Darkness more visible Read online

  'Cute,' he said.

  'I have an acre of land,' I responded to a question which hadn't exactly been asked. He just stood surveying, listening. The loo is thirty paces from the back door along a narrow, winding path of cement. It has a pitched roof, too. The house does not. 'It is as if they have tried to lower the roof of the house so that it doesn't blow off in an easterly gale. Maybe the original one did blow off. Anyway,' I was in full swing. He had opened the floodgates. The house has a flat roof with hardly any slope at all with one long side and one short side. The long side has a strip of guttering feeding into a fresh-water tank, the short side has no guttering at all. The tap has a handsome bronze lever, so close to the ground it hardly fits a nine-litre bucket under it. We strolled around the yard. There is a 1950s tubular steel car port, free-standing plumb in the middle of the drive-way. The police vehicle was parked behind my Suzuki Sierra, almost bumper to bumper.

  'My two sets of neighbours are completely different from one another. The old couple come about once a month to mow their acre with a ride-on he brings on a trailer,' I informed as we walked along my northern boundary. 'Herbert's conversation entirely comprises the progress of development. Elsie never talks. She just nods when he looks at her. To be able to do this she must keep her eyes on him all the time.'

  'Strange,' opined Philippoussis. Herbert and Elsie have a roller door enclosing their sea-side, shutting off their front door and picture window, and one and only verandah.

  'On my southern side are "alternatives",' I said, turning one hundred and eighty degrees. Honeysuckle covered the fence.

  Together we proceeded to examine their paddock which is a field study in noxious weeds: Ian tana, thistle, ink-weed, fire-weed, Paterson's curse, morning glory, Spanish passionfruit, and madeira vine.

  'It's a wonder Council don't get onto them,' said the policeman, looking at the climbers creeping over their outhouses and machinery wrecks.

  'I want to kill this,' I took a flower, sucked out the sweetness and threw it away. 'But I am afraid of the consequences.'

  Phil commented on the idiosyncratic nature of their house, which is mud-brick, pole timber and stained glass, all unfinished. Untidy.

  'When they are here, they are noisy. The bloke has a beard, a pony-tail and no hair on top. He sanctimoniously declares all green is good, but he's basically too cowardly to chain himself up a tree. She wears dresses that drip below her knees and seems to have worn them for so long she is comfortable in nothing else. Style, in terms of cut and fit, non-existent. The number of kids around varies. I haven't got a handle on which exactly are theirs, theirs together or individually. Often other adults are with them. Sometimes they come only for the day. At other times, teenage boys are there by themselves. When the family stays overnight, she is usually hysterical by bed-time. To my face, she is as sweet as something sticky. One day when I asked was she all right she actually denied she had screamed. Although the sound had torn the night apart, she lied to my face. A tragedy waiting to happen if it didn't actually happen last night. Her name is Moonsunshine, Moo, for short. His is Jim or Jack or John, no, I forget. Jerry? I must stop myself at times,' I confessed to the cop. 'I get obsessed with getting the names of things right.'

  'So what happened there last night?' He thrust the question like a swordsman making a hit after softening up the opponent. I didn't care if I dobbed in my southern neighbours and told him of the argument I had heard and the cars speeding up the corrugated road. Although Pip was going to be my man in the shop, I held back the solid evidence. The horrid cap. I had to meditate on its vibes and my paranoia. I could say I forgot it.

  'The ones to the north,' I added, 'were not there last night.' He nodded and looked across at the dusty brown Volvo parked on the grass and said he would go and interview Moo and Jim.

  'Expect lies, Pip,' I nearly said, but grinned, realising that they were probably drying a crop somewhere.

  'Greenies are they?' he asked.

  'That would be a matter of opinion. Hippies, alternatives, new agers.' I did not want to get too far into my attitude to passive-aggressive men who keep their women barefoot and pregnant.

  Before he left, I made an appointment to formally sign my statement and told him to get some sleep.

  DC Philippoussis drove the vehicle out of my yard and into next door. To get away from the temptation to be curious I took myself on a stroll through the paperbarks, stopping, stretching, listening to the birds. It was not a morning I needed the sort of high I get from pain. I had to think, be gentle with myself, although my verbal diarrhoea had worked out some of the stress.

  3

  …slicing at the head of a Moor…

  The Shire of Paradise Coast is between the mountain range and the sea. River valleys and wetlands, lakes and bays, plateaus and escarpments, pockets of old-growth eucalypt and rainforest, koala habitat corridors, dairy farms, banana plantations, fisheries, timber industry rapidly giving way to the encroachment of tar and cement, bigger roads and beautifying palm trees. The development of brick veneer block-shapes, handsome villas, holiday flats and housing estates suggests increased population is changing the rural nature of the district. Craftspeople ply their wares at monthly markets. Oyster-farmers lease room in the estuaries for their racks. Both deep-sea fishing and fresh waterways offer recreation for tourists. There are seven lawn-bowling rinks. Resort-managers do well, if they don't over-extend their credit. Retirement villages are popular, with locked gates and serviced apartments. While there are mansions, there is also the highest concentration of unemployed youth in the country. Wealthy jet-setters pass through the Paradise Coast. Aborigines have succeeded in claiming some land back. Illegal immigrants could be, perhaps, forgiven for thinking they could disappear into the march of nomadic travellers.

