After Mercy’s dramatic reentry into my life – nothing.
Who will make the next move? It becomes a battle of wills.
Days turn to weeks. July to August.
It occurs to me that the battle exists in my mind only, and that I might swallow my pride and stop being an arse. I’ve no sooner allowed this thought to well up to the surface of my mind, than my phone dings:
Want to meet up?
I let it rest for half an hour, then text back:
Sure, love to. Go somewhere for lunch?
I’m pleased with myself for suggesting neutral ground. I barely have time to feel smug, then ding:
Perfect. Mt Leura Lookout. Picnic! Tomorrow, 12 sharp.
I had something more like a focaccia and a coffee in a cosy café in mind. Pricked by the ‘twelve sharp’, I vent my scepticism:
Picnic? In the middle of winter? On top of a bloody great hill? Right.
She fires right back:
Trust me. Or if not me, trust BoM. Forecast is good!
Okay, Mercy, looks like we’re doing it your way.
What should I bring?
Yourself. My treat x
Approaching Camperdown from any point of the compass, the first thing a traveller sees is Mount Leura, the taller of the town’s volcanoes.
I’ve always found the eastern aspect most impressive.
I’m driving on a ruler-straight highway through flat, almost treeless farmland. To my left, the darkly forested Otways bristle the horizon.
The satnav shows this plain to be freckled and birthmarked with lakes of all sizes. I catch occasional glimpses of those inverted pools of sky. Otherwise, it’s a land of windswept grass, drystone walls and cypress windbreaks.
A scatter of odd bumps punctuates the horizon. They seem stuck on, alien to this level countryside, as if sky giants have been chucking mud pies around.
As I approach, the angle between the bumps widens. It’s a matter of changing perspective, of course, but it always seems to me as if the hills themselves are trundling smoothly across the static plain. Moving warily out of the way.
The nearest, my destination, is an almost perfect pudding shape, its flat peak spiked with a phone tower. Close behind the peak and to the left I see the tip of a second cone.
Now the road starts to ascend, climbing a low rise – actually the broad shoulder of the hill which now dominates my view. I reach the crest, and the small, neat grid of streets that is Camperdown reveals itself, snugged into the western flank.
I’m pitifully early. This won’t do. Instead of taking the road which corkscrews up to the Lookout, I drive into town and park on Manifold Street, outside the bluestone Art Deco post office. Then I faff around in the organic tea shop, choosing cakes.
At least I won’t turn up empty-handed.
There’s no such thing as a quick transaction with the kind, chatty lady behind the counter, and her EFTPOS is playing up.
So, I arrive at the Lookout ten minutes late.
Mine is the only car in the car park. No silver Saab. She’s not here.
I check my phone, but no message.
It’s been years since I came up here. I stand and look out across the undulating patchwork of paddocks, stretching and fading into misty distance.
It’s almost a perfect three-sixty view, obstructed only in the southern quadrant by the neat little cone of the Sugarloaf. Below me the freeway bisects the landscape, a diagonal slash. Far off to the right, Lake Purrembete shines dully in the noonday sun like a planished silver disc.
It’s a warm day for August, as forecast. Fair-weather clouds dot the bright sky like a flock of sheep; a mild breeze out of the north herds them lazily towards me. Across the paddocks below, their dark shadows drift, rising and falling with the lie of the land.
A few minutes elapse before I hear a car approaching up the steep track. Its ascent is obscured by the curve of the hill and the fringe of casuarinas, but judging by the high-revved whine of the over-pressed engine it sounds like Mercy’s lead foot on the accelerator.
Sure enough.
She isn’t dolled up as usual. Well-fitting blue jeans today, a checked flannel shirt that could easily have come from the nearest farm supply shop, sensible walking shoes. Dark curls well out from under a baker boy cap.
‘Sorry I’m late. Busy morning, then I had to dash home to pick up the picnic and get changed. Been here long?’
After an unexpectedly warm, close hug, she opens the boot and allows me to take the rug and wicker basket. We find a good spot with a view, sufficiently off the path to not be bothered by walkers, should any pop up.
She’s gone to a fair bit of trouble, I realise, as she unpacks the heavy basket on to the tartan rug. There’s smoked trout pâté and crackers, a variety of filled rolls. Marinated olives. A selection of cheeses. We weigh up the merits of a chilled local Pinot Gris versus apple juice – and decide on the former.
We fill the awkwardness with small talk and fussing over our meal. Then, when we’ve had a glass of wine and I judge the mood sufficiently relaxed, I bring up something I’ve been wondering about.
It’s been niggling, if I’m honest.
‘What do you do, exactly, in your meetings with clients?’
‘Oh, I answer their questions relating to their bereavement, to the best of my ability,’ she says, waving a half-eaten salami-and-salad roll at the landscape spread out at our feet. ‘To help them manage their grief – or whatever else they may be feeling. Anger, often. Despair. Or simply a lack of resolution, “closure”, to use that much over-used term.’
This is such a bland answer. I turn it over in my head, try to make something useful of it.
‘Sure, but … how do you know the answers to their questions?’
‘I don’t always,’ she replies. ‘But I think you’re labouring under a misapprehension, Benjamin.’
‘Oh?’
‘Let me describe to you what you think I do. Will you trust me to do that?’
‘Sure.’
‘Okay, let’s see. You imagine me sitting around a table in a darkened room, holding hands with strangers, contacting the spirit world – “I feel a presence,” that kind of thing. “Does the name ‘Mary’ mean anything to you?”’
