Opportunity (14 page)

***

A long time ago, when my father and mother first came out
from England, they went exploring in the Far North, and
their favourite place was a small bay where they camped on
Maori land. They made such good friends with the Reihana
family, who owned the bay, that they came back every year,
and eventually they got the money together and built a bach.
They used to get a manager into the shop and we'd go up
every holiday. My parents spent their days with Marama and
Don Reihana and my brothers and I played with their nine
kids. Marama and my mother kept each other company while
Don and my father went fishing. The women gossiped and
looked after the kids. They talked non-stop. Marama was as
churchy as my mother, although she wasn't as strait-laced.
My parents used to send me and my brothers to stay with
the Reihanas some holidays, and sometimes they came down
to stay with us. Don and Marama were my parents' first real
friends in New Zealand, and they stayed close all the years I
was growing up.

When my father died, the Reihanas came down to
Auckland. They said, 'We've come to take Alfred home.' They
took his body up north. We had a tangi at their marae, and
they buried him in the Maori graveyard, in the Reihana line.

James liked our bach, and he and I used it every summer.
The Reihanas were still there, and James loved the fact that we
could go over all the Maori land because of my family ties to
the place. He wanted to be friendly with the Reihanas,
although he was a bit awkward with them, whereas I'd known
them all my life and just thought of them as family. Anyway,
we went up there often and one year we took Jean.

Jean loved the place too. She met old Marama Reihana, and
had a long conversation with her about land rights and Treaty
settlements, which my mother wouldn't have done; she would
just have settled down for a cosy chat about who was doing
what in the family, and all the other local gossip.

Jean was very sociable and could get on with anyone, and
she was full of observations. She said Marama's grandchildren
were good-looking and chic and that they looked as if they
had a bit of French in their family, maybe from de Surville's
time. She thought it was interesting that some of the Reihana
grandchildren were studying at university. One was even
doing a Masters degree. She went on like this and it made me
a bit uncomfortable, especially when she went on about the
university thing. To me they were the scruffy old Reihanas
who we used to give our worn-out furniture to, and I wondered
if she was having a dig at me, by implying that even the Maoris
were more educated than I was.

We took Jean to the Maori graveyard and she enjoyed
washing the tapu off her hands afterwards. She squirted some
water on Michael's hands, which reminded me of his christening,
when she'd kept fidgeting and making rude jokes
about the vicar. She'd made James laugh when it was supposed
to be solemn and beautiful.

'So you do tapu but not christenings,' I said.

'They're all just rituals, aren't they?' she said cheerfully.
Then she gave James a look, as if she was sorry for him.

One day I said I'd ask Don junior Reihana if he'd drive us
up to the beach his family had been given in a land settlement.
It's a huge, beautiful beach that you can only get to by four-wheel
drive.

Jean said, 'Oh, should you ask? They might think it's
offensive
.'

'Why?' I said, surprised.

'If they think we're ordering them about or something.'

I thought, what's offensive? They're friends. We were always
asking them for things, and giving them things, too. If they
don't want to they'll say no, like always. So I went ahead and
asked, and Don junior said that would be fine, but the next
day he didn't turn up. Jean started saying he must be annoyed,
but I said not to worry, he'd come on a day when he was ready.
I was irritated with her telling me I'd offended someone I
knew well and she didn't.

Sure enough, on the third day Don drove up, ready to go.
Jean made an elaborate explanation about how we didn't want
to be a nuisance. He just smiled and waited for us to get
ready.

Jean was delighted to be going on a trip. She got Don
talking. He told her how a long time ago his father had gone
to the Maori Land Court to protest the sale of some land
nearby, but the Maoris who owned it had insisted on selling it
to the government, and there'd been bad feeling between the
families ever since. I was a bit surprised to hear him talking
like this. As long as I could remember, the Reihanas had only
talked about fishing and boats and the church, and all the
other everyday things that had kept them and my parents
absorbed.

We turned off onto a narrow, sandy road. Around the first
bend we met a truck. Don stopped to talk to the driver, a one-eyed
man. There was a fat woman next to him with tattoos up
her arms. On the back were two vicious dogs and a row of
silent boys. The boys were ragged and thin, with bad teeth.
These people were related to the Reihanas, but they were part
of what Marama called the 'bad side of the family'. They lived
deep in the pine forest. The children hardly ever made it to
school. None of Marama's nine children had a single criminal
conviction, and they all, pretty much, had jobs. Some of the
'bad side', on the other hand, were rumoured to be lifelong
criminals and, in particular, drug dealers.

