She huddles between the Great Dividing Range and the outer northern fringes of the Tasman Sea, rests beside a great river, ever watchful for summer cyclones ripping towards her from the capricious Coral Sea. She stretches her arms to Moreton Bay, up the Brisbane River Valley, and into the foothills of the D'Aguilar Range. Her breasts are full, and her arms sinewed and brown from sun and labour.

Lying under her feet are the sacred grounds of the ancient Turrubul people. Below a tangle of intersecting arterial roads in Petrie Terrace - roughly around the Hale Street and Gilchrist bend - there are three venerable Aboriginal camps. They slumber under the Victoria Army Barracks, the Kelvin Grove Army Barracks, and a maze of suburbia west of Hale Street. Brisbane may know this deep in her subconscious, but most of the time it's difficult for this party-girl to focus on such hoary details.

For just over 170 years Brisbane has slept with blackfellas, German missionaries, hungry gold miners, opportunistic land grabbers. She has spawned thieves, whores, Governor-Generals, famous pilots, Wimbledon and Olympic champions.

Brisbane is buxom, and straining her seams, doing the Rumba. She throws back her head and laughs. She wipes her forehead with the hem of her sarong. She is a wealthy strumpet dancing on the graves of stone-age men. Under the sea - to the east into Moreton Bay and beyond - lies the antediluvian river bed, where 20,000 years ago, the Brisbane River was joined by the Pine and Caboolture Rivers, forming a mighty valley. No doubt the burial grounds, middens, and Bora rings of sundry tribes grace the flooded riverbanks for tens of kilometres to the east.

Brisbane is a brassy tart, camping temporarily on a tidal ledge. See her swaying her hips to the rhythms of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. When she flung her arms open, I entered her embrace, on a collision course with my private hell. That was in 1983, fourteen years ago.

If this seems a strange beginning, please indulge me. Strange beginnings befit singular tales. This one is dedicated to Jippi: my loyal feathered jester and familiar. May his good intentions and boundless humour infect the cosmos. And may the relatives and friends of the deceased, in particular, come to comprehend an otherwise rational person being driven by events to an act of mindless savagery. I don't pretend to fully understand all of it myself.

My name is Eric Van Gelde. I'm of Viking stock and look it. But I've never been a violent man. I state that categorically, at the outset, as a fundamental truth of this manifesto. Ask my first wife, Julie; my second wife, Sarah; or my daughter, Tanya. This must be understood. I'm a lover, not a fighter, Viking blood notwithstanding.

***

When I finally dragged myself out of bed around noon, I was saturated in sweat. It was 38 degrees by my window thermometer and felt like 99% humidity. I had a cold shower and drank almost two litres of water. I rang Josh at the hospital but he was still under sedation.

There was a message on the answering machine but I couldn't bring myself to listen to it. I was restless, and already thinking of a drink. Since it was too late and too hot for an early morning run, I made myself an iced jug of cordial spiked with Riesling and collapsed on the hammock I had strung on the verandah - the coolest spot in the house.

In the late afternoon I finally listened to the message. I had been putting it off because I thought it would be Sarah (she had been ringing me every few days to check up on me), but the message was from a Grizelda Wimbolt who had seen the admiral's slow combustion stove. She was interested in meeting with me as she wanted me to paint a child's bedroom in a medieval motif. She specifically asked for dragons - lots of dragons.

She had sounded like she might be a stubby short of a six-pack, and as I wasn't much in the mood to discuss children, colour schemes and medieval dragons, I waited until the evening to ring her.

"Oh hello Eric!" she said. "I finally I get to speak with the artist. I met you at Edna's once actually, at lunchtime . . ."

I wracked my brain trying to remember her but it was hopeless. "I'm sorry . . ." I said.

"No, no, don't be", she replied. "I was at a table full of guests. You were just passing through. Anyway, I loved the stove you did for Edna and Richard. You find a lovely balance between whimsy and concentration. This is a much larger canvas - of course - a whole bedroom, including the ceiling, to be finished in three weeks. Is that a problem?" she asked. "I could help you . . . if that's okay . . . just easy sections. I'm no artist, but I can paint a straight line and I don't mind doing tedious work."

"Yeah, well, I'm going to have to meet with you", I said. we can talk about all that stuff then." Inwardly I was groaning. I preferred to work alone, without anyone - especially the boss - looking over my shoulder.

"Yes, of course Eric", she said, "I understand. What are you doing tonight? I was just about to start dinner. The house is pretty empty. The kids won't be here for three weeks, only some of the furniture has arrived, but, you'd be most welcome to join me", she added.

"Tonight? Ooh well ... " I stammered. I hadn't really got as far as dinner yet.

"I'm making a curry with rice and vegetables", she said. "You won't be sorry. If you're feeling naughty, bring a bottle."

The suddenness of it all caught me off guard. Here was a woman offering me food, work, money, and God knows what else. What the hell! It would be awkward to say no. The option was another night at home, alone with Jippi, Black & Blackers and wheels within wheels.

