Quicksand Tales

by Keggie Carew

  ‘We’ve been invited to dinner,’ I told Jonathan in a bemused tone of voice, ‘in February!’

  Our minds boggled. Not just the time-span, but the very invitation itself. A mere student going to a professor’s home for a social engagement? We were frankly amazed, and at the same time I was a bit nervous, for while it was a glimpse into a world I aspired to, I suddenly did not feel at all equipped to hold my own. What on earth was I going to talk about? I certainly couldn’t talk about Shakespeare (even though, bizarrely, I’d once learnt As You Like It off by heart). I wasn’t even sure I could talk about Art – I had appalling visions of regurgitating my last lecture. And who would be there? Maybe his brother, the art collector? We joked about hitting The Big Time.

  I could hardly mention this, of course, to any of my fellow art students. Maybe we were all invited, and nobody was mentioning it. But I surreptitiously brought up Michael Neill’s name in a discussion about which English courses other students were doing. Was anyone doing Shakespeare? I innocently asked. Nobody was. But a bright rusty-haired sculpture student called Dean asked if I knew who Michael Neill was.

  ‘He’s the head of the English Department,’ I said, ‘the professor of Shakespeare.’

  ‘Yes, but do you know who he is?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Who his brother is?’

  I didn’t know.

  ‘Sam,’ Dean said.

  ‘Sam?’ I said.

  ‘The actor!’ Dean said. ‘Sam Neill.’

  ‘The Sam Neill?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Sam Neill of the film, My Brilliant Career?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Oh. Right. Blimey.’

  And I walked off a bit dazed, because I had loved My Brilliant Career when I’d seen it, and I was a bit of a fan of Sam Neill.

  ‘Ha!’ Jonathan said. ‘The thinking-woman’s crumpet.’

  ‘Oh . . . Come on! But, but . . . Wow. Sam Neill!’

  And so I began to fantasise . . . Could Sam be the brother Michael was talking about? And could Sam possibly be coming to dinner in three months’ time? Which would account, possibly, for the long lead-up. And bloody hell, might I actually meet Sam Neill? There followed the extraordinary possibility that in three months’ time The Sam Neill might very well cast his eyes upon my huge composite print, of which I was enormously proud, Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? We were going to dinner, we joked. On the road to My Brilliant Career, Jonathan teased. And so we fooled about, the jokes madder and more surreal, until the apprehension and excitement were almost too much to bear. But nothing would stop the anticipated dinner growing in our imaginations, for after all there was plenty of time for it to grow, and grow.

  In the meantime I looked Sam up. Of course I did. I learnt his age, his list of films and parts, that he had been married and divorced and that he now had a Japanese wife. Which was common enough, I’d noticed, in Australia and New Zealand. Far less common for Japanese husbands to have New Zealander wives I should add. Then a friend told us about a film being made on the west coast of New Zealand at a place called Kerikeri; his brother, who ran a plant nursery, had supplied all the plants. Could this film have any connection with Sam Neill, and the dinner party? Slowly, as the date approached, our imaginations inflated the possibilities of this dinner out of all proportion. That we had ever been invited, considering the guest list we’d drummed up, was a thing of wonder.

  The appointed evening finally arrived. The spreadeagled pile of discarded outfits grew mountainous on the bed, but eventually, scrubbed up, dressed up, we set off to Michael Neill’s house in our sort-of car, our Skoda. We arrived and parked round the corner just out of view, and walked gingerly up the wooden steps to the front door. And rang the bell. A child opened the door and let us in. We followed the child, and there was Michael, intercepting us. It appeared we were the first to arrive, which was very unlike us, but it was too late to drive round the block now.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ said Michael, looking pleased. ‘Come down to the kitchen and meet my brother.’

  We followed Michael, me chattering about the convoy of Hell’s Angels we saw on the way, trying to cover my nervousness as we went into the kitchen. In the corner, standing by the dresser, was a man who looked a bit like Sam Neill. But not quite. No, I definitely didn’t recognise him. He had the most enormous whiskery sideburns I’d ever seen, and was quite hairy. In fact, he was very hairy.

