A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  Does the woman painter still relax in the room two along from the Emergency ALW, the skipper still gun the company van at Oriental Bay? The derelict buildings at Grassmere — are they still there? Have they ever been? Has his piss dried at the top of the stairs with no sides and is there a flamingo flush on the abandoned sea pans? Has Tigger done the deed with Alice? Does the woman cyclist with powerful legs and hair held back with a simple green band now deftly test the skin of a gravied sausage with her teeth and imagine the presentation? Does the road manager, that whippet of leather and feathery bone, rest in Amberley and peace? Where do the seedlings wave and where have the few children gone who shouted to each other at Tuamarina? Is the owl once more on the wing?

  There is a fragrance of kerosene, or boot polish, in the calm air and Slaven’s aware of the sliding feel in his left hand as the plastic bag of clothes slips, the sharp feel of the letters in his other hand. The residue of a day’s sweat is on him, the salt of it drawing the skin tight and brittle. His leg muscles twitch with the poisons of unaccustomed strain and the banana-passionfruit flowers only inches from his face have a pearly, yet slightly yellow sheen, like the gloss on a pelt peeled from the steaming beast. A duck with one leg is swimming upstream in the Heathcote — he can tell by the compensatory movement that its body gives to each surge of propulsion. From an upstairs flat comes the Hoihos, but not Half Moon Bay. A huge Harley Hog leans on the wall and the richness of it contrasts with the surrounding neglect. Upwards, through the corroded grin of the guttering, Slaven can see the jewelled dazzle of the western sky. Ah, the mockery of indifferent precision.

  So no discriminatory initial description of our Athol, as he first glances from the flawed window then opens the door and blocks it with his spread arms. He leans there, tilted cheerfully forward and he looks at this guy who has come as a windfall. ‘You’ll be okay here, mate. No sweat,’ he says. So Slaven comes into the home and lives of more people when he has home and family of his own. Coming back from the dead, in a manner of speaking, isn’t as easy as he had imagined that morning at quiet Lake Grassmere. ‘You need somewhere to crash for a while,’ says Athol and he takes up the case and leads the way through a living room of mismatched furniture into a bedroom of obvious femininity — shadow curtains at a window which overlooks the Heathcote and the smell of kerosene and boot polish overlaid with that of deodorant, fabrics and pot pourri in bowls of glass.

  ‘Get your head down for a bit. I can see you’re almost knackered, and then we’ll talk about a feed.’ Slaven has nothing in reply. He can’t be bothered with the emotional effort of acknowledging yet another stranger. He undoes his cycling shoes at the side of the bed and lies on the blue covers with his arms spread out. The Heathcote’s sluggish water idles by outside, but by some trick of evening reflection there is a rippling pattern on the ceiling — so ethereal and chaste in its silently breaking then coalescing flow that Slaven feels his essential self drift upwards to join it. ‘Absolutely knackered,’ says Athol as from habit he hefts the small case to assess its contents.

  While Slaven sleeps there is an opportunity to make free with those tinctures of verisimilitude which he’s in no condition to record. The greenstone stud, say, in Athol’s left nostril, a blue, folded handkerchief — yes, to match the cover — between the lamp clamp and the bedhead as padding and across the Heathcote in an overgrown backyard is a netting compound in which unregistered pit-bull terriers are hidden from the world. See each of these, and the things which link them are just as certain and as clear to you as they are to Slaven when he wakes. The purple plums, say, each of which has been pecked by the birds sufficiently to be a token of possession and the hair in the portal of Slaven’s facing ear, little cutlasses which catch the light and which he cannot describe even when awake. The goose girl’s closest friend of earlier days was brained with a baseball bat at the back of the Gethsemane Hotel, but his pueblo carving from New Mexico still hangs on to a life on the wall. And ah, the comforting, orbital repetitions which knit up the world we know, for as you say, it is indeed a sticker for Australasian Union on the mirror of the goose girl’s duchess. It hides a glass flaw there, rather than showing political awareness.

