‘Lovely, lovely,’ Slaven murmurs. On the bedside table is a digital clock, a ginger nut and a pork nugget, a box of lavender tissues, an owl made from blue and emerald felt and embroidered with golden thread. They look very settled together, comfortable in their accustomed spatial relationship. They and the pueblo carving are part of the exact scene and company for Slaven’s climax with the goose girl, as they had no doubt been exactly present even if at a distance while he lay in Kellie’s flower garden beneath the power line, while he galvanised 250,000 people at Western Springs, while he was beaten beneath the wharf at Lyttelton. Well, perhaps not the pork nugget.
The goose girl smiles at him in a surprisingly maternal way, considering her age. ‘There now,’ she says.
‘Ah, Jesus.’
‘We thought it would relax you. Athol reckoned you’d probably been missing out. That’s not prying, or anything.’ She props herself on an elbow so that she can see him better as she talks and her white breasts move to one side. They are full and the nipples still gleam pinkly from the wetness of Slaven’s mouth. ‘A guy brought round a special phone,’ she says. ‘You’re going to get a ring about midday.’
‘Thank you. I haven’t been welcomed to the morning in that way for years.’
‘I didn’t mind it slower for a change. Young guys are so bloody quick, aren’t they. Athol’s very strong, overpowering. He comes off with a hell of a rush.’ She gets on to her hands and knees and then stands by the bed to put on her dressing gown. The harp swing of her hips, the heft of her breasts; there’s a sensuous ungainliness in her movement and her long neck, her too small head with compressed features, aren’t beautiful in any conventional way. ‘You like it here don’t you?’ she asks. The phone guy brought even more money and she likes Slaven’s formality and all the words he uses without swearing. And she likes his gratitude.
‘You know,’ he says, ‘I’ve been trying to change things for the better in our country. There’s been too much separation, too many categories for too long. We need to be more a part of each other.’ Slaven has particularly strong conviction of this at present and his voice has a rich vehemence which comes only when he begins to fire up. The goose girl enjoys how he talks rather than what he says. She sits back on the bed, watches the Heathcote flow on the ceiling and wonders if he’s one of those extra rich guys who has been kicked out of Mexico by the Hispanics and hasn’t a permit to be in New Zealand. When she looks at him she’s not sure he’s like a Kiwi and he doesn’t speak like Athol and her.
‘Your poor hands,’ she says. Maybe he’s been tortured.
‘A work accident,’ he says.
‘You haven’t even read your letters,’ the goose girl says and leaves him to do so by taking a handful of clothes to the bathroom.
‘Has it been too awful for you?’ Kellie writes. ‘Miles has been a tremendous help at this end and so have Marianne and Thackeray. I just hope that we’re doing the right thing this close to the elections. It’s all such a risk isn’t it. Miles’s political friends don’t think the authorities will try a public arrest once we get the background across to the people and Marianne’s been questioning the medical grounds for the original committal. I’ve tried to keep the CCP on track, but of course all sorts of factions are making a bid now. We need to talk about Cardew. Anyway, soon there’ll be time for all that. I’m worried about you. What about your hands and face?’
Slaven takes time from Kellie’s letter to check his hands. They had shaped themselves to the goose girl’s bosom well enough. The seams like lashes, the colour differences, will never go completely of course. ‘We must make a strong public move soon, if we’re to be effective before the elections,’ Kellie has written. ‘The main parties consider we’re neutralised I think.’ The goose girl leans into the doorway of her own room, her nose concave like a bill and her eyebrows darker than her hair. She has packed away her full-feathered breast inside a jerkin with indigenous motifs and has an amulet of Inuit design.
‘Athol and me are going to have a feed of garlic bread and chilli beans,’ she says as an invitation.
‘I like hot garlic bread, thank you, but I’ll give the beans a miss if you don’t mind. A cup of coffee, though, marvellous.’
‘I’m off then,’ she says and Slaven doesn’t even know her name. See her journey then to the Fabo Fast Food Centre, taking her slightly ungainly steps, her white hair, her kindly and shallow intentions, her arched neck, her curving breasts beneath the jerkin with the nipples washed by Slaven’s tongue. The goose girl knows nothing of mythology, metaphysics, or populist ideologies, god bless her, but she knows something of a man’s needs perhaps and is a ready judge of garlic bread and chilli beans.
