Living As a Moon (2 page)

It should have been a great moment. It was, I suppose, but meeting Estelle Page at last was real unsettling. She didn’t want any of us to be introduced to her in the preliminary rounds, but she came on stage when I won to give me the award and pose together. And she and her manager shook my hand in the dressing room afterwards. It was weird to touch her, to be beside her and realise how closely we matched. Her skin wasn’t as good as mine: I remember that. The sweat from her final act affected her makeup, and that sort of orange peel roughness on her cheeks was just starting to show through. I’ll always know I’ve got a better complexion than Estelle Page. She just said I must be pleased to have won, and good on me, and as she and the guy went away down the corridor, I heard her say, ‘Well, that’s the end of the freak show.’

Elton John was the only person I told about that afterwards. We were in the Matrix Bar in Double Bay. Elton reached over and took my hand. ‘Don’t let it throw you,’ he said. ‘Let it go.’ He’s got that mouth like a frog that goes right round his face, and it makes a sympathetic smile, comforting somehow.

‘But why would she say that?’ I asked him.

‘We don’t know the pressure these people are under. They have to cut through the swell and we’re just dinghies towed along behind. Estelle’s made it from nothing. She came from an inland farm in kangaroo country. She’s managed something pretty unusual in entertainment here, but she’ll know better people will follow: not impersonators, but women with more talent and just as much guts to take her place.’

I can see it starting to happen. She’s slipping just that bit, and better-looking women are coming through with stand-up routines. Estelle’s getting more raunchy to keep media attention. Elton John reckons she’ll end up in the niche category of men’s clubs and stag parties. I’m expected to follow. That’s the thing with impersonators: you have no control over who you are. I don’t much like Estelle Page, or talking dirty, but that’s the future if I keep going, I suppose. Every success has its cost, Elton says, even petty success.

Most people would say I’ve nothing to moan about. I can see that. Being Estelle Page has made a big difference to my life. It’s meant more money for a start. I’ve got an apartment not far from the zoo with a manageable mortgage, money in the bank, and I’ve been able to help Mum and Dad buy a new red Corolla. They’ve never had a new car before. I get a kick out of seeing how proud of it they are, and they appreciate any help I give. I’ve got fab clothes to wear when I’m not Estelle, some of them made overseas. There’s a sort of fame too, that comes from appearing in public and winning that competition on telly. People often want to come and talk to me after appearances, some of them quite well known, and I get some fan mail even. We don’t give out my address, but messages and emails come through Wayne’s agency. He’s quite strong on professional distance. Most people admittedly are wanting to know how to become impersonators themselves. They start by praising you, and then get on to their own abilities and how they’re the spitting image of so and so. My old high school asked me to come and present the cultural prizes at the end of year, and Mr Littam from Mademoiselle Coquette rang up to congratulate me after the television appearance. Nothing from Mrs Littam.

Being Estelle though meant I lost my retail friends, and Nigel Nesbitt. Showbiz is a different world. Nigel was supportive at first, but soon stopped coming to the gigs. He hated the way I was on show for the guys, and their interest afterwards, and he was at a complete loss with Elton John, Kylie and my other new friends. I think he got a hard time at the council offices about us too. I don’t miss him, I’d have to say. There are plenty of guys keen to take me out if I want fun. Johnny Depp and I have had several weekends at Surfers, and he’s as sexually energetic as I can cope with. It seems a sort of competition for some guys, doesn’t it. I think I’ve got more from people like Elton, Kylie and Rove McManus, who I wished lived closer than Goulburn.

The thing is, being Estelle gives me a different sort of life, different people and expectations. I’d never have met a friend like Elton John working in Mademoiselle Coquette. You make a choice and you live with the consequences, because yes, there is a cost. It’s not just the travelling and the repetition and guys shouting for a look at your tits, and wondering how long the work will last.

More it’s about the value of what you do, and who you are. Last Thursday I went to an overnighter in Newcastle: a private birthday party for a big noter in horse racing whose name you’d recognise. It was one of those gigs that didn’t go so good. You get them from time to time in this work. I was feeling a bit flat, the sound system was shonky and a couple of girls started stripping off during my act and got most of the attention. Everyone in showbiz has times like that, but they’re a bit of slap all the same.

