A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  There are people, you understand, who are employed for the hypothetical. Dr Royce Meelind is one. He works in the Government Think Tank with a responsibility for the potential political impact of social movements and events. His most splendid career success was predicting the growth of reactionary regionalism as urbanisation intensified. He noticed such signs as the growth of country and western music in the lower part of the South Island. The media term it Hillbillyism, but Meelind refers rather to the Pancake Syndrome, after the great twentieth century West Virginian author, Breece D’J Pancake.

  Meelind read all the reports of Tuamarina and watched the uncut film from the television station. At the Thursday morning briefing of the Think Tank he uses it as an example of nostalgic popularism which arises from time to time as a political expression of frustration and anxiety with the complexity of modern life. Meelind’s colleagues expect Slaven to flare across the political sky briefly and then be forgotten, but Dr Meelind is impressed by the man’s grip on an audience. He jokes about the prospect of a dentist with a mid-life crisis, yet opens a file on Slaven which includes the names of school friends, medical reports, his financial situation, his links with Thackeray Thomas and his recent friendship with that old power of business — Miles Kitson. To the file he adds the information passed on to him from sources within television, that Slaven has been asked to appear on the ‘What’s Up Show’.

  I haven’t burdened you with a full static description of Royce Meelind at this stage. His time will come. The large, pale ear-lobes for example, whitened with down, and the extreme length of his upper legs so that when he rests his elbows on his knees his body is almost lying forward, but you’ll be interested that his brother was that paleontologist whose death was widely reported when he choked on a bumblebee while climbing in the Old Man Range.

  Anyway, it is a staffer from the show who rings Slaven and invites him to appear on the ‘What’s Up Show’. ‘Amand is very much hoping that you can see your way clear,’ says the staffer. ‘We’re all very much hoping. You realise of course that there’s no payment offered as such, but the exposure of views is absolutely enormous, isn’t it.’ Slaven has been slicing onions for one of Kellie’s quiches and his eyes swim with tears. ‘Just a few questions on your policies and reaction to the present political direction of the country.’ Slaven thinks he would like time to consider the invitation. ‘Of course. Look, as long as you let me know by four this afternoon. That’s three complete hours. Remember, we’re very much hoping. I haven’t talked in detail with Amand yet; I wanted your initial response, but I imagine he’ll be interested particularly in the angle of oratory, inspirational ( delivery, the democratic message. Quite extraordinary what happened at Tuamarina. We have a great programme mix in mind — with you, cartoonist Buffle who has just turned ninety did you realise and Marie Antoinette Smith, the first woman convicted of serial rape in this country. It’s getting that balance, that cross over impact, for prime time TV you see.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ says Slaven.

  He talks it over with Kellie and later she rings back to make the arrangements, insisting on a clear understanding concerning fares and accommodation for both of them, and being met at the airport.

  Afterwards she takes the opportunity to point out to Slaven the need for a more businesslike approach to his activities. She reminds him that despite the thousands at Tuamarina he received no fee, nothing at all. Yet increasingly money is coming in, often vaguely identified in origin and purpose. She has been talking to Thackeray Thomas of the administrative and financial structures required as Slaven becomes a focus of attention. She is of course the best manager he could have. Her ability to organise and direct is no surprise to him, but her enthusiasm to do so humbles him. As they discuss the practical matters, the external things, he has a sense of both guilt and remorse concerning their marriage and yet finds as ever that he has neither the courage, nor the words, to speak. He can barely admit to himself what a falling away there has been; gradually, imperceptibly almost, the erosion of love’s isthmus until they are quite separate again.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he says energetically, ‘but not just the management of finances and logistics. What’s more important is that we’re sure of the true motivation of those people who want to be associated with us, who we allow to represent the movement. There’s a real danger of exploitation in all of this, exploitation of the people that I know now I can reach, can influence. Oh, we’re all of us used and users I suppose, but there has to be some scrutiny, some on-going evaluation of our purposes and our power. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Can you make yourself responsible for the opinions and actions of everyone who responds to your ideas.’

