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  Freewoman. I dialled Maria's number and waited. Sofia answered. Somewhat mollified, I dissembled on the purpose of my call. I wanted to check them out. I spoke to Maria.

  'Hi, it's Margot. Do you mind if I come around to visit later on this morning?'

  'No, that's all right. We might need some milk.' They lived on the wrong side of the railway line.

  'Okay,' jollied. 'I'll get a Boston teacake, or something, at the Vietnamese bakery on the way.'

  'That would be nice. A tea cake or Neenish tarts or apple turnovers, apricot Danish, even custard pies will be fine,' Maria elaborated.

  'Yeah.' I knew Maria was sending herself up, but I couldn't bring myself to acknowledge the joke. 'Well, I'm pretty sure they're open on Sunday. I like the buttery French taste in their pastries.'

  'Wonderful,' responded Maria.

  'Right, I'll see you before eleven,' I said closing the conversation. Overbrightly.

  'Yes,' answered Maria. The stuffing sounded knocked out of her. A moment ago I thought she had made a joke, now she was dull. Maria was not stupid. She knew why I was visiting.

  While we enjoyed the generous repast and sat over morning tea we talked. Sofia was unusually taciturn. Maria was warm, expansive. Very easy to be with. It turned out she knew my spiritual guide, my karmic auntie. This connection opened my flood-gates and I told them of our meeting, at Fitzroy Crossing. 'She knew all the tricks and the delicious value of air-conditioning; the privilege of being able to pay for it, or of being white; whatever, no hypocrisy or phoney liberalism.'

  Apart from wattle-birds squawking in the grevillea near the window, it was quiet outside. Sofia sat with us silently, her head slightly bent, her blue eyes glancing at me through long lashes. Her honey-fair hair has a natural wave. 'I was drawn to her,' I finished. Maria chuckled. 'Noses,' I continued, 'were important to both of us. She said hers was about beauty, mine about duty. Mad people, she said, rhyme all the time. I didn't care whether she was mad or not. She told me to come to the hinterland of the Paradise Coast to "swim out of the pea soup of my confusion."'

  'Are you glad you did?' Maria asked, buttering another piece of bun. Like Venus of Willendorf, Maria is a round woman, with big breasts and thighs and tummy.

  'Geikie Gorge was the last place I bathed in the waters of the fantastic Fitzroy River. We parted at Halls Creek. With the last cup of coffee together in the morning at a service station, she reminded me. "Lesbianlands, Margot. From the town of Stuart, you take the road to the Cavanagh Gorge National Park". And "Give my regards to Virginia White". From Darwin I flew to Townsville.'

  'Virginia White?' Maria sparked up. Virginia White was her friend. It was Maria's opinion, in Sofia's company anyway, as I watched the eye movements of caution, of appeasement, that Virginia made sculptures as others garden, or take heroin. It was her thing. Maria sounded particularly indolent, in indulging Sofia's drug habit. Not Maria's place to judge what other women did with their time or their money or their energy. Now I knew why Sofia was quiet; she was on the nod, as if she had had a hit immediately before I arrived. That must have been why I noticed how blue her eyes were. Big, like the eyes of a baby.

  'Was Virginia at the barbecue?' I wondered.

  'No. She came in on Saturday for the dance.' Maria spoke as if last night were a week ago.

  Sofia shrugged. 'No, she wasn't at the barbecue on Friday. Cybil was.'

  With all their attempts at physical description I could not picture Cybil Crabbe. Maria said she was gorgeous and sexy. 'Luscious. Surely you noticed her, she was the one with real tits.' There were so many people at the Orlando Ball I didn't know, it was all a blur.

  Sofia clarified, 'She is overweight but carries it.'

  'So, Friday?' I encouraged

  'Anyway,' Sofia continued. 'Cybil Crabbe was making eyes at the new girl, and, you know, when Cybil does that, you can cut the air with a knife.' Sofia gave out a bitter, risqué laugh. 'Off they went into the arms of Old Man Banksia.'

