A Many Coated Man (33 page)

‘Are you up to it all,’ asks Miles. ‘It’s not essential to have a meeting tonight, or to push on with anything unless you’re up to it.’ Is he up to it? Well, he is up to it in the sense that presumably it is the next thing to happen and up to it also in that he can cope with any of the pressures it will bring. What however, Slaven asks himself more keenly, is he UP to? What is it that he wants? Why is it that a conscious effort of concentration is needed to bring his mind to the CCP, the elections, the policies which have aroused the expectations of thousands of his compatriots? Just a
delayed reaction, surely. The culmination of the psychological pressures of the Beckley-Waite and then the bewildering montage of his escape. He just needs to place himself again. Just needs to be set.

‘I’m up to it all right,’ he says.

‘Paul Hurinui, Eula, Sheffield and Thackeray are coming, that’s all. Not Cardew of course,’ says Kellie. ‘We can’t take the risk of telling him anything. He’s speaking at a meeting in Ashburton. We’re only just holding on. Things don’t take off the same without you, even though Thackeray’s been giving some fine speeches. A lot of people can’t understand what happened to you. They’re not sure what to believe. We must get back up to steam by doing something spectacular soon. A city rally, here, as soon as possible I reckon, so that the government and the other parties get the message that we still have the electoral power and are prepared to use it. A real jolt and then demands.’

‘Dr Slaven back from vengeful exile,’ says Miles. ‘Certainly the moment’s right for a big one.’ Miles is having trouble with Kellie’s meal, so much of it is uncooked. A line of cottage cheese and chives underscores his bottom lip and he finds the salad difficult to corner with his fork. Things that were second-nature have become of plodding concentration. Yet he looks shrewdly at Slaven, wonders what has happened at the Beckley-Waite, what overt and covert treatment, what resistance on his friend’s part. Their eyes meet.

‘When we were coming here,’ says Sarah, ‘I saw all these intersecting snail tracks across the paths and we haven’t had any rain. In the pattern of Aquarius, which is good. And your aura’s out again, dad. I said as we came in and you were still sleeping that I could see it.’

‘There you are then. Mighty portents.’ Miles gives his caustic grimace which has once been a smile. ‘However, I must mention the emperor’s new clothes.’

‘Thousands saw his aura at St Kilda and Western Springs,’ says Sarah. ‘That’s what I mean.’

Kellie told the others that they would start at eight, but all four arrive early, hoping for some time before their fellows to welcome Slaven and slightly aggrieved at the similar
intentions. They crowd in to pat and grip him. Thackeray Thomas, the broad beam of his face as openly evangelical and loyal as ever, Eula Fitzsimmons, with elegance and so many organisational allegiances that she has a cross reference at hand for any proposal, Sheffield Spottiswoode, who leans forward seriously with his hands firmly on his splayed knees as a union man should, Paul Hurinui, who finds a brief opportunity to tell Slaven that the Caretaker still enjoys a night pipe in the courtyard of the Beckley-Waite Institute.

‘Tell him that I’m going to Mahakipawa when I can.’

See the Caretaker doing his stores inventory at the beginning of the month. He can calculate to within a score the total of the toilet tissue stack by just the first rank towards him and the colour code of the light bulbs needs no reference. See him judge the detergent which remains by one quick heft from the floor and alter on the order form the source of tinned stock because he hasn’t forgotten the last outfit’s refusal to help him hump it in. See him interview for new cleaners; what compassion for those who are halting and inarticulate in what they say, yet have character. In the summer nights he smokes stuff from his own land during his legitimate breaks and listens to Victor Yee release his soul. He values a multi-sourced heritage and claims no chiefly descent. One ancestor he admires was born a slave. See the Caretaker in his workshop fashion a tool of his own specification to gather leaves from the spouting of the Beckley-Waite and have a laugh with Ovens, who goes up to the surgery to dispense his gift of pain.

Sarah leaves them to the meeting, clears the table, begins the washing up. Maybe they have left some augury in the cups. Slaven feels a pang to see his daughter so surely know her place — to go away because she lacks the ability to be on the Executive. He leaves the small living room, takes the few steps into the kitchen where she is at the sink. He feels a helpless goodwill towards her and a turning of a father’s love. This rather pretty woman with a plain mind. Does she deserve any less than if she had been dealt subtle understanding,
but a plain face? ‘I’m so glad you came tonight. So glad to see you.’

