The Years Before My Death

by David McPhail

  His face didn’t move. ‘I think you still are.’

  Months later my mother and stepfather returned from an overseas holiday and Robert went to the garage to inspect the cars. I’d had the Triumph Herald fully restored. Only if you looked really hard could you see the ripples of the panel beating. Idly, he asked if I’d ever had occasion to use the Herald. I thought long and hard before I replied. It would have been easy to say ‘no’. Instead I said, ‘Actually, yes. But only the once.’

  He nodded. ‘An emergency?’ he asked.

  ‘Sort of, but I’ll tell you about it some other time.’ I left it several weeks before I confessed to the crash.

  Robert took it quite calmly. ‘That would explain what your mother’s been saying,’ he said. ‘She says the car keeps pulling to the right. It’s like driving a crab.’

  A picturesque assortment of people drank at the Gresham. There were artists and musicians, students like my friends and me, occasionally a flutter of lawyers and always a collection of characters who confirmed the eccentricity of Christchurch. One was Joe Waller. He was a scrawny, long-haired, bearded man. Everyone knew he was scrawny because Joe’s hobby was taking his clothes off at parties. He disrobed so frequently that hardly anyone noticed anymore.

  Joe and the Gresham are forever linked in my mind because of an event that happened one Christmas. I was looking for a job and suddenly saw an advertisement in a newspaper: ‘Wanted: reliable, steady man to play the part of Santa Claus during the two weeks before Christmas. Hours 10 am to 4 pm daily. Costume provided.’ I thought it looked perfect. Six hours sitting in a fairy grotto having my picture taken with children. I could do that. I applied immediately and, as I was the first applicant, got the job.

  When I appeared for work I asked about the location of the fairy grotto. The shop owner who’d hired me looked up curiously. ‘What grotto?’ he asked.

  ‘The one I’ll be sitting in for the photographs,’ I replied.

  He shook his head. ‘No, you misunderstand,’ he said. ‘You’ve been hired by the High Street Retailers’ Association. Your job is to walk up and down the street pushing a barrow filled with boiled sweets.’

  I was stunned. ‘For six hours?’ I asked.

  ‘With half an hour off for lunch,’ he replied brightly. But, there was worse to come.

  By the time I’d put on the padding, clambered into the red and white suit, attached the woolly beard and donned the floppy hat, I was perspiring. I grabbed the wheelbarrow and walked out into the street. The sunlight was dazzling and the temperature was 22 degrees. When I reached the end of High Street I was awash. However, I persisted. The pay was good and I consoled myself with the thought I’d lose a lot of the weight that was still crippling my social progress. As the end of the second week approached, the retailers’ association asked if I’d work for an extra three hours on the night of Christmas Eve. I could have an hour off for dinner.

  Christmas Eve turned out to be the hottest day of the fortnight. At 4 pm I struggled out of the Santa Claus costume, made the mistake of thinking I deserved a beer, and walked to the Gresham.

  I vowed I would only have one beer and my resolve held. Joe Waller had been at the hotel since early afternoon and clearly had consumed more than one beer. He was working on rubbish trucks at the time and was dressed in a khaki singlet and a pair of cut-off jeans. At some point he’d lost his gumboots. Joe asked what I was doing. I answered I was Santa Claus. ‘Bullshit,’ he replied. Vainly, I tried to convince him but he just kept shaking his head and saying, ‘Bullshit.’

  I was about to leave when he asked me where I was going. ‘I’ve got to get into the costume,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘Gotta see this,’ and he downed his beer and followed me out of the hotel. I should have told him to go away but I knew that was pointless. We arrived at the shop where the costume was stored.

  ‘You wait here,’ I said firmly. ‘I’ll get changed, come down and prove to you I’m Santa Claus.’

  When I returned, Joe was slumped on the footpath with his back against a shop window. ‘What do you think?’ I asked.

  He glanced up. ‘Who the hell are you?’

  I pulled the beard down. ‘It’s me,’ I hissed.

  He started laughing and struggled to his feet. ‘Jesus Christ, it’s true.’

  I readjusted the beard. ‘Now you bugger off,’ I said. ‘I’ve work to do.’

  Suddenly, Joe grabbed my arm. ‘Can I watch you?’ he asked.

