Darkness more visible

by Finola Moorhead

  Rory switches off her electricity. She does jobs outside and checks the weather and covers her solar panels with anchored tarps. Still worried about Virginia, she does her housework and stacks her chopped wood inside. Hope Strange appears. She tells Rory how she saw Judith on the ridge, with her face battered and bruised, walking home.

  When Rory asks her, Hope says, 'Judith Sloane's injuries are a product of the bad vibes on the land. Malevolence certainly.' She goes on with what Rory decides half-way through is a lot of rot. 'Said she was kicked by Virginia, knocked out, disorientated. I didn't believe her.'

  Rory laughs at Hope's earnestness. 'Something was seriously bothering her? Do you think she got bashed by a bloke? Dee said they were threatening, and a lot are turning up, bikies, truckers and so on.'

  'The bruises were a few days old. She was acting so weak, I helped her back to her shack and lit the fire.'

  'Should I go up, do you think?' Rory asks without meaning it. 'If I was to go out, it would be to find VeeDub.'

  'We've got to find her before it starts to rain,' Hope urges, 'Judith thinks I'm round the twist. I must be. I have a very clear idea of what the aliens look like now, and how they disguise themselves in mobs of black cockatoos.'

  Hope's description of the aliens is so graphic, Rory doodles drawings while she talks. 'Hey, you did good. I must bring down Trivia's pictures, and compare.'

  Thunder in the distance claps Rory on the back with a hearty appeal to her sense of responsibility. 'Come on.'

  Hope is keen. 'Before I thought aliens got her. But they didn't.'

  They drive the mile or so up the rugged track to Virginia's turning circle. The keys are inside the Rodeo, and seeing those, Rory inquires, incidentally, 'Can you drive, Hope?'

  'Of course. I drove you home from the funeral. Why?'

  'Because, even if we don't find her, we'll have to get the vehicle out before the storm hits.'

  The Mental Health Unit of the local Area Base Hospital was signposted, along with Physiotherapy and Social Work, in quite a big wing. There was some kind of community group having a meeting in a large room to the right. 'Friends of Schizophrenics', I read on a sandwich board as I went down the stainless corridor.

  The psychiatric nurse ushered me to Sofia's room. Jill David was there. She sat calmly, listening to a drugged Sofia rave. 'If it benefits women at all, it benefits whores and courtesans. And only financially, unless they are perverts. The infantry grunts are women, you bet, god's police, the downtrodden, wife-beaten, Bible-bashing, it's hard-for-me-so-sure-as-hell-it's-going-to-be-harder-for-you-if-I-have-anthing-to-do-with-it type of woman.

  'So we get bugger-all,' Jill said.

  'I am not black, I am not Vietnamese, I am not a Korean car company, but I am blessed with being different. I cannot take these psycho drugs any more because the chemical companies are trying to poison me, and it is not my earthly body they want to destroy. They want to destroy my mind, because I know who it is. They have destroyed my mind. They've done it.'

  Jill leant over and took her hand, 'It's okay, Sof.'

  Listening to them politely for a while, eventually, in a pause, I asked, 'Where's Margaret?'

  Sofia replied, frowning. 'They've taken her away. I have to get a computer of my own. If I don't I will go off. If they don't take me as well.'

  'She left. Got a job in Sydney,' said Jill. 'I think.'

  I was certainly seeing Jill David in a better light than I had before.

  'Some sick chick there,' spat Sofia, implying her ward-mate.

  'She's not that gross, Sof,' Jill eased.

  'This is a catacomb,' confided Sofia. 'I'm in hiding. Chat-line interface, lists, email, MUDs, multimedia. Living maze. Choose another option. Acronyms, the Internet is another language. How do you know really what they're saying. They nearly got me. Sucked in,' shouted Sofia. 'Women at the well, come. Come. We must revive Etruscan. Etruscan is a language in which all the symbols and signs are known to man but no sense can be made of them. Women at the kitchen sink, wet nurses. Cyborg, lesbian Etruscan. Watch out for the greenie friends too wasted to care about political action other than the legalisation of marijuana use.'

  Jill gave me a complicit look of tolerance. 'Never mind,' she comforted.

  'Another white magic substance. And we are talking about a lethal white substance,' Sofia gestured towards the RN who was distributing medications.

  Sofia winked at me, 'Sweetened condensed milk, Margot, with the international Nestlé label. No. Is this our poison?'

  'What do you mean?' I conversed, taking a leaf out of Jill's book.

