, nooks and crannies.

  'Far out,' I called.

  At home in the forest, I'd heard Pam was a capricious thief, and, as I looked down, I saw her as pretty attractive. She didn't answer. I was a witness to Pam, nothing more. Or rather, I, like all about her, was an extension of herself, her environment, her mood. But I did need to know what was behind her culprit rave. I descended to earth.

  'What do you mean "he is in her bed dressed as a woman"?' I asked slowly.

  'Cocks in frocks,' she muttered. 'Even naked. I live in my own world, but it's a really real world. Look at it.'

  'Why was Gig so angry with you?' Standing, I reached down for my pen and paper.

  'Jealous. It's too dangerous to tell everyone who you fuck with. I'm always scared. But I didn't lead him on. I don't do it with men.' Pam shrugged. 'I don't like men.'

  'Which man?' I pressed.

  She sighed. 'Like Willy Campbell threatened to rape me, right? The gurls have got to protect me and when I go out there's always someone with me. I don't have a car, I don't drive. Don't have any money. Nothing. But when he came in here, I was shitting myself. He was looking for me. I'm the one he wants to rape. Anyway, he wasn't on horseback, he had a bulldozer and I saw him smash the bridge. But I ran away. I just told her then and she went ballistic.'

  'Hang on, hang on,' I begged. 'You actually saw Willy Campbell drive the bulldozer over the bridge? Why didn't you tell someone?'

  'How could I when I was hiding? No one can find me when I am hiding. But it's true.' She mumbled on some more about being called a liar and admitting she was a liar because it was too dangerous not to be.

  'Well, I believe you,' I consoled. 'Now tell me, after you saw him breaking the bridge?'

  'It was so scary! But he didn't do it deliberately. I didn't know dozers could move so fast. And the noise!' she exclaimed, and shivered in recall of it all. 'Chucking sticks of dynamite all over the place.'

  'Okay, can you say where he went after that?' I inquired, hopefully.

  'Dunno, but kind-of up the road to Ilsa's or off towards the plateau, you know, where Hope is living, but there's a gully to the west of that.'

  'Other women heard the explosions, too.'

  'I reckon.' The pygmy possum emerged from its cosy pocket. She patted it as it nestled into her neck. 'It was too crazy. Who was going to believe me?' The way she talked, full of internal drama, even paranoia, crying wolf and muttering on, it was easy to understand why she would not be believed.

  'Where were you all this time?' I queried. Pam had missed the meeting, and all that had occupied the lives of the others in the meantime, a dance, a funeral, parties.

  But she was not going to reveal her secret places. Pam had the instincts of a feral and the furtive gleam of a wild dog. In some ways she was right. Gurls did not want to know more than they could deal with at any one moment, and, if she came to their camps to say there was real and present danger when everything was dangerous to Pam, why would they listen? Usually, I supposed, they did not take Pam seriously, apart from sometimes cuddling her when she crawled into their beds. But I had got a rough idea of where to go next in my hunt, the track to Ilsa's. I said the usual polite things and went upwards to find my way to Rory's place.

  The beginning of the waterfall was a narrow creek finding its way past flat rocks which seemed to invite you to lazily lay your body down. The view was a wonder to behold. Steep gorges, hanging rocks and dense patches of rainforest, and in the distance, pure hill-lines coloured in with pastel purple. The track I chose wound its way down into the bewitching feel of close jungle. The crystal sounds of water and birds piping to each other, rustles here and there, the heady smell of fecund growth and mulch filled my senses. I had no choice. I had to go where I would be a leech's delight.

  After Margot leaves their company, Chandra begins to express her concern about the free radicals infecting the carefully set-up honeycomb of rooms within rooms of her website. Having got to Rory's hanging cottage and unloaded the boxes and bags, which Rory does while Chandra admires the bush and the building, over a cup of tea, they discuss face to face the vulnerabili
ty of the conspiracy to misuse. Chandra says, 'We know it is someone who knows our community, whether or not it is a he or she in the meat.'

  'So,' Rory is down to business, 'we discard those who are not technoliterate.'

  Chandra frowns. 'I don't know whether we're looking for two or three people here. One, the raver. Two, the betrayer. The Tragic.'

  'Why can't they be one and the same?'

  'Who knows?' Chandra mutters. 'They'd have to have a split personality.'

  'Is the Annihilation Tragic a Solanasite?' Actually what is disturbing Chandra is not at all clear to Rory.

