Boy Overboard

by Peter Wells

  Ponky doesn’t so much as deign to touch the doll. She despises the stupid doll, I know, even though I see her pretend for Uncle Ambrose that she, yes, she likes it. But Dora the doll sits on Ponky’s dressing table, right by her bed, cold and unloved and I stand there, aching to touch it, hold it, dress it, talk to it. Couldn’t it be my friend?

  ‘You doan want it, do you, Jamie, eh boy, you doan want it really?’ I can hear Ponky’s voice all low and simple, a tone she uses when she really wants something. ‘Well,’ I say. ‘Well. If you give me, maybe, some Juicyfruit and a hokey pokey ice-cream. Two cough-drops. A packet of cricketballs. Then,’ disguised in the centre so she can’t decipher it (or rather, so that the nakedness of my quest is more decently disguised), I murmur drowsily, burying my eyes in my toes ‘if you let me play with Dora. Maybe then I might.’

  But a strange thing happens always at Ponky’s. A week, two weeks after Christmas, after Uncle Ambrose has made the biggest and best Christmas ever for my little girl, Dora the doll and all the other presents just disappear. Into thin air. ‘Go back,’ says my mother, ‘to the shop,’ pleased that she is not proven wrong, that safety does pay, that watching your pennies is important. ‘Bignoise Ambrose,’ is what she quietly says of him. ‘A Bignoise. Everything of the biggest brashest and the best. But no substance,’ Mum says. ‘No substance at all.’

  So Dora with her glass eyes and claw hands which never move (I don’t want you anyway, with your stupid expression which never alters and your flesh which never warms), Dora goes back, away, disappears as if she never existed. But Ponky has my rifle. And together when we are on our own we run round the cliff-edges of the park, kings of the wild frontier. The wind blows. We are free.

  But today is serious. ‘Act caj, follow me,’ Ponky says out the side of her mouth. She chews gum as she rolls on her feet. I know this walk. This is Ponky as boss, Ponky as the person who knows just what to do. She squints into the sun, from behind her sunglasses, as she and I silently, like spies, infiltrate the park: our park.

  We know every aspect of the beach: the bins in which empty bottles are dropped, and which we will collect, early the next morning; the shop where, late in the day, we might score an empty packet of ice-cream; the swings on which we sit, going higher and higher each breath; the cliffs which overlook Hungry Creek, where stupid couples go to be alone, wandering along, heads joined together (we spy on them, under blankets, as they struggle). There is no part of the beach which to us is unknown.

  Today, this hot perspiring day, under a merciless blue sky, is special. Mr Lamb had marked out the grass of the park, sternly, into strips. White paint thick on blade after blade of grass. The lines run magically away from him, seeming to come out of his very body as he moves along, grave and serene. We are all frightened of Mr Lamb, whose Maoriness has a kind of grave savagery, a severe dignity which is outside our understanding. But I know. The Lambs in their small dark house are in league with the trees, the stern roaring pine trees which guard the park.

  These trees, so thin and gaunt, branches hacked off so they appear as nothing so much as leaning soldiers returned from some bitter campaign, stand on the very cliff-edges of the park, facing out to sea. They guard us sternly. Also, at nightime dreamtime, when the water rises up and washes over the peninsula and we all sink back into being the dream people the night soil people, these guards do not let us out, they stop us from escaping. In our faces they slam shut the iron door. The wind plays them mournfully, ice fingers plucking mournful tunes. I hear the screams of murdered souls at night. I hear the sobs of the lost souls whose bodies occupy the bin up the road. Through their needles soaks the blood of forgotten people.

  But in daylight — and this is always the trick — in daylight everything returns to being what it is not. The daylight face finds them familiar. I touch them with my fingers and the soft pearloid gum comes out and sticks to my skin. Above us they creak. Soft needles cushion us as we, Maddy, Ponky and I, lie at their feet, in our own secret bunker. Talking.

  ‘THIS IS WHERE there was a battle,’ says Maddy. ‘The tribe arrived in the faint light of dawn: it was still dark,’ he says.

  We see the dark.

  ‘Their canoes pulled up silently at the beach. Blood stained the sand so much it was as if all the blossoms of the pohutukawa had fallen and formed a carpet on the ground: a carpet of blood.’

  We see red.

