The Other Side of Sorrow (7 page)

Megan Sarah French had been born in Bathurst at St Margaret's Hospital twenty-three years ago. Her birth date was given as one day after the date Cyn claimed to have had her child. Her adoptive parents were Rex and Dora French of Katoomba. Megan Sarah French had attended the St Josephine Convent in Katoomba. She was a prefect, leader of the debating team and captain of the netball squad that won the country division championship in her final year. She scored 90.5 in the HSC and matriculated at the University of New South Wales. She'd dropped out of a degree course in industrial relations after two years.

I jotted the information down from the phone calls and arranged the faxes in order as they came in. I drank the whole of a pot of strong coffee and made another as things began to sink in. The confirmation of Cyn's story seemed to be staring me in the face and I found it hard to adjust to. I'd been hoping, or at least half-hoping, for something to blow the whole idea out of the water, but all I was getting were blocks building towards the same conclusion.

The data continued to flow. Megan Sarah had enrolled in the same TAFE Environmental Studies course as Talbot and had dropped out at the same time.
Connection.
She'd drawn unemployment benefits at various times and signed on for several re-training programs without completing them.
Not good.
A couple of credit cards had been withdrawn for failure to meet payments. No prosecutions. She held a driver's licence but no vehicle was registered in her name. She had never lost any points on her licence, and there was nothing outstanding. No criminal convictions.

It was ambiguous stuff to convey to Cyn and I resolved to edit it. I got the suit wet walking in the rain to the Post Office to consult the Blue Mountains telephone directory. There were three entries for French and one with the initial R. Back in the office, with the suit jacket on a hanger, I rang the most likely number and drew a blank—R was for Robert and he had no knowledge of a Rex. Ditto with the next. The third French was Rex's brother, Frank, and he was happy to talk to me when I told him I was a private detective.

‘Is the prick in trouble?' he said.

‘No, I want to talk to him about his daughter, Megan. She's … ah, missing.'

‘That poor kid.'

This was the second time that expression had been used. ‘Why d'you say that, Mr French?'

‘Rex and Dora are religious fanatics. First it was Catholicism, strict as buggery. Megan was supposed to be a nun. They tried to beat God into her, made her life a misery and she was a super kid. When she kicked over the traces, wanted to go to university and that, they went nuts.'

‘What did they do to her?'

‘Kicked her out. Then they sold everything they had and joined a bloody cult up here. They get around praying and scratching in the dirt.'

‘I'd like to talk to them.'

‘You'll have to come up then. There's no phone out there.'

He gave me directions to a five-hectare property near Mount Wilson operated by the Society for Harmony and Tranquility.

I thanked him. ‘Do you think they'd be in touch with Megan?'

‘Rex? No way. Dora might be. She's under his thumb but she not quite as crazy as he is. Tell him Frank sent you. That'll really get up his nose.'

It wasn't a day for the mountains. Sydney was cool and wet, the mountains were likely to be cooler and possibly wetter. I grabbed a parka I keep in the office and headed west. Mentally, I picked through the information I'd acquired about Megan and Talbot. It could be structured not to sound too bad—a ‘crazy mixed-up kids' gloss could be put on it. But it could be a lot worse in reality, with the drugs and Talbot's violence factored in. I tried to treat it like any missing persons case—concerned parent, worrying features, bad associations—but the personal aspect kept cutting in, confusing me and making me unsure of my assessments.

The country around Mount Wilson looked bleak in the pale winter light. After a long, hot summer there hadn't been much rain until recently and the land was parched-looking and damply yellow. Frank French's directions were good and I located the property easily. It was at the end of a long dirt road and the word that sprang to mind to describe it was neglect. The fences were in poor repair, broken down in spots by the press of branches, sagging elsewhere from wood rot. The driveway to the main building had once been covered with gravel but now the rocky ground was showing through. The rambling main building, constructed from what looked like rough, pit-sawn local timber, immediately struck me as odd. It was huddled down amid trees and shrubs in a hollow as if deliberately trying to avoid the view to the west. If it had been located just a few metres in that direction on higher ground it would have commanded a magnificent outlook over paddocks to forest and far ranges.

