Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  Ci is all innocent concern. 'Look, Rory, we won't be long. We will just ride in and out, okay?'

  'It is not okay, Ci,' answers Rory, defeated.

  Ci moves her pony forward, 'I built my house. I paid for the materials. I am an anarchist and I'll fight for it. You can't tell me what to do.'

  Rory runs her hands through her hair, 'Anarchy, you little twerp, is about responsibility.'

  'Try and stop us.' Ci kicks the pony and pulls him up at the same time, making him circle the vehicle.

  'How can I do that?' Rory asks. 'You know I can't.'

  Ci bends her horse. 'Look, it's business, okay? In and out again, that's all. Well, maybe a cup of tea. He's not staying over the night or anything.'

  Her genuine love for her sister-Lesbianlanders keeps Rory begging, 'Ci, what if all of us did it? Brought our brother, father, nephew, mechanic, carpenter in?' She argues, 'You might trust him, but he could be another woman's enemy, rapist, whatever. And if you suddenly make new rules, or rules for yourself, there's nothing stopping you changing them tomorrow. Let's say, it's not regulation, but a tradition. We want to build a tradition. Consider the future, consider the model we are trying to set up. Just so women know there is a place where men can't go.'

  Ci is not impressed with the plea, 'I'm not sleeping with him, don't be stupid. And fuck tradition.'

  'You didn't even hear what I said!' Rory is distressed. The boy on his pony in the big stock saddle smirks, quietly watching. Rory attacks him, 'Why can't you respect us? Just turn around and go.' She stands and addresses Ci. 'Please don't do it. Have you asked anyone, Fi? Gig?'

  'No one was going to know. Anyway, it's my life and I have a right to choose,' Ci finishes aggressively. She kicks her horse and the boy follows at a canter. A little further up the road they take a track to the left into the bush.

  Rory makes her way home in a lather of fury and despair. She really wishes Virginia were around to unburden her woes, and, if she were truthful, they would include the unrequited, quite hopeless, suit with Margot Gorman.

  When she is alone, she turns on her computer. Rory's face flushes and her body is bathed in a sudden sweat. She is embarrassed. She clicks a few changes and hooks into a menopause chat-line.

  I feel great, she reads. I've been taking hormones since I was thirty-five and I'm fifty-seven now. When I went off them for a month, I was impossible. Anger. Tears. Irritable.

  Someone else writes, It's just part of the process of ageing, like losing eyesight, hearing. You take something for diabetes. You take something for heart pain. Well, hormones are just natural.

  The words appear on the monitor thick and fast, each woman having her say.

  And they're very good for osteoporosis and arthritis.

  Another puts in,

  They have helped me keep my looks. I don't have any argument with them at all.

  Rory watches the chat roll on as tears come down her face. No one raises any objections to hormone replacement therapy at all. These women should be in the pay of the Chemical Giants, they are advertising for them. She logs on and types, How much do they cost? Her question is ignored. As she reads the anecdotes of one individual after another, she feels all the beastly menopausal symptoms they describe: irritation, impatience, hot flushes.

  They discovered ERT around about the same time as Valium, don't you think there might have been some kind of conspiracy, to shut up the little lady, seeing they couldn't give her laudanum any more?

  She is incredibly angry with Ci, but she is savage at everyone for betraying women in the little ways they do. The ladies on-line are now angry with her. In the freedom of her splendid isolation she feels pressured, and that alone, gets her dander up. The answer to her question eventually comes in the form of a question,

  Are you in a Health Fund?

  To which she responds immediately with,

  If I were in a Health Fund, I would certainly be paying for these 'natural' things. Someone is paying some laboratory somewhere else to package them in plastic and little cardboard boxes with a company name on it. Any of you got shares in that company? I bet you haven't.

  Taking on middle-aged women proselytising about replacing estrogen, she feels like Valerie Solanas, blazing at stupidity, barking at Daddy's girls. These horrid obedient women are like the drug pushers in her community. Except they truly believe they are giving helpful advice, cheap. She slumps, owning her intellectual loneliness. While she needs friendship, she needs compromise like a hole in the head. She types:

  Hormones are not like hearing, or hearts, or arteries, eyes. Indeed these things are not like each other. Women's ageing should not be automatically pathological. You are just putting off 'the change' and until you are mumbling, grumbling nannas. Too bad if you haven't got nice children and grandchildren! But you do have your Chemical Company, and don't worry darlings, he will provide a whole tray of things for you to take you away from the reality of yourself. Signing off.

