The White Tower

by Dorothy Johnston

  ‘The collective wisdom,’ I said to Ivan, ‘is that Niall has to have jumped from a public gallery because it’s impossible to get into any of the restricted areas or the outside platforms next to them.’

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘The head security guy. He explained about their access cards. To get to any restricted area a technician has to go through three doors with one of these access cards. When you’ve finished your shift, you hand it in. They never leave the building.’

  ‘Who keeps a record of what technicians are in the building when?’

  ‘There’s a guard on the ground floor who lets them in. He enters it all up on computer. I asked him about cards going missing, and he said that if anyone loses a card, the computer cancels it immediately.’

  Ivan chuckled. ‘Remember Clinton Haines?’

  Haines’s nickname was the Virus King. A few years ago one of his viruses, called Nofrills, had hit a thousand Telstra computers at once and wiped them clean.

  ‘Do you think something like that on a smaller scale could have been the means for Niall to get hold of an access card, or to get himself into a secure bit of the tower?’ I asked, glancing across at Ivan as the road levelled out.

  Ivan grinned. ‘Say he did—would that security dude have admitted it to you? No way. Far better to pretend that everything was running ­normally. No blips in security whatever.’

  ‘He may not have known. Depends on how it was done. He might be as much in the dark as we are.’

  Ivan didn’t comment on my ‘we’. Good, I thought. He’s in a good mood. I hope nothing happens tonight to turn him off again.

  He bent over to unstrap Katya from her car seat, while I breathed in the long night breath of the mountain. A mild night, air to open your skin to, herald if not yet promise of summer. The winter hadn’t been particularly severe, damp and grey rather, recalcitrant fogs that hung around till lunchtime, rain rather than pipe-bursting cold.

  Ivan ran towards the fence, kicking a pretend soccer ball to Peter. He dribbled the invisible ball towards a hole in the fence and shot for goal with a great flourish of his long right leg.

  Peter cried, ‘Not fair!’ But then he laughed, a high childish laugh of excitement that Ivan was playing with him, the hole in the fence for a moment lit by a searching arc light from the crow’s nest of the tower.

  ‘Mum! Be on my team!’

  I kicked the imaginary ball to him, and he shot for goal.

  ‘Everything’s so bright,’ I said.

  There was a display of antique telephones in the foyer of the tower. Ivan made a beeline for an early model Ericsson, explaining to Peter in a loud voice, ‘Now this fella here was called the coffee grinder.’

  We left him to enjoy the history of telephony.

  On the way up in the lift—Peter was still young enough to get a kick out of pressing all the buttons—I recalled how, when Ivan and I had met, he’d been renting a leaky weatherboard bungalow in Turner, a gloomy house surrounded by grevillea so overgrown that it obscured all the windows, a house festering inside with unwashed socks and dishes, forgotten bacon in the fridge so old it had grown a magician’s cloak. His pride had been a computer room that was part museum, half a wall covered with a black and white print of Alexander Graham Bell.

  Katya’s eyes widened with alarm as the lift shot up to the viewing galleries. Peter swayed from side to side and teased her. ‘Woooh!’ Katya opened her mouth to howl. The lift clunked to a stop. Peter ran forward through the doors without waiting for them to open fully, then he froze.

  Though the floor was level under our feet, we seemed to be on an irreversible slope down and out towards a fifty metre drop.

  The lake shone grey and silver. The water spout shot floodlit water high into the air. Commonwealth and Kings Avenue bridges were luminous bracelets, curved and sparkling, the kind children might demand at a show or kiosk, flash around fixed to their wrists, great hoops and whorls of light.

  Katya held out her hands to the lights through the double glazing. A stone might fall from the bracelet, a single, irrecoverable jewel.

  Peter pulled me by the elbow. ‘I don’t like it Mum.’

  Ignoring his anxiety, I stood staring through the glass, mentally stretching out my own hands towards the shining drop. The tower was a spectacular upended Titan in its last freezing moments. And we weren’t nearly at the top. I’d imagined Niall’s fall as dark, private, anonymous. Much stranger, standing here, to recall how nobody had seen or heard it.

