Through a Camel's Eye

by Dorothy Johnston

  It was an afternoon when you could feel the ground warming underneath your feet. The saddle was back where Camilla had first seen it, gracing the fence on the side furthest from the road. Each mirror caught the light and shared it.

  Riza ignored the saddle, having no idea that it was for him, while Anthea walked over to admire it.

  She fingered the leather, which felt strong and supple, catching her reflection more times than made her feel quite comfortable - blue uniform, dark hair, pale face, blue uniform. This time, there seemed quite a lot between the lines.

  Chris had advised his assistant to go back to Melbourne for detective training. He’d said she would be good at it, that she was a natural. What did that mean - a natural? - and how much detecting had she really done?

  Chris was loyal and encouraging. But Anthea had to work out what she wanted. If she left Queenscliff, she would never come back again, except as a visitor. A part of her still missed the city, missed the unpredictability of it, how an evening begun one way could end up spent in quite another, with surprising and interesting results. And there was the question, also, of what Chris would do, in the long term - in the short term, she knew. He’d told her that he wanted to take extended leave, to travel overseas.

  Anthea could not imagine the station without him. Who would do the garden, for example? This suddenly seemed to be a question worth asking, whose answer might influence her own decision.

  Anthea turned away from her multiple reflections. Someone would have to fill the gap, unless they closed the station. This was another possibility, of course. If that happened, would Chris care? Would she?

  In the pocket of her jacket was the drawing Camilla had done for Chris in the hospital. Anthea had discovered it when she’d put the jacket on, and could not recall exactly how it had got there. She unfolded it, glancing towards Camilla, who was leaning forward, smiling and watching Frank playing with Riza. Next to her, Brian Laidlaw, in deeper shadow, was watching her, watching over her, ready to move if she needed anything.

  The drawing was both more and less accomplished than Anthea remembered. The seashore was a single line with waves above it, the sun a pimpled circle sprouting a few more lines, the remaining background tentative rather than assured.

  But with the camel and the girl-child, something more had taken place. True, they were simple lines as well, stick figures that might as easily have been produced by, as about, a child. But there was something charming in the way the camel’s long, straight legs were reflected in the girl’s straight back. A pride was there, and the joy of anticipation. She could not think the camel very old, though full grown certainly, easily able to take the weight of a birthday child. The child’s head and the camel’s - was Anthea mistaken in finding a resemblance here as well? A chin raised towards the horizon, a nose rather longer than the norm.

  Anthea looked up and Chris was there, solid and inscrutable, in front of her. She held out the drawing and he took it, then nodded in Camilla’s direction.

  Camilla was laughing at something Bob Sinclair had just said. Or else she was laughing at the spectacle, from Frank and Riza, and Julie, who had joined them, and was teasing Riza with the ball, to Cynthia Erwin waiting on Brian Laidlaw, and Laidlaw’s look of amazed effrontery as he accepted a cake.

  Anthea thought of comfort and compassion, and how they need not be withheld, and how these were moments worth preserving.

  A week later, Chris was strolling along the bank of the Murray River, experiencing not the delighted surprise of his first encounter, but the more assured pleasure of a treat anticipated, one that would not let him down. Before making the trip to Swan Hill, he’d applied for, and been granted, six months leave. He knew why his application had been dealt with swiftly. He’d explained to Anthea that his decision was in no way a reflection on her, either as a colleague or a person. She’d listened and nodded, then made a face and said she’d miss him. He’d tried to joke about it, replying she couldn’t get rid of him that easily. He did not want to think about his replacement, temporary or otherwise.

  Lights winked on the far bank, the one belonging to New South Wales. They seemed to beckon him, humbly, reachably. A woman’s body had been buried not so far along. He did not want to think about her any more. It was enough to carry the memory of Jack Benton standing over him with a gun, to feel again that contemptuous thrust of a boot against his bare back. It could well be that he was not cut out to be a police officer, and that all these years he’d been cushioned from the realisation by a small town which had accepted him as its keeper of the occasionally interrupted peace. He did not have to find an answer to that now. He had not lied to Anthea. He would come back, once his leave was over, and then he would decide.

