Through a Camel's Eye

by Dorothy Johnston

  For a few moments, Anthea nourished an irrational desire to sit in the kayak and be transported over water. She would forget her place of origin and her destination. Her mind would be cleansed; she would focus only on the present. She would become one with the kayak, as her neighbour appeared to be, without apparent strain.

  Anthea shook her mind clear of this vision and concentrated on the traffic, on finding the lab in an unfamiliar suburb when visibility was poor.

  Once her errand was completed, the samples handed over and signed for, she stood under the awning at the front of the building. She needed hot food and coffee, but wasn’t sure whether to leave the car where it was and walk until she found somewhere that looked decent, or drive to a suburb she knew. Chris had given her no instructions for the rest of the day. Timing the trip, allowing a bit extra for bad weather and a meal break, Anthea supposed that he would expect her back by mid afternoon.

  She fetched her umbrella from the car. Around the corner, as though fate had decided to give her a treat, she found just the café she was looking for - warm and well lit without being noisy - tasty lunch dishes on the menu. She ordered soup and a focaccia. Both were delicious. If she got sick of police work, Anthea thought, she could open a café like this one in Hesse Street. Then she remembered that she’d have to make a year’s income over the summer months. On a day like this, she’d be lucky if she had two customers.

  Anthea checked her watch, feeling that she’d earnt a little time off, an hour when she wasn’t following anyone’s instructions. It would take no more than twenty minutes to drive to Graeme’s office. She recalled the kayak man again, wondering at his stoicism. Later, she was to see the two as connected - the brief returning picture of the kayaker crossing the seagrass in the rain, and her decision to drop in on Graeme.

  Of course, it was likely that he wouldn’t be in; or that he’d be with a client. Presented with either of these alternatives, she would turn around and go. But she wouldn’t ring ahead and be fobbed off over the phone.

  While Anthea negotiated the route and found a parking spot, it began to seem that she’d planned to confront Graeme in precisely this way - not a confrontation unless he chose to make it one - using a small gap of time so that she might, with luck, present herself unheralded and find a welcome.

  Yet not only did her heart lurch, but all her body’s vital parts, when Graeme appeared at the foot of the stairs.

  His hair flopped forward and half hid his frown.

  ‘You,’ he said.

  ‘Come and have a coffee.’ Anthea was amazed to hear her voice sounding normal.

  ‘I have to be in Camberwell in’ - Graeme checked his watch - ’fifteen minutes. It’ll take me that long to drive there.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, then.’

  Graeme glared at the receptionist, as though blaming her for allowing Anthea inside the building. He opened his mouth to argue, then apparently thought better of it. Anthea followed him to the company car park. She felt that, having set this collision in motion, she had nothing further to do but remain upright. It would have been different if Graeme had been pleased to see her, or even pretended to be. She could turn around now, knowing it was over, knowing he’d never contact her again. But the die was cast, this car ride to wherever. Funny word that, die - surely it should be the singular dice, in her case - one throw to determine the future.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Graeme asked as she buckled her seat belt.

  Anthea chose to interpret this as, what are you doing in Melbourne? She told him she’d had to deliver some samples to the lab. He looked thoughtful, as though this might be a regular occurrence. Perhaps she was in Melbourne more often than he’d thought. She saw him wanting to ask why she’d sought him out this time, but was glad he didn’t. She would have found a truthful answer impossible.

  When asked about his work, Graeme replied in monosyllables. He turned to her at a red light. ‘It’s very awkward, you know, this.’

  ‘I agree it would have been more comfortable to talk over a cup of coffee.’

  ‘What is it you want to say?’

  ‘To know why you left in such a hurry.’

  ‘What did you expect me to do, hang around that boring flat? Why couldn’t you have told Mr Plod that Monday would be soon enough?’

  ‘I couldn’t do that,’ Anthea said quietly. She waited for a moment, then asked, ‘Is there someone else?’

