— Friday

 

 

 

‘RIGHT, WELL, PERHAPS we can make a start…’

The noise in the staffroom quickly faded. Here was the principal’s single trick: silence was attracted to him. Peter Lambert. A tall man, gaunt in the style of an undertaker. He had been at the helm for fifteen years, outlasted his detractors, refashioned the school’s motto around his own. ‘Doing better through valuing doing better.’ The sort who took joy in such recursion. The sort who had a motto.

Luke had never been sure what it was he wanted. Not a motto. He slotted it between motor home and moustache in the list of such things and tried to ignore the principal’s voice. Luke had washed up at the school five years ago, spat out by the shipwreck of a ‘high needs’ experience: decile two and falling. Nicholson High by contrast was featureless, unremarkable.

Luke shifted in his seat to duck beneath the glare of early November sun. The sky this morning was a nostalgic blue and the wind was pausing for breath. Regathering. As were they. Each Friday the students were granted an extra hour’s sleep while the staff dedicated the beginning of the day to professional development. Luke surveyed his colleagues. They brought to mind a leaking air bed, optimistically inflated, determined to last the night.

‘So this morning we’re looking at the second of the school-wide goals on our Strategic Plan: eliminating violence. As you will remember from the hui we held back in May, we made a commitment to revisit this issue once the seniors had moved into their exams.

‘Now, up here,’ Peter Lambert pointed to the wall, where his PowerPoint pulsed on the whiteboard, ‘you can see the results from the survey carried out by the ministry team at our request. And here I’ve arranged the incidents by percentage of students reporting, and here by the seriousness of the incident … Yes, Martin?’

Martin taught mathematics. He wore jeans with sneakers, and on days like this, a waistcoat. He also taught a little history, which he thought made him broad-minded and interesting. His lifelong skinny frame, now in its fourth decade, was relaxing into a haphazard sort of lumpiness. His thinning hair he gelled into a series of hopeful spikes.

‘I thought we agreed after the hui that we wouldn’t look at any more figures. I thought we agreed that if we spent all our time analysing the problem, that wouldn’t leave any time for, well, solving it.’

Luke remembered no such agreement. What he did remember was the management unit Martin had applied for, for co-ordinating the school choir, a payment the previous co-ordinator had enjoyed as of right. Peter Lambert had declined the application, on the grounds that the choir’s membership had fallen, in part due to its boycotting by the principal’s daughter Marie, of whose dope habit her father remained oblivious. As Luke heard it, this happened after Martin had informed the daughter she needed voice training, a small mistake brought about by the pressure of report week. So now the principal was subjected to this petty interruption, a challenge to be both acknowledged and ignored; another pointless pinprick in the carcass of This Fucking Job, which had been on Luke’s list for some time.

‘It’s a good point, Peter.’

The room fell quiet, for people were afraid of Sarah. She was an old curmudgeon from the English Department, her cynicism well-padded  with erudition. The fear she carefully cultivated, emerging from her lair only to breathe hot scorn on those who dared disturb her. Luke had never much liked her, an opinion he kept to himself.

The principal’s brow tightened.

‘If you would just let me finish please, what I was about to suggest …’

‘We know what we need to do,’ Sarah’s voice crested, before swooping down on her signature pronouncement. ‘And no amount of talking is going to change the fact that we’re just too gutless to do it.’

Peter Lambert’s head bobbed as if sprung from the neck, conjuring the hint of a second chin. ‘I am aware that some of you …’

‘It’s not some of us.’

‘I can assure you, Sarah …’ the principal’s voice rose to meet her objection. He had not survived this long without a firm grasp of the numbers. He was disliked by some but supported by more. This simple mathematical fact provided him with the confidence to govern and that confidence in turn assured him the numbers. ‘People have sat in my office and expressed privately views which they may well not be comfortable about sharing in a forum such as this.’

‘What views?’ Sarah challenged but Peter Lambert was no fool. Nor was Sarah about to be cowed by his silence. She swivelled in her seat, her ample frame strangely camouflaged by the gaudy colours she favoured, her shock of red hair flashing its customary warning. She scanned her colleagues, daring them to speak.

Matt stood slowly, so as to exaggerate the weight of his fifty years. His stomach pushed hard against the green knit of his rugby club jersey. The grey trousers were forced low by the same protuberance and twisted awkwardly as he rose. Not an impressive looking man perhaps; but an impressive man nonetheless. His mana in the staffroom  was unquestioned, and his contributions, though rare, rarely went unnoticed.

‘Kia ora koutou.’ Matt sniffed and ran his fingers through his grey and black tangle of hair, as if troubled greatly by this necessity of speech. He paused, waited, dared Sarah to interrupt. ‘Tane Walters, Maddison Kohunui, Tyler McMillan, Tayler Ropata, Taupe Wylie.’ Each name was breathed out, becoming a sigh: a lament to the underachiever, the drug dealer, the thug. ‘The last five boys excluded from the school for acts of violence. We all know what you think is the easy solution, Sarah. What you think is the easy solution is more exclusions, as if any of these boys have become less violent as a result of being booted out of school. The thing you call us too gutless to do is cleansing this school of boys who are brown.’

Luke watched Sarah carefully. Anyone else on the staff would have backed down at this point, found a way of steering the discussion back to safer, colourless ground. Sarah, though, was suspicious of consensus. It was why her students loved her.

‘It’s got nothing to do with being Mäori!’ Sarah said. ‘I don’t care if a student is green with purple spots, if he hits someone he has to go. If we don’t insist on that, then we are sanctioning thuggery, and if that’s about race to you, then you have a pretty low opinion of our Polynesian students.’

Matt leaned slightly forward, as if putting his weight on an imaginary walking stick. Again the pause was long enough to ensure every eye was on him. ‘I do have a low opinion of the chances of these students, Sarah. I have a low opinion of the opportunities we are offering them. I have a low opinion of our ability to provide them with an environment in which they might shine.’

Matt stayed standing and so Sarah stood too in an attempt to wrest back the physical advantage. But there was an ugliness to the move; its aggression was too naked. They faced off across the room, two of the most skilled and dedicated teachers on the staff, ideologues both, pawing at the ground. All around him Luke could sense the fidgeting, people willing for this to pass.

‘A thirteen-year-old boy in my form class received ten stitches because he did not move quickly enough through a doorway. His assailant was three years older and twice his size. He pushed him to the ground and kicked him repeatedly in the head. Explain to me please, why it is unreasonable of me to believe I owe that boy some measure of protection. Explain to me why refusing to stand up to that sort of thuggery is not gutless. And explain to me how that makes me a racist.’

‘Nobody’s calling anybody a racist, Sarah.’

‘Why does he deserve to stay in the school?’

‘Tane’s was an extreme case.’

‘And today’s extreme becomes tomorrow’s commonplace unless we are prepared to do something about it.’

‘I agree with you. And I am absolutely prepared to do something about it. We all have to be prepared to do something about it. I just don’t agree with your solution, Sarah. I don’t agree that washing our hands of the problem makes it go away. We’re the last chance these kids have.’

‘All I’m saying is that when they put one of my boys in hospital, they have run out of chances.’

‘Your boys, Sarah?’

Matt smiled, his hand raised against further comment, as if he wished to say more. It was only when he was sure that every last person had registered the slip that he lowered it.

‘That’s not what I meant.’

But it was what she had said. Matt looked to Sarah, waited for a reply. She breathed in sharply, muttered something Luke could not hear, and sat. Matt waited another full fifteen seconds – Luke counted them – before lowering himself back into his chair.

This Fucking Job.

 

 

‘YOU’RE LATE,’ RICHARD bellowed from behind the desk of his small office. The administration had offered to move him but he’d always resisted, in a show of solidarity that played like contrariness. The view from his window was uninspiring: a jutting concrete wall, a sharp corner of sky, low and moving fast, and the dark end of a campus car park, where rubbish and leaves circled. Some days it annoyed him. Bad days. Today was a bad day. A day to pass through, on the way to better things. She would make it worse.

She. Amanda Hume. Half his age, a career ahead of her. Documentary maker. Activist. Recorder of the life and times of Richard Bradley. A film to mark The Institute’s thirtieth anniversary. An excuse for looking back, for a flurry of congratulations, some of them deserved, others, like the tone of reverence this documentary would settle on, misguided. Richard’s trousers dug into his expanding waist and indigestion burned the back of his throat. A fluorescent light overhead flickered, as if the world was asking too much of it, and a headache threatened to tighten on him. Thirty years. Too soon for a funeral.

‘This is a damn fool idea,’ he grumbled.

The cameraman, Greg, tall and thin, in tight, tall-thin-man’s jeans, was already setting up the tripod. He paused and looked to Amanda for direction.

‘Do we have to do this every time?’ Amanda asked with a sigh.

‘Do what?’

‘Go through this charade of reluctance. Point noted. You’re a humble, thoughtful man. Now sit back down in that chair, and let’s get on with the interview.’

‘I’m not sure I have anything to say today.’

