7

Central Wellington, Easter Saturday, 17 April

Control nodded for him to sit the other side of the large oak desk. The decrepit old round-shouldered chair with a cracked and faded brown leather seat should have been long retired to the Gracefield public service used-furniture store. He gripped the arms of the seat, and just as well, it was mounted on some kind of rusty metal swivel which lurched and screeched and slewed this way and that. Control pulled out his cigarettes, fired up, inhaled deeply as if it was and might well be his last breath, blew smoke over the interviewee.

‘Explain yourself.’

Simon shrugged, holding his breath until the acrid smoke eased. ‘It was reasonable to assume a clandestine meeting of known marijuana dealers and Maori gang leaders was not to chat about All Blacks selection. Logically there would be illegal substances present.’

Control took another drag, exhaled, squinting through his nicotine cloud. ‘Now you listen to me, Sunny Jim, you are a blithering idiot. There was nothing logical about your tip-off. It was based on assumptions. Wrong assumptions. There was no cannabis found on the premises. Maybe a sniffer dog could have found some, but our police do not have them. You gave me a bum steer. It led nowhere. You are going to have to do a lot better next time. For two pins I wouldn’t bother giving you a next time, but right now we have few options. Get out there and find out what is being planned. Start with Patterson’s daughter. She has to know something.’

He steadied the chair, intending to right the balance of this little exchange. ‘If I’m a blithering idiot, what does that make you? You passed my tip on to the police. If it had been good, you’d be a box of fluffy ducks. Instead, you dip out and accept no responsibility. You blame me for informing you of a suspicious meet. It was up to you what to do about it. Your police lackeys attacked the side of the café with a chainsaw. Bit over the top, wouldn’t you say?’

Control turned away towards a dull brown landscape oil, the only decoration in this room of beige walls, no windows. ‘Of course it was,’ he said, pausing to suppress a cough. ‘For some inexplicable reason they sent in raw recruits who hadn’t a clue how to conduct a raid. Headless chooks. Probably seen too many episodes of that American cop show Naked City and fancy themselves as heroes. Fantasy stuff, and yes, they stuffed up big time.’

Pass-the-blame game, Simon figured.

‘We unfortunately,’ Control continued, ‘have no input into operational strategising. What the presence of these criminals means is not clear, but it does suggest they have a part to play. We know Patterson’s daughter has had contact with them and that for some reason she seems to fancy you. Do what you have to. We cannot stall much longer. The Australians don’t yet know about the death of their agent and only Easter and their appreciation of the constraints we work under have allowed us to prevaricate. As far as they know, she is deep inside this protest cell, and hopefully we can keep it looking that way for the next few days. There has been no coverage in the papers apart from the brief report of an accident, no name mentioned. Radio has not picked it up. We’ll deal with the fall-out when we have to. The Americans on the other hand could be preparing some kind of action of their own. They are obsessed with this anarchist cell we have lost contact with, and do not accept our assessment that they are merely impudent and not dangerous.’

‘Perhaps not.’

Control swung to face him. ‘You know something?’

Simon enjoyed this swing from supercilious to supplicant. ‘I may be on to something there. I can’t if you want to waste time berating me for the abject failure of your flat-footed coppers. I might have a name by the end of the day.’

Control stood, his lined face twisting in a twitch that could have been a smile. ‘Please proceed. Patterson’s brat has been released. The police dropped her off, you should find her home. And ring here the moment you have anything.’

‘But of course,’ he said as he stood carefully, not wishing to lose any of his reestablished advantage by tipping out of the damned chair. ‘I will be in touch.’

It was a decided advantage having Hine back, but also knowing where one of the anarchists was, and exactly what he was doing. Yes, he decided, Simon was not for him. He did not especially like Oliver as a name, preferring his brother’s name, Charles. That was another strike against his father. Mother told him she intended him to be Charles, but his father cocked up the registration of the twins, giving his brother the name mother chose for him. His father’s pathetic excuse, she said, was that he thought she said Charles came first, when what she had meant was that he was first-born by a few minutes. It was not a good start. Mother had told him the story many times.

