Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  'Know where we're going, mate?' enquires the big, genial fellow.

  'You tell me,' Ian says suspiciously, 'Bruce.'

  Bruce shrugs, 'Yeah, well, you know enough. Nice rig.' They climb into the truck.

  Ian is arrogant. 'Should be. Gets looked after.'

  Bruce continues chattering, 'Reminds me of what my dad was up to in the 'thirties round Bega way.'

  Ian, not hearing, says, 'That so?'

  'Shooting practice,' Bruce claps his hands. 'Right to bear arms, bushies and bikers.'

  Ian has to concentrate on the task of transport.

  'Show of strength, there's a few truckers coming I heard,' Bruce expounds. 'You gotta say, that's power.'

  Ian likes this guy, he loosens his tongue. 'Been on my own in my cabin for too long,' he chats.

  'By the way,' Bruce says, dragging a bit of paper out of his shorts way down there under a load of fat, 'I got a map.'

  'Good.' Ian suddenly feels remarkably sane. 'I just had the general direction.'

  'That's right, north,' Bruce directs, stabbing the sheet with his greasy forefinger. 'We take a right off the New England Highway, then we go deep into the wilds.'

  Ian sees his free hand reach for the paper.

  'What's your weapon, mate?' Bruce folds it away.

  'Just a Ruger rifle,' Ian answers simply, trying to maintain control.

  'You're kidding me?'

  Ian grins. 'Of course I'm kidding you, Bruce. I'm not invited to this bivouac as far as I know. I've got to deliver on the coast.'

  'The bloke that owns this place reckons he has found rubies,' boasts Bruce.

  'Fair dinkum?' exclaims Ian, reckoning a mate with this mouth couldn't be anyone's secret agent.

  'They are sitting underneath the ground sat on by a pack of sheilas. Just has to get an exploration licence and they're history. Reckons gem quality worth about $10,000 a carat,' Bruce impresses his driver.

  Ian changes gears to experience the power of his engine. 'Keep going. Bruce, you're good company. Settles me down. Gives me direction. You know what you're doing,' he mumbles.

  Ian Truckman, the silent, efficient type, with another man beside him, is in command of his semi-trailer, speeding heavily, riding high.

  The monitor mounted on the cockpit of a dashboard flickers to life.

  'Hey, what's going on?' Bruce freaks. 'You got whatchercallit, hackers? Computers aren't safe, mate.'

  'Not that,' Ian explains uncertainly. 'Aliens.'

  'Stone the bloody crows!' Bruce slaps his beefy thigh. 'How'd you do that?'

  'New technology, mate. Keeps you up to date. Something to do with the satellites,' Ian assures him. 'With cyberspace up and running extraterrestrials can communicate. Finally,' he adds.

  Bruce has met some weird types in his time, but you take them as you find them.

  You don't need a million dollars to buy a boat, but it sure helps. For the craft that will propel you to the dizzying heights of the moving and shaking jet set—and see you rubbing fenders with the world's best—it has to be big.

  The words accompany a graphic of a motor cruiser.

  'On-line shopping, Ian?' he asks

  Bruce watches the screen for a few more minutes, expleting his incomprehension, then gets bored and looks at the paddocks of the Western Tablelands through the windscreen.

  'Do any hunting, Ian?' he asks, because he just can't stop talking.

  'No, mate, not for a while,' Ian settles the pace at 105 km/h.

  Bruce is a disingenuous, rural man. 'There's a whole hill of trees gone since I was out this way last.'

  'That bother you, Bruce?' Ian condescendingly inquires, because he is aware of exactly what is happening. 'This is just the beginning.'

  Bruce gets comfortable, ignoring what he has quite clearly heard. 'They call it die-back. They don't even know what it is. Gum trees just turn up their toes, one after another or all together. Could be a pest. They don't know.'

  'You think their fuel don't burn?' Truckman gives up and reads the roadsign out loud. 'Armidale, fifty.'

  'Right. I gotta make a phone call, can you stop?'

  'Don't need to, Bruce. Here use this.' Ian hands him his mobile.

  'You got the lot.' Bruce takes instructions and makes contact with his fellow shooters. 'You know the Shell?'

  'Out of town?' Ian verifies.