  Lights formed themselves into faces and dissolved again. There was his mother, whose grave would never be disturbed, or not in his lifetime. Her face split into two and was replaced by those of Anthea and Julie, laughing at him from the other side of their youthful energy and hope. And lastly, there was Camilla and that camel - words that ran together in his mind. Strange how the likeness hadn’t occurred to him till now. Chris had booked himself a ticket to Europe with a stopover in Cairo. Its bargain price was only half the motivation. He would spend a few days in a country where Riza’s ancestors were native, not a feral pest. He would take a trip along the Nile. Perhaps that would truly lift his spirits. Perhaps then he might even learn to see the world through a camel’s eye.

  Can’t wait for more from Dorothy Johnston? Here’s the first chapter from her second sea-change mystery, The Swan Island Connection.

  All children were a mixture of innocence and guile, Chris thought, but the innocence had been squashed out of Bobby McGilvrey unnaturally young. Chris Blackie, senior constable in charge of the small, some would say redundant, Queenscliff police station, was in the habit of qualifying his impressions and his thoughts. He did so automatically; and for the last four months he’d lived mostly in his own company, with only himself to talk to and share impressions with, apart from the small practicalities of daily life. He’d been travelling in countries where, though everyone who dealt with tourists had at least a smattering, English was not a language in which they chose to express themselves. Though politeness ran deep, he’d too often watched the pained expression with which some poor river guide attempted to follow what he was trying to convey. He was sensitive enough not to continue inflicting embarrassment, so he’d given up. He wished now that he’d kept a diary, but it was too late for that.

  Rivers of the World, he could have called his trip, and the irony would have been apparent to no one but himself. He’d become fascinated by the Nile, and, though planning only to make a stopover in Egypt on his way to Europe, he’d ended up staying in Africa for almost the whole of his leave.

  Now Australian rivers looked like trickling drains, and Chris was back on the Barwon, a river he’d ignored for most of his life, trying to work out what to do about Bobby McGilvrey.

  There’d been a dolphin in the estuary for almost two months. It happened from time to time that dolphins, seals as well, came upriver to fish; but none, in his memory, had stayed so long. Familiarity had led to mischief; or perhaps the boys who’d stoned the dolphin, then tried to run it down with Dad’s borrowed boat, would have done so however long it had been there. Dealing with them wasn’t his problem, thankfully, since Barwon Heads was in the next municipality. But Bobby lived in Queenscliff, and it was to Chris that Bobby had reported the attacks.

  In retaliation, the boys had threatened to kill him. This was not surprising. Bobby was a loner who did not appear to be afraid of making enemies. He did what he pleased and took orders from no one, so far as Chris could see. He’d been paddling about on the bay and the river in his small red kayak since he was six years old. He’d rigged up a trailer for the kayak out of a discarded pram, and carted it about behind his bike the way other kids carted surf boards. Chris believed he’d stolen the money to buy the kayak. He could pass off the deat
h threat as children’s chatter, but something told him he had better not.

  Bobby McGilvrey was not a boy to give away information, and there were aspects of the business with the dolphin that he was keeping to himself. Chris identified with the child’s reserve, but the identification resided in a part of himself that he did not wish to examine closely. Examining uncomfortable emotions had been a large part of the reason for his extended leave, and he was aware that he’d returned with only a small amount of introspection having been achieved.

  Bobby appeared without his bike or kayak, his dog Max walking close to heel.

  When Chris said hello, Bobby regarded him solemnly and did not return the greeting. ‘I’m worried about Max,’ he said.

  Max was a Kelpie cross, swift as black lightning and Bobby’s only regular companion. The boys he’d dobbed in over the dolphin had threatened to kill him as well.

