13

Kelburn, late Easter Monday

Oliver tossed and turned all night, waking a number of times in a panic with his heart thumping, sure that he was being asphyxiated. After he untangled himself from the damp sheets, he sank exhausted into fitful slumber.

His half-conscious mind relived Hine’s rejection over and over. He was appalled at what he had done, but he saw no way out of it. He should contact the police and confess to murder and accept whatever punishment society deemed appropriate. It was not going to make any difference. He was in a hell of his own making.

He could not ask the church for forgiveness, he no longer had any faith in confession. All those years kneeling on hard wooden pews praying for forgiveness of sins he had not committed was a waste of time. The nuns said you built up indulgences like a bank balance against future bad behaviour. It seemed to him now this was utter piffle, made up by frustrated old biddies with nothing better to do than dwell upon fantasies of things they had never encountered.

There was weak light coming through the curtains. This was said to be the witching hour when the mind and body were most vulnerable. For sure he was bewitched by his Ophelia, and now felt despair, disillusionment and depression. Hamlet contemplates suicide, but fear of the afterlife stops him pursuing that. When Ophelia rejects him, he is alone. His mother wants him to cast off this knighted colour. He cannot. His thoughts turn to revenge. Should he seek revenge on his father for joining the socialist cause, for planning some kind of protest against the lawful government and its allies Australia and America? Has his father become a communist, one of the anti-Christs?

He was muddled and no longer clear where he stood. Was he still anti-communist or had Hine changed him into a peacenik campaigning against America? The love of his life understandably spurned him for his collusion in an attempt to blackmail her father. Yet still he burned for her. Does that translate into agreement with her and her father and his father that New Zealand should not be a party to the American military activity in Vietnam? The Catholic Church supports this anti-communist crusade. He was no longer sure if he did. He was not sure of anything.

‘Oliver?’

He ignored the whispered voice. He was imagining voices now.

‘Oliver? Wake up.’

‘Jeremy? Crikey, where’d you come from?’

‘My gran’s. Had to shoot through. Hostile incoming. Get up and I’ll tell you about it. I’ve put the kettle on. I need something hot, strong and stimulating.’

Oliver watched him retreat. He was different, dressed in some kind of blue workman’s overalls. He’d had a short back and sides. Weird. As usual.

In the kitchen Jeremy was smirking. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ he said. ‘Have a cup of my special brew. Well, flatmate, I have a plan to shaft the state, do a Dracula, drive a stake into its beating bloody heart.’

Oliver watched him sip. ‘You know the police are looking for you?’

‘Yeh. They found me. Had to take counter-measures. Fortunately I was prepared.’

Oliver sat down. The mug gave off a whiffy odour.

‘Drink up, it’s herbal. Restorative. Wanna hear about the fuzz? Actually, they were Yanks. Not legal, I reckon.’

Oliver shook his head, rubbed his face. ‘I don’t get it. American policemen came to your grandmother’s house?’

‘Right on. I was down in the shed, busy. Heard them coming. They were not exactly quiet about it. More like a herd of elephants. One of them was shouting at me to come out with my hands up where they could see them. So I did, except I had something in my hands. Kind of experimental. One of my father’s blow torches, adapted. Bit of petrol, aluminium salts of naphthenic, palmic acids, gelling agents, you don’t really want to know the chemical constituents, do you? Drink your special tea.’

‘Is this stuff you’re talking about what I think it is?’

‘Napalm? Not really. Close enough. Had the desired effect. Kind of appropriate, don’t you think. They use it on defenceless Asian peasants.’

‘Are they, you know, okay?’

‘Not really. I told gran to ring an ambulance. I had plans. And that, dear and glorious flatmate, is why I’m here.’

‘Funny sort of tea.’

Jeremy lifted his mug and clinked it against Oliver’s. ‘Tastes okay to me. The time has come, the Walrus said, for us to get going and get set up, while the cops waste their time and taxpayers’ money watching the Ban the Bomb crowd march around Wellington.’

‘What’s the idea of the overalls?’

‘Me late unlamented pappy’s,’ Jeremy said, smirking. ‘I got his van up and running too. Come on, we got a window of opportunity.’

