Harlequin Rex (28 page)

Three
weeks
after
that
second
visit,
Wiremu
came
and
told
him
that
she'd
died.
His
hair
had
been
cut
just
an
hour
before
and,
as
Wiremu
told
him
about
his
mother's
death,
David
ran
his
hand
up
the
back
of
his
neck
and
there
seemed
to
be
bristles
right
to
the
top
of
his
head.
‘I
asked
the
cause
of
death
for
you,'
said
Wiremu,
‘
and
evidently
she
had
Parkinson's
disease,
but
it
was
a
fast
blood
cancer
that
killed
her.
Nothing
to
be
done
even
if
they'd
found
it
earlier,
they
said.
'
Wiremu
sat
on
the
stool
and
David
on
the
bed.
Maybe
it
should
have
been
dusk
for
such
news,
or
a
rainy
day.
Instead
it
was
a
bright,
cold
morning
with
a
knife
edge
between
the
frost
and
the
green
grass
further
from
the
wall,
and
with
a
fine-cut
mix
of
his
own
hair
drifting
before
his
eyes.
‘All
her
stuff
is
going
to
her
sister's
in
Devonport
for
the
time
being,'
said
Wiremu,
‘but
I've
spoken
with
the
office
and
you'll
be
eligible
to
go
up
for
the
funeral.
'
Eligible
maybe,
but
not
inclined
to
be
the
organ
grinder's
monkey
for
the
gathered
relatives.

At
the
time
of
his
mother's
burial
—
what
thin
bones
they'd
be
—
David
was
filling
out
a
video
order
form
for
Wiremu,
and
he
slowly
and
deliberately
wrote
down
the
titles
of
the
idiot
films
approved.
What
composed
greeting
would
his
mother
and
father
have
when
they
met
again?
He
remembered
her
sudden
laugh
as
she
prepared
to
leave
the
visiting
room.
‘What
appalling
art,
'
she
said
of
Turtle
Watts'
seminal
works.
‘The
man
has
no
eye
for
country
at
all.
No
sense
of
structure
beneath
the
surface.
Limestone
country,
for
instance,
has
a
completely
different
look
to
the
clays.'
The
coat
hem
and
the
skirt
quivered;
her
back
was
straight.
Had
he
kissed
her?
Surely
yes,
he
always
did
on
parting.
The
barrenness
of
the
room,
the
guilt,
the
gaze
of
others,
the
chokingly
inarticulate
history
of
his
love
—
none
of
those
things
would
have
prevented
him.
That's
all
right
then.
Body Count, Amazons in Space, Challenge the Reich, Alien
Holocaust —
all
of
those
would
give
the
sort
of
active
unreality
that
was
popular
to
distract
inmates
from
their
failure.

Surely
the
most
savage
and
unforgiving
grief
is
that
felt
for
those
you
have
both
loved
and
betrayed.

There's
an
inescapable
nakedness
to
life
in
prison.
You
can
no
more
hide
the
death
of
a
parent
than
you
can
the
nature
of
your
crime,
whether
you're
prepared
to
take
it
up
the
arse,
or
if
you
believe
in
Baby
Jesus.
Grocott
was
an
emotional
dwarf
from
the
next
cell
and
felt
a
need
to
commiserate
at
lock-up
time.
He
came
close
to
his
grille
to
talk,
although
there
was
no
way
he
could
see
David.
‘Mother
died,
eh?'
said
Grocott,
who
particularly
enjoyed
a
time
of
sorrow,
or
weakness,
in
anyone
else's
life.
‘The
old
mumsie
six
feet
under,
eh,
and
not
going
down
too
bloody
happy
about
it
either.
And
you
buried
her,
Stallman,
you
bet
you
did,
you
useless
bugger.
You
buried
your
own
mother
because
you
fucking
amounted
to
bloody
nothing.
All
she
did
for
you
was
thrown
right
back
in
her
face,
and
it
killed
her
right
enough.
Too
right.
You
buried
her
by
growing
all
that
shit
and
selling
it.
You
buried
her
by
being
a
useless
cocksucker
even
though
you
went
to
some
useless
wankers'
school
and
then
farted
around
at
university.
'
He
was
standing
right
up
beneath
the
grille
and
his
voice
was
muffled
a
bit
by
that
and
his
sniggering.
‘So
how
does
it
feel
now,
Stallman?'
said
Grocott.

