“Looks like a good day for it,” Hugo says.
A fine early summer’s day they all agree and they wait for Harvey to arrive. It’s all well planned. Harvey agreed to be their minder for the day, ‘the sober driver’, but of course things don’t always go according to plan. Harvey phones to say he’s too sick and staying at home.
“Harvey’s bailed.”
“The piker.”
“Too sick? Too hung over, more like.”
Now what? They discuss their options. “We could hang out here for the day, play music, have our own little party. There’s plenty of food and music.” That’s Louise, Hugo’s girlfriend. It’s their flat. Louise is petite and pixie-like with her dark hair cut in a short bob.
“And we could walk down to Parana Park and along the river path,” Emma suggests. Emma has an abundance of curly, blonde hair that sits like a nimbus about her head. She is almost beautiful. Her otherwise perfectly proportioned profile is marred by a receding chin.
The guys are of unremarkably average appearance, or at least typical of their campus cohort. Both have short beards. Bill has shoulder length hair and a cultivated dishevelled look. Hugo has a spiky shock of hair and a more athletic look.
Party at home. A walk in the park. Those are the safe options. Bill is still keen to go to Raglan for the day. “If we leave now it should kick in soon after we arrive. We stay there all day till it wears off and I’ll be okay to drive home. What could possibly go wrong?”
Emma feels a bit uneasy about Bill’s bravado but she knows her boyfriend to be a pretty responsible guy, certainly more reliable than Harvey anyway, and she is willing to go with it. Okay then, all agree. They pack lunches, water bottles and picnic rugs and hit the road. “Set the controls for the heart of the sun.” Hugo, a Pink Floyd nut.
Bill’s younger brother, Dylan, was keen to go with them but Bill said, “Sorry mate, not this time, no room.” Bill is still living at home and has managed to buy a car as he doesn’t have to pay board while he is at university. Dylan is still at school and likes hanging out with Bill’s varsity friends but he doesn’t know anything about what they’re in to. Fortunately he got a better, safer offer of going to Whangamata for the day with his parents.
It’s a forty-minute drive from Hamilton to Raglan but Bill is going a bit further, to Manu Bay, a little more remote. There might be a few surfers or they might even have the beach to themselves. Past the rolling west Waikato hills, Raglan by the sea comes into view. The sea, lambent on the horizon. Expansive skies spread before them with billowing clouds, roiling and shape shifting.
I am the daughter of earth and water
and the nursling of the sky.
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change but I cannot die.
The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
and his burning plume outspread…
Bill, the English Literature scholar, his head full of poetry, reciting aloud from out of a Shellyesque reverie. The Cloud. Poetry and meteorology.
“You okay mate?” says Hugo.
“Yes, all good. Hail to thee blithe spirit.”
Hugo’s still straight. Good to have a straight co-pilot.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
lightning my pilot sits.
“Yeah, me too,” says Louise from the back, “sublime,” and she starts giggling. “Go west young man, go west. Better hurry along and get there safe.”
Bill thinks there might be a paradox in there somewhere and concentrates on driving safe and sure. Louise, being a female with a small body mass, he calculates, will be affected sooner and perhaps to a greater degree. She seems to be well on the way.
Getting passed on the straights. That’s okay. Take your time. We’re just out sightseeing. Bill’s talking to himself. Then singing. Take it easy. Take it eeeeasy. Eagles.
“Are we there yet?” More giggling from Louise, child-like.
Not much further. Turn off at the town. Go south young man. Along the winding coast road. Glimpses of the sea. I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky… Bill’s off again.
They are all under way by the time they arrive at the Bryant Memorial Reserve. Hard to know how long… how much. Alighting from the car, Bill is drawn to a bank of preposterously bright white lilies and drawn into the whorl of a furled funnel where a golden pestle arises to declaim the essence of liliness.
