Some Here Among Us (5 page)

‘That’s what they do,’ said Race. ‘They put their hands behind their backs to show they’re not going to steal the roses. But all it shows is that they’ve thought of stealing them. It shows they have
mens rea
, a guilty mind.’

He had picked up this phrase from Tolerton and Rod Orr who were law students.

‘No. You haven’t grasped it at all,’ said Chadwick, who was also a law student and who disapproved of Race’s use of legal terminology. Race was studying biology. ‘In any case, it’s nothing to do with your state of mind,’ Chadwick said. ‘When you’re bending over you keep your balance better with your hands behind your back.’

He stopped and bowed deeply over a rose, his hands behind his back like a royal male, to prove the point. Then they walked on. Ahead of them on the path was a long black car with government plates. Race glanced in as he went past. Three Asian men in suits were in the back. All three were gazing impassively at the rose gardens through the closed window. Race guessed they were official visitors who had been sent on a tour of the city’s sights. The chauffeur, a little turkey-cock of a man, ex-army by the look of him, wearing a red tie and black blazer, stared straight ahead with an angry expression. Race and Chadwick walked past, and then they paused at the end of the drive where a set of stairs led up to another lawn.

‘I didn’t mean that about the drugs,’ said Chadwick. ‘The drugs are important. LSD is real important. Did you know that LSD was synthesised the
same month
that nuclear fission was achieved in another lab five thousand miles away? Call that a coincidence? I don’t think so.’

‘So what do you think?’ said Race.

‘I think it was
sent
,’ said Chadwick, and he stopped to look into Race’s eyes, his pleasing way of adding emphasis to a declaration. They stood at the bottom of the steps to consider the matter. Morgan, who had fallen behind the rest of the party, was drifting along the gravel drive on his own. He came up behind the long black car and then without apparently taking thought or even increasing his pace, he vaulted onto the boot of the car and then onto the roof, and took a few steps forward and then stopped.

Four heads, three Asian and one turkey-cock, jerked upward as one. Disbelief was written on their faces. There were
footsteps
above them! Morgan stood there peacefully for a moment, outlined against the hillside woods. Then he walked forward, stepped down on the hood and back to the ground, and continued along the gravel drive. No one spoke. No one else moved, not even the angry-looking chauffeur. Chadwick and Race were half-screened by the branches of a tree at the foot of the steps and Morgan had not seen them watching. He had leapt on the car solely to suit his own requirements and he still did not appear to notice their presence as he came along the path and nor did Race and Chadwick speak a word to each other, but they both turned quickly and went up the steps so as not to be seen as Morgan came along.

4

‘It says here,’ said Race, rolling up a magazine and, reasonably enough, he thought, under the circumstances, swiping FitzGerald on the back of the head with it, ‘it says that every era has its own blind spots. What do you think? What would you say ours are?’

FitzGerald, at the wheel of the car, said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the way ahead. They were driving on an unsealed country road. A cone of dust rose behind them, filling the rear window. All the roadside foliage was laden with dust, which gave the landscape a wild, slovenly air.

‘The question doesn’t make any sense,’ said Rosie Gudgeon, who was in the front seat between Race and FitzGerald. ‘If we knew what our blind spots were, then we wouldn’t be blind to them, would we?’

‘But that’s why they change,’ said Race. ‘One day people realise the blind spot is there and then they do something about it. That’s history.’

The car was an old Chevrolet sedan. The cracked leather bench-seats gave off the dry, dusty smell of ancient summers and old barns. There was still a cobweb in the back window. Race and FitzGerald had bought the car off the side of the road for $100 a week earlier. The vendor was a white man in his mid-fifties who seemed to be on the point of rage. A sprightly green oak shaded the transaction. Race lifted the hood and looked at the engine, then walked round the car and looked at the tyres, but he really knew nothing about mechanics, and the middle-aged vendor knew he knew nothing, which only added to his irritation. They handed over the $100 and drove away into the summer. It was ten days before Christmas. Now in the car seven days later were Race and FitzGerald and the Gudgeon sisters – tall, confident Rosie and short, sweet-natured Dinah – and Rod Orr, and Panos Carroll, one of FitzGerald’s school-friends who had come up from the South Island to join them on the road trip. They were driving around the wild coast between Opotiki and Gisborne. The dust rose up behind them, the long white road stretched ahead. ‘Bang!’ went the stones on the chassis. ‘Bang! bang! bang!’ The goblins of summer were rapping from below. ‘Freedom!’ they were saying. ‘Sea! Sunburn! Nakedness!’