  'No,' Chandra is using Rory as a sounding board. 'The net is anarchic, we have to change the strategy to allow revolutionaries to act in any way they feel fit. But how do we prevent transgression? There can't be unified action. But there's got to be boundaries?'

  'I've thought about it and I don't want to be involved in the killing of any person,' confesses Rory with sincerity. When Chandra says 'we', she realises, she means T.

  'But how can we control it?' Chandra sighs. 'The structure facilitates the spread of ideas based on the passion of Valerie Solanas and the early radical feminists, who believed they could change the world. I cull the bags of hot air. I'm my own web-master. But, someone's come over the top of me. I did not anticipate, or formulate any mechanism to contain, really odd-ball, destructive activity.'

  'I don't know if you can force everyone to agree with you.' Rory puts her criticism mildly. 'What would our major objective be, anyway?'

  'If we attacked the money-markets, the banks for instance, down the line that would cause suffering of the poor, even suicide. Homicides out of desperation, because the fat cats will hand it down.' argues Chandra.

  'As a member of a loose non-hierarchical organisation, how far is one responsible for the actions of others in the same cause?' Rory questions, rhetorically. 'It's as much about means as ends, isn't it?'

  'Yes, and about individual conscience. A veritable monster,' Chandra exclaims. 'Such a perfect idea.'

  'It was, I mean, it is, brilliant, Chandra. I think you've got to have faith in us participants,' Rory pleads. The ideals themselves intrinsically have ethical constraints.'

  She acknowledges the compliment, and relaxes a little. 'I don't know about you, Rory, but I believe in loyalty to the philosophy. In practice. As integral to our updated manifesto. I'd choose loyalty to principle over loyalty to persons, including friends and lovers, given the instance they are in conflict.'

  'Such dedication to the cause!' Rory jibes, doubtful that she agrees. 'Even if you could control membership to, say, a knowledge of the manifesto, you still have different interpretations of what is effective. And what is unacceptable.'

  Although their conversation is abstract, it is potent with the intensity of hungry, selfish needs. They are like tennis players hitting balls over the net of Margot's absent presence, using the skills of their intellect, the high standard of their political commitment, to keep the game going.

  'Remember the recipes?' Chandra pulls a handwritten page out of her handbag and reads, 'Mouldy Rice Bread; Black Coal Chapattis; What Pip Does With Eggplant; Sofia's Dope Cake; V.W.'s Anything Patties; Camp Oven Stewed Veg (fresh); Chandra's Strawberry Jam and Victoria Shackleton's Fried Tomato Sandwiches.'

  'Strange,' Rory comments. 'Who's Pip?'

  'The Tragic herself,' decides Chandra. 'Perhaps?'

  'A mischievous imp. Let me guess, ah? Alison?'

  'No,' Chandra shakes her head. 'Impossible. She's been out of it since Maria's funeral.'

  'Sofia, then? She could have access, I mean, it is vaguely within the realms of possibility.' Rory tries to imagine what it is like for those with mental illness, locked in a ward. What are they allowed?

  'Who is visiting her?' Chandra has not yet made the time to do it herself.

  'A few,' Rory displays how in touch she is. 'Jill David for one.'

  'Well, she could carry in a PC,' Chandra reckons. 'Jill loves gadgets.'

  'Yes,' Rory accedes. 'I hope Margot's not lost.' She picks up the printed recipe pages.

  Chandra pulls her callipers towards her seat, fits her arms in place and goes to examine the little exercise book Rory has hanging with a pencil. It is a record of those using the phone-line.

  'Victoria and jaffle-irons do not get on,' Rory confides. 'Always in a hurry with a tendency towards shortness of temper, Vee's stomachs good mate is her heavy skillet. She is a vegetarian on principle, being an animal rights campaigner. Her better self is in constant battle with her salivating glands which respond to the thought of juicy steak and the smell of take-away chicken. So she puts thick sliced tomatoes on the inside and lavishly butters the outside and fries her sandwiches.'

  Chandra flaps the call book. 'OWL has got to be someone here!'

  Rory rubs her tummy as she says, 'Whatever, it's made me starving. Mate, thousands of lesbians have come through these lands, and met most of us. There are no Judith recipes. I'll get some grub together.'

