‘I’ve asked him to come tomorrow. He pretended that there was nothing we needed to settle of course, that he’s been going great guns on my behalf all this time.’
Those within an organisation often base their personal opinion of their leader on the extent to which tough issues are faced, which is quite a different thing from the public conception of how successful, or unsuccessful, a person may be. Slaven knows that the people in the Coalition he most relies on are watching to see if he’s prepared to tackle Cardew’s corruption, faithlessness, opportunism. For everything that’s been proved there’s almost certainly a double betrayal, but between father and son special, extenuating circumstances are always in force, aren’t they? Isn’t it a son’s function to usurp his father’s powers and shouldn’t the father despite all disappointment and provocation in the end present himself as pelican? A son who supplants his father by any means assures his own future — a father who defeats his son destroys the future of them both.
‘Sla-VEN, Sla-VEN, Sla-VEN.’
‘Maybe you should go down and talk to them. Capitalise on your return.’
‘Once I did that, there’d be ten times as many. They’d swarm over the paddocks despite the security and hide in the garden here. They’d garrote themselves with trellis ties, make sacrifice in the bird bath and flatten their faces on the window panes. Thackeray said there were three more electrocutions yesterday; one here in Christchurch. A retired Harbour Board navigation instructor who said that the world was to end with my deliverance from the Beckley-Waite and climbed into the Addington substation.’
‘I hoped you hadn’t heard,’ says Kellie. She sits beside him again. She puts one hand over one of his.
‘So you’ll talk to him tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
So he comes. They don’t touch, but Cardew says how pleased he is that his father’s looking good and that he’d been working closely with the others to put pressure on so that Slaven would be released the minute he was well enough. A few sentences is all that Cardew needs to include some sort of lie. Slaven notices his son’s big feet and the way he walks with his hands busy — trying to occupy a little more space than he can naturally fill. The distaste between them is heavy on the air, a reason perhaps for them both to prefer their meeting outdoors.
‘Let’s not try to fool each other,’ Slaven says.
‘Cut the crap you mean?’ Even his language he knows, is a way to antagonise his father.
‘Okay, cut the crap. You see I know what you’ve been up to. All the deals and little scams. The money that’s ending up in your pockets, the kick-backs from some of the parties, the women you kindly interview on the Coalition’s behalf, you and Pollen and Marr and others in Wellington.’
They argue in the double garage overhang and it is raining, as it was raining when Dr Eugene and Dr Bliss came down from the Beckley-Waite at Cardew’s invitation. This time it is his turn to take a trip into the rain. The garden in which Slaven and Kellie talked yesterday is bowed with it, blossom and leaf drenched and so drawing the slighter stems down. There are puddles on the broad, paved turning circle in front of the garages and the heavy rain impacts there, forming clear bubbles even, which drift for a moment and then are gone. The worked soil of the plots, always fertile in Kellie’s garden, is darker, richer, in the rain and seems to breast up.
‘Miles tells you all this stuff, I suppose. The old stoat. The stinking, old stoat. Got a finger in everything, including up your arse.’ Cardew is still young. I’m young, his look says and the voice beneath the words also. He’s guilty of every accusation made and more. He’s selfish, weak, ignorant and unimaginative; less than his father in all the things that don’t matter as much as that he’s young, and Miles old and dying and Slaven ageing. What has right, or wrong, got to do with a sense of life.
Neither Cardew, nor his father, express anything of this as Slaven lays down the deal that Cardew must relinquish any connection with the CCP, go back to Australia and in return he’ll get enough money to start some sort of business there and no action will be taken on what he’s done. ‘So I’m wiped off like an arse,’ Cardew says. Yet he is young, see, young.
‘You’re still part of the family. Kellie and I will stick to that,’ says Slaven and Cardew’s eyes slide away with a boredom as absolute as if the subject has become non-penetrative sex. Slaven sees his son’s face in all its unleavened physicality. Slaven has been disappointed — more, betrayed — so often by his son that the original love has become detached and persists only as a less specific, nagging pain, rather like a stomach ulcer.
