Harlequin Rex by Owen Marshall

Author:Owen Marshall [Owen Marshall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781869796815
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2011-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY

David told himself that death wasn’t restricted to any institution: that a natural conclusion to life should be accepted with healthy philosophic resignation. Some die because of growths within them, and some because no growth occurs. Some go spectacularly in the jaws of a shark, or a greater white crevasse. Some become small and flat in their beds, with no more movement, or relevance, than the green flecked wallpaper which they plumb-bobbed twenty-five years before. Some with eagerness await the dark angel; others are driven to a fine old Celtic rant before they leave the stage. Death is generous in the variety allowed its players.

Death, that great egalitarian: that customary and modest victor.

Lucy was unwell for some time after fighting in the dining room, and David observed her wish by not visiting. He was left subject to all his old guilt. And the most powerful new one, which was his inability to help her. He had a feeling that the air was congealing, and that after the final agony of suffocation, they would each be set there in time’s amber: all movement and resolution abandoned, despite the sea wind, in one last glaze of futile boredom.

Churchill called depression his black dog, and it followed him faithfully enough, drawing closer to his heels with old age. There were traces of white paint where David’s nails grew from the skin, yet he had no recollection that would serve as an explanation. Someone’s sneakers lay on their side with long laces limp on the verandah, and the stained ivory soles worn through to blue on the pressure points. Faintly yellowed sweat stains showed on Raf’s shirt as he leant back with his hands clasped behind his head. It was a poor creation after all: the uncouth gorse on the slopes, the sheen of the mudflats, the blatancy of the far hills’ appeal. No wonder that disease came easily. Raf and David talked without much interest in the topic, or each other’s company. They were considering an outing for their Takahe charges.

Despair is the sense of loathing we have for the world. David had access to alcohol as well as cannabis. A combined dose when he longed to escape the glint of Wilfe Orme’s discoloured teeth, the sound of the inane games show through the thin wall, the crass sweetness of Jungle Glade toilet freshener, the reptilian touch of the communal plastic chairs, the cattle splattering shit on the gorse slope, the partly repressed memories of his more significant failures.

David left Raf’s room, rang Tony Sheridan and asked if he could go down and talk with him: it was time perhaps to hand in notice and leave the Plague House before coming down with Harlequin himself. It was a temptation of fate after all, wasn’t it? No one could guarantee a lack of contagion. Maybe it would be like those nineteenth-century leper colonies, with the priests at last recognising on their own bodies the lesions that they had been ministering to on others. David certainly lacked sufficient sense of faith and calling to accept that with resignation.

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