Through a Camel's Eye

by Dorothy Johnston

  ‘Of course he grows what he can,’ the woman had said, as though to teach her a lesson.

  Anthea’s phone rang, startling her. She hoped, as always, for Graeme. But it was Chris, with some twaddle about a missing camel.

  THREE

  ‘The lock’s broken!’ cried Julie Beshervase. ‘Who’d do such a thing?’

  Chris Blackie, who’d brought Julie to the station and was questioning her while Anthea took notes, asked when she’d last seen Riza.

  ‘Last night. Evening. Getting dark. Who’s taken him? Where is he?’

  ‘Calm down, Ms Beshervase, we’ll get your camel back. He’s too big to hide.’

  ‘That paddock is deserted! No one ever goes there, except me and mad Camilla Renfrew. It must have been her!’

  Frank Erwin met them at the paddock he rented to Julie, looking, Chris thought, as though he wished camels had never been invented.

  Chris wore gloves to remove the broken lock and chain.

  ‘They must have come in a horse float,’ Frank said. ‘See these tyre marks? Two together either side.’

  ‘Right,’ Chris said. ‘I’ll look into that.’

  ‘Are you going to question that witch-woman?’ Julie demanded.

  ‘If you want to help, Ms Beshervase, start by asking round the village. If a horse float was used to steal your camel, someone will have seen it.’

  From the look on Camilla’s face she’d forgotten what a horse float was. Chris sighed. He might have known that it would be like this. He’d had to wait outside her house for twenty minutes before she appeared on the dunes path, wearing a ridiculous hat and looking like a scarecrow.

  When he’d instructed Anthea to begin a door-to-door, she’d looked mutinous and pressed her lips together.

  Chris sighed again. Camilla approached him with a desperate expression.

  ‘How often do you go to the paddock, Mrs Renfrew?’

  ‘At what times?’

  ‘Who do you see there?’

  Camilla shook her head from side to side. Spittle flew from her mouth and Chris, embarrassed, looked away.

  ‘Mrs Renfrew, can you hear me? When did you last see Riza?’

  Camilla held up her hand to indicate that he should wait. She disappeared inside the house and came back a moment later, carrying a notebook and pencil.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she wrote, and underlined it twice.

  ‘Riza’s missing. Looks like he’s been stolen.’

  Chris continued asking questions while Camilla wrote. When she’d finished, she handed over her notebook.

  1. I was at the paddock yesterday. 2. I saw Riza. 3. I heard a woman scream.

  Aware that his own nervous tension was making her worse, Chris took a deep breath and said, ‘When was that, Mrs Renfrew?’

  Camilla took her notebook back and wrote, in the summer.

  Chris thought it would be better to come back after she’d had a chance to calm down.

  Of course, it didn’t have to be a horse float, he reminded himself as he got into his car. The camel could have been led away. But then, where were its footprints? Once on the road, they wouldn’t show. But the same damp earth that had recorded the tyre marks Frank had pointed out would surely have held prints of those large, gentle feet.

  Chris felt sure that the thief was someone local and the motive personal. He made a mental note to ask Julie if Riza was insured, and how much he was worth. It couldn’t have been easy to catch Riza and lead him into a horse float. The Erwin’s farmhouse was on the other side of the hill. Lights might have frightened the young camel, unless of course he’d known the person and gone willingly.

  Chris’s reaction, as he approached Julie Beshervase’s house, was that it was far too big for a woman on her own. The house looked deserted, curtains drawn and front garden neglected. Chris parked a short distance from the overgrown driveway and paused for a few moments, wondering how Julie occupied herself when she was not with Riza.

  ‘Have you found him?’

  It was clear that Julie had run to the door.

  ‘I’m afraid not. May I come in, please?’

  Chris followed Julie down a dark corridor. She didn’t ask him to sit down, but he did so anyway, on a chair next to large windows facing west, overlooking the back yard. The windows were dirty, but at least the curtains were pulled back.

  ‘I’m sorry about Riza, Ms Beshervase. Was he entirely yours?’

