Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  ‘Yeah – and my home-brew kit. A coupla three might have blown up, too, and it’ll be a hell of a mess in there.’

  ‘Royce Rowland, are you trying to get rid of me?’ She turned towards him in the dark, making his hand fall out.

  ‘Hell no, Penny. That’s the last thing …’

  ‘Well, you still fit into bed, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose so.’

  ‘Well, then!’

  ‘It’s only a single bed.’

  ‘For hell’s sake,’ she hissed, ‘we’re not going to do it side by side!’

  ‘Oh, yeah, right.’

  Ironically enough, this arrangement, rather than cause an exodus from the car, caused renewed activity inside it. It all got a bit dreamlike after that, because of the unreal circumstances. He was doing, with a real, grown-up woman, what he did with girls; he was touching her in places that were – historic. Not meaning as in old, but as in – known. Awake, aware, full of memories, experiences. And she smelt of deep, elemental things – musk – where all the others had smelt of powder and lavender water and so on: things they’d put on, not smells that were part of them. Girls around his age hadn’t developed a smell of their own – though they said he had.

  She had – Penny had – and it was staining him, right now. For ever. He was part, now, of that school of old, married geezers that muttered about young under-age unhairy arses in the pub all the time. He was part of their school for ever more.

  It was unbelievable that a nice lady like Mrs Turton would let him do this to her and be so appreciative: no squeals and slaps, no wrestling around corners – just great big, joyous availability. He suddenly realised the difference – she was doing this for her, not for him. She didn’t give a toss about him; she was out for her own buzz.

  Even as he thought this, she reached her left leg over to his side, lowering the handbrake so she could make herself more available, and spreading herself out. She was making herself even easier to get at. Holy kermoley, old women were so … brazen!

  But what with the booze, the steamy darkness, and the strange angles they kept ending up in, he found he sometimes couldn’t remember who he was with. Especially because her little whimpers and gasps made her sound incredibly young. Then he’d remember and give a silent cheer of triumph.

  It was amazing that he could have this effect on a woman so experienced; and it was amazing that all these effects were known to him. The same effects at fifteen and thirty-eight. And thus Royce stumbled upon an immense truth – all women are equal.

  She was hunched so low in the driver’s seat that her head was on her chest and she was breathing in rasps. While her left leg was spread over to his side, her right was over the steering wheel with her heel on the dashboard.

  Suddenly she gave a yelp, a lurch and a twist. The horn started.

  ‘Aaargh! I’ve got cramp!’

  ‘Take your leg off the horn!’

  ‘I can’t!’

  ‘You’ve got to!’ He reached for her right leg and gave it a wrench.

  ‘Aargh! You murderous bastard!’

  ‘I had to. You might have woken somebody. You probably bloody did.’ He rubbed a hole in the steam. The geography had sickeningly changed. They were inside Scotty Ames’ fence, parked on his lawn. ‘Christ, we’ve rolled onto Scotty Ames’ lawn! Get out of here, quick!’

  ‘Hell! God, my leg’s sore.’ She shuffled sort of upright and turned the key.

  It’s appalling how quickly your sense of values can change. The activities of ten seconds ago now seemed ancient, irrelevant and slightly repulsive.

  The engine started, at about the decibel level of a Saturn rocket.

  ‘God, can’t you be more quiet?’

  ‘Shut up, I’m not a mechanic.’ She belted the car into gear and leaned into the accelerator. The car lurched encouragingly, then rocked backwards. ‘Oh God, it’s stuck.’

  ‘Get it out! Don’t worry about the noise, just rev it full tit.’

  She jigged the accelerator to the sounds of ferocious spinning. It was staggering how alien she seemed to him.

  ‘It won’t move.’ There was a sob behind the harshness of her voice.

  ‘A bloody light’s come on. Come on, we’ve got to get out of here.’

  ‘The damn car’s stuck!’

  ‘Leave it, run!’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘You’ve got to!’

  ‘How can I, you idiot? I’ve got nothing on down there!’

  He could have run, but it didn’t seem right. The honourable thing was to go down with the ship. So he did. He put his coat over her naked legs and was rubbing her shoulder for comfort when old Scotty Ames charged up to them. His face appeared in the rub-out of steam at the window.