  Chris knew that Bobby’s house had no proper yard. The back gate was falling off its hinges, and, even if it hadn’t been, the fence was falling down as well. The boy wasn’t allowed to bring his dog inside.

  ‘I could keep Max at the station for a while,’ he said.

  ‘He wouldn’t stay there. He’d come looking for me.’

  ‘I could tie him up.’

  Bobby looked thoughtful, considering the risks.

  Chris said, ‘I expect the boys will forget about it after a while.’

  He was about to add that boys did get sick of whatever torment they happened to be fixed on; something new always came along. But before he could frame the words, Bobby turned on his heel and walked away. Neither boy nor dog looked back.

  Next morning, a Saturday, Chris was enjoying a mug of tea on the station’s back veranda when he heard shouting and a dog barking wildly.

  Max charged up the road pursued by a bunch of boys, their leader out the front, whooping and yelling, waving a flaming branch.

  Chris opened the gate and Max ran in.

  ‘You lot, in my office,’ he told the boys.

  He tossed the burning bit of wood into a damp garden bed, kicked earth over it and stamped it down.

  Chris locked the five boys in - not strictly legal, but they deserved to be frightened and he wasn’t having them run away. He and Bobby spent the next fifteen minutes soaping petrol off Max; they had to rinse and rinse to get rid of the stuff, and though they used warm water, Max would not stop shivering. Chris gagged on the smell, but Bobby, working with careful concentration, seemed oblivious.

  He spoke only when necessary. ‘Be careful not to get soap in his eyes, Mr Blackie.’

  The boys were subdued by the time Chris got to them. He made them dictate separate statements while he typed. None was allowed to hide behind silence, or their leader. He made each one spell his name, although he already knew them all. These were boys who’d thought it would be fun to stone a dolphin and set a dog on fire. He talked to them about multiple offences while they affected boredom. Another hour or so and he would break that pose, Chris thought; but he had better things to do. He printed out copies and made each boy sign his name on all of them.

  Chris would not necessarily have thought of Olly Parkinson as the one to help out with Max, but when he happened to bump into Olly outside the small supermarket, it seemed a sensible solution.

  Olly hadn’t lived in Queenscliff for long, and Chris had come into contact with him mainly as his assistant constable’s boyfriend. He knew that Olly’s cottage had a secure yard and that Olly worked from home. He was a keen kayaker and Chris had often seen him exploring the bay.

  When Chris raised the problem of Max, Olly said he’d think about it. Chris said it would only be temporary and repeated what he’d tried to tell Bobby, that the gang would forget about Max after a while.

  Olly had seen Bobby out kayaking, and they’d said hello to one another. Chris tried to indicate that this was a good start. Most newcomers, unless they went around with their ears gummed up, got to hear things pretty quickly.

  Bobby’s father beat him. Chris had reported the beatings and had alternately tried to persuade and threaten Phil McGilvrey into treating, not only Bobby, but all his children decently. He knew that neither his threats nor his attempts at persuasion had had the desired effect. He also knew that for Bobby to be put in foster care, away from Max, would be a worse punishment than being beaten by his father.

  Chris watched Olly walk away and told himself that here was a man who could not be rushed; Olly would come to a decision in his own time.

  Olly Parkinson and Anthea Merritt sat drinking a pre-dinner glass of champagne on Anthea’s small balcony. Olly did not ask what the occasion was. It had been a pleasant surprise, as he got to know his neighbour, to discover that Anthea produced small occasions for celebration, that she had the gift of making ordinary evenings special. He feared the loss of his privacy, but this fear was gradually being replaced by pleasure in Anthea’s undemanding company, pleasure in the feel and touch and smell of her, the way his days were coming to be shaped by anticipation of the night ahead.

  Anthea never asked unwelcome questions. She wasn’t at all his idea of a police officer. She laughed and flushed when he told her this, not quite pleased, but not offended either. He wondered what he would have to do in order to offend her. She never pushed him, or appeared, apparently by accident, when he was on his way somewhere. She’d given him to understand that she’d been hurt by a relationship that had ended not so long ago, and that her appointment at Queenscliff police station had been taken up reluctantly. But she seemed to have accepted where she was, and to be making a life for herself in the town.

