Through a Camel's Eye

by Dorothy Johnston

  Chris thanked the seaman, recalling the lovely swathe of material that had caught the light back there, in a room where a woman was beginning to get well. Camilla had written him a thank you note. Chris knew suddenly what her blanket reminded him of - it was Riza’s saddle.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Chris sent off a copy of the statement he’d typed up for Brian Laidlaw to sign, then decided to cook himself a slap-up meal, glad he wasn’t one of those Billy Bunter types who only had to look at a three-course meal in order to pile on the kilos. When he was growing up, his mother had encouraged him to eat heartily; it had been the done thing. She had been slim - too slim really - it was advice she might have applied in her own case. Chris’s memories were more of his mother watching him eat than of tucking in herself. It wasn’t until she died that he understood to what extent meals were a social activity, even if the ‘social’ only consisted of two people, one of whom had the appetite of a small bird.

  He thought of asking Anthea what she was doing for dinner, then rejected the idea. He wanted to think about his plan for leaving Queenscliff. He’d liked Swan Hill, but he wouldn’t want to work for the Swan Hill police. Somewhere inland anyway, with a decent river.

  Chris concentrated on cooking and let the vexed question of his future dissolve in the smell of roasting meat.

  Never having been much of a one for music, he decided that music would be appropriate tonight. He wondered later whether, if it hadn’t been for that, he would have heard footsteps, or a rasping at the window and been warned.

  Chris was standing with his back to the kitchen door when he heard his name spoken in a low voice, and turned to face Jack Benton, who was standing less than two metres away, holding a hunting rifle.

  ‘Well, Mr Smart Policeman,’ Benton said.

  ‘Don’t make things worse for yourself by shooting me.’

  Chris sounded unconvincing even to himself, and thought, why argue? Let him do what he’s come to do, only make it quick.

  ‘Who said anything about shooting? We’re going to take a little drive.’

  Chris had been threatened often enough in the past by men bigger and stronger than he was, angry men past caring who they hurt, though this was the first time he’d had a rifle pointed at him. He was surprised by his acceptance of it, by how little he cared. He asked if he could brush his teeth.

  Benton smiled. He seemed amused by the domestic scene, adopting a relaxed stance in the bathroom doorway, holding the rifle as though it weighed no more than a wooden spoon.

  Chris took a last look at his face in the mirror. It did not seem real, or even made of material substances - tissues, cells - ingredients that were, or had been living. He thought fleetingly of the bullock who’d died to provide him with the principal ingredient of the last supper he wouldn’t now be eating; but was as detached from this thought as from his own reflection. A mind soon to shut down forever should be concentrating on what was important. But how? And where to begin?

  Benton made him turn off the stove, take the meat out of the oven and put it in the fridge, wash the dishes he’d used, then fetch shorts and a towel - Chris told him he had no swim suit - all the time smiling as though he was preparing a treat.

  Benton pulled on close-fitting gloves before he got into the front passenger seat of Chris’s car, and sat with the gun across his knees, pointed at Chris’s stomach. Apart from the gun, he behaved as though they were about to embark on an ordinary, pleasant outing. From the driveway, Chris glanced at the front windows of the house next door. Lights were on behind drawn curtains. He heard the faint sounds of television.

  They drove in silence. Benton signalled for Chris to stop at the main path to the surf beach. It was dark enough to need a torch, the moon hidden behind banks of cloud, but if Benton had brought a torch with him, he didn’t switch it on. They began walking, Chris in front.

  He found some energy, and was suddenly curious enough to hazard a few questions.

  ‘Why was Margaret running away?’

  ‘We had an argument.’

  Chris felt the rifle prodding at his back. ‘What about?’ he asked.

  ‘What difference does it make? She was a bitch, but I never meant to kill her.’

  ‘That horse trailer was a good idea.’

  ‘I thought so too. You’re not known as a champion swimmer around these parts, are you?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Chris said. His mind filled with irrelevancies, such as a passage from the first chapter of Moby Dick, about how Ishmael’s cure for depression was to sign up on a whaling voyage. Not his solution, but potentially attractive to a lot of men. Chris understood that his embryonic solution - that luminous, two-sided river - would be stillborn, a dead hope known to no one, expressed to no one but himself.

