Acid Song

by Bernard Beckett

  He hit play and sat breathing heavily beside her. Amanda shrugged off his presence: a cloud to the side of the sun.

  Paddy had made good with his promise. The screen filled with the faded colours of 1981. A studio host in a brown suit attempted to match the dignity of the occasion, but was foiled by the lushness of his sideburns. Amanda marvelled at the way this hair had been allowed to grow into its natural waves. The programme was filmed two weeks before that year’s general election, the day the ‘meet the candidates’ roadshow arrived in Palmerston North. There was a sputtering of studio audience applause as the two guests were announced: the applause choking quickly as somewhere off a floor manager reminded the people this wasn’t It’s in the Bag.

  Amanda was reminded of the rugby books her father treasured, full of black and white photos showing fifty-year-old men with stern faces representing the All Blacks. So it was with Richard who sat across the low table from his opponent, squirming in the chair, his forehead already beaded with sweat. His frame was a little lighter, and his hair a shade darker; but the blue suit, the broad tie, the chrome framed chair … somehow he had always been old.

  The thirty minutes to follow represented the end of the part of his life Richard refused to speak of, which in turn had only made Amanda more assiduous in her research. Up until this point the polls had put Richard well ahead, something of a surprise given that he was taking on an incumbent. Richard had come to be spoken of, in the viral manner of lazy editorials, as the respected intellectual who didn’t talk down to the people; a man for all seasons, young and vital; a liberal who grew up on a farm; a man who could build bridges in a country whose faultlines had been exposed.

  This night was to have been his crowning glory. He was a polished public speaker, a formidable intellect with the pertinent facts always at his fingertips, strong in his convictions, not frightened to express an opinion. It was meant to be an easy victory, the sort that would benefit not only Richard, but his party too. The first step.

  The MP sitting across from him in the studio had been written off, a journeyman who had ridden his luck too far. He was a small man with quiet eyes lost beneath an exaggerated forehead. A man who had failed to serve the local constituency with any sort of pride and now sat waiting on his expired meter. Or so the script had been written.

  With the benefit of hindsight to sharpen her vision, Amanda saw the things the commentators at the time had missed. Richard moving about in his chair during the introductions, looking one size too large for the furniture, the glass of water beside him already empty. And Brendan Ward by contrast sitting dead still, not a bead of sweat on his generous scalp. His eyes may have been small but they were steady, and the expression on his peculiar face exuded calm. Slack, perhaps. Uncommitted, certainly. But a politician nonetheless. An expert in this game. Cornered, roused from his three year slumber, waking. Amanda imagined she saw the slightest of smiles pulling on the corners of his mouth. She could hardly bare to watch.

  As the sitting MP Brendan Ward got to speak first, and calmly filled the policy vacuum with worthy platitudes. ‘These are hard times,’ he told his audience. ‘Prices are rising, jobs are falling, debt is accumulating, the world economy has turned its back on us and here at home our private hatred has spilled out into the streets.’ An odd approach to take perhaps, listing one’s own failings first, but the pitch, if a little morally malnourished, was at least simple. We’ve screwed up, and the other lot might turn out to be even worse. Of course he didn’t put it quite like that – he spoke of caution, of steadfastness, holding one’s nerve – but it was easy enough to translate. Richard should have been able to put him away in the first round. Who wouldn’t have been expecting it?

  Amanda listened carefully, trying to hear in Richard’s first faltering words the rewriting of history she longed for, the rebuttal that was never delivered. But television is made to look effortless by experts. This was strange territory for Richard and he was nervous. Beneath the harsh studio lights the camera magnified every symptom, making tragedy of his good intentions. Try though she did to see past it, Amanda too was drawn to the beads of sweat, the bobbing head, the big swallowing breaths, the thick lips made clumsy by sentences that tonight refused to behave. She saw what the voters saw, what the television demanded they see.

