True Stars

by Kidman, Fiona

  Only when it came to it, he wasn’t inside the grounds. As the day drew closer, he could see it wasn’t going to happen. He was outside, and a bunch of creeps and weirdos were blocking the roadway, and him and his mates had to deal with them.

  ‘Give ’em enough rope and they’ll hang themselves,’ were the orders.

  He stuck to the rules, like everyone else in the squad. The supporters went down the road after the protesters.

  Amandla, Amandla, Amandla Ngawhetu.

  The cry chilled his heart. What goddam spook language was this? Even at this last moment, before he withdrew the final vestiges of sympathy he might have for what would befall these people, he wondered, why couldn’t they just be New Zealanders like everyone else? Like him?

  The crowd behind him shouted:

  We want rugby, we want rugby, give us rugby, go home commies give us a four what do we want rugby rugby rugby tour.

  The squad entered a property by a back entrance and crouched beside a fence.

  There was a thwack of bottles in the distance, and then silence. Someone peering through the cracks, said that senior officers had gone and quietened things down. Campbell, he supposed, talking to the protesters and the spectators, negotiating. Pleading, he thought with disgust. Stupid dopey old Campbell, playing nursemaid. He was an old woman. He couldn’t stand Campbell.

  O’Meara felt his pulse fluttering. He knew, with great clarity, that he did not want things to quieten down. It was time to take a stand. Under his hand was a beautiful baton, fifty-five centimetres long, with a thirteen centimetre handle at right angles to the shaft. A beautiful smooth, shining, never-before-used-in-New-Zealand, American PR24.

  Suddenly he was glad to be out here, dressed in his riot gear, and not inside the grounds. He was about to keep his country beautiful, worth living in, and living for. As long as there was action.

  The command came. As one body, the squad rose from behind the fence, moving down the road towards the protesters with a rhythmical, even tread.

  ‘Move, Move, Move,’ they chanted, and it was like the high chords of church music, a song he had known from his childhood.

  He could still see their faces, their silly cowering afraid faces. There was one in particular that he remembered, a woman with frizzy hair and largeish hips, a real do-gooder, her and her bloke, one of those greenies; a couple who were always looking for something to make a fuss about, and get away with it. This time they weren’t going to. He took the man first. The PR24 sang through the air and connected with just the right solid note; then there was blood.

  The woman tried to protect him. He was a little kinder, going for the side of her arm so that her body was hurled away. Afterwards he was sorry that he hadn’t given her the full treatment too. Women, out there, making trouble in a world of men. He thought of his mother, she wouldn’t do that.

  The next woman was easier.

  The second woman had got her comeuppance in the end; she was dead now. But the first one kept coming back to haunt him. It had been war from the beginning, from that first moment. She never learned her place.

  And now, here she was, walking towards him with the line of policemen, his mates who had gone soft on him.

  The police were calling something, he didn’t know whether it was to him, or to Gary and Jason who had been his prey because they had let him down just like everyone else. He couldn’t hear, as his breath rasped in his chest from the chase, and the wind roared and the spiral of papers in the sky swelled above him.

  The raw stump of Jason’s leg was causing him intolerable agony. He knew he should be walking towards the police, but it was impossible for him to take another step. He stooped, releasing the strap which held the leg, hopping on one foot, and reached for Gary’s shoulder in an impossible attempt to hold his balance. But Gary had begun to move at last, waving the gun around as if uncertain whom he should point it at. With the other men, Campbell raised his weapon.

  ‘We’re matter,’ said Jason, quite reasonably. ‘Just matter in the universe.’ He hopped, about face, holding his leg aloft.

  In that moment O’Meara took his eyes from the oncoming police and the woman, startled by Jason’s sudden movement. He saw something pointed in the sky; a weapon, he thought. In the blinding and uncertain light he raised his own gun and fired.

  Someone else fired too, but he was not sure who it was. The shots resounded round the walls of the gully, as if to frighten the huddled bulldozers. Gary screamed in pain, rolling on the ground and clutching his foot. O’Meara laid down his gun and walked towards Jason’s body, waiting for the others to come.

  15

  Nick sent Rose a Virago postcard from London. He had gone there to order new equipment for Lyle Warner’s business which he had bought out at a rock-bottom price. The card was edged with a dull burgundy stripe and inscribed with a long quote from Maurice Guest, a novel by Henry Handel Richardson whom Rose had not heard of before, and at first thought was a man. Part of the quote read: ‘He heaped on her all the spiritual perfections that answered to her appearance. And he did not, for a time, observe anything to make him waiver in his faith that she was whiter, stiller, and more unapproachable — of a different clay, in short, from other women.’

  She wondered if the title was a low blow, but then she remembered that Nick had held her hand, and his clumsy kiss. It was not true, this message that he had sent her. Once it might have been, but that was before the last wound, the sound of gunfire. Consumed by the presence of violent death, she would never be entirely still again.

