Carnival Sky

by Owen Marshall

  Something niggled at the back of his mind, and then he had it. The woman who had hustled into the men’s toilets and exhorted him to sing to cover her embarrassment. Why hadn’t she just let it all go and then waited until he left? Had she feared he might wait outside the loos to see who emerged? He was too tired to come to any conclusion.

  As he fell asleep he entered a dream of a childhood not his own: running alone in uncouth clothes across frigid steppe, or prairie, with absolute, but inexplicable purpose, and bird cries above him, beseeching and wavering in the wind.

  HIS FATHER DETESTED AND DESPISED CRUELTY of any kind. It was almost always the cause of his rare anger. They used to have white leghorns in a netting run close to the orchard fence. One of Sheff’s boyhood tasks was to mix the mash and scraps for them each morning. The dominant hen kept pecking a lowly one until it lay with a bare and bloodied neck, unable to flee, or defend itself. Warwick strode in and said, ‘I’ve told you and told you, and you’ve taken no damn notice. So be it,’ and he took the aggressor dangling by its yellow legs, wings ajar, to the block and cut its head off cleanly. He ate his share of it with satisfaction. There were moral nuances perhaps, but Sheff had sided with his father.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IN THE MORNING Sheff felt fine, and had forgotten his nosebleed until he saw the pillow case in the washbasin. The incident at the dairy in the rain seemed just as remote: as if imagined, rather than true experience, slipping away like his dream of solitary escape in a foreign infancy. After breakfast he admired the lithograph again, the dark palette and stark symbols. He spent time holding it against the walls to find the best place to hang it. Even after more than two years it was strange to be making such a decision without Lucy’s opinion, and final arbitration. Strange, too, that he was at home and without an office to go to, people to interview, or stories to research. For the first time in many years, his life had an open-ended aspect, and he found that both invigorating and slightly unsettling. How odd not to have any place he should be, at a time specified and for a purpose premeditated.

  He rang his parents in Alexandra to ask after his father. ‘I had my farewell from the paper last night,’ he told his mother.

  ‘Oh yes, I hope that went well. I’m sure they were sorry to lose you. We’ve been talking about you. It’ll be a big change, I imagine. You’ll be able to come down and spend some time with us then, I hope? It’s been months since we’ve seen anything of you.’

  ‘Well, I haven’t sorted myself out yet.’

  ‘Georgie’s been, and you know how busy she is,’ said Belize. Sheff was accustomed to his sister being held up as exemplar.

  ‘I will try. How is he?’ A fatuous enquiry. How is anyone with cancer of the liver and multiple secondary lesions?

  ‘I’ll take the phone through in a minute,’ said Belize, ‘but no, it’s not good at all, I’m afraid. Every test confirms the worst. He doesn’t want to be in the hospital, or hospice, of course, but I worry I can’t give him the sort of care he needs. Dr North’s very good, and a nurse comes to see him regularly, but it’s not the same. People ring, but often he doesn’t want to see them, and that can be embarrassing.’

  ‘Does he get out?’

  ‘We have a drive sometimes now the weather’s warmer,’ said Belize, ‘but he just stares and doesn’t say much.’

  ‘It’s tough on you. I will try to get down. I’m thinking of going overseas for a bit, but I won’t do that before seeing you.’

  ‘That’s good. We still get the paper sent to us and read your pieces. I suppose it will be strange for you for a while not to be working there. Anyway, here he is.’ She had been moving through the house as she talked, and soon Sheff could hear his father laboriously clearing his throat as he prepared to speak.

  ‘How are you keeping?’ Sheff asked him.

