Harlequin Rex by Owen Marshall

isolated there in the long arm of the sea. From the dinghy, the Slaven Centre became only a small part of things again, though he could recognise Takahe, the walkways, the treatment block, the tractor mower revolving like a blowfly on a polished table, even Bryce’s blue ute going up with the deliveries. David thought some emanation from the centre should be visible: transpirations of bewilderment and defiance, fear and desperation, comfort and selflessness, stoicism and compassion — all rising up over the buildings. But there was nothing of that: no distortion of the mundane buildings unless just a shimmer from rising heat waves.Perhaps a faint diesel plume from the high, stainless steel boiler house chimney.
    As David talked with Tolly and Raf, enjoyed a rich man’s port, he knew that the faded float was out there on the dark water, holding against the fluid, tidal bulge towards the bone-dry moon.

SEVEN
    Agony and beauty co-existed at the Slaven Centre: David suspected at times they coalesced, though he shied away from any serious consideration of that. Often when he sat at a lounge window while on night duty, or when sleep wasn’t easy, the sound was a pale trough between the hills rising from it, and the moving air bore scents of the salt, purpled mud, the bracken under dew, and the shellfish in all the small bays. The morepork was insistent, yet invisible. The stoat and weasel made no noise, but they struck as happily.
    It was a morepork-cum-stoat-cum-weasel night when Lucy Mortimer came to the centre. Big Pulii suffered several sudden attacks that left him almost dazzlingly euphoric, and after David and Raf had strapped him to the power trundler and delivered him to the main block for treatment, they came back just in time to see Jane Milton begin to die. She had wedged herself between her chest of drawers and the wall. Her fingers were already fully curled, which was a gloomy sign, and she had kicked in some of the hardboard so that the timber framing showed beneath. Abbey was sitting beside her, stroking her hair. With Tolly’s help, Raf and David got her face up on her bed. She was seriously regressed.
    ‘She was grooming most of the afternoon,’ said Tolly, ‘and while you two were away with Pulii, she blew. Everything except walking on the ceiling.’
    ‘Did you do anything about it?’ asked David.
    ‘Sure, sure, I fucking cured her, didn’t I. What do you think? Abbey stayed in here while I rang the main block and told them what was going on.’ Jane drew her knees up suddenly and shivered. The tissue white skin of her ankles was marked with little sunbursts and twists of red and purple from her veins. Two nights before, David had been interested in her description of ballooning in south Italy: ugly Brindisi at a distance and the green olive groves, the white charcoal field kilns, slipping past beneath. Harlequin reduced her to grimacing at the light fitting, snoring for air, checking the parts of her body with fluttering hands.
    ‘Well, you did what you could,’ said Raf.
    Jane began to baboon, turning her head and drawing back her lips to show the dog teeth. She stopped breathing for longer and longer periods, even though Raf gave her shots. No sign of the higher responses: all well gone, and even the involuntary functions were failing.
    ‘Jesus,’ said Tolly.
    ‘Remember you’re not here,’ said Raf. The protocols were insistent that fellow guests were not to be part of such observation.
    ‘I never thought she’d go downhill anything like as fast,’ said David.
    All so animalistic at the end, which made it easier for them — well, easier for Raf, David, Abbey and Tolly; something of a performance, though, for poor Jane.
    Afterwards, restful on the power trundler, Jane looked her old self again — the self of humour and acceptance. The pale face, glimpsed in the security lights as the trundler took them past the buildings, was civilised, apart from the wild hair across her forehead.