Sheila Power An entertainment

By Inez Baranay

Sheila Power has been described as "A rattling good read that defies pigeon holing into any one genre. Our heroine is Sheila Power, a very rich film producer and all-round prominent social identity, who is about to start work on what will be the crowning achievement of her spectacular career. The stylised satire and mystery are only part of the plot. Sheila's also undergoing past-life therapy. Sheila Power is a block-buster of a novel, a satirical thriller filled with lashings of racy sex between moments of transcendental spirituality and shopping". First published in 1997, this novel was also noted as being "both a continuation of and a break with Baranay's writings". This new ebook edition comes with the author's Afterwords.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inez Baranay
• Release date: Sep 2, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465918284

Inez Baranay

Born in Italy of Hungarian parents Inez Baranay is an Australian writer; she has published over 12 books, seven of them novels, as well as short stories and essays in a range of publications. More biography and details of her books can be found on her website.

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Reviews of Sheila Power

At last, an Australian novel with a cast of characters as richly overdrawn and brassy as any of the fabulous monsters in an Aaron Spelling TV series. An entertainment is a good description for this rattling good read that defies pigeon holing into any one genre. Our heroine is Sheila Power, a very rich film producer and all-round prominent social identity, who is about to start work on what will be the crowning achievement of her spectacular career. She has obtained the rights to a best-selling novel, one of those cult classics that has captured the country’s imagination .... The stylised satire and mystery are only part of the plot. Sheila’s also undergoing past-life therapy. Each session she relives a sexual experience from one of her many pasts. Baranay lets rip in these episodes with some of the best-written purple prose I’ve read in ages. When added to Sheila’s busy sex life in her current incarnation, it makes a novel dripping with erotic activity. ... Sheila Power is a block-buster of a novel, a satirical thriller filled with lashings of racy sex between moments of transcendental spirituality and shopping.

Sydney Star Observer, 20 November 1997

Sheila Power...is both a continuation of and a break with Baranay’s writings. ... She’s always been difficult to categorise. When she is defined, it’s with labels that can work both for and against her ... Sheila is a character we’d all like to be in our dreams. Ruthless and unstoppable, a kind of fantasy woman.

Courier-Mail, 27 September 1997

For more reviews of books by Inez Baranay please visit

http://www.inezbaranay.com

Sheila Power: an entertainment

by Inez Baranay

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Inez Baranay

First published by Allen&Unwin (Sydney) in 1997

This Smashwords Edition includes new Afterwords by the author

http://www.inezbaranay.com

Discover other titles by Inez Baranay at Smashwords

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/inezb

Cover credits:

Design by Daniel Stephensen http://forgetlings.net

Sydney Harbour Bridge image: Tracey Saxby, IAN Images Library

Smashwords Edition, License Note

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of this author.

*

Dedication

To Jenny Pausacker

*

PROLOGUE

And then she saw something. It was incredible, but it was quite clear. She saw the scene and she was there. She was a young girl of about fourteen. A woman in her twenties was leading her. They paused on a pathway on a hill, surrounded by the enchanting violet lights of dusk.

They looked at the full moon. She was rising on the horizon, huge and golden. The woman and the girl said a prayer to the Moon, the sister of their souls, who guided their destinies, reflected their rhythmical changes, defined their feminine essence.

In her honour she, the girl, still a virgin, would be initiated into her mysteries at the ceremony tonight.

Her mounting excitement was so great that the thick, sticky wetness between her legs had oozed to dampen her inner thighs. Her vulva was swollen into an exquisite ache of longing for her dedication to the Goddess. Tonight, she thought, all the men of our island will be able to achieve union with Her through me.

The woman with her was tall and dark, dressed in a simple robe. The thin soft cloth draped sensuously over the bare body beneath. Like her companion, the girl was dark-haired, with smooth olive skin. She was dressed the same way, and wore a similar garland of leaves on her head. The older woman took her by the hand. The air was silver. They were on a path leading to the stone temple. It was time!

For a moment she was absorbed in her surroundings, wanting to remember the details of the most important day of her life. Now, as they continued to move along the tree-lined path, she was almost swooning with excitement and delicious anticipation.

