Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  There were those I simply did not trust. Jill, Tiger Cat, Judith. I felt I could discount Judith on the question of drugs, but not money. Tiger Cat seemed to have nothing to do with money, or if she did, whose? Jill liked the poker machines. I had to stop my mind at this point from flying off into fanciful scenarios. It was too easy to presume everybody I didn't like as capable of deadly deeds.

  What was the aftermath of Maria's death? Who was handling her estate? With Sofia incarcerated, who was looking out for her interests? Those out-of-towners at the funeral seemed to take control. I, myself, saw that Mary Smith pinned to the eyeballs; she was as underweight as any junkie, but very respectable and articulate. An employed city-slicker. I hoped at this stage that Libby, the lawyer, was Maria's executor because, for all her feistiness, she would be fair and reasonable.

  But how did I know this? While among my list of characters there was an honest lot, with money you didn't know that higher purposes wouldn't motivate ostensibly illegal activities, law-makers on the whole favouring the rich and powerful. The manuscript I read snatches of at Virginia's, the SCUM Manifesto, advocated taking on the status quo. Well, that's what I gathered anyway. While someone like myself might be amused, more fervent types might truly hate the patriarchy. And hatred, certainly, is cause of much destruction.

  Not wanting to consider Rory and Chandra in this light, though it was plain they were up to something they didn't want me to know about, I wandered outside in the rain, now a refreshing drizzle. A sharp, vibrant rainbow arced across a battleship-grey background. Beautiful! The mailman passed. In my post was this month's Spiders Coalition Newsletter. I flicked over to the photo page. There were snaps of the Orlando dance and one or two of the barbecue. Jill David with her arm around Rosemary Turner laughed into the flash. Of course, that weekend Meghan Featherstone rang me from the desert. I wondered if she knew of the intimacy between her girlfriend and her accountant. Pictures of Margaret Hall and Alison Hungerford reminded me that Rory and Chandra were not the only women I knew who were messing around on the Internet.

  If one were to conduct guerilla warfare against one's perceived enemies, the global electronic village would be the place to do it. The terrorist tactics of the animal rights extremists or the anti-nuclear movement's heroes were cases where your passion to save the defenceless or the planet would override fears for your own safety and lead you to action outside the normal strictures. Perceived enemies could include such transnational companies as the conglomerate that, for instance, Dr Meghan Featherstone sometimes works for, or, indeed, governments with inhumane policies. A conspiracy of committed revolutionaries using computers was a possibility. Why even myself, if I acted upon the feelings of despair I had this morning, could be persuaded to behave illegally in a good cause. I have the kind of middle-level intelligence that recognises that those brainier than I can see and feel things beyond my ken. Which awareness could lead, I supposed, to desperation. Or acts of bravery.

  The wide scope began to overwhelm me. Back to my great untidy page, I scribbled. Lesbianlands—rubies? I flicked open the Spirax. Details of my conversation with Hope rendered little, except the suggestion of another general motive for destruction.

  Madness.

  Campbell's greed for mineral or gemstone wealth was understandable, as was his threat to the fragile Pam of rape. If Pam had not hidden out in the hills, but had communicated earlier what she had witnessed, would it have made much difference? That speculation was pointless. Her actual behaviour expressed the depth of fear his, probably casual, intimidation inspired. One cannot, in judging another woman's actions as inappropriate, then dismiss it. Mad or not, Pam was real. Her experience valid. Quite comprehensible, in fact. This horrid, taboo-breaking show of masculinity was more reasonable in my appreciation of the data in front of me than the suspicion of a conspiracy of radical women driven by indignation at incredible unfairness and cruel injustice to murder of men. Why did that explanation seem more probable when the other, while not explaining the same incidents, was more logical? Why, in short, were gurls mad and blokes and families sane?

  Virginia White seemed to me, when I spoke with her in her house, as one of most interesting and level-headed persons I had ever met. Yet, of course, she has to be mad, chipping at a log in the hostile jungle away by herself. She had less of a crazy turn of eye than Chandra in whose hands I would put my life. What's more, when we raced she was competitive with her mind on the job, a basically healthier attitude than Rory's. Rory was so beset by worries and responsibilities that she put aside her art, her creative outlet. Yet, at Virginia's chair, her reading matter urged criminal operations as opposed to civil disobedience to hasten the women's revolution. And, I felt, Virginia was the type to act on her beliefs.

