Harlequin Rex (16 page)

‘The
bank
runs
us
all
on
this
country,’
David
said.

‘There
may
be
an
answer
to
that
too.’

David
had
a
shower
when
they
went
inside,
and
Chris
got
a
meal
under
way
without
any
prompting
—
cold
mutton
and
pickle,
cheese
and
tomatoes.
Afterwards
they
sat
looking
out
on
to
the
garden
and
drank
beer.
‘I
can’t
get
used
to
your
mum
and
dad
not
being
here,’
said
Chris.
‘If
I
look
into
the
paddocks
he
still
seems
to
be
there,
and
if
I
look
out
at
the
garden,
your
mum,
too,
she’s
there.’
David
had
no
comment
to
make
on
such
a
truism.

And
they
smoked
some
good
stuff
that
Chris
had
sent
down
from
Takaka.
‘It’s
what
I’m
mainly
into
now,’
he
said
casually.
‘It’s
a
living
without
too
much
effort.
I
never
was
much
on
the
nine
to
five,
you
know.’
He
drew
in,
long
and
slow,
and
went
slightly
cross-eyed
with
the
satisfaction
of
the
joint.
‘The
thing
is
there’s
some
very
ropey
people
in
the
business,
and
I’d
rather
deal
with
friends
for
supply.’

That’s
how
it
began.
A
few
rows
of
premium
stock
planted
between
the
old
orchard
and
the
hay
barn,
and
then
strips
within
the
shelter
belts
and
along
the
back
gullies.
David
was
a
willing
enough
partner.
Cannabis
was
the
best
cash
crop
of
all,
and
he
thought
that
within
three
or
four
years
the
stuff
would
be
legalised
anyway.
It
was
bound
to
come,
Chris
assured
him.
Even
many
of
the
Health
Department
boffins
were
saying
that
it
was
less
damaging
than
alcohol,
or
tobacco.

They’d
just
be
jumping
the
gun
a
little,
that’s
all,
and
when
decriminalisation
came,
they’d
be
there
to
exploit
the
opportunities
—
just
like
the
first
people
into
angora
goats,
ostriches,
olives
or
truffles.

At
first
it
was
a
sideline
that
David
enjoyed
as
much
because
it
brought
Chris’s
company,
as
for
the
profit,
but
increasingly
it
became
the
easy
way
to
do
things
at
Beth
 
Car.
He
and
Chris
would
sit
on
the
warm
side
of
the
shearing
shed
putting
the
seeds
into
wet
cotton
wool
to
germinate,
or
settling
seedlings
into
trays
where
they
would
be
left
to
grow
to
about
milk-bottle
height.
David
had
a
CD
player
above
the
portholes
and,
when
they
had
talked
all
they
wished,
they
listened
to
tracks
of
trad
jazz,
or
blues.
Even
better
was
working
in
the
plots,
transplanting,
pulling
up
the
useless
male
plants,
or
harvesting.
Growing
cannabis
well
had
all
the
satisfactions
of
farming
other
crops,
and
a
better
return.
Where
could
be
the
harm
in
such
a
healthy
association
with
the
land?
They
concentrated
on
the
heads
and
resin,
hardly
bothering
to
try
to
move
cabbage,
and
they
had
a
good
deal
of
success
with
skunkweed,
which
had
more
grunt
than
the
old
stuff.
In
time
they
moved
into
hydroponics
as
well,
which
allowed
additives,
but
David
never
had
the
same
interest
in
the
indoor
process
and
largely
left
it
to
Chris.

It
was
Chris
who
usually
took
the
stuff
away
to
their
dealers,
and
no
gang
members,
baseball
bats
or
beatings
marred
the
calm
of
Beth
Car.
The
Romney
ewes
dropped
no
more
deformed
lambs
than
usual,
the
nor’-wester
was
no
worse,
roses
still
bloomed
in
his
mother’s
garden,
the
creek
still
ran
clear
through
the
watercress
and
wild
mint.
What
damage
to
the
world
was
a
little
more
good
quality
shit?
What
better
economic
theory
than
supply
and
demand?