Don winked at me as we drove off. 'He's a mean bugger,
that Riki. Last year him and his missus were having a fight?
He went for her, but she stabbed him in the eye with a
toothbrush!' He went off into a big giggle.

Jean said, 'Oh dear. A bit of utu.' They laughed for a while.

We drove into the pine forest. It was dark and cool. The
thick pine needles muffled sound and you could only hear the
wind sighing. The trees grew so thickly together you could
barely see the sky. There wasn't a proper road, only a track that
meandered through the trees, over stumps, around bluffs, up
and down steep banks. The forest stretched away as far as you
could see — dark trunks and orange needles with shafts of
light angling down. Sometimes the trees opened out, and
there'd be a clearing, and a view of a yard full of old car bodies
and a ramshackle house, the windows broken and boarded
and the paint peeling, and some kids running towards the
jeep, dark little figures against the wall of pines. Sometimes
you could hear the whine of a chainsaw, or an axe chopping.

When we passed one of these clearings Jean said in a low
voice, 'I wouldn't want to be on my own out here.' There was a
house with chickens running about and a face at the window.
The wall of the house was green and mouldy. It was hard to
understand why anyone would choose to live in such a secret,
dark, lonely place.

We drove on for an hour. Then Don accelerated and we
roared up a dune into bright light. The beach was beautiful
and empty, a stretch of sparkling sea with a little island out
from it and lines of long, even waves curling in. Jean ran down
the dunes holding Michael's hand and exclaiming how lovely
it was. She had a way of throwing herself into things with her
whole body, like a kid. 'Let's walk to the end of it,' she called,
holding Michael. He put his arms around her and kissed her.

Don wanted to load some wood into the back of the truck
so we left him and walked all the way to the rocks at the far
end. Jean played with Michael, doing different voices for him
and making up a long story. We went for a swim and started
walking back.

Jean stopped and shaded her eyes. 'The car's gone.'

'Oh my God,' James said.

'We'll have to walk all the way back. Through those terrible
woods.'

'We'll be eaten!'

They went on like this, laughing and joking. Then Jean said,
'It really is gone, you know.'

'Oh shit.'

They looked at me, all giggly.

I said, 'You know he won't have gone.'

James sighed. A special kind of look passed between him
and Jean, as if each knew what the other was thinking. Jean
went on adding to the story about how we'd been
abandoned.

When we got back, Don was driving the truck down the
paddock towards the stream. Jean told him we thought he'd
gone and made lots of jokes while she got out the picnic and
made everyone a sandwich. While we were eating, a big, shiny
new SUV came over the dune and cruised down to the flat.
Two men got out and Don went to talk to them. He came
back.

'That's André and Teina,' he said. 'Bad buggers. They live in
the pines further down the coast.'

'How bad are they?' James asked.

'How bad? They're like the Sopranos, bro!' Don said, and
went off into a big laugh.

'Really? Drugs?' Jean eyed the two men, who were talking
behind their big truck. She was dying to know more.

'Drugs, whatever. You name it.' Don said. 'I keep a polite
distance. Hear no evil, see no evil, get no evils!' The three of
them laughed at that.

After lunch Jean played with Michael again and we drifted
about. James swam and Don and I lay in the grass. André and
Teina had moved a bit further off and were sitting in the shade
of their truck.

'What are they doing?' I asked.

'They're waiting for some fulla. Someone's cousin from
Australia or something.'

I could hear Jean's voice, and Michael shrieking with
delight. I went down to look for James. When we came back
another car had driven down and André and Teina were
talking to a man.

Don was starting to load up. I went a bit closer to the men.
André was squat and muscular. Teina was thin, with dreadlocks
and heavily tattooed hands. The new arrival was tall and dark,
with a bushy beard.

Behind me Jean was telling Don, 'Michael's just like James
as a little boy. He's so imaginative.' She often said those things.
Michael was handsome like James, stroppy like James,
intelligent like James.

I was watching the men. Jean said cheerfully to me, 'Ready
for the forest? It's so spooky in there. As if anything could
happen. Those terrible little houses. The chopping noises.
That
face
at the window.'

I turned, with a sensible smile. 'It's just a whole lot of pine
trees,' I said.

She gave me a look; there was a sort of incredulity in it, as
well as an appeal. Then she looked cynical and resigned.

'Michael! Where are you, you pirate?' she called.

