Opportunity (19 page)

I found a cloth in the glovebox and cleaned my face. I
started the car. I zipped my jacket over my bloody shirt.

I said, 'We'll go on a bit of a journey. How about up north?
A road trip — it'll be nice.'

I drove in the direction of the harbour bridge. He lay down
across the seat.

'Don't worry,' I told him. 'I'll take care of you. Everything's
going to be fine.'

My father grew up poor. He and his twin brother lived in
Opotiki, in a house with a dirt floor. Their father left them,
and their mother brought the children to South Auckland.
She took housekeeping jobs, and worked in a bakery. The old
state house where they lived is still there, at Mangere Bridge.
My father used to play on the mudflats. He went to Mangere
Bridge Primary School.

Their mother, my grandmother, was strict and very
religious. She worked hard to give her sons a good upbringing,
despite the hardships. My father's twin, Barry Weston, became
a vicar. My father had a lot of different jobs before he bought
the bakery in Mt Albert that he owned for many years.

Every Sunday my parents took me and my brother Tim to
the church where my Uncle Barry was the vicar. We sat in our
pew listening to his sermon, my mother in a good-natured,
open-mouthed trance, my father with his arms folded, stolid,
proud, censorious. He always went up to Barry afterwards,
shook his hand, leaned close to his ear and said something
that no one else could hear, at which they both laughed. Then
they stood together, still as strikingly alike as they'd been
when they were boys, and spoke to the people who approached
them — the old ladies, the nervous young men, the huge-bosomed
matrons.

My father was as much in charge as Barry after the sermon
was over. He took people aside and spoke to them, gravely
and compassionately, about their problems. He was important
in his own right, a member of the vestry and an organiser of
church functions. It was said that everything would fall to
pieces without Ted to organise it. Barry was the 'dreamy' one,
the one who 'couldn't organise his way out of a paper bag'. Ted
managed the fairs and the church maintenance, and worked
to keep the congregation going. Numbers did dwindle over
the years, but there was always a solid core of what Barry
called 'worshippers', and even, later, a new generation of
married couples who came to the service and enrolled their
children in the Sunday School, part of a new wave of
conservatism that was supposed to be sweeping the country.

When I was a little boy I was proud of my father and my
uncle and I liked standing with them after church. I wanted
everyone to know I was Ted Weston's son. But when I was a
teenager things changed. There were certain words I began to
have a bad feeling about. Worshippers. Ministry. Sharing. My
father and Barry had a particular hushed, special way of
saying them. It started to grate on me. I noticed other things.
When a difficult subject came up, instead of talking about it
directly, my father would say to us, 'I'll just tell you a little
story.' He'd begin his tale in a low, syrupy voice, and it always
ended up with a moral, a lesson we were to take from it.

'So you see,' he'd say, 'I'm just trying to show you . . .'

He and Barry 'showed' adults too, when they came up after
church. The worshippers nodded and blinked as they listened
to the stories designed to teach them this or that, and they
turned out bleak, watery smiles as Ted and Barry encouraged
and shared, and praised them for their little triumphs.

'Your son's had so many problems. And now he's doing so
well. It must be
wonderful
for you.'

'Having your family around you, Mrs Cranston. It's
wonderful
for you, isn't it?'

'Up and about now, Bob? How
wonderful
.'

Often you sensed that things weren't actually wonderful, or
at least were more complex than Barry would allow, but there
was something smothering and final about his pronouncements;
the parishioner's role was to bob his head, to smile
bashfully, and to agree. It was all
wonderful
.

For the most part, the congregation were so humble and
obedient that it used to give me a slightly disgusted feeling.
I began to dislike being 'shown' things, and to wince at Barry's
patronising social worker tone, which he used everywhere,
even with ordinary, successful people who were more sophisticated
than he was.

Barry used to say, 'I am one who listens.' But he was too
busy doing God's work to notice whether people received his
pearls of wisdom with gratitude, or with the strained look of
someone who had been handed a hideous, inappropriate
present and was being forced to be polite about it.