Oliver felt a wave of tiredness sweep over him. He was inadvertently fasting again and it made him feel light-headed. Having no sleep didn’t help.

‘Sorry, Jeremy,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to rest. You go ahead.’

‘Have a shower. I’ll wait. The tea will help, promise.’

Oliver sipped the tea, it was disgusting. ‘Um, shower, right?’

Jeremy told him he was getting the message. Oliver stood up and moved in a dreamy fashion to the bathroom. He tried to think straight. American cops? Wasn’t it the New Zealand police trying to find Jeremy? Some kind of threat? His head felt like mush. Was he a mushroom? A mushroom shaped cloud? He had to get under the shower.

It was difficult to get his leg up and over the side of the bath. He looked up at the large old tin shower rose. It was retreating into the ceiling. He reached for the tap and it started to melt like those clocks in that surreal Dali painting. He gave up and sat down in the bottom of the bath.

Jeremy was helping him up. It seemed to take an eternity to get his trousers in one leg, then the other. Jeremy was a big help, putting on his jersey, now doing up his laces. He was saying he had a cloak that would protect him from the rain, which was very good of him. He didn’t remember Jeremy showing symptoms before of the milk of human kindness. The only milk he associated with Jeremy was the frequent guzzling of pint bottles, washing down the pork pies and Boston buns he devoured on a daily basis.

‘Where we going?’ he murmured as Jeremy steered him down the path.

‘All will be revealed in the fullness of time,’ Jeremy said, sounding more cheerful than he ever had. Oliver could hear him loud and clear, but it seemed to be coming from a great distance.

He obediently sat in the passenger seat of the blinding white van with a huge, writhing rusty-red icon of crossed wrenches on the side. Jeremy jumped in. ‘Fingers crossed, eh?’ He started up and the van shuddered into motion. Oliver felt queasy in the stomach, needed something to eat, except he was not eating again, was he? Just as well, Jeremy only ate rubbish, pies and greasies and in any case would be unlikely to share.

The overhead trolley bus wires were writhing about like long, skinny eels. Oliver put his hands up to protect himself. The road seemed to be expanding and buckling, which could not be true. He looked at trees racing by, greener than he had ever seen them.

‘I feel a bit funny,’ he said, closing his eyes, his head spinning.

‘Relax,’ Jeremy chuckled. ‘We have a leaky header tank to attend to. Strictly speaking, I have. At least that is what I told the Easter security detail. You can just come along for the ride.’

Oliver opened his eyes on a fortress of granite. Jeremy was helping him move under an archway.

‘Through the looking glass, Olly, me bucko. Now you stay put while I go retrieve a few tools.’

It might be a monastery, it was hard to tell. Jeremy returned with a large leather bag over his shoulder.

‘Open Sesame,’ he said, prodding a key into a door. They entered some kind of basement. A dungeon? Jeremy was saying not to make any noise as they moved along a corridor.

Jeremy told him to wait while he peered around a corner. Oliver was worried the ceiling was collapsing. It was a relief when Jeremy beckoned him out of the dungeon corridor and into a church. He couldn’t see any altar, but there were stained glass windows. Jeremy pulled him into the shadow under the stairs as a terrible groaning was heard, then a thumping and the screech of metal. Footsteps could be heard approaching. Oliver cringed.

‘Quiet as a mouse, you dig, Ol?’ Jeremy whispered urgently. ‘It’s only the old lift making that racket, bringing an unwanted visitor.’

The footsteps moved past and Jeremy tugged at him. ‘Up the stairs, Olly. Come on, no time to lose.’

They ascended to a floor of black and white tiles. The Mad Hatter played chess with giant pieces on a board like this.

‘Move it!’ Jeremy hissed.

They climbed up another flight of stairs. Directly ahead the doors opened on to a strange room of green leather and gleaming wood and pretty carpet. The couches were arranged facing each other. At the far end was an elaborate carved wooden throne hosting a big fluffy white sheepskin. He had a dread of what this might be. It felt like a place of trial and tribulation. He had not been inside Protestant churches, but understood they had plain wooden pews and no images of Christ or the Blessed Virgin Mary. He rejected the idea of a church. Even the followers of Luther and Calvin had altars and pews facing forward. This was more sinister. Was this where Masons met to carry out their devilish rituals?

