Carnival Sky (4 page)

‘Got a cell phone?’ asked the small guy.

‘Not with me, no.’

‘Bummer. Could have called a bloody taxi.’

‘It may ease off any time,’ said Sheff.

‘What you up to then?’

‘Just a function.’ The more familiar his companion became, the more Sheff felt himself withdraw, even physically, as the man pressed close, his face raised with a gap-toothed grin, alcoholic breath unavoidable.

‘Just a function,’ he repeated, accentuating the formality of Sheff’s
voice. ‘Let’s see this bloody pictcha anyway,’ and he took hold of an edge of the frame and began to strip off the wrapping, swaying a little with the effort.

‘Leave it,’ said Sheff.

The small tug-of-war continued briefly, and then they both stopped. For a moment the reason escaped them, and then they realised the drumming of the rain had ceased. Neither of them referred to it. ‘Arsehole,’ said the small guy in abrupt change of mood.

‘Shithead,’ replied Sheff, and he hitched the litho firmly under his arm and began walking.

‘Fuckwit.’

‘Weirdo.’

‘Motherfucker.’ He hadn’t followed Sheff, and remained at the dairy, raising his voice in each exchange as Sheff receded. He started to laugh. ‘Cocksucker.’

‘Useless bastard,’ called Sheff, and he too started to laugh. Jesus, he thought, you never know, do you? The Swanndri guy was plastered, and the next day would remember nothing of their meeting. They might walk past each other in a week or two with no recognition: stand quite privately together in a cinema queue, or Thai takeaway.

By the time he reached home, the rain was a fine drizzle that drifted as pale halos around the street lights, and elsewhere gave fluidity to the darkness. Sheff took off his wet shoes, jacket and trousers, and in shirt, underpants and dressing gown stood at the bench to make himself coffee. His farewell present was propped on a kitchen chair, and bubble-wrap showed in places where the wet paper had collapsed in the drunk guy’s grasp. ‘Jesus,’ said Sheff, still bemused by the oddity of the experience. Talking to himself had become a common habit since his separation, and quite unrecognised. It gave him a sense of comradeship. ‘You never know what the hell, do you?’ he said.

Before going to bed he checked his emails, grumbling to himself at the delay in connecting to Thunderbird. The computers at his work were much more efficient. And when he did get access, no undeserved
reward or opportunity awaited him, no individual commendation for his professional contribution, no arch, suggestive endearments from someone who missed him. Just the false glee of a prancing message congratulating him on being the 10,000th site visitor, a monthly power bill, and the invitation to become the Facebook friend of a woman called Alana who was quite unknown to him.

A little after four he woke because his nose was running, and when he touched it his fingers became sticky. He turned on the bedside light, saw the bright, arterial blood on his hand and pillow. The flow wasn’t great, and stopped almost immediately. He hadn’t had a nosebleed for some time, and could think of no reason for one. He snorted cold water in the basin, and took off the pillow case and left it soaking. Afterwards he sat for a time in bed with his head forward, not wanting to lie down until he was sure the bleeding had stopped. With deliberation he breathed through his nose, and counted forty inhalations. There was no more bleeding, and he lay down and turned out the light. He wasn’t greatly alarmed by what had happened. It occurred to him that there were so many biological systems and structures in the body, that it was surprising failures weren’t more common. There must be thousands of things that could go wrong, and a lot of them without initial symptoms. He ran through a list of such afflictions, but not dwelling on any lest that tempt fate. You could be eating a burger, laughing at television, making love, and at just that unsuspecting moment death begins, makes an irreversible decision that will be realised in time. How much wine had he drunk at the farewell? Not so much that his nose would bleed, surely. Maybe being caught in the rain after the heat of the squash club rooms, and the small, drunk guy grappling for the lithograph, had brought it on.

Something niggled at the back of his mind, and then he had it. The woman who had hustled into the men’s toilets and exhorted him to sing to cover her embarrassment. Why hadn’t she just let it all go and then waited until he left? Had she feared he might wait outside the loos to see who emerged? He was too tired to come to any conclusion.

As he fell asleep he entered a dream of a childhood not his own: running alone in uncouth clothes across frigid steppe, or prairie, with absolute, but inexplicable purpose, and bird cries above him, beseeching and wavering in the wind.

