Some Here Among Us

by Peter Walker

  ‘What’s Morgan doing on the floor?’ said Tolerton.

  ‘I don’t know what he’s up to down there,’ said FitzGerald. He knew Tolerton didn’t approve of marijuana.

  Morgan was on his hands and knees. He had begun journeying on hands and knees to the couch. It was a long, long way. He thought of pyramids in the far distance. Their tops were white with eagle-droppings.

  ‘Of course,’ he thought. ‘That’s what they were for! For eagles to perch on.’

  ‘What’s the matter with him?’ said Tolerton.

  ‘He’s drunk,’ said FitzGerald.

  ‘He’d better stay the night,’ said Tolerton.

  ‘You’d better stay the night,’ said FitzGerald, calling out to Morgan as if he was deaf.

  ‘I better stay,’ said Morgan. Stay-ay-ay-ay— he heard.

  ‘You better stay tonight,’ said Human Sanity, who was suddenly anxious to go back to the party at once. Why had he ever left? The plump girl, Trisha, whose party it was, had more or less invited him to stay the night with her. He imagined being in bed with Trisha. But then he remembered that he wanted some of Morgan’s pot and that it would be easier to take it from him outside.

  ‘He can sleep on the sofa,’ said Tolerton.

  ‘You can sleep on the sofa,’ FitzGerald called. Morgan was kneeling now, his elbows on the sofa.

  ‘He’s not staying here,’ said Rod Orr, who had just come in the room.

  ‘Really?’ said FitzGerald.

  ‘Not in this house!’ said Rod.

  FitzGerald gazed at him in surprise. Rod himself was surprised at his own vehemence, but he liked it. He felt pleased. His eyes blazed. He had been waiting for this encounter, he realised. All his best wine they had drunk. And Race had not even left a note. He still felt hurt at that. And the curtains! When he came back from Chadwick’s wedding he found that his curtains had been taken down and hung back to front. Why? What did it mean? It was a code! It must have meant something. Anger surged through him.

  ‘What the fuck,’ said Rod, ‘did you do to my curtains?’

  ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ said FitzGerald, who had no idea what Rod was talking about.

  ‘Curtains!’ said Morgan. He remembered sleeping under Rod’s red curtain. He remembered the golden instruments on the curtain. Race was there as well. ‘That’s why I have to go to Auckland,’ he thought. ‘Tell Race what the pyramids were for. Tombs so tall that eagles would come and perch on them.’ He saw an eagle in the azure. He wanted to say something about that but the words began to echo again as soon as he formed them.

  ‘He’s not staying here,’ said Rod Orr, now very calm, as if stating a well-known fact.

  ‘I will take him home,’ said Human Sanity.

  ‘I’m not staying here,’ said Morgan solemnly. Hilarity filled him and almost made it impossible to speak unless he was very careful. ‘I mean, look – no curtains!’

  ‘Get him out,’ said Rod.

  Human Sanity reached under Morgan’s arms and hauled him up, and led him into the hall. Meiklejohn unfurled himself from the hallway chair. He looked furious at being left there unattended. He and Human Sanity and Morgan went out the door.

  ‘Wait,’ said FitzGerald. ‘I’m coming.’

  He picked up his helmet and came out onto the front step and closed the door and put his helmet on under the outside light. Then he followed the others up the steps.

  ‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ said Morgan, fending off Human Sanity.

  The thought of Rod Orr in a rage made him laugh. Morgan laughed, then fell down the gap between the steps and the house.

  ‘Jesus!’ said FitzGerald, looking down into the gap. ‘You OK?’

  Morgan stood up and laughed, and fell over again. FitzGerald went back down the steps and helped him to his feet.

  ‘I’m leaving you here,’ said Meiklejohn. He had suddenly realised how intoxicated Morgan was. ‘I’m wasting my time here,’ he thought.

  He went up the steps to the road and looked back down at them.

  ‘Goodnight!’ he said and went away at a fast pace.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Human Sanity. ‘He is a very irritable man.’

  ‘Give me a hand here,’ said FitzGerald.

  Human Sanity came down the steps and between them they helped Morgan up the steps and onto the street. They stood on the footpath.

  ‘OK,’ said FitzGerald. ‘Here I love you and leave you.’

