Urn Burial (15 page)

‘Then what you need to do, my dear,’ Phryne extended a hand and hauled Miss Fletcher to her feet, ‘is go and see your nice trustee and tell him that’s what you want to do. If he agrees, then all the mothers in the world won’t be able to stop you. Tell him that you’re tired of all these parties and if he doesn’t comply with your wishes you’ll marry a taxi-driver and fling all your worldly wealth away on gigolos. Tell your mother that, too. It might work.

Has it occurred to you that she is actually living off your capital, and making your life a misery into the bargain? Now, get back to the house before you freeze, Miss Fletcher, and next time, think before you fling yourself into deep water.’

Judith Fletcher had the gaffed-cod look of soul’s awakening on her round face. She goggled at Phryne for fully a minute before she lowered her head and ran for the house, whipped along by a chill breeze.

The boathouse would do, Phryne ascertained a moment later. And not only had it stopped raining, but the sun looked like it was trying to come out.

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The stableman had the heavy dray out and was backing a stout horse into the shafts as she came past.

‘’Ere, ’old ’im,’ he grunted, thrusting a leading rein into her hands. The piebald carthorse at the end of it was backing steadily away. He knew those shafts. At any moment they might spike him in the behind. They also meant that he would spend the next few hours dragging a heavy weight behind him instead of the leisurely day’s grazing he had planned.

‘Calm yourself,’ said Phryne to the horse, looking it in the eye and keeping a steady pressure on the rein. ‘No use kicking against the pricks, Dobbin dear. We all have our cart to drag and today you are for it.’

The horse, soothed by her voice, stepped a pace towards Phryne and allowed her to stroke his nose.

‘Good on yer, Miss, now back ’im in ’ere.’

Phryne walked Dobbin around in a tight circle, then stood in front of him and laid a hand on his chest. ‘Back, ho!’ she said. ‘Whoa back!’

Dobbin, uneasy, danced a little on hoofs the size of soup plates before stepping back between the shafts. Willis threaded the tug girths and Phryne caressed the fringed ears. Dobbin, once harnessed, appeared resigned to his fate. She handed over the rein to the ex-jockey and walked around the dray.

It was a huge, heavy, lumbering wagon, obviously designed for carrying tree trunks. It had been fitted with benches and could be covered with a 147

canvas hood as seen in all the best westerns.

Phryne half expected to hear someone play ‘The William Tell Overture’.

She walked around the vehicle, noting its all-over muddiness and resolving to take an oilskin.

Then she noticed a clean spot of bright metal in the centre of the front spoked wheel.

‘Mr Willis, have a look at this,’ she called, and the old man tutted, looped the rein over a mounting-block, and came to her side.

‘Someone’s been playing tricks again, Mr Willis,’

she said. The axle nut was missing. Fresh sawdust on the muddy ground indicated that the axle itself might have been partially sawn through. Terry Willis rubbed a shaking hand over his gnome’s face. He looked like a kobold who had just been told that he was mythical.

‘Jeez, it’d take mebbe ten minutes to work loose, then . . .’

‘You know, I’ve lost all my taste for travelling,’

commented Phryne. ‘I think we’d better give Dobbin a holiday and tell the Boss that the trip to the caves is off.’

‘Yair, reckon,’ agreed the old man. ‘You want to unharness ’im? I gotta get my boy and we gotta get this dray back inta the shed. Don’t want every man and his dog ta know.’

Phryne found that unharnessing the carthorse was a lot easier than harnessing him. One just undid every buckle in sight and led the beast forward with his enthusiastic cooperation.

‘There you are,’ she hauled on the rein to bring 148

the big head down low enough so that she could take the headstall off past his ears. ‘And a nice little walk back to your paddock. At least I’ve improved your day,’ she said to the horse, who shook his head at the contrariness of humans and trotted back to his paddock, waited for her to unlatch the gate, and plodded through.

Tom Reynolds was as astonished as a man with a newly recovered hangover could be when he heard Phryne’s news. Stopping only to pull on some gumboots, he rushed out of the house to interview Willis. The house party scattered in search of other diversions and Phryne went up to her room.

‘I’m going for a walk, Dot,’ she yelled to her maid, over the hammer blows of Mr Black, the houseman, who was fitting the bolt. Dot nodded.

