A Many Coated Man (35 page)

‘Until you are determined on a thing which runs counter to the wishes of everyone else,’ he says, ‘you never understand the force convention has; just as you don’t realise the menace of the crowd when you’re moving with it.’

‘If what I was determined on was opposed by everyone else, then I’d question myself again,’ says Slaven.

‘The great majority of people are fools, as Ibsen said.’

‘Present company excepted,’ says Kellie.

‘We’re not supposed to think it of course,’ Miles continues, ‘but it’s true. You only have to look at their entertainments to recognise that. Comparative programme ratings and the response to the most fatuous advertising are the best indicators of the real mentality we exhibit. The welfare of a fool is as important as the welfare of a non-fool in a democracy no doubt, but unfortunately the mass opinion is unlikely to achieve it for either. Most people are in a community because they believe that they can get more out of the association than they put in.’

‘I suppose you have to put up with this hog-wash whenever he starts to drink?’ Slaven asks Georgina.

‘No, it’s something he tries to impress visitors with. Most of the time he watches the programmes he says he hates, or tells me stories about his prime.’

‘Lies,’ says Miles in delight.

‘He’s like so…’

‘Georgina has a marvellous pair of tits, but she slanders me all the time.’

‘You’re like so many really successful people,’ says Kellie, ‘because in your own way you’ve excelled, yet secretly
consider yourself mediocre, you assume that all those who haven’t done as well must be stupid. It’s not like that.’

‘Mediocre. Mediocre,’ says Miles hoarsely. He has long since become sick of deference and loves any abuse from his friends. ‘I bring you into my house and feed you and you turn on me. You’ve become a very proud, authoritarian woman since the CCP has made celebrities of you both.’ The artificial kidney is only a slight bulge beneath his green, silk shirt, his wife is happy, the Haut-Brion is a pleasure and Slaven has told him of the strange, off-hand way in which Cardew went. So little passion, or action, in it as is his way.

‘It’s your generalisations which let you down,’ says Slaven. ‘You’ve been away from the people you categorise for too long. Most are this, some are that, such and such a percentage are something else. That’s where you go wrong. Individuals aren’t constant, they show a range of vices and virtues from time to time. Today’s judicious person is tomorrow’s fool. Maybe a majority take a wrong view, but the significant thing is that almost all of them are capable of seeing their own error. I’m in touch with that you see. I’m able now to bring the best out in people.’

‘You do,’ says Kellie simply.

‘I know it sounds arrogant like that, but if I didn’t believe it I couldn’t keep pushing myself forward.’

‘You’re a power-hungry dentist,’ says Miles. ‘You’ve this secret ambition to be a pop star.’

Baby,
baby,
come
again
and
live
with
me
upon
the
shore
of
Half
Moon
Bay.
Georgina begins the singing of it and Kellie then Slaven and Miles take it up.
Kinder
hearts
are
waiting,
baby,
amongst
old
friends
at
Half
Moon
Bay.
It’s not likely to rival the Hoihos’ original, particularly with the respiratory deficiencies that Miles has, but the four of them enjoy it around the walnut table in the tower. The city shimmers on the plain below them and a constant wind adds a hollow whistle as a backing. The German housekeeper, who is agile and dark, smiles from the doorway and holds off on the Black Forest Gateau for a while longer. Slaven leans to his friend.

‘You know, I’ve never actually been to Half Moon Bay,’ he tells him.

‘Most of us haven’t,’ says Miles, ‘that’s why we’ve taken it so much to heart.’

‘What motivates all these people who come to your Coalition rallies?’ he says. ‘What do they imagine will be the consequence of such a show of electoral solidarity?’ He himself is always uncertain of the degree to which one person is able to comprehend another. The link between signified and signifier seems both multifarious and tenuous as he grows older. What is loaves to one, is fishes to another, what is leadership becomes subjugation, what is intended as testimony becomes interpreted as confession. ‘What do they want of you?’ he asks Slaven with a sudden seriousness which prevents them continuing the line of conversation. For both know that the supporters, whatever slogans they endorse and whatever programmes they march for, want from Slaven all the fierce, private glories which they’re unable to provide for themselves.

‘I’m coming to the Hagley Park rally,’ says Georgina. ‘I’ve warned Miles that he’ll be left here. I want to see Aldous’s aura that they talk about and watch him whip up everyone’s feelings. Sarah said she’ll go with me.’