Last night Elton and I were talking about it at Dominoes. John Clarke and Scarlett Johansson had just left, and the two of us were there by the window, overlooking the marina that was like a black and white photograph. I told Elton about Newcastle not going so well. I tried to explain to him why I wasn’t getting the same pleasure out of being Estelle Page as before, but it wasn’t clear in my own mind. Elton John has been in the business longer, has a university degree and likes to examine behaviour. ‘It’s living your life as a moon,’ he said. ‘That’s what it’s all about really. We give up our identity and become just a reflection of another personality, like the moon having no fire of its own and being just a pale reflection of the sun when it’s not there.’

I think he’s right. That’s what’s been bothering me. All the advantages of being Estelle Page, the good money, the laughter and applause, people knowing you, come because you pretend to be someone else. You’re not at all significant for being yourself. ‘You don’t get anything for nothing,’ Elton John said. ‘Me, for instance. I like the guy, but I’m not good enough to be him overseas: not musician enough. So I’m Aussie Elton, that’s my slot. It’s just a business, Estelle, and you’ve got to keep yourself apart. You’ve got to have people who know who you really are.’ He’s right, isn’t he. I’ve made up my mind to ride the Estelle thing out for as long as I can, while still keeping myself going. I bet you can do it with the right friends, like Elton, Kylie and Rove.

Serial rape, murder, smash and grab with senseless violence — these are things that force politicians and celebrity weddings from the front pages. The people responsible are household names for a time, and then mostly forgotten, unless in some way you have a personal link, as I had, fleetingly, with Tony Ballard. Ballard was a contractor with a small property close to Feilding, and he killed a bank official and a neighbour with a Hollis 12 gauge, let the bodies lie and went on the run. I knew nothing about it at first, because I was on exercise at the annual camp that territorials had to do as part of national service. Ours was an infantry battalion, and we’d been in the field for three days practising contact and ambush drills, with some regulars as the enemy. I’d been back in barracks only long enough to get cleaned up when the adjutant sent for me.

‘How are you feeling?’ he asked. I told him I was okay. ‘Yeah, well something’s come up we’d like you to handle. Heard anything about this Tony Ballard guy in the news?’ I said I hadn’t seen a paper, or a television, since getting back, and he told me about the shootings and Ballard taking off into the Kaimanawas not all that far from Waiouru. The police wanted help in the search, and the CO offered a platoon. ‘Better than doing the same old, same old, anyway,’ said the adjutant, ‘and it’ll be good for your map-reading skills if nothing else. You operate under the police guy of course. He knows all about this sort of thing. Senior Sergeant Hoskin — a bloody good man. Your platoon will need only their small packs, and the police will feed you. I don’t see it as more than a couple of days at most. We’ll truck you up there and set everything up. No weapons, of course. Best go and warn the lads, and then come back for a briefing. I wouldn’t mind getting out of the bloody office and up there myself for a nosey in the fresh air.’

The adjutant was an enthusiastic type who had stayed in the army even after his term of national service was done. He loved the formal mess nights when the port was passed to the left, and getting done up in his dress uniform for special public parades. In real life he was a chiropractor in Palmerston North.

Less than three hours later the twenty-seven of us were on the way to a creekbed in the Kaimanawa foothills that was as far as vehicles could go. The police had set up there, not far from Ballard’s abandoned ute. There was no use setting the platoon to anything until I knew the situation: maybe the guy had already been caught, or turned himself in. Sergeant Vince Hoskin was looking at a topo map he had spread on a small wooden table in the shade of a police van. He must have been not long back from a recce, because the sweat shone on his balding head and darkened most of his shirt. He was a big man I judged to be in his mid-forties, and he wore fragile reading glasses as he leant over the map. They had thin wire frames and caught the sun as he turned to meet me. He put his head down in an oddly equine way to look at me over the rims. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Cometh the army.’

Hoskin was disappointed, I think, that I was a junior officer still in my twenties. ‘Wow, a full lieuy,’ he said. ‘The army certainly believes in sending top brass, and I’m only a sergeant.’ There were other touches of sarcasm as he briefed me, but I let it all pass. They hadn’t found any sign of Ballard, and he wanted a search the next day, right up into the bush and tops.

A platoon and a police team couldn’t hope to cover even a part of the high country, but Hoskin was working on Ballard’s need for water. It was a hot, dry summer and not many streams flowing in that part of the Kaimanawas, he said. As I talked with him I realised he was a shrewd guy with a lot of experience, just as the adjutant had said. What did it matter in the circumstances if he was friendly or not.