‘Is that right?’ Amanda grinned. Richard had an awful flash of his future: himself trapped amongst blankets on a stained La-Z-Boy, with a view out the window to the communal garden; she a nurse, humouring him in his grumpiness, but one eye on her watch, counting down to the end of the shift. Shoot me first, he always told his son David, on the occasions David saw fit to visit. And the boy always smiled, changed the topic, humoured him.

Richard didn’t feel bad about his moods. It was expected of him: part of the legend pinning him to the specimen table. He was sure that on the occasions he was charming and agreeable people left feeling disappointed. Doubtless Amanda enjoyed being admitted to the club of those with whom he would share his displeasures. And Richard enjoyed it too. As long as he could ignore the fact that she admired him. That to her, he was still a hero.

They waited while Greg got the camera ready. A bright white light flicked on.

‘Shit! Do you mind?’

‘Sorry, you were looking a little dark there.’

‘And now I’m feeling a little dark. Is that better?’

‘So how’s your wife then Richard?’ Amanda interrupted.

‘Compared to what?’ he replied.

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘It’s her birthday today. I haven’t bought her anything, and God knows how I’m going to get to the shops today. What should I buy her? You’re a woman. Buy her something for me, will you? Here, take a hundred. Something thoughtful.’

Amanda waved away the wallet.

‘It wouldn’t be the same.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s about making the effort. It shows you care.’

‘You think a person who didn’t care couldn’t fake shopping?’

‘If you care enough to fake, that’s still something.’

‘I don’t understand women.’

‘She’ll appreciate you made the effort.’

‘I won’t tell her it was you.’

‘I don’t have time either, Richard. I’ve got tomorrow to prepare for too, remember?’

‘Yeah, well I think I’ve changed my mind about that.’

‘You’ve already signed the contract.’

‘What if I just don’t turn up?’

‘You will.’

‘You know that do you?’

‘You can’t help yourself.’

‘Now you’re sounding like one of them.’

‘I just record the events. I’m not here to take sides.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

‘It is.’

‘You are on my side though, aren’t you?’

‘Of course I am,’ Amanda smiled. She was. He wondered how she would feel, on the day her dogmatic confidence was finally shattered.

‘You know, I wish you’d decided to write a biography instead,’ Richard told her. ‘Then you could make things up from home. I wouldn’t have to talk to you.’

‘You’d miss this,’ she replied, which was true.

‘Okay, we’re ready when you are,’ Greg told them. Amanda straightened and her face slipped into a mask of seriousness which made Richard think of a child in a school play. Or the twelve-year-olds they put in police uniforms these days, and their younger sisters who tried to sell him credit on his occasional visits to the bank.

‘All right, I think we’ve had enough of your childhood now,’ Amanda started.

‘That’s much how I felt at the time,’ Richard replied. The camera, like the multi lens gaze of the lecture hall, always relaxed him. He was a performer.

‘Now remember, just give us the whole story, whatever comes to mind. Ramble as much as you like. We cherry pick in the editing room.’

‘That’s a terrible metaphor.’

‘That’s why nobody’s making a documentary about me. Today I want you to talk about the first time you met Steve Watson.’

‘The only time I met Steve Watson,’ Richard corrected, even though it was a lie.

‘Just tell the story.’

‘Okay. Well, where to start? It was nineteen seventy-six. Winter, as I remember it, but you can check the records and discard that cherry if it’s rotten. I’d been back in the country three months. I’d just finished a post-doc in Berlin and people were surprised I’d returned. I’d shown promise, academically, and mine was the sort of career people were taking bets on.’

Richard liked this business of recollecting, the way it gave shape to things. And of course, it made him feel important. A reasonable sort of an indulgence, perhaps even a necessary one.

‘I was, as you know, as much a mathematician as a biologist back then. I had done most of my work in population genetics. But molecular biology was the field that was really beginning to open up. We were getting the first glimpses of the methods by which simple chemicals went about this business of making life. It’s hard to explain how exciting that was, at the time. We all felt the next breakthrough just around the corner, and I suppose I dreamed of being part of it.

‘Ludicrous perhaps, to be plotting a revolution from Palmerston North, and I think at the back of my mind there was always a fear of that, of it all descending into farce. But as I say, I was young, and fears were easily ignored. We didn’t have any funding, or any established reputations, or even any agenda. But there was an optimism, a feeling I suppose that a world of new understanding was awaiting whoever could find the right crack to peer through.

‘I’d just started my lecturing, which is a great antidote to youthful optimism. Nothing more clearly defines the expanse of your own ignorance than trying to teach. I soon discovered that even the least sophisticated thinkers amongst them were still capable of asking the most devilishly difficult questions.

‘So if any of this is anybody’s fault, and I certainly do like having somebody to blame in these things, it is the fault of a man by the name of Alfred McCreedy, a lecturer in chemistry whom I befriended one self-pitying night in the staff lounge. He was drinking his way through a marriage break-up, as I remember it, and apologies to the poor dead fellow if that’s my memory adding interest. He was most certainly drunk, whatever the excuse, and when it was my turn to bemoan the sorry state of university living, I mentioned my lecture difficulties. And he told me not to worry, that every lecturer went through exactly the same thing. And then he shared with me his solution. “The trick,” he told me, “is to get on top of the problem early.”

‘The problem of course being the damnable curiosity of the students, and to our eternal discredit neither he nor I had any trouble viewing it that way. McCreedy’s solution was ingenious. Thank them for their question, commend them for their insight, and then recommend a reading that might help them with their question. Not a specific book you understand, but something obtuse and generic. Conjectures and Refutations by Karl Popper was his favourite. “They never read it,” he assured me, “and they never ask another question.”

‘A hell of a word, never. She had a round face. Her hair was cut in a sort of pageboy style as I remember it, and she stood out on account of her being a woman. They weren’t unknown in the biology classes, but they were solidly in the minority. She sat near the front, she wore glasses and my notes were poor. She asked a question, of course, I don’t remember what, and I gave the prescribed answer. And that, McCreedy had assured me, would be that.

‘I knew something was up when she stayed behind to double check she had the title right. The next day I spied her sitting in the library, halfway through the recommended reading and showing no signs of slowing down. So you know, never take advice from a drunkard. I stayed up most of the night reading the book myself, and the next day Steve Watson visited the campus. History in the end is little more than the careful recording of accidents.’

Richard stopped. It was the sort of anecdote he enjoyed retelling: capricious, and amusing at his own expense. The older he became, the more his past separated out into these little islands of story. Stories which would come across well enough on film, he imagined. This was his gift, and academically speaking, his weakness too. He had a way of dropping his words in such a pattern that believers could always find what they were looking for.

‘So don’t stop there,’ Amanda told him.

‘You know the rest.’

‘Yes, but the viewers don’t.’

‘So you’re still clinging to this viewer fantasy are you?’

‘Tell it exactly like you did at Eva’s that time.’

‘You should have filmed that.’

‘You wouldn’t have let me.’

‘I wouldn’t.’

Eva’s was the suburban restaurant where Amanda had first pitched her ambitious plan. At Eva’s he had been drunk. Drunk and flattered, with a full stomach and the celebrations still six months in the future. Had he known then what he knew now, he never would have agreed to any of this. Richard looked for a place to begin, pulled cautiously at a strand and felt his whole head tighten.

‘Just whenever you’re ready.’

‘I’m looking for a place to start.’

‘Just anywhere is fine. That’s why we have editing.’

‘Couldn’t you just generate the whole interview digitally? Isn’t that how these things are done nowadays?’

‘Would you prefer to be a dinosaur or a gorilla?’

‘Make me a mermaid.’

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘I was thinking of shipwrecks.’

‘I thought you had to be somewhere at eleven?’

‘I do. Meeting of the penguin research group.’

‘Is it interesting?’

‘Of course it’s interesting.’

‘Let’s get back to Watson.’

‘You could use that as the title.’

‘For what?’

‘This documentary.’

‘It’s already got a title.’

‘What?’

‘Clash of the Mermaids.’

Richard smiled. She was bright, Amanda, which was her weakness. Arguments fell into place too easily for her; she had little trouble believing they were solid. It gave her no appreciation of the fault lines that ran through everything.

‘Stephen Watson was young, and brilliant, and fêted, and controversial, and English. He was only three years my senior, but whereas I was an antipodean optimist, plotting world domination with my friends on the back of a beer mat, he was already dominating it. His book, Gene Genie, had sold something hideous like a million copies around the world, and that made him a superstar. He was out here on what was essentially a promotional tour. Academic purists sneered, of course; he wasn’t a real researcher, he was simply packaging knowledge, making it accessible to the world beyond the university walls. As if making knowledge accessible wasn’t important work, God help us. I’d read his book with some admiration, and more than a little envy. He was a gifted communicator. He captured that sense of wonder most scientists feel, but few are able to distil.

