Les Croad’s phone buzzes and he answers with a voice of conscious conspiracy. ‘Things are on the move,’ he says to Slaven, ‘but we’d better not have you talking to anyone. The snoopers will have their gear out. We mightn’t be able to get right down to Christchurch tonight, but we’ll be told of the best place to make a stop. There aren’t any checks at Blenheim as yet, so we’ll get through there all right. I used to work here you know. I had a seed drier and used to handle a good deal of small stuff, clover and so on.’
‘So what happened.’ Slaven knows that he is to be told in any case.
‘My wife caught me shagging the babysitter and I had to sell up the business when the family broke up. I reckon I would have been mayor of Blenheim now if it hadn’t been for that girl.’
‘Who came out of it the best,’ says Slaven. ‘The babysitter, the town, your wife, or you.’
‘Six of one, I reckon, but I never look back. It’s all water under, after all.’ He drives through the town which seems to have prospered under the leadership of Mayors who haven’t been sabotaged by babysitters of either sex. Above the central shops is the huge, plastic bunch of grapes which can be lit up at night and which is decorated at Christmas time instead of a communal tree.
Perhaps indeed that’s the secret — don’t look back. Don’t look back across the waving seedlings to Tuamarina, don’t look back to the spinning eyes of the Beckley-Waite, don’t look back to Waiouru and a father chinning effortlessly on the back-lawn bars that held the swing, a mother of special smiles, don’t look back to Kellie on her wedding day with a face as serene as her expectations, don’t look back to the blue paint of the barge board, the wire in his grasp and Half Moon Bay.
The present also may become with examination as unhelpful as Les Croad confirms his past to be. The dry hills before Seddon will be the same dry hills when Les and Slaven have passed, the frogs will bulge their eyes from the stock dams when the wind alone is before their stare, the genetic pattern of the harrier hawk will have it lift awkwardly from guts upon the road on the day Les surrenders his bitterness, and long after. What happens to the spools of incessant occurrence; insistent yet trivial patterns of sight, sound and fragrances which net the heart and hint at some explanation for consciousness.
There’s a place, not far, sweet country if only it had summer rain. The sheep seek shade and in these camps the loess clay of the ground is smooth and hard, or pooled to dust and the droppings of the sheep are thickly spread, but dry and inoffensive, baked in the heat. In the odd sink hole the briar seeks moisture and gorse blooms brighter than the clay. The ridges are worn almost bald, like the heads of the lean, brown farmers who ride farm bikes too small for them across the paddocks of their land. The creek beds are marked more by rushes and willows than running water and the mallards come only in twos or threes. An easterly is always up after midday and burnishes the arc of pale, blue sky. The shelter belts close to the road and the macrocarpa before the farmhouse are dusted with a false pollen drifting in off the road. The rural delivery boxes are large so that stores can be left there as well as mail and each has a name painted by hand. In the evenings the sheep come to the stock dams and troughs to drink, the magpies gather to imitate the noise of poets and the barley grass and brown-top ripple at the sides of the shingle roads.
Is that so far away?
Les Croad is on the phone again. He fully accepts the urgency of the present. He lowers his voice at moments of greatest decision. ‘I’d rather not leave the visitor alone,’ he says. And, ‘Yes I see that, but I’d rather not leave him alone.’
‘What’s this,’ asks Slaven.
‘They’re making checks before Kaikoura. Miles Kitson’s people want you to spend the night at Lake Grassmere to be on the safe side.’
‘Then we do it.’
They turn left from the main road towards Lake Grassmere. A deadend road with the old salt works almost at the finish of it. Les has a key to the works’ gate. ‘Plan B,’ he says with his flat grin and they drive to the old buildings with the wide sea-pans beyond them, then the ocean. Solitude and dereliction have worn the buildings down in relation to their surroundings and drawn one building further from another so that there are conspicuous spaces between one gaunt barn and another. Only the remains of a viaduct conveyor system sticks up thirty or forty metres, its raw, solid parts expensive to dismantle. There are still slumps of unprocessed salt like old snow and the long grass is untrammelled at the loading bays alongside the rusted railway lines. Les takes a backpack and the food from the truck and pushes past the door of what may have been the administration block. Slaven can make out, in large letters on the outside — ‘Cerebos’.