  And before—Niall perhaps passing the point where I was now, looking out, or, eyes down, heading for the doors to the gallery. Once outside, no barrier beyond an iron fence, did he look down and note the awkward jutting of the lower platform, feel a lifting of the heart, perhaps, at this final challenge?

  ‘Mum!’ said Peter urgently.

  We walked around to the small kiosk which sold souvenirs as well as drinks, chips and confectionery. A solitary man was sitting at a table, in front of him a polystyrene cup and a large, expensive camera. A tripod lay folded at his feet. He looked up at our approach and nodded.

  I nodded back, understanding his impulse to make contact. The emptiness was unnerving, the walls cold, kiosk lights, lolly papers, stuffed koalas unnaturally bright.

  I bought a packet of salt and vinegar chips and asked the woman behind the counter if the nights were always as quiet as this.

  ‘Well, there’s the weekends,’ she replied.

  I returned to the table where I’d left Peter holding his sister. The man with the camera had gone. Peter munched through his chips, sitting with his back to the glass. Working out his own method of coping with a grim situation, he took the car keys out of my bag and jiggled them in front of Katya, who laughed and tried to grab them.

  ‘I’ll take you back down to Dad now.’

  We found Ivan, whose eyes were glazed over with the pleasure of a dozen unexpected antiques. ‘Did you know that Melbourne had the telephone less than a year after Bell’s initial breakthrough?’

  ‘Amazing.’

  ‘Don’t be like that Sandy. A sense of national pride would do you no harm at all.’

  ‘I promise to work on it,’ I said. ‘In the meantime, I need to take a look at the outside gallery. Be back in fifteen minutes.’

  ‘Take your time,’ said Ivan. ‘We’ll be fine right here.’

  I don’t know what I had expected—a wind like that morning when I interviewed Olga Birtus and Mikhail Litowski? There was nothing you could call a wind. I walked over to the fence and stared out between its iron bars. Had Niall done that before he climbed them, feeling at last that constriction of any kind was dreadful, not to be borne, the world too bright, replete with trivial illumination? And then, taking step after step, had he climbed up and over, into the night sky and beyond it, taking what he needed for the moment, letting go the rest?

  This time, I took the stairs back to the ground floor. On the floor adja­cent to the broadcasting platform, there was only a small area open to the public. More windows, though smaller at this level and set higher in the wall, a rope across the walkway with a No Admittance sign hanging from it, on the other side of the rope two steel doors whose signs proclaimed Strictly No Admittance. As I stood next to the stairwell watching the doors, a guard came out of one and stared straight at me, not with hostility, but surprised to see me there. Perhaps I was the only visitor to use the stairs for quite a while. The guard was a heavily built, middle-aged man. He went on staring, then seemed about to ask me what I was doing. I turned and continued my progress down the stairs.

  . . .

  A message from Brook waited for us on the answering machine.

  ‘Found an interesting connection Sandra. Catch you tomorrow. I’m out for the rest of the evening.’

  I phoned back immediately and got his machine. Where did out mean, if not with Sophie? Why hadn’t he called my mobile, and why was his switched off? Brook persisted in his dislike of mobiles, using them only when he had
to. In some ways, he was infuriatingly old-fashioned.

  The phone display had made Ivan restless. He’d talked about it all the way home in the car. He was too keyed up to sleep, and so was I.

  ‘We could check out that friendship society for ourselves.’

  ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

  Their membership database was easy to break into. We found Niall Howley’s name on a list, then began looking for any mention of the concert Bernard said had been the subject of the society’s letter to Niall, better still a copy of the letter itself.

  I scrolled through lists of dates, figures and names. My eyes were beginning to blur when I spotted Niall’s again. He was credited with having sold a book of tickets to the Sydney concert, at a cost of nearly a thousand dollars.

  He’d done well. Who had he sold them to? And, in spite of what he’d told his father, had he gone himself?