‘But it wasn’t just his popularity that attracted scorn, it was what others perceived to be his politics. Most biologists at the time were content to make their mountains out of molehills; we had by and large observed the old Cartesian demarcation and left humanity to the historians and the poets. Applying evolutionary speculation to humanity was considered not just a little gauche, but also rather dangerous. But not everybody is cowed by convention, and the sociobiology juggernaut was getting up another head of steam. And as Watson had discovered, while wondering out loud about the evolved nature of the human mind might have been frowned upon in academic circles, out in the general public the appetite for such thinking was huge. He told of industrious worker bees, battling seals, faithful voles, and sneaky cheating little birds; and he asked what was then something of a taboo question. Aren’t we a bit like that too? And people bought the book and answered, “Not me, but a lot of people I know”.

‘Like any great popularist, Watson went for the controversial and the titillating. He was pushing our buttons quite deliberately, and people either saw him as a breath of fresh air, a welcome antidote to the po-faced dictates of the social sciences; or as a misogynistic, baby-strangling racist. He was young, giddy with power and very good at what he did. And what’s more, he was bringing it here, to our windy little town in the middle of nowhere, a land of friendly flightless birds, hopelessly ill-equipped for the arrival of such a predator.

‘Although I must say it didn’t stop us giving our very best. There was a protest outside the lecture theatre, led by a history lecturer who I had flatted with back in our undergraduate days. Susan Russell. She was an attractive woman, which allowed her to scorn those of her sisters who turned to the diets and make-up she never needed. At the protest she had a banner which read “Hitler was a sociobiologist” and a T-shirt she had made herself, with “I am not defined by my biology” scrawled in such a way that you had to pause and regard her breasts to read it. Which I foolishly did. Only when I looked up did I realise who it was I was inadvertently ogling. “What the fuck are you doing going in there?” Susan demanded of me, not unreasonably, and I just had the presence of mind to realise it was my queuing for the lecture, rather than my consideration of her breasts, which she was questioning.

‘Inside was more subdued. There was a fair-mindedness about us back then, I think, a desire to see a person given a chance to explain themselves. Watson’s delivery was polished, honed over three months of touring, and the audience was eating out of his hand soon enough; and this included more than one or two attendees who had come in only to show their disapproval. Maybe it’s the carefully cultivated Oxford accent, or the dry laconic style he favours, but Stephen Watson in the flesh is hard to see as the devil.

‘He gave us the usual spiel, about the pervasiveness of selection pressures when it comes to crafting complexity, and from there took the usual leap into the dark world of human behaviour. That is, if we accept the brain is complex, then we must accept it too is designed by the same pressures of selection. And if we accept such a mechanism of design, then we must also accept that our behaviour will be drawn towards behaviours which would have favoured reproductive success in the past. Of course one can accept any one of those propositions without being obliged to accommodate the next, but this was more about entertainment than education, and to give him his due, he was very entertaining.

‘There was time for questions at the end. The first two he took were patsys. The third was more challenging, from a man I didn’t recognise, who was questioning the observational bias of the field studies Watson was quoting. There are two types of presenters, I have found: those who crumple under pressure, and those who revel in it. Watson of course was the second type. He turned on his accuser with a slow spreading smile.

‘“Would you say, Sir, that physics is a reliable science?”

‘“As a rule, although obviously mistakes can be made,” the questioner stammered. He realised then his mistake, I think.

‘“Indeed they can. And do you, on the basis of such mistakes, dismiss the study in question, or the entire field of enquiry? And if it is the former, Sir, as I most sincerely hope that it is, then do you have a specific example of a study I am using where the data has been unduly biased, or were you simply hoping that somewhere along the way I had forgotten to consider such matters as objectivity?”

‘I don’t know if they were the words he used precisely, but whatever the exact expression there was a meanness in them that I found surprising, disappointing even. He didn’t need to hurt this man, whom he would never meet nor hear of again; who was in point of fact grappling with a perfectly reasonable question. But Watson clearly had a taste for blood: it was part of the thrill for him. And he was cheating, as any public presenter can. By avoiding the substance of the question the first time around, he was forcing the questioner to put it again, and in doing so to appear dogmatic. If the questioner stays the course, the audience begins to resent them for attempting to monopolise the speaker’s time, and for ignoring the spirit of the event. A subtle sort of peer pressure is brought to bear, and the questioner crumples. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Few of us would ever agree to take questions from the floor were the odds not stacked this way.

‘Not surprisingly when Watson scanned the room for his next victim there were fewer hands on offer. One of them was mine. I could make this sound a lot grander than it actually was. But the truth is there was nothing preplanned or aggressive about my query. Rather it was an accident. I simply had a head full of Popper, and a question which I wished to hear answered. And I thought he would have an answer. I wasn’t trying to catch him out.

‘Let’s say a hush fell over the place as I stood. I like the sound of it.

‘“What,” I enquired, in the slightly over enunciated accent I had cultivated at international conferences, “is the unique prediction regarding human behaviour that this theory makes, against which it can be scientifically tested?”

‘It is, if I do say so myself, an excellent question, and perhaps I should explain why.’

Richard looked to Amanda for permission to digress, and her shrug told him that he could do what he liked, for nothing educational would make it onto the final tape. Although Amanda would deny it, she was in the end one who led with her heart, and followed with her eyes; tailor-made for the age of sound and vision. Richard by contrast was a dinosaur, slow-moving and wary of warm-blooded slogans. He also took a certain pleasure in loitering in the path of progress. Not today though. The cards were all hers.

‘“If you had been listening more carefully,” Watson blustered, “you surely wouldn’t ask such a question. What is your field of speciality, Sir?”

‘“Mathematics,” I answered, sensing that he was bluffing.

‘“Figures,” Watson replied, and obliging laughter rippled as he scanned the auditorium for another question, presumably expecting me to sit down. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. For he hadn’t answered me.

‘“I would have been more impressed by that comment Mr Watson,” I rather shouted, drawing attention back to myself, “had you not made the prediction retrospectively. Which brings me back to my question. In what respect can we consider your theory predictive?”

‘He turned back to me then, and rolled his eyes, as if this was too tedious a business for him to be wasting any more time on.

‘“Look,” he informed the auditorium, letting out an exasperated sigh and running his hand through his foppish Oxford cut. “This complaint has been around since the time of Darwin, and despite being roundly beaten on any number of occasions, it simply refuses to die. I am almost reluctant to add to the punishment, lest it is some form of masochism which keeps it coming back for more.” He paused to give the congregation a moment to appreciate his wit. I waited for the killer blow. “Selection theory predicts that wherever there is complexity, there will be design. It predicts, in human terms, that there will be shared characteristics across cultures, that there will be average tendencies to behave in a certain way, and it predicts that these tendencies will be consistent with reproductive utility in the past. How many more predictions do you want?”

‘And still I didn’t sit, because now I smelled a hint of victory. And the very possibility of it, in front of my own, against a combatant of international standing, was simply irresistible.

‘“Considerably more predictive than that, Sir, I would respectfully submit,” I told him. “For unless you can show me the competing theory which explicitly predicts no such shared characteristics, or can outline for me right here and now a discovery which would shake your confidence in your theory, I am afraid I find it hard to accept that what you are doing amounts to any sort of science.”

‘A little knowledge is, as they say, a dangerous thing, not least because of the appetite it gives one for battle. I didn’t, back then, know what I was talking about, not really: I was just flailing about, seeing what I might hit. And what I hit, by luck not design, was the softest and fleshiest part of his agenda.

‘The questions moved on, but he was shaken and his performance suffered. I had become the story, at least in the eyes of those who saw in Stephen Watson a threat to all they held dear.

‘Susan of the attentive breasts embraced me as I left the auditorium, and I was whisked away by a group of admirers to a pub off-campus, where we drank and made instant legend of that single brief encounter. And as the empty jugs crowded out our table, we did something even more outrageous. We made plans for a new sort of research centre, an institute where scientists and social scientists would work alongside each other, complementing rather than denying one another’s contribution. I had no idea at the time just how well-connected some of these people were. Before I could properly articulate the how or the why of it, I – along with Susan and an anthropologist by the name of Pipa Whyte – was moving down to Wellington, to establish the country’s first solely academic research institute. It lasted only two years before it was brought under Victoria’s wing, but university politics makes for a dull interview. That in brief is the story of Stephen Watson, and The Institute. A tale of chance in the end. Written perhaps in the stars.’

Richard leaned back and stretched his arms together above his head.

‘And that is all you’re getting for now, unless you are interested in making a film about penguins.’

‘Just one last question,’ Amanda replied, ignoring the dismissal as, Richard supposed, journalists must. ‘What, if you were to sum it up in hindsight, is The Institute’s achievement you remain most proud of?’

‘I suppose in the end the networks we have established. Internationally, there is a community of ideas, of interest, and we’re part of that. It’s old fashioned to say it I know, but we’re part of the ongoing search for knowledge. Maybe a futile search, but a profoundly human one. Will that do?’

He’d given that answer so many times over the years that it was polished smooth from the handling. And the smoother it got, the less plausible it became. These days, truth be told, he didn’t believe in it at all.

 

 

‘YEAH, SO, UM, see ya then.’