Inside there are stairs without a railing to the upper floor. ‘Tomorrow morning I’ll come back in a green van. Don’t come out for anything else,’ says Les. He’s attaching a thin, metallic sheet, almost a foil, as a shelter. He strings it from warped partitions there, despite a roof that seems serviceable enough. ‘If a chopper comes over you’ll be all right under this,’ he says. ‘I’ve got to get the ute out of here pronto, but I’ll be back quite early tomorrow and we’ll have you in Christchurch lickedy.’
Slaven watches the Parks Board vehicle go back towards the main road, skirting the downs. It has left no obvious tyre marks within the gates, and as Slaven turns back he has the inconsequential hope that the seedlings will not suffer for their adventure. He’s never been to Grassmere before, yet his first careful scrutiny after Les Croad has gone brings to him a landscape of utter familiarity; as if he has been assembling it in his sub-conscious during the long, air conditioned nights of the Beckley-Waite and now is able to visit his creation at last. The wooden and corrugated iron buildings are dry and whitened by wind and sand and salt. The sea has long broken into some of the pans closest to the coast, but from the others the setting sun still catches crystals and pond surfaces between the low rubble causeways and the wind casts grit and sand against the old buildings. In the concrete loading ramps and retaining walls the iron reinforcement has burst out in furled half-blooms of rust in response to the salt sea air. The skeleton of an industry remains — those things too large, or uneconomic to cart away. The sun shows through the ribs of the high walls and much of the heavy, simple machinery is still in place.
The people have drawn off to find a life elsewhere. A tribe of Croads; sunburnt, stubborn, bitterly humorous, clinging to a host of work-related perks of doubtful legality as they drove loaders and skimmers, alternately let in and held back the sea. Then in other jobs and places they would mention briefly that they’d worked at Grassmere by the sea, but not take the time when passing to come back to see the shallow, discoloured water, or feel the salt rind their sweat in the way it always used to do.
Slaven sits on the warm boards of the blank second story of the administration building. By the glassless window is carved — ‘here Tigger did the deed with Alice’. The night hills are one dimensional serrations against the red and yellow of the western sky and the closest pans have glints of flamingo pink. Slaven wishes the Caretaker could be with him so that they could talk some more and he could share the tobacco in a more substantial way.
When the sun is down, Slaven lies on the sleeping bag and beneath the foil which will keep his living heat from detection — all being well. He has no artificial light and lies listening to the building creaking as it cools, feeling the wind move easily through it. He is completely safe, free of the hum of the Beckley-Waite air conditioning and able to breathe the wind flowing in from Lake Grassmere. There is a rat, or a cat, maybe, scratching a reply on the tin, but no tight walls, no acoustic ceilings, no padding futility in the narrow corridors, or surreptitious unwrapping of chocolate, no soft weeping, or levitations of despair.
At three he wakes because of the chill and a need to piss. He urinates in the corner furthest from his camp, not trusting the stairs in the dark and he makes sure that he climbs within the sleeping bag when he comes back. Despite the hard boards, he’s quickly asleep
again; just enough time beforehand to hear the wind in the gaps of the old timbers, the ocean at a distance and the flexing of the foil strip above him. Also the drip of his own piss to the ground floor beneath.
Gulls wake him and the sun through windows rimmed with shattered glass. He is nailed to the floor with stiffness, but manages to dress clumsily and go down the stairs to stand in the doorway and flex himself. It’s a wonderfully empty world and Slaven finds it hard to imagine that his presence is of concern to anyone. There have been no helicopters, loudspeakers, or dogs, not even a local policeman come to have a nose around. It will be a piece of cake from now on. Slaven thinks.
A green van comes while he’s having a cursory wash in shallow and discoloured water of the nearest pan and stops by the old building and Les Croad picks up the kit which is already packed. Slaven hears the tyres in the grit and salt as the van comes towards him. ‘No problems?’ asks Les.
‘Fine.’
‘We haven’t been all that far away. Better sure than,’ says Les. He has brought coffee and a bag of apples and Slaven is able to balance the cup better once they reach the main road.
‘Things get just a bit dicey from here on in,’ says Les. ‘There’s a good deal of surveillance as we go towards Christchurch. They know they need to get you quickly, or the publicity will be too much for them. You’re going to become a veteran cyclist to be on the safe side. I hope that’s okay?’