  There should be a moment here when Slaven can admit that love has gone, and weep for that loss. Admit that he has admiration for his wife’s intelligence and decisiveness, the lack of triviality, her loyalty and respect of privacy, the skill she has in the garden and the nimble way that she can keep all disappointment hidden. Say all of that to her and also that in the heart where love was, he cares not a jot for any of it. Instead he continues to talk of the contribution he hopes to make towards the general good. ‘— trying to return a measure of effective political influence to people who aren’t interested in the processes of politics,’ he says, ‘but are interested in outcomes, some of them even in collective outcomes, but let’s not push our luck too much on that last one.’

  ‘Not on the “What’s Up Show”, anyway.’

  Kellie and Slaven sit in the kitchen and watch the onion, cheese and pineapple quiche rotating in the oven. They talk of the formation of a Coalition for Citizen Power which they will invite the Charismatic Cambrian Church, Gender Plus and the union movements to join. Slaven remembers a time some nine or ten years before, when Kellie’s younger sister came to stay with them, remembers the dreams he had each night while she was in the house, the frisson each time she came into the room, the profitless recital to himself of all the fortunate aspects of his life. Nothing was said, nothing happened. Miles once told Slaven of an affair he had with a South African nurse; how they would habitually meet during the late afternoon in a bungalow his firm maintained for guests. Miles said that as soon as he opened the front door he knew whether he had arrived before her, because his cock would stiffen if she was anywhere in the house. That’s natural life, that’s pure experience of a sort, surely, Miles had said.

  They are met at the airport and taken to the inner city Hotel Hollandia, and later to the studios. There they are separated, Kellie being invited to visit a neighbouring series in production before joining the audience of ‘The What’s Up Show’. Slaven goes first to have the layout of the set, the format, explained to him, then to make-up and on to the small lounge for the panel guests where he joins the ninety year old cartoonist and the female serial rapist. Peter, the staffer, gives them a choice of fruit juice, coffee or scented tea and tells an amusing story to explain why they no longer provide anything alcoholic for panellists before the show. It concerns a noted bishop who disgraced himself while discussing the rites of adolescent passage with Mrs Van Troon the painter in egg tempera. The serial rapist, who has paid her debt to society and is now recouping it through personal appearances and magazine stories, says that the Church is finished, anyway, more obviously irrelevant under capitalism in the twenty-first century than under communism years before. Buffle, the cartoonist, hems and haws with senile incredulity and asks by the way was she rapist, or rapee. Ex-rapist he is told, and presently a leading expert in herbal remedies.

  When Amand Beardsley strolls into the room to meet his guests, Peter is quickly by his side. Marie Antoinette Smith doesn’t rise for the introductions. Buffle can’t coordinate himself in time, so only Slaven joins the staffer in courtesy, or obsequiousness. Beardsley has the ability to talk to them all at once, practising with casual confidence the information Peter has given him on each. He possesses a magnificent smile which appears with sudden radiance, but fades only gr
adually so that it can be lingered on by the cameras while his mind and eyes have moved on. ‘We are most impressed by the Tuamarina rally,’ he tells Slaven. ‘Rivetting political theatre. Tonight, as Peter has mentioned, I wish to touch on the funding structure of your organisation and the ties with Christian fundamentalism.’

  ‘Fundamentalism?’ But Amand Beardsley has left only the Cheshire image of his smile as he turns to assure the cartoonist that there will be someone to carry his folio of drawings onto the set.

  ‘Remember the parameters we agreed as far as the questions on my sexuality are concerned,’ says the ex-rapist.

  ‘I shall be gentle,’ says the host. The corner of his mouth has the briefest of puckers which is then assimilated into the embracing smile. As they talk they can hear from the studio the live audience being warmed up and members of the production team appear in the doorway from time to time, not saying much, but giving signals and murmurs which Beardsley replies to by asking for more young people to be seated in the front rows this time, or deciding that the cartoon close-ups can be cut in later.

  ‘Just relax,’ says Amand Beardsley. His eyes jitter.