  Michael said, ‘Keggie and Jonathan, I want you to meet my brother, Nigel.’

  Nigel. Ah. Brother Nigel, of course, the art-collector brother, Nigel. I smiled and stretched out my hand, and I said, ‘Hello, pleased to meet you, Nigel.’ I wanted to burst out laughing, but of course I didn’t. We all shook hands. And I was completely wrong-footed, after all our capers and clowning and the tomfoolery build-up, after the fashion parade at home, after the bragging and against-my-better-judgement imagining, I was tongue-tied and hadn’t a clue what to say. Then, even more confusingly, a Japanese woman walked in and she was introduced, and we shook hands and said hello to her. Ah, another brother with a Japanese wife. The doorbell went. Nigel smiled and rushed out to answer it. I caught Jonathan’s glance and we both raised our eyebrows very slightly at each other and smiled. And slowly the guests arrived. The great and the good, as far as we were concerned. The literati of New Zealand. People we had seen on TV. This writer, that poet, a distinguished Maori actress, the playwright Maurice Shadbolt, the writer Elspeth Sandys . . . Then Jonathan’s Politics lecturer arrived: Andrew Sharp, one of the most eminent political scientists in the world, a friend of Michael Ignatieff, with a reputation across Auckland University and beyond for the incomparably brilliant lectures that he delivered breathlessly and fluently without notes. Jonathan was suitably overawed, because Sharp was Jonathan’s hero and marked Jonathan’s essays. It was kind of unnerving and now we both felt we had snuck in the side door, two imposter students about whom everyone must have surely been wondering ‘Who are they? Where do they come from? Why on earth are they here?’

  They all knew each other, and I became shyer and increasingly out of my comfort zone, as Michael was busy telling everyone about my print, which he escorted each guest separately to see. This was undeniably flattering, and so I was at the same time pleased yet deeply embarrassed in such rarefied company, particularly as I still couldn’t think of anything to say. So I smiled and drank my wine and ate the tasty snacks that were coming round on trays, which was exactly what, I noticed, Jonathan was doing too. Then we were seated in the dining room. I was placed on the left side of Nigel at the far end of the table, but Nigel had an old friend on the right of him, and they were catching up, so I clung on to the conversation opposite me, but I was also a bit distracted thinking about the weird coincidence of two brothers, Sam and Nigel, looking so similar and also both having Japanese wives. I noticed that Nigel was wearing a very expensive-looking shirt. Which made my charity shop cotton shirt with raffia Pacific Island dancers stitched around the collar look, well, quaint would be generous. And as I sat there, next to Nigel, I couldn’t help noticing that he sounded quite a bit like Sam. But then siblings do; on the telephone, my sister Nicky and I are almost indistinguishable. The conversation at my end of the table was about Maori land rights, of which I knew nothing, so I was nodding in a knowing and interested way, even though I was distracted, thinking that soon I would probably be talking to Nigel about his art collection or something else out of my realm, and still feeling extraordinarily shy, because there was something niggling at me, that made me uneasy in a kind of oblique way, because I was not a hundred per cent sure (I certainly wouldn’t have bet my life on it) that I was not sitting next to Sam. And one reason I was confused about this was that the other guests, who all appeared to know Nigel, said things to him that suggested he was an actor too, things about directors, and producers, and wardrobes and make-up artists, an
d writers and screenplays, and books that had been made into films.

  This uncertainty was deeply unsettling and enough to put me in a quandary (as if I wasn’t already) as to what on earth to say when I did speak to him. I could hardly ask him what he did!

  But of course this was Nigel, who had been introduced, and collected Art. All our stupid pre-dinner, meeting-Sam build-up had obviously got so deeply into my brain it was reluctant to let it go. For how utterly weird, I was thinking, how ironic it would be to sit next to a Hollywood film star for a whole evening without knowing it – a film star whom you were a fan of, like Sam Neill – and not be sure if you were sitting next to him or not. To spend the evening wondering if it were him. With no one to ask. How surreal that would be. And if it were him, even more surreal. To be having the experience, but not to know you were having it.