Miles also has sent a letter. ‘You may yet regret your refusal to accept the solace of hibernation in the Beckley-Waite, that cave in which no one need look directly at the real. Why would you want to return to what we have around us at present. Perhaps you still believe you can change it. I begin to think that you have developed an appetite for fame. If so you will be consumed by it in the end. Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the hugger-mugger preparations for your escape and imagine your great daring in the execution of it. When you surface, come and see me if you have the time. I crave distraction, having used up all my memories, and dying is either a painful, or boring, business.’
Slaven grows hungry waiting for the goose girl to return with the first food of the day. He puts a finger first on the pork nugget on the bedside table, then the ginger nut there. The nugget is corpse-like and so he eats the biscuit with no great satisfaction as he has a feeling that it’s been dunked then left to parch again. Surreptitiously he dries his cock with a squeeze of the goose girl’s sheet, then dresses in the clothes which Kellie sent. Fresh clothes, freedom from the Beckley-Waite, a loving awakening to the goose girl. He hasn’t felt this good in months. Slaven is determined to take up his mission again; to succeed in it.
The three of them eat together in the kitchen. Athol has the non-snoop phone as the centrepiece on the table, not just as a convenient proximity, but because to him it is a novelty. Time isn’t money to Athol and the goose girl. Theirs is still a life of direct contacts and the day’s agenda working out bit by bit as the day itself determines it in casual development. Athol likes to ride his Harley Hog to an address and knock on a back door beneath sloping wooden stairs, or a workshop window behind the auto tuning shop. He needs to see a full-sized, three dimensional face when he’s speaking. How can you deal with people, reckon them friend, or threat, if they’re not near enough to reach out to and touch, grasp.
The call from Kellie comes as Slaven finishes his coffee. It is right on time, of course. The goose girl shifts her position with innocent curiosity so that she sees Kellie’s face on the small screen. There is a slight double image which relieves the sharpness of her features. Slaven is determined to be more deserving of her loyalty and talent. Kellie tells him that they have a recuperative cottage at a hospital not obviously connected with Marianne Dunne which will do the trick for a few days. ‘Can’t I stay here?’ says Slaven.
‘People coming and going in any number would soon be noticed. We have to have meetings, but without it drawing attention. An institutional cover is best now — privacy without isolation.’ He knows that she is right and agrees to be ready when Les Croad comes. ‘See you soon,’ says Kellie.
‘She speaks nice,’ says the goose girl.
‘You come here anytime you want,’ says Athol.
Athol and the goose girl take a spin on the Hog to check out the neighbourhood. Just in case there are uniforms, Athol tells Slaven, who hears the barking of the exhaust as the patrol is carried out. Athol and the goose girl return as Les arrives and so the farewell is made there by the side of the house — Slaven and Les on the path amongst its coloured crescents, Athol and the goose girl on the wide cherry leather of the Hog. What would you say at such a time, I wonder, which would not be completely glib, dismissive even of such brief acquaintance, such
ignorance of each other’s motivations, such purely convenient mutual favour and passage. Just such does Slaven attempt and is aware as he speaks that the banana-passionfruit retains its set scrutiny. So do the felt owl and the tissue box now, so does the pueblo carving, but Slaven has borne the ginger nut away so that there’s left merely the faintest ring of its drying on the goose girl’s bedside table. Why have you this appetite for the bewilderment and joy of others? Already you have been told more than you would otherwise have known. There now. Is that it then? And the stud in Athol’s nose dips and glints as he smiles. ‘Go for it,’ he says.
‘Banzai,’ replies Les Croad who knows them not at all.