‘You’ll need to improve your singing,’ says Slaven.

‘The Government’s got the wind up about it, I think.’ Kellie’s sharp face is eager in the candle-light. She stops eating at the thought of this final, great rally. ‘Royce Meelind rang me to get details. He had to say it was all routine of course, but I could tell there’s a good deal of anxiety about what’s going to happen. Locally they’re raising various obstacles of one sort or another, without admitting they don’t want it to go ahead.’

‘It’ll be a real cracker,’ says Slaven.

‘It’s nearly all set to go,’ says Kellie.

‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ says Georgina.

Miles in the exchange is able to pour himself more wine, without Georgina feeling the need to notice. He is relaxed, enjoying the present well enough, also allowing his mind to range beyond it. In recent years he has realised that some of his time was wasted in doing too much. Last night he had a dream about his life having taken a different turn. He was voyaging on a forest river where everything was new,
the fruited jungle crowding to the slow water’s edge and parrots in livery of flashing yellow and red, criss-crossing as heralds of his arrival. And he had an absolute and benign assurance that he was coming home. ‘I had a dream last night,’ he says,’ about my life having taken quite a different turn.’ Miles thinks most people miss the real significance of dreams. They’re confused by the distortion of incident and appearance without realising that the emotion is always true. In dreams the quiet person may be paid that admiration so often due, and adulterers may awake in tears because they have restored to them the early joy of marriage.

So Miles shares his dream. There is laughter and ease. Cardew’s jet far above the Tasman, the lapping of the jetty water amongst the hair of the mussels, might seem a world away. Yet there’s no linear progression you remember and our own future is going on now, except that it’s happening to someone else.

Slaven is very busy revitalising the Coalition and preparing for the rally. Kellie plots his time for him in a diary; designated sections for all the day and a good part of the night. Even rests must be consciously provided for, and she won’t have them pushed out by last minute demands on his attention.

Slaven is having a rest between eight thirty and nine, when he’s to be picked up by Les Croad and taken into the city to do a talk-back with Pamela Greene, Mouth of the South. So he lies on his study sofa with his belt loosened and his shoes off. There’s still light, but it’s not a harsh light and after rubbing the bases of his thumbs awhile, a habit which persists from the time they were healing, Slaven falls asleep.

Sarah wakes him by coming into the room. In the moment that comes with his awakening and before his attention is fully-focused, he knows that he’s been dreaming. All of it has fallen immediately beyond conscious recall, except the last thing spoken. ‘The Caretaker will see you now, Dr Slaven,’ and there was the fragrance of the weed. No context at all remains for the line, but the voice itself is there and the vestiges of the pleasure with which he received the invitation.

He sees that his daughter has been crying. ‘I just want to say I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘Sorry?’

‘I’m not able to give you much support. I know you’re disappointed in me and in Cardy too and I’d like it to be different, but I haven’t got the brains. I see the things that happen to you, but I can’t be there in any way that helps. Do you see? I’d just like to be able to say the right things, but I haven’t got them in me. I haven’t got the brains enough to get alongside you.’

For a moment the pain of love is such that he can’t speak, and having woken suddenly, the more calculated defences against emotion are down. Slaven sits up clumsily; his feet smell he thinks and this embarrasses him. He takes her left hand in both of his and he looks with longing into her face. ‘Not at all,’ he says. ‘Don’t say it. Don’t ever say it. It’s just that we’re two adults now and what comes between us is the ache of having once been father and daughter in that special, original way. You see what I mean? You can’t go back to it and what you move on to is always something less, isn’t it. Even with Cardy I suppose there was a bit of that and there’s nothing can be done. It’s a metamorphosis and a different thing entirely comes out of it, quite beyond our control. So there’s no blame in any of it.’

‘Tonight I’m going to listen to all of the talk back and get a proper grip on your ideas. Then I’ll listen to the Tuamarina, or Western Springs, tape. They’re so long aren’t they. I just don’t know how you think of enough to say. And mum said the best article is probably the one in Pacifica. Maybe I can help then.’

‘I just want people to have a better deal, that’s all. More influence on what happens to them and a sense of dynamic community.’

‘In my full horoscope for this month, November’s the best time for renewing old ties and friendships. It’s a very definite indication. Isn’t that a spooky thing, just when I’ve decided to do more for you.’

