Harlequin Rex

by Owen Marshall

  ‘I’ll get back to you in time.’

  ‘We had a good set-up, didn’t we?’

  ‘Yes,’ said David.

  ‘I reckon it was just bad luck. And maybe we got into it in too big a way. The real bugger was that you lost your farm because of it.’ David had nothing to say to that, and the two of them walked on up the slope. ‘That’s probably the only thing that I feel bad about,’ said Chris. ‘You know?’

  ‘There was always that risk,’ said David. ‘I don’t think about it much now.’ What else could they say? The significance of it made them uneasy and, after one keen meeting of glances between them, they let it drop. They had been friends for a long time, and the claims they made on each other no longer needed the advocacy of explanation. Beth Car, the place of his family, was gone. His mother and father were gone. The early, easy expectations he had assumed as of right, were gone too.

  David took a flight to Christchurch, so that, if it should ever become known, there’d be little indication that he was heading for Mahakipawa. That’s how he came to be on a bus from Blenheim which came over a small rise, fringed with red hot poker plants, and there was Havelock, the dipping main street little changed at first glance from the place he had visited as a boy. That one short stretch of clumsy, honest buildings, the steep hill behind them, the glistening mudflats at the head of Mahau Sound, the inevitable association with a grandfather who had never lived there.

  THIRTY–TWO

  Some people want more than anything else to be listened to. David remembered his mother telling him that some time after she’d retired to Herne Bay. She delivered Meals on Wheels, and said that a piece of mutton in cooling gravy was okay for old people if their teeth were up to it, but more important was the contact she briefly gave, when they had no company apart from their own voice and those of television. How they wanted to talk, she said, how they longed for the indulgence of a listener. Yes, just like Rebecca’s Nan.

  Sickness could take some people that way, too, as well as causing others to withdraw from the world. Dilys Williams was one of those determined to be heard. She saw the entire hierarchy of staff, from Schweitzer to pot scrubber, as being in her employ, and at her disposal. Her regular sessions with medical staff were not sufficient, and she waylaid Raf and David as her particular Takahe functionaries, and jawed at them endlessly. Her fellow guests could use their equality of affliction as an excuse, and walk away, or tell her to shut up, but David had to take a certain amount.

  ‘It’s the turning away from religion that’s done it. God won’t be mocked, you know: not outright and not all the time, He won’t. When I was young the church meant something, and the vicar was a person of influence in the community. All that’s gone. The church’s got no clout any more — no status. For myself I’d say only the Catholics get to the top of the heap, because no one asks about people’s religion any more. As long as you love the Maoris, and people in same-sex marriages, you’re away laughing. But God won’t be mocked is what I say, and it’s true without a shadow of a doubt. Think of all those plagues in the Bible and how they punished people.’ David asked her as inoffensively as he could why she had Harlequin, if it was a penalty for unbelief. ‘Tainted by my husband,’ Dilys said, ‘who was a sinner day and night. There’s no distinctions made in the bonds of marriage.’

  Dilys was petite, attractive enough in old age, with her unblemished skin and nimble way of using her arms and legs — walking, sitting, folding, crossing, gesticulating. In time, though, her voice drove out any other awareness of her presence, as disembodied as the whine of a mosquito in a cheap Barcelona bedroom. ‘I went to hear Billy Graham when I was a young thing,’ she said. ‘Thousands and thousands, like a rugby game, and streams going up to pledge themselves. Not that he was C of E, but Protestant, of course. Ask young people today about Billy Graham and they’re as blank as a lodge wall, aren’t they, but God won’t be mocked is what I say. This Harlequin’s the result. No doubt, absolutely none. No doctors can find any physical reasons at all, can they.’

  David and Raf were having a Sunday joint — very traditional, Raf said — but Dilys had rapped on David’s door until he opened it just enough to allow her monologue in, and the fragrance of hooch out. The two aides wanted to drift a little, talk a little, keep Harlequin beyond their door.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ said Dilys.

  ‘Raf’s got his sneakers off again,’ said David.