  'Okay, where has the icing sugar got to?' Sofia demanded of the sister. 'All the men are dead. They begin to stink. The women buried them in their backyards. Maybe it is just the men of women who have backyards who are killed. No, all. The others use public parks for burial grounds.' She was speaking loudly, telling the professional in uniform a tale as if she had asked her a question. 'So,' she continued, 'they have just gone. Slowly the infrastructure of the modern world breaks down because there are no, say, linesmen, repairmen. Women have not been trained to fix electrical cables etc. My story is called night of the shovels and spades. Let's make it happen!' She whooped, an ineffectual revolutionary.

  'Maybe the San Andreas fault goes too, and a tidal wave rushes across the Pacific and wipes out East Coast development,' commented Jill, entering her reality.

  'The Earth pulls her lips apart. It is liquid fire in the centre. Under the skin.' Sofia threatened to become obscene. 'She angrily swallows what falls in. Or erupts.' Sofia stared at me as if she had forgotten what she wanted to say to me, and shook her head. 'Erupts, right?' she continued, wanting to keep talking. 'Leaves dead stone? Salt. A pillar of salt. Let's kill the white man. The white man has no right to appropriate what he does not understand, but he does and he places upon it an analysis which presupposes the pre-eminence of his sexuality.'

  Jill sighed, 'Which is so boring, endlessly, tediously boring.'

  'It's more than bloody boring, woman. It's a matter of life and death,' said Sofia angrily. 'Crete teaches us that it's wise having a piece of string to enter the labyrinth with. Tunnels. Burrowing away, making new pathways. A string of words, hypertext, piercing hype, shovelling shit, whatever, getting in, killing the Minotaur and getting out scot-free. Cyberspace is just the place.'

  When the sister came with her ministrations, Sofia made it known to us we were dismissed. She took her medication without argument, allowing the nurse to mother her.

  Jill and I left. Outside, I stood beside her as she pressed the key-ring and all the locks on her rich friend's car spring up at once. Another rain squall hit. I moved quicker than she and was sitting in the passenger side when she closed the driver's door, staring at the car-phone. It rested on its cradle between the front seats. I didn't say anything because the instrument brought back the sense of panic I felt when I used it to contact the police.

  'So, Margot,' she began. Hesitated, then confessed, 'You've worked out, I'm having an affair with Rosemary Turner.'

  'I guessed, when I visited Meghan's house in Lebanese Plains and noticed all your things gone,' I fibbed. The rain came down like a wall of water, enclosing us in the claustrophobic space of the Saab. I raised my voice a little. 'I saw your picture in the Spiders' newsletter. Do you want to explain?'

  'Which part? Everything has changed since Maria died. For me, anyway.' There was a new honesty about Jill. Previously she had been quite difficult to be alone with: liars' silence charges the atmosphere in a way I find oppressive. Yet I know it is only my intuition speaking.

  'Why?' I asked.

  'Well, I always thought Maria was madder than Sofia, I suppose. But it was death stalking her with his sickle,' she explained enigmatically. 'I've got a feeling he hasn't finished with us yet.'

  The rain eased and a crack of sunlight speared the thin shower. Her very dark brown eyes gleamed mischief, humour. I sighed, 'Let's start with Meghan. What's going on t
here?'

  'She's coming back tomorrow. I'll tell her then. I didn't want an argument at Maria's funeral.'

  Their relationship was not really what I was interested in. I reached into my bag and pulled out my notebook. The pen was still attached. I flicked pages, gathering focus. I told her, 'Someone, not Meghan, wanted me to investigate her finances. Then after I had dinner and stayed over, Meghan herself employed me. When I realised you were into the pokies, I thought you would need more money than you probably have. So, you being a good mimic, I wondered whether it was you who pretended to be Meghan. Then I went over one day and the place was a dreadful mess. The next time it was spic and span.'

  Jill nodded as I spoke, and looked at me when I paused. 'Trina turned up and threw one hell of a wobbly. Now, that woman is totally crazy. Judith was there. But she had no finger in them pies, and, well, I left them to it. Came back a week later and cleaned up.'

  'Trina, Meghan's sister?' I turned to a new page and scribbled, 'Judith?'

  Jill watched me work, and remarked, 'You know, I'm envious of you, Margot.'

  'What?' I exclaimed, shocked, I think, by her levity.

  'I wish I could work at what I love,' she said, simply.

  'Instead of using your talents breaking hearts, I suppose,' I commented.

  'There are no parts in straight theatre for me. Not any more. A neurotic, a saint, or a prisoner. When a performer can't perform, what does she do?' There was a decided note of self-sorrow in her voice.

  'I don't know. Do you think Judith could have imitated Meghan's voice?' I asked, and added, 'If it was Trina, why did she do it?'

  'Because she hates me.' She took on a frown of appropriate seriousness. 'She found out that I was gambling. I don't know how. Maybe I told her. Maybe she saw me, but personally, I think she is the one ripping Meghan off. Hangers-on all over the place. Judith's another one.'

