Acid Song

by Bernard Beckett

  The water was warm, the world offering a gentle apology. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and saw William’s beaten face hanging Banquo-like before him. Accusing him of what? Comfort. Of becoming comfortable. There was a time when that had seemed the greatest of crimes. But he was warm and food and wine awaited him. They would lock the doors tonight. Comfort seemed not criminal but reasonable. He would hold his form a little longer. He would not fade away.

  They ate in front of the fire. Good food, delivered to the door by a local restaurant, in a suburb where wise investments came home to roost. They drank good wine, a bottle he had been given by a supplier at the lab. They talked about William. Elizabeth had questions Richard could not answer, about the protest. It was her talent, to find the image at the heart of any story. She should have been a painter. Instead she taught music, private lessons, piano and voice, and said she liked it well enough. Richard never quite believed her.

  The late news carried a breaking story from Christchurch, where a National Front rally in support of One Nation (although how Wilson backed away from the mess he had created) had turned predictably ugly. A rumour had swept through the crowd that the Chinese boy beaten two nights before had died. It was untrue: he still remained trapped in that modern euphemism, the critical condition, but the skinheads believed otherwise. And they danced at the news. Young, drunk, ignorant: adjectival excuses paraded before Richard but he dismissed them all. They danced. Animals.

  Onlookers, sickened by what they observed, hurled insults. The skinheads hurled bottles. Windows were smashed, a car turned over, and the TV crew, with hand-held Hollywood sensibility, made art of it. A reporter barely old enough for a driver’s licence, with glasses he probably didn’t need, panted into the camera, giving a melodramatic look over his shoulder as he arrived in shot.

  ‘Violence has erupted tonight, as the city shows off its ugly underbelly.’

  A young man staggered into shot, uncommonly thin, as so many of this type seemed to be, his shaven head showing off every bump and imperfection. Like all forms of nakedness, it revealed only uncertainty. The stretched scalp brought to mind the feel of uncooked chicken skin. The boy’s teeth were crooked. Attractiveness amongst skinheads was a rarity, as it was amongst politicians. Nature had done this angular fellow few favours. A rash of pimples high on his forehead had been incited further by the razor, and his eyes were too small to ever charm. Yet now they gleamed as he leaned forward into the camera, pulsing with his moment of power.

  ‘Fucking wonderful isn’t it?’ he asked the world, the opening of his sentence bleeped out by an alert editor.

  ‘What’s so wonderful about this?’ the reporter asked. The skinhead paused, as if suspicious of a trap. His face wrinkled in confusion.

  ‘It just fucking is isn’t it? Fucking nips deserve it.’

  ‘Seannnneeeey!’ A scream of recognition from another Fronter, as he hurtled past, pursued by two policemen.

  ‘White power!’ returned the interviewee, his clenched fist raised in triumph. Then it all became too much for him, and he started to giggle uncontrollably, a small child overwhelmed by the world’s attentions. The camera swung back to the reporter, who for a moment also appeared lost for words.

  ‘This is Andrew Collins reporting live from Christchurch, a city tonight coming apart at the seams.’

  Hyperbole, of course. Richard knew this. And yet little drops of sweat formed on his brow.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yeah. Just a little warm, after that bath and the wine, I think.’

  ‘Shall we turn this off?’

  ‘Yes, let’s. Where’s the remote?’

  The room blipped to silence and the walls became solid again. But for Richard there was no comfort to be found.

  SIMON HATED THE bus. He was supposed to love it. He told people he did. He remembered once using the words romantic and real. In truth it was dirty and slow. Full of other people.

  A boy new to the trench between first shave and manhood sat across from Simon, his eyes flicking open and closed. The obligatory lines ran from pocket to ear phones, wrapping the world in warmth and safety. The manchild wore a thick green army coat, faded and carefully frayed. Simon remembered the age so well, how tightly one clung to anything that could be shown to fit, how the smallest accessories formed the frame over which your personality slowly crept. He remembered the friendship books which at some stage were all the fashion, in a world without Bebo. Favourite food, favourite drink, favourite saying, favourite song … How he’d worked at getting his lists just right.