  ‘If there was, could you blame me? Long distance relationships never work. You knew that when you took the job.’

  ‘It’s only a couple of hours.’

  ‘It might as well be three times that. There can’t be any spontaneity.’

  ‘Could you please answer my question?’

  ‘I should have known you’d give me the third degree.’

  Anthea reflected that, if she was a temporary prisoner in the car, then so was he. Graeme drove as though the traffic snarls around the junction were put there solely to annoy him. She wondered why she’d ever considered his expression of petulant bad temper handsome.

  ‘No one to write home about,’ he said, accelerating when the lights turned green. ‘And you?’

  ‘I would have come back to Melbourne every weekend if you’d asked me.’

  ‘Oh yes, and what would you have done when Plod rang up and demanded your presence on a Saturday? It wouldn’t have worked and you know it.’

  ‘I know it now,’ she said.

  It took Anthea an hour to get from where Graeme dropped her at the Camberwell shopping centre back to where her car was parked. She walked to the nearest train station, where she spent her time staring at the opposite platform, then out the carriage window at fences and backyards. The rain had slowed to a drizzle and there were patches of blue sky. She wondered what the bay looked like at that moment, where the swans would be. Her phone didn’t ring and she was glad of this, glad she owed no one an explanation of how she was spending her free time.

  Rain had scoured the headland before it blew off to the east. The light was dull over the bay, clouds heavy with more rain. Anthea hoped that her familiar cliff top walk would allow the events of the day to settle, bring her to a calmer acceptance than she felt at present.

  Her feet slipped in the mud. She thought of the umbrella lying forgotten on the floor of her car. She would bring it inside and dry it. Wasn’t it supposed to be unlucky to open an umbrella inside? She thought that, in her case, bad luck ought to apply retrospectively, and be cancelled out by Graeme dumping her; unless she slipped again and broke her leg like poor Camilla Renfrew.

  It was odd to think of the formal end of a relationship, as compared with the end that had already been there all these weeks. Graeme had implied that she had ended it when she’d taken the job in Queenscliff, but it had not been up to her to say ‘send me somewhere else’. She’d tried to explain this, and to suggest they make the best of it. She wondered why Graeme hadn’t said the right words, the clean-cutting words, back then. She had taken it upon herself to force the last - I declare this over - conversation. She had to face the folly of a bed far too big for the room it occupied. She had to face the voice in her head which insisted I told you so.

  Returning home, Anthea looked for lights next door, and was pleased to see one in the front room of the cottage.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Chris was shocked by how weak and ill Camilla Renfrew looked. It occurred to him that she might never recover, that the broken bone might not heal properly, that she might leave hospital only for a nursing home. Where was Simon, that he was letting his mother suffer and deteriorate like this?

  Camilla’s eyes were closed and she did not open them when Chris said her name. He did not believe she was asleep. She did not want to be bothered by him, or any other visitor. She had given up.

  Chris found a nurse, who reacted to his concern with thinly veiled impatience. Camilla refused to eat, that was her problem. Lack of food made her weak, and she would only get weaker until she changed her m
ind, or was fed intravenously.

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Heaven knows. She complains that her voice exercises hurt her, that’s when she bothers to communicate at all.’

  ‘The message I sent, did Mrs Renfrew get it?’

  ‘What message was that?’

  ‘About a stolen camel. Mrs Renfrew was upset about it. I told the sister in charge to make sure she got the message that he’d been found safe and well.’

  ‘Then she will have, Constable Blackie. But you can see for yourself that Mrs Renfrew is a bit beyond taking an interest in camels.’

  ‘What will happen to her?’

  The nurse gave Chris a look which said, spare me idiotic questions. ‘After doctor sees her this morning, I believe he’ll give instructions for her to be put on a drip. You’re welcome to sit with her, but I have other patients to attend to. So, if you’ll excuse me - ’

  Camilla was lying face to the wall with her eyes shut. She had shrunk so much that her broken leg looked grotesquely large and ill-proportioned. Chris wondered if the note about Riza might be in one of the drawers beside her bed. It wasn’t. He decided he would write another one and place it so that it would be the first thing she saw when she woke up.