It baffled him why she was still with his father, they were chalk and cheese, he was Labour, she was National. Perhaps she had harboured the hope that he would get to the top of his department and retire with a knighthood. That was not going to happen with National in power. Perhaps they stayed together to honour their Catholic vows? For sure she was an asset to him at public gatherings; she was always the best-dressed and most attractive woman in the room. He decided anyway, he would not abandon Oliver for Simon, that was Control’s puerile notion and he did not want Control exercising any control over him. He was running this cutter.

His mostly buoyant mood was somewhat dashed when he crossed Dixon Street to where he had left the Vespa motor scooter under the pohutukawas beside the Royal Oak. It had been powder blue. Now it was blue streaked with gooey white droppings. The culprits were everywhere, waddling and cooing around the wedge of dirt and grass remnants and filthy public seating known predictably as Pigeon Park. Greasy wrappers blew about the empty space in the chilly southerly, not even a slumbering alchie to be seen across or under any of the seats. Easter Saturday morning had a hungover gloom about it. He pulled out a pristine white handkerchief, flicked it open and wiped off the seat. This was the day his two-week fast ended. The sight of congealed fragments of hamburger and tomato sauce did nothing to restore his appetite.

The good news was he had taken his helmet to the meeting. He put it on. Ignoring the bird-shit he had not managed to remove, he lashed out at several pigeons approaching their only hope of a handout, climbed aboard and kicked the motor over. He tossed the hankie into the gutter alongside an accumulation of wrappers and crushed cardboard containers and empty brown quart bottles of beer. The council litter collector had one more thing to attend to, if he ever turned up. The clutch jerked as usual, but he kept it controlled and took off around the park and up Dixon Street, across Willis Street, changing down and revving up the dog-leg on to The Terrace.

He had time to compose himself on the curve around the university’s Virginia-creeper-clad red-brick Hunter Building. He had met Hine in its magnificent library, which he loved because it had the stained-glass windows and Gothic-like wooden ribbing of St Paul’s. It was a sort of secular church, even containing if you knew where to look some illuminated manuscripts under lock and key. It was there he had read about Shakespeare being a closet Catholic despite also being a prominent Queen’s Player for the vicious Protestant Elizabeth. He read of links between Hamlet and the Protestant revolution which ushered in Protestant Elizabeth’s reign, bringing murder, fratricide, incest and chaos.

He read everything available and was amazed at Shakespeare’s many sympathetic Catholic characters like the friars in Romeo and Juliet and Much Ado About Nothing. Shakespeare showed an intimate knowledge of Catholic ritual and presented Catholic themes of suffering, resurrection and forgiveness of sins. Richard II saw parallels between himself and the betrayed Christ, Prospero forgave his betrayers.

Reading about Shakespeare’s life there was no doubt in his mind he was a devout Catholic, like his daughter Susanna, to whom he left everything, and nothing to his Protestant family members. There were so many Catholic references. As a young man he was living in a house where a Catholic pamphlet was discovered. He was married by a man denounced as a Catholic priest. He purchased a house in London with a priest’s secret room. He visited the Vatican.

Oliver could not credit that the Jesuits never mentioned any of this. Did they not know? Were they so blinded by their disdain for all things Anglican they willfully ignored Shakespeare’s Catholicism? They never stopped talking about their illustrious Jesuit saint, Edmund Campion, who conducted an underground ministry in Shakespeare’s time. When he was caught the Protestants convicted him of high treason and had him hanged, drawn and quartered.

His Jesuit teachers revered Campion’s resolve under torture, lasciviously offering horrendous details. If Campion had confessed to his torturers, Shakespeare might have been implicated and never written Hamlet or Macbeth or King Lear. Surely that was worthy of comment, that Shakespeare led a secret Catholic life and wrote so ambiguously that he never suffered the imprisonment and torture of some of his less artful fellow playwrights, like Ben Jonson. To him it was a wondrous discovery confirming he and the world’s greatest writer were part of the One True Church.