  ‘Why did you leave the clothes behind?’ he asked.

  ‘That prick of a sergeant kept on at me about that. The truth is, I forgot about them.’

  Chris couldn’t see, but he guessed that Benton was still smiling.

  ‘Stop here,’ he ordered. ‘Take off your clothes and fold them, with your shoes on top.’

  ‘Why should I go swimming at night?’

  ‘Just do it.’

  The clouds parted, and there was enough moonlight to see his way into the shallows. All aspects of the sea repulsed him, and now the fear of death seemed strangely to be the least of these. Benton pushed him over, casually, as though expecting no resistance, and Chris offered none. He rolled from side to side as the shore break caught him. He felt glad that his mother had gone first.

  Benton steadied his rolling body with one foot, then, suddenly and fiercely, trod on the middle of his back.

  Chris had no time to take a desperate gulp of air. He tried to keep his eyes open, but the swirling sand hurt them too much. He raised his head, struggling at last, only to feel a boot kick him in the face. His nose and ears were full of water. His head jerked up once more. This time, no heavy foot thrust it back down.

  Aware of a momentary reprieve, Chris thrashed and tossed his head and managed to roll over. He could breathe. He spat and coughed, then sat up. The water was shallow, scarcely thirty centimetres, though deeper when a wave came. Chris half rolled, half crawled a little further from where he imagined Benton was still standing. He heard a woman’s voice.

  ‘Who’s that? Who’s there? Are you all right?’

  Hands were pulling him by the shoulders. The woman spoke again, calling loudly, ‘No!’

  Chris blacked out. When he came to, there were more voices, more shadows. He felt himself being lifted. He tried to speak, but couldn’t.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Chris woke in the middle of the night, startled awake by somebody taking hold of his wrist. A nurse was writing on her clipboard, pausing to regard him sternly. He whispered questions, remembering the thick, obliterating water, and before that the gun in Jack Benton’s hands. He understood that he’d been rescued, but not how, or by whom. He’d been carried somewhere, bumpily. Around him had been voices that he’d recognised, but could not put names to now.

  The nurse told him to go back to sleep. His throat and head hurt. There was water beside his bed and he managed to drink some.

  He woke again at dawn when the ward became active. Curtains were pulled back and a different nurse came to take his temperature and pulse. Chris asked who had brought him to the hospital, but she didn’t know. He asked when he might go home, and she replied, ‘Wait till doctor’s seen you.’ He found that his voice was hoarse, but serviceable. After he’d had breakfast and used the bathroom, he confirmed, by looking out the window, that it was the Geelong hospital he’d been brought to. He got back into bed and closed his eyes.

  Memories returned. He felt the gun again, in the middle of his back. Benton had waded in after him, still carrying the gun, and had stamped on him to force his head under the water. Chris asked himself why he hadn’t tried to break free, why he hadn’t dived through the shore break. Perhaps he would have been shot and b
led to death, but how could that have been worse than drowning? At least then his murder would have been known for what it was. Instead he hadn’t fought back, or tried to escape. The realisation made him feel cold; but then he recalled the woman’s voice, and this time he recognised it.

  The doctor was happy to discharge a patient whose bed was needed by somebody else. Anthea appeared, smiling atop a bunch of wild flowers. Chris thought he had seldom been so glad to see a human face. When the doctor told her that he had a temperature, that there was a possibility his glandular fever would recur, Anthea replied that Chris would be well looked after.

  Two hours later, Chris was settled in his own bed, though he kept protesting that he wasn’t sick. Voices rose and fell in the kitchen, through an open door. There was water by his bed and he hoisted himself on one elbow to drink it. His throat still felt sore and the cool liquid tasted good. He looked up to see two heads peering at him, two young faces which belonged to Anthea, his assistant constable, and Julie, who had saved his life.

  Of the many strange connections and streaks of luck that found their way into the light over the rest of that day, the budding friendship between Julie and Anthea was perhaps the least strange, the most easily accounted for.

