‘The governor already has a private secretary.’
‘Perhaps they don’t get on.’
I remembered Marcus Smeeton’s superior manners. ‘A bit Lord Cut-Glass,’ I said. I supposed it wouldn’t hurt to meet this Colin. But. ‘I’m not much for one-night stands.’
‘There’s always a first time,’ Averil said.
‘I didn’t say it would be the first time.’
It was a beaut evening and a nice restaurant. Sammy couldn’t make it but Colin was there and Colin was everything Averil had promised.
‘Not Ben Lomond,’ I told him. ‘More like the Matterhorn.’
He laughed, not understanding, and I did not explain.
‘Are you married?’ he asked.
‘I have a commitment,’ I said.
‘For the moment,’ Averil said.
‘I have a commitment,’ I repeated. I was a million kilometres from tipsy but red wine at dinner on top of the afternoon’s gin had perhaps loosened my tongue a tad. I gave Averil the eye. ‘A firm commitment,’ I said.
‘No need to keep saying it.’ My oldest, dearest friend was as determined as ever to prise me away from Tim Luttrell if she could.
‘Repetition to add emphasis is a recognised literary convention,’ I said. Pompous as hell and enjoying every minute of it. ‘Exaggeration is another one. We say millions when we mean dozens, dozens when we mean two or three. And the other way round too, of course. It is a convention based on the convicts’ cant they used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.’
So much for Averil. I smiled at her; we had always been close and nothing would change that but we were competitive too, and I was determined to hold up my end of the debate.
‘Thank you for a delightful evening,’ I said to Colin as we left the restaurant.
‘Well?’ Averil said.
‘Well what?’
‘Colin.’
‘A pleasant dinner companion,’ I said.
‘Is that the best you can say about him?’
‘I am committed,’ I said. ‘And very, very faithful.’
‘More fool you,’ Averil said.
On my way home the next day I wrote detailed notes of my discussion with Averil. They didn’t help much but were a start.
SEVENTEEN
I clocked in the next morning, shoved my notes and the notebook into the drawer of my desk and went to see the boss. My plan was to give him an account of my trip but he beat me to it; the vile man had news of his own.
Dick said, ‘I’ve talked Professor Poxon into joining us to help sort out your little problem.’
I noted the terminology. The missing crown had become my problem. If we didn’t find it I would be the one who’d mucked up.
‘Oh good,’ I said.
I wasn’t thinking good at all. I was thinking tiger snakes in the bath; I hadn’t forgotten Pete’s most recent attempt to grope me. However, after what the vice-chancellor had dubbed my ‘abortive’ Melbourne trip – You will recall I always had my doubts – a modicum of tact seemed appropriate.
‘Let’s hope his instinct leads him in the right direction,’ I said politely.
I’d said it deliberately; I’d always been long on instinct whereas Dick gave it no credence whatsoever.
‘Science deals in facts and not instincts,’ he said.
I gave him the ambiguous smile of one who knew bullshit when she heard it and went to dig out Poxon. I found him – true to form – sitting in my office in my chair, nose buried in a file he had clearly pinched from the cabinet beside my desk. He looked up.
Embarrassment? A hint of apology? Not a chance.
‘I need you to turn on your computer,’ he said, his rust-belt twang an affliction I could have done without.
I wished scorpions on his balding head. ‘And good day to you too,’ I said. ‘Do you mind letting me have my chair? I want to sit down.’
He looked at the visitor’s chair on the other side of the desk but I ignored him.
‘Out you get,’ I said.
Petty? Not at all. This was a fight over hierarchy, vicious behind the smiles, and I had no intention of giving way. The excruciating oaf had the temerity to smile. Pityingly. I felt my teeth grate.
‘If it means that much to you,’ he said.
Seating suitably re-arranged – Round One to me – we sat down. Again the smile.
‘Forget the computer,’ he said. ‘I think what happened here is clear enough without that. The biblical references spell it out.’ He quoted them – in case I had forgotten them, presumably. ‘Matthew seven, verse seven. Seek and ye shall find. Pretty darn clear, I would say. You got a problem with that?’