‘How veteran?’ Slaven has never liked cycling.
‘You won’t be on the road that much. There’s a group riding in turns to publicise Australasian Union.’
The Australasian Unionists have set up a pit stop at Ward and Les drops him there. ‘Don’t you worry. We won’t be that far away,’ he says. A grey-haired, whippet of a man takes Slaven into his care, arranging for a shower, a completely vegetarian meal and a shave which includes the legs.
‘So that we can give you an instant tan,’ says the whippet man, ‘and you won’t stand out from the rest.’ From the outside maybe he doesn’t, but he feels foolish in the large back-up van travelling on: lycra shorts and top, helmet ready and yellow elbow and knee pads in place. Rather than the threat of recapture he’s worried about his own clothes and his possible inability to ride fast enough when his turn comes.
Certainly the six in front are slow enough and Slaven has ample time to watch an iceberg being towed north off the Kaikoura coast and to see the crayfish speciality stalls and tourist boat trip operators as the town grows closer. The handler is told that there’s a checkpoint ahead, so he has the van pass the riders and flag them down for a change of personnel.
That’s how Slaven comes to enter Kaikoura on a Torricelli touring bike with a thin, uncomfortable seat. He sweats in the morning sun and some of his new tan stains the fold of the white socks he’s been given. There’s some apprehension when the road-block is sighted, yet since the very beginning of his escape things have been so very much in the hands of others that Slaven has become fatalistic. Having no part in the planning against threat, he finds it difficult to believe in the threat itself. The sweat moves, tickles in the short hair by his ears. The sea breeze evaporates it on the side of his face and so there’s coolness there. The breeze comes from the direction of the iceberg which is in plain view directly offshore. How marvellously out-of-place it is. Vast and with touches of the milky green of the lightest jade, it is towed captive far from its own world.
Miles has chosen his men well. They know that the best disguise is not to change a person’s appearance, but to alter the context. Slaven and his fellow riders barely put their feet to the ground at the check-point before they are waved through. They are urged on by a bald-headed man in shorts and tramping boots who uses a megamike to extoll the virtues of Australasian Union. Rather than fearing a last minute shout of recognition as he moves through, Slaven has to concentrate on keeping up with the woman in front. Her bum swallows up the seat, but her brown legs provide a seemingly effortless propulsion. Slaven puts in a special effort as they climb the hill behind the town centre and he wonders when the whippet will order another change. At all his meetings, Slaven has spoken out against sexist attitudes, but sweating on the coast road he prays to a male god to deliver him from the humiliation of not being able to keep pace with a woman. He lowers his head so that his effort can’t be read and he counts each thrust of legs as an encouragement — 702, 703, 704, 705. The tremor of small muscles in his thighs is a warning of cramp.
The back-up van overtakes them while still on the flat of Goose Bay. Slaven has no wish to be cycling over the Hundalees. ‘I thought that just a small stage would do you,’ says the whippet. ‘Though it might pay to have you back on if we strike other checks. Just one other thing; you actually had your helmet on back-to-front.’
‘I’ll get it right next time.’ Slaven is aware of the irony. He has never been on the run before and he’s becoming aware of an aspect of it which he has never suspected — it is demeaning.
The others in the van are a cheerful enough lot, though by no means all youthful protesters. Nor is there any reprise of the advantages of union which is the reason for them coming together. Slaven could talk to them regarding that. Hadn’t he been completing an article for The Australasian when Drs Eugene and Bliss called. Rather the talk within the van is of stage distances, muscle massage, energy foods and the reason for the police checks. The ample woman whose fitness Slaven found a threat, says they were after the man who tried to assassinate the Maori King and the manager, thin as a whippet, says that’s it and catches Slaven’s eye.
Slaven rides only one more stage — through Cheviot and the yellow downs immediately beyond — because there is a second check made by the police at the crossroads which you come on suddenly around a left-hand sweeper. The whippet however is constantly and well-informed. With his helmet on correctly, Slaven feels quite at ease during the short pause and breathes deeply only to ensure he’ll be well oxygenated when he resumes.