‘
I
think it’s a good question,’ said Dinah who was reading
Middlemarch
in the back seat. ‘Everyone in
Middlemarch
goes round toying with these little silver-handled whips while they’re talking.’

‘Whips! What for?’ said Rosie.

‘To whip their horses.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Rose.

‘But I bet they never thought how odd
that
would seem one day.’

‘They’re not people, Dinah,’ said Rose. ‘They’re characters in a book. They don’t think things that aren’t written down.’

‘Why not?’ said Dinah. ‘You think things that aren’t written down.’

‘But I exist, darling,’ said Rosie. ‘They don’t exist.’

‘Of course they exist,’ said Dinah.

‘Not like I exist,’ said tall, brown-limbed Rosie, in her sarong and bikini top. She turned to FitzGerald, laughing.

‘What do you think, sweetie?’

‘Me? I’m lost,’ said FitzGerald, watching the road.

Rosie leant over and kissed FitzGerald’s ear. Dinah put
Middlemarch
up in front of her face.
‘Bang!’
went the goblins under the car.
‘Bang, bang!’
The mood in the Chev was not good. All had gone well until the day before when, in the twinkling of an eye it seemed, everything had changed. It began with a voice calling from the road. Panos was alone on the beach when he heard it. Race was way out in the surf. Dinah had set off on a long walk along the shore with
Middlemarch
– every so often you saw a parasol of white gulls rise and hover, then settle again, to mark her progress. Fitzgerald and Rosie had gone off somewhere together. Then Panos heard the voice calling and saw Rod Orr on the coastal road – he could just see his sandy head bobbing along above the low dunes. Panos went up to meet him but on the way a faint noise caught his attention. He stopped and looked at the tent, which was closed. He unzipped the door and saw two naked bodies entwined. FitzGerald and Rosie were making love! The zip sang! Panos was outraged. He had been under the impression all week that Rosie had been flirting with him, which in fact she had. He marched away to greet Rod, his face like thunder. Down at the edge of the surf, Race also caught sight of Rod above the dunes. He was amazed. He had deliberately not invited Rod on this trip. He had found of late that he was uncomfortable in Rod’s presence – he hardly knew why. What was Rod doing here now? How on earth had he located them along a hundred miles of empty coast? Race went up into the dunes as well and reached the tent. Rod and Panos arrived down from the road at the same time. The tent zip sang again. Rosie emerged, tying her bikini top.

‘Sorry, everyone,’ she said. She laughed her husky, musical laugh. ‘We didn’t
plan
this, I promise. We just looked at each other and went “Wow!” ’

‘Yes, that’s it: “Wow!” ’ said FitzGerald lazily from the orange-tinted interior.

‘
What
a scene!’ said Rod, pretending to be joyful, the sandy-haired Cupid of the match, yet he was feeling hurt at Panos’s distracted air and by Race’s cool greeting. Within a few hours everyone found they had feelings they could not express. Dinah came back from her walk and was disapproving of her sister, and jealous as well. Panos was angry, and jealous of FitzGerald. FitzGerald and Rosie decided they would now rather be off on their own, yet that was impossible – there was only one car, and hardly any passing traffic, much less public transport, was to be seen. Race meanwhile had realised that someone had been in touch with Rod all the time, guiding him in, so to speak, by phone. Had everyone been in on the secret? Everyone adored Rod, the entertainer, the charmer – sandy-haired, wanton-eyed Rod.

