It was pretty hectic working for Freddie; he was always off his face, although he managed to run a tight ship and make a lot of money, God knows how. He had a lot of rich friends — people he'd gone to public school with, who used to pass through — and he'd play the host and give them what they wanted: all-night parties, hilarious messy times, lots of drugs. There were always girls reeling off the dance floor, dancing on the sand, wading into the sea, shrieking at one another in their posh voices.
A couple of times I took long trips with Freddie. We drove into France and Germany, stopping along the way at places where Freddie had business or someone he needed to call on. Once he took me to a wake in a chateau in France — his friend's father had died. We'd stopped off in a couple of bars and done a few lines of coke along the way, and by the time we got to the place Freddie was feeling pretty regal. We drove up miles of tree-lined driveway, screeched into the courtyard of the most stupendous mansion, were greeted by a bowing lackey and led through a lot of grand rooms. He showed us into a sort of ballroom where there were a lot of people grouped around, everyone very quiet. I hung back but Freddie took command as usual. He strode up to his friend, the bereaved son and heir, shook his hand and shouted, 'Jonty! Let me be the first to congratulate you!'
I had a girlfriend in Teulada, a good-looking girl called Mimi. She worked in the bar too, and she was nice, but it got on my nerves the way she stuck so close to me, always cooking dinner for me and trying to keep me with her on our nights off. In the end I told her it wasn't working and we'd have to call it off. It made her sad — she spent weeks crying about it — but after a while she went to London and married the bass player of her favourite band. I toughened her up. Set her on her way. That's the way I looked at it. I wished her luck.
Just before I left Teulada a fight broke out in the bar. I came out of the back, pilled up to the eyeballs, and a girl crashed onto the sand at my feet. I just stood there staring at her. There was a big punch-up spilling off the dance floor, and soon people were throwing chairs, bottles, glasses, anything they could get their hands on. In the office Freddie was on the phone to the police, telling them there was a riot. Typically they didn't show up, and we just had to wait for the brawl to run out of steam. There was a lot of clearing up to do afterwards, and plenty of ruined stock. Freddie was up in arms and decided to go to the police station to complain. He marched in and gave them a piece of his mind, said it wasn't good enough and what did they think they were doing, just sitting around while the place was torn to pieces. The next night we were all apprehensive, but people seemed to be behaving themselves. The bar was full and the night was going well. But the police had decided to get their own back on Freddie for the telling-off he'd given them, and the next moment they'd turned up mob-handed, forty of them, with torches and dogs. So there was uproar again. Freddie was in the kitchen holding a dinner plate with six lines of coke on it. He threw it over his shoulder. Then he stuffed some pills under the fridge, but the police saw him and had the fridge lifted up. Freddie was led away shouting, 'It's all for me, officers! I'm an addict!'
I lay low and didn't get arrested. The bar was closed down and I walked the short distance home along the waterfront, hearing the screams and crashes and shouts behind me. The sea was calm and still, and the moon was making a shining path across the water. I got home and had a few drinks. When I went into my room I saw my flatmate had put a letter on my bed. It was from my father. He said it was his seventieth birthday soon (so it is, I thought, glazing over a bit) and would I like to come home so we'd all be there for the party. I lay on my back staring at the ceiling. I thought about home. I thought I might do it. He'd offered to pay the fare.
***
It took a bit of doing, getting home. I was in a bar in London with all my gear and a transvestite stole my bag with my passport in it. I was off my face at the time, and I cursed myself afterwards for not realising that this creature who was doing funny tricks in front of me, dancing and twirling and making faces, wasn't just trying to make me laugh. I ran out of the bar after her, or him, but it was too late. I had enough cash to live on for a short time, but barely enough. I had to apply for a new passport and it was pretty difficult with hardly any funds or ID. I stayed with a friend of mine in Wanstead; she was into something called Vortex Healing. It was a spiritual thing, to do with lifting the bad karma out of places. She took it very seriously.
'We're a worldwide network,' she told me.
'Yeah,' I said, 'course you are.'
