by Tom Scott
Jim behaved like a devoted son to James K. Baxter, who spoke occasionally at Massey gatherings, but only ever recited one poem that I can recall. It was short but he intoned it slowly and grandly, savouring his own words like boiled lollies.
Sometimes … I feel … like a turd … in the … arse pipe … of life
Not his best work. ‘Hemi’, as Baxter had taken to calling himself, inspired a deep reverence in many, but I always felt there was something phoney about him (not his poetry, which ranks amongst the finest of the twentieth century). He would wait until it was raining heavily before announcing softly that he was walking to his Jerusalem commune on the upper reaches of the Whanganui River. Pulling his old duffle coat tightly around his stooped shoulders, he would pad in bare feet to the door only to be beaten by ten people offering him a ride, one of them usually Jim.
Years later, when Jim effectively excommunicated himself from the Catholic Church by getting married, and I had been excommunicated from Prime Minister Rob Muldoon’s official press party covering a Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Delhi, Jim and I met up again. He was an adviser and punkah wallah for his old chum, Samoan Prime Minister Tupuola Efi, who insisted that I join them both for a nightcap and deep background conversations every night of the conference. Excluded from Muldoon’s press briefings, I ended up knowing more than any other journalist—all thanks to Masskerade 69.
It was also thanks to Masskerade 69 that deputy Prime Minister and Attorney General Jack Marshall wrote to Vice Chancellor Stewart on 24 December 1970.
Though some people might contend that blasphemous libel as a criminal act belongs to a past age and should no longer be treated as a crime, it is clear that Parliament has intended that it remain one. The Crimes Act of 1908 was repealed and replaced by the Crimes Act of 1961. The provisions as to blasphemous libel were substantially repeated, it remains law and it would be the duty of the Police in appropriate cases to prosecute …
He included a blunt warning—events at Massey University over the past few years were testing the tolerance of the community too far, and in the event of a repeat transgression he would use his authority to initiate proceedings.
Under the Crimes Act, anyone found guilty of blasphemous libel faced up to a year’s imprisonment. The statute has rarely been invoked anywhere in the Commonwealth since the war poet Rupert Brooke, up to his neck in mud, shit and rotting corpses in Flanders Fields in World War One, dared to question the existence of a higher power and was charged with blasphemy, deftly escaping punishment by dying in battle.
Marshall’s letter was passed to me illicitly and I published it in full in Masskerade 70. Alongside his letter I included this note:
Every year decent people are offended by the contents of Masskerade. What is most frustrating to them is the feeling they have no way to prevent the reoccurrence of such material. ‘There ought to be a law against it!’ is a familiar cry. Well, there are laws against it and you should read Mr Marshall’s letter to acquaint yourself with them. As proof of our concern we have included a letter of protest to the Attorney General and all you have to do is fill in the particulars and post it to the Justice Department. Please print legibly in ink. Nom de plumes will not be accepted.
The Students’ Association was horrified at this provocation. I argued that should we end up in the court we could call God as a witness. If he didn’t turn up we had no case to answer. If he did turn up it was the biggest news story of all time.
In the event the Attorney General ignored us, as did everyone else. The righteous fury of the year before was a soufflé that didn’t rise twice. Bugger.
CHAPTER NINE
LOCKED IN
AFTER MY IGNOMINIOUS DEPARTURE FROM vet school I had a year to kill before Massey set up physiology as a stage three unit, which I needed to complete a rather tatty Bachelor of Science degree. I did a philosophy paper and a biochemistry paper, but mostly I drew cartoons for the student newspaper Chaff, and was a judge of Miss Massey, held on the cricket oval in front of the refectory.