  ‘You mean, did I own him, had I paid for him, do I have a receipt to prove it? Yes!’

  Julie lowered herself onto the edge of a straight-backed chair. Chris thought it odd that she should be so tense and ready to run in her own house.

  ‘Camilla Renfrew took him,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because she’s nuts.’

  Chris decided to ignore this. ‘Renting the paddock from Frank Erwin - how did that come about?’

  Julie said she’d heard that the farmer made a bit of money out of horse agistment. She’d rung up and inquired. The rent had not been impossible. The situation was good, and there was water.

  ‘How did Riza get here?’

  ‘In a horse trailer. The man who sold him lent it to me.’

  Chris asked for contact details.

  ‘You don’t think he stole Riza, do you?’

  ‘I’d rather keep an open mind at present. Did Riza settle in well?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘What about Mr Erwin? Were there any problems there?’

  ‘Why should there be problems? I’ve always paid on time.’

  ‘Did Mr Erwin ever help you out with transport? Did Riza ever need to be taken to the vet, for instance?’

  ‘You mean in Frank’s horse float? It’s falling to bits.’

  ‘So Riza’s never needed to be taken anywhere?’

  ‘Not since I got him. He’s a perfectly healthy young camel.’

  ‘Is he insured?’

  ‘No,’ said Julie. ‘I couldn’t afford insurance.’

  Her voice caught and she bit her lip.

  When Chris asked how much the camel had cost, Julie said, ‘Five hundred dollars’, and explained that, after his mother had rejected him, Riza had been sent to a horse stud up along the Murray, but that none amongst the small herd of camels there had wanted to have anything to do with him.

  Chris wrote down the name of the stud, then asked Julie where she’d got the money

  Julie bit her lip again and looked annoyed. ‘My brother lent it to me. My older brother. And in case you’re about to ask, no, I couldn’t afford to rent this house on the open market. It belongs to friends of my brother’s. They’ve gone to France and Italy.’

  ‘Do you train camels for a living?’

  ‘Not much of a living, obviously, but you could say that.’

  Chris went on asking questions in a mild, uninflected voice; how Julie had found out about Riza in the first place, who had watched them together besides Camilla, whether she’d seen anyone suspicious hanging round the paddock. He left when he thought he’d got as much as he was going to get from her, for the time being at least.

  Julie had begun that morning by eating a small bowl of cereal. She’d put an apple and banana in her backpack along with the water bottle that she always carried. She’d planned to introduce Riza to the halter. She’d found one on eBay, where she’d also bought the saddle with the mirrors and the fringes, now sitting on two chairs in front of her living-room windows. Sometimes she liked to take it to the paddock with her; it seemed to hold a kind of promise for the future, and it made her happy to watch the sunlight reflected off the mirrors. On these days she walked, carrying the saddle. But that morning was cloudy, and she’d decided to leave it behind.

  She’d strapped the halter onto the back of her bike, turning her head, as she wheeled it down the driveway, for a last look at the house. Riding to the paddock, avoiding a patch of sand, she’d reminded herself that she ought to get a job. Her inquiries, since she arrived in Que
enscliff, had drawn the response that there were waiting lists for the few casual jobs available. Disagreeable reflections on the state of her finances sank as she breasted the last rise. She had to puff up the rise; but liked forcing herself, liked the warmth flowing through her legs and back.

  She had not been able to believe that the paddock was empty. She’d run round and round it, calling Riza’s name.

  When Julie thought of Camilla Renfrew, anger made sharp red points in front of her eyes. It was a ruse, a trick, that not speaking thing. It was like the child who covers her eyes with her hands and imagines herself to be invisible. The old witch had the locals wrapped around her little finger, but she’d done an evil thing.

  Camilla wasn’t considered mad because she was a local, having lived in the town all her life; whereas she, Julie, was a newcomer, and engaged in what she was well aware some of the locals described as mad behaviour. ‘What on earth’s she training a camel for?’ ‘We’ve got plenty of sand, but we don’t need camels to get round on it.’ ‘Pretty beast. Maybe she’d going to sell him to a circus.’ These were some of the comments that Julie half-heard, as she turned away with her litre of milk or half kilo of apples from the small supermarket.