  I went for the jugular. 'Did you steal from Meghan?'

  'Depends on your definitions of give and take,' she sparred. 'I won't now.' She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, reminding me that Rosemary Turner was also a player.

  'So Trina had some cause to suspect you?' I pressed.

  'I had it bad, for a while there, Margot. All I could think about was getting to a poker machine and blanking out. If I couldn't feel risk, taking a character I played to the edge, then I got the rush of, what is it, fear?, losing money. You know, dry mouth, clammy hands, the roller coaster of hope and despair. I don't know.' She looked for sympathy, for understanding, and met my direct gaze. 'Now and then I dipped into our joint account. Meghan wouldn't notice. Wouldn't mind. Trina suspected and then ransacked the place for evidence. Meghan must have left some papers up at the Brisbane place.'

  'Can we talk figures?' I suggested, fiddling with my pen. 'How much? Say, a ballpark number?'

  'Three thousand, tops.' Jill David shrugged, sad, a little bit depressed, but not guilty of anything she considered excessively immoral. 'Two and a half, maybe, in dribs and drabs. How pathetic! Look at Sofia. Now Maria's gone. Can't blame her any more, can we?'

  I cleared my throat. 'Do you love Rosemary?'

  She shook her head. 'No. She's easy. Comfortable. Normal. Ordinary. It doesn't matter how bad I am. The naughtier the better.' She barked a mirthless half-laugh.

  Sunshine was now glistening on the wet surfaces. Rosemary Turner's car-phone, it suddenly occurred to me, pre-dated mobiles. That's what it was about the Saab, with its central aerial; it reminded me of unmarked police cars. And established drug dealers among other businessmen.

  'Easier than feminists?' I sought clarification.

  'Yes,' she confirmed. 'Much.'

  Snapping closed the spiral pad, I continued conversationally, 'Do you remember grilling me about feminist texts I had not read? How sarcastic and superior you were?'

  'Don't come the guilt-trip, Margot. I have enough already,' she pleaded.

  'The SCUM Manifesto interests me now.' I made a play of academic disinterest but she wasn't fooled, as I hoped, indeed, she wouldn't be. Nevertheless she complied.

  'So you've discovered the Solanasite Conspiracy? I wondered why you were asking about Margaret Hall.' She grinned. Another cloud brought another downpour. 'Ah, the blessed revolutionaries of cyberspace. Babes in the post-modern woods.'

  'Come again?'

  'Old dears clunking into the new technology with their old-fashioned views hoping to change the world,' she revised.

  'Chandra doesn't limp in cyberspace,' I said indignantly. 'Nor, I imagine, does Meghan, but she could not be a Solanasite. She and Chandra fell out about politics and practice.'

  'That, Margot, is where you are dead wrong. Megs is a Solanasite all right.' Jill turned her black-brown eyes with their cynical glitter to my eager blues ones and smirked. 'Her methods are more subtle and more effective, that's all.'

  Laughing light-heartedly, feeling for the handle in the door, I scoffed, 'Amazons, right? Warrior women. Penthesilea's revenge and all that? A joke, is it?'

  Jill pulled down the corners of her mouth in a world-weary expression of 'been there, done that, moved on' and her last self-sorry comment was, 'I don't want to end up where Sofia is.' Which I took to mean if you take things too seriously they will call you clinically insane. I could have said, no, Jill, you look after number one and you'll be okay, but all I did say was 'thanks,' and 'goodbye'.

  Sometimes when clouds scud across the sky and the sun breaks between the high precipitation and the low miasma, it is as if a yellow electric light has been turned on and suddenly the wetness is infused with brightness. That was how the weather was when I waited in my Suzuki Sierra outside the block of flats they call 'the hornets' nest'. I was acting on a hunch, relaxing into surveillance. My hunch was that Tiger Cat had not left the area. Now I knew that she did not have the might of corrupt police behind her and was more likely to be connected to lesser forces whose devious methods I would probably be able to protect myself from, my simple question could elicit a reasonable reply. I did not see her in the waspish comings and goings I observed. My intuition, however, was not far off, for Cybil Crabbe's iridescent little bubble pulled out of the underground car park within twenty minutes of my stay at the kerb.

  Slumming it, I knew it! She drove like one who learnt to drive in the suburbs on an automatic, all accelerator and brakes, whizzing down the straights and stopping sharply at corners. I followed, making myself obvious, eventually bipping my horn and gesturing. Neither of us was prepared to leave her vehicle. I didn't want to be left standing while she took off, and she had good reason not to cave into my demands. If she was the 'respectable' dealer, it wasn't my business. I tried to convey this with smiles and open palms. She must have been confused because the merry game meant I chased her into a cul de sac, a residential court shaped like a key-hole, from which she had no escape except to smash into my fender. We stared at one another through our windscreens for a moment; then she reached down and emerged from her car opening an umbrella.