No, I had no problem with that.
‘And the second one –’
‘Revelation four,’ I said. Did the cretin really think I hadn’t looked them up? ‘Before the throne was a sea of glass.’
I’d thought he might look abashed. Fat chance.
He leant back in his chair, smiling his smug smile, a man truly in love with himself. ‘You familiar with the Walls of Jerusalem?’ he said.
‘If you’re talking about the Tasmanian National Park, I know the name.’
‘Did you know they call it the Land of Three Thousand Lakes? And what have we got bang in the middle of it?’
I hadn’t a clue but it didn’t matter. He was not looking for an answer but fitting a halo around his thought bubble. I said nothing.
‘Solomon’s Throne,’ he said. He slapped his hand on the desk like a shyster setting up a deal. ‘That’s where you’ll find it.’
He would have patted me on the head had he been able to reach me. I’d have knocked his smile down his throat had I dared.
‘I’ll let Dick Cottle know how I see it,’ he said.
We parted with mutual dislike: he to hobnob with the boss and no doubt exchange anecdotes about Celebrities I Have Known; I to give Averil Gillis a call.
Alas, her various search engines had come up with nothing.
‘I’m convinced the Bible isn’t your substitution text,’ she said. ‘My instinct tells me the number clusters aren’t right for that.’
Like me, Averil Gillis placed great value on instinct. Dick Cottle would have sneered. Eliminating the Bible reduced the field but not by much. Assuming it was a book code at all, what we needed was the book Catherine Haggard had used as her substitution text, not the millions she had not.
‘It has to be a book familiar both to her and the person she was writing to,’ I said. ‘In which case why use code at all?’
Neither of us had any bright ideas about that. Not exactly a blind alley but for the moment at least the signposts were obscure.
‘Perhaps one of the books in your library?’
‘There are hundreds of them.’
‘Then you’ll have your work cut out, won’t you?’
She’d had another thought. ‘Those literary references… I don’t think they’re random. I think they’re sending a message.’
‘Pete Poxon says they’re telling us to look in the Walls of Jerusalem.’
‘Poxon? How did he get in on this?’
‘Dick Cottle’s idea. Poxy will, as Dick put it, help me solve my little problem.’
‘That moron couldn’t solve a crossword puzzle,’ Averil said.
Averil’s attitude was you were either first rate or nothing. Pete Poxon fell into the second category.
‘He really believes he’s cracked it. He was telling me it’ll be somewhere on Solomon’s Throne.’
‘On where?’
‘It’s a feature in the park, apparently.’
‘You don’t know it?’
‘Haven’t been there. But I suppose he could be right for once.’
‘Never in my experience,’ Averil said.
‘Even so, Dead-Eyed Dick will certainly want me to give it a look.’
‘Then I have a suggestion. Take an expert with you. Colin McNeil is going over to Tasmania soon to tie up his Governo
r’s House job. He knows the Tasmanian national parks like the back of his hand.’ Averil on her match-making mission again.
‘What about Tim?’
‘What about Tim?’
‘I told you two days ago. I’m the faithful type.’
‘Tim is a player. You know it as well as I do.’
‘Does Colin really know the national parks of Tasmania?’
‘He’s a bushwalker. He was born there. He spends most of his holidays there. Work it out for yourself.’
Maybe it made sense. But never in a million years would Tim put up with it. Maybe he was everything Averil claimed, maybe not. But one thing I knew for sure. He was not in the lending business.
‘I think I’ll give Colin a miss,’ I said.
‘More fool you,’ Averil said.
‘And you complain that I repeat myself,’ I said.
Late that afternoon I was summoned into the presence. I told myself to be patient. I sat and stared out of the window while Dick confirmed my worst fears. He agreed with the professor that Solomon’s Throne should be our target, if not for that very night, then no later than the next week. But there was another matter he wanted me to deal with first. He reminded me in a nasty voice that my budget submissions should have been in ten days previously.
