Our Future is in the Air

by Corballis, Tim

  Was little of this news to Janet? Certainly not the mention of SWELLS OF FEELING; although she wondered whether the same phrase might not apply to all of us. It was only a term for how we veered through our lives. The SIS man, Grey, seemed to have them in himself. Was she allowed to like him? He had offered to help. But when she formed attachments to people, she often found herself stepping back and looking at their pretences and inconsistencies, regarding them almost as children. Pen, Grey—two very different men-children? It was a surprise to find Grey. He was something like Pen’s ghost. He was a discovery that led her no closer to Pen—but in other ways led her much closer. Extremists? TCF? None of this was a surprise. But Grey himself?

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘From the perspective of 1975, the days of protest seemed to us already far in the past. In 1972 the Labour Party was elected to govern the country, and, in fact, we were impressed with its performance. Were they elected because of the impact that the protesters had had on the mood of the general public? We can’t be sure. Prime Minister Holyoake came across as a tired and desperate figure in his confrontations with them. For a number of years, they seemed to us like his natural opposition. The Labour Party hardly figured in our imaginations during those years. The protesters openly heckled him, in public and in televised meetings. They burnt effigies. The protesters thought that our culture was far too tolerant of authority, and Holyoake came across increasingly as a figure of authority and establishment. We had our doubts about the parliamentary process, but couldn’t help feeling stirred by the process of the election—of Holyoake receiving his punishment. In contrast, Kirk was a charismatic leader. His establishment of a nationally owned shipping line was convincing to us, especially under the conditions of isolation following the collapse of the airlines. Shipping was paramount to our place in the world. Our exports had already begun to suffer from Britain’s entry into the European Common Market. But most importantly, our troops were withdrawn from Vietnam and sporting ties with South Africa were cut. Surely, we thought, that was because of the protesters. Military service was stopped. Indigenous representation in parliament was increased. Welfare benefits were increased. The crowds who had turned out to protest—what did they now have to say? It seemed to so many of them that they had won. It seemed like that to us too. The People’s Republic of China was recognised. A tribunal was established to look into past wrongs of colonialism. The pace of new social initiatives was bewildering. The figure of Kirk himself was one of AUTHORITY and ENERGY, but it was a form of authority that was more palatable to us. Kirk was, we thought, on our side.’

  ‘I don’t think we can say that. Kirk stole our movement. He diverted its energies into parliamentary form. If it hadn’t been for Kirk, we would have strengthened as a movement and achieved REAL CHANGE. The Labour Government, in my view, made STRATEGIC CONCESSIONS in order to secure power for the ruling establishment, of which they were a part. I also felt satisfied when Holyoake was punished in the election—for a long time, I thought of him as my enemy, a personal enemy. But I feel ashamed that I allowed so much feeling to attach to the power and punishment of particular individuals, when what we were aiming for was a wholesale, systemic change.’

  ‘And also, are all SOCIAL EXPERIMENTS driven by debt? Kirk’s government borrowed heavily.’

  ‘We were not opposed to the borrowing. Economic orthodoxy of the time saw the borrowing as a stimulus for the economy. Borrowing is a form of faith that the future will conform to the promise, to the IMAGE or IDEA of it—and distributing borrowed money out to the people is a way to distribute that faith. Kirk’s government could be said to be distributing shares in the image. The borrowing made sense because we agreed with the future he presented to us; it made sense because we had faith that the future would provide returns. We are talking about VISION and the SHARING OF VISION.

  ‘When Kirk died, we were certain it was not the result of natural causes. He was a big man, but strong and full of energy. There was no question in our minds but that the CIA had been involved.

  ‘From the perspective of 1975, there was a lot of water under the bridge. There had been hope, and the sharing of vision, and then the collapse of both. We think that this is not only about Kirk. Perhaps he channelled it all for us or embodied it for us. Maybe it is correct to say that he only represented the establishment? It is not quite clear to us what to think about that. His successor in the role of prime minister floundered and was no match for Muldoon, the leader of the opposition. We could see it coming—the switch back. Or were all of those times equally dark?’

  Marcus, without telling Lilly or Janet, took an afternoon off work to seek out Tom’s nephew. He knew the gang house well enough by sight but had not been inside. He recognised the man sitting outside the front door—he had come to the hospital a few times.

  ‘You doing house calls now?’

  ‘I’m looking for TK. Is he here?’

  ‘I think so.’

  When TK came out, he put up his hands in a half gesture of surrender and said, ‘Oh, man. I don’t know anything. No one knows anything.’

  ‘I just wanted to see if you could take me to your TCF people.’

  The other man said, ‘What’s he want to do that for?’ Marcus caught the man’s eyes searching his veins. ‘Does he think he can just get some from us?’

  ‘I don’t know. Hippies like TCF, eh?’

  Marcus laughed. It wasn’t the first time he’d been called a hippie. ‘Look, it’s just, I don’t want to get anyone into trouble.’

  TK said, ‘His friend’s missing.’

  The other man: ‘Shit. That’s bad.’