  All this musing was beside the point of my investigations. Males made more sense as culprits. To stop my own lunacy as I tried to assess the females, I wrote down the names of men, apart from Willy, in proximity to Lesbianlands. Alison's son, Harold, and Vanderveen. Harold was helping harvest the crop of marijuana in the National Park and Vanderveen was of the stamp of environmentalist who would shoot all vermin, the sort who sees the world's multiplying human population as the major threat to the planet. Regardless of whether it was someone's precious moggie or not, that man was capable of dispatching all cats. If the gurls on Lesbianland stepped out of line, these two forces, the black market and the holier-than-thou ecology fanatic with all the wealth of the white market in his power, would squeeze them out. Either could easily take their land, or make their lives miserable. But the present enigma was neither black nor white, it was grey, the dubious Campbell family and its murky ally, one of the gurls themselves. To that there were two questions: who? and why? Was the mining legal?

  Money, drugs, madness were words I had circled with each coloured Texta I had worked with on my butchers' paper, which was now looking interestingly chaotic.

  Because my heel was jagging from my boxing exercise and because I glanced at my notebook and saw the conversation with Chandra from our drive in on Saturday and because the Spiders' newsletter photo page was open on my bench, I wrote Achilles, and circled that. As the Greek hero was of no use by himself, or as himself, I wrote what he represented. Transsexism in this context. That brought me to other males. And, finally, back to the beginning: Neil, the transvestite youth. Strange as it might seem, radial lines from him seemed to connect everything. Police, poofters, Sean, porn, paedophiles. Philippoussis. I did the washing-up and got on the phone.

  Proud of my page with its bright words and lines and ragged edges, I carried it without creasing or folding to my office and stuck it on the wall above my desk. The abstraction was alluring. I gazed at the unfinished piece of scrap, like a painter, realising I had never worked like this before. Usually I chased detail and arranged data with algebraic precision, facts, deduction, cause and effect. This sketch was schematic. I picked up my pen and added more. Pertinent or not, I wrote: relationships—sex & love.

  There was a community of gurls; whether they believed in aliens, like Hope and Trivia, or Amazons, like Chandra and Virginia, they practised politics, conducted romances, were victims of betrayal, seduced by idealism or suffered its inevitable underside, disillusionment, as if their culture was as real as that of any other village. Yet, like Virginia's sculpture, like their illegal, hand-made dwellings, like interest groups in cyberspace, like colonies of life in the misty ranges, it was invisible to normality. There wasn't a pigeon-hole to put them in, or, if one did, one was kind of wrong. They were neither freaks nor spinsters, neither married partners nor bag-ladies, not unified by utopian visions of building a new state nor truly alienated from society as outcasts, as witches or animists, neither terrifying nor harmless. There simply wasn't a term to describe the vivid and troubled mob.

  I looked at the word madness and remembered Sofia in the bin, Alison on Neil's computer, the flash of crazy secrecy in Chandra's eye and Hope in the sanctuary of Lesbianlands, replacing Christian fe
llowship with the congress of aliens. Meghan came to mind as one hanging off a tight-rope strung between two worlds, the mountains and the desert, in her dank south-facing place. I memoed: Jill? Trina? Then I rang Dr Neville's surgery.

  The Annihilation Tragic's latest essay is entitled: Money. Chandra reads it on the printed page.

  Money is god, and violence is the archangel sitting on the right-hand side and poverty sits on the left, both trials of annihilation of the female self because they are so obvious, ubiquitous. And women are enchained. Money is sacred. Money is divine. To transgress this belief is to be immediately punished by poverty or pain. It is impossible in this world to live without knowledge of them. Women know. A poor man can spend the family's last dollar on himself, especially if he is a drinker, if he is a gambler, plunging the women and children into destitution. The pathos is classic. The same man feels he has a right to violence because he is upset. I don't care how much remorse there might or might not be, the fundamentals are taken for granted. Money requires belief. But there is always a punishment. In middle-class divorces, often the woman is left with little of the money and care of the kids. The need for money is paramount but it is only a belief. A religion. Poverty is a real fear for women. Put up with violence, aggravated assault, sex under duress, pushing and shoving, forced watching of misogynist television, or pornographic videos, daily humiliation, you name it, all will be appeased by the hope for, if not the acquisition of, money. Win the lottery! Money is the god of the pope, the god of the queen of England. Without money there is no power.

