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on with it. A need not just in me, but out there; a need out there. Tonight’s shown that, even with only twenty-three people. I can see that I won’t be at ease with myself until I’ve tried to give leadership and direction in the way which has become clear to me since the accident. Does that sound pompous? I’m not clear on what it all means yet. Perhaps it will be just forthe time until my hands have healed and I can go back to the surgery.’
    ‘A mission,’ says Kellie matter of factly. ‘You’ve found a mission, I’d say.’
     
    There is a place, as you well know, quite close to the Beckley-Waite Institute in Wellington, but a private home, flats in fact with the Yees in the front one, the McGoverns in the back and Walter Tamahana in the bed-sit. The Yees have been out since the Democratic Reconstruction over thirty years ago, but have broken with precedent by not working the pants off their new countrymen and becoming rich. Instead Victor Yee tutors part-time in Cantonese at the Polytechnic, stoically looks after his wife who is a severe asthmatic and has the passing joy of a fortnightly visit to the brothel above the Tahitian tattooist. Very late and very often in the intervening nights he opens his window and plays his clarinet with exemplary skill while looking at the dark mass of Beckley-Waite. He does not, you will notice, spend a great deal of time rejoicing in his adopted country. Will he ever get to hear the dentist from Christchurch do you think?
     
    Following the Civil Defence seminar Slaven has three calls. Ayesbury rings to thank him again and give him the address of the missionary from Bangladesh. Marjorie Usser proves that her enthusiasm hasn’t abated and the entreaty man, whose surroundings on the vidphone appear surprisingly opulent, claims that at last he has a clear purpose in life. He says also that he has taken the liberty of mentioning Slaven’s gift to a friend — the Rev Thackeray Thomas.
    Enter then, Thackeray Thomas, when the first autumn winds whirl old leaves and seed heads and husks of insects into Slaven’s double garage. He is sweeping it out clumsily because of his maimed hands, when Kellie comes in and tells him that a Thackeray Thomas from the Charismatic Cambrian Church has rung to see if he may come out and talk. Kellie says that the Rev Thomas has been struck by reports of Slaven’s comments at the seminar and would appreciate the opportunity to meet him. ‘Have you everheard of the Charismatic Cambrian Church?’ asks Slaven.
    ‘Never heard of it. But he speaks well.’
    Thackeray Thomas brings his two sons when he comes to visit: fat, freshly scrubbed young men who are determined to gain the power of rhetoric. ‘Pay no attention to them,’ says Thackeray after the introductions. ‘They’re here to learn.’ So the sons sit with Slaven and their father in the autumn sun and listen to this conversation of their elders and betters — occasionally twitching their mouths as they silently practise some orotund sentence of their father’s, or understatement from their host.
    Thackeray Thomas is a man of average height who appears taller because of his bearing, the large Brythonic head, but most of all a voice which he wields as excalibur. New Zealanders remain suspicious of any pride, or skill, in words, but Thomas claims a heritage beyond his five generations locally — descent from the great Meyricks of Bodorgan who fought for Henry VII at Bosworth under the Red Dragon standard of Cadwaladr, and were rewarded for it.
    ‘Positively we are a social church rather than an institutional one you see,’ says Thackeray. ‘The ideas which you have and which you express so succinctly are precisely those which our church and the Cambrian membership have been working towards in the development of our outreach policy.’
    ‘I don’t think of my ideas as being religious and certainly not denominational. In fact it’s a sense of downing the barriers and classifications