A Many Coated Man

by Owen Marshall

  You recognise the bosomy, smiling woman whose free and easy hair has scents of clover seed? Come, come, someone of whom you have abundant information. That’s right, it’s Croad’s Blenheim babysitter and only a hundred or so away is Gebrill who turns his own gaze from the cynosure of other eyes with a downward, envious smile and he licks blood from his lip. See Roland Purcell, Anna Fivetrees, and Mr Garrity. See the Aucklander who has come from the carpark of the Burlesque Hotel for easy pickings in the south. See Alice grown old and long since parted from her Tigger.

  Let the polar storms go bowling by, as long as we’re still seeing eye to eye.

  ‘That we are here is the candid expression of our unity. And not just a common purpose, but a unity of heart. A belief in the community of our fellows; faith that collaborative concern is the best way to benefit us all. What our presence shows,’ says Slaven rather grandly, ‘is that the people of this country are now individually committed to it again and collectively prepared to take responsibility for its direction. We see the promised land and the charter marks the road to it. We are on the march.’

  ‘No charter, no vote. No charter, not vote,’ is the crowd’s chant and ‘All six. All six,’ as Slaven vows that the party who wishes CCP support must accept the complete charter of reform.

  ‘There’s no time now for wriggling on the hook,’ he says. ‘No time for evasions and half-promises, negotiations and commissions. No more time for dirty tricks — I’m not in the Beckley-Waite Institute any longer. No more time for wait-it-out, tough-it-out policies. The election is here and we are here. We are HERE.’

  ‘All six. All six. All six.’ See the great multi-coloured audience like a froth over all the surface of the ground and beneath the summer foliage of the large, English trees.

  ‘In two hours,’ and Slaven deliberately checks his watch for the cameras and his supporters. ‘Yes, at four o’clock, if we haven’t heard from the Government that the full charter is accepted for implementation within the next Parliamentary term, then the CCP will be asking you and all those with us in spirit today, to vote for the Democratic Socialists who have already pledged support.’

  As he finishes the line, Slaven hears the echo of his own words from the sound system, then the chanting begins again and the rush of that makes him catch his breath, as if he were high on a headland and the sea wind gusts into his face. He has learnt to play to the cameras as well as the crowd, to prolong a pose, or smile, long enough for effect, but without it becoming unnatural. Even as his skin tightens because of the great roar of the people, he leads the cameras with a sweep of his arm to pan over the crush which covers Hagley Park and spills out far beyond. He knows that the PM will be watching and Alan Warden, Fassiere and Tonkin. Dr Meelind will be appreciating it, all the politicians and advisors in fact and absent friends such as Miles and Marianne Dunne who sit together in the tower. Jocelyn Piers, his old classmate from primary school perhaps, Ayesbury, the CD Officer, from professional habit assessing any crowd risk if there is panic. The Caretaker he hopes, in the staff quarters even though it’s a Sunday, absent-mindedly reaming out his pipe as he watches the screen — debts will be paid. Slaven’s mother even, as long as there is no cricket on the all sports channel and enemies such as Pollen, Marr and Aristeed, the Director with his book and a carpet thankfully cleansed. Doctors Bliss, Eugene and Collett who are neither friends nor enemies and consider no doubt that they have done all that can be expected of them. But not Professor Hankie who has returned to Swansea, not Buffle the cartoonist who has finished his earthly portfolio at last, not Cardew who capitalises some of his two hundred thousand in the canting of a blonde across a hand-tooled leather humpty in the window alcove of the Sydney El Dorado Motels.

  Not Athol and the goose girl, for nothing of general significance can break the individual focus of hand-to-mouth, moment-to-moment, which is the nature of life there. The river flows upon the ceiling still, Athol’s nose-stud glitters, the grizzle of the pit-bull terriers at a section’s remove is almost as loud as the sounding of the Hagley crowd at a distance. Athol is cutting up a hogget, perhaps, liberated from a Lincoln College field in the previous dusk. See the deft knife-work. The goose girl is lying on her bed, perhaps, watching the Heathcote flow time as beauty on her ceiling. Her long neck rests on the pillow, her compact head tilts back with her mouth open a little as she rests and her golden beak left to legend. The pueblo carving has its colours muted by dust where dust can lie, but other surfaces are agleam with vermilion and Prussian blue. The embroidered owl still contains its wisdom and disguises function on the bedside table and the turn down of the sheet is finely-creased and gentle, free from the stiffness of any recent washing. The goose girl is comfortable in this Sabbath afternoon which is no more, or less, than any other, with her knee-length calfskin coat behind the door, the sound of Athol’s knife in the flesh, the whine of the pit-bull terriers who may yet get a share if Athol feels neighbourly.