The garden beds and lawn flanking the driveway were scruffy. An old Land Rover was parked on a patch of remaining gravel to the left near a rusting pre-fab shed. I stopped dead in front of the building, got out and looked around. No telephone lines, no electricity cables, no TV antenna. Isolation. The right context for dogma and obedience. The place depressed me already.

I suppose I expected white robes and sandals, but the man who met me at the top of the front steps wore a business suit and a business-like expression.

‘Welcome to Harmony and Tranquility,' he said. ‘How may I help you?'

He was middle-aged, plump, balding, normal-looking, so I behaved normally by showing him my PEA licence and telling him that I wanted to talk to Rex and Dora French on a family matter. I'd put the parka on in the car to keep myself dry on the dash to the building. I took it off and revealed myself in suit and tie. No gun bulge. No knuckle-duster.

‘I believe they're both meditating. Nothing distressing I hope?''

I made a non-committal gesture which he didn't like and he liked it still less when I asked him who he was.

‘Pastor John,' he said. ‘The leader of this community. I'll make enquiries about Brother Rex and Sister Dora. If you'll just wait inside?'

He ushered me up the steps and through the door into a room on the left. I had time to glimpse a faded carpet in the hallway, a lack of light, and to smell a musty odour that confirmed my impression of neglect. The room I stood in was bare apart from an old set of church pews arranged around three sides. The window was small and the panes were dusty, inside and out.

After a few minutes a woman came into the room. She was fiftyish, small and tired-looking. Her grey hair was wispy and the cardigan she wore over a woollen dress was ill-buttoned. No make-up, thick stockings, flat-heeled shoes. She stopped one step into the room and looked at me as if I was going to bite her.

‘Yes?'

‘Mrs French?'

‘Yes.'

I went into a quick explanation, fearing that Rex couldn't be far away. At the mention of Megan's name she sparked up.

‘Oh, oh,' she said. ‘It's been so long. How is she?'

‘I don't know, Mrs French. I'm trying to find her. You love her?'

‘Oh, yes. Megan is wonderful. The best thing in my life. But Rex …'

‘Her natural mother is dying and wants to see her.'

Her thin, blue-veined hands flew up to her face, almost hiding it. This was too much hard-edged information for her to process. She dropped the hands and looked up at me. ‘The poor woman.'

‘Yes. Do you know where Megan might be, Mrs French? People seem to think she might have a place to go to.'

‘People?'

‘People who care for her. People who want to help her. She's keeping bad company, Mrs French.'

I could hear some sort of movement inside the house. Rex? I whipped out a card and extended it. She didn't move and I had to grab one of her hands and wrap it around the card. She clutched it like a child with a toy. I asked her again where Megan might go but she'd heard the sounds herself by now and didn't reply.

The man who entered the room was big and bulky. He was fair, a redhead who'd turned grey I guessed. His pale skin was blotched with freckles and whitish skin cancers. He towered over his wife and almost shouldered her aside to confront me.

‘You are?'

I told him.

‘Your business?'

I told him.

He sensed that his wife was moving so as to be able to look at me and he pushed her towards the door. ‘I'll handle this, Dora.'

She shot me a quick, hopeless look and left the room.

‘Megan's mother was a whore,' Rex French said. ‘Like mother, like child.'

It took every atom of self-control I had in me not to hit him. ‘That's not a very Christian attitude,' I said.

‘The word is be-fouled by your use of it.'

He was sixty or thereabouts, flabby and slackbodied in overalls and work boots. A decent punch would destroy him but I'd met enough fanatics to know how useless it is to argue with or assault them.

‘You're pathetic,' I said. ‘She deserved something better than you.'

‘Leave!'

I had to clench my fists to control the impulse to plant one in that soft belly. ‘I'm going. By the way, your brother Frank doesn't say hello.'

French snorted. ‘Another sinner.'

‘No, a human being. Not a sack of self-righteous shit like you.'