  It was early for a boy of that age to be heading home. Out the window through the rain-pocked darkness, Simon saw teenagers huddling in bus shelters, waiting to be transported into the city, where they would drink and swear and flirt and fight, piss against walls and goad the old who would call them scum under their breath before hurrying by. He wondered if the boy across from him – who Simon had named Nigel, after a schoolmate who fifteen years before had owned the very same jacket – saw them too. If he wished to be with them, or if he had better things planned. It seemed unlikely, out in these suburbs. A three-word conversation with his parents, he supplying only one of them, then off to his bedroom. PlayStation and masturbation; beneath the surface nothing changes.

  The bus stopped. Simon swung out the back door, called out his thanks to the driver. The cold had a personality tonight. It came in from every side, anxious for attention, and spat on you if you dared to turn away. It suited Simon. Southerlies, he had found, were the very best weather for dreaming.

  ‘Hi there, stranger.’ Amanda met him at the doorway. Simon wondered if she knew how much he liked it when she did that. He tried to do the same, when he remembered. He loved her, he was sure of it. He loved the way her face lit up when he looked at it, and the way she took his projects seriously, and trusted him to do the same. He loved the fact that if he’d had a tail, she would have made it wag. He loved the way she loved him. That was the simple, precarious truth.

  They kissed. It started off as a peck but at exactly the same moment they both changed their minds. He dropped his bag and felt the small of her back, the rise of her arse. She pulled him closer still.

  ‘You hungry?’

  ‘I should eat,’ he told her.

  ‘Excellent. I’m starving.’

  Simon was the cook. It was a fair and sensible arrangement. He earned less, because he worked less, which was his choice. And he was better in the kitchen. They had competed, and he had won. Or she had let him win. He knew that was possible.

  Simon opened the fridge, grabbing whatever came to hand. He piled the meal-to-be on the bench, in the space between the dishes he had meant to wash this morning and the broken breadmaker, which his mother had given them as a wedding present, on the day she finally realised they would never marry. Amanda stood against the stove.

  ‘How was your day?’

  ‘Good.’ He bit the end off a carrot and spat it into the compost bucket. ‘Want one?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘Slept in,’ he told her.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But I don’t want to jinx it by saying too much.’

  ‘Work on the screenplay?’

  ‘Thought about it. Like, thought about the screenplay, not about working on it,’ he clarified. He had reached the end of his twelfth draft, which he and Amanda had agreed in advance would be the last. But now, looking at it, he wasn’t sure it was finished. ‘How about you?’

  ‘Um, good and bad, a strange day. Richard was being strange.’

  ‘Normal strange or strange strange?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think it’s new. I think he’s pulling back, like he’s having second thoughts about the whole documentary.’

  ‘But he’s signed up, right?’

  ‘You can lead a horse to water…’

  ‘I’ve never understood that. I always thought getting the horse there would be the harder part.’

  ‘What do you kn
ow about horses?’

  ‘I’ve seen horses. They’re big. I can’t imagine leading them anywhere they didn’t want to go.’

  ‘He’s keeping something from me.’

  ‘Everybody holds a little back, even from themselves.’

  ‘So what are you keeping from me?’

  ‘I’m the exception. You’re keeping me from the knives though. Move.’

  ‘Something important. I keep thinking there’s something I’m meant to be picking up, so that when the documentary’s finally made, and then it comes out, it’s going to make the whole thing redundant.’

  ‘That sounds like paranoia to me.’

  ‘Maybe. I saw a man get beaten today, by protesters.’

  ‘Did you try to stop them, or did you film it?’ Simon wasn’t criticising, but from the wrinkling of her nose he saw he had left room for the possibility.

  ‘Of course I tried to stop it. Well, we. We tried to stop it. Did stop it, actually.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Me and Greg.’

