Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  A wave detonated into the windscreen and hauled the Aurora judderingly downwards. They were a little lighthouse in the sea off Westport until the water crashed clumsily through the scuppers and they rose into a boat again.

  ‘Jesus. Didn’t know a thing about this, Sticky,’ murmured Bob. ‘Not a bloody thing.’

  ‘That’s the nature of the beast, isn’t it, Bob? Privacy between consenting adults.’

  ‘Well, stone me, eh? What was it like, then, Sticky?’

  ‘Shut up, Bob! Shut your filthy mouth!’

  You always assume that Bob wins all his fights, but just looking at Sticky, now, you begin to wonder. Stringy bugger, tall, with big hands and mad eyes.

  ‘Back off, Sticky,’ snapped Bob, getting some authority back into the situation. ‘This is one shit of a time to start spitting the dummy.’

  ‘Dunno, Bob; don’t know that I agree. Might be the perfect time.’ He smiled – which was not an encouraging sign – then said to Royce, who he’d been staring at all the time, ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’

  ‘Well – I do, Sticky. But I don’t think I’ve quite caught your drift.’

  ‘You tore up all my books once. In Lyttelton. Do you remember that?’

  A full-frontal cliff of sea caromed into their bows and sent Royce into the galley.

  ‘No, I don’t, actually, Sticky,’ he said when he got back, making as little of his departure as he possibly could.

  ‘Your mother was my girlfriend. Has she ever told you that?’

  Oh God. ‘No. She hasn’t. When was that?’

  ‘Before Tommy. I’d got moved to Lyttelton because of him sinking the bloody Rubi Seddon. I was saving up.’

  ‘Sticky,’ said Bob quietly, ‘we just went over a wave about the length of this boat. If they get bigger than that, you know what happens.’

  ‘I haven’t had many women in my life, Bob; nor have you. One was Laura Hill. Tommy Rowland comes along and knocks her up while I’m on the Lyttelton dredge, saving up for an engagement ring. I end up the best man, for crissake!’

  Bob and Royce are battered from their positions in the wheelhouse by another left hook from the sea. Sticky doesn’t seem to notice.

  ‘And then – holy hell – twenty years later the product of that bloody union is trying to shaft me next girfriend!’

  Bob gives a snort. He turns it into a cough. ‘Yeah, you’ve had a bad time at the hands of the Rowlands, all right, Sticky.’

  ‘Have I bloody what!’ He turned from Royce to glare through the front windows, as if seeing the sea for the first time. But his thoughts were far away. He was oblivious to the storm. He looked away from it – sort of swatted it from his eyesight.

  At one level – one deep, desperate level – there was something quite encouraging about Sticky’s self-absorbed disregard for the storm. There it was, trying to turn them into matchwood – with a force Bob’s already admitted he might not be able to handle – and old Sticky was so wrapped up in his problems he didn’t even notice. Inspirational, really – if a storm couldn’t get a bloke’s attention, it was hardly worthy of sinking you, was it?

  ‘Sticky, why did you want to crew for me?’

  ‘Five weeks’ money I wouldn’t have got otherwise.’

  ‘Fair enough, yeah. No other reason?’

  ‘Bugger of a storm this,’ said Sticky, folding his arms and glancing out at it again. Then he turned his eyes back to Royce and left them there.

  ‘Glad you’ve noticed,’ grunted Bob.

  ‘Reckon we could do with putting the wobbly boards down.’

  ‘Anyone going out this wheelhouse would get washed off the deck.’

  ‘Wobbly boards’d stabilise us. Might capsize without them.’

  ‘Two waves back we were underwater. Wobbly boards’d been out, we wouldn’t’ve come up again.’

  Sticky was silent for a moment, staring at the advancing sea. Things clattered in the galley, crashed on the deck – there’d be several things not there after the storm. Most of those STOLEN FROM SCULLEY’S bins would be behind them now, bobbing on the sea. Some of the fish down in the hold would probably be mulch. The atmosphere was as tight as the inside an African tom-tom as the hull was compressed and strained. If the common-sense man-in-the-street could see the views from this wheelhouse window right now, he would have to conclude that there was no friggin’ way out of this.