A loud buzzing like a giant bumblebee was coming from inside the mystery room. Was it a machine being prepared for diabolical torture?

‘The cleaning lady,’ Jeremy said. ‘She’ll never hear us. Come on, come on, you’ve got two legs bad, as in four legs good, you dig? Use those fucking legs before I start kicking. Two more sets of stairs.’

It was some relief to move away from the buzzing room. The broad, metal-capped stairs ended on a landing. Jeremy was unlocking another door.

It was a musty climb up plain unvarnished wood into some kind of attic. Jeremy waved a hand across a room empty of any furniture, host to beams festooned with masses of cobwebs, a gurgling copper pipe emerging from the roof and disappearing through the floor. Jeremy shut the door and they were in darkness.

‘Are there spiders?’

‘The evidence is before you. Make yourself comfy, this is our home for the night.’

‘Where are we? Why? I don’t like this, Jem-ry. I don’t like spiders.’

A loud clunk caused Oliver to jump.

‘What was that?’

A torch beam revealed a grotesque giant spider crouched ready to spring.

‘No!’ he yelled. ‘No, please God!’

The spider turned towards him. Oliver scrabbled back until he banged against hard wood. The torch lit a gargoyle face, a devil in a spider’s body.

‘Might have overdone the Datura,’ Jeremy said. ‘Hard to get it right with the old Devil’s Trumpet. Take a few deep breaths and drink this.’

Oliver did not want to drink anything, but Jeremy was forcing his mouth open. He choked and gurgled as water went down the wrong way, causing him to cough painfully. It did clear his head a little.

‘What the fug you up to?’

‘You’ll find out soon enough. Meantime, didn’t you say you were tired? Here, you can use the kitbag for a pillow. Sweet dreams.’

The torch went out. Oliver could feel and hear his heart banging against his ribs. ‘Hine,’ he moaned, slumping against the kitbag.

Lights popped in front of his eyes, but fizzled. Oliver strained but could see nothing. There was a stench of dead carcasses, pigeons trapped under the roof, or rats. Were the rats hungry? Winston Smith was caged with rats in 1984, the punishment he most dreaded. He was frightened of rats too, and of the dark. His mother used to put her arms around him when he was screaming in the night. That was a long time ago and besides the wench … no, that was not Shakespeare, it was Marlowe? No, what had Prof Mc said? Revenge tragedy. Yes, Duchess of Malfi. A contemporary of Shakespeare. Webber? No, that was Marty Webber. He was a waiter for Marty, Hine was with him. That was a long time ago in another country and besides the wench … No, Shakespeare said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. He loved Hine.

Oliver felt his muscles tightening. He tried to breathe, his chest tight. He was getting hotter and hotter, his temperature rising rapidly, like when they used to blow on a thermometer in chemistry class and the mercury shot up the tube. God, was it going to surge to the top and explode and then his head burst. Now he was shivering. He tried to wrap his arms around his stomach. Hine did that, and comforted him. Now for no reason he was snuffling and grunting.

‘I am a pig,’ he said.

He was kicked in the leg.

‘Pigs get their throats slit,’ Jeremy said.

‘Why are you doing this … this … this?’ Oliver could not remember what he was asking. Of course, it was all explained in Shakespeare. ‘I am,’ he declared, ‘of an antic disposition.’

‘Poor little rich kid,’ Jeremy sneered, delivering another kick.

‘The poor shall inherit the earth. No, the rich. No, the MEEK!’

‘You’re rambling, Bolton. You always did, full of yourself and your fucking Shakespeare. You thought you were shit hot. Stupid prick. Thinking you could revenge yourself on the student play when you didn’t get the part of the priest. You went on and on about that in the caff, and that gave me ideas. And here we are, ideas coming to fruition and you get the starring role.’

‘What? I don’t understand. There’s no theatre up here.’

‘There will be. I promise you, I have got it all worked out. You get to pontificate to the nation and I just pop a little device I have with me and ABRACADABRA! I’m gone in a puff of smoke, leaving you with the applause of the crowds below.’

‘You mean like in Julius Caesar?’