His happenstance reading paid large and unexpected dividends when he aired it in Professor McKenzie’s tutorial. He was not only warmly praised but doors were opened that led to introductions, notably to the great New Zealand theatre director Richard Campion. Oliver began to perceive this as his Catholic destiny and vindication of his rejection of the Jesuits and the sinful seminarians.

The first check in this lay Catholic connection with Shakespeare and the stage was when Campion said he was too young and handsome to be considered for the part of the priest in the upcoming production of The Devils at the University Memorial Theatre. It was a cruel blow. It was not supposed to happen. He was sure it was written in the stars that he would be anointed as the only person fit to play the priest. It skewed his feelings so badly he petulantly muttered in the student café he would like to blow the production and all who trod its boards to kingdom come.

And yet even this seemed to lead on, as if by a divine guiding hand, when he was overheard by Jeremy, with the benefit of hindsight hovering like Iago or one of the Roman plotters. They got talking and he saw how Jeremy’s very anti-social interests could be channelled to his advantage. The pudgy little squirt was so eager to initiate mayhem, he would be a pushover. He did not hesitate to invite him to be a flatmate in the house his mother had provided for him. He would see mother for Mass tomorrow and regrettably his father at lunch. Meantime he needed to refine his plans with Jeremy and force himself to be nice to Hine so he could learn her godless cabal’s protest plot. He could do it. He was an actor. This would be a part he played to bring out the trust in his Ophelia.

He knew she was smitten with him. She kept blushing whenever he caught her eye. She gazed dreamily at him when he expounded on Shakespeare, as if it was all his own ideas and not what he had read. She was vulnerable and naïve, like Ophelia. Strangely, that did not provoke his contempt. He did feel something for her, something he had no references for identifying, but nothing must compromise his exposure of the communist rot at the core of their Christian society.

The fast ended at midday. He was starving and craving fat, salt and protein. Two weeks of one bowl of porridge per diem was incredibly boring. Mother Mary had suggested that, as it was good enough for the Scots, it should be good enough for anybody. She’d told him that when she was weaning him back on to food after his self-imposed eight-day fast in the seminary. He had done that instinctively, the only way to ease the endless daytime psychological bullying by the Jesuit priests and the inevitable night-time propositions under cover of dormitory darkness. Both were intolerable. The Rector in particular liked to humiliate him in class.

‘Gus?’ he’d drawl in his dry, sarcastic tone. ‘Decline the present subjunctive moods of the verb to carry. In the Latin, I need hardly remind you. This is Latin class, in case you failed to notice. Church Latin, not the pagan classical Roman as practised by Cicero. Can we assume after 18 months that you know that? Or am I falling into a weary magister’s presumptive assumption? Gus, I am waiting.’

Silence, except for titters from classmates.

‘Gus! ARE YOU SUPERSONIC?’

Unrestrained laughter and his ears incandescent, a red flush spreading down his neck.

The evening frolics usually started in the showers, dropping soap and inviting him to pick it up. Bumping against him accidentally on purpose. Chortling. In bed a whisper beside his ear: ‘Move over, Gus, I want to do you.’

He could not get his head around this constant committing of the mortal sin of concupiscence, this perverted lusting for another male. These sodomites stayed at the back of the chapel next morning, unable to take the Holy Communion wafer. It would have burned holes in their sinning tongues.

The day and night bullying ended when he had what he had to believe was the divine-inspired idea to go on hunger strike. He had no notion where he got the idea, he knew nothing about its practice anywhere else, unless you count the saints who voluntarily fasted and wore hair shirts and flogged themselves. He flat refused to eat anything, at breakfast, at lunch, at dinner. He ignored all pleas to eat.

