Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  He implanted this message in her brain every time he was in the office, which was quite frequently. It was incredibly exciting. What if it worked? Imagine! He couldn’t. It would be like ending up in one of those strange countries he knew nothing about (which reminded him: he’d better start doing some of Mrs Hartley’s geography homework). It was so unimaginable that even the dirty thoughts he had about her seemed so foreign that he realised he was bullshitting when he did his Thought Transference. It wasn’t her who was finding impossibility, it was him. But imagine if …

  He didn’t often talk to her, because that turned into everyday sort of public talking that spoiled the effect, but one day – when the effect had been spoiled anyway, by her having to explain that Mr Daly was held up – they’d got into a chat about movies and he’d said, ‘My favourite movie of all time is The Graduate.’

  He couldn’t be absolutely sure she’d got the message, but he’d thought he saw a sort of flare in her pupils before she said, that, yeah, she’d liked that one too. Then old Gorps Daly had walked in and apologised to her for not being held up after all, and set about caning him.

  THERE WERE STORIES about her. No one had any proof, but everyone had stories. Long lunchtimes in the sports shed with this or that teacher … seen leaving the Gren with so and so’s husband … When you saw her, you couldn’t help staring at her, wondering if the stories were true. And when she saw you staring, she’d smile, and that turned her smile into a confession. Yes, all you’ve heard about me is true, she seemed to be saying, when all she was probably doing was being polite.

  The stories got pretty fevered. The wisdom was that old Gorps was about the only bloke on the staff not getting any. Well, him and Reg Turton, her husband. Gilbert used this word about poor old Reggie – ‘cock-holded’. He reckoned Reggie was being cock-holded by his wife. Except that it was exactly the opposite – seemed she was holding everyone else’s in the district except Reggie’s.

  Be that as it may, Royce had never seen any evidence. It all sounded like jealous bullshit to him. But then there was no doubting that the way she acted whenever he passed through, on his way to the headmaster’s office, was more than just your normal friendliness. She was sending messages all right, or his name wasn’t Royce Royce the people’s choice. All modesty aside, he had a fair idea he was her choice as well.

  Especially after the photo at the last school social.

  There were always a few teachers there – to stop fights and so on – and now and then Mrs Turton turned up with Reggie as well. Not that Reggie could stop a fight – but maybe you wouldn’t start one in case it gave him a heart attack or something. Anyway, Royce’d had this smart red jacket on that Terry Ohern had given him when he stopped playing in the Red Henchmen Boogie Band, and was cutting quite a dash. He’d got really bold and asked her for the supper waltz but she’d said, ha ha, no, she was on a diet, and would have left him hanging there like tits on a bull if old Leo Howard hadn’t turned up and asked if they’d like their photo taken. And she said yes, she would; she’d get two copies and pay for them herself.

  They’d laughed and joked while Leo got ready and Royce’d put his arm around her shoulders just for fun. And when you saw the photo you knew exactly what they were both thinking.

  Now here they were, talking to each other in the Gren, late at night.

  HE COULD TELL she’d been watching the dunny door, because she jerked her head away from it like whiplash when he came back, and flicked at the ashtray with some ash, which missed.

  He went to the other side of the bar and waited for the barman to notice his empty glass. He didn’t, the bastard.

  She was watching him, her eyes half closed – either because of thinking or because of smoke. She took a drag of cigarette and the filter came out lipstick-tipped. She blew the smoke out through a tiny pucker hole, then left her lips in this ‘blowing kisses’ shape. Overall, he was pretty sure she was Rosicrucianing him right back.

  But what if he was wrong … hell, these were big stakes. This was not a ‘not now’ from Dana Glover, nor a ‘cos I don’t feel like it’ from Colleen O’Reagan, nor a puzzled look from Linda Harvey – this was full-on carnal knowledge! No, that’s for when you’re under age. Noncarnal knowledge by a major? Whatever. What if he’d got her look in that photo all wrong? Make an unwelcome move on a married school secretary and you’re page three in Truth.

  She suddenly gave a sort of bray of laughter. ‘You know, I still laugh when I think about that time you were in with Gorps Daly and you were talking about having got too much education. How did it go?’

