Harlequin Rex

by Owen Marshall

  ‘The man’s an animal,’ said Mrs McIlwraith. She was out of sight, but still aware of them as an audience. ‘I’ve seen him at the mirror squeezing fat from the pores of his nose.’

  David walked part way to Kotuku with Lucy. ‘You holding up okay?’ he said with some diffidence. What right did he have to ask something so important?

  ‘Did it rain last night?’

  ‘No.’ The days had been blue and bright, the nights quickly cooling as the heat radiated towards the clear stars.

  ‘Then I’m heading for an episode. I’m sure I was awake for two long periods in the night, and it was raining both times from the south-west. I got up, even, and watched. The walkway was slick and wet beneath the security lights, and there was that rush of fragrance that you get after rain when it’s been dry for a long time.’ The grounds were proof that no rain had fallen, but David thought of Lucy standing at her window in the night, and the heavy rain being swirled in by the sou’-wester as it was sometimes. The smell, too, with its sharp flavours of nuts and insects, cats’ piss, and swelling, refreshed earth.

  ‘Did you go over to Treatment?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Everything’s been okay so far today.’

  He felt the stirring of that urge to touch her. Partly the touch would have been sympathy and reassurance, but partly also the desire to feel the warmth, the slight roughness of her skin: the brush of her dark hair on his hand, perhaps. But he didn’t reach out at all. He continued to talk a while before leaving her outside the entrance to Kotuku, and going on to the main block to visit Howard in the treatment rooms. What would she be like to make love to: tall, slightly gangly Lucy, with good tits and a good brain, with small, dark moles on her strong neck and a wry perceptiveness? What way would she like it? How urgent would she be in the clasp of a man to whom she was attracted?

  THIRTEEN

  The Slaven Centre was often visited by people of influence — political as well as medical, international as well as home-grown. It was because of Schweitzer’s reputation and the need for reassurance that all possible steps were being taken. In any direction at all.

  A group was to come from the parliamentary select committee set up in response to public alarm about Harlequin. Alst Mousier would normally have organised a visit of such importance, but he was in Australia to give a keynote address on institutional administration, and Tony Sheridan drew the short straw. He had a morning meeting with ancillary and block staff to go over things. Mist drifted on the upper slopes of the hills and rolling drizzle greyed the windows of the conference room like a vast exhalation.

  ‘Thank God they’re not coming today,’ said Sheridan. ‘Can you imagine it all? Umbrellas, the smell of wet socks and macaroni cheese, the blocks closed up like stables.’ He had his hands clasped over the front of the small lectern, and he leant back to bare his teeth to the ceiling.

  ‘It’s probably like that in the Beehive all the time,’ said Raf from the front row.

  ‘And the same treatment available,’ said Polly Merhtens, ‘except that they never realise they’re undergoing it.’

  ‘All the same, they may come up with more funds,’ said Colin Squires.

  ‘You’re right.’ Sheridan swayed forward and rested his head on the lectern. His vast shoes were like pancakes on the floor. ‘I’m a doctor. I just want to be a doctor, not an administrator, or a tour director.’ He was on a small podium, low and wooden, with mushroom carpet on its top and small castors obscured beneath. It gave him full view of the bland, new room even when seated, without undue emphasis of hierarchy.

  In twos and threes the staff continued to amble in, and to sit as far back as they could. ‘Ah, Jesus, come on, guys. You think I’m going to shout back there.’ The mist and rain glossed the bush despite the absence of sun, and droplets clung to the windows, were augmented and then ran on the glass.

  Cleghorn from Titi had his pyjamas on under his anorak to remind the establishment that it was officially his day off. Had Mousier, or Schweitzer himself, called the meeting it would have been a different story. Evie Masters from registration was finishing her toast and honey. She had won the novice award at the Gore Country and Western Music Festival two years before, and believed in looking after her throat. Sometimes, after her period, she would have an impromptu concert in the dining hall and sing ‘Stand By Your Man’ and ‘Panhandle Blues’ with a Southland burr. Surely she had the makings of a star, people said.