  She clicks out, runs her mouse around a bit more, reads the marijuana websites and scans information about Du Pont disparaging the plant which before and during the Second World War was used for clothing and building and all sorts of things. Du Pont maligned it so that plastics could take over. Instead of feeling gratified that she is not wrong, Rory feels depressed. The mighty mind of man has yet again successfully conspired for destruction of the earth and humanity against reasoned constructiveness and freedom. Business deals like Ci's split the foundations of her own lifestyle.

  Rory loves the forest. She knows she loves the forest as much as she loves her bitch, Tess. She has built here. She works here. She knows the names of most of the birds and trees and ferns and animals, even rare species. Yet, she cannot feel that love without sharing it with other women.

  'Where the fuck is Virginia?' Rory yells at the scenery. She expected her the day before yesterday. She still has not arrived. Rory feels rejected, dejected. They really must talk about Judith, about Willy's intrusion. Money and men and male violence. Marijuana. They need to ensure the integrity of Lesbianlands against the selfish wiles of the women. It might not be Judith, but Ci who consulted with the Campbells. For all her obsession with the awful Cybil, Virginia is trustworthy. Rory sets out to find her, first in the truck. Then on foot.

  Rory goes along the top road and then crosses the hills to Virginia's shack along a path through the higher rainforest. It is much damper than she expected. On the facing slope she can see through the trunks of large trees a surprising woman shape, like the figurehead on the prow of a boat. As she progresses and comes across other angles of Virginia's huge, mostly hidden sculpture, lit by enigmatic patches of the sun, she finds if she takes one more step it disappears into nature. Several times she back-tracks and almost cannot see what she had seen a moment before. As she descends its implausible seclusion mystifies her more.

  At Virginia's she finds no sign of life. She leaves a long clearly written note, begging her to come and discuss the things, finishing with 'please, please see me soon'. She considers climbing up to her ship, remembering the report of the work close up from Hope Strange, but she is not in the mood. She knows Virginia isn't there. Nor is she in town, as she is unlikely to have gone in someone else's car.

  Rory drives up past Ilsa's, tracing the tracks of the bulldozer. The wall of lantana with the struggling wattles and white cedars growing up through it makes her sigh. They are crushed and flattened at one or two places. She has not penetrated this part of their bush and has had no wish to. She stands at the head of the dark gully and sees rounds of disturbed earth, circles of singular blasts, strangely symmetrical. Eerie.

  On the road on her way back home, she comes across Dee, Fi and Kay, who are stuffed into the front seat of a little Rocky. She wants to grill them about the troubles in her mind, but she finds her emotions too intense to communicate easily; had they seen Virginia? No. The three of them are polite and nodding. Willy Campbell was around but that was a while ago and way down th
e other end of Lesbianlands. They say it's great having the road back in action. They saw Willy's brother-in-law at Pearceville.

  'Stumpy tried to make us go along to the rally next week,' says Fi.

  'Oh yeah. Might go. Could be funny,' Kay puts in.

  Dee says, 'We gave him a hard time.' The three laugh again, 'He said what we really needed was a good screw.'

  Rory makes a face. 'How disgusting!'

  'Yeah, he threatened Helen. Gunna straighten her out with real manhood!'

  'Ti nearly flattened him.'

  'You weren't drinking with Stumpy in the pub?' Rory marvels aloud, and silently asks, where do they get the time? 'Why do you bother?'

  'Not in the pub, we shared a beer down at the lake. Bit of a lark, really. He's scared of us,' informs Dee, proudly.

  'What's to be scared of? Stoned, stupid and useless,' Rory mutters. She wonders how dangerous their indolence really is, to her, to the land.

