The Trojan Dog

by Dorothy Johnston

  Ivan didn’t move, but I didn’t know whether or not he was asleep. I thought of Lauren and the things he’d said about her, holding his words in front of me like a curtain of some fine material. Desire and belonging and knowledge all were there, but when I clutched at them, there was nothing for me to get a grip on. I tried to see the pattern for what it was, at the same time afraid that it was beyond me.

  Still thirsty, I poured myself a second glass of water. Outside, the weather began to change. I smelt it through the curtains. When I finally managed to open the window, there was a cool wind with rain in it.

  When I turned round, Ivan was awake and looking at me. ‘At least put some knickers on,’ he said. ‘If you’re going to parade in front of the window.’

  ‘It’s what people do in the tropics,’ I told him, ‘when they haven’t got a ceiling fan.’

  ‘For the hundred and fifty-fifth time, Brisbane is not the fucking tropics.’

  I splashed cold water on my face, for a few seconds hearing no other sound than the wind outside, rushing to fill a vacuum.

  I’d tucked the brochure I’d taken from Access Computing at the bottom of my bag. Two numbers were listed. While Ivan was in the shower, I tried them. The first was an answering machine, Isobel’s recorded voice. I let the second ring until I heard the shower turned off.

  ‘Will we just take it back, the hire car?’ I asked Ivan while he was getting dressed.

  ‘No, we’ll go to the fucking beach. Why not?’

  ‘Are you seeing her tonight?’

  ‘Lauren is a bitch.’

  I let the words sink in, then I said, ‘I didn’t realise that you still loved her.’ I wanted simply to set it out between us as a piece of ­information.

  . . .

  Ivan lay in the sun, reading. Every now and then he lifted his head and stared at the sea through his sunglasses. Tanned people were scattered along the beach. We were conspicuous, pale winter slugs with northern hedonists all round us.

  I was longing to tell Ivan about Access Computing, but I didn’t. I was beginning to build up a little store of things I wasn’t telling him. For instance, that I’d bumped into Allison Edgeware just before we’d left Canberra. I wondered how many secrets you had to have from someone, and for how long, before they became top-heavy, before you reached a point where you simply had to tell them, or passed that point and knew you never would.

  I let my mind be taken by the tide. The water was pale green and disconcertingly warm when I stepped into it. I swam out through the shore break to where I could no longer stand, trod water and turned round to look for Ivan. The swell was no more than a mild nudge. It would become a rush, but not for hours yet.

  If this was Ivan’s way of loving, I thought, this mixture of bitterness, anger and resignation, did I want it?

  While I was rubbing myself down with a sandy towel, Ivan said, ‘This sunblock stuff only lasts for fifty minutes.’

  I leant over and touched him gently on the shoulder, and he looked up, but straight past me, his glasses hiding his expression. I was frightened then, the way people become afraid of some sideways thing.

  I thought of Peter and the way he’d set limits, the way he did still, from a distance. The sky was the colours of bruises, old and new. The sea turned grey and sticky, shot with yellow; for a while the sun fought back. Rising wind turned our arms and legs to sandpaper.

  ‘Come on!’ Ivan jumped to his feet, crisply decisive, impersonal as I’d never seen him. ‘We’ll get soaked to the bone!’

  He drove the hire car too fast. I was hungry, and my insides felt ­hollowed out from the unrelieved promise of sex, and the anxiety of not knowing where we were going. Blood was thick in my ears, and when we started to climb a hill, it was as though I was behind the car, pushing it along.

  We bought hot salty chips at a takeaway and sat down to eat them on white plastic chairs. The rain came down in a perfect silver curtain. We burnt our tongues on the hot, soft potato, and watched people run to shelter.

  A man bumped into our table, glasses fogged over, blinded by the rain, and a small red elf ran past, a blond, diminutive IT in a red wetsuit that looked like a second skin.

  ‘That sunny dome,’ I said, blowing on a chip. ‘Those caves of ice.’

  Ivan frowned, but I continued the poem, because the lines were marvellous, drugs or no drugs, person from Porlock or no. The air was steamy with cooking oil and hot breath and wet bodies. ‘Honeydew,’ I whispered to myself, and then, ‘the milk of paradise.’