I went towards André and Teina. They stopped talking and
watched me. André's eyes were small and calculating. He gave
me a malignant smile. Teina looked irritated, as if he wondered
how I dared to interrupt. I went close to the man with the
beard.

'Reid,' I said.

He made a small movement, jerking his head back, putting
out his hands.

'Who?'

'Reid.'

He looked at André and Teina. 'Who's this?' he asked.

'You were in Dunedin, remember? Just before I left the flat.
When you were in the police. '

André and Teina looked at Reid. They didn't move.

'Are you still in the police?' I asked.

'I don't know who this chick is,' Reid said. He started to
back away.

'Weren't you going to be a detective?'

All three men were very still. Reid looked at me over the
top of his sunglasses. His mouth was open, grimacing.

I smiled at André. I said, 'I was sure it was him. He used to
have a little star tattooed on his shoulder.'

I shrugged and walked away.

Don started up the truck. Jean was singing Michael a pirate
song. He clapped his little hands. James was fussing about the
sand in his shoes.

The water glittered in the afternoon light and long shadows
were starting to cross the beach. We drove up the dune onto
the track, and the pine forest closed around us.

From my hotel room I could see the lights of New Plymouth.
There was a house facing me with two horizontal slit windows.
They stared at me out of the darkness, yellow eyes.

In the morning we had walked around the boardwalk, from
one end of town to the centre, where the Len Lye sculpture,
the Wind Wand, stretched high up into the sky. It moved with
the wind, it dipped and bobbed. I thought it was beautiful.
The surf crashed against the rocky breakwater, spray rose, the
light was silvery, the white foam so pure white and cold,
rainbows in the spray. Alan took my arm. Two teenage girls
watched us, him short and plump in his scarf and black jacket,
me much taller in my anorak and jeans, my glasses blurred
with sea drops. I wished he would let go of my arm but he was
talking and happy and I didn't want to pull away.

Alan said he'd expected a flat, dull, inland town. He never
looked at maps. He talked about the sea — so strange, he said,
coming from Auckland, to see surf crashing in at the edge of
a city. We passed a shopping centre and went into a modern
building called Puke Ariki. There was a trendy café where you
could sit out on the balcony and watch the Wind Wand
moving like a giant flower stalk over the sea. Alan drank wine;
I had a Coke. He called it rot-gut: 'A glass of rot-gut for my
friend.' When he liked a place, he needed to describe it, and he
wasn't satisfied until he'd called attention to every feature and
oddity, everything ugly and lovely. I sat and listened, and
chimed in sometimes. He wanted to know that I'd registered
all the impressions he'd had. If I hadn't, he would explain,
describe, until he was sure. He shifted nervously on his seat.
He waved his hands for emphasis. Then he sat back, smiling.

We finished our drinks and walked back up the main street.
He talked about the mountain, how it had been shrouded in
cloud when we'd flown in and been driven from the airport,
how it was stubbornly refusing to show itself now.

'The guys in the minibus,' he said, laughing. 'What were all
the names?'

We'd been met at the airport by a woman with a hard, flat
Australian accent. She was the liaison person for the Taranaki
Festival, at which Alan was to perform. He was a pianist, a
Bach specialist. In the minivan were another sort of musicians
— Kiwi rap artists. The woman had taken out a clipboard and
asked for names. Humourless and earnest, they came out with
'9-Funk', 'Snoop Rag', 'D-Money'. I could feel Alan laughing. I
sat up the front with the woman, and Alan delightedly climbed
in the back. He said, 'Are you 9, or Funk, or Snoop?' They
corrected him. 'I'm D. He's Rag.' They high-fived and whooped
and said 'Yo' and 'Dude'. They invited us to their dance party,
which was to start at midnight. Alan enjoyed himself. He
liked their strong brown arms, their tattoos, their masculine
bravado. He thought they were hunky and sexy. He was
titillated.

'See that big lump of cloud there?' the driver said to me.
'That's the mountain. It's beautiful when it comes out.'

The sky was blue, apart from the seething mass of greyblack
cloud ahead. I had the idea the cloud was moving
around the thing it was hiding, the wisps writhing, rising,
plunging. I thought of bees circling a hive.

'Why do the clouds cling to it like that?'

'Dunno,' she said. 'You can go up it.'

In the back someone said, 'Yo, surf 's up.'

'Yo,' Alan said.

Funk, an Islander, handsome, massive-featured, said, 'I've
got some
random
new lyrics, man.'

'Oh yes?' Alan said, gaily, hilariously.