  He lowered his visor, got on his bike, kicked down and roared away with such speed that he was at the far end of the road with his words still hanging in the air.

  His tail light shone red and then the brake light shone red and both tilted to the ground as he took the corner.

  ‘Sandra Isbister and Candy Dabchek,’ thought Morgan.

  The sound of the bike faded. Morgan felt sad. He wanted to go off on a bike himself. He wanted to go to Auckland. He had something important to tell Race. He stood there swaying. Something very important, but what was it? It was – it was—

  ‘Put your fingers down your throat,’ said Human Sanity.

  Morgan put his fingers down his throat but nothing happened.

  ‘Give me the pot,’ said Human Sanity.

  Morgan took out the other joint and handed it over. Human Sanity put it in his jacket pocket.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.

  They walked along the street a few yards. Morgan thought of Rod Orr’s eyes blazing. He laughed. Then he thought of Lucas, his brother, flying down through the pine branches. Morgan leapt at the branch of a tree overhanging the pavement and swung from it for a while. Then he let go. He walked along a bit further, then fell on the ground.

  ‘Get up,’ said Human Sanity. He stopped and looked down at Morgan. Morgan’s eyes were closed. Human Sanity felt rage. Everyone else had run away. Meiklejohn. The guy on the motorbike. He’d been left holding the baby! Why should he stay? Especially now that he had the pot. All he had to do was get back to the party and find plump Trisha.

  ‘Get up, black bastard,’ he said to Morgan.

  Morgan didn’t move.

  ‘You black bastard,’ said Human Sanity.

  Morgan didn’t move. Human Sanity saw his mouth twitch.

  ‘Black fucking bastard,’ he said.

  Morgan didn’t move. Human Sanity looked down at Morgan, then stared all around in the dark. There was a phone box at the corner. He went along and rang a taxi. A taxi arrived in about two minutes. It came cruising very slowly along the street. Human Sanity could tell just from its slow deliberation, from the expression of its headlights so to speak, that it wouldn’t take Morgan. The cab stopped by him. He got in beside the driver and told him to go along the road. Morgan was lying on the footpath. The driver stopped and looked out at him.

  ‘I’m not taking that,’ he said.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ said Human Sanity.

  He jumped out of the cab and heaved Morgan to his feet, then opened the back door with one hand.

  ‘I’m not taking him,’ said the cabbie. ‘He’ll be sick in my cab.’

  ‘No, no. He’s been sick,’ said Human Sanity.

  ‘I have to think of my upholstery,’ said the driver.

  ‘Polstry?’ said Human Sanity.

  ‘You try cleaning up after them,’ said the driver.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ said Human Sanity. ‘He is bachelor of arts.’

  ‘Ha!’ said the driver.

  ‘It’s only a short way,’ said Human Sanity.

  ‘That’s nice,’ said the driver. ‘Shut my door.’

  Human Sanity closed the back door with his foot and the cab drove away. He let Morgan go. Morgan fell on the footpath. A light rain began falling. All the streetlights across the valleys, on Brooklyn hill and Mornington and Melrose, turned hazily gold in the rain. Human Sanity looked around.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he said. He went out and stood in the road and waved his arms at an approaching car. It swerved around him not brak
ing and drove on. He went back to the phone box and called emergency.

  ‘Do you require an ambulance?’ a woman asked.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Police?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. Then he thought of the joint in his pocket. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Which service do you require?’

  ‘None,’ said Human Sanity.

  ‘I have notified the police,’ said the woman. Human Sanity came out of the booth and put the joint inside his sock. A car had stopped along the street. He ran along the pavement. There was a man standing looking down at Morgan.

  ‘I can’t get him home,’ said Human Sanity.

  ‘That’s OK,’ said the man. ‘Up you get, sonny boy.’

  They heaved Morgan to his feet and put him in the car.

  ‘There was a tiger at the party,’ said Morgan. ‘It - it - it - it—’

  ‘It what?’ said the man.

  ‘It came in by the gate,’ said Morgan.

  ‘Course it did,’ said the man.

  Morgan fell asleep. They drove three hundred yards around the corner to the bottom of the zig-zag.

  ‘Here,’ said Human Sanity, who had dropped Morgan before.

  The car stopped.

  ‘We’re here!’ said Morgan.

  ‘Someone’s woken up,’ said the man.