‘Look at them now, Joanne. If you please. If it’s not too much trouble. The Audit Committee is waiting.’
I had bloodthirsty thoughts about what he could do with the Audit Committee but it was something that had to be done and there was no one else to do it. I worked late – one way to spend a Friday evening – and it was close on ten when I pulled out of the car park. I was filled with the righteous glow of a lousy job out of the way at last. All very well, so far as it went, but I had decided there was an urgent need for another type of glow in my life. It was ten days since I’d seen Tim. I’d tried to ring him earlier but had gone to voicemail. I imagined opening the door of his place and walking in on him.
‘Surprise!’
I got that right.
Instead of heading across the Tasman Bridge to the clifftop grandeur of Cat’s Kingdom I drove down the hill and parked outside his front door. All was quiet. A light was showing in the upstairs window of his bedroom. Good news; he was still up, then.
I got that right too.
The house was on two levels. I opened the door and climbed the stairs. A strip of light showed under Tim’s door. I paused, frowning. A muffled voice, half laugh, half cry. A woman’s voice?
I thought afterwards I should have sneaked back down the stairs and let myself out. It would have avoided humiliation. It was not in me to do that. If the situation demanded confrontation, confrontation it would have. I took a deep breath, put my best foot forward, my shoulder to the wheel and hand on the knob. I flung open the door.
Afterwards of course I ran. My heels clattered on the wooden stairs as I flung myself down and out into the night. The crash as I slammed the door behind me shook the building. I unlocked the car door and got in. Within seconds I was blinding down the hill in a scream of tortured tyres. I could not outrun the image of what I had seen.
The bed with Tim lying naked upon it. Balancing on his thighs the equally naked figure of Di Hardcastle, impaled and sweat shiny, mouth open in the instant before she turned to stare at me.
The phone was ringing as I came into the house.
‘Yes?’
‘We need to talk.’
I slammed the phone down. No, we did not need to talk.
I paced and paced. I told myself my heart was not broken. Not very broken. It was pride, no more than that. And why not? Di Hardcastle, of all people. The sluttiest slut in the university. So much for Dettol.
I went out and stared over the sea, feeling the wind cold in my face. I went back indoors, slammed and locked the door behind me. Time for bed.
I brushed my teeth. I stared at my face in the mirror. I saw not myself but that image. Di and Tim. Tim’s breath. Tim’s touch. The soft tender murmurings of love. Di and Tim. Of course my heart was not affected. Of course not. Di and Tim.
Averil had warned me a dozen times. I’d always known we would break up eventually. I hadn’t expected it to be just yet. Or that he’d shag a low-life like Di, whom he’d claimed to despise so much.
It was the salt wind that stung my eyes. Only that.
If I were to grieve, I told myself, I would do so in private. I would put a bold face on it. I picked up the phone and dialled. It was late, but Averil was a night owl. I found her in.
‘Sammy’s here,’ she said.
Why should I care about that?
The image of Di’s rosy flesh. Her rosy, well-used flesh. Goddamnit!
‘Colin,’ I said. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’
‘What about Tim?’
‘Who’s Tim?’
‘Alleluia! About time, too.’
‘Make sure Colin understands it’s purely business,’ I said.
I hung up before I disgraced myself.
My heart, I told myself again, was whole. Undamaged. Yet that night… The empty bed; the tears that in the morning I would deny having shed. The pain of a betrayal that felt like a wound against life. The face of a grey and lonely day when I woke.
* * *
Mercifully, it was the weekend. Having a period in which to marshal my forces was a blessing. I went up Mount Wellington. It was a stiff climb and I was sweating pleasurably when I reached the summit. I perched on a rock with my only companion the wind. Tim stood at my shoulder. The memory of Tim. His touch. The smell and texture of his skin. Companionship and shared laughter. His body warm on mine, his eyes smiling.
I ordered myself to think of him no more. I could do that; feelings were harder. I stared at the Derwent River far below and thought how one hundred and sixty-five years before my ancestor had travelled up that waterway past Hunter’s Island with its row of dangling corpses, eyeless in a tempest of birds.