Funk made a series of snorting sounds — drumbeats. The
heads of his crew began to bob in time. He started to deliver a
string of Americanisms about dreams, destiny, the 'hood.
Alan looked innocently polite. The rap went on, a saga of
urban deprivation, gun violence. The heads bobbed. We drove
through the beautiful landscape, the sunlit fertile fields. Cows
watched us go by.

I asked the driver, 'Is it much further?' I liked her. She was
good-looking, tough, at ease. The way she tossed comments
back to the rappers, you could tell she would fit in anywhere.

'Nearly there,' she said. I wished I could think of something
to say. I spent more time wondering how to talk to people
than actually talking. I didn't know how to make people like
me. Usually they'd moved on before I'd thought of anything.

We pulled up at the hotel. In the car park Funk put his arm
around Alan and said, 'My man! Dude! You're coming to my
party.'

'Absolutely,' Alan said.

'Thank you for the ride,' I said to the driver. It sounded
formal, sycophantic. Her phone rang. She got in the van. She
said something and I started forward with a protesting 'No!'
She drove away.

Alan and Funk were marching into the foyer. I wondered
whether Funk was gay. He was muscular, tattooed, powerful,
but his face had a symmetrical beauty that might have
communicated something to Alan. Now they were playing
with Funk's mobile phone. Perhaps numbers were being
exchanged. I followed, feeling awkward. I couldn't join in with
the bobbing, chanting group crowding around the front desk,
Alan in their midst. The receptionist, who was young and
sweet, fluttered her slender fingers and pretended to be going
to pieces, and charmed everyone. I stood out on the edge,
smiling woodenly. It was like this at parties. You smiled, and
yet your smile was contrived, rigged up to show willing, and
you felt people sensed this and their own smiles faded and
they edged away . . .

Alan elbowed his way out of the group, holding up his
room key. They called after him. 'Later, Al! See you tonight!'

We took the stairs. Alan panted and puffed, flinging his
scarf around his neck. I thought what a genius he had for
friendship. He was generous, easy, flamboyant. People
followed him. He made them laugh and feel good. I was proud
of him; I liked the way he attracted people. I thought of the
driver's words: 'I've just dropped off Alan Reece and his
partner.' My protesting 'No!' lost in the abrupt roar of her
acceleration. I wanted her to know I wasn't gay. Alan had been
my music teacher since I was a boy. He was my gay friend. He
was my only friend.

All that day, as we walked around exploring, Alan's arm linked
through mine, the mountain stayed hidden.

***

My parents died in a car crash when I was nine. I moved in
with my aunt and uncle. Their children had grown up and
moved out, and they were happy to have me. My bedroom
had a view of Mt Hobson. There were houses built up against
the hillside and at night I couldn't see the houses, only their
yellow windows against the mountain's black shape. I had a
fantasy that the windows were set in the side of the hill; that it
contained a whole city, blazing with light. I imagined people
coming out of the mountain in the dark. I remember sitting
alone in my room, late, looking across the black valley of the
suburb, thinking about the hidden city — its heat, its bustle,
its fires. I thought of energy building up in there. Some trigger
would set it off, and then the mountain people would spill out.
I imagined the people in the houses round about, sleeping,
unaware, and then the sudden onslaught. Sometimes I
imagined terrible scenes. Houses overrun, people screaming.

When I turned ten my aunt decided I was too old to have
her tuck me in any more. Sent to bed each night I went
upstairs, switched on the light, put my drink of water on the
chest of drawers, then sat on the bed, looking at the walls. No
one would come to my room until next morning. Before, my
childhood had been a blur of unconscious action. But in the
bedroom at my aunt's house every move I made felt deliberate
and willed. The hanging of my clothes, the angling of the
lamp, the opening of the book.

Here in New Plymouth, in the hotel, I had that old sense of
dislocation, where everything was unfamiliar, nothing
automatic. I remembered the loneliness of childhood. As an
adult, you can look for someone to go to bed with. When
you're a child, you've got no choice. You go to bed alone.

I always enjoyed my piano lessons with Alan. After my
parents died they were one thing that stayed the same. He
lived in a big wooden villa with a terraced garden. The interior
was quirky and camp, full of old movie posters and strange
objects he'd collected. He had a taste for the grotesque and
the weird — he had a stuffed bird and other curios, but he had
beautiful things, too: vases and lamps and rugs, hundreds of
books, and a large collection of music. It was always dim and
quiet and peaceful in Alan's house. I sat at the piano and
outside the rain fell and birds hopped on the wet lawn and the
garden glowed in the afternoon light. Alan sat among his
treasures, in his black velvet jacket and his bright scarf,
listening. He sat very still while I played, his eyes unseeing.

