‘He also called her “barge-arse”,’ Christine said indignantly. ‘When she told him not to, he said that she should stop jiggling her arse around, and drawing it to everyone’s attention.’ Christine’s dark eyes flashed. ‘She was so humiliated. I found her crying in the toilet.’
‘Can you tell me about their relationship otherwise?’ I asked, and Christine leaned forward in a confiding manner.
‘Well this is what I think,’ she said. ‘Maria was John’s secretary, right? So she knew all about the bust-ups at home. Big bust-ups, because she heard him on the phone. His wife walks out on him, comes back, walks out again, and he’s really angry, all the time. But he can’t show it, he’s got to be nice to all the customers, nice to the senior managers, so he takes it out on his secretary.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Because Maria walked out on her husband, see, so John makes himself feel better by calling her barge-arse. Then when he sees how upset she is, he really gets stuck into her.’
‘So what you’re saying is—’
‘That’s what the dildo business was all about. He was saying she spent too much time on the phone when she should have been working, and asked her if she was practising giving blow jobs with her dildo substitute.’ A hint of distaste must have entered my gaze, because Christine went on with renewed energy. ‘He wasn’t trying to come on to her, it was nasty, you know? The more upset she got, the more he did it. Like with that dildo he put in her drawer. It frightened her—she’s a good Catholic.’
‘But you never saw the sex toy yourself ?’
‘No. I was on holiday. Maria told me about it, though. John said he knew nothing about it—acted all innocent—and she threw it away. But then he made a big thing of it, told everyone she’d found it in her drawer, so everyone was joking about it— saying it was from an unknown admirer.’
‘What about your own relationship with him?’
‘Me? ’ Christine’s eyes flashed again. ‘If he tried anything with me, I’d kick him in the balls!’
Christine had a lot more to say on the subject of her manager’s psychological make-up; by the time she had finished, my next witness had been cooling his heels by the door for at least ten minutes. Aris was the illiterate male co-worker I referred to previously—the one who, according to Ms F., had been the recipient of Mr L.’s prurient observations. Gruff, awkward and monosyllabic, he was in his late forties, though he looked older. He was also small and wiry and wearing a pair of overalls emblazoned on the back with the company’s logo. He kept rubbing his jaw as I talked to him.
So cautious was he—so reluctant to speak or even meet my eye—that I was fully expecting him to deny Ms F.’s claims, if only because he was afraid of being sacked. To my surprise, though, he supported them fully. He agreed that Mr L. had indeed remarked, in Ms F.’s hearing, that she wasn’t the sort of woman that anyone would want ‘on top’.
‘Did he say anything else?’ I queried.
Aris studied his boots, and mumbled something about ‘not listening’.
‘Did he say that “she’d need two men, one for each buttock”?’
A muttered reply.
‘I’m sorry?’ I leaned forward. ‘What was that?’
‘He said “butt-cheek”, not buttock.’
It was like pulling teeth. Afterwards, I felt quite exhausted, but satisfied—because by then I had enough to move on with.
I said as much to Mr L. on my way out. Not that he tried to pump me or anything. He didn’t even approach me, as I half expected he would; like a man with a clear conscience, he behaved as if my movements were of no concern to him. But remembering the curt tone of his correspondence, I decided that I might get a better response if I spoke to him in person, rather than sending him a report of my findings.
So I knocked on his office door, and asked if I might talk to him for a moment.
Of course I gave him my usual spiel about objectivity, resolving a problem, both parties being given the opportunity to express their feelings and concerns, et cetera, et cetera. He listened in silence, nodding occasionally. Then I hit him with the fact that every witness named by Ms F. had supported her side of the story. Had he no witnesses of his own, who might help to rebut these claims?
