Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  As for Cybil, she is grateful for her hurtful acts. If the clay exhibition had happened in the city, a few people would have come and gone with highbrow notions of women and wilderness. Theories of freedom, the adventure of creativity, the dreams, the uncharted imagination, the mighty tree wrecked on a reef, in the forest, dripping with the fairytale ambience of deep greens and luscious luminescence in the fungi, Virginia sees as tunnel vision. Sexually channelled through lesbian reality, she simply investigated female imagery not as beautiful, just lovely cunts, arm-shapes, thigh-shapes, breasts, forming out of the boles and branch-joins as opposed to the phallic reach of Gothic cathedrals and the merits of spires. Wet places. Cybil's ignorance of Virginia's purpose is iniquitous, criminal annihilation of her cultural effort. Savage and sophisticated beyond any degree of will that Virginia can find excuses for, Cybil's primitive act with the boy was truly terrible. But where does it measure against Judith's cold-hearted sell-out of women's land? Her calculated hypocrisy?

  Virginia finds a hole in the wall of the locked shed and pisses through it standing up, as she and her brother had done. When they were nine, in her prepubescent year, the twins pissed everywhere. Until now, Virginia had forgotten that. Her bruises are healing. All the abrasions have firm scabs.

  Given both are kidnapped, trapped, what is the difference between a mad woman and a sane one? Virginia feels released from the routine of daily needs. The plastic cheese and white bread that Willy gives her, she rations against the onslaught of the next pang, having one or two mouthfuls at a time. She drinks some water from the plastic soft drink bottle and places it on a noggin. In blackness is enlightenment. She is pathetically pleased to be standing and cannot understand how she spent so many hours curled up, sleeping in the corner. She feels she had taken the first steps towards responsibility and Judith's evil is banal, yet horribly dreadful. And Cybil's blow to her emotional being in causing such agony lessens the power of her enemies.

  How many days have passed?

  She lies down on the mattress and pulls the ragged bag over her shoulder and sleeps.

  Gun-shots.

  When she wakes, Virginia feels ill. Not only is it the sudden change of diet. The abhorrence she has to digest, what is happening on their land, is worse than processed cheese. Her anxiety goes to her stomach. She couldn't eat, anyway. Facts, suspicions, fear, philosophies, horrors worry her energetic metabolism, though her body is robust.

  The feral pigs are human males. 'Swine.' There is a high cyclone fence enclosing an acre of bare clearing, probably the result of early logging endeavours, recently dozed on the side of a hill. A patch of natural growth lower down is tussocky, bladey grass, dry sedges. From the air, if you were flying low and coming from a particular point on the compass, you could just make it out. Did it appear suspicious to Vanderveen, in his helicopter last weekend? Two bulldozers, a tractor, parts, front-loading buckets and blades, log-snigging chains and slashers. The equipment could be stolen property. She has worked out it is Saturday, and there is a lot of activity. The generator is in use. ATVs. All-terrain vehicles, an army eight-wheel-drive transport, covered in fatigue-dyed canvas. They park it in the shade. Willy Campbell is the only one Virginia sees on horseback.

  When let out of her shed, Virginia feels like a lone POW. Camps are forming down the hill. Bales of hay with targets painted on cardboard attacked. Bullets hit the flattened beer cartons. Each new set brings guns and starts firing them. Then they stop practising to get drunk. It is a men's gathering, but instead of spears and drums, they're playing with beer and weapons.

  Virginia watches and waits to assess what is going on, a temporary camp. She overhears a man in a suit talking to Willy. 'Ground magnetic surveys point to the presence of a rich major volcanic gemstone reserve, could explain your alluvial rubies.' A perverse niggle in Virginia is eased to hear the metallurgist because it makes sense of her night in the cave. It is a mine shaft. Gurls have picked up gemstones from the creek, some alluvial rubies, some strange white quartz, but Wilma Woods and Zee Minogue will not allow a rock of any sort to be moved. They say their ancestors live inside them. When a friend of Rory's tried to take home an ordinary rock, she fell into a supernatural fit and did not recover until she had returned it to the exact place she found it. Men, unfortunately, have a different view. Ground is wealth and under the ground, rubies.