I can picture it now. It was a warm, still evening. The grass was the colour of emerald. The setting sun lent the terracotta art deco buildings a pink glow. Young girls, hair and makeup perfect, jewellery sparkling, wearing glamorous gowns, approached the oval in an excited giggling gaggle … falling silent when they saw the temporary drafting yard that some ag students had set up on the lawn. Guys in black bush-singlets, shorts and gumboots (and this was well before Fred Dagg), armed with whistles and rattles and assisted by yapping dogs, rounded them up into a holding pen, where they stood ashen-faced until another gate was thrown open and with a lot more shouting and barking they were unceremoniously herded down a narrow race, on either side of which guys in white coats armed with red and blue raddle marked them on the back as they tottered past in their high heels towards a drafting gate, to be culled into the clearly identified finalists’ pen or the ugly pen. Dazed girls fought back tears when they examined ruined ball gowns, not to mention the more permanent, incalculable damage to their self-esteem if they ended up in the ugly pen.
I hasten to add here that I was not part of this pre-selection process. I was dressed sombrely in a tuxedo, as were a city councillor and the local MP, the rotund and jolly Joe Walding. We merely mingled with the finalists, deliberated in private, then declared a winner.
I know what you are thinking and I quite agree. We have gone backwards as a society.
At the cocktail party afterwards, Joe, who was not afraid of a knife and fork, was piling hors d’oeuvres onto two plates as if a bell were about to ring sounding that time was up, caught my eye and looked guilty. I repeated an Ambrose Bierce quote that an abstainer was a weak person who yielded to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure. He got very excited and made me hold his plates while he scrambled for a pen and paper to write it down.
Some years later, at a parliamentary reception for a visiting rugby team, where Joe was keeping pace with giant locks at the canapés table, matching them mouthful for mouthful, I witnessed him whip this note out of his pocket and recite it gleefully. On the campaign trail of the 1984 snap election, the Labour Party appointed Joe as David Lange’s minder because he was very shrewd, had a calming presence and every time they sat down to dine together, Joe’s eating habits made David’s seem anorexic.
—
A REPORTER AND A PHOTOGRAPHER from the local paper usually covered Miss Massey. One of them told me the Manawatu Evening Standard was on the lookout for a cartoonist, and the editor, Denis Wederell, would like a word with me. Drenched in Old Spice and looking as much like a Young National as I could, I met Denis in his office. A very short, personable, bald man, he offered me a job on a trial basis for the princely sum of $5 a cartoon. That settled, we went downstairs to visit the paper’s owner, the ancient and venerable N.A. Nash, in his gloomy, mahogany-lined office. The paper had been in the Nash family forever—more than a business, it was a dynasty unparalleled since Rameses. Old N.A., who was 90 in the shade, reached for my sample folder with a trembling, liver-spotted hand. Grabbing a cartoon at random, he fixed it with a watery stare for all of two seconds before pushing it away.
‘One thing we’re all tired of is students! You can’t pick up a paper without students rioting somewhere—I want nothing about students, understand? And Vietnam. I’m sick of Vietnam. Just be funny.’ To his credit, Denis suggested I be allowed a certain freedom of expression. This incensed N. A. I thought the old bugger was going to die. He started wheezing and shouting that the paper was worth millions and they weren’t going to have me jeopardise it in any way. He asked me if I knew how much his paper was worth. I didn’t.
‘Lots,’ he said. ‘Do you know the Prime Minister’s wife, Mrs Holyoake?’ I didn’t, as it happened. ‘I do. Lovely woman!’
Following this illuminating chat, we returned upstairs, where Denis gamely opined that N.A. was a remarkable man. ‘He can sound so wrong so much of the time, yet it’s truly amazing how often he
is right.’
I didn’t mind—I had my first paying gig, and was assigned a tiny office off the newsroom. Every cartoon was preceded by an editorial conference.
‘Has anyone got any ideas for Tom?’ No one ever had any ideas for Tom. Denis would look in my direction.
‘Any ideas, Tom?’
‘Well, Mr Wederell—Denis, sir,’ I would cough, ‘I was half wondering about these campus riots …’ My voice would trail off as Denis’s face lit up. ‘Rail fares to Auckland! Gone up again. Preposterous! Go to town on that!’