‘Oh,
shut
your
trap,
Grocott,'
shouted
Lund
from
across
the
corridor.

‘You
think
you're
as
smart
as
a
shit-house
rat,
Stallman,'
said
Grocott,
‘and
you're
no
better
than
anyone
else.
Worse,
because
you
didn't
even
go
to
see
your
mother
turfed
over,
although
you
buried
her
all
fucking
right,
no
doubt
about
that.'

That's
how
it
was
when
David's
mother
was
buried
—
a
day
that
finished
with
a
homily
from
Grocott
the
dwarf,
and
what
was
the
use
in
making
any
reply,
because
an 
expression
of
grief
and
pain
was
what
Grocott
wanted
above
all,
perhaps
because
he
wasn't
able
to
generate
any
emotion
of
his
own.

Raf had drunk a good deal of Speights, and moved on to his cheap flagon port again. He was in one of his lost opportunity moods, so David said just enough to keep him jogging along, and gave most of his attention to his own thoughts.

‘Maybe this is where the world begins to end for all of us,' said Raf. ‘Not in a war zone, not in a city riot, but here at Mahakipawa with Harlequin let loose.'

‘Humans have proved bloody persistent.'

‘Sure,' said Raf, ‘but you never know. The thing that gets us all might have started as simply and oddly as what we're dealing with here.' He had his new shoes off, and the colour from them had stained his light socks in contusions of blue and brown. The light smell rolled about the room on the convections from the two-bar heater.

It was possible that Harlequin would finish them all, but present tribulations always seem greater than those of the past. People thought that the Black Death was the big one, but it passed. ‘Someone will make a reputation by coming up with a cure,' said David. ‘Most likely our own hero, Schweitzer, and he'll get a knighthood and his own stamp.
You and I will establish careers on the strength of being on his staff.'

‘It's the counter-attack of the old brain,' said Raf. ‘That's what I reckon. We've got to the stage in evolution at which we're effete, and Harlequin lets loose that underlying,
cunning
old brain again. Maybe there isn't even a virus, but just some weakness in development.'

‘Maybe.'

‘The dinosaurs went because they were too stupid: maybe we're going because we're too sensitive. Crocodiles have the idea. A crocodile doesn't go in much for self-analysis.'

‘The boffins will come up with something,' said David.

‘No bugger has a clue about it, and I reckon if the
numbers
climb much higher there'll be panic action.'

‘Shoot on sight,' said David gravely, but Raf, even with plenty in, knew that he was being had on. He grinned and had another slice of the corned beef he'd got from Pauline in the kitchen. It had a coarse grain like quickly grown, cheap timber.

‘We'll see in a few months,' he said. His underclothes and dirty shirts were in a plastic bag by the door to go down to laundry. A paua shell wedged in a margarine pottle was his ashtray, and as an ornament on his desk was a piece of greenstone, polished on one side and with a whitened, oxidised rind. There was comfort in the ordinariness of such things. ‘Maybe Harlequin's the one we don't crack, and man goes down like the dinosaur,' said Raf.

Tony Sheridan had told David earlier of an article in a psychiatric journal, which suggested that the worldwide and extreme celebrations of the new millennium had brought on Harlequin.

‘You must be kidding me?' said Raf.

‘No, evidently it's all there in very staid language.'

‘Jesus.'

‘Some argument about fundamental effects of mass hysteria.'

‘Jesus,' said Raf wearily.

Darkness was on the way. The wind gusts were hunting over the ridges and gullies above the centre, and the waves broke with muffled intensity below. Those were the sounds of the place long before Harlequin, and they would be there long afterwards. Not everything has to do with people: not all is subject to the dominion to which they answer.

‘Anyway,' said David, ‘you're too thick to get Harlequin. It hits the most talented and sensitive.'

‘Like Simon Cryer and Woodsie, I suppose.'

‘Exceptions, and anyway they never had anything but a primal brain from the start. In their case, the whole world's coming back to meet them.'

Raf was pouring more port when a tap came on his door. Without any loss of concentration on his task, he asked who was there. ‘Dermot,' said Dermot Sweeney, and when the door was opened for him, he stood there in his worn towelling dressing-gown with the sash of a different garment altogether. ‘I'm on the way up,' he said, his tone both apologetic and fearful.

‘How bad do you reckon?' said David.

‘I can smell the wet bracken on the hill and Tolly's breath from two doors down. I can see moreporks on the wing, hear a stoat behind the car park and the sound of blood pumping behind my knees.'