  I took a deep breath. ‘All I do is hand out boiled sweets.’

  He tightened his grip on my arm. ‘Do ya say “Yo Ho Ho”?’

  I was getting nowhere. ‘Look, you can follow me to that corner and then you’ve got to go.’ He continued to laugh and we set off.

  This was the scene. Santa Claus is negotiating his way through crowds of shoppers pushing a wheelbarrow full of sweets. Half a pace behind him weaves a bearded man with no shoes wearing a singlet and frayed jeans. We stop at the agreed corner. ‘You’re not handing many out.’

  I turned to him. ‘Stop talking to me,’ I said sharply. ‘You’re scaring the children.’

  Joe’s mind was elsewhere. ‘Tell you what,’ he said, ‘I could be your elf and help you get rid of the sweets.’ People were beginning to stare at us.

  ‘I do not need an elf.’

  But, he had it all planned out. ‘And if we had a lolly scramble we’d get rid of them in a flash.’ To prove this, Joe reached into the wheelbarrow, grabbed a handful of boiled sweets and hurled them across the road. The air was punctuated with the sound of hard sweets pinging on the roof of parked cars. This was getting out of control. In a denial of the Christmas spirit, parents were actually shepherding the children away from Santa Claus. I pleaded with Joe to stop throwing sweets but he was starting to enjoy himself and as he fired off another handful started yelling, ‘Yo Ho Ho.’

  At that moment, I saw two police constables moving through the crowd. Luckily, Joe spotted them too and stopped throwing the sweets. The constables did not look pleased. One of them pointed to me. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked bluntly.

  I can’t think what was going through my head. I replied, ‘Santa Claus.’ Their eyes turned flinty.

  Then, Joe piped up. ‘And I’m his elf.’

  One constable brought his face very close to mine. ‘Listen, Santa,’ he said. ‘We’re going to give you and your elf five minutes to get off the street, otherwise we’ll be taking you into custody.’

  Joe started to speak. ‘You can’t arrest Santa. Think of the kiddies.’ I shut him up by jumping on his bare foot.

  I don’t know whatever happened to Joe Waller. I saw him sometimes hanging around student parties warming his buttocks by the fire. One night he smashed all the windows in his flat. After that, there was silence.

  Chapter 8

  THE REAL WORLD

  Earlier I’d made a pact with my mother that unless I passed my examinations there was little point in returning to university for a second year. Normally, I might have disputed this, but it was hard to justify another year after my embarrassing results. I would have to find a job.

  Our next-door neighbour was a formidable man named Jim Caffin. He had a ram-rod stance, a broad chest and always held his pipe between his teeth in the middle of his mouth. He was the chief reporter of The Press newspaper. My mother and stepfather sometimes socialised with Caffin and his wife. I hardly knew them but my mother suddenly started talking about a career in newspapers. I always thought I could have a flair for writing although my early poems tended to deny this. But, I had never thought about writing for a living.

  Suddenly, it clicked and I remonstrated with my mother. ‘Have you been trying to get me a job on The Press?’ She made a flustered denial and then, taking the offensive, told me it wouldn’t do any harm to talk to Mr Caffin. After a week, I did. He explained that occasionally what he called cadetships came up on the newspaper. He admitted cadets were at the bottom of the hierarchy but if a vacancy
occurred it was normally filled by a young person — rarely a woman — who could write intelligible English and wanted to make a career in journalism. He suggested I might like to keep an eye on the vacancy columns.

  Two months later, I applied for the job of cadet reporter on The Press. I was interviewed by the deputy editor who was unimpressed by my university career, but cheered up a bit when he learnt I’d been to Christchurch Boys’ High School. There was a tradition in Christchurch that when meeting a man you judged him by his answer to your first question, ‘And, what school did you go to?’ Somehow, I got the job. I knew Caffin knew nothing about it because of his look of incomprehension as I walked into the newsroom. He strode to his office and slammed the door.

  The Press was an institution and it can be unwise to voluntarily admit yourself into an institution. During the first weeks I sharpened pencils, made cups of tea and observed my new life. No one explained to me what was going on. They had a newspaper to get out and didn’t have time to explain anything to a rather unprepossessing youth who was sharpening pencils. I was introduced to the editor, Mr Cant. He looked at me over a proof, a length of copy that was about to go into the newspaper, and said, ‘Hello.’ And turned back to his reading. I started to get nervous. This was not what I’d expected, but then I’d never known what to expect.