‘Don’t know the guy. You have to remember, Bolton, I did not have the advantages you grew up with, the silver spoon in the mouth, your doting fucking mother.’

‘My father hated me.’

‘We got that in common.’

‘My father preferred Charles. He was his blue-eyed boy. I don’t know what he thinks now Charles is going to fight in Vietnam and prove he’s a warrior. I never got the chance to prove anything to my father. He didn’t want to know, said I was a wimp. Mother preferred me. She told me I was the sensitive one and I would make a name for myself whatever I did.’

‘With a little help from me, I guarantee you will be famous come tomorrow.’

‘Why are you doing this?’

Oliver was kicked again. ‘Spoiled brat. You had it all. Mummy gives you a flat, tells you you’re a fucking genius. Some of us didn’t have a nice mummy. My mother used to watch my father lay into me. My deadbeat dad came home every night after the six o’clock swill and the moment he saw me he started undoing his belt. He belted shit out of me night after night. She did nothing to protect me. Only Gran ever tried, but she couldn’t really help. I was my parents’ punch bag. They took out all their frustrations and failures on me. My father got drunk, my mother was always having what she called a flutter on the geegees or the Art Union. They lost, they were born losers. Somehow I survived, and then I discovered the possibilities of fourth-form chemistry. That was it for my parents, gone to hell …’

‘In a hand basket?’

‘Eh? Yeh, I can suss that devil’s trumpet is playing a lively tune inside your head.’

‘The cock that is trumpet to the morn may be a devil.’

‘Drongo. You know the lingo of your bard of Avon, but you’re not exactly up with today’s play. Probably just as well. You feather cluckers were always streamed into the languages classes in secondary school, while us deadbeats did woodwork and science. Lucky me, I reckon. Come tomorrow and courtesy of yours truly all the nation’s going to be your stage. I take all the credit for the devil’s own tune. I aim to light up your life. I should thank you for going on about fucking Shakespeare and the Gunpowder plotters. You gave me a brill idea. This time it will work. Lucifer would rate what’s coming.’

‘You’re a sick little shit, Morrison.’

‘And you’re Joe fucking Normal? Nah, you handed yourself to me on a plate. You were born to play a waiter. Well, the wait is over. And believe me, Olly, I have been waiting a long time for this. The others in our anarchist flat chickened out and joined the capitalist rat race they used to rail against. One’s a history lecturer in Oz, another is in broadcasting. They all sold out. Except me. Now it’s payback time. Man, tomorrow, I can’t wait. Sweet dreams.’

The torch was in his eyes. Oliver put up a hand to shield himself. The torch beam flicked around the attic. ‘Ah ha,’ Jeremy said. ‘There’s my sleeping bag, couldn’t remember where I put it.’

Oliver was looking at ceiling beams and cobwebs. Then the light was extinguished. He heard Jeremy moving about and then there was silence, except for the sound of the wind and distant traffic. No owls do cry. He was trapped up here with a madman who had drugged him so he couldn’t think straight. He had to do something.

He waited a long time, until he heard Jeremy lightly snoring. Then he forced himself on to his hands and knees and slowly felt his way across the rough wooden flooring. He used the sound of Jeremy as a guide, aiming diagonally away from him towards where he thought the door was. It was painfully slow because he had to move without making a sound and had to still the roaring in his ears and the desire to giggle, which was what he did with Hine in another dimension.

He was stirring dust and his nose started tickling. He pinched it hard, taking dusty breaths, but could not suppress several successive sneezes. He froze. Jeremy was still asleep. He had to get out of this place. Surely God had punished him enough. He was no longer sure of what he had done. It was Jeremy who made the smoke bomb. He helped Delilah, even though his mother warned him to beware of brazen vixens. He ignored his mother, for the first time in his life, and he paid a terrible price. But surely his sins were venial? He did not deserve hell, did he? What about kicking Delilah. No, it was Jeremy who kicked. Must get away, he had to escape from Jeremy.

He found the door. He ever so slowly reached up. The handle turned. He waited. Then he wrenched it open and flung himself out the door. Something jerked at his ankle and he fell forward, cracking his head on hard wood.