She puts on a sonorous, ghostly voice for this. It makes me chuckle.
‘Then, when I get a response, I answer as if “possessed” by the loved one, giving the client back only so much as I’ve been able to tease out of them, plus a generous dose of platitudes and some guesswork. At the end, maybe I do a bit of swooning, because channelling the spirits has taken so much out of me. Am I wrong?’
I grimace, shrug. ‘Not entirely.’
‘No wonder you were angry with me. But believe me, Benjamin, when I say this …’
She pauses, gives me a straight look.
‘What?’
‘I would never abuse anyone’s grief like that. Anyone’s. Ever. And certainly not yours.’
‘Tell me how it is, then,’ I say, embarrassed to be put on the spot.
‘It’s nothing like that. No theatrics, no confidence tricks, no silly voices. Definitely no swooning. I simply listen – to both sides – and facilitate an exchange of views.’
Both sides.
‘But how do you make contact with the “other side”? The, I don’t know, spirits of the departed?’
‘They’re not “departed” in the sense you mean. Nobody has gone anywhere.’
‘How so?’
‘There’s a part of every sentient being that exists outside this space-time continuum. A part that’s simply timeless. And spaceless.’
‘Hmm. That’s a bit difficult to get a handle on, if I’m honest.’
‘Ha! You see?’ She folds her serviette, leans back, hands on the grass behind her supporting her weight. ‘This is one of the reasons why consciousness is proving so difficult for contemporary science to pin down – neurology, psychology and your own field, artificial intelligence, amongst others.’
‘I don’t really philosophise about the nature of consciousness, to be honest, Mercy. I just work out where my clients’ software is broke, identify faults in the design, try to fix them.’
‘Well, dear Benjamin, you wouldn’t get far if you did. That vital spark of consciousness, you see, it’s literally not of this world. It doesn’t go anywhere with the death of the body, because it has no spatial or temporal location in the first place. It requires no special effort to “make contact” as you call it. One either has the sense for it, or doesn’t. It’s like seeing, or hearing.’
I’m at a loss for a response, so she continues.
‘This isn’t really news, you know. Hinduism and Buddhism are grounded in a knowledge of the transcendental, for example, as are almost all of the non-monotheistic belief systems, and the recursive nature of sentient life.’
‘So the Christians, Jews and Muslims have got it wrong?’
‘Not entirely wrong, either. Sufism for example and the Gnostics come close, in their own ways. Not to forget Kabbalah. Don’t misunderstand me, though: the rules, rituals and legends that accrete around the eternal are just trappings. Human inventions to maintain social cohesion and promote spiritual hygiene.’
What the hell is ‘spiritual hygiene’? I’m cursing myself for turning a pleasant picnic with an attractive woman so weird. Well, weirder than lunch with Mercy was always going to be.
I make a belated attempt to lighten the mood.
‘Bloody strange topic of conversation for a picnic lunch, eh?’
‘Not really, not when you consider the location.’
I look around, turn back with the mute question.
‘This is a spiritual, liminal space for humans. It has been ever since the cinder cone cooled sufficiently for feet to climb it, a thousand generations ago.’
She stands up, brushes crumbs from her jeans.
‘Help me pack this up, then let’s go for a walk. We can have coffee and your cakes after.’
We stroll around the crater rim, descend the steps to the saddle between the main crater and the Sugarloaf, then take the path that spirals down between gum trees and casuarinas into the quiet wooded hollow that is the crater bottom. We seem to have this charming woodland entirely to ourselves. At the bottom, we stop.
‘Do you feel anything?’
Yes. A tingling in my fingertips, like touching the terminals of a small battery. I realise I’ve been feeling it for a while.
‘Face me, hold my hands. That’s it. Close your eyes.’
Reluctantly I comply.
I feel a shudder run through the earth, through my feet and up my legs, into my body. A deep rumbling fills my ears. We’re deep in the crater of a volcano, after all.
‘What the fuck?’
‘Shh. It’s okay, we’re quite safe. Shut your eyes again.’
I see it as clearly as if my eyes were open. The sky is black, but not the black of night. It’s a louring blue-black like a raven’s plumage. Lightning slices the darkness, strikes the ground all around us. The ground which judders and heaves. Steam jets out, stinking of sulphur. A vast explosion heaves a whole hillside of glowing cinders into the sky. I feel the heat sear my exposed skin.
Appalled, I release Mercy’s hands, stagger back with my palms to my face.
And open my eyes to see the tranquil bushland, hear the quiet hush of the crater broken only by the twittering of little blue wrens along the path. The earth is solid and unmoving beneath my feet. The sun has slipped behind the crater rim and the day is beginning to cool.
Mercy’s eyes are shining. She seizes my hand in hers, puts the other softly to my cheek.
‘Did you see it, Benjamin? Feel it? That’s what it was like – to be here, on this land, twenty thousand years ago.’
‘View from Mount Leura Lookout’, by Steve Fendt
Next week in Blind Spot:
Chapter 11: Cracks
Ben learns a thing or two about plastering.
Acknowledgement of Country: This story is set on the lands of the Djargurd Wurrung, while the author lives on Wadawurrung country. I pay my respects to their Elders past, present and emerging.
Disclaimer: This story is a work of fiction. Characters, institutions and organisations mentioned herein are the product of the author’s imagination. The locations are based on real places.
Exceptional!
There is an essence of mysticism in the conversation!…I loved it!
The view of Mount Leura is breathtaking!
Brilliant, Steve. ✨