  ‘As you may know,’ said Tony Sheridan, ‘we’re having a visit on Tuesday week from members of the Select Committee on Public Health.’

  ‘Bummer,’ said Cleghorn.

  ‘All of us are going to be involved in one way or another.’

  ‘Double bummer,’ said Cleghorn. After the blue of his pyjama legs there were his thin hairy ankles and heavy sneakers with the laces loose.

  ‘All of us,’ said Sheridan firmly.

  And sure enough they were, even if only to guarantee that the less amenable and attractive charges were kept away from the official route, and that Cleghorn was glorified parking attendant. Mousier had made only a few changes to Tony Sheridan’s arrangements, such as including a more soporific wine at the parliamentarians’ luncheon, and increasing the number of women to be in the patient group to talk with the visitors at three o’clock.

  On arrival, of course, the select committee members were first to have an hour’s briefing by Schweitzer. David and Raf watched them being escorted by Tony Sheridan and Alst Mousier from the car park and towards the offices. Seven of them. Raf could put names to some, but David recognised only Janis Bloomfield, the Minister of Health, because of her height and the bobbed, grey hair seized on in caricature. It was a fine, still day, and the gardens and grounds reflected the extra care received in preparation for the visit. Sheridan’s plan B for wet weather, which was substantial perhaps because of the drizzle on the day of his briefing, was untested. Even as a professed non-administrator, he’d rather fancied his plan B.

  ‘So when is it that they reach us again?’ David this way emphasised Raf’s responsibility for Takahe.

  ‘Ten thirty,’ said Raf. ‘Just before they have a cuppa. The thought of it should keep them moving. I’ve got Abbey primed up to talk about recreational and therapeutic programmes if they ask.’ Abbey was a sort of trustee of the centre, relied upon, and even put upon to some extent, by fellows and staff. Her capability and good will were taken advantage of over and over again.

  How tall Janis Bloomfield was as she passed not far from them, Mousier by her side. Her head and shoulders swayed in a manner intrinsic to her walk, as the head and neck of a giraffe sway to keep a constant point of balance in its progress. ‘Oh, there’s a climate of opinion without doubt,’ she was saying in her stride. ‘Without a shadow of doubt.’

  The parliamentarians were accustomed to being well received, secure in their right to make cursory intrusions into other people’s lives, but even they were conscious of venture at the Slaven Centre. They maintained a compact group, they traced lapels, or pocket flaps, with their fingers, their voices were slightly raised in assurance, yet furtive glances were given to the buildings, as if the visitors feared that a true scrutiny might show the victims of the new plague gathered and lolling at the windows. David watched the party move past the beds of roses and pansies and on to the covered walkway to the main block. For a moment he saw it all as they saw it — from the outside — in the way that it had been for him when he arrived months ago with Bryce the mailman: unencumbered with knowledge, or experience, a matter of physical presence and unequivocal presentation. The modern blocks, the colours, the landscaping, an openness of clear instruction in the signs, the guests secure in their reluctant occupation.

  As Raf had predicted on David’s arrival, familiarity created successive overlays, until the place took on a depth of ambiguous reality distinct from the blueprints of initial regard. It filled up with associations, the presence of a whole population, incidents and tableaux both randomly futil
e and vitally consequential to his life. The rough slope rising behind the centre had the shouts and fires of poor Jason; the covered path was the Bridge of Sighs for Big Pulii; in Jane Milton’s room he knew exactly the repaired lining. The verandah on which he stood was Raf’s court, the chapel for Abbey’s diffident, mild confessions, an arena for the antics of Harlequin’s children. The car park, steady in the sunlight, required just a switch of thought to put on a cloak of darkness for the arrival of Lucy Mortimer and all her cases.