  ‘Need more power, Bob,’ said Sticky, as quietly as the noise around allowed. He’d made a quick glance at the sea. ‘We’ve got cavitation problems here, Bob. You’re only just reaching the top of those waves. You lose steerage, we’re stuffed. What we’ll do, the kid and me, we’ll get down to the engine, tie a string to the governors, bring the leads in here.’

  ‘And what about the water that’s gonna crash into the engine, Sticky?’

  ‘Yeah, well, here’s what we’ll do. We’ll time it so we can get down there, open the doors, I’ll jump in, the kid closes the doors and holds them closed till I’ve done the job. Then we bring the leads back here and you get more throttle.’

  ‘Meanwhile the kid’s on the deck.’

  ‘Yeah. But he’ll be okay. I think it’s in the interests of the safety of the boat, Bob.’

  ‘That what you reckon, Sticky?’

  ‘That’s what I reckon, Bob. I’d be inclined to put it in the log if it were my boat.’

  ‘That a fact, Sticky?’

  ‘I’d put in the log, that me and the kid went out in the interests of the safety of the vessel, to gun the engines. Me and the kid that cost you a day’s fish did this in the interests of safety.’

  ‘That’s what you’d say?’

  ‘That’s what we’ll say. How me and the kid that tried to pinch your girlfriend’s groceries went out to save the boat.’

  ‘At risk of life, eh, Sticky?’

  ‘At risk of that, all right, Bob.’

  ‘He’d be just the one to hold those doors shut on the deck, you reckon, Sticky?’

  ‘No one better, I reckon, Bob.’

  ‘Well, I might just be inclined to come around to your way of thinking, Sticky.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear that, Bob. We’ll be back in a few minutes, barring mishaps.’

  ‘Yeah, barring those, of course.’

  ‘Come on then, Royce, get your wet gear on.’

  ‘Oh, Sticky, just before you go …’

  Sticky stopped, turned, and was greeted by a right upper-cut that lifted him off his feet. He then hosted a left, right, left combination on the way down.

  Bob was back at the wheel. ‘Sorry, Sticky,’ he said. ‘Sudden change of mind.’ He was breathing heavily.

  The rapidity of everything around him had slowed Royce to a torpor, though he was probably still moving and thinking at average speed. Christ, Sticky’d been knocked out further than Alister Hopkinson. What a show of skill; you kept looking on his jaw for the Phantom’s skull mark.

  ‘Christ, Bob, Sticky’s knocked out,’ he spluttered, as if carrying news to Bob. ‘He’s out for the friggin’ count.’

  ‘Two bags o’ groceries,’ Bob was murmuring. ‘He reckons he can turn me for two bags of friggin’ groceries?’ The whiteness of his hands on the wheel came like flashes of lightning. ‘Of course he’s knocked out, that’s what upper-cuts are for. Well, fix the bugger up, you useless bastard!’

  Sticky didn’t seem to be breathing at all. He was on his back, moving only with the motions of the boat. ‘I think he’s …’ his diaphragm was going slowly up and down ‘… okay.’

  ‘Put the bugger on his side and plug him there with cushions. He’ll come round in an hour or two.’

  ‘Jesus, Bob, I haven’t got a clue what that was about,’ said Royce shakily, ‘but I sure as hell didn’t want to go out onto that deck.’

  ‘You didn’t know what that was about?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing!’

  ‘Sorry, Bob …’

 
‘Holy friggin’ hell. Jesus! Go get me an octopus, I want something intelligent to talk to!’

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  EITHER HE’D DONE a Legend of Sleepy Hollow and woken up God knows how long since the storm, or storms deflate pretty quickly out here, because his bunk was now on an almost even keel. Sure, it was still rising and falling, but if they’d been travelling on land, this would be the downs of South Canterbury rather than the Southern Alps that he last remembered.

  The sea of The Fisherman and the Siren was undulating too, above his bunk. It seemed to really swirl under the siren and over her thighs, although it was only the heaving of the boat. He watched the pink, unopened bit of Linda Harvey go steeply up and down above him, then he turned away to concentrate on events of the moment.

  Sticky was just a hump in his bunk. He’d moved a bit since they’d carried him – still pole-axed – down the companionway. His head was now under the blankets, his back turned. He could be awake and sulking for all Royce knew.