From the verandah of Takahe, David could see down the slope to the shore of mudflats and rushes, with Tolly’s white and blue dinghy bottom up. He was making a pretence of listening to Dilys Williams while waiting for Chris’s Picton contact to make a drop for him. ‘That woman who’s Minister of Health, that Janis Bloomfield, she’s made no reply at all to my letters about the goings on here. And the amount of taxpayers’ money that she gets too.’

‘I suppose she’s flooded with requests,’ said David.

‘I hardly got a word in when she came here. Write to me about it, she said, and I did, and now there’s nothing at all. But God won’t be mocked, you know.’

‘You’re right.’ David saw a yellow car park by the shore, and a person get out and wander down to sit on Tolly’s upturned dinghy.

‘You reap what you sow,’ said Dilys. There were some patches on her face as red as winter crab apples, and her hands shook with a vehemence out of all proportion to what she could express. Maybe her discovery of ubiquitous sin was the sublimation of her Harlequin fears, and who could blame her for that. David listened to her complaints with
more sympathy for a time. ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’ he asked, but her face remained a vivid and
preoccupied
mask. Sin was everywhere.

‘What could you possibly do?’ she snapped. ‘If people won’t listen to me and the director. If the minister won’t act. I know for a fact that personal laundry is being stolen and sold second-hand in Nelson, and there’s a bald man in the kitchens who spits into the soup.’

‘Right,’ said David. He saw the yellow car carry on towards Havelock, and knew that his delivery had been made.

‘No one takes things seriously enough here. There’s just soothing talk and open slather for any behaviour at all. People have their hands all over other people. Remorse is unknown. No standards, no self-discipline, no rigour. Has indulgence ever solved or cured anything, answer me that? You can’t, can you?’

After a time with Dilys the need for relief was considerable and David imagined a full draw on some good shit. Who did he think he was to be offering any help anyway. Wasn’t he one of the mockers on whom Dilys wanted to bring down the wrath of lightning? ‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll have a stroll, but I wouldn’t give up on a reply from the minister. You never know.’ Dilys said nothing, offered no release from the conversation, or thanks. She stared angrily away as he left.

David went down the long drive of the centre until he reached the road. He crossed that, and went to the dinghy in the rushes with the anchor stuck in the ground, even though the boat was above high tide. He sat there for a while with his face tilted to the sun. After all, Dilys Williams might be watching, or someone with Tolly’s telescope. Mocking God was one thing; mocking the system was another. After a session with Dilys he fancied some time with a very different woman as an antidote. Lucy Mortimer might be in the mood for one of their talks, and she appreciated a few joints.

He moved the diftwood log by the anchor, and felt in the stones beneath it for the plastic bag left for him. A good, solid package that promised release in its fashion from his past and future, and from the part played by Harlequin in the present. The more he came to know Abbey and Tolly Mathews, Gaynor and Howard Peat, the people in whose service he had agreed to be, the more their suffering oppressed him, despite his being so much more fortunate than them.

He rang Lucy from Takahe when he returned. He heard the guest who had answered his call, shouting her name down the corridor as if she was just anyone at all. ‘Hello?’ Her voice at the phone. ‘Hello?’ How he wished he could have said, You’re cured, and both of them start on some new life.

‘The candy man’s been.’

‘Well bring some over then, for God’s sake,’ she said. ‘What do you want, a medal?’

‘You okay?’

‘Peachy,’ she said.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Come on over,’ she said.

He put on aftershave and a fresh shirt. He left two tinnies under Tolly’s pillow where he knew he’d look. He gave his most genteel greeting to Mrs McIlwraith, who had her pearls on for mid-afternoon bridge at the rec rooms. ‘God won’t be mocked,’ he heard from the verandah, and chose another way to leave.

All the original residential blocks were built to the same plan, and whenever David went into one not his own, he had an odd feeling that was a paradox of familiarity and alienation. Lucy’s Kotuku could be walked through in his sleep, and yet where was the Presley transfer on poor Jason’s door, and who was the stranger comfortable in Abbey’s room? Why were the drapes floral rather than plain in the otherwise precisely duplicated lounge, and if he went to room
fourteen would the hardboard show the repairs necessary after Jane Milton’s head butting with the devil?