  Then Nigel turned to me and asked if I had ever been to Northern Ireland. I had to say I hadn’t, that I had lived in southern Ireland, but never crossed the border. He told me he used to go, but hardly went there now. And I asked him about his art collection. And we played out a string of artists’ names, artists whose work he owned, and they were well-known New Zealand artists like Billy Apple and Ralph Hotere, and it was a serious top-league collection. And then I couldn’t think of anything else to say. And I noticed Jonathan was getting louder across the table. He was sitting next to Elspeth Sandys, and they were laughing about something – he was not confused about whom he was, or whom he was not, sitting next to. It was getting late, and Jonathan had taken it upon himself to charge up people’s glasses. Jonathan was in wine wonderland. For the wines were unbelievable. Even I could recognise that we were drinking spectacular stuff. A white burgundy, some amazing pinots, and with pudding, some sticky Sauternes. Jonathan knows a bit about wine and I could see he was impressed, and also that he had sampled quite a lot of it. And Nigel seemed to be very interested in it too, as you could tell by the way he twirled his glass, looking at the colour in a scrutinising, pleasurable way.

  ‘One of yours, Sam?’ Jonathan asked.

  Sam? I blushed for Jonathan’s sake (and mine) and tried to catch his eye to save him saying it again. Nigel politely replied, something about some vineyard whose name I can’t remember. Then, swallow me whole, Jonathan did it again: something, blah, blah, Sam. I glared at him. What was he doing? But no one seemed to bat an eyelid. Then Elspeth called Nigel Sam. They all started calling him Sam. Except Michael. Who, being host, had not been hooking in to the nectar like his guests. So was it Sam? Or was everyone drunk? But it was after midnight, and whether it was Sam or not, the evening was over and we really had to go.

  And so we backed out of the house, down the wooden steps and round the corner. I cast an eye over my shoulder as we got into our Skoda. I pulled out from the kerb and turned to Jonathan.

  ‘So. Was that Sam?’

  He looked at me, dumbstruck. ‘What?’

  ‘You called him Sam.’

  ‘What? You didn’t realise? You’ve got to be kidding!’

  I groaned.

  If I had researched more diligently I might have learnt that Sam’s christened name was Nigel. To have had the experience of sitting next to Sam Neill, yet at the same time not had it. To have, in reality, sat next to him all night, yet in my un-reality – my reality of the time – I had sat next to a hairy-faced bloke called Nigel.

  And so when Jonathan and I watched The Piano the following year, with everyone else in New Zealand, everyone in the cinema pointing out the landmarks – the Kerikeri beach with its black sand and the rolling white waves of the powerful Tasman Sea, and the dense tropical New Zealand bush with its giant tree ferns, and other wonderful plants probably from our friend’s brother’s nursery – what I was looking at was the art collector, my dinner companion, Nigel Neill, walking down the beach in those hairy mutton-chop sideburns.

  Years later, living in England, I met Michael again when he became the visiting Professor of Early Modern Literature at the University of Kent. He had tracked me down and we – Michael, his American wife Kube, Jonathan and me – all had lunch together in our garden in Wiltshire. Michael told me that my print Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? was still in pride of place in their New Zealand hall, and that it continued to amuse their visitors with its gauche jokes. I confessed to him the story of sitting next to Sam that night in Auckland, so many years before. He looked bemused, but I got the impression he was accustomed to the fuss over his younger brother, whom he has always called Nigel, his christened name. I also know that he gave Nigel/Sam a copy of my memoir, Dadland, and thinks if ever there were a film that Sam would be a brilliant elder Tom Carew. I agree.

  And what a strange circular tale that would be.

  THE CAMEL RAID

  It began with desire. For a brilliant blue sky to flood the back of our retinas. But not to have to go too far. Then stars came into it. As many as possible. So it was that from a flat, grey, January London, we arrived in the small Tunisian town of Douz on the edge of the Sahara.

