Through a Camel's Eye

by Dorothy Johnston

  On another evening - it couldn’t have been too long after the restaurant dinner - she had challenged him. Could he conceive of studying architecture for five years, and then not working as an architect?

  Graeme’s response to this had been swift. There was no comparison.

  There was a time, about eighteen months ago, when she’d believed Graeme was going to ask her to marry him. She would have said yes like a shot. She would have given up her training once she was Graeme’s wife, though she was not at all sure what would have taken its place. Something bland - a secretarial course of some kind.

  Anthea wondered what would have happened if her weekend with Graeme had not been spoilt. The glow would have carried her, buoyed her up for weeks, but then anxiety would have crept up once again. For she knew, deep down, that Graeme would not soon have repeated his visit. She would have been left to wait, and eventually to worry that the glow had been all of her own making. She told herself that it might not have happened this way, that Graeme might have invited her to Melbourne; but deep down she knew.

  What joy there was in the lift of a dark eyebrow, what delight the shine of pale olive skin and a brightening smile. They had delighted in each other once. She had not imagined that.

  Lost in her memories, Anthea almost didn’t hear a knock on the front door.

  It was Chris’s neighbour, who, this time, introduced herself as Doreen. Doreen Ramsey was a slight woman, though the muscles in her arms looked tough. The two women glanced at one another, conscious of an unspoken reluctance when it came to certain of the sick man’s needs.

  When Doreen said, ‘Mike, that’s my husband, he’ll drop by in an hour or so’, Anthea thanked her warmly.

  The sauce was burning on the bottom of the saucepan, but Anthea didn’t care. She put the saucepan in the sink to soak, and ate at the small kitchen table, scalding her tongue and adding grated parmesan by the handful. She recalled how Chris had gobbled, that night she’d invited him to eat her lover’s share of the meal she’d pictured in advance. But of course Chris hadn’t known this. She thought of the phrase ‘fell on his food’, how it summed up a certain kind of man. But not her boss, who evidently looked after himself in the food department, or had the makings and equipment to do so. His utensils were good quality, his pans heavy-based and strong, his olive oil thick and greenish-gold.

  Anthea looked in on Chris again after she’d washed her few dishes and tidied up the kitchen. It was said that murder destroyed privacy - murder investigation, not only the act of it. People caught up in a homicide case were asked to reveal all sorts of secrets about themselves and their lives. But illness destroyed privacy as well, she thought, looking down at Chris’s sleeping face. Unless the sick person had a special nurse to guard this privacy, or family members prepared to work around the clock. Those less fortunate dealt with the emergency as best they could. Complaints could be kept for afterwards, when the mind was active, the body well again.

  Anthea was thinking about Camilla Renfrew when Mike knocked at the promised time. Gently and without fuss, he woke the patient and helped him use the lavatory.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Anthea woke with the sun on her face. Thin curtains were covered with a floral pattern faded almost past recognition. Whoever had made them - Anthea assumed it had been Chris’s mother - had skimped on material. The curtains were unlined, did not meet in the middle, and were useless as any kind of insulation.

  She found that she was smiling at the sun’s warmth, the feeling of being well rested. She hadn’t woken at all during the night. So much for being on call. Frank’s mattress had been surprisingly comfortable and she’d been exhausted by the time she finally undressed and lay down.

  Deliberately making a noise as she entered Chris’s room, Anthea was pleased to see him lift his head and smile.

  She smiled back and said good morning, poured water and helped Chris to drink. Looking embarrassed, he gestured towards the doorway. She helped him to stand up, but then he indicated that he could manage by himself. Anthea waited outside the bathroom door, feeling both foolish and relieved.

  Ten minutes later, she was arranging breakfast in bed, balancing the tray, saying, ‘Well sir, I hope you’ve got an appetite.’

  Chris made a face in which the necessity of acknowledging weakness, gratitude and annoyance with himself all fought for expression. He avoided his assistant’s eye, concentrating on nibbling a piece of toast.