  When she stood at my window, I said, 'I hear that you Cybil took advantage of Neil among the banksias and sand-dune grasses.' She answered with an almost imperceptible nod, and I asked about the state of his health at the time. 'Did he come? Was he sick? Sweaty? Hyperventilating?' How was his heart? I really wanted to know.

  She prevaricated for a while as my questions sliced through her artifice. Realising I knew a fair bit already, she told me candidly what happened between them. 'Afterwards I was so shocked by what I had done, I returned to the circle and buried my head. I was blind, deaf and dumb, catatonic. I just sat there, invisible, a shadow, dissociated. Until you came, looking spare and shocked yourself. You ran off. The police came. I was anchored, cemented to my spot. When people started leaving I had to move and when I moved I raced to my car and sped along the dirt roads. I couldn't bear to be among the crowds at the punt. I went the long way, going so fast I could have killed myself. But I didn't.'

  'No, you didn't,' I said, thinking of H
ugh Gilmore as I identified the second car that was the first to pass my place on the fatal night. 'And you never saw him again?'

  'No.' Her eyes beaded with small, unwilling tears.

  The vulnerability of a hard, sensuous woman was fascinating. There was something real about Cybil Crabbe after all. Perhaps it was the recognition of self-disgust. She stood still while her umbrella dripped, waiting to block my censure with whatever skill she could muster. I thought I am not judge and jury, merely an investigator. 'Did you notice a yellow Valiant Charger? Suped-up vehicle? Driven by a kid?' I queried.

  'Yes, they were doing donuts in the next beach entrance, where the surfies go. I had taken the wrong dirt track. A group of boys, about three cars. They looked pretty high, self-destructive, manic. I remember thinking, watch it fellas, there'll be cop-cars about any moment. And yeah, I think one did follow me. A lunatic night. Is it only a month ago? There was a big moon. I heard him crash. Behind me. I slowed down then, and drove home trembling. I've been trying to forget ever since.'

  'Tragic,' I commented and reached for my ignition key. I started my car, pressed the clutch and reversed into a driveway. She seemed frozen to the spot, a squat statue. I drove away.

  The heaviest rain did not come until I was on the ferry, and there it was dramatic and drenching. The phone belled as soon as I got home, and Chandra's voice filled my ears with her conviction that Judith Sloane had betrayed the gurls and the principles of Lesbianlands and was in cahoots with Willy Campbell. It was all very plausible as good stories from the imagination are and I asked, 'Why?'

  'Because she is a miser,' she answered. Then added, defensively, 'And Alison agrees with me.'

  'Okay,' I said blithely. 'See you tomorrow, yeah?'

  'You know I'm bringing Rory?' She sounded in two minds about that, which made me grin.

  'Of course,' I replied.

  Chandra is thinking of Margot Gorman. She talks nineteen to the dozen and Margot listens. She realises, in the security of her home with her plants and animals, how much distrust she has incorporated into her romantic relationships with women. Burnt too many times. But she was right, inspired? Trust has to be the mortar of the edifice of a gynarchy. It is physical between them, that is, intensely emotional. Urgent, promising wonders. Yet partnerships cause incidental caucuses which, no matter how great your intentions, bring settled tactics to the general forum; this is counter-productive to the revolutionary cause. Chandra has seen couples destroy collectives over and over again in her time. She, herself, has been culpable, both in the blush of love and in the agony of the break-up. Chandra takes it deeper, into the veins of her very self. The happiness of sharing your worries, your work, along with the minutiae of your trivial days, having a load lifted off your heart and your time lightened by sparks of anticipation or the smiling, cuddly presence, is so seductive all the world thinks it is the be-all and end-all of possible pleasure. The pressure, however, to right wrongs, to make a difference, to pursue a path with meaning towards a non-hypocrisy in oneself, to actually act on your beliefs, or if you can't do anything, think anyway, comes to a serene contentment that can cope with any circumstance. The violin string between indulging your capacity for joy and knowing the real limits of your worthiness, usually a strain, out of tune or stressed to snapping point can, conceivably, be tuned. But Chandra is not stupid enough to think such tension is easy. And she is quite aware of the inflexible ideologue in herself, and how, in love, that wall can become a ton of bricks. For the chemistry of sexual attraction to taste as sweet as the rare fruit it is, she would have to display her strength of mind and conviction. A secret kept from the one who shares your bed causes moral cancer, festers to tumours of self-disgust, eventually. But pillow talk is terribly dangerous.