HIS FATHER DETESTED AND DESPISED CRUELTY
of any kind. It was almost always the cause of his rare anger. They used to have white leghorns in a netting run close to the orchard fence. One of Sheff’s boyhood tasks was to mix the mash and scraps for them each morning. The dominant hen kept pecking a lowly one until it lay with a bare and bloodied neck, unable to flee, or defend itself. Warwick strode in and said, ‘I’ve told you and told you, and you’ve taken no damn notice. So be it,’ and he took the aggressor dangling by its yellow legs, wings ajar, to the block and cut its head off cleanly. He ate his share of it with satisfaction. There were moral nuances perhaps, but Sheff had sided with his father.

IN THE MORNING Sheff felt fine, and had forgotten his nosebleed until he saw the pillow case in the washbasin. The incident at the dairy in the rain seemed just as remote: as if imagined, rather than true experience, slipping away like his dream of solitary escape in a foreign infancy. After breakfast he admired the lithograph again, the dark palette and stark symbols. He spent time holding it against the walls to find the best place to hang it. Even after more than two years it was strange to be making such a decision without Lucy’s opinion, and final arbitration. Strange, too, that he was at home and without an office to go to, people to interview, or stories to research. For the first time in many years, his life had an open-ended aspect, and he found that both invigorating and slightly unsettling. How odd not to have any place he should be, at a time specified and for a purpose premeditated.

He rang his parents in Alexandra to ask after his father. ‘I had my farewell from the paper last night,’ he told his mother.

‘Oh yes, I hope that went well. I’m sure they were sorry to lose you. We’ve been talking about you. It’ll be a big change, I imagine. You’ll be able to come down and spend some time with us then, I hope? It’s been months since we’ve seen anything of you.’

‘Well, I haven’t sorted myself out yet.’

‘Georgie’s been, and you know how busy she is,’ said Belize. Sheff was accustomed to his sister being held up as exemplar.

‘I will try. How is he?’ A fatuous enquiry. How is anyone with cancer of the liver and multiple secondary lesions?

‘I’ll take the phone through in a minute,’ said Belize, ‘but no, it’s not good at all, I’m afraid. Every test confirms the worst. He doesn’t want to be in the hospital, or hospice, of course, but I worry I can’t give him the sort of care he needs. Dr North’s very good, and a nurse comes to see him regularly, but it’s not the same. People ring, but often he doesn’t want to see them, and that can be embarrassing.’

‘Does he get out?’

‘We have a drive sometimes now the weather’s warmer,’ said Belize, ‘but he just stares and doesn’t say much.’

‘It’s tough on you. I will try to get down. I’m thinking of going overseas for a bit, but I won’t do that before seeing you.’

‘That’s good. We still get the paper sent to us and read your pieces. I suppose it will be strange for you for a while not to be working there. Anyway, here he is.’ She had been moving through the house as she talked, and soon Sheff could hear his father laboriously clearing his throat as he prepared to speak.

‘How are you keeping?’ Sheff asked him.

‘A man of leisure. I sit here and watch television, or fall asleep and dream. The dreams are superior in all respects. I hadn’t realised how awful daytime television is. Occasionally a decent golf tournament on SKY, or something on the history channel, but most of it utter rubbish.’ It was typical of Warwick that he didn’t initially complain of his condition, but his speech had a sort of squeezed huskiness that Sheff hated to hear, for it wasn’t truly his father’s voice. He would be sitting propped by pillows, with the small, flat-screen television on a stool at the foot of his bed. His loose hands with their mottled, crepe skin would be palm down on the blanket, and the thin hair of his crown standing up awry. The brown lawn would show outside his bedroom window, then the roses and the wire fence before the neglected lines of fruit trees, a mid-distance neighbouring house and, farther back, over the broad river and then the town, the sinuous
hump of the Dunstan Range with Leaning Rock like a nipple at its highest point. Sheff saw it all and absolutely, although he sat in his study in Auckland and talked to his father about giving up his job. For a moment also he had the strong, dry fragrance of Central Otago, compounded of thyme, briar, tussock, even the schist tors themselves.

‘I’ve decided to take some time out,’ said Sheff. ‘I’m going to have a breather and see something more of the world.’

‘Well, journalism’s all about options, isn’t it?’ Warwick said. ‘When you want a job again you’re free to go anywhere you like.’ It referred to his own incapacity as much as Sheff’s lack of encumbrance. ‘We had a call from Lucy.’ In his illness, Warwick ignored his son’s separation and spoke as if Sheff and Lucy were still together.

‘She told me,’ said Sheff. ‘She’s always been very fond of you. Just about all her time now is spent organising those day-trips from the cruise ships. It’s become quite a thing. She’s got the contacts and she’s so good at detail. It would drive me nuts – all those old folks sleeping on the bus, or crying out for a toilet stop.’