He gave a great sigh, and ran his hands through his hair. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘this is so wrong. This is outrageous.’ And he shook his head. ‘You’re going to think I’m a nutter, but this is all . . . God, you know, this is all Christine’s doing. I don’t like to use the word “conspiracy”, but—call it office politics. She wants my job.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘It’s true, I swear. If she gets my job, she’s promised Maria a promotion, and that’s where all this has come from. I know it sounds insane. I know you’re not going to believe me, but I’ll go down saying it, because I won’t admit to something I didn’t do.’ For the first time he sounded upset; he put his fists on the table, side by side.
‘But what about Aris? Aris agrees—’
‘Of course he does! Because I was joking with him. I admit the jokes were off-colour. But I didn’t know that Maria was listening, my God, I’d never have said anything like that to her face. Is it my fault that she was hanging round outside my office, eavesdropping?’
I studied him. He had such a pleasant, open look. Such a wounded, outraged expression. As for his interpretation . . . well, it wasn’t completely off the wall.
‘So you’re saying that any offence you may have caused was unintentional?’ I asked.
‘Totally.’
‘Snapping her bra strap?’
‘I didn’t do that.’
‘What about the sex toy?’
‘I had nothing to do with that. Nothing.’
‘Calling her telephone a dildo substitute?’
‘I never said that.’ He spoke firmly. ‘If Christine told you I said that, she’s . . . that is, she must have misheard. I never said that.’
The diplomatic backtrack. God, he was convincing.
Then I remembered Matt. Work had made me forget him, for a moment, but suddenly it all came flooding back in a poisonous tide. Matt was intelligent and attractive too, and look what he was doing.
‘All right.’ I stood up. ‘Well, if that’s your position, perhaps you’d like to set it down in writing?’
‘What’s the point? No-one’s going to believe me. You don’t believe me, do you?’
‘It’s not a matter of what I believe.’ I wittered on for a while about how the Board doesn’t take sides, and how misunderstandings often arise that can be settled quite easily, and how equal employment opportunity issues are addressed in certain available training courses . . . that kind of thing. Then I shook his hand. But as I was moving out the door, he said in a tentative voice: ‘I mean, have you actually seen her?’
‘Seen who?’
‘Maria.’ His eyes were pained under a corrugated brow. ‘There’s no reason for me to . . . well, she’s not exactly a pin-up girl. Maybe an older guy would be interested—I don’t know. I don’t think anyone is, at the moment.’ He spread his hands again. ‘Maybe that’s part of the problem. You know?’
There it was. The classic ‘why would I harass a dog like that?’ followed by the traditional ‘it’s sour grapes because she can’t get a root’. I’d been waiting for something along those lines.
Dirty bugger.
I was so angry when I got back to the office. All the way from Penrith I’d been thinking about Matt and Mr L., and the unplumbed depths of male deceit. I’d been wondering why I hadn’t got off my butt and made an effort, instead of behaving like a victim and wandering about in a daze all the time. It was motherhood, I decided. Motherhood had made me fatalistic. I had done everything I could for Jonah when he was a baby, and it had made no difference at all. He had still cried and cried and cried. In the end, I had realised that the western tradition of endlessly searching for answers to problems wasn’t helping me, it was just making me more frantic.
What I had to do was surrender to the suffering. Be Zen. Accept the karma. Let go. Realise that there are some things you just can’t beat—like the inequalities between mother and father, for instance. It all comes down to breastfeeding. Matt couldn’t breastfeed (for obvious reasons) and I couldn’t express enough milk every day for a night feed. Just didn’t have it in me. So I had to keep waking up at night, and Nature triumphed. It almost always does, with kids—though try telling that to some of the policy people at work.
However.
When I reached my desk I immediately called Miriam, only to discover that she’d taken a sick day. A sick day! This was almost unprecedented; was she really ill? There were fifteen calls on her answering machine at home, and I left another one. I didn’t have Giles’s number. The number for Miriam’s mum was in the family address book, which I hadn’t brought to work. Neither Ronnie nor Vicki (another mutual friend) knew anything about where else she could be. Feeling a little uneasy, I had to give up on Miriam, and call Stuart instead.