  She put her thumb thoughtfully under her chin, with her cigarette right next to her eye. The smoke went into her hair. (Maybe it wasn’t brown after all – maybe it was nicotine stained.) She emphatically waved her cigarette fingers and made a tiny sky-writing message in the air just above her head.

  ‘Oh yes, that was it – “The thing is, Mr Daly, I think I’ve got so much education in me now that it’s getting confusing.” What was that example you used?’

  The sky-writing had unravelled, spent several moments as a jagged halo around her head, then risen and expanded into nebulosity.

  It was all a bit embarrassing. She was speaking louder than she thought. Not that there was anyone important in the bar: the barman himself was temporary – some wanker from Greymouth, couple of semi-known blokes from the Cement Works and old Stan Lowrie, deaf as a post. Frank O’Higgins was down the end, with his head on the bar, asleep. Frank had this amazing ability to go to sleep for ten minutes and wake up stone cold sober. Trouble was, he’d lost the ability to wake up these days.

  ‘Oh, that,’ mumbled Royce. ‘Um, Irrawaddy and Ihimaera.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right!’ and Mrs Turton gave a throaty laugh. ‘You said, “See, if I’d only known one of these things, Mr Daly, I wouldn’t have mixed them up. But Mrs Hartley’s geography about Irawaddy dams is mixing up with Mr Style’s English about Ihimaera and …” God, I laughed – the door was a bit open and I could hear everything. Witi Irrawaddy, the famous novelist. You’ve got a real nerve, Royce Rowland. I don’t know how you get away with it. Come to think of it, you generally don’t. Hahaha!’

  It was a smoker’s laugh. He’d kissed a few smokers, but never one with a smoker’s laugh. Beverley Freeny was the oldest – she was in 6A (it’d never gone past a kiss, thank God) – but she hadn’t had time to get a laugh like that. This was really grown up.

  The tingle increased.

  ‘Well, it was true, Mrs Turton …’

  Her face crashed into a frown. ‘Now listen to me, Royce Rowland!’ And her lips were suddenly as hard as Beatrice Ellen Ann’s. ‘My name is Penny. You can call me Mrs Turton when there’s teachers around, but I’d be really disappointed to think that’s what you wanted to call me socially.’

  ‘Sorry, Penny.’

  ‘That what you really want to call me?’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon it is.’

  ‘Good, because I don’t want there to be that great big gulf between me and you kids in the upper school, like there is with the teachers. I’m a secretary, that’s all: an underpaid, overworked office menial. Right? I’m no snob, Royce. I think more like you lot than like a teacher. So no more Mrs Turton, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Good. Now come over here and buy me a drink. Shit, what am I saying, you’re a schoolkid. What are you drinking?’

  ‘Well, a Miner’s Dark, thanks …’

  ‘Thanks …?’

  ‘Penny.’

  He moved around to sit on the stool vacated by Mrs Martin.

  ‘Yeah, well, just make sure the Penny comes straight out.’

  ‘The Penny drops, eh?’

  ‘Yeah! Hahaha.’ And she swivelled around on her bar stool. Her legs were darkly closed, but they were aimed straight at his crotch. Mind you, you make symbolisms out of anything when your imagination’s racing like this. ‘Any hesitations in the Penny and I’ll think you want to call me Old M
other Turton.’

  ‘Cripes, I don’t think like that, Penny. None of us think of you like that.’

  Somehow she’d attracted the barman’s attention: he was pulling a pint of Miner’s.

  ‘Yeah? How do you think?’

  ‘Haw haw, come on, Penny, you know what we think!’

  ‘Yeah, randy little buggers. See a woman, any woman, and that’s what you think.’

  ‘No, not all women.’ He said it almost dutifully. ‘It has to be a woman like you.’

  ‘You’re a dirty-minded generation, you lot, I can tell you!’

  ‘Well, how can we help it? I mean, look at you.’

  He was amazed at how easily this dumb little compliment struck home. She was supposed to be his elder and better but she’d fallen for it like a daffy fifteen-year-old. She was wriggling and glowing, and sort of pushing a frown down her face to stop the smile that was happening.

