11

Kelburn, very early Easter Monday morning, 19 April

A pounding woke Oliver out of a troubled sleep. He sat bolt upright, trying to make sense of the noise coming from the front of the house. He was dreaming superstitious dread of Black Monday. He touched his nose to check it was not bleeding, like Launcelot early Easter Monday morning in The Merchant of Venice. Easter Monday was unlucky in Shakespeare’s day, but was it still unlucky? Or was it much worse? Had he sold his soul to the devil of lust? His heart was thumping seemingly in time with the banging on the little-used front door. He dared not move. He peered through sleep-encrusted eyes at the closed curtains. It was pitch black. What if there was a thick mist over the city? That would prove something, he was not sure what.

‘Who’s calling at this hour?’ Hine asked sleepily.

‘Open up!’ somebody bellowed, followed by an almighty wallop that shook the house. Men’s voices were shouting and torches flashing about. The boots thumped away from Hine’s room, the door to Oliver’s room bashed open.

‘Try the other one,’ a voice ordered.

Two black balaclava-clad figures appeared in the doorway. This time they were waving automatic rifles. Oliver shielded his eyes from the torch, then his genitals with his other hand.

‘No need for this,’ he said feebly, noting that a torch was playing over Hine holding the sheet across her naked body.

‘Oliver Bolton, Hinemoa Patterson, we have warrants for your arrest. Put your clothes on and do it NOW! Move it!’

‘Or you lose it!’

There was a suppressed snort of amusement. To them this was a fun game and they held all the cards. Oliver was relatively relieved, the more potent imagery of his dream replaced by cops. He figured they were not in any real danger. These boys acting tough and cracking funnies had orders to bring them in, not to hurt them. Still, the torch roaming over Hine’s body was a provocation. ‘Better do what they say,’ he said, moving in front of the torch.

‘Like we have a choice,’ she said.

They put on jeans and skivvies but had no time to put on shoes as they were hustled out the door.

‘Overkill,’ he sneered, as he was hauled down the path.

‘Shut it,’ a voice warned him, ‘or we’ll shut it for you.’

Oliver knew where the ride through the dark, empty streets would end up, at Control’s offices. He hoped and prayed Control was not going to identify him as in his employ. It would ruin everything with Hine.

The police prodded them inside and stood guard. Control was there, the cop Milton, a large, square-jawed man with an American Marine crew-cut and a powder-blue jacket, tan shirt and trousers and oxblood shoes with tassels. It was an outfit Oliver associated with golf.

Control pointed silently to the interview room. Oliver took Hine’s hand and they entered. Dan Delaney was seated on a bentwood chair facing a table with more comfortable chairs behind it. On the table was the suitcase tape-recorder, the German one. And beside it the interrogator’s lamp, lighting up Dan’s figure, his hands locked behind him in handcuffs. Control told them to take the seats next to Delaney.

‘No need to handcuff Delaney, surely,’ Milton objected.

Control ignored him. ‘Mr Hancock,’ Control began, pausing to light a cigarette as the three men took seats opposite. He blew smoke over them. ‘Mr Hancock here has been able to find out who your friend Jeremy is, and what he might be up to. But we’ll let you tell us all you know. I need not remind you two gentlemen that you are bound by the Official Secrets Act. Miss Patterson, we will arrange a retrospective signing for you. Let’s begin with you, Simon.’

‘Oliver is my name.’

‘Oliver, then. You did not tell us much about your nasty little flatmate.’

‘Not much to tell. I agree with you he is a nasty piece of work. He’s taken off, I’ve no idea where.’

Control tutted, adjusted the light so it was shining in Oliver’s eyes. The other two men stared stone-faced at them.

‘You’re not going to get away with this kind of police state behavior.’

‘Mr Delaney, you will get your turn. For now, shut up.’ Control began a coughing fit.

‘Hey fella,’ the crew-cut Mr Hancock growled. ‘How about easing up on the cancer sticks.’

‘How about treating us like human beings?’ Hine said.

Control ground out his cigarette in a tin astray, the acrid odour enhanced.