  So Athol leaves us to it and goes back to the kitchen for a jar and to count the first of the money which has been his without delay. The poor, old bugger’s completely knackered, he thinks, and will need a good feed when he wakes. Something to stick to the sides of him and put lead in his pencil. As Athol stands at the bench, looks through the window above the dishes in the sink, it doesn’t occur to him that the one-wheeled trailer askew in the long grass is an eyesore, or that the landlord’s brother-in-law would have done better not to mix his paints on the concrete path. Some things just are: a one-legged duck chugging on the Heathcote to match a one-legged trailer in the grass, lunar paint stains in orange and cream to walk upon, a battery of pit-bull terriers in a neighbouring yard, a pounamu nose stud, a pueblo carving whose expression changes with subtle reflections of the stream and the banana-passionfruit flutes with the most delicate tinge of purple at their base.

  Live and let live. Do any of these things ever prevent Athol from going round his man on the outside and scoring a good one for his Heathcote League side, or threaten his concentration as he steadies the goose girl with a hand behind her buttocks?

  So here she is then —the goose girl — who has been visiting her sister in Hoon Hay. She has boots despite the heat and an Azerbaijan patterned skirt, very popular since the planned immigrations. And her short, white hair and her long, white neck and her features gathered to her mouth. Athol has a hand on her shoulder as they stand at her bedroom door and watch Slaven asleep on her bed. His socks are stained on his thin legs, his hair prickled with a former sweat, and the stubble a salt and pepper scatter over his chin and throat. Now that his face is relaxed, the creases that he had drawn in against the wind and dazzle show as pale lines in the sunburn.

  ‘Who is he?’ says the goose girl.

  ‘Some rich, old bugger who matters. I think he’s been in the clink and it’s all very bloody hush-hush, understand. We look after him here for a while until his cobbers pick him up. And it’s money for jam; easy money by Jesus.’

  ‘Why here then if he’s a bigwig? Why stuck with us?’

  ‘Because no one will find him here, will they. No guest lists, or sign in, no credit cards, or cleaners with keys to fossick around, no nosey people at the desk to recognise a photo. We’ll let him sleep and then he can spruce up and we’ll have a feed. A big bloody order of pork nuggets and chips is what we could do with and a bottle of plonk for him to down with it.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s one of those lawyers who’s got off with millions from some outfit that’s collapsed.’

  ‘No idea, and what does it matter. The thing is that some heavy people are behind him and he’s a bloody good meal ticket while he’s here, so you look after him. You treat him better than your own dad, better than me almost,’ and Athol pushes his hand over the breast of the goose girl. The swell of her skin is firm feathered and the curve of her neck is almost classic beauty despite the closely-gathered features of her small face. She smiles and tilts up that small face as she does when things are going well. Her long throat shows to best advantage and her short hair shivers as a crest shivers.

  ‘I wonder who he is,’ she says. ‘I reckon he’s one of those business guys with all the money and they’ve got onto him.’

  ‘Anyway, you be good to him. A goldmine to us is what he fucken is.’

  Slaven sleeps until after ten o’clock at night and then wakes because of the changing temperature and the constriction of his cycling clothes. He comes back to himself slowly from a landscape which fades only just before his recollection of it. He’s a stranger here and so begins to orientate himself by a cautious process of deduction, before giving himself away by movement. The initial alienation means he’s nowhere in his own domain. There’s no angle of Kellie’s garden, or their spacious bedroom, n
o round adjustable light of his surgery. Is it the hospital then, with the cover of The Beaver Trade to Vincent’s face and Norman Proctor to his left, if not already dead? Is it the Beckley-Waite and his hotbed of insignificance there, with the whine of the air conditioning preventing the quiet voice of the Caretaker from being heard? Is it the chinked vastness of the old building at the salt works with a sea mist wreathing in, or the rocking motion of the protesters’ van slowing for another check-point. No?