  From the large flat roof of our pension we gaze across the town. Lucky, we think, to have bagged one of the only two rooms on the roof, each one its own entity, two small whitewashed cubes like sentry huts, with a window and a door. We gaze. Our view dodges through telegraph wires, along narrow dusty streets, past minarets, a glinting onion dome on the left, another further in the distance, and at the end of the street a silhouetted splay of palm fronds against the fading light of the shell-pink sky. On cue, a lone voice rings out in the call to prayer. The first star is out. We sense the sand. The very edge of it. Three million five hundred thousand square miles of it. A dry shifting sea. Dunes that rise like waves, up to 500 feet high. A landscape crisscrossed for centuries by the trade routes of camel trains, caravans of up to 12,000 strong, carrying salt and cowrie shells, bringing back gold, or kola nuts, or slaves. Tomorrow we will look for camels. Tonight we can only gaze.

  At midnight, the occupants of the other room on the roof – our only neighbours up here – arrive. From the stampeding feet we calculate a dozen schoolchildren. We can hear the thudding of extra mattresses being hauled across the roof to accommodate them. We quickly revise our calculation: fifty schoolchildren. And their friends. The mattresses are not required, as the little buggers never go to bed. No matter, for tomorrow we will find camels to take us into to the Great Silence.

  The next morning, bleary-eyed but breakfasted, we notice a sign down a narrow side street, chalked onto a board outside an anonymous door: Camel Raid. After a second of hesitancy, for it looks as if a child might have written it, we go in. Yes, they have camels available; yes, they have guides; yes, yes; one day, three days, a week. Yes, yes. Very nice camels. Very nice desert. Yes, they bring food. Yes, they have time to organise. Of course. Very good agency. No problem. Very good trip.

  One instinct is to go with it. As though providence brought us here. A superstition about the importance of trust. Spurn this and it may mean bad luck. The other instinct is that maybe they have no camels; maybe this office is a moveable feast; maybe, after each booking, the chalk-written sign travels over to the next street. But they do have a photograph album on the desk which is full of pictures of camels and sand and the blazing blue sky.

  We go with it, take the leap of faith, pay our money and book our raid. A week in the desert. Then have to resist checking out all the other Camel Ride establishments that suddenly seem to have sprung up on the way back to our pension. Proper offices with proper signs, and printed leaflets. Ours is more authentic, we try to smugly tell ourselves. More . . . Saharan. Not some regimented tourist itinerary. And how lucky now to have the day free, not to have to compare. Which would only result in terrible deliberations and indecision and endless discussion. Which would impoverish the day.

  All day we see signs for Camel Rides, wherever we go. I can’t help wondering. Out loud. I begin to worry about our raid, whether they have camels, whether there will be enough food. Whether
we will ever see the organisers again.

  At the appointed time of four p.m. we stand, crestfallen, in semi-disbelief outside the locked door, from which the Camel Raid sign has vanished. Then a horn blares at the mouth of the street. A young man in a long white djellaba and a midnight-blue keffiyeh gets out of a jeep. He beckons us over and introduces himself as our guide.

  He is called Mohammed. We climb into the back of the jeep. There is nothing in the jeep. Except us. No provisions. No camel harnesses . . . And then, putting up a dust cloud, we are driven out of town, very, very fast.

  Two miles outside the town, beside a crumbling ochre sandstone wall, Mohammed points to a pile of sacks on the ground, pulls over and skids to a halt. Beyond the sacks are two robed men holding three camels. Here, Mohammed informs us, is our camel driver. And here are our camels, two large ones and a baby one – which looks way too small to ride, and way too small to carry anything.

  ‘This is Mansour,’ Mohammed says.

  The camel driver smiles, displaying a mouthful of broken brown crockery. One of his eyes rolls sideways and up, its pupil hides beneath the lid, leaving just the albumen, yellowing slightly, like an overcooked egg.

  ‘Sabah el kheir,’ we say, which we learnt at breakfast.

  ‘And this is Zaid,’ Mohammed says. We nod and bow our heads.

  Mohammed and the camel driver talk rapidly together. I begin to feel a fluttering of ominous anxiety. Only two camels. Where were their camels? My smile becomes frozen.

  Three of them and two of us. We couldn’t possibly have paid enough money to hire three men for a week. And why only two camels? What if they mean to leave us in the middle of the desert and rob us? Or worse.

  ‘Are there only two camels?’ I ask.

  ‘You need more than two camels?’