‘Mr Hancock has identified from their own fingerprint files that your flatmate is a John Jeremy Morrison, known when he was flatting in Tinakori Road, Thorndon by the juvenile and quite accurate criminal cognomen Mini Cannon. He has one surviving relative, a grandmother who looked after him after the death of his parents in a suspicious fire in their house. We are interested in you telling us about the smoke bomb located under the stage floor of the University Memorial Theatre. We know Morrison made it and we learned, from an anonymous phone call, that you asked Morrison to build the bomb. You want to tell us why?’

Oliver sensed Hine tense beside him. Jesus, he needed his head read ever engaging that toxic gnome. The slimy little toad had dobbed him in. ‘It’s not true,’ he said indignantly. ‘This is all hearsay.’

‘Let’s hear your say, before you are charged with intent to cause property damage and disruption of a dangerous order at a public gathering. Minimum jail term for that is five years, but we could probably double it without much trouble. Our judiciary does not like an incendiary, and even less those who put fire lighters up to it.’

‘Hearsay.’

‘Really. Perhaps you do not quite register the implications of your rash enticement of this unstable person to commit what could easily have resulted in a fire in an enclosed space and probable loss of life as well as property. We will hold you accountable. The only chance you have to get any reduction in your sentence is to tell us where Morrison is and what he planned after this little, ah, pipe-opener.’

‘You’re fishing,’ Dan growled. ‘You have nothing on Hine or Oliver or for that matter me.’

‘We know you have all been at a gathering of disaffected socialists. We know from Delaney’s own information that a major protest is planned.’

‘I told Milton all this,’ Dan said indignantly. ‘These are bureaucrats and professionals and academics exercising their democratic right to protest.’

‘No argument with that right, Delaney. Our concern is that it is a cloak for a more sinister kind of protest. You and Miss Patterson are linked to Master Bolton and his identifiably dangerous flatmate. Perhaps you do not know that Master Morrison was kicked out of his chemistry course for continuous disruptions of the exploding sodium and stink bomb variety. He has progressed since then. What we could term his smokescreen is studying this incomprehensible electronic stuff for a music unit one of your predictably leftwing professors is promoting. What he is actually doing is attempting to raze the university theatre and cause panic and possible loss of life. We were dead lucky, no pun intended, that the device was accidentally found and handed in.’

‘By Hine and me.’

‘Yes, Mr Delaney. The Chief Inspector has briefed me. Again, it could easily be your smokescreen. While we do not know where to apprehend this loose Mini Cannon, we regard the planned protests tomorrow as fertile ground for the committing of a major and possibly lethal incident. We must locate and neutralize Morrison. Do you understand?’

‘You’d better believe it,’ Hancock said. ‘Morrison is on record promising a more significant outrage against our presidential envoy than his theft and defacing of General Hamilton J. Howze’s uniform hat. I will give you the background to this threat so you might appreciate why we take this anarchist galoot seriously. The general has for the last two years been commander of the United States Forces in Korea, which makes him our main military man at the forefront of our war against the Chi Coms. He was here direct from Fort Bragg to address your United Nations Association at a Coral Sea celebration dinner in the Students Association cafeteria. The New York Times reported the occasion and noted your Prime Minister Holyoake was there, which signals America is watching. This was considered a goodwill occasion where America affirmed its close links with your country, which you appreciate the Coral Sea engagement saved you from Japanese servitude. The general’s aide placed the uniform hat under the general’s wife’s fur coat in an upstairs dark corner next to the entrance to the Memorial Theatre, for fear some student might liberate it. Guess what?’

‘I’m sure you’re going to tell us,’ Oliver said.

Hancock bristled. ‘Yeah, this little turd must have been watching, he waltzed off with the hat. Back at their flat they cut it up and mixed a pudding of cornflour and tomato sauce in it. Now here’s the kicker. The hat was tossed over the ambassador’s fence. A note attached read: “A small thing in return for the peoples of Guatemala, Honduras and Vietnam. Get fucked. Next time we fuck you big time.” ‘

‘Fair enough,’ Hine piped up.