  ‘A man of leisure. I sit here and watch television, or fall asleep and dream. The dreams are superior in all respects. I hadn’t realised how awful daytime television is. Occasionally a decent golf tournament on SKY, or something on the history channel, but most of it utter rubbish.’ It was typical of Warwick that he didn’t initially complain of his condition, but his speech had a sort of squeezed huskiness that Sheff hated to hear, for it wasn’t truly his father’s voice. He would be sitting propped by pillows, with the small, flat-screen television on a stool at the foot of his bed. His loose hands with their mottled, crepe skin would be palm down on the blanket, and the thin hair of his crown standing up awry. The brown lawn would show outside his bedroom window, then the roses and the wire fence before the neglected lines of fruit trees, a mid-distance neighbouring house and, farther back, over the broad river and then the town, the sinuous hump of the Dunstan Range with Leaning Rock like a nipple at its highest point. Sheff saw it all and absolutely, although he sat in his study in Auckland and talked to his father about giving up his job. For a moment also he had the strong, dry fragrance of Central Otago, compounded of thyme, briar, tussock, even the schist tors themselves.

  ‘I’ve decided to take some time out,’ said Sheff. ‘I’m going to have a breather and see something more of the world.’

  ‘Well, journalism’s all about options, isn’t it?’ Warwick said. ‘When you want a job again you’re free to go anywhere you like.’ It referred to his own incapacity as much as Sheff’s lack of encumbrance. ‘We had a call from Lucy.’ In his illness, Warwick ignored his son’s separation and spoke as if Sheff and Lucy were still together.

  ‘She told me,’ said Sheff. ‘She’s always been very fond of you. Just about all her time now is spent organising those day-trips from the cruise ships. It’s become quite a thing. She’s got the contacts and she’s so good at detail. It would drive me nuts – all those old folks sleeping on the bus, or crying out for a toilet stop.’

  ‘Oldies often have money, though.’ Sheff’s father retained an accountant’s practicality even when money was of no use to him. ‘Anyway, is she there for a chat?’

  ‘She’s got her own place now. You know that.’

  ‘Of course. Of course. I’m pumped so full of stuff I don’t know if I’m Arthur or Martha.’ Sheff could tell from his tone that he was embarrassed at his forgetfulness and the insensitivity of it.

  ‘That’s okay. You get some rest and I’ll ring again in a few days.’

  ‘I haven’t been too bad lately,’ his father said. It was obviously a lie, but he wished for a positive end to their conversation.

  Sheff’s mother came back to talk, at first some triviality concerning relatives until she reached the kitchen and so beyond Warwick’s hearing. She went on about blood tests, painkillers, weight loss and mood swings. Sheff had heard much of it before, but knew Belize found relief in expressing everything in detail. The least he could do was to be a good listener, and so he encouraged the full recital while unwittingly pulling faces of discomfort as he heard of his father’s decline. ‘He’s so lucky you’re there for him, Mum,’ he said.

  Barely had Belize gone, when the phone rang. Sheff half expected that his mother was phoning back to continue the recital of Warwick’s deterioration, but it was a woman named Rosemary, calling on behalf of the McInnes Foundation about the judging of the investigative journalism award. He was one of three judges, she said. The others were Annabel Powell representing newspaper proprietors, and Dr Gordy Howell of the media studies department at Victoria University. Surely Rosemary was confused with the surnames, but when Sheff queried the similarity she confirmed it, and saw nothing at all unusual in it. ‘Powell and Howell,’ she said with careful enunciation and a trace of haughtiness. ‘Perhaps my diction is at fault.’

  ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s just they’re almost the same, aren’t they?’

  ‘I’d like to arrange a suitable time for the three of you to have a first meeting, and then subsequent opportunities can be agreed on among yourselves,’ Rosemary said, dismissing the rhyming coincidence.

  ‘The sooner the better for me,’ said Sheff. Fewer
obligations in his future suited him if he wished to see his parents and then travel overseas. While Rosemary stressed that the panel need not confine itself to nominated candidates, and covered what she called the ‘processes’, although she promised to send them in written form also, Sheff remained captivated with the possibilities suggested by the surnames of his fellow judges. Cowell and Dowell he persuaded himself he had come across, and Jowell, Lowell, Towell and Vowell families surely deserved to exist. The Bowell and Fowell surnames were more problematic. He wandered in search of the telephone book, and leafed through it as Rosemary talked on.

