Tea and a bun. Taking the place of expensive therapy since the invention of the mug.
Mac started up the bus, which shuddered and coughed like Ngaire, before firing into life. On its last legs, too, perhaps? This lot would be stranded without it. The only other bus service was the school bus that delivered Gabriel’s Bay teens to and from Hampton High. Mac couldn’t see the two lots of passengers being thrilled with each other’s company. Though Ngaire would have plenty of new marks to cadge ciggies and booze off.
But who else in town showed a speck of interest? Who else cared about these oldies? It was hardly a hot item on the Progressive Association’s agenda. To be fair, Mac had started up the Love Bus run without consulting a single person apart from Dr Love, so if her service was now taken for granted, she had no one but herself to blame. If anyone needed to add it to the Bunch of Ass’s agenda, she did. Which meant she now had two issues to speak to them about. Double the time forced to watch self-righteous pomposity ooze from their pores like mucous from a hagfish.
Seemed her life was full of issues she was being forced to address alone. Having decided not to share her concerns about their father with her children, she had tentatively raised the subject with Gene. He and Jacko might scrap like toddlers, but their friendship was limpet tight, had been since primary school, where seven-year-old Gene had discovered that bullies could be encouraged onto a more virtuous path through the simple expedient of pointing out Jacko and leaving the rest to their imagination. He also ensured they knew he was Jacko’s best mate, and, even if that hadn’t been true at the start, Gene made it so in short order. His sharp wit and Jacko’s physical presence equalled a team no one messed with. They looked out for each other, and any kid being unfairly picked on, he’d told Mac. Unfairly, Mac questioned? Some knucklebrains deserve all they get, Gene replied. Mac couldn’t disagree.
Was denial a knucklebrain characteristic? Did Jacko deserve what he might get? On the internet, Mac had seen an image of a billboard advising men to get checked for prostate cancer. The headline read ‘One in three men will die from stubbornness’. Below it, someone had scrawled ‘No, we won’t!’
Hardy ha ha.
Man-pride solidarity meant Mac couldn’t ask Gene outright if he had any concerns. It was like fly fishing — she had to cast the line gently upstream and wait for the bite. In five attempts, all she got was a nibble, an offhand mention that he’d caught Jacko having to rest between loads, while carrying groceries from his car to the Boat Shed kitchen. Gene joked that he’d have to recruit another partner to shift the murdered bodies, and then moved on to another subject, leaving Mac wondering if she could pay someone to spy on Jacko during the day. Not likely. Cover around the Boat Shed was minimal, and Jacko’s eagle eye for detail would spot a camera inside pronto.
She could ask Sidney to keep an eye on him on the evenings she worked, but Mac knew the small income was important to her, and the truth was that the end of Jacko would mean the end of the Boat Shed. Mac didn’t want Sidney to worry without cause.
So it seemed her best option was to trust in Gene’s frankness, trust he’d speak out if he were worried, tell his mate. Of course, he could well meet with exactly the same resistance that she had, and quite possibly — wonderful thought — already had.
Mac punished the Love Bus’s gearbox with a vigorous change.
‘Gently, Bentley,’ said Emil Olsen.
He’d chosen to sit up front, away from Ngaire, who didn’t like to be too near to Mac. Unlike his son, Evan, Emil was as spare and gnarled as an old fence post. The late Mrs Olsen, neé Pugh, had provided the chubby DNA, and had died of a blocked artery — the obstruction, Mac was convinced, being pure whipped cream.
‘Emil,’ said Mac, ‘how do you feel about foreigners?’
Emil had strong opinions on the tobacco industry, the International Monetary Fund and the Catholic Church. It only followed.
‘What kind?’ he said.
‘The human kind.’
‘Doing what?’
At this early stage, Mac felt it wise to be vague.
‘Taking positions of responsibility within your community.’
‘What kind?’
‘The responsible kind. Teachers, JPs, dentists, that sort of thing.’
Mac recalled another internet gem her daughter, Emma, had sent her. Small town hashtags. Number one:
#TheLocalsAren’tQuirkyThey’reRacist.
‘Can they speak English?’ said Emil.