I asked him what it had all been about, Tony Ballard shooting the man from the bank and the neighbour. Hoskin told me that he’d got into debt and the bank was going to sell him up, and Ballard couldn’t bear the thought of losing his small holding. He’d had some hare-brained scheme to do with alpacas, or llamas, and he’d spent thousands on the wrong breeding stock, and the whole thing was a flop. ‘A dreamer and a loner,’ said the policeman, ‘and he drank himself silly before the bank guy came out. The neighbour was actually one of his few mates, and came to the house when he heard shouting, to smooth things over, and ended up copping it as well. You never want to see someone who’s been killed at close range with a shotgun, believe you me. Ballard just left them there by the doorstep and took off. He’s got hardly anything with him and can’t last long up here without food. The poor bugger will be in a right state emotionally too.’

‘No sign of him so far?’ I said.

‘We’ve had a look in the obvious places today. We’ll have to go further up, I’d say. Partly he’ll be walking just for the sake of it. But no use doing anything else today.’

Adrian McLintock was my platoon sergeant, and we got the guys settled in. There was plenty of light in the evening and we had the tents up, sleeping gear out of the trucks, and a latrine dug before twilight. The police had food brought through from Turangi and we ate with them, sitting in the creekbed close to the vehicles as the sun went down. My guys seemed happy enough: the search for Ballard was better than square bashing, or weapons drill, and most of them preferred to be in the field. Almost all of the police team were older than us, but, apart from Hoskin, they were friendly. One of them had been at the same school as Adrian, and sat by him and me, talking of their common experience. It became cooler, and I lay back and watched the light gradually leave the clear sky, which lost its shell-like sheen and began to show the soft depth of dusk. Adrian and his friend were reminiscing of old teachers with nicknames like Snapper and Toots, and there were voices and low, relaxed laughter from guys further away. A small community was being established, while somewhere in tougher country Ballard was hiding out. I remembered being rather surprised when Vince Hoskin called him a poor bugger, but he was, I suppose, even though he’d killed two other poor buggers.

I had no dreams of murders and manhunts that night, and the only interruption was sleepwalking Pita Wiremu, who blundered into one of the vehicles and cut his lip. He’d been on his honeymoon in Taupo with the sexiest woman in the world. They were about to go to bed. Pita said he was pissed off he hadn’t had just a few more minutes of his dream before hitting his face on a tailgate and waking up on the creek shingle.

A Sioux chopper went over the next morning early when we were preparing to move out. Hoskin was talking on the police radio about the area he wanted covered, but when I joined him he said that the flight was pretty much a waste of time. There was too much cover and the noise carried a long way. ‘But you know HQ,’ he said. ‘Must put on a show, oh yes.’

‘Maybe he’s not even up there,’ I said. ‘Maybe he’s snuck back down and thumbed a lift back to civilisation, back to some mates who’ll hide him away.’

‘He hasn’t got any mates,’ said the sergeant. ‘Not even a mother to love him, and his wife walked out on him yonks ago. No, I pick he’ll be up there all right, stewing in it as he sobers up. You know he’s still got the shotgun?’

‘I guessed as much.’

‘You told your men?’

‘Not yet,’ I said.

‘Okay,’ said Hoskin. ‘Let’s have a look at the map here, and then we’ll gather everyone together and set things up for the day.’

Hoskin gave us a good briefing, full of experience and common sense, free of puff and exaggerated drama. Afterwards, though, I saw him giving more detailed instructions to Adrian, and individually to my section corporals. I didn’t want to get all uptight about chain of command, but it wasn’t on, and would only get worse if I didn’t say something at the outset. When he was putting his pack on, I went up and said I wasn’t happy about it. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘don’t go all regimental on me.’

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘We’re here to do it the way you want. There’s no problem with that. It’s just that individual direction should come through me and Adrian. You know how it works. You lose cohesion otherwise.’

Hoskin gave me a level look and a half smile of weary tolerance. ‘Okay, bright eyes,’ he said, ‘point taken, but if it comes to the crunch out there today I’ll tell any bastard what to do on the spot and expect it done pronto.’

‘Fine by me,’ I said. Hoskin re-tied one of his shin-length boots: expensive trampers, almost beautiful, and a contrast with my black, army issue, and the rest of his police field kit. He looked me over.

‘Binoculars?’ he said.

‘No.’

‘Jesus, you’re no good to me up there without binoculars. Come down to the van. I think there’s a pair still in there.’

It was a still, clear day and the heat built up quickly while we moved as a party into the hills. It was good to reach the bush, and we rested there for a bit. Hoskin pointed out on the maps what areas he wanted gone through, and the trig point where we were to regroup. The link between the army radio sets and the police ones wasn’t that flash, but we hoped everyone would be able to keep in touch. The police line went off quietly: I spaced out my sections over the gullies Hoskin had allocated, and we began working uphill, paying special attention to any likely water points. It was cooler in the bush, with soft green light, spirally ferns, tree trunks to hold up the canopy, and mulch beneath our boots. No one expressed it, but most searchers I think must have felt it was a hit or miss affair. Thousands of hectares of steep bush, open tops, scrub and scree, and one man in it, not wanting to be found.