Lucy had pillows along the wall side of her bed, so that it resembled a divan, and when she’d jammed a stopper under her door for privacy — no locks allowed — she and David sat there in bars of bright yellow sunlight from the slatted window. Her skirt, too, was yellow, and he noticed that not so much because of the colour, but because she was usually in jeans.

She was happy because she felt well. She was happy because she’d talked with Schweitzer about the possibility of doing a programme on Harlequin that focused on interviews with staff and patients at the centre. Schweitzer was usually opposed to media coverage, but Lucy had emphasised that she had a foot in both camps, that she knew the world of Big Eye television and now that of the new disease. The director had said he was willing to consider a more detailed submission, though he warned that the politicians were apprehensive of anything which would increase public awareness of Harlequin.

‘Will you be running auditions?’ David asked.

‘Only for stars,’ she said.

‘Will I get a big chance?’ She couldn’t know how little he wanted to feature in any filming at Mahakipawa: that if it wasn’t for the pleasure the idea gave her, he would wish it never happened.

‘Maybe you’d have a small walk-on part.’

‘Not a lie-down role maybe?’ David said.

Jesus, he hadn’t seen Lucy so happy for a long time. It was the way she had been before she got sick, surely, and the jolt of that was painful even as he put his arm around her. They lay together with their legs in the sun; their voices became softer, as less and less was said and more and more intended. They began that journey of languorous, almost helpless anticipation, which comes before a first, fierce lovemaking. Have we ever needed an Einstein to tell us that
time is relative? Extreme joy or horror can rein in even the Pegasus of time. Lucy’s yellow dress was a response to the warm day, perhaps, or a less deliberate one to the possibilities of David’s visit. The dress was linen, with an open weave. How coarse the fabric was on the back of his hand, when her thigh was silk to the palm.

‘Open your shirt,’ Lucy said.

It was unethical, of course: forbidden explicitly in the contract he had signed, even though he was too humble an employee to be professionally related to any treatment. But then what treatment was there at the centre except care, and what more caring restoration than he performed.

‘Easy, oh easy,’ she said.

It was unethical, of course, but what were such
observances
within a death camp, where defiant love might be one way of fighting back. Lucy knelt on her bed and above her glossy hair was the slatted view of the gorse and broom flourishing in rough pasture on the hillside. All of it pulsated with the coursing of his blood. Wasn’t all of life in the moment? No past, no future, just the plummet of a present that had as much completeness as he’d ever know. His hands were brown and spread against Lucy’s back.

‘Not so loud, or half the bloody hospital will hear,’ she said.

‘Was I saying something?’ A language, surely, which transcended any script, or grammar, and came quite naturally to all throughout the world who were suffering such joy. Maybe, even, it was the speech of the good twin of Harlequin.

Lucy smiled, lay on her side, and pulled the discarded linen dress across her hip. No other woman he had seen naked was as provocative, even though fucking had flushed her up, so that her neck and collar bones were mottled, and her hair was still ruffled from the bed.

‘Well, are you satisfied now it’s happened?’ she said.

‘Blown away,’ he said.

‘I hope so. I was really in the mood.’

‘So was I. Jesus.’

‘But men always are, aren’t they?’

‘Pretty much, I suppose,’ he said, and Lucy smiled at the honesty.

It was unethical, of course, but what possible connection did prudent principles have to your real life.

Lucy reached out and, with the tips of her fingers, brushed the hair back from his forehead: that reassuring contact that a woman makes with a man after the passion of lovemaking, and which affirms the satisfaction of it, but affirms also other reasons for closeness. ‘You’re sweating,’ she said.

‘From the best work in the world,’ David said. Didn’t every man go on with the hope of such times.

‘Guys always think that at first,’ she told him. There was a slight shaving shadow in her armpit, and an indistinct vee of browner skin above her breasts. Fine hairs parenthesised the upper corners of her mouth. She lay comfortably in his gaze once she had the dress over her bush. Her breasts pooled with their own weight as she lay on her back; the nipples shone with his spit. For an instant he remembered the
married
woman he’d slept with for several nights in Hobart. She had recently given birth to a son, and each time he left her bed to return quietly to his own, he had her milk on his chest.