Stuart, like Paul, is an old friend from university. In fact I met him through Paul. Like me, he loathes Paul’s wife; our main shared interest, these days, is Kerry-bashing—though I don’t actually see much of him any more. Perhaps it’s just as well. He works for Comcare, sussing out people who’ve been claiming workers’ compensation for non-existent injuries, and it’s made him very cynical. He’s even dropped a few sour remarks about single mothers, lately. God knows, life can be depressing enough without Stuart destroying your few remaining illusions about sickness benefits and the welfare state. That’s why I tend to ration my conversations with him.
This time, however, I needed to pick his brain. I needed to ask him about private detectives.
‘You use them, don’t you?’ I asked. ‘I remember you telling me.’
‘Yeah, we use ’em. All the time. Why? What’s up?’
I wasn’t going to tell him the truth. He wasn’t a close enough friend. For a moment I toyed with the idea of confiding that Paul was concerned about Kerry—that he thought she was having an affair. Then I discarded the notion. Too far-fetched. Whoever would want to have an affair with Kerry?
‘I’ve got a friend called Mandy.’ (Mandy the Wholefood Mother.) ‘Her husband’s run off with a man.’ (I wish.) ‘She’s trying to find him.’
‘He’s disappeared?’
‘That’s what she says.’
‘Then he’s a missing person.’
‘No, no. He’s around. He keeps calling her. She just wants to know where he is, and what he’s doing.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t ask me. I just promised I’d find her the name of a good private detective. You know one, don’t you?’
He did. He knew several. James McRae, he said, did a bit of ‘marital infidelity’ work. He was good. So was Jerry Vosilla, but he’d turned down a few jobs, lately, citing health problems as the reason. Hettwer Marcel was good, also. ‘But they’re expensive, Helen. They’re not cheap. Does your friend realise that?’
‘How much do they cost?’
He told me. Forty an hour, he said.
Ow.
‘I’d go for Jim McRae,’ Stuart went on. ‘He’s reliable. Excop. Do you want his number? If you don’t think she’s serious, don’t give her his number, because I don’t want to muck him about. He gets enough of that as it is.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘I don’t know. His company operates out of Rose Hill.’
‘Give me the number. I’ll see what she says. She might not be able to afford it.’
‘Tell her all she has to do is strain her back, and she’ll be set for life,’ Stuart said bitchily. But before he could launch into another one of his diatribes against fraudulent back injuries someone knocked on my office door, and I had to hang up.
It was Jean, telling me that a busload of people had arrived for my two o’clock conference.
‘Bugger,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had a chance to eat my lunch.’
‘Well they’re here. It’s conference room two, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. Has Cindy set it up yet?’
‘Far as I know.’
‘Could you ask her to get them settled, Jean, and I’ll be three minutes? Three.’
‘Okay.’
Fortunately, I’m used to stuffing down half my weight in ham sandwich during whatever brief interval I can grab between peeling an apple for Emily (she hates the skin) and making a cheese-slice-and-fish-finger boat for Jonah. I reckon I could polish off a three-course meal in seven minutes, given half the chance. And I get plenty of practice at work too, because never a lunchtime passes, at the office, without my having to bolt out and pay a bill, or buy more nappies, or go to the bank, or extract a refund from Medicare. So it wasn’t much of an effort to consume one peanut butter roll and one fruit jelly dessert in the time that it took me to call Jim McRae. (I’d brought my own lunch, to save money; I can only really afford one lunch date per week.) Unfortunately, Jim wasn’t available—out trailing adulterous husbands, no doubt. I had to leave a message on his messagebank, informing him that I was a friend of Stuart’s and needed advice. Nothing too specific. I gave him my name and work number, then remembered that I wouldn’t be at work, the next day, and gave him my home number as well. All this time, mind you, I was folding a bread roll into my mouth, and spooning up two-fruits in apricot jelly. You can’t say that I’m not versatile.