  Chris smiled to himself, after they had fed him, demanding that he shouldn’t talk too much, after the first explanations had been given and received.

  Julie had taken Riza for a walk along the beach. It had suddenly come into her head that she wanted to, and that Riza wanted it as well. Perhaps it had been the droop in the young animal’s shoulder as she’d said goodnight, even though she’d stayed with him until after dark. She’d wondered if he missed the horses who’d kept him company in Theo’s paddock, and had decided to give him a treat. She’d unlocked the gate. By now, she knew the path through the tea-tree so well that she had no fear of stumbling in the dark. Riza’s pleasure and excitement had made it more than worthwhile.

  Julie had been about to begin the plunge down to the beach when a car pulled up. It had passed under a streetlight and she’d thought she recognised it. Two men had got out, little more than shadows, soon absorbed in the shadow of the dunes.

  Julie and Riza had run down onto the wet sand. The tide was going out, the sand glittering each time the sea pulled back from it. Julie turned in the direction away from the car; not that she felt afraid, but there was no need for her to bump into the two men, whatever their business on the beach. She ran with Riza on a short rope, loping easily beside her.

  They did not go far. It was soon after they’d turned and were heading back that Julie saw movement in the water, close to shore. She was puffed by that time, but she ran faster, calling out. A man ran ahead of her, up into the dunes.

  In Julie’s retelling of events, it was almost as though finding Chris on the beach had been Riza’s doing, that it had been Riza’s nose and intention she’d been following.

  When Anthea asked if she’d been scared, Julie replied, ‘I didn’t have time to be.’

  Jack Benton must have seen two shadow shapes as well, one human, the other large, confusing, inexplicable. For it struck Anthea, and sharply, that Benton knew nothing about Riza and his misadventures. It must have been a wild sight that he’d glimpsed in the lambent light. He’d probably been too startled to wait and shine his torch in order to be certain who, or what, was descending on him. If he’d done so, if he’d seen it was a young woman with a camel on a rope, there might have been two successful drownings, not one aborted one.

  Anthea smiled at Julie, recalling the day they’d sat facing filthy windows. She was proud that Julie had phoned her first. She found herself hoping that Julie would stay after the owners of the house came back. It would be a shame to have to move Riza again. Perhaps she could help Julie look for a small apartment and a job.

  The two women returned to their account of the night before. They’d needed extra people and a makeshift stretcher to carry Chris over the dunes. Frank Erwin was the obvious choice. He hadn’t wasted time, but thrown a folding camp bed into the back of his ute.

  It hadn’t been that difficult. Anthea had rung police headquarters, reciting the rego number of Jack Benton’s Landcruiser, and approximately where it might be if he’d decided to drive back to Swan Hill. She’d fetched gloves and a bag from the station, pausing for a second in the doorway and allowing herself to consider the fact that Chris had almost died. She’d thought of absence, loss, how suddenly it could occur, a floor falling away - that was how people sometimes put it. In her case, she thought, the floor would have stayed, the office would have stayed, and she would have gone on working in it.

  The loss would have been inside her. She rejoiced that it was not so.

  Anthea’s phone rang. Jack Benton had been arrested. The rifle had been found in the Landcruiser, and a pair of sandy boots, damp with seawater.

  They wondered aloud why Benton had made no attempt to hide the gun, to clean up. Perhaps he was arrogant enough to believe he could talk his way out of it. Perhaps he no longer cared.

  When Julie excused herself to go and visit Riza, Anthea said, ‘I’m sorry about your father.’

  She bit the inside of her cheek, wondering why she’d come out with it like that.

  After a tense moment, Chris shook his head again, then he smiled and thanked her.

  There were people who tended their own pasts and the dead who inhabited them like a garden so precious it left no room for intimacy with living human beings. Watching Chris, Anthea felt sure he had been one of them, and might now be able to change.

  The Ramsays came to visit. By now the news of the attempted murder and the rescue was all around the town. Bob Sinclair phoned; half an hour later, he dropped by with a note from Camilla. Frank Erwin brought a casserole, and the McIntyres a cake.

