A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  ‘I talked with some of your friends and my friends in the weekend at Mahakipawa. Someone reckoned it was good on me for being pro-active.’ The Caretaker’s quiet laugh comes up from the courtyard and then the puh-puh sound as he draws strongly on his pipe which is almost out. Slaven closes his eyes as after just a little delay the fragrance rises up to him, a harsh, lovely nosegay of old defiant ways. ‘Ah, well,’ says the Caretaker. ‘This isn’t getting anything done, aye.’

  ‘If I do get out,’ says Slaven, ‘I’ll pay you back in some way.’

  ‘I’m pretty right here. This is the best job I’ve had. Don’t you go drawing attention to me in any way when you’re out. You can see that? If we get you through that door and away, then I’ll come and hear you speak when no one dares stop you. More important is that some good things happen for us, like you’ve said at Tuamarina and in your articles. This place here is full of talkers isn’t it, but none of them know what to do for the benefit of anyone but themselves. You can do more than that. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  ‘Right,’ says Slaven. Moonlight of mushroom on the tiles of the yard, the building with edges as sharp as playing cards, cars at the end of his narrow view with their lights twisting at the corner and then gone. That’s it, isn’t it. Justifying any risk, any expenditure of talent, friendship or effort, by a proclaimed future and knowing from the large history and also the lower case record of your own life that fine expectation spins to coarse reality.

  So is it night again within the Beckley-Waite Institute. The air conditioning hisses in its work. The dry air is forced to every corner so that a controlled climate is achieved which will preserve them all until the morning, or the millenium perhaps. Each night is a small advance in the process of mummification. Slaven wakes at three and lies with a wet flannel over his face, or pouts for fresh air at the slit the window allows. He has a sense of levitation and he turns as he drifts so that the walls go panning past. Has he ever been more than he is now, cut adrift from family and society, from the complacency of professional status, from more recent fame as an orator. What is there to substantiate his opinion of himself, even his account of existence? On some nights as he sucks life through a flannel, drifts on a level with the door top and mourns because the Caretaker has not called to him from the yard, he’s assailed by the idea that the Institute is all that is real. That the Beckley-Waite is an asteroid which whirls in a phantasmagoria of black chaos with the symmetrical, close windows on floor after floor like the myriad facets of a gadfly’s eye.

  ‘A measure of conceit.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘A counterweight of self-abuse.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘The certainty of having received compassion, if not deserved it.’

  ‘Check.’

  ‘The determination to sell one’s soul dearly.’

  ‘Check.’

  There are footsteps in the corridors, aren’t there? Not of axe murderers, or limping droolers, but people like you and you who have lost the confidence to decide what is right, what is rite and what is written. Footsteps which hesitate for a security they don’t receive, so move on and hesitate again. Slaven gets up and takes his flannel to the door, opens the door and looks into the passage, but there’s no one there, or at most a heel-down slipper disappearing at the corner, a slack pyjama arse, the last, forlorn backward twist of a creased head with the dry hair of a dog tufted on it.

  The Beckley-Waite has no need of any more extravagant enforcement than confinement itself and patent, impartial mistrust of the sanity of its inmates. The most bitter mockeries are those of malaise, misunderstanding and mundane neglect. A touch of egg yolk within the tines of Slaven’s lunch time fork is a golden snarl of death and the supervisor’s perfunctory chat, in a voice just louder than that he uses with his peers, hollows the soul until the place is merely an ache of one’s inconsequence. When Philip Mathieson is selected to be the buddy for two new arrivals, Slaven can’t repress tears of rage and self-pity at such injustice.

  There is mould along the bottom rim of the aluminium window frames and a video eye follows the night visits that he must take for a piss. Dr Collett asks him how he enjoys his time with Ovens in the surgery, laughs appreciatively at the reply and glances at his watch. Dr Burlapp’s resignation has added to the case-load of them all. Not one patient mentions Slaven’s fame on the outside and a boy like a stick insect approaches him in the day room to accuse him of farting to excess, demands that he keep to his own room and quit farting in the common space.

