A Many Coated Man (18 page)

‘Hasn’t the Hotel a security system?’ asks Kellie.

‘Plugged nickle,’ says Les. ‘All activated lights and cameras and such. No, you need someone there, don’t you. Someone holding the line as we did. They’ve got to think twice about having a go then.’

‘Royce Meelind said that he would be in touch to set up the meeting promised by the PM,’ says Kellie. ‘He said there’s no denying the political impact of Western Springs. All the parties are taking the CCP very seriously. Electoral leverage, he said, that’s what we have now more than ever. We’ll need to sort out a time frame for the meeting and a shopping list.’

‘And when we meet, when the heats off the PM a bit, we’ll probably get the old run around.’

‘That’s why we need to be well prepared.’

So they are all three quiet for a while, travelling back from the Waitakeres through the suburbs. Kellie’s thoughts and Slaven’s include each other in their different ways, but Croad is the unperturbed epicentre of his world and is unaware of any arrogance in that. He relives the confrontation in the carpark of the Burlesque Hotel as the great event of the evening and already the roles of actuality are subtly modified to enhance his mastery. He smiles his batwing smile as he drives and the blips of the centre markings, the reflectors, flash by. Have a go then, he thinks. Let’s see what you’ve got.

Kellie is impressed by Royce Meelind. Despite his government job, his Think Tank responsibility for evaluating political impact of new movements, she doesn’t regret the candour of their conversation at the party. She likes his dark eyes, his intellectualism, the quiet efficiency. She wishes she had just such a colleague to assist her with the administration of the Coalition. Meelind is a gardener, surely. She imagines him a man committed to large plants and long term development:
maples and golden elms, Spanish chestnuts, limes and the skyward reach of poplars — her favourites.

Slaven is appalled by his lack of response to most of the people who came to him in the course of the celebrations. Many of them praised the depth of concern he had for his fellow New Zealanders, while their individual approach, their particularity as the people to whom he advocated service, meant little to him. He comforts himself with the idea that the people of greatest worth, the salt of the earth folk that are at the heart of all his effort, would be the last to push themselves forward for his attention. He had enjoyed a brief talk with Fassiere and the promise of further negotiation, but otherwise he seemed to be amongst a press of people who had nothing he admired and whose resolves were transparently self-promoting. His training gives him a certain objectivity of course with which to view his own reactions. He considers the warping power of the enormous stress he has had over several months and that so soon after his accident. Fierce revelation and joys just as much as racking doubts and momentous decisions. Trivial frustrations which could suddenly flare to epic proportions.

The poet Cummings said that the fear of insanity is an unfortunate display of self-importance, but Slaven since hanging on the wire in sparks has never taken a happy balance for granted. The sudden expansion of his vision and powers which has brought him fame might be counter-balanced by the growth of darker faculties which will have their expression when the time is ripe. Still at times, just before waking, against a low-lit skyline he sees bursts of fire where the arch-angels fight and hears the scaled and feathered reinforcements griping as they march by. There are inner views which have a sad finality, yet lack a surface credibility and sometimes when he talks to people, snatches of conversations from his past come between his words and theirs, as spots drift in our vision across the shapes of an observed world. It happened at the party. A man in very creased trousers, a campaign worker whose face he knew and whose name he has forgotten, had congratulated Slaven while in fact seeking endorsement for the position of Auckland publicity manager designate and as they spoke
together, Slaven heard quite clearly his father saying goodbye as he left for China when the Democratic Restoration was in progress.

‘Did you see Cardew at all?’ says Kellie.

‘Not since right at the start.’ Slaven had noticed his son then, how he seemed to have an appetite for the hors d’oeuvres. Slaven is pleased that he hasn’t seen him since. He never finds any comfort in his son’s presence. ‘I didn’t meet the people I wanted to,’ says Slaven.

‘There’s never enough time at parties.’

‘No. I mean that the people who are really important to the movement weren’t there, probably not invited even. You end up each time with people who are organisational masseurs, who keep the administration in shape, but who have no consciousness of the spirit within the movement. There was hardly anyone I talked with who had a sense of the individual benefit possible, apart from their own of course.’