‘Hey, Olly!’ Jeremy said, shining the torch in his eyes. ‘Let me help you get up. Hope you’re okay. I need you in peak condition for your big performance tomorrow. You were born to be the sacrificial lamb or, in this case, the tethered goat. You must remember you used to go on about the need for a sacrifice to take away the sins of the world. I thought you meant a virgin sacrifice when Hinemoa arrived at your urging. Then you got the urge to screw her, you dirty, filthy hypocrite. I hate hypocrites. You have the chance to redeem yourself. You lost your lover, so what do you have to lose? Here’s a gift-wrapped opportunity to show them what you are made of. You can be a martyr, the highest category in your hierarchy of saints, right? You get to go straight to Paradise and get to screw 77 virgins. Or is that some other ridiculous religion? They’re all fantasists.’

‘What?’ Oliver found it hard to process what this pathetic little wannabe wanted. Did he mean to make a sacrifice of him? What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul? Whose soul did he mean, his own or Jeremy’s? Jeremy did not covet worldly possessions, unless you count junk food. He coveted control, like that SIS interrogator he sparred with in another life, and besides the wench … no, not wench, it is a wretch, he was the wretch.

‘Oh, I forgot to tell you, I tied a cord to your ankle. You didn’t notice? Get some rest, there’s a good lad.’

Oliver slumped to the floor and lay there. ‘To be nor not to be’. The answer was obvious, he was not a bee, no way was he a buzzy bee, hee, hee. To bee or not to bee, that was the question, whether tis nobler to sling your hook, or make the cock with two backs. Cock-a-doodle-doo. He was of an antic disposition. He had no arms against this sea of troubles. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune had trapped him. Life was full of evils and travails and only death would deliver him from all evil, Amen. He made a cursory sign of the cross over his forehead, his heart, his left and right shoulders. He quickly made an act of contrition, one of the three valid ways of being forgiven for all your sins, in confession before a priest, in direct communication with God, the third he could not remember. He was shriven. He was at peace. Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit.

Olly couldn’t breathe. He tried to sit up, using the kitbag as leverage, but he was too weak. He struggled to get some air into his lungs. He knew what it was, even though he hadn’t had an asthma attack since he was a child. It was all the dust did it. The doctor made him eat oranges and told him to stay calm and breathe slowly and evenly and the asthma would ease. The thought of oranges made him twitch. He’d never eaten them again.

Forcing himself up on one elbow, he made a supreme effort and got some air as well as dust into his lungs.

‘Help,’ he croaked.

The torch snapped on. He blinked and turned his head slightly away from the beam that was blinding him. Even moving his neck was difficult.

‘Get out of the way,’ Jeremy snarled, reinforcing his command with a kick in Oliver’s ribs. He fell off the kitbag, struggling to get some air, the dust in his mouth and nose.

‘Good boy,’ Jeremy said. ‘I need my bag. It’s time to move the van and set a few devices. The piecart’s the other priority, I’ve been getting peckish sitting about waiting.’

Oliver heaved in a little air. ‘Are you leaving?’

‘Needs must,’ Jeremy said, lifting up the clunking kitbag Oliver was acquainted with, metal objects that negated its role as a pillow. ‘Otherwise all my plans crumble, like chimney sweepers come to dust. You’d know the stupid quote. Even Fourth Form Woodwork had to put up with that poetry crap. They told us English was the most important subject. Not for me it wasn’t. Except of course for reading Popular Mechanics.’

‘Water. Please.’

‘Sorry, Oliver, no time to waste. Gotta go.’

‘No. Don’t. I might be.’

‘You want me to finish your sentence? You mean you might cark. Pray you don’t, isn’t that what Doolans do? No skin off my nose if you live or die, you’re still going to light up Parliament.’

The torch moved away to the door and it was shut, plunging Oliver back into darkness. His chest was tight and his breathing more labored. He sounded like he had TB, or was it a death rattle? Panic squeezed his lungs like the straps on a straitjacket hauled to the tightest notch by a sadistic nurse. He jerked at a tickle in his ear. What was it? Please God not a spider? An earwig? A female earwig, burrowing into his ear, laying its eggs, the eggs hatching inside his head. He slapped his ear awkwardly, flashes inside his head. Why had he ever read that damned Dahl story about the earwig? His breathing was painful, his heart was accelerating. Poe’s beating heart buried under the earth. Another panic-inducing story.