They arrived at the clearing. Before them, a vast circle of stone: their temple, dedicated to their beloved Goddess. The stones of the temple were formed into an open-walled building, round like the full moon, round like the wombs that bore their children, round like their sacred cunts where men learnt bliss and surrender round like the feminine Eternal.

She had begun to menstruate twelve moons ago. Before that she had lived with the other children. All the boys and girls played together. When they were children, their games included exploring each other's bodies, copying the antics of the goats on the rocky hillsides. What she remembered now about the boys was the funny little bits that wobbled and jiggled as they ran, but, when you learned to touch them gently, the bits would stand up straight. She, with the other girls, learned how to stroke and rub their sticky lower lips to produce sweet tingling sensations. Of all the games of childhood, these were revered in adult songs.

After attaining the age of twelve suns, the boys were taken to live with the men. And after her first lunar blood, each girl was taken to the temple.

The girl had learned when she was with the other children that after she had served as a temple priestess for a while she would probably produce a child. After that she could either stay at the temple, as a senior priestess who no longer engaged in The Rite. Then she would live in celibacy and train to become one of the High Priestesses or Oracles. Or she could choose one of the young men of the island to marry, and live in a village, and engage only in the sex of married couples, carefully timed and restricted to producing children, as the Goddess decreed.

But that is all a long way off in the future, too far to think about now. Now is the beginning of the phase of her life when she was able to engage in ritual sexual intercourse in the temple, and experience its joy—transcendent, transient. She knows she was made for this. She feels especially blessed to be the only girl eligible to be an initiate at this month's ceremony. All the men who qualify for the rite will give their seed to her alone tonight. She will have them all, each one of them, in turn. She, a virgin. Deep inside her, her womb pulsates in readiness and fear.

PART ONE

ONE

'I don't believe it,' I said. 'What problem?'

Up to now, it had all gone smoothly. I'd assumed it would continue to go smoothly. I thought the hard part was over and it had been easy.

'Do you want to come over and talk about it, Sheila?' Belle asked. Belle Malouf was the best lawyer in Sydney. And a friend. And the sexiest designer dyke who'd ever worn leather.

'I've got lunch with Jeffrey today. Tomorrow, then,' I agreed.

People like us obliterated our short-lived problems, or turned them into challenges, learning experiences, opportunities, gifts, magic pathways to all the goodies. I wasn't going to brood. Not for a moment.

The other phone was ringing. "Lo?' I switched off the brusque tone for more of a purr. 'Sweetness dearest,' I said. 'Thanks for calling back. But suddenly something's come up and I'll have to get back to you, OK, then I'll want lots of your time. Bye, sweetness.' I dismissed all thoughts of sweetness for now. I had a lot on my plate.

A plateful of impediment, apparently. Belle would tell me. We'd deal with it. I was too committed to this project to let anything even think it could stand in my way.

I am often very pleased with myself, and this time I had special reason to be. One big bright reason above all. I had acquired the hot literary property of the year.

Rhonda Dawe's autobiographical, three-part novel Doors was a tale of misunderstood genius, the heartbreaking but ultimately uplifting tale of a sensitive young artist who had been brought up in an illiterate brawling family in the wilds of Tasmania. She had taught herself to read and write, run away to the mainland, and ended up out of luck, on the streets and in big trouble. She had suffered every kind of destitution,

degradation, injustice and misdiagnosis. Somehow, she had managed to produce poems, stories, and the massive autobiographical novel. She had died recently, not knowing she was on the eve of worldwide fame and recognition. It was the year's most talked about book, it had penetrated the overseas market and now I owned the rights to make the film!

OK, OK—it wasn't the world's most talked about book yet. Not quite yet. But it wouldn't be long. It was still a cult novel, but adored by quite a few people and about to be adored by masses. Masses would be uplifted by the passionate story of a contemporary woman who had overcome all odds. The death of her childhood tormentor had freed her to find a voice. The practice of poetry had freed her to experience love. And after her first journey abroad, to take up an artist's residency in Venice, she seemed the free-est of all women—but despair had killed her.

I was going to make the film, with the best talent in the country or offshore. I, Sheila Power; head of Power Productions, number one creative producer in the southern hemisphere.