Phryne pulled on a heavy velvet-lined cape and went to find Lin Chung.

He was standing in the parlour, looking out of the window. When she came in, he asked quietly,

‘How was the beautiful young man?’

‘Beautiful,’ said Phryne carelessly. ‘But only beautiful.’

‘And I?’

‘Ah, you are quite different. Much more than just beautiful.’

Lin Chung sighed. Then he held out a closed hand to her. She opened his fingers and revealed a chess-piece. It was the Red King.

Phryne scanned the board, caught up a small 149

figure and laid the White Queen beside the Red King. The alchemical marriage. The Shanghai ring gleamed on her hand, next to a bright, silver-mounted diamond. Lin Chung took up their intertwined hands and kissed her palm.

Phryne did not care for hunting. Her view was that she had never been personally threatened by a rabbit (unless you took into account a villainous long-dead lapin ragout once served to her by a Marseilles cook of few morals and a penny-pinch-ing disposition), so she saw no need to shoot them.

She had sacked the cook, so that took care of him.

And the rabbits, she considered, had enough problems without her persecuting them as well.

Wandering out into the grounds, however, she noticed Jack and the angelic Gerald heading out bush with a couple of rifles, apparently intent on slaughtering some of the local wildlife. That disposed of them. According to her careful investigations, the staff were all safely in the house. Tom was in the stables, Mrs Reynolds was arguing with the cook about bottled beans, the Major was apparently still sleeping off his dissipated evening and his wife was sitting on a bench under the beech tree embroidering. Miss Fletcher and Mrs Fletcher were playing the Victrola in the parlour and Miss Cynthia was inducing the Doctor to dance a foxtrot with her. The poet, having been inspired by the sight of Cave House at dawn, absurd amongst the gum trees, was in the library, 150

immersed in ink and swearing under his breath in some Finno-Ugric language. Miss Mead was knitting in the parlour and Miss Cray was in the kitchen, attempting to extract contributions from the staff in aid of missions to the heathen.

The heathens Phryne and Lin Chung were drifting across the lawn toward the boathouse, which had a door that latched, a punt, two boats loaded with cushions, and the requisite amount of privacy.

Phryne found that she was breathing as if she had been running. They slipped inside, into a scent of old mattresses and varnish. The door had barely closed before she was unfastening the buttons of Lin’s shirt, and he had pulled her jumper over her head.

‘We can lie there, in the punt,’ she said, as her shirt peeled away and his mouth came down to her breast. His silk shirt fell open and she wrapped her bare arms around his waist, his skin smooth and warm.

‘And if we are surprised?’ he breathed into her neck.

She laughed and said, ‘We glare.’

They lay together in the boat, squeezed close in the semi-dark, on musty cushions and Phryne’s velvet cloak. She sneezed, chuckled and gasped as his clever mouth found the right place.

She felt his body react to her touch. Under her fingers the jade candle was lit. When she managed to manoeuvre into the right position, it was extinguished inside her and she stifled a cry.

The butterfly danced on the flower. Lin Chung 151

lifted one of her hands to cover his mouth. She felt his jaw clench. Muscles tightened and trembled in thigh and buttock. He was a golden man, a brazen statue. She clutched his shoulders and they were as hard as iron; then she felt his lips thin as his climax bloomed inside her and her bones were filled with honey.

For a while she thought she was seeing stars, then realised that small shafts of sunlight were shooting arrows through the holes in the boatyard roof.

There was a weight in her arms, a beautiful man.

The air was redolent of female musk and his hay-scented skin and she leaned up to lick beads of sweat off his throat.

‘Silver Lady,’ his voice was husky and very low,

‘you are full of wonders. I was wrong, I cannot bear to be without you. Let me come to your room tonight. I will not be seen.’

‘Yes. Ah, Lin, don’t move – let me feel you, so close.’

They lay coupled in the boat, dust settling on them, heavy with completion, not yet sated, kissing, endlessly kissing.

The door opened. Phryne and Lin Chung lay still. Phryne had chosen this boat because it could not be seen from the door. And if she was going to be caught, she was not going to make an undignified, shamefaced scramble of the discovery. She would be found lying with her lover, and she hoped the finder would appreciate his truly remarkable beauty and her own.

The footsteps came closer – two people. They 152

heard the sound of a kiss on a long, gasping breath. Someone else, it seemed, had noticed the advantages of the boathouse.

