Harlequin Rex (17 page)

Towards
the
top
of
the
gully
was
the
wooden
farmhouse
Sneaky
Pete
rented,
the
land
around
it
long
sold
for
forestry.
One
of
the
verandah
poles
had
rotted
through,
and
the
bowed
iron
of
the
roof
was
lower
there.
The
giant
macrocarpa
hedge
on
the
south
and
west
sides
had
been
felled
to
let
in
some
light,
and
so
attract
a
tenant.
Most
of
the
hedge
had
been
scavenged
for
firewood
by
successive
occupants,
but
the
great
stumps
still
held
on,
with
the
scars
of
the
chainsaw
on
their
surfaces.
One
of
the
most
even
was
used
as
a
chopping
block.
Its
ringed
surface
had
additional
axe
and
knife
marks,
stains
and
libations;
there
was
a
scurf
of
fine
chips,
fur,
feathers
and
bone
at
its
base.
The
waxy
head
of
a
white
leghorn
lay
close
to
David’s
boot
as
he
stood
smoking,
the
comb
granulated
and
the
beak
ajar.

‘I
could
take
half
as
much
again,’
said
Sneaky,
as
he
splintered
the
rib
cage
of
an
appropriated
hogget
for
his
evening
chops.
‘But
I’d
want
a
sharper
fucking
price,
of
course.
I’m
making
you
guys
rich.
That
skunkweed
resin,
though,
I
must
say
is
top
shit.’
Sneaky
was
very
tall,
thin,
bald
and
revealed
by
his
voice
as
Australian.
At
rest
he
tended
to
hold
his
skinny
arms
across
his
stomach,
as
if
something
had
caved
in
there
and
was
causing
discomfort,
yet
all
his
actions
and
opinions
were
resolute,
showing
that
he
was
in
good
form.

Sneaky
always
complained
that
the
price
was
too
high,
but
he
knew
that
he
was
onto
a
good
thing.
The
quality
was
consistent
and
so
was
the
supply.
Sneaky
collected
and
distributed
for
more
than
a
hundred
and
fifty
kilometres
around,
and
although
the
rented
place
in
Dog
Gully
Road
aroused
no
envious
comment,
when
Sneaky
flew
to
Wellington
as
Mr
Ferris,
bank
managers
came
from
behind
their
desks
in
welcome.

After
they
had
helped
Sneaky
put
the
stuff
into
the
bunker
beneath
the
shed,
David
and
Chris
went
into
the
old
farmhouse
and
drank
Napoleon
brandy
and
coffee.
Sneaky
 
was
generous
with
that,
but
he
made
no
offer
of
accommodation
and
David
didn’t
expect
one.
It
didn’t
pay
to
become
too
personal
in
their
business.
So
they
left
quietly
in
the
small
hours,
when
the
country
was
beginning
to
creak
with
the
hardening
of
the
frost,
and
Dog
Gully
Road
was
just
the
beginning
of
a
long
drive.

The
pines
were
very
dark
and
the
sides
of
the
small
valley
kept
out
the
moonlight.
The
new
Holden’s
headlights
swept
over
the
tottering
fence
posts
and
the
gleam
of
ice
on
the
mud
of
the
potholes.
Briefly,
before
the
demister
took
effect,
the
windscreen
grew
delicate
hachures
of
frost
like
the
blades
of
a
Spanish
fan.

‘Sneaky
must
be
raking
it
in,
I
reckon,’
said
Chris.

‘He
has
to
take
more
risk
though,
doesn’t
he
—
dealing
with
a
lot
more
people
to
distribute
it,
and
some
of
them
very
odd
bastards
with
no
loyalty,
or
talking
too
much
at
the
pub.
We
can
just
come
up
here
once
in
a
while
and
dump
a
fair
load,
yet
no
one
knows
us
except
Sneaky.’

‘And
you
don’t
think
that
if
Sneaky
takes
a
fall
we
go
down
as
well?’
Chris
said.
‘Come
on.’

‘I’m
just
saying
that
we’re
doing
very
nicely
and
that
Sneaky’s
business,
good
or
bad,
is
up
to
him.’

It
was
odd,
wasn’t
it,
that
you
could
be
a
criminal,
and
yet,
having
made
that
one
move
from
orthodox
practice,
you
continued
to
expect
many
of
the
principles
which
applied
in
the
legitimate
world
to
hold
good.
How
else
could
you
operate?
How
was
it
possible
to
escape
a
middle
class
upbringing
even
if
you
stepped
outside
the
law?