Hardly anyone yet knew that I was number one creative producer in the southern hemisphere. But that was only because I hadn't made a film. But I had all the experience, qualifications and contacts that were necessary. After all, my whole life had been leading up to this.

The energy I felt was incredible. Energy enough to climb mountains. Energy enough to swim vast oceans. Certainly energy enough to get cracking, get glued and get to lunch with Jeffrey.

TWO

Jeffrey Power had developed the habit of perfect punctuality, part of a repertoire of perfect manners. He arrived at Buckleys exactly at one o'clock, knowing that Sheila hated to wait for anyone, and that Sheila was perfectly punctual too and would arrive exactly five minutes late, at exactly five past one.

Rodney, the maitre d' at Buckleys, whooshed to the door to greet Jeffrey warmly and show him to his usual table.

Sir Harry waved to him from a table where he was sitting with Bob Beaver. Interesting. Keep an eye on TV ownership stories in the next few days. A hint in the column? Jeffrey made a note.

People who knew they were lucky to get into Buckleys watched Jeffrey as he passed, then turned back to their companions and said, 'You know who that is, don't you?'

Jeffrey Power had been well-known in certain circles since his first triumphant business venture nearly twenty years ago. But the circles had rippled outwards, from his many appear-ances on both news pages and social pages and since he had begun writing a weekly column in a weekend newspaper in which he usually upset someone.

He was loved for his vitality, his outspokenness, his generosity. He was loved for telling you with total credibility what play you should see, which restaurant should serve you supper after the show, and how you should vote at the next election.

He was admired or forgiven for being a self-made man. Once upon a time he had been one of a large, poor, uneducated family, trailing after his nomadic clan in the outback.

Jeffrey Power was self-taught, self-styled, self-made. He had come from nowhere, arrived somewhere, and now went everywhere. He had been a nobody and now he was somebody. In his childhood he had worn cast-off clothing full of holes. These

days he purchased his wardrobe all round the world, and looked as elegant and at ease as if he had been brought up with silver spoons and crystal teething rings.

Not everyone was impressed. In Sydney, a lot of people made it a point of pride not to be impressed. Not by anyone, not by their money, not by their taste. Not by their achievement, even if they'd worked for it.

Some people disliked Jeffrey Power: They said he was arrogant and overbearing. His taste was criticised. His outspokenness was taken as mere self-aggrandisement. They mocked his background.

Some people hated the fact that while Jeffrey was behind some of die most successful property developments in Sydney, he was also outspoken in his opposition to any development he found environmentally unsound or aesthetically offensive.

His sexuality was referred to with sneers, even by liberals.

And then, he had been married to Sheila Power. And they were still friends.

It was exactly five past one and Rodney was showing Sheila to the table. Jeffrey rose, kissed her on each cheek, and moved back to watch her as she seated herself.

'That's an interesting look,' he remarked. She was wearing a skin-tight, navy silk bodysuit, a sheer organza shirt with long sleeves and a hood (pretending she was reviving hoods but in fact giving some old clothes a final airing before tossing them out), and very wide navy pants that came to mid-calf length. She carried the matching jacket. Prada shoes and fave old Prada bag. And the square-cut diamond ear studs he had given her. The whole look was pretty square-cut and Jeffrey was being sarcastic. Sheila always wore a navy suit in the daytime. She'd worn daytime navy ever since their marriage ended.

Sheila possessed navy suits in cotton linen ramie wool leather suede organza tulle gabardine seersucker chiffon and rubber; she had navy suits in knits laces pleats gauzes velvets nets and the one industrial material that counted, nylon. She had navy suits in every combination of those. She had classic suits—in navy blue—by YSL, Issey Miyake and Linda Jackson.

'Most people say, You look wonderful.'

'I only said.'

She had checked him out too. 'Nice jacket.'

'Milan.'

'You could have got it here.' Sheila always said you could get anything in the world right here in Sydney.

'It would have cost three times as much: import duty, mark-up.'

'That's not even the airfare!' Jeffrey insisted on going overseas to shop, and had been known to fly to Tokyo and straight back to buy a suit he couldn't get out of his mind.

