5
As Lucy moved through the alternations of urban devastation and bright, lively bazaar which made up King Street, her destination became her sole external focus. Her surroundings were immaterial, they could have been something made up out of fog. She found herself not far from the railway station, like someone who, after a night of drunkenness, cannot remember how they came home intact. Cutting through familiar narrow streets past the old police station, she followed the curve of the hill down towards Parramatta Road, to where a small, old-fashioned picture theatre, square, squat and flat-roofed, stood on the corner of a laneway. A sign — The New Life Ministries Temple, Pastoral Care and Community Youth Refuge, the Preacher Graeme Fredericksen — had been attached to the facade of the theatre against a backdrop of weathered film posters. Its companion building, the refuge, a large terraced house with a closed-in veranda, stood on the other side of the narrow lane.
The front door to the theatre was always locked. Lucy went down the laneway to the back of the hall. Here, there was an open expanse of ground where two houses had been demolished some months ago, leading to a protest which had left the site undeveloped. The back door was also locked and she let herself inside, dropping her keys into her jacket pocket and leaving the door on the latch behind her. She stood in a small hallway where bare bulbs hung unlit from the high ceiling on their long cords. There was a set of stairs leading up to a mezzanine area, with a door beside them. She opened the door and looked into the untidy office beyond but it was empty. She walked down the short hallway and opening the heavy wooden door that led into the small auditorium she called out ‘Hello?’ A vacant echo was the only response. She stepped inside, shutting the door behind her.
A single row of small navy-blue rectangular windows near the ceiling locked out the light on the laneway side of the building. They created darkness, cutting out the sound and sight of the outside world.
A painted Christ was projected onto an ancient film screen at the back of the auditorium. Beams of light from the projection illuminated the slow circling fall of specks of dust. In the unlit room, the figure’s face and garments were luminous and seemed to float above the tiny stage, with hands held out in blessing towards the watcher. White plastic chairs were set in concentric circles in the middle of the auditorium, centred underneath its gaze.
Lucy’s heart beat more quickly as she looked around her. She took off her backpack and placed it on a chair. Then the door next to the stage opened silently and Graeme, dressed in black trousers and a grey striped shirt, came into the room.
‘Lucy,’ he said, ‘I have been so worried about you. I was beginning to think I wasn’t going to see you at all today. I heard it all on the radio. Congratulations. I can’t say it enough: I am so proud of you, I am so very, very proud of you. I knew you had the courage, I knew you could do it. But how are you? You are coping? You do know that now you’ve done this, you’ve nothing to fear?’
He had been walking towards her with his hands held out to take hold of hers, but something in her face made him stop where he was.
‘How am I? I’m fine, Graeme! I just shot two people and I killed one of them, but beside that, I’m just fine. How do you think I am?’
The fury of her emotion came up from a depth of revulsion she only now acknowledged.
He sounded shaken as he replied. ‘You were brave, Lucy. You were very, very brave. You did what had to be done.’
‘Yeah?’
She began to move restlessly through the circles of chairs.
‘Yeah, I was brave. You always say that. I am always so fucking brave.’
She stopped and kicked over a chair and then another and another.
They clattered against the wall. The preacher watched her, unmoving.
‘Just so fucking, fucking brave. You know what? There was some kid there. I don’t know who he was, her kid or something, I don’t know, but he was watching me. He saw everything I did. And nothing’s changed, has it? I thought it would. You said it would. You said everything would change. I’d just feel relief. I’d feel … clean. Well I did, maybe for five minutes, I felt like, yeah, I’m glad I did it. But I don’t feel that any more.
And nothing’s changed. Nothing. The world’s just rolling on and I don’t feel any different. No, that’s not true. I feel like shit!’
‘Lucy …’ he moved towards her slowly, ‘you must calm yourself.
You’re upset, of course you are. An action like this asks so much of you. And it is unpleasant. There’s nothing to rejoice about in carrying out a task like this, no one said there was. But it is a cleansing process and it has to be done — ’
‘You stop right there, Graeme!’
He did stop and she saw his face briefly distort with a passing flash of anger. She registered the emotion with surprise.
‘I said that to Greg, you know? I said to him, it had to be done. And I did it. And you know what he said to me?’ She laughed. ‘Bullshit.
That’s what he said. They put you away for ever for things like this.’
She stopped to draw breath. In her mind, she saw the Turtle’s electronic words:
‘They will never find you, Lucy,’ the preacher was saying. ‘Never.
No one’s ever going to tell them who you are. Except for Greg himself, perhaps. I have no idea why you had to tell him so much about this in the first place. I thought we’d agreed you wouldn’t. Greg is in my charge, Lucy, the government has made him my responsibility. He may be your friend but I know him. How do you know he won’t bring the world in here?’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You don’t know him better than I do. There’s no one in the world I’d trust more than Greg, because, you know, we’re one and one. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about me, he could tell people all sorts of things. Nothing like this though.’
The preacher’s face was very pale, his expression fixed; the sight of it disturbed her. She fell silent and sat down next to her backpack, and then leaned forward, as though her nerve strings were cut. Graeme stood at a distance, hesitating.
‘What did you do with the car?’ he asked eventually.
‘It’s where it’s supposed to be, it’s in the garage. I left everything there, like you said, the jacket and the gloves, the whole thing. But I lost the gun.’
‘You shouldn’t have done that. That was very careless of you.’
‘It’s in that back lane somewhere, I don’t know exactly. I guess they’ve found it by now. I tripped. I didn’t remember at first. I ripped my gloves.’ She looked down at her grazed hands and then up at him. ‘I want you to give me another gun now, Graeme. Now I’ve lost that one.
I like having it. I didn’t think I would, but I do. It makes me feel safe.’
‘That was a very special gun, Lucy. You shouldn’t have lost it. I don’t know if it can be replaced just like that.’
‘Well, you’d better find me one. Because I want it.’
The preacher took another hesitant step towards her.
‘Guns are fine so long as you use them for righteous purposes, Lucy.
But not if you don’t. You should remember that.’ He paused. ‘I’ll see what I can do for you.’
She was no longer listening. She was leaning forward, staring at the floor, chewing a fingernail. Then she looked up at him.
‘You know something? I wish I’d never done it. I told myself just what you said, that I had to do this. And I know it sounds really mad but I still believe that. I still believe something like this had to happen.
But now that I’ve done it … Blood’s all the same colour. It’s all just the same, it doesn’t matter if it’s mine or theirs.’
She stared at him, trying to give voice to what was in her mind.
‘The thing is, I didn’t know what it was going to be like. I didn’t really know what they’d look like when I’d shot them. But when I say that, I think well,