  'Yeah. Rendezvous. We're right on time. They said you were reliable, Ian.'

  Never short on compliments when they're needed, Bruce.

  'So, I leave you there, right?' Ian hides his dismay.

  'That's about it, mate,' avers Bruce. 'And thanks,' he says from the ground before he slams the door. Then he waves.

  'Yeah,' Ian nods grumpily. There is a network of arrangements going on, movements on the roads, in the sky, on the sea, out in space. It is all connected, monitored. Maybe they even care if he's sick, Ian is just a pawn in their game. No choice. Feeling dizzy. Seeing things. The highway is a ribbon in the breeze.

  Virginia scrambles through brambly bush, feeling for thorns, instinctively, responding to the contours of the land. Flat backdrops to her self-involved drama of the last year transform beneath her feet into the three dimensions of reality. She progresses as shakily as if she rode a whale in mountainous seas. Owls above her move from tree to tree.

  The moon sets. Darkness is complete. No stars. A damp, chilled air pushes through her clothes, her skin. It is not wind. It is night being thrust forth by the coming day, the last hurrah of black cold. She steps gingerly on leaf and loose stones, skidding, righting herself, banging into branches, hopelessly blind.

  Streaky light infuses the sky. Ghosts scurry like the nocturnal animals in a hurry to find their sleep and day birds begin to squeak. As wary as a phantom in this wondrous changing of the guard, she witnesses the slow diffusion of colour.

  Then dawn, like a silver-golden sword, strikes the highest crowns, conferring the honour of hard-edged life. Of light.

  Of sight. Then, after a few moments marvelling, she finds it commonplace and takes bearings and heads towards her home.

  The first recognisable feature in the landscape blows her mind. Her vision discerns her gigantic sculpture. Though still magnificent wood, her Amazon ship in the forest is a mish-mash of confused images. As if she could not tell the difference between Sappho and Penthesilea, it's neither on an island nor beyond the Trojan Plains, not horse nor barge, neither primitive nor civilised, but crude and abrupt, embryonic, whimsical, incredibly naive. Heavily bereft of dynamism. Embarrassing. She laughs at her own rudimentary efforts to form art so arrogantly self-reflexive. So desperately big. She knows the galley and the bunks. She climbs the deck. She finds a place to rest, but cannot sleep. She just relaxes. The irony that her over-reaching ambitions resolve themselves in the mundane gratitude that this is so remote and inaccessible she will avoid the vigours of exhibiting flattens and amuses her. Apart from the joke that she has tricked the critics, her mental efforts take her nowhere. She is exhausted. Too tired to close her eyes. She feels absolutely nothing.

  Strange lights appear in the morning sky. She hallucinates an upright being with wings alighting on the prow. It stands like a small human in a helmet, and the wings become a cloak. She hears it speak. It is not words. It is music, fixed tones and sequences, very high-pitched like bats, but measured.

  Sounds involve her while her sense of sight abdicates its fierce throne in the hierarchy of her being aware and becomes disfocused so the bush dances in shimmering impressionism: the fall of Rory's axe, a 747 overhead, an odd howl, and beyond the immediate birdsong and bustle, gurls' dogs' barks. It is philharmonic. Virginia White wonders if she has reached Mary Daly's experience of quintessence, spiralling into the fifth galaxy, realising the archaic future.

  50

  …seduced by idealism…

  A squall came in from the east but it didn't keep me inside. After a jog, my foot was really sore. I needed my trainer. Even though I'd as easily accepted Sean
's betrayal of trust as he had what he saw to be mine, I had to get back in touch with him for a number of reasons. Faith between the sexes can collapse without warning. He could not have really meant that I'd snitched on him. Who did then? He said I dobbed him in. What did he say exactly? I can't remember for the shock of it. He just turned on me. Tore off his sheep's clothing and showed his wolf-teeth. Sweetness and Light swore at me, Sean Dark threw me out of the gym. I'm afraid it's sayonara boy, you are just as misogynist as the rest of them.

  But, by the time I'd showered, I changed my mind. I rang Sean. 'How are you, mate?'

  'Changing colour,' he said sulkily, referring to his bruises.

  I decided to be tough. 'Was not me who said anything about you to the cops, so, what was that all about?'

