A Many Coated Man (22 page)

At Slaven’s first appearance following the Lyttelton attack, he suffers a mild convulsion while addressing a combined local bodies seminar in the Pocock Lounge of the Civic Administration Block. His face strikes the lectern, his notes are dislodged and flutter in the air briefly after he himself has reached the floor. Cardew is present at Kellie’s insistence and takes his father’s place as speaker while Slaven rests. His theme is not, however, a greater bureaucratic responsiveness to public opinion, but an appeal for official ratepayers’ institutions to contribute to the Coalition’s funds. His reception is less than rapturous.

So Slaven must cut down on his commitments for a while. It’s the advice of both Garrity and Marianne Dunne. ‘It’s what I’ve been saying,’ Cardew tells his mother. ‘We’ve got to take more of the load off him by playing a bigger part. He’s the last one to want some sort of personality cult. You know that and it only makes him a target.’

‘Who else can make it work? Who else can speak like that?’

‘Yea, well, there’s that, but the organisational things, the policies and the supervision should be left to you and me, mum. We’re the ones who understand him.’

‘You feel you’re that close then?’ says Kellie. Cardew has the grace to let his eyes slide away.

‘I reckon I’m closer than Thackeray Thomas, Eula, or Sheffield and that lot.’

‘God help us,’ says Kellie.

Cardew goes out soon afterwards to the Hello Dolly Escort Agency and then a motel complex with a Maori theme. He shags on the second floor by a window level with carved
figures on a pole. He can see from his fixed examination what a sham it is. The pole has long cracks which show pale wood beneath the stain and the eyes are white plastic instead of the true irridescence of paua shell. ‘What a have,’ he says above his partner of the moment’s rise and fall.

‘Tell me about it,’ she replies.

The Chairman of the Coalition’s Wellington branch rings him later that night, saying he has heard that Slaven isn’t well, that there’s been an unfortunate incident. The movement as a whole has to be safeguarded he says, there are people just waiting to pick on anything suspect, to discredit the principles for which the Coalition stands. All the work, the commitment, the faith, the political capital gained, can be lost so quickly. He tells Cardew that some influential members are concerned that Slaven hasn’t had enough rest since the Lyttelton affair. A rest for a while, the Wellington Chairman says, an opportunity for others to run with the ball. There’s a group who would like to talk it over with Cardew; just a quiet discussion for the moment. There’s a room booked at the new hotel in Island Bay, built by the Koreans. The Chairman is so glad that Cardew appreciates their concern.

Something of drama should follow perhaps. We think that evil of necessity comes with a heightened significance, don’t we? That triviality is erased by betrayal, and boredom incompatible with cruelty and malice. It’s not so though. Cardew and the Chairman meet with Messrs Pollen, Marr and Aristeed in the Chairman’s suite overlooking Island Bay and they move cautiously towards agreement that Slaven is best taken into professional care. For his own sake, for the Coalition’s sake, for the sake of Cardew, the Chairman, and those represented by Messrs Pollen, Marr and Aristeed. Mr Aristeed has a bad hip and from time to time he gets up and walks around the chairs of the others for a little respite. Mr Pollen speaks very highly of the Beckley-Waite Institute and gives a brochure on it to Cardew. The essential point emerges in regard to Cardew that a close family member will have to agree, almost certainly sign something to that effect, says Mr Pollen and the Chairman murmurs something about resolution and imposing oneself on reality.
Mr Pollen says that there are excellent medical people who know what’s required for Slaven’s well-being and are prepared to say so, but nevertheless there is this about a close family member, and some record of Slaven’s little problems since the fall and the power line will be helpful. Mr Aristeed stops limping about the room and says that his hip is unbearable. Before he leaves he shakes Cardew’s hand and says he’s convinced that a secure convalescence is the best thing for his father and for the CCP, just until Slaven is strong enough not to be his own worst enemy. There are media hounds who crucify people just to keep their hand in, he says.

Cardew sits with the Chairman and Messrs Pollen and Marr for another hour or so and they talk about the amazing success of Slaven’s Coalition. Cardew says that what’s needed next is a corporate financial structure with the emphasis on subscriptions, donations, pledges and endowments. No doubt of it exists in the minds of the others. The Wellington Chairman thinks that he’s had a small bucket of ice sent up, but can’t find it. Mr Marr isn’t much older than Cardew. He leans towards him and tells him that as soon as Slaven goes to the Beckley-Waite for a spell then they’re in business for sure. No doubt of it at all.

