A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  You will remember that Royce Meelind is a top man all right. A top man in the sense of ability and presence rather than merely position. The greatest overt power will never be his because with all his talents and advantages he lacks the strain of personal bitterness and trivial curiosity which are necessary to understand the final one third of the world. He is a small, wiry man you will recall, with brown skin and circular nostrils, like a jockey perhaps, or a steeplejack, but his voice without much bulk to resonate in is nevertheless deep and clear, full of masculine assurance. He rocks on the balls of his feet and his laugh, without being at all brash, sounds through the corridor, a succession of even, strong notes like a gong. Not a word is slurred and the grammar of his sentences rarely falters in impromptu conversation. Despite his brown skin, on the bridge of his nose and high on his cheeks, small, twisted, inconsequential veins are clearly visible, like crimps of red and purple cotton.

  Meelind comes from behind his desk to meet Slaven and sits with him on the leather sofa of the executive suite. His smile has a sincere interest and he takes Slaven’s hand firmly. ‘Give me a place to stand and I will move the world,’ he begins. ‘Said in connection with physics, but it applies also in your case Dr Slaven. I’m amazed by your performance at Tuamarina, the tremendous sales of A New Drummer, the appearance of the CCP as a national organisation almost overnight. You’ve struck a chord all right.’

  ‘But which one?’

  ‘Alienation. Without a doubt. A very significant group of New Zealanders who feel exiled from their country while they’re still living in it. They seek an allegiance.’ Meelind rises to draw two coffees from the dispenser by his desk. The north side of his office has a large screen for presentations, blank grey now, but the windows on the opposite wall give a magnificent view of the harbour.

  ‘Yes, we’re having an overwhelming response in many ways, but for so many different, even contradictory reasons. If you could see some of the letters that flood in and some of the callers.’

  ‘I’d very much appreciate any material for assessment.’

  ‘Everyone has a grievance it seems and also a solution for it, but they’re all different grievances and various remedies.’

  ‘In toto though,’ says Royce Meelind, ‘you see they have a unity of opposition to what’s being done at present, or not done. That’s the beauty of political opposition, there’s always an aspect of solidarity, even if it’s lost in the very instant of success, the moment that power is achieved.’

  ‘I can see that an analyst, or a campaign professional, would be fascinated in the workings of that, but I have to justify my leadership. What I say and support give rise to expectations. I don’t find it that hard to arouse that sense of alienation, but the direction of it? Ah, that’s it you see.’

  ‘Exactly,’ says Dr Meelind. They both realise that in the end people like Slaven take the chances and people like Meelind are commentators. Although Royce Meelind is in the Government Think Tank, although he will make both an assessment and a report after his talk with Slaven, they are not in direct competition. ‘Proportional representation, then bi-cameralism, then non-legislative representatives were all brought in for just the sort of feeling that you have tapped. Despite it all people haven’t any greater sense of identification, or participation. There are too many steps in the process, too many complexities. The earliest democracies were crude and direct, like the people who voted in them, and then as now they offered opportunities to the demagogues.’

  ‘You understand that the Coalition isn’t putting up any candidates itself. We’re not attempting to become a Parliamentary party.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Meelind. Together they have their coffee and see through the large window the crowded street many stories below, people, foreshortened, scurrying about there. And buildings rising up to rival the one in which Slaven and Meelind sit at their ease. From the outer office is the sound of some noisy arrivals. ‘There’s nothing sinister in our interest,’ says Meelind. ‘In fact I openly push the politicians to pay more attention to what people think. Isn’t it important for Government to be receptive to the public mood? The sort of groundswell that you create is exactly what we should be on to. Whatever we do receives a largely cynical response. If we take no notice of such movements we’re arrogantly elitist and captured by our own bureaucracy, if we show an interest then we’re manipulative and exploitative. I’m excited by what you’re doing. The power to mobilise the opinions of the electorate is so rare. The flow for so long has been the other way that people have become the negative pole, given themselves up to apathy and malaise.’