  ‘By the suffering tomcats I’ll have you for this, Royce Rowland!’

  ‘Look, Mr Ames, there was nothing going on; couldn’t we just keep this among …’

  ‘Have you seen what you’ve done to my lawn, you young reprobate? I’ll be on to Mr Daly first thing tomorrow morning!’

  His lawn – all he cared about was his bloody lawn. Mrs Turton was weeping wretchedly into her chest, sort of funnelling a drooly mess down her cleavage.

  ‘If your friggin’ lawn was on genuine limestone, this would never have happened, you lying old bugger!’ roared Royce.

  What the hell.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  STICKY MOODY HAD kept an eye on Laura Rowland since the death of her husband Tommy. Oh, not a close eye, just a glance now and then, usually from a distance, to make sure she was all right.

  Sticky had gone to school with Tommy Rowland – and Laura. He and Tommy had been best friends in a way, though he was an absolute tearaway, was Tommy – worse than his pain-in-the-arse son, Royce. They left school together, Sticky and Tommy – joined the Marine Department and worked on the Westport dredge. Sticky had been aboard on the day Tommy sank it.

  Suction dredge, it was, the Rubi Seddon. Sticky was down in the engineroom, Tommy was on the suction pipes. Master that day was old Jud Goodger. He’d worked all his life on the Eileen Ward, a much bigger dredge, and – so Tommy said later – he couldn’t get a feel for the much lighter pipes on the Rubi Seddon.

  They were clearing out moorings on the Coal & Merchandise docks before they went out to the bar, and old Jud would keep ringing the bell from the bridge and demanding Tommy keep the pipes right on the bottom, instead of the few inches off it that he liked to maintain. Every time Tommy’d sneak the pipes up a bit there’d be this roar from the bridge and the clattering of that damn bell that Sticky could hear even down in the engineroom. ‘Get those pipes on the bottom!’ old Jud would roar.

  Well, when the moorings were scooped, they headed downstream for the bar. Pipes went down and Tommy held them above the bottom for a while then: ‘Get those pipes on the bottom!’ Clang clang clang, came from the bridge, and Tommy had had enough.

  ‘If that’s the way you want it, that’s the way you’ll get it,’ he said. Let the winch wires go, so they had every inch of slack they were born with. Pipes were snug on the bottom with about three feet of play in the wire.

  Well, bit of a westerly was running up the river that day – running at quite a swell. A wave took her up so the pipes dropped vertically underneath her because of the winch wire being slack. Wave passed underneath, down came the dredge, smack onto the pipes – crunch. Dredge did a sort of double pole-vault, smashed prow first into the next wave, sent Jud Goodger through the window of the wheelhouse, crushed both pipes and knocked a ten-inch hole in the hull.

  They had to drive her aground in the Floating Basin to stop her sinking.

  That was the beginning of Tommy’s career as a fisherman. Which is a polite way of saying it was the end of his career with the Marine Department.

  THERE WERE HIDDEN depths to Tommy. He and Sticky used to play snooker down at O’Higgins’ parlour – at not a bad level. The odd thirty break, sometimes a forty. Always a good tussle between t
hem.

  Then one day there’d been a call for Tommy. Old Gabby O’Higgins gave him a written-down phone number. ‘Toll call,’ he wheezed. ‘I’ll take the five bob up front.’ Tommy came back to say he had to get to Christchurch, pronto. And off he went in the railcar.

  He was away six days, then he came home knackered. ‘What was all that about?’ asked Sticky.

  Tommy gave a big sigh. ‘I’ve gotta show you something, Sticky. You’ll have to forgive me.’

  They went down to the parlour, set up the balls and about five minutes later they were all gone, with Tommy on 124 and Sticky on three.

  ‘It’s nothing I’m proud of, mate,’ he said. ‘It’s not that I practise or anything, I just know the angles. See, all I do is, in me mind’s eye, put the white ball where it’s exactly behind the other, so they’re both in line with the hole. I dunno how I do it, honest.’

  Seems Tommy was known as a natural all over the country. The call had been about this local league player over in Christchurch who’d lost the club funds to an Aussie horse-buyer in a week-long shoot-out at the Olympia snooker parlour. They’d called in Tommy to win it back.