  Royce rolled out of his bunk – gravity, for once, being helpful – and eased up the companionway, anxious not to wake Sticky. There were things about their last situation that he didn’t want to think about right now.

  Bob was dozing in the La-z-boy and grunted as Royce crawled out of the fo’c’sle from under his legs. The boat was presumably on automatic pilot. Royce stood up and looked at the panel; yep, it was. He knew that now, did ole Master Mariner Rowland.

  Outside was fog, pressing down on the water, flattening it out. Big rollers were still surging by, but the top of the sea was oily somehow. Usually, even in calm weather, the top of the sea is sort of dimpled – as if suffering a bad case of cellulite (Dana Glover had a couple of spots of it; he never let his hand dwell on them, in case she got offended). Now, over the surface, there seemed to be a plastic coating – a miniscus – holding the water in. Maybe that’s what made waves so violent – they are a tearing of the miniscus and an unnatural spilling of the contents underneath. Anyway, the sea was wallowingly calm, sort of slopping aimlessly around, looking for the way out. The fog leached all the colour out of it so you just had moving grey on the bottom and unmoving grey on the top.

  ‘I’ll make a cuppa tea, Bob,’ he said.

  ‘Emmssfizzup,’ said Bob, without lifting his head off his chest. But he took the opportunity of semi-awakeness to have his usual infinity-sized fart. Christ, Bob could probably fart through a whole ad-break.

  Royce bowled down to the galley. By the time Bob’d had his cuppa they’d probably be going to shoot the gear. Royce’d probably have to do it himself this time. He got the idea that Sticky was gonna be counted out of proceedings from here on in. He picked up the kettle, yelped and dropped it. It had electrocuted him. So did the spoon, so did the metal cup – so did every friggin’ thing made of metal in the galley. There must have been so much lightning pumped out last night that the sea, the boat and everything on it was electrified.

  When he got back with the tea you could see straggly tendrils of fog through the front windows, like the hem of a torn sheet, where it was starting to rise. And suddenly, clear as a bell, was the bottom half of a boat. A few seconds later the top half was there as well, as the fog headed upwards.

  ‘Jesus, Bob,’ said Royce, and it was a sort of plea for company.

  Bob was instantly awake. He stared out as if he’d been on watch all night. ‘Fuck me. Jap squiddie,’ he snapped.

  And then another.

  The fog had turned into a series of theatre curtains that kept on going up on yet another Japanese squid boat: black-stained, squalid looking things, low in the greasy water as if peering over the top of it.

  ‘And slimy things did crawl with legs, upon a slimy sea,’ murmured Royce.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It’s a poem. By Samuel Wordsworth.’

  ‘Well, don’t give me the creeps more than you have to.’

  ‘There’s not a soul on board them.’

  ‘A dozen Marie Celestes.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Ghost ships,’ said Bob, having his own turn at wisdom. ‘Bad seamen, these bastards. Don’t give a fuck. All asleep, no one on watch. Like steel icebergs. Floating disasters. These hulks are fulla Jap rapists and murderers. They get a choice of either prison or the friggin’ squid fleet.’

  It was eerie – like those stories you hear about the Sargasso Sea: horizonfuls of dead ships.

  ‘How far out are we?’ said Royce. For some reason he was whispering.

  ‘Thirty miles,’ replied Bob. He was hardly shouting either. ‘Right, we’re outa here.’ He hauled on the wheel and after a long think the bows started falling off the middle of the waves and veering towards the edge.

  The Aurora trampolined across the sideways domes of uncresting waves, turning for home.

  ‘They love whiskey, those little bastards,’ said Bob. ‘Pay the earth for the good stuff. What we used to do was pierce the cork on a bottle of Bells and the cork of something really classy like eighteen-year-old Highland Farm. Pierce ’em with wee capillary tubes that Jummy Symes used to pinch from the hospital. Bleed them into neutral jars, turn the capillaries around and fill the other bottle. Took six weeks, but you drank the good stuff and made sixty bucks on the difference.’

  ‘Bob,’ said Royce quietly, ‘you oughta take a look at this.’

  Royce had been watching someone come on deck of the squiddie they had just passed. They’d biffed a package overboard that had suddenly convoluted into a grey lifeboat when it hit the sea. They’d jumped into it, half missed and had only just sorted themselves out when Royce alerted Bob. He held off telling him, uncomfortably aware of the similarities to their own little rescue foray.