  'She wouldn't do that to Virginia!' Maria was sharp, and certain.

  Sofia's body language implied she didn't care.

  Maria enjoyed romancing about the goodness of women. Cybil was no exception. Nobody, according to Maria, would jeopardise a relationship with VeeDub. They'd need their head read.

  Sofia had something to say and was debating with herself whether to say it to me. But she let it die on her lips. I described how it was for me, finding the body like that. They both nodded, listening with interest because they were hearing it from some sort of horse's mouth. I asked if they had noticed a semi-trailer or anything like that. Yes, Maria had. Sofia hadn't. Then we talked about the dance. Maria suggested I read Raymond's The Transsexual Empire.

  Sofia groaned as if Maria's tons of books were a millstone round her neck.

  'No matter how much men and boys wish to be women, they can never be women,' Maria explained. 'No matter how they change themselves surgically, or dress to be feminine. Yet by doing these things they annihilate the meaning of female sexuality and the real experience of women generally.' In her rave, Maria really hit her straps. She was clear. She was happy. She knew her stuff. I found it interesting enough. Rory was trying to tell me something similar last night. 'They will never bleed.'

  'Lucky them,' I said.

  Sofia repeated herself, 'I saw Cybil Crabbe take her into the bushes.'

  Maria argued, 'Unless you followed them, you wouldn't know for certain. They could have been bird-watching.'

  'Is this Cybil a bird-watcher?' I asked.

  Sofia murmured, 'As a matter of fact…'

  Maria chuckled. And contributed, 'Cybil knows her birds.'

  'Tiger Cat handed out free eccies,' Sofia said.

  'Why were they free?' The eagerness of my question startled them. I wanted to know what Catherine Tobin was up to.

  Sofia shrugged, 'I don't know if they were eccies. I didn't have one, I was pretty spinny already. I have just avoided a really bad episode. I have to be careful.' Sofia looked to Maria for approval. The calm daytime situation was so different from the telephonic connection in the early hours. Whatever the nature of the power relations between them, they had come to some kind of truce. I would not like to guess what the conditions were.

  I said, 'Tiger Cat is an old enemy of mine. Catherine Tobin. She was a cop. True filth.'

  Maria eyed me ironically.

  'Well anyway,' Sofia continued, unhearing, 'they were pills, and they were okay.'

  Has Sofia such a loose relationship to the truth of fact that she could say two opposite things in exactly the same tone of voice within minutes? I asked myself, does she live entirely in a reality of her own making?

  Maria clearly enjoyed the sensual pleasures of life and had no plans of denying herself when they were offered free. She complimented me on the food I had brought. And she really meant it.

  'It is interesting,' she theorised, 'to see how drugs affect women in so distinct a manner. Chemicals seem like water off a duck's back for Sofia. Whereas, I am susceptible. She has such a riotous collection in her brain, that a little pill wouldn't make much difference. Sofia's mind is a wonder to behold, Margot.' She smiled, humiliating and praising her partner in one fell swoop. 'Whereas I,' she added, 'couldn't drive.'

  'Well, Maria, you seem okay, today,' I commented as I slapped my knee and rose to my feet. 'And I had better go.'

  Neither of them saw me out. Everything was calm. The house was tidy.

  'Adios,' I called.

  'Hasta la vista,' cried Sofia promptly.

  'Ciao,' called Maria.

  Watching the pelicans sitting and preening on the sticks of the oyster leases, the barge's slow progress, the fan-wave of its wake on the surface of the river, I thought about how I came here. A considerable while later than my encounter with Auntie in the Kimberley, I fell into competing in triathlons and Iron Woman events in Queensland.

  After an enforced stress leave, I was transferred from Sydney to Adelaide to continue
working with the National Crime Authority. Three years, then I walked out with full severance pay and an angry head of steam over misogyny, among other things. Within a week of my leaving, our offices were bombed.