In the van again, eating a parrot mixture of dried fruit, seeds and nuts, which the others relish, Slaven thinks of the weeks before the elections and how they can best be used. He wonders if he will have to operate undercover, if it’s possible even, or if once he has a following around him again the authorities will accept his presence.
He goes over his six points in case there are things in his experience since Lyttelton and the Beckley-Waite which necessitate changes, but finds his mind circling back to the person most responsible for recent weeks — Cardew. For years his son has been both puzzle and disappointment; complete in all corporeal respects, but lacking character, having in its place only an instinctual drive for self-gratification. Slaven accuses himself of failing to pass on any of the values which guide his own life. Perhaps he proclaims, rather than exemplifies. Gradually Slaven’s dislike of his son has sapped the love that can for a long time exist with it in paradox of parenthood. They have sat in the bath together. Slaven has carried him on his shoulders and can remember the joy in Cardew’s face at the modest enough prospect of a video game. But soon he must be dealt with for the common good.
The stop for the night is a church hall at Amberley and Slaven’s fellow riders are almost euphoric at the thought of rest and recreation, then their triumphal ride into the city the next morning and the official presentation of their petition. The whippet promises savoury sausages and mashed poatato, but when Slaven climbs stiffly from the van and makes to follow the others, the manager gives a whistle and raises his eyebrows and points to the quiet end of the hall where Les Croad is waiting in another vehicle again. The manager says nothing, just gives Slaven his clothes within a supermarket bag and squeezes his arm with thin fingers. The manager whistles and makes his way to sausages and mash, for he’s done his bit.
‘Almost there,’ says Les. Slaven follows him to the car, flexing his arms and back as he does so. Les rather enjoys the cloak and dagger stuff, enjoys also the sight of a stiff and absurdly-dressed Slaven, with eyes reddened by the wind
and borrowed white socks stained with the false tan sweated into them.
‘We were going to have a hot meal here, you know,’ says Slaven.
‘Hotter than you bargained on perhaps. When people have satisfied their bellies they start taking an interest in other people, start asking questions. I’m afraid we can’t take you home either, or to anyone you know. No visitors even until things quieten.’ Les is grimly pleased by the inclusive isolation for it prolongs Slaven’s reliance on him. ‘I’ve an address though. You could say a safe house, I suppose. Famous last, eh?’ When the glass has Slaven invisible within the car, Les Croad takes his time, even a few paces back to the corner of the hall so that he can see down the path towards the rooms where the supporters of Australasian Union are relaxing. Their noise is unmistakable in quiet Amberley. There is no apparent surveillance. ‘I smell sausages,’ says Les.
‘Tell me about it,’ murmurs Slaven from the car.
The Christchurch place that the advisers have arranged for Slaven to lie low in. An old house divided into flats, and the back flat where Les Croad leaves him has an addition which juts over the Heathcote stream. A banana-passionfruit plant grows all around the door, its fluted flowers lit like candles there in the low evening sun. Les puts a case for Slaven on the step and gives him several letters held together with a rubber band. ‘Better I shoot through, now,’ he says. ‘These people don’t know who you are. They’re not well up on politics and national happenings, but Kitson’s guys are sure you’ll be okay. The boy is called Athol and he understands that you need to be quietly out of circulation for a while. But we won’t be far away.’ Les shakes hands with Slaven vigorously, then raps on the window and gives a thumbs up to someone inside. He leaves before the someone comes, cutting across the rough, brown lawn and perfectly at home. His shrugging walk and jutting, restless face seeking stimulus. The close-crimped, almost yellow hair, the creases of his grubby twill trousers well-suited to the movement of his legs. This is his happy hunting, thinks Slaven. What does he wish from the Coalition except a wage. Les Croad would have been born and grown up in a succession of back flats on railway and river sections. He would have crouched with his mates in the macrocarpa when he should have been at school, smoking and spitting on the spider webs and starting to resent those people who had it better. Les should stay by the less-than-crystal Heathcote and Slaven should cut across the lawn and away. Slaven opens his mouth to say so, to call Les back to natural surroundings, but he realises how absurd it all is, how weary and confused he has become, how hungry, how unwilling to meet more strangers who will constitute yet another interlude in the scheme of his escape from the Beckley-Waite.
A Many Coated Man Page 24