She was really enjoying the brunch. Second course was coming, eggs, toast, fried tomato. I squeezed the juice of fresh oranges into a catching jug.
Gurls, I had learnt, only talk about their families when a level of camaraderie has been reached. The straight society talk that stuff all the time. And the lesson was a savage one, the death of Maria. Before that, I wasn't trusted. So, as I poured the OJ into glasses, I appreciated Virginia's chat as confidence in me as a person, a growing, changing ego, a lifetime friend. Yet, I had not offered similar information. If I did I would do so quite guardedly.
'Jeff and Caroline have three kids. Two boys and a girl, Cally. Cally's still in her teens. Both boys are in their twenties, both married. If Jeff has grandkids, I do. I mean they're mine too. And he does. I am a great-aunt.' Virginia downed the orange juice and attacked the truckie's plate I put in front of her.
'My mother's maiden name,' I ventured, 'is Norman.'
Virginia laughed so hard I was glad she had swallowed her last mouthful. My standard joke was funnier than ever, so I, too, was sputtering. When the gush of amusement died to a ripple, she suggested I take a look at my Viking heritage. We talked for another hour, covering many subjects easily, so quickly, it was incredible to feel so broadly understood in so little time. The Lesbianlands issue was the least resolved and most disturbing of my jobs, but getting Virginia's particular perspective, while it was entirely personal, enlightened me. It opened a wide landscape with past-present-future dimensions, even as it was peculiar. The fight was on to save the property, though Virginia didn't like the term. 'We don't, can't, own land,' she said. 'The title just means we have a right to protect it.'
We stood together in my office, speaking of anything, of everything, as the updated Featherstone report came through the printer.
'Lori Heise, in the US, Dallas, I think, has done a world-wide report on domestic violence, all cultures, huge,' Virginia gossiped about the grapevine aspects of the Internet. 'Years it's taken, and one in three women suffer abuse.' But that was not the point she had to make. 'One in how many, do you reckon, are like me?'
I reassured her that there were heaps of lesbians, millions of great-aunts, and that every woman in the world was unique.
'Yeah, okay.' She accepted my invitation to stay another night, then she reckoned she might make a trip to get to know her nephews' children while they were still babies. 'Years pass at such speed, I could lose the precious moment without noticing.'
She went about her day, and I sat down to write out a report for Penny Waughan.
Meghan Featherstone does not find Chandra Williams alone at her home. Alison Hungerford is there. Rory O'Riordan and her whippy red dog, Tess; all are on the verandah.
Alison is laconic with the effects of psychotropic drugs.
Chandra's Rottweiler softly growls. 'Who's that, Nikki?'
The conversation collapses under the barrage of kelpie yelping as Meghan mounts the steps. She takes off her coat and squats on an upturned milk crate.
Accepting a cup of tea, she begins her reconciliation with Chandra by telling the three the story of her proof of hell. 'Beneath the volcanic layers it is not hot, the molten lava is a reaction, chemistry.' Her audience is appreciatively stunned. 'What men can't measure, they can't know.'
'True.'
'Unless they name and calculate, formulate and pin down, it simply doesn't exist, except as god. So I gave them the devil, Prometheus Unbound, and said it was promethium, a trivalent element, with some mysterious carbonesque constituent that could indicate life.'
'Nonsense, right?' Chandra is suspicious.
Rory pulls down the corners of her mouth. 'I don't find it too far out. Nearly all interpretation of data is bound up in belief systems. While we push the envelope of discovery, in all scientific fields, how they make sense of this flow of fact is radically conservative.'
Alison nods, and comments dreamily, 'Gurls going forwards and back spending their energies on vain quests for meaning, for a meaning which is beyond our realm of reason to start with, irritate me.'
'Exactly,' agrees Meghan. 'I found genuine research was being discarded because it did not fit the paradigm. Not only in my own area, but everywhere. From work in Antarctica to analysis of moon-dust, from dinosaurs to the cutting-edge genetic engineering, good data was going down the gurgler, because it didn't accord with what they wanted to know. Read, believe already. So, instead of going "ooh ah, you won't believe this!", I go all serious and make out the conclusion is indisputable, because it does fit in the constructs of their faith. I dressed the bullshit in reams of valid data.'