Ollie allowed himself only a quick scan of Sophie’s face to make sure she wasn’t crying, then looked again to his feet. He kicked at the ground, and waited for her to say something. Waited to be released. People swarmed all around, laughing, complaining, squealing, pushing their way past. If it were anyone else, Sophie might have thought he planned for it to happen this way, right at the end of lunchtime, at the bottleneck at the bottom of the stairs. She wouldn’t scream here. She wouldn’t break down. She wouldn’t plead or make a scene. But she knew Ollie didn’t plan things. If he was asked, if he was forced to think about it, he might even be able to imagine himself as the victim. That she just happened to him. Saturday night, at the party, it just happened. What she had thought of as his cool was something else, she saw that now. It was just unbothered. Too unbothered to say no, and then later, when the sex and the alcohol had both faded, too unbothered to answer his mates, when they asked, ‘So what’s the deal with Sophie?’ (What deal man? There’s no deal.)

He did it this way. He was coming down the stairs while everybody else was going up, finishing a lunchtime detention probably, planning on a session up at the pines as compensation. He saw her. She happened to be there. He grabbed her arm, slowed her down, forced her to take in his smile. His easy, casual, nothing-happening face.

‘Hey, Sophie.’

‘Hi.’ She smiled back, felt it warm her.

He launched straight into it, as if it was a thought that had only just this moment come to him. Which was possible.

‘Hey, about the other night, that didn’t, like, just checking you knew that didn’t mean nothing right?’

‘What? Nah, of course not.’

Naked beneath him, terrified, wishing he would say something, wishing he would at least look her in the eyes, hoping it wasn’t the sort of park people would walk through, late at night. And if she couldn’t have any of that, then wishing she could be drunk like he was, as a way of deadening the disappointment. Why would it mean anything? What did he think she was, stupid?

Sophie shrugged, raised a single eyebrow, a move she had perfected in front of the mirror in Year Nine. Not for this. She’d had bigger plans for the eyebrow.

‘Right, sweet.’ Ollie nodded sagely, like an old man appreciating the late revelation of life’s pattern. Only he was sixteen, with a pimple forming between his eyes and oil glistening on his forehead. The nod he had picked up from a music video.

‘Yeah, so, um, see ya then.’

‘See ya.’ She smiled. The effort of it fractured fault lines in her brain.

Ollie bobbed against the tide a moment, then regained his momentum, his shoulders rolling out towards the door. The air. Freedom.

She was not crying. She would not cry.

‘Sophie, bio right?’

‘Ah, yeah, think so.’

Tessa stopped and looked again.

‘You all right?’

‘What? Yeah, sure. Just … you know, sick of it all.’

‘Sure.’ Tessa asked no more. She understood. Who didn’t?

They made their way up the stairs. Sophie’s legs were heavy; she felt out of sync, as if imposed on the scene by an amateur hand, three frames out of time. She stumbled on, determined to make up the ground, to swallow back the dancing that had hold of her stomach. Sick.

‘You think we can get him to play games today?’ Tessa asked.

‘If you ask nicely.’ Her voice was her friend. It would not betray her with so much as a quiver.

‘Me? You’re the one he’s always looking at.’

‘I wouldn’t say always.’ Sophie laughed.

He was Mr Krane, their biology teacher. Luke Krane, an odd one. All teachers were odd, that was a given: adults who’d never left school. Mr Krane’s odd though was different. He could make them laugh when he felt like it. Tessa was right. He did look at her, sometimes. And she didn’t mind. That sort of odd. Early thirties she guessed, not quite as old as her dad.

They were the last ones to class, five minutes late because Tessa diverted to the toilets to consult the mirror. Sophie was relieved to see her eyes hadn’t reddened. Maybe with an X-ray the damage would be visible.

‘Sorry we’re late,’ Tessa breezed. ‘Toilet.’

It was good to be a girl too, sometimes. Tessa chose seats beneath the teacher’s nose and looked up, flicking her hair back with long fingers. She’d dyed it blonde, in preparation for summer, and it made her look like a slapper. Sophie didn’t tell her this.

‘Sophie wanted to know if we were playing games today,’ Tessa said.

‘And what’s in it for me?’ Mr Krane asked. Oblivious.

‘I don’t know,’ Tessa replied. ‘I’m not Sophie.’

People laughed. He shrugged it off, like the nothing it was. The class fixated on the possibility of a game.

‘Yeah, let’s do one of those games, Mister.’

‘You promised us.’

‘When did I promise you?’

‘Before the last test.’

‘That was last term, Brendan. You don’t even remember last Wednesday.’

‘My long-term memory’s good, Mister. It doesn’t affect your longterm memory.’

‘Being stupid affects everything.’

‘You’d know.’

‘Well actually I wouldn’t. That’s the compensation for being stupid, you see. You’re always the last to realise.’

Each class depended upon the teacher’s mood. A sick sort of roulette, five long years trapped at the table. Today they’d get their game.

‘Okay, chairs and desks to the side. We need some space for this.’

Twenty-four pairs of arms and legs built messy nests at the edge of the room.

‘What’s this for?’

‘Reproduction. We’re going to learn about reproduction.’

‘What?’

‘Do we get to choose who with?’

Lionel was front row: large, wide and firmly planted. His face dimpled when he smiled, and when he scowled. People were afraid of him. Sophie’s friend Jade, who had fallen for him briefly some time last summer, swore that he was a lot cleverer than he appeared. Sophie preferred the alternative: that Jade was far stupider. For Lionel was a stupid boy, a bully who set the tone because nobody knew how to stop him.

‘No, we’re leaving it to fate,’ Mr Krane told him.

‘Is this still part of the ecology unit?’ asked Sean. Lionel hit him from behind.

‘Don’t!’

‘Or what?’

The teacher ignored the exchange. If you didn’t ignore Lionel, then the lesson was about Lionel. Every time. They wouldn’t expel him. That would be giving up. And it was very important to never give up. The almost-sports-stars they dredged up for assemblies told them so, every second Wednesday.

‘Get a die each. There are twelve green, twelve white. It doesn’t matter which you get.’

They took their dice, continued their conversations, milled about. Mr Krane was in no hurry.

‘Here’s what’s happening. Hold your die in your left hand.’

‘It’s dice. The word’s dice.’

‘That’s plural.’

‘That’s stupid.’

‘And with your die in your left hand, you cross your arms like this, hands to the opposite shoulders.’

‘Why? Why are we doing this?’

‘Because you don’t need your hands to reproduce.’

‘What?’

‘It’s so we don’t touch people’s tits.’

‘Shut up.’

Without Lionel, and Gavin, and possibly Andrew, this would be a good class. Without Ollie, school might be okay. Sophie forced herself to think of something else, but already a film had spread across her eyes. She wiped it away before anyone noticed, and swallowed down the misery.

‘Okay, now I want you all to close your eyes.’ Perfect. The world went dark, and Sophie’s mind followed into blankness. ‘And then very gently, within this space … eyes closed, Lionel.’

‘It’s Sean, Mister. He’s been looking at me funny, ever since you mentioned reproduction.’

‘Fuck up.’

‘Thanks, Sean, eyes closed eh? Now, we are going to very quietly move about the space. If you bump into somebody, just gently move away, without opening your eyes, and keep going.’

‘Then what?’

‘I’ll explain when everybody’s doing it.’

Sophie felt a hand slide across her arse. She opened her eyes, but the groper had moved on.

‘And eyes open. Face the nearest person. Good. That’s your reproductive partner for this round. Introduce yourself.’

Laughing. Stupid comments. Boys faced boys, girls faced girls, Randall the exception. He faced Sophie shyly. He was shorter than her, and had made a good head start to obesity. He blushed, too hot in the jersey she had never seen him take off. The groper?

‘Now roll your dice. Whoever gets the lowest number must come to the front and change their die for one of their partner’s colour.’

‘What say we’ve got the same colour?’

‘Then nothing changes.’

Dice were rolled. Comments were passed, dice changed. Sophie watched Mr Krane write ‘Random Selection’ on the board. She tried to remember the words. He could not be relied upon to make his points clearly. He had no staying power. He wasn’t the sort you could depend upon, when it came to the exam. Sophie made up her own notes at home.

‘And if any pair throws two sixes, let me know. Eyes closed; mingle again.’

Three rounds later the first double six was called. Mr Krane stepped forward, took the pair’s dice and replaced them with red ones.

‘What’s this?’

‘A mutation has occurred.’

‘Mutants!’ Lionel jeered.

‘We’re all mutants, Lionel.’

‘I’m not.’

‘No, possibly less so than the rest of us. Quick show of hands. Who’s still got green? How about white?’ Three quarters of the class now had green dice. ‘Okay, remember that. Now, people with red dice: whatever you roll, add a two to the number.’

‘Random Drift’ and ‘Mutation’ were added to the list on the board. Sophie said each to herself three times. The game was good. It was helping her to forget.

‘Eyes closed, let’s go.’

It came from nowhere. That can’t have been true, it must have been bubbling over, perhaps all year, but from nowhere is how it seemed to appear.

‘Fuck off!’ Loud, angry. Every eye opened in time to observe the half second between intent and action. Sean eyeballed Lionel. He was only half Lionel’s size, but his eyes burned dark and there was spit at the corner of his mouth. Lionel raised his eyebrows in invitation, his head pivoting back on his neck, jeering. For half a second.

