A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  ‘What’s that,’ says Kellie.

  ‘Steven Wybrow thought he was Champeen of the whole damn world.’

  ‘Sarah’s with us,’ says Kellie. ‘You knew that?’

  ‘How is she.’ Cardew attempts brotherly warmth, but there’s only jocularity. He is seized with a boredom sprung from return to what is familiar and unloved.

  ‘She’s come back for a while as well. It’s been relatively slow with her freelance astrology, I think. She says she might do some psychology papers.’ Cardew opens his mouth to make reply, but is not supplied with even the most banal of comments suitable for his mother to hear, and he is left with an expression half fatigue, half adenoidal idiocy as he turns off the main west road and into the fringe belt of four hectare blocks which includes his parents’ home. Jesus, though, freelance astrology.

  Something then of exposition from a distance this has been. A hush jet delivery, but no deliverance. A hand upon a shoulder and externals like a short order cook. A placing of each in relation to the others you understand, but you come right up close with me and meet the man. All right?

  It is Cardew, evident by a distinctive bad breath in the air and a less explicable, but equally characteristic aura of physicality such as strikes the observer of an empty baboon cage at the zoo. Everything about him is too obvious, too carnal, as if a model homo sapien has been made in the flesh. So here he is: the nostrils drawing attention to their vital function, his moustache not quite the colour of his hair and offset a little because he always trims it with his right hand. His expression is one of ignorant presumption, of scrabbling for a living in the here and now because there will be nothing after death — not even brief immortality in the fond memory of others. No shadow of the spirit, no tincture of the divine, no faint stirring of apprehension at the potential of the mind.

  So you see him. Cardew Slaven with no letters after his name and no approbation in its pronounciation. How like his father though in the hair which stands up from his crown and the way he shakes his wrist to bring his watch strap down, the way his big foot hangs from the ankle when he has crossed his legs, his dark, lacquered eyes. How like Kellie in the thin, lobeless ears and jawline. How like himself in that he looks away while he is talking and his mouth is tight with a barely suppressed yawn before people who have no immediate advantage for him.

  So here is Cardew Slaven for you, the son, cast as the cast off in the list of company and deserving it. Not the villain because he lacks sufficient malicious interest in others, not the fool because he lacks the pathos of the true jester and any grasp of the symbolic utterance. Experiment with him in that dark laboratory which shuts down external stimulus in sequence and he will in stages close down himself, until he is inert there in the dark, only his blood coursing. For nothing sublime originates from within to motivate him, no sense of higher aspiration, no vision to which the metal of the world and self must be beaten — just the instincts of gratification, or survival.

  Shagging is the thing he likes best. That’s how he spent his money in Sydney. That’s how he will spend the money the CCP will unwittingly supply. He has a cultivated appetite. He shags in hotel and motel rooms, in old villas renovated for the purpose, in chalets which never see the snows, in staff quarters reached by a narrow path with a tin fence hard beside it, in bean bag lounges and maisonettes. He shags with the glow of television casting bruises on the white arses of his loves. He shags in dormitories, changing rooms, vans, and after hours cafeterias with all the legs turned up to the ceiling; yes, all the legs turned up. He shags in the bed and breakfast which overlooks the croquet green and shags in the deep doorway of the St Vincent de Paul in Mitre Street while a group of drivers yarn at the taxi stand ten metres away. He is indiscriminate, except that he dislikes women who come to sex determined to enjoy it, as they might join a tennis club on advice to make friends.

  He shags always with the same fixed, lacquered eyes, not looking at a woman, not registering the things that seem the object of his fierce stare, but shagging as if he is knocking at a secret door and in the greatest pitch of the act the flicker in his eyes is brief anticipation of the opening of that door. Knock, knock, knocking at Heaven’s door.