  Where Brendan Ward had made the three minutes feel like ten, building smoothly to his dishonest conclusion, Richard’s allotted time scrunched itself up small, and his words couldn’t be made to fit inside it. When the interviewer politely called a halt he was barely through his introduction, and his hasty dismount left the audience confused. He looked surprised, lost for a moment: the sort of incomprehension you associate with the very young and the very old. The vulnerable. Amanda wanted to reach back through the years and hold him. Tell him everything would be okay, that he wasn’t the first to have been ambushed. But she didn’t want to vote for him.

  ‘So tonight we have three areas of concern, and we will split our time between them. Each candidate will have an opportunity to answer a question provided by our studio audience. Richard Bradley, to you first then. And the question comes to us from Russell Kaye from Feilding.’

  Russell Kaye wore a geometrically patterned jersey and had carefully combed his hair down for the big occasion.

  ‘Yes, my question to both candidates is where did you stand on The Springbok Tour and why?’

  The question had lurked in the background of every public meeting this election. Are you Us, or are you Them? To which tribe do you belong?

  ‘In the end I think history will be our judge,’ Richard opened. ‘And although I have upset many people over the last few months by expressing this view, I remain loyal to the stance I took, and indeed I remain proud of it. It would be easy for me to deny what was clearly an unpopular viewpoint in this electorate but I don’t want to be the sort of politician who blows in the wind of popular opinion. I, ah, look, let me put it this way, if sport and politics don’t mix, and economics and politics don’t mix, and religion and politics don’t mix, and family and politics don’t mix, then I don’t think that leaves politics with enough for us to even be bothering with this election. I haven’t entered politics in order to keep it out of our lives. I have entered politics because I believe it can enhance our lives. That I think is the important thing.’

  He breathed out a little at the end of that, and Amanda saw his broad shoulders drop as he relaxed. He believed he had answered well, and maybe he had, if only it had been in another forum. Brendan Ward leaned smoothly forward towards the live camera, as if what was to follow was intended to be shared with a single viewer. He did not wait to be invited to speak, for he was the sitting MP, this would be his floor until someone had the courage to wrestle it from him.

  ‘Let me say by contrast I am the sort of politician who does blow in the wind of popular opinion. I’m not here to tell you how to think, I’m here to represent your views: it’s called democracy.’

  Someone in the studio audience laughed and there was a smattering of applause. The MP for self-advancement knew he was only a statement away from catching the wave.

  ‘And what’s more, I don’t think this is the time for preaching to the other side about the way history might judge them. This is a time for putting a terrible episode behind us, for working together. I believe in mending bridges, not building fences. I didn’t enter politics to tell you how you should live your lives. You know that. I stand by my record on that.’

  Again they applauded. A record of saying nothing, promising nothing, contributing nothing; yet somehow he made such moral indolence virtuous; implying that to hold a point of view was to rob the electorate of its sacred right to freedom. A ridiculous assertion, but Richard was not used to boxing shadows and before he could gather together a response the next guest questioner was on his feet, his moustache moving in time to the query he had practised all morning.

  This time it was a question on the economy, and again Richard was outwitted. He ha
d come prepared, with the key facts and figures summarised in note form, but he had to look down to refer to them and on television this served only to make him look shifty. Again he was caught out by time; there was too much data and the message was lost amongst the detail.

  Against this Brendan Ward made promises. Lavish, reassuring, unaffordable promises. Fuel plants being completed, international trade systems being reformed, a new era of easy wealth where the people would live comfortably and untroubled.

  It was clear from Richard’s face he was not prepared for the sheer scale of the lies his opponent was happy to tell. At one point Amanda saw him open his mouth to interrupt, but Brendan Ward anticipated it and spat out a pre-emptive question.

  ‘If your view of the economy is so pessimistic, Sir, and you are so troubled by the deficit, then is it not true that your party, which doesn’t believe in growing its way towards prosperity, will be forced to cut spending?’

  On this question at least Richard must have been schooled, but still there was a moment’s hesitation as he sought to take care with the party’s official answer. Hesitation that played out as fabrication. Again Brendan Ward exploited the unminded gap.

  ‘Or has your party instructed you not to comment on this issue?’