These are a few of the other things that are said in the hotel in Island Bay, though not necessarily in the same order, or with the same intonation that you, or I, would use.

‘Mr Aristeed is a former Minister of Community Equity. No one knows more about minorities. Ramon, Ramon, come and meet Cardew Slaven. It’s his hip. It gives him absolute hell.’

‘Pardon me for that. It’s the amount of rabbit food these hotels serve. We’ll all be like cart horses.’

‘Yes, Miles Kitson. Now there’s a man to watch.’

‘I’ll ring again. Have some sent up.’

‘It would be a well-earned rest for the old campaigner, that’s all. Christ, what a thing in Lyttelton. Ugly business.’

‘Pardon. It’s the fodder here, isn’t it.’

‘A small one then.’

‘Absolutely freakish luck. One day before the appointment and while working in the research library a book of Gaucho ballads fell on him from a great height. Broke his neck the poor bugger.’

‘No, no, I’ll be down there anyway next week. Gives you a chance to think about it.

The Regional Chairman is down and Cardew has thought about it. They understand each other sufficiently for Cardew to ask for the Beckley-Waite people to come on Thursday, when Kellie is in Invercargill.

Slaven is supposed to be resting at home; not taking on too much until his face is fully healed and the small behavioural abberations have subsided. It’s wet when Dr Eugene rings from the airport and Cardew tells him the best way to the rural sub-divisions amongst which Slaven has his few hectares. Not a dreary, or unpopular, rain however, for the plains need every drop of it. The ground seems to puff up as it drinks of it and the lines of vines, ranks of fruit trees, squash plants, nut bushes and boysenberry have the colour of stem and leaf fresh again. The rain takes the traffic film from the road seal and it gathers in paisley whorls of green and violet on the puddles along the verge. The rain deepens the colours of the tiles on the homes on their private blocks and darkens the old tyres on the sides of the pony jumps in the front paddocks. The rain releases essences of growth which drift in the humid air.

‘There’s a doctor coming out to give you a check over,’ Cardew tells his father. They stand in Slaven’s study and look out on Kellie’s garden in its glistening variety.

‘What doctor?’

‘Marianne Dunne’s asked a specialist from the Beckley-Waite Institute in Wellington to have a talk with you seeing he’s in Christchurch for a few days.’

Slaven has been working on an article for
The
Australasian
in which he draws parallels between the electoral systems of the two neighbours. He thinks that much of CCP policy has relevance across the Tasman. He’s annoyed to find the doctor’s visit landed on him without consultation, or warning.

‘Mum’s been so busy she just forgot all about it I suppose.’

‘It’s not like her at all. I’m not even changed.’

‘I wouldn’t think he’ll want you to take your clothes off.’ The rain is heavier so that the dripping is no longer audible. The rain can be heard striking the leaves outside and on the tiled path below the study window. There is only natural light in the study and in places on Slaven’s face the vestiges of bruising are the colour of clay. ‘Pretty much a formality I would think,’ says Cardew.

Dr Eugene’s rented car turns in at the road gate. The wipers are on full and the car pitches a little on the long, uneven drive up to the house. Each time there is a spray of water from beneath the front wheels. The cloud is not dark: it is difficult to see where all the rain is coming from, but it is low and the skirts of it trail in the willows of the creek and make indistinct the architect-designed and gabled home on the block to the south. Cardew goes out to meet them.

Dr Eugene is a very hairy, clean man who smells of soap and lotion. His chin and lower cheeks are gun-metal blue and only his palms startlingly free of growth. Whatever more is necessary will become evident, but for trivial curiosity there is the nature of his death in good time — smothered in the Totara Rest Home by an Alzheimer patient who mistook him for the adulterer in a daytime soap. Dr Bliss is his associate. A very tall man who threatens to topple forward when he walks and who shows his even, capped teeth often in affable smile. Slaven appreciates the teeth when he is introduced, for the work has been well done and with the latest bond polymer which gives a first rate finish, but is testing in the execution.