  Stimulating reading is kept from him. All he has are magazines with brief articles on actors who have put on weight, or lost it, and popular auguries which Sarah would enjoy. How to interpret the character of your loved one by the way he does his hair, cuts his toenails, or the manner of his walking in the snow.

  Ovens is right perhaps: the only way to salvage a sense of self is the sharp pain of extraction and the taste of your own blood.

  The Caretaker’s voice is no different on the night he forewarns Slaven of escape. ‘Are you sill going up at the same time?’

  ‘Tomorrow, yes.’

  ‘Do everything just as usual, except that this time you go into the room two along from the Emergency ALW, on the same side, just as I’ve told you. And if someone goes with you then walk on up to the surgery and forget about it.’

  ‘What if the door won’t open?’

  ‘Then forget about it.’ There is the strike and flare of the Caretaker’s match below. The darkened courtyard strip, the deeper shadow that he knows is the terracotta pot, the narrow view through the archway — they are different even as the Caretaker speaks, losing a unity of opposition and becoming just a collection of things within a set night-time view. ‘Aldous.’ Slaven has no name to use in reply. ‘Aldous? Now remember, mate, don’t try to take anything with you. You just go up to Ovens as usual except that you duck into that door. That’s the one for you. Leave the rest to us.’

  ‘I’m not going to forget this.’

  ‘I hope not. After all it’s the elections soon. Anyway, who knows, some day we may be together at Mahakipawa, take a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc up the hill and look down over the Havelock mudflats. My brother says we should call our wine iwi juice.’ The Caretaker’s laugh again, low and even and Slaven joins in. ‘Okay, now I’d better get some work done, but you remember about tomorrow. You’ll be all right. We got it organised.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Slaven. ‘Thanks.’

  It isn’t hard to keep to the usual routine. There’s no one apart from the Caretaker whom Slaven wishes to farewell. After all, although he has enjoyed late at night the drifting melodies of a clarinet, he has never met Victor Yee as we have, knows nothing of his asthmatic wife, or the passing joys of the rooms above the tattooist. Nothing in his possessions either, that he minds leaving behind, except his Hoihos disc. Slaven allows himself just the petty malice of ignoring the stick insect at lunch, and congratulates Philip Mathieson on how well the new chums are learning to stifle their weeping within their own rooms.

  He does feel pressure in the half hour or so before he is due to go to the surgery. He dreads Dr Collett having such a lapse into concern, or efficiency, that he might come to accompany him, or send a nurse. But no one cares, or remembers, of course and Slaven makes his way somewhat self-consciously past the security check, on to the second floor, down the corridors, through the swing fire doors, until he can see the door marked Emergency ALW and his entrance two beyond. That’s the one for you, he seems to hear the Caretaker say. No one walks behind, no one advances from the opposite direction. The corridor is as ever quiet and yellow — a therapeutic colour you understand. Slaven grasps the knob. The coolness slips on the sweat of his palm, but it isn’t locked. He steps into the room, closes the door behind him, resists the urge to look back and see if he has been observed despite the silence.

  It’s a narrow room, sunlit unlike the corridor and obviously one of the supply dumps of the Caretaker�
�s domain. The two longer walls have shelves of toilet tissue, cleaning fluids, folded drapes and large chrome teapots. There’s an orbital polisher blocking most of the way and on one shelf a line of boxes with word processing identification; out of date titles such as Word Perfect Corporation and MS DOS User’s Guide. Slaven has expected a reception less mundane and less cryptic. Something of a let-down perhaps. He steps over the polisher and stands at the window to see scaffolding not far below and two men and a woman using it to paint the roughcast. The woman is closest to him and she walks easily the grey planks laid on the scaffold pipes, comes and halts in front of Slaven’s window so that her head’s almost level with the sill. She motions to him to open the window, but waves him back when that’s done and hauls herself in with strength and agility.