Hancock shook his massive head as if unable to believe what she said. ‘We caught the tosser. At first he joked, said their flat was “a bomb’s throw from the imperialist residence”. We left the authorities here to prosecute. But we did not forget. America never forgets a threat. With or without your cooperation, we intend to track down Morrison and, you’d better believe it, snuff out any threat he is planning. Like General Howze, President Johnson’s Special Envoy Henry Cabot Lodge is equally central to America’s current geopolitical stance, and he will no doubt reiterate that we do welcome you in the ANZUS alliance at the highest level. In case it passed you by, Lodge was vice-presidential candidate to Richard Nixon when he lost in 1960 to Kennedy. The Kennedy/Johnson administration recognized Mr Lodge could make a contribution above and beyond partisan politics. He was American ambassador to South Vietnam in 1963. He is an important player and we must ensure there is no threat to his person. Okay, we on the same page here?’

‘We speak almost the same English,’ Oliver said sarcastically. ‘Our newspapers report your progress in Vietnam.’

‘We are of course fully briefed on Mr Lodge,’ Milton said. ‘We are charged with his safety and maintaining his schedule with our politicians and dignitaries runs like clockwork. We do not intend to cock it up.’

Hancock shrugged, as if he had little faith in the competence of New Zealand’s police. ‘We need more than assurances.’ He tapped Control on the arm. ‘We need better intelligence than has been forthcoming. So let me lay it out loud and clear.’ He stabbed a forefinger in turn at Control, Milton, Oliver, Hine and Dan. ‘We welcome any assistance you can provide, now you have been told what kind of character Morrison is. You may not have appreciated the depth of his psycho feelings before his trial run with this smoke bomb. He is escalating his violent anti-social behavior. You don’t presumably share his hatred of America. Help us catch him before this loose little cannon does something we will all regret, like spilling the blood of innocent Kiwi civilians.’

‘You’re bombing Vietnamese peasants,’ Hine said truculently. ‘It doesn’t seem to bother you that you’re spilling their blood.’

Hancock snapped a ballpoint in two. He was dangerously flushed.

‘Look,’ Oliver intervened before Hancock’s blood pressure reached ignition. ‘We can’t keep repeating ourselves. We do not know where he is.’

‘Enough pussyfooting around,’ Hancock snarled, leaning across the table. ‘I say we sweat them. These wimpy do-gooder commie sympathisers never hold up. We found that out in the McCarthy hearings in the fifties. At the first sign of pressure, these soft-shell socialists crack open and spill all their dirty little secrets and can’t wait to name everybody else in their subversive cabals.’

‘Absolutely out of the question,’ Milton said. ‘We ask questions, we do not use the cosh.’

‘I was thinking of something a little more persuasive,’ Hancock said. ‘Electrodes work wonders.’

Milton stood. ‘This is outrageous. I will not be a party to these goonish tactics. I have already objected strenuously to Delaney being brought in as if he is a common criminal. He is a former police officer and has served his nation under the most trying circumstances preventing the assassination of our then prime minister.’

‘Listen, buster, you Kiwis are wet behind the ears. We have a full-scale communist insurgency on our hands in Vietnam. It is the start of the Chi Com push to invade and occupy the Western world. These clowns are part of the wishy-washy lib-left fellow travelling faction that do not recognize a tiger when, as your Churchill put it so well, it has your fucking head in its mouth. Get real! We all must make sacrifices to stop this enemy. We have to root out its collaborators in our midst. America is only as strong as its weakest ally. That weakest ally is Noo Zealand. You people are babes in the wood. You got to learn that you can’t handle these abusers of our democratic freedoms with kid gloves. You shape up or we cut you adrift. You get my message, I can’t make it any plainer. So let’s fix this starting right here and right now.’

‘Mr Hancock,’ Control said, pausing to light another cigarette. He blew smoke and turned towards Hancock. ‘You are here as an observer. You have no jurisdiction. You will kindly sit quietly and observe, or leave this room.

Hancock was on his feet, his face phone-box red, finger jabbing under Control’s nose. ‘You penny ante prick! I found out who your little anarchist bomber really is. You won’t find him, I will. Starting with his grandmother. Why don’t you have a cup of fucking tea with these homegrown commies. I’m out of here. You gonna be hearing from my ambassador, you can bet your bottom dollar on that.’