  ‘What do you mean? I just try to dress nicely. I like to be smart, that’s all.’

  IT WAS LIKE sleep-walking; as if he knew what was going to happen next. And so did she. They were acting out a play for the non-Rosicrucian side of themselves. Coo coo kachoo, Mrs Robinson, sang his awareness, and goddamnit he was riding one of the mightiest blue steelers of his life. He leaned forward to sort of politely tuck it into the fold of his jeans.

  He looked up to see if she’d noticed but she was gushingly spreading her arms out, to show off her nice black suit. Under the jacket she had a clingy black woollen thing on and she was actually giving him a walk-through demo of the curves of her upper-to-mid sexual bits while she talked about ‘just wanting to look smart’. He listened politely, pressing down on a monumental hard that threatened to impale his belly-button.

  When she brought her arms in again, they squeezed an amazingly interesting cleavage into the top of the clingy woollen thing. He was pretty close to it – what with having to lean forward to keep his knob tucked in – and at the very top, he noticed, the cleavage line forked faintly, like an arrow tail. Below that, her breasts were amazingly smooth and full and high – but just up there at the top, there was a bit of oldness.

  Oldness. Of course there was oldness. There had to be. Because it was going to happen. The Graduate. Youngness and oldness …

  Coo coo kachoo, Mrs Robinson …

  Not that he was a bloody graduate – what the hell was he gonna graduate from? Eh? Ha! Nothing! The Non-Graduate. That’s the movie they were going to make tonight.

  When you know a thing like that, you don’t have to push it. You don’t talk about it: you say anything else, because you’re not really listening. You’re just pushing time forward with a big block of words.

  After a big block of words she said, ‘Well, home for the beauty sleep, I suppose.’

  ‘It’s certainly working, Penny.’ God, you get witty at times like this.

  She didn’t seem impressed. She reared up on her barstool in a way that flattened her breasts against the black wool, but very nicely. ‘Don’t talk bullshit to me, Royce Rowland! A woman my age must look a hundred to you. Do you want to know how old I am?’ She was sitting to attention, legs crossed, elbow on the bar with the cigarette by her ear. ‘I’m going to tell you, right?’

  She was a bit drunker than he’d realised. Timing was everything: drunk was good, drunker could be disastrous.

  ‘Really, I don’t care how old you are, Penny. I mean, it’s not that I don’t care, it’s that it doesn’t matter to me. According to a book I read, we’re both at our se …’ Christ! Shut up! Don’t make assumptions. Not out loud, anyway. There was still the total ignorance game to play.

  ‘I’m thirty-eight. You realise that? I’m twice as old as you.’

  ‘I’m not nineteen!’ It blurted out before he could censor it.

  It didn’t matter: she was deeply within a significant moment and didn’t seem to hear. She was perfectly still, with a little curl of smoke coming from her hand. She somehow reminded him of one of the shunting trains with no steam up: motionless, with just a wisp coming out of somewhere.

  ‘Thirty-eight. Old enough to be your mother.’

  Holy shit! He did some fevered mental arithmetic, then felt ashamed.

  ‘So don’t you forget that. Now,’ she put out the cigarette and stood up from the barstool in an over-stately manner, ‘I suppose you’ll want a lift home?’ She brushed the crinkles out of the crutch of her black dress. She wasn’t very tall and he felt protective. He wanted to put his arms lightly around her and save her from lions. He was feeling all those feelings you feel afterwards.

  This gentle, caring post-coitum triste lasted about four seconds, then was swamped once more by lust. It surged back down his veins, filling his trousers. He leaned urgently forward, sort of doing a protective foetal over his knob, and was no taller than she was as they departed the bar and headed towards destiny.

  ‘Unless you’ve got Grant Franklin’s Anglia outside, have you?’ she said with a smoky cackle, at the door. The smokiness was accompanied by the dense mist of her breath on the chilly outside night. ‘Drying washing in a converted car. God, you’ve got a nerve, Royce Rowland. Come on.’ Steadily drunk, she crunched across the gravel to her car. Unsteadily sober, he followed.