On
the
drive
back,
Chris
told
David
that
coming
through
Nelson
reminded
him
of
a
job
he
did
there
with
two
mates
before
he
went
overseas.
A
shipment
of
spirits
and
top
wines
which
they
knew
was
stored
in
a
warehouse
in
Neath
Street.
There
hadn’t
been
a
snatch
of
booze
for
ages
and
the
place
had
got
slack.
They
used
two
stolen
trucks
and
got
away
with
a
hundred
and
seventy
cartons
as
easy
as
pie,
but
one
broke
down
in
the
Rai
Valley
and
they
had
to
ditch
it,
and
 
then
the
other
one
conked
before
Blenheim.
‘Jesus,
can
you
believe
that,
though?
Weeks
of
planning
and
we
ended
up
hitching
into
Blenheim.
On
the
bones
of
our
arse
again,
and
all
we
took
was
one
bottle
each
to
carry.
’
Chris
had
a
good
laugh
at
his
misfortune
from
the
vantage
of
better
days.
‘
One
bottle
of
top
whisky,’
he
said.
‘That’s
what
I
got
out
of
that
lot.’

Growing
and
selling
shit
was
a
much
better
business,
wasn’t
it?
Sneaky
Pete
was
doing
just
fine,
and
so
were
they.
Meeting
the
market,
you
might
say.

Claire Townes was one of those who slid into a trough and stayed there: one of Harlequin’s muted and uncharacteristic ways to go. So predictable were her last weeks, and free of threat, that she was left in Takahe where she wanted to be. Except when sleeping or sedated, and increasingly the two were combined, she called for her daughter, Sandra, who had become an archaeologist and found work in Yucatan. Before her death, Claire wanted above all to farewell her daughter. It couldn’t happen, because Sandra had gone ahead, killed in a helicopter accident on the plateau seven months before. No matter how many times Claire was told the news, she blotted it out as more than she could bear. Her conscious hours were dominated by the failure of her daughter to visit her at the centre. Sometimes she blamed Sandra, sometimes she blamed the staff; she even claimed that it was a conspiracy by her ex-husband, as a punishment for not investing in his olive-growing venture just outside Thames.

Claire’s night and day cry, ‘Where’s Sandra?’, became integrated into the acoustic life of the centre, eventually losing any intrinsic and personal significance, becoming as generic
as the cry of the skuas over the mudflats, or the bellowing steers on the hillside. Sometimes in the darkness and their agony, other guests too, cried ‘Where’s Sandra?’, not for cruelty’s sake, but just to share the solace of the familiar.

‘Couldn’t we arrange for Sandra to come, for Christ’s sake?’ asked Lucy, in David’s small room. She had heard Claire’s piercing cry as Raf and Abbey wheeled her to the sluice bay. David was quiet to listen to the calls as they diminished down the corridor. They had become so
customary
over weeks, that he had to make an effort to register them as having a specific origin.

‘What — a seance?’ He wondered whether Claire or Sandra would have the most difficulty in crossing over.

‘Just an ordinary visit,’ said Lucy. She was leaning on the window sill so that the hills above the centre were visible to her. ‘Have Sandra come to visit after all.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘She’s going quite fast now. The doctors told you, didn’t they? All she wants is that one last thing. Soon she’ll be taken down to Treatment to stay, where people won’t know her the same.’

‘The daughter’s dead, though. Tony Sheridan said she was killed in a plane crash in Mexico or somewhere, but Claire won’t take it in.’

‘All Claire cares about is getting an okay from her
daughter
to go. A sort of release. At this stage I reckon it could be done by proxy: there’s so much need. I mentioned it to Schweitzer, but he said it was dubious in terms of ethical practice.’

It surprised David that Lucy was on such terms with the director, that during her sessions with him she would discuss Claire Townes in such a way. And David shared Schweitzer’s unease with the proposal. The deceit of taking advantage of Claire’s illness, even if it was for her own good. The
assumption
of power and decision over what was left of her life. ‘Oh, come on. No more than a prognosis held back, or a
drug-induced calm,’ said Lucy. ‘No more than anything else which is the means to the end of dying more easily. We should just do it, and it’ll all happen and be over before anybody really knows about it.’

So Lucy began her successful persuasion.

‘Where’s Sandra?’ called Claire on the wet evening they had chosen to grant her an answer. The rain came in on the wind: cats’ claws on the windows. There was a downpipe on the outside wall close to Claire’s head, and it gave a vigorous orchestration for the performance inside. ‘Where’s Sandra?’ Few people would be moving from block to block on such a night to provide any interruption. The pigfern on the hill slope had a subdued gleam in the twilight. ‘Where’s Sandra?’

‘She’s on her way, isn’t she,’ answered David.

‘On her way?’ Claire had almost renewed her habitual cry when she realised what he’d said. ‘You mean she’s
coming
?’

‘All the way from Yucatan,’ said Abbey. ‘You remember, we’ve been telling you for days. She’s arriving any minute.’

‘All that way just to be with you,’ said Raf.

The three of them kept on for some time about the visit, the history of preparation and acknowledgement, until the idea was taken up as valid by Claire herself: until she
complained
that she had grown sick of waiting for what she had long been promised. Yet David didn’t see how it could work, and was embarrassed by their well-intended conspiracy against the sick woman.

Lucy walked across to Takahe, and came with a
transparent
, plastic hood which she almost shook from her head. ‘That rain,’ she said. ‘It’s driving in with the wind.’