  He drew Riza smiling - he thought that might amuse Camilla - and underneath the words, ‘I’m back!’ He’d recorded Simon’s number in his phone, and walked out to the corridor to ring him.

  Simon didn’t recognise Chris’s name and had to be reminded. When it dawned on him that Chris wasn’t calling on a police matter, but out of personal concern for his mother, he became defensive and annoyed. The hospital staff were doing their best. His mother was being extremely uncooperative. When Chris asked what Simon planned to do about this, he received the curt answer that it wasn’t any of his business.

  Chris asked when he planned to visit Camilla again, and was told, after a moment’s hesitation, that he hoped to get down on Friday after work.

  When Chris returned to Camilla’s bed, she opened her eyes and smiled at him, a pale but welcoming smile.

  Chris leant across and took her hand.

  A nurse from another ward, hurrying past the door, saw a man with his back curved, bent in an attitude of gentle helpfulness, and smiled to herself, thinking that he must be the old woman’s son.

  Camilla grabbed her notebook and began writing quickly. She held it up for Chris to see.

  ‘Congratulations! You deserve a medal!’

  Chris laughed and asked how she was feeling.

  ‘Better for your news,’ Camilla wrote.

  Many of the tasks Chris had performed, during those years of caring for his mother, had been performed without conscious thought. In recent years he’d been inclined to focus on their more awkward times, times when his personality had chafed and grated against hers, when, for instance, it had needed all his patience not to cry out against her habit of sitting in the car outside the Kostandis place.

  He was, and had been for as long as he could remember, the kind of man who was inclined to focus more on his faults and failures than successes, and to feel impatient that he could not go back and change them.

  He talked a little about Zorba and Theo, skating over details, then asked after Simon.

  Camilla’s face dropped from expectancy to resignation, then distress. Her whole body seemed to collapse inwards, as though the name on its own, just those two syllables, carried extraordinary power. She shook her head and closed her eyes.

  Before leaving the hospital, Chris asked to be shown to the speech pathology room. A group was in session and he couldn’t interrupt. He checked the therapist’s schedule at the desk and noted a time when she appeared to be free. He left the hospital wondering how best to occupy himself for the next hour or so. He wished that Zorba and Theo were appearing in court right now, today, and felt frustrated at how long it would be before the brothers, represented no doubt by the best and most expensive lawyers, were forced to account for what they’d done.

  Chris had never taken much notice of Corio Bay or Eastern Beach, having plenty of bays and beaches right at his back door. City beaches were tamed and sullied by the proximity of so much human traffic, and less objects of fear as a result. He decided to walk, hoping to ease some of his anxiety about Camilla.

  The day was damp and gloomy. The tankers at the oil refinery sat as though stuck on the water, rather than immersed in it. It seemed foolish to expect that Camilla’s voice would ever return, now she was so weak. After spending only a few moments in her company, Chris understood that the speech therapist wanted to use him as a sounding board for her puzzlement about her patient. The woman certainly had no problems with her voice box, Chris reflected, framing questions in his mind and waiting for a chance to squeeze them in. Camilla suffered from none of the known diseases which caused loss of speech, such as throat cancer, or Parkinson’s. The therapist had initiated a program of exercises to strengthen her muscles and a step-by-step vocalisation of basic sounds. Most patients responded well to this regime.

  ‘But Mrs Renfrew was in hospital for a broken leg,’ Chris pointed out. ‘She was in considerable discomfort.’

  ‘Many of our patients are in pain. That doesn’t alter their desire to speak.’

  ‘Who suggested the treatment?’ Chris asked, though he knew the answer.