  But then he looked up, and surprised Anthea by speaking in a strong, decided voice. ‘I don’t know what kind of fool I’ve made of myself. I don’t suppose I need to, not right now. I can remember waking up yesterday - was it yesterday? - and feeling absolutely lousy.’

  ‘Do you remember being taken to the doctor’s?’

  ‘Was I? Well, of course I was, if you say so.’

  Anthea became aware that she was wearing only a cotton dressing down over her pyjamas. ‘You’ve got glandular fever,’ she said.

  ‘Good Lord. I suppose I’m contagious.’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘What are you doing here, then?’

  ‘Someone - ‘ Anthea began defensively, then saw that he was teasing her. She laughed.

  What had Frank Erwin called it? The kissing disease. She’d been careful not to use any of Chris’s kitchen utensils without first washing them thoroughly, and he was most unlikely to kiss her.

  Chris ate slowly, as though eating was a duty he was required to perform, watching Anthea with a guarded, half-admiring expression. Perhaps the best thing would be to dress quickly, then leave, she thought. She excused herself and went to have a shower. When she came back, Chris’s face was flushed and he was panting slightly. An unnatural brightness in his eyes warned her that he wouldn’t welcome any more questions about his state of health.

  He coughed, then asked, ‘What’s Frank been up to?’

  ‘He saw a man crossing his paddock. The one with the dam. From the beach side to the road.’

  Chris listened while Anthea went over her conversation with the farmer, surprised at how easily the words came back to her. She’d admired Chris for his ability to recall interviews word for word, and did not think she’d shared it.

  ‘Frank called out, but the man just kept going.’

  Anthea recalled the story of the drowning then, and bit her lip.

  She went on with her account, how she’d tried to trace the Bentons’ movements after they’d left Queenscliff, and had found a van park in Apollo Bay where the manager said Jack had rung him wanting to make a booking.

  She looked from Chris’s tense hands to his over-bright eyes. ‘They could have stayed in Geelong or Melbourne.’

  Chris agreed that it was a possibility.

  ‘But if they didn’t, if they went straight back, and Jack’s story about Margaret going to the supermarket is a lie because she was already dead, then why the extra days? Why not say they drove back on New Year’s Day?’

  ‘He had to get rid of the body. Perhaps he drove to Swan Hill late at night. That way, although the Landcruiser might be seen, it would be impossible to know how many people were inside it.’

  ‘But there’s nothing in the Landcruiser that - ’

  Chris nodded and then coughed again.

  Anthea poured more water. Chris’s hand shook so much that she had to help him drink it. His condition seemed to have deteriorated in the last few minutes, and again she was in a quandary as to what was the best thing to do.

  She suspected that it was more than glandular fever. There’d been an instability in her boss long before. Underneath his calm demeanour - keeper of the peace, everybody’s friend - there was a more turbulent person, one whose demons might rise up to get the better of him when they sensed a crack.

  Anthea wished she’d found out about Chris’s father earlier. Did he believe she’d known all this time, and had deliberately said nothing? He hadn’t asked about her family. Was this because he’d looked up her file? She couldn’t guess what it mig
ht mean to him if he did know. She wondered if it would shock him to learn that she hardly ever thought about her parents. She’d been too young. All she could remember was walking down a path between tall trees, hand in hand with two people who must have been her mother and father. She could not recall their faces, just that they were large and she was tiny, and that the three of them were walking in step, so they must have slowed their pace to hers.

  The path had been dense with shade. Before her grandmother died, Anthea had asked her about this memory, and her grandmother had confirmed that yes, there had been such a path beside the house. Anthea felt sure that it had been warm, the trees in summer foliage, which might make it just a few weeks before the accident.