She did a procedure on my back, I don't know what it was, but I felt a kind of weight, a strange burning. I told her and she gave a smug little smile and said that my luck would change. Which it did, actually. I got my passport, and I bought myself a ticket to New Zealand — although I have to confess that by the time I got back it was too late for my father's birthday party.
Just before I left London I'd completely run out of money and I ended up staying with a woman I didn't even know. I met her in a bar; she started buying me drinks and the next thing I knew she was taking me to a poetry reading. I was just biding my time, keeping myself relatively sober so I wouldn't miss my plane. Anyway, I sat around laughing at the poets. The next morning she kicked me out of her bed and I struggled off down to the tube and went to Heathrow. When I got on the plane, in that enclosed space, I realised what a mess I was and I pitied the family sitting next to me. I went to the toilets and had a wash with paper towels, wetting them and doing myself over. It seemed to take ages, bouncing around in the tiny cubicle. I couldn't do much about my clothes, but I took off a couple of layers and left them in the toilet. It was going to be summer where I was going. Auckland. I hadn't been back for years.
I had a sense when I got off the plane that the air was soft, not harsh like the mineral air of London. You could smell plants and even cows. The sky was high, light, wide. The light was too bright. All the functionaries at the airport had new wide-brimmed hats, which looked ridiculous. I'd been away long enough for the place to seem familiar but altered, as if I'd walked into a place that was an approximation of what I remembered. My parents were waiting for me and for a second we were all struck a bit dumb. I was thinking what little old people they looked, and I don't know what they were thinking about me. I was bigger, for one thing, not skinny like I used to be. My brother was there with his wife and baby. Poor old William, he was always the sensible one. When I got outside and saw the police cars painted yellow and orange instead of blue and white like they used to be I said to him, 'Jesus, what have they done to their cars? Is that for Christmas?' He laughed. My mother said my name in her dry, ironic little voice. Dad tried to pick up my suitcase and she hissed at me, 'Help him.' I shook myself out of a bit of a daze and picked up the bag.
Dad drove. My mother screwed herself around and stared at me fiercely.
I said politely, 'So, what have you been doing?'
'Oh, just waiting to die,' she said.
Dad said, 'The trip's quite quick now they've put in more motorway.'
'Indeed,' I said.
William was ahead of us in his station wagon, its back window crammed with baby equipment.
'What have you been doing?' my mother asked.
'Just a lot of drugs, basically,' I said.
My father sighed.
My mother gave me an acid look. 'At least William . . .'
'Thank goodness for William,' I said sincerely.
'Lucy's very nice, you know,' my mother said. That was William's wife.
'My girlfriend left me,' I said. I felt a little pang. I sighed. 'Mimi . . .'
'Mimi!' She thought that was a scream. She went on repeating the name. 'Sounds like a poodle,' she said. I said was I supposed to have a girlfriend called Desdemona or Cressida, some bullshit name like that? She snorted.
My father stopped at a red light and turned around. His face was so lined, so baffled. He smiled, wanting to be kind. I stared back for a second, my face fixed, then looked away.
'Green,' M
um said.
Dad wrenched himself around and groped dimly at the gears. The car shot forward. His thin grey hair straggled over his collar. His shoulders were thinner than they used to be. I'd got more solid; he'd shrunk. I wasn't sure I was going to live to his age, however. Not with all the booze and dope and coke and E I'd put away over the years. I sat looking at the backs of my parents' heads. My body was on London time and I was in a bit of a trance, almost drifting off. I could have done with a line of coke. They'd tried, but they'd failed when it came to me and drugs — failed to stop me, I mean. What they should have done when I was fourteen is sat down and smoked a joint with me. But that piece of common sense was beyond them.
When I was sixteen my friends and I grew a little cannabis plantation. Once we'd harvested it we hid it in the back of the warming cupboard at my place. A few days later I came home to disaster — my parents had discovered my stash. They'd brought it out and piled it on the kitchen bench. My mother had a big spoon and she was stuffing the leaves down the Wastemaster. While I was standing there, stunned at this calamity, she barked at my father, 'On!'