  If he isn’t shagging in any of those places, then he’s most likely shagging in his mind. Shagging Eula Fitzsimmons at the meeting of the Coalition Executive until his mouth slackens from its yawn, shagging the weather reader in her own deep depression, shagging the girl who comes with the keys for the rental cars until her breath mists up the windscreen, mounting the shapely shoppers and catching their exclamation from behind while a cool wind blows on his balls at the top of his stroke.

  Knock, knock, knocking on Heaven’s door.

  Just an insight to ponder on as Slaven sweeps his double garage and sees the car approaching. He comes out to meet Cardew and the clumsy touch is only partly explained by the damage to his hands. They haven’t seen each other for two years and Slaven hopes for some change for the better in them both, some lift within himself at the sight of his son, some sense of mutual goodwill even if attitudes and understandings must remain distinct. It doesn’t come. There are only the physical resemblances and they’re most remarked on by others.

  ‘You’ve become almost famous, Dad,’ says Cardew. He resents that as well of course, as he resents the example of hard work and moderate success that Slaven provides. Now though, a sudden, flamboyant success and therefore one that could come to anything. As they talk Cardew yawns in his father’s face and his eyes slide away.

  ‘Sarah will be back later,’ says Kellie when the silence lengthens. They move inside. Aldous and Cardew carrying cases, Kellie leading the way. Slaven wonders why his new vision offers no insight in regard to his children, why he has nothing of urgency to say to his son, yet can speak with strangers about vital and personal things for hours on end. Some people are known so well that we can have no hope of them.

  After St Kilda, and with the CCP establishing branches in all parts of the country, there are political approaches of course and discreet talk of possible accommodation. Eula Fitzsimmons was approached by Tonkin of the Democratic Socialists and there is a meeting. The Democrats haven’t held office for fourteen years and are now mainly urban liberals with a rural fringe of alternative lifestylers. Gebrill, a former PM who came to grief over refugee immigration is here, Fassiere as well and Tonkin who set it up.

  Gebrill sits next to the window and speaks little. He watches Slaven’s face and finds there all he needs to know, but when his own colleagues have their say he tips his melancholy eyes to the grass and gardens two floors below and picks his lip. He hasn’t been given very long.

  ‘How do you think that your public support would translate, realistically, into votes?’ asks Fassiere.

  ‘The studies show the Coalition’s reaching at least twenty per cent directly and influencing at least that again through family, or associate contact.’

  ‘Yet our research indicates that over one third of the people attending your rallies haven’t voted in the last two national elections.’

  ‘Yes, but will they in this one? The point you see is that we’ve got these people thinking politics again.’ Kellie and Fassiere weigh each other’s smiles and Gebrill, one long finger at his lip, watches the office workers from the bank and the legal firms enjoy the fountain, the freedom amid the lawns and flower plots. Beyond that he can see the wide, glassed entrance to the atrium of the South Pacific Bank, which he had once termed in the House, the Bubble Bank. The atrium is inviting now — pungas growing in the coolness, more delicate ferns below them, yellow Samoan orchids. ‘Middle New Zealand,’ says Kellie, ‘that’s where you’re weakest isn’t it. The heartland. And that’s just where we have the greatest strength, the greatest control. Who can give you Dargaville, aye? Who can give you Tuatapere, Fielding and Becks, Greymouth, Ngapara, Bulls, Parnassus, the valleys of the Owen and the Hakataramea?’

  ‘A lot of places, but few people,’ says Tonkin. See the neat
ness of his collar despite the heat and the thin case with touchtronic locks.

  ‘All right. What about the ninety-five thousand third quartile by income who live north of the bridge, or the sixty-seven thousand of the same group in the new sprawls beyond Porirua. What we did at St Kilda we’re going to do at Western Springs.’

  ‘We’re not denying there is a constituency,’ says Tonkin. ‘We’re here to determine the political cost of encompassing it within the Democratic Socialist Party. We have to be a very responsible shopping party. You understand that.’