The next day every newspaper in the country was full of stories about the All Black trials for the upcoming series against the Springboks and the arrest outside the grounds of demonstrators opposed to New Zealand rugby teams touring South Africa. I suggested a cartoon about this big news story and was stunned when Denis agreed. Twenty-four hours after publication, a shamefaced Wederell told me N.A. didn’t get it (I think the old boy did) and my trial was terminated. I had lasted barely a week.
I wrote about this brief foray into newspaper cartooning for Chaff. In the article I said that Denis was the same height sitting as he was standing. He sued for libel. I wanted to go to trial and summons Denis to the witness box (I was an old hand at this now), and ask him to sit, then stand. ‘No further questions your Honour. The Defence rests.’ The Student Union settled out of court for $600 dollars. It could have been more, but the libel was contained. When the offending issue of Chaff was dropped off in bundles around the city, Manawatu Evening Standard reporters were dispatched like commandos in dawn raids to snatch as many copies as they could find before they fell into anyone else’s hands. Their orders were then to destroy them.
The late, legendary head of TV3 News, Gordon McBride, was a print man early in his career and came up from Southland as a young reporter to work on the Manawatu Evening Standard. On his first day, the deputy editor waved him across to his desk, discreetly slid open a bottom drawer and winked. Expecting a copy of Penthouse, Gordon peered in all excited and saw instead the offending issue of Chaff, open to my article.
Denis Wederell had long since left the building. We had both moved to Wellington. I would sometimes see Denis on Lambton Quay in the mid ’70s. When he saw me coming he would dash through traffic to get to the opposite pavement to avoid contact. I thought he was going to get himself killed, so I gave chase next time, cornered him in a doorway and told him that this was stupid and we shouldn’t be enemies. He was very relieved and immediately offered me a job caricaturing captains of industry for a business publication he edited. I even drew him for one cover. Recently I got a sweet note from his daughter. He was very proud of the picture and the family used it on the programme for his funeral service.
After being sacked as a cartoonist, I washed windows part-time and became invisible. Standing on a stepladder inside a lawyer’s office, I smeared suds across a glass pane and wiped it off again while seated below me a distressed farmer’s wife seeking divorce detailed her husband’s depraved sexual demands. A former flatmate could see me all too clearly. ‘Locky’ Smith, now Sir Alexander Lockwood Smith, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and former High Commissioner to the Court of St James’s, told me he did sudden U-turns in his car when he saw me trudging the streets with my ladder and bucket because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings by whizzing past in his brand-new Ford Escort. That’s compassionate conservatism for you.
I also wrote and produced my last capping revue, starring my friend, Peter Hayden, who went on to become an award-winning presenter and producer of wildlife television documentaries, both here and overseas. Latterly, at an age when most people are taking fewer career risks, he chanced his arm at acting full-time and has made a success of that as well.
The revue also starred a very pretty, super-bright social-sciences student, Christine, who became my first serious girlfriend. When Palmerston North Hospital opened a separate psychiatric unit and called for student volunteers to work night shift, we both applied and made the cut, with about ten other students. The first television drama I ever wrote, Inside Every Thin Girl, was based on an anorexic patient we befriended—Peter Hayden starred as one of the student volunteers.
Early evening, they locked us in with the inmates and unlocked the doors the following morning. We made toast and cocoa for patients who couldn’t sleep and played endless games of table tennis to keep ourselves awake. Apart from one young man smearing his faeces on the wall, nothing untoward ever happened.
The front-door buzzer sounded after midnight one night. When I went to check who it was, my father was swaying drunkenly in the security lighting. We talked awkwardly through an intercom.
‘Egghead, I’d like a job here. I could do this.’
‘It’s not up to me, Dad,’ I replied politely. ‘You’ll have to talk to the hospital authorities.’ He nodded and weaved off into the darkness.
As you’d expect, there was less of a stigma against mental illness in such an institution—the threshold for going loopy was much lower. The senior staff seemed to take it in turns having breakdowns of one kind or another. Mild cases were called ‘acting out’—they sought sedation and were put in a room with a ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door. I was always tempted to add in felt pen ‘disturbed already’. Others had full-blown psychotic episodes, which meant one of two things—either they were never coming back, or rapid promotion.