  Morgan looked out the window.

  ‘That’s the zig,’ he said. ‘Further up’s the zag. Just so’s you know.’

  ‘He’s all right now, see?’ said the man. ‘It happens to the best of us.’

  Morgan and Human Sanity got out the car. The car drove off. They went up the path. Human Sanity took the joint out of his sock and put it in his inside jacket pocket. Halfway up the first section of the zig-zag, Morgan began to stagger. At the turn, he sagged. Human Sanity tried to hold him up, but he went down and lay there.

  ‘Oh, you black fucking bastard,’ said Human Sanity. He bent down and looked at Morgan. He slapped his face and looked hard at him again. Then he stood up and stared around. He could see four or five houses high above him, through the trees, but which was Morgan’s? There were no lights on in any of them. He was going to start up the path but the thought of knocking on the doors of those high dark houses quelled him. He thought of Trisha. He came back and looked down at Morgan. It had stopped raining. There were even one or two stars out among the clouds. Human Sanity took off his jacket and laid it over Morgan, and he stood looking at him for a moment. Then he turned and ran away as fast as he could down the path and across the street and along the avenue, turning his head again and again and even running backwards for a few paces at a time in case a taxi came along behind him, going the same way as he was into town.

  After a while Morgan woke up. The stars were out, the wind blew a little. A few rain drops fell out of the trees and then stopped. He lay there a moment, thinking. Where was he? He had been dreaming that he was in the sun. But then he opened his eyes and found he was in the dark, alone, on a cold hard path. But why? Why was he here in the dark, all alone? He felt sad. He felt bitter at fate. He remembered walking along the road with Human Sanity, but then what happened? He was going to Auckland, that was part of it, but why was he going there? There was something he had to do there. So why had he ended up here on this cold path? He lay there a moment and felt sad and sorry for himself. ‘I have never been happy, not once in my life,’ he told himself. Then he thought of living in the sand-hills of Ninety Mile Beach with his troop of runaway kids. He was the leader. They lived in the dunes for days. What on earth did we eat? he thought. He remembered one night they looked along the beach in the gloom and saw a pick-up truck parked, nose towards the sea, about half a mile away. He and one of the other kids ran across the sand and crept up to the truck. The fishermen were standing in the surf, their backs to the beach. In the tray of the truck was a single big fish. Morgan picked it up. It was still alive! The scaly hull turned slowly astern in his hands. Then away they ran, taking the fish. They ran along the sand half a mile and up into the dunes.

  Then Morgan recalled a detail he had forgotten for years. They had run backwards. It was quite calculated – if the fishermen tried to track them down, all they would find were footprints coming towards the truck.

  ‘You little devils!’ Morgan thought. ‘You cunning little rogues.’ He felt almost shocked. Then another detail came to mind. They were naked! They had both stripped before setting off to raid the truck in the dusk. Why on earth did we do that, he wondered. To be invisible, as free as the wind! Morgan sat up. He remembered running naked in the mild night air. A strange garment – Human Sanity’s jacket – fell off him. He didn’t know what it was and let it fall. Then they had reached the sand-hills and tracked inland and hid on the heights and watched the pick-up. Nothing happened for a while. Then they saw the men come up from the sea. There was a pause, but only for a minute or two – then the headlights flashed on and that old jalopy took off, it came rushing south towards them and went tearing past, fifty, sixty miles an hour, slewing in the sand as if the devils of hell were after it.

  Morgan wanted to laugh. ‘Those superstitious Maoris,’ he thought . . . A vast beach. Dusk. Not a soul to be seen. And the catch of the day – one big fish – gone.

  Ghosts!

  The truck vanished away in the south.

  ‘And it was only us,’ thought Morgan. ‘Those crazy superstitious Maoris.’

  He wanted to laugh but he felt sad still and he wanted to go home. And to go to Auckland in the morning. He stood up. He must be at the top of the zig-zag, he thought. He took a few steps along the way. The path was tangled with bushes. He was puzzled at that. And there was a faint light down to the left which he had never noticed before. An orange glow, peacefully showing through long stems of the grass. He had come along that path a hundred times and had never seen that a light was there.

  ‘I’ll just take a look,’ he thought, ‘and then – bed.’ There was a low fence in the way. He felt sad still, and careless, and daring. He thought of Lucas, his brother, jumping from the top of the tree.