  ‘You’re well in the shit, boy.’ The voice isn’t Meelind’s, or Slaven’s. It comes from the outer office and is accompanied by heavy movement and thuds. Royce Meelind smiles and lifts his eyes quickly so that the whites show in a brief mockery of the crass world’s intrusion.

  ‘The length of your Tuamarina address,’ he says. ‘An amazing thing when all research shows that these days people will not be talked at hour after hour. It proved me wrong. You must have the rhetorical stamina and gift of a Gladstone, a Luther King, or new China’s Soong Shih.’

  ‘Any strength in my speaking comes from conviction,’ says Slaven, ‘rather than art.’

  ‘Like a pig in it, son. Yes, you’re well in it. Jamie says you were supposed to come in on Tuesday and do it then. It’s all on the roster and now you’re really in the shit, see.’

  ‘No one told me did they.’

  There is a variety of workman whose voice becomes louder in proportion to the inappropriateness of his presence. Slaven imagines them amongst the soft carpet and monstera plants of the outer office. ‘I’m not sure what it is myself,’ he continues, ‘but a rally builds towards unity if it’s a success at all. You need actual physical proximity, personal decision becoming awesome in a mass expression. That’s why I think it won’t work on television. You saw me on Beardsley’s show?’

  ‘You were okay.’

  ‘You don’t mean that. I have to be there, with everybody.’

  ‘The crowd as Leviathan,’ says Meelind.

  ‘When a crowd comes together like that it has a soul of its own and a resolve of its own and no conscience whatsoever, so the resolve must be the right one. Must, must be the right one.’ Slaven wonders if Meelind understands.

  ‘You hold the ladder then and I’ll unscrew the sodding thing. I can’t see anything the matter with it myself. Jamie is not happy, sunshine. Not happy at all my old son. Not happy one little bit and myself I don’t like your chances. In the shit, my son. That’s you and my heart bleeds.’

  ‘Still, that gift for holding them, getting through. I mean, god, the news of the world these days is only fifteen minutes before the first game show of the evening isn’t it.’

  ‘For me it’s still a success of ideas rather than delivery,’ says Slaven. ‘People become numbed by routine unhappiness and trivial compromise until they think those are the natural conditions of life, but at Tuamarina we had the exhilarating realisation that a great many people want something better and think it possible.’

  ‘And is it?’ asks Meelind.

  ‘Let it down carefully, old son, or else we’ll be arse over twat and in worse trouble.’

  ‘Wait till I shift my fucken grip on the thing. It’s cutting off the circulation. My back’ll go in a minute.’

  ‘You and me both, sunshine.’

  ‘Some people see it as a freakish talent, and in the end doesn’t it become a power thing. Where will you point the crowd and when release it?’

  ‘You mean what side I choose?’ says Slaven.

  ‘Yes, what side you choose.’

  ‘I’ll come back for the ladder. Remind me.’

  ‘Is that why you asked me to come.’ Slaven admires the ease with which Royce Meelind does his job.

  ‘It’s my homework. I imagine that quite soon the Minister will ask about this Slaven chap and his CCP.’

  ‘What will be your opinion?’


  ‘Another rally or two like Tuamarina and you’ll be shaking the political establishment by the throat. Then again, as you know well enough, you’ve got a tiger by the tail.’

  ‘And if I can point it in the United Party’s direction?’ says Slaven.

  Royce Meelind smiles. There is the impartial interest of the scientist in his eyes as well as the appraisal of a Government servant.

  ‘Tuamarina is a long way from Auckland,’ he says.

  When Slaven leaves there is no one in the outer office; just an air-conditioning unit cover on the carpet and an aluminium ladder of the sort which makes Slaven wince with a memory of betrayal. Slaven parts with Meelind at the lifts and as he drops down floor by floor, he wonders if the Think Tank would be set against him if he and the Coalition presses the Government hard. As he comes into Bowen Street, Slaven sees the great copper dome of the new speed rail terminal glistening not far from the Beehive. In just a few months he has come a long way and he must be careful not to over-reach himself.

