Through a Camel's Eye

by Dorothy Johnston

  ‘I’m going to find out what happened. You’ll make it easier for yourself if you tell me now.’

  Having delivered his warning, Chris gave Ian time to think, standing back while each of his brothers took a turn to bat. He noted how Ian placed the ball within their reach, and praised them when they hit it.

  ‘Who went back to the paddock?’ he asked when Ian took a break from bowling.

  The boy couldn’t keep his fingers still. Empty of the ball, they made for tufts of bronze hair.

  ‘Zorb wanted his fifty bucks.’

  ‘So you and Zorba went back to the paddock. When?’

  ‘The next day. After school.’

  ‘Did Zorba ride the camel?’

  ‘That lady who owns him, she was there talking to Mr Erwin. As soon as we saw ‘em, we got off our bikes. Zorb wanted to wait, but I said I couldn’t. I didn’t know how long they’d be. Mum expects me to mind my brothers after school.’

  ‘So when was the next time?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t expect Zorba gave up that easily.’

  ‘The next day he couldn’t go because of soccer training. The day after that we went, but the camel was gone.’

  ‘Did you see anybody else at the paddock?’

  ‘Only Mrs Renfrew the first time and the other lady and Mr Erwin the second.’

  ‘Anybody else? Please think.’

  Ian made a face as if to protest that he was doing that. One of his brothers ran up and asked him to bowl again.

  ‘In a minute,’ Chris said. He watched Ian carefully while he pulled out a photograph of Margaret Benton.

  ‘Have you ever seen this woman?’

  ‘No! No, I never!’ Ian cried, suddenly going pale.

  His brothers stared with undisguised alarm.

  ‘It’s all right. Calm down. Think about it. I’ll be along to talk to you again.’

  Chris checked his watch. Not much past five. He felt as though he’d been at the Lawreys for much longer than a quarter of an hour. They’d set up the sunroom at the back for Phil, but Eileen Lawrey had a dozen eyes and ears - with that brood she had to - and he doubted very much if his visit had gone unremarked. Then there were the small boys, who might be bribed to keep their mouths shut, but could still forget.

  Chris knew he should go back to the Kostandises’ place. To stall for a few more minutes, he got out his notebook and wrote down Ian’s denial about having seen Margaret Benton, wondering why the boy had lied.

  Maria Kostandis called Ian Lawrey names he wouldn’t have expected her to get her tongue around. Her son ride a camel? Ridiculous! Taking bets? It was all malicious invention. She didn’t let Chris get anywhere near Zorba, though he knew the boy was at home. He’d watched them going inside together as he was pulling up. He could wait for Zorba after school, but the boy would echo his mother’s denials, then go home and complain.

  Chris walked fast along the street, turning his back on the southwesterly, walking off his annoyance. He recalled his mother’s admiration, and felt annoyed with her as well, and then surprised, because annoyance with his mother was something he seldom allowed himself to feel. It quickly gave way to shame, as he remembered how white and paper-thin she’d been the last few times he’d driven her to the house belonging to the wealthy Greeks; the expression of contentment - never envy - on her face.

  The same oblique sun that struck those huge, hewn stones had been touching her; but there it was absorbed by a dark mass, a shelter announcing itself as impenetrable. Light had passed through his mother’s skin as through the window of a car, as through cobwebs, or air. She’d thanked him for the outings as he helped her back inside, in her voice the acknowledgement each time that it might be the last. Her voice was paper-thin as well, though never maudlin or self-pitying. He always said that it was fine, don’t mention it, while he felt his insides crumbling; and hoped, and felt ashamed of the hope, that he wouldn’t have to go through the ordeal again.

  Sometimes he added that he would drive her anywhere she wanted, and understood, by the silence that followed, that she saw through this offer. He hated himself then.

  Even after she became too ill to leave the house, his mother used to ask him if he’d been by there, and what was out, or budding, in the garden. He wished it hadn’t been Zorba’s mother who’d been obstructive and belligerent, and he wished he hadn’t had to endure her tongue-lashing while standing on her expensive Turkish rugs.