They make their way down the Ngarunui Track through the bush to the beach with all their picnic paraphernalia, through manuka, puriri, kowhai, rangiora, flax, kawakawa in full flower, redolent of exotic, aromatic spices; and the occasional malevolent gorse. Emma is singing all the way. She is more accustomed to fronting a rock band but she sings The Teddy Bears’ Picnic so sweetly, almost hauntingly. If you go down in the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise…
The bush is teeming with life: bird life, insect life, plant life, the secret life of plants. Dylan Thomas’ force that through the green fuse drives the flower… molecular force, air force.
A fantail follows, flitting and flouncing, flaunting its balletic aerobatics, its flight path lingering, illuminated like a sparkler.
They stop at the lookout to take in the view of the beach below and the sea that stretches into the distance, seemingly into infinity. “Wow, far out!” Emma exclaims, striding out to the precipice.
“Yeah, far out,” Bill agrees. “It’s so far out to see so far out to sea.” Where is this nonsense coming from? From an addled brain tossing words like salad.
Bill grabs Emma and pulls her back from the edge of the abyss and they continue down the path. They emerge from bush to beach. The sea is a tumultuous roiling avalanche of chandeliers, all shimmering Byzantine hues of gold, chartreuse and mauve and shattering on the shore. The black beach is only iron sand but glitters like milled obsidian and silver.
They lay the rug on the sand next to a small stream of braided rivulets: Coleridge’s bright sinuous rills. Bill lies on his back and gazes approvingly at the sky. Clouds rolling in, shielding them from the heat of the sun. A perfect day, Clouds metamorphosing. One cloud in particular has the appearance of a brain: all bulging lobes and furrows and fissures, unfolding, gradually disintegrating completely.
Bill breathes a deep draught of sea air and, in a moment of inspiration, he hears himself recite:
Far above the raging sea,
in air so crystal clear it clinks,
in the azure godzone ozone,
I find by chance a patch of blue
as I search the clouds for the stuff I knew
had blazed in the heavens in the days before
the clocks began relentlessly to tick,
before the world began to wane;
a corner of sky of a certain hue
that stills the clocks again.
And he hopes he can remember these lines beyond the day.
Louise is looking pensive, anxious, lying foetal, wringing a corner of the rug. She is muttering incoherently, but one phrase coheres: “…everything I thought I knew…” An ego dissolving can feel like dying. Hugo holds her hand, brings her back. They walk along the beach, barefoot in the soft sand, like a foot massage. She reconnects with her body and finds herself.
Bill is kneeling on the beach in a prayer pose, not praying, just touching his forehead to the sand to earth his body, clear his head. Then gets to his feet and looks around. Where are Hugo and Louise? Their clothes are lying on the rug. Have they dematerialised? There. Emma points to the sea. They’re waist deep in the surf, frolicking and laughing. Now, swimming wasn’t in the plan. This is a wild west coast beach and could be dangerous in the present circumstances. Bill strides to the water’s edge to call them in. They can’t hear him. He goes out further. Now Emma can see the three of them playing about in the surf so she goes out to join them. They are buffeted and trampled by a stampede of wild white horses of surf and decide to go back to the safety of the beach.
But Hugo is still out there. He’s a good swimmer but he’s getting pulled out by a rip. What is the ocean doing? “Go this way,” Bill shouts, back in the water, gesticulating wildly. Hugo swims to the side out of the grip of the rip and swims ashore, breathless. So let’s just stay out of the water, they all agree. Bill takes off his wet clothes and hangs them on bushes to dry. The others had stripped off before going in the water. They bask and dry in the sun and unpack their lunch. A seagull, big as an airplane, hovers and hangs on the breeze over the picnic. A majestic scavenger in sleek white plumage, laserly eyeing up their food.
Bill’s gut is griping. He announces he is going to have a shit and goes back into the bush. He squats and pushes out a massive, steaming, pungent, soft serve turd, a coil of ochre coloured pastry, soon covered in blue ass blow flies. A pile of shit studded with iridescent lapis lazuli gems. Extrudinary. Still, mustn’t linger. He joins the others lying on the beach.
Opacus clouds roll over and darken the sky. Thunder rumbles ominously in the distance, then crashes closer, with a flash of lightning. Emma thinks someone up there’s taking photos of them.Bill looks up at the sky and says, “We’d better get back to the car. It’s gonna piss down.”
