The Redness Deepens

Dear Anthony Lawrence,

I am writing to you because I do not have Robert Adamson's email.  

I noticed you were in his company during the Poetry Festival in Castlemaine. I assume you are friends.

My name is Dorothy Green, once known under the name of Dorothy Auchterlonie. During my time at Sydney University I was a member of the elite group who became notorious for perpetrating the Ern Malley hoax. The group was described by Peter Coleman in his book on James McAuley, as the 'sourly brilliant literary circle',  which is an oblique reference to Thomas de Quincey.

I was born in 1927 in Sunderland County Durham in England and my family moved to Australia when I was 12 years old.  So you understand my connection to the fishing Doctor, David Greene, the man my daughter married.  He was at Castlemaine and attended the session that you and Adamson gave on the Waggafish.  He is a juddering mess now, although he is going to strike into the very heart of your ploy.  Yes, ploy.  Greenie is great friends with Wallace Crabbe, and neither of them gave away their cover. This is why I am writing to you. I want to make a proposition: together with Rodney Hall from the South Coast town of Ulladulla, we plan to kidnap Chris Hemensley and torment him until he spills the beans on the Red K.

This is a mere whisper, a titbit of the plan, a tiny hint which grows and becomes darker, nay, blacker each day.  It will turn the red tide eventually.  Are you in on this?

D. A

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Dear Dorothy

I remember you. I found you in 1978, exactly a week after I attended a poetry workshop and film night at Robert Adamson's house in Lane Cove, Sydney, where one life was thrown out and another embraced.

You were on the shelf of a bookshop in Crow's Nest. I took down your book Kalaidescope and started reading. I returned it to the shelf almost immediately. In fact, it made me feel ill. It had the sound of A. D. Hope feeding mountain lowries with bread soaked in Chivas Regal; the sound and smell of a teenage Mark O'Connor burning ants with a magnifying glass.

I'm sorry to hear about David Greene. I thought I saw him up in the projection box during the showing of Ladies and Gentleman Mr Leonard Cohen - I said to Bob "That bloke looks like David Green, false casting to shadows with a length of celluloid", but Bob was deep in conversation with Raymond Gaita and didn't hear me. This was after out talk on the Waggas, so i can only imagine that Dr Greene had been deeply distressed by the news. 

This all makes sense now. Driving back to the airport, Wallace Crabbe tried to kill us all by driving on the wrong side of the road. If it hadn't been for Jayne Fenton Keane, who said "Excuse me Chris, but are you on the wrong side of the road?? we would have been truck bait. 

I'm sure that Bob Adamson will welcome your plan. Kris Hemmensley knows many Red Facts. His shop, Collected Works is, as you know, a decoy. It's actually a CSIRO office, with Hemmensley working undercover. I hope he’s not a double agent. Rodney Hall, now that he has short hair and muscles, will be a good man to have in a red fix.

Magic is afoot

Anthony