The first blow, a close-fisted punch, caught Lionel on the chin. The second, a furious, optimistic swing, was blocked by the larger boy. Knees and elbows flew. A ball of desperate rage, repelled by a wall of solid violence. Sean screamed, flailed, erupted. Lionel, far more practised and efficient, chose his moments. A sickening blow took the wind out of Sean’s stomach, a needless addition broke the smaller boy’s nose.

Sean was snorting blood as they pulled him off, its vivid red splattered across a face of snot and tears. Small, careful, studious Sean: turned, just like that. Turned and suffering. Lionel towered over him, hands held out as if in complete innocence. His shirt was ruffled, but floating above it his smile was serene and his eyes shone, an animal too, not beaten but high. Wanting more.

Mr Krane stood between them, fighting to catch his breath. He paused as if he was looking for something. A mood perhaps.

‘Sean, come with me. Lionel, Mr Chalmer’s office.’

‘But I didn’t fucking do anything.’

Lionel stepped forward, closing the gap between himself and his teacher, accentuating the difference in size. Mr Krane stared back impassively.

‘Well that’s clearly not correct is it?’

‘You saw.’

‘Yes Lionel, I saw.’ Mr Krane’s face was blank, as if this was all too stupid, too predictable, to waste his life on.

‘So a little fucking white guy’s never in the wrong?’ Lionel challenged.

‘You want to accuse me of racism, Lionel, feel free to lay a complaint.’

‘With who? The white principal?’

Now at last there was a reaction from the teacher. Nothing much, just the smallest hint of a smile.

‘Yes, Lionel. Your life is the end product of a vast racist conspiracy. That is why you hit people. You are a victim. Please accept my sympathy. Now get to the deputy principal’s office.’

Lionel thought about hitting him. Sophie saw the careful calculation in his eyes. The numbers fell and he reluctantly turned, ambling towards the door.

‘And don’t go anywhere else on the way!’

Lionel raised a single finger in staunch salute. Mr Krane looked down at Sean’s beaten face.

‘And don’t you expect any sympathy either. What the hell were you thinking?’

It was, Sophie realised, the stupidest of questions. You only had to take one look at the boy’s eyes, dull and empty, watch the rapid rising and falling of his chest, or see the flaring of his crusted nostrils, to know he hadn’t been thinking anything. Surely a biology teacher didn’t need to be told that. There had been rage and now, in a slow tide of realisation, there was shame. The victim stood gingerly in a drunkard’s daze, hunched over as if his stomach was contracting, pulling him forward. A thick line of blood stretched down from his nose, its slow motion descent breaking into three neat drops which splashed onto the carpet.

 

 

‘GET CLOSER,’ AMANDA instructed. ‘We need the anger.’

In her mother’s album the activists always looked so relaxed, certain the world would tumble at nothing more than a gentle nudge and the strum of a guitar. Maybe it was the way the sun was always shining in the photographs, or her mother’s face, simultaneously eighteen and fifty at the centre of every frame, but it had all seemed so harmless.

Today’s protesters were dressed for battle, coats pulled high against the cold of the southerly which had swept in as forecast to announce the onset of afternoon. The faces in the crowd were pulled small and grim, eyes too tight for optimism, bit actors playing their small but necessary roles in the war that never ends. No longer the adventurers setting out to conquer new lands; now the defenders left at home to guard the castle, to forever fight off the gathering hordes.

‘One, two, three, four.’ The chant emerged tinny from the megaphone and was treated with disdain by the ripping air. ‘We don’t need no racist bores! Two four six eight, ignorance must lead to hate.’

There was a decent gathering; not large, but passionate. The number of students on their way from cafeteria to library who paused to watch, and puzzle over the more obscure placards (‘IQ for who?’ ‘You can’t measure shade’) made it hard to get an accurate fix on numbers. Fifty or so made up the hard core, Amanda estimated. They had been out here all morning, and were promising to do the same every day until the object of their rage, William Harding, Professor of Psychology, did the decent thing and resigned. His public pronouncements to date suggested that it would be a cold day in hell before such a thing happened, and right now the southerly was doing its best to oblige. Amanda was filming in the hope that she might later trap Richard into commenting. He had remained resolutely silent on the issue, which seemed to Amanda to be oddly out of character, and therefore a puzzle worth probing.

‘How much footage do you want?’ Greg asked her.

‘Can you pull back and up and get a focus on his office window?’

‘Which one’s his office?’

‘Just a window that looks as if it might be his will do.’

‘Hold on a sec.’

Greg planted his feet wider and practised the move a couple of times before he was happy.

‘Okay, think I got it. Any faces you particularly want to …’

He was interrupted by the sudden movement of the crowd. It was like watching a flock of birds in flight: impossible to say exactly where the lead came from. Suddenly, the mass was moving as one, swarming towards a door.

‘It’s him!’ The air was filled with boos and hisses. For a comical moment the protesters were deprived of the confrontation they longed for by the fact that they were now blocking the doorway through which the professor sought to emerge. It took a complicated series of Chinese whispers and clumsy backing up before the drama could resume.

Amanda and Greg followed their instincts and skirted around the side, anticipating this would be the hounded academic’s escape route. Within a moment he was stopped in front of them, caught between the impassive lens and the baying crowd. For a representative of Lucifer, Professor Harding was disappointing. He wore a sensible, unsurprising brown jacket over a blue-buttoned shirt. What was left of his sandy hair was unkempt and easily tempted into dance by the wind. He was the sort of man it was easy to imagine standing in a park somewhere, smiling as he watched his children playing on the swings. He hesitated, as if too polite to simply push past the camera, and after running his hand through his kinetic hair, sighed and turned to face his accusers. Perhaps he was hoping they would give him an opportunity to speak.

‘Racist!’ cried one.

‘Bastard!’ another, before chants of SHAME, SHAME, SHAME drowned out the individual contributions.

‘Just let him through,’ Amanda shouted in Greg’s ear. Greg took a step back, but a short wide woman alert to the opportunity was too fast for them. She bounded up the single step marking the beginning of the quad’s amphitheatre and stood in the space vacated by the cameraman, effectively putting the shrinking professor on the stand.

Sensing a new twist in their interactive drama, the protesters quietened, compressing from the back like a crowd at a rock concert. There was fear now, in Professor Harding’s eyes. Amanda felt something similar rising in her throat. She scanned about for sign of a security guard, a policeman, or even a grown-up. Someone who could stop this ending badly. There was only her and Greg.

The spokesperson raised her hand and the last of the murmuring flattened out. Even still she had to shout to be heard above the wind.

‘Professor Harding, are you prepared to publicly apologise for and retract your statements made in the Journal of Psychology?’

Amanda watched the faces in the crowd, their necks craning as they peered at this vision of evil.

‘Ah, well, I was just on the way to the library actually, I haven’t come prepared for a, ah, for this…’

His voice was small and he looked to the ground as he spoke: whether a function of circumstance or habit she couldn’t say.

‘We can’t hear you!’ someone shouted.

Another added ‘racist!’ and laughter spread through the crowd.

At this the professor raised his head again. Amanda caught a glimpse of tears in his eyes.

‘I am categorically not a racist.’ The hounded man raised his voice now, his reedy version of shouting betraying his emotion. ‘I have explained as carefully as I can that all I …’

But they didn’t want to know. What good could knowledge possibly do, when they had such tightly drawn feeling to call upon?

‘APOLOGISE, APOLOGISE, APOLOGISE.’

The professor, realising his mistake in attempting to engage, tried to continue on his way towards the library. This involved making his way around his inquisitor, who in turn attempted to block him by moving into his path. But the man was looking down, drawing the blinds on this ugly world, and the collision gave the woman the excuse she needed to stagger backwards, as if the contact had been deliberate.

It was an older man with years in the business who provided the next spark. He grabbed at the professor’s collar, as if to pull him off, although it was clear no such restraint was necessary. In fact, so little resistance did he offer that he and his assailant were both thrown off balance, stumbling backwards over the low step and sprawling at the feet of the mob.

And then the kicking started.

To be fair to the crowd, some people even tried to pull back the worst offenders, but nevertheless the result was vicious. Blows to the back, the head, wherever a boot could be landed. The poor man crumpled, frail and defenceless. Amanda had no choice.

‘Get off him! Get back, you fucking animals! Get back!’

She pushed her way forward, arms out, shoving at anything solid, screaming so hard she felt the tearing of her voice.

They stopped suddenly, perhaps as shocked by their actions as Amanda was. She felt a knot forming in her too-dry throat, and her chest rising and falling as she gasped for air. Greg was standing beside her, his glare as furious as her own, the extra height making him all the more threatening. There was a moment then of absolute quiet; even the wind made a space for the descending shame. Amanda crouched and helped the poor man to his feet.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked. Blood dripped from his brow. He nodded his thanks, but did not meet her eye. She had hold of his arm, supporting him, and felt his body shaking.

‘We have a car out the front, if you’d like us to …’

‘No, no, I’m fine.’

