A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  A party then, after the CCP’s dramatic success at Western Springs; a celebration of the heartland over the complacent poseurs of the big city. The Auckland branch of the Coalition is turning it on in the state room of the new Burlesque Hotel in the Waitakeres, with a view over the city, the spread, endless shimmer of the lights in the night and the black holes which mark the excursions of the sea.

  It is of course a political event as well as a celebration, with some people of importance to Slaven and the CCP drawn out by the power the rally demonstrated. A certain amount of sizing up is taking place, the agreement of times for mutual talks and so on. All sorts are here — Royce Meelind of the Think Tank, as he happens to be up from Wellington, Marjorie Usser whom Slaven met at the Civil Defence seminar, Fassiere with her wonderful complexion due to the gold-rush, the Chairman of the United Association of Volunteer Unions, newly introduced to Slaven by Sheffield Spottiswoode. But not poor Norman Proctor of course, not Roland Purcell, not Birdie Watson who fell from the Cenotaph, or Buffle the famous cartoonist, not Simon Adderley, not Mrs Prothero’s canary.

  Eula Fitzsimmons is showing the northerners that she too knows how to dress and her fluting vowels give a sense of panache to every view she expresses. The echo of her Rangi Ruru laugh penetrates the airing cupboard door behind which Cardew has his knee between the thighs of the hors d’oeuvres girl and his hands full of her breasts. ‘Believe me,’ he says, ‘I’ve just the filling for you.’ Thackeray Thomas relaxes from hard campaigning by recounting a Cymric dream — mists, magicians, Anglesey and the roaring ghosts of Iago, Llywelyn Fawr and Madog. He swears it is a heritage of the genes, so real is it to him.

  ‘We’re each of us conglomerates, aren’t we,’ he says, ‘or like onions that have all our forebears one by one a layer closer to the heart.’

  Kellie is still tired from Western Springs two nights ago, but it’s now a lassitude of relaxation and achievement as well. She delights in the party which is no part of her responsibility. Even she has had enough of that. What does she care if there’s a problem in the carpark with thieves, that one of the sliding doors of the state room has jumped its track, that there aren’t quite enough girls to hand round the hors d’oeuvres. Kellie discusses with Royce Meelind the evolution of the organisational structure within the Coalition, the special difficulties of a quasi-political party without a parliamentary wing and her envy of the ease with which people here can grow citrus fruits and great evergreen magnolias.

  ‘It’s an amazing achievement in so short a time,’ says Meelind in reference to organisation. ‘The only parallel this century I can think of is the Antarctic Movement.’

  ‘Aldous’s father served on the pickets there. He was a regular soldier.’

  ‘Somebody told me that.’

  ‘Maybe it would be better for us to be completely independent. It’s only circumstance that linked us to the Cambrians and so on, but they gave us that early help and we won’t toss them over now.’

  ‘I doubt if it bothers your supporters at all,’ says Meelind. ‘Everything is so focussed on Aldous. Such a direct source of energy, yet in another way inexplicable.’

  ‘Inexplicable?’

  ‘What I mean is, none of the ideas are new, but it’s his conviction that makes people want to take them up again. In some way he arouses their trust. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Or their hate,’ says Kellie. ‘Whenever you want to share a conviction, there’s someone hates you for it.’

  ‘That’s for sure. There’s only so much success available, isn’t there, especially in politics. So when one person gets more, the others see themselves as diminished.’

  Kellie and Royce Meelind are sitting on the long, cushioned seat of the state room, well back from the uncarpeted area where dancers move before the huge windows and make it difficult for Kellie to see the distant city. She is slim and well dressed, isn’t she? She has brains and money and power in the CCP? Better to concentrate on all that, rather than being forty-eight years old and with a husband in emotional free-fall. ‘Western Springs was way beyond my predictions and I was more generous than most,’ Meelind is saying.