  It is a bedroom unknown to him, partly lit by a passage light, so that he can see the blue of the duvet on which he lies, the cluster of the goose girl’s bottles on the duchess and her slippers bottom up by the wardrobe door. And a young guy with his hair in a bun, a stud in his nose, and the balance of an athlete in his walk, coming in from the passage.

  Athol doesn’t introduce himself, but smiles at Slaven so that the stud lifts at the side of his nose and he asks Slaven if there’s anything he wants and just to say if there is.

  ‘A bath if that’s okay.’ So Athol leads him along to the bathroom and then sends the goose girl for the pork nuggets, the chips and the wine. The cold tap gives a forceful stream, straight from the Heathcote beside them perhaps, but the hot tap coughs and pants steam and is easily overpowered, so that Slaven has to leave it full on, yet turn the cold down. He hadn’t realised there are places still without a mixer.

  Even when he has the taps off and is soaking in the narrow tub, the pipes keep arguing and rattling in their sockets. Pale green the walls are mainly, but at bump level the chips reveal flashes of other colours which once held sway — lemon is well noted, mushroom is here and the deepest injuries disclose a pre-cambrian gloss white which is close to the bone.

  Slaven dries himself with a large, thin towel which has the odours of a locker room and combs his hair with his fingers as best he can. He knows no other place to go than the goose girl’s bedroom and so he walks back there in his trousers and carries the lycra gear in the supermarket bag. The small case brought for him by Les Croad has been packed by Kellie. He should have opened it before he went to wash, for the comb, towel, shaver are all there as well as a change of clothes, pyjamas and a tube of ointment for his lips. On top of it all is a single sheet of notepaper — ‘You can’t keep a good man down,’ she’s written. What will come of her loyalty, he wonders.

  Slaven shaves at the goose girl’s duchess with all its bottled promises and Athol keeps a cheerful check on progress and when he thinks the moment right comes in with the food. ‘Grub,’ he says. The goose girl follows with her head down, but still curious. She has the wine and mugs. The three of them begin to eat and Slaven feels the rich bite of the pork nuggets. Athol can make an anemone of chips between thumb and forefinger to dunk in the organically grown tomato sauce. The goose girl can tilt her head and clack her teeth in satisfaction. And no introductions are made, none necessary, or at least too late, for Slaven’s slept in the goose girl’s bed and drawn across his back the bow of the communal towel. His fingers have locked with Athol’s in the pursuit of a nugget in the box and his eyes found easy rest on the whiteness of the goose girl’s arching neck. Her legs are folded beneath the hem of her Azerbaijan skirt as she sits on the bed with the men to eat and her shallow, bright, goosey eyes are alive with the novelty of a man with money, on the run.

  ‘A few more hours in the pit and you’ll be back to par, I reckon,’ says Athol. He clumsily pours Chardonnay into three mugs and tasting it is privately convinced that it’s gone off, but gone off from what he hasn’t the experience to say.

  ‘But I don’t want to take your bed from you,’ protests Slaven to the goose girl.

  ‘No sweat,’ says Athol. ‘She can doss down with me.’

  When they leave him, going out without any fuss, Slaven folds his trousers at the end of the bed and settles beneath the blue duvet in merely singlet and fresh pyjama bottoms. Athol has turned out the bedroom light and again there is just that from the passage, too faint for Slaven to read the writing on his small wad of letters which he idly turns before his face. Everything can wait until he’s enjoyed more of freedom’s sleep. There’s a small hollow in the pillow where the goose girl’s head often lies and a scent throughout all the fabric of down and chips and cologne and the light perspiration of sleep. How different from the Beckley-Waite and the air conditioning unit which there seemed to service all of the world, but is silent here.

  Athol and his flatmate finish the pork nuggets in the kitchen and he pours the remaining wine into the sink. They have no idea who Slaven is and no interest in the public world he represents. The only television they watch is cable sports and Afro-rock. Conventional society has no advantage for them, no means of access and no contact with their lives apart from their necessity to know what money they can claim and to keep a watchful eye on the enforcers of the law. The goose girl, I assure you, couldn’t give us the name of the Prime Minister.