  Dilys wanted to stay and tell them more of the decline of religious observances, but the Reverend Weymouth, the Anglican minister from Blenheim, was taking a service in the conference room of the main block. He was popular because of the jokes he used, and once a month was about right for ecclesiastic humour. Dilys was a stalwart of the services he held at the centre.

  ‘Guess that service must be due to start right about now, Dilys,’ Raf said.

  ‘Staff should be setting an example,’ said Dilys, ‘and what’s that smell in there?’

  David shrugged and smiled. He held the door so that her narrow strip of vision grew no larger, and she went off, grumbling, to be a Christian.

  Later Montgomery tapped on David’s door, then opened it and put his meaty head into the room. He silently enjoyed the aroma for a while, then told David that there was a call for him. David went to the corridor phone, and found that it was Schweitzer. As he heard the voice he visualised the director in his high office, the smooth desk of executive responsibility, and the view which suggested escape from it over the broad sound to the pink fishing buoy and beyond.

  ‘Everything all right?’ asked Schweitzer. Do you love her? David wished he could ask, but the line was quiet between them, though the Reverend Weymouth and Dilys must have been about their Father’s business not far from the director. ‘I’ve had a call from the Nelson police,’ said Schweitzer in a voice quite devoid of dramatic inflection. David took a step or two as release of anxiety, which stretched the close spiral of the telephone lead, then moved back into the alcove.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. Jason Brown had left his name in green biro on the wall, and in his mind’s eye David saw the Harlequin fires of the night on the hill.

  ‘Someone here has told them about you, and they’re coming up late in the afternoon. The superintendent contacted me as a courtesy.’

  ‘Do you know what time?’ He had no need, or inclination, to ask what Schweitzer had been told.

  ‘He just said late afternoon, but he did ask the dining room times.’

  ‘Right.’ Nothing was audible of Weymouth’s far Sunday service, but David could hear Wilfe’s laugh from the lounge. In that strange, tangential way the mind works, the idea came to David that Abbey should be playing at the service. He missed Abbey and, with a turn of his heart, he knew that soon he’d be missing Lucy, whose loss meant so much more. ‘I appreciate you letting me know,’ he said.

  ‘I haven’t told anyone else at all. I’m the only one officially who’s to know. You understand?’

  ‘Yes, thanks.’

  ‘In some ways, David, I wish they were coming for me. Anyway, good luck,’ and he hung up before David had a chance to reply. Schweitzer’s use of his Christian name had a kind of intimacy in it, but the greater sense was that of finality. And why would Schweitzer half wish the police were coming for a different catch? But there wasn’t time for speculation.

  David didn’t want to involve any of his centre friends and acquaintances, not only for their sake, but because of the pain of farewells. Who in the whole outside world knew of him, cared enough to act quickly, could be trusted? Post Office Bev, he decided with a sudden confidence, and he rang her straight away.

  Raf wandered off without question when David went back to the room and said he needed to go down and see Tony Sheridan. It was mid-afternoon: already the police would be on the road from Nelson. Even with his fear of being caught, and the agony of leaving Lucy, David was aware of the weary dullness that is the breath of a Sunday afternoon. Wilfe and Jock in the lounge laughed on a
t the television; Mrs McIlwraith’s patrician voice from the verandah gave instruction in the pruning of roses she was no longer able to oversee. The scent of banality hung in the air, as did the smell of the sluice room.

  David put on his best shirt and jersey, and his jacket over that; his new jeans and the hand-made Last Footwear Company boots from affluent times. He carried all his money and all his stash in his pockets, and nothing besides. Raf’s room was open and empty when he passed it, and he took down the calendar there and wrote on the back — ‘Take anything in my room you want, cheers’ — and left it lying on the bed.

  He went out of Takahe, set against attempting to say anything to Tolly, Gaynor, Montgomery, Tony Sheridan, or Raf, who was another of the friends whom he’d made and lost through the years. Life was like a war, wasn’t it, and the longer you served, the less inclined you became to draw close to your fellows. He just had to slip away from the place to save himself, leaving the dance of Harlequin to go on without him. He’d just be the latest in a long line of departures one way or another.