  ‘Bit eccentric, but she’s harmless,’ was how Frank had described Camilla, when Julie had asked if he might persuade the old woman to stay away. She hadn’t liked Frank’s smarminess when he’d rolled up in his ute, the excitement in his eyes when he’d been told that Riza was missing.

  FOUR

  Anthea discovered that, almost without exception, the inhabitants of Queenscliff had been indoors watching television the night before. The half dozen who’d ventured to the pub had been glued to the TV too. It seemed to Anthea that she was making inquiries on the flimsiest of evidence. She thought it most likely that Camilla Renfrew had taken the camel, and that it was a waste of her time and Chris’s to be looking for it.

  It didn’t make Anthea feel any better that the people she questioned looked at her as though she was crazy. They kept peering over her shoulder, as though expecting Chris to turn up any second and rescue them from the embarrassment his offsider was causing.

  The chemist laughed when she told him. ‘Sounds like somebody’s idea of a joke.’

  Anthea wanted to agree, to justify herself. ‘Just find out about the horse float,’ Chris had said. Well, no one had seen a horse float, especially not one that had been used to make a camel disappear.

  Anthea stood on the footpath while her sandwiches were being made, not wanting to talk to anybody else. She didn’t want the smirking girl behind the counter asking if she’d found her camel yet.

  The sandwiches were good and Anthea was hungry. She took them to the bench in the park she was beginning to think of as hers, and stared out across the channel. A container ship was slogging its way towards Melbourne, while the small orange pilot boat sat on the horizon waiting for another one. The sea was flat, the trees on the headland barely touched by wind.

  Why couldn’t Graeme phone? Now would be a perfect time.

  Anthea considered going home for the afternoon, saying she was sick. But that would look pathetic. She guessed that Chris had little tolerance for falsehood or deception, white lies that other superiors might be prepared to overlook. Yet it was thoughts of home that drew her, as she rested her eyes on the grey-blue horizon, the bay calmer than it had been since she’d arrived in this poor excuse for a seaside resort.

  Home, for the present, was a one-bedroom flat overlooking Swan Bay. She hadn’t unpacked her books or CDs, and half her kitchen utensils sat in boxes alongside them - that was how temporary she’d been hoping this period in the wilderness to be.

  Anthea admitted, scrunching up her sandwich wrapping, that her morale would improve if she unpacked. Her tiny living room, with a kitchen alcove at one end, wouldn’t feel so cramped. Her bedroom was just big enough to hold a double bed, and she was sick of climbing over boxes.

  Up till now, it had seemed to Anthea that the only good thing about her flat was the view over the bay. When her landlord told her how lucky she’d been - a tenant who’d already paid the bond having pulled out at the last minute - she’d tried to look and sound appreciative, instead of showing the disbelief she’d felt. People actually wanted to live here? They competed with each other to claim such an address? But today it was unpacking those boxes that attracted, rather than the prospect of going back to work, returning to Chris Blackie and his one-man show.

  Chris filled in some background over mugs of tea which they drank sitting on cane chairs on the station’s back veranda.

  ‘I’ve known Camilla all my life,’ he told Anthea, expecting to see a downturn of ill-concealed mockery around her mouth, yet disappointed when he did so. ‘She brought her son up by herself after her husband died. Always kept him clean and well-dressed. And her house is a palace of cleanliness compared to the mess that Beshervase girl’s living in.’

  Anthea warmed her hands around her mug and made an effort. ‘I wonder what the owners will say.’

  ‘She’ll clean it up. Or I should say she’ll intend to. She’ll leave it too long and then get in a panic.’

  Anthea thought of Graeme and the lists he left for his cleaning lady who came every Tuesday. She felt a moment’s sharp envy for this woman who could visit Graeme’s flat, who could come and go.