  Raschid had nothing to add to Ben’s and Ian’s stories. He confirmed the bet, and the way that Camilla had interrupted them. Chris wasn’t sure whether Raschid was telling the truth when he said he didn’t know that Ian and Zorba had gone back to the paddock on their own. He thought that, on balance, the boy was most probably lying.

  Raschid’s mother stood anxiously in the doorway while Chris questioned her son, but she didn’t interrupt. Chris felt her anxiety as something he could touch, and understood that it was caused, not by anything Raschid had, or had not done, but by the possibility that her husband might come home to find a policeman in his living room. For her sake, he got through the interview as quickly as possible.

  NINE

  A gentle hopping glow attracted Camilla from the doorway of her bedroom. She paused in the act of switching on a light, wondering who could be out there at this time of night. A burglar would hardly attract attention with a torch. She wondered if the police had come back to search. But why the need for subterfuge?

  Camilla made her way silently down the corridor to the back of the house, thinking of the drawing she had made, the speed with which news travelled around Queenscliff. If Riza’s abductor had come to silence her - she paused a moment for the irony in that - then the best thing would be to run away.

  But Camilla braced herself against the temptation of a cowardly escape. If the thief were really out there, she was being given a chance to prove that she wasn’t a coward after all. She stood in deep shadow by the kitchen window and watched the dim, bobbing light pass across the back yard and stop outside her garden shed. She watched the light disappear as whoever was carrying it went behind the shed. Camilla guessed who it was then, and what she was doing. She smiled to herself in the darkness, as, just in case she was wrong, she bent to take a rolling pin out of a drawer. She stared down at her tense and whitened knuckles grasping the makeshift weapon, catching her breath at the ease with which a violent impulse could rise up without warning.

  The light was lowered and became even dimmer. The torch had been placed on the ground, revealing the shed window from below, and Julie Beshervase peering into it. Camilla watched as Julie tried the catch, then cupped her hands around her face. She wore dark clothes and a scarf around her head, but it was Julie’s figure all right, Julie’s long-legged stance.

  Camilla loosened her grip on the rolling pin and smiled again, thinking of the contents of her garden shed. She watched until Julie picked up her torch and returned the way she’d come.

  No building in Camilla’s vicinity had such solidity and stature as the lighthouse. When she woke to a foggy morning, she got up and headed for the cliff path.

  The fog horn filled every cranny in the rocks; even the rests between each blast were sucked up by the echo. Camilla was fascinated by the thick white stalk of the lighthouse, appearing and disappearing through the fog. Behind her, the pier squatted as a vague horizontal line, a grey denser than the sky. Its verticals were lines of shadow legs, a giant centipede.

  On occasions like this - and it was far from the first one - Camilla stood spellbound by the spectral pillar and the deafening noise. She grimaced, hands clamped to her ears, thinking that it might be a relief to change her loss of speech for loss of hearing, and then frightened that this wish might be taken as ingratitude for what she still possessed. No one had told her to stand under the lighthouse in a fog. In fact, there were signs that expressly forbade it.

  Camilla proceeded along the cliff path, grateful that she knew where to put her feet. She st
opped, recalling the white-faced woman. When Chris Blackie had shown her a photograph, she’d hesitated and then shaken her head. She could not be sure. But the woman had been wearing dark clothes and she’d indicated this to Chris. She wondered if she should make another drawing.

  When, exactly, had she heard the scream? Chris had asked her this, but again, she couldn’t be sure. Her thoughts were muddled and she was afraid of being misunderstood. Chris had not been unkind, or hasty, but still, Camilla knew she was suspected of taking Riza, and that she must be careful.

  Thinking of the woman, she felt the membrane between her being and another’s to be stretched so thinly that she might pass through it unseen. She longed for a voice to shout with, to shout a warning that she feared was too late.