By the end of the week the priests were pleading with him to eat. They had turned from tormentors to petitioners. Even the other seminarians changed from buggers to beggars, urging him to eat. He knew then the power of his instinctive choice. The Jesuits were terrified of a scandal, of the outside world learning that a trainee priest had died of hunger in the midst of plenty. The other seminarians feared their guilty and depraved secrets would be exposed and never came near him again. Satisfied he had made his point, he stood up at breakfast, plucked an apricot out of a bowl, bit into it and left.

His mother encouraged his taking an arts degree. He loved it. Especially drama. Make-believe. Shakespeare. He got an almost religious experience from the words, as potent as the recitation of the Dies Irae or the full-throated seminary choir singing Gloria in excelsis deo. No surprise, really. Shakespeare and the other Elizabethan playwrights filled the need for fine words and dramatic ritual after Elizabeth banned all Catholic practices. You have to get your spiritual uplift from somewhere. Elizabeth must have recognized that, for she set up the Queen’s Players. Shakespeare was one.

It amazed him how the bard survived, considering how close he sailed to the wind, a closet Catholic, related to some of the Gunpowder plotters, who even did their plotting with a relation of Shakespeare’s at Stratford. Shakespeare’s plays filled his own gap since abandoning the regular rituals of the seminary, the plain chant masses, singing in the glorious Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Christchurch, the splendour of the vestments, the bells and incense and flowers, all feasts for the senses. Shakespeare’s magical words were balm for his deprived soul.

But he was appalled at the godless licentiousness and moral vacuity of most students, who seemed only interested in fornication and getting drunk. Then there were the trainee orators promoting godless communism outside the Student Union building. He joined the Moral Rearmament Movement until they too fell short of the action required to challenge the insidious propaganda of the socialists. He needed to clear his head, find a way forward. Another fast had seemed the obvious solution.

Unfortunately it had led to a less than satisfactory outcome. He was not sure what was real and what he was imagining. Foolishly he thought that by inviting two of the more coherent Moral Rearmers to flat with him, he could promote a dialogue that produced some solutions. That was not working out. There was no useful exchange of opinion. And worse, the two appeared to have succumbed to the prevailing loose behavior of most students and were sharing the same bedroom. He was relieved when they went off on the Easter break.

Meantime he had taken to mumbling aloud in the caff, so he was informed by Jeremy when approached by him. Jeremy said he might be able to help with the problem he was expressing aloud. He had practical skills that could be harnessed. Jeremy was only too happy to boast about how he had gone underground in plain sight, and the dumb cops had no idea where he was, right under their noses.

Now he was not so sure that Jeremy was entirely sane or that his devices were controllable, even though the gnome assured him he could control precisely the level of smoke and the degree of impact. In fact, he was not even sure what he had proposed to Jeremy.

In his food-deprived state, he was convinced Hinemoa Patterson was a heaven-sent opportunity. She was in the same drama tutorial. He noticed she kept looking at him until he caught her eye, when she blushed and looked away. She was not forward like so many of the girl students. She tweaked his interest. When he discovered she was the socialist broadcaster’s daughter, he took it as a sign.

It was not difficult to engage her in conversation about Shakespeare, and he further ingratiated himself with her by rating this light-weight pop group the Beatles she confided how much she loved as the modern equivalent of Shakespeare. She swallowed such absurd comparison whole and entire. Now he had to be able to justify this flight of fancy. All he knew about the Beatles was that like most pop groups they sang silly love songs. He vaguely recalled them squawking that they wanted to hold somebody’s hand.

He quickly purchased a number of their records. There were always sacrifices to be made in pursuit of a worthwhile goal. It worked beyond his expectations. Jeremy heard him playing some repetitive drivel about she loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. Jeremy sneered he always knew he was a phony with his high and mighty classical storm music. Oliver defended the Beatles, saying they were in the great song-writing tradition, unlike the electronic squawks he went in for. Jeremy snapped back he was as much of a pseud as one of the junior lecturers in music, quoting the music critic of The Times saying the Beatles were the greatest songwriters since Schubert.