Jeffrey was about to reply when a man said, 'I'm right with you Jeffrey.' It was a tall man in spectacles and a startling bow tie, who had paused while passing by their table. 'Outing,' the man explained, seeing Jeffrey flick through his mind over the various issues that people could be with him (or against him) about.

'Oh, yes. Thanks,' Jeffrey said. 'Drink?' he said to Sheila. 'Two,' he said to the drinks waiter and opened his menu.

'What was that about?' asked Sheila. "What outing?'

Jeffrey sighed. 'Are you the only person in le tout Sydney who doesn't read my column every Saturday, first thing, before the headlines, before the reviews, and even before the real estate pages?'

'Darling,' said Sheila. 'Remind me.'

'I expressed my position on the phenomenon of Outing.'

'Outing?' she enquired. 'Like a trip to the zoo? On a ferry boat, with a picnic lunch.'

'Sheila!'

'Oh, I know. Remind me.'

Jason—he was the new one, blond, with the kind of high, rounded buttocks you rarely see on a white boy—arrived with two perfectly chilled vodka martinis. 'Shall I tell you our specials for today?'

An explosion rent the ait, shattering, shocking. The sudden noise was horrendous, the floor of Buckleys trembled, and the reverberations of the frightful noise were echoed in waves of instinctive horror surging through each body in the restaurant. Some people dived under tables, a reflex learned in grim, troubled places of far away and long ago. The sound of falling glass and then a split-second of dead silence. Then commotion.

The shouting and babbling of a crowd outside the restaurant. The sirens of a police car, searing the eardrums as the car screeched to a halt outside. Another ringing of the ears as the siren was turned off. Jason and the other waiters scurrying to clear up the spills.

Sheila and Jeffrey raised their glasses.

'To your health and continued composure.'

'Yours,' replied Sheila, with equal graciousness. Then a uniformed police officer was at their table. It was then that they both realised.

The explosion had been a bomb.

The bomb had been placed in a car.

The car was Jeffrey's.

Detective-Sergeant Warden accepted a Perrier with a twist of lime while he took statements. The remains of Jeffrey's car—the precious Bentley, as it happened—were roped off by the police for examination. Rodney made sure a hire car with a driver would be there for Jeffrey before he had finished lunch.

'Outing,' Jeffrey resumed, over a complimentary second vodka martini, 'is, as I know you know, a political action. Remember coming out? I, for one, certainly remember coming out. No more closet. I am me, and free to be me. Take me as I am. No more straightening up for the outside world. It was a fabulous party, thank you.'

'You thanked me then. No one,' said Sheila, 'talks about closets and coming out any more, or being gay? Those aberrant categories.'

'Unfortunately,' he said dryly, 'a little matter of a hideous viral disease becoming endemic on this planet has overshadowed ...'

'OK,' she interrupted. 'We haven't got to the outing yet.'

'Coming out is a voluntary, proud declaration of your sexual preference. Outing is a disclosure made for you. By others.'

Their appetisers arrived.

'Well,' said Sheila, 'why should people be hypocrites and pretend to be straight?'

'Bon appetit. What about gays who want to lead quiet, private lives and maintain that what they do is no one else's business?'

'Everything is everyone's business. In a cosmic way.'

'A lot of radicals would agree with you. Not the cosmic part. Good oysters. How's yours?'

Sheila was having the asparagus. 'Delicious. And so?'

'So: my column called for a distinction. Anyone whose homosexual practice is not an issue has a right to be left alone to his privacy.'

'Or hers.'

'Or hers. But people whose silence supports policies which discriminate against gays are legitimate targets. Closet queens— sorry—people who've indulged in same-sex sex. People in government. In large corporations. In churches that say being gay is all a lot of sin and sacrilege. They're the ones who should be Outed.'

'I suppose most people would agree.'

'A lot of people don't. The hate mail has been incredible. Even more than usual.'

'Can we talk about me now?'

'Those who are violently against Outing in any case at all. Rights of the individual, rights to privacy and so on. Those who want to expose every single individual who has tried to hide any hint of a homosexual experience. Rights of gay communities, rights of gay pride and so on. Incredible passions, some of these letters. Death threats.'