He turned the switch. She forced the dope down into the whirring grinder. At her command he turned it off. She took more leaves from the bench and pushed them down. Then 'On!' she snapped. I came alive at that point, rushed forward and shouted at them to leave my stuff alone. My mother held me off with the big spoon. 'On!' she shouted, and my father reached up obediently with his trembling thumb, pressed the switch, and ground the last fruits of my labour to pulp . . .
A rift opened up after that. Betrayed, I took to my room and began to learn the electric guitar. The house throbbed with my angry chords. A battle raged between my parents' classical music and my own eclectic range — I was particularly fond of one song that burst out with the exhilarating lyric, Slut! Slut! Dirty Bitch! I remember my mother beating on my door, shouting at me to turn it down. Oh, it's all a long time ago now. A long time . . .
At each red light my father turned and looked at me carefully, smiling and sad. My mother fidgeted in her seat and ate peppermints, and screwed her head around, her glasses flashing, to fire questions. How long was I staying? Would I think about coming back for good? Did I have any ideas about getting myself together?
There was a sudden heavy shower, the car sluiced through deep puddles, then the sun came out and the road steamed, and I saw a rainbow riding between the wooden houses — appearing, disappearing, a blur of bright colour, the flash of sun through leaves, diamonds of light.
***
I nodded off in the middle of lunch. Muttering about time zones I crashed into the bedroom they'd given me — not my old room but William's. Perhaps they couldn't bear to have me back in my old lair. Later, after dreaming uneasily on the single bed, I got up and groped my way downstairs. I was in the kitchen with little idea of where I was, until Dad swam into focus next to me. I was looking at the Wastemaster.
'Poor Sam: you're not up to much, I suppose,' he said. He put an experimental hand on my shoulder. I glanced at it, as though at an insect, then at him, as if to say, what's that doing there? He registered my expression and we both smiled — I tightly, he ruefully but with affection. I could see him thinking, difficult old Sam, poor old Sam. An idea swam about in my fuddled mind; I was re-registering my parents, comparing them, having been away so long. My mother and I, we have a kind of carry-on: tough, some might even say obnoxious, but my father is different — more gentle and straightforward. I think William takes after him. He'll be henpecked to death by that wife of his, for sure.
'Shall we get a video tonight?' Dad said.
'Certainly,' I croaked. I felt like falling flat on my face.
Will and Lucy came for dinner with their baby, who was quite a cute little boy. I sat him on my knee and tried to teach him a Spanish football song. I got through the meal with the help of a lot of booze and some racy anecdotes about Spain. I was in good form, my head cleared by the wine. Lucy seemed to find me hilarious. She kept going off into shrieks, which made my mother glare. I'd warmed to Lucy, in fact I was already feverishly imagining an affair with her — Will stumping off to work and Lucy sighing and folding nappies and looking out the window, and I in the driveway with my Spanish tan, my bottle of wine, my gypsy guitar . . .
We gathered in the sitting room after dinner, while Dad fed the tape into the slot. I'd been up the road earlier and got myself a bumper flagon of red. One of those double-sized bottles, I'd thought, would be the way to get through Day One. The film was The Fugitive, with Harrison Ford. It's a good movie. I offered wine around, made a bit of suggestive smalltalk with Lucy, brushing crumbs off her breast and so on, then we all fell silent. Everything went well except that my mother sighed a lot when I kept getting up to offer more drinks. Soon I discovered everyone was saying no when I offered the bottle, so I shut up and got busy with it myself. At one point I nodded off, still on London time, then abruptly remembered myself and got up with the bottle. I tripped over Will's legs. He said 'Fuck' loudly and made a big thing of rubbing his shin. Lucy was sniggering. I looked over at her, delivered some searing witticism, tripped over a cord and the TV went off. Mum rushed off and came back with cloths. Dad knelt by the TV.
'More wine?' I waved the bottle at them. Some drops went on the carpet. My mother made a high-pitched sound. Lucy was snorting behind her hand. Suavely, I asked if she wanted to go out for a cigarette while the technical problem was sorted out.
