A Many Coated Man
Page 32
Let the polar squalls go bowling by, as long as we’re still seeing eye to eye.
See the Right Honourable Brian Hennis, Prime Minister, make his call before the deadline. The AV people cast his face from the vidphone link to the screen at the back of the rally stage. The definition is poor in a bright afternoon, but who doesn’t know this face well enough to refurbish it from their own recollection. You are experienced enough to know how he carries it off: the mixture of warmth and sincerity in his voice, the trick of combing his hair back with his fingers as he speaks and its lapse again to the side of his face. ‘All six charter points,’ he says. ‘Let there be absolutely no mistake about that and I’m thrilled that after prolonged discussion I carry all my colleagues unanimously on this pledge.’
The Avon ducks and scavenging birds scatter in fright before the great shout of triumph. The non-committed and tardy in the surrounding streets leave their cars static in the traffic lanes and hurry to the park, stranger talking to stranger in the freedom from inhibition that such unusual circumstance begets. One thinks that scaffolding has collapsed, another that a UFO has landed. There is a wildfire rumour that the PM has offered Dr Aldous Slaven the Presidency. People press on to see whatever there is to see, so that in years to come they can say that they were here at the great rally, and so gain the floor while others give way before such first-hand authority.
A trio of thieves runs through a street of abandoned cars as if the world is ending, snatching bags and purchases as they go. Someone in a mood of celebration cuts a yellow blimp loose and it rises above the people and the city, moving slowly away from the sea. Hundreds of people wade into the Avon to cool themselves, but more sub-consciously to prove that this is a day on which anything is possible. All of the CCP leaders come out on to the stage and as the PM continues with his message, Kellie pins a spray of Powys Hayhoe flowers to her husband’s damp shirt.
So many grounds for pleasure and satisfaction, relief, congratulation, even joy, but the response which surprises Slaven with its intensity is the sense of vindication in the call made to the conscience of the people. In his heart have been two contrary instincts: one is the belief in an open appeal to common action, the other a fear of the ancient perversity of the mob. Each time he raised the serpent to overcome those who opposed his cause he glimpsed the otherness of the pulse within its eye and caught the sulphur on its breath, but each time when the purpose had been served the creature swayed, looped down, as bidden.
Slaven’s shoulders ache with the release of muscular tension. His hands tremble and beneath the soft skin below his left eye where the suture marks are just visible, a tic is like the small movement in the pouched throat of a tree frog. Ah, Jesus, there is nothing now that can go wrong on any terrible scale. He tightens his hand in Kellie’s and in response she turns with a quick smile of excitement. This at least, at last, he can give her. The PM is praising him from a distance, the people press close to the stage.
To Slaven’s right the driver is steadily making his way through the crowd, no more self-consciously than if he were still on the landing beneath the Lyttelton wharf. See the beak of his nose and deep eyes, head up so that he can pick his way better. He is not at all furtive and stops to apologise for treading on Walter Tamahana’s foot.
Thackeray Thomas leans towards Slaven, taking his upper arm and shaking it in triumph. ‘This is the start of a new era,’ he shouts. ‘I believe that. I really do. This is the way that things will be decided from now on. It’s an irony that here we are in the technology of the twenty-first Century and yet democracy has come the full circle.’ Kellie is passed a phone from an aide and after speaking into it, she points to it amidst the hubbub and then at Slaven who reaches for it.
‘We’re watching it. We can see it all.’ Marianne Dunne’s voice has for once lost its professional calm. Slaven imagines her, elegantly tall and dark, in the tower house overlooking the city. ‘And the statement’s come over about the Government’s unconditional acceptance of all charter points. My God. The PM is going to announce it on national news too. What a thing for you and Kellie apart from anything else. Miles is right beside me. He pretends it’s all nonsense, but wants to talk to you anyway. You know how he is.’
The driver finds a place which suits him, the sun at his back and the ventillated cover of a Kiwi Juice storage unit for support. He leans there and watches Slaven with the suggestion of a smile. Not an expression that’s meant for communication, rather the look of one who has come across an old class-mate who has done well. ‘So there you are, old son,’ he murmurs.