Sheila's eyes widened.

'Could that ... ?' Sheila indicated the ruins of the car outside. They could not see the police's operations, as Rodney had closed the wooden Venetians. The press had arrived, and the management of Buckleys was swift to shield its clients from their intrusion.

The people who knew they were lucky to get into Buckleys longed to rush through their meal and talk to the press, but Buckleys' impeccable service had mysteriously slowed down for them.

'Idiots. Cranks. Cowards,' Jeffrey reassured her. 'As always. Darling, what about you? We're nearly to the main course, and I haven't heard your news.'

Sheila smiled. She knew from long acquaintance that it was always Jeffrey's turn first. First she listened to his rave. First he got to tell what was on his mind. He had plenty of time for her, as long as his story was told first. It was probably like that at his home, she thought. At home with whoever it was now, Jeffrey's latest... Grant? Jules? Brad, that's right, Brad. Jeffrey got listened to first at the end of the day, got first choice in what he and Brad would eat and where, and in bed ... well, they probably took turns and she knew whose turn it was first.

'As a matter of fact,' Sheila said, 'I have very big major important fabulous news, since you ask.' She enjoyed a moment's pause, sipping her wine. 'Doors,' she said. Jeffrey nodded eagerly. He was a big fan of the posthumous cult classic. 'Mine,' said Sheila. 'It's mine. Twelve months' option.'

Jeffrey was actually impressed. 'Sheila. You're a film producer at last. It's wonderful. You'll do it marvellously; no one else could. I want to know everything. This calls for cham-pagne.'

'Actually,' Sheila remembered, 'Belle Malouf said there was some little last-minute hitch with the contract.'

'Always is. Belle's fine. Just get on with it!' said Jeffrey, looking around to summon the waiter. But Jason was already approaching their table with a bottle of Krug in a bucket of ice.

'From Sir Harry,' said Jason. 'With compliments.'

Sheila turned to wave to Sir Harry across the room, while she slipped into her pocket the envelope that had arrived with the champagne. A busy afternoon lay ahead.

'Isn't he sweet?' she said to Jeffrey. 'Now I'll tell you all my plans.'

THREE

Lucky. That's what they said about her. They said she had fabulous luck.

She had been married to a wealthy man who adored her and remained her friend. She had travelled wherever she wanted to go. She'd had a number of interesting jobs—magazine columnist, radio broadcaster art gallery manager. She had swifdy gone straight to the top in all her careers, which freed her to drop out of them before she got bored. She kept trying new things and was good at most of them. She attracted the devotion of interesting people. She didn't look her age and she didn't give a damn what anyone thought. If you couldn't love her you had to hate her.

But what is luck? She created her own luck, of that she was sure. She created it out of her courage, her intuition and her sense. Some people hated her some were jealous. They didn't have her determination, her willingness to gamble, to seize opportunities and to use anyone who could be used.

A capital-B Bitch is formed out of capital-A Ambition. She had not been born with it. She had not been born Sheila Power. Ambition formed when she was a child, little Saskia Stankonovich, living in a semi-rural area on the outer edge of the despised western suburbs of Sydney.

When her parents had migrated to Australia as displaced people, penniless refugees, her mother was pregnant and died in childbirth. Her silent, bitter father laboured to make a new life. She was cared for by her maternal grandmother who lived until Saskia was eleven.

Babushka had found it impossible to learn a new language, and muttered to the child in Russian. She whispered and muttered stories about the Homeland, and the Cossack of the royal family who had raped her in the year of the revolution.

The offspring was Saskia's mother, she swore, and the child had royal blood. 'My little princess,' the grandmother would say. 'When our land is free, you will return and claim your inheritance.'

Who knows what Saskia's father would have said if he had known what stupid lies his daughter was being told? He was a man of broken spirit. Each night he consumed a bottle of vodka, either playing cards with other men, or at home alone, weeping.

Perhaps the child believed the grandmother; perhaps not. Looking back, as an adult, she realised she could never find out who had raped her grandmother and that it did not matter. In this new country, you made a new life. The only family history that mattered was the one that began when you entered this faraway continent, this new world. Her life and her family history began in the year of her arrival to Australia in the belly of the mother she never knew, the year of her birth.