  There was plenty of money in her bank account, Morris Applebloom told her.

  She realised the shares Kit had put in her name. It surprised Rose that he had bought ones which had survived the crash so well. She wondered if he might have forgotten he still owned them, and insisted that half the proceeds go to him. ‘We’re civilised,’ she told Morris as she drew out all the money that was left and closed the account. It was during her absolutely last visit to Weyville.

  Which was more than she felt could be said of Morris and the beautiful and inexplicable Sarah. They had bought a restored Bentley and drove around Weyville in it together. They had never looked happier.

  ‘What are you going to do with the money?’ Morris asked Rose when she collected her cheque.

  ‘I’m helping to finance a co-operative of women film makers,’ she said.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ Morris offered, and she knew if he could have stopped her from taking the money he would. Probably he believed she was as mad as her sister.

  Hortense said, ‘Morris’ll never take Kit’s seat now. This electorate doesn’t wear philanderers very well.’

  ‘You used to think Morris was a bit of a devil,’ Rose observed. ‘Some people might still like him.’

  Hortense looked serious and reminded her that women comprised fifty-one per cent of the electorate and explained, as if to a child, that tastes had changed, and that where once women might have admired Morris, they now perceived him as a rat. ‘The fact is, we’re stuck with your ex,’ she said.

  ‘Does it make much difference?’ Rose asked.

  ‘I suppose not. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. When Nick comes home we’ll just have to get stuck into Party work again and hope for the best.’

  ‘Is that what Nick wants?’

  Hortense stared at her, suddenly convulsed, as if an impossibly funny idea had just occurred to her. She shook her head, dismissing whatever it was. ‘He will,’ she announced.

  ‘Good luck,’ Rose said.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’ve left the Party.’

  Hortense looked blank. ‘Shit.’

  ‘You’re saner than me, Sis,’ Rose whispered when she saw Katrina. She had managed to have her brought south.

  ‘Ah bullshit.’ Katrina seemed quite genuinely not to care. She smiled, as she had smiled throughout her short court appearance. ‘I’m nuts, stop trying to comfort yourself.’ She stared around the psychiat
ric ward with apparent nonchalance and allowed Rose to hold her hand. ‘Have you heard from Larissa?’

  ‘No, but Minna says she’s gone. There were some housetrucks going over to the East Coast. They stopped in Weyville and had a bonfire by the lake one night. The next day they’d gone, and so had Larissa. Ellis’s mates are watching out for her.’

  ‘Sorry, old kid,’ said Katrina gruffly. ‘She was as much yours as mine.’

  Rose shook her head. ‘Gone to gypsies. Maybe it’ll suit her. She might be happy.’

  ‘Yeah? What’s happy?’

  ‘Where did we come from, Sis? What did we ever really know about our parents?’

  ‘You know,’ said Katrina, ‘I used to wonder. But I see Elsie Diamond and I become nothing. I don’t wonder any more. Not since I lost Basil. I used to wonder what made him so weird, and I used to blame his father, bad blood and all that stuff. Yet all that time the kid was sick. It didn’t make any difference. Anyway, if we’re a bit queer, there’s always Jim. You can’t get much straighter than Jim. I’m glad he didn’t come to court, it would’ve been too much of a shock for his system. Is he back from dreamland yet?’

  ‘Yes, they toured all over. Fay got enough Elvis souvenirs from Memphis to fill a whole wall of their living room.

  ‘You see then, we’re all right, aren’t we, we’ve got Jim and Fay.’

  ‘We should have kept dancing,’ Rose said, ‘All of us should.’

  ‘You just never found the right stage,’ said Katrina with an amused tolerance.

  ‘I’m on the lookout,’ said Rose, and could have laughed.

  Before she left, she offered Katrina the topaz ring.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Katrina, as if she had been expecting it. She put it on her finger, turning it this way and that to the light. ‘It’s a pity it’s not real, isn’t it?’

  Rose caught the unit back into Wellington. Later she would meet Olivia. It was a meeting she anticipated with mixed feelings. Olivia was angry that her parents had separated; she blamed Rose. Her letters were full of barely concealed accusations that it was Rose’s fault. She was appalled, too, by the scandal which had surrounded her parents for months. Rose wrote to say that she understood, but it didn’t change anything. She suggested they meet in Wellington when Olivia was on her way north to spend Christmas with friends in Auckland. In response, and to Rose’s surprise, Olivia had agreed. Of course, I’m grown up now she had announced in her reply. All in all, Rose thought it could be a tricky meeting.

  The Beehive loomed above her as she walked uptown from the station. She wondered what Kit was doing up there on the hill. There were only nine days till Christmas, and the House was still in session. Political crises rocked the country almost every day as Lange made his bid to re-establish his power base, eroded by the attacks on his leadership. Events like this fascinated but no longer touched her. She had not been in contact with Kit since the sale of the house in Weyville was finalised.