At the recuperative cottage, one in a deliberately random distribution of cottages just the same, Slaven finds he has become Croad, yet Croad remains himself. ‘Just as a precaution,’ Les says. ‘Answering the phone, any mail, things like that. Just a precaution. Better sure.’ Slaven considers the convolutions of his escape. Perhaps before he can be himself once more, he’ll be lost in all the subterfuge, his identity shucked and then what’s left mislaid, or hard put to make a claim to what once was his. ‘I’ve seen a damn sight worse than this,’ says Les. He wanders uninvited through the cottage. It is after all to be the home of a titular Croad. ‘Small, sure, but such a crafty, modern little place. So cheap to heat.’ Fittings are tested for adherence to the walls and the body dryer activated in the bathroom. ‘Kellie and Miles Kitson will come round this evening,’ he says after satisfying his curiosity. ‘They’ll bring more stuff for you.’
With Les gone, Slaven has an opportunity to think things through. He leaves his one small case and the shopping bag of cycling clothes on the floor of the only bedroom and lies looking at a very clean, white ceiling on which nothing moves at all. Soon he will be caught up in the onward rush of the Coalition and publicity again which will blur the end to which they are the means. Just for a few hours then, free from the Beckley-Waite, from the mechanisms necessary for that escape, from the distractions of the goose girl and the mundane assistance of Les Croad and before Kellie, god bless her, Miles, Thackeray and the others, before Cardew’s continuing betrayal and the fatuous auguries of his daughter. And in that time an earnest question for himself — where to now?
He will take the platform soon enough, raise his genie above a great rally to dismay the powers of politics, and all for the good of others of course. He will be the leader of ordinary people and made extraordinary because of it.
What is it then that prevents Slaven from a complete confidence in the future of it all? When the people have been most united and vociferous in support, still he’s seen the snake’s head forming. The great owl spreads its wing as a shadow backdrop to the genie. Why in his dreams do the archangels’ reinforcements still troop to a lurid horizon? Why does he lie amid the Earl of Athlone’s clotted blossoms and the bumble bees where it all began.
Baby, baby, come again and live with me upon the shore of Half Moon Bay.
Kellie and Sarah and Miles come when he’s asleep, using their own card in the door and carrying cartons of food and clothes. After all, Slaven is repossessing his life. Kellie’s long hug is all sincerity and comfort — and nothing more. ‘How are you feeling?’ she says and Slaven has a selfish guilt that in fact how he feels has always been in the forefront of his mind, but rarely how things might be with her. ‘You look so tired,’ she says. ‘Your colour’s odd. Most of your skin’s so white, but your face is windburnt. Good heavens, I suppose it’s all been horrible has it?’
‘Not really. If you mean the getting away, then more confusing than anything and if you mean the Beckley-Waite, well the worst thing there was that no one cared a damn for you and yet you couldn’t go anywhere else. I’ve come to realise that for a lot of people that’s their life, but I’ve been used to better. You made me feel someone. You spoiled me.’
‘Of course I did. And there’s a big job to do now if you’re up to it. You know that it’s less than a month before the elections.’
‘The parting of the ways, or the parting of the waters,’ whispers Miles. The red inners of his lapsed lower eyelids glisten. ‘Great things are expected of you as a sort of political Lazarus; a Lear’s clown to our rulers.’ Miles is protectively stooped. He looks about the small bedroom for a place to rest, but as there’s no chair he walks slowly away into the living room and sits out of sight, but not out of earshot. ‘I’m so pleased to see you, Aldous,’ he says.
‘Your face has healed up. It’s really come on. Don’t you think so, Sarah?’ Kellie runs a finger down the side which had been more damaged.
‘I knew you’d be all right, because there were no black fantails on the bush walk last Sunday. A black fantail is the really bad omen as far as signs go.’ Sarah looks over her new surroundings. No fantails of course, but maybe there are other auguries.
‘Let me see your hands,’ says Kellie and she takes them in her own as if they are fabric samples and tests them thoroughly, bending the fingers back and running her thumb firmly across the palms to see how quickly the blood comes flooding back.
‘No, I’m feeling fine,’ says Slaven. ‘Everything’s working okay.’
Haven’t Athol and the goose girl seen to that; primed him with pork nuggets and Chardonnay and ignited him in the grasp of the goose girl. As Sarah puts clothes in the drawers and wardrobe and Kellie outlines the background for the Coalition Executive Meeting, Slaven has in recollection the wondrous cherry leather sheen of the Harley Hog, the Heathcote gliding, turning on the ceiling, the quick switching muzzles of the pit-bull terriers, the tremble of the goose girl’s breasts, the dazzle of blue sky through the guttering rusted right away.