  The newsroom at The Press was large, noisy and filled with smoke. Near the windows sat the sub-editors behind lines of geometrically positioned desks. The chief sub was Mr Glasgow, a round-faced, genial man who, like nearly everyone else, smoked a pipe.

  Beside him was the sub-editor who was responsible for the local pages. He was a rather crazed man whom I avoided if possible. So, it went down the line. The sub-editor in charge of the cable pages, overseas news, the sport sub-editor, and then the sub-editor who dealt with the farming pages. In front of this stately array were the desks of the reporters. There was a hierarchy here as well. I never fully understood what it was, but I knew I was somewhere near the bottom. This was the final era of the classic ‘Hollywood’ reporter. Certainly, none of The Press reporters wore fedoras with a card reading ‘Press’ stuck in their hat-bands, but they never spoke without a cigarette in their mouths, they flipped their writing pads, always wrote in pencil and knew everything about everyone in town.

  My favourite was Dave Corboy, the head court reporter. I was finally assigned to be one of his juniors. Corboy was short, slightly stout with a gravelly voice and a gregarious personality. He knew everyone in the Christchurch legal community and more about the court system than many lawyers. Dave could sniff out a story three kilometres away. When we gathered each morning and waited to be assigned to a particular case and courtroom, Dave would say, ‘Forget about Number Two. It’s nothing and the murder in the Supreme Court’s boring until tomorrow. The real story’s in Number One with the man who tried to set fire to his wife. On second thoughts, McPhail, you do Number Two. It’s parking fines.’

  This was a time when every offence, including the most minor, was listed and reported in newspapers. So I embarked on the dubious career move of recording my own parking violations. I recall one moment when the chief court reporter, Pat Plunkett, of the opposition newspaper the Star slid in beside me on the reporters’ bench. He was just checking around and listened for a few minutes. He heard my name mentioned twice, nudged me in the ribs and said, ‘My word. You’re quite a little performer, aren’t you?’

  I worked as a court reporter for more than a year. I was hoping to cover the big trials: the murders, the extortions, even, heaven help me, the assaults with deadly weapons. But all I got was the occasional burglar, a few shoplifters, two indecent exposures and the curious case of a man who tried to assault his wife with an empty hot water bottle. This didn’t seem like Pulitzer Prize material.

  The Press employed a remarkable collection of idiosyncratic people. One reporter was paralysed from the waist down. He continued working. He dragged himself around the newsroom on crutches, but no one paid much attention. They weren’t callous. Everyone agreed that’s what he wanted, so they let him get on with it. One of the newspaper’s most endearing reporters slept in a car in Cathedral Square. The assistant illustrations editor was alleged to be a de-frocked priest. The proof-reading room was said to be a hive of unstable Communists, or, even worse, out-of-work actors.

  One of the most enduring characters was the illustrations editor himself, George Creeth. He was an imposing man who spoke rarely but examined every photograph that was to appear in the newspaper with a magnifying glass. I was assigned to write captions for the photographs. He found my style frivolous and imprecise. I was told that every person in a photograph must be identified by their correct name and even those who couldn’t be seen had to be named. I was permitted to add the words ‘partially obscured’ if they weren’t visible.

  Some years later a friend held the same job. It was driving him mad so he would look at a group photograph, count the number of faces — say, there were 12 — and added a thirteenth name. Then, he’d write ‘Nigel Harrison, partially obscured’. It took the editorial department four months to tumble to the trick.

  George Creeth made a lasting impression on me. He was elegant and aloof and he regarded me as a minor irritation, like a flea bite. But, he was meticulous. Every word I wrote was examined, each comma was considered. Creeth had a structured view of the world, which might explain why the newspaper often published vague photographs entitled: ‘A recent aerial view of Darfield’, or ‘Culverden from the air’. He was an unforgiving and righteous monarchist. There is a story that, during one Royal Tour, he produced a photographic supplement for the newspaper. There were over 15 lovingly composed photographs of Her Majesty and the Duke. Before the newspaper went to print, the editorial staff ran off one supplement that didn’t contain any photographs and delivered it to Creeth’s home. Two reporters waited to watch Creeth in his dressing gown stroll to get the paper, open it and then run screaming into his house.