Chandra is excited. 'The conspiracy is working.'
'But,' worries Rory, 'that is not male-specified. It turns us on our own. Nonsense, meaning. It'll fuck up women's heads just as much. Probably more. If that hits the newspapers, men will be sceptical and women will fall for it.'
'So?' Meghan shrugs. 'Of course, I had to have a mystery to start with.'
'Is it revolutionary?' Rory remarks, uncertainly.
Chandra shakes her head. 'But you're not in control of it.'
'Actually, that's what I wanted to talk with you about, Chandra, in person,' Meghan appeals, getting up and leaning over the balcony-rails before she turns.
Alison opines, 'I'm picking up aggro vibes.'
Neither Chandra Williams nor Meghan Featherstone take much notice of the other two as they stare at each other. Repair of fractured friendship, forsaking feelings of betrayal and renouncing patterns of thoughts, the habits of enmity, requires considerable emotional maturity. Even strong women have few reserves to call upon. Especially fractious lesbians, intent on autonomy, vulnerable to self-doubt, find it hard to accept the implied criticism of their worth.
'We could spend hours revealing secrets, exchanging strategies, putting our heads together, going over the ground of our individual journeys in cyberspace,' says Meghan, 'but that betrays our faith in each other. Furthermore, the Solanasite is only one head of the Gorgon.'
Rory says, with laughter, 'Athene, the death goddess. They tried to disguise her roots in Libya, where she was Medusa. I like it. I love it.'
'Yes, chop one off and another will appear. It's a bigger monster than you know, in more disguises than you can pick. You attacked me, having no idea what I was doing. I watched as you fished for sisters.' Meghan confesses to meddling with Chandra's screen-saver.
Nets entangled, lines crossed, Chandra and Meghan argue about the ongoing conspiracy. Neither Rory nor Alison can interrupt as it is way over their heads. Far too intense.
'You try to control everything,' Meghan insists.
'I work really hard,' says Chandra in a voice low with menace. 'For absolutely no recompense!'
'I know!' Meghan's voice is high, squeaky. 'And it is really good, too. But, you can't make women behave, believe, exactly as you do.'
'Instead, just let them burn and destroy so I can meditate on the coals, hoping for a phoenix to arise?' Chandra is fighting a rearguard action. Her utopia is in tatters. The redefinition Meghan is asking of her is too much. She has to have her hands on to see how things work: knowledge is power.
Virginia experiences ineffable sadness as she says to Cybil, 'It's a real shame you're too damaged to love.'
The flat overlooking the beaches, sharing a street address with motels and holiday units, where there was passionate love-making and mess, is uncomfortably clean. 'You feel truth, you can't think it. Death, loss, annihilation, the word is feel, to know. To value.'
Cybil Crabbe's stare is as blank and unexpressive as the results of her new broom. Even Puddles, the poodle, curls neatly in a fresh, cane dog-bed.
'I loved you so much I couldn't function. It made life impossible.'
With all her cheek and courage intact, Cybil struts into her kitchen, obliterated. She stands in the middle of the shiny tiles paralysed by her own stubbornness, trying to work out what to do.
'Virginia,' she says when she finally decides, 'I w
ill tell you what happened, but first we must start with my father. Daddy loved me so much he couldn't keep his hands off. If I threw a tantrum I could get anything I wanted.' Cybil's resolve to confess her betrayal to Virginia dissolves. 'I can't take it. It's like I don't belong to myself when someone loves me too much. I belong to them.'
Virginia sits cross-legged on the couch, her elbows on her knees, her hands on her heels, her facial features fierce as she assimilates the substance of what Cybil is saying.
'I just never knew what it was, exactly.' Her despair is palpable. 'Everything is nothing.'
Virginia unfolds her long body and stands, preparing to leave.
'For Maria's sake, will you give me a hug?'
Virginia cries for the loss of Maria, among other things, and because tears are easy, in Cybil's arms. Then she is restless, she doesn't want to stay. She takes her leave of Cybil, crisply. Strangely grateful for the hurt, she is gentle. Almost cheerful. Cybil keens like a banshee as Virginia skips down the stairs.