  There is a place, known well to most of us, where the printers hum and the computer screen glows in fields of blue and grey and green, and on a field azure, say, is a profit graph rampant. The vidphones are just an undergrowth in such a jungle, yet each has its time to bloom and blush, casting a glow while communication proceeds. A frieze screen is high on the front wall and words like runners chase across it for general announcement All balances to the sync computer by 1650 hours, or, don’t forget Anna Sledgley’s farewell at the Goblin tonight. People never change. They are the same here as in Dickens’s counting house, or the Minoan records room of the palace at Knossus.

  See the finest grime of a thousand thousand finger applications that lies just below the pressure point patina of the high tech keys, the tape which holds up the continuous feed door on number twenty-three. Popperwell coughs to cover a characteristic fart and the women screw up their faces. Abbot glances from the inner office at the people who would like to change places. You are entitled to a short break of course and there are seminars on alternate Fridays in company time and a suggestion drawer on the main computer which is always a laugh to bring up. Allen is the sharpest programmer, but he won’t get on in the firm, because he blatantly takes his sick days to renovate American cars.

  The machines of each technological niche have their eyes of green, or yellow, or red. Dots, or strips, or obelisks that gleam, wink, alter hue and form and finally die at the day’s end.

  Whatever it is that is done here has always been done, and by the same people — informing and arranging and recording, letting people down lightly and with some profit in it. Only the means at their disposal alters.

  Although Aldous Slaven isn’t a member of any of the three categories of parliamentary representative, he sets aside an afternoon each week to be available to discuss the principles on which the Coalition for Citizen Power is established. Kellie provides him with a list of those who are to see him, with brief comments she has added, and Slaven drives in from the western hobby farms to the Rev Thackeray Thomas’s Charismatic Cambrian Church in Armagh Street where the Coalition has rooms and secretarial services.

  See him on this cool, spring day with a drifting easterly drizzle from the sea which encourages the gulls to come scavenging in the city. Read the list that he scans briefly before leaving the unsealed carpark to enter the Church Hall.

  2 pm — Mr Nicholas Halley — offer of his talents (unspecified)

  2.15 pm — Ms Anna Fivetrees — thrilled to the core by A New Drummer

  2.30 pm — Anatasia — to discuss gay issues inherent in the Coalition’s stance

  2.45 pm — Ms Polly Romains — freelance journalism graduate, wanting scoop I suppose

  3 pm — Mr Dean Talbot — long standing grievance with all about everything

  3.15 pm — Mr Murray Franca — wouldn’t say

  3.30 pm — Mrs Jocelyn Piers — financial and thinks she remembers you from Te Tarehi primary

  3.45 pm — Mr Bruce Anderson from Statos Nationalist party — matter to your advantage

  After — toast slice kibble wheat, margarine, penlight batteries, prescription, don’t forget.

  From the plain room that the Coalition rents, Slaven sees a toi-toi bush and a neglected garden before the road. Weeds are obviously assured of equal divinity with the flowers here. Diamonds of water gather on the leaves of dock, twitch and chickweed. As a background to everything that is said are modest sounds of water dripping, seeping, plopping, trickling and the sounds of the earth drinking. Dafydd Thomas is talking in a room in the other wing, visible to Slaven. Framed by the window he is obviously working up a good head of steam, though no sound is heard and no audience visible. He is counselling seniors perhaps, or merely practising his rhetoric so that he’s more his father’s son.

  ‘You might say that I’ve powers of plenipotentiary,’ says Bruce Anderson. ‘Why restrict yourself to being a pressure group, however powerful, when you could have direct political influence as a representative. It stands to reason.’