‘Oldies often have money, though.’ Sheff’s father retained an accountant’s practicality even when money was of no use to him. ‘Anyway, is she there for a chat?’

‘She’s got her own place now. You know that.’

‘Of course. Of course. I’m pumped so full of stuff I don’t know if I’m Arthur or Martha.’ Sheff could tell from his tone that he was embarrassed at his forgetfulness and the insensitivity of it.

‘That’s okay. You get some rest and I’ll ring again in a few days.’

‘I haven’t been too bad lately,’ his father said. It was obviously a lie, but he wished for a positive end to their conversation.

Sheff’s mother came back to talk, at first some triviality concerning relatives until she reached the kitchen and so beyond Warwick’s hearing. She went on about blood tests, painkillers, weight loss and mood swings. Sheff had heard much of it before, but knew Belize found relief in expressing everything in detail. The least he could do was to be a good listener, and so he encouraged the full recital while
unwittingly pulling faces of discomfort as he heard of his father’s decline. ‘He’s so lucky you’re there for him, Mum,’ he said.

Barely had Belize gone, when the phone rang. Sheff half expected that his mother was phoning back to continue the recital of Warwick’s deterioration, but it was a woman named Rosemary, calling on behalf of the McInnes Foundation about the judging of the investigative journalism award. He was one of three judges, she said. The others were Annabel Powell representing newspaper proprietors, and Dr Gordy Howell of the media studies department at Victoria University. Surely Rosemary was confused with the surnames, but when Sheff queried the similarity she confirmed it, and saw nothing at all unusual in it. ‘Powell and Howell,’ she said with careful enunciation and a trace of haughtiness. ‘Perhaps my diction is at fault.’

‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘It’s just they’re almost the same, aren’t they?’

‘I’d like to arrange a suitable time for the three of you to have a first meeting, and then subsequent opportunities can be agreed on among yourselves,’ Rosemary said, dismissing the rhyming coincidence.

‘The sooner the better for me,’ said Sheff. Fewer obligations in his future suited him if he wished to see his parents and then travel overseas. While Rosemary stressed that the panel need not confine itself to nominated candidates, and covered what she called the ‘processes’, although she promised to send them in written form also, Sheff remained captivated with the possibilities suggested by the surnames of his fellow judges. Cowell and Dowell he persuaded himself he had come across, and Jowell, Lowell, Towell and Vowell families surely deserved to exist. The Bowell and Fowell surnames were more problematic. He wandered in search of the telephone book, and leafed through it as Rosemary talked on.

‘So is all that sufficiently clear?’ asked Rosemary eventually.

‘Absolutely,’ said Sheff.

‘There will be a contract with the other material coming by post. Oh, and the foundation has appointed Dr Howell as panel convenor.’

‘Eminently suitable,’ said Sheff, who had never heard of Dr Howell,
had no prejudice against his appointment, but was weary of Rosemary’s affectation. He wanted to ask her how much he would be paid as judge, but thought it too mercenary, and instead commended the foundation on its support of journalistic standards. God knows there was a need.

After the call he paid some bills online and checked emails, deleting the communication that he had won $100,000 in a lottery to which he’d not contributed. Nothing of threat, and nothing of delight. Most of life was spent in such a way. For lunch he decided on tinned sweetcorn on toast and a dark ale. The slice of toast became stuck, and when Sheff on impulse poked at it with a knife without turning off the element, there was a sudden flash and painful kick on his elbow. The smoke alarm went off, beeping persistently. ‘Shut up,’ he ordered, but it went on until he stood on a chair and blew on it. ‘Now shut up,’ he said. His hair felt strangely charged, and when he looked in the mirror he could see strands oscillating from his scalp. He held his hand out to check if it was steady, and was reassured. No harm done, and he ate the toast and corn, drank his dark ale while he skimmed the newspaper with a professional eye. His reaction was almost totally critical, proving that electric shock therapy had no effect on his professional opinions. The toaster was buggered, though, and would have to be replaced. The lunch would be an expensive one. ‘You silly, silly bastard,’ he said reprovingly. He hadn’t reached the stage of answering, but that too might come with more time spent by himself.

HIS FATHER LIKED TO READ,
but not much fiction. He preferred to have real people presented, especially politicians and military commanders. Weighty books with glossy dust jackets on Montgomery, Wavell, Dowding, Patton and Zhukov. Warwick believed that human character is most truly revealed under pressure. He didn’t belong to a library. He said that if a book is worth reading, it’s worth buying and keeping. He was too busy to read simply to pass the time.