‘They can. They may have an accent.’
‘Do they eat strange food?’
This coming from a man of Norwegian descent, who ate fish that had been steeped in lye, and had the consistency of the underside of a bar of damp soap.
‘No stranger than anything you can order at the Chinese takeaway.’
Emil thought for a minute.
‘What was the question again?’
‘Never mind.’
Silence while Mac navigated the hill bend known as The Crunch, which could have been named after the V-shaped position people attained doing abdominal exercise, but was, in fact, a reference to the last sound you’d hear if you messed it up.
‘There’s an African lady in the library,’ said Emil. ‘From Burkina Faso.’
‘And how do you feel about her?’
‘She knows her onions.’
Emil could mean this literally. He had a vast vegetable garden, made vaster after Mrs Olsen’s death when he was able to rip up her dahlias and replace them with scarlet runners.
‘How would you feel if she was — let’s say — your nurse? If you met her in hospital?’
‘Not likely,’ said Emil. ‘She’s a trained librarian.’
‘OK, how about a different African woman? How would you feel being nursed by her?’
‘By who?’
‘Never mind.’
She might slip the subject into conversation after they’d paid tribute to Albert with tea and buns. Better still, she’d search out the African librarian and ask if she had any medically trained relatives back home. Don’t ask, don’t get was Mac’s motto.
Though what you got, she had to admit, wasn’t necessarily what you wanted.
Dr Love opened his door, smiled briefly to acknowledge Mac’s return, and beckoned in his next patient, a truck driver with sleep apnoea.
‘I’ll see you in two weeks,’ he said to the patient exiting.
Olivia Jensen. Fleshless as beef jerky, forehead smooth as a marble chopping board. Touch of redness in the eyes and a few broken capillaries around the nose, though, Mac noted, as Olivia reached the reception desk. That’s because fighting the course of Nature was like carrying live squid in a string bag. Always something slips through.
‘Forty dollars,’ she said. Held out her hand for Olivia’s well-thrashed credit card.
‘I’ll put it on account.’
‘On account?’
Mac let her eyes travel to Olivia’s perfectly French-manicured nails. Odds were low that she’d had them done for ten bucks by Peg in Gabriel’s Bay, who went house-to-house flogging franchise cosmetics. Peg wasn’t bad at makeup and nails, but she did like to embellish. Her latest hairstyle was a rainbow-hued bob with a green cat’s head shaved just above the nape of her neck, and her own nails were currently adorned with Disney princesses. Peg wore fifties-style dresses in cartoon-print fabrics, a fashion choice that would no doubt make Olivia dry-heave.
‘Will that be a problem?’
Oh ho. Olivia’s tone was all smooth-silk above, but beneath Mac heard the ding-dong of the boxing-ring bell.
No need to step right in now, however. For one thing, the next patient had arrived. Patricia Weston, early as always, and radiating her usual propriety. Patricia would be upset if Mac went for the TKO on Olivia. No, she’d have to settle for a quick jab to the kidney.
‘No problem at all,’ Mac replied. ‘Plenty of our patients find it more convenient to pay their bills at the end of the month. You know, when the ban
k account’s filled up again.’
‘Thank you,’ said Olivia’s mouth. Her eyes said, ‘Cow.’
Mac held her gaze, unblinking, until Olivia had to pretend she always intended to look for her keys in her handbag. Said keys in an iron grip, she stalked out to where her car was no doubt parked in a handicap space.
Patricia lowered Condé Nast Traveller, the ‘Intimate Caribbean’ issue.
‘An unhappy woman,’ she said, to Mac’s great astonishment.
‘Entirely of her own making, don’t you think?’
‘Is it? I had the impression her husband was the one managing their finances.’
‘You mean mismanaging?’ said Mac. ‘Got himself in four flavours of strife by the sound of it. The IRD’s after him; ACC, too, for unpaid levies. The bank’s calling in some massive loan, and wants everything he secured it by sold, including Stonelands. The Samoan resort development’s ground to a halt with all kinds of planning issues, so no buyer with an ounce of sanity would take that on. And his Wellington properties are buggered, so ditto. It’s a mess, and Rick made it.’