  Morgan climbed the little fence and stepped out.

  At that moment he saw the top of the streetlight below – a dirty grey helmet – and he felt nothing underfoot and a bolt of dread and disbelief went through him.

  ‘I was only at the zig!’ he thought.

  4

  It was late when Race woke the next morning. He could tell from the silence. The reef-rumble of commuter traffic from New North Road had subsided. It must be after nine. And spring had arrived – he could tell that as well, almost before he opened his eyes. The spring had come in the night, high, warm, unseen. He lay listening for sounds in the house. Nothing. They must have already gone in, Panos and Busoni. He got out of bed and went over to the window and lifted the blind. Yes, there it was: you could see spring had come just from the look of the sky. A flock of little clouds floated above the factory roofs like lambs straying across a field. Broken glass glinted on the grass verge across the street. The panels of the phone-booth had been smashed. The receiver dangled from a metal-spiralled cord. The smell of new-baked bread came from the Tip-Top factory on New North Road. Suddenly Race felt a deep, shocking kind of gloom. Christ, he thought, where did that come from? And it stayed with him – a savage black gloom – no, not black, he thought. He saw the blue sky and the green grass and the glass glint in the verge and those were its colours. Maybe it was the spring itself, he thought, the idea of spring in the back streets that depressed him. He stood at the window and felt it turn away and sink into the depths. He went to the wardrobe and put on a shirt and pants and went down the hall to the kitchen. ‘House to myself,’ he said aloud, but when he came down to the kitchen there was Busoni standing at the bench. Busoni was naked. He liked running round the place naked.

  ‘You still here?’ Busoni said. ‘I thought you had lectures at nine.’

  ‘I slept in,’ said Race.

  ‘Toast?’

  ‘Toast
,’ said Race.

  ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Coffee.’

  ‘Jews want coffee, Jews want toast,’ said Busoni.

  ‘How exactly do you mean?’ said Race.

  ‘This waitress I know,’ said Busoni. ‘She goes round chewing her gum and says: “D’youse want coffee? D’youse want toast?” ’

  ‘They want coffee,’ said Race.

  ‘And are you in fact Jewish?’

  ‘I have Jewish antecedents. But they jumped ship, our lot. One became a bishop.’

  ‘A bishop in the family tree,’ said Busoni, rolling his eyes upwards.

  ‘Can I still have coffee?’

  ‘I am preparing your coffee,’ said Busoni.

  The toaster popped. Busoni went to the old glass-doored wooden cupboard and peered in.

  ‘Hello, little pot of Communist jam!’ he said. ‘Are you all there is to go on my toast this morning?’

  ‘Communist?’ said Race.

  Busoni held up the jar like Yorick’s skull.

  ‘This here is Commie red-cherry jam from Poland, Poland,’ he said.

  He put the jam down on the table. The smell of newly baked bread came in a waft through the screen door.

  ‘Hey, hey!’ said Busoni. ‘It’s spring!’

  He slapped his upper belly with both hands like a bongo drummer. Then he poured the coffee and swung a cup across the table to Race. He buttered his toast and put cherry jam on it then went out the screen door into the back garden. The screen door banged. The grass was very long. No one had done any gardening out there for years. Race went out the screen door and it banged again. He stood on the back porch with his coffee. Busoni walked away holding two pieces of toast, one in each hand, coffee mug hooked on an index finger. His dog was leaping by his thigh. Busoni held both his arms out wide.

  ‘Down, sir, down!’ Busoni said. His voice was charged with happiness. A blonde girl walked fast through the dining room behind Race and went into the bathroom. Busoni had a series of girls through his room. Sometimes you heard their screams: they had encountered Busoni’s rats, Radio and Television, which were not even white rats from a shop but wild brown baby rats Busoni had found in a nest in the back garden and taken in and trained, and which lived in his room, in the pocket of an old tweed overcoat, and which arrived questing on his pillows in the depths of night. Busoni was an acting student with Panos. Race watched him in the sunlight like someone in a photo – his waitresses, his dog, his rats, his clean shoulder-blades. Then Race felt the shock again – this time a dreary bleakness. It’s the spring, he thought. It must be that. Spring arriving in a grimy city . . .