  She’d grown up with the certainty that, if her grandmother hadn’t been looking after her while her parents had a night out, she would have been killed as well. She’d often felt that she was alive owing to a lucky chance, that her continuing to live was some sort of mistake or oversight. She wondered if Julie felt like that as well. But she did not share Julie’s guilt. Her grandparents had been kind and loving. They’d never made her feel unwanted, or a burden. As a child, she’d often wished for a sister or a brother, but this desire had faded.

  ‘I need to go to Swan Hill,’ Chris said, his jaw clenched and shoulders braced as though to combat a physical attack.

  Anthea stood up and took the breakfast tray, in order to have something to do with her hands. Chris clearly wasn’t asking her opinion. But how did he think he could just take off? He could barely walk. She could put his ‘need’ down to the fever, or that other, deeper malaise of which she’d just caught a glimpse. She decided that she would go ahead and pursue the course of action she considered best. She hoped that Chris would spend the morning resting, but knew that nothing she said or did could persuade him to do this if he decided otherwise.

  She was saved from having to speak by a knock on the front door.

  It was Doreen Ramsey. Anthea welcomed her in.

  They chatted for a few moments, then Anthea excused herself to tidy the room she’d slept in and collect her overnight bag. She left the mattress on the floor, not knowing what else to do with it. She supposed that Frank would be happy enough to pick it up eventually. As for tonight, she’d cross that bridge when she came to it.

  Chris’s neighbour offered to do a bit of shopping, dealing with the invalid by jollying him along and mothering him discreetly. Chris agreed to stay in bed, but asked Anthea to fetch his file on the Bentons. Anthea had been planning to go through the file again herself, but of course she didn’t say this. She picked up the file from the station and left it with him. She didn’t think it would matter if she went home for a short while.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Anthea’s neighbour appeared in his driveway as she was unpacking her car. With smooth practised movements, he hoisted his kayak onto roof racks and tied it in place. He didn’t look her way. His skin was brown and smooth, his body compact, the sort that never gave trouble, always did what was expected of it.

  Anthea considered her own body, her city-pale skin, the pull on her arm of her overnight bag, that slight weight yet how it pulled. A moment returned to her, Chris stumbling on the path to the surgery, how she’d steadied him. He weighed a lot more than she did, but she’d acted without thinking and prevented him from falling.

  Anthea smiled to herself and swung her bag, whose weight now seemed negligible. When she raised her head, the man had finished tightening the ropes. He straightened at the same moment and met her eyes.

  Anthea took another shower, as a kind of homecoming present to herself, made toast and smothered it with butter and raspberry jam. She’d dressed in her uniform again, but left her feet bare. She sat on the balcony with her feet up while she ate, rubbing her soles and the ends of her toes against the chair’s heavy cotton cover.

  She lifted her face to a sun that turned the bay into a huge, reflecting plate. The kayak man was out there, brown line of his craft no more than that, tentative and slight against the gold-green profusion of the seagrass. He paddled steadily across the dazzle of the morning, his figure coming and going through reflections that were suddenly too bright. For a whole minute, sun-blinded, Anthea was unable to see him at all. She thought of fetching her new binoculars, but was afraid of the conspicuous glancing of sunlight off glass, of the man looking up and noticing.

  She knew that she should get a move on, but lingered, eating more than she really wanted, washing it down with coffee so strong she felt instantly dehydrated.

  Wildflowers were out along the top of the low, raggedy cliff. On impulse, Anthea crossed the road and picked a small bunch, returning to her flat to put them in a kitchen glass. Later, she would rearrange them properly, or maybe she would not. She might leave them as they were, more connected somehow to the cliff top in their hasty, unselfconscious combination, in their makeshift vase. She told herself that it was the flowers she’d come for, not a final glimpse of her waterborne neighbour.

  She remembered Graeme’s ironic half smile, a way he had of making her feel inadequate simply by the way he stood, the way he looked around a room. She thought of how she’d bought her furniture, her few ornaments, even her food with this in mind. It suddenly seemed fortunate - not that she’d wanted such fortune, but the way things had worked out in spite of what she’d wanted - that there was nobody to disparage her flowers. The critic in her head, who wore Graeme’s smile, who’d taken up residence inside her when they met, vanished in the morning glare, in the reflections off the bay.