‘And entangled his poor wife and daughter in the process,’ said Patricia.
‘OK, poor daughter, I’ll give you,’ said Mac. ‘Madison is a complete innocent. But Olivia? Hell no. Her sole motivation for saying “I do” was an express ticket to Easy Street, and she’s spitting tacks that it’s all crashed down. “For poorer” was not part of her matrimonial vows.’
‘That’s a little harsh, if I may say so,’ said Patricia. ‘Isn’t it possible she may have fallen in love?’
‘No,’ said Mac. ‘It isn’t. Anyway, why are you feeling a need to defend her? You barely know her. Are you involved in some charity that rescues miserable wives?’
What answer Patricia might have given was lost, as Doc Love showed the truck driver out, and invited Patricia to enter. Mac peered after her, trying to glean a clue from her expression, but the truck driver blocked the way, and the door closed.
‘Doc said I could put this on account,’ said the truck driver, a large, bearded man in a flannel shirt, who clearly rated Paul Bunyan as a style icon.
‘Of course he did,’ said Mac.
‘Um, is that OK?’ the big man asked.
Mac wasn’t inclined to adopt her reassuring voice, but then he looked so pitiful. Luckily, being that large, he probably wasn’t picked on by bar fighters. He was a creature that relied on its deceptive appearance to stay safe, like one of those butterflies with wings patterned like an owl’s eyes.
‘It’s perfectly fine,’ she said, and even mustered a smile. ‘I’ll mail the statement at the end of the month.’
He left, and there were no more patients waiting. She may as well use the next twenty minutes productively, if that word could be applied to filtering through yet another mountain of rubbish applications from overseas ‘doctors’ who had all the credibility of Mrs Joyce Zuma, who worked in the packaging and courier department of the Central Bank of Nigeria and needed Mac’s help to shift a consignment of twenty million American dollars, all in used hundred-dollar bills.
Bronagh Macfarlane had warned her, true, but it was hard not to be dispirited that the frontrunner for the job was currently Mrs Joyce Zuma herself, by dint of the fact she correctly spelled ‘consignment’.
Mac hadn’t raised the subject with her Love Bus group. The tea-and-bun session for Albert had threatened to turn maudlin, so she’d cut it short. Her patience was thin anyway, after two incontinence incidents, one lot of groceries forgotten in the public loo, three close calls crossing streets, and, despite the librarian producing photographic evidence, Bob Thatcher remaining convinced that his favourite historical romance author, Jude Deveraux, was a man.
‘Jude can be a man’s name,’ the librarian had whispered to Mac, thereby capturing the entirety of Bob’s argument in a nutshell.
On the other hand — Mac glanced at Doc Love’s closed door — it was some comfort that nobody knew what she was up to, so she needn’t feel embarrassed at producing no result. But as reinforced by the plastic waiting-room clock, time was a-ticking on.
Well, you knew what they said. No rest for the wicked.
Chapter 16
Kerry
‘ “O my brothers. Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?” ’
An excellent question.
‘ “This new tablet, O my brothers, I place over you: Become hard!” ’
Paired with an answer that surely must have sounded less dodgy at the time. Although earnest intellectuals, in Kerry’s experience, tended not to be aware of the double-entendre. Unlike shallow people such as himself.
And, by God, that was the end! Kerry had made it all the way through Twilight of the Idols with only minor headaches. Being shallow, he had not a clue what the broom-moustached one was on about, but then he wasn’t reading it for himself. He was reading it for the man in the bed, who didn’t seem to care one way or another whether morality was an idiosyncrasy of degenerates or that Christianity was the metaphysics of the hangman. His demeanour suggested a hangman, one weary after a long day of suspending people from the hempen noose. But while Nietzsche punched at his shibboleths with unflagging zeal, Jonty Barton had all the vigour of old celery. Why he wanted to hear Nietzsche’s writing was a mystery.
Could the clue have been at the beginning, where the moustached one asserted: ‘What does not destroy me, makes me stronger.’ Seemed Nietzsche was a fan of what he called ‘life’s school of war’, was adamant that wounds had the power to re-invigorate. Perhaps old Jonty found some comfort in that?