‘When was your last episode?' asked David. It was his duty night.

‘Shit,' said Dermot, ‘corned beef. I knew there was something else and I couldn't place it.' He took up the knife and cut himself a wedge. ‘Silverside. Don't you love the strands when it's cold, and the bits of white fat in the body of the meat? This is what we had hot yesterday, isn't it?'

‘I should be doing a round anyway. What's the time? Did you see anyone else about?' David got no answer, Dermot had assumed a protective half-crouch to eat his corned beef, as if the others might snatch it from him.

‘You have a wander then,' said Raf. ‘Dermot's in the aura. I'll go with him down to the main block.' He took up the clipboard with the duty sheet on it, and wrote in Dermot's report. ‘What else tells you Harlequin's on the way?' he said casually, and then, ‘No, no port,' as he caught Dermot's glance.

‘Well, I'm hyped as hell, of course,' said Dermot.

‘You always are, old son.'

‘True, true.' Dermot was delighted with the compliment. ‘But not with the sense of striking power you get from this, eh.'

‘Colours?' asked Raf, hand and biro poised.

‘I've been on the verandah, and the building lights where they fade in the night are the palest blue that you see in very old skim milk, and there are clouds as clammy as puff balls. But it's the sounds this time. That's the thing. You realise that the wind's no more one sound than a bloody orchestra is. The whine from a corner guttering is quite different from the wind noise through the gorse, flat across the grass, or barrelling across the water.'

‘Maybe you can hear the steers farting in their sleep,' said Raf.

Dermot laughed more than the other two, his shoulders shaking furtively.

‘Yeah, but some day you guys may have to go through it. And what a frigging business. I tell you this, though, there's something dead on Hitchen's property. I can smell the guts of it coming over the hill. That's probably your steer.'

‘Or tomorrow's lunch,' said Raf. ‘You want to go over now?'

‘I think I'd better,' said Dermot. ‘I could blow pretty soon.'

‘Okay then.' Raf put on his shoes, and navy blue jersey. He flipped his pony-tail free from it at the back.

At the main door of Takahe David watched the other two go on down towards Treatment. He listened to the wind, trying to identify all the elements Dermot was aware of, but
it was just the same indiscriminate swirl, and when he sniffed he could smell nothing from Hitchen's farm that wasn't from every other direction. The sea, the mudflats, were what the wind bore for him. He didn't know whether to be relieved or not, and went back through the corridor to do his first night check. Chime time and all's well. Outside the rooms at least: who wanted to pry further?

It reminded him of Paparua, when the screws Petrie, or McMurdoe with the limp, would be doing the rounds, and David was one of those to be accounted for. McMurdoe had a son who went to the Olympics as a wrestler. He didn't win a medal, but his father's pride was a compensation for the job he did, lessened his limp, reduced his whining
complaints
about the prisoners' recalcitrance and ingratitude.

David would have spent twice as long in Paparua to avoid being a patient at the Slaven Centre. As a prisoner you could always kid yourself that you were falsely accused, or unfairly punished, but there was no logic, no deceit, and little future when Harlequin pinned you. Only luck saved you, or
perhaps
prayers superior to those of Jigger Fraser. David stood at the smaller, far door to hear the wind buffeting the sides of the building and bounding over the grounds. All manner of threats might be out there, but how much worse was treachery from within for Dermot and the others: with Harlequin able to turn intelligence, emotion, even, perhaps, the soul.

Is from the blanket storeroom on the third floor of the main block. On impulse she took the key from the lock two months ago and, after a cautious delay, has made the place a refuge. It isn't that she feels persecuted, or even particularly unhappy most of the time, although she knows she may be dying. What the storeroom gives her is privacy: it allows her the heady feeling of being unlocated within the
consciousness of the institution. Not Abbey is in her unlocked room, or Abbey is playing the piano in the Takahe lounge, or Abbey is swimming with a supervised group, or talking to Roimata Wallace, or halfway through the Thursday Neapolitan lasagne, or seeing a vision of the last supper of the great composers. Abbey is where no one knows, even if no one really cares, and she hugs that sense of secret location to herself.