55
…drop-dead gorgeous…
Chandra was reluctant to swim in the sea. For all her cyber-activities, her loves, her prejudices, her hobbies, horse and garden, her disability, her politics, she was fragile. Her freedom to be herself was to do her own thing. It would be pretty freaky having no leg strength where the rollers break on shore. It made me melt with feelings of care and protection.
The swim date was off. Fair enough.
She accepted my invitation to dinner out, though. We discussed what sort of restaurant we wanted: seafood, Italian, Thai, a big red steak or delicate Japanese sushi. Fancy having a smile as broad as Chandra's, a large forehead so full of brains! I am intimidated. I'm just an ordinary dogged Virgo-dog who knows her erogenous zones are dying to be touched. Sister, don't try to be smart. Stunned for a minute by questions I had not considered, I stared into space, remembering Maria. 'When women fall for each other,' she had told me in our first conversation soon after I arrived in the Campbell River valley, 'they are expected to be perfect and are for a short time. Nothing can be found to be wrong with her because, at that stage, all your dreams come true: love without violence, tenderness, beaming attention, humour, understanding, someone to do things with, to enjoy, to share and show off, preen, prance and be gorgeous. You're in love with yourself. You're entertaining and original. She's not threatening, and there is lots of beautiful sex. Later ethical decisions must be made about staying together and giving things up or forcing restraint or sacrificing self. Questions to understand about responsibility and giving attention to another's problems. Or moving on to another without changing one's behaviour or view of oneself.' At the time I listened politely, now I knew she was right. What I feel for Chandra is of a different order altogether. With Broom I was a shallow, good-time gurl. With Chandra I could expect to find hidden depths of myself. A real me. I needed to be free.
Now I was desperate to finish the business with Penny. I had as clear an idea as I ever would of what happened to Neil Waughan. I banked on the probability that she would be home. It was late in the afternoon when I got to Cannisteo Bayou. I took the footpath along the canal and crossed the lawns. Ants were making tiny tepees of dirt in the grass so that when it rained water wouldn't fill their holes, flood their homes. I tried not to flatten their work with my feet and walked slowly.
She was on her private jetty, lighting a cigarette. Lightning flashed in distant skies. 'Penny?' I called for her attention.
She turned around. 'Margot, I was just thinking about you. Is it over?'
Giving her the envelope, I said, 'Well, it is in good hands now. Detective Constable Philippoussis will present a pretty full report to the coroner at the inquest.'
A plastic chair leant against a plastic table. I righted it and took a seat. She puffed as she read. When she finished, she said, 'He always had a weak heart.'
'A lion-hearted boy, he wanted to fight evil,' I comforted. 'He found evil in a group of men he discovered preying on lads. His friend Hugh, and Hugh's mates, were being given toys and pocket money, which they seriously needed as they were poor, unlike Neil. All they had to do in return was make themselves available.'
Mrs Waughan braced her face to voice an obscenity. 'For sex?'
'That's what they thought and that's where Neil made his mistake,' I clarified. 'Oh, they used them all right, and abused them. Made them think they were filthy old poofters who couldn't resist the beautiful youths and would pay. Hugh and his friends probably hated them as they obliged them and were bought off. I don't think Neil was into hatred.' I saw my job at this point as an adjunct to her healing process. 'I think he was too clever to think he could fight paedophilia.'
Flattery wasn't what this brittle, unhappy woman wanted. She was out for blood.
'No,' I affirmed. 'He discovered on the Internet an international group, into every sort of filth, some of whom travel around in an ocean-going cruiser, testing new hazardous drugs on the boys they prey on. They haunt holiday towns where their boat wouldn't be remarked upon, and there is high unemployment among the locals, chiefly young men who should be employed. Or gainfully occupied in some way. While into drug-running, gun-running, prostitution and child pornography, they were looking to invent the new up-market party pill. He found out the yacht was in Port Water. He contacted Hugh to find out how he could safely infiltrate. Together they decided that the queers would fall for him dressed up as a girl, or possibly think of him as a girl and leave him alone.'