  ‘I hate the sound of that you know.’

  ‘Now who’s being paranoid?’

  ‘Who were they beating?’

  ‘The professor I told you about. You know, the whole IQ thing.’

  Simon remembered being told, but not what he’d been told, which was not uncommon. He nodded.

  ‘Right. He okay?’

  ‘Pretty frightened.’

  ‘Arseholes.’

  ‘I thought you were on their side,’ Amanda said.

  ‘We got any mushrooms? Turn on the TV, I want to watch the final speeches.’

  ‘You hate politics.’

  ‘No, I hate politicians. There’s a difference.’

  ‘Decided who you’re voting for?’

  ‘A number of times.’

  ‘You’re useless.’

  ‘Yet ironically, very good at it.’

  ‘That’s not irony.’

  ‘I need a fork.’

  ‘You’re holding one.’

  ‘I know, it was a joke. Alanis Morrisette. You used to love her.’

  Amanda scooped a handful of grated cheese and rammed it into her mouth, speaking through chews.

  ‘I was using that.’

  ‘I don’t like cheese in it.’

  ‘Yet you … No, let’s not.’

  ‘You piss anyone off today?’

  ‘Five, so far. Turn it up.’

  While he prepared the meal, Simon kept one eye on the television. The small flat was open plan. He’d grown up in a house of walls, where kitchen, dining room and lounge each served different, separate functions. Now he found it impossible to imagine such an arrangement. Did his parents never want to turn the stereo up loud and listen to music while microwaving dinner and talking to their spouse who had cleared a space on the only table and was tapping on the laptop? His attention drifted back to the television.

  Peter Wilson, political chameleon, survivor – even charmer it was said, by those who’d got too close – and these days leader of the One Nation coalition (dubbed One Last Crack at Power by the newspaper cartoon that morning) smiled serenely at the screen. His delivery had grown smoother over the years (and slower too, pointed out the wags, as his support base each election grew harder of hearing) but the message hadn’t changed.

  ‘New Zealand is facing a crisis…’ Wilson purred.

  ‘How can he seriously do this? He knows it’s a load of bollocks…’ Simon began, but Amanda, sitting on the couch, her back to the kitchen, raised her hand in protest.

  ‘If you’re going to commentate …’

  ‘I was just …’

  ‘I thought you weren’t meant to get excited in the evenings.’

  ‘I’m not excited, I just …’

  Politics was Amanda’s obsession. Later, when the speeches were over, she would want to unpack them all. But now, during the action itself, distractions were intolerable.

  ‘… during this campaign we have been attacked by cowards, who would use labels like racist as a way of avoiding the issues. But I ask you this. Is it racist to love your country? Is it racist to have a core set of values around which you wish to see a stable, prosperous society constructed? My challenge to those who have made this battle personal is to return to the issues. Let’s see the facts debated. Throughout this campaign I have asked them to provide me with their model of a flourishing society which does not ask of its citizens that they adhere to a shared set of values. And have they done this? No they have not. And why not? Because no such society exists.

  ‘People have accused me of being anti-immigration, but that’s as cheap as it is inaccurate. I – we – are the most vigorous proponents of immigration of any of the parties contesting tomorrow’s election. But we are saying, hang on a minute, let’s be smart about this. Let’s use immigration to further our own aims as a society. This is our sovereign right, to ask of those who come to live here that they come prepared to work with us towards our shared vision. We welcome those of every race, colour and creed with open arms, and ask only in return that they embrace this country which has offered them such hospitality.

  ‘Immigration is a gift we offer to the world, not an entitlement. Should you be allowed to travel here and then go straight on a benefit? No, of course you shouldn’t. If a friend cooks you a meal don’t you at the very least offer to help with the dishes? Is it reasonable to keep known terrorists from living amongst us? Of course it is. Is it reasonable to expect immigrants to be proficient in our language? Again, yes. Is it reasonable to say to those who earn criminal convictions within their first twelve months in this country, “You are no longer welcome here?” It is unreasonable not to. It shows a lack of pride in who we are, a lack of belief in the values which still make this the greatest country in which to raise a child.