  ‘So is all that sufficiently clear?’ asked Rosemary eventually.

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Sheff.

  ‘There will be a contract with the other material coming by post. Oh, and the foundation has appointed Dr Howell as panel convenor.’

  ‘Eminently suitable,’ said Sheff, who had never heard of Dr Howell, had no prejudice against his appointment, but was weary of Rosemary’s affectation. He wanted to ask her how much he would be paid as judge, but thought it too mercenary, and instead commended the foundation on its support of journalistic standards. God knows there was a need.

  After the call he paid some bills online and checked emails, deleting the communication that he had won $100,000 in a lottery to which he’d not contributed. Nothing of threat, and nothing of delight. Most of life was spent in such a way. For lunch he decided on tinned sweetcorn on toast and a dark ale. The slice of toast became stuck, and when Sheff on impulse poked at it with a knife without turning off the element, there was a sudden flash and painful kick on his elbow. The smoke alarm went off, beeping persistently. ‘Shut up,’ he ordered, but it went on until he stood on a chair and blew on it. ‘Now shut up,’ he said. His hair felt strangely charged, and when he looked in the mirror he could see strands oscillating from his scalp. He held his hand out to check if it was steady, and was reassured. No harm done, and he ate the toast and corn, drank his dark ale while he skimmed the newspaper with a professional eye. His reaction was almost totally critical, proving that electric shock therapy had no effect on his professional opinions. The toaster was buggered, though, and would have to be replaced. The lunch would be an expensive one. ‘You silly, silly bastard,’ he said reprovingly. He hadn’t reached the stage of answering, but that too might come with more time spent by himself.

  HIS FATHER LIKED TO READ, but not much fiction. He preferred to have real people presented, especially politicians and military commanders. Weighty books with glossy dust jackets on Montgomery, Wavell, Dowding, Patton and Zhukov. Warwick believed that human character is most truly revealed under pressure. He didn’t belong to a library. He said that if a book is worth reading, it’s worth buying and keeping. He was too busy to read simply to pass the time.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘COME IN BY ALL MEANS,’ said Michael. ‘I’d like to catch up. I heard you’d left the paper. Not tomorrow morning, though, and most of my lectures are early afternoon. Apart from that I’m pretty much here all this week.’ His voice on the phone held the same quick warmth that Sheff knew from their time teaching on the journalism course together, and he looked forward to talking with Michael again. In a busy life friends tended to be those people you met up with in the course of your work and, if those circumstances altered, you drifted apart. Friendship required conscious and sometimes inconvenient effort. With a twinge of guilt, Sheff realised that he hadn’t bothered to keep in regular touch with Michael, and was now contacting him when there might be some advantage in doing so.

  As befitted its academic status within the university, the School of Journalism had its home in a modest, thirty-year-old ‘temporary’ building on campus. It lay single-storeyed in the shadow of lofty buildings with equally lofty pretensions, and had an allocation of only one staff park that Sheff knew would be taken. He left his car on the street, and enjoyed his stroll through the grounds. He wondered about an investigative piece on the changing nature of universities, especially the decline of standards and the rise of staff workloads that reduced the opportunity for research and academic publication. He disliked journalism that was deliberately alarmist, but there was justifiable concern there surely. From habit he framed a few paragraph points in his mind as he walked.

  How beautiful in their youth, and aware of their youth and beauty, were many of the women students who roamed the place, and how scruffy and undeserving of their company and favours were the males who accompanied them, or trailed behind. How much better Sheff would be as partner to such women were he twenty years old once more. And why, when he’d been that age, had he wasted so much life on sport and beer, rather than seeking the reward of women’s company, which of course was defined at that age as sex? The question quickly supplanted that of university performance, and as he walked he conjured the names and images of all the girls to whom he’d made love as a student. A disappointingly brief list, and even some of those encounters had ended badly.