  Miles on the other hand has both the long and the short view. From his eyrie in Cashmere he sees the rally at a distance like a spawning ground, all congestion and multi-coloured intensity. On the screen however is detail enough in close-ups for him to recognise the scars on his friend’s hands, sweat on his high forehead, the veins in his throat swollen in the delivery of his beliefs. ‘Stick it to them,’ murmurs Miles. Almost he wishes that he could still care for anything as much himself.

  Foveaux storms are fading, baby, within the calm of Half Moon Bay.

  See the advertising blimps tethered to strong points around the perimeter of Hagley Park. They drift in the empty space thirty metres above the press below and each one on its sides proclaims the charter points of the CCP. And Kellie has been careful to do well from the franchises for the day. Jumbo Pies has its particular territory and so despite the sun, the hot meat and pastry is ferried in. Kiwi Juice and Freeze Throws, whole hospitality tents as Lager Bars, rosettes with Slavenisms at their centre, perspex-embalmed badge photos of Aldous and Kellie in their garden, ‘Crav’n for Slaven’ bumper stickers, cardboard bookmarks with a treated surface superficially resembling leather and embossed with the koro and cambrian motifs — and the outline of Half Moon Bay.

  Is this it? The context in which decisions of our welfare should be made, judgments concerning the efficacy of political ostracism and the reduction of the Presidential term, or is this the justifiable celebration of achievement in the palm. Miles is in some pain again, but he is delighted by everything he sees in this amalgam of the admirable and derisive. In the absence of Georgina he calls aloud to Marianne to share with him a vision of the high-wire act which is democracy.

  See dapper Raymond Boydd who teaches Art History at Elmwood High School and each night paints the great canvases of his early ambition with no recollection at all on waking. He shouts, ‘All six. All six,’ with a sudden, inexplicable fury which appalls him, then adjusts the top of his walk-socks with shaking fingers. And Steven Wybrow is here of course, having become a computer historian and a follower of Jung. Georgina Kitson has come with Sarah and her beauty is remarked upon and Vivien Castle is with us, rather than examining the Montana meadows. See Nicholas Halley whose story this may just as easily have been, and Izzy Paycock, Majorie Usser, Simon Adderley, old Ger with his lolling, gap-toothed smile is only one cunt from our view. Madeline Shields is here, with her bulk and jandals as badges of discrimination. She has saved from several weeks’ housekeeping to be able to afford a Slaven cassette and standing monolithically amongst the crowd she is certain that Slaven has caught her eye with special affirmation. See the entreaty man who glories in the fame Slaven has established and has his own secret pride at his early recognition of such power. People expect like with like, but an ordinary person can live an extraordinary life, and an extraordinary person can live an ordinary one.

  There is a place in the south, in the unfashionable south of the city where the rain-mist comes in from the harbour — a fine and silent touch on the bare legs of the student
s. Two young men kiss in the park and a young woman stands alone with her pockets inside out and a calculus text. The old trees ramify above the park, their tops undulate while it’s quiet beneath, as an ocean surface crests above the peaceful depths. Come past the park into the unfashionable south, where the rentals are lower, the foot traffic less intense, the premises more representative of individual enterprise, or ineptitude. The Holistic Health and Acupuncture Clinic is in the old office of Acme Dry Cleaners. It has a gilt oriental symbol on the window, an anatomy chart to show the points and meridians, it has dried flowers and joss sticks as ancillary supplies and Buddhist calmness in fine calligraphy. Don’s New and Used Sportsgoods holds promise for fresh whims and the accoutrements of those long gone. Come past the Cascade Die Casters, the Housie and Mah Jong Hall with hours for three nights of the week, the engraving service, the Power Body Gym, the Hydroponics supplies, the tool hire and The Salvation Army Clothing Shop. The Lefage Beauty Salon has all its services listed and beside each is a small, pink cupid: electrolysis, facials, depilatory waxing, red vein treatment, manicures, pedicures, skin tag removal, Danish massage, lash and brow tinting, sculptured nails, sunless tans, steam baths, cellulite protection, body wraps, colour and image consultation, lobe dedowning, bikini line clearance.