  ‘This is the site of a terrible battle.’

  We see, under our feet, corpses, and listen in silence to the cries of the wounded, the dying.

  We smile.

  Matthew is my brother. Maddy. He is a Quiz Kid on the radio, much to my humiliation. I hate having a clever swot brother. He even wears glasses. It is a terrible brand on my flesh. But I listen. Ponky listens. She knows too, when no one is around, we can hear his words, which tell us things we do not know. Sometimes we don’t know whether to believe him. Like now, when we lie on our backs and up, high above us, the trees slowly move against the sky. Creak and gently falls and flights a small needle, whirling round and round and round towards us.

  ‘How do you know?’ says Ponky.

  ‘It’s written in a book,’ he says. ‘In the library.’

  ‘Tell us, Maddy,’ I say the old words, rehearse the litany. ‘Tell us.’

  With my backbone I nuzzle into the claybowl softened by pine needles. Ponky, too, lets out a sigh and flops over on her front.

  ‘Well,’ says Maddy and he takes off his glasses. He is instantly blind, I see that. His tide-grey eyes look far away.

  ‘The faeries and goblins wanted to build a bridge from this side of the harbour to the other. But the gods said they may do this only in night-time. They must labour —’ (this word is typical of Matthew, a fancy, long, embroidered carpet of a word. Ponky’s brow frowns: she hates fancy) ‘— only in darkness. So the goblins began to build.’

  My eyes stray out into the silvern water. Black ridge folds out, and falters.

  ‘What happened?’

  I know what happened. But I need to be retold. Just as the goblins each night must labour again and again to complete this bridge.

  ‘Tell us, Maddy. Tell us.’

  ‘The goblins were working and slaving away carrying rocks on their backs and singing as they went,’ he says, ‘and the bridge was being built, they were almost there …’

  ‘Almost there,’ says Ponky. She grins. Her braces glint in the light.

  ‘They could see, just about feel, they were reaching the other side of the harbour, when first one bird sounded …’

  ‘A tui? Through the still forest?’

  I know this story.

  ‘And then another bird, and then the darkness started to fade away, and a faint light quivered across the sky, and still they worked on (they thought if they could only build the bridge they could then cross the harbour and escape the gods and run right away) so on they went working.’

  ‘Fingers bleedin’?’

  ‘Yes, fingers bleeding, backs aching, and the sun rose high and hard in the sky and a terrible a terrible thing happened then …’

  We pause there, all of us. Maddy is kneeling so upright, slim and vibrating, his sightless eyes scanning far out to sea. I see a strange smile play and quiver on his lips.

  ‘The light killed the goblins,’ Maddy says then, folding downward. He put on his specs again, covering his eyes with glass. He is exhausted.

  ‘So … the bridge was never finished,’ I whisper for all of us, for I hunger for completion, for the bridge to be finished.

  ‘And that is the sound you hear each night. It is the goblins singing as they labour to finish the bridge each night, condemned to work and work again and again, and it is their voices you hear, their voices singing, you hear each night, in the very pitch of night. You must listen!’ Maddy triumphantly concludes.

  None of us says anything. We suffer the pleasure of a story well told. Besides, I know the truth of what he says. I know the mysterious forces of da
ylight and night. I have heard the goblins singing.

  My eyes find Maddy’s, and I look at him and I see not my brother but a stranger. Who is he, Matthew, this strange changeling? Sometimes I think he is one of the faeries too. He knows what lies just slightly beyond me. He is my older brother. But I know it is dangerous to stick too close to him, with his glasses and stories and long words and silences. He is a Quiz Kid after all. Quisling. Gosling. Ugly words. Ugly wiirds. Weird.

  BUT ON THIS day we, Ponky and me, having given Maddy the slip, do not even glance at the trees. Old friends, them, we know.

  Our destination is the scrawl of kids over by the raceline. Even now, a gun goes off, a ragged line of boyshout struggles up through the white.

  Watchit.

  It is Mr Lamb. His brown eyes bullet us. We look down at the grass, searching for threepences, as we mosey away.