  Last words I said were, 'The name is Margot, not patsy.' I had just had enough.

  The Sydney job soured me to law enforcement. They used the very best part of me on a phantom job, drugged me to oblivion, and, expected me to forget. They tried to send me mad, was Auntie's way of putting it. A good bloodhound never ever loses the exact scent of a track it's been put upon. Even when I was a cop, 'dog' was not an insult to me. Dog, detective, that's my calling in life. I have an exceptional nose. As for insults, is 'virgin' a dirty word? Maybe Broom and Harry think so.

  Honest as I was, I thought I was part of the boys' club. I was not. No woman can be. The blokes communicate with winks and nods or deadpan looks beyond your ear at other males. They have a silent contract with each other. There is only one such club as mateship and women can only be associates. If you achieve membership, you're a token. I've been the honorary man, and, to that degree, I know how they think; basically all women are fuckable. What most of them don't know is, that all women are not fuck-over-able.

  No job and in a very lonely situation, I left Adelaide. My only companions, a bit of money and my bike. Well, banks for all their daylight robbery can look after money and cars are made to be bought and sold. So I put all I needed in panniers, told myself I was as free as my body was fit and pumped my legs up the hills. In the Barossa Valley I took stock at a luxurious guest house and sipped wine. Since I have never smoked and found fatty foods yucky early in life, my palate is excellent. Discerning the grape, the vintage, the barrel, the time and the depth of tannin excites me. My sense of smell can taste on its own. Bouquet became my speciality. People who just pick a glass of wine and swill it straight down don't believe that ninety per cent of taste is smell. I stayed there so long I had to ask about their laundry facilities and purchase polo shirts with Barossa embroidery on the pocket.

  Developing an appreciation for wine-making as an art began pulling me out of the hole I was in. It gave me a sort of preening pride, the one which separates the critic from the hoi-polloi, puts meaning into the expression, I know what I like. Statistically more women have supernoses, but men were employed by the perfume industry, I discovered. An enthusiastic amateur, I wanted to educate my palate and ride my bike. A body has to have a hobby.

  As I crossed the Nullarbor to Perth, by train, I slept as if for years I'd suffered low-level depression. In my sleep, as the vast plain of no trees passed the window of the train, the anxiety of working for the authorities gradually trickled out of my body. The Margaret River vineyard district, though interesting and really beautiful, shaved the romance off my daydreams.

  As free as I thought I was, I began to be bothered by my personal highwaymen, demons of my paranoia. Or, perhaps, real men had me in their sights. The boys who drive big machines which guzzle gasoline and screech their tonnage at a threatening proximity to a girl on a bike love ugly cuttings and road-works and open-cut mines and belching sooty smoke. They hide behind tinted windows in cabins you need a step-ladder to reach and think themselves inviolable in their almighty capsules. My imagination began obsessing about what they think about all day, so I guessed it was getting me, or someone like me and making her their servant; or killing me with torture and mutilation. When I caught my mind getting to these horrible meditations I realised they had half-won.

  My progress was monitored even though I haven't spilled any beans and I haven't threatened to. Between leaving for the Barossa and meeting Auntie in the middle of the Kimberley, I reckon I was working through some sort of post-shock syndrome, for the misunderstanding of me among some of the men about the place was truly frightening. The blasted, aggressive ignorance of powerful people, barely in control of themselves and their fantasies, scares me in a really deep place in my psyche. Auntie reached in there, caressed, nurtured and okayed my being in a basic way. Instead of meeting an Indian with peyote to open my doors of perception, I met a women's libber with a chip on her shoulder, a scar on her face obliterated by the pindan, who released in me my confidence and allowed me to admit my real fear. I resolved to beat it out of my brain with punishing exercise schedules and fierce competition.