  He cleared his throat, 'I heard from a reliable mouth that you were in cahoots with a dee.'

  I sighed. 'Nothing to do with you, but.'

  'Sure.' He sounded dispirited.

  'No, true,' I assured him.

  There was silence between us for a couple of seconds, then he said, 'Can't speak on the phone, Margot.'

  Faking impatient good humour, I demanded, 'What the hell is this all about, Sweetness? I am in the dark, Mr Dark.'

  'At least you sound like the same old Margot,' he laughed.

  Lying, I proclaimed, 'I am the same old Margot. Let's get together.'

  We made a time and place.

  Judith Sloane thought that seducing Cybil Crabbe would be a walk-over. She can rely on her sexual charm, though normally not needing to do more than tease. She has the number of Meghan's private extension.

  Meghan Featherstone, while an object of fun, is her rock, her pedestal. There for her, always. The sincerity, warm-heartedness, within the eccentricity, is appreciated by Judith, perhaps more than by anybody else. Meghan, however, is uninterested in anything Judith has to talk about. Judith disconnects with a feeling of dissatisfaction. She leaves the house with a cursory glance that everything is as she wishes it and gets into her Triton with its purple bumper stickers: 'my other car's a broom'; 'practise random acts of senseless kindness'. Judith's loyal admirer is taken up with her own affairs. Her relationship, her work, her finances, her fads, whatever, are more gripping than her star-struck adoration of the singer she never slept with. Yet Judith, used to using her vulnerability, had only rung Meghan to touch base, to keep in contact with the mirror on the wall that told her she was the most perfect of them all. But the reflection fails her today. Judith's practised flirtation techniques, her silky voice, do not have Meghan playing along, assuming the secret recognition of each others worth with a laugh, an okay, oh yes, of course. She is totally distracted. Simple Featherstone affirmation would do. The words need not even be true provided Meghan states them.

  Judith now curses her for the very honesty she needs. She hears thunder in the violet cloud to the west. Violent fulmination in her car sounds hollow; she cannot see her face in the rear-view mirror. She adjusts it but the light is bad.

  Judith drives through the town of Stuart, impatient and irritable, taking the back streets. Her scheme to do with Cybil died without being born, clever as it was in theory. Trying to move Cybil was like talking a boulder into moving itself. Judith is pissed off, yet her vehicle travels smoothly. The skyscape is dramatic with impending weather.

  When she comes to the right turn into the Warrumbingle Highway, she hesitates to click her seat-belt into place. She is amazed she has to wait for a convoy of trucks, motor bikes, farmers' four-wheel-drives, all travelling at the same speed. A sign reads SHOOTERS' RIGHTS. They are enjoying themselves, bipping their horns. The back of a Bravo ute carries a bunch of young men openly displaying their firearms, and another is draped in the Australian flag. A shiver of genuine fear horrifies Judith; then she is excited. She U-turns and goes up the dirt track to a farmhouse. There she asks if she might use their telephone. She pays fifty cents, and gleans the information she needs. When she is back on the highway she travels slowly, enjoying the disturbance from the comfort of her car. She gets to the upper Campbell before the eruption of weather. She stops at the mailbox.

  Judith Sloane is a closet snoop. If there is a postcard to someone else she reads every word, bank statements she holds up to the light, or, if she knows the gurl is not in the lands, she simply opens the envelopes to get the information. Personal letters she tends to leave alone, afraid the karma would come back on her. She doesn't want others to read her mail. Although surnames are hardly ever used in the community, they're necessary for dealing with the institutions of the patriarchy: the NRMA; the Department of Social Security; Tax; Police; magazines and newsletters; the local council. Someone has written all the surnames of the gurls; Judith reads them again.

  The post has just been delivered. She takes up the bundle and one by one tosses the envelopes back. She is looking for hints as to who is as clever as she and any communication between the others and this company which was coming to mine. Although the prospect for mining rights has been advertised in the local paper, the gurls seem to have paid no attention. Usually she let off the crackers of distress, but this time it's true. There was real dynamite and there will be more of it. For Rory, there is only a letter from her mother. That's strange, notes Judith, her mother only writes once or twice a year, now two in a week. Family tragedy, great, Rory might be off for a while! Judith hears a car and strolls nonchalantly away from the mail box with no letter of her own. A post-office box in town is where her official correspondence comes. She parks the Triton in the Christians' tractor shed and makes her way into Lesbianlands on foot.

