by Tom Scott
And this one on my birthday two months later.
Dear Tom,
I am informed by Ginette that the odometer is clicking again today. You are to be congratulated and I understand from the makers of plumbing equipment that you are under warranty until 2046. The position will be reviewed every fortnight after that so please get everything important done in the intervening period.
Happy birthday.
Yrs,
J Clarke, Manawatu
On the Sunday evening before the Monday-morning operation, Averil and I met in turn with the cardiologist, the surgeon, the anaesthetist, and the perfusionist—the latter’s job was keeping a weather eye on the fancy machine that would be doing the work of my heart and lungs while they were temporarily decommissioned. There was lots of talk and discussion about risks. I asked the perfusionist about power outages. There were back-up generators and if they failed they had batteries.
Averil was anxious and tearful. I felt strangely calm and relaxed. Like Woody Allen, I wasn’t frightened of dying—I just didn’t want to be there when it happened.
I had been truly blessed by Averil entering my life. Blessed with all my children, including Will, who has none of my chromosomes and is the richer for it. Sam and Jessica had gifted us with one grandchild. I had hoped to be around when Shaun, Rosie and Will had theirs. C’est la vie. I fell asleep knowing that I was a fortunate man who had led a fortunate life. If I woke up after surgery, everything from that point on would be a bonus.
I CAME ROUND IN A strange, grey light in a recovery room. Everything was fuzzy and in soft focus. I didn’t know where I was. I knew I had been subjected to open-heart surgery but what was the outcome? Had I woken up, or was this a poorly lit dream? Or, worse, was I on the other side? Whatever that was.
A familiar silhouette with a corona of light around blonde hair leaned close. I couldn’t make out the face. A gentle voice spoke and someone squeezed my hand—my darling Averil. Unless by some extraordinary and tragic coincidence Averil had died as well, it meant I was alive.
She told me that it had all gone smoothly and that everyone was pleased. I had sutures in a wound stretching from my groin to my right knee where they had borrowed a vein to replace some occluded coronary arteries. I wore pressure stockings on both legs. An aortic valve from a bullock replaced my own (Model No. TF-25A, which I thoroughly recommend), which had been steadily turning into chalk as it struggled to close properly. My sternum was stapled together. Subcutaneous connective tissue and skin also divided by the Skilsaw was glued back together. I had drainage tubes leaving my lower ribcage. I had tiny electrical jumper-leads entering my upper ribcage and running to my heart in case my blood pressure flatlined and my pump needed starting again. I was connected to a blood-pressure cuff. I wore a pulse oximeter on one finger. I had a saline drip feeding electrolytes through a catheter into one vein. I had a morphine drip feeding soothing opiate into another. I had light, clear plastic tubes delivering oxygen to my nostrils.
I was alive, and the good people at Wakefield Hospital were doing everything humanly possible to keep me that way. I would get to see my mokopuna grow up (Freddy and Gus have since made stellar entrances, and another grandson is biding his time in the green room of his mother’s womb). I would grow old with Averil. Unlike my brother Michael, I had been given a second chance.
I know she is not the slightest bit interested but I would use it to take Averil to Lake Bled in Slovenia and Dubrovnik in Croatia. We both want to visit Venice and Barcelona. We both want to live and work in Paris and New York. There is so much to do and see!
Waves of euphoria and gratitude swept over me. The taste of butterscotch filled my mouth.
Then I noticed some other bastard recuperating from surgery, doubtless nowhere near as serious as mine, had the bed next to the window with a view, and I instantly felt short-changed.
I’LL LET THIS FRAGMENT FROM Higher Ground have the final word.
EXT. SUMMIT EVEREST—MOMENTS LATER
WIDE SHOT: We circle the New Zealander and the Sherpa hugging on the roof of the world. Rotating slowly below them is the brown plateau of Tibet and the icy peaks of Nepal. Around them nothing but sky. Above them the Indian ink of space.
Super the Title: Everest Summit—11 a.m., May 29, 1953
TENZING holds his flag-bedecked ice-axe aloft while HILLARY takes a picture—
TIGHT ON: The famous Summit photo—
HILLARY takes photographs north, east, south and west—
TENZING scoops out a depression in the snow and places offerings of sweets, the pencil, the karta, Lambert’s red scarf and the flags from his ice-axe.
TENZING kneels and prays quietly—
TENZING: Thuji chey, Chomolungma. Thuji chey, Chomolungma.