  Where the path ended at the foyer to the admin block, Dr Sheridan stood back to let the visitors go ahead of him, and he saw Raf and David watching from Takahe far away, for he raised a hand. In his brown corduroy jacket he looked like a bear waving a paw. It was a gesture part recognition, part wry dismissal of the role they watched him play. ‘Poor old Tony,’ said Raf.

  ‘Maybe he can ditch them in Schweitzer’s office?’

  ‘No, he’ll be stuck with them, you’ll see. He’ll have to traipse round all day to make up the appropriate number of professional staff for the occasion.’

  ‘What time again?’ asked David.

  ‘Ten thirty,’ said Raf. ‘Could you just check that Estelle and Wilfe have their doors closed before we come past, and that Abbey and Tolly are all set?’ Abbey and Tolly Mathews were to be the star turn, caught in apparent spontaneity on piano and violin.

  Ten forty-three wasn’t bad. A degree of chronological drag is normal in official itineraries. It meant a more compressed visit to Takahe before morning tea. The delay did, however, extend the rather awkward priming of Abbey and Tolly in the lounge room, and Wilfe opened his door against instruction, complaining that he wanted to join in, despite being medicated for a recent episode. Also David and Raf had asked that no one use the toilets in case the parliamentarians wandered in there, and were met by a stench, or poor Montgomery washing his bum at the sluice basin.

  David did a last quick check of the block, and came out in time to be introduced with Raf. No handshakes, no break in the procession, just Tony Sheridan’s words and the nod of the minister from her height, and then they were all in the corridor. Open doors like a passing carriage, closed ones unquestioned. Piano and violin eased their passage, and Schweitzer, Mousier, Janis Bloomfield, others behind, all came into the lounge to find the musicians, and an artful disarray of their peers listening. Everyone was familiar with the pretence of happy coincidence: for the minister it had become the customary way of life.

  Tolly had been bribed by promise of a tinnie, and played with skill and good will. Separated by his illness from an empire of bathroom fittings, fishing, astronomy and music had become his trades. Abbey did her bit as ever, always the citizen and a supporter of whatever community she found herself in. Surely she was dying, but something must fill up the time that remained. What could she owe the parliamentarians, the Slaven Centre, or even the world any more? But she played that cheap piano with utmost care, and the facility of a genuine talent. Perhaps it was for herself that she played, or for those loving, academic parents who held her hand in childhood’s photographs. ‘Look, Abbey, how the rainbow forms behind the rain.’

  For most of us, pretence is so accustomed that it comes to be accepted as the true feeling, and we’re uneasy if it’s threatened. Bodger smiled and nodded to the music as if gulping pills had never been on his mind; Mrs McIlwraith wore her patterned silk scarf and emeralds in honour of the deputation; Dilys Williams sat prim with envy that she had no larger part than member of the audience; Howard Peat looked away from the performance and sneered at the gardens.

  ‘It’s good, isn’t it? They both seem to have a bit of a knack for it, don’t you think? And it encourages socialisation.’ The lowered voice was from one of the minister’s team, leaning towards David. Ah, Abbey, it had come to that: real talent reduced to a knack, by the voice of ignorance and power. Almost as if she desired to be part of the whispering, Janis Bloomfield swayed her badger-grey head down on David’s other side. ‘And how are these people in themselves, do you think?’ she asked him. Ah, Abbey, despite the high hopes, the symphony orchestra and the full concerts abroad — it had come to that.

  And so Mousier, lustrous lemur eyes and no-nonsense voice, reminded them of the timetable, and Schweitzer, what presence, what acute affability, led the select committee members away. They straggled like grazing animals across the grounds from Takahe towards the hidden rendezvous for morning tea, and although the bald facts of the visit, the historical validation in memo and report, would be kept somewhere no doubt, the actuality of the experience was already wavering, detail leaching away. The minor stumble that the minister made on the paving, so that for an instant her wild oscillation threatened those about her, the fierce blue of the sea as backdrop, the plaintive wheeze of the hydraulic doors to the loos as curfew ended, the sound of violin and piano fading over the centre grounds and the slopes of broom and gorse.