  ‘So he’s still missing? It’s been weeks. Months?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The other man: ‘Shit. And he’s a user? He’s involved in something heavy?’

  ‘I have no idea. It’s a hunch.’

  ‘We don’t do any of that here.’

  ‘I know.’

  TK said, ‘It’s all right, he’s okay. Let me talk to him. It can be my thing.’

  ‘I hope you find your friend.’ The man went inside, leaving TK and Marcus on the front step.

  Marcus said, ‘The people you use, are they the only people in Wellington?’

  ‘Probably. There might be some private kit around I guess, in people’s houses. I thought you hippies all had it.’ He laughed.

  ‘I’m not as hippie as you think. I’ve seen it, but not for a long time.’

  ‘The TCF place, it’s nothing to do with Black Power. Nothing at all, okay? Some of us have gone there a few times, just for a blow out.’

  ‘You’ve done it then.’

  ‘Oh yeah, a couple of times.’

  A pause, then, ‘I never have.’ Marcus laughed.

  ‘That’s cool.’

  ‘I want to talk to them. I’ve got a photo of Pen.’

  ‘The guy there’s pretty careful. He might not like people just asking questions. I could try though. You don’t seem like a cop.’

  ‘I could meet someone away from their facility? Just some people, talking to each other somewhere, you know.’

  The meeting was arranged for the following week. Marcus joined TK and another man from the gang house in a car. They drove to the beach, not far from the former airport site. Had TK already talked to this contact about Pen? Marcus had the impression that he hadn’t—that he had hardly asked around at all. Would Marcus have done the same thing? He had left TK with only the vaguest description—and there was nothing in it for him.

  They told Marcus to wait in the car while they talked to the contact. After some time, TK returned and told him to join them. The man, the contact, stayed silent at first.

  Marcus: ‘I just want to talk. I’m not asking anything about you… okay?’

  A nod.

  ‘I’m just wondering if you’ve seen a friend of mine.’

  ‘These guys said. They already asked once before, but they didn’t have a photo or anything.’

  More si
lence. Then TK’s companion signalled to him to move off—they walked some way down the beach.

  ‘You not wanting to get plugged in?’

  ‘No. That’s not why I’m here.’

  ‘These guys say you’re okay. That’s fine.’

  ‘I’ve got a photo. Have you seen this guy? I just want to find out where he is.’

  A long silence. ‘I’ve seen him.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. I remember him. He liked to talk.’

  ‘How long ago?’

  (Another silence.) ‘I don’t know.’ Then: ‘Ages.’

  There, at least. Some confirmation of something. It was as if Tom knew. Maybe Tom knew something about Pen, from those few years ago, that Marcus didn’t? It didn’t matter—Marcus was glad Tom had planted this seed in his mind. At the same time, something he had constructed in himself crumbled a little further.

  The man said, ‘He came and visited a couple of times. More maybe. But not regularly. I’ll tell you though, that guy liked plugging in, and he liked talking about it.’

  Marcus wondered if this was because Pen did not talk about it with him, or with Janet, or with other people. There was a silence. Was the man inviting him to ask him more? What should he do with the information that Pen had been with this man?

  Marcus said, ‘What did he talk about?’

  A laugh. ‘He went to this one place, I remember. It was hard to get to. So it took a pretty good operator to get where he wanted to go—but he really wanted to go there for some reason. A lot of people have those kinds of places, places they want to get to. Apparently.’

  ‘I’m not a cop. What was this place?’

  ‘You know that power station they built underground a few years ago? There was all that protest about it?’

  ‘Manapouri?’

  ‘Yeah. He went there, a couple of times. Other places too, I think, but that’s the place I remember him talking about the most. Shit, he was a talker.’

  ‘Ha. Yeah. When he gets going.’

  ‘You guys close?’

  ‘Yes. I mean, I thought so.’

  A look. The man’s face seemed to open slightly. ‘I don’t know anything. I don’t even know his name.’

  ‘Pen. Penwyn Evans.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘What did he like about the power station? It’s finished now, right? It’s not like he was seeing something new, something from the future.’

  ‘He always talked about how empty it was. He said there was basically no one there. Just these huge turbines. I tell you, it’s not easy landing someone in an underground hall.’ A hint of pride. ‘He said that in the new millennium they automated it, basically. He talked to someone there. So there must be some workers around. But he said basically the place runs itself, and it’s controlled from somewhere else, some buttons and switches in Wellington. He kept going on about that.’

  ‘Huh.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure why. But the thing with plugging in is, doing it’s different from talking about it. You can’t know unless you do it.’

  ‘Do you do it?’

  A silence again.

  ‘I’m not going to get you in trouble.’

  ‘Yes. Of course I do.’ Then: ‘But he seemed to have this thing about the future—as if the future was basically empty. As if there were no people, or not many.’

  ‘Is that your experience?’

  ‘Nah.’ A laugh. ‘People see what they choose to see. They always go back to the same places, or the places that will just confirm what they believe. I mean, it’s not like you go to the future and see the future, the whole future. You know? People think they’ve come back with a significant experience cause it’s so… the whole thing’s pretty fucking mind-blowing.’