  Seeing is Believing

  I rang Rae from a phone box near the bus terminal in Civic, waiting my turn behind two young men in Indian cotton with dreadlocks dyed the colour of Di Trapani’s dresses.

  ‘I’m not talking to you,’ I said. ‘This conversation has never taken place.’

  I could feel Rae smiling across three suburbs and a lake.

  ‘How well do you know Isobel from Access Computing?’ I asked her.

  ‘I told you, Sandra. I only ever spoke to her once on the phone.’

  I took a long breath and asked, ‘How are you bearing up?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Look after yourself,’ I said. ‘Take care.’

  I wondered if this would be the last time I spoke to Rae before her trial. Coward, I told myself, hanging up the phone. Coward. The twin pictures of Isobel and Lauren snaked in front of my eyes and made my stomach lurch.

  In my mailbox there was a note from Gail Trembath, asking me to phone her.

  ‘How about Manuka this time?’ I asked when I got through. The line was bad and I had to shout. ‘It’s not much further for you! At least we’ll get a decent cup of coffee!’

  ‘OK,’ Gail said. She sounded as though she was talking with her mouth crammed full.

  Derek rang the night after I got back from Queensland. He sounded happy, fatherly. He’d taken Peter to a cheese factory. The thought that in a few weeks I’d be seeing Peter again, holding his boy’s body in my arms, was a live warmth, fire in my bones.

  . . .

  I was standing at the counter at Pellegrini’s in Manuka when a voice behind me said, ‘I’ll take another look at you.’

  I swung round. It wasn’t a voice I recognised, and neither was the face it belonged to, a rather heavy one framed in curly hair dyed a brooding red.

  ‘Hi,’ I said, pleased that it was my turn to be served, so I could give my order and pay for it while I tried to remember who the hell this woman was.

  The woman smiled and said, ‘Would you like to join me?’

  My skin began to prickle. ‘Sorry,’ I apologised, ‘but I’m meeting a friend.’ I cursed Gail under my breath for being late again.

  Pellegrini’s tables were made of some sort of polished black wood. I couldn’t tell if it was veneer or the real thing. Behind me, a woman was talking to a baby in the strained conversational voice of someone who has no-one else to talk to from one day to the next. The baby was grizzling and refusing his bottle. ‘You just want to sit up, don’t you,’ the woman said, falsely bright, ‘and see what’s going on.’ I winced, thinking of the things I’d done to keep Peter entertained when he was that age. The cafe seemed full of women at loose ends. Or was that my paranoia?

  Each table had a single daffodil in a thin white vase. The curtains were black-and-white, with a touch of green here and there to match the daffodil stems. There were floor-length mirrors along one wall. I certainly didn’t want to see a double of myself, or of the redhead spying on me. I tossed up whether I should leave and wait outside where I could spot Gail coming. Then, thankfully, the woman who claimed to know me left the cafe, with an uncertain smile in my direction.

  Pellegrini’s in Melbourne was one of the first cafes I could remember going to on my own, without my mother; the first time I sat on a bar stool in a narrow, noisy unAustralian place. The coffee had been too strong and rich to drink, the small fingers of pastry unbelievably crumbly and sweet. The blasts of cold air every few seconds when the
door opened were biting, full of promise.

  I could recall going to that Pellegrini’s with Gail at least once. A celebration of some sort, winter, so it couldn’t have been after the exams.

  I stared out the window of Canberra’s Pellegrini’s, so edgy that it was all I could do to stop myself from running away. It was too early for the lunchtime wave from Parliament House and the departments that hugged its base, Finance and Treasury, Foreign Affairs and Trade. Only a small wash of well-dressed people decorated the footpath. Why did they look so different from me? Was it the classier setting? If DIR happened to be located on the south side of the lake, would Ivan with his leaking felafel sandwiches have blended in OK?

  Rae’s uniform went anywhere, but it hadn’t saved her.

  Gail surrounded herself with platefuls of goodies, stuck out her lower lip, and with an obscene tongue licked up butter, croissant crumbs, chocolate cream.

  Her gluttony was startling. ‘Haven’t you eaten for a week?’ I asked her.

  ‘Gave up fags two weeks ago. Fifteen days, to be precise.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Well done.’