‘Oh, me too.’ She puts a wet hand to his face and smiles. Kellie watches from the other room. ‘Do you know,’ Sarah says, ‘we were ever so careful coming here not to be followed. It’s like a mystery video isn’t it. Everyone with some sort of secret which might save the day.’

‘That’s exactly what it’s like,’ says Slaven. The Beckley-Waite has had at least one positive effect. He has no impatience now with his daughter. He has learnt the value of natural affiliation and affection by being deprived of them.

Slaven wants to talk with Kellie and Sarah, to hold their hands and feel that he’s come through. The others however want all of his Count of Monte Cristo memories. Even Miles has an appetite. ‘Was it so terrible at the Beckley-Waite place?’ asks Eula. ‘Was the escape a dangerous thing?’

It’s an understandable curiosity and Slaven wishes for a more gripping and charged story to tell: direct and personal malice, rather than indifference and disavowal of responsibility, a series of racy events in which he has a decisive influence on the outcomes, instead of being handed on from one supporter to the next and with sunburn the most apparent threat. He knows how to conjure a tale of course from Ovens’s surgical technique, the closest thing to explicable terror in the Beckley-Waite. So he makes the most of it and as the subject is one in which he’s professionally adept, he knows he won’t be caught out. Maybe in time he will be able to spin all of that place into travesty.

He listens to the others in their turn. The difficulties, the indecisiveness, the faltering of the Coalition. Kellie outlines her idea for a last great rally before the election, with the parties challenged publicly to state how many of the charter points they will support.

Miles gives a hoarse whisper which is his laugh. He has a tale which takes his fancy. ‘A woman at Makara said you appeared to her in a vision with a directive to climb to the old pa site on the headland and when she did she found there five bags of stolen groceries and newly-born twins. She was on the news yesterday.’

‘There’s a crowd again at the house,’ says Kellie. ‘At the road gate and they say they want to welcome and protect you. I’ve had to get security again. I’ve talked with them, but it’s no use. They’re trampling the shrubs there and doing their business behind the liquid amber and smoke bushes.’

At the table in the cramped kitchen they agree on the great Christchurch rally. Kellie is well-prepared and sets out the priorities. She has made this new garden of politics her own. Slaven determines to tell her how proud he is of her ability.

He will play his full and essential part of course, but even as he works with his committee there is momentarily revealed to him the great cobra of the crowd which he can raise up, but which settles at its own whim. He has caught the stench of its vintage breath, the glint of its mocking eye even as it coils beneath his genie in the night. There are fleeting, facet images there of Colosseum Christians, Jacobin ecstasy and stadium hooligans.

There is a place, isn’t there? There is a place in the old school by the sea, where the boys gather to fight. Past the fives courts as you remember, and the boiler room, and the old prefab used for cadets.

‘Web belts.’

‘Check.’

‘Prismatic compasses, one per section.’

‘Check.’

‘Rifles, drill only.’

‘Check.’

Two oak trees in the brown grass there and the staff room far from mind and view. Just the ring of the dragon and two boys of blood within, and the shouts of insensate satisfaction and the tossing of the sea beyond the foreshore. Each of us has been in the dragon’s maw.

Slaven doesn’t find the cramped, recuperative cottage easeful, despite its artful planning and modern fixtures. He prefers the ruins of the salt works at Lake Grassmere, or the back flat suspended in both time and space above the
Heathcote where Athol and the goose girl live for themselves. But now he has taken up responsibility again and wants to be in his own home and at the head of his organisation.

The authorities have become more amenable now that he is free to manoeuvre and the publicity, the searching questions of Dr Marianne Dunne and the CCP lawyers, the pressure of Miles Kitson’s contacts, the union stance, all strike near the bone. So, a sort of stalemate compromise is reached with Slaven allowed freedom, the documents signed by Cardew not released, and in return certain key questions not pressed to the Director of the Beckley-Waite.