  Between Morten’s Pallet Racking and the radiator repair shop is the factory showroom for gas beds. Between Trevor’s International Cornish Pasties and the water-blasting firm is Fifi’s Escort Agency with quotations from enthusiastic customers pasted to the glass of the door.

  Above Controlair Systems (NZ) Ltd, who are agents for dual directional air handlers and Belissimo damper motors, are the same day couriers and Bubbelas Antiques. There’s the Zealandia Business and Art College of course, founded you will remember by Wyeth Knox ASSW, PSN, BA. There’s the security specialists, the computer firm, the Community Legal Advice Bureau, Ducati Parts and Servicing, Equestrian Leathers, the stall of coloured transfers on glass, economy rental cars, the Baha’i Meeting Room, retirement planning, Simmon’s Marine Upholstery and the Seven Day Twenty-Four-Hour Lightning Breakdown Service with an Alsation chained to its door. And all our friends are present — some making money, some making conversation, some making just prints on the ground. In such places are our lives passed and past.

  Slaven feels little fear as four o’clock nears and he’s surprised by that. Anticipation and excitement are what he’s aware of on the stage in Hagley Park. All his decisions have already been made, now the responsibility for outcomes lies with those invisible politicians that he knows are watching. The mood of the great crowd is just that balance between fervour and common sense which he has hoped for, as if they too realise that all that can be done for their beliefs is being done and done well. Soon it will be over. He feels a free sweat on his face and the base of his neck, but it’s the sweat from the energy of his performance and the afternoon sun, not anxiety. The sun glosses the scene and draws a light wind from the sea which stirs the advertising blimps at their moorings and the leaves of the chestnuts, sycamores, oaks, limes and willows. A macrocarpa even, massive and relegated to the less scenic margins of the park and generating from such bulk, reduced, careful cones for its seed. All these trees seemingly grow not from the ground, but from the dense, endless mulch of people spread amongst them in a shifting and pointillistic array of colours.

  ‘One hour to go,’ exclaims Slaven.

  ‘All six. All six. All six. All six.’ So extensive is the audience that a true unison isn’t possible and the shout sweeps through a mass many of which are too far away to see Slaven. The cry is sinuous and buffeting, racing in division at some times, catching up with itself at others in redoubled strength.

  ‘What do we want.’

  ‘All six. All six.’ The red and yellow blimps heel in pleasure at the turbulence beneath them.

  ‘What do we demand.’

  ‘All six. All six.’ In the crowd Sarah is reduced to tears and Georgina catches her breath at the enormity of the people’s will.

  ‘No charter, no votes.’ The Hoihos join Slaven on the stage again: time for Welfare Heaven and Blowing in the Wind.

  The PM and others sit in the Cabinet Room and watch the Christchurch rally on screen. Also they are in touch with the consultants one floor below and their own observers at Hagley Park.

  ‘How many do you reckon are there?’ says the PM.

  ‘Too many,’ says Alan Warden.

  ‘Far too many,’ adds the Minister of the Environment who did not at all enjoy watching the hands go up from his St Albans electorate when Thackeray Thomas was asking for an indication of the constituencies.

  ‘Too bloody many,’ he says.

  ‘You can never trust the South Island voter, Neil,’ says the PM. ‘You should have moved up to Te Tarehi when we offered it to you.’

  ‘Who let the bastard out of the Beckley-Waite. That’s what I’d like to know,’ says Neil. And who facilitated his entry? Has the deputy Prime Minister a special smile. ‘He went in there because he was a nutter, didn’t he, a stirrer of the first order, and he should’ve stayed there. Also he should have been stuck straight back in when he surfaced in Christchurch.’

  ‘And you would be happy to explain that in St Albans?’ asks Warden.