  ‘Good on you,’ she says. ‘I heard you speak at Western Springs. Marvellous.’ She stretches out a hand and Slaven has his half extended in response when he realises that she’s picking up a bag from the shelf beside them. It has grey overalls within, like those she wears and when he’s put them on, he climbs down to the plank on the scaffolding. He waits for her to follow. ‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ll have a breather here till you’ve gone in case there’s some joker watching who can count. You go quietly down the end ladder and wait by the van for the skipper. And listen, make sure you give the buggers heaps before the elections.’

  At the end of each run of worn boards is a small ladder and Slaven climbs down two of these flights until he’s on the lawn close to the staff carpark and can see the contractor’s van and the other cars in the bright sun of the afternoon. From the second tier of the scaffolding comes the Hoihos’ Bound On The Wheel, their biggest hit since Half Moon Bay. A black Labrador cross with a grizzled nose looks innocently into the blue as its haunches draw up and quiver in the making of a deposit. Yes, the very same, as you have recognised and the tribute lay beneath a lovely, dark rose — Crimson Glory, a hybrid tea, Kellie would tell us.

  It is impossible to believe that anything dramatic is taking place; that the Institute is at all sinister, or Slaven’s escape from it is seriously opposed. As Slaven looks back at the tall sides, already he’s unable to tell which room it was he entered and left.

  ‘Time for a cuppa, I reckon,’ says the skipper as he comes up to Slaven at the van. He has the seamed, square face of a prop and he pulls the zip of his overalls down to cool himself. The green singlet beneath is spotted white, pink, yellow and blue from previous jobs and the skin of his hands is dry from many cleanings with turpentine.

  ‘Relax,’ says the skipper and he lifts his right hand from the wheel in a lazy salute as they drive past the gate house when the bar has been lifted. Within a few blocks they’re in the traffic of downtown Wellington where life hums by in ignorance of the hesitancy and introspection of the Beckley-Waite. ‘Whip off the overalls,’ says the skipper and as Slaven does so the skipper talks into a hand phone as he drives. ‘A mate of yours wants to say goodbye,’ he tells Slaven. ‘Press the red one to talk back.’ It is the Caretaker, telling Slaven that he’d find they knew all about him at the hydrofoil and that the evenings wouldn’t be the same without their chats.

  ‘I couldn’t be there to see you go. You’ll understand it was better for me to be clearly somewhere else at the time. Be careful on the way south. The word will be out soon.’

  ‘In more ways than one, perhaps,’ says Slaven.

  ‘Go for it and good luck,’ says the Caretaker.

  The skipper drops Slaven at the private hydrofoil terminal in Oriental Bay and goes back to work. He’s asked no questions, sought no contact apart from that quick, strong handshake at the last and a proffered barley sugar which was dwarfed by the large finger and spatulate thumb which held it.

  Les Croad is waiting for Slaven, wearing the same scuffed moccasins and twill trousers. ‘So here you are,’ he says conspiratorially. ‘Turning up like the proverbial.’ He leads the way to the craft and the transparent hatch is closed behind them. Almost immediately the engine rises in volume and pitch and the hydrofoil noses out into the harbour. For a time it labours in contact with the full area of water beneath its hull, but then lifts with a sense of release, striking the occasional crest with sharp vibration.

  Now at last Slaven feels the emotional reaction to his escape, mundane and all as it has been. He finds it hard to talk to Croad without his voice breaking, so he breathes deeply and looks across the harbour to Ward Island and down to Port Dorset. Croad is no soul mate, but he is an envoy from Slaven’s own people, a sign of the active friendship which has reached out even to the Beckley-Waite Institute and countered its disillusion. As he listens to Croad, glances sometimes at his unkept face, Slaven thinks of Marianne Dunne in her hospital beneath the Port Hills, Thackeray Thomas and his stalwart sons, Eula and Sheffield, Miles Kitson putting off death awhile to help a friend. And most of all his own Kellie, who has a sure judgment and a loyalty quite undeterred by the disappointments of which they rarely speak.

  Slaven leans on the cushioned backrest. His head nods as Les Croad gives what he considers a shrewd overview of the past weeks, though the nodding is more in response to the movement of the hydrofoil than any affirmation of what Croad relates. ‘We’ll be in Picton in an hour,’ says Les. ‘In two shakes of, in fact.’