  ‘We thought very carefully about naming our coalition, and in the end One Nation was chosen because it is what we aspire to be. Individual, diverse and free, yet united in a single vision. Tomorrow, when you go to cast your vote, I urge you to consider this. Why would you give your tick to a politician who is not passionate about defending all you hold precious, who does not wish to honour the very values our parents and grandparents fought for?’

  Simon wondered how Wilson did this. Was it possible that he was as cynical as it seemed, that this was just a game to him, an exercise in pushing buttons? Winner takes the seat and the salary, the status and the perks, and in the end this paltry end justifies its means. Or was it something Simon found even harder to understand? Did the words Wilson spoke feel like truth to him? Truth, as fragile as the life of the Chinese student on life support, whose condition, according to the radio he’d heard blaring from the newsagent beside the bus stop, was worsening.

  Simon ate his dinner slowly, a small portion, carefully measured. Beside him Amanda shovelled. He’d been the same, before the beginning of the experiment. Now he was losing weight. She teased him about it, but there was nothing he could do. No sugar after three o’clock. No caffeine. No snacking after dinner. A single glass of water before he went to bed. Two hours exactly, between his last meal and sleep. It wasn’t always this strict. But nights like this, cold nights with excellent prospects, it was wrong to take risks.

  ‘We could watch Letterman.’ Amanda curled up beside him on the sofa, her cheek against his shoulder. They’d bought the couch at an op shop. He’d seen it from a bus window and texted her. Simon breathed in the smell of her. The TV flickered blue in the dark room, told stories on her face. He checked his watch.

  ‘Sorry.’

  She understood. Her face slackened in disappointment, but she understood. Her mouth half opened, and she tripped on a word. He looked down at her. She did understand, didn’t she?

  ‘Hey, Simon.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Don’t do this, he wanted to say, not tonight. The conditions are perfect, you know they are. But that would be starting an argument. That would set his mind spinning. That would ruin everything. Amanda rub
bed her hand across his belly, moved in closer. The hand passed low, a cool finger edging beneath his jeans.

  ‘I know it’s important, I’m not saying it isn’t, but I just … I don’t know, today was weird. I’m feeling weird.’

  ‘The conditions are perfect,’ Simon pointed out. Not arguing. Staying calm, detached.

  She sat abruptly, turned on him. Still Simon believed he could avoid this.

  ‘I think this might be hurting us,’ she told him. The sentence carried the weight of a long deliberation.

  ‘It isn’t. I wouldn’t let it.’

  ‘When was the last time we had sex?’

  ‘Saturday afternoon,’ he replied, without hesitating. He’d been careful not to let it slip away. They’d warned him, at the clinic, and he’d been careful.

  ‘Between the shopping and the rugby,’ Amanda said.

  ‘We didn’t hurry,’ he countered.

  ‘No we didn’t. We left plenty of time.’ But that too was an accusation. He could feel his calm coming away at the edges. It would take only one purposeful tug.

  ‘Don’t you see what’s wrong with that?’ she tugged.

  ‘What? Was there something wrong with it?’

  ‘There’s something wrong with making an appointment to have sex.’

  ‘It wasn’t an appointment.’

  ‘You wanted to get it out of the way, so it wouldn’t interfere with your evening.’

  ‘And I was right. It was the best one so far.’

  ‘The sex?’ she provoked.

  ‘No,’ he replied, knowing now that he was trapped. ‘The dreaming.’

  Amanda bit her lip. He looked at her, and wanted to hold her. Should have held her. Didn’t.

  ‘Look,’ Amanda told him. ‘I know we agreed at the start that this was a really interesting project, and I know that sometimes my projects take over my life too, but it’s just, well, I’m finding it really hard. I just want sometimes to be able to relax with you. It’s not that I mind it sharing your life, Simon, I just mind it sharing our bedroom.’