  Because it is covert, the men are plainly, with this installation anyway, out of line, liable to legal charges. However, mining rights overrule freehold title. The motive is greed, buried treasure, riches for the digging. But who are the others innocently sizzling sausages and playing country music, guns out of sight? Making a hillock of beer cans, these good ol' boys would love to take on the army. And fight for their right to import and keep for themselves highly sophisticated military assault weapons, automatic pistols, rocket launchers and high-tech bows and arrows. Self-loading rimfire rifles of more than ten rounds. Pump-action shotguns. They have their politicians to whip up prejudices so they can shoot. Virginia, the kidnapped, is the spy behind enemy lines. The ignorant white man needs to be protected, against what?

  Virginia herself is a scrawny old bit of insurance.

  47

  …to sabotage your site…

  Food was indeed on the table when I entered the marvellous dwelling perched on rock, with the music of water falling down various gradients all around. But a lusty argument was going on. Four hands struggled over the small keyboard of the laptop, competing to press a key or prevent such an event by grabbing a finger or slapping a wrist. I stood at the door and laughed.

  'I tell you this is the mole!' Chandra was adamant.

  'It can't be,' responded Rory. 'Look at what she says!'

  'That's all very well,' conceded Chandra, frustrated in her attempt to type a letter by Rory's pushing her hand away. 'Look, I know this better than you. It is how we got to this message!'

  'There is no way the writer of this is attempting to sabotage your site. No way!' Rory was having the last say, and leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest.

  Chandra shot her a clenched-jaw shake of the head and withering look. Speaking to me, she said, 'Margot, see that exercise book hanging by the door. Read out who has used Rory's telephone line in the last couple of weeks.'

  While I was flipping pages, Rory impressed her opinion. 'So, she was clever. What does that matter? The more the merrier. If she's the got the technique, well and good.'

  Chandra stressed, 'But, if I don't have control, I feel decidedly uneasy.'

  In the notepad was a scribbled list of names and dates. Beginning at the end I read, 'Ci, local. VeeDub, local and Sydney. Hope, local, a few. Judith!' I looked up and made a face. 'Yvonne, Dee and Gig,' I finished. Over the page, I found Ilsa's name and no date. Chandra hand-wrote, and I went over to look at the screen. The other two moved away.

  …you can't own land…you can only take a loan of it for a moment and for that time you should care for it in return, a sacred task…legally it is our property…top layer, anyway…mining rights…the whole world should be worried!…beyond the lantana infestation, behind the thorny hedge where the bush was merrily regenerating itself possums and dingoes were playing out their lives and the birds were eating the honey of native flowers or berries…that European bees and bulbs were rare here…orchids, staghorn ferns in the trees and maidenhair flourished along the creeks… parrots were cracking the seeds, and new growth sprouted…as the bush grows taller, the secondary growth is killed by shade…wild boar dug out the roots…the wishful thinking…lesbians are overwhelmingly concerned with personal problems…enough land to let the weeds be outgrown… even the greenie gurls who have come to pursue their passions have rarely penetrated the backblocks…bush regenerators don't stay for long periods, artists, arseholes and dreamers stay…too dispiriting, we should warn visitors, they could get lost up here, more gullies than you think and not all of it bush…a real mind fuck, telling lies to yourself…

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nbsp; So I gathered that one of Rory's fellow Lesbianlanders had used her computer and Chandra needed to know exactly who. They did not want to let me in on the in and outs of their dispute, so instead of answering my polite queries, they called me over to the table to eat. They weren't saying much so I told Rory about my talk with Pam. 'She knew all the time.'

  'Yeah, well, no one takes much notice of Pam, sometimes she's there, sometimes she isn't. I haven't seen Virginia for days. It happens out here.'

  The meal was simple. Noodles and salad, crisp biscuits and dip. Metaphorically rolling up my sleeves, I tucked in.

  'Willy Campbell drove his bulldozer across the bridge too fast. He didn't think, because he could have gone through the creek. Therefore, he was in a hurry. Seen by Pam heading towards Ilsa's,' I said with my mouth half full. Pushing my Spirax and pen across to Rory, I suggested she show me where Ilsa's is.