  The phone was Camilla’s enemy. When it rang, she fumbled the receiver, hot of hand and face, lifting it with shaking hands, straining towards the voice on the other end. It was usually somebody selling something, or her son. If the former, she felt relieved. If the latter, she tried hard to indicate, by the quality of her listening, answers to his questions about her health, about what she’d been ‘up to’. She knew the questions were a test that she was bound to fail. Success would be recorded when she could reply in a normal voice. She marvelled that this person to whom she’d given birth could be so cruel.

  But now, when Camilla passed the telephone on its stand in the hallway, she thought of Chris Blackie and wondered what progress he was making. She thought of writing him a note about Julie Beshervase coming to her place at night, but decided not to. She didn’t want to get Julie into trouble.

  TEN

  Anthea woke to the sounds of water birds and opened her curtains to the slow movements of swans across the bay. She felt she would never get used to the sheer number of birds. There were thousands out there feeding when the tide was right.

  The light was pearly over the water as the fog began to lift, sun strengthening every second, turning the sea and sky into a soft blue-grey. In the distance, on the opposite shore, a line of light hit the tree-tops. Round the corner, hidden from her view, the town was beginning to stir.

  Before plugging in the kettle, Anthea switched her phone on and checked for missed calls. It was her habit to do this each morning, though she’d given up hoping that Graeme would ring or text her late at night. At least she turned her phone off when she went to bed. The first two weeks she’d left it on, sleeping fitfully; at every creak the wind made she’d grabbed the small rectangle from her bedside table, as though it was the weather’s fault that it refused to ring.

  She’d grown used to the night sounds. There was so little traffic on her narrow street that every car announced itself as individual. It would be easy, she thought as she ate her solitary evening meals, to amuse herself by spying on her neighbours. Sometimes she went outside at night, just to feel the cool dark air all around her, taste its briny texture, smell the strong weedy smell coming off the bay at low tide. A footpath wound its way along the top of a low cliff. After dinner the night before, she’d taken her torch and set off along the path.

  After a while, she’d turned the torch off. The moon had been up and she’d seen quite well without it. She’d thought of her phone not ringing on the bedside table, how the air of expectation in her flat was squeezed and squeezed until she couldn’t bear it any more. She’d stood still and traced the outline of Swan Island, where there was an army training camp, imagining all those waterbirds roosting in military lines.

  She’d pictured herself getting in the car, not stopping till she reached Graeme’s suburb, and the house he shared with another architect. She would confront him, forcing answers to her questions. Hadn’t she been trained to do just that?

  Anthea had kept walking, tiring herself out. Back at the flat, she’d had a shower and fallen into bed, slept well for the first time in weeks, woken to a different question, or the same one differently put. Did it require more courage to wait, or to have it out with Graeme?

  Anthea had never been a patient person. She forced herself to be patient when dealing with members of the public, but it did not come naturally. She expected others to come up with answers as quickly as she put the questions. She was inclined to interpret hesitation either as evasion sliding into lies; the wish to prevaricate while thinking up a lie; or a sign of cowardice. After all this time, she asked herself, what did she want from Graeme? Did she want him back, or did she want to shout at him and tell him to go to hell? Did she want him back if it meant pretending that these miserable weeks had never been?

  Before leaving for work, Anthea made a start unpacking her boxes, stacking her books by subject and alphabetically on the built-in bookshelves along one wall of the living-room. Then she made a shopping list, wondering if it was a cause for congratulation that her needs were so modest.

  Anthea guessed that there was no love lost between Frank Erwin and her boss, and that perhaps some old rivalry or mistrust had led Chris to focus on Erwin’s trailer.

  Chris knew everybody’s property - how many sheds, what kind of garage the townsfolk and surrounding farmers owned. He hadn’t examined every single one, but he’d been over Frank’s and Camilla’s with a fine tooth comb.

  Chris and Anthea sat over an early morning cup of tea on the station’s back veranda, while Chris outlined their tasks for the morning. He wanted Anthea to check on Julie Beshervase’s insurance.

  ‘She said she couldn’t afford it, but she might be lying. Then I want you to go and talk to her again.’

  Anthea was quick to read the challenge, and wondered why Chris was palming Julie off on her. He seemed prickly and disagreeable, as though he’d got out of the wrong side of the bed.