  See a youngish man in a tailor-made suit and a tooled leather choker instead of a tie. See him talk to a simpering guy with unctuous, yellowed eyes and to a slightly buck-toothed woman with glasses and a creamy breast. They stand between Kellie and the rest of the room. On the squab to her left is a solid man with creased trousers. He’s a member of the Auckland Coalition Committee and Kellie worked quite closely with him for several days before the rally. She recognises the face of course, but has let go on the name. He intones snatches of their campaign songs to himself. On the other side, beyond Royce Meelind, are two of Eula Fitzsimmons’ supporters.

  ‘An inexorable law, absolutely,’ says the choker. ‘It matters not a bit what one is wearing, the lint from one’s belly button is always pale blue.’

  ‘Ha, Ha.’

  Angels on the 1am all singing, come on in to Welfare Heaven.

  ‘What I fear is an essentially patriarchal structure, while you seem to be happy that the end justifies the means.’

  ‘You must be both tired and proud,’ says Meelind.

  ‘I never have any lint in my belly button. I am most scrupulous concerning orifices,’ says the buck-toothed woman.

  ‘But the proportional representation aim, the sixth point, that’s our salvation. You must give credit to Aldous Slaven there. Eula says herself that he was a supporter.’

  The best new century policy, is the making of a glasnost galaxy.

  ‘Oh, how he can talk, can’t he. It just carries you away, and I thought we were supposed to be the ones with the gift of the gab.’

  ‘You’re bluffing. I bet fifty that your sweet button has blue lint like all the rest of the world.’

  ‘Ha, ha.’

  ‘Pull your blouse up just high enough to prove me wrong and there’s fifty right here, right now. I tell you it’s an immutable law. No kidding.’

  Kinder hearts are waiting, baby, amongst old friends at Half Moon Bay.

  ‘I’ve heard things, you know, about the son. Things about Cardew Slaven.’

  Kellie can see Slaven, between the young man with the tooled choker and his friend with jaundice showing in his eyes and a ready, empty laugh. Slaven, glimpsed a distance away, amongst others and with the glassed view of the lights of the city spread against the dark pelt of the night. Slaven rocks on the balls of his feet the way he does when bored in the presence of fellows and unable to escape. He is the centre of attention for a good many people and they wait to have their say, each with a personal agenda which has little in common with that of the Coalition. Slaven hasn’t acquired the skill of sloughing off the concerns of other people while still preserving a solicitous demeanour.

  ‘And another is the indication of libido provided by the ear lobes. Absolutely. Now yours are fleshy to a marked degree.’

  ‘Ha, ha.’

  ‘When you come to think of it, though, why should quantitative gender representation be the last charter point? Oh, I know there’s supposedly no hierarchy in the order, but many will make assumptions.’

  ‘It should be looked at.’

  ‘It should.’

  Foveaux storms are Jading, baby, within the calm of Half Moon Bay.

  The elegant woman is feeling her ear lobes. In the concentration of the moment her mouth opens a little more and her white, slightly buck teeth emphasise the sheen of her lipstick. Slaven at a distance is dancing, more as an escape, Kellie thinks, than from positive inclination. She glimpses something fugitive of his younger self and it causes her a brief, sharp pang. She tells herself that she’s feeling down because of the anti-climax after Western Springs. That’s what it is all right, she tells herself.

  Royce Meelind is a man to whom ideas are more important than anecdote, yet even his professionalism allows for a measure of curiosity. He has sat with Kellie for some time without further comment, listening to the c
onversation around them, following Kellie’s gaze through the shifting figures of the party. Slaven is a fair dancer and Meelind is reminded of the story told by his cousin, Eric Tydeman, who as a second year commerce student took evening dancing lessons in the bare room of the Langar Dance Academy above the Suzuki Agency. The dance instructor was a Polish woman of great vivacity and charm, and one warm March night she excused herself in the middle of a modern bracket, opened the old sash window and did a header onto the pavement next to the display of Suzuki tourers.

  ‘How is he in himself,’ says Meelind. ‘How is he bearing up under the strain of recuperation and heading a national organisation that at present gets more attention than the Government almost?’

