Murder Song. Jon Cleary

before then?’

      ‘It’s impossible. What’s so serious?’

      But he said he didn’t want to talk about it over the phone, he would expect to see her in an hour. She hung up, stood for a moment looking out at the rain-drenched gardens without seeing them. He had sounded worried; more importantly, he had sounded as if he needed her. Almost every night, in the last moments before falling asleep, she asked herself why she had fallen so desperately in love with him. She had met many more physically attractive men, as many who were more attractive in their personality and their approach to women. But if love could be defined in definite terms, it would have died years ago: the psychoanalysts would have turned it into a clinical science. She had been in love before, with three men before her husband, and she knew in her heart, if not in her head, that part of the joy of love was that one could never truly fathom it. She no longer loved her husband: that was something she was definite about, had been for months before she had met Brian Boru. But there could be no thought of divorce from the Prime Minister, not while he was in office.

      She could hear the chatter behind her in the main rooms of the house. Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister’s Sydney residence, had never been as much a favourite with her and Philip as it had been with previous Prime Ministers and their wives; she always compared it unfavourably with Admiralty House next door, the Governor-General’s residence. Both were harbourside mansions built by nineteenth-century men with delusions of grandeur; Gibbes, the Collector of Customs who had built Admiralty House, had had grander delusions than Feez, the merchant of Kirribilli House. Both the Norvals had aspirations to grandeur, though Anita kept hers more secret. It was difficult to compete with her husband’s conceit, but up till now she had not discouraged him in his ambition to some day be Governor-General. It would be even more difficult, as the wife of the G-G, to get a divorce.

      She went out of the small study where she had taken the call and back to the main reception room. She paused in the doorway, caught the last of the gossip before this charity morning tea broke up. It was for one of her favourite charities, homes for deaf children, and she was glad the children couldn’t hear the gossip.

      ‘Have you met her husband? His idea of repartee is to pass wind.’

      ‘Why do we need men? I’m beginning to understand lesbians.’

      ‘That writer over there, what’s-her-name, she’s one, you know.’

      ‘Really? I thought they all looked like punk rockers.’

      ‘I tried to congratulate her on her new book, but she got in first. She writes her own reviews, so they say.’

      ‘They sleep in separate rooms,’ Anita heard from another corner. ‘She tells me they make love on their anniversary each year. I’m surprised they know where the essentials still are.’

      The women began to file past Anita Norval, chattering, murmuring, gushing. She found groups of women no worse than groups of men; the men were a little more deferential to her, paying awkward court to her beauty and the position of her husband, if they were conservatives. Gossip was endemic to both sexes; the men varied it by trying to buy or sell influence with it. There were no men here this morning and she was glad of that; she did not want to compare any of them with Brian Boru. It was a weakness she recognized in herself that she was always comparing people. It had started when she had first gone into radio over twenty years ago.

      Penelope Debbs, the last to leave, stood before her. ‘I always enjoy coming to Kirribilli House, Anita. You’re so fortunate.’

      ‘It comes with the territory, as they say.’ In her days in radio, when she had hosted her own chat show, she had perhaps used too many American expressions; she had cured herself of that since Philip had gone into politics, but some still clung. They put her very much on side with Philip’s minders, all of whom had done a quick course in Americana. ‘You should put forward a bill to have a permanent residence for the State Premier. There are several going around Point Piper for ten or twelve million.’

      ‘I’m Labour, remember? If ever I suggested anything like that, I’d be thrown out on my rear.’

      She had been born a Whymper; with such a name she had been destined for some sort of climbing, though Alps were in short supply locally. Unfitted for mountaineering, she had taken up political climbing. She had driven her pitons into at least a dozen rivals on her way up, buried others in small avalanches started by her scrabbling boots.

      ‘Never you, Penelope.’ No one ever called her Penny, except one man: that would suggest a value much below that which she put on herself.

      She was the State Minister for Development; her main development, it was said, was her own advancement. Her ambition was so naked that the Premier, Hans Vanderberg, had once remarked that it should be censored and not allowed on television in front of children; it was rumoured that when in the Cabinet Room with her, he wore a chain-mail vest and never turned his back on her. She was a goodlooking redhead till she turned her face full on to one: then one saw the green ball-bearings that were her eyes and the white steel smile. She gave Anita the smile now.

      ‘No, that’s true. It’s very comforting representing constituents who think I’m Mother Teresa.’

      That was when God should have sent the bolt of lightning; but God, Anita often thought, was a Labour sponsor. ‘How’s Arnold? I rarely see him in Canberra.’

      Arnold Debbs was a Federal Labour member, sitting on the front bench opposite Philip and his ministers. The Debbs were a formidable pair. ‘He finds Canberra boring – one always does when one is in Opposition. He tries to escape as often as he can. I’ll tell him you asked after him. Give Philip my love. How is he? Still playing God? Or is it the other way round?’

      ‘He’s busy.’ Though God knew what at or with whom. He had a new secretary who was either slow at her word processor or quick in bed; either way, Philip and she had been working an awful lot of overtime lately. Anita did not care, so long as Philip didn’t ask what she was doing. ‘I’ll tell him you asked after him.’

      Then the house was empty but for the servants cleaning up, her secretary and the Federal policeman who was her security guard. All at once she wished she were rid of it all, it had all suddenly become tiring, tiresome and empty; she had tried to become a political animal but the metamorphosis had been too much for her, though few would have known. She longed now for escape with Brian Boru, away from the constant wearing of a face that was false, the rein on a tongue that wanted to be truthful, the politics.

      She hurried upstairs, checked her make-up, went to the bathroom for a nervous pee, as if she were a teenager sneaking out on a date, put on a raincoat and hat, and as she came downstairs was met by her secretary, Grace Weldon.

      ‘Going out? I’ll tell Sergeant Long –’

      ‘No, Grace. I’ll drive myself. May I borrow your car?’

      Each time they came up from Canberra for an extended stay, Grace Weldon drove up in her own car, a bright red Celica. Not really a car to be driving in to a secret assignation, but better that than to be driven there in a government car.

      Grace looked dubious. ‘I don’t know – no, I don’t mean I don’t want to lend you my car. By all means, take it. But Sergeant Long will hit the roof when I tell him you’ve gone off –’

      ‘Then don’t tell him, not unless he asks.’

      ‘May I ask where you’re going?’ Grace was tentative, but she asked out of the best of intentions. ‘Ted Long said you were gone Saturday night and all day yesterday. He was nearly out of his mind. He rang me at my mother’s, wanted to know what I knew. Did he say anything to you?’

      ‘Yes, this morning. Very politely. I just told him I was visiting an old schoolfriend who’s in trouble and I thought the fewer people who knew about it, the better.’

      ‘Is that what you’re telling me now?’

      She hesitated, then put her hand on Grace’s arm; it was almost as if she were speaking to her own daughter.