Oliver’s interest was tweaked and he needed to be able to spin Hinemoa a line about the Beatles. It was easy enough to track down the lecturer, Harold Hamilton, a hirsute fellow scarcely visible behind a straggle of long corkscrewing black locks spilling over his face and merging into a bib of unruly black beard. Like an acquarium fish almost invisible behind dense strands of kelp, bulging eyes assessed this intruder into his composing cubbyhole. Oliver must have passed the test because he had to endure a 30-minute rave about the Beatles. Hamilton gave him a copy of The Times critic William Mann’s article, which was where Hamilton got his ideas. Mann rabbited on about Aeolian cadence and chord progression on Not a Second Time similar to the end of Mahler’s Song of the Earth, the chains of pandiatonic clusters and median switches of I Want to Hold Your Hand. Oliver suspected bullshit, but it was perfect for the idea forming.

Just as he had with Shakespeare, he regurgitated this lofty stuff over coffee in the caff. It was after all no more than the junior lecturer did with his classes.

In an awestruck, reverent voice, Hine said he was not only with it, he was ahead of it. Yes, manipulating the broadcaster’s baby bitch might prove to be a stroke of genius. So he invited her to flat with him. It was working out best of all his flatting invitations.

His pressing urge was to eat. He continued around past the house and down to the Kelburn shops. It was wonderful to smell hot fat as he entered the fish and chips shop.

‘Oliver! Long time no see. Your flatmate Remy always here, not you.’

‘Hi, Alan. Yeh, I’ve been out and about. But I intend to make up for it. One – make it two fillets, and chips, and a dozen oysters.’

‘Coming up,’ the Chinese man beamed, and yelled the order over his shoulder. ‘How you been keeping, Oliver? You doing anything over the Easter break?’

Oliver smiled. ‘This and that. But nothing I am looking forward to more than your inestimable f and c.’

‘Flattery gets you everywhere. Hey, extra scoop!’

Alan got busy with the chips and Oliver looked at the sagging posters of faded Oriental landscapes. His mouth was streaming.

‘Bonzer brill,’ he said, taking the folded warm package and handing over a ten bob note. He accepted the change. ‘See ya next time.’

‘Don’t be so long to next feed, eh, Oliver.’

He parked the Vespa and bounded up the path. Jeremy was not in the flat. Hine was, emerging from the bathroom with a bright red and green beach towel round her chest, rubbing a white towel through her wet hair. He greeted her with his best grin.

‘Got you a fillet, if you fancy it?’

‘Hi Olly,’ she said. ‘No, ta. I’m not hungry. You go ahead. Hope you had a better night of it than I did.’

He knew exactly what she meant, given he had engineered her downtown detention and that of the Jew and that stage Scotsman he overheard planning a marijuana meet. Pity her father had not been picked up too, but you couldn’t have everything. He put on a concerned frown. ‘Something you want to talk about? I’m here to listen.’

She hesitated, said it could wait. She asked him what all the white stuff was on the back of his trousers.

He craned around behind, silently cursing the pigeon poop he had not noticed. ‘Bloody birds,’ he said. ‘I need to clean up too. How’s your dad?’

‘Not good. Doctors say it takes time.’

He put a hand on her arm. ‘I am so sorry, Heen.’

Her eyes watered up. She glanced away, said she had to get dressed, get the contacts in.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ he called after her retreating body. Her curvaceous body. Her big green eyes. She had the looks of a courtesan, the demure demeanour of a madonna. She was the exact opposite of the siren Delilah. He was perhaps attracted to her, he was not sure, given he had no previous experience to call on. He had, after all, touched her arm, admittedly playing sympathy, but he had not found it repellent.

She turned at her bedroom door. ‘I have to tell you about your room. Our rooms. We had some idiots break in. Jeremy surprised them.’

He laughed. ‘I’m sure Jeremy would frighten away the toughest burglars, not.’

It got a smile from her. She told him to check his room.