  Gebrill watches a young man below lean forward with his knees spread to eat an orange, careful that the juice doesn’t dribble onto his clothes. The young man’s hair is fashionably permed and his movements are supple and quick.

  ‘There’s no way that we can take on board full regional devolution, ostracism, or quantitative gender and ethnic equality in political office,’ says Fassiere. ‘Let’s be honest about that.’ Fassiere has some Chinese blood of which she is proud. A certain Deng came out to the Tuapeka goldfields in the 1860s. He worked through the tailings left by European miners; made less, but saved more. All that was long ago and would have been forgotten, except that Fassiere is now deputy leader of the Democratic Socialist Party and the journalists are delighted with a simplistic explanation for her financial acumen, her relentless industry and a complexion that all admire.

  ‘Which of the demands could you accept as policy, then?’ asks Kellie.

  ‘Or, even more important, which would you like to include?’ says Slaven. ‘I believe that the ideal should be discussed before the practical.’

  Gebrill perks up at that, swivels his face from the window back to the affairs of the office. The long, lined face of a gibbon with the area of his upper lip very full and semi lunar. ‘Ah, now there’s the rub,’ he says. ‘None of them. Not one of your grubby arsed, popularist, minimally egalitarian and fatuous statements will be part of Democratic policy while I’m alive.’ And Gebrill has a good laugh at that, because it is known that he is dying, like his old enemy Miles Kitson, and has no one to please now but himself. No voice says he’ll be dead soon anyway, hopefully before the election, and that Fassiere, who is acting leader during Gebrill’s illness, has the numbers in caucus if she has to use them. It is politic of course and a sign of new allegiance, that Tonkin is the one to hint at the true order of things. He smiles at them.

  ‘All we can do is consider all the possibilities and report back to the caucus and the party organisations,’ he says, ‘but for myself, I must say that there are features of the Coalition’s demands which appear to be endorsed by a groundswell of voter opinion and which aren’t necessarily incompatible with our objectives. A mandatory plebiscite on the presidential term, a new ministry to promote emotional well-being, further curbs on party advertising; these things could well be runners.’

  So Gebrill turns away from them once more, preferring to watch those happenings outside which are transient enough, but not with an end so imminent, so bitterly capping great achievement. He deserves better, surely, and he feels little concern for any politics which might come after, but not include him. He is tempted to speak to Slaven concerning the temper and the patience of a crowd, the onslaught of popular power and its equally sudden passing.

  The Democrats are prepared to accept several CCP points into their manifesto. It becomes clear some political appointments for Coalition members could follow if the election is a success, and in return they would require public, sustained and exclusive endorsement before the poll. Gebrill takes no part in the discussion. Where he has torn a little skin from his lip, the bright blood grows, but he doesn’t lick or wipe it away. So it spreads slowly into the creases at the side of his mouth. There is no point in standing up to Fassiere and Tonkin, for even if he won, he no longer has the time to take possession of the field.

  Afterwards, Slaven agrees with Kellie that the Democrats will have to do better than this. If Western Springs goes well they’ll have to cough a good deal harder, Kellie thinks. Slaven wishes he could take greater pleasure in the growing power of the Coalition, the consideration with which Fassiere and Tonkin treat him, but the image that he takes with him past the South Pacific Bank is the painful bitterness of the former PM’s face and the blood from his picked lip.

  Miles, on the other hand, is quite bucked up to hear of a once powerful adversary in such decline, and while in a good spell himself. Slaven and he have a beer in Miles’s tower house on the hills above Christchurch. ‘Like all lawyers turned to politics he had a fierce love of regulation,’ says Miles. ‘The satisfaction, the contentment, of a lawyer is achieved only by the knowledge that his influence is always growing. The process of reduction now for old Gebrill must be a torture worse than hell. I love to think of it. The bugger made business more difficult for years. His government was like a fat tick on every enterprise.’

  ‘You mean he wouldn’t let business go unchecked.’

  ‘Or your CCP if he had the chance.’