We went to the animal fair,

The birds and the beasts were there

Rod sang from the back seat as they drove away the next morning. Race now felt
he
was the outsider in his own car. And Rod, for his part, was still feeling hurt. The fact was – he loved Race! He was to be punished for that, apparently. That was why he had not been invited on the trip. And yes, it was true – Rosie had secretly kept in touch with him for the last week. She had rung from road-side phone boxes all the way, and told him exactly where they were. He had come hitch-hiking after them. And why not? They were all his friends as well. But now everyone was at odds . . .

The further they drove, the rougher the country became. Fences were scanty or non-existent. Brown cattle wandered the road. A bull stood its ground as they approached, and shook its head. A cow and calf went lumbering ahead of the car for half a minute then crashed away into the dust-hung scrub and stood there, eyes white-rolling. The cone of white dust filled the rear window.

‘Stop the car!’ said Race suddenly.

The road had turned away from the coast and they were crossing a wide inland plain. FitzGerald pulled over and stopped the car. Race got out and stood on the road.

Far away in the back country rose a single, steep-sided, table-topped mountain; there were one or two chasms in its side, dark, faint and secretive, like the folds in ancestral clothes.

‘Look at that!’ said Race, but no one in the car was interested. No one, as far as he could tell, was even looking at the view. The wind hummed in power-lines above. A line of willows marked the course of the river across the plain, the willows a-shimmer, as if the water had taken aerial form just in order to dance in air. Race kept his gaze on the mountain in the back country. It reminded him of something – it was like the frontispiece of an old book, he thought, some famous book he had never read. There were tiny dots of birds flying into one of the chasms. Just then he thought of something else.

‘Morgan!’ he said through the car window. ‘Doesn’t he live round here somewhere?’

‘I think maybe he does,’ said FitzGerald.

‘We should go and see him,’ said Race.

‘We should,’ said FitzGerald.

‘Who’s Morgan?’ said Rosie.

‘Morgy-baby,’ said FitzGerald.

‘I don’t know who you mean,’ said Rosie.

‘You know Morgan,’ said FitzGerald. ‘He used to come to my rooms sometimes.’

‘We’d just call in,’ said Race.

‘We would,’ said FitzGerald.

‘But will I like him?’ said Rosie. ‘I might not like him.’

‘I don’t,’ said Rod Orr. ‘I don’t like him, I don’t like him, I don’t like him – end of story.’

‘I do,’ said Dinah. ‘I hardly know him but I think he’s adorable. He’s just like Will Ladislaw.’

‘
Who?
’ said Rod Orr.

‘Someone in
Middlemarch
,’ said Dinah.

‘Oh,’ said Rod. Then he laughed a little wildly: he had heard disappointment in his own voice.

‘That’s it,’ said FitzGerald. ‘Three against two. Let’s go and see Morgan.’

Race got back in the car and FitzGerald began to idle forward.

‘What about Panos?’ said Rosie. ‘What does Panos think?’

‘Panos doesn’t know Morgan,’ said Race. ‘How would he know Morgan?’

‘I know Morgan Tawhai,’ said Panos. ‘He was at school with us.’ For some reason he found himself speaking in a sepulchral voice.

‘He was at school with all of you?’ said Race. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘Then he was expelled,’ Panos said.

‘Expelled!’ said Rosie. She looked disapproving. Rosie’s and Dinah’s father was a senior diplomat. At times, when it suited Rosie, who had lived in Paris and Washington and Rome, she liked to play the
grande dame
. Now, in her bikini top and sarong, she looked down from a great height at anyone who had ever been expelled from school.

‘But you know, he was the clever one,’ said FitzGerald. ‘He just knew more than the rest of us.’

‘Such as?’ said Rosie.

‘I don’t know—’ said FitzGerald.

‘What is the name of the liquor flowing in the veins of the immortal gods?’ said Panos from the back seat.

‘And?’ said Rosie, putting her pretty brown foot up on the dashboard.