'What could he have done?' To stop too fierce feelings, she lit another Light. 'What was he thinking?'
The mansions along the canal seemed sparse of people, as if each housed a widow or widower or an elderly couple silently waiting for the annual disruption of grandchildren. 'He wanted to get the bad guys,' I reckoned. 'Sink their ship. Do reconnaissance. He may have had a plan to sabotage their electronic navigation gear, or find out how he could in the future. I don't know.'
She nodded, eagerly. 'Yes, he would have understood any electronic equipment. He could have made a bomb, he knew how. But how was he going to get away with it?'
It was easy to imagine how well she got on with her son. I guessed, 'To the teenage mind, fuelled by Hollywood movies of heroism, a disguise was a protection of some sort.' While I knew firearms were available through the Internet and recipes for homemade explosives, nothing like that was found either in Hugh's car or at the scene. Neil himself was carrying so little, identification took some time.
Spits of rain spotted the murky surface of the dredged mangrove swamp. Instead of going inside, Penny's movement raised a permanent umbrella and we sat ourselves beneath it. I continued. 'He never got there. Argument among the boys. Let's say, Neil tried to tell the others not to take the drugs, and they said, "Get real", or whatever. They may even have forced Neil to have a pill or he may have had one later at a barbecue he ended up at. They had a fight, tossed Neil dressed as girl out onto the road and drove off, high themselves. He was picked up by lesbians who thought he was a girl. He didn't tell them otherwise. He ended up at a gay beach party, harvest moon or something. His disguise, conceivably, made him imbibe more alcohol than he was used to or smoke dope or take a party pill. Plus, by this time he is overwrought, tense and possibly close to panic. What was wrong with his heart?'
The miserable weather darkened the sunset. 'Ectopia, morbid displacement. If he got stressed it would have an irregular beat, not life threatening.'
According to my theory it was. I took a deep breath, believing that truth was better for grieving mothers than superficial sympathy. 'He may have had an orgasm which put more pressure on it. Anyway he went to the toilet to throw up, and, died of a heart attack. Or at least, that is probably what the inquest will determine. Although, they might say it was system failure from toxic substances. Then, I don't know. The magistrate may recommend charges be laid. Normally the amount of chemicals found in his blood would not cause a problem, except for the ingredient they were trying out. But analysi
s shows he had no more than one pill and others I've spoken to didn't find it very powerful.'
'Will Philippoussis get these men?' she asked vengefully.
Taken aback, I frowned. 'I gave him all the information that Neil collected, the name and anchorage of the yacht or cruiser, and allied connections. Charts, etc., history of other ports of call. He had quite a dossier, some of it useful to crime-fighters. When the task force arrived to investigate the scene, the other boys, who were skylarking further up the foreshore, took off in cars that were either stolen or hired for them in adults' names. Hugh happened to go by himself along the way that doesn't include the ferry ride. Perhaps he was scared of the police, and killed himself taking a corner too fast. These men, as you call them, would not be able to operate as arrogantly as they do if it weren't for corruption inside the system. Now that Phil is working with the deputy coroner, it is possible some will be caught.'
Southerly gusts angled the rain into our shelter. She snorted.
'Your son died trying to be a hero,' I emphasised.
'There's a storm coming,' said Penny Waughan vaguely. The rumble of thunder made her speak louder. 'So,' she sighed, gathering cigarette pack and lighter. 'What do I owe you?' Before we ran into the house, she secured the umbrella shut and placed the plastic chairs against the matching table so water would run off their backs.
It was too strange to think of money. Payment didn't matter. The outdoor furniture on the clipped lawns, seats leaning two-legged into tables and the phoney trees folded down like bats' wings ready to be opened into instant shade were desolate, and repeated all along the canal. If there weren't so much tar and cement, bricks and mortar, water would not be so alien. I felt a failure. The neat hard edges of these human dreams belied habitation. The weather moved in. One or two lights came on in windows. Penny's place was dark behind us as we stood in the garage. There were more living beings in a graveyard.
Darkness more visible Page 86