He turned away and hunched against the wind, scurried back to the door from which he had emerged. Already the crowd was dispersing, splitting off to regather the strands of their stories, to make sense of this. Most of them. A small core remained with their placards, apparently unmoved by the incident.

‘What?’ The woman who had assumed leadership suddenly shouted into Amanda’s face. Amanda realised she had been staring. At the edge of her vision, she was aware Greg had the camera back on his shoulder.

‘Are you going to apologise to him?’ Amanda asked, the only thing she could think of.

‘What for? The fuck got what he deserved.’

Behind the pugilist someone nodded their assent.

‘That’s barbaric,’ Amanda told the woman, taking in now the small blue eyes quivering with righteous certainty.

‘So you’re defending the racist? Is that why you’re here? What are you, fucking television?’

‘We’re making a documentary, on Richard Bradley, to mark the anniversary.’

Richard was, amongst these people, something of a hero. These people. Amanda’s people; although right now the fit felt tight and clammy.

‘You should know better.’

‘That was assault.’

‘Have you read the article?’

Amanda nodded. She had skimmed it. IQ tests. It seemed that no matter what opinion you had on the things, it would always be controversial. And Professor Harding had an opinion. He had conducted a systematic statistical analysis on all the reputable data he could find and his conclusions were unpalatable. No matter what allowances he made for other factors – income level, social status, gender, language bias, educational experience – he claimed he found a residual effect which correlated strongly with race. Which is to say different races may have different types of brains. His conclusion, as Amanda had read it, was not so bald. Rather he suggested that the data demanded this hypothesis at least be investigated. But there are some investigations which can not be proposed. For such proposals invite beatings.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘And were you disgusted?’ the woman asked, although it was less a question than a demand.

‘I think,’ Amanda replied, certain only of her disgust for the woman in front of her, ‘that in the end I would defend his right to say it.’

‘And you would have defended Hitler’s right to free speech too, I suppose,’ the woman responded.

It was all so ridiculous, life’s mystery reduced to slogans. ‘Hitler’s thugs formed mobs, and beat the defenceless. That’s how the terror started.’

The woman spat a warm, solid glob of saliva straight into Amanda’s face.

‘You disgust me,’ were the protester’s final words. Amanda, wiping the retort from her cheek, turned away.

 

 

RICHARD BOARDED THE lift. There was a time when it had been a matter of pride to take the stairs. He felt the world drop away beneath him. Down through the institute of molecular biology, where the Ph.D. students he supervised did their lab work. Past the maths floor, which occasionally he was forced to visit, to have the latest parsimony models explained. Nothing could so consistently make him feel young again – grey of shorts, bony of knees, brim-full of ignorance – than talking to today’s mathematicians. There had been a time when this was his domain, but he had become distracted by the demands of his career, and now he needed them.

The lift stopped at the request of an Asian boy of indeterminate age, weighed down by textbooks. The boy looked at Richard.

‘Up?’ he asked.

Richard shook his head.

‘Down.’

The boy shrugged, and entered anyway. The doors closed and the lift lurched its way to solid ground.

Richard headed through the lobby to a waiting southerly, the precursor to an unfriendly storm, the forecasters had cheerfully announced this morning. Too close to the Pole, was the problem. What they needed was to find a way to shift the damned country north by ten degrees. Until then, spring would do no springing. It would stutter, as it did every year, beaten back ten times over by a jealous winter.

‘Hello, Richard!’ A student he didn’t recognise, a boy (where had all the adults gone?) with big hair and a stupid, harmless smile held a door open for him. Richard snorted his thanks, which seemed to please the child. If he was in the class, he was going the wrong way. And if he wasn’t, he had no damned business using his name. Yes, now that he thought about it, that’s just who he was. One of the class. A latecomer. Every day a latecomer. Richard would learn his name, and embarrass him.

The protesters would be out in the quad again. It was possible to avoid them, but it meant looping back through the buildings, and he was already late. Yesterday one of them had spotted him and attempted to engage him in conversation. There had been a time, even very recently, when he had seen them as a sign of the university’s ruddy health. It doesn’t matter too much, he would tell people, what it is they’re protesting about. The thing is they’re out there. They’re exploring the limits, feeling that giddy rush of a boundary passed without reprimand. But without warning the world had shifted on him, in ways they could never know. He found himself like the old man returning to the place of his childhood, unable to find the vantage point about which his memories had been constructed, recognising nothing.

Richard had a friend who would cross the road rather than walk past a busker, she told him they made her feel physically ill, although she could never explain why. Now he understood her. He lowered his head, using the wind as an excuse to pull his collar higher. There were fewer than yesterday, perhaps only nine or ten. And a camera. Was that Amanda? He hurried on. They didn’t notice him.

Richard looked out over the faces of his audience. One hundred and seven of them, or close enough. He was proud of that. Proud of the reputation his lectures held. A good idea, like a good disease, needs only the smallest beginning. This was the only course he lectured now, his last practical link with the world. Bio 309: Biology in a Social Context. His old brain’s foolish love affair.

The older students (mature, the university clumsily called them) sat at the front. They listened carefully, scribbled furiously, nodded often. Beyond that the sorting was by aspiration and ethnicity: desire for success and distance from the lecturer bound together by a simple ratio. Yet it was slouching amongst the carefully careless of the last six rows that Richard liked to believe the infected most often hid themselves. Richard made an effort to raise his eyes to them, throw his best comments their way. Racist? Ageist? He had no time for such niceties. You can die at any moment. And then who will care that you made an effort with the front four rows? Will they come to the funeral? Will they remember the things you told them?

‘I would like to begin by telling you a story. The story of how the missionaries brought Catholicism to the atoll of Fakaofo in the Tokelau group.’

Richard paused. To speak, to be listened to, this was power. His technique had developed slowly, crafted over the years. There was the sound of pens lifted, poised beneath their headings. A cough. A shifting in seats wriggled its way through the auditorium. No PowerPoint here. No downloadable lecture notes. This was a one-off. Many had tried to mend him of his ways, but he was an old dog now, and happy with the excuses it provided.

‘You should know a few things about the Tokelau group, but probably you don’t, for reasons we needn’t go into here. Tokelau consists of a collection of tiny atolls just below the equator. It’s low-lying land with an abundance of fish, warmth, coconuts, and tropical cyclones. A paradise of sorts I suppose, and a hell of sorts too, one imagines. Today the group is accessed by way of a boat trip out of Samoa which can take two full days. My story begins in eighteen forty-eight when boat services were less reliable. Tokelau was isolated then and is isolated today. It has an island population of some fifteen hundred, spread over the three atolls. At the time of our story at least a fourth, Olohega, was also peopled, although the population there must have been small, only a few families.

‘A Frenchman by the name of Jules Tirel, who was, by all accounts, a man with an eye on a future fortune, was amongst them. Promises of great wealth then, as now, motivate a certain sort, and I think we are safe in assuming Tirel was one such man. On Olohega he set up a coconut oil extraction business, which involved collecting the coconuts, pressing their flesh and storing the oil for subsequent shipment. For whatever reason the venture was a short lived one. Records are of course sparse, but we do know that the locals themselves fled the island first, so perhaps Jules was not the most pleasant of neighbours, but we are speculating. Shortly after, he and his fellow entrepreneurs decamped. Not, so far, the most riveting of stories, but bear with me.

‘For our intrepid Frenchman was not content to fade from history’s stage quite so easily. He next enters the record in eighteen fifty-one, in Apia, Samoa, where he is commissioned to return to Tokelau, to the atoll of Nukuono, to help salvage a ship which has grounded there. Now, whether he ever had any intention of refloating the ship is unknown. What is certain is that Tirel took with him his coconut processing equipment. Having pronounced the ship beyond salvage, he then set about extracting three barrels of the precious liquid from the atoll’s crop and set off again for Samoa, promising to return with proper compensation once the oil’s sale had been completed. Whether or not he made the sale is again unknown. The records do however show that he did not return with the promised payment. You may draw your own conclusions.

‘Back in Apia, Tirel next befriended the Bishop in charge of Catholic ministries in the area, and this is where the story gets interesting. Whatever the good motives of missionaries in the area at the time, there was a certain indecency in the race for converts being conducted between the Catholic church and its Protestant adversaries. The population of Tokelau was at this time without the benefit of biblical instruction, although there was a Catholic missionary established in Uvea, another small island within reach of both Samoa and the Tokelaus. And now the cyclones become important. Tirel informed the Bishop that the atoll of Fakaofo had been hit by a severe storm, and that its people were consequently starving and in need of help. Was this the case? It is difficult from this distance to be sure how much of the tale was a convenient fabrication, but as we progress some evidence will emerge which will give comfort to the cynics amongst you.