  Slaven has a dream in which he gives his most emphatic and heartfelt speech to a great gathering at Mahakipawa and as he talks to them he is buoyed up by the audience’s complete goodwill and agreement. Who can doubt that a better life and a closer fellowship are possible? And the Caretaker is sitting close to the stage. Slaven feels such pleasure to be able to see the Caretaker’s face at last. He knows with the absolute certainty that a dream may have, that it is the Caretaker. The face is brown, calm and quizzical, just as he has always expected it to be. There is a rich smell from the tidal mudflats at the head of the sound and large patches of pig-fern on the hills, not yet dispossessed by the donkeys and vines.

  Like a water beetle on the smoother surface of Queen Charlotte Sound the hydrofoil skims towards Picton. The drumming caused by the waves of Cook Strait dies away and Slaven can again hear Les Croad rebuilding life to his scale. They are passing Waikawa, the old batches clustered by the beach and the high rise hotels behind, built by Hong Kong investors at the turn of the century. Les examines Slaven’s face with care. ‘It’s healed up pretty well you know. Any effects still?’

  ‘My teeth aren’t so good.’

  ‘You’re probably just too fussy there, being a dentist and all. Jeez, was I pissed off afterwards. They used remote electrical interference you know and I should have twigged to something when those two wanted you to ride with them.’

  ‘You weren’t to know.’

  ‘All the same, a nod is as good as.’ Les watches the small slipways and docks at the left of Picton harbour. He’s making the most frank apology he finds possible. ‘The police haven’t found either of those bastards,’ he says.

  There’s an old inter-island ferry laid up for the tourists to view and the hydrofoil slips behind it into a private berth. Les and Slaven climb from the hatch and apart from a group of primary kids heading back from the ferry, there’s no one about. Les leads the way to a utility with its tray full of boxes of fir seedlings and with a Parks Board motif on the door. ‘We’ll have to have a bite as we go, I’m afraid,’ says Les. ‘The sooner we’re out of here the better.’

  ‘From what I know of the Beckley-Waite they won’t even miss me.’

  ‘They have their masters though.’

  ‘How far is it to Mahakipawa?’

  ‘Right over towards Havelock,’ says Les as he drives up the hill out of Picton. The vehicle has been chosen well. Les Croad is a natural in a ute with a load of seedlings. ‘Mahakipawa. Whatever made you think of that. There’s nothing at Mahakipawa.’

  ‘For me there is. I’ll go there some day.’ Slaven thought of a broad hill with native bush on its crown, rough pasture with yellow-flowered gorse and bracken
, then the carefully-tied rows of vines. The Caretaker’s hapu would be working amongst them and the free-range leghorns would come from fluffing in the dustbowls beneath the windbreak pines to take grapes in their beaks so that the bloom on the dark skin was marked as if with pencil lines.

  There’s a tin of sandwiches and a carton of fruit juice in the cab. Slaven can tell that Kellie has made the sandwiches — egg and parsley, and tongue — for the crusts are cut from them as is her way. Who else but Kellie would think of it amongst the mechanics of escape. Slaven is eating as they pass Tuamarina and he looks up to the hill where he knows the cemetery to be. Almost he expects to see his meeting still in progress there, but all the people, all the rhetoric, the pies and publicity, have had no lasting impact and now he’s a fugitive from the Beckley-Waite, sliding by in a utility driven by Les Croad. Will anything alter if he stops and adds himself to the quiet landscape? Will the hedges be less impenetrable, the Friesians less shitted at the tail, will the Scotch thistle mitigate the wonder of its purple, or the angles of the cheese factory be less definite against the sky? The backdrop has both the message and the last laugh.

  Slaven has the taste of a beast’s tongue in his mouth. The afternoon shadows give definition to the land. The old eucalyptus tree will be making its pipe-bowl nuts above the Wairau memorial and through it the mottled light will make the record of 1843 even less distinct. From the green school-ground below it are cries of joy from country children playing.

  On then, across the Wairau Plain, with time for just a final backward glance over the firecely-waving seedlings to the hills of Tuamarina and the white memorial there.