But there was one gift her grandmother's crazy mutterings gave her. The gift of imagining. To dare to imagine a better life, to dare to hope—to know—that this poverty and dispossessed misery could be escaped! To dream of grand cities, glorious adornments, sculptures and symphonies!

Saskia's father could not be made to dream, or to hope, or to imagine. He laboured and he drank, in unrelenting defeat and melancholy. 'This is all there is,' he told the child. 'Don't expect too much. Don't try to have more. Life is hard and cruel for people like us.'

He was wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. This she knew in the depths of her heart. When she went to school and discovered books, music, drawing and dancing, she found she had been right. Another world did exist. A world of beauty and infinite possibilities. And she would get there.

Miss Bowles, plump, white-haired, elderly, ran the local library. Miss Oxford, in her twenties, thin, nervous, yearning, gave piano lessons in the house in which she lived with her stria, religious parents. Mrs Macquarie, with the booming voice and the dishevelled, bohemian style, had a large family and taught life drawing and watercolour painting at the art school. And Mrs Lipton, a tall, elegant widow, ran her own ballet academy.

All of them became besotted with the lovely, eager; motherless little girl. She gave them reason to keep on teaching in the cultural wasteland to which circumstances had banished them.

Miss Bowles directed her to the best books that had ever been written. Mrs Macquarie gave her extra tuition, because Saskia had talent and might become an artist. Miss Oxford took her on excursions to see the big stage shows in town, as no one else shared her love. Miss Lipton invited her to tea in her own genteel home, and showed her pictures of the great ballerinas. Saskia avidly learned all she could about art, elocution and etiquette.

When she reached puberty a new Saskia was born. She changed from an appealing little child into a blooming baby-woman, a Lolita vamp. The buds of her new breasts began to push at the confines of her school blouse and the skirt of her school tunic rode higher on her thighs. She grew faster than the clothes could be replaced.

Even in the most self-contained trance of childish daydreams, Saskia Stankonovich walking down the street seemed to be screaming for attention.

Within a year; she had learned a great deal.

She learned that even secondhand rags could not conceal a provocative sexuality as natural and irrepressible as hers.

She learned that life was not fair; and that being beautiful gave you both advantages and disadvantages. You could choose between them. Being beautiful could be fun, if you learned to ignore others' jealousy and your own self-doubt.

Saskia figured that there was no one she could count on but herself, and so she would make that the best self she could by herself create.

She learned that a woman's full-grown breasts could be restrained by silk or polyester. She resolved that if she got any chance in the world to wear silk all the time, she would grab that chance good and hard.

She learned the ways of the world. And in spite of its injustices and betrayals, in spite of its bad manners and bad taste, she herself would like to go on living forever.

Saskia had looked after herself ever since her grandmother died. She grew up fast.

Perhaps her father didn't notice that she was a woman. Perhaps he didn't want to know. He now drank two bottles of vodka every night. He spoke to her less and less. 'You can't expect too much' was all he said. 'Life is cruel. You can't have more than the little we have now.'

'Oh no? Just watch me,' said Saskia, packed the few things she wanted to keep and, at the age of fifteen, she left home.

FOUR

'What am I doing here?' I said out loud, although no one was there.

I had made an appointment, and I had found the room. It was on the second floor of one of those marvellous old houses on the Edgecliff side of Double Bay. A Moreton Bay fig tree shaded the front. The wide cedar staircase led to a corridor where all the doors were numbered.

I had stepped into number thirteen, Gary Nin's room. It was painted white. White Japanese blinds covered the window and a white Chinese paper lampshade covered the light. A glass cabinet was full of uncut crystals. A fern had been placed in a handmade clay pot in one corner. A print of a mandala—I recognised it as a Tibetan thanka—hung in a plain frame on the wall. Seating was provided by rolled-up futons covered with Indonesian ikat cloth. Health-food and nature-love magazines sat in artful disarray on one cane stool, while another held an Indian brass tray, mugs and herbal tea-bags. Ambient music was playing on a silver boombox. Too many damn flutes. I pressed Stop. The polished wooden floors were nice, though, that lovely old cedar.