He didn’t want to die. If God gave him another chance, he would dedicate it to something worthy – nursing lepers in the islands like Father Damien. He would pay for his sin in this world, God willing.

Other stories fought to gain his attention. The Bible had too many. Esau and Jacob, Esau selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. David and Goliath, slinging stones not arrows against a giant. Abasalom caught by the hair in a tree. Adam and Eve, Oliver and Hine, no, he did not want to think about that. Get thee behind me, Satan. Cain killing Abel. Was Jeremy going to kill him? Did he plan some grotesque display, his head on a dish like John the Baptist? Hine would play Salome, Tim Elliott as Herod. Hine dancing around her bedroom naked, not even noticing as Jeremy dragged him down to the basement and sealed him in a coffin before sunrise. That was Dracula. Accidentally buried alive was another story, who wrote that? Hamlet has dread of something after death, carved deep as to the lungs. The unaccustomed terror of this night, he craves bestial oblivion. To die, to sleep, perchance to dream. Life’s but a walking shadow.

His brain was a muddle of his reading life, a din of dread, Shakespeare crowding out the other voices. He made the sign of the cross. Deliver from all evil. Amen. His panic was subsiding. It was the healing balm of the bard’s words. So long as he ignored Hamlet’s ghost. He quickly made another sign of the cross, to banish the ghost.

Take deep breaths, his mother used to say. Let your airwaves relax. She rubbed his chest with Vicks and laid a hot flannel across it. She poured hot water over friar’s balsam, had him crouch over the tin dish, towel shrouding and sealing him in the bitter fumes. He missed mummy.

‘Wakey, wakey, Oliver Bolton.’

He was being kicked again. There was enough filtered light to see the squat shape of his attacker.

‘Rise and shine,’ Jeremy said, burping and wiping off the sides of his mouth icing sugar remnants from the half-dozen cream buns he had forced himself to save for breakfast. ‘Time for you to go on stage.’

‘What’s the time?’

Jeremy checked his watch. ‘Time for your performance. The capitalist conspirators have met and shaken, now they exit stage left and you get your curtain call.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You will. Simple Simon, actually. The New Zealand Cabinet presided over by Prime Minister Holy-Smoke have met a few floors below with the presidential lapdog and promised him more young New Zealand lives. You slept through it all. Can’t you hear the world awake and waiting for you? We are going to give them a premature taste of what the devil’s trumpet can do, with the nation watching.’

‘Where are we?’

‘Come and see.’

Oliver tried to get up but he felt weak and shivery. He realized he was naked.

‘Cover yourself,’ Jeremy said, tossing the cloak over him. It smelled of petrol.

‘Next bit’s tricky,’ Jeremy said. He was tapping at one side of the ceiling. ‘Got it.’

He used the claw hammer to rip away chunks of plaster board, small pieces of timber. He punched out roof tiles, which clattered down the roof. Oliver felt the entrance of a chill wind and pulled the cloak around him. Jeremy was forcing the bottle of bitter water into his mouth. He gasped and tried to turn away. Jeremy held his jaw up and he swallowed.

‘Should do the trick. Ooops, the cavalry are coming.’

Oliver felt a surge of hope. A loud voice yelled to come out with your hands up.

‘The door should hold long enough,’ Jeremy said. ‘Come on, action time. Better keep that cloak around you.’

He pushed Oliver out on to the roof, into the sharp wind. Oliver swayed and blinked.

‘This way,’ Jeremy said, tugging him by one arm across the steep slope. ‘It gets easier once we’re on the flat.’

Oliver saw that Jeremy had his kitbag in his other hand.

‘What’s in there?’

‘A surprise,’ Jeremy said. ‘Several surprises. Showtime, Oliver. Isn’t that what you always wanted? The bonus is you show those godless commie bastards like your father what sacrifice is necessary to wake them up. Your destiny awaits. To be a star.’

‘Or not to be,’ Oliver mumbled as he staggered across the roof, wanting to see what was around the corner, and not wanting to.