  Anatasia is well and comfortably dressed and comfortably assertive. Slaven notices that her legs are shapely and that on one ankle is a small tattoo. ‘I appreciate your wife plays an important part in the movement,’ she says, ‘but it’s a matter of perceived stance and public profile. The law is quite clear on equity in executive structures and if you have a copy of Coalition appointments and responsibilities I can quickly check whether it’s in compliance. You know how such things can be picked up for political purpose by the unscrupulous.’ A thrush is on the rough lawn, listening for a worm that the soft rain will tempt to rise. How much more delicate its colours than the greasy, pin-flecked dark feathers of the starlings, or the full gloss of a blackbird.

  ‘I mightn’t have the qualifications on paper, not the actual qualifications on actual paper, but then I always say that’s what they’re worth, aye. Paper. No, but from the school of hard knocks I’ve learnt a few lessons I can tell you. Aye? What I see myself being able to bring to the CCP is promotional skills that I’ve developed in the world of insurance and bereavement support.’

  ‘Form one with Ms Kedgley it would be wouldn’t it. I said to my sister that there wouldn’t be many Aldous Slavens. Fancy that. And there was that boy with us for just a term from the foster home and he broke into the school office and set fire to it, no, sprayed everything with the foam extinguisher, that’s right. It all comes back to you, doesn’t it. And he’s copped it you know. Oh, yes. Locked accidentally in a commercial freezer and when they found him he’d built a snow cave of 1kg bags of free flow peas. It all comes back to you, doesn’t it.’ Jocelyn Piers looks at Slaven expectantly as if there has been a clear reward posted for Slaven’s identification and she is here to claim it.

  Slaven realises these are the people who come to Tuamarina and St Kilda. These are his people. He’s not long back from Dunedin and he saw clearly there the thousands of people just like these. Standing high on the sealed road at St Kilda he had addressed the crowd on the beach and on the recreation grounds below him. The people had covered the ash-blonde sand on the seaward side and also the sports fields on the city side. He had seen the line of generating windmills on the hills behind the city and looking south along the beach where the great audience finally thinned he had seen a scud of white blowing up into the dunes from the beach — drifting spray, or the pale sand wind-driven. They had sung the protest songs Capetown Races and Remember Greenpeace; they had begun the vogue of the CCP’s own theme song — Half Moon Bay. And all of them are the same people that write the thousands of letters, send money and policies unsolicited, come to the Cambrian Church Hall so that they can talk to him. Iago right now deals with a number who have come without appointments, but find they can’t by-pass Kellie’s system.

  ‘You think about it. Don’t dismiss it out of hand. We feel that you have all that it takes for a major political career and a place in Parliament would guarantee a continuing profile for your policies
. Otherwise, you know what will happen once the elections are over.’

  ‘And then when I first heard you,’ says Anna Fivetrees, ‘I could hardly believe it. After always feeling totally alone in my views, to find someone who has the same values and the ability to make them known. I talk to people about you all the time. They must think I’m terrible, terrible.’ Anna Fivetrees puts both hands to her face in confusion at her own daring. ‘That bit when you talked of the need in adulthood to regain the trust of youth. How true, how beautiful.’

  Behind the chair on which each of Slaven’s visitors sit in turn is a poster of platitudes and as each person’s head comes to a different height, so from Slaven’s vantage they have individual adages. There are no strangers here, only friends you haven’t met, is Anna’s halo; for Nicholas Halley, today is the first day of the rest of your life.

  ‘The Council has given me a complete runaround, never mind that I’ve been a ratepayer and reserve fireman for over thirty years. They won’t see me any more, because they know there’s no bloody answer to my argument, Aye? The papers have refused to publish my letters now. The buggers have been got at I reckon, and I’ve been individually to every Christchurch MP. They all say they’ll look into my case, but do nothing. Everyone’s knuckled under to the big boys except me.’

  ‘One of the things that interests people, Dr Slaven, is that apparently you weren’t active in politics at all until the accident meant you had to stop working.’