  Meanwhile, up-country, bush-folk stubbornly stick to seasonal habits learnt at their grandfathers' knees.

  The exclusive romance with the challenging Broomhilda changed me. I cannot explain now why I had my head shorn. I no longer have long, straight, fair hair, and never will again. Keep it short. Styled when I feel like it. Dyed when I feel like it. I have a loyal hairdresser, or rather she has a loyal client. My muscles are hard, veins prominent. I am five foot eight. I wax off my body-hair.

  In the Paradise Coast Pictorial Directory, my ad reads: 'Need a helping hand? Have a problem? Appropriate jobs accepted with discretion', and my phone number. Most of my employment, though, comes through word of mouth. If a male calls, I dismiss him with a single sentence. The simple believable fib, poetic in its perfection, is one of my stocks in trade. When someone asks me to do their ironing I say I'm too busy, but I've found often a woman needing domestic aid has a deeper problem. Usually I can tell from tone of voice whether I will listen, and I have done the odd spot of ironing. I can't think if I sit still, doing nothing.

  Although I don't call myself a feminist PI or a lesbian detective, my rule in regard to clients is, I will not take on a job for a man. This is trickier than it sounds. As soon as you set something up for women only, some man makes it his life work to infiltrate. Does he do it for all men? A sole conspirator. I had one show up later, to smirk. I shake my head in wonderment at the duplicity of the woman who fronted for him. On that occasion, I took the money and said to myself, learn your lesson, Margot.

  Ultimately I will discover the truth. It's a matter of practical application, examining the detail of each case and generalising often enough to remain sane. I'm a born blood-hound.

  The phone rang. It was Lisa's mother. A regular client.

  'Now at sixteen she is hateful, a criminal. I try to love my daughter, but she hates me,' she said.

  'No, she doesn't,' I put in. But I don't think she heard me.

  'I have my own needs. I need reassurance that I am doing good. She is my proof. I am defined as a mother. I am a failure. A sorry failure at that.'

  She carried on, despite my denials.

  'My Balmain bugs with coconut sauce make your mouth
water. Where are they now? All over the floor.' Right, so they had had a fight. 'Her dark eyes haunt me,' she continued. 'They go black with accusation, as if I did anything, anything at all, to deserve it, except be a mother and be stuck in the endless ping-pong game between work at work and work at home. Then I feel guilty.'

  'Where is the naughty girl now?' If she was not at home, I would have to go out and find her.

  'Grooving in her bedroom. As if nothing's happened. Listen,' she continued. 'I bought her a computer. You see I think they need them these days. There was no way she wasn't getting the best start, the best chance I could give her, after the treatment she received from her father, if it wasn't quite physical abuse, it was certainly emotional abuse, and that was after I left him. The computer sat in its box in her room for weeks. All she needed to do was open it and set it up and say thanks. It cost me nearly a months salary all up.'

  How they hate the youth today, I thought.

  'In the end,' she went on. 'I was begging her to unpack it and set it up. I was pathetic. Last weekend she did. She just suddenly did. And she did it quickly and efficiently and taught me the basics. And in our joint enthusiasm, was she playing me along? I ask myself. She demanded that I buy the Internet software, modem and get on-line. It was such a ray of sunshine I did it the next day and put it all on Visacard, and she said, "Cool," as coolly as you can. So again I was begging. We were surfing the Internet together, until I got hooked and she said, "Gawd, Mum".'

  I began doing crouches waiting for her to get to the point.

  'I moved it by myself to the sunroom, which is a whimsical word for where the ironing board is, some cane furniture and a north-facing window.'

  'Oh oh,' I murmured.

  'Yes, she did not like that!'

  'She'll get over it,' I advised. 'If you can only afford one computer, she'll have to share it.'

  'I suppose you are right. Thanks, Margot. For listening. I'm better now I've got it off my chest.'

  Before Lisa's mother put down the phone, I said, 'Pick the bugs up and give them a wash. Don't waste them.'

  When I turned up in Stuart on a push-bike with panniers, as soon as I swung my leg over the bar and let my long hair down from under the helmet, outside the local Greeks' greasy, I was addressed in formal German. 'What?' I replied, in broad Strine. Then she spoke to me in faultless formal English. The construction was sweet, the accent thick. She had a beautiful smile. My heart was in the palm of her hand by the time I had finished my toasted tomato sandwiches.

  Broomhilda and I shared a yearning for the intrinsic relationship of nature and woman. I adored her body and the way she talked. Her revolt against mainstream society was eccentric. Not to say idiosyncratic: a kind of environmentalism and anti-racism mixed with an artless assumption that she herself was of a superior race. She would deny it on an ethnic basis but claim it as a woman-loving-woman. Her contempt for blokes made me laugh, mostly. She placed gurls at the extreme left of the political spectrum. Green concerns and outrage on behalf of the indigenous as well as a sense of injustice against the poor cloaked a more amorphous disenfranchisement, that of white women in Western society, which made Broom restless, scattered, exciting. Sometimes, movingly sad. Lesbian ethics, she said, was her philosophy. I wish she practised what she preached. Straight into the deep end; drama from day one. She was not, as I, unattached.