  Success was a rush of energy we hadn’t felt for ages. Ivan’s black eyes shone. Who was it said that hacking was like sex? That night it felt like this was our particular discovery. I felt the long night breath of the mountain once again, in my throat, on Ivan’s hair and beard. But then we left both the mountain and its tower behind, entering another, a surprising yet familiar space, where other mountains might appear or disappear, tricking eyes and minds, enticing human beings.

  We stepped once again into that limbo land of snoopers, and I knew a part of me would want to return every night, now I’d been reminded of it, to send my furtive melody out along the wires, see who tripped on my filaments of song.

  Ivan whispered, ‘Sandy, it’s okay. We’re not late for a bus.’

  ‘I always think—’

  ‘They were asleep in thirty seconds. They’re both knackered.’

  ‘So are we.’

  I took care of my own clothes, got my legs around him. Ivan was a big boat, second-hand and weatherworn, not yet a shipwreck in an unknown sea.

  Sex was skin and blood and letting go, not bothering any more about how you looked because up so close it didn’t matter. Hacking was up close too, so close there was no space for doubt or self reflection. Hacking was physical the way that skin was, skin under the palms of our hands, Ivan’s and mine, the slippery, unexpected roughness. Perhaps the idea that the human will, or spirit, could leave the body, do its work and then return, had something to do with it. The body not diminished, but enhanced.

  The surprise in Ivan’s thick white skin was like the surprise of unexpected pain, yet his body had no sharpness to speak of. It was round and solid. A certain rivalry proper to pleasure stood between us. He shut his eyes and let me take the lead. I tangled my fingers in his chest hair, and he came like that. And then without me having to ask he opened his eyes again, face still concentrated, eyes wide and black as Katya’s when I fed her.

  . . .

  In the unforgiving light of morning, Moira Howley sat and heard me out, folding and refolding her cold hands.

  When I’d finished, she said in a small voice, ‘Perhaps Bernard was mistaken.’

  ‘You knew Niall was a member of the society didn’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I did.’

  ‘And you knew he was helping them raise money?’

  ‘Do you mean the concert tickets? As a matter of fact, Niall was worried. He was very busy, he wasn’t sure if he had time, so—so I helped him.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I sold them for him.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me that before?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Sandra. I should have, I know. It’s just that—I wish you could understand what it was like those weeks after Niall broke up with Natalie. Something was upsetting him, eating away at him, and he wouldn’t say—and he and Bernard—well, they went from arguing to not speaking to one another, and back to arguing, and I was at my wits’ end trying to figure out what to do about it. Then a letter came one day with the society’s name on the envelope, and I asked Niall about it. I was careful to choose a time when his father wasn’t home. And Niall said there were these tickets he was supposed to sell. I was so pleased to be able to help him.’

  ‘If there turned out to be more to it than selling tickets, that wouldn’t surprise you?’

  ‘I want to believe the best of my son—does that seem so strange to you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘I want to believe there was more to him than—well, if I say Niall was self-centred, I don’t want you to take it the wrong way. I think he was as kind to me as he was capable of being. It’s just that, when that letter came, I can’t tell you how pleased I was.’

  I hadn’t found Moira’s name in any of the lists, but I asked her anyway. ‘Have you ever been a member?’

  ‘I used to be. Bernard and I had a fight over it and I let my membership lapse.’

  ‘Did you and Niall talk about the concert?’

  ‘He was grateful when I sold the tickets, surprised that I managed to sell so many, I think. His hopeless old mother was good for something after all.’

  ‘What was the money for?’

  ‘We never talked about that.’

  I took a deep breath and said, ‘You need to make a decision. You need to tell me whether you want me to stop now, whether I’ve found out enough about the MUD.’

  Moira hunched her shoulders obstinately. ‘I can’t say goodbye because I don’t know who I’m supposed to be saying goodbye to.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Forget about all this for a minute. Niall was your son. You knew him better than anybody. Say goodbye to the boy you knew.’

  She shrugged again, and then, without giving me an answer, began walking to the door. Okay, I thought, I’m being dismissed.