‘It’s a party. Be reasonable. You can’t expect people to show their best side all the time.’

‘I heard dad talking.’ Slaven’s voice is quiet and matter of fact.

‘Pardon?’

‘When Bowman bailed me up after supper. Yes, that’s who it was — Bowman. He helped with the setting up of Western Springs from this end.’

‘That’s right. Bowman,’ says Kellie. ‘He was the one singing all night. A god awful voice, too.’

‘As he was going on and on, I heard my father saying goodbye again at the Wellington airport before he went with his unit to China. I suppose I was about seventeen and there was just this group of service personnel saying goodbye to their families and mum never wanted him to go and so she wouldn’t make it easy for him at the end. She made it seem as if he was staying very late at the pub with the boys when he should be home. His high, laced boots squeaked as he stood with us until he had to go and in his eyes you could see that he’d left us already. “Well, off to the land of Nanki Poo,” he said. “It can’t be helped,” and mum walked away without a word.’

‘What did he do then?’

‘He said he’d get it right when he came back.’

‘And did he?’

‘Not altogether, no.’

‘I feel sorry for them,’ says Kellie.

‘It’s not easy being in the services,’ says Croad, not thinking she may mean man and wife. He has the firm opinion that comes from ignorance. ‘Like back there in the parking lot of the Burlesque Hotel when I had just a few seconds to decide to make a stand. And it could’ve been heavy going if the passing bald-headed guy hadn’t waded in with a will.’

‘Do you think I need some counselling, or more treatment?’ Slaven asks Kellie as Croad drives smoothly on through the night.

‘Actually,’ muses Croad, ‘I reckon I’ve seen that bloke before, but down south of course. Sort of familiar he was, but he didn’t stick around afterwards. I suppose he had stuff in his car that he was keeping an eye on.’

‘When we get back maybe I should go and get some advice from Marianne Dunne. The name of a top person. I still feel scrambled at times and although I wouldn’t swap what I’m doing now, I haven’t been at it long enough to know what I can take, whether I’m pacing myself as I should.’

‘I’ll ring her as soon as we’re back.’ says Kellie and she will of course. Slaven knows it is as good as done.

Les Croad drives quickly on the motorway. The lights set into the island embankments wink past as regular as heartbeats. The lights beyond are a delicate shimmer which disguises the reality of the city — the main thoroughfares traced with yellow through the starlight private whites, the commercial clusters of flashing blue and green. And from the outside, on the one-way glass of the car is all this same reflected, except that in the windows the lights stream past like sparks of phosphorescence in a dark wake.

There is a place, in an arcade, or is it a mall. A cave in a main street and so out of the light night breeze, but still allowing sight of the main chance. A large, slot video on which the guys play permissible pornography, but they are
so familiar with it that their eyes slide away to the clothed women walking on the main street. They want the real thing. At the entrance is a Pacific Bank distribution point and the wind fluffs the discards on the paved floor and the guys even as they laugh together watch sideways to see how much is withdrawn, who has good tit, who’s well hung. They are the real thing. The laughter has no humour in it, just an act of territory and when they see good tit and arse the guys lift their shoulders instinctively within their yellow, leather jackets and laughter beats out to the wind at the entrance. There is a takeaway bar which helps to warm the arcade with tacos, burgers, fries and pizza. There is a video parlour and plastic pot plants used as urinals, dispensers for kiwi juice and condoms, a cubicle shop that sells posters of the video rock stars — Doctor Normie, Little Nell and the Hoihos. There is a bright, red arrow which starts, runs and disappears towards the parlour and starts again, except that in its length is one malfunction so that the moving finger vanishes for an instant in just the same place over and over. There is movement and light and heat. There is a crass energy which has its own appeal. An arcade, a mall, in the city you understand. It is the real thing.