‘How much?’ asks Cardew.
‘How much?’ Is it affection he wishes to quantify.
‘How much will you give me to get started?’
Kellie maintains precise boundaries between lawn and garden and the water begins to collect in the small moats there, stretching back like a line of quicksilver in the light of a rainy day. It isn’t the parting that either of them would have wished. I suppose you have your own beliefs,’ says Slaven.
‘Yes, you’re a long time dead is what I say.’ And he is young.
So see him off, yes, certainly that, with the rain still heavy and the two of them standing in the garage doorway. ‘We’ll come out with Sarah to the airport when you go,’ Slaven tells him and Cardew gives his smile which turns down at the last moment. They glance into the rain which hachures the sky and sounds on the garage roof.
‘I never liked this as much as the old place in Allen Street,’ says Cardew. ‘It’s too far out of town.’ People say they’re alike physically in some ways and in some mannerisms. Judge for yourself as you watch them. The small, but fleshy, ears perhaps, the narrow wrists which make by contrast their hands appear large, a way of dipping a shoulder when they are called and turn back. Cardew has lost somewhat more of the dark hair than his father — yet he is young, young. Baldness is inherited through the mother, Slaven has told Kellie with some complacency.
‘Two hundred thousand isn’t that much,’ says Cardew, ‘when you’re talking about a business. Anyway, I hope that the big Hagley Park rally goes off okay. I really do. Just remember that the blue bird of happiness can so soon become the chicken of despair.’ He has turned back from his car to say it with a laugh and his shoulder dips; the rain already wetting down his hair exaggerates his young baldness and the two of them look just past each other as they make farewell.
‘See you later then,’ says Slaven as he sends his son into exile. And so epigone is, yes, gone.
Kellie and Slaven go on to the ostentatious house on the Cashmere Hills after talks with the Regional Council officers in which civic apprehensions concerning the coming rally are quietened. Miles has a German housekeeper and a Chinese gardener, gathered somehow in his business travels, though Georgina claims the roles should be reversed. He has a nurse, too, all Kiwi, who leaves Slaven and Miles together once the latter’s artificial kidney has been replaced. There is a brief spiral of life blood in the catheter. Miles chooses a green silk shirt to cover it. ‘Just like an oil filter really,’ he says. ‘I can wear it strapped to my stomach. There’s a knack to everything you know, even dying.’
They have their meal in the tower, with the city of the plains traced with lights of pulsating, jewelled colour. Miles especially loves such evenings with his wife and the Slavens. He calls them his patient reunions and is intrigued by the irony of his support for Slaven and the CCP when he is utterly in disagreement with most of the beliefs they have. He has a sneer of pure delight to hear Kellie talk with conviction of the common interest as a means of gaining support, for he has long understood that the common interest is far too broad and too just an application to make anyone enthusiastic. Only personal and factional advantage provide an urgent motivation. A notion of fair play, justice, is unknown in nature and one of the most recent masquerades in human society.
‘He likes to play at cynicism,’ says Georgina, ‘because somehow he thinks it appropriate for his success.’
She is fully-dressed, and just as lovely, at the table tonight so as not to scandalise the guests. They are having venison for the main with a burgundy and ginger sauce. Miles is not allowed the sauce. They are having a turn-of-the-century Haut-Brion. Miles is not allowed the Haut-Brion, but has it all the same. He drinks it as a libation and his old face smiles.
‘Until you are determined on a thing which runs counter to the wishes of everyone else,’ he says, ‘you never understand the force convention has; just as you don’t realise the menace of the crowd when you’re moving with it.’
‘If what I was determined on was opposed by everyone else, then I’d question myself again,’ says Slaven.
‘The great majority of people are fools, as Ibsen said.’
‘Present company excepted,’ says Kellie.
