“I’m afraid I don’t listen to talkbacks.”
She sensed that he was relieved at the change of subject. “Of course you get a lot of cranks ringing in. But my question was going to be about the racial situation in New Zealand. He gives such good advice on other problems. As he is such a close friend, I thought you might know his views about how we can handle this kind of stress.”
“It’s one of those matters that we don’t discuss.”
“Really?”
“I suppose we are afraid we might disagree. You see there was an argument at a vestry meeting – can I trust you to keep this confidential? Two months ago after the highway assault on the Desert Road, the marae near Turangi was deliberately burned down. Stan McTaggart proposed a motion expressing our support for the Tuwharetoa people. The vestry seemed sympathetic until Randall spoke. He claimed the motion was supporting Maori terrorists and threatened to leave not only the vestry but also the church if the discussion went on any further.”
“What happened?”
“The motion was withdrawn. I had never known Randall so angry.”
“Angry?” she repeated. Then she said slowly, “It’s curious how anger affects people. Makes them act out of character.”
David couldn’t understand why Kate had suddenly switched to discussing talkbacks with the vicar. But the word “anger” resonated with him. He remembered with shame how he has allowed anger to destroy his friendship with Tane.
The psychiatrist seemed to have acted strangely at the vestry meeting. But was there not something out of character in his actions at the vicarage that night? He found himself looking back to their meeting in the dark hallway. Then it came to him.
It was the grandfather clock.
“I’m sorry, Vicar, but I don’t trust your churchwarden,” he said.
The vicar looked at him tolerantly. “I think you’ll have to give me a reason.”
“He’s an eavesdropper.”
Harry Mountjoy shook his head sadly.
“He was at the door that night I first came here. He came to the vicarage to leave the keys after locking the church. The service finished at eight-thirty. We met him in the hallway here just as the grandfather clock in the hall chimed ten o’clock. How long does it take to count the money and to lock the church?”
“But you don’t go to church,” observed the vicar.
“Even a six-year-old wouldn’t take one and a half hours because there were about twenty in the congregation and most of them didn’t put money in the plate,” he went on. “The real reason was that he heard my name and my position at the University when you talked to me at the door after the service. At that moment he was standing in front of you collecting the books. He knew at that point that I had been a colleague of Tane’s. So he stayed on after he had left the key – and eavesdropped. When you mentioned my search for Tane to him in the hall after we came out, does he admit to being his psychiatrist? Not at all. Instead he asks me if I thought Tane had made a geological discovery in the Waitoa. This was the one subject that wasn’t covered in our conversation in the lounge and one he wanted to know about particularly. The question is now: why doesn’t he disclose? It’s not because of confidentiality at all. It’s because he doesn’t want me to know where Tane is.”
“David, that statement is totally unwarranted!”
“You and your warden aren’t going to make me into a case too. That’s what you think Tane is. You think he’s mad. That’s why you lock him away and give him treatments. Yet he’s not mad. He’s the only sane one among us. He sees clearly, but people don’t want to listen to him. I know because I didn’t listen to him once. So what does he do? It’s all bottled up inside him, and he can’t get it out. He’s in that place, and they’ve got him and drugged him and made him into a vegetable so that he can’t talk to anyone.”
Harry Mountjoy looked towards Kate. “David is under a lot of stress, I fear.”
“I don’t think he is, Vicar. Keep going, David.”
“Now why don’t they want him to talk? It’s something to do with what he discovered on that last trip.”
“In which he probably visited the Waitoa,” inserted Kate.
“Exactly. You see he’s the only one who really knows about the Waitoa.”
“Particularly if the huia story is a blind.”
Harry Mountjoy drummed with his fingers on the table. His face was pale and drawn. He said nothing but got up, went to the window and looked out over the garden. Finally, he fidgeted with his watch, mumbled “Five o’clock – Evensong,” and disappeared from the room.
Kate gave a hollow laugh. “Typical Rip Van Winkle Anglican. Evensong indeed!”
David did not hear her. His heart was throbbing. Thoughts kept racing round in his mind, fearful, angry thoughts which he could not control. At last he could bear it no longer and plunged out of the room.
“I’ve got to get Tane out of there!”
CHAPTER 28
“Where’s he got to?”
David glanced behind the oak trees as he ran down the driveway towards the church. He half expected to find the psychiatrist waiting there as he had waited in the hallway. The vicar said he had gone to say Evensong. But what was he really up to? He had obviously been shielding Richardson all the time during their talk at the vicarage. They shouldn’t have told him so much because he was obviously going to be loyal to someone who was his close friend and churchwarden.
Now that the vicar realised how much they knew, he would go straight to his warden and tell him. Perhaps the church was the rendez-vous. Tane was in terrible danger.
He slipped quietly into the church. Not a sound. The light from the late afternoon sun was coming through the stained glass window at the west end, staining the carpet with deep red. There was a smell of Brasso, of candle grease, of furniture polish and old wine.
He saw him – a shining bald head in the front pew. Just sitting there. Waiting for Richardson? He listened for footfalls, or the sound of a car. “We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep” rose in a low monotone from the front pew. How hypocritical can you get? “We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts…”
How many entrances? Two. He would guard the main one just in case Richardson came in. He would also make sure Mountjoy didn’t get away.
“And there is no health in us….” He crouched down in a pew so that he wouldn’t be seen.
Harry Mountjoy said Evensong on Saturday and every weekday at five o’clock. Today he was especially relieved to have some time in the church on his own. The verbal attack on his churchwarden had hurt him deeply and personally.
The problem with his warden now threatened to develop into a major crisis in his own ministry and parish. This was because of his own actions. Not only had he visited the hospital without permission, but now he had told David about Tane before asking permission from Randall. His very desire to help people had led him into a situation where he was forced to be devious. The only way he could get out was to wash his hands of the whole affair and leave David to do as he wished. However, he couldn’t do that. He had given Eleanor a promise.
There was also a personal reason why he couldn’t draw back. Strange as it might have seemed to the young people, he didn’t understand and wasn’t interested in geological discoveries, racist plots and huia which did or did not exist in remote mountain valleys.