We were all ending our time at the school. Some had achieved the qualifications that were necessary. Others, like Ken and me, were wondering if those years inside the ivy-covered walls, and the grim classrooms amongst the mutterings of teachers, meant anything at all. The dusty masters who paraded with slight enthusiasm at the morning assembly ceased to be figures of fun. They were the elders of the society we were about to join.
My last year at Christchurch Boys’ High School was at the same time the most memorable and forgettable of my school life. At seventeen I was too young to enter university. I was, as ever, an irregularity. So, unwisely, I stayed at school and entered what was called the Upper Sixth Form. I was immediately summoned to the headmaster’s office. CFS Caldwell was a short, compact man who did not appear to have a sense of humour. He observed rather testily that I had ended the previous year with a large number of detentions.
Caldwell noted I had 15 uncompleted detentions. I was now a senior boy, he said, and my presence in the detention room would set a bad example for members of the junior school. Thinking he planned to waive the detentions, I readily agreed. However, this was not his plan at all. He proposed the detentions were ‘caned off’. One strike for every detention. This was, he continued, the only honourable way of starting the new term and he intended to start immediately with the first six. Later, I reflected on what went through school masters’ minds when they thrashed boys across the bottom. Caldwell clearly thought the punishment was a distasteful but necessary part of school discipline. But, I recall one science master who saw the opportunity to beat pupils as a pleasant change from the monotony of school life and seized the chance to lash out frequently and with obvious relish.
In an effort to occupy my time, someone decided I would join a German class. After four years of hoping to speak French, I was instructed to learn German. The teacher was a generous and forgiving Scot named Jim McBride. I often wondered if, had I ever mastered the language, I would have spoken German with a Scottish accent. Today I can ask for the location of the nearest lavatory with Teutonic accuracy. Unfortunately, that is the extent of my German vocabulary.
It was becoming obvious there was little left for me to achieve at high school. I had the necessary qualifications to enter university. I was not bright nor distinguished enough to attempt bursary examinations and after two forgettable games with the First XV my services were not required on the Rugby field. So, I was given a list of books, told to sit in the library, read them and then write a report on my reading. This was light years from the woodwork class. The list started with The Last of the Mohicans and ended with David Copperfield. No one ever checked to confirm I was actually in the library and then at end of my reading no one was the least bit interested in what I’d assiduously written. It was time to move on.
Chapter 6
CHINESE HISTORY AND OTHER DIVERSIONS
I left Christchurch Boys’ High School and attended the University of Canterbury. ‘Attended’ is an apt word. I was there but that was about all. I took what I thought would be easy courses and turned my attention rather aimlessly to getting a BA in English. It was the freedom of university that was my downfall and not just the liberty to study in my own time and at my own speed. I was free to study anything. So when I was supposed to be analysing early political thought in Ming Dynasty China I ended up reading translations of Chinese poetry. I was so entranced when first introduced to the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins that I didn’t read Keats and he was the poet I was studying. I wasn’t lazy. I simply didn’t concentrate on the subjects that would earn me a degree.
There was another factor — my friends. They all had astute, enquiring minds with wide-ranging interests and strong opinions. Increasingly their company became more important than the curriculum. We hired a tiny room at the back of the old university bookshop on Worcester Street. It was a small box with one electric heater and one sinister-looking plug. It could comfortably accommodate two people. Sometimes, there were seven males squeezed inside. Later, when we were evicted, we piled into an old potting shed at the rear of a house in Hereford Street and proceeded to paper the walls with empty packets of Hollandier pipe tobacco. We thought pipes made us look academically attractive. We’d hired the garden shed to pass the time between lectures. Well, that’s what we told each other. I knew the shed was really a venue for the hopeless task of trying to lose our collective virginities. In this regard, it never achieved its purpose. As we’d all read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road we called the place The Pad. We thought this was ‘cool, man’.
As the second term wore on I became increasingly aware that I was unlikely to sit, let alone pass, my examinations. I was too far behind and, in spite of the able tuition of two superb lecturers, Professor JGA Pocock and the redoubtable Professor John Garrett, would never catch up. This caused my mother deep distress. I think she felt a slight discomfort about the way my high school career had drifted away from any central purpose and may have felt guilty she hadn’t raised questions when I was dumped in the woodwork class. Now her son was meandering again and her reaction was muted anger.
There had been earlier distractions. Shortly after arriving at university I became fascinated with stunts. Around May, sensible students graduated. They were ‘capped’ and went on to successful careers as economists, lecturers in economics or economic theoreticians. Others moved to vaguely useful jobs like teaching. For new and ultimately unsuccessful students like myself there was Capping Week. This was an excuse for undergraduates to drink far too much, parade around town in idiotic costumes, create risqué and occasionally sarcastic floats that were hauled through the streets to the mystification of most people and publish a magazine containing the oldest and most obscene jokes in human history. Lincoln College students were the masters of this form. Their magazine Ram was 90 pages of filth. But, very funny filth. As the title suggested, the jokes were principally about sexual conquests involving women, men and various members of the animal kingdom.
