Cloud of Universal Light - chapter 2 Kristin sat in her office, smoking furiously. Years ago, she and Bram had given up together. He'd stuck it out (as far as she knew) but in times of stress, she reached out for a cigarette.
In the last few weeks she'd started again. She was hardly aware of what she was doing, but her hand had a mind of its own, sliding toward that packet of cigarettes.
She was alone in the office today, at the Queensland Heritage Trust, and things were quiet. They often were, except that normally she had Mark to talk to. Today Mark was away, and there was very little to do. There were plans and photos to be filed away, but she couldn't be bothered with such detail; that was Mark's job.
She was worried about Bram, as usual. When two weeks ago he'd left for Charters Towers to try and settle a strike, she'd asked how long he'd be away.
"You know what it's like," he said, with that funny lop-sided grin of his. "Maybe a day, maybe a week. With any luck, the unions will settle it themselves before I get there."
"Don't forget I'm going to the Conservation Architecture conference on the Gold Coast this weekend," she'd reminded him. "Siggy's staying at Russell's place, and I won't be back till Sunday night. So if you get back early, you can go and play with Clarissa."
Kristin regarded Clarissa with tolerant amusement, a problem that Bram had brought upon himself. She didn't understand what Bram saw in Clarissa, so she put it down to sex. Sexual attraction, she knew, was so mysterious that it could explain anything.
At the conference, Kristin met a gorgeous young architect called Rex. Over drinks, he happened to mention that he'd split up with his wife. He seemed to be looking for advice, so Kristin offered some. She gave her best advice in bed - after all, before you could advise somebody, you had to understand where they were at. So after the conference finished on Sunday afternoon, she rang home to see anybody was there.
Siggy answered. There was no sign of his father, he said.
"I've been held up at this conference," said Kristin. "I'll have to stay here overnight, so you'll need to look after yourself till tomorrow."
"Important business, is it, Mum?" Siggy leered.
"Very!" she said stonily, hanging up on him.
When she'd rolled into work on the Monday afternoon, Mark had silently handed her a fax. It was a short message, typed on a page of QMine letterhead:
Dear Kristin,
I'm staying away a while.
It's my turn now.
Love,
Bram ThorzinShe blinked, and read it again. The signature looked more or less right, but something was wrong.
"Where did this come from?" she snapped at Mark.
"It was on the machine when I got to work this morning, deary," he said, in his most languid faggot voice. He was annoyed with her: people had been ringing for her all morning, and he didn't have a clue where she was. With a man, no doubt. Well, this little message would wipe the smile off her face.
"This is from a woman," she said, examining it closely.
"What makes you think that?" Mark asked. "Can you smell perfume on the fax paper?"
Kristin lashed out at him with the back of her hand. Mark was an idiot, sometimes.
"Little boy, anybody with a brain knows that when married couples send messages to each other, they don't use their surnames. I bet he's taken that stupid Clarissa to the back of beyond with him, and they're fucking each other's brains out in some sleazy motel. Well, Mister Bram Thorzin, see if I care."
She scrunched up the fax into a ball, hurled it unsuccessfully at the nearest wastepaper basket, went into her office, and immediately rang Rex. "I think I'll be free tonight, Rexy love," she said. "Perhaps tomorrow night, too."
That night, as she prepared to go out, Clarissa phoned in a panic. "I'm sorry to bother you," said Clarissa in her strange hoarse voice, "but I noticed in the Courier-Mail that the strike at Charters Towers is over, and they all went back to work yesterday."
"Isn't that nice of them?" said Kristin. Industrial news utterly bored her.
"But if it's over, Bramwell should have been back."
Kristin snorted at the name Bramwell. Nobody ever called him that, except his mother.
"He promised to ring me the moment he got back," Clarissa continued. "He promised me he'd fix my blown fuse. Half the lights in my flat are out."
"Try and fix it yourself," said Kristin. "It takes about ten seconds. Or call an electrician. Because Bram-well" (she said it very slowly, to be nasty) "isn't coming back just yet. He has a new woman up north. I assumed it was you, but evidently it's not."
"That can't be true," Clarissa sobbed.
"Isn't it tough, when another woman takes your man?" said Kristin. "Bye now, Clarissa. Why don't you go and wait for him at the airport. Perhaps he'll be back in a week or two."