  It isn’t that Brian Hennis and his Government have been caught napping, not at all. They have had ample warning of the rally and the ultimatum it carries. It is in any case the obvious political play immediately before the elections. The United Party has already given the PM power to make whatever decision he thinks best. Going right to the wire is what this is about and Hennis doesn’t concede key points until he must. Who knows what can happen? Each day there is hopeful advice to him that Slaven and the CCP are losing momentum, backing down, riven by internal dissension, modifying their stance, seeking a compromise, about to be discredited, or suffering a crisis of conscience.

  None of these things has happened. The PM watches the screen. ‘All six. All six.’ There’s a long shot of the endless audience over the lawns and beneath the trees and the streets clogged with cars. Slaven achieves attention with impressive ease and begins speaking again, distorted by the sound systems, but with the passion evident nevertheless.

  ‘It’s Western Springs all over again,’ says Warden. ‘Jesus, must be 300,000 there.’

  ‘Bugger the man,’ says Neil. ‘He’s got no concern for the careers of those of us who are professional politicians. He’s appallingly ignorant of how things should be done.’

  ‘Has anyone got a bright idea?’ asks the PM. There are only grumbles and indistinct murmurs. Hennis has known all along where the buck would stop. ‘I’m going to speak directly to Aldous Slaven and the people too, if he’ll let me.’

  ‘And?’ says his deputy.

  ‘All the polls tell us that we need CCP support, so I’m going to congratulate him. I’m going to say that the Government and the United Party are enthusiastic to adopt all the charter points and implement them when we’re re-elected. I’m going to say that this is a great day for democracy and the common people in this country. The people have spoken and our party has responded, I’m going to say. I’m going to kiss enough arse to ensure that we’re all back in power and that way we live to fight another day. That’s my pleasant duty as PM. Right?’ No one in the Cabinet Room denies it. ‘Then I’m going to be asking some hard questions about the quality of advice and briefings that I’ve had over several months on this whole Slaven and Coalition thing. Some hard questions. Some of you may like to consider that, and in the meantime I’ll talk to the dentist.’

  See the people of Canterbury and beyond, standing close together in the summer afternoon and singing Capetown Races, Remember Tiananmen Square and Ice Cathedral — so popular after the Antarctic pickets. But most of all, like any proud people, they love their own special Half Moon Bay sung by their own Hoihos. Those close enough to watch Slaven’s face, do so as he joins in, for the significance of the song is part of the folklore which
has grown-up since his near electrocution on the barge-board of his house. Can it be claimed that the Hoihos have any intrinsic commitment to the CCP and the six point charter? Certainly they know how magnificently they benefit from the association, bow to their guitars and keyboards with a will and the lead singer tenses her thighs against the blue leather skirt and sings it all again.

  Baby, baby, come again and live with me upon the shore of Half Moon Bay.

  The music critic of ‘Speak Up’ even, admits that it’s splendid of its genre and his daughter leaves off beating the hedgehog and resumes innocence with the melody. One of the Thackeray Thomas acolytes cries in Gaelic between the riffs, dapper Raymond Boydd sees the sunlight play upon the coruscating branch of an oak in an epiphanic moment of texture, Madeline Shields sways her body blissfully, a movement not dissimilar to the nodding of the Coalition blimps, Norman Proctor has lilies in his hand and delights in scents and sights which logic would have him denied.

  Kinder hearts are waiting, baby, amongst old friends at Half Moon Bay.

  The wonder and the power, the implication, of it are nothing in Guatemala of course, in Sedalia, Missouri, the Sierra de Gata, Schleswig, Ogbomosho, or the reed beds of the Yevpotkin, nothing in the air conditioned subterfuge of the Beckley-Waite Institute, or Cardew’s Sydney El Dorado Motels, nothing even so close to home as the rear flat by the Heathcote with the river flowing on the ceiling, Athol washing the hogget blood from his hands and the goose girl asleep beside her embroidered owl.

  Within its own orbit though, within the political awareness of our small country, Slaven’s rally is a mighty enough thing, sure enough. This immense crowd, Slaven, Kellie and her fellow leaders, the PM and all the other watchers, have no doubt of it.