  The wind surprised him with its gusty force across the grounds as he walked over to Kotuku. Simon Cryer was idling about the door of Weka as he went past, confirmation in David’s mind as to who had given the police the nod. ‘Hey, chief,’ said Cryer, ‘haven’t seen you for a while.’ He made as if to come over.

  David kept walking. ‘I’m on a promise,’ he said. ‘Can’t stop.’

  ‘Way to go. Yeah.’ Cryer held a thumb up, made a tongue clicking noise, man to man.

  Lucy wasn’t in her room: he could see that while walking the garden side of Kotuku and looking through her window. Propped against her light blue pillow was the smiling rag doll she’d been given when she left television. David went in because he wanted to be close to her place, her things, one last time. But he made no attempt to leave a message. A phone call would be the best thing, when he was well away, and any Mahakipawa interrogations over.

  The indentation from Lucy’s body was clear on the duvet; on the floor beside the head of the bed, the biography of a ballet dancer made a small chapel, spine up. Lucy was unlikely to be seeking strength from the Reverend Weymouth. More likely she was with Schweitzer, although that had never been acknowledged. Perhaps she had been standing there with him when the warning call was made to Takahe just minutes before. And if that was so, why should he feel anything but thankfulness that his desertion, his freedom from Harlequin, his inability to be of help, might be the less painful for her. No adult can fully bear up the life of another.

  On Lucy’s cupboard was a photo of her mum and dad with her in the studio — what ordinary people they seemed, to be the parents of such a woman — and her clothes for the laundry were in a soft, draw-top bag by the door. Just for a moment he put the fabric bag to his face so that he could have her smell. He took the stash from his jacket pocket and slipped it half under dolly, half under the pillow. He allowed himself one aching moment of love and gratitude and grief before he left, whirled away again by life which was, perhaps, just Harlequin writ large after all. ‘Ah, shit,’ he said softly to himself as he went back into the wind again.

  Old Sidey, ranting to himself, was coming up the path in his electric chair, which was so silent in the wind. He reduced speed with a twitch of his abbreviated arm, not so that he could be heard, or hear, but that he might catch David’s eye for a moment with a keen sardonicism, then, still talking for himself, he was past.

  David walked up behind the caretaker’s cottage and climbed over the four-strand fence and into the poor grass and rubbish of the hill. The broom tossed in the wind and, as the cloud lowered, some gusts were damp and cool on his face, precursors to a sweeping drizzle. He carried on uphill for a while but, when hidden from the centre, he veered off, dropped over the ridge line and down towards the sea and the road. Where the stock tracks came together in breaks through the scrub, the ground was bare and deeply pock-marked by the passage of cattle. He crouched in the pigfern on the bank above the road. He was hidden from the centre, but able to see the swimming place where he and Raf had gone often. The full, buffeted tide covered the mudflats, and the bright rushes vibrated on the shoreline like a thousand batons. Tolly’s dinghy lay on its side there, with the anchor rope leading up to slightly higher ground.

  David tried not to think about much as he waited. He began to close down. It was something he’d resorted to during his prison time, and after Kaikoura, and when he realised what was in store for Lucy. He could still see how things were, often with greater clarity than he wished, but he allowed them no easy purchase on his feelings.

  LUCY’S VIEW

  Is the study in Schweitzer’s house, not his office in the admin block, and because his wife and family live in Wellington, that flight away, the only womanly touches are those Lucy brings to it herself — the dark roses in the pale vase, her fingers across the shaving path of his jaw, which feels as if there is sand on the surface of his skin. ‘In some ways, David, I wish they were coming for me,’ he says before putting down the telephone.

  Lucy understands why that is said. She knows all about Bellini and Kinshasa. Isn’t that her own wish — that someone was coming to take her away from Mahakipawa, even though she loves two men there?