‘That’s a spooky thing all right.’ The tears run down the back of his throat. He wishes his hands more sensitive to touch.

‘I think it’s wonderful, all the things you’re doing now with the Coalition and that, after the accident. In her book, Anastasia says that illness — not that yours was, but you know what I mean — can be a spiritual redirection. You know? That it’s the body’s way of responding to the imperative of the psyche. I’m convinced that’s so right, absolutely so right. Don’t you just think?’

‘It may be. May well be.’ He has in his life believed more with less foundation, for causes not as precious to him.

‘I’m getting so much more interest in my work now that people realise who I am.’

‘Just make sure you always have an optimistic prognostication for the CCP and your dad. I’m counting on your skills. With the Zodiac behind us, how can we go wrong.’

‘I know you’re having me on,’ she says, ‘but you’ll see.’

‘I’m ignorant rather than sceptical.’

‘You’re having me on.’

‘Just a bit.’

She seems quite happy again, and why not? It’s all a lottery isn’t it, or read in the stars. She could have been born with a harelip, or as a Down’s syndrome baby. She could have swollen out to be the school fatty, or closed up in autistic isolation. To be both pretty and shallow may be a cause for celebration even, after all the unexamined life is often the happier for that.

‘How does it feel when you really get going with the speaking,’ she says. ‘When you take off the way you do.’

‘It feels as if at last I’m able to give of myself and there’s both release and refreshment in that. Strangely enough, the more people there are the less self-conscious I am, as if a totality of fellowship is made stronger and stronger by weight of numbers.’

‘Not even speech notes, though.’

‘It’s odd, Sarah. I trust energy and passion that comes to me when I get up to speak.’

‘Mum says something may have been gained even out of the accident.’

‘Or something burnt away,’ says Slaven. ‘Some people at religious conversion say they felt their hearts strangely warmed, perhaps my brain was fried.’

‘It’s not something to joke about really,’ she says. ‘I read in this magazine that we only use about one tenth of our brain and all the rest is there to be drawn on if we knew how to do it.’

‘I think something’s going on, but it doesn’t always let us know.’

So they are talking there, father and daughter, when Les Croad comes to collect him and Slaven gets a real kick out of it, even if he knows that their interests are far apart. It’s the mutual intention he finds comforting. He sees himself briefly in the long mirror, insubstantial in the waning, natural light. How should we describe him then, as he goes out in a pleasant frame of mind to the talk-back? Quite a sizeable, omnivorous mammal with upright, bi-pedal gait, a large head and life expectancy of three score and ten.

The helicopter comes suddenly over the dark, pine shelter belts with the sound of a dog being sick. Over those buildings of the old Burnham Camp which remain to be used from time to time in transit by refugee immigrants — from China, from South Africa and Kurdistan. The down-draught seems immense to Slaven and together with the retching noise bewilders him momentarily so that he sways back and gives a laugh of nervous release. The long, summer grass swirls beneath the wind of the rotor as the helicopter puts down on what has once been a close-mown parade field with stones painted white, with the cries of NCOs and squads in perfect time. WO2 Slaven has been there too, in a more junior rank, has carried a gonad half of his son across the place to which he’s come again. The self-same son, the self-same sun, the same radiata pines grown taller from the same pale yellow loess and shingle.

‘One lined parka.’

‘Check.’

‘One housewife kit.’

‘Check.’

‘One Johnny Walker, illegal.’

‘Check.’

‘One standard-bearer of resilience.’

‘Check.’

‘One father in the hereafter.’

‘Check.’

On the chopper’s side are emblazoned the words, ‘Muche Safaris’, which is one of Miles Kitson’s firms. When the blades finish turning, they droop as if for rest. The pilot wouldn’t switch off at all, except that Miles is to board as well and as he’s a hesitant walker the climb into the machine is a business of considerable care and complexity. Also the pilot knows full well the deference that the old guy is due. The last echoes of the motor and rotor flee like receding wingbeats through the pines. The pilot rotates his helmet to see his passengers, ant sheen to his head, and slips his harness. Slaven and Miles walk slowly out into the field, the small and harmonious noises of the natural surroundings gradually reforming around them. The brown top rustling at their feet, sheep coughing from the paddock beyond the trees, cicadas coming back on song, a high bird too bright in the sun to look at, the half whisper, half whistle, of the easterly through the wind breaks and the fence wires.