In later years she was accused of being a bushranger and there was evidence to support that. She was said to have been a pirate and it was possible she’d been that too. A woman, then, with little regard for man-made laws but with more than her share of the initiative through which by some miracle she had turned every catastrophe to her advantage.
I toasted her repeatedly with my drinking bottle, thoughtfully charged with VSOP. Never mind the missing crown of Muar; what fascinated me was how special my ancestor must have been, the despised felon who’d managed to end up as a pillar of colonial society. Climbing Everest would have been a pushover by comparison, and if she had got away with the missing crown I thought she’d deserved every last diamond of it.
I went back down the mountain and drove to the harbour. In my hiking boots and sweat-stained shirt I prowled the waterfront.
I told myself I wished Tim no harm. We were finished but I was not hurt in any way that mattered. Hold fast to that. The missing crown would be my talisman. Like the spear in Wagner’s Parsifal: I would find it and its touch would make me whole.
My mobile rang. Averil. ‘Colin is keen.’
‘Good.’
‘He thinks you’re cute.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says Colin. He told me so just now.’
It was a lot too soon for cute. ‘I hope you made it clear that I am looking for a hiking companion. Nothing else.’
‘I thought that would be better coming from you,’ she said.
Hmm. We hung up and I continued my walk around the harbour, watching a squall of gulls fighting over some refuse. Yet it was true that the pain – and the shame – were less. It had been the shock, I told myself. Only that. In its place came a pleasing anger, hot as fire. Tim Luttrell was a player, was he? Well, he’d played his last game with me.
EIGHTEEN
Cat
Two days after Martha Brimble had spoken to her Cat Haggard was taken under escort from the Cascades to Aberystwyth, the Morgan property on the northern edge of town.
After her
second icy winter in the colony it was lovely to feel the sun’s heat. It felt strange to walk through the town, feeling the cobbled streets beneath her bare feet and watching ordinary people going about their business. No one took any notice of her: a convict under escort was too common a sight in Hobart Town to arouse interest.
The mountain loomed high over the roofs, hiding half the sky behind its green and grey slopes, but what she could see was blue. There was a cheerful sparkle on the water where a two-masted ship was shaking out her sails. It was such a pretty day that her heart ached to see it. Even the air felt different after the confining walls of the Cascades and Cat made up her mind to do everything she could to get on with the couple she was being brought to see.
Aberystwyth was set back above the road at the end of a tree-lined drive. With its shaded verandas facing the river it had a different look from the Byfields’ mean-eyed house and she felt her spirits rise. She remembered the night of her arrival and how she had looked up at the mountain and promised herself she would make a new life in this new place. Maybe today would see the start of it.
She followed the red-coated soldier to the kitchen door where Mrs Morgan let her in.
‘Wait here,’ Mrs Morgan told the soldier. She had a soft Welsh voice, quite unlike Mrs Byfield’s hectoring tones. ‘We won’t keep you a minute. I don’t imagine she is planning to run away.’
Mrs Morgan closed the door and they were alone together. It was the first time Cat had not been under guard for so long, because even with the Byfields the sense of imprisonment had been there.
Mrs Morgan was grey-haired, neither old nor young. She was a little stooped, with lines on her face and shrewd brown eyes. She sat at a white-painted table and studied Cat as she stood in front of her.
‘Why were you sent out here?’
‘They did say I’d stolen a gold watch.’
‘And had you?’
‘Ma’am, every one of us will say we never did what we was convicted of doing and I’m no different, but in my case it’s God’s truth. I never stole anything.’
Still the shrewd eyes watched. ‘Tell me about it.’
Cat had spent most of her recent life not telling anyone about herself but now she told Mrs Morgan how Mort Ridgeway claimed he’d found the watch in her thatch when she’d never set eyes on it and how she’d made an enemy of the squire’s nephew Arthur Dunstable and all that had happened to her. On and on, and it was a great relief to spill it out at last.
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