some were smart; some were brave and some were not, like the rest of us. ‘It wouldn’t trouble me, Ms Cato. I’ll work for anyone who doesn’t want me to break any serious laws and can pay me. I have a few no-go areas.’
She lifted one plucked eyebrow. Did it well. ‘Like?’
‘I steer clear of politics, religion and teetotallers.’
She laughed. Sounded a bit like Bacall. ‘You’re safe with me then. I vote Labor, federal, state and local, and that’s the end of it. I’m an atheist. I like a drink but I have to limit it to preserve my figure.’
‘We all should,’ I said.
She focused her heavily made-up eyes on me. ‘You’re what? Pushing fifty? You don’t look so bad. Pity about the nose and the scars. Nothing a bit of plastic surgery wouldn’t fix. You could look ten years younger.’
‘I wouldn’t feel it. Now…’
‘To the point, yes. I hold weekly gatherings at my house of other cross-dressers. It’s a small group, half a dozen or so. We’re friends. There’s no sex involved. We have a meal and a couple of bottles of wine. We talk about clothes and make-up and some of the problems of our… hobby. There are a few, as you can imagine.’
I nodded. Ms Cato could pass as a woman in the street or in casual social gatherings, especially in a dim light. Not in an office or anywhere the contact with others was close and prolonged. I wondered what she did for a living.
‘I’ve been separated from my wife for a few years, so I don’t have that problem. No children. Some of my friends have wives and families. Terribly difficult. I write and illustrate children’s books, edit them as well. I work at home and my agent handles all the business.’ She gave that good-sounding laugh again. ‘I talk to authors on the phone but I don’t often meet ‘em-a little quirk of mine. When I do, I have to decide what to wear and stick to it. I’ve been known to forget. But cross-dressing can be fun. That’s my message.’
Strange waters but I was interested. She was a very composed person and I knew that some authors of children’s books made good money. ‘So you live as a woman all the time?’
‘No. About half and half. Of course it’s difficult at times. The neighbours had to adjust. The driver’s licence is a real bother. They won’t let you appear as anything but a male unless you cut the bits off, which I’ve never wanted to do. So I have to front up in a suit and tie for the photo. Then, of course, if I get stopped…’ She waved a hand and smiled, making me suspect she’d be able to get out of most tricky situations with charm and brains.
There’s no getting away from it, people who cross over or stand astride the gender line are interesting. I wondered about her sexual preference and whether she pissed standing up or sitting down, but you can’t ask.
‘These meetings,’ I said. ‘There’s a problem?’
‘Twice now, my visitors have been harassed by an individual who arrives on a motorcycle. He sits there outside the house and passes comments in obscene language. He flicks cigarette ash at their clothes, threatens to spray them with beer. It’s very unpleasant!’
‘It would be. Couldn’t you and your visitors retaliate in some way? You must outnumber this yob.’
She shook her head. Silver earrings danced. Her hair was bleached blonde with dark streaks, short but not cropped. ‘No. You have to understand how vulnerable a transvestite feels, our sort anyway. Basically we’re rejecting the aggressive male role. We’re impersonating women for a time, getting a little relief from the pressure to be male, up-front, thrusting. See how easily the language veers towards the sexual?’
I felt out of my depth. ‘Look, Ms Cato. I sympathise. I read the papers. I know things are changing and… kind of swirling about in these matters. But I’m not sure why you can’t cope, or what you want from me.’
‘I’m glad we’ve got this far. I was afraid you’d throw me straight out. Look, I’m fit and quick. And strong. I go to a gym. I can fight. So can a couple of my friends, but when we’re dressed as women the fighting impulse goes out of us. We don’t want to fight. In a way, we can’t. To fight would be to shatter the illusion, do you see? It’s a very precious illusion to us, weird though it may seem to you.’
I was losing confidence in this fee by the minute. I fidgeted with a pen. ‘I think you should talk to the police, Ms Cato. They have gay liaison officers now… ‘
‘None of us is gay,’ she said evenly. ‘I’m bisexual myself. Some of my friends are as heterosexual as it’s possible to be. The Glebe police are not equipped to cope with this. We’d get smirks from the men and sneers from the women. Bet on it.’
I thought of the personnel at the St Johns Road station who seemed to get younger every year. There were good men and women among them, but Ms Cato was probably right. This was territory they wouldn’t have covered at the Academy. New to me, too. I must have looked as I felt-uncomfortable, sceptical.
She leaned forward and tapped on my desk with her index finger, the nail of which was Iongish, shaped, pink-tinted. ‘If that bastard scares my friends away or provokes one of us into throwing a punch, he’s won! Do you understand? He’s proved that we can’t be like this. That there’s no place for us. Have you ever felt that there was no place for you, Mr Hardy? Not that you were in the wrong place or in an uncomfortable place, but that there was no fucking place on earth for you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I haven’t felt that.’
‘Right. Now you live in Glebe. You must have seen old Dot, the woman who goes up and down the street haranguing people for money? You’ve seen the winos and the deadbeats and the male and female executives in their suits and those beautiful people from the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre. Glebe’s tolerant, Glebe’s for diversity. I was hoping you might appreciate that.’
‘I do,’ I said. I opened a drawer and took out a contract form. ‘Let’s get a few details down.’
This time I got the smile and the laugh. ‘Right. I bet you want to know whether I piss standing up or sitting down.’
‘It crossed my mind.’
‘Sitting down when I’m tired and standing up when I’m not-just like you, mate. Just like you.’
She lived in a terrace that left mine for dead. Two storeys, deep front garden, fresh paint. Encouraging, and her cheque had cleared. I parked in the wide street on the night of the next meeting and watched the guests arrive just as it was getting dark. The moon came up. Ms Cato had told me that she and her friends liked moonlit nights particularly, found it flattering.
Five of the guests drove themselves in middle-of-the-range cars and two arrived by taxi. A green Honda Accord carried two people who were obviously more confident than the rest. Ms Cato’s guests were taller than a random selection of seven women would be and, with the exception of the pair in the Honda, they moved with a kind of caution that visibly slackened as they opened the gate and went up the path. Definitely some hip sway then. There was nothing remarkable about them apart from an excessive smartness. Their suits and dresses and shoes almost had a shine, as if they were kept in layers of tissue. No motorcyclist appeared.
‘It was a comfort knowing you were there,’ my client told me later when I phoned to report. ‘We had a good meeting and a lovely time.’
‘If you had any idea who this character is I could perhaps do something to make sure he doesn’t show up again.’
‘You’re talking yourself out of a job. I want you there again next week. Sorry, I really don’t have a clue.’
I wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not so I pressed. ‘No-one got the licence number of the bike I suppose?’
‘No.’
‘No angry authors? No rejected boyfriends?’
‘No. I haven’t an enemy in the world that I’m aware of.’
I could have told her that it’s not always enemies you have to watch out for, it’s friends. But that would have got me nowhere. I agreed to be on watch the next week and I turned up on time and parked in the same spot. Daylight saving had come in that week but the time of the meeting hadn’t changed, so it was much lighter when the guests were due. A person wearing a blue silk dress with white spots arrived in a red Commodore. She looked jaunty as she locked the car, dropped the keys into her handbag and hefted the bottle of champagne. It was a fair bet not to be a six dollar special. Just before she opened the gate she looked across at me and winked.
The motorcycle rounded the corner at low revs and pulled up behind the Commodore. The rider dismounted and stood in the gutter near the gate to Ms Cato’s house. Short and stocky. Helmet, leather jackets, jeans, boots. I