  ‘Hah. Hah. You see. You see.’

  ‘That’s Kellie Slaven just two along from us. We should introduce ourselves.’

  ‘He’s been buoyed up by the success of it, swept along,’ says Kellie. ‘He’s only recently beginning to think of the consequences of failure, or of losing control of the public feeling he’s aroused.’

  Everything around you seems to say, remember Greenpeace.

  ‘Personal leadership’s like that. The emotional demands can be appalling.’

  ‘People don’t make allowances, or put themselves in his shoes,’ says Kellie. ‘They’ll distract him with personal pleas only moments before he has to speak to thousands. They’ll walk right into the house if they can, sit down at the meal table without a blink and start on their life story, the things they want from him. I’m just realising how selfish need is.’

  Some people who are implacable in withstanding all the forces of the working day, or week, are quickly collapsed by relaxation and a little fun. Sheffield Spottiswoode proves himself to be one of these and after a supper of cannelloni, giant prawns, and cherry gateaux the bubbly goes straight to his heart. He supplants the creased campaigner as the source of protest songs and Thackeray Thomas as the leader in a range of toasts to CCP success.

  Thackeray can not normally be so easily deposed, but he has been smitten with a sudden Celtic melancholy and gone out into the night beyond the state room to wrestle with his demons.

  Some considerable time after Slaven’s speech, he and Kellie find time to slip away, knowing that the younger ones will party the harder for their absence. Les Croad drives them back into the city and boasts of his part in dealing with a gang who were rifling cars in the Hotel Burlesque park. ‘Have a go then, I says to them. Have a bloody go. Chance your arm if you feel lucky.’

  ‘Hasn’t the Hotel a security system?’ asks Kellie.

  ‘Plugged nickle,’ says Les. ‘All activated lights and cameras and such. No, you need someone there, don’t you. Someone holding the line as we did. They’ve got to think twice about having a go then.’

  ‘Royce Meelind said that he would be in touch to set up the meeting promised by the PM,’ says Kellie. ‘He said there’s no denying the political impact of Western Springs. All the parties are taking the CCP very seriously. Electoral leverage, he said, that’s what we have now more than ever. We’ll need to sort out a time frame for the meeting and a shopping list.’

  ‘And when we meet, when the heats off the PM a bit, we’ll probably get the old run around.’

  ‘That’s why we need to be well prepared.’

  So they are all three quiet for a while, travelling back from the Waitakeres through the suburbs. Kellie’s thoughts and Slaven’s include each other in their different ways, but Croad is the unperturbed epicentre of his world and is unaware of any arrogance in that. He relives the confrontation in the carpark of the Burlesque Hotel as the great event of the evening and already the roles of actuality are subtly modified to enhance his mastery. He smiles his batwing smile as he drives and the blips of the centre markings, the reflectors, flash by. Have a go then, he thinks. Let’s see what you’ve got.

  Kellie is impressed by Royce Meelind. Despite his government job, his Think Tank responsibility for evaluating political impact of new movements, she doesn’t regret the candour of their conversation at the party. She likes his dark eyes, his intellectualism, the quiet efficiency. She wishes she had just such a colleague to assist her with the administration of the Coalition. Meelind is a gardener, surely. She imagines him a man committed to large plants and long term development: maples and golden elms, Spanish chestnuts, limes and the skyward reach of poplars — her favourites.

  Slaven is appalled by his lack of response to most of the people who came to him in the course of the celebrations. Many of them praised the depth of concern he had for his fellow New Zealanders, while their individual approach, their particularity as the people to whom he advocated service, meant little to him. He comforts himself with the idea that the people of greatest worth, the salt of the earth folk that are at the heart of all his effort, would be the last to push themselves forward for his attention. He had enjoyed a brief talk with Fassiere and the promise of further negotiation, but otherwise he seemed to be amongst a press of people who had nothing he admired and whose resolves were transparently self-promoting. His training gives him a certain objectivity of course with which to view his own reactions. He considers the warping power of the enormous stress he has had over several months and that so soon after his accident. Fierce revelation and joys just as much as racking doubts and momentous decisions. Trivial frustrations which could suddenly flare to epic proportions.

