Harlequin Rex (5 page)

‘Dragnet, Dragnet,’ shouted Raf as he opened David’s door and leant in: one hand anchored on the doorframe, the other on the knob and spilling him forward, although his feet remained in the corridor. Such was the length of his arms and the extent of his large body, that his head reached far into the room and was outlined against the corridor light. The crop of his pony-tail frayed into the glow behind him; his large nose was a restless shadow on his hung face.

‘Jason’s running berko on the hill,’ he said. A tone almost all urgent and genuine concern, but with some joy of the spectacle. ‘He’s lost it altogether, the poor bastard. He’s blown. I’ve buzzed the main block. He’s got some stuff from somewhere, and he’s setting fire to the goddamn hill.’

It was one of those moments when you’re unsure if you’re emerging from sleep to reality, or moving from the world to nightmare. It wasn’t the first time such bewilderment had gripped David in that place. Nowhere, surely, had a more indistinct boundary between real and unreal. ‘Jesus,’ David said weakly from the bed, and then, trying for a stronger voice to match resolution to the event, ‘Right, Jesus, I’m with you.’

‘Come on, come on,’ called Raf. His voice was flung away,
as in one movement he swayed from the room and made off down the corridor. ‘Get something on your bloody feet, though.’

In the time it took David to reach the verandah, Raf had a torch, was over the fence that kept stock from the centre’s grounds and was a bounding shadow on the slope of the hill. Further up flared patches of gorse and bracken fired by Jason. The night enhanced the flames so that they were blood red and glittering, but the smoke was denied its true colour, and rolled away black as liquorice except immediately above the flames.

David could hear the duty team coming up from the main block and, wanting to be on the hill before them, he slipped through the fence and headed up towards the fires, using his own issue torch to find the best way.

There was nothing fugitive, or furtive, about Jason. As David passed some of the earlier fire patches, already dying down, he could hear him shouting exultantly ahead. Raf had taken the can of petrol from him by the time David arrived, and sat on it, trying to catch his breath, his pale pyjamas almost luminous in the night. ‘Look at him,’ he puffed. ‘He’s well away. Happy as a bloody sandboy.’

Jason Brown stood agog before his last fire, his high laugh of release matching the jumpy energy of the flames which caught gorse barbs, or fern whorls, in a sudden grip and gave them brief, incandescent beauty. Jason wore a long, blue coat, unbuttoned, and his head rocked in excitement, his voice raced at the eternal fascination of fire: the threat and wilful power, the heat, the primitive wonder of it. Jason was unable to keep still. His mind and body were in spasm. His hands and feet and eyes had the sudden movements of the fox and ferret; his voice had release and abandon. ‘Look at the bright cunt,’ he shouted. He was dancing, as if in imitation of the flames. ‘Woosh, you beauty, away you go. Burn it all up, you fucker.’

‘He could have started on the buildings,’ said Raf. ‘Now,
without the petrol, he can’t do much harm. We’ll let him bounce around until he wears off some energy, and then take him down for the shots.’

‘Let it all burn to buggery.’ Jason waved on the flames fiercely. He wanted the whole world consumed.

‘What’s the cocky going to feel about all this then?’ asked David.

‘I imagine he keeps well away,’ said Raf. ‘Do you know who’s coming up?’

David hadn’t been able to see any faces behind him, but thought he’d heard Dr Sheridan’s voice, and sure enough he came puffing behind Colin Squires, who was one of the duty nurses.

‘Everything’s jake,’ said Raf, as Colin continued over to Jason, and Tony Sheridan made a special effort up the hill over the last few metres. ‘He can’t do anything without the petrol.’

‘I swear he picks the bloody nights I’m on,’ said Colin. ‘Who knows what mad thing he’ll get up to if we don’t get him down for treatment.’

‘Just leave him,’ David said. ‘Probably the excitement of the fires was all he needed. I’ll help Raf bring him down.’

Colin pulled Jason’s long coat closed, and buttoned it for warmth as the last clump of fired gorse died down. He did it with no more sense of human contact than if Jason had been a scarecrow, and received as little reaction. ‘Yeah, I think I’d better go back down. There’s bound to be some other cracker about to blow. Okay, doc?’

‘Sure,’ said Tony Sheridan. He was still bent forward, hands on his knees, his face disappearing as the flames contracted to embers. ‘I’ll be down myself soon with Jason. I just need a breather here for a bit.’

They heard Colin going back, the light of his torch
winking
down the slope towards the steady, broad glow of the centre buildings. And when the fires were no longer a dominant glare, the natural variations of the night could be
realised again. A certain sheen to the dark sky, stars even, the absorbent black of the bush on the high slopes, a scaly glimmer from the distant movement of the sea. Raf and David moved over to Jason, and stood with him for warmth by the last fire. The smoke in their faces was powerfully aromatic, and David could feel the faintest touches of ash on his cheeks when Jason flipped branches with his feet. The last sparks flitted up and were gone. Jason still twitched and talked, his hands roved to make compulsive touches, but as the fire dwindled so did his euphoria. The red of the flames, the black winging of the smoke, were almost lost to him, and the accustomed profile of the hill crest against the sky came up quietly again. Fire wasn’t freedom for him after all, just an expression of some tyranny within. Atavistic responses are the heart of Harlequin.

‘Burn, you fucker,’ he said bitterly.

David and Tony Sheridan walked with Jason down to the centre. Raf followed behind, with the sound of the petrol sloshing in the can to locate him. David had nothing on over his pyjamas, and felt cold when the excitement was over. His concern for Jason was partly overtaken by a wish that he’d thought to pull a jersey on before following Raf up the hill. He used the torch to keep to the clearer ground, but his light trousers were filthy with ash stripes and the dew from grasses and fern.