  Julie shook her head in disbelief. ‘I ought to throw you off the premises for that. I know my rights, even if I can’t afford a lawyer.’

  ‘I’d go as soon as you asked me,’ Anthea replied, ‘but it’s better if we clear this point up without wasting any more time.’

  ‘Why would I lock my own camel in a garage when I’ve got a perfectly good paddock to keep him in?’

  Julie shot this over her shoulder as she took down a bunch of keys from a hook behind the kitchen door.

  Anthea observed that the room was in an even worse state than the last time she’d been there. Some people didn’t notice dirt. She’d come across a number of blokes who were literally blind to it. Though not Graeme: Graeme was fastidious.

  She realised that Julie was waiting for her to say something, and asked, ‘Where’s the Talbots’ car?’

  ‘They’ve lent it to their daughter while they’re overseas.’

  ‘I’d like her contact details, please.’

  Julie pressed her lips together and shook her head as though in disbelief.

  She stayed outside the garage, leaving Anthea to walk around it by herself. There was a work bench at one end, an old fridge, various tools and boxes.

  Anthea opened the fridge door, wondering if she was missing something obvious. She could search the garage properly, and felt confident of her ability to ride down Julie’s objections while she did so. But she did not believe that Riza had ever been hidden there. And the camel hadn’t been insured; Julie had been telling the truth about that.

  Dangling the keys by a forefinger, Julie strode back into the house.

  But once inside, she did not ask Anthea to leave. Instead, surprisingly, she offered tea. Anthea made herself look and sound appreciative, trying not to think about the grimy rings around the mugs.

  ‘Have you given any more thought to what we were talking about the other day, about people who might have a grudge against you?’

  Anthea waited for another complaint about Camilla.

  She wanted to tell Julie about the bet to ride Riza, see how she reacted; but Chris had warned her not to. He’d said he wanted to investigate further before presenting Julie with the story.

  ‘What about the shops - the newsagents, the supermarket?’

  ‘You mean, have I
made enemies of checkout chicks? Why would I bother?’ Julie shook her head again, impatiently this time. ‘I’m still paying rent, you know.’

  Anthea reflected that, if she’d been asked six months, or even six weeks ago, how long it would take to find a camel that had disappeared from a paddock on the outskirts of a small town, she would have laughed and said a morning max. Yet when faced with the actual problem, her skills and training seemed to be of little use. If she’d been asked whether she would have cared about a missing camel, her answer would have been a disdainful no. She shook her shoulders irritably. Her thoughts returned to Graeme once again, and how, if she’d been expecting him that weekend, she’d be buying the best coffee and fresh croissants from the bakery.

  ‘Would you like to see Riza’s saddle?’

  Anthea nodded, surprised at the question.

  Sitting on some sheets of newspaper, on a dusty floor, in an empty room, the saddle looked like a throne. Anthea understood that Julie had put it in an unused room because she couldn’t bear to look at it. Then why the invitation?

  She bent down and ran her fingers gently over the tassels and the mirrors. In each one was a view.

  Behind her, Julie was speaking softly, describing how she’d loved to turn from her training sessions and see her face reflected in them, to bring Riza up close and see his reflection too.

  She talked about the Afghan women sitting in their camp circle outside Alice Springs, camels hobbled a little way behind them, her childhood in the Territory and how it returned to her in nightmares whose precise details she could not, awake, recall, but whose mood she always could.

  Anthea stood up and breathed in deeply. ‘You said no when I showed you that photograph of Margaret Benton, but you recognised her, didn’t you?’

  A woman had been standing at the gates of Wallington stud, back in December last year, when Julie had driven out with Riza, full of unbelieving joy that he was really hers. The woman’s fearful attitude, when she slowed down and pulled over, had pierced Julie’s happiness. When Julie had asked if she needed a lift anywhere, the woman had stared at her and shaken her head. Then a Landcruiser had come tearing down the driveway, kicking up the gravel. The door had swung open, and the woman had stood absolutely frozen for a few seconds before getting in.