  Once every couple of weeks I was assigned to be the night messenger. I started work at 6 pm and didn’t leave until the presses rolled at around 1 am. The job had three parts. First, I was to make tea for the sub-editors and buy dressed-pies from the pie-cart in Latimer Square. My second task was to run sheaves of telegrams across Cathedral Square to the post office in Hereford Street. There were few telephone lines and no faxes so news was passed from newspaper to newspaper by telegraph. My third job was to make more tea and get more dressed-pies before the pie-cart was wheeled away at 12.30 am.

  There was one thing that redeemed all this catering. Around midnight, the presses started to roll. A noise began to build. There was the smell of oil and men in overalls appeared. The noise grew louder. It rumbled across the silence of Cathedral Square and then a ghostly swish could be heard as huge rolls of paper started to revolve. The first edition was being printed. I leaned against the door and felt the trembling floor. I thought, it’s nearly 1 am and I know the most important news in the world and no one else does. When I picked up a copy of the newspaper to take home, it was still warm.

  But I was beginning to have doubts about the job, especially when Jim Caffin roared out of his office, streaming pipe smoke, grabbed a pencil from my hand, made a note on a galley and hurled my pencil in the air. Invariably he’d then spin around and shout, ‘Have you made that phone call?’ Mostly I hadn’t. My stammer was still an unhappy companion and telephone calls were roughly like talking to the Spanish Inquisition.

  Once, Jim Caffin ordered me to ring the Labour member of Parliament, Mabel Howard. I had no problem with this except I was going though my murmuring hum and laughing gas stage. I could not say any word commencing with an ‘m’ or an ‘h’. I made the telephone call and heard a small, sharp voice say, ‘Hello?’ I intended to begin by saying, ‘Miss Howard, I’m David McPhail.’ But, then, I hit the first letter of her name and started humming. ‘Mmmmmmmm.’

  A small, crabbed voice shouted, ‘What? Who is this?’

 
Foolishly, I decided to reject etiquette and go straight for her surname. I’d forgotten about the laughing gas. I attempted to say ‘Howard’ and went, ‘Hahahahaha.’ This elderly woman heard a maniac humming and laughing down her line and promptly slammed the telephone down.

  Then, my life changed. The assistant editor told me that a position had become vacant and I’d been appointed. I was to become the mid-Canterbury correspondent of The Press. This sounded impressive until I learned I would have to live in Ashburton. Now, I had nothing against Ashburton. It seemed like a quiet, rural town and I doubted that the mid-Canterbury correspondent would be over-worked. But, there was a complicating factor. Her name was Anne McLeod. We had been going out for several years and I was deeply in love with Anne. There was no chance of her joining me in Ashburton because she was just about to finish her nursing training.

  I felt dislocated and unhappy during the first weeks of my new job. It didn’t help that on the very first day my Mini blew up 15 kilometres north of Ashburton and I arrived for work splattered with oil and two hours late. The Press office manager was unenthusiastic and the reporter I was replacing told me this was a bad start.

  The newspaper accommodated me in a motor camp until I found a flat. But, as the weeks passed, I felt less and less inclined to look for somewhere to stay. A flat would indicate I intended to remain and this was by no means certain. So, I started commuting between Christchurch and Ashburton spending only the occasional night at the motor camp. Even today I still can’t understand what was going through my head. The carrot-on-a-stick to entice anyone to take the Ashburton job was the hint that after two or three years the reporter would be assigned to the Parliamentary Gallery in Wellington. Yet, I was steadfastly distancing myself from that opportunity. I didn’t like small town life or small town news and I loved Anne. So, after two months, I asked if I could return to Christchurch. The editor refused to bring me back. On The Press you did as you were told and I was to be the mid-Canterbury correspondent for at least two years. So, I resigned. In those days, nobody resigned from the newspaper. It was an act of betrayal. You were expected to remain at your post until you either retired or died. Jim Caffin was grim saying I was making a grave mistake and my mother became apoplectic.