'This is not my scene,' I said and decided to leave. Just then the door to an inner room opened and a creature in white stepped out.

'You must be Sheila,' he said. I saw a man of indeterminate age, dressed in white sandshoes, 'white track pants and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. His hair was so short it looked as if he shaved it rather than cut it and his bony face was expressionless and yet serene. Completely asexual, I thought in surprise. I've never seen that before.

'And you must be Gary Nin,' I replied.

He showed me into the inner room, which held only a high narrow bed, and two chairs. We sat.

He wasn't going to speak again until I did. 'Have you had these rooms long?' I asked.

'I'm borrowing them,' Gary Nin replied, 'while I stay in Sydney and conduct sessions here.' His voice was steady and soft and strong, with an indeterminate, faint, pleasant accent. I wanted to ask him a lot more but this time he was first: 'Why are you here?'

'My friend told me I should come.'

'What did she tell you?'

'It is a she, actually. She said if she told me too much about it, I probably wouldn't go but to please go just once with an open mind. All I know, it's something to do with past lives. You tell me what my past lives were, right? I must say I don't believe in that stuff. I mean, reincarnation makes sense as an answer to the big question. And I respect the fact that so much of the world's population has always believed in reincarnation. I have a friend who ... Anyway, the problem is if you take it too literally you're locked into a concept of linear time which is being totally altered by the New Physics. When I retire from film producing I intend to make a thorough study of the New Physics and really read that book. The understanding Time one.'

I sweaty Gary Nin forced me to babble on like that. His skeletal, unearthly face had the quality of no particular response but absolute attention. He seemed already to know everything I was saying to him, and yet to totally support me in expressing it exactly as I did.

He was the strangest person I had ever sat in a small room with and yet I felt comfortable. Just as he seemed to have no particular age, so, in his presence, time seemed neither to pass nor to stand still.

'You will not be asked to believe in anything,' he said. 'Only to experience.'

'Experience? Don't you just tell me stuff, what you see? Would I be able to tape it?' I had a certain amount of experience with various spooks: clairvoyants, card-readers, channellers: my friend Rana would pass on the phone numbers.

I'd think 'I don't need to do this again' but she'd always persuade me to give it a go.

'The therapy, if you decide to do it, consists of seven sessions. You will be guided into a state of deep relaxation, and then into an actual experience of significant scenes from other lives. Past lives is only a useful expression, as human thought at this stage is in fact largely locked into the concept of linear time. These scenes might give you insights into issues in your present life.'

'Well,' I said, not really sure, 'it sounds interesting. What result can I expect? What will I be doing it for?'

'That's up to you. Perhaps just for the experience. Perhaps for self-knowledge. Perhaps the reason will be revealed to you later. Perhaps you have the audacity to do something for no reason.'

'Oh, I must have a goal in this thing, an objective. Don't you go into the big issues in my life, the patterns I seem to repeat, the things I've never been able to resolve?'

'You've been to therapists before, Sheila.'

'So much is of importance to me. Work, sex, peace of mind, clothes. I must confess though. I date a few nice men but I'm confused, they're all so different. Do you think life is all about finding the perfect partner?.. . You're going to say do you?'

A flicker of a smile played on Gary Nin's serene features. I'm sure I saw it. He kept gazing at me with that air of patient wisdom.

'What we can do,' he suggested, 'is to look at specific incidents of your other lives—sexual incidents, the sexual experiences of the many people you are.'

'Fine,' I said. I often made my mind up quickly and thought about the reasons later. 'I'd like to schedule the appointments now.'

And then I had to dash.

As I hurried to my car I realised my knickers were already wet. My cunt had been aching in a moist agony of background anticipation ever since I had received the news of my next appointment of the day.

FIVE

I let myself into the best suite of the hotel with the key that had been delivered to me. Two dozen red roses had been placed in a cut-glass vase and champagne in a silver bucket of ice. The glasses, I knew, would be in the refrigerator.

I went through the double doors into the bedroom, where, of course, upon the emperor-sized bed covered with the Italian tapestry bedspread,