  ‘His friend called again,’ says Athol. ‘They want to know if he’s happy here and I said of course he was, but he wants to sleep most of all. You remember to be good to him. These people aren’t fucken short of a few dollars, I can tell you.’

  ‘Enough for a knee-length calf-skin coat?’

  ‘Maybe piss in,’ says Athol.

  So when Slaven wakes at last, the goose girl is here beside him and although she doesn’t look at him, but watches the abstract ripples on the morning ceiling, her left hand gently holds his cock and moves sufficiently to keep it of a size to be gripped. The goose girl lies with her head back so that her throat is taut and white. There is a ridge almost cylindrical along the centre of her throat and the faintest of lines diagonally across it, which form creases when her head’s forward. It is a throat so long that it possesses a sinuosity between shoulders and head, like the smoothly muscled body of a snake, and Slaven, looking past it at her tilted face can see her eye-lashes as serrations, because of the odd angle of his view. The small, smooth head of a goose and that muscular neck and one hand lying gently on the surface of the duvet while the other continues, enquiring, solicitous.

  ‘I’ve only started doing this in the last year or so,’ says the goose girl.

  ‘Why?’ but such is the pleasure of the engrossing present that he has no real curiosity of motive.

  ‘I was saving myself.’

  ‘From what?’ says Slaven and the goose girl laughs. The muscles move in her powerful neck.

  ‘Not from anything. You know; for something. Saving myself for the right man, person even.’

  ‘Are you having me on,’ says Slaven.

  ‘Dead bloody right,’ says the goose girl.

  Well, it has been a long time in the Beckley-Waite even for a mature man and there’s the sense of dislocation, of hiatus in the principles which he would conventionally accept. Of other things, Miles has told him that political correctness is the side door to hell. As well there’s the unsought opportunity, but we can agree to make that secondary. There is the adjustment of the bed in time with their breathing and the river light dappling, sliding, convections and fronds of movement on the ceiling. The whine from the bull terriers, as if they too have a scent of gift.

  Slaven closes his eyes with the joy of entering the goose girl and feels tears run down his nose. The goose girl’s breathing is hastened and a feathery loop of her white hair caught on her damp forehead. How beautiful. Slaven experiences a welling affection for women — their strength, humour and steadfastness, the slight forward curve of their bellies, the movement of skin on their collar bones. As he holds the smooth-feathered goose girl, he loves also the young Kellie and Rebecca Maitland from a New Year’s Eve and Charlotte his first crush and Paula who tasted of chlorine from the town baths, Shelley who drew blood with her teeth, Miss Carlisle his standard four teacher who leant over his poster and aroused in him a longing for he knew not what.

  Slaven isn’t able to make any of this explicit to the goose girl, or shape it fully within his own consciousness. Instead he follows with
his finger the white curl on the goose girl’s temple and feels the tears slide down his nose. Is release a form of beauty?

  Some other place then, for privacy’s sake and it may be in your own town with the Lotto sign and the stars of the BNZ, with the arcades of specialist boutiques and the large shops that have a score of active screens so that you may order a life on any scale which suits. Buskers in the street who can’t sing, or play their instruments, but will be paid by all of us flattered by a sense of the cosmopolitan. Shops of window stools, gossip and coffee; shops of exquisite lingerie in case you get knocked down in the street, or knocked up at the office party. See those friends of yours who have made professional careers and wear black shoes. Tell me why it is that they are grey at the temples in a distinguished way, while you and I are bald. See twenty-three pastries in the one window and not two alike. See seventeen cold meats, including four in jelly, eleven vertical and nine pastel horizontal blinds, a turnstyle of flashy books, the price and product expressly uniform. See power tools that have the masculine appeal of automatic weapons and the creams and ferns in the window of the naturopath. See our mutual friend who has been diagnosed as possessing a most obscure and terminal disease. See the joy on children’s faces as if they travel through a different world.