‘I’m okay, okay,’ said Jason. ‘It wasn’t a reversion.’

‘It’s the third time within a fortnight. Must be at least,’ said Sheridan. There was a morepork crying through the darkness from the shore. There was a small wind which rustled and fingered on the hill. There were embers which glowed briefly at its touch.

‘Jesus, I suppose I’m for it then.’ Jason said it with both fear and defiance, as a soldier might who can’t turn back. His head went up, and he gave an odd turkey cock cry which drifted on the dark slope. He walked in a way that made the long coat swirl about his legs.

‘You’ll be all right,’ David lied.

‘Once you have some stuff, you’ll be fine,’ lied Raf from behind them. ‘A time will come when you’ll look back on all of this, and have a laugh. All of us will. Won’t he, doc?’

Tony Sheridan was busy climbing through the wires of the fence, and on to the lawn of the centre. He didn’t say anything, but the morepork floated a reply out of the darkness that was both sea and land. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much,’ said Jason, ‘but there’s this girl in Napier.’ None of them asked about the girl in Napier, or Sara Keppler closer to hand. They had enough with Jason right there at the centre; seeing anything of the life that he had come from could only make it more difficult. It was better, as a form of protection, to keep him in focus as a patient. Was there a point at which you drew a line and allowed no emotional concern, not even curiosity, to go past it?

They took Jason back to Takahe, but only so that he could collect overnight things for the treatment room in the main block. Most of the others were awake, and had been watching from the verandah. Sara couldn’t bear to approach. She wept for him and for her loss of the sweet consolation that is a lover’s body, but some of the others saw him off, magnifying, or diminishing, the significance of it, depending on their way. ‘Rely only on your own resources, Jason,’ said Howard Peat dogmatically. ‘The fight is with yourself.’

‘God won’t be mocked, you know.’ The voice came from Dilys Williams’s window. She must have been standing there with her light out.

‘You’ll be all right, Jasie. Hang in there,’ called Abbey as Jason walked down from Takahe with Sheridan. ‘See you, Jasie.’

‘See you, Abbey,’ mimicked Jason. The voice exactly hers, and exactly Harlequin’s — not mockery from Jason. The coat swished around him, its blueness coming and going as he walked through the pools of light cast from the buildings.

‘He won’t be back,’ Raf said softly. ‘No chance.’ Blue
faded to black; black was refurbished to blue. Jason’s head rose and fell because of the unnatural energy of his walk, whereas Tony Sheridan’s gait maintained him at an even height. David realised that Jason was building to blow again. His hands were raised as he talked urgently to the doctor, almost as if he were conducting an orchestra out of sight of the rest of them. Swish blue; swish black. See you, Jasie. The morepork was quiet by the sea. Swish blue, swish black. The guests began to withdraw to their own rooms. Sara had already gone in and closed her door.

‘Go back to bed,’ Raf said to David. ‘I’ll hang on a while till everything’s settled.’

No one wanted to talk about what had happened, for they knew exactly what had taken place. It was old Harlequin, wasn’t it, coming out to play.

Chris
came
to
Collegiate
at
the
start
of
the
fifth-form
year,
when
his
parents
shifted
to
a
diplomatic
posting
in
Berlin.
The
same
dorm,
the
same
form,
as
David,
and
so
an
opportunity
for
friendship.
Not
immediately,
however;
Chris
was
too
much
a
showman
to
encourage
early
confidences.
It
was
his
way
of
settling
in:
attack
as
the
best
defence
until
he
was
accepted
in
the
place.
He
was
shrewd
for
his
age.
Within
a
fortnight
he
had
to
face
up
to
a
fight
with
the
malicious
Coddy
Joux,
and
knew
that
to
appeal
openly
to
the
masters
was
as
bad
as
chickening
out.
So
he
appeared
eager
for
a
meet
behind
the
library
after
prep,
but
set
up
such
a
din,
swearing
and
shouting
as
they
fought,
that
the
hostel
staff
got
wind
of
it
before
Coddy
could
do
more
harm
to
him
than
a
torn
ear.

Chris
was
accomplished
at
art,
at
fives,
at
loyalty
and
at
getting
girls.
He
was
hopeless
at
maths,
science,
honesty
and
keeping
to
any
rules.
His
mother
was
part
Chinese
and
passed
on
just
enough
to
give
him
a
smooth
complexion
and
very
dark,
straight
hair.
When
he
was
in
the
seventh
form,
an
ex-Rangi
Ruru
girl
in
her
first
varsity
year,
and
not
 
half
bad,
asked
him
to
partner
her
to
an
orientation
dance.
She
lived
near
the
school
and
had
picked
Chris
out.
It
was
almost
as
if
girls
liked
the
smell
of
him.
David
and
the
others
had
to
work
harder
to
be
noticed,
but
they
came
to
accept
his
appeal
as
just
one
of
those
things
—
like
being
born
with
odd-coloured
eyes,
or
having
the
knack
of
holding
your
breath
under
water
longer
than
anyone
else.

Several
times
Chris
went
home
with
David
to
Beth
Car,
where
he
charmed
David’s
mother,
amused
his
father
with
general
irreverence,
and
failed
only
with
the
dogs,
which
must
have
been
averse
to
the
pheromones
that
worked
so
well
on
women.
Neither
Chris
nor
David
talked
about
school
realistically
to
those
outside
it.
The
hostel
was
a
separate
life,
a
foreign
land,
and
they
kept
it
that
way,
tacitly
acknowledging
that
special
values
and
rules
applied
there.