  His expression must have given him away when the therapist said Simon’s name. ‘I’m sure your work would be made easier,’ she said, ‘if Mrs Renfrew could answer questions like a normal person.’

  ‘That’s not - ’

  ‘We do our best. We can’t cure everyone.’

  ‘What will happen to Mrs Renfrew now?’

  ‘That’s not up to me. As far as her voice treatment goes, we’ve had to discontinue, but I expect you know that.’

  Chris tried to talk about causes. The therapist kept repeating that none of the tests they’d done showed any abnormality.

  ‘Are you saying Mrs Renfrew doesn’t speak because she doesn’t want to?’

  ‘I’m not a psychologist. That’s not for me to say.’

  ‘But surely it affects your diagnosis and treatment if the problem is wholly, or partly, psychological?’

  The therapist shrugged. ‘It may be less relevant than you think. As I’ve said, the patients referred to me are actively seeking treatment, and even those who might be ambivalent - well, once they feel that their voice production is improving, that gives them the motivation to try harder. The exercises can cause discomfort, especially at first,’ she admitted.

  ‘But you persevered, even when it was clear that Mrs Renfrew was becoming weaker.’

  ‘We persevered with the patient’s best interests in mind, Constable Blackie.’

  Chris wished that people wouldn’t use his rank like that, when they meant to put him down.

  Camilla’s doctor was a young South Asian, who looked worried about what a police officer would want with him. Yes, he said, it was unfortunate that Mrs Renfrew’s recovery was slow. Yes, she would need professional nursing care for the foreseeable future. When Chris asked how long it would take for her leg to heal, the doctor refused to commit to a time frame.

  ‘Do you need Mrs Renfrew’s help with your inquiries?’

  Chris almost smiled at that. He said that Mrs Renfrew had already helped a lot.

  He steeled himself for paying Camilla another visit, without having anything to offer her - no escape plan, no words of hope.

  While Chris pulled the chair closer to the bed, Camilla reached for her notebook and wrote, ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘What about your leg?’

  ‘I have money. I can hire a nurse.’

  ‘Who is your solicitor?’

  Camilla balanced her notebook in shaking hands and managed one more word. ‘Sinclair.’

  Bob Sinclair lived in a part of Queenscliff that Chris seldom visited. His house was on a hill opposite the Catholic church, occupying the highest point of land. The town’s richest residents lived
up there, people who, if they broke the law, managed to do so without attracting the attention of the local uniforms. Chris’s heart had lifted at the sight of the name, because Sinclair had been his mother’s solicitor. He was surprised that the old man hadn’t retired.

  Bob Sinclair’s head was bald and age-spotted, covered with incipient skin cancers. In answer to Chris’s first question, he replied that he’d retired for all but for a few of his oldest clients and that these included Camilla whom he’d known since she was a child.

  Chris described Camilla’s state of mind and health. He said he’d just come from visiting the hospital and that, in his opinion, Camilla would be much happier and recover more quickly at home.

  The solicitor took Chris’s meaning, and Chris was glad of it, glad he did not have to refer to Simon directly, or to his intentions. There was one of those small silences that occur between relative strangers when meaning has been implied and understood. The two men looked at one another, then Bob Sinclair turned and stared out the window. Chris had never been inside his house, had guessed, but never confirmed, how much of the ocean was visible from those wide, clean windows.

  ‘You know the day Harold Holt drowned,’ Sinclair said, startling him. ‘I was standing right here when I saw the helicopters circling. Someone’s drowned, I thought. The search went on for hours, and then of course we heard it on the news.’

  Chris went white and could not prevent himself from clutching an edge of curtain for support. Had the solicitor forgotten his father, or was he being deliberately cruel? If so, what on earth was Chris doing there, enlisting, or trying to enlist his help?

  The old man stared out across the channel with a faint smile on his lips. Chris cleared his throat. Quickly, he searched his mind for alternatives. There weren’t any. What mattered was that he should act on Camilla’s behalf.