She had made no pretence, I noticed, of following my lecture, though it is one of my finest and had been delivered with all my customary verve. “Arthur Boyd and the Mystic Bride" was not, it seems, her cup of tea. Easing off her shoes with a series of gasps and sighs that was itself very nearly mystical, and which she in no way attempted to hide, she had slumped deeper and deeper into the canvas chair, blinking her eyes at one moment, as if what she saw on a vivid slide alarmed her, then once more sinking from view; and had difficulty, when it was over, in getting back into her shoes. An inconsiderate woman, who astonished me now by announcing: "It's t’ do with that article you writ on Alicia Vale.”
Now there is such a paper. It is one of several on a wide range of topics — West Nigerian gold-weights, Renaissance scissors, house interiors in Muscat and Oman. My publications at least are indisputable and can be produced as proof positive of their own existence. It's a little coup it gives me great satisfaction to produce. But that my Vale monograph, which isn't entirely unknown to followers of the Diva, should have found its way to Karingai! And into the hands of this odd, ungrammatical woman!
“You've read it?” I said foolishly.
She ignored the question. “I can't talk ‘ere, it isn't the right place. But I reckon you'll be interested in some information I got.” She worked her mouth a little, having lost control for the moment of her teeth, which she must also have assumed for the occasion. She snapped, got them fixed again, and went on. “And things. I got some ‘v ‘er things. ‘Ere's me address. I've writ it on this bitta paper. I'll expecher round ten.”
She thrust a page of ruled notepaper into my hand, “Thanks" — once to me and again to the minister's wife — and was off.
“Who was that?” I asked, and stood staring at the floral back.
Mrs. Logan allowed her lips to form a superior smile. “Oh that, poor soul, was our Mrs. Judge. She's quite a character. Lives out near the Indians.”
My first thought, I should admit, was that it was a trap. My passion for the Diva, my obsession we might as well call it, with her life, her records, her relics, is pretty well-known at the Council, and I have enemies who would be happy to see me discomforted.
As a matter of simple caution I pushed the scrap of paper into my breast pocket as if it were of no importance, rubbed my hands together in a gesture of exaggerated delight at the prospect of sausage rolls and pavlova (overdoing it as usual to the point where it declared itself to be quite plainly an act), and waited for Mrs. Logan to move. She did not. She was observing me with amused but dangerous detachment.
She was a tall young woman whose husband had hopes of being a bishop. She was bearing their period in the wilderness with a good grace but was impatient. It showed. Her words snapped, her fingers flew at things, the tendons in her neck were strained. Her intelligence, finding no object out here, had begun to spin away from her, and since she leaned so much towards it, had set her off balance. She was poised but unstill, and seemed quite capable, I thought, of taking an interest in me, and in the unfortunate Mrs. Judge, out of boredom, or because no larger opportunity offered itself for revealing how superior she was to the follies and passions of men.
“You mean to go?” she asked.
I tried to laugh it off.
“Oh well, it depends, doesn't it? On how the morrow feels. I mean, you never know, do you? Perhaps it will be a Mrs. Judge day.”
She seemed to find this very comical. I did a little jig as if I too recognised the absurdity of the thing; and experienced a wave of nausea at my own impiety. The bishop's wife, no doubt, had other notions of what was holy.
But I had saved myself, that's what mattered, and looked on the three sausage rolls I forced down, and the two slices of pavlova, as a proper expiation, and a proper snub to my hostess, who had assumed that in the matter of pavlovas at least there would be a certain complicity between us. In fact I loathe pavlova; but this is a question of taste, not Taste, and I took two slices very willingly to make amends. It was only when I got outside at last, and felt the dense sub-tropical night about me, the restless palm leaves fretting and rising, the low stars, the beating of wings and bell-notes in distended throats, the heavy scent of decay that is also the sweet smell of change — it was only then that I let myself off the leash and felt my heart quicken with a sense that even the dreaded Karingai might be the site of a turn in my fortunes, some unique and unlooked-for revelation. A magic name had been spoken and Mrs. Judge's address was burning above my breast.
But of course I would go!
3
I found the house easily enough. One of five unpainted weatherboards on high stumps, it stood apart from the rest of the town on a narrow ridge. The other houses belonged to Indians. Plump dark children, the youngest of them naked, splashed about in mud-puddles in the front yards; chickens rushed out squawking; a lean dog tied to a fence post stood on its four legs and yowled. Morning-glory, running wild in every direction, hauled fences down till they were almost horizontal, swathed the trunks of palms, was piled feet deep above water tanks and outhouse roofs. The big purple blossoms were starred with moisture. From beneath came the faint hum of insects and the smell almost over-poweringly sweet, of rotting vegetation.
Climbing the wooden steps, which had long since lost their rails, I paused at the lattice door and prepared to knock.
The woman was there immediately. She must have been waiting in the shadows beyond. Darker than I remembered, she had, in the clear light of day a driven look, as if she had been hungry for twenty and maybe thirty years for something that had hollowed her out from within and which the black eyes had slowly sunk towards. She wore the same blue floral, but it was beltless now, and her feet on the dry verandah boards were misshapen and bare.
“Come on in,” she said, peering over my shoulder to make sure there was no one with me; then stood and smiled. “I reckoned you wouldn’ let me down.” She turned into the hallway with its worn linoleum. “Come on out t’ the kitchen an’ I'll make a cuppa.”
Indicating a chair at the scrubbed-wood table, she used her forearm to push back mess — jam-tins, scraps of half-eaten toast, several dirty mugs; then filled a kettle, scooped tea from a tin with Japanese ladies in kimonos on each of its faces, and sat. Behind her, on the wood stove, the kettle began to hiss.
“As I was sayin',” she began, as if our conversation of the previous evening had never been interrupted, "I got information t’ give, seein’ as yer interested in ‘er.”
“Alicia Vale?”
She laughed. “Well I don't mean the Queen a’ Sheba.”
She glanced round the smoke-grimed kitchen, cleared a further space between us, as if she were preparing an area amid the chaos where large facts could be established, and with a new light in her eyes, thrust her hand out and opened her fist.
Coiled in her palm was an enamel bracelet of exquisite red and gold, in the form of a serpent. Beside it, two tiny Faberg eggs.
She was delighted with my look of astonishment and gave a harsh, high-pitched laugh.
“There! You didn't expect that, didja? I thought that'd surprise you.” She set the three pieces down and turned away to haul the kettle off the stove. “You oughta know that piece if you're an expert. She wore that in Lakm. New York, nineteen o-five.”