  Rory drew another of her beautiful maps on a clean page, arrowing the related positions of Virginia's, where Hope is staying and Judith Sloane's paddocks to Ilsa's home and the winding road up and over the hill.

  'There's a gully there, south-facing, cold. No one goes there. It's a gentler slope from the back, you may be able to get through Vanderveen's property, or State Forest.' She indicated where and handed it back. 'Willy's lease, Crown land is there.' She pointed.

  'Okay,' I said as I took it. 'That is where the explosions were. Probably. Barbara Campbell affirms the family fixed your bridge, but denies they damaged it. She could, of course, be telling the truth. That would mean her brother doesn't tell her everything. But. The feeling I got was that these Campbells have no secrets with each other. And plenty with the outside world.'

  Checking the hand-drawn map, Chandra joined in with, 'I find it hard to imagine that Judith did not hear the dynamite. She is the closest. She could have located it. Or Ilsa.'

  'Well,' replied Rory, 'even though it's not obvious in the two dimensions, there's a high rocky hill here.' She pointed between Ilsa's dam and Hope's plateau. 'Not quite as high as Widows Peak, but of the same inhospitable vegetation. Sound would start echoing, but you're right about Judith's. If she were home, she would have known exactly where the blasts were coming from. And she couldn't have mistaken them for falling trees like the rest of us.'

  'Either she wasn't home,' I deduced, 'or she was cognisant of events. Right?'

  The strings of sight made a tight triangle, creating unified ground in our three-way glance. After a second or so, Rory said, 'She's a hard case, but I cannot countenance her being that bad.'

  'Judith's an old politico,' opined Chandra. 'She must have been away.'

  'Every time it happened?' I inquired. 'Does anyone have a record of exactly when these big bangs occurred?'

  Rory shook her head.

  'Well,' I slapped shut my book. 'I've got a bit of work to do.'

  Because I would be back far too late if I walked both there and back, Rory thought it best if she drove me across to Ilsa Chok Tong's tram and dam. Chandra was keen for a ride through the hills. If I went home via Hope's pied à terre on the plateau, on foot, as actually there was no other way to get there, we could all meet at Virginia's, where they planned to visit next, and I could get another ride from there.

  'Is Ilsa Chinese?' I asked, as we rattled back along the track.

  'Ilsa is as Australian as you and me on her father's side,' Rory responded, stopping as she changed the four-wheel-drive down to lower range, then proceeded to grind up another rough road. 'But her mother is Swedish.'

  The country dramatically changed as we curved down to the left. While eucalyptus grew in the incline, it was more sparse than the rainforest behind us. The bush we faced was composed of shorter trees with thick foliage, dense stands of she-oaks and wattles. Chinese-Swedish Australian Ilsa's retreat was cute and exotic. A quaint twisted chimney puffed smoke out of the front end of a carriage, merry curtains rucked sweetly in the windows. Down the hill a little was a small lake with rushes and lilies and waterfowl. The path along which Chandra could swing quite easily on her crutches was bordered with collected stones, blue copper rock and red jasper. Ilsa herself, having withdrawn as thoroughly as Pam from the rough and tumble of barbaric civilisation, seemed physically the better for it. Her face was unlined, her lithe body straight and winsome as a reed, yet her social skills were, if possible, rustier.

  No one thought to ask Ilsa if she had negotiated with the Campbells. Although Barb was not interested in giving names, I retained the impression that their fixing the damaged bridge had been okayed by one of the gurls, one with Asian appearance. Grey gum was used in the new bridge, Ilsa told us, but she was more interested in big-winged creatures she could not identify. 'The Paradise Riflebird, the ordinary Chough, something I think is the Forest Raven, or the Torresian Crow,' she went on solemnly. 'The blessed thing was not a Glossy Black Cockatoo or any other type of black cockatoo.' She continued hunting in her bird book, and, after dismissing all the owls, with admirable academic impartiality, she doubted for a moment whether they were avian at all. 'A variety of bat?'

