A Many Coated Man Read Online Free PDF Page A

can see the pale, ribbed soles of his wife’s sneakers nine rungs above, if he looks down he can see the camellia and lemon bottlebrush which he damaged ten weeks before. Nowhere on the soil, the plants, is there any trace of the bright blue paint he was using. The garden is quiet, subdued and orderly in all its detail. He isn’t high enough to see the hills to the west, or his sheep beyond the garden, but if he breathes in deeply there is a catch of some awful smell which was part of his ordeal.
    ‘See the kelp and crayfish pots, beneath the rocks of Half Moon Bay, ’ murmurs Slaven.
    ‘What’s that?’ Kellie doesn’t look down. There is one splash of bright paint on the brickwork close to the ground. Now that he sees it, how could he not have noticed it before. His hands itch at such times. He hears a voice much like Birdy Knowles’s, muffled now though by a more resistant present.
    ‘Just singing,’ he says.
    ‘What? I remember now there was one call asking you to speak.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘It was from the Civil Defence Officer, Ayesbury. I didn’t really see how you being almost electrocuted was a disaster on that sort of scale, but I took his number for you on the hall pad.’
    ‘Perhaps they want my views on how it feels to be a victim. The psychological aftermath that they’d have to deal with, but on a scale of thousands.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    When Slaven rings, the Civil Defence Officer is happy togo along with this. He’s committed to an evening seminar on the nineteenth and has been let down by a meteorological spokeswoman, then the Hospice Superintendent, his second choice, was called to a conference on economy euthanasia. So Ayesbury rather clutches at Slaven, who is a professional man at least and has time on his hands because he is unable to employ them for much else. Ayesbury had intended that Slaven talk about precautionary dental care, but victim psychology will do.
    ‘Think of the management skills required,’ he says in his introduction of Slaven at the seminar. ‘Imagine the state of mind of a thousand earthquake survivors and we’re asking them to line up quietly and then fill in an identification report which has twenty-three questions.’
    Although it is only eight pm and daylight saving is in force, the Civil Defence Headquarters are lit by recessed bulbs, for they occupy what was once the basement of a bank, protected there from fire and tsunami impact. The rent is also lower. Slaven can see lines of videophones and radio telephones in the communications room through a glass divide and the compact Controller’s room all set to go, with its message pads and CD plan on the desk.
    In the largest room, where they gather, the walls are covered with display screens, maps and flow charts. An operations room, says Ayesbury, from which he and his volunteers constantly practise the salvation of a city which largely ignores them.
    Slaven has been a small part of that disregard, but as he stands up to address the twenty-three people in the bunker-like operations room, he feels a curious warmth towards them. They are here on a summer’s evening, having put aside other duties, pleasure even, to come to a Civil Defence seminar. Slaven spreads his legs slightly to ensure a good footing, as he often does when about to begin a challenging piece of orthodontic surgery. Now for the first time he will put to the test his new compulsion to promote a cause, to influence others. He feels his hands begin to tingle, reclothed in skin and muscle from his thighs. He has nothing to say regarding the maintenance of dental health, or the management of disaster victim psychology.He realises that despite his notes he never intended to follow them.
    He begins with the irrevocable sense of isolation he assumes all to feel and the great act of will necessary if it is to be sufficiently controlled to allow a sense of community. He goes on to talk of personal and social conscience, the need for policies which cater not