Phryne, moving silently and with great care, edged around so she could see over the gunwhale.

The other punt creaked as a young man unloaded the padding and spread it on the floor. He was evidently preparing a bed, and would be making love in Phryne’s plain view. She heard a whisper.

‘No, we can’t.’

‘Yes,’ urged an unmistakably male voice. ‘You know you love me.’ Phryne heard the sound of something heavy and metallic being put down with a clatter.

‘I love you,’ agreed the whisper. Lin Chung had also moved; he was kneeling behind Phryne, his belly against her buttocks, both hands on her breasts. His touch, as always, sent sparks through her.

‘I love you,’ declared the whisper, louder this time.

Phryne watched as a male chest was bared by skilled hands, to be mouthed and kissed by . . .

Another man.

Phryne had never seen men make love to each other. She would not have sought out the sight –

available for a fee in certain places in Paris, for instance – but she could not move without alerting the lovers, and they were fascinating.

Beautiful. Gently, carefully, Jack peeled off Gerald’s clothes, baring the slight body with olive skin, long thighs and the scribble of pubic hair.

Gerald’s dark curly head was drooping as his body relaxed into desire. Jack tore off his own clothes; 153

taller and paler than his lover, and dropped to his knees. He kissed and gently stroked the beloved body, then finally drew Gerald down onto the punt cushions. They kissed, first tentatively, unpractised, then with ferocious passion, locked mouth to mouth, chest to chest, thigh to thigh.

They panted, grappled again, the dark arms around the pale back, the blond head sliding down to suckle. Finally they settled, then plunged together with bone-breaking force.

A jolt ran through Phryne at the strangeness and violence of their embrace. She reached behind her and Lin Chung responded, sliding forward until they were joined then moving gently, all noise covered by the ragged breath of the lovers, who drove together as though frantically trying to be one flesh in truth; Hermaphroditus, one body.

They were too passionate to endure long. As Phryne heard Lin Chung catch his breath and say her name in Chinese, as she sank under her own orgasm, she heard the young men cry out together.

Jack was lying on his back with Gerald’s head on his chest as Phryne and her lover found ways to lie more comfortably in their punt. Phryne’s skin was glowing with heat. She felt light-headed with relief and determined to not sleep alone in Cave House again.

Then, in the gloom, she heard Gerald begin to cry.

‘There, Gerry, there . . . my . . . love, my love,’

soothed Jack, stroking the dark hair.

‘It’s no good,’ sobbed Gerald. ‘We’ll never be together – never. We’re monsters, Jack. You’ll 154

never love women at all. I’ll never love them like I love you, want you. We’ll never be normal, they call us pansies – inverts. Oh, Jack, I do love you so.’ He kissed Jack on the shoulder.

‘Hush, love, hush. There will be a way. You’re not . . . you’re not sorry that you’re mine, that we . . .’

‘I’m not sorry.’ Gerald kissed Jack again. ‘You love me, I love you. It was bound to happen . . .

Jack, I’ve been thinking about you all night.’

‘Not all night you haven’t. I came looking for you.’

‘Where?’

‘Miss Fisher. She nearly beaned me with a poker.’

‘You went to her room? Golly, Jack, what did you say?’

‘Nothing much. She was beautiful, though.

Looks like a Deco nymph with a snarl on her like Nike herself. I can see why you wanted her. Was it better, making love to a woman?’

‘No. Of course not. Different. Lovely. But not this, not love. I had to try, Jack, you can see that.

I had to see if . . . she could help us, and she wanted me.’

‘If you were a woman, Gerry, you’d be a tart.’

‘Probably. I’d do anything – anything at all to have you, Jack.’ They kissed again. Gerry faltered,

‘Could you . . . could you come to me? We can make it look like we sat up drinking and playing cards. No one will know. Come and . . . sleep with me? I . . . can’t bear to lose you.’

‘I’ll come,’ said Jack tenderly. ‘We’d better go, 155

Gerry. We’ve been away a long time and not a single rabbit to show for it.’

‘I suppose so.’ Reluctantly, they found their clothes and dressed. Then they suddenly clasped together in a kiss which took Phryne’s breath.

‘But the hunting was good?’ asked Gerry.

‘The hunting was good,’ agreed Jack.

The boathouse door swung to behind them.