‘We’re not supposed to think it of course,’ Miles continues, ‘but it’s true. You only have to look at their entertainments to recognise that. Comparative programme ratings and the response to the most fatuous advertising are the best indicators of the real mentality we exhibit. The welfare of a fool is as important as the welfare of a non-fool in a democracy no doubt, but unfortunately the mass opinion is unlikely to achieve it for either. Most people are in a community because they believe that they can get more out of the association than they put in.’
‘I suppose you have to put up with this hog-wash whenever he starts to drink?’ Slaven asks Georgina.
‘No, it’s something he tries to impress visitors with. Most of the time he watches the programmes he says he hates, or tells me stories about his prime.’
‘Lies,’ says Miles in delight.
‘He’s like so…’
‘Georgina has a marvellous pair of tits, but she slanders me all the time.’
‘You’re like so many really successful people,’ says Kellie, ‘because in your own way you’ve excelled, yet secretly consider yourself mediocre, you assume that all those who haven’t done as well must be stupid. It’s not like that.’
‘Mediocre. Mediocre,’ says Miles hoarsely. He has long since become sick of deference and loves any abuse from his friends. ‘I bring you into my house and feed you and you turn on me. You’ve become a very proud, authoritarian woman since the CCP has made celebrities of you both.’ The artificial kidney is only a slight bulge beneath his green, silk shirt, his wife is happy, the Haut-Brion is a pleasure and Slaven has told him of the strange, off-hand way in which Cardew went. So little passion, or action, in it as is his way.
‘It’s your generalisations which let you down,’ says Slaven. ‘You’ve been away from the people you categorise for too long. Most are this, some are that, such and such a percentage are something else. That’s where you go wrong. Individuals aren’t constant, they show a range of vices and virtues from time to time. Today’s judicious person is tomorrow’s fool. Maybe a majority take a wrong view, but the significant thing is that almost all of them are capable of seeing their own error. I’m in touch with that you see. I’m able now to bring the best out in people.’
‘You do,’ says Kellie simply.
‘I know it sounds arrogant like that, but if I didn’t believe it I couldn’t keep pushing myself forward.’
‘You’re a power-hungry dentist,’ says Miles. ‘You’ve this secret ambition to be a pop star.’
Baby, baby, come again and live with me upon the shore of Half Moon Bay. Georgina begins the singing of it and Kellie then Slaven and Miles take it up. Kinder hearts are waiting, baby, amongst old friends at Half Moon Bay. It’s not likely to rival the Hoihos’ original, particularly with the respiratory deficiencies that Miles has, but the four of them enjoy it around the walnut table in the tower. The city shimmers on the plain below them and a constant wind adds a hollow whistle as a backing. The German housekeeper, who is agile and dark, smiles from the doorway and holds off on the Black Forest Gateau for a while longer. Slaven leans to his friend.
‘You know, I’ve never actually been to Half Moon Bay,’ he tells him.
‘Most of us haven’t,’ says Miles, ‘that’s why we’ve taken it so much to heart.’
‘What motivates all these people who come to your Coalition rallies?’ he says. ‘What do they imagine will be the consequence of such a show of electoral solidarity?’ He himself is always uncertain of the degree to which one person is able to comprehend another. The link between signified and signifier seems both multifarious and tenuous as he grows older. What is loaves to one, is fishes to another, what is leadership becomes subjugation, what is intended as testimony becomes interpreted as confession. ‘What do they want of you?’ he asks Slaven with a sudden seriousness which prevents them continuing the line of conversation. For both know that the supporters, whatever slogans they endorse and whatever programmes they march for, want from Slaven all the fierce, private glories which they’re unable to provide for themselves.
‘I’m coming to the Hagley Park rally,’ says Georgina. ‘I’ve warned Miles that he’ll be left here. I want to see Aldous’s aura that they talk about and watch him whip up everyone’s feelings. Sarah said she’ll go with me.’
‘You’ll need to improve your singing,’ says Slaven.