‘We don’t have dollars here,’ Milton said to Hancock’s retreating back. ‘I am sorry, Delaney. This fool here had you brought in without my say-so. As for you two stupid kids, you can start to cooperate before I throw the book at you.’

‘That Yankee is certainly agitated,’ Oliver said smoothly. ‘Sound and fury signifying nothing. It can’t be good for his health.’

‘I’m ending this session,’ Milton told Control. ‘These people are free to go. I would appreciate any assistance they can give us with this big protest march tomorrow. Any notion where Morrison is or what he is planning would of course be welcome. I need a word with you.’

Control sighed. ‘This arrangement doesn’t work. We cannot get results under the present arrangements. We need independence from your limited operational structures, Chief Inspector. I will be reporting to your political superiors about this. I just hope you have not made a major mistake.’

‘We’ll find out tomorrow,’ Milton said. ‘Come on, I’ll have you three dropped back where you live.’

Oliver and Hine were back in bed, where their day began so well until their arrest. The mood had changed. Oliver felt his conscience jabbing at him like Hancock’s belligerent forefinger.

‘There are a few things I should tell you.’

Hine sat up, lifted the pillow vertically to prop her back against the wall, laughing at Oliver’s eyes on her jiggling breasts.

‘I can cover them,’ she said, ‘if they’re putting you off. But don’t you Doolans confess to your priests, not the lady you sin with?’

Oliver swung around, his feet on the floor, his back to her. ‘I’m serious,’ he muttered. ‘I wasn’t going to admit it to those state thugs but it was my fault Jeremy or John or whoever he is made that smoke bomb.’

The bed shuddered behind him and Hine pressed against his back, her arms around him like she had on the Vespa. He felt the same instant response.

‘I’m sorry about mother,’ he said. ‘She’s not used to seeing me with a woman. Ever.’

She rested her head against his back. ‘Olly, it’s okay, I’m a big girl, I can cope. Mothers are always protective of their sons. I think.’

Oliver lifted her hands away and turned to face her. ‘You’re beautiful,’ he said.

‘So are you, Mr Shakespeare actor/scholar/Mickey Do/lover boy.’

‘I love you,’ he said in a low voice, closing his eyes as they are embraced. ‘Um?’ he started to say.

‘What now, lover? Something on your mind – apart from the obvious?’

He tried to express his dread, but he couldn’t find the words. ‘Shouldn’t we?’ he started, his chest tight, his ears flaming. ‘You know?’

She laughed. ‘Bit late to think of frenchies, isn’t it? I told you not to worry, I’m on the pill. Spider Hands to the rescue.’

‘Eh?’

‘That’s what the girls call the good Doctor Schneiderman. Well, not so good. He wanted to demonstrate how I could, ah, express myself.’

Oliver sat up, his manhood wilting. ‘You mean he wanted to touch you? Down there?’

‘The dirty old bastard, I told him I knew about his little trick, some of the other girls told me.’

Oliver could hardly breathe. ‘Did he?’

‘Nah. I told him I’d report him to the Medical Council. He gave me the pill and I left, no touchee, no trouble.’

‘Did you report him?’

‘Come on, Olly. I doubt those old male geezers would believe me. They’d just close ranks. I got what I wanted, didn’t I? Now the rest is up to you.’

Unbidden he thought of Shakespeare describing the beast with two backs, a crude and vulgar description of their physical union. Hine was so open and affectionate and held nothing back. He was not like that.

‘Just relax,’ she said, snuggling against him. ‘Let nature take its course.’

Her embrace revived him. She was underneath and making encouraging murmurs. He was erect and she guided him inside her. They began moving against each other, faster and faster. He felt himself losing all control. A flash of Control flicked across his mind. Hine was panting faster and faster, and he was caught up in their rhythm.

It was not so different in one way from fasting. He entered an altered state that was beyond his free will to interrupt. He didn’t want to interfere, he wanted to surrender. Finally he let himself go completely. The saints talked about ecstasy. He knew what it was now. He didn’t care if he was damned. He was in thrall to this intoxicating woman. He didn’t need alcohol, he didn’t need prayer and fasting, he needed Hine. He craved her.