‘The good Bishop, sensing the hand of God in this business, realised there was an opportunity to bring salvation to these poor souls, who as far as we know had done nothing to deserve such a fate. This opportunity was sharpened somewhat by the fact that the Uvea mission already held a small Tokelau population, who had apparently been shipwrecked there in a previous storm. The Bishop offered our canny entrepreneur a generous payment if he could rescue the people of Fakaofo from their plight and deliver them up to his mission in Uvea. A bonus was negotiated, should he be able to secure more than five hundred persons. To you and I this sounds a little like kidnapping, but in the context of the times it was apparently possible for men of the cloth to see merit in the scheme, and it is not my purpose today to judge their evangelical fervour.

‘Jules set off with one Father Padel, who thankfully for us kept a careful diary outlining the journey and its surrounding circumstances. The ship stopped off in Uvea and collected a cargo of coconuts to take to the storm-ravaged Tokelaus. The ship duly arrived at Fakaofo and it was explained to the people, through the sole translator Jules, that they were invited on board to be taken to a place where they would be better provided for. Now, to the priest’s great surprise, the people were not greatly tempted by the chance to leave behind their precious homeland. Given the parlous state of the storm-ravaged islanders, this may be read as something of a puzzle. Against this we should note that oddly, Father Padel has little to say in his diary regarding the physical state of the reputedly starving islanders. He does however mention that in support of the cyclone and famine hypothesis Jules was able to point out three-hundred recently dug graves. Or perhaps the cunning Tirel was showing the good Father the island’s taro pits. I am not the only one to have made this speculation.

‘The priestly diary records, without a hint of remorse, that one hundred men were then invited on board to collect the coconuts from the ship. It also notes, in equally neutral terms, that once the men were down in the hold, ready to go about their work, the hatches were closed above their heads and they were trapped on board. Lest this was not in itself sufficiently powerful argument in favour of a mass relocation programme, Jules Tirel then led some of the ship’s men back on to the atoll for a spree of destruction. Most importantly, in order to cower the remaining locals, and demonstrate the visitors’ great power, Tirel burned to the ground the islanders’ sacred temple, desecrating their monument to Toi Tokelau, the local God. The chiefs were tied up, and the people guarded overnight, to prevent escape.

‘The next day the people of Fakaofo were told that they too would have to board the ship if they wished to see their menfolk again. This was the choice brought to them by the man of God. Lose your home, or lose your families. Not a simple choice. In fact, the tyranny of the proposition, from this distance at least, is clear. But remember that it is quite probable the priest himself believed he was saving souls, and in the end, what is a little earthly discomfort compared to eternal salvation? The consequences of our cultural choices perhaps need to be more carefully thought through. The record shows that fifty islanders refused the quinella of the immediate company of their beloved and everlasting life and chose instead to give their loyalty to the land that had raised them. The rest were bundled off to Uvea, where those who did not first succumb to an outbreak of influenza on board the ship were schooled in the ways of the white man’s loving and compassionate God.

‘It was another ten years before a group of converted Tokelauans from Uvea returned to their homeland, where they were greeted with understandable suspicion. Nevertheless, the draw of family ties was enough to convince the locals to allow the establishment of the first Catholic missionary on Fakaofo, and so began a long process of forgetting. Long, but I should note, tremendously successful. Prior to the unearthing of Father Padel’s diary, there was no reference in church records to the events surrounding the mass evacuation of the island. Rather the South American slave traders, who later visited the islands in search of labour for kidnap, entered the history books as the people responsible for this mass depopulation. It even became part of the legend that it was a group fleeing these pirates who washed up on Uvea’s shores, delivered to the mission by the hand of God perhaps. For the record, Jules Tirel next turns up on the Cook Islands, again trying to establish his oil empire. For his efforts he was shot dead. Perhaps those locals had not yet discovered the benefits of a loving and forgiving god.’

Richard looked out over his audience, who listened in a silence he chose to interpret as respectful. It was one of his favourite stories, little known and therefore an excellent way of hinting at the uncommon depth of his knowledge. In truth, if called upon he doubted he could produce another tale from the region in any such detail. Intellectually, he was a browser. But the faces in front of him, who knew him by reputation alone, would never guess how close his braided river was to drying up. Even his colleagues were content making the assumptions that best served their prejudices. The audience waited for more.

‘So why do I tell you this story? Because as you know, in this course, I am interested specifically in the places where biology collides with other disciplines, with chemistry, psychology, neurology, sociology, and today, history. There is an urge which every academic faces when confronting a piece of data, be it a measurement, a statistic, or in this case, a story. And the urge is to ask why? Why did this thing we have the privilege of observing occur? It is, in the end, the intellectual raison d’être of any researcher. We value this sort of knowledge because we seek understanding, and we seek the ability to predict, to learn from our mistakes. So, when we hear this story from the Pacific, we can barely stop ourselves asking, “But why did this happen? What drove the people involved to do the things they did?” This I hope is the urge that brings you to an institution like this one. This is the mystery we wish to get to the bottom of. You, just by listening to my story, have already developed your attitudes towards the relevant players. You have already started on this business of summary, and judgement, and apportioning blame.’

Richard wandered as he spoke. There was a pattern to the energy of his lectures: physical, acoustic, psychological. His speaking voice was low, he felt it rumble in his chest and vibrate through his feet to the cheap, charged carpet below. On a good day his mouth ran dry and spittle formed at its corners. Richard stopped abruptly and shook his head.

‘Beware the Why. The Why is a siren song. The inevitability of history is a retrospective conceit. That the missionaries were not above trickery and force to establish their outposts is a recorded fact. That its greater cause should lie within the poorly drawn current of other recorded facts is both deeply misleading and profoundly uninteresting. Okay, this next bit is important. You at the back, slouching boy with the big hair, pick up your pen and write this down.’

Laughter animated their faces. The boy reddened.

‘And if you object to being picked on in this way, next class come on time.’

More laughter.

‘When we seek to explain an event, we must first choose an appropriate level of analysis. At the most fundamental level, we might wish to explain the happenings on Fakaofo by physics alone. Why not? By reducing every player, every coconut, every drop of water and salt in the ocean to its constituent parts, and by attempting to model the forces acting on each and every subatomic particle involved in our story, we might be able, in the manner of a Laplacian demon, to show that what happened on the atoll was the only thing that could have happened. But we don’t. We dismiss the approach out of hand. Why? Because the model we would have to build is too complex for us. Not only is the approach emotionally unsatisfying, but in predictive terms it is entirely useless. It is for this same reason we do not call upon an advanced knowledge of quantum mechanics when preparing a meal.

‘But what you may not have considered, what many of my colleagues appear not to have considered, is that many of the more popular approaches to understanding our history suffer from essentially the same defect. We may wish to explain the fate of the atoll in terms of religious doctrine alone. We might wish to model it as cultural clash, or economic imperialism; we might wish to allow technological advance to explain the meeting, or call upon some bogus genetic representation of the people involved to explain their actions. We might spin elaborate tales about the importance of climate and available food sources. Or perhaps we could lay all the blame at God’s doorstep. But do any of these approaches convince us really? Do any of them assert their primacy with any sort of force? Can any of them make a single prediction about tomorrow which a competing model can not also make? That is the test we will put our explanations to, over the next two weeks, and I suggest to you that many, perhaps most, of the theories we come across will fail this test.’

Richard was winding up now. Preparing for a different battle, a different audience. Like a boxer in his changing room before a bout, punching at the air.

‘History happens to individuals. History is caused by individuals. Did the Bishop understand that Jules was a man of dubious intent? Probably, but he made a pragmatic decision to ignore this for the greater good. He weighed up the outcomes. He searched his conscience. He made his decision. So did the priest who accompanied Jules, who doubtless saw more than he recorded, but chose to interpret his world selectively. He was not simply an animal cocking his leg on foreign territory, because that is what an animal must do. He made his choices, and history judges him accordingly. And what of the Tokelauans themselves? Why relegate their part in the story to that of simple-minded victims of deceit and aggression? Isn’t there something particularly arrogant about that assumption? They could have refused to join their menfolk on the ships. Some did. Again, they weighed up the options, and the consequences.

‘It is misleading to speak of the broad sweep of history. The broad sweep of history is constructed of individual lives, of weeping children and wives beyond comforting. Of the tragedies that visit: always in some particular place, always at some particular time. And always it is built upon the decisions of individuals, who weigh up the probabilities, consider the constraints, examine their consciences; who act or do not act, and so change the flow of events forever. When you are looking for your level of analysis, here is where I suggest you start every time: with the individual, a biological unit within a cultural context, faced always with a set of moral decisions…’

By the end of the lecture the mind of Richard Bradley was a much changed landscape. The sharp dread of an hour ago was now just a dull throb of warning. It could, would, be ignored. His was the simple joy that every big fish finds within the confines of a small pond.

The lectured filed out, and Richard caught scraps of their conversations. Some of them were talking about the lecture, and the knowledge warmed him. Someone, though, was going nowhere. The student stood patiently beside Richard, waiting to be noticed. A young man (but not a child) Richard recognised from row two: just the other side of the great divide, young enough to leave his shirts untucked. The man extended a hand. It was small and smooth. The man looked nervous.

‘Ah, my name’s Luke Krane. I just wanted to say that was the most interesting lecture I’ve ever attended.’

‘Thank you,’ Richard nodded his acknowledgement at the compliment. The man didn’t have to do this, nor was he enjoying it.

