Aaron returned the bottle, seeing that Phryne was amused, and the chorus began on a sad tale of a young maid who was poor (but she was honest). Phryne sighted Alastair across the room, scowling, and the beautiful and diverting Lindsay near him, looking embarrassed. Then two young women claimed Phryne’s attention and a bottle of her wine, and she elbowed her way out onto the balcony, where there was a wicker garden-seat.
‘What do you think of this idea of putting the two societies together, Miss Fisher?’ asked the blonde girl, gnawing at an ink-stained fingernail. ‘They are pretty rough types, these Glee-ers.’
‘Nonsense, Marion,’ retorted her companion, who was thin and stylish and would be elegant when she started wearing stockings. ‘They’re nervous around us. Once they see that we aren’t put off by the vulgarity they’ll be all right. And we need some basses if we are to put on that B Minor Mass you’re always talking about.’
‘I suppose so. The world has a lot of men in it, doesn’t it? It won’t do just to pretend that they don’t exist. Miss Fisher, we are devoted admirers of yours. We read all of your cases. Are you engaged in one at the moment?’
‘Why, yes, I am engaged in the cases of the vanishing lady and the appearing lady; one died and one is alive.’
‘Ooh, a riddle! Let’s see if we can guess it. Do you want some of this wine? It’s rather good,’ said Marion. ‘Let’s get Alastair onto it, he’s frightfully good at riddles.’
‘Alastair!’ shrieked the other girl, but Alastair did not seem to have heard her. He turned his back to the balcony and was arguing with Lindsay.
‘What’s wrong with him lately?’ demanded Agnes. ‘He’s terribly shirty at the moment. Used to be a good enough chap, too, though a shark for the books.’
‘I’m doing Arts,’ explained Marion. ‘Agnes here is doing Medicine. So is that Alastair chap, and he was rather fun, though over the last year he’s been awfully dull. Does nothing but talk about money.’
Phryne accepted some of the wine, a good traminer riesling from the Hunter Valley which she had personally selected as being light and sweet enough for a student’s taste. No glass being evident, she drank out of the bottle, sharing it with the two girls.
‘I don’t know that one,’ remarked Agnes. ‘What are the men singing?’
Behind the door, her pappy kept a shotgun,
He kept it in December and the merry month of May
And when they asked him why the heck he kept it
he kept it for a student who is far, far away
‘Far away,’ carolled the tenors, ‘Far away,’ growled the basses, ‘He kept it for a student who is far, far away.’
‘That’s a good song, we must learn it. Look here, Agnes, I think you’re right. It sounds much better with us all singing together. So much more balanced. Not shrill, like we used to sound.’
‘Ah, and you should have heard us,’ commented Lindsay from behind Phryne. ‘We growled like bears with sore heads. Now the sound is quite perfect.’
‘Not quite perfect,’ disagreed Johnson, poking his head under Lindsay’s arm. ‘There is a lot of dissonance which can be removed by rehearsal. We need to knock the raw edges off and get used to singing in time with each other. Listen. One half of the room is out of tempo with the other half.’
This was true. Someone had started the old catch, ‘My man Tom has a thing that is long,’ which the girls also knew. ‘My maid Mary has a thing that is hairy,’ they replied, but somehow got irremedially out of synch, so it was hard to tell whose thing was long and whose thing was hairy. Eventually cacophony was reached and they broke off, laughing.
‘Was that as indelicate as it sounded?’ asked Phryne, and Marion blushed. ‘It’s a broom and a broom stick.’ Phryne laughed and had another mouthful of wine. It was cold and dark outside, and the rain slanted down in sheets, but in the boathouse it was very warm, and the wine was delicious, and the singing was (occasionally) excellent. Phryne relaxed for the first time since she had left the bed with Lindsay in it, and produced a flask of cointreau.
This drink was new to many who tasted it, and it seemed to have a powerful effect. Edwards, the music student, suggested a negro spiritual, and they began to sing ‘Swing low, Sweet Chariot’. The battery of voices in that confined space, all trained to hit a note so that it went down and stayed down, was terrific. Phryne felt tears prick her eyes, as she joined in, and Marion was openly snuffling.
I looked over Jordan, and what did I see?
Coming for to carry me home
A band of Angels coming after me
Coming for to carry me home.
Before the impact of the song had time to die away, Edwards was pushed aside and the bespectacled madrigal enthusiast flourished a pile of sheet music.
‘Sops on the right, basses on the left,’ he ordered, and Phryne was left alone on the balcony.
She reclaimed her flask and sat staring out into the night, enjoying the rain, until she felt a hand slide up her calf to her knee and she covered it with her own.
‘It’s me, dear lady,’ said Lindsay’s voice from the floor, where he was lying out of sight of his fellow choristers. ‘Have you forgotten me so soon?’
‘No, dear boy, I haven’t forgotten anything at all. Come and sit next to me, or do you like it there on the floor?’
‘If they see me I shall be dragged off to sing — I like it better here. How smooth your legs are. Smoother than anything I can think of, except your thighs.’
‘You are an impudent young man,’ said Phryne, catching her breath. ‘What were you quarelling with Alastair about?’
‘Does it matter?’ asked Lindsay, laying his head in her lap. ‘Will you take me away and ravish me again tonight?’
‘Perhaps, if you merit ravishing. What was the quarrel?’
‘How tiresome you are, I shall be jealous of Alastair, you are so interested in him. If you must know, he wants to move out of my house, and he has packed up all his things. I was asking him where he was going to go, and he took me up uncommonly short and told me it was none of my business, which, of course, it isn’t.’
‘When is he to go? Stop fooling, Lindsay, this is important.’
‘Tomorrow,’ replied Lindsay, hurt. ‘I don’t know where he’s going but I think that it might not be unconnected with the not-so-blushing beauty and the money. Funny, you know, that was the night I spent in the jug.’
‘You what?’
‘Oh, I hadn’t done anything wrong,’ protested Lindsay. ‘Old Alastair used to have spiffing ideas, you know, before he went strange.’
‘Did he?’ asked Phryne in a tone so compelling that Lindsay got up from the floor and faced her. ‘What did old Alastair suggest?’
‘Well, it was like this,’ he stammered, staring into the face of a fury, cut out of marble, with eyes of green ice. ‘He said that if I was going to be a lawyer I ought to understand about prisons, and the only way to really understand a prison is to be in one, and he said that I should get myself taken up for drunk and disorderly and be locked in overnight. Everyone gives a false name, you know. For God’s sake, Phryne, what’s wrong? What have I done?’
‘Where’s Alastair?’ she asked through numb lips, and scanned the room; an easy thing, since Alastair should have been with the tenors, and he was not there.
‘Come,’ cried Phryne. She shinned down the verandah pole, leapt and raced for her car, with the young man behind and gaining fast. Phryne threw herself into the driving seat and jabbed the self-starter. The powerful engine turned over with a roar.
‘Where are we going?’ yelled Lindsay.