‘I love you!’ he shouted involuntarily as he climaxed inside her.

He was still shuddering when he realised she was still writhing beneath him, and more urgently, gasping faster and faster.

‘Don’t stop, don’t stop. OLLY!’

She had stopped moving, gasped a final time and flung him off, then rolled on top of him. He could feel her heart pounding against his ribs, against his pounding heart. Two hearts, one love.

‘God!’ she laughed. ‘That was fantastic. Let’s do it again, lover.’

‘Give me a break,’ he pleaded. ‘I’m still recovering.’

She rolled off him, jabbed him in the side with her hand. ‘When you’re ready,’ she giggled. ‘Anytime. I never knew how neat it was.’

‘I thought,’ he said, hesitating.

‘That I did this all the time with every Dick, not to mention Tom and Harry? You calling me a wanton woman? Nasty. You’re my first.’

‘Same for me. I just thought you seemed, sort of, knowledgeable.’

She laughed. ‘Girls talk about it all the time. Don’t boys? No need to answer that.’

He certainly would not. Images of seminarians making their beasts with two backs after lights out was the only reference point he had. The Jesuits never mentioned sex. He knew nothing about it. At least his mother didn’t seem too upset when she knew he had been with a woman. Not just any woman.

‘Hine?’ he said, propping himself on his elbow and looking at her naked body, sweat pooling between her magnificent breasts. Her nipples were erect. He started feeling a stirring again down below.

‘What?’ she said, grinning as she fondled his unfolding member. ‘You want to again already?’

‘Hine?’ he said, when they were recovering a second time. ‘I must talk about it. Jeremy was a really dumb idea. I was not myself when I met him.’

‘You looked pretty good to me. Maybe a little vague. You had the hungry but not the mean look. You always wanted to talk to me, even if it was almost exclusively about Shakespeare. I liked that you talked to me. Most of the boys just wanted to get into my knickers.’

‘Please, Hine. I want to explain. I was fasting for the whole two weeks of Passiontide. I had done something like this once before. It worked.’

‘Is that what you want to get off your chest?’

‘No. Yes. I mean, I was in a bad way. I really resented not getting the part of the priest in The Devils. I was sure I knew how to play it better than that half-bald actor.’

Hine embraced him. ‘I’m sure you would have been fantastic. Your turn will come, didn’t Mr Campion say so?’

Oliver swung out of bed. ‘I can’t think straight when I’m close to you. I must tell you, I got talking to Jeremy in the caff. He offered to make a smoke bomb. He said it was a joke. You know how mother said I picked up strays as a kid. It wasn’t like that. I was resentful and it was a horrible thing to do. I’m glad it was found. The trouble is that I think Jeremy is planning something that could be really dangerous. He went on about how he wanted to shock New Zealanders out of their smug complacency. He said we had never had a decent bomb thrown, like the anarchists did in Russia, America, London. That shook up their societies. He used to spout about how we were all slaves to big business and had no real freedom. I am sure he is planning something violent. But I can’t do anything about it. I have no idea what rabbit hole he’s dived into. And there’s another thing. At Marty’s.’

‘I wasn’t the only one fancied you, I know that. Barry Whatshisname, I saw him trying to fondle your bum.’

Oliver shuddered. Pervert. ‘No, it was Linda. I got talking to her, before I really knew you.’

Hine pulled the sheet over her. ‘Real confession time, is it? I was not your first?’

‘No, no, no. You were. You are. No, Linda was sort of manipulative.’

Hine nodded. ‘Yeh, I saw her flirting with dad. It was so obvious. She wanted a job with him.’

‘It was more than that. She asked me to help her. She got this camera, asked me to get a few photos of her and ... in the pool.’

‘Olly! What are you saying? You were with Linda and dad in the hot pool, when she fell? You were helping her entrap dad? Christ, what were you thinking?’

‘I wasn’t,’ he said, his heart pounding, but this time with dread. ‘I just wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘You got that right,’ she said, standing abruptly and hauling the sheet around her. ‘Best if you leave.’