I made a bit of a fool of myself in guiding my guys to the trig point at midday. Map reading was never my strong point. So much depends on the ability to grasp scale — the spatial relationship between what’s on the map and what you see, or expect to see, on the ground. It comes with experience, but early on you can be standing on a feature and looking round for it because you expect it to be so much bigger, or smaller. We ended up twenty minutes’ walk from the designated place, and I found it only by using the binoculars to see the police sitting in the open on a knob high above the watershed. We arrived to find the cops already eating and resting up. ‘Better late than never, bright eyes,’ said Sergeant Hoskin. ‘We’ll give your boys a bit of a blow before moving on.’

The flies came as I sat with Dave Saunderson, one of my section corporals, and opened my lunch pack. Dave was a powerful guy, but got migraines sometimes. The warning was when his eyesight started to blur. He took a couple of aspirin, and thought he’d be okay if it didn’t get any worse. I told him if he thought he was going to start vomiting then he was better off going back to vehicles, but I knew he wouldn’t want to do that. I’m always surprised by those flies that come around high in the hills. What the hell do they feed on when there’s no one around, as is the case almost all the time? They like to get at your sweat. They’re bigger than blowflies and have bodies of a wonderfully blue, or green, iridescence. If they weren’t flies people would think them beautiful.

The boys got a bit of a blow, but I didn’t. Hoskin wanted to get up the mountainside high enough to work out the best places to check in the afternoon, and he wanted me with him. We set off up the ridgeline, with the cop setting a cracking pace. He was bloody fit for a guy of his age and size, and chose ground well, but he’d picked the wrong activity if he wanted to show me up again. Tramping’s always come easy to me, with pack or without. I enjoy it, and your fitness is at a peak in camp. Hoskin may have had the flash boots and be shit-hot with maps, but he’d taken on the wrong guy if thought he could drop me on the climb. I kept just behind him: when he put a bit of a spurt on, so did I; if he slackened then I eased off. He talked a bit at first, perhaps to check my breathing when I replied, but then he just put his head down and got stuck in. Faster and faster, but when we got to scree slope, where it’s better to cross on the trot when the shingle and rocks start to move, I left him lagging behind.

‘Okay,’ he called at the other side, ‘let’s take a gander from here.’

‘A better spot up a bit by the bluff,’ I said, without stopping. I was sitting there when he caught up, chest heaving. I could taste my own salt sweat, but Hoskin was dripping. Nothing was said about our little contest. It was tacit, but registered all the same. ‘We can see a hell of a lot of country from here,’ I said. We were above most of the trees, could look down on jumbled hills and bush, see the cones of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe to the west.

We sat with our maps and checked them against the country. Hoskin showed me the areas he wanted the platoon to cover, but didn’t make any comments about my deficiencies of the morning. Rather he seemed more inclined to talk. ‘What do you do normally?’ he asked, and when he found out I was with the Grasslands Division of DSIR, he was quite interested. As we went back down to the others at an unforced pace, we talked about introduced plants in the South Island high country, and then the whole question of genetic modification. Hoskin was well informed. He was doing a law degree he said, and wasn’t sure when he completed that whether he’d stay with the police or not. ‘Maybe I’m too long in the tooth,’ he said, ‘and after a while you find most of your friends are doing similar work, have the same interests.’

‘I suppose there’s a lot in common between the law and police work.’

‘I have a good deal to do with court lawyers,’ said Hoskin. ‘Some are good value, but Jesus, there’s some average bastards that need a kick in the bum. Think they’re God’s gift. We have to put up with a heap of investigative work wasted because of incompetent prosecution.’

When we rejoined the others, Hoskin gave a briefing and we moved off again, groups working away from each other as they headed for the most likely search areas he’d identified. The heat was sapping, but at least movement stopped the flies gathering, and the bushed areas were welcome when we came to them. Well spread out as we were, and moving quietly, there was a certain feeling of unreality. I found it hard to take seriously the chance of finding Tony Ballard in all that wild country: difficult to imagine some wild-eyed guy with a shotgun behind a tree. And what would he do, or I do, if we came across each other, despite the sergeant’s order not to engage? No, it was like yet another exercise that you knew would end without significance.