  The poet Cummings said that the fear of insanity is an unfortunate display of self-importance, but Slaven since hanging on the wire in sparks has never taken a happy balance for granted. The sudden expansion of his vision and powers which has brought him fame might be counter-balanced by the growth of darker faculties which will have their expression when the time is ripe. Still at times, just before waking, against a low-lit skyline he sees bursts of fire where the arch-angels fight and hears the scaled and feathered reinforcements griping as they march by. There are inner views which have a sad finality, yet lack a surface credibility and sometimes when he talks to people, snatches of conversations from his past come between his words and theirs, as spots drift in our vision across the shapes of an observed world. It happened at the party. A man in very creased trousers, a campaign worker whose face he knew and whose name he has forgotten, had congratulated Slaven while in fact seeking endorsement for the position of Auckland publicity manager designate and as they spoke together, Slaven heard quite clearly his father saying goodbye as he left for China when the Democratic Restoration was in progress.

  ‘Did you see Cardew at all?’ says Kellie.

  ‘Not since right at the start.’ Slaven had noticed his son then, how he seemed to have an appetite for the hors d’oeuvres. Slaven is pleased that he hasn’t seen him since. He never finds any comfort in his son’s presence. ‘I didn’t meet the people I wanted to,’ says Slaven.

  ‘There’s never enough time at parties.’

  ‘No. I mean that the people who are really important to the movement weren’t there, probably not invited even. You end up each time with people who are organisational masseurs, who keep the administration in shape, but who have no consciousness of the spirit within the movement. There was hardly anyone I talked with who had a sense of the individual benefit possible, apart from their own of course.’

  ‘It’s a party. Be reasonable. You can’t expect people to show their best side all the time.’

  ‘I heard dad talking.’ Slaven’s voice is quiet and matter of fact.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘When Bowman bailed me up after supper. Yes, that’s who it was — Bowman. He helped with the setting up of Western Springs from this end.’

  ‘That’s right. Bowman,’ says Kellie. ‘He was the one singing all night. A god awful voice, too.’

  ‘As he was going on and on, I heard my father saying goodbye again at the Wellington airport before he went with his unit to China. I suppose I was about seventeen and there was just this group of service personnel saying goodbye to their families and mu
m never wanted him to go and so she wouldn’t make it easy for him at the end. She made it seem as if he was staying very late at the pub with the boys when he should be home. His high, laced boots squeaked as he stood with us until he had to go and in his eyes you could see that he’d left us already. “Well, off to the land of Nanki Poo,” he said. “It can’t be helped,” and mum walked away without a word.’

  ‘What did he do then?’

  ‘He said he’d get it right when he came back.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘Not altogether, no.’

  ‘I feel sorry for them,’ says Kellie.

  ‘It’s not easy being in the services,’ says Croad, not thinking she may mean man and wife. He has the firm opinion that comes from ignorance. ‘Like back there in the parking lot of the Burlesque Hotel when I had just a few seconds to decide to make a stand. And it could’ve been heavy going if the passing bald-headed guy hadn’t waded in with a will.’

  ‘Do you think I need some counselling, or more treatment?’ Slaven asks Kellie as Croad drives smoothly on through the night.

  ‘Actually,’ muses Croad, ‘I reckon I’ve seen that bloke before, but down south of course. Sort of familiar he was, but he didn’t stick around afterwards. I suppose he had stuff in his car that he was keeping an eye on.’

  ‘When we get back maybe I should go and get some advice from Marianne Dunne. The name of a top person. I still feel scrambled at times and although I wouldn’t swap what I’m doing now, I haven’t been at it long enough to know what I can take, whether I’m pacing myself as I should.’

  ‘I’ll ring her as soon as we’re back.’ says Kellie and she will of course. Slaven knows it is as good as done.