Clowns At Midnight (24 page)

PART THREE

‘Confused, our eyes look after what has disappeared; for what they see has been raised as from a depression into golden light, so full and green, so amply alive, immeasurable and full of yearning.’

—Friedrich Nietzsche,
The Birth of Tragedy

 CHAPTER 17

Waiting for Carlo and Tomaso at the forest edge on that hot still morning just reinforced the sense of déjà-vu. The plumes were on the hills; the summer air was tinged with the smell of wood-smoke. The anger and disappointment, the resentment at being played, the sheer terror of the night before, were all vividly familiar, and just reinforced the sense of it all being a dream, a fever dream—no, a midsummer dream waiting only for darkness to make it complete.

I could leave. I could throw it all in and drive down to Sydney, even if only for a few days, a week, see my parents and Jack, see Mick and Jeremy, even Julia and Mark, just get perspective. Maybe give it up completely.

But too much—as well as too little—was happening. It was all part of some intended dramatic effect: the gumnuts, the mamuthone on the hillside, the Iackhos cries, Madame Sew’s mutilation. And Gemma not being there: a deliberate tease, it had to be.

These things gave a sinister edge to the day, darkened everything. Perhaps Gemma had been the one under the mamuthone mask. Perhaps Zoe. Staging a clown courtship! Haunting the neighbourhood at
this
time of year.

Haunting the neighbour.

It did feel like something staged for me. With Madame Sew’s return there was no escaping that conviction. Someone had planned and carried out the whole thing.

But I needed perspective there as well. It may not have been David-specific at all, as unlikely as that seemed. Mannequins and sewing dummies were obvious extensions of clowns, puppets and masked figures for others too, were as universal—and as universally frightening—as I’d always expected them to be in my phobic meditations, as I’d stated in the draft article shown to Carlo.

Yes, perspective was vital, especially now. The camera is always on us, I reminded myself as I gazed out at the day. More to the point, we
were
the camera, each one of us, always making the realities we lived. A coulrophobe’s chronic self-absorption could make me fortune’s fool so easily. I had to allow that I was actually on the fringe, an outsider privy only to bits and pieces of a progress intended for others, carrying out whatever small duties had been allotted.

Perhaps it
was
something between Carlo and Tomaso, a much older issue, though I’d sensed none of it at the party. Perhaps it was between Raina and Gemma—or Gemma and Zoe. Perhaps tomorrow I’d learn that Gemma was not only schizophrenic but that rarest of things, one with multiple personalities. Or she’d be Carlo’s illegitimate daughter, with all this part of some kinship and inheritance dispute, something safely sordid and ordinary. Yes, and with Zoe as the disgruntled half-sister or some such thing.

But who to ask about any of this? The Catleys? They could be part of it for all I knew. Len had phoned to say Madame had gone missing, when all the time she could have been in the back of his car ready to be brought over, bloodied and put in place by his conspirator sons. Len and May did errands for the Rankins. They could have house keys, could be called on to do special duties. They might even have known about the spare house key hidden at the end of the terrace.

Maybe it was the heat. I sat in the shade of a red gum and allowed everything, with me as an outsider brought into the intricate dance when they learned what
I
was bringing to it, just the means to ends I would never fully discover. I could only wait to see what this identical but different day would bring.

Between ten and eleven, Carlo had said.

I tried to recall what I could of Tomaso Risi from the party, but there had been so many people. I remembered little more than the grinning, balding, affable man in a white shirt, dark trousers with festive red and gold braces, highly polished black shoes. He’d spoken Italian mostly, or Sardinian to make the important distinction, and had seemed to join in the spirit of the naming contest wholeheartedly.

But soon, soon, I would meet him again, share in his role in these events and—walk-on part or otherwise—match it to my own.

They arrived fifteen minutes later, Carlo surprising me by turning in at the front gate rather than calling to me from the top of the hill. I’d been expecting them to cross the Risi property overland from their side, park close to where Raina had had the picnic, then walk through the forest to the tower.

But this made it easier for Tomaso, I realised, and gave me an even better reason to be involved.

I saw the old man get out to open and close the Rankins’ gate, watched as they drove up the hill, then turned off the driveway and crossed the grass and bracken to the first trees.