  ‘That’s what I always say,’ says Marie Antoinette Smith.

  ‘Arms are the difficult things to catch,’ says Buffle, who is perfectly relaxed through obliterating age. ‘Heads are easy enough, but it’s difficult to caricature an arm. See?’

  ‘We’re thrilled with the mix for tonight,’ says Peter. ‘You’ll all bounce off each other superbly.’

  ‘Just be yourselves, relax and do yourselves justice.’

  ‘I never expect justice any more,’ says Smith vehemently.

  ‘We’re nearly off,’ says the staffer.

  Beardsley is to have a final few minutes of privacy. He pauses on his way out to light his smile. Peter takes up station at the door where he can see the floor manager while still able to talk to the guests. Slaven has a sure instinct that his appearance is not to be a success, that the technological constraints, the packaged indirectness, will prevent a message.

  And so it is. There is no stage-fright, no particular ignominy, or slapstick confusion, no special malice of Beardsley’s part, just the essential superficiality of the format and the medium which assumes that a few minutes of shared prime time television are sufficient to establish any viewpoint, or transfer a philosophy of life. A laugh a minute is considered slow stuff these days. The ninety year old Buffle goes down best. He is used to talking to himself and the cartoons when flashed up have the necessary immediate impact. He has a fund of scurrilous personal anecdotes concerning the celebrities he’s satirised and Amand Beardsley, who knows a good stunt when he sees one, keeps him going at the expense of Slaven and Marie Antoinette. The ex-rapist is too nearly a match for Beardsley, Slaven too earnest, yet at the same time seeming evasive as his eyes slide away from the cameras seeking human contact. And the heat — Slaven feels his body prickle with a sweat induced by the great lights and his tension.

  After all, as Beardsley told the staffers later, a dentist with a social message is not a sure fire cert, is he? And what reaction can be expected from a studio audience? They crowd in an arc of seating, mirroring on their rapt faces the play of expression of those on the set. Oblivious for an hour of their humdrum lives they cluster towards the incandescence of Beardsley’s set, watch the clap board, remember the lucky number, glance at their neighbours in response to innuendo and trip their ready laughter.

  Kellie and Slaven don’t talk much about the panel on their way back to the hotel. He finds even recall is difficult, for the interviews recede at a greater rate than normal experience, like the implosion of the image when a television set fails. As he left the studio after taking off his make-up, Slaven hadn’t been surprised when Beardsley passed him in the corridor with only a last minute muted gesture of recognition. Not avoidance, or even arrogance, just that it was history; gone for ever. Slaven’s mouth had been open in readiness to greet the man who minutes before had been leaning towards him, diligent in pursuit of Slaven’s inner self.

  Slaven tells Kellie that after all he’s fully aware of the nature of professional intimacy. It is his occupation to hover over people’s mouths, working the plaque from their teeth, checking for caries, seeing the blood well from their gums, breathing a muted duodenal release, or admiring a set of eyelashes. Close as lovers, with his fingers in their mouths and their heads well back. Then the suction removed, personal distance resumed, and the relief of parting as strangers. As Slaven forgot the close-up of a nasal configuration, so Beardsley made public auguries in the display of faces and ideas then washed his hands of them.

  ‘You just don’t suit that type of television, that’s all,’ Kellie says. ‘You need the physical immediacy and rapport of a meeting.’ There is a sudden spray of saliva from beneath her tongue and the tiny droplets fall upon her brown forearm so lightly that she is unaware. She is watching the rowan trees which they pass in the taxi for they remind her of places in which she once lived.

  ‘It’ll put ten kilos on me, I suppose. They say that television puts ten kilos on you.’

  ‘I thought the ex-rapist suffered a good deal more than you in that way,’ says Kellie. ‘You did sit with your legs splayed out somewhat, mind. The Smith woman’s knees were like uncut cheeses. The very old guy, the cartoonist, had a wonderful profile, etched by the years. Was it true do you think, what he said about Winston Peters?’

  ‘I can barely remember Winston Peters.’