  I hear PK humming and I do likewise, casual and treacherous. We thread round the edges of blankets, laid out on grass. Fat white feet imprisoned in sandals. A baby mewling on its back, a mother bent over on all fours, changing it. A ragged line of bigboys runs through playing tag, ‘Get out!’ one of the fathers stands up and bellows. He is a bigbelly dad, wearing a singlet, a small hanky on his head, face red. Mother says, ‘Oh, sit down Dad, they’re only being boys.’

  We thread on. Down by the swings a boygirl war is happening. Boys behind the girls, waiting to push them higher, to let them feel the weight of their push, its power and momentum. The girls’ thin squiggle scream. We move on, PK turning to me and pulling a face of horror, ‘Uggghhh girls,’ she says to me, ‘Yuuuuuuuk.’ I agree without saying to her I like girls, at least I like being round girls, they are very interesting with their secrets. Boys’ secrets are different. Boys’ secrets are cutting your flesh with a knife and always it is a competition to see who what how. But here, silently and casually, we have got nearer to the front line.

  ‘OK,’ says Ponky, captain of our operation, her face without any emotion whatsoever. She takes off her sunglasses so as to pass with all the other kids whose fathers cannot afford to give them sunglasses (nor Coppertone which is what gives Ponky her glorious even tan: nothing but the best says Uncle Ambrose when he is feeling happy, nothing but the best for my girl.)

  ‘OK,’ Ponky murmurs to me very caj, ‘Just hang out round here, doan move too much and just say you’re one of the Meatworks kids if anyone asks …’

  But already an organising father, white sleeves rolled up, comes towards us. He is hot from organising, I can feel the blood thumping through his body. He has a handkerchief, its ends knotted, sitting on his bald skull.

  ‘Blue,’ he says to me. ‘You in this race? What age are you?’

  His hand hotdandles down my back, to the bottom of my spine.

  ‘Ten,’ my lips say, I hope caj. Behind him I see Ponk give me the OK nod, yeskid keep goin’, she likes to talk American when she can.

  ‘OK, Blue,’ he keeps calling me, his hand thieving up into my hair where it rests hot and damp. ‘Your race coming up.’

  I feel his hand squeeze and caress round the ball of my head. I am used to this, for, without it seeming to quite belong to me, I have hair the rarest shade of russet red (‘A true auburn,’ says my mother nodding knowledgeably, as if she knew all along she would one day produce something of such consequence. The strange thing is no one knows where it came from. ‘The milkman,’ says Mum, and laughs oddly, everyone laughing with her. ‘I don’t know where you come from,’ she says to me smiling mysteriously.)

  ‘Hey are these kids ours?’

  The man peers into our faces. We don’t look stubby enough, stunted enough. Behind her Coppertone tan Ponk goes white. She goes chicken, I know.

  ‘Son of Ray,’ I lie, desperately.

  The man’s hand surges electricity up and down my backbone. He smiles into my eyes.

  ‘That’s the story, Blue. You speak up.’

  ‘Hey, she’s a girl!’

  Her hat is taken off, face assessed. I see Ponk stiffen. She doesn’t like this.

  ‘Well, I’ll be blowed.’

  Laughter.

  Ponk’s face loses its features, she goes stone. Don’t worry, Ponk, I say to her silently, sending her a message. It doesn’t matter. We’ll win anyway. Just you watch. I will win something for you, PK.

  LINED UP, ON the white.

  On your marks.

  Get set.

  My world explodes.

  In a wave-wash, a face blur, I see the pine tree my tree smiling at me. Feet-thud, beside me another neck straining, air pulling in threads, ropes of it inside me, yanking me onwards as I lunge forward and break the white line. Oh, these people. If they only knew the practice I got each night, at running.

  Clapclapclapclap! I am breathing all the air of the park and picnic inoutinout dragging it into me in all my excitement: I taste gum and hot tea and sweat and the water inside people’s eyes and the warmth of their blood and all …

  ‘But he’s not one of ours!’ a mother says. ‘Whose boy is he? Whose?’

  ‘Now, don’t be a poor loser, Ima. He’s here every year.’

  He’s here every year.

  Now I see PK race. Easily, with a superb disdain, she heads off all the other girls. She wins with sleek ease, like a practised diver taking to the high platform.

  Together, silent, mute, we head off to get our prizes. We don’t risk speech.

  We feel each other’s triumph silently. Our eyes graze past each other. Inside ourselves we laugh. We have passed. We have infiltrated. We have pretended to be like everyone else. And, what is better, we have won. This is PK’s lesson to me.