On the other hand, a stunt was a clever practical joke that for a few hours might perplex, amuse or infuriate the city. At the time, there was a lengthy, angry and acrimonious argument in Christchurch about a proposal to drive a road through Hagley Park. At the start of Capping Week, drivers swinging into the city from Fendalton Road to Harper Avenue were horrified to see large trees swiped with white crosses and an outsized sign that declared, ‘The NEW road starts here today.’ It took most people a morning to wake up.
For hours during my English and Political Science lectures I plotted practical jokes. I dreamt up a scheme to hang a banner around the spire of Christchurch Cathedral. Remember, this building was my spiritual home. The banner would read:
For Sale. Outdated and Surplus to Requirements.
Contact: Nick Sodom or Harry Gomorrah — Phone: 666666.
None of my ideas worked because most people thought I was crazy. There was another reason. The greatest stunt had been pulled many years before.
It was seven days before Capping Week — enough time to throw the authorities off the scent. Workers were digging a hole near Queen Victoria’s clock tower on the stretch of road called, rather unimaginatively, Victoria Street. Two students observed this. One approached the men digging up the road and told them a group of students impersonating police officers would be arriving telling them to stop digging because the police knew it was a stunt. Meanwhile, the other student went to the Central Police Station with the news that students, dressed as road workers, were digging up the road under Queen Victoria’s clock tower as part of a prank. Then, the two protagonists stood on the corner of Salisbury and Victoria streets and watched. Legend has it the fight went on for at least a quarter of an hour.
Chapter 7
PLAYS, BEERS AND SANTA CLAUS
I continued to neglect my studies. After Capping Week I developed another preoccupation — the theatre. This was infinitely more interesting than the politics of Ming Dynasty China, so I started tracking down fellow thespians. I mus
t have been somewhat ego-centric because I already thought of myself as an actor although I’d hardly ever been on stage. After some time I was cast in a play, Eros Blight. The title alone should have warned me. It was written by a Christchurch playwright, Richard Brook. He was an urgent, wild-haired young man with expressive hands and the habit of staring at you. The play was about a transsexual. This made it rather daring. Flower-power may have been alive and dancing around the streets of San Francisco, but in Christchurch transsexuals were not spoken of because they broke all the moral codes of a city that had produced the Parker Hulme murder. I read the script of Eros Blight and struggled with some of the words and many of Brook’s images — it had a Pre-Raphaelite feeling, but as I was unsure what Pre-Raphaelite meant, I thought I wouldn’t mention that until I knew everyone a little better.
Eros Blight was a confrontation about sexuality. I thought it was about time we had theatrical confrontations about gender and sex and all that stuff. But, I was increasingly confused about what Brook and the director, Brian de Ridder, were actually talking about. The principal member of the cast had to be a very tall man who would play the part of Eros or Blight, I can’t remember which. He would be dressed as a transsexual, with a wig, gloves, a tight skirt and huge high-heeled shoes. At a critical moment in the play, he would be nailed to a cross.
I was to play one of two interrogators who were to cross-examine the crucified transsexual. The script called for us to mouth all the wild prejudices of a society unused to confronting sexuality. The fourth member of the cast was a manic gunman who spent a large part of the action sitting in the audience. Brian had decided a theatre was not a suitable venue for the play. Instead it would be performed in an empty art gallery. The space was large and white and dominated by the large cross. David Ault was cast as the other interrogator, Murray Reece played the psychotic criminal and the role of the transsexual went to John Bach. I could tell John was edgy about the part and almost as uncomfortable as I was about the play. But, we kept telling ourselves it was experimental and audacious and that was the kind of actors we were.
Folding chairs had been scattered about the gallery for the audience. Brian didn’t want the chairs in conventional rows so they were placed at random angles. When members of the audience arrived they were met by two masked creatures who appeared to be dressed in plastic bags. These weird beings ushered the patrons to their seats. Because many in the audience were obviously unhappy with the arrangements a lot of time was wasted as they rearranged the folding chairs into conventional rows. I knew Brian would be furious. Dave Ault and I then took up our places and stood menacingly on either side of the cross. We were dressed in bright red shirts and trousers. Then we all, rather nervously, awaited the start of the play and the arrival of John. Now, John is tall and with a large wig and very high heels he must have measured over two metres. To a notable gasp, he entered regally and with some elegance tottered carefully through the audience to sit on a chair near the cross.
It was an impressive entrance and my confidence rose as I launched my stinging examination. The audience was either baffled or entranced and we rapidly approached the moment in the play I was particularly nervous about. Dave and I had managed to manoeuvre John into position on the cross and we were ready to improvise. Both Brian and Richard were wildly excited at the prospect of unscripted conversations with the audience. I tried to talk them out of it but they rejected my objections as examples of ‘bland and boring conventionality’. So, meekly following instructions, I turned to the audience and to their surprise thundered, ‘What shall we do with him?’
There was some uncomfortable shuffling. Brian had said, ‘Force them to reply.’ So, when no one answered I raised my voice and crashed on. ‘I said what shall we do?’