‘There are several options really,’ says Kellie. Indeed there are. His father despised indecision. Take what you want — and pay for it, the sergeant-major always said.
‘Four green issue singlets.’
‘Check.’
‘Two woollen draw-neck and leather-reinforced jerseys, issue.’
‘Check.’
‘One draw-neck bushshirt.’
‘Check.’
‘One stainless steel dog-tag set.’
‘Check.’
‘One reticent affection.’
‘Check.’
‘One bottle top for swallowing, personal.’
‘Check.’
‘Not everything’s been Cardy’s fault,’ says Kellie.
‘Come on now, Kellie,’ says unseen Miles.
‘Well, it hasn’t either.’
‘But he’s behind most of the trouble. He’s a hopeless little bastard, I’m afraid.’ When you’re very rich, very influential and dying as well, trenchant expression of the truth can be got away with. Kellie is hurt of course, and Slaven pulls a face for her sake, but shares the realisation that his son is as Miles describes him. It’s a feeling of sorrowful awareness, rather than anger, for the only continuation for most of us is through our children and as well there’s some responsibility for what they become, isn’t there. ‘Aries is never kind in Cardy’s horoscope. Things are stacked against him,’ says Sarah.
‘I read one of your columns when I was in the Beckley-Waite. In some magazine. I understood that success was going to come to me through some imminent sporting triumph. I’m still waiting.’
‘You need an individual chart done for any precise indication. You know I’ve always said that.’
‘Some time soon, Sarah, we must sit down and do it. A full personal horoscope and we’ll find out all sorts of things about each other maybe.’ Slaven sees that his daughter’s pleased with the attention while knowing his scepticism for her interest, and he wishes that he had been more welcoming, more often.
‘I want my stars read, too,’ claims Miles, ‘but backwards, receding. Bright constellations which will light up patterns in all the rushing hitherto. The past is always more interesting than the future, because you have first-hand knowledge of it, but no idea what it means.’
All in all
though, Cardew is dangerous sure enough, as has already been shown. Slaven knows someone close to the centre offers the best opportunity to opponents. A sort of palace revolution began with his admittance to the Beckley-Waite and though Kellie and Miles were too strong for it to be carried through at once, the division is real.
The simple meal becomes a reunion in a quiet, understated way. Kellie and Sarah, Slaven and Miles, shoulder to shoulder at the small table. Miles has brought a Schloss Fustenberger from his cellar and for the first time in weeks, Slaven has the sort of food he likes and is accustomed to. He realises how much of his former comfort in the world has been the result of Kellie’s mediation between him and it.
‘Are you up to it all,’ asks Miles. ‘It’s not essential to have a meeting tonight, or to push on with anything unless you’re up to it.’ Is he up to it? Well, he is up to it in the sense that presumably it is the next thing to happen and up to it also in that he can cope with any of the pressures it will bring. What however, Slaven asks himself more keenly, is he UP to? What is it that he wants? Why is it that a conscious effort of concentration is needed to bring his mind to the CCP, the elections, the policies which have aroused the expectations of thousands of his compatriots? Just a delayed reaction, surely. The culmination of the psychological pressures of the Beckley-Waite and then the bewildering montage of his escape. He just needs to place himself again. Just needs to be set.
‘I’m up to it all right,’ he says.
‘Paul Hurinui, Eula, Sheffield and Thackeray are coming, that’s all. Not Cardew of course,’ says Kellie. ‘We can’t take the risk of telling him anything. He’s speaking at a meeting in Ashburton. We’re only just holding on. Things don’t take off the same without you, even though Thackeray’s been giving some fine speeches. A lot of people can’t understand what happened to you. They’re not sure what to believe. We must get back up to steam by doing something spectacular soon. A city rally, here, as soon as possible I reckon, so that the government and the other parties get the message that we still have the electoral power and are prepared to use it. A real jolt and then demands.’
A Many Coated Man Page 26
