by Ann Michaels
Chapter 13
The Evening of Saturday, 19th November, 1988
Dana Roberts is Sally Brown
A Night to Remember
My mind was scrambling as Peter Ruslen towed me out from the room. Should I tell him that I couldn’t go with him because I had to do my job? But he was my employer. Then from the corner of my eye, I saw the lady in the Dior suit, and crumbling face, marching toward us and I felt a sense of relief. She would send Ruslen away and let me return to my duties. I felt like a damsel in the distress, but instead of a handsome young knight, my rescuer would be a walking skeleton in designer threads. I almost giggled.
Hurry up, I thought, as my saviour in Dior strode across the room, I still hadn’t had a chance to have a scout around and I needed to do that. But Peter Ruslen waved her away imperiously and she disappeared, absorbed into the crowd.
He turned to smile at me and I had to admit that Peter Ruslen was a handsome man. It wasn’t just his tall and well-built frame, or his golden hair, or his flirty blue eyes: it was the way he looked at you with those eyes, like there was no one else in the room. But I wondered how Peter Ruslen would score on the Psychopathy Checklist? A test developed by Canadian psychologist, Robert D. Hare. Ruslen certainly had a superficial charm, but did he possess a profound absence of guilt and empathy?
But I was jumping ahead of myself; a person is innocent until proven guilty, under Australian law. However, a voice inside my head, also reminded me that, this man was dangerous, and sleazy as hell.
We were striding down a wide, carpeted corridor now, where we passed a room with a swimming pool, which had statues of Roman gods and goddesses dotted around its sides, and blue and gold tiles decorating the walls. Inside, I could see a rotund, hairy man, pursuing a tiny, curly headed woman, across the water. She was laughing, almost cruelly, and he was panting with exertion. I noticed the quick flicker of a smile on Peter Ruslen’s lips, as he took note of the situation.
There was only one other open door, though, toward the end of the corridor. It was a small room that was stuffed with lots of old antiques -like it was a storeroom; everything was jammed and balancing one on top of another. I stopped and peered in, and saw that the walls were covered with many beautiful old paintings. I stepped back out of the room and ran my eye along of the many closed doors, along the corridor, and wondered what might be on the other side of them.
My ear, then, caught the muted splash of water and a muffled echo of a shriek. I hoped that the swimming woman was OK. Or was it the hairy man who had cried out?
We came to a lift and Ruslen pressed the button. He didn’t say anything to me as we journeyed upwards, surrounded by reflecting mirrors. He just smiled. And up we went to another floor, where we got out and were faced by a large, stainless steel, cartoon rabbit, which was about half the size of a human. It was very shiny and reflective, and standing on a pedestal.
‘That belongs to my mother’, Ruslen explained. ‘She buys the art’.
‘Who’s she—the cat’s mother?’ came the clipped tones of a woman speaking with a very proper accent, like the fake, received pronunciation of Margaret Thatcher. And out of a doorway stepped Mrs Kristina Ruslen, Peter Ruslen’s mother, looking expensive and immaculate, but to my mind overdone. Meow! We all think we are fashion critics when it comes to others. I also wondered how Mrs Ruslen had come by her very BBC accent: I made a mental note to find out, if I managed to get out of here —alive!
‘My husband has a particular passion for the Victorian era, doesn’t he, Peter,’ added his mother, continuing on from her son’s remarks about the art purchases of this household.
‘Yes!’ replied Peter, ‘we have all kinds of things downstairs like you wouldn’t believe’.
‘Yes my dear, like you wouldn’t believe’, Mrs Ruslen echoed, as she closed her eyes and waved her hand at him, before opening her eyes to stare at him indulgently, adding, ‘off you go now and have your fun’. It was like he was five years old instead of thirty.
Speaking of the father and husband, I could just see Philip Ruslen, in the crack between the door and Mrs Ruslen; he was lying propped up in a hospital bed, facing a woman on a burgundy chaise lounge. He looked like he was smiling at her, but I could only see her long, blonde hair and part of her green dress, which swept the soft, beige carpet. Interestingly, from what I could see, this room was furnished with dark, rich timbers, carved and covered with tapestries and there were paintings on the walls of classical design, in the style of the old masters. It was the very antithesis to the other parts of the house, which I had seen – except for the room of antiques and paintings.
We rocketed along the hallway, which was covered in modern, mostly abstract art. Then Peter Ruslen stopped, pulled open a door and we went into a huge, softly lit room, which reminded me of an upmarket piano bar. And certainly, a grand piano stood importantly on an elevated section of the room. A Leather, modular lounge suite in black, covered with red cushions, snaked about the place. And sitting on one section of that lounge, bathed in the light of a lampshade that appeared to be made of tinsel, were the two women that I had only just seen downstairs, who I originally saw first at the dunnies in Julianna’s. The willowy, strawberry blonde woman, who I remembered was working toward a doctorate, smiled, and the shorter, Mediterranean one, glanced up and looked at me with speculative interest.
I have to admit that my heart began to beat a bit louder, and harder, as we walked toward the two watching women, because I have found that it is generally, women that make life most difficult for the other women around them. To me, there is always this visceral awareness of the pecking order with women, and sadly, I have never experienced any sense of sisterhood, with any woman, other than my mother.
‘Hello, I’m Liz and this is Effie’, said the willowy one, showing a gap in her front teeth, as she spoke. I relaxed a bit; there was something about Liz that seemed kind, at least. Effie smiled, but it did not reach her eyes, she was more cautious, I thought.
‘Girls! Girls! Where is the champagne?’ Peter Ruslen cried, clapping his hands together, as he looked about in disbelief. He turned toward me, and said, ‘come with me darling and we’ll grab a few bottles’.