The occupational therapist was on leave after a nervous breakdown. Word got out that I could draw. With no training whatsoever, I was promoted to acting occupational therapist and put in charge of twenty patients, half of whom were schizophrenic, which made it 30 patients in total (just joking). It could be challenging. If you gave them playdough or clay they tended to make erect penises, and you had to give them positive feedback without looking perverted yourself. Not having a clue how to weave a basket and desperate to keep them therapeutically occupied, one afternoon I put John Lennon’s haunting, post-Beatles, primal-scream album on the turntable and asked them to draw what they felt. The first track was ‘Mother’. Big mistake!
Over metronomic, thudding-heartbeat drumming, Lennon started wailing plaintively that his mother had left him but he had never left her, and that he wanted her but she never wanted him. Yes, I thought, nodding my head in time. This is great! Then I heard something else. It was quiet at first, then built in intensity. A low moaning accompanied by gentle swaying, which I interpreted as a good sign until it escalated rapidly into banshee wailing, howling and slapping of foreheads. I quickly lifted the needle off the vinyl as staff came running from all directions.
‘What happened? What’s going on?’
‘I’m not sure. Something set them off …’
At a staff meeting one morning, with Christmas Day just a few weeks away, I suggested that I might get the patients to help me make a Christmas cake.
‘What are you going to bake it in?’ smirked the head psychiatrist. ‘The kiln?’ He started shrieking with laughter, which obliged the rest of the staff to nervously join in. I wondered then if mental illness might be contagious.
My relationship with Christine got a whole lot more serious when she became pregnant. We got married in a park and had the reception at our flat. Tom Quinlan was my best man. Having set a precedent with my twin sister’s wedding, my father did not attend.
I WORKED IN THE FREEZING works one final summer while looking for a job that matched my exceedingly lacklustre qualifications. The School of Occupational Therapy in the Central Institute of Technology in Petone needed a tutor in physiology. Provided no one else bothered to apply and they were desperate, I had a slim, long-shot, outside chance of getting it. I drove down for the job interview in my brother Michael’s ‘Noddy car’—a cute Morris Eight Sports.
Michael was a mechanical wizard. When we lived in Owen Street we shared a big bedroom. I kept my half spotless—operating-theatre hygienic. You could safely eat a meal off every surface. His side was a pigsty. Guitars, amplifiers, greas
y tools and smelly clothing were scattered everywhere. I had to step carefully around engine parts soaking in trays of oil to get to my bed. I only complained on one occasion and learned my lesson.
‘Look, Tom, I find your anal-retentive ways deeply offensive. Your obsession with neatness and order drives me mad, but have I ever grizzled and complained? No! Out of respect for you I have kept these feelings to myself.’
There was a lot of our father in him as well.
When I was contemplating purchasing a motor vehicle, I naturally sought his advice. He was soaking in a bath at Owen Street. I had to invade his privacy because he could be in there for hours. Not that it made much difference—the grime just seemed to swap pores. I told him it was a Ford Prefect and was going to cost me 60 bucks. He whistled softly.
‘I dunno, Tommy … My Ford only cost ten dollars and it goes like a dream. The Buick cost fifteen dollars and only needed new spark plugs. The Morrie Eight is perfect and only cost twenty dollars. I’ve always said—pay more than twenty bucks for a car and you’re only buying trouble …’
I was tootling along in his Morris Eight when I encountered a torrential downpour coming down the Ngauranga Gorge, turning the snaking descent into a nightmare luge run. The canvas top started streaming water and the single windscreen wiper, which provided a small wedge of visibility, stopped working. The car’s designers had anticipated this might happen and thoughtfully provided a tiny lever on the inside of the windscreen that you could use to manually operate the wiper. With one hand on the wheel, the other hand throbbing from the effort of creating a clear triangle in the deluge, I slid down to the Hutt Motorway, buffeted, rocked and sprayed by cars and lorries thundering past me. What was I letting myself in for?