  She brushed crumbs from her jacket lapels with a busy hand and asked me, ‘How was Queensland?’

  ‘Surprising.’

  Gail made an large enquiring gesture, fingers dripping butter, but I was saved from having to explain. A man with long grey hair tied back in a pony tail was looming over us. ‘Yo,’ he greeted Gail in a deep voice.

  Gail half-stood to shake the man’s hand, then thought better of it. He smiled. ‘Great news about Phil.’

  ‘Magnificent!’ Gail wiped her fingers vigorously on a paper napkin. ‘Mind you, I’ve had the weepers and wailers on to me already.’

  I listened to them talking, sipped my coffee and tried to breathe evenly and slowly. After the man had moved on, Gail explained that there’d been a row over the Press Council elections.

  ‘I hope he doesn’t know who I am,’ I said.

  ‘Macca? If you had a mane and tail he might. Only interested in racehorses. Actually’—her face registered alarm and then bewilderment—‘it is Wednesday, isn’t it? I have never, ever, seen Macca in town on a mid-week race day before.’

  ‘How does someone like that make a living as a journalist?’

  ‘Are you kidding?’ Gail waved and grinned, and I turned to look. Macca was talking to a woman with black hair and the shortest skirt I’d seen since the seventies. She blew Gail a kiss.

  ‘You know too many people here,’ I said.

  Gail sighed and turned back to the ruins of her feast. ‘You know, Sandra, chappy rang me while you were away.’

  ‘What sort of chappy?’

  ‘Mr Anonymous. Cheery, you know, like Mr Good News. Like his footy team’d just won.’

  ‘What’d he sound like? How old?’

  ‘Youngish, oldish, couldn’t tell.’

  ‘But youngish?’

  ‘Yeah, I’d say youngish. Coming on. You know the kind of voice. All balls. Said he sent the story about your boss. Said she had it coming to her.’

  I stared at Gail. ‘You don’t sound like you believed him.’

  ‘Mr Anonymous? Why believe a guy who’s got nothing to say to you except “Hey, man! It was me!”’

  I could think of lots of reasons, and I was sure she could too.

  Gail made a face. ‘Thought he might be a Kiwi. You know how New Zealanders swallow their ‘i’s? B’g t’ts? Sounded like it over the phone. I’d just been reading a piece on regional accents. That’s what made me think of it.’

  I thought about motive. Cause and effect. They were a juggler’s coloured balls.

  ‘Your caller offered to sell you something, didn’t he? And you said no. Why?’

  ‘Hang on. One step at a time, or you’ll give me indigestion.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Gail! How much did he want?’

  ‘Five thousand up front,’ Gail said, licking her fingers one last time. ‘I put it to Brian and he said sorry, no money in the kitty. I told him if he was going to be such a pissant, at least come up with a good excuse.’

  ‘How did that go down?’

  Gail rolled her eyes. ‘As you might expect.’ She stretched back ­satisfied, her belly full at last. ‘Here’s what I think. Your blue-eyed boss was squirreling away some nuts for the winter. Face it. She knew she’d be looking for a job next year. She pinched the dough, or else helped that Access crowd to pinch it.’

  ‘And your Mr Anonymous found out and dobbed her in?’

  Gail nodded slowly, then gave me a long stare. I stared back, looking for the moral line, as if looking hard enough would make it visible, catgut or nylon down a reporter’s forehead, balancing one side of her face against the other.

  Gail picked up the wooden spatula she’d been using to stir her coffee and broke it deftly in two.

  . . .

  It was our fourth day back, and still Ivan hadn’t shown up at work. I hated the idea that he was avoiding me.

  ‘Don’t mope in here, Sandy,’ Guy said. ‘Come shopping with me. It’s Joshua’s birthday on Saturday.’

  ‘What are you getting him?’ I asked, absurdly pleased that Guy was bothering to cheer me up.

  ‘Wants a Game Boy. Has Peter got one?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’

  Guy buttoned his brown leather jacket with one hand. The crinkle-cut smile again.

  I murmured something about having taken an early lunch break and wished him luck with his present-buying.

  At first I’d thought Guy’s children must be pre-schoolers because he looked so young, but he had a son a few weeks older than Peter. It was pleasant to talk about our kids. Guy didn’t look surprised when I told him how often I needed to ring Peter, to hear his voice, which sounded so much younger on the phone.