‘How dare you,' he shouted.

Pastor John and two other men entered the room. They looked at me as if I'd shat on the carpet.

‘I'm afraid you've upset Brother Rex,' Pastor John said. ‘I must ask you to leave before you create more disharmony.'

They represented no physical threat but I was repelled by their self-righteous disapproval. I drove away feeling sorry for Megan who'd spent something like sixteen years with Rex French, sorry for his wife, sorry for Cyn and sorry for myself. Sorry.

‘Cultists!' Cyn almost screamed at me. ‘What do you mean cultists?'

‘Apparently they were Catholics …'

‘That's nearly as bad.'

Religion, dislike of it, was one of the few attitudes Cyn and I had had in common and nothing had changed.

We were sitting in the living room of Cyn's flat. Contrary to what she'd told me, there were no signs of medication and illness. The flat was elegant, as I would've expected. Elegant, but not obsessively so. Cyn had always had good taste and had only let it slip once—when she'd married me. I couldn't identify the pictures on the walls or tell who'd designed the furniture, but I knew someone had. I can't tell a leather couch from a vinyl one on sight either, but I was sure what I was sitting on was the real hide. I'd thought it was better to talk face to face with Cyn about what I had learned so I'd driven straight to Crows Nest from the mountains. Now I wasn't so sure. She was working herself up into a fury as she used to do when we were together and I'd transgressed.

She paced the room with energy she'd summoned up from somewhere. ‘Cultists. What sort of a life must she have led? They're insane, they have group sex. They …'

‘Cyn, shut up! We'll talk about this rationally or I'll leave and phone that son of yours and get him to come over and take care of you.'

‘You don't know his number.'

‘You think not?'

‘God, you're a bastard.'

‘When I have to be. Why doesn't your daughter come around? And you never talk about her.'

Cyn sat down in one of the leather chairs and all the energy left her in a rush. ‘We've fallen out, Anne and I. It's nothing serious.'

I had my doubts about that and I wondered whether the falling out had contributed to the search for the lost child. I was out of my depth. ‘Look,' I said. ‘The place of birth checks out. The date's one day out, though. I suppose this Megan French could be your daughter.'

‘Our
daughter.'

I'd told Cyn about Meg French's early academic record and about her jump across the creek. I hadn't mentioned Talbot hitting her. ‘She's athletic and bright …'

‘And running around with some low-life. That's you coming out in her.'

‘Cyn.'

She covered her face with her hands. Her hair flopped forward and suddenly, thin and frail in a silk dress that was loose on her, she looked old. She lifted her face and pushed back the hair. ‘I'm sorry, Cliff. I'm sorry. It's late in the day. Would you like a drink?'

‘I would. If you'll have one.'

‘I hardly slept at all last night. On all these pills sometimes you do and sometimes you don't. It feels bloody late in the day to me. I generally have a brandy at seven o'clock when I watch the news. I think I'll have one now. You?'

‘Why not?'

She went to the kitchen for ice and soda water and poured the brandy from a decanter on a shelf. The tray also held bottles of gin and Scotch—I would've preferred either of them, but what the hell.

‘Cheers,' she said. We touched glasses. ‘D'you remember when we used to like brandy, lime and soda? I wonder if people still drink that these days?'

‘Haven't heard of it lately,' I said. ‘It wasn't a bad drink though.' I sipped. ‘This is pretty smooth.'

But from the way she set it down on the arm of the chair I could tell that she wasn't really interested in the alcohol. ‘So what's your next move? It doesn't sound as if you pushed very hard up there. They must know where she'd go.'

I was enjoying the drink.
Brandy at 6.30,
I thought.
Have to watch out for that.
‘I don't think so. The woman does possibly, but the husband's got her hog-tied. You have to watch your step these days. Can't throw your weight around like before. She'll turn up again at this environmental thing.'

She gestured impatiently, almost upsetting her glass. ‘So we just wait? That doesn't sound like the old Cliff. Goes with the suit, does it?'

I sipped the smooth brandy and didn't say anything.