I gave a hearty wave and went to meet them.

Carlo gave me a big grin. ‘
Buon giorno
, David!’ he cried as he switched off the engine and got out, grabbing a torch from the seat. ‘
Come sta
!’

‘Hello, Carlo. It’s good to see you again.’ We shook hands.

‘You remember Tomaso, my uncle.’

‘Of course. From the party.
Buon giorno
, Tomaso.’ And I shook the old man’s hand. It felt dry and strong.

‘
Buon giorno
,’ Tomaso said, and seemed easy enough.

Carlo pointed up the hill. ‘I am showing him the tower this morning. Taking a look inside. It’s been a long time. You are welcome to join us.’

‘I don’t want to intrude.’

‘Not at all. It’s for old time’s sake. Papa and Tomaso used to come here all the time. It’s like a
nuraghe
, like—ah, how do you say?—like a watchtower.’

‘Well, if it’s okay.’ I had to smile at Carlo; he was certainly being the genial Sardinian pig-farmer this morning.

Carlo spoke quickly to Tomaso. I understood none of it except the old man’s ‘
Sì
.
Sì
.’

‘It’s fine,’ Carlo told me. ‘You will get a chance to look inside too.’

So I had been omitted from the account of Saturday’s visit.

‘I’d like that.’

We headed up through the forest together, taking it slowly in the heat. When I tried a pleasantry with the old man, he shrugged and smiled. Carlo came to his rescue.

‘
Scusi
, David. You will remember from the party. My uncle doesn’t speak English too well.’

‘I understand. Tell him I am hopeless with Sardinian too.’

I could tell Carlo was pleased I had not said Italian, that I had remembered. He relayed my comment. Tomaso grinned, gave a comical shrug and murmured something.

Carlo translated. ‘He’ll give you another week, but only because you remembered his name at the party.’

We all laughed and continued up the hillside, surrounded by the constant burr of cicadas, the bruised silence of this fierce summer morning. Both men seemed glad to be doing this, and I was too. There was purpose here, a sense of need, even—to use
the
buzz word of the decade—closure. The mysteries of Madame Sew, Gemma and Zoe, gumnuts and black pages aside, I felt a genuine contentment at sharing something so completely beyond language for once.

The glade was quiet but for the cicada song. The cross—the stulos—was empty. The tower stood in the hard light like a theatre set, seeming oddly impermanent for once.

We went closer. Carlo and Tomaso chatted in dialect all the while, rapid exchanges accompanied by sudden gestures, and again I was happy not to be included.

I saw Carlo indicate the cross, then gesture at me. Obviously the mamuthone’s appearance on the hillside, the blood on the bells,
had
been mentioned, though obviously not my part in the follow-up visit to the tower. I made sure I was looking elsewhere for much of their conversation, but what I did catch showed Tomaso speaking sharply and eloquently, with none of the folksy old man about him. Something serious had happened here, was happening even now in their talk.

At last Carlo slapped his pockets, letting me know that he was looking for the key, his way of involving me again.

‘Let us do this. David, you will be interested.’

He made much of inserting the key and opening the old door, pushing it back on its hinges. Then he switched on his torch and led the way inside.

I half-expected the carving to be gone, the whole block replaced or swivelled cunningly about like you saw in movies and television thrillers. But when Carlo shone light on the spot, there it was: the table with the pointed legs, the starwheel formed by the rim of the sun glyph meeting the rays of the star.

‘
Ah ma
!’ Tomaso cried. ‘
Dio benedetto
!’ He continued rapidly in Sardinian, speaking excited, even frantic words. Carlo’s answers were mollifying, reassuring, always appropriately respectful. For Tomaso the carving was clearly a violation, an unacceptable intrusion. He was gesturing, pointing, touching the lines and curves as if to make them real. How much of it was for my benefit, or Carlo’s, I couldn’t say, but it seemed genuine.

I took the opportunity to look up into the darkness again, locating the cross beams in their heavy dark squares, wondering what else sat up in that cool emptiness. No stairs, no rooms, it seemed, just a hollow throat set here on a forested hilltop, rising up in the day. And, when the door was shut, making night in day.