‘Here she is,’ said Abbey in a voice of conviction. Unlike David, she entered into the spirit of the performance utterly. As a patient herself, although not in Claire’s condition, she more easily acknowledged the supremacy of need.

‘Here’s Sandra to see you, Claire,’ said Raf. He had no
sense of shame whatever, or rather, perhaps, he was willing to be actively ridiculous if it would help Claire. He delighted in the challenge to shallow reality. Well, isn’t life after all a theatre of the absurd, in which bit players are forced to take larger parts because a God is lacking.

Lucy went to the bed and seized Claire with a hug. Not a wary embrace for the sick, but emphatic, outgoing,
expressive
. Claire was startled rather than welcoming. Her face appeared for the others at Lucy’s shoulder: the many lines at the mouth emphasising it as orifice, the slight rash around her nostrils, the eyebrows rubbed almost bare.

‘I love you so much, Mum,’ said Lucy. ‘I’ve come all this way to make sure you know that.’

Claire allowed herself to be held, but looked at Abbey for affirmation. ‘You never used to hug me,’ said Claire, when her head and shoulders were back on the double pillow. ‘You liked your father so much better because he spoilt you rotten. Do you ever see him?’

‘I haven’t time for any of that,’ said Lucy. ‘I’ve only a moment and all I want to say is thank you, and that I love you.’

There was brief eagerness and intensity then in Claire’s face which transfigured it, and for the first time David saw something of the personality that had been Claire Townes; recognised a full individual beneath the spoil of the illness. ‘Sandra, Sandra,’ she said, yet her eyes went up and she tilted her head back towards the gurgling downpipe. She had a full handhold on Lucy’s arm, but perhaps she knew better than to regard her gift horse in the face. Lucy had made no effort to resemble the daughter in the bedside photo. ‘I’ve kept all your letters,’ said Claire. ‘I just wish you could work indoors more in that place. Everything’s so dirty in archaeology, isn’t it? All that grubbing after what’s better buried. And what must the smells be like.’

David found it so difficult to play a part. The whole thing teetered between the grotesque and the sublime: at once a
profound reality and a mockery of itself. Perhaps, too, he was reminded of another old woman, and a granny flat in Kaikoura by the sea. He went out of Claire’s room and stood in the corridor by one of the windows, which showed the rain and wind moving like shoals in the liquid evening. Raf followed him, and stood and stretched his face oddly as a commentary on what they’d seen, and as relaxation after a long duty. ‘She’s bought it, hasn’t she?’ he said. ‘She thinks her Sandra has really come to say goodbye, I reckon.’

‘She’s taking what she needs most, just as Lucy said she would. Heart’s ease, no matter what the source.’

‘Weird really,’ said Raf.

‘She’s dying.’

‘And going very differently than most of the others, isn’t she? I guess you have to take any short cuts there are.
Self-deception
may be even more necessary at death than in your life.’

Lucy was at the door. ‘I’ve got to go now, Mum,’ they heard her say, and Claire calling her back for one last thing. And Abbey was talking too: the three of them in conference. Then Lucy was back again with tears on her cheeks and a catch to her voice. ‘She needed so much to say things to her daughter.’

‘What did she call you back for?’ asked Raf.

‘She said the doctors kept telling her that Sandra was dead, but she knew it wasn’t true because she could see letters from me on their desks. But they never passed them on.’

‘Come and have a drink in my room,’ said David. He put his hand on her shoulder. ‘Let’s have a joint, eh?’ She was trembling slightly.

‘No, honestly I’m fine, but it’s got to me more than I expected. I’ll come over tomorrow and have a talk then. You can tell me how she’s taken it.’ Her voice was firmer with each word. She put on the plastic hood again and started down the corridor. ‘See you, Raf,’ she called.

‘See you, Lucy.’

‘Is this some strange place, or what?’ said David.

‘On the edge, mate, on the edge,’ said Raf. He pulled one of his half-grotesque, half-mocking faces. He spread out his large arms and balanced up the corridor towards his room, one foot perilously after the other on some invisible tightrope.

Claire and Abbey had bundles of Sandra’s letters out on the bed, but they were talking of the doctors, and which of them could be trusted. Animation made Claire look especially ravaged, her face like some glaring, piecemeal, papier-mâché head. She looked up as David re-entered, but her quick smile was for herself only. ‘And I’m not going to tell anything to you men either,’ she said. ‘Maybe you think it’s funny, do you?’

‘Why should I think your daughter’s visit funny?’ said David.

‘Men still think women are a joke,’ said Claire fiercely.

‘Yes, go away now and leave us in peace,’ said Abbey. And he did; taking orders meekly from those in his charge, because the whole evening had become topsy-turvy anyway, and Abbey was twice the comforter he’d ever be.

In the three further days that she lived, Claire didn’t call for Sandra any more. Maybe she was convinced; maybe she knew that the trick wouldn’t work a second time. Others continued the cry ‘Where’s Sandra?’ for a time, but eventually, with the source gone, even those mimics of good intention realised that the power of the incantation was lost forever.