  As she turns off her motor, and listens to the nattering of birds in the dark density of leaves, Rory has the distinct feeling that Margot and Chandra are together and she has no hope. A thought-form from outside flits about her consciousness like a moth. A butterfly, a flighty suspicion, as clear as crystal. Chandra is her friend and she likes her, yet she feels ashamed and jealous. She doesn't feel strong enough to know the truth. Rory wants one woman to be personally loyal to her. Her, her meagre, ravished self. She is thinking about Margot Gorman and her shyness becomes a red cheek. A sweat. She is besotted. She presses the numbers and Margot answers. Rory is lost for words. She longs to ask about Chandra and her, but ends up being practical, saying, 'The bulldozer tracks go all the way up to where we thought they would. And there are holes in the ground in the gully. I promise we will pay you. When we've got a result.' She splutters.

  Margot says, 'Tell me that again, I will get a pen.' Rory holds the phone, feeling perplexed; plainly for Margot this is a business call. 'That's all?'

  'I can't find Virginia. I've looked everywhere. Spent hours.' Rory tells Margot about Ci.

  'I thought gurls up there could be isolated for weeks.' rejoins Margot. 'Sounds like Ci's business is dope. It wasn't Harold, was it?'

  'No.' Without meaning to, Rory sobs. 'I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Margot. It's just. I feel. Lonely, I guess.'

  Margot is open. 'Come and visit. Come with Chandra, tomorrow, no, the day after. Any time. Okay. Okay?'

  'All right.' Rory puts down the phone and paces about her lovely house, weeping. Virginia and she are of an age. Their paths in life have run parallel through the tosses and turns of the last three decades. They share Chinese star signs. They rely on each other, even though Virginia's creative devotion seems to Rory, an artist herself, far too extreme. And Cybil is a shocker. Rory cries middle-aged lady's tears on her verandah, waiting for her friend to show. 'Please, come. Come.'

  Ilsa, not having satisfied herself as to the identity of the big-winged birds, sets herself a hide in a crag of the rocky hill and watches at dusk. She is rewarded. From out of the bush all over the hills black cockatoos rise with their squeaky, human cry and their lazy, strong flap, all flying in the same direction, fill the sky. It is a wonder to behold.

  Roz Small has an affinity with crows. She has raven hennaed hair and black clothes. Her face is as pale as the moon. She likes to be awake at night. During the day she stays inside, sleeps or sews. She lives under canvas Bedouin-style on a flat piece of land which was graded for a communal longhouse not yet built. It is gravelly. The poles are hung with laces and stained glass shapes in copper foiling. Big on symbols and very artistic, Roz has embroidered the word, Emania, on the curtains of her doorway and appliquéd screen prints of Celtic wolf-hounds to guard her entrance. Her own dog is merely a blue heeler bitch called Dormath, who alerts her to the presence of ghosts and the nearness of death.

  The waxing moon is overhead, calling her out. She sees the wisp of cloud, and predicts rain. Her friend is Nicole Montoya who is camped, at present, in Victoria Shackleton's functional stud-framed stable along the side of the road. After sitting in the air watching winged shapes fly over the mountainous horizon for a while, they convince each other that it is okay to be about. When the moon is high in the night sky, Roz and Nic decide to go where the road takes them.

  They come to Judith's farm and mistake sleeping sheep for boulders. The house is in shadow and darkness. No one is at home, so they go inside. Nicole ignites a lantern. Beyond the shadows of the spinning wheel and the stark upright chairs is a hanging frame. Ever interested in fabric and cloth, Roz takes the lamplight closer to examine the rack.

  'Hey, check this out, Nic.'

  'What?'

  'Well, weren't these the clothes and gear that Gig said that Hope stole?' Roz giggles. 'Stole, I dig that word. Here's a stole. Cool.'

  'You are not wrong, sis. I recognise this stuff,' says Nicole as she picks at pieces of fabric. 'Fuck, hey! Why?'

  'Whatever.' Roz loses interest.

  Nicole shivers. 'I don't get a good feeling in this place.'

  Roz, in fact, a solid and tough gurl, likes to make a show of being afraid. 'Me neither, let's go.'

  'You want to steal them back?' Nic asks. 'I don't mind, I'll take them and…'

  The senior of the two, Roz says, 'Dunno. No. Not a good move.' Dormath is under her feet, trying to hide. 'If she's got these then she might have other stuff. Why don't we organise a raid? Get more gurls, you know?'