  Hardly any cars moved up and down Lambton Quay. The city was unearthly in its quietness. Power cuts had affected different parts of the country all day. The national grid had been shut down as electricity supply workers went on strike. She had not realised how strange and dead the city would be. All the large department stores were closed. A handful of smaller shops were open, lit by candles, staff hovering near the doors to prevent shoplifters absconding in the gloom.

  Rose sat down in a bus shelter to wait for the airport bus that would take her to meet Olivia from the plane. Glancing up again at the Beehive, she saw that the lights had gone out there, too. This, then, was Christmas under the Government of their dreams. All that work, all this loss.

  Beside her a woman sat apparently transfixed, with one of the familiar transistors to her ear.

  ‘Lange’s got rid of Douglas,’ she said out loud.

  ‘Are you sure? Has he sacked him?’

  ‘It’s very confused. Listen.’

  Together they heard the newsreader elaborate on the shock resignation.

  ‘The lights are out, and Douglas has gone. Surely things can only get better,’ the woman said, putting down the radio. She was dowdy and clutched a bag of groceries.

  ‘Who can tell?’ Rose was thinking of Kit, that maybe he had jumped the right way after all. Perhaps things would get better, for him, for the country.

  But she was not sure, and she could not see how anybody could know for certain at this stage. Maybe all the people had gone too far down some dreadful path, away from their best intentions and ideals, to turn back.

  She reminded herself that she was a film maker now, of sorts anyway. Perhaps the group could make a documentary. One of her partners looked like Katrina.

  She glanced up towards the towering buildings. The window panes hovered in the dark air. Random light slanted down between two walls, a sudden illumination of the street.

  ‘Tell you the truth, I could kill them,’ said the woman. ‘These politicians.’

  ‘Anarchy rules, okay?’ Thinking of Hortense.

  The woman didn’t notice any irony. ‘You’ve got it. What are you going to do?’

  Rose didn’t answer straight away, partly because she had been asked this question, or a version of it, so often of late. She thought of saying: ‘Shooting for the stars’, only it made her think of O’Meara.

  Anyway, she was still working out the stars.

  Remembering all of them. Toni. Wiki. A small space for Hortense, in spite of herself. Katrina of course. Larissa. Minna. Sharna (she’d grow). The cast was huge. It filled her life.

  There were bit parts for the chaps.

  She could see the exact point where they would commence the opening sequence, in the empty park, alongside the Henry Moore sculpture. While she was squinting to establish angles the airport bus rattled past, leaving her behind. She considered a taxi rather than leave Olivia standing on her own. Then she thought that that was what grown-ups did. She decided to wait for the next bus.

  She hoped Olivia would thank her.

  She turned to answer. She was going to say, ‘I’m working on it,’ but the woman had gone. Rose felt comfortable in the silence.

  OTHER NEW ZEALAND TITLES AVAILABLE IN VINTAGE EDITIONS

  Holy Terrors and Other Stories by Amelia Batistich

  Man with Two Arms and Other Stories

  by Norman Bilbrough

  Strangers in Paradise by Jonathan Eisen and Katherine

  Joyce Smith

  To the Is-land by Janet Frame*

  An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame*

  The Envoy From Mirror City by Janet Frame*

  Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame*

  The Carpathians by Janet Frame*

  A Population of One by Alice Glenday

  Strained Relations by Gaelyn Gordon

  Wakeful Nights by Fiona Kidman

  Finding Out by Elspeth Sandys**

  The Peace Monster by John Smythe

  Always the Islands of Memory by Noel Virtue*

  *Available only in New Zealand

  **Available only in Australia and New Zealand

  About the Author

  Fiona Kidman, born in 1940, is a full-time writer who lives in Wellington. Author of thirteen books, including novels, a play, poetry, non-fiction and two collections of short stories. Her novel The Book of Secrets won the 1988 New Zealand Book Award. She has held the Writer’s Fellowship at Victoria University and has received a number of awards, including the Queen Elizabeth II Literary Fund’s annual Award for Achievement.

  OTHER BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHORS

  Search for Sister Blue (play)

  Honey and Bitters (poems)

  On the Tightrope (poems)

  A Breed of Women (novel)

  Mandarin Summer (novel)

  Mrs Dixon & Friend (short stories)

  Paddy’s Puzzle (novel)

  Gone North (non-fiction)

  Going to the Chathams (poems)

  The Book of Secrets (novel)

  Unsuitable Frien
ds (short stories)

  Wakeful Nights (poems)

  Copyright

  Vintage New Zealand

  Random Century New Zealand Ltd

  (An imprint of the Random Century Group)

  18 Poland Road

  Glenfield

  Auckland 10

  NEW ZEALAND

  Associated companies, branches and representatives throughout the world.

  First published 1990

  This edition first published 1992, reprinted 1994

  © Fiona Kidman 1990

  ISBN 978 1 86979 873 4

  Printed in Hong Kong

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in any information retrieval system or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.