  Nor was I, in this instance, going to walk away. My lesbianism was as fresh as a ruby cicada taking in life after the shell. My legs were brown and muscled, my hair bleached by the sun, my eyes very blue in contrast to the golden tan of my face. Ready for a new life, I exuded happiness from every pore. Broomhilda's real name is more Wagnerian than that. The goddess is dancing is written on the bumper of her car. Funnily enough, work fell into my lap soon after our affair began.

  Within days Broom's friends had picked me as a cop. I had to come clean. 'I was,' I said, 'but not any more.'

  Anke eyed me through narrowed lids and proposed that I help her fix up her immigration as she wanted to work and needed a tax file number. She had no legal status. In short, my first PI work was against the law, using my knowledge and expertise to achieve the illegal, successfully. It was a good job, well done. Not only did I get paid, I got respect, too. After that the work started pouring in. I managed to set up a moral framework for myself which runs a sort of parallel course to the law. The law stands there like commandments, a big stick and a big oaf, and reality is over here in a different light, in subtler shades of grey. But I loved solving things, being surreptitious when I have to be, not because I believe the law is right and I am guilty; I just want to get the facts exact. Legislators pass whatever they want if they have the numbers. The law. Then it depends. You would not want to get too dependent on the moral standards of your law enforcement officers.

  There are laws and lores.

  Dykes in this district vary from those living in complete secrecy to those who flaunt their sexual preferences on the streets. We have your wealthy land-owning, wine-loving couples, your 'gays', your queers who prepare arty floats with the queens for the Mardi Gras in Sydney each March, your Christians seriously going about their ministry, your regular employed types, both in and out of the closet, your man-haters, refuge-workers, your anarchists, your bald girls with language, your tattooed types with attitude, your disaffected politicos, your genuine feminist radicals, your Koori and your hippie dykes, your thugs and your drunks. And the feral rebel gurls. In this area, as well, there are many women, not lesbians, who have plenty of cause not to trust the law. The local policeman, say, is a friend of their wife-abusing husband. The magistrate, maybe, is a child molester himself. There are women caught in the double-speak of social workers, priests, husbands, brothers, uncles, bank managers, fathers and lawyers. Their initial problems grow right up like Jack's beanstalk as they discover the binds they are really in. Too often the best scenario is they have been ripped off financially. I work, primarily, for women. Like Lisa's mother.

  My poofter trainer, Sean rang, confirming our engagement for tonight. We are going to the Orlando dance. He will dress me in skin-tight bright

  colours to look like a jester. Not hard as I have a selection of lurid lycra to stand out on the highways. A fluorescent cyclist for the amusement of the kings of the road; would be if they weren't humourless and I wasn't scared.

  My guide, my desert auntie, told me, with Scorpio rising, I should pursue the career of detecting because it would further my karmic path in this life. I don't have a private investigator's licence. As far as official income is concerned I am a professional triathlete, investments, savings and sponsorship monies from sports clothing companies, soap, breakfast cereals, fast food industry. I put in a perfect tax return each year. I am honest but I say what honest is. While people may use amnesia as an excuse, for instance, and get off in the court system, scot-free, someone is paying the price. I'm tough on accountability.

  Take it easy before the dance, Margot. Hang around the house. Is the Nadir Mining Services Cap a real clue? Yes, I had taken something from the crime scene, but I could not let it disappear into department evidence-bags under lock and key, not until I understood something.

  Spiders, the Paradise Coast gay and lesbian coalition, puts on a theme dance every three months. Fliers in the mailbox, stuck on refrigerator doors, in café windows, pasted on lamp-posts, all over the district the feeling among same-sex couples and singles is this is the do to go to. A real chance to fancy dress. Although the head-master does not know it, the new drama teacher at the High School is a gay activist. Giving energy as a way of getting to know people in the district, and building a life here, he puts his all into publicity, decor and costuming. This time, Spiders has really tried to involve their female membership equally. Even Hazel McDonald and Daisy Sweet are determined to enjoy themselves at least once a year. While Daze is reasonably recognisable as Romaine Brookes, Haze makes Radcliffe Hall look more like Gertrude Stein.

  Couples in drag get in
to their cars. Gurls from the bush come out of the hills. Even Ilsa treats her peerless skin with fresh aloe vera and takes her tights and heeled high-shoes out of the closet. Gays make masks. Hermit crabs emerge from under their rocks.

  Virginia wears her best black jeans to town. And her R.M.Williams elastic-sided riding boots. Cybil Crabbe is taking her miniature poodle, Puddles, on a diamanté lead, a touch which matches her decorative dress from Costume Hire and Rental. While copies of the video Orlando are being watched by gays and lesbians throughout the district, Virginia White reads the book by Virginia Woolf.