His room was fine, apart from the Laurence Olivier poster as Richard III with the head crudely sellotaped on to the hump-backed body. Olivier as Hamlet was ready with rapier. The typewriter had bent keys but he was not concerned. He did not use it. You got secretaries to type. He picked up his copy of the play and went out to devour the fantastic fish and chips and make tea. Best meal he’d ever had. There were many things to say for fasting, but none beat breaking it. He wiped grease and salt off his lips with a fresh monogrammed handkerchief, ironed as always by his mother.

‘Great to see my Ophelia,’ he said, suppressing a belch. He meant what he said. She was wearing the gorgeous floor-length moss-green velvet dress for the Ophelia role. He felt a stab of jealousy, the part falling in her lap, him reduced to stand-in. He knew he could do the gloomy Dane to a T. The trouble was, Tim Elliott was brilliant and didn’t look likely to fall on his rapier in rehearsals. Maybe that could be arranged.

‘You polished that lot off quick time,’ she said. ‘I don’t recall you eating like that before. But then, it’s only a few weeks I’ve known you.’

‘I’ve been worrying about you,’ he said impiously. ‘I was wondering where you’d got to,’ his voice deepening with concern. ‘You look like you could use some sugar in your tea.’

She helped herself, sipped on the mug, put it down on the lurid yellow oilcloth, stared across the table at him, her green eyes blinking rapidly from the contacts. She started to say something, but checked herself, turning away. ‘The contacts,’ she said hoarsely.

He reached his hand out and clasped hers. He wasn’t clear why he did. He had never before taken anybody’s hand. The only person who ever took his hand was his mother, and that was years ago when he was just a kid. He shuddered at the random thought of where some seminarians wanted him to put his hand. Perhaps he was getting inside in the part, deceiving the credulous Ophelia to win her trust, before pouring scorn and contempt upon her. ‘We could rehearse, if you like? I know the Dane.’

‘Word perfect,’ she murmured.

‘It might help, you know, get you into the part?’

She nodded agreement, allowed him to hold on to her hand. More surprisingly to him, he let himself continue to embrace hers.

Oliver put his other hand to his brow, head down, silent. ‘I’ll start at the end of To be or not to be.’ He paused again, but only for effect, he knew the lines, as she said, to the word perfect:

‘The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons

Be all my sins remember’d.

Good my lord,

How does your honour for this many a day?

I humbly thank you; well, well, well.

My lord, I have remembrances of yours,

That I have longed long to re-deliver;

I pray you, now receive them.

No, not I;

I never gave you aught.

My honour’d lord, you know right well you did;

And, with them, words of so sweet breath composed

As made the things more rich: their perfume lost,

Take these again; for to the noble mind

Rich gifts wax poor when givers prove unkind.

There, my lord.

Ha, ha! are you honest?’

‘Olly?’

He broke his Hamlet middle-distance stare and looked at her. He must remember not to object to the diminutive. He preferred Oliver, but sacrifices were required when one became immersed in a role. ‘What troubles you, my truly fair yet darkling maid?’

‘Oh,’ she said, tossing back her long black hair. ‘Never mind that malarkey. Why does he ask her if she is honest?’

‘I think he means are you a virgin?’

‘Really?’ Her eyes enlarged, and she started blinking, blushed and retrieved her hand to use both to keep her contacts in place.

‘Lots of code in the play,’ he said. ‘Nunnery is of course a brothel.’

Hine sighed. ‘He doesn’t treat her well. Turning up in her chamber with his pants round his ankles, befouled, I think, is the description.’

‘Neither trusts the other,’ Oliver said. ‘Both are shattered by their fathers’ deaths. Hamlet has lost faith in women because of his mother’s behaviour with his uncle. He is really railing against himself. But he is not mad. He is, as he says, putting on an antic disposition, to aid his divining of his uncle’s guilt.’

‘And Ophelia?’

‘Mad as a cut snake. Well, consider she is torn between her loyalty to her father and her love of Hamlet. It is too much. She goes doolally. And them’s your set-pieces. You want to deliver a set-piece?’