‘The Government’s got the wind up about it, I think.’ Kellie’s sharp face is eager in the candle-light. She stops eating at the thought of this final, great rally. ‘Royce Meelind rang me to get details. He had to say it was all routine of course, but I could tell there’s a good deal of anxiety about what’s going to happen. Locally they’re raising various obstacles of one sort or another, without admitting they don’t want it to go ahead.’
‘It’ll be a real cracker,’ says Slaven.
‘It’s nearly all set to go,’ says Kellie.
‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ says Georgina.
Miles in the exchange is able to pour himself more wine, without Georgina feeling the need to notice. He is relaxed, enjoying the present well enough, also allowing his mind to range beyond it. In recent years he has realised that some of his time was wasted in doing too much. Last night he had a dream about his life having taken a different turn. He was voyaging on a forest river where everything was new, the fruited jungle crowding to the slow water’s edge and parrots in livery of flashing yellow and red, criss-crossing as heralds of his arrival. And he had an absolute and benign assurance that he was coming home. ‘I had a dream last night,’ he says,’ about my life having taken quite a different turn.’ Miles thinks most people miss the real significance of dreams. They’re confused by the distortion of incident and appearance without realising that the emotion is always true. In dreams the quiet person may be paid that admiration so often due, and adulterers may awake in tears because they have restored to them the early joy of marriage.
So Miles shares his dream. There is laughter and ease. Cardew’s jet far above the Tasman, the lapping of the jetty water amongst the hair of the mussels, might seem a world away. Yet there’s no linear progression you remember and our own future is going on now, except that it’s happening to someone else.
Slaven is very busy revitalising the Coalition and preparing for the rally. Kellie plots his time for him in a diary; designated sections for all the day and a good part of the night. Even rests must be consciously provided for, and she won’t have them pushed out by last minute demands on his attention.
Slaven is having a rest between eight thirty and nine, when he’s to be picked up by Les Croad and taken into the city to do a talk-back with Pamela Greene, Mouth of the South. So he lies on his study sofa with his belt loosened and his shoes off. There’s still light, but it’s not a harsh light and after rubbing the bases of his thumbs awhile, a habit which persists from the time they were healing, Slaven falls asleep.
Sarah wakes him by coming into the room. In the moment that comes with his awakening and before his attention is fully-focused, he knows that he’s been dreaming. All of it has fallen immediately beyond conscious recall, except the last thing spoken. ‘The Caretaker will see you now,
Dr Slaven,’ and there was the fragrance of the weed. No context at all remains for the line, but the voice itself is there and the vestiges of the pleasure with which he received the invitation.
He sees that his daughter has been crying. ‘I just want to say I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m not able to give you much support. I know you’re disappointed in me and in Cardy too and I’d like it to be different, but I haven’t got the brains. I see the things that happen to you, but I can’t be there in any way that helps. Do you see? I’d just like to be able to say the right things, but I haven’t got them in me. I haven’t got the brains enough to get alongside you.’
For a moment the pain of love is such that he can’t speak, and having woken suddenly, the more calculated defences against emotion are down. Slaven sits up clumsily; his feet smell he thinks and this embarrasses him. He takes her left hand in both of his and he looks with longing into her face. ‘Not at all,’ he says. ‘Don’t say it. Don’t ever say it. It’s just that we’re two adults now and what comes between us is the ache of having once been father and daughter in that special, original way. You see what I mean? You can’t go back to it and what you move on to is always something less, isn’t it. Even with Cardy I suppose there was a bit of that and there’s nothing can be done. It’s a metamorphosis and a different thing entirely comes out of it, quite beyond our control. So there’s no blame in any of it.’
‘Tonight I’m going to listen to all of the talk back and get a proper grip on your ideas. Then I’ll listen to the Tuamarina, or Western Springs, tape. They’re so long aren’t they. I just don’t know how you think of enough to say. And mum said the best article is probably the one in Pacifica. Maybe I can help then.’
A Many Coated Man Page 28