Hugo says, “It’s just spitting.”
Spitting, pissing, what next, a shit storm? Louise scampers into the bush for cover.
In a cavern under is fettered the thunder, it struggles and howls at fits…
Bill and Emma bundle everything into the rug and carry it like a body bag back to the car. It’s raining quite heavily by the time they all emerge from the bush onto the road.
The car is a ludicrously pulsating monstrosity and Bill needs to time his entry carefully to slip in through the expanding and contracting open door. Hugo. No you go. Everyone in. Is anyone straight enough to drive?
“I think I could pilot the Millennium Falcon around the local galaxy,” says Bill, “but I don’t know about driving this car, not with the road moving around like that.”
“Like what?”
“Um, like a roller coaster.”
“Oh yeah, I see what you mean.”
“We just wait for the rain to pass. We don’t have to go anywhere now.”
Bill turns the radio on. In national news: police investigating the death of a toddler from head injuries, questioning the mother’s partner… a car crash, fatalities and serious injuries… drug busts, imported Class A drugs… the proposed project will create hundreds of jobs for New Zealanders… will have minimal environmental impact… jobs and money go offshore… environmental damage… resource consent… a mass shooting in America… a call for stricter gun controls… terrorism in the Middle East… flooding in Bangladesh.
It’s all just depressing and confusing. Put some music on. Some CDs here. Here we go. The Eagles. Take it to the limit one more time… Lifting the mood. The windows fog up. They sit and wait in their pod while the music plays on. The rain eventually eases and they go back down to the beach. They’re walking through the dripping bush when there’s a noise on the road. Tyres scrubbing the tar seal. A car horn, like a car shouting. A man shouting. “Get off the road you idiot! What’s the matter with you?” Hugo had wandered onto the road, gazing at the sky and a car coming round the bend had to brake. Now he is looking, perplexed, at a man’s head out a car window. Bill trots back up the path and nonchalantly fetches Hugo back to the beach. They all sit in the same spot in the sand. Louise thinks they’re caught in a time loop.
The sun returns, crepuscular rays rend clouds and spotlight the sea. Bill feels time passing through him and his head clearing to where he is confident to drive. Driving home, he is all relaxed concentration at the wheel, distracted by occasional spectacles like a hawk lifting off the road, jacking itself into the sky, clutching some dangling road kill. He follows its flight and Emma jolts him back onto the left lane away from an oncoming car. Another close shave. Emma stays on his case.
They arrive safely back at Hugo’s and Louise’s. Louise is feeling jittery and they smoke some weed to ease the coming down. It’s getting late. “Time I went home,” Bill says. “I’ll drop you off home Emma.”
“No, I think I better stay here,” Emma says, “if that’s okay with you guys.”
Bill drives home alone and finds there’s a cop car parked in the drive. Shit! He should have stashed the acid away somewhere safe. It won’t be hard to find at the back of his top drawer. Too late now. Don’t want to face this now. Need a clear head. Keep driving. Come home later.
He goes back to Hugo’s and Louise’s. Hugo looks out the window. “It’s okay; it’s Bill.”
Bummer about the cops at Bill’s place. Yeah, he can stay the night too if he wants.
Another car arrives. Hugo goes to the window again. “Fuck! It’s the cops. Louise, flush the rest of the weed down the toilet. I’ll stall them at the door. They’ll have to have a search warrant.”
A voice at the door from another world says, “Is William Buckingham here?”
“How did they know you’re here?” Hugo whispers.
Bill shrugs. He goes to the door and the cop says, “I’m sorry to have to tell you, William, your family were involved in an accident, a collision on state highway 2. Your father died at the scene and your mother and brother are in Waikato Hospital with serious injuries.”
“Oh Bill, I’m so sorry,” Emma says.
“Why them, not me?” Bill says to no one.
“So, are we alright?” Louise says, uncomprehending.
“No,” says Bill, “we’re not all right. Picnic’s over. I’m going up to the hospital. Might see you later.”