Hine frowned. ‘Here we go:

By Gis and by Saint Charity, 
   Alack and fie for shame,
Young men will do ‘t, if they come to ‘t; 
   By Cock, they are to blame. 
Quoth she, ‘Before you tumbled me, 
   You promised me to wed.’
So would I ‘a done, by yonder sun, 
   An thou hadst not come to my bed.

How’d I do?’

Oliver took both her hands this time. ‘You are stunning,’ he said, and really meant it. She was most affecting, even if the words were crude. ‘You are going to be a star.’

She squeezed his hands and stood up. ‘I don’t know. Dad needs care. Anyway, she is a bit of a doormat, don’t you think?’

‘More than a bit.’

‘Damned if she sleeps with him, damned if she don’t. We don’t have that problem of getting up the duff anymore. Thank God for the pill, eh?’

Oliver could not hide his shock.

Hine gave him a calculating look. ‘You don’t approve?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘not at all. I mean, I was surprised. I didn’t know you were. Actually, I don’t know what I mean.’

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I haven’t seen you uncertain before, Mr Shakespeare scholar.’

He forced a chuckle. ‘I’m all theory, I suppose.’

‘Look,’ she said, ‘I promised my uncle I’d visit dad with him. You want to come to the Monde Marie tonight. Most of the leftie libs from the party will be there.’

‘Yeh?’ He felt his pulse accelerate. Maybe he would have something to report, without even trying.

‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a lift. Hope your uncle’s better behaved than Hamlet’s.

‘Dork,’ she said, slapping his shoulder. Then she put her arms around him, leaned up and pressed her lips to his. To his surprise, he didn’t mind. He was thinking of Hamlet entering her chamber, of the line of Ophelia’s about sucking the honey of his music. It was mysterious but thrilling.

So were her arms around his stomach as she climbed up behind. He could not remember his last hug, and that would have been his mother. He inadvertently accelerated as he flashed on seminarians hugging. This was different. Her hug around his midriff was so much more than a hug.

On the way back from leaving her at her father’s house, he tried mentally to reassemble his plans. The imprint of her arms around his body was a distraction and one he did not want to stop. Jeremy claimed he could make any kind of incendiary device, confessed his penchant for chemistry lab sabotage tricks was what had him banished from the chemistry course. Jeremy was entirely open about his desire to cause public mayhem, and that he aspired to something a lot more dramatic than the cutting up of the American general’s cap after his dinner at Vic. They caught somebody else for that, and he was let off with a fine. He had a truly devious lawyer who argued lack of evil intent, a first offence that would ruin a promising career and the fact the cap was returned. Jeremy felt as let down as the Americans by the mealy-mouthed excuse of a verdict and meant to eclipse that little pipe-opener.

Oliver hadn’t been thinking straight when he suggested a smoke bomb released on opening night of The Devils. That was entirely petty. Jeremy was keen on the protest device, said it was good practice for what he had in mind. His concern was that Jeremy was not good at taking orders. He showed no gratitude for a free bed after complaining about the restrictions at his aunt’s. As far as he could tell, it also meant the authorities were unlikely to locate this pathetic little anarchist despite their best efforts. Well, at least not in the short-term, not until the protest was over. Then he might have to give Control the tip-off about the anti-social behaviour of this unattractive little flatmate.

For now Jeremy was safe enough. Changing his name had helped. The only question was how to ensure that he controlled Jeremy’s slings and arrows against the chance of a sea of troubles coming his way. He would cancel the play’s smoke bomb stunt, go for the protest bomb and set it up so that the authorities would be sure it was a violent side emerging in the protest movement. With any luck it would unleash New Zealand’s dogs of war against the communist menace, the commitment of troops to Vietnam and a crackdown on these home-grown lefties. It was becoming a very tangled web as he progressed to deceive. So be it. Things were clicking into place. Ophelia – Hine -- would be a victim, but that was historically to be expected.