  SHE DROVE TERRIBLY. She wove, jerked, didn’t slow down at corners, slowed down on the straight bits, crunched the gears. She was nowhere near as good as he was, and he’d only had three drives.

  But never mind that: there was still the game to play. ‘And how long have you been working at the school, Penny?’ You have to ask these dumb, polite questions. Meanwhile you’re both almost sobbing with a sort of sexual rage and swapping gluons of randiness like dogs swap fleas.

  ‘Since you were in about Standard Two.’ She gave a delighted crash of laughter. She was getting off on his youngness as much as he was on her oldness. ‘Sorry. Um, let me think: 1969 – nine years.’

  ‘Oh, that long. Well, it’s nice to get to know you, Penny.’

  ‘Yes, it’s nice to get to know you, Royce. You’re the first pupil I’ve given a lift home to, by the way, so feel honoured.’

  ‘Oh, I do. Thanks very much.’

  ‘That’s why I couldn’t accept your offer to dance at the social. Not that I didn’t want to. But you know what the other kids would be saying.’

  ‘Yeah, dirty-minded little buggers.’

  ‘Yes, you’ll never believe what kids will believe. But it’s nice we’ve had this opportunity to, you know, just have a friendly chat out of the spotlight.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s nice – you know – after seeing someone so often at school, getting to see another side of them.’

  ‘Yes.’ There followed a dazed silence as they both contemplated the other sides of themselves they were about to reveal.

  ‘Yes, it’s quite difficult getting to know people under all the official constraints, you know? It’s all so formal; it can be quite lonely sometimes.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m sure it can.’

  ‘So it’s nice when this happens. You know, when you can – you know – get to let your hair down in front of the people you have to deal with all day in the office. Not keep up that official mask all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s great. It’s been really nice sort of really meeting you for the first time.’

  They’d reached the front gate of number 74 Brougham. She rolled slowly past it, then stopped as if she’d hit something. The limestone lawns of 74 and 76 glowed dryly in the streetlight. He noticed she’d parked in the slanted shadow of Scotty Ames’ big poplar.

  ‘Well, we should keep in touch now we’ve made contact, shouldn’t we?’ she said lightly. She turned off the car lights but not the motor, and then went through a million little parking manoeuvres in the darkness. By the time she’d finished they were angle parked in darkness, pointing up the camber of the road so they were forced lightly backwards by gravity. It was perfect; like the back row of the pictures: ‘tilted slightly back for your convenience’. She may h
ave been a lousy driver but as a parker she was expert. This was by no means her first park.

  ‘Yeah, that would be nice …’

  ‘Because I think you’re a really nice person, Royce.’

  ‘I think you’re a really nice person too, Penny …’

  At which stage they collided into each other’s face at about 300 miles an hour. The game was over. Within five seconds he’d gained more information on Penny Turton than he’d accumulated in nearly eighteen years.

  THE WINDOWS WERE soon steamed up. Royce had come to regard this as a piece of evolution: lovers who steamed the windows up the most would have the most privacy and thus generate the most new members of the human race. He prided himself on steaming up windows as expertly as Beatrice Ellen Ann smelt fruit.

  (Not that he was out to do any human generating, mind you. He had methods of not generating humans, taught to him by Eddie Phibbs the barber. ‘Will that be all, sir?’ Eddie would say. First couple of times Royce’d wondered what he was on about: ‘Will that be all, sir?’ then a big wink. Until he’d caught on: ‘Oh, and a dozen Durex,’ he’d reply.)

  ‘Is there anywhere we can go?’ she whispered.

  ‘You mean my place?’

  ‘We can hardly go to my place!’

  ‘No. I suppose not. Reg’d be really pissed off, eh?’

  ‘Don’t talk about people!’ she hissed. She sounded quite angry. ‘Is there anywhere?’

  ‘Well, no, there isn’t, really.’

  ‘Is your mother’s bedroom close to yours?’

  ‘No, mine’s sort of outside; hers is way down the hall.’

  ‘Well, that’s just right.’

  ‘The thing is, my bedroom’s full of …’

  ‘Of?’

  ‘Bottles.’

  ‘Bottles?’