He said, 'When I was little I had two aunts who used to take
me to horror movies. I was too young to see the films and they
terrified me. As soon as I'd recovered from one, they would
take me to another.' He laughed.

I thought about this. It seemed like a subtle form of
feminine violence. Were the aunts sadistic, or just neglectful?
Why didn't his mother intervene? I saw little Alan, shivering
between two young women in a dark cinema. Coming out
into the light, freshly traumatised. He took refuge in music.
He knew he was gay from the age of eight. He knew about
loneliness and disorientation. But he had courage and a tough
character. He was an optimist. He had gay friends, and I used
to think gayness was like a club. If you belonged, you had a
common language. I didn't like it when Alan's friends came
over. It interrupted our talk, and I was shut out.

We were close. I was one of his best friends, maybe because
I was so available. No one else would have come down to New
Plymouth with him, just for the fun of the trip. I was studying
music at university, didn't have to go to work.

I had flatmates, a few mates at university. I was good at getting
on with women, but women tended to be disappointed when I only wanted to be
friends. The more time I spent with Alan, the less I had to make other connections.
People assumed I was gay when I was with him, and sometimes I thought he exploited
that, to keep me to himself. He was always saying how good-looking I was.
We got on well because we both loved music. Every now and then I had an uneasy
feeling. I wanted a girlfriend. I wasn't part of his world, not properly.
And I hadn't made a world of my own.

***

We went out. On the main street we found a café called the
Ultralounge.

Alan was drinking and in a good mood. It was Saturday
night. He didn't have to perform until Sunday afternoon. We
shared a bottle of wine. After the meal we walked down the
town. There were posters advertising a band called Sticky Filth.
Taranaki's favourite sons, they were called. Alan was amused
by the name and wanted to see them for a laugh, but at the
Convention Centre we were told they were sold out. I suggested
a quiet bar across the road but Alan rolled his eyes, looking
restless and bored. He nosed around the corner, eyeing the
entrance to a basement pub, guarded by burly bouncers.

He pointed. 'Let's go in there.'

'Oh God,' I said, but there was no stopping him. I followed
him down into a dark, deafening, smelly bar, full of drunk
hoons and staggering women. People were setting up instruments
on the stage. It was rough: you could sense violence,
in the women as well as the men. Alan looked around, pleased
and interested. A hefty man with long dreadlocks veered into
me threateningly; behind him a woman was dancing and
falling. I ordered a couple of strong drinks. The band came
out on the stage. Alan nudged me sharply.

The band were young and white — three of them, just boys.
They had dreadlocks, but the sides of their heads were shaved.
The bass player's face was painted completely black. The lead
singer had delicate pixie features and black makeup: smeared
eyes, black lips. All three wore clothes cut into rags and
spraypainted with words: Hate Fuck Death Kill. The bass
player took his place, putting on, as a final touch, an oxygen
mask, from which dangled a plastic bag. You got the idea:
they were horror men, post-Holocaust men; they were
creatures who'd crept out of the rubble after the end of the
world. They let loose a roar of sound and the singer began to
rasp out the words of a song in a voice so deep and flat and
violent you could hardly believe it came out of his slight
teenage body.

The audience had changed. The women had retreated to
the edges of the room. Now, in front of the stage, the crowd
was only male, and they were all doing the same thing, leaning
forward and shaking their heads in time, and chanting bits of
the chorus, roaring it. I looked across the rows of heads. It was
a war dance, a dance of rage. It was atavistic, barbaric,
primitive. I felt it vibrating through me — the rasping voice,
the answer of the crowd, the rhythmically juddering bodies. I
was outside it, appalled by the sound, but it was in me too,
filling every part of me. And then it finished and the crowd
broke ranks, surged forward, roared, raised fists, then there
was another explosion of sound and the rhythmic headshaking
began again. 'Zombie, zombie,' they were chanting. I
thought of an ancient scene, smeared warriors in flickering
light, weapons splattered with blood. The teenage shaman in
his warpaint, calling his people to war.

Alan was pulling my arm, shouting and pointing at the
door.

Outside he fanned himself and laughed. My ears were
ringing. A man with a shaven head and tattoos on his face
came close, looked intently at Alan, and said, 'Hello, sweetie.'

'Hello!' Alan said. The man snarled and lurched away.

***