  Tony Sheridan told David later that, at the medical staff debriefing the day after the visit, Schweitzer passed on Janis Bloomfield’s relief that there seemed no signs of panic, or despair, and that the patients were positive about the centre. Good material to use against those MPs who wanted treatment centres shifted offshore to places like D’Urville Island. Sheridan said that the Slaven Centre could still manage an impressive shop window, but David wondered how people were in themselves.

  ‘What really worries everyone,’ said Sheridan, ‘are the latest incidence figures: up seventeen per cent and with New Zealand and Italy among the highest outside Africa. The minister told Schweitzer in confidence that it was possible that some overseas countries would soon impose special restrictions of entry. It’s rich, that, isn’t it?’ said Sheridan. ‘Because for years we’ve been keeping foreigners out, now we might find ourselves quarantined.’

  ‘Do we really have such a high rate of Harlequin?’

  ‘Well, outside Africa, of course.’

  ‘New Zealand, for God’s sake,’ said David. ‘I just don’t get it.’

  Somewhere, though, you see, there had to be a connection.

  The country team had to have a new coach when Bunny Lyte finally gave it away, and David was disappointed with the new guy from the very first team talk. Remember, Jenner said, that the victor is always the team with the greatest determination to win. It was one of those facile, commentator’s views that David knew from experience wasn’t true. He’d been in teams that were comparatively gutless, yet walked over others that fizzed with the desire to win. Talent, size, tactics, local knowledge, luck, even, could equally well be a decider. ‘If you want it hard enough,’ said Jenner, pressing his new, crap artist face towards them and making a fist of his right hand, ‘then you’ll be a winner.’ The assumption that followed was that if you lost, then you hadn’t given everything. David knew that wasn’t necessarily true either.

  Jenner’s dictum was attractive in its simplicity, though, particularly for a coach who wasn’t sharp enough to spot, or correct, any other weakness, and it conveniently shifted responsibility for failure. David could see that some of the squad bought it easily enough. Brett Anderson was a believer: his freckled face attentive, and his head almost worn smooth of pale hair from scrummaging. Absolutely fearless he was, almost stupidly so, and he trained like a demon, but would never make a first division team because his genes denied him the size.

  ‘That’s the thing,’ said Jenner. ‘Guts is the thing, by Jesus.’ There had been All Blacks, hadn’t there, with less than Brett’s determination, but gifted in ways he was denied. David didn’t point that out to the new coach, though: such observations weren’t welcome. Subversive, weren’t they — divisive and shit-stirring, as Jenner said, showing that you didn’t put the team first.

  They trained on a winter field that was pock-marked with sprig-holes in the dark, soft soil and flattened grass. A thin mist might trail through the branches of the birches on the west side of the ground, and Jenner’s shouts echo into the stubby height of the old wooden stand. Th
e first few times down on the ball, David felt the damp chill of the mud on crotch and belly; at the scrum the steam eddied away from the close bodies as it does from working horses. As he packed down he caught the cooked lobster smell of close bums. The knee cartilage that he told himself had come right tweaked painfully as he was hit from the side in a tackle. ‘Back up the bloody ball carrier. Bloody back up the bloody ball carrier,’ Jenner would shout emphatically, as if he had that instant created the idea.

  ‘All good players are workaholics,’ he would say. ‘Abso-bloody-lutely,’ and after the drills he outlined a fitness regime for them all, because distances meant they could practise together only once a week.

  A few more sessions with the crap artist, and David decided that he’d had enough of Jenner: enough of the game even. He was driving up the valley in the dark after practice, the headlights sweeping over pasture, or paddocks of winter feed, at the sharp turns in the gravel road. He decided that the only kicks he got out of it any more were the ones he could do without. With his father dead, so many of the accustomed things lost their point; became small shams of an unexamined lifestyle. He imagined that there must be more important ways of living which had essential connections one with another — and with himself.