‘Hello, Demosthenes,’ says Miles in his husky way. His voice seems to come from a place very quiet and far away. ‘The bastards have caved in I hear. Good for you. Good for you. Push home the advantage while you can.’ The driver calmly lifts the supposed vid-camera, steadies it on the cowling and fires twice. The noise is nothing much at all amongst the clamour that is everywhere and attention focuses on the consequences of the shots not their origin. ‘Come and see me when the world allows you a moment,’ Miles asks, not knowing that the white phone is already falling from his friend’s hand.
The first bullet passes through Slaven’s left zygomatic arch into the brain and the shock of it stands his hair on end, the second strikes through the eye socket on the same side.
Do you doubt that everyone gives voice to exorcise the terror and the threat of what they see, blasphemies and screams, protestations and blessings, and various odd puffings, gruntings and groans which are quite beyond words, beyond consciousness even, the jerk of one soul at the passing of another.
Everyone gives voice — except that Aldous Slaven and the driver, those two most intimately concerned, make not a sound. Slaven has fallen with his legs strangely folded beneath him and the driver keeps his camera on target as would be expected and begins backing slowly through the tumult.
Slaven has, as you know, very straight, black hair, like that of an Italian, or a Slovak, and it lies across the pallor of one cheek despite the damage elsewhere. He has large feet, with thin ankles seeming a poor connection to them. What description is necessary though, when you have come so well to know him, haven’t you, in the same way as all your acquaintances are perfectly open to understanding?
Miles and Marianne can’t get all this from television. They don’t hear the vast droning as if from bumble bees, don’t see the coursing blood like the Earl of Athlone flowers, but there are scenes of the supporters separating Kellie from the body and carrying it to the Square, shots of the rioting and looting within the inner city, the torching of the Town Hall and murder of a score of people separately identified as the assassin. Miles and Marianne continue to watch, but have no comment. Miles might admit to sorrow perhaps, but not surprise, for he understands that none of us has the price of the most precious things. Marianne Dunne takes the old man’s hand and he doesn’t move it from that consolation, or turn away from the screen, but he has begun to move his thoughts back to places where life had been bearable.
Owen Marshall – 1992
‘Aldous Slaven hangs for an instant on the power line of his home…’. So begins Owen Marshall’s first novel, A Many Coated Man, which he began while the Burns Fellow for 1992. Set in 21st century New Zealand, the novel – a departure from his usual short story writing – was published in 1995 and shortlisted for the Montana Book Award for Fiction. Marshall’s strong sense of place and environment is evoked in his poem displayed in Diedre Copeland’s painting, done recently for the Otago Hospice charity auction, 2008.
‘South Island Prayer,’ a copy of a painting by Deidre Copeland. 2008. Private Collection; Owen Marshall, A Many Coated Man. Dunedin: Longacre Press, 1995. Private Collection.
About the Author
OWEN MARSHALL was born in Te Kuiti, New Zealand in 1941. His first collection of short stories, Supper Waltz Wilson, was quietly published in 1979. Since then he has written seven collections including, The Divided World, Tomorrow We Save the Orphans, and T
he Ace of Diamonds Gang. He is now considered to be the finest short story writer in New Zealand.
Marshall has received many awards, prizes, and fellowships. He held the University of Canterbury Literary Fellowship in 1981, the 1988 New Zealand Literary Fund’s Scholarship in Letters, and was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council Award for Achievement in 1990. He held the Robert Burns Fellowship at the University of Otago for 1992.
Owen Marshall lives in Timaru with his family.
By the Same Author
Supper Waltz Wilson
The Master of Big Jingles
The Day Hemingway Died
The Lynx Hunter
The Divided World
Tomorrow We Save The Orphans
The Ace of Diamonds Gang
Copyright
LONGACRE PRESS
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful for the tenure of the Robert Burns Literary Fellowship at the University of Otago in 1992, during which the draft of this novel was written.
Published with the assistance of the Literature Programme of the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa.
This book is copyright. All rights reserved. No reproduction without permission in writing from the publisher.
© Owen Marshall
ISBN 978 1 7755319 1 3
First published 1995 by Longacre Press Ltd.,
P.O. Box 5340, Dunedin, New Zealand
Typeset by Egan Reid Ltd., Auckland
Printed by Tablet Printing Co.
Book and cover design Jenny Cooper
Front cover painting: Untitled (Watcher on the Shore), 1982–83, by Tony Fomison. Reproduced courtesy of the owner and the Fomison Family Trust.