I squirmed about these things, and eventually they put me
off the church. My younger brother, Tim, went regularly. He
stood in line with Ted and Barry after sermons, and even
began to imitate their manner towards the congregation. He
was said to be a fine, steady young man, a perfect candidate
for the ministry. He was charming and good-looking and
polite. He had his sensible, caring tone down pat. The old
ladies loved him.

My father had sensed me pulling away from the church,
but he knew he could rely on Tim to stick with it. There were
no difficult, critical aspects to Tim's character. He was similar
to my father, in that he enjoyed lording it over simple people,
in a way that would have made my mother embarrassed. Tim
couldn't get enough of good works, and after he married, he
and his wife kept going to Barry's church and sent their kids
to Sunday School there.

Tim and Dad were especially close but that's not to say that
I didn't get on with them. We were a happy family. My mother
had a sunny nature and if there were things about the church
that she disliked she glossed over them. The furthest she went
was a little exasperated grimace every now and then, when
Dad and Barry were being especially pompous.

At a family barbecue one day the conversation turned to
education. I stared out the window, glazed with boredom, as
members of the family held forth. Barry and Dad sat together,
very upright and dignified, and if anyone got excited, one or
other would hold up his hand, gravely shake his head to
restrain the hothead cousin or nephew, and offer a little story
to show the way. There were predictable elements to the
stories. One was that no one was to 'think himself ', or get
ideas, above his station; we were all equal, and no one should
be thought superior even if he had achieved more than other
folk. Barry and Dad did not tolerate the sin of pride; they were
assiduous levellers.

Barry's son, Dan Weston, a clever, quiet boy of thirteen,
had described boys in the lower forms of his school as 'thick'.
Barry looked sorrowful.

'It worries me when you talk that way, Dan. People might
think you're . . . Let me tell you a little story. A man I knew
had a son who was dux of his grammar school. Clever, like
you. And do you know what happened to him? Well. The poor
boy committed suicide.'

Dan stared strangely at his father.

Barry went on. 'What about that chap we went to school
with, Ted? Brilliant scholar — what was his name? Sam,
Simon, something? Had a bright future. He went right off the
rails. By the end he was . . . Well, put it this way, Dan,
he was
going through bins
.'

Barry put his head on one side, his voice clogged with
regret, his eyes watchful, hard. 'So I'm just trying to
show
you . . .'

Tim chimed in with some inane platitude. I glanced up, and
happened to see Barry give Dad a wink that was patronisingly approving of
Tim, but somehow toadish and shrewd too. I was struck by the slyness of the
wink, and by Dad's expression as he acknowledged it. It was as if I'd glimpsed,
for the first time, a secret current that ran between my father and uncle,
a current that seemed to me, at that moment, to have something to do with
the will to power. It was an odd thing to notice, in a flash like that. I
wondered about it. Did Dad and Barry wink at each other over the heads of
their congregation? Was there cynicism in them, hidden beneath their godliness?

***

Since he'd grown up poor, Dad had strong feelings about
money. He talked about bills when they came in, and he was
often up in arms because he thought the electricity company
was wasteful and we were paying too much. When I look back,
I think money (along with 'hard work') was held up in our
house almost as a thing to worship, although Dad would never
have admitted that the sin of avarice lurked in our house.

I met my girlfriend Emily at university, and I took her to
lunch with my parents to introduce them. Emily was having a
dispute with the boss at the café where she worked. Dad didn't
like the idea of someone being underpaid and he started to
advise her, but she looked distracted, and after a moment she
tossed her hair and said, 'Oh, it's only money.' I laughed. Dad
stared. She ignored him. I could tell by her glances at me that
she knew there was something in the air. He kept staring at
her all through lunch. He looked as if he wanted to kill her. He
didn't say anything direct to me, but Emily made him bristle,
and it took a long time for him to warm to her.