That was it. So obvious. It was something that kept night
here
in this blazing summer morning. So, a church? A temple? What had been its purpose; what could be its purpose still?

They were talking in Sardinian again, arguing, remonstrating, the tones were clear enough, so I wandered out into the glade, replacing my sunglasses as I moved over to the stulos.

The cicadas roared. The sun was a hard core of light, a bright fist giving life and snatching it back, beating it down.
Not too much
.
Not too much
.

I wondered how it was for Tomaso, for the lot of them. It was all so different here. Instead of cork oaks and helm oaks and the tough Mediterranean
macchia
covering the hillsides, the hot dry summers and the mistral blowing cold on the coasts in winter, there was apple-box and forest red gums, humid nor’easters and cooling southerlies in hot, comparatively wet summers, chill winter southerlies as the year turned. Instead of moufflons, deer and Sardinian kites, there were kangaroos and rainbow bee-eaters, spotted pardalotes and goshawks. It was a different world, and yet a
true
place as well, as profound and abiding as anything in the old country, with the same uncaring reality, the same changing yet changeless constancy.

I didn’t need to stay. Tomaso’s message was clear enough: he may have helped build the tower, but—at least overtly—he knew nothing about the sign. It was a violation of this special place and it concerned him greatly. Carlo was right. Involving Tomaso had been a way of providing a resolution for our talk yesterday, so there would be enough hope, enough of a sense that things were being brought to a conclusion. But in real terms, it was a way of deflecting me, of putting me off a while longer.

All I knew was that I needed to be away. If there were some ulterior purpose for the meeting, it would become apparent in time. I’d had enough. And had enough in that other sense. Tonight there would be Gemma.

‘Carlo, Tomaso, I should be getting back to the house. That wind yesterday. There’s tidying up to do. It was good to see you again, Carlo.’ I shook Carlo’s hand. ‘Good to see you, Tomaso.’ I shook hands with the old man. ‘
Arrivederci
.’

‘
Ciao
, David,’ Tomaso said. ‘
Piacere di conoscerla
.’

Carlo echoed him. ‘
Ciao
, David. We shall speak,
ne
?’

‘Please. If you learn anything at all, I’d like to know.’

‘
Sicuro
. Of course.’

Then, instead of returning to the driveway, I crossed the glade and headed down through the forest.

It was probably a wrong decision, because I immediately felt that I was being watched, that Carlo and Tomaso had slipped away, had perhaps retreated into the tower to carry out their real business, and that now dark clowns watched from off in the green distances, rising up from behind burnt-out trees.

I couldn’t avoid it. So much had happened; there’d been so much talk, too much talk. All I could do was make quick time of it. Alert for snakes, I plunged through the bracken, navigated between closely packed trees, finding what seemed the most direct route back to the house. Let them talk; let them have their secrets. I would deal with this my way.

I hated rushing on in fear like this and stopped, made myself stand quietly in the thick bushland, making it mine, this tree, this spread of fern, this fallen log. I went to the log, checked that no snakes were using it for shelter, then sat, made myself sit and consider what was happening.

It was true. I had been the clown here, the puppet, manipulated, jerked this way and that, factored into schemes. Leaving Carlo and Tomaso now had been a new start: my first act of stepping away, a fresh repudiation of all that was forced and imposed. Perhaps Carlo had anticipated it, but I had made the decision.

Maybe it
was
therapy. Again, the thought was there. Maybe Jack and the others
were
staging this elaborate re-acclimatisation of David Leeton, bringing him in out of the darkness by putting him into a dark world of another kind. Aversion. Saturation. Rejection. Wasn’t that how it went? It made sense.

Well, no more. If Gemma wasn’t there this time, that would be it. I had savings, royalties coming in. I could go north, go west, be a writer anywhere, re-locate outside Jack’s ambit for a time. My agent wouldn’t care; my editor wouldn’t. Rollo Jaine would probably gain by it. The band would.

I sat on the log and watched the hot light filter down. The cicadas sounded far off again, somewhere over there. It was the right silence for the next ambush, the next appearance of a mamuthone or whatever else they had planned.

Yet it was odd. I’d been on the way to quarter-clown just thinking of what might be lurking close by. Now there was a peace. A true tranquillity had settled.