  Nicole nods. 'You never want to come here when Judith's here. I didn't think it'd be worse when she's not,' she reckons.

  Roz Small agrees. 'It's truly creepy.' Blowing out the flame and replacing the glass, she falls over the cat as she moves. Its mew of protest is blood-curdlingly shrill. 'I'm outta here.'

  Book Seven

  money

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday

  Monday's child is fair of face

  49

  …spiralling into the fifth galaxy…

  Directions on his IT network have sent Ian Truckman, smoking again, off the Pacific Highway to the road to the west of the ranges. Manoeuvring the large articulated vehicle through the Barrington Tops, he creates a problem for every car coming in the opposite direction. He has to slop into the expanding puddles as the rain beats down. Although he is supposed to control his own access to his communication systems, or at least feel in control of it, he does not. The bloody thing switches on when it wants to and runs sentences and words he can make no sense of. Someone is sending him mad. He has the sweats.

  Nonsense crackles through the CB. Vector, lector. Static, he can't quite hear, so he talks over it. 'My man, give me a low ten and high five. My man. What do you expect? Me to lose my hat? Couldn't do it. Shook my head. Lips sealed. Screen, TV. Screen, monitor. Right inside, Scania? Can ya scan ya. Need some eye-drops. Gotta job to do.' Ian Truckman wonders what all that rubbish was about. He drives the latest Freightliner. The Scania's gone. But that is the word trapped in his mind. He is being scanned. He knows. Small episodes of insanity unsettle him, but he drives. He finds some savage purpose in himself. 'To frighten you, my pretty white virgin, my little dragon, puff of my cigarette.' He watches the wispy genie in the stream of smoke and nearly leaves the road.

  Ian, who has a big-breasted Barbie painted on each of his doors, thinks he would feel a lot better if he could get a girl in his clutches. To bring back reality. To bring back sanity. He eases into a resting bay. To see himself as the powerful man he is, the ordinary bloke, he needs to assess the size of his rig. A simple young female will bring his humanity back to him, reflect his essence.

  As soon as the ignition is turned off, the computer screen bursts to life. But he sees his hand move this time. He is doing too many things at once. His left hand doesn't know what his right hand is doing. Heaps of sightings, meteorites raining down on earth like pennies from heaven, four-billion-year-old rocks!

  The scrolling stops and the screen flashes message. Ian keys in his password. Route B. Got to pic
k up a bloke. Roger, got it. They've been sending him code messages that were bullshit as far as he was concerned. No sense. Like off the planet. Had him worried there for a while. The way it suddenly turned up on his screen seemed like it came from out of space. Truckman cannot, truly, understand. Too much information, communication coming one way, Ian hasn't got a say.

  One of the mischievous bugs from outer space, which flow into the earth's atmosphere over the Antarctic where the protective ozone is torn asunder, being eaten away by the methane gas and fluorocarbons among other emissions of modern human practices, thriving in the greenhouse effect of global warming, enters the system of Ian Truckman where it flourishes. While Mr Frank Zoltowski calculates the kilometre-long asteroid, AN10, will come within 39,000 kilometres of the Earth in 2027 instead of the comfortable 30 million, knocking out satellites and creating dust storms and disaster, while the magnetic poles are preparing to switch, the driver of White Virgin, Freight-liner FL112, is infected by a virus giving him galloping Alzheimer's disease.

  Smoke in the roadhouse not in the cabin, too dangerous considering the load is guns. Ammunition. Crazy but he does not know how so many fags got lit. He gets the feeling they know every-bloody-thing.

  The bloke is at the roadhouse and boy! is he a bruiser. Ian mutters as he paces along the trays of pre-cooked food, pretending to be at the counter, but glancing. 'Big fella. Got swastikas tattooed to his arm skin. Pretty faded like they were done a long time ago. He's old. Much older than me. Bald but hairy elsewhere. Still wearing blue singlet, no Yakka stay-pressed shorts for him. I look neat as a businessman beside him but he does the recognising. He's got the rego of the Freightliner and her name, White Virgin, written on a bit of paper.' He says his name, 'Bruce.'

  Bruce is a talker. He talks like he knows everything but he's fishing for information. Because Ian doesn't know, he is not saying. 'I drive my truck,' he responds, happy to be the silent type.