The motorcyclist ripped in front of her, as they do, out of nowhere. She braked and saw the speedometer drop to 60 mph.
The cop was waving her to stop up ahead on a gravel siding. She sat lumpishly, waiting for him to stroll back to her.
‘I’m sorry, officer. My mind was elsewhere.’
He grunted and handed her the speeding ticket. The speedometer needle trembled at 35 mph for the rest of her trip, and after a while she was able to think more calmly about her first encounter with Minou.
It had been in mid-summer, too, but in Sydney the heat was stupefyingly sticky, with a north-easter flicking city grit against your shins and tossing bits of dirty newspaper up from the pavement outside the Glebe town hall into your face.
Judith hadn’t had time to change before catching the plane from Canberra and that morning she’d interviewed the mining lobbyists, so she was still dressed up. When she walked into the hall she could feel the hostility like a firingsquad. All the women were in overalls, and most were drinking beer out of cans, tipping it down their gullets like wharfies. There were strobe lights. A sign on a wall said ‘No Grass or Hash, please’, and scribbled underneath ‘Coke is O.K. The Pigs Can’t Smell It’. A few of the less serious types were sitting around, snorting. Judith found an organizer, told her she wanted background for a story on the difficulties of the women’s movement and mentioned that she was a member of the Canberra Women’s Electoral Lobby. The organiser, ‘WEL. Well, fuck me. Wanda dance?’ When Judith said ‘No’, she replied, ‘I don’t suppose you could, in those shoes.’ Somebody else said, ‘They make her bum stick out; that’s the important thing for her.’ Then a dark girl came up wearing a battle jacket and a peculiar cap, black with large green Hermes wings over the ears. ‘Write about my hat,’ she said. ‘It’s the latest. That’s all your readers want to know about – the latest gear.’ Bill was delighted with the story she’d written. He said, ‘Only a woman can be as nasty as this about the sisterhood. Great work, dear.’ It was almost a year before some people, people Judith liked, spoke to her again. That was the unbearable part. Richard had said she was imagining it. But she hadn’t imagined the letters and telephone calls. One caller said, ‘I’m one of your mindless militants from Sydney, one of what you called The Feminist Thought Police …’ When Judith asked, ‘What do you want?’ the caller had laughed and drawled out, ‘Don’t you remember me, Brenda Starr? The gook with the terrific green hat?’
4
There was no argument about the better-looking half of Judith-and-Richard. It was Richard. He stood 1.8 metres tall, had dark wavy hair brushed to the side and a commanding, straight nose. His eyes, however, were disproportionately small – like brown pig’s eyes, Judith had once thought, when she was angry with him.
Richard’s father was a successful surgeon and had given all his children expensive educations – the daughters at the Rose Bay Convent, the sons at Riverview and St John’s. Richard looked expensive. He was glossily groomed and carried himself with the aplomb of a tall man conscious of his importance to society. At parties guests would navigate a room to introduce themselves to the political journalist Judith Wilkes and would end up listening to Richard. Of recent years, however, since Judith had regularly appeared as guest commentator on radio and TV, people had pointedly asked for her views. Nowadays Richard stood by with his head lowered, silent. She would watch him from the corner of her eye and say things like, ‘You should be asking Richard, not me. He really understands the Constitution.’
He was in the living-room listening to Mozart on the FM, when she nudged the front door open with her elbow. He breathed in, murmured ‘Divine’ to the sound system, and rose. He was still wearing his running shorts and Adidas jog-gers and he had forgotten, Judith could smell, to put the chicken in the oven.
As he relieved her of some of the shopping he said, ‘How intelligent of you to bring my beer ration. I forgot,’ and patted her bum. ‘Nice funeral?’
‘Dreadful,’ she said. ‘Where are the children?’
‘Where do you think they might be at 6.30?’
‘They watch too much bloody television,’ she muttered and went through to what her brothers and their wives called the family room and she called the kitchen.
He followed her and sat at the breakfast bar to drink his beer. ‘This should be Dom Perignon,’ he remarked.