  He was a sort of Robin Hood, in a way. He wouldn’t use his ability to make money for himself, only to get other people out of the shit. He was a bad bastard in so many other ways, but his snooker ability made him saintly. He was a Protestant atheist – though all the others were Catholic – except Gorps Daly, who was Protestant and believed in it – yet Tommy reckoned this gift was God-given, and he wouldn’t take advantage of it. Sticky always thought that was weird. He took advantage of everything else.

  HE’D BEEN A good-looking bugger, Tommy – like young Royce was now – and had the girls at his fingertips. Which is one reason it’d come as such a shock when he announced he was going to marry Laura Hill. Sticky had been working on the Lyttelton dredge for three months (he and the rest of the crew of the Rubi Seddon had been re-assigned after the inquiry) when Tommy rang with this announcement: ‘I’m gonna marry Laura Hill.’ And that Sticky was to be the best man. ‘You don’t mind, do you, Sticky? Eh?’ chirruped Tommy, ‘Coming home to be my best man?’

  He’d said no, he didn’t mind, and Tommy had laughed and said, ‘Yeah, that’s because you’re the best, man.’

  At least Tommy’d had the decency not to do a runner. Could’ve taken off – could’ve denied it – but he didn’t. Stayed and took it on the chin. He’d probably only rogered her to complete the set – the set being every goddamn virgin in the district. But whether it was honour or fear of Big Dan Hill, he went through with it. Came the due date, and Sticky went home on the railcar to do his best man duties.

  It was a bit of a pity, really, for both of them. Tommy was so good-looking he could probably have had Jackie Onassis if he’d wanted. There was no way he was going to make do with ordinary old Laura Hill. And it was a pity for her, too, because she could have found someone more … well, less out of her league, so to speak.

  Oh, she wasn’t ugly; she had a vague prettiness. But then everything about her was vague. Her manner was vague: she always had this little squinty frown as if she’d forgotten something. When she looked at you it was as if she was only seeing about half of you, and the absence puzzled her. And she somehow walked in several directions at once – it was a waste of time trying to get her to hurry up. Teachers at school had despaired of ever getting her into line for assembly.

  And she came at you from strange, unsettling directions; if you asked her the time she’d probably say ‘Why?’ Even her shape was vague, because she didn’t really have a recognisable figure. She had a big chest, but it didn’t seem to have a form, and she had no waist. She was, well, not fat, but blocky. Yeah, blocky.

  Brian Ohern had sort of broached this in a subtle way to Tommy one night down the Gren; how maybe she should shed a few pounds for the wedding. ‘Nah,’ Tommy had said, ‘she’s gonna be perfect, mate. Few years’ time she’ll be a gazelle. You seen her mother?’

  ‘Yeah.’ They all knew Laura’s mother: slim, svelte, trim.

  ‘That’s what you do, see,’ said Tommy, ever so confident: ‘If you want to see your wife in twenty years, you look at the mother.’

  There’d been a bit of a pause, then Brian had said, ‘Yeah, but what about looking at the father?’

  You could see Tommy’s pupils sort of splay a bit – he really and truly hadn’t thought of that until that very second. Big Dan Hill was about twenty-three stone.

  ‘Nah, it doesn’t work like that,’ he’d said – a bit faintly.

  But every indication was that it did. And it still did.

  The one thing about Laura that was intriguing was her stillness, her sort of mystical self-possession. Nothing ever surprised her because she had no capacity for surprise. ‘Laura, there’s a wombat climbing up your leg!’ ‘Really?’ is about all she’d probably say. Picking up the phone and ringing the divorce lawyer when she saw Tommy’s sunburnt bum was one of the few acts of feeling she’d ever carried out in her life.

  In a way this stillness gave her an incredibly powerful presence – it was a bit like how white contains all the other colours of the rainbow inside itself, yet still looks blank. You got the impression that her own personal blankness contained every known emotion, and was so strong it could hold them all in.

  It could well be that Tommy saw her as a sump for his wickedness. His dark deeds would be soaked into the White Hole that was his wife, and, if not cleansed, at least turned white. That seemed to be the theory he worked on, anyway, because dark deeds there were, in abundance.

  SEVEN MONTHS LATERC young Royce was born.

  In keeping with her phlegmatic nature, Laura didn’t even bother to change shape during the pregnancy.