  ‘That trouble with Camilla’s voice - ’ Chris was saying - ‘I couldn’t tell you when it started. It’s not as though I’ve been keeping tabs on her.’

  ‘What about the son?’

  ‘It’d be worth having a word to him. He’s married, or at least he was. I’ve never met his wife.’

  Chris noted the change in Anthea’s expression. It occurred to him that she might be having an affair with a married man.

  He breathed out heavily when she left the veranda, then went inside to his computer, where he busied himself looking up Wallington Park stud. He pictured the Murray River with its flood plain and rich, absorbent soil.

  Camilla drank water standing at her kitchen sink, but it did nothing to ease the burning in her throat. Riza had been stolen. Perhaps he was dead.

  She saw the white face and heard the scream again, then rushed to the lavatory.

  Camilla gagged and clutched cold porcelain to stop herself from falling forward, re-living those minutes underneath the lighthouse.

  She steadied herself, and returned to her living-room.

  Camilla sat in a chair and waited for Chris Blackie to come back, thinking of old Brian Laidlaw scavenging along the tide line, and how it was too late to speak the simple words of greeting. She smelt the fear of nocturnal creatures who had no defence against feral cats and foxes. So quick and unmarked the change from life to death, the small animal swallowed in a morsel, or, mortally wounded, scurrying away to die.

  She remembered picking grass and holding it out on the flat of her hand, Riza drawing back his thick lips, the feeling ticklish and delightful.

  His trainer never used the gate, lifting her leg, instead, to slip between the fence wires. In the next paddock, a tree gave good shade, half way up a rise, beside a dam. Perhaps the lock on the gate had been faulty and no one had noticed. Riza might have opened it himself.

  Camilla recalled the playground in the small country school where she’d been a teacher’s aid the year Chris had started. He’d been a skinny boy, though tall for his age, a quiet boy who watched and listened, rather than filling up the space around him with his own noise, a boy whose scuffed black shoes, outgrown felty jumpers and unironed shirts heralded a neglect that marked him out for teasing.

  Camilla’s mother would never have sent her off to school without a freshly ironed ribbon in her hair. Her own opinion had been that ribbons made her look a fool. She’d watched the new kid from her position as playground supervisor, that first hot summer of his formal education. Several times she’d had to break up fights. Once, a sixth-grader had to be enlisted to take Chris home with a nose that refused to
stop bleeding. By mid-autumn the fights had stopped and Chris was left alone.

  What was the good of a weak and silent witness?

  It began to rain. Camilla opened the curtains and looked out over her front garden. Rainwater filled the gutters and splashed down the tea-tree. She stood at her front door. After the closed-up air of inside, the trees smelt wonderfully fresh.

  Memories tripped her up like tea-tree roots. She wondered if that woman had stumbled off the path. She’d been wearing a dark overcoat, unusual for summer, even in the fog. Camilla knew it was a trick of memory that shapes appeared just when you were about to put your foot down, and felt right then the immense gap between a person’s raised shoe and the waiting earth.

  It was her experience that a bad day generally got worse. Had she wished, she could have measured the progress of her affliction in mornings that began with boredom, or with indigestion.

  The doorbell rang. Chris Blackie stood on the porch, his uniform covered in tiny drops of moisture.

  Camilla invited him in. He sat on the very edge of a chair.

  ‘Did you take the camel, Mrs Renfrew?’

  Camilla shook her head, but a doubt crept back, the sensation of tree roots rising up to meet her.

  ‘What time did you leave the paddock?’

  ‘About six,’ Camilla wrote in her notebook.

  ‘And the camel was there then?’

  Of course he was. She nodded.

  Chris went on asking questions, keeping his voice and his expression level, and Camilla tried to answer them in writing.

  Chris read patiently, then cleared his throat and said, ‘Mrs Renfrew, I’d like you to do me a drawing. What if I leave you to it, and come back in half an hour?’

  Chris thought he would spend the time walking through the sandhills - not that he believed Riza had taken himself up there, or that whoever had stolen him had let him go. If that had been the case, someone would have found him by now.