David experienced protectiveness, admiration, once that fierce consummation had subsided. Lucy’s face wasn’t
beautiful
in any fine-boned, profile emphatic way. Rather it was girlishly wide, broad-browed, smooth, the eyes so far apart that she couldn’t possibly enter the criminal fraternity. She had Hollywood teeth, though, and when David told her so, she said that all her front teeth had been capped because of her work on television. ‘It’s my fetish,’ she told him. ‘Always what I notice first, and television is cruel on teeth.’ She never ate anything during a working day, unless she had a toothbrush handy, she said. In a day of appearances she
might go ten hours without eating, rather than risk food between her teeth. And no red wine because it stained the natural teeth.

‘Keep talking,’ said David.

‘You’re not even listening.’

‘No, but keep talking.’

As all on the hillside lost colour, but remained distinct because of texture and plane, Lucy and David lay on the narrow institutional bed. They heard the Kotuku people go down to the dining hall and then come back. He couldn’t believe that there’d ever been a better fuck in the Slaven Centre than that. ‘Tell me what it’s like to be so good-looking,’ he said. ‘No false modesty now, no bullshit. What’s it like?’

‘Do you think I am?’

‘Answer the question.’

‘Success always made me feel attractive,’ she said. ‘Success not just with men, but in my life. I felt good when I did my job well, and ugly when I got sick.’

As David massaged her shoulder, the curve of her breast trembled in a perfection of arc and subtle movement. Never forget this, he told himself. Never forget this. Some time when he was waiting for death, he would restore the moment as a triumphant solace. Old age becomes the voyeur of its own past. Half alongside, half over her, graceful only because his body followed the line of hers, the whisper of his palm on her shoulder, the tremor of her unconfined tits, a laugh drifting from the lounge, their own candid talk, the faintly salty smell of her hair, shadows, her face with a smile which had complacency, and irony as well because she understood the transience of such idolatry.

‘Now that we’ve done it, you can tell me something personal about you and women,’ she said.

‘It took me ages to get past the assumption that
good-looking
women were more interested in sex. Somehow I took it for granted that anyone who stirred up so much desire must be looking for it.’

‘It sounds like your excuse for striking out.’

‘Maybe that too. Maybe I just grew up a bit,’ he said.

‘I never made love until I was twenty-two, although I had boyfriends from the time I was in the fourth form. The intensity of men’s interest put me off, even though I enjoyed the flattery. I could get them off quite happily with my hand. Many didn’t even need that encouragement. I had a good deal of wet trouser material up against me.’

‘And then?’

‘What?’ said Lucy. She turned to look at him directly, the shadow in the darkening, small room moving on her face, her hair falling in a cusp from her cheek.

‘The first time. When you were twenty-two.’

‘Oh, no. You won’t get me started on the jag of talking about other guys that way, and I don’t fancy hearing about your adventures in the sack. I was joking before. I’m not into it.’

‘What about right now?’

‘You know what I mean,’ she said.

No other woman is like you, he thought.

How many times would they do this good thing together?

It was unethical, of course, as so much of what is important in our lives is.

Dog
Gully
Road
was
in
the
hills
behind
Nelson,
and
it
was
no-exit,
narrow
and
gravelled,
winding
up
to
a
fair-sized
pine
plantation,
planted
years
before
when
prices
were
looking
good.
In
the
summer
the
dust
from
the
road
was
a
talc
over
the
nearby
pigfern
and
blackberry;
in
winter
the
gravel
sank
into
the
slick,
yellow
clay
and
the
potholes
held
a
rich
slurry.
The
fenceposts
tottered
alongside,
grey
with
age,
scabbed
with
lichen,
sometimes
borne
down
by
old
man’s
beard,
or
gor
se.
Narrow
stock
tracks
fanned
out
from
the
gateways,
and
eased
up
the
hillsides
to
the
patches
of
rough
pasture
among
the
scrub.
The
flash
magpie
ruled
by
day,
and
at
night
the
possums
hunkered
in
the
branches
and
 
the
morepork
cried
to
reinforce
the
silence.