There are two varieties of issue blanket: a straight wool in yellow-cream with machined edges, and a slightly more therapeutic sky blue wool-acrylic mix, edged with blanket stitch in a darker blue. Abbey needs some of each to perch high enough to see from the single window. Her vantage point gives an unusual view of the long-run roofing iron used for the walkway covers, the sloping grounds with garden plots, the ridge running down to the sound. What Abbey does among the blankets and pillowcases, the table covers and throws, is to let her socialised face go — all the reassuring play of responses which make her so
approachable
, civilised, comforting even. Her face instead becomes utterly introspective, both older, in the unhindered sag of flesh, and younger, in an expression of quest, innocence and vulnerability.

Abbey has loosened the dark blue edge stitching of the blanket she sits on, so that she can put fingers beneath it absently as she considers things. When she puts tension on the strand she sees her fingertips whiten, as the blood is forced from them. She doesn't imagine that there is any personal malice in her affliction with Harlequin: nor
anything
of punishment. Though she hasn't told the others lest it seem to be dealing in despondency, she thinks that
Harlequin
could well be the nemesis for them all, the catastrophe.

And, if so, wouldn't it be just the further descent from the paradise of childhood? Abbey's father had been a reader in chemistry, and her mother a professor in the same discipline. Their marriage was a close and happy one, both
of them preternaturally sensitive to passing good fortune. ‘Look at the full moon, Abbey,' her mother would say, with her husky voice, to her only child. ‘How it glows for us, don't you think?'

Her father would press his lips close to Abbey's hair as the three of them hung blissfully in a Queenstown gondola, or walked with her pony through the silver birches of the property at Pigeon Bay, or sat on their tiled patio in bleeding sunset. ‘Never forget this moment,' he'd whisper. ‘Look at the kingfisher, Abbey,' he'd say. ‘Look at the lights in your mother's hair.' ‘Listen to the sound of the ocean in the distance.' ‘See how high the thistledown is carried, like pale flecks in the sky.' ‘Can you smell the fleeces on the sheep, Abbey. Can you?' For he was a man highly educated, and vulnerable to transience.

Look, listen, smell, feel, taste — and oh, never forget, never forget, and there would be in their eyes tears for the unbearable happiness that was passing. And the thing was that she never did forget, so that nothing afterwards had quite the bloom, or ecstasy. Not even the post-childhood gift of sex was sufficient compensation. Hers was a largely self-conscious performance, a localised and brief carnal pleasure. Her lovers tended to end up as friends, then seek new lovers elsewhere.

There was nothing, not even Mahler and Grieg, that could stay the descent from childhood: the dimming of the colours. Listen, Abbey, to the sound of Canada geese across the lake. Look, how the puddle ice is fractured in a glittering web. The adult world is more compromised and compromising, and that temperate cynicism which is called maturity holds sway. And Harlequin? Maybe she had unwittingly
summoned
him, and he had come with his second childhood of terrible dimension.

But Abbey isn't thinking of this at present in the
storeroom
, as she looks out across the grounds. She's thinking of her mother, retired in Tauranga with an honour for services
to science and education, and the despair her mother feels because of Abbey's illness. Her father has been saved that agony by a cardiac arrest which killed him while he picked lemons. Remember this, my darling. Always remember this — and his whisper at her ear, his arms lifting her up so that she would have a better vantage point from which to view the world. Look, oh, look at the kingfisher, Abbey; see the blue sheen of it, and the dark, strong beak. So she's thinking also of her father, and she's enjoying her bird's-eye view over the grounds of the centre and the slope to the sea. The rushes there are like the morning bristles of a landscape face, and the road loops over the ridge by the one farmhouse, Picton one way, Havelock the other. The sound lies like that
kingfisher's
wing, outstretched between the hills.

Abbey sees David helping one of the laundry staff manoeuvre a trolley through the door of Takahe, and then stand, half turned to talk to someone out of sight, while the trolley is taken noiselessly down the ramp and towards the main block, just as the larger trolley carrying Jane Milton must have travelled. Abbey likes to talk to David, particularly after a serious episode, for she feels as if he suffers from Harlequin himself without the symptoms. He has empathy with her anguished powerlessness: transfixed like a butterfly, but still with an ache to take wing.

He isn't soft at all physically. His well-muscled neck is the feature of which she's most conscious: the sinews, the shoulder muscles sloped away, the blue arteries on each side of his windpipe which swell and pulsate beneath the skin when he plays volleyball. What she doesn't like is the loose, dark hair that too often needs a wash, his passive cynicism, the drug habit that he makes no effort to break, and even provides for in others — Tolly, Raf, Montgomery, Lucy Mortimer, who's his lover, they say. How could you do that to someone you loved?