  In Western Australia I was free-wheeling and so fit. Destination did not worry me much. I was going clockwise round the continent. Then it became I am where I am, which sounds much sillier than it is. It came out of the blue. I body-surfed in the warm Indian Ocean, and swam with some dolphins. Because I was outside all the time I saw so much. Birds, animals, trees, skies, rocks, scrub, colours, bottle-trees, beaches and deserts. Roads, lots and lots of roads, with trucks, lorries, road-trains, utes, semi-trailers, men in steel spoiling the air. Baobabs and ant cities are sculptures. I managed to have a fine wine with my dinner in restaurants in Geraldton, Carnarvon, and Port Hedland, which achievement pleased me, but damper, nuts and dried fruit were my main fare, and water, water, water.

  I showed my residents' pass to the ferryman, gear-shifted my thoughts to the present and got on with my day.

  7

  …Myrmidons of Achilles…

  Cybil has a flat overlooking the sea in the town of Port Water. At dawn Virginia is on the beach. The Myrmidons of Achilles radiate from behind icecream cumuli on the eastern horizon. Vessels are out on the water already: a large container ship, several prawn trawlers, a yacht under sail, one fishing dinghy, a launch, features dwarfed by ocean and sky. Low-flying terns and a high-soaring sea eagle are placed in perspective by the artist's eye. One other human shares the beach, a man with a rod and long rubber boots, thigh-deep in the wash.

  The clouds entrance Virginia. Yet she is seeking the planes of the sea. Heavy grey beyond the curling tubes of the breakers. Water's slow lines rush towards the horizontal while wood's busy shapes patiently seek the vertical. Abstract circles and angles of straight geometry she draws in her mind, trying to find the impression of correct depth; the moment of sight to capture in her work, so boat and sea are distinct in a single chunk of timber. The container ship is not moving. Further down the coast, near Newcastle, sometimes as many as fifteen merchant ships are moored outside harbour. More if the stevedores strike. Its rusty squares are clear, close, ferrous cubes of iron floating. She moves on, distracted. Her unfinished sculpture in the rainforest has brought to the front of her brain the ancients as if they lived and fought today.

  Achilles beat Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons, who had brought her forces to the assistance of Troy. Some say he raped her corpse. The sea glitters like the armour that Thetis, his mother, had Vulcan make for him when, after one of his sulks, he agreed to go to Troy. Mummy's boy, she must protect him by all means in her power. Achilles was destined to die in the Trojan wars like Penthesilea, whom he murdered and humiliated. Even though Thetis knew Achilles' fate, she tried to defy it. She gripped him by the heel and dipped him in the River Styx to make him impervious to wounds. She hid him dressed as a maiden in Scyros to avoid battle. Ulysses wanted him and found him. Death culture.

  Virginia has seen it for herself, mothers cheating for their sons. Fortunately, neither she nor Jeff took much notice of what their mother said, poor woman. She realises she has just experienced another burst of inspiration for her sculpture, for she has, actually, little knowledge of the classics. Only a children's book of Homer and ABC radio of the 1950s featuring the Argonauts. A few discussions with Caroline. The Greeks needed Achilles. Virginia finds it simple to imagine the court at Scyros, having seen the drag queens at the Orlando dance. Most looked like footballers amusing themselves with their hairy bear-like bodies in feminine clothes.

  Jeff works with atoms on computers. And twins ruled Sparta.

  Cybil delights in putting her into situations to see if she can make Virginia compromise her principles. Cybil had wanted to dress up as an oil painting as she feels her looks belong to another age. Her body ou
t of fashion, Cybil enjoys camping it up as much as the queens, and flirting. But Virginia is grateful for the whisky and the experience as she understands more about misogyny. She feels she knows why Penthesilea fought. Clytemnestra did not leave her subjects, hence retained some power. Helen did and lost everything. If Jeff and Virginia were the Spartan twins, it would have been Virginia who went to war and Jeff who handled the political business at home.