  Slaven enjoys this opportunity to leave the hurly-burly of his work, the meetings and decisions, the planning and consultations, the close itinerary for each day that Kellie efficiently provides for him, the ever more insistent emotional demands that come with great success. Such time as this in the tower, with Miles asking nothing of him, with silences, and prejudices, unguarded opinions, pettiness and innuendo. They laugh at each other, and with each other. Slaven’s laugh a brief burst usually, Miles’s little more than a hoarse rustle.

  ‘The third richest man in the world has built a house from stone from the moon,’ says Miles. ‘Did you see that in the news?’

  ‘I think I did.’

  ‘Now that must tell us a great deal about human nature, but I hesitate to work out what. The Roman Emperors used to have ice brought down from the mountains for summer court banquets.’

  ‘You take enough advantage of privilege yourself.’

  ‘My chief indulgence,’ says Miles, ‘is to keep as many people away as possible. I buy privacy with my money rather than mountain ice, or stones from the moon. I don’t find it proven that we’re naturally gregarious.’

  ‘You say that now because you’ve grown old. You’re the rogue elephant turned out from the herd and making a virtue of it. When you could cut a dash you loved to do so. You spend much of your time thinking about it. You’re full of bullshit yarns about your prime.’

  There is a haze over the heart of the city on the plain below, mainly fumes, but a blue bowl of sky above it. Slaven pours them both another lager and almost wishes that he didn’t have to leave, that he could claim some sort of truce with time and stay in the tower house with Miles. He says as much to Miles, but they both know he has prospects of achievement that are offered to one in a million. The gift, as Thackeray Thomas says. Just thinking about it, Slaven feels a tightening of awareness of things and a gratitude that he has been given the opportunity of having a life out of the routine.

  ‘It’s all set for Auckland and Western Springs?’ asks Miles.

  ‘Yes, we’ve got people up there now, including Cardew, but there’s a lot of negative feeling at work. People who don’t want us to come off well there, but won’t publicly take that position.’

  ‘You’ll blow them away. I’ve never heard a better ideas salesman.’

  ‘I’m raring to go, actually. I feel strong. I was better at St Kilda than Tuamarina and I’ll be better again at Western Springs. We’re getting a more specific programme together now. More down-to-earth objectives that act as a focus for all the pent-up frustration and sense of loss.’

  ‘Stick it to them,’ says Miles in his whisper. ‘And so you’re feeling okay?’ Slaven smiles, but remains looking through the floor to ceiling windows across the Canterbury plains.

  ‘You know me. I’m still slipping a few cogs now and then.’

  Most nights they sleep in the same large bed and most days they have at least one meal together, ample opportunity to discuss priva
te things, privately. Yet they find themselves reviewing their marriage while waiting in the airport lounge for their flight to Auckland, so that the expressions on their faces for public view are sometimes not in keeping with the things they talk about. Maybe, of course, the private places are by their very suitability, locations in which it’s too difficult to begin, offering not enough excuses to draw back when the time comes.

  Kellie asks him if he loves her and they both laugh a little. Partly they laugh at the incongruity of it, here in the airport on a rack of seats by the observation windows and with people looking at Slaven already. Partly they laugh in pain and discomfort that the question needs to be asked at all. Partly they laugh to placate one another, meaning as with a shrug, this is how it is, this is how it is.

  And as they talk, Kellie wonders if the accident is the sudden imperative for new ways and new preoccupations that it seems, or subconsciously for Slaven the plausible occasion to turn away from disappointment with his family, his marriage, his profession and his image. Yes, people change, they grow apart emotionally perhaps while still in a tandem of routine, eating and sleeping together, supporting each other, attempting to make changes in each other purely from habit. And the emotion is gradually replaced by civility and forebearance and common sense so that the appearance may be much the same, as the real tissue of creatures is fossilised and replaced bit by bit with quite different particles in a perfect duplication.