She glanced up from the leftover casserole which she had taken from the refrigerator and was suspiciously sniffing. ‘Is that so?’ she asked.
Richard made a humming noise and closed his smallish eyes. ‘Yes. I’ve got the numbers for pre-selection. I have to pick up eleven more votes from the Tuggeranong Branch tonight – a formality – and then, my darling …’
Judith’s rush unbalanced him on his stool. He fended her off gently. ‘Will you enjoy floating around as the wife of the Member for Canberra?’
She stepped back. ‘You’re not suggesting I give up my job?’
Richard shrugged. ‘Well, when I’m a Minister, it would hardly be appropriate.’
‘When! You mean, if. Anyway, Labor’s got no show of winning in 1980. You’re looking at 1983 and you’ll have to beat all the other smart young oncers who’ll be in Caucus.’ She had moved away again, towards the wall oven.
‘We do know it all, don’t we? Us political scribes, I mean.’
Judith spun around. ‘Why didn’t you cook the chicken?’ she demanded. As she planted her feet for battle she skidded and almost fell on some squashed, wet thing on the floor. The floor was always covered with little traps the night before the cleaning woman came, and as it never occurred to Richard to sweep it, Judith would not either, on principle.
Richard expanded his rugby-player’s chest. ‘I thought, naively, that we were discussing the 1980 elections.’ He added, ‘You really should buy some sensible shoes. You’ll break your leg one day.’
She threw an oven glove on the floor and began to cry.
Richard sighed and placed his beer can carefully on the bench. His face had an expression of sorely tried but unshakeable patience. After a while he coaxed, ‘Come on, silly one. Tell me what’s gone wrong.’
Judith skipped some details, but even so it took time. She had been sneered at by a Foreign Affairs chap and the hem of her skirt was down, while Sancha looked a million dollars; Lady Hobday, whose co-operation would be essential for the boat people story, was an old enemy; the remembered humiliation of that dance in Sydney, and ratting on the women’s movement; the speeding fine … and the chicken would go rotten if it weren’t cooked tonight.
‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ Richard said. ‘The problems of a modern pluralistic society.’
‘I’m sorry for what I said about Labor’s chances, and yours,’ she said, sincerely. ‘With your background in the Party, of course you’ll make the Ministry.’
Richard smiled comfortably.
‘Especially if I write your speeches,’ she added, more defiantly.
He strolled over and kissed her forehead. ‘That’s my girl.’
The rainclouds had cleared, leaving a summer evening sky the colour of goldfish skin against which the mountains stood detached, spiky and black. They sat outside at the terrace table to eat the warmed-up casserole and a salad Richard made, then shooed the children away to watch the Thursday night variety show. It was perfectly quiet. From where they sat no other house was visible, only open paddocks and black mountains backlighted by orange sky. When Judith’s brothers had come to stay for the first time they had looked around them and one had remarked, ‘Not bad, for a couple of socialists. You’d have to pay more than a hundred thou for this, in Sydney.’ They were proud of her, although they teased her about being a women’s libber and for having only two children.
‘Don’t you let him near you?’ Pat, her favourite brother, had asked her one day, grinning.
She was thinking about that when she realized that Richard was watching her, his eyebrows raised.
‘How would you like to start helping
me now?’ he asked.
His challenging tone, his look of restrained eagerness, alerted her. ‘M-m?’ She was wary.
‘This boat people story … There’s a lot of double-think in the electorate about them. Guilt, resentment …’
Judith nodded.
‘The wind is blowing against them’.
Her interruption was furious. ‘Blowing! It’s a force eight gale. The Department of Immigration is getting hundreds of letters a week objecting to our taking any of them. And, for Christsake, that after we’ve bombed their country flat, defoliated it, panicked everyone in the South by telling them for years that the Northerners will murder them, cut off aid, encouraged China to attack them’.
Abruptly, she closed her lips. Richard was looking bored.