  No other questions occurred to Marcus. Why did he feel uneasy about the meeting? He was aware that he was, in some way, out of his depth. He had left work on the pretext of bereavement for his friend—bereavement?—and indulged in a sort of lie. Or, indeed, was he going through some sort of process, some set of external tasks that matched an internal working out? There was no practical purpose to his search, indeed to any form of search given that he was so unsure how to conduct it.

  He was silent in the car on the way from the beach. They dropped him at a street corner not close either to his work or to the house. He walked the rest of the way. It reminded him of the walks he had taken when he first moved to the city, trying to orient himself, walks that also had no purpose except, perhaps, to build up some feeling for the city in his body. But those walks expressed something. They expressed a problem, or his attempt to solve a problem by walking, to walk his way out of a problem. They were an attempt to shake something out of himself. He could never quite reconcile himself with himself. Was it simply this: reconciling his job, his profession, with the anger he felt over the senseless deaths of Vietnam, say, and more broadly with his belief in a better world? The medical school, the hospital—this was a cornerstone of establishment and authority. The walks had led him, if not literally, into the bookshop and into his friendship with Pen. He could never believe in the white-coated men. Was he one of them? He tried to dress differently. He still believed, as far as he could, in Laing and in the alternatives, in his support group and the possibilities for different ways of living. Or was his work simply a way to earn money, his medical knowledge just a form of control?

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Peter still cries all the time.’

  ‘Oh… I didn’t know that.’

  ‘He cries really quietly.’

  ‘Poor Peter.’

  ‘It stops me sleeping.’

  ‘It’s sad, though. Isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. How long is he going to stay?’

  ‘He’ll stop. I hope he will. Don’t you like him being here?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I don’t know how long he will stay. We thought—’

  ‘Is he going to stay forever?’

  ‘Well, yes. No. We thought it would be a long time.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘We didn’t talk about how long. Just, until Janet and he… ’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘We thought that this would be our house now. Our household.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I didn’t know he was so sad.’

  ‘He’s sad about Pen.’

  ‘I know, sweetheart.’

  ‘But maybe he doesn’t like our house?’

  ‘Then we have to try to make it nice for him.’

  ‘I hold his hand sometimes.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  Later, in bed, Marcus talked with Lilly. ‘Did you know Peter’s been crying at night?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘It’s more complicated with children.’

  ‘You mean, living together, all of us?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, yes it is, but he’s not crying because he’s here.’

  ‘It must have been a shock to him, coming somewhere new?’

  Lilly said, ‘He’s crying because he’s lost his dad.’

  ‘I know… ’

  ‘It’s not going to be better, having him cry somewhere else, just him and Janet.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I think having all of us around him is great for him. He’s happy playing with the girls and helping out. It’s only when it’s quiet at night… he goes to sleep in Janet’s bed a lot.’

  ‘Oh.’

  A laugh. ‘You’re oblivious sometimes.’

  He tried a laugh too.

  ‘I don’t want this just to be my project.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t want this… this house. I don’t want it to be just my thing.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Because if it is, then it’s still, you know, women at home, looking after the house, men off at work.’

  ‘But I have to go to work. We need income.’

  They let thi
s truth settle in the air.

  Lilly said, ‘We can’t change everything all at once. But it will be so good for the children to grow up around people.’

  Lilly had returned time and again to Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex. Was the book on her mind again now? Firestone thought that the SMALL COMMUNAL CELL might be the first step towards a new society. Marcus, of course, had his own thoughts, based on Laing’s focus on the dynamics of the household, the child’s internalisation of external relations, the psychological advantages of the shared house. A history of conversations between them, about all of this—and about whether school was the right place for their children, whether it was good for them to be separated into a children’s world apart from adults for so much of their lives. But, by the same token, this household couldn’t separate itself from the world around it, from its schools and communities. Janet was now teaching a regular day every week in the local school—Dani’s school, and now Peter’s—and their housemate Leonard was also thinking of training to be a teacher. What else could they do? So many communes—Lilly and Marcus had talked about this—made the mistake of retreating to remote places without experience, and being faced with difficult blocks of land and the conservatism of their rural neighbours. The communes rejected technology that would allow them to achieve freedom, including, Lilly thought, freedom from human nature. They took refuge in religion or spiritualism. Firestone wrote that we need reproductive technology to free women from the slavery of sex. Giving birth and looking after children were forms of forced labour. Lilly thought of the world as a slow-moving machine. Their minds were tied up in it, as slow-moving as the machinery outside. How many generations before they could break from it?

  She got up from the bed, pulled her dressing gown on and went downstairs. Did Marcus also have the sense of the world’s slow machinery?

  Janet was downstairs, reading—or at least staring at the pages of a book. She closed it as Lilly sat next to her. Lilly said, ‘Are you okay living here?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘A bit of a change.’ After a moment she noticed a tear on Janet’s cheek. She put her arm around her.