  Wealth can actually make women unhappy. What does the rich bitch buy? Painful cosmetic surgery? We have to believe in money for it to work. Just like god. Fear of poverty equals greed for money; fear of male violence equals need of protection, from whom? The absoluteness of these oppressions is the point. In the lesbian community, the god money's police are probably other women, realists! But money is addictive; if you believe in it you can never have enough. Money is kinder than almighty god, but an infinite gulley-trap nonetheless, the more you have the more you need. Hence colonialism, of countries, of country-side and women's bodies. The original theft, essential plunder, must continue eternally. Conserved. Conservative aggression. It is a closed circle. You take. You own. Use violence. Make others pay. Revolutionary thinkers have no action they can take because potency is negated by poverty, and activist revolutionary lesbian feminists have too much to do as well as fear for their lives.

  This woman's anger soothes Chandra. She is sorry her email address is defunct.

  Chandra rolls back from her computer on her fat wheels with such a thrust she is through the door. Although she would like polished wood floors, she has serviceable rubber linoleum of an institutional greyish colour. She picks up her rolling tobacco from the kitchen table and goes onto the verandah.

  After taking in the heavy character of the sky, Chandra skims down the page.

  Greed is a disease, there appears to be no cure for it. A woman who does not see the revolutionary future of women as important, even if it is only intent and dreams, does see money as the thing she can have. Money as power. Daddy's girl is likely to spend it destroying herself, readers, I am going to kill riches. If I don't succeed, who cares? Don't underestimate the strength of womankind, hell hath no fury like a woman's scorn. Not, as he said, like a woman scorned. Hell is alive and well, Tragic.

  Alison parks Chandra's car and wanders across the yard, looking white-faced and sheepish but the weather excites her. She is refreshed, chatty and sane. Tilly is safely at school.

  Chandra gives Alison a run-down on her weekend, the bulldozer tracks, the bridge, Margot's job, Ilsa's description of the ownership legalities and the gems tones. She is about to confide her feelings for Margot when they are interrupted by the telephone ringing. It is Rory. Frantic about the missing Virginia, but arranging to come with Chandra to Margot's tomorrow.

  Back on her verandah, Chandra speaks. Alison listens. Lightning, sudden stunning rainbows. Now wind.

  'Judith Sloane is a miser. The meanness of misers is legendary. It is not only habit, it is the staff of life, the measuring stick, the meaning. They are secretive, misers, and so they need to be. It is to Judith's benefit to let everyone think she is poor.' Chandra says the words as if she is thinking of something else, something she cannot find the sentences for.

  Alison nods, 'What I've noticed is she manipulates people.'

  'Hang with me,' Chandra continues. 'Let's say she is a miser. And a liar. The huge void in Judith's centre gets bigger. A part of the miser's mentality is envy. Judith is envious of Virginia White's talent.'

  'She tried to make me sing with her once, or we did a few rehearsals. She's got a lot of talent, but she was terrible to work with. Yeah, I guess it was envy. Didn't really jam, didn't like me singing too high.' Alison trills a bit of melody, and laughs. 'We had an argument about music in the end. Her material was so turgid.'

  'It drives her crazy that Virginia can be so complete in herself as to want to create for no return. Yet she sees her as a non-realistic weakling.' Chandra seeks Alison's eyes, 'You know what I mean?'

  Alison does. 'Anyway there's only one of her songs that I like.' Thunder claps.

  Chandra grins and shakes her head, 'Why someone like Judith Sloane hides in Lesbianlands is the same why classic misers go through rubbish bins. Her miserliness makes her monk-like. She sussed the gurls long ago, and stayed, while wave after wave of idealism has come and gone. Rory has also stayed, through sheer stubbornness and conviction. Rory is a fact of life for Judith, one largely ignored. Everything Rory does makes pedestrian sense. The good-hearted pragmatic. But Virginia.'