  When I called by Ivan’s house that evening to see if he was all right, I expected him to be wary, distant, even to tell me he didn’t want to see me. But Ivan was excited, full of the task he’d set himself, putting the finishing touches to a program that would record and print out every log-in to DIR, and also its source, whether it came from another ­computer in the building or via a modem from outside.

  He’d borrowed a computer and a printer, which he was setting up to be permanently on guard.

  Confused, I asked him, ‘Isn’t Felix already doing that?’

  Ivan had opened the door to me with a small, distracted nod, just barely distinguishing me from the Avon lady or a Mormon. He’d walked straight back down the corridor to his workroom. From behind, his gait was that of a nervous horseman whose mount might bolt at any moment.

  ‘We’re going about this bastard the wrong way, Sandushka!’ he’d called over his shoulder. ‘Need to think about it as a technical problem with a technical solution!’

  Ivan sat down at his keyboard. I stared past him at a screen of symbols that meant nothing to me.

  ‘Felix’s log is bloody useless!’ Ivan shouted as though I was a block away, not standing next to him. ‘Doesn’t tell you whether the call is internal, or coming from outside. My little baby does just that!’

  Ivan’s moustache jutted over thick lips pursed in concentration. He explained how it had come to him on the plane. ‘While you were fast asleep!’

  I’d only been pretending to sleep, so we wouldn’t have to talk. But Ivan seemed to have forgotten everything that had happened in Brisbane. Setting up a foolproof watching system was the answer. Out of need or greed, the hacker would return and trap himself.

  ‘Won’t he see you?’ I asked, unconvinced.

  ‘If my program’s working properly, no-one will.’

  ‘Won’t it cost a fortune?’

  Ivan grinned. ‘Have to cut down on the caviar! Now for a little test run! Here’s what I want you to do. Tomorrow morning, try and access a file of mine from your PC. You won’t be able to, because you don’t know my password. But I should be able to see you trying.’

  My mind began to whirr lik
e overworked machinery. ‘And so will Felix,’ I said. ‘And my head’ll be on the block again.’

  ‘Do it first thing, then phone me here. No, hang on, don’t phone me from your desk, nip downstairs and use the bistro phone. Can you do that?’

  I felt I had to get out of Ivan’s workroom for a few minutes. Was this a pattern for him, I wondered, to plunge himself into some new scheme to take his mind off whatever had gone wrong? Had he been in touch with Lauren since he got back to Canberra?

  I found a Lipton’s tea bag in a jar on the kitchen bench. It was discoloured with age, but I didn’t think it had been used. While the water was boiling, I tried not to notice the egg and bacon dishes in the sink, the rubbish bin that looked as though it hadn’t been emptied since before we left for Brisbane. If the police ever decided to go through Ivan’s trash, they’d need gas masks.

  I sat at the kitchen table to drink my tea.

  Ivan shuffled up behind me and said sheepishly, ‘You know, Lauren won’t travel anywhere south of Sydney.’

  I turned to him. ‘You’re going to Sydney to meet Lauren?’

  Ivan nodded, looking pleased and trying not to.

  ‘You mean Lauren’s never been to Canberra?’

  ‘It’s a recent thing. This feeling the cold so much.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, wishing I did.

  I finished my tea and Ivan showed me to the door. ‘It’s just a weekend. Lauren wants to do the tourist thing, go to Taronga Park.’

  ‘Take care,’ I told him, holding out my hand and squeezing his, not jealous after all, suddenly wanting the best for him. ‘A zoo can be a tricky place for romance.’

  . . .

  How to separate the clues on the screen from those in the air, the clues Ivan and I teased out together from those whose presence ­insinuated itself into my nasal passages, the back of my throat, pulse beats, abdomen?

  Ivan would never willingly let Lauren go, had not done so. He’d follow her now if she gave him the slightest encouragement. Or if she gave him none.

  I remembered Ivan showing me Lauren’s photograph. He hadn’t ­volunteered to show me; it had fallen out of one of his computer manuals. I’d flicked the snap over. ‘Lauren Semyonov’ and the date were written on the back.