  One is David. She’s not at all surprised to find that the police are coming to call on him. She knows there are things David can’t share, tight coils of some experience which trap part of him inside himself. Something ails him and he can’t talk about it to her. Deep down and a long way back something has gone wrong. He can’t allow himself to be fully known, as a man with a withered arm manoeuvres always to present his good side.

  And Lucy also loves Schweitzer, who manages to relieve his guilt, who gives more than he receives. Neither love is any less for not being exclusive. Only moralistic convention denies that it’s possible to love more than one person at a time, and convention is nothing to Lucy now that Harlequin has her life — now that all is day to day, and episode to episode.

  She and Schweitzer understand that the warning they give to David is a farewell too, but that’s not the reason he rang. He’s done it for Lucy, of course, but also for David. Her grief in that is tempered by relief, for any later form of parting must be worse. Lucy knows from the progress of the disease that she won’t follow Abbey back to a life outside.

  ‘Do you want to go down and see him?’ asks Schweitzer. He takes no pleasure whatever in finding that the police are after David: no satisfaction in knowing that he will slip furtively away. Schweitzer is so devoted to his work that it’s only there he has time for relationships. Each woman has had his friendship and his passion at the periphery of his true dedication. How clinically that was established at any outset. What right has he now to see any other man as rival.

  Lucy doubts if David has as civilised a tolerance, and has never put it to the test. She feels no guilt in that. She must give and take all that she can now as Harlequin comes closer. To David she gives more; because his need is greater, from Schweitzer she takes more, because he has strength and confidence — and resignation. ‘I may do something silly if I go down,’ she says. Her hand traces Schweitzer’s on the fabric of the chair. ‘Like going off with him,’ she says. ‘I’m sure that would have happy outcomes.’

  Schweitzer smiles and puts his free hand over hers, so that there is a pancake of three. ‘I suppose it’s the cannabis they’re after him for, though it seems a big deal for that.’

  ‘Maybe. It’s difficult to tell with David. Something’s gnawing away there.’

  ‘Where will you get your stuff if he goes?’

  ‘You?’

  ‘If we started on the run of drugs I’ve access to, Lucy, you really would ride the roller-coaster. Good try, but no luck.’

  ‘So what then?’

  ‘Alessandro Bellini told me that there’s an Albanian doctor with a clinic in Paris who claims to cure everything with sex.’

  ‘Theoretical, or applied?’ says Lucy.

 
; ‘Maybe there’s a New Zealand franchise available.’

  They can talk on like this for quite a while, but what is really happening is the light pressure of their hands, a warmth of contact nothing to do with sex, and their eyes meeting in recognition of those things impossible to discuss, incapable of solution.

  A little later, while Schweitzer prepares to visit his office although it’s Sunday, Lucy sees David leaving Takahe. He wears his best boots, which she has always thought too yellow by half, and leans slightly into the strong wind. He walks in the direction of Kotuku, which is out of sight, and yes, she does want to be there.

  ‘He’s going, I think,’ she calls. A voice louder than necessary to reach Schweitzer in another room, almost as if the cry is for David.

  ‘Are you sure that you don’t want to go down?’ says Schweitzer, quickly back to be with her. ‘Quarter of an hour won’t be any danger I wouldn’t think. It’s going to take the police a while.’

  She watches David, his longish hair blown up in the wind, his boots resplendent, until he’s out of sight behind Weka. He’s going to her room and will find it empty. If she’d been well, she could be there and they could hit the road together, like the conclusion of a bitter-sweet romance, but she’s sick isn’t she, Harlequin’s bride, and if she wasn’t then she wouldn’t have met David, or Schweitzer, anyhow, so a script didn’t work either way. And if she can’t go with him, then she doesn’t want to say goodbye. She thinks of the last really good time they were together, and it wasn’t to make love, but fishing in Tolly Mathews’ dinghy. Only a light breeze then, but salt in the sea air, the boat rocking, the large blue cod on the slats mouthing for water and finding air which provided nothing. They had told stories against themselves, and exchanged memories, laughing so much together that they almost forgot their fears, just as some mornings she woke happy and complete, had a moment of her former life, before it was overwhelmed by the realisation of where and what she was.