Free Carnival Sky by Owen Marshall Page A

more an influence on their tasks, moods and prospects. It was now Raewyn who allocated their rounds and evaluated their copy. He left a note on Nick’s desk accusing him of slacking off, and saying he would be in touch. How hot it was, despite the dampness of his clothes. The long room flickering with computer screens, active with movement, and noisy with telephone conversations and chat among reporters. He talked a bit with Donna and Lloyd, who were more interested in telling him of a stand-off between the union and the paper than in his doings. ‘Hey, take it easy, okay,’ said Lloyd as they parted. When Sheff glanced back from the door they had become engrossed in that discussion again. And why not? People were spun off from busy workplaces all the time, and those left closed ranks with common purpose. He hadn’t once bothered to contact his predecessor after he took over the job. He’d been too busy, and too selfish.
    He stood by the car park with time to spare. The rain was over, and he watched the people passing, a few skipping as they went to avoid the puddles. How very ordinary most of them were, and apparently ungrateful for being alive, while he had a commission from a city newspaper and an overseas trip to plan. Yet below that acknowledgement was a dragging dissatisfaction. What the fuck did any of it matter?
    He shouldn’t have paused for that unremarkable rumination: a seagull muted expertly on him, then wheeled away overhead in noisy triumph. The loose excrement soaked quickly into his shirt, still damp from the earlier rain. It both startled and angered him, but even before taking out his handkerchief, he looked furtively about to see whether the humiliation had been witnessed. No one in sight paid him any attention, and yet, life being what it is, he was convinced that at some window above him a casual observer had been rewarded, would reel back laughing from the glass.
    In a deliberate exercise in self-control, Sheff uttered not one swear word as he carried on to his car, instead whistling and graciously waving a woman driver on at the exit although he had the right of way. ‘Not at all, madam. Not at all,’ he said aloud to himself in response to her smile. He was agreeably surprised that there was hardly any smell at all. Would there be germs in bird shit though? Parasites splashed into his face and already working their way into the bloodstream? He saw them as in a television commercial: sperm-shaped and resolute in their malice. A wash with Dettol might be a sensible precaution.
    In the evening Sheff rang his sister, Georgie, in Wellington.
    ‘How’s things?’
    ‘Things are fine except I’m too busy and haven’t found the ideal man to marry yet.’
    ‘Well, you’re getting on a bit, and anyway I don’t think guys want to marry a doctor. It’s offputting to have a woman know so much about one’s biological workings.’
    ‘So that’s it? Because I’m brainy I can’t have a lover.’
    ‘You could marry another doctor,’ said Sheff, and then he told her that he’d left the paper and was planning a trip overseas. ‘Most other times I’ve had to concentrate on study, or interviews and research. This trip I’ll smell the flowers, sit in terracotta village squares, eat goat cheese and imitate the locals.’
    ‘Mum told me. You’re a lucky bugger,’ said Georgie. ‘I guess journalism’s one of those jobs you can put down and take up againwithout trouble – the skill set doesn’t change. It’s more difficult in medicine to take a break. Anyway, good on you. A trip will be marvellous. There’s Dad, of course.’
    ‘Dad?’
    ‘Well, let’s face it, he’s not going to get better. You know that. You should at least go down there before heading off anywhere.’
    ‘Yes, I intend to, but he’s just the same, isn’t he?’
    ‘Well, he could die soon,’ she said, ‘and you haven’t been to see them for months, Mum says.’
    ‘I ring pretty regularly.’
    ‘It’s not the