  ‘We do not believe that all of this government’s spending is quality spending, and in many cases the distorted signals being sent …’

  Another jab, another interruption.

  ‘At least have the courage, Sir, to tell us which spending you intend to cut. Who will be missing out, Mr Bradley? I think the voters deserve to be told.’

  ‘It’s not about identifying individuals…’

  An awful mistake. Acknowledgement had been given. He had as good as said it. Spending would be cut. Ward leapt upon the admission and Richard visibly recoiled, looking weak and uncertain.

  Amanda was reminded of a nature documentary Simon had made her sit through. The majestic elephant, enemy of none, brought down by a marauding pack of lions who in their hunger had grown desperately brave. The crumbling of the natural order, the startling conquest of the thickest hide; mighty bones and ligaments snapped as easily as any other. She remembered the tears that had risen to her eyes as the proud elephant stumbled; immobilised, unable to continue yet hopelessly unprepared for such humiliating defeat. Refusing to go down. And she imagined she saw in that creature’s eyes, as its pack deserted it, something like bewilderment. Amanda felt the same tears now.

  There was another ten minutes left to run, but Amanda had seen all she needed. The realisation of defeat was already written on his face; not just defeat, but public defeat. Richard Bradley, failed politician. In that single moment Amanda thought she understood him, his evasiveness, his grumpiness and despite the protestations, his transparent desire to add to the archive. As if this new film might be burnt over the old, and he could allow himself to believe that people had forgotten.

  ‘Turn it off.’

  ‘But the last bit’s the best. The little guy destroys him,’ Paddy reported. ‘Some people say you can see him starting to cry right at the end. I don’t know. I don’t think you can, but it’s hard to tell. I can fast forward if you …’

  There was a note to Paddy’s voice that reminded Amanda of the boys she had known at school, that joyous celebration of destruction, born in the end of a kind of jealousy. Suspicious of ideas, frightened by the clever. Some said it all changed with Lange, that Richard’s timing was simply poor. Amanda had never believed it.

  ‘Don’t.’

  EVEN TO RICHARD, who every year watched his students become more childlike, the officer appeared improbably young.

  ‘Ah yes, come in, come in. Good of you to come.’

  The child-in-uniform hesitated.

  ‘Elizabeth! The police are here, well – one of them at least.’

  Richard turned back to the officer and smiled. ‘It’ll be easier if you deal with her directly. She makes more sense.’

  Richard led the young man through into the lounge. Elizabeth looked up from her newspaper and smiled. She was good with strangers.

  ‘Elizabeth Bradley. He’s quite right, I make far more sense.’ She offered her hand. ‘Can I get you something to drink? Tea, coffee?’

  ‘No, ah, I’m fine thank you, I just …’ the boy held his hat in his hands, fingering its rim nervously, looking not like a policeman but a poor actor auditioning for the part.

  ‘No, you must be busy. I’m surprised they sent anyone at all.’

  ‘I suppose these must be the sorts of jobs they give to juniors, eh?’ Richard felt sorry for the lad who was clearly floundering. ‘Politeness and paperwork. How long have you been in the force?’

  ‘I’ve tidied I’m afraid,’ Elizabeth added. ‘On the phone they said it would be okay, but I think I can remember how everything was if … We haven’t done a list yet. It was my birthday last night you see, and this morning we were voting, Richard doesn’t like to vote at the local booths, it’s a long story, but … I could write something now, if you like. Richard get me a pen, you can show him around while I write the list.’

  ‘He doesn’t want to be shown around. He would have said, if … Do you?’

  The officer’s face grew smaller and finally Richard made sense of the scene. He waited for the policeman to speak, but he too was weighing the silence. Richard’s stomach grew heavy, his mouth dry. He looked to Elizabeth. Time turned slow and sticky.

  ‘You’re not here about the burglary are you?’

  The smallest shake of the head, a warning tremor.

  ‘Professor Richard Bradley?’ The officer’s voice was surprisingly deep and calm.

  ‘Yes, that’s me.’