"Umm ... yeah ... righto. Thanks. What sort of bottle ... What time?" I stammered.

"Red Bordeaux", advised Grizelda. "Better make it two", she added. "The only thing I've got in the house is a drop of champagne. Say, eight o'clock? That'll give me time to prepare the food and have a nice bath."

"Okay", I said.

After briefly giving me directions to her house in Upper Brookfield, Grizelda Wimbolt hung up, leaving me wondering exactly what it was I had just agreed to.

* * *

I had a lot of mixed emotions as I drove to Grizelda's that evening. The episode at Nasty's farm had opened a Pandora's box of demons and half-baked repressions for me. My own mortality was something I usually avoided considering at length. Now it had been cast into sharp relief by Josh's personal tragedy. (It was as if I'd been unaware of a murderous ogre stalking me; whose breath I now suddenly felt on the nape of my neck .) The shiftless, aimless, mad-pacer's circle that was my life seemed to be assuming the proportions of a gargantuan monument to the wastage of precious time. I could see my own epitaph mocking me from my future gravestone: "Too lazy, drunk, and myopic to realize his potential; died a loser." This cut particularly deep since I'd always nurtured a conception of myself as a goer. I had learned to gamely wear my patchy work history as some sort of tattered war decoration to a jack-of-all-trades heroism. Now, bathed in the glow of Nasty's calamity, it looked more like a demerit badge for avoidance. Maybe I was just a feckless putterer, too weak and impatient to see any grand projects through - doomed to bumble drunkenly around some suburban backyard amongst a junk pile of old fridges, hubcaps, and plumber's pipe; mumbling into my beard and slowly sinking into senile eccentricity; Mr. Magoo meets Caspar Milquetoast.

I had no idea how old Grizelda Wimbolt might be. She had sounded like a slightly batty, flirty, blue-rinse candidate, and just a little too overly-relieved to hear from me. I had always been wary of doing in-house jobs for nutters, even wealthy, harmless ones. I couldn't work if they were chewing my ear off. Being trapped for eight-hour stretches with verbose weirdos was not my concept of ideal working conditions.

I felt a little anxious and ridiculous as I knocked on the door, with two bottles of Bordeaux under my arm and a comic opera spinning out of control in my cranium.

The door swung open to reveal a tall slender woman with an ethereal Nordic face. She looked to be in her mid-thirties and was dressed in loose cotton slacks and a black baggy T-shirt with l'amour emblazoned on the front.

I instantly remembered the afternoon at Ednas' a table of wine-soaked society wives giggling their hellos - one austere drop-dead beautiful ice-queen at the back, sizing me up like a piece of rotten fruit.

"Eric!" Grizelda extended her hand for me to shake.

"G'day Mrs Wimbolt", I said.

She shook my hand firmly, like a man. "My friends call me Gaz. Please come in, " she said, holding onto my hand a fraction longer than was necessary, then slowly dropping it, and retreating a few steps, so that I could step inside. She led me through an empty lounge room into a parlour. This room, too, was bare of furniture, though several large cardboard boxes rested against the far wall. In the centre of the room, an American Indian blanket had been spread on the timber floor. On it were several large pillows, and place settings for two. An ornate silver candelabra enjoyed centre position.

The cutlery and plates had been impeccably laid out, as if the distances between the parfait spoons and salad forks had been measured with a micrometer. Another ten candles, placed strategically around the room, cast a shimmering borealis of shadows over ornate architraves and an impressive array of leadlight windows. The room, I thought, would be awash with colour on a sunny day.

I stood, dumbfounded, my feet nailed to the floor, the silence, and haunted-mansion feeling, seeping into my bones like a cold draught.

"Make yourself comfortable, Eric, I'll serve", Grizelda said.

She glided from the room.

I spied a chilled, half-empty bottle of champagne. Sprawling on the pillows like a visiting satrap, I helped myself. I gulped down several mouthfuls of the champagne and listened to the light classical music which emanated from some far corner of the house.

Grizelda returned with a huge silver platter on which sat several large tureens and small bowls of various sauces and condiments. The platter looked like it weighed twenty kilos, but she handles it with a deft touch. "Ha good", she said, "you've already poured yourself a glass. I'm sorry, I'm being a thoughtless hostess tonight."

She placed the platter on the floor, dropped onto one of the pillows and sat, cross-legged, facing me with an upheld glass.

"Well then, here's to us, and the genesis of a fabulous work of art", she said.

We clinked glasses and drank, and for the next hour we enjoyed a pleasant meal.

Grizelda chatted about her husband (a successful barrister) and her two girls (twelve and six) with the housewifery familiarity of a new neighbor over tea and crumpets, while I found myself gazing at her face. I've always been a sucker for a pretty face. Hers was that combination of chiseled Aryan coolness and too-perfect Cleo-model sensuality that made my knees go to water.