  Anthea decided to treat herself to her favourite walk. The tea-tree and wild flowers gave off a faint air of thanksgiving. Jack Benton had overplayed his hand, which could have ended in disaster, but had not.

  Stepping carefully around tree roots, Anthea decided that she rather liked mysteries when they turned out well. She thought of Margaret Benton then, and felt ashamed, but only for a moment. Margaret was dead, and Anthea had never known her, but they’d done their best to find out what happened and bring her killer to justice.

  The kayak man was out there, paddling slowly across the seagrass, as though no destination could mean more than the one he’d chosen. But what kind of destination was it, to paddle round and round and then return, repeating the same movements both before and after? Anthea bridled, feeling a spurt of irritation of the kind she used to feel for Chris.

  She let it go. Her neighbour was who he was, and most probably oblivious of her.

  Swans were feeding. Clumps of Moonah framed the bay. Anthea stood still and listened to the swans calling, then reached out to pick different kinds of wattle. She’d become so used to the varied and surprising offerings that she could hardly conceive now of walking into a florist’s and paying for a bunch of flowers.

  She must have taken longer to get back than she’d thought. When she crossed the road, the kayaker was pulling up in his driveway. Anthea watched as, with smooth, unhurried movements, he began unhooking ropes. He turned and met her eyes and smiled.

  THIRTY-SIX

  They had a party in the paddock, so that Riza could join in. Jack Benton had pleaded guilty to the murder of his wife, and there was much, besides, to celebrate.

  Julie did herself up like an Afghan princess. Camilla wore the multi-coloured blanket as a cloak. Wielding her crutches with quiet determination, she hobbled from Bob Sinclair’s car to the chair he placed for her underneath the Moonah. Her nurse was there as well, having bought Camilla, following instructions, a new hat in green and gold. Julie had decorated the hat with seabirds’ feathers picked up by Brian Laidlaw.

  They were a pair of butterflies, Frank said. Laidlaw fetched Camilla a plate of cakes and a cup of tea from the trestle table covered with a white c
loth that Frank and Cynthia had set up in a sheltered corner of the paddock. All agreed that for Brian Laidlaw to attend a social gathering was nothing short of a miracle. From Laidlaw’s expression, it seemed he thought so too.

  Julie whipped Anthea’s police cap off her head. Laughing, Anthea chased her round the paddock and stole it back again. Julie had curled ribbons into Riza’s hair, but not too many - he was a camel, after all.

  Frank was in his element. He might have been born to play host to just such a gathering. He and Chris talked briefly about the man who’d crossed his paddock; it seemed he’d been an ordinary tripper after all.

  Cynthia had been cooking all morning. Chris had provided salads, relishes and chutneys. Anthea had made filo pastry rolls. They drank cordial, beer and wine, and toasted one another, laughing and yet solemn when one or another of them glanced up at the sandhills.

  A carload of city people, passing on the dirt road, lost and wanting directions, stopped to stare. The driver, a man, looked embarrassed, barely polite as Chris pointed the way to the main road. The woman passenger was more friendly, smiling at the fancy dress and touching her companion lightly on the arm. In a story with more than a gesture towards the surreal, these strangers would have been invited to join in. As it was, Chris watched them go, dust rising and settling in their wake.

  If eyes lingered on the dunes, no one spoke of the body that had, for a short time, been buried there. And if Chris Blackie glanced up more often than any of the others, and his glances lasted longer, this was scarcely to be wondered at.

  Laughter drew Chris back to the present. Riza was dribbling a red ball, using all four feet like a soccer champion. Frank Erwin was looking proud and laughing heartily, the ball having been his idea.

  Chris looked from one pair, one trio to another, as they grouped and reformed. He thought it wrong that anyone should be sad on such an occasion, and he wasn’t sad. He accepted the congratulations of those gathered around him with good grace, while Julie wore praise like a bright and shimmering mantle. Julie’s eyes had lost their bitter, hunted look. She laughed immoderately when Frank made a wild swipe at the red ball and missed.