So Clarissa has a rival thought Kristin, much amused. (It didn't occur to her that she, Kristin, might have a rival.)
Clarissa kept ringing, her state of panic increasing, and finally Kristin had to ask her not to call any more. After extracting Clarissa's phone number from her (a historic first), Kristin had promised to ask Bram to phone her if she heard from him. They both knew perfectly well that Kristin wouldn't bother, but Clarissa was desperate.
A week later, Kristin was at home one afternoon, in bed with Rex, when he saw something moving at the bedroom window. He apologized for his lack of performance. "I couldn't concentrate," he said. "There was a woman looking in, watching us."
"You're imagining things," said Kristin, worried that he was tiring of her. "How could a woman get up on the verandah? The gates are locked, remember? It was probably a parrot. What did this so-called woman look like, Rexy?"
"Tallish, big round silver glasses, sort of pink-faced and flustered looking, straight hair, blonder than yours..."
"Bloody Clarissa!" Kristin exclaimed, jumping off him, running naked to the French window, and flinging it open. "Clarissa!" she yelled. "Is that you? Fuck off!"
Clarissa edged around the corner of the veranda. "I'm so sorry," she said, tears dripping from her glasses. "I thought it might have been Bram."
"You know damn well it isn't," Kristin shouted, slamming the window shut.
Clarissa then climbed over the veranda rail, and jumped into the garden several metres below, ruining one of Kristin's best hydrangea bushes.
Since then, there had been no sign of Clarissa.
And stupid Rex, full of remorse, had gone back to his wife, who'd been weeping at him daily by phone. "You're too sort of fierce for me, Kristin," he'd said, trying to be polite.
She knew what that meant: she was past it. She sat in her office, gloomily sucking at a cigarette. The phone rang, and she almost jumped out of her skin.
"Queensland Heritage Trust," she announced brightly. "How can we help you?"
Most phone calls were from people seeking advice on restoring old houses, and builders looking for new ways of getting rid of them.
Beeps came over the line, signifying a long distance call. "Mrs Kristin Thorzin?" said an old man, in a country drawl, separating the words with short pauses.
"That's me," said Kristin. They didn't usually ask for her by name.
"A message from Mr Bram Thorzin. At the moment, he has no access to a telephone, but he has asked me to tell you that he is well, and thinking of you."
"Yes, but when's he coming back?"
"That is...undecided," said the man. A metallic sound followed, as if a coin were being dropped into a pay phone.
"Is he with a woman?" Kristin asked, impatiently.
The old man laughed. "He is with..." (he paused, as if counting) "eight women. But in a platonic sense. So I understand. Your husband is a great man, Mrs Thorzin."
"Where is he? What's he doing."
"He's being treasured, and - "
The line went dead.
Kristin sat by the phone, biting her nails even harder, waiting for a follow-up call. A minute later the phone rang again. She snatched it up the moment it started ringing. It was a builder, wanting to know about moving an old timber house out of Brisbane. She tried to hurry him up, but he was the garrulous type, and it was at least ten minutes before she got rid of him.
She knew the old man wouldn't ring back now, but she sat by the phone all day, chain-smoking. The mortgage had to be paid by next week, and there wasn't enough in her bank account to cover it.
In the end, she decided to ring Royce, Bram's American boss. After the embarrassment of last year's Christmas party, she was reluctant to speak to him, but she could see no alternative.
"Kristin!" he exclaimed. "I've been meaning to ring you, but I'm sort of, um..."
"Forget that," she said. "Have you heard from Bram?"
"Not since he resigned."
"He WHAT?"
"He sent us a letter. I've been waiting for him to come and get his things. We've got a couple of suitcases here, you know. The motel at Charters Towers sent them back when he didn't return. We've got a big fat severance cheque waiting for him, too."
Kristin was almost in shock. For weeks the worry had been building up, like a wave; now the breaker hit her in the face.
"Where is he?" she cried.
"The woman at the motel said he went away with some religious nuts. That was the rumour in Charters Towers."
"But he's never been the slightest bit interested in religion. That can't possibly be true."
"Maybe he's holed up somewhere with a woman. It happens, Kristin. So where does that leave you? Look, you were pretty sweet at that party of ours. Want me to call around and deliver his things?"