At length he said, ‘I was thinking of the difficulties the ALP is having in forming a policy on Indo-Chinese refugees that will get across to the Party faithful and to the Australian electorate. Our Party’ (Judith mentally corrected this to ‘Your Party’ – she had never joined the ALP) ‘stands for succour and strength. But it’s as shot through with envy as the rest of Australian society. When everyone had jobs, well, that was different. But now the envy is oozing out. That’s what the “dole bludger” campaign is all about, isn’t it? And the tax swindling scandals. You know who rats on doctors with good accountants? Other doctors who can’t get a piece of the action. We’re living in mean-spirited times, Judith.’
‘So what do you want me to do about it?’
Richard shrugged. ‘I thought that would be obvious. Write up the boat people in a way that won’t cause bleeding hearts for them here. That’ll make it a lot easier for the Party to come out against our taking too many of them. And that policy is necessary – I shouldn’t have thought I’d need to explain this – because the unspoken grudge issue at the next elections will be jobs for all, and Aussies first!’
Having come out with it he flung himself back on the red cedar chair, smiling naughtily. He knew as well as she did that she must not slant her copy – unless directed by Bill, anyway.
‘Think about it, darling. It’s amazing what can be achieved in the name of objectivity.’
Later, as he was dressing for the Tuggeranong Branch meeting he called out, ‘Look, if they’ve been able to escape they’ve got money and they’ll want to make more. What are we going to do with a bunch of Asian entrepreneurs? We’ve got no entrepreneurial skills, in their terms. They’re the most daring businessmen in the world, and the most clannish. If you want to get into the camps to talk to them, I suggest you get right on side with the dusky Lady H, somehow. Get everything tied up here, before you leave.’
Judith clasped her hands over her ears. It was always like this. He leapt from asking a favour to the certainty that she would give it. Almost always, she did. She supposed that was the basis of a partnership. But she marvelled once more at her stupidity in bullying and cajoling Bill for months to be sent to Malaysia to do a story on the boat people.
Nothing had been said, but she and Richard had, ever since that first time, avoided Asia on their holidays abroad. These days she could barely remember Kuala Lumpur. If she tried to picture it she had only an impression of heat and darkness. When she had first told Richard she would like to go there during the slack time when Parliament was in recess he had lifted an eyebrow and said, ‘If you think that’s wise’. And Bill, when she’d flown to Sydney to nag him, had objected, ‘It’s too expensive. Talk to the refugees who get to Darwin.’ Finally, he’d wrapped his arms over his head in mock fright, shouting, ‘I give in! I never argue with a woman who’s made up her mind.’ When he was signing the approvals for her airfares and expenses he’d looked at her straight and said, ‘You’d better bloody well get into the camps, dear. It’s the only angle I can see.’ She’d eyed him off coolly, saying ‘I will.’
She thought now, What am I doing? She felt as if something had pressed on her temples causing oblivion, the way an angel, in Jewish myth, touches the forehead of a new-born baby, making it forget the trauma of its birth.
‘Hell!’ she said aloud. Her thoughts had shambled to a standstill.
From a metre away David, her eight-year-old, was observing her with grave blue-and-white porcelain eyes. He came forward and made a shy feint with his hand towards her shoulder – he often proffered these small gestures of affection to her when Richard was not around. When he was, both David and the young one, Sebastian, patronized her, calling her ‘silly one’. His eyes were large with inquiry.
‘Work is driving me mad, that’s all,’ she said to him.
Richard got home after midnight from his meeting, smelling of beer. He threw some papers on the bedroom chair. Judith was half asleep. ‘How’d it go?’ she mumbled.
‘Bastards!’ he said. ‘Six closet coms have promised to vote for that great intellect from the Miscellaneous Workers’ Union, John Land. John Land! Mother of God! I’ve got to pick up the numbers somewhere else, before March.’
‘Make a list of whom you need. We’ll have a barbecue.’ She was washed back into sleep before she had finished the sentence.
The animals were there. They’d been waiting all night to reveal themselves and they sprang out now, so clearly that she could see individual hairs on their coats and the blank ferocity in their eyes. Then a siren blared. But the beasts, not alarmed by it, continued to tear at each other. Judith was gasping. She forced her eyes open and knew then that the bedroom-extension telephone was ringing and that it was daylight. She was shaking as she picked up the receiver.