'She doesn't smoke,' they all said. There was a bit of an atmosphere.
I climbed over everyone and burst out the French doors. It was nice out there on the deck in the soft night. I had a couple of cigarettes, then went inside. The wine was all finished but I had my eye on a bottle of gin in the kitchen.
To my surprise the TV was still off. 'What about the film? Shall we press on?' I clapped my hands, refreshed by the outside air.
My father was holding a wet cloth. He threw it down, his shoulders hunched. Then he turned and made an inept fist — the fist of a man who could never throw a real punch. 'I should have exercised more discipline with you!' he shouted.
I looked at him in surprise. He was overwrought. Just when it was all going so well. I turned on my heel and went silently outside again. I was thinking: families. Always a drama. I sat on a deckchair and smoked. I went back in and Will and Lucy were sitting at the kitchen table. My parents had gone upstairs.
'All right?' I said.
'Jesus, Sam,' Will said.
I winked at Lucy. Her mouth quivered. I stared hard at her, severely — I knew this would bring her out in shrieks. She was making a tiny noise in her nose, like air being let out of a balloon . . .
'Oh, shut up, Lu,' my brother said.
***
I decided to get fit. I borrowed Will's bike and rode to the top of One Tree Hill. It was beautiful up there, the suburbs sprawled under the cloud shadows, the wind blowing in the dry grass. I rode around the waterfront too, and one day I tried to go for a run, with mixed results. Covering ground, biking mostly, I looked at the places I used to live in long ago. The old flat in Grafton, the big house in Mt Eden. My friends from that time were all gone — some to London, some to Sydney, other places. Some had families — kids. I was left behind in an empty city; that was how it felt when I saw those old places. Sometimes I stopped the bike and stood in a spot and stared, and covered my face with my hands. I'd been transported back to my youth but I was changed and everyone was gone. It was almost too much for me. In the mornings I looked in the mirror and saw what time had done to me. In Spain, I had had no past. There was nothing to look back on, nothing to remind me I wasn't young. I could live for the moment, in unchanging happiness. Here, time whispered at me, it told me terrible things. What have you made of yourself? Where are your friends? Why have you been left behind? In the nights I yearned for Spain; during the day I haunted the old places. I visited them again and again — probing the wound.
There was one group of people who were still ab
out, but I was steering clear of them. For one thing, I didn't have much money; for another, I knew what would happen if I hooked up with those people I knew over in Ponsonby. I would end up getting completely trashed.
I was sitting in a café at the top of Upland Road when I heard tooting. A station wagon shot around the corner, a woman waving at me out the window. I was pretty sure it was Lisa Green. I went home, guessing she would ring. Sure enough, about an hour later Dad called me to the phone.
'You're staying at your parents' place,' Lisa said laboriously.
'So it would seem.'
'Shall we have a drink or something?'
I agreed to meet her that night at the café up the road. I sat at a table outside so I could smoke. She came walking up the road. She was wearing a leather jacket and jeans, and she was thinner than she used to be. We'd been at school together. We had a thing, briefly, a long time ago; now she was married to an engineer and had a baby son and a house and a mortgage — all that. She showed me a picture of her son, Michael, and her husband, James.
'What have you been doing?' she asked.
'Learning how to use email,' I told her, truthfully.
She fell about at that. 'Learning?'
'I've been leading a simple life,' I said with dignity.
'Obviously!'
I told her about my Spanish village, Freddie, the bar. She bought drinks. She laughed a lot and stared at me, obviously fascinated to see how I'd turned out. I got into my stride and told her about Mimi who'd gone off heartbroken and found the bass player of her dreams, and my new girlfriend who used to be my flatmate but who'd ended up sharing my bed, and about having my passport stolen by a transvestite and being stuck in London with no money or ID, and staying with my friend in Wanstead who'd practised Vortex Healing on my back and given me a funny feeling and good luck, and how I'd missed my father's birthday and how my father had shouted at me after we'd watched The Fugitive.
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