Of course the minute I put the receiver down, I regretted making the call. Sitting there, I had a major panic attack: sweaty palms, hot flushes, the lot. What the hell did I think I was doing? I couldn’t afford a private detective. If I couldn’t afford a café meal more than once a week, then I certainly couldn’t afford a private detective. It would cost me hundreds—perhaps even thousands—of dollars. And for what? So I could prove something that I didn’t want to know in the first place?
I thought: This is what comes of losing your temper. This is what comes of letting the job (and its attendant sleazebags) get to you. But I couldn’t do much to remedy the situation, because there were a lot of highly stressed people waiting for me in conference room two. I had to rush off and make sure that they didn’t start fighting each other before I even got there. I didn’t have time to fret about private detectives.
I didn’t have time to do anything except my job until well after six, when the conference finally ended. Not a bad result, actually—a pregnancy discrimination case, settled by conciliation with a $2000 payment and a written statement of apology. Personally, I’d take a straightforward pregnancy discrimination case over a sexual harassment case any day, because there isn’t quite the same level of humiliation or resentment in pregnancy discrimination. There aren’t quite as many nasty undercurrents. But that’s just my opinion. I know that Bebe, one of the other complaints officers, really gets off on sexual discrimination cases because the settlements tend to be heftier. It’s my feeling that she enjoys wresting $25 000 out of a blue-chip corporation every once in a while because she used to work at the Redfern Legal Centre when she first left school.
Each to his own, I guess.
I’d warned Matt that I might be late, so I didn’t panic unduly when I got back to my office and saw the time. Ten past six. That gave me fifteen minutes until the next train—plenty of time to call Jim McRae and cancel. I was half-expecting to get his message-bank again. I certainly didn’t expect him to answer the phone himself.
‘Jim McRae,’ he said quietly.
‘Oh. Hello.’ Help! ‘That’s—that’s Jim McRae, is it?’
Aagh. What an idiot.
‘Yes. Can I help you?’
‘Look, I’m sorry about this, I—um—I left a message earlier. I’m a friend of Stuart Klein’s.’
‘Helen Muzzatti?’
‘That’s it. That’s me. Um . . . look, I’ve made a mistake. I’ve changed my mind. I’m sorry, I’m such a dodo. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s all right.’ He had a great voic
e, very deep and calm. He sounded more like a psychiatrist than a private detective.
‘Okay, well . . . thanks for calling back. I mean—no, you didn’t call back, did you? Ha ha.’ Oh my God, my God, could I have sounded any more stupid? ‘Don’t listen to me, I’m in a complete state at the moment—’
‘I did call you back, Helen.’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘I did call you back. You said after five-thirty I could reach you at home, so I called that number.’
‘Oh.’
‘I didn’t leave a message. I didn’t know if I should, in the circumstances.’
‘No. Right.’ I felt as if I’d suddenly drifted into a John Le Carré novel. ‘Thanks.’
‘But if you change your mind, I’m always available.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Goodbye.’
He hung up. I hung up. Then I stood for a moment with my hand on the phone and my mind in a spin, before I suddenly remembered the time. Six-thirteen. I thought: If only I had a mobile, I could call Miriam on the train. But mobiles cost money, and office mobiles are in great demand.
I knew it would mean rushing, but I dialled her number anyway. Twenty-one messages; she still wasn’t answering. It suddenly occurred to me—what if she was lying dead in her bathroom? ‘Jesus,’ I murmured. Should I call the police, just in case? Should I send someone over there?
Not until I got home, perhaps. Not until I’d had a meal and a hot shower.
I’d made enough stupid phone calls for one day.
I was a nervous wreck by the time I got home. To begin with, I was worried about Miriam. Furthermore, as the train sat becalmed for ten minutes somewhere between St Peters and Sydenham, I had the leisure to realise that if Matt had been at home all day, he would have had plenty of time to call the Girl With Purple Hair. For all I knew, he might have arranged a meeting. It was with this happy thought foremost in my mind that I finally walked in the front door, and was greeted by a high-pitched yowl that I identified as Jonah’s.