  And that was it. Royce was born; three or four weeks later Tommy had his first extramarital affair and kept having them for the four years until the Day of the Sunburnt Bum.

  Three years later he disappeared. Disappeared off the face of the calmest sea in years. He’d been fishing out of Nelson, putting in at New Plymouth and trawling the channel in between. There’d been an Omega Block for eight days over the region – that’s a low over Tasmania and another over the Chathams, holding in a high. The sea couldn’t have been flatter. And he disappeared. To this day they’d never found a single shred of him, his boat or Des the deckhand.

  It’d been a profound mystery in the district, and the nearest they’d ever come to solving it was one day in Dooley’s hut when he was talking about purse seining in Hawaii. ‘Your biggest worry is getting too much in the net,’ said Dooley. ‘I mean, you get million-ton shoals out there – you just gotta cut a wedge out of them. More than one of those seiners was flipped and downflooded before you could blink, by trying to displace more weight in the net than there was in the boat.’

  In a blur of what you can only call calm excitement, Sticky had had a thought: ‘You think that might have happened to Tommy?’ he said. And the place went quiet, because, right then, every one of them did.

  THERE’D BEEN A memorial service a month after the disappearance. Tommy still wasn’t officially dead – not bureaucratically so, anyway – but the police and coast guard and whatnot had given up the search. So it was felt there should be a get-together, to sort of see him off and put the matter to rest.

  Sticky had still been working in Lyttelton at the time and came back over for the do. Frankly it was about as embarrassing as the bloody wedding had been, because here they were at the funeral of a bloke who may or may not be dead, attended by a wife who may or may not be divorced from him. It was pretty bizarre. They held it at Laura’s parents’ place in Granity, twenty minutes north of Westport.

  Sticky’d wandered over to Laura at some stage, to offer his commiserations and so on, and she’d murmured, ‘I don’t regret it, you know.’

  She’d had a bit to drink. Probably not a lot, but she generally drank so little that a couple of sherries would send her three sheets to the wind. Well, that’s abo
ut where she was at that moment. Funnily enough, she looked almost contented. Her eyes – of which you always seemed to see a bit too much – had run out of questions and the frown had gone from her face. ‘I don’t regret what he did, one bit,’ she said again, in her long, slow way.

  ‘No, of course not,’ he muttered, presuming she somehow meant the divorce.

  ‘And he doesn’t regret it either.’

  ‘No … Who?’

  ‘Uncle Ray. Said he’d hated the bastard as much as I did. Said it’d been a pleasure.’

  Uncle Ray. That would be Ray Hill. Ray Hill Transport. ‘… What had been a pleasure?’

  ‘Putting the bomb on his boat.’

  STICKY HAD TAKEN her home soon after. He’d told people that she was getting tired and emotional and they all agreed – including her. Young Royce was to stay on with his grandparents in Granity.

  She was starting to sag as he got her through the door of Brougham Street and he undressed some of her and hauled her into the bedroom. He plopped her, face up, on the bed. She didn’t release her arm from his shoulder as he placed her there, and, unbalanced, he fell head first into her belly. Whether she was applying pressure or whether it was just the dead weight he didn’t know, but the upshot was that he couldn’t move and was soon beginning to drown. Eventually he weaselled out from beneath the arm. Her eyes were closed; whether asleep or not, again he didn’t know.

  Next day he phoned Ray Hill about the bomb story. Yeah, he said, he had told her that – just to give her some comfort, like.

  TWO YEARS LATER – his last year on the Lyttelton dredge – Sticky had shouted Laura and six-year-old Royce over for a weekend’s holiday. He knew she didn’t have much money and could do with a break. The Russian Circus was in Christchurch and he shouted them to that as well. Lions, bears – an elephant that helped put the tent up. Not a bad outing.

  He had a couple of hours’ maintenance work on the Sunday and when he got back his upstairs flat on London Street was locked. He rang the bell. Nothing happened. He knew she was in there, but nothing happened. He rang for ten minutes, threw gravel at the window, then assumed he was wrong. She must have gone out somewhere after all. He went down the road to the Mitre Hotel for an illegal Sunday hour, then returned. He rang the bell. Nothing. He went back to the hotel, borrowed Kenny Foulds’ ladder and climbed in through the kitchen window. He walked across an estuary of spilt pots and cutlery.