So Slaven goes home, openly, but with more precautions taken by the CCP after Lyttelton and the visit of Doctors Eugene and Bliss. Les Croad drives him from the cottage complex through the city and they are shadowed not by the amateur car of Dafydd and Iago Thomas now, but professionals acceptable to Miles. And what a clamour at the entrance to his driveway, where Slaven gives a brief and fiery speech for reporters and supporters. Some of the latter weep at his resurrection and sing
After
Tiananmen
Square
and
Half
Moon
Bay.
Slaven hints sufficiently at the great rally which is planned and the cheers of his followers cause a flush of emotion which covers all doubts for the moment.
Let
the
polar
squalls
go
bowling
by,
as
long
as
we’re
still
seeing
eye
to
eye.

Les drives Slaven to the house amid the splendour of Kellie’s summer garden — the Chinese ground orchid, butterfly bush, yellow dahlias and showy red justica, the crepe leaves of the golden elms. Les has an air of complacency as if single-handedly he has been responsible for Slaven’s escape and return. ‘Here you are then,’ he says. ‘Safe and sound. Where the heart is.’

Kellie has a drink for Slaven set in a part of the garden invisible from the road, though the singing can still be heard for a while. She wishes to keep difficult issues from him just long enough so that they can have their welcome alone. They sit together surrounded by flowers and leaves, they kiss lip to cheek, and as they talk Kellie prepares grapefruit and oranges for a salad. She has all the skills. Slaven thinks of this as he watches her deal with the citrus fruit with
absent-minded dexterity. Just as she can effortlessly shuck the shell of boiled eggs, catch things that start to topple, recognise acquaintances by name when confronted in the street and eat any variety of food in all places without leaving a stain down her front. She can ask for the proprietor and deliver a complaint without appearing at all a bitch, put three blooms in a vase and have a talking point, succour Helene Corkery on the phone after her husband has suffered abrupt dementia in Dubbo, Australia, while on a sales trip for computerised cookery manuals.

Kellie has her diary planner and when she’s satisfied that Slaven is up to it, they begin to go over the plans for the next few weeks. She has a flair for logistics, but even more valuable she has a flair for management and the two things are by no means the same. She has become the object of interest and admiration in her own right. She features in magazine profiles and has twice been more successful on television than Slaven managed in the ‘What’s Up Show.’ Sheffield says she’s a born union negotiator and Eula considers her a wonderful role model for her sisters.

Slaven admires her efficiency and loyalty, her lack of selfish ambition, and he knows he hasn’t in him the sort of love that she deserves. In the year so much has happened. He’s unable now to maintain the old, comfortable deceits. He cannot love his wife, he dislikes his son, he’s disappointed in his daughter, and he’s the leader of a national movement based on fellowship. Neither does he love himself — at least he can say that in all fairness.

Slaven and Kellie agree to reorganise the finances of the CCP. An unimpeachable audit so that Cardew’s damage is contained, and their enemies won’t find corruption to publicise. ‘And we’ll have to move against those Wellington Executive members who’ve been undermining everything. Miles has got it all sussed out.’ She is neat, wiry, attractive, accepting middle age with the common sense typical of her. Slaven could want no better ally, nor does he, but love is burnt out. If Mrs Boss’s horn sounds for her this instant, can he grieve as he should?

It must have been different once; if not then why does he feel the present loss and guilt. But the change has been
imperceptible, all of the one thing, so that now he’s unable to contrast what was then with a separate now. The accident has not caused, or even accelerated the process, but just made clear to him the point which has been reached.

‘Yaa — aa — eech!’ Imagine it very sudden and shrill, with just a slight falling away in the middle and a vehement end. Kellie has seen the ginger stray which terrorises her own cat and scratches in the seed beds. A burst of finches in fright from the smoke bush. Maybe even the CCP enthusiasts at the road gate are startled by it. ‘That beast of a thing,’ she says. Even a minor stampede of some of Slaven’s Romneys which have been resting close to the fence in the shadow of Kellie’s garden. There are just a few clouds like basking sharks, close to the horizon and a ladybird, reverse orange spots on black, in the hair of Slaven’s wrist. What careless beauty. Perhaps he must learn that if you don’t love life itself, then no great affection for the separate parts is possible.