‘And it’s helped me make a big decision,’ the man continued. A little too earnestly, Richard thought. He felt embarrassed for him. ‘Um, you see, I’m a school teacher. Secondary. I teach biology. I’ve just been taking this course out of interest, but I’ve been thinking I might go back next year and finish my Masters. And today, well you reminded me how …’ the poor man struggled for the right word, and settled on a deflating compromise. ‘…Well, how good this sort of thing can be. So you’ve helped me decide. It won’t be easy of course, financially, we have a child, and my wife’s just gone back as a part timer now…’

Richard had no time for this fashion of sharing the details of one’s life with strangers. The man, perhaps sensing his disinterest, lost momentum.

‘But yes, that doesn’t matter. I just wanted you to know, well how important that lecture was to me. How, um, positive it made me feel. Thank you.’

The man called Luke looked Richard in the eyes and nodded his second thank you, before turning away and heading for the door. Richard allowed himself a smile. The cloud was passing.

 

 

‘YES, I DON’T think you quite understand my question…’ He held the phone closer to his ear, to drown out the sound of a neighbour’s power tool. ‘No, I’m not that Luke Krane. Yes, K,R,A,N,E. That’s right. No, look at the date of birth. Do you have the date of birth there?’

‘One moment.’

Luke listened to the tapping of a keyboard, and the call-centre echo of twenty other frustrated conversations.

‘Ah yes, sorry, Sir. I see the problem. We have two Luke Kranes here. Can I just have your date of birth please?’

‘Sixteen, ten, seventy-four.’

‘Oh.’ Then silence.

‘Oh? What do you mean oh?’

Luke checked his watch. It had taken seven and a half minutes to be connected to this operator, and now he was getting oh. Two hours ago he had been sitting in a lecture hall and everything had seemed so simple.

He wanted this to be perfect. Every detail fastened down. He wanted to be ready for her objections. (And she would object, at first. She didn’t like surprises.)

She: Robyn, around at her parents, dropping off Alicia. In twenty minutes she would be home. Luke could feel the stress levels rising, like toothpaste squeezed from the bottom of a tube, the way Robyn insisted.

He hadn’t been cut off, he could still hear the tapping, but ominously, nothing more.

‘Ah, maybe this is it,’ the voice offered with some uncertainty. ‘We have a Luke Kane here, no r, living at forty-three Broadway Place.’

‘Yes, yes, that’s me! That one.’ In his mind Luke was in the cubicle, leaning over the young man’s shoulder, pointing at the screen.

‘Right, so there’s no r?’

‘No, yes, there is an r. It’s just there’s been some sort of mistake, obviously.’

‘One moment while I look at that, Sir.’

‘No, no. I don’t have a moment, Can you fix it later?’

‘Do you have your account number there, Sir?’

‘I’ve already given it to you.’

‘Yes, but that was as Krane, with an r.’

‘What does it matter?’

‘I would have to go back to that screen for verification, but your details aren’t on that screen. I need a verification for you without an r, Sir.’

‘But I’m the same person. Why can’t you just change the name?’

‘I need a written request for any change of personal details, Sir.’

‘Okay, okay, wait a minute.’

Luke searched around frantically. Where had he put the statement? He’d had it, just before. This was ridiculous.

‘Look, I don’t have the number.’

‘But you just gave it to me, Sir.’

‘I know. I know I just gave it to you.’

‘All right, just hold on a moment and I’ll see if I can do a cut and paste. Won’t be a sec.’

More tapping. More silence.

‘Bugger.’

‘Bugger what?’ Luke demanded. Outside there was the sound of an approaching car. He checked the window. No, it was the little red Daihatsu from across the street.

‘Um, can I have that date of birth again please?’

‘Look, I’m in something of a hurry. I know you’re just doing your best, but could I perhaps speak to your supervisor?’

‘Certainly, Sir. I’ll just put you back to the choice menu, and if you press one, followed by the hash key, and twenty three … Okay, doing that now …’

‘No, no wait. No, don’t, I just spent seven and a half minutes on the choice menu. Isn’t there someone actually in the room I can talk to? Can’t you just call them over?’

‘No, wait, here we go, you’re in luck. Yes, I’ve got your details right here. Thought that might work.’ The man sounded uncommonly pleased with himself. ‘Now this is the Conservative Fund option we’re looking at is it?’

‘It’s the only one I have isn’t it?’

‘It is.’

‘Well then, we’re looking at that aren’t we?’

‘Yes we are. Now, how can I help you with this?’

‘Well, to start with, what’s the current value?’

‘You know you can find that information by accessing our website?’

‘Yes, I do, but I haven’t set the account up that way, my wife has security concerns, regarding the … Look, I don’t have time. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude.’

‘No, we just like to check.’

‘Right, fair enough.’

‘So …’

‘The value.’

‘Investment value or cash-in value?’

‘Investment, no, I mean … which is bigger?’

Damn, he’d completely lost it. He’d had it all sorted in his head, but ten minutes of waiting had curdled him.

‘The investment value, although its value is only realisable upon maturity.’

Okay, that was it. He’d remembered.

‘Look, what I need to do, is just, well I’m in the scheme, but I’m applying for study leave, for next year, and …’

‘Twenty-one thousand, two hundred and thirty-five dollars. As at the eighth of the ninth. Which includes your employer contribution of course, which is only realisable …’

‘And as I was saying, I’m applying for study leave…’

‘Yes.’

‘Um, and what I need to know is, if I put my contributions on hold for a year …’

‘Yes, you can put your contributions on hold for a period of up to three years, or if you’re working for another government department, you can transfer the scheme directly across to that employer. Are you going to be working for a government department?’

‘No, I’m going to be studying.’

‘All right.’ The tapping started again. ‘And where will you be enrolled for this study?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Well, it’s just that if you’re employed by the institution during the …’

‘No, I’ll just be studying.’

‘All right.’

‘Look, I just wanted to know, if the scheme’s on hold …’

‘That’s available for up to three years.’

‘Look do you mind not interrupting me all the time? It’s slowing things down.’

‘I’m sorry, Sir. We just like to make things as clear as possible. We realise that that you have had to queue for this service, and it is our endeavour to …’

‘Wait a minute. Are you just reading this?’

‘No, not at all, Sir.’

‘You’re not just reading words off a screen, that respond to key words in my questions?’ He’d heard about this. There’d been an interview, on the radio.

‘No.’

‘So why do I hear typing when I talk?’

‘We like to keep a thorough record of all conversations.’

He hated this man. In the course of only four minutes, Luke had actually grown to hate him. Which was a record.

‘Now, did you have a question?’

‘Yes.’ Luke forced himself to stay calm. He was almost there. Now was no time to take his eye off the prize.

‘If I stay in the scheme, but suspend my payments, and am only on study leave, so I’m still employed by my current employer, who contributes to the scheme, and I intend returning to the employer and the scheme at the end of my study leave, can I use the investment value of my fund as collateral if I want to extend my mortgage facility?’

There was a moment’s silence, as the tapping caught up. And a moment more, as the brain attached to the voice on the other end read a message off the screen. The bastard.

‘That depends, Sir.’

‘On what?’

‘On the policy of the institution who issued the mortgage. You should talk to them.’

‘But that’s you! I have my mortgage with you. It’s one of the reasons I chose this scheme.’

‘Then you would need to talk to one of our mortgage specialists, Sir.’

‘And of course you are not a mortgage specialist?’

‘No, I’m not. That takes extra training.’

‘And you can’t put me through to a mortgage specialist?’

‘If you like to return to the main menu and push …’

‘Look, I’m sorry to be short with you but I just wanted to know …’ What? What did he just want to know? Robyn’s hello toot sounded in the drive.

‘Look, you know what, it doesn’t matter. Thank you for your time. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘Goodbye, Sir. Have a nice evening then.’

‘You too.’

‘Hard not to, Sir.’

Was he mocking him? The cheeky little bastard was mocking him.

Robyn was still dressed in her work clothes. New work clothes, which she’d bought three months ago, to mark Alicia’s graduation to childcare. Robyn was an accountant. Accountants dressed carefully, to show their clients they were discerning, but not wasteful. You don’t want your accountant to dress like your hairdresser, nor like a newsreader. Robyn had explained this to him. He’d nodded, and tried to remember what sort of clothes she had worn, back when they were in love.

Not that they were out of love. But it definitely wasn’t the same love. It was wrong of society not to have invented a separate word for it. Cowardly.

‘All done,’ Robyn beamed. ‘They said not to hurry. Well, Mum said not to hurry, Dad doted over Alicia. You know.’

She pecked him on the cheek.

‘What have you been doing? You’re all hot.’

‘Nothing. Just on the phone.’

‘Who to?’

‘A complete stranger who I never want to speak to again in my life.’

‘Oh, all right. How was the lecture today? I’ve got time for a shower right? When are we booked?’

‘Half seven, heaps of time. It was good, really good.’ He raised his voice as she walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower. ‘Fantastic actually. I’ll tell you all about it at dinner.’