  ‘You’d think that they’d have a vase or two of greenery on that set wouldn’t you. A few sprigs of japonica, or some Leucadendron.’

  ‘Not a great success. Let’s face it,’ says Slaven.

  ‘We’ve learnt that a TV panel show isn’t the best thing for our purpose, that’s all,’ says Kellie.

  There is a place — a narrow street in an old hill suburb. The rank hedges obstruct the footpaths as do the cars with two wheels up there to leave just enough room for solitary passage. There are no complaints for who else besides the inhabitants go there; not a cul-de-sac, but certainly a dead end. Sets of damp, concrete steps lead steeply up through aisles of weeds and shrubs to the street above. As windfalls the dog droppings line the hedges, the chronology of their deposit is a colour code with the most venerable the fine, white ash of a Churchillian cigar. There are wood pigeons on the telephone lines and the gates have been left open so long that the hinges have seized, even frames rotted where they stand. Almost every retaining wall is a Pisa, yet having made its threat apparent the angle is held for a hundred years. The fractures allow the walls to weep when the rain comes so that delicate fans of yellow and rusty clay embrace the dogshit. Houses here were never grand. Cottages mouthing directly at the roadway, a few wooden villas with verandahs beneath a bow of roofing iron. Old people live here in the houses they have owned for fifty years: young people live here, glorying in the antiquated loo and the one lead-light window for a few months on their way to a degree in French. Such a very narrow, a very quiet, street, only the inhabitants go there one at a time with their heads down against the slope and not speaking. In the soft rain of an autumn’s evening the dogs trot along the hedges and there is an emanation of all the people who knew the place before and now have gone. Do you know them? There is a cherry tree with a canker over its branches and a board nailed to its heart to fix one end of the clothes line. There is a glass house with no glass two doors up, from which the convolvulus flows. There is an old lady who once had both musical talent and aspirations and now she presents her great bum to the world as she gathers chickweed for her canary.

  In the summer evenings the cats of the street sit on the letter boxes and the leaning walls and the rowan berries are like blossom at a distance, clustered flowers which the blackbirds eat, shaking the fingers of the rowan leaves. In the winter the seepage of yellow and rust coloured clay and grains of dark top-soil spread over the footpath towards the water hurrying in the gutters, or the frost bears up in the sh
ade of the hedges.

  And all of this is the twenty-first century. The days, you see, have a trail of continuity as well as a cutting edge.

  Slaven’s Tuamarina Address — A New Drummer is printed for the recently established Coalition for Citizen Power by Pomegranate Press and Kellie keeps control of its distribution. It sells 173,000 copies in three weeks and provides the final proof of a target group for Slaven’s beliefs. Kellie begins to plan a commercial strategy to tie in with the publicity for the Coalition — posters, stickers and cable ads utilising the more epigrammatic of the Slavenisms such as, ‘Specialisation leads to alienation’, ‘People are the means and the end’, ‘Politics isn’t a party’. They try to prevent the trappings of a cult developing, despite the swelling interest in anything to do with Slaven. Supporters want private articles as mementos and thousands of sightseers are disappointed that because of new security they cannot visit the home to see the precise place where Aldous Slaven experienced his near fatal shock and received his mission. There have already been five copy-cat electrocutions, including the twenty-three year old daughter of the Minister of Aviation and Technology. She left a note saying that she was determined to break through to the euphoric component of the human soul. The street term for these unfortunates is cracklers, or sparklers, and if the Slavenisms are the healthy and open publicity for the Coalition, the sparkler jokes are a strange underside. In the cities arises a skinhead cult with ‘Shavin for Slaven’ tattooed on their heads. God knows what inspiration they find in Slaven’s message.

  He talks about it with Kellie during one of the few spring days he has had time to work with her in the garden. The early afternoon sun warms his protective gloves, but far to the west beyond the Canterbury Plains the Southern Alps still show white. Kellie is concerned by the number of wasps and fears an awakening nest in her garden. She dislikes wasps particularly because they force out the more passive, pollinating bees.