"Please don't! I'd rather not see you."
"Okay, if that's how you want it. Drop in here some day, and pick up Bram's things, and the cheque. I'll sign it across to you, if you like."
"I'll think about it," she said weakly, and hung up. Of course she'd have to go soon; she needed that cheque to pay the bills.
Almost immediately she thought of something, and rang back. After waiting for endless minutes, she was put through to Royce again.
"Kristin, baby," he said.
"I'm not a baby. Tell me about Bram's supposed letter of resignation. What address did it give?"
"This one. He wrote it on our letterhead, of course."
"Was the letter handwritten, or typed, or what?"
"It was faxed, I remember that. Probably straight from his laptop."
"Aha! And did you check the signature?"
"What do you mean?"
"I bet it was faked."
"Come on, Kristin. We know Bram's signature. We could tell if it was real. Besides, you usually don't send a signature with a fax modem."
"He can't have resigned. He told me he couldn't afford to."
"He has, Kristin. He's finished with us, and we're finished with him. I have his cheque here to prove it, and as from today we have a brand new human relations manager. Not as competent as Bram, though: we're only paying her half as much. Bye now Kristin, a call's coming in on the other line. See you soon."
Kristin felt as if a huge hole had been torn from her side. After twenty years with Bram, it was all over, without warning. She felt as if he'd been killed in a freak accident. She desperately needed somebody to talk to, but couldn't think of anybody suitable. Her women friends wouldn't be sympathetic. Paula was hard to reach by phone, and they'd end up screaming at each other, as usual - with that terrible landlady always listening in.
Kristin's men friends, who'd been more and more infrequent in recent years, were nearly all married, and didn't appreciate calls from her. They were friends for fun times, not for trouble.
She went home early, arriving just as Siggy came in from school. He'd long been of the opinion that his father had been kidnapped by rabid unionists. From what Kristin now told him, he polished this theory until it gleamed. The feigned resignation would get Bram out of the unions' hair. The religious theory was an obvious red herring, given his father's contempt for religions of all types. And the story about the eight platonic women, when she related it to Siggy, mimicking that slow voice, made them both collapse with laughter.
"What can we do?" asked Kristin. "Please think of something, Sig."
"The next step will be a ransom note," said the knowledgeable Siggy. Either that, or the cops will find his body floating in some old flooded mine. It'd be all bloated by now, so they'd find it hard to identify him. Dental records are the best, so we'd better get Doctor Fisher on standby."
He'd gone too far. "We've got to find him," Kristin sobbed.
Eventually, Siggy persuaded her to call the police. They weren't very interested, but a few days later a cop called around to take evidence.
"Four thousand people go missing in Queensland every year," he recited to Kristin, "and fewer than 100 are believed to meet with any foul play. When a man in his forties disappears, 99% of the time he's gone off with another woman. Statistically, you should expect to hear from him, after a while."
"I HAVE heard from him, but I don't believe it was him," she said.
"Just keep waiting," said the puzzled cop. "But if no crime's been committed, we can't do anything."
To humour her, they sent one of the Charters Towers police to the motel where Bram had last been seen, to interview the staff there. They'd hardly seen him, they said, but on the Monday morning, when the cleaner went into the room, she'd found his suitcase there, and clothes in the wardrobe. The bed was rumpled, but not slept in. His rental car had been parked outside, with his briefcase on the front passenger seat. After a few days they'd telephoned his company, which had asked them to courier everything back to Brisbane.
"What on earth can we do?" said Kristin, for the hundredth time. Unconsciously, she lit another cigarette. "The mortgage payment is overdue, and the plumber keeps ringing me asking when he's going to be paid."
"Why don't you go and see Royce? Didn't he promise to give you Dad's pay cheque?"
"Yes, but that's too final. And Royce makes me feel uncomfortable. He's sort of slimy."
"You'll feel even more uncomfortable with no money, Mum."
She thought for a moment. "You're right," she said. "I'd better go to QMine. And if he really has resigned, we'll have to sell the house. I can't keep up those payments on my income."
"Don't cry, Mum," begged Siggy, patting her on the back. "I never liked this place anyway. It's far too big for us. I preferred our old place at the Gap. Why don't we go back there?"
"We can't. It's sold. We can never go back."
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