  Somehow or other, Olly had found himself on Anthea’s balcony sipping champagne as the sun went down, and one thing had led to another. He refused to ask himself: what next? He simply enjoyed the quality of the wine, the food Anthea prepared, and the company, both in bed and out of it.

  When they spoke about Bobby McGilvrey, Anthea was careful not to repeat her boss’s request. She told him all she knew about the boy, which wasn’t much.

  Bobby’s self-reliance appealed to Olly. He agreed that Max would be no trouble and the arrangement would be temporary.

  Anthea sipped her wine, then bent forward to light two candles. She asked Olly if he felt like eating outside, or preferred to go in. It was cool, but windless on the balcony. Olly could smell the seagrass. From time to time he heard swans honking, very faintly. He noticed how the candles, perhaps because he had got used to the twilight, perhaps because his senses were more alert than usual that evening, played over Anthea’s strong features. She wasn’t smiling; indeed her expression might have been described as grave; yet there was a glow to it, a kind of promise or assurance that he couldn’t name and didn’t want to, yet felt drawn towards.

  ‘Let’s stay out here,’ he said. ‘Do you want any help?’

  Anthea shook her head. This was already their custom. Olly would do the washing up.

  She served linguine with local mussels in a spiced tomato sauce, and they ate for a few minutes without speaking, except for Olly’s murmured praise.

  A gunshot bounced over the water, echoing, fooling the ears, producing sensations that, while clearly auditory, seemed visual as well.

  Olly looked up. ‘They’re practising again.’

  Anthea lifted her chin in the direction of the gunfire, to the narrow beach which, in the gathering darkness, was all that could be seen of Swan Island.

  The shot was followed, in quick succession, by four more.

  She turned and looked at Olly. ‘Apparently there’s a special kind of snail that lives in the seagrass. It’s important because the fish, the baby whiting, eat it. Well, the lead in the bullets has been turning all the snails into males. The marine scientists didn’t know why their numbers were decreasing, so they did a study, and that’s what they found.’

  ‘I don’t suppose they’ve listened to the scientists and started firing inland,’ Olly said. ‘I heard something related to that too. Th
ere’s a huge problem with algae taking over and smothering the seagrass. The common assumption is that crop fertilisers and cattle manure are responsible, but those snails did their bit to keep it down. They live on algae. It’s their main food source.’

  ‘So we need the snails back. What are they shooting at anyway? I mean it’s hardly cut-outs in the shape of terrorists when they’re firing over the water, is it?’

  Olly made a face and shook his head.

  Anthea said, ‘It might be time to move inside. It’s a good thing my bedroom walls are thick.’

  Olly smiled. ‘Dessert won’t spoil, will it?’

  ‘Oh no. Not at all.’

  Anthea listened with her head on one aside as a last shot followed them through the French doors. She turned over her shoulder to say, ‘You know, Chris’s lived here all his life, and he’s been a policeman for the last fifteen years. But he doesn’t have a clue what goes on over there. They never tell him anything.’

  Olly related another story later, over coffee and citrus tart, which they ate sitting up in bed with the doona over their legs, and a small table beside them, holding a carafe and mugs, a jug of cream. The story concerned a rich yachtsman who’d arrived at the marina one weekend to find the sail of his ocean-going yacht full of bullet holes.

  Anthea leant over to add cream and sugar to her coffee.

  ‘Did he get compensation?’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  Anthea smiled. She knew what she did not doubt, with Olly’s warm brown shoulder next to hers, Olly’s easy way of being with her, and his way of showing, by small words and touches, that he liked her, and that liking grew each time they shared a meal and went to bed in the middle of it. Anthea was used to being criticised by men, but Olly never criticised her. He made her feel that what she did was right.