Tim's wife, Alison, was studying to be an eye surgeon. Tim
had a patchy series of jobs before deciding to become a real
estate agent, specialising in commercial property. He talked a
lot about his ventures and made himself out to be a terrific
entrepreneur, but I got the impression he wasn't consistently
successful, and that he relied on Alison to bring in the serious
money. There was something striving and fake about him,
striding around with his briefcase, shouting into his mobile
phone. He'd looked much the same when he was a little boy
playing grown-ups. My notion of Tim, if I ever thought about
it, was that he was incompetent in most things he tried because
he wasn't very bright, but that he had such an aggressive,
energetic personality that he managed to convince people he
knew what he was doing. He liked telling the family about the
tough business calls he'd made. 'Someone has to make the hard
decisions,' he'd say. Among our extended family it was
understood that Tim was the sensible one in money matters. I
was supposed to be bit of a spendthrift, what with my posh,
flighty girlfriend and my refusal to participate in long
discussions about bills and bargains and the right appliances
to buy.

I studied law and started working in a firm after I'd
qualified. I had a mostly permanent relationship with Emily.
Tim and Alison had a couple of kids, and bought themselves
a house.

We had a bach a few hours' drive away from Auckland and
we spent all our holidays there. Dad had a boat he took out
fishing and Barry and his family used to come and stay. It was
a nice place that my parents had bought when it was just a
little shack. They'd built onto it, and made it big enough for
the family. We spent all our summers there, swimming,
fishing, walking out onto the estuary, having picnics. We used
it as often as we could. When Tim was married and I was
going out with Emily we shared it, sometimes all squeezing
into it together.

A long time ago Dad had got advice about death duties
(back when they were still a tax). He was told that the way to
avoid paying duties on a property like the bach would be to
change the ownership into Tim's and my name; that way there
would be no tax on inheritance. He'd seized on the idea, as he
always did when there was a prospect of saving money. Papers
were drawn up and the bach was transferred from our parents'
names into mine and Tim's.

I didn't know it, but that was the start of the trouble that
would separate me from Tim forever.

***

We were a happy family for a long time, and then two blows
struck us. My mother collapsed with a heart attack, and
seemed to be recovering in hospital, but died a week later.
We were wretched, miserable with grief. Dad was completely
crushed. We had the funeral in Auckland, then drove her to
the graveyard on the hill above the bach. She was buried there,
in sight of the sea.

A year later there was a scandal at the church. A woman
whom Barry described as 'known to be unstable' got up in
church and shouted, 'Barry Weston, tell them what you done
to my son!' There were rumours of a misdemeanour, something
sexual. It was hushed up, but it had an impact. Barry left
the church, and not long after that he died. It was a heart
attack, we were told. After that my father seemed to grow
older very quickly. He kept his dignity, but you could see that
his power was diminished. He became more reliant on Tim.
Tim had the big house and the kids, and Alison was always
willing to take care of him. They and Dad went regularly to
church together, and Dad carried on working on the vestry.

I, on the other hand, didn't offer Dad much. I avoided the
church. I still had a fairly tempestuous relationship with Emily. I lived
in a series of flats and never got around to buying a house, and was constantly
reminded by Dad and Tim that I should get on the 'property ladder' before
it was too late. They shook their heads over my erratic love life and my lack
of prudence. I thought they talked as if life was one long, dull preparation
for a trouble-free transition to heaven — no spending, no risk-taking,
no 'living it up'. 'As soon as you're born you start to die,' Dad liked to
say. I rebelled against such joylessness. It made me want things, fiercely:
love, risk, choice, excitement, life.

***

Emily and I went to dinner at Tim's. Dad was there too. Emily
and Alison clashed.

Alison said, 'Walk down Queen Street. You'd think you
were in Hong Kong.'

Tim said, 'Keep them out. Someone's got to make the tough
decisions.'

'The Nazis were good at tough decisions.' Emily said,
glaring.

Dad said vaguely, 'Asians? They eat so many veges. They
live for a hundred years.'

Afterwards Emily said, 'Why is Tim so rough with your
father?'

I bridled, offended. 'Tim's not rough.'

'He orders your father around. He talks to him as if he's
stupid. He jerked his head at him, telling him to get out of the
way. You saw.'