  PRIZES IN HAND now we run riot and wild back down to the beach. Our togs are on under our shorts. Stripping aside our outer clothes, we run into the waves. We sink into the warm salt water, laughing.

  But there in the distance is Maddy. Hide! Hide! We lie flat into the sea. I watch him slowly walk into the men’s changing sheds. He is always going in there. What does he find there that is so interesting? I do not understand. We watch him go into the dark, then we continue on with our appointment.

  Entering the sea I enter heaven. I lie back. I look up at the sun. The sun burns a scarlet aureole on my eye-shard. I smile. My face forms into a boat, and the sail on the boat is my smile.

  This is how it used to be.

  Once.

  Ghost

  IT IS THE morning and I am trying to make myself invisible. I’m waiting, standing by the Ezy-cleen Formica, I’m trying not to get in the way. Now it is morning, all the colour in the world has drained out, down the plughole of Aunty Gilda’s new stainless-steel sink. All around me I feel the patterns of Aunty Gilda, Uncle Ambrose’s urgent movements. I am in the way, I know it, just by occupying any space in their kitchen, in their lives. By being where once there was no one, the best they can do is walk right through me, like I am a ghost. None of us slept well last night. The visitors did not leave till two am.

  All around is a sleepless suburb, accusing.

  Now Uncle Ambrose is in the hall. I have silently followed him, with my eyes and ears, tracking his every movement, the small dog of my desire running right by his heels, nipping. But he doesn’t see me.

  Aunty Gilda, Ponk know to keep out of his way.

  There is no conversation.

  Only this race, this silent tussle, to get ready for work. And work is a wall, a Berlin Wall rising up high beside us, we live now in its shadow.

  Bowl of rice-bubbles on the tabletop, glassy Formica under my fingerpads. Sometimes I like to trace the folds of the scarlet curtains placed under glass. But now it is chill to the touch, sending little electric shocks of dislike into me-who-doesn’t-exist.

  Uncle Ambrose, I silently say, willing him to remember the ride to school, in his red Jaguar. I am desperate.

  In the hall he keeps his suits all in a row, a blue one, a brown one, a thin-striped cream one. Uncle Ambrose is so important his suits are kept inside plastic bags
, being drycleaned endlessly so he is smart as a new five-pound note. Bustling into the kitchen now, his footfall is fretful, we all, goose-startle, streak out of his way.

  His red eyeball, dry, accusing, falls on me.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Ambrose,’ I say into my ricebubble moonscape.

  ‘You won’t forget the hedge,’ he says to me sharply. ‘You didn’t do the hedge. You haven’t cut the hedge.’

  Hedgeclippers snip, slash the heads off the leaves.

  He orders me, his Hitler-soft face staring down at me, momentarily.

  I realise in this second, and for this second now, he hates me.

  The kitchen is empty. Mysteriously, Aunty Gilda and Ponky have vanished. They know what side their bread is buttered on.

  He goes over to the kitchen shelf and gets out an Aspirin. He pulls some water from the tap. How slow time is as the water in his glass flows down his throat. He stands there, hand on the tap, one hand on the glass, letting the silver water flow right into him.

  Uncle Ambrose, I don’t say as I look over at him silently. Am I no longer his goodboy his ownboy? My cheeks hurt. I look downwards.

  Soon, just as Aunty Gilda bustles into the kitchen, highheels running across the lino, and Ponky comes back in, we hear Uncle Ambrose opening the garage doors with a curse, then the sound of him backing down the drive. Just as the car passes the wall and the whole kitchen becomes occupied with the volume of carsound, Ponky’s eyes lean against mine. Just for a second.

  I lower my lids so she can’t march inside.

  I SLIP IN through the school gates, my head held low so I can keep in my eyes the image of me getting out, really slowly. It is the Saturday Evening Post, over at Aunty Margaret-Rose’s, an advertisement, in colour, and the car door falls open wide, in front of the lit-up Southern mansion. A full moon like a lamp hangs in the sky. A bright slash of black marks the glittering marble floor. A thin, elegant and muscular young man stands beside the opened door. He wears a dinner jacket, a cigarette smokes elegantly between the semaphore of his second and third fingers.