A lone figure rose from the audience. I recognised him immediately and my mouth went dry. It was Mervyn ‘Proc’ Thompson, writer, actor, co-founder of The Court Theatre and éminence grise of the stage. ‘Well, I know what I’m going to do,’ he announced. ‘I’m leaving because this is the biggest load of shit I’ve ever had to sit through.’
Instantly I decided to stop improvising. Proc then turned and strode out. Judging by the number of people who followed, this was a shared opinion. I don’t remember how we finished Eros Blight. No one in the art gallery, including myself, was paying much attention to the words. There was, however, an unscheduled piece of improvisation later in the evening. Murray’s brother Simon had been one of the shuffling ushers in the plastic bags. He and Proc had a disagreement before the play and as we trickled away into the night Simon took the opportunity to clout Proc. It was a fitting full stop to an unconventional evening.
In spite of my experience with Eros Blight I agreed to appear in another of Richard’s plays. Brian had moved on from anonymous spaces and now conceded we could perform in a traditional theatre. I remember little of the play, much less the title. There is an old photograph of me looking particularly moody, but it gives no hint of the action other than to confirm I was over-acting. What I do recall is Brian’s staging. He had agreed somewhat reluctantly to use a theatre, but he wouldn’t compromise any further. The audience would sit on the stage and the actors would perform in the stalls.
These idiosyncratic performances may give the impression that Brian de Ridder was determined to make plays as incomprehensible as possible. But I considered him to be one of the most gifted theatrical directors of his generation. He was passionate about the theatre and communicated his delight with an excited intensity. Brian hated staid conventions and struggled to create productions that stretched the imagination of both the actors and the audience. He left Christchurch to work in Australia. Somehow, Brian ended up in Indonesia and the next we heard he was in gaol. He had always been fearless with drugs and they, ultimately, became his downfall. On his return to New Zealand it became obvious Brian had lost not only his freedom in Indonesia. He started work as a gardener in the Rotorua Botanical Gardens. Months later a friend approached him. There was not a spark of recognition. Brian de Ridder never directed another play.
For several years the centre of my universe was a hotel called the Gresham. It sat unceremoniously in Christchurch’s Cashel Street. My mother had promised me a watch if I didn’t drink until I was 21 and for some months I worked my way unsociably towards that goal. But, it seemed pointless joining my friends at the Gresham if all I drank was lemonade.
The hotel was owned by Campbell Murray, a tall, frequently flustered man whose clients ranged from under-age students to grizzly old men who would sit for hours staring at a small beer. Campbell had a flexible attitude towards the country’s drinking laws. If you said you were 21 he agreed and never seemed suspicious when most of his young patrons rushed for the back door lavatory whenever the police burst in.
This was the time of ‘six o’clock closing’. However, you could stay after 6 pm if you purchased a dinner voucher. This was proof that you would be dining in the hotel and were therefore permitted to have a drink with your meal. There was a dining room upstairs but it hadn’t been used for years. In fact, the only food available was provided by an elderly man who sold pies from a wicker basket.
Campbell also had a liberal interpretation of the rules relating to the sale of liquor. While he would not respond to telephone calls after midnight, Campbell could be persuaded to refill a party when the beer ran out if you rang earlier. So it happened that one Sunday evening I was sitting in my mother’s Triumph Herald, a car I was forbidden to drive except in an emergency, at the end of Cashel Street. With me was my good friend Ken and Anne’s cousin Richard whom I had only just met. We watched Campbell looking cautiously up and down the street. Then he went inside. Moments later he returned, placed two cartons of beer on the footpath and disappeared again. We drove quickly up to the hotel. Richard and I heaved the cartons in the boot, while Ken pushed a bundle of notes under the door. I swung the Triumph into a fast U-turn and we headed back to the party.
We were congratulating ours
elves on a smoothly run operation when suddenly another car failed to give way and smashed into the side of the Triumph. It tipped over and ended up on its side. Ken, whose legs were now around my neck, was the first to speak. ‘I think you should turn the engine off, Dave.’ I did.
To our relief no one was hurt but the car reeked of beer. Unfortunately, the accident happened close to the Central Police Station and almost immediately a patrol car turned into the street. The other vehicle had not stopped after the crash, so all the approaching officer could see were three men standing in the middle of the road next to a Triumph Herald on its side with its lights still blazing.
Someone said, ‘Let’s move away from the smell.’ I was about to do so when I noticed a large, brown stain on the side of the Triumph. The police officer was advancing warily. He was certain to see the beer. I panicked and for some absurd reason wiped the stain and then licked my hand. It wasn’t beer. It was oil. The constable stopped and watched me carefully. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. I didn’t know what to reply.
Eventually, the officer accepted the explanations and took our details. We pushed the Herald to the side of the road and began considering how we would get home. The constable continued to eye me. After all, I still had oil on my face. ‘The business with the oil,’ I said with a weak chuckle. ‘I think I was in shock.’
The Years Before My Death Page 6