  If my imagination were a painting, right now, it would be one of those confused landscapes where roads lead nowhere, human faces loom too large, and little explosions take place on the horizon in the background. With my sanity sending me mad, my emotions were reacting to an information overload which threatened to swamp me. Whether it was the expansion of media coverage available to us in Australia or whether indeed there was a log-jam of disastrous events backing up on each other, it seemed to me this Monday morning the world was hurtling towards wholesale catastrophe: earthquakes, floods, mud-slides, volcanoes, tornadoes, blizzards, cyclones, global warming, both hot and cold temperatures all reported in superlative terms, breaking previous known records, exceeding all means and measures to cope, exacerbated by territorial wars where neighbours were burning and bombing each others houses and rendering viable cities into scenes of destruction with civilians running for cover beneath the sporadic firing of sniper bullets, forced out of their villages at gun-point, speaking from some foreign land in broken English about rapes, massacres, unspeakable atrocities. Watching the news, reading the paper, being in touch was like Orson Welles' The End of the World and The Day of the Triffids rolled into one, yet worse, for, taking into account all the sensationalism, it was happening. Underneath each audio-visual thirty-second grab or photo with minimal journalistic text there were so many films and novels of individual suffering that ones heart-strings would be frayed to shreds. Alongside that, taking equal space, serious corruption of officials, the fatuous frivolity of wealth being spent in ridiculous ways, manic shots of stock exchange frenzies, and straight-faced reports of money markets and financial indices, before the sport and weather. The oscillation between El Niño and La Niña was carefully monitored in an ongoing graph to which you could get addicted if so inclined. The hole in the ozone layer was expanding, eating away at the earth's protective atmospheric shield. It mattered to me.

  The rain they had predicted started. The last major flood of the Campbell River was thirty years ago, thus the next one was due. With all the clearing and development and increased population in the valley, more dire consequences were expected. Hail hammered the roof for five minutes. Although this storm would pass, the forecast was for extended precipitation. The downpour should have eased my mood. Instead it sought the depressions in my own person, making puddles, dispersing my focus.

  Sparring with my pun
ching bag on the verandah, dancing through the pain in my foot, my meditations zoomed from the ozone layer to my secret fears of the man in the truck. I thrashed that delusive paranoia with left hooks and right jabs at the leather. I had to get over it. I had work to do. With physical exertion I could excrete nonsense in beads of sweat. Not to say the emotional trepidation of getting involved. I had the energy of a flea.

  When I got to my desk, the shorthand notebook and the computer screen seemed too small to handle the breadth of my ignorance, the scrappiness of my knowledge, the loose threads of my investigations, so I hunted around for big paper and a packet of coloured felt-tip pens. The cramped neatness of my office would not do, so I swept all condiments, cups, cutlery, fruit and jam off my kitchen table onto the sink and bench, creating chaos so that I might dig to a deeper order. Superficial organisation has in the past distracted me from the vital value of confusion. It was self-discipline for me not to wash up, get out the vacuum cleaner, shine the windows, rid the house of daddy-long-legs' cobwebs, polish silver, bake a cake. I could not afford the time for housework nor to please myself by mere tidiness. I scrubbed the toilet bowl anyway.

  Finding the roll of butchers' paper, I tore off roughly a metre and laid it down like a story board. Characters, places, plots and motives. Who I knew, what I knew, where I had been. Suspicions, insights, gut-reactions. What I didn't know, where I hadn't been, players I had not met face to face. Dr Neville, I wrote, beginning my list.

  Places. I had not been to 'the hornets' nest', for instance, which is a block of run-down flats where smack-addicts hang out and speed, dope, ecstasy are available. Drugs had a part in this, played by a shadowy figure who the Larrikin implied was respectable, either a user or dealer, or both; not a complete stranger to me. I could, for instance, imagine Cybil slumming it. Gut-reaction to her was that she was hiding something from me personally. Then there was Rosemary Turner, who had the eyes of a death adder and the body of a dowager.

  Motives. Yes, and money. Money had a role in it all.