Or perhaps the point was that there was no comfort, only the hair-shirt penance of being bored witless, leavened only by the pleasure of knowing his reader was suffering right along with him.
Oh, look, they still had twenty minutes left. ‘What next, Mr Barton?’ said Kerry. ‘Ecce Homo, or The Gay Science? Or are they the same book with different titles?’
It was a terrible joke and in worse taste, but this was Kerry’s third day of reading to a man who did nothing but lie on his back and stare at the ceiling, and he was starting to feel the kind of relentless desperation that Sisyphus must have experienced every time he watched the boulder wend its merry way once more to the bottom of the hill. Kerry had tried a spot of casual conversation, but it turned into an amateur ventriloquism skit — he both asking and answering the questions — so he gave up.
No response this time, either. As Kerry flipped through both books, he began to hum Monty Python’s drunken philosophers song.
‘Stop that.’
JesusMaryMotherofGod — speech!
‘Apologies,’ said Kerry. ‘Just making my selection. Eeny-meeny — oh, why not? Ecce Homo it is.’
‘His last work. Published post-humously.’
Kerry might be reading it post-humously, too, after dying from boredom mid-sentence. But now that Jonty was showing interest in actual verbal communication, it might be better to encourage him. With luck, he could keep a conversation going for the remaining eighteen minutes and twenty-two seconds of their session.
‘What did he die of?’
‘Insanity.’
That would have been Kerry’s second guess. After being clubbed to death by someone forced to read his entire oeuvre in one sitting.
‘He ordered the German emperor to go to Rome and be shot.’
‘I can see how that might have raised the odd eyebrow,’ said Kerry.
‘They committed him to the clinic of renowned psychiatrist, Otto Binswanger.’
Kerry snorted. Couldn’t help it.
Jonty Barton shifted his gaze from the ceiling. He had a drift of white hair around a bald patch, an aquiline nose and a straight, stern mouth. Kerry had mentally pegged him as the love child of Statler and Waldorf from The Muppet Show, but under Jonty’s stare, he revised that image to Edward the First in Braveheart, as played by Patrick McGoohan. There was a hi
nt of the same ice-eyed cruelty, though Kerry felt somewhat sure Jonty Barton wouldn’t chuck him to his death out of a castle window.
‘You’re a frivolous young man, aren’t you?’ he said.
‘In my defence,’ said Kerry, ‘Binswanger is a very funny name.’
Jonty’s resemblance to Edward Longshanks was now quite uncanny.
‘Only to those with the intellectual capacity of a flatworm.’
Insults! Was that a good sign? Should he retort — perhaps that’s what Jonty needed, to be gingered up? Or should he back off, be conciliatory?
The man’s mental state was fragile, so no doubt backing off would be the prudent option. But then there was the matter of the subject that everyone — well, Gene — at the Boat Shed had insinuated that he’d never dare raise. Now that the door of conversation had been opened a crack, shouldn’t he seize the chance and fling it wide?
Kerry had never wished more fervently for Bronagh Macfarlane to appear by his side and gee him up the way she used to at the children’s playground when he was small. ‘If you want to go for a slide, you’ll need to climb the ladder. If you don’t, we can go home. Up to you.’ His mother excelled in setting firm parameters.
Up the ladder, or go home? What would new, improved Kerry choose?
‘Mr Barton,’ he said, ‘now that we’re chatting, may I run an idea past you?’
‘What sort of idea?’ said Jonty, testily.
Kerry surreptitiously checked the window latches.
‘How would you feel about letting people come and look at your trains?’
‘People? What people?’
‘Anyone who wants to see them. And, er, who’s prepared to pay a small entrance fee. Which, of course, would be used to benefit Gabriel’s Bay, and—’
Kerry swore Jonty’s white fringe of hair stood suddenly on end, like a human Van de Graaff generator.
‘What, what—?’ he began to splutter.
‘The town needs a boost, a tourist attraction.’ Kerry spoke faster, while feeling like a bomb-disposal expert searching frantically for the blue wire. ‘And your trains have such great appeal, even more so if we combine them with the other miniature displays that—’
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