  'Gives her the shits,' affirms Alison. 'Rory doesn't bother her. Why? Because she's given up her art.' More thunder. The breeze freshens.

  Chandra reckons, 'Margot just might nail her.'

  'By the way,' Alison comments. 'I've figured what Neil intended to do when he went out that night.' Her voice is drowned.

  Chandra keeps talking on the subject she started. 'And then there's Virginia's disappearance.'

  'Purely coincidental,' is Alison's opinion.

  'Through Judith,' Chandra synchronises her thought paths, 'we have the link to the penetration of Lesbianlands.' She snaps her fingers. 'I must tell Margot. The wasteland valley no woman bothered to go in is where they blasted, except, I bet, Judith has crops hiding in there. When VeeDub starts her sculpture, Judith feels she has to do something contrary. The more positive her reflection becomes, the more negative she gets. She fraternises with the chaps, okay? There is money in it for her. "Money is god",' Chandra quotes.

  Alison remarks, 'They wanted to go into the rainforest and bring out staghorn and orchids, but she said she would not let them, saying the other women would not allow that. Dig this sky!'

  Chandra reasons, 'But really it's because the road to get there is too close to Virginia or Rory. I am guessing all this, but it makes a lot of sense. If they created a new track out the back and came in from the other river valley, they wouldn't have been caught. Why didn't they do that?'

  'Didn't have to. They had inside help.' Alison smiles and says, 'She must be getting cheeky because if they've fixed the road through Lesbianlands, they mean to use it.'

  'They must have a licence.' Chandra backs her chair. 'Well, I don't know it's Judith. It's easy enough to pay any one of the women, put so much money in an account number she gave them, they could take their rubies and no one could do anything.'

  'Willy Campbell threatened to rape Helen, I think. Or Pam, can't remember. There's gurls out there wouldn't mind being stoned all the time, if they could afford it,' Alison says, bitter with recent experience.

  Chandra frowns, 'Perhaps Rory is right to be worried. He could have got Virginia. Two birds with one stone. He was born in that bush. He knows every ridge and landmark. Since his threat, say, he has taken to riding in the lands, sneakily. He wants to get the woman he has been told, by his spy, could create tr
ouble,' Chandra speculates.

  Alison nods, 'Gurls have got cocky.' She shivers.

  'He gets a lot of credence among his mates in the pub for this invasion. But the gurls make fun of him, they give him a hard time. Then he resolves to rape one of them one day. And does it.' The rain comes on to the verandah on the wind.

  'You know that little creep, his brother-in-law?' It starts to pour.

  'Rory saw Judith driving up to Willy's one day. Judith knew about the bulldozer.' Chandra convinces herself, as she rolls to shelter.

  'No one will believe it's Judith, not when they can point their finger at the users,' Alison shouts.

  'Exactly, that's why she's so sure of herself.' Chandra cries, 'Will you look at this weather.'

  Alison rubs her arms. 'Holding the sword of the law over their heads by a single thread to show the perilous nature of their happiness, à la Damocles, is one thing, but he was going too far. Threatening rape. The gurls won't back Judith,' she says loudly.

  'No, Judith has been in and out of the lands a lot lately, she said.' Chandra completes her version of events, 'So Rory doesn't discover what is really going on. Gets Margot in.'

  Alison asks, 'Do you reckon Margot's a good detective?'

  'Too good for my liking,' Chandra states, recklessly.

  Alison senses that the vibe of affection, even intimacy, has entered Chandra's life. So she warmly suggests, 'What I think Margot needs is a feminist text to read.'

  Although Chandra understands Alison to mean that if Margot is going to be close to Chandra she'll have to bone up, she firmly dismisses the idea. 'It could be dangerous if, in the course of her investigations, she jumps to the conclusion that theory could easily translate into action thirty years later.'

  'It's okay, Chandra,' Alison assures her. 'I know about the Solanasites.'

  'Thought so,' Chandra thrusts her chair into a spin. 'Let's go inside.'

  'Better!' Alison follows her. 'But I really do reckon you should confide in her your deepest passion. It's one of the things that makes you exciting, Chandra.'