  ‘He’s gonna try and reach us,’ said Bob.

  They watched. The person had taken up a pair of oars from inside the dinghy and was rowing, reasonably well, towards them.

  ‘If they make it, they make it. I’m not heading towards no friggin’ Nip,’ snapped Bob. But he had crunched the big gear handle towards neutral and slowed them to a wallow.

  ‘Do Japs defect, Bob?’

  ‘Christ, how do I know?’

  The lifeboat was sporadically visible behind the spurs and gullies of the grey sea.

  ‘If he makes it,’ said Bob evilly, ‘best thing we can do is drop him off home in Pearl Harbour.’

  THEY WATCHED THE defector trying to arrive. He was welled upwards like he was on a volcano of water, then sank out of sight into the depths behind the wave as it passed him by. He looked helpless but determined.

  He was still a long way off but even at a distance somehow didn’t look Japanese.

  A couple of gulls checked out the liferaft to see if it was edible. It wasn’t. The gulls sloped off in that Quasimodo style of theirs. The bloke in the liferaft rowed in the same hunchbacked way, come to think of it.

  The defector’s back was to them of course, because he was rowing, but now and then he got slewed round by miscalculation and then you could see some of his features. Dark skin, a big hooked nose, like a red Indian’s – and frizzy hair that had the faded blackness of licked licorice.

  When he was within docking range he started turning around to get his measurements and you saw more of his features – big pale eyes that dug into the dark, bare, Rubric squareness of his cheekbones; a nose so thin from the front that it squeezed his nostrils into slits, and an amazingly wide mouth. Overall he looked a lot like a monkey – but not a Japanese monkey. He was compact and weedy and yet had somehow managed to grow a double chin. It shimmered under his first chin like a paradox.

  He reached them, long after they’d lost interest in his identity.

  ‘I’ll go round to leeward,’ he yelled, ‘but gemme a rope down here, before I drift.’ His long mouth snapped open and shut like a glove puppet’s, to let out the voice – which was sort of squeaky and crackly, with an American accent.

  His rubber boat scudded down the hull, bouncing off, then being pushed back into it by th
e easterly set. The force was too much for him to safely climb aboard, so he thrummed his craft down the hull with his hands – then disappeared under the bow and turned up in the calm water of the lee side. He bobbled there, waiting for help.

  ‘Typical,’ muttered Bob. ‘No friggin’ gear. Another friggin’ refugee ready to bludge on social welfare.’

  Bob threw some heavy netting down into the liferaft and tied the other end to the starboard bollard. The non-Japanese guy swarmed aboard, legs, arms and black sou’wester making him look like an invading sea spider.

  They awaited his arrival – sort of forming themselves into an official party. But at first the bugger didn’t turn up. He turned his back on them, leaned back over the bulwark and hauled the net out of the liferaft. And you couldn’t help noticing that for a skinny guy he had an amazingly jutting bum. He folded the net very quickly into quite a neat bundle and came down the deck and handed it to Bob.

  ‘Thanks, feller,’ he said in his crackly voice as he shook Bob’s hand. ‘Name’s Betty. I was a sex slave on that goddamn squiddie for six months; you’ve just saved me. Haven’t got the kettle on, have you?’

  ROYCE AND BOB looked at each other, but not with kettles in mind. This was a woman? Holy shit, this person – made up of spare parts from a horror movie – was a woman? And a sex slave? Sheesh! Royce wasn’t all that sure what a sex slave was, but Betty sure as hell didn’t put him in mind of sex, and she didn’t seem the type to get enslaved – especially over sexual matters.

  ‘Yeah, Royce’ll make us a cuppa,’ said Bob slowly. ‘Come in, you’ll be wet.’

  ‘Right, thanks again. You’re the Royce in question, I guess?’

  ‘Um, yeah,’ said Royce. And shook, for the first time, the firm, calloused hand of Betty the sex slave.

  He and Bob drooped into the galley, sort of goofy with confusion. Betty had taken over the conversational airwaves and was saying technical things about her little journey over to them and how Japs had such small diddles that they fell out of western condoms and had to use special Jap ones with ELEPHANT or GIGANTOR on the side.