A friendly voice said, ‘Hi. Sorry to ring so early.’
‘Who is it?’ Judith said.
‘Ooooh, la! You’ve forgotten me again. It’s Minou Hobday. Good morning, Miz Wilkes.’
Her mind winced to attention. She took a deep breath and replied in kind. ‘Hi. Thanks for ringing. Where are you staying?’
There was a giggle. ‘The honeymoon suite at the Lakeside.’ There was no honeymoon suite at the Lakeside. ‘What a dump,’ Minou added. ‘Why don’t you come over for lunch and a chat about the boat people?’ They agreed to meet in the foyer at noon.
Judith was still grinning to herself when she noticed that Richard had rolled over and was staring at her. He must have been very drunk the night before, she thought, seeing his solemn, vacant eyes, and the idea made her irritable. He was a supercilious drunk; he would have played into the Land faction’s hands.
‘Lady Hobday has summoned me. I’ve been forgiven.’
His vocal chords were not yet working. He patted at her dumbly and this diminution of his powers made her want to cherish him.
‘I’ll nail her,’ she said. ‘She’ll get me into the Malaysian camps. Don’t worry.’
By nine o’clock the mountains were a soft lilac; the huge inland sky stretched above looking as frail as pale-blue tissue paper. Judith dropped the boys off at their holiday activities centre then sang as she drove on to work.
When she brightened at the sight of a frisky dog or a garden full of roses Richard would explain, to nobody in particular, ‘My wife has simple reactions’. It made her seem, she thought sometimes, as mindless as an anemone stretching or shrinking from the organisms around it. But it was true, in a way. She would rave at the children for pulling the legs off grasshoppers and cried when the cat killed an owl which on long, silent wings had visited the terrace pergola each evening and had stared at her – as remote and intense as The Lord in Judgment, he’d looked. Only the family knew of these outbursts of distress, which her colleagues would not have suspected in her. Around the Press gallery her nickname was Eyeball-to-Eyeball because of her habit of bailing up honourable gentlemen and asking them questions which they did not like.
At the office today she spent most of the morning reading through the Australian and foreign papers for news on the Vietnamese refugees, swearing when she could find only one small item. The panic flight of late last year – after the rupture with China, the floods that had ruined Viet
nam’s rice crop, the increased pressure on city dwellers to take up work in the ‘new economic zones’ – had eased off.
‘They’re just not leaving,’ Judith said to her room mate, Barney. ‘There hasn’t been a boat reported for four days. Last October, when I decided to go, there were hundreds of them.’
Barney said after a while, ‘You’re in a real sweat about this trip, aren’t you?’ He was a small morose man who spent hours planning revenge on people for slights upon him of which they were unaware. On Monday mornings he would dump on Judith’s desk handfuls of zucchini and cherry tomatoes grown in his garden.
‘You’ve been there before. You know your way round.’ He watched the discontent in her face. ‘It’s still a good story, if you can talk to them in the camps. What’s the trouble?’
‘Richard is pushing me on the angle I should take.’
Barney heaved in his chair and turned away from her. ‘That figures,’ he muttered.
‘It’s not really Richard,’ she said quickly. ‘I had a bad dream last night and I’m still a bit … fazed.’
Judith arrived at the Lakeside at noon.
A banner across the front of the hotel said ‘Welcome To The Atlanta Lions Club’. Lions in sports jackets were gathered in a pride on the foyer’s red armchairs while others wandered to and fro across the blue-green carpet to the gift shop, buying toy koalas and boomerangs. All Canberra’s hotels were decorated in a way that suggested the furnishings had been ordered by catalogue, unseen, and that the wrong colours had turned up.
Minou was not in sight.
After ten minutes she went to the desk and asked for Lady Hobday’s room number. The clerk hesitated.
‘What’s the problem?’Judith asked.
He became prim. ‘Security,’ he said. ‘Lady Hobday has had calls from certain ladies she does not wish to see.’ His expression indicated that nobody would wish to see such ladies, and he gave a sharp glance at Judith’s uncombed hair. ‘You may ring from there.’ He pointed at the house telephone.
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