  As Anthea washed up her few dishes, her thoughts returned to Chris and the way he’d spoken, through gritted teeth, about needing to go to Swan Hill. She guessed that he’d been thinking about it for a while. She pictured him collapsing on the highway and guessed also that he’d played out the scenario this way too, and that it only added to his frustration.

  On her way to the station, she thought about being a reluctant witness. She’d scarcely put her bag down when the phone rang. There’d been an accident in Hesse Street. The caller was the chemist and he asked for Chris. When she said that Chris was sick, but that she’d come straight away, there was a short but eloquent silence on the other end.

  The accident proved to be a complicated one, involving three cars and a bicycle, and it was over an hour before Anthea had sorted it out. She put up witches hats and diverted traffic. She photographed the cars and bike, establishing positions, taking close-ups of the damage. She had to take statements from five people - two of the cars had only had their drivers in them, but the third had had a couple. The cyclist had been taken to the medical centre by the time she arrived on the scene. The chemist had taken charge, and Anthea was grateful for this. He’d made sure the bike had stayed where its rider had been knocked from it, and had photographed the scene himself.

  Anthea listened to the motorists’ voluble complaints about each other, but mostly about the hapless bike-rider. They all agreed that he’d dashed out from the lane that ran beside the post office, straight into the traffic. Loudest was the female passenger, who was certain she had whiplash, though Anthea very much doubted that she’d be waving her head and arms around in such a manner if she really were in pain.

  Anthea recorded the statements, not trusting her memory with four people gabbling at her. Once they’d left, she rang the medical centre, where she learnt that the young cyclist’s name was Raschid, that he’d suffered bruises, scratches and a bump on the head, and that his mother had taken him home.

  Not only the chemist, but each of the three drivers, and the passenger as well, had asked how Chris was doing. They’d let their disappointment show that the policeman they knew and felt comfortable with hadn’t been there to take their statements, and listen to their advice about what to do with boys on bikes who didn’t wear helmets, who thumbed their noses at the road rules.

  But they hadn’t made her feel that she was stuffing up completely, and Anthea supposed that she should feel gratefu
l for this. It wasn’t her job to explain Chris to his flock.

  The Abouzeids lived in a newish brick veneer house on the Geelong Road. It was a fair ride each day to the high school, but a fourteen-year-old boy would probably think nothing of it.

  Raschid’s mother was waiting for Anthea, and was prepared, not to defend her son - she’d got enough out of him to be satisfied that he probably had caused the accident - but to stand between him and the unforgiving hand of the law.

  The boy was sitting up in bed with a bandage on his head. He might have looked pathetic if he hadn’t also looked too pleased with himself for someone who’d caused a three-car pile-up.

  When Anthea asked why he’d been in such a hurry, Raschid patted his bandage. She could see that he had no answer to this question. If she’d phrased it differently and asked if he’d been in a hurry, his answer would have been no. Raschid had been riding the way he always rode, at the pace he always rode when there was no immediate obstacle in his path, that is to say recklessly and without consideration for anybody’s safety.

  Anthea sighed. She had no wish to make trouble for this boy or his mother, who was hovering in the doorway. Selafa Abouzeid touched two fingers to her right cheek. Her glance towards her son was both a warning and a supplication.

  Raschid did not ask where Chris was, and Anthea guessed that it was not his way to ask direct questions of adults, particularly adults who had some hold over him. His way was rather to work out what kind of hold it was, how much of a danger, and how he might wriggle out from under it. Freedom, to a boy like Raschid, was to be grasped in the moment, for the moment, because the future most likely held punishment of one sort or another. His internal, private balance of innocence and guilt had nothing to do with the fact that he was used to punishment, used to finding it waiting for him.