  I was halfway down the front steps when she called me back.

  ‘Sandra? I have some money of my own.’ She smiled, embarrassed. ‘I mean, I couldn’t have hired you if’—her voice changed and she began speaking precisely, choosing words with care—‘if I’d had to use my husband’s money. Perhaps you ought to go and meet this man Fallon, talk to him.’

  ‘You want me to go to Ireland?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Well for a start, I don’t think he would see me. And even if he did, what would he tell me, face to face? If Niall was involved with a Republican group, and Fallon was perhaps involved in it with him, there’s no way he’d admit that to me.’

  Moira was nodding as if her mind had moved faster than mine, and she was waiting for me to catch up with her.

  ‘He’s answered my questions up to a point, but he hasn’t offered ­anything.’

  ‘I think it’s worth a try,’ said Moira firmly. ‘Nothing Niall did, or didn’t do, will make me love him less, or grieve less for him. At least I’m not afraid of that. And I’d rather know.’

  She looked me up and down, nodding as if to say I might not be ideal, but I’d have to do.

  ‘I’d go myself if I thought I could manage it.’ Taking my silence, if not for assent, then the wish to do as she asked, she smiled. ‘So you go Sandra. Beard this Fallon in his den.’

  Her smile was soft, encouraging, with a deal of calculation in it.

  I didn’t feel like explaining my family situation to her. I said I’d think about it.

  . . .

  That evening, when Peter and Katya were asleep, I went into the office and sat down by myself to puzzle over her proposal that I go to Ireland.

  Ivan was out with some of his work mates. I was glad. I wanted to concentrate on Moira. So much ground seemed to have shifted during our conversation that I had difficulty burrowing my way back to how I’d felt before it, to the sort of person I’d thought I was dealing with.

  The difference wasn’t in Moira’s feelings for Niall, but I was sure now that she didn’t want emotional support from me, much less someone to help her understand a MUD.

  Why had she hired me? And what was her real reason for wanting to send me to Ireland? She couldn’t believe anyone would tell me anything, and I might stum
ble on, or draw attention to, matters that were better left alone. Is this what Bernard had meant when he’d tried to ­dissuade me from asking any questions at all?

  If Moira had been lying to me, what were Bernard’s views underneath his stiff, censorious front? He’d painted Niall’s membership of the friendship society in the worst possible light. Was that what he really thought?

  None of this explained what use I could be. On the other hand, why was I expecting Moira to behave methodically, to consider each step before she took it? She mustn’t know much. If she knew, for instance, that Niall and Sorley Fallon were members of a Republican group, and that Fallon had turned on her son for political reasons, she wouldn’t want me fronting up to Fallon to confirm it. Fallon would laugh in my face, or worse.

  I remembered Moira’s quick, sarcastic comments about the Irish fighting the English in Castle of Heroes. She had assumed immediately that her son would be on the right side, and one of the best.

  Perhaps she knew no more than that something had gone wrong—not what, and nothing about who else might have been involved. Perhaps she feared the worst, that Niall had betrayed the cause in some way unforgivable even to himself. What she wanted from me was to seek out some reassurance that this had not been so. She feared the worst, yet wanted to discover otherwise. She wanted me to come back and tell her that her son had not failed anyone, that he’d been a hero.

  Again, I recalled the computer image, the body at the bottom of the cliff. Did the clothes, the position of the body, mean something to Moira that they didn’t to me, or to the police? Moira Howley stood on the crumbling edge of a castle wall herself. What did she see when she stared down?

  There was birth, illness, death, a continuity that, for me anyway, when my mother died, had been like little bits of vertebrae, once part of a healthy skeleton, scraps of crushed bone to scavenge and to cherish.

  Was this what Moira wanted me for, to unearth a bit of shin bone from the compost? Perhaps she’d changed, or perhaps I’d been slow to pick up on the clues she’d given me. She was more resilient, and her desire to know ran deeper than I’d acknowledged, either to her or to myself.