  Carrie. It had to be Carrie. Julia was in London, she’d rung for Elizabeth’s birthday. She’d sounded fine. David had sent a card, and David was indestructible. They hadn’t heard from Carrie. It wasn’t unusual. Carrie was less organised. She would remember later, and her apologies would be effusive, her gift overcompensating… Elizabeth sank into the nearest chair, diminished: the news-to-come already wrapping itself around her, squeezing her dry of being. The hand, raised over her mouth to stifle a silent cry, betrayed her years. Richard saw in her eyes his own confusion. Thought and feeling compressed to the point where details are lost and there is only weight. He wanted to hold her, but first the word that needed to be spoken. Carrie?

  ‘Do you know a William Harding?’ The policeman looked down to his notes to check the name. ‘Yes, a Professor William Harding … Sir? Perhaps you would like to sit down?’

  ‘No, ah, I’m fine.’ As quickly as the tragedy had settled it broke up; pieces again, possibility. Impossibility. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just I have, we have three …’ He shrugged apologetically. Elizabeth frowned, seeing something he did not see. ‘Yes, I mean to say, William is a friend. I saw him yesterday afternoon, well evening, rather. He’d been beaten. Protesters. Young thugs, more like. I told him he should lay a complaint. I’m glad he listened. There’s evidence you see, a documentary team, I’m sure I’ve got a number if you’d like to …

  ‘Richard.’ Elizabeth cut in on the officer’s behalf.

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I should be quiet. I should let you …’

  The smallest of breaths, in preparation.

  ‘William Harding was found dead this morning in his office. He hanged himself.’

  The words were spoken gently, the younger man holding Richard’s gaze, as he had been trained to do. A tiny ‘oh’ escaped into the silence, Elizabeth’s hand too slow to catch it. Richard turned away from his relief, embarrassed by it.

  ‘Oh, I see. I’m sorry. I …’ he stopped, with no one to whom he could apologise. The officer let the silence expand until the pressure equalised. Richard felt he should be speaking.

  ‘I, ah, I’m sorry, we were friends, and colleagues, but I don’t quite see why you’re … I mean to say, I’m glad you came, it’s very good of you, but …’

  Damnably difficult now.
He looked to Elizabeth to save him. She offered nothing.

  ‘Is there something we can do for you, Officer? Do you need our help? I’m sorry, I don’t even know your name.’ He reached out, offered his hand. ‘Richard.’

  ‘Blake. Constable Blake. Perhaps we could …’

  ‘Of course.’

  Both men sat, like a father and his daughter’s new boyfriend, one on either end of a couch that now felt too small. Constable Blake produced an envelope. On it was written Richard’s name.

  ‘We found this, on his desk. It appears he may have left it there, deliberately. The detective heading the enquiry, Detective Olliver, asked that I let you read it first. We will need it you see, as evidence, but it seemed proper, in the circumstances…’

  The envelope was passed solemnly between the men. Richard stared down at the blue ink, the careful deliberate lettering of his name. Prof. Richard Bradley. Why bother with the title? Some sort of joke?

  ‘Can I, would it be possible to take this somewhere private?’

  ‘Um, I’ve been asked to vouch for the integrity of the contents.’

  ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ Richard snapped. ‘I’m not going to do anything with it am I?’

  ‘No, I don’t imagine you are,’ the constable replied. But he showed no sign of moving.

  ‘Just read it,’ Elizabeth told him, her voice beginning to break.

  ‘What, out loud you mean?’

  ‘No, of course not out loud.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I just …’

  Richard watched his shaking hands rip at the envelope, the fingers comically large for the task. There was a single sheet, the crammed writing white-knuckled into the paper in the manner of a child. Richard tried to read but tears blurred his eyes. The simple unjoined letters, written slowly, carefully … He imagined his friend leaning over the table, his breath still warmed by the whisky they had shared. He imagined William thinking of him, needing to write it down. (Next time just call, you stupid prick.)

  He heard someone say ‘There’s no hurry.’ And there wasn’t. Not now.