Slaven. In the week following Western Springs, with the residual triumph of that underpinning the quiet sun and flowers of Kellie’s garden. He has agreed to an interview with Ms Zita Lee of ‘Here and Now’ and he waits in a deck chair by the rose plots and the weeping willow whose skirts sweep the ground bare in patches. He has been so busy that to be at ease in the garden is a heady novelty, simple, external things a feast for the senses. After all, the recent advice has been not to lose contact with a physical reality. Kellie has mainly modern roses, but there is Annie Vibert with its small, white flowers prim amongst the less inhibited generations. Regensberg, Pot o’ Gold are here and Blue Nile with the bruise tint to its pale petal. Kellie has a spray which will flush the buds at her whim.

They are in need of a different spray now. Slaven can see beneath almost red new leaves and clustered on buds, aphids, and on the thorn of a Kerryman with a red-purple
flower nodding above is a mantis in a sheath of pea-green. Cicadas cry for their lives from secret places and there’s the whiff of sheep dung and oil and wool on the drifting air. ‘Actually I haven’t had time to read
A
New
Drummer,
though the political editor gave me a copy before I came,’ says Zita. Tipped back somewhat in the chair she is aware of vulnerability. ‘But I saw some of the St Kilda rally on the television and think you spoke marvellously well.’ Slaven wishes that he could ask her the most personal things — where she comes from, whom she first loved, the story of the small scar on her left ankle, does she bleach the fine hair on her upper lip, did she have a pet rabbit with eyes of jellied innocence, does she realise that her life is being passed in this way and that the sun liberates from her skirt a fragrance of washing liquid and wardrobe. Loving Memory, a hybrid tea, Kellie has told him, is such a beautiful bloom; dark, glowing red, rolled petals with just the suggestion of down. And he can smell the bleached canvas of the deck chair close to his face. ‘Our readers are interested particularly in the human dimension of the celebrity I suppose. Does that sound trivial? I mean an impression of you as a person apart from your political image. Things about your family and your background and whether you restore steam engines, or velum manuscripts, as a secret relaxation. Can you cook, for instance, delighting your wife with an egg and pasta dish.’ On the stem of the Kerryman the praying mantis slowly climbs, two sways forward and one sway back. The new growth of the weeping willow rustles on the earth and the cropping of his sheep is as scissors through fabric beyond the garden. ‘I can see your point. That you don’t want to be photographed by the side of the house where the accident happened,’ says Zita, but she knows the editor will be disappointed nevertheless. ‘You’ve been generous in tribute to the part your wife plays in the organisation of the CCP. That’s something I want to cover as well.’

Several times Slaven’s father took him camping in the Kaimanawa Ranges, using all army gear of course, ration packs of mostly dried stuff, plastic water bottles in lined belt carriers, stainless steel pannikins which fitted and folded tightly together, gossamer tents which yet had
strength and so low that after a night the breath’s condensation gathered and ran only inches above their faces. ‘Would you say you’re fully recovered from all the effects now?’ says Zita, ‘apart from the hands. You must have been very lucky.’ Slaven would wake early in the mornings and from his tent hear, or see, his father already up, washing at the ablution point he had established in the creek, or fetching a pannikin of water from further upstream. From training and pride he kept a tidy camp, things tucked away after use so that the site was never strewn and he could be packed and gone when quick movement was required. Before they left a campsite his father insisted that they walk the area to ensure it remained as they found it. Always there were the flies that found them out however, loathsome, yet with bodies of iridescent green, or blue. What could they possibly feed on normally in such isolation. Even his father had no answer. ‘You’ve said that you won’t stand for parliament yourself and that the Coalition has a policy of not putting up candidates. Is that firm, or a ploy as some people have suggested, to gauge support before committing the movement?’

Only years later did it occur to Slaven that his father was something of an ascetic. It didn’t sit well with the idea of a soldier perhaps, but nevertheless it was true. His father hated indulgence and any easy way, He loved a rigorous self-discipline and a challenge, whether in the plotting room of GAMD, on the tracked missile carriers, or a ridge above the bushline. And a practical joke got him in the end: topped him. ‘Not that you’re old of course,’ says Zita, ‘but it does seem comparatively late in life to become so intensely and controversially involved in public life when before you didn’t even belong to a party. The PM was quoted as referring to you as a menopausal prophet. Any response?’