  46

  …truly terrible…

  Time passes. Virginia's nights are mooned by the bleak neon from the man's phosfluorescent torch, days by rays of sunlight through the gaps in the wooden slats, bars of restricted light. Apart from Willy's, movement about her is the size of spiders and rodents on the floor of rough boards, but he is the low-life. At first she focuses on him. She sees his leer as ghostly, his bandy legs in tight riding strides or baggy old tweeds three sizes too big held up with dangling binder twine, hears his phlegm-filled smokers' cough. She regards her jailer, in turns, as some kind of saviour, as ignorant, puny, ugly, as less than human, as the devil, as snivelling, perhaps equal, never superior, notwithstanding the chain. Virginia treats the male ego carefully. He has the keys of the padlock. She suffers bouts of hunger, agonising filling of the bladder, fits of rage, defiant dignity and discipline, sublime boredom, torture by thought and heavy heart as the hours roll across her like a Sisyphean ball. She is tied into a canvas-covered sleeping-bag with wire.

  Tin-snips release her. She drops into a squat of relief without looking at him. Humiliated. He watches. Cold panic paralyses her. Tired, in pain, she wants to relax but his irritatingly physical power over her reflects deeper fear of violent ignorant criminal stupidity. Men lock women up. The petty circumstance concentrates her thoughts on wider issues, she feels guilty, embarrassed, has hot flushes. The fence in the middle of Lesbianlands is her fault. She knows their borders pretty clearly, but has not ranged much since starting the sculpture. Certainly not since Cybil.

  She curses herself. Any bush-walker could have found it, Jeff, her brother, in proper boots with a water bottle and energy bars, but the gurls, VeeDub included, are too totally involved with themselves and each other. Meghan, perfectly outfitted, hikes all over the ground when she comes. She would have known, but Virginia is too busy. She knows the lay of the land, has a good visual memory and understanding of contour lines, but the last aerial photo she saw was taken about five years ago. There were no huts here. Her thinking is repetitious. The bag is over her body not her head, but the many branches of her intellect trap her in distractions. It fixates on an exhibition in the small gallery in Stuart where she showed clay renditions of found natural objects, things of universal abstract beauty, a piece of driftwood on the beach, the gorgeous lines of mountain profiles, mysterious shapes the size of beer cartons; even a cloud. Only several walking sticks sold. Framed prints and sketches reiterated what she was trying to say, to see, the cloud, the driftwood, the branch, the mountain range. The craft of the cerebral. But her concession, the size, a cartable, a buyable, a gallery size, made the whole thing too cute, too precious. All the gurls came. Virginia was their comic creative clown, the butt of witty comments, yet her lecture on the aesthetics of her work, sculpture, was serious, and reaction hostile. The lack of anything recognisable, representational of female or animal, struck Cybil, particularly—a stranger then—as repugnant. At the time Virginia was magnanimous, she mi
stook her interest for constructive criticism; was the disciplined artist a self-indulgent lesbian?

  Later she wanted her body and to share in her being. The rehashing of that event which came and went, a pimple of creativity on the face of the community with Judith singing, others' painting and skits of theatre, is intermittent through Virginia's days and nights. At times she starts sawing away at the swag with the little paper-cutting blade, using her sense of touch and dexterity. A crazy zen activity. Pale lime dawns against gunmetal purple evident through the spaces in the hardwood shack, speediness and sleepy insomnia, intersperse with patches of her past which are so immediate she feels she still has the choice. Cybil seduced her and she fell in love, fell into the riddle of irony, the need for knowledge of woman through intimacy with a woman who is not there, who thought her exhibited work was something she could pick anywhere in the same way as adults think they could scribble and make art like children. Virginia tried to teach meaning and gave her the best piece, the profile of the mountain range, and Cybil said it looked like mud to her. Virginia set the work against the sky on the rail of the balcony, taking into account light and dark, but Cybil was stubborn. Around the same time Judith's voice was the holy grail, the chalice of feminist art, song. Orange daylight in lines on the floor of her primitive jail mock Virginia's magnificent ideal, freedom.

  Rewriting the past with fabrication is better served by the fleeting pleasures of performance, the moment that cannot be recaptured. Myth-making, Virginia searches for the growth in the inadequate memory, the continuum of truth, and soon traces the machinations of Judith's deceit. She carefully gropes, then violently rips open the bag and climbs through the hole, leaving the zip parts spliced together. Time for action. This time she will kill her. She sold their land, or part of it, to the men. And the lazy indifference of the gurls enabled her to do it. Judith has been allowed to control the books, the deeds, the paperwork, for years, because Virginia and the rest had more important obsessions.