‘Hine, please?’

‘You fuck me, after betraying my father. Christ, Oliver, I can’t believe it. Just go. Piss off. Or better, I’ll piss off. I’m calling a taxi.’

‘Please don’t go. I know it was wrong. I was not well. I hadn’t eaten properly. I’m so sorry.’

‘Get out.’

He slunk out the door. He shut it behind him, trying to ignore her throwing stuff about. The back door slammed. He assumed she was going down to the village phone box. Should he follow her, beg for a chance to explain? He felt sick in his stomach. Why did he confess? There was no explanation. He could not tell her the full story, that he not only helped Linda set up a blackmail sting on Ru Patterson, but he was now employed by the state’s spy agency to spy on Ru and Hine and the other protesters, including he now realized his own father. He was utterly raving mad to confess.

God, he had gone from heaven to hell in one quick leap, Lucifer descending. He was despicable. He couldn’t blame it on fasting. He knew what he was doing. He knew only too well now how pathetic his life was, full of resentment and paranoia, with no idea what life was really like, what love was. He had found it, and lost it, in a day.

Should he kneel down and pray? What was the point? He had turned his back on the dire rules of the church. He had indulged in fornication, again and again, willingly, rampantly. He had in one day rejected all his years of obeying the edicts of his church. He knew he had lost his faith. He had probably lost it years ago in the seminary, when the Jesuits would not listen to his accusations of buggery against his fellow seminarians. They did not want to know. They had turned on him, making his life a misery. He had found a way to get back at them, to frighten them with his fasting. It was a pyrrhic victory, false, phony.

He bitterly regretted ever talking to Linda. She was, as his mother warned him so often, a scheming female, a Jezebel, a Delilah. But Hine was not. She was honest and true and exquisite, and he had ruined their relationship.

Actually, it was already ruined before it began. It was only a question of when he confessed.

He sunk to his knees against the bed, her odour in his nostrils. He sobbed uncontrollably. He had lost everything. He didn’t care about losing his immortal soul, whatever that was. He only cared about losing forever her warm and loving embrace. Better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all. Othello. Damn Shakespeare. Damn the priests. Damn himself. He was cast into the outer darkness. There was no hope. He was like Dives the rich man in hell, except he was not begging for a drop of water, he was begging for Hine’s embrace. There was no chance, and thus there was no point to life.

St John of the Cross talked about the dark night of the soul. This was worse, this was the sin of despair, the worst of all sins, the most serious mortal sin against the Holy Ghost. He sobbed, sinking to the floor. He was a wretch. He did not deserve to live.

After a time he sat up. Could he make amends? Was there anything that would restore him in her eyes? If he could find Jeremy, and stop his planned bomb incident, that would surely count in his favour? The Ban the Bomb protest march tomorrow. He still did not know what McGlinchey planned with his father and Cyril Potts and those other senior protesters, but it had to be part of the big march. This was Jeremy’s last opportunity to create mayhem. Find Jeremy, snuff out the fire bugger, be the hero of the hour, win back the one and only true love of his life. Yeh, and pigs fly, as Marty said about the prime minister. He was a pig in a poke. He deserved to be tossed into the fiery pit, barbecued forever and ever. There was a nun always repeating the story of St Martin being barbecued and he said to his tormentors that he was done on this side and they should turn him over. He deserved terrible fiery punishment, but there would be no sainthood for him, only hell for ever and ever.

He pulled the curtains and stared out at the twinkling lights of the harbour. Stabbing fingers aimed at his peripheral vision, accusing fingers, a curious roaring, a Babel of whispered accusations of guilt, warnings of damnation. The jabbing fingers were advancing, to skewer his eyes and hurl him sightless into the bottomless pit, into hell fires. He blinked, shook his head. It was just another brisk Wellington northerly, the agitated branches assuming weird and threatening shapes in the underpowered reflections of gloomy yellow street lights. He was abandoned, Adam cast out of Eden, alone, his Eve and not God had banished him, he was a voice crying in the wilderness and the wilderness comprehendeth not. He must cover his nakedness and slouch like a beast towards whatever awaited him.