Super the translation: I am grateful, mother goddess of the world. I am grateful, mother goddess of the world.
Observing TENZING’S tribute, HILLARY suddenly remembers something, and reaches into his shirt pocket for the small crucifix a tearful John Hunt gave him three days earlier on the South Col and places it alongside Tenzing’s tributes to the gods.
He quickly scans the horizon, then checks his watch—
HILLARY: Right. We’re out of here!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I WANT TO EXPRESS MY gratitude to my writing chums David Young, Murray Bramwell, Greg McGee and Dean Parker for taking the time to read early drafts and offering me prudent and timely advice on the tone and content of this book.
I am indebted to a legion of editors on the New Zealand Listener, the Evening Post, the Auckland Star and the Dominion Post for giving me the freedom to leave my office desk in pursuit of stories I thought worth telling. I am grateful to a small army of sub-editors who took pages and pages of copy coagulated with white-out and fashioned them into useable prose.
I am honoured that Murray Webb and Trace Hodgson, caricaturists whose work I have long admired, have given me permission to reprint their work. I am chuffed the Ball family have consented to the use of Murray’s cartoon of me as a breastfeeding dad.
I thank John Barnett, Pat Cox and Magpie Productions for permitting me to use a fragment of the screenplay Footrot Flats that I co-wrote with Murray, and a cell from the finished film.
I thank my partners in crime, the political journalists Barry Soper, Dennis Grant, Pattrick Smellie, Richard Griffin, Phil Melchior and Mark Sainsbury for refreshing, confirming and correcting where necessary my memory of events.
I thank my daughter-in-law Jessica for the perfect title, and my son Sam for bullying me into using it and for roughing up an indicative layout that proved his point … sigh.
I want to thank Jenny Hellen at Allen & Unwin for gently hounding me until I consented to write this book, then hounding me even more until I finished it, to the point where I’m wondering if perhaps she and Sam are related.
I thank Averil, who never stops believing in me even when all the evidence suggests her faith is misplaced.
Finally, I thank my sweet and funny darling twin sister, Sue, the family historian who drew up the gnarly family tree and collected and collated the few and far between Scott and Ronayne family photos. This small tome will keep her busy for months spotting errors, distortions, falsehoods and wild fabrications, none of which are her fault.
Tom Scott
Wellington
November 2017
Me and my twin sister, Sue, on a Sunday drive, Manawatū, 1950. Before I fell into an empty swimming pool and needed glasses.
Cartoon exhibition, Wellington, 1979. Back row: Nevile Lodge, Evening Post; Eric Heath, the Dominion; Burton Silver of Bogor fame; me in the glory days of my ‘afro’; Bob Jones, who I would soon resemble; and Bob Brockie, National Business Review, one of my early heroes since his Cappicade days. Disappointingly his hair remains thick and luxuriant to this day.
A hand-drawn, hand-painted animation cell from The Dog’s Tale, the Footrot Flats movie. Washing the Dog and Horse out to sea, I was able to bring my
recurring childhood nightmare to the big screen.
My tense fortieth birthday at Emerald Glen. Noam Pitlik pretending to be shocked, me pretending to be sober, and Helen wryly amused.
With my daughter, Rosie, and son Sam, Kotinga Street, 1989. To curious people under the age of thirty: I am holding something called an atlas and I am showing them maps that don’t come with a voice.
Trapped in peak commuter rush hour, en route to Lublin, Poland, 1990.
Me and Barry Soper, Prague Castle, 1990.
On the hill trail above Khumjung, with the Everest massif in the background, Nepal, April 1991.
Averil and me, Kotinga Street, 1993.
George Lowe and Ed Hillary at Lukla, en route to Khumjung for the 40th anniversary of the conquest of Everest, Nepal, 1993.
Presenting two of my cartoons to Nelson Mandela at the 125th Anniversary Dinner of the Press Gallery, Wellington, 1995.
Will and Shaun, the whānau bookends, at Kotinga Street, 1995 or thereabouts.
John Carlaw, Mike Single, Ed Hillary and me at the South Pole, filming View from the Top, January 1997.
Averil, me, Ed Hillary, June Mulgrew, Maharaja of Benares, John Carlaw, Mike Single and Haresh Bhana, Varanasi, India, February 1997.
Me and John Clarke, celebrating the successful season of The Daylight Atheist at the Melbourne Theatre Company, 2004.
I was overwhelmed when I first saw this poster. It’s a shame the production didn’t live up to the billing, sigh …