So out the door we went again and down the hallway right to the end, where there was a door disguised as a particularly ugly painting. Peter Ruslen swung it open and we stepped into a giant fridge.
‘We probably have one of the biggest cool rooms in the world’, Ruslen pronounced boastfully, ‘it has two storey’s’, he adding laughing, slightly; perhaps, at himself. ‘Downstairs at the party they can access one level and we can access another up here. And there are stairs.’ He put his finger to his lips and added, ‘mother won’t let me tell anyone about this secret entrance, so you don’t know’. He smiled bewitchingly and continued walking through the boxes of food and frigid air.
As we walked into the cool room and the cold air hit me, a dim light came on. I wasn’t feeling too relaxed, I had to admit, and the dull hum of the room’s machinery added to my agitation.
‘Come on, we have to go downstairs to get at the champagne.’ He called back at me, sounding overly loud.
So we walked past wheels of expensive cheese, boxes of strawberries, large cheese cakes and trays of fresh herbs. We went down some metal stairs and came to an Aladdin’s cave of champagne. The room appeared to be filled with champagne.
Peter Ruslen simply purloined two magnums of Veuve Clicquot, and up we went again.
‘The downstairs cool room appears to be smaller than up here’, I remarked, as Ruslen stopped and picked up a prepared tray of smoked salmon, cheese and olives. Ruslen snorted.
‘That’s because my mother has her own small, cool room, where she keeps her own stash of food. All you will find there is cold beet soup, potato pancakes and lots of peas. She loves peas.’
Funny, I thought that with Kristina Ruslen being so skinny, she must live on air.
As we brought the bounty into
the room, Liz jumped up and grabbed the tray of food and began to eat. ‘I’m starving’ she half whispered, looking at me apologetically. Peter Ruslen popped open the champagne and Effie grabbed some glasses from a nearby cabinet. Soon we were all sipping the velvet, smooth champagne, and thinking our own thoughts.
After a while, Peter Ruslen walked away from us, still clutching his champagne flute, toward the piano. He sat down, his glass reflecting the light back at us from the piano’s top and started to play some music that I couldn’t quiet recognise, although there was something of the romantic, Tchaikovsky about it. Liz leaned over and touched my knee.
‘You look worried, but don’t be. He is interested in you, I think, because you look like his fiancé……yes, you do look like her in some way’.
‘Where is his fiancé? I asked.
‘I don’t know, but I don’t miss her, she was a bit of a bitch’. Liz smiled, which took the sting out of her words. Then she continued. ‘Pete’s one of those guys who has a Madonna –whore complex. Freud explained it well: “Where such men love they have no desire and where they desire they cannot love”. But his fiancé had him confused; on the one side, his mother approved of her and on the other……well….. she was a bit kinky’. I looked at Liz quizzically. ‘She liked girls too.’
‘Oh’, I said ‘stupidly’ ……I hope he won’t be expecting me to become his fiancé’, I joked.
Liz laughed. ‘No, of course not, you would need approval from the She Devil’.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Mother dearest, that’s who’.
‘I don’t look like much of a virgin in this outfit’, I grimaced, opening the fur coat.
‘That is true’, Liz giggled, and that’s why he put that coat on you. What Peter really wants is a wife who is a mother figure, and another woman on the side for the rest. His mother, though, she is his queen.’
‘That’s sick’, I cried, a little too loudly. Peter Ruslen stopped playing the piano and stared out at us suspiciously. Liz sprung up and began to dance a seductive dance and it came into my mind that she was trying to cover my faux pas. Ruslen just stared at her, though, like his mind was elsewhere.
Liz was still dancing, when an oscillating wail of fire sirens hit our ears, coming from somewhere in the mammoth house. Ruslen didn’t move. Liz, however, ran and flung the door open and watched as two fire men ran past yelling commands for everyone to evacuate the building.
I looked at Ruslen, Liz and Effie each in turn. Ruslen was beckoning Liz and Effie toward him; Liz waved me away. ‘Go’ she whispered. ‘He will want us now’. I looked at her, confused. ‘Don’t worry, we will be alright’.
I got out of there, but I didn’t leave. I wanted to take a look at Kristina Ruslen’s cool room. So as Liz and Effie walked like zombies toward Peter Ruslen, I retraced the steps I had taken with him to get the champagne. I could still hear the caterwauling siren, but as I moved out of the room, I could also hear running feet and voices raised in alarm and distress.
I whipped into the cool room, grabbed a few strawberries along the way and galloped down the metal steps. The champagne room was empty. I opened the door which led out of the freezer, and saw that I was just across from the kitchens, where I had entered earlier in the evening. Nobody was about. The place was deserted.
I went back inside and looked about for the entry into Mrs Kristina Ruslen’s personal cool room. Behind a pile of boxes of Krug, I could see a door with a small window. I rubbed the glass and I stared into the small, darkened room, where I could see a single light above Mrs Ruslen head; she was carrying a huge, eight layer cake. I rubbed the glass some more and tried to get a better look, but the fridge room was dark. I dropped down toward the floor, as Mrs Ruslen slowly turned around, as though she had scented something. And on my hands and knees, I scrambled out of there and through the doorway which came out near the kitchens. I dropped the fur coat off with the security guard, and wearing that hideous and tarty costume, I fled outside past flashing lights, and dazed looking people. Evidently, though, there was no actual fire.
As I drove my car away from Palais Royale, which was bathed in the sickly, flashing red of the fire brigade lights, I had the slightly sick feeling of a night gone wrong. I wondered where Tabra Hayden, June Roze and Lee Lin were; I certainly had found no trace of them. So much for gut feelings. I also wondered about Peter Ruslen’s strange relationship with women, and then, I had the sudden feeling that I had missed something very important.