Dr Eugene expresses a considerable admiration for Marianne Dunne and is particularly interested in any psychological changes and eccentricities since Slaven’s accident — the marching on the spot, syncopation episodes, sudden changes of colour intensity in vision and so on. Dr Bliss makes notes while Eugene and Slaven talk and the rain drums down on a receptive Canterbury. Dr Bliss takes the initiative only once, to say how impressed he was after listening to a tape of the Western Springs speeches. His
senior colleague doesn’t encourage the topic and carries on with the professional gathering of symptoms. Cardew goes unnoticed upstairs to pack a case of his father’s things.

Dr Bliss finds him there and says there is no doubt that Slaven would benefit from a residential period of treatment at Beckley-Waite and that he isn’t the best person at this time to make the decision for himself. Bliss has a form and Cardew signs it twice — once on behalf of the family to certify a fear for his father’s health and safety, once to confirm a list of symptoms and incidents.

Cardew returns with Dr Bliss and is present when his father agrees to give a blood specimen to finish the examination. Slaven grips a red rubber plug from Bliss’s bag to bring up the vein on the flat of his right arm. The tourniquet hisses to inflation, but Slaven doesn’t see Bliss take a specimen, because Eugene obscures his view and draws attention to one of Kellie’s beloved drum lily clumps, sleekly beautiful in the rain. ‘Do you know,’ says Dr Eugene, ‘I would very much like to live here myself. Who isn’t drawn to privacy and a garden in which to enjoy it.’ Dr Bliss adroitly places the needle home and gives the injection. Almost immediately Slaven feels a relief from customary care, the welling up of a passive, but comforting ease and goodwill. ‘So welcome to the therapy of the Beckley-Waite, Dr Slaven,’ says Eugene.

‘Yes, how beautiful the lilies are,’ says Slaven. He is moved almost to tears. He can see Cardew waiting by his chair and for the first time in over a decade he has that bedrock love for his child, with the spoil of disappointment and contrary personality stripped away. He reaches out his arm with the small adhesive strip at the inner fold of his elbow and he takes his son’s hand. ‘Have I told you how much more I want to do for you?’

‘No.’

‘How much closer we’ll become again. I’m determined on that.’

‘Why not,’ says Cardew.

‘Welcome back,’ says Slaven. Dr Eugene smiles to one side. Dr Bliss topples towards his bag as he packs up.

The rain rebounds from the roof of the car as it returns
down the long drive to the gate, the drops kicking back up from the surface in glints of fractured light. The water dashes from the wheels and Cardew sees the raspberry of the brake lights through the drapes of rain as Dr Bliss pauses at the gate before turning on to the road. The one-way glass makes it impossible to know if his father is looking back from the rear window. Cardew has an exhilarating sense of being on the threshold of something momentous. He enjoys being alone on the property, no one to gainsay him, no one to remind him of past failures, or demonstrate the deficiencies of his schemes. It’s almost as if he has come into his inheritance. He can see some of his father’s Romneys with their full fleeces parting along the back as the wool becomes heavy in the rain. The house waits empty, all his. ‘Bugger me,’ he says. ‘Easy as pie.’

Cardew goes back into his father’s study and he swivels the desk chair so that he can see the phone screen and the rain at the same time. Kellie is available immediately, which surprises him. She is tired and the fine lines of her face show more clearly because of it.

‘We’ve had a really positive response again,’ she says. ‘Most people understand exactly what we’re on about.’

‘Something’s happened here. Dad’s had a bit of a turn. No worry, but the doctors think that he needs rest and observation.’

‘Oh, my god, what is it.’ Kellie’s head enlarges on the screen, as if by coming closer she could learn more.

‘He’s okay. There’s no panic at all, but we thought that you should know right away. He needs a spell without any pressure; without people pestering him, always drawing from him. You said so yourself. He’s just dog tired and after the Lyttelton thing too.’

‘Where is he?’

‘We were lucky that Dr Eugene from Wellington happened to be in Christchurch. There’s a really top place up there, just like an ecclesiastical retreat, Dr Eugene said, a chance to leave the world behind and bounce back stronger for it.’

‘I’ll come straight back.’

‘There’s no need. Nothing to worry about at all, and I’ll ring Sarah at the Cambrian rooms so that she won’t hear it
from anyone else. Don’t worry about anything. It’s an opportunity to check up on some of the symptoms that concerned Dunne and Garrity.’