  The father of one girl had come to Sheff’s door and threatened him, while his flatmates inside overheard all of it with a delight they often revisited in his presence. After nearly twenty-five years the humiliation of it still occasioned a frisson of horror. ‘I’ll tear your gonads out with my teeth next time, you little prick,’ the father had said. A big man: a building contractor from Silverdale, who had swelled in the doorway until he blocked the sun.

  And there had been long-haired Sandra, who fell asleep beneath him after the capping party while by minimum exertion he prolonged the joy of coitus, thus showing her own stimulus had been somewhat less than his own. A deflating experience for the masculine ego, though as far as he knew she’d shown sufficient compassion not to tell others of it.

  ‘The ivory towers are no more,’ said Michael, after he’d answered Sheff’s knock. ‘Bums on seats. Especially foreign bums, because they pay well.’ Long, chin-heavy face, long, lank hair, and a smile of genuine welcome. His office was that of a squalid muddler: books, dead flies, newspapers, files, magazines, running shoes and food pottles scattered, or heaped unsteadily, around his computer, seeming in inexorable encroachment. The room was small even without the clutter, and Sheff could barely find a track to the only other chair.

  ‘I’m happy to do a semester paper or two,’ said Sheff. ‘You’re still doing one on ethics and protocols, I suppose?’

  ‘I wish I had something to offer. There’s only two of us as it is, and nothing’s secure any more. It’s the three Rs – restructuring, retrenchment and redeployment.’

  ‘Nothing at all?’

  ‘Maybe casual tutoring. Nothing more, I’m afraid. It’s a different world – my God, yes.’

  Both of them were aware of the irony. Sheff had once been in Michael’s chair, young for the appointment and marked as having unusual promise. He had been largely responsible for Michael being appointed as lecturer, and now in an awkward reversal he sought a favour. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Sheff. ‘I just thought I’d keep my hand in while I sorted things out. I’ve about decided to go overseas.’

  ‘It’s a bugger. I really wish I could do something. Maybe later in the year.’

  ‘No problem. Anyway, it’s good to keep in touch. You get so bogged down in work, don’t you?’ In the trembling, transparent jaws of a sandwich container close by, he could see the remains of bread, cheese, pork and sallow, degenerating lettuce. The smell was surely yellow. There was name for that conflation, but Sheff couldn’t recall it. Even as he continued the conversation, part of his mind persisted with a word search.

  ‘Have you got time to come over to the club for drink?’ asked Michael, pleased to move from the professional to the social.

  ‘Sure. Why not?’ Time was something he now had in good supply. ‘I might pick your brains about the best investigative stuff over the last year,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow I’m getting together with fellow judges to talk about the McInnes award.’

  ‘Who are the others?’

  ‘Annabel Po
well, and Gordy Howell.’

  ‘Sounds like a vaudeville comedy duo,’ said Michael.

  ‘Don’t get me started. Annabel will be okay. Know anything about the Howell guy?’

  ‘Never heard of him. Actually I think the field’s a bit thin this year. I can’t think of any really significant exposé stories. The usual celebrity beat-ups and credit card overruns, but nothing that showed up someone with a real nose.’

  Michael was already at the door and putting on his jacket. The elbow sweep dislodged a cardboard box on which the words ‘business expenses/tax’ in fading felt-pen had been crossed out and ‘assessment moderation’ added. He took no corrective action, yet paused, and his face became passive as something crossed his mind. ‘I suppose there’s Robert Malcolm’s stuff on overseas tertiary students. Raging institutional avarice and irresponsibility, eh?’

  ‘True.’ But Sheff wasn’t pleased to have Malcolm’s worth endorsed. He knew him quite well, disliked his manner, and had an unacknowledged inclination to hinder any success due him. Once at a seminar Malcolm had pointed out a flaw in Sheff’s presentation on the use of overseas press agencies. It wasn’t the correction that rankled so much as the collective laugh that had followed it.