  When Rory brought her attention around to the cause for our visit, she was terribly shy. It was painful, I decided, and left it to her fellow Lesbianlander. Her trips to town for provisions were as regular as clockwork, but definitely she had not heard the explosions in the neighbouring gully. 'But then, I wouldn't. Echoes. Except, you remember Rory, the one at the end of the meeting. Now you have convinced me of the exploratory activities, and I will take your conclusions as true and correct for the purposes of further induction, it absolutely stands to reason that miners would be interested in the earth beneath our feet. We are sitting on a goldmine. Not only gold, but tin, copper, zinc and gemstones, most valuably, rubies.'

  Her personal disinterest was dumbfounding. She went on to explain the Act relating to propriety of potential mineral wealth, which knowledge, if it were my place, would worry me a lot. But she had pigeon-holed it as a matter of curiosity in the cabinet of her reserve. God forbid that she would have to deal with people. So paralysed by our presence, she did not think to offer us a drink. I went outside to get myself water from the tank and gazed at the rearing hill which screened the offending labour. An intimidating climb to say the least. Then it occurred to me why Willy was in such a hurry to cross the bridge when he could have safely gone through the creek. His having recently fixed the other bridges, the machine was probably on that side of the property. He had to get his bulldozer to the site while Ilsa was shopping. If he bothered, he would have a rough idea of her time-table. Because even if echoes disguised the blasts' location, the sound of the bulldozer would be heard and remarked upon by this resident as he would have to pass quite close. After the main drag through the plain, and up past Judith's, this was the gurl he would have to consider. Wilma and Barb had been in on their horses, seen by Hope, casing out the place? Giving the all-clear, gurls gone to, perhaps, the dance? That left only Hope, apart from Pam, who could have witnessed the intrusion.

  As soon as Rory and Chandra emerged from the anchorite's bolt-hole, I needed to step on it. Stopping at a fork in the road, Rory explained the routes to the plateau where I was headed. The shorter distance was already in shadow, the other still in sunlight. Affirming that I knew my way to Virginia's once I was in the vicinity of the creek which became the waterfall near Rory's, I said, 'See you later.' Chandra's mind was all over the place. She remarked on the beauty of the landscape while being chauffeured from house to house in the relative comfort of Rory's otherwise rugged vehicle.

  When I had made the far ridge in fairly good time, I found strange signs burnt into the ground. I felt I was at a scene from Trivia's diary. Like arrowheads the signs made a pattern on the flat ground in two-foot-wide lines, making a square into three equilateral triangles. Peculiar geometry for a house plan. Further down there were the ruins of a four-sided dwelling. The poles supporting the roof were sooty black and silver. The corrugated iron was brown and bent. The once-whitewashed fireplac
e looked as if it had been sculpted with hands out of cowshit. Beside the cot, a tin trunk served as dressing table. I opened it. A couple of toilet rolls, a box of candles with three inside, articles of clothing, a towel, the sinus-burning pong of mothballs, leather working pouch and another exercise book tooled with the words, Golden Notebooks. Further writings of Trivia? Hope didn't seem to be about, so I made myself comfortable among the tussock grasses and read under the trees as I waited for her.

  These were happier times for Trivia. Beautiful descriptions of Maria and lesbian love, simple, lyrical poems. Then Hope returned. The sun was setting, though sunset at sea-level would be later. The moon was half-full, high in a clear blue sky. The third skinny isolated gurl of my day sank down beside me gracefully. She tactfully lifted the leather-bound book from my palms, and opened it at the back.

  'Look at this,' she breathed, her voice full of wonder. There were five pages of drawings. Surrounding each illustration was text in Trivia's handwriting. 'I've seen them, too,' she said softly.

  In the bewitching dusk, I sat with an elfin Hope, possibly madder than either Pam or Ilsa, but much easier to be with. The picture she showed me was called 'Upstanding Formal Alien'. Height 1500–1600 millimetres, clothed in fine-woven robe. Her helmet, like a dog's head, was the same in each; wings, hidden in the first, featured in the other four; one Pegasus-like, a rearing four-legged winged creature with a fish-like tail; another fully flying with the limbs invisible; another on all fours, very like a dog, height 400–500 millimetres; and the final one, standing, unrobed, displaying full wingspan, two metres, looked vaguely familiar, like something Egyptian.

  There were copious notes about them, including descriptions of a landing craft which was drawn as a sphere which breaks open to a bowl, similar to those plastic ones you buy for pets.