by Nixon, Carl
Only Jase Harbidge encountered any difficulty in getting away. When Jase passed, fully dressed, through his darkened kitchen on his way to the back door, he found his father sitting at the kitchen table staring at one of his wedding photographs by the light from the hall, where the bulb was always left burning. Bill Harbidge took in the heavy crowbar that hung from Jase's hand.
'I've gotta go out,' said Jase.
'Sure,' his dad said and glanced towards the window where the rain dripped down the glass. He went to the fridge and began making himself a sandwich. Jase watched him but was unsure of what else to say, so he just turned and walked out of the house.
The wind seemed to have lessened slightly but the rain was still falling when we slipped from our homes. Like the stormwater systems down south, the gutters and underground pipes down New Brighton could not cope with so much water in such a short period of time. Rocking Horse Road had started to flood hours before and large pools of rainwater were now lapping against the edges of the footpaths. In some places the water from both sides of the road had met in the middle, forming dark lakes through which we waded.
Tug met Pete Marshall near the Ashers' dairy. As though their meeting had been planned, they fell into step, although neither of them spoke. Jim Turner reported seeing Jase ahead of him on the road. Others were drawn to the beach and the light from their torches flickered and wove down through the sand dunes as they followed the tracks. Behind the dunes, foaming white waves stampeded on to the beach.
We converged on SJ's house, coming out of the surrounding darkness singly and in pairs. Tug and Pete were the first to arrive. Tug's hood was back up. He tapped the head of his golf club with a metallic watch-tick against a fencepost as he waited. Jim Turner had blacked his face with shoe polish so that the whites of his eyes showed bright in what little light there was. Both Al Penny and Matt Templeton wore balaclavas and Mark Murray carried a softball bat. Pete Marshall had stopped to collect Lucy's trophy from the Turners' garage and bore it through the night like a silver talisman. No one mentioned the dream.
When we had all gathered on the street, we walked on to SJ's front lawn. For a moment we were at a loss. The dream had brought us here but had not told us what to do when we arrived. The only light came from a naked bulb above the front door. We were facing south and the rain drove into us; those who weren't already saturated, soon were.
Although we did not notice it straight away, the rain had already formed puddles on the lawn where the ground was low-lying. One puddle was reaching out to embrace another and another. If we'd cared to look we would have seen the same thing happening in front of all the houses we had passed. The road flooding was not unprecedented, but elsewhere on the Spit puddles were unnatural. Water normally vanished instantly into the sand. But we were not interested in the puddles or even in the storm. Our focus was on the house.
Mild Al Penny was the first to throw one of the whitewashed rocks that ringed the garden. The rock arced through the darkness. We watched its progress as it travelled through the air and then carried on through the bedroom window. The shatter of glass cut through the noise of the wind and the rain. There was a pause, and then the bedroom lit up. We could all see SJ clearly as he peered out through the ragged pane. He had been startled from sleep and was wide-eyed. As more rocks began to hit the house, his head darted back inside and the light in the bedroom was turned off.
There were more than enough rocks, hundreds. Some bounced off the weatherboards, others found their mark. More glass shattered and fell and not just in the bedroom either. The windows of the darkroom and the lounge and the louvred panes in the toilet all shattered. The rocks that went high landed on the iron roof. They roared and growled as they rolled back down, adding their voices to the storm's.
And then SJ was standing on his front step. He had pulled on a T-shirt but was still wearing his pyjama pants. He was lit from above so that we could not see his eyes. Where they should have been there were only dark sea-caves inside which, we were certain, lurked a black soul. He shouted garbled, angry threats into the darkness but he might as well have been yelling at the slanting rain. We knew that he could not see us, or if he could, that we were only darker shadows in the night.
Who threw that next rock? We don't know (even if we did, we wouldn't tell, right to this day). All that we will say is that it was a good throw, hard and accurate. The rock struck SJ on the forehead just above his left eyebrow. A communal sigh of satisfaction rose from us. There was immediately blood and SJ clutched at his head and staggered forward. That involuntary movement took him down the single concrete step, out of the light from the bulb above the door. Perhaps if we had been able to see him more clearly, what happened next would have been avoided. Then again, probably not.
More white rocks flew, striking him on the body. Nobody was holding back now and we were not kids any more. At fifteen the power in your arm is there and your eyesight is sharp. SJ staggered again and fell. He tried to regain his feet. White rocks flew in like tracer in the night. Behind the dunes the waves crashed. The storm rumbled above and the wind howled. The rain beat down on us and him. We closed in, forming a wide semi-circle in the darkness. A large rock struck his left knee and he cried out and fell again. He did not try to get up this time but simply curled up in a ball and took all that we had to give. By then he had stopped shouting, and if SJ was moaning we could not hear it above the rushing sound in our ears.
When the rocks close to us finally ran out we threw whatever was at hand. The golf club helicoptered through the air into his body. Someone threw a potted geranium that fell short, the pot shattering. In the end we resorted to snatching up the very earth. We hurled the sodden sand, darting forward, yelling in berserk, open-mouthed rage. The silver trophy was the last to go. It pierced the darkness, striking SJ on the shoulder where he lay, still now. The silver girl broke as she rebounded, the metal separating from the plinth where it was only glued, and both parts lay on the ground.
We had glimpses of each other's faces but quickly looked away. Something primitive and savage was there: a look we has also seen in the faces of the men who confronted the protesters outside the Empire.
The Molotov cocktail was improvised on the spot (though again, who did it, we cannot say). A tin of two-stroke petrol, intended for the lawnmower, had been taken from the unlocked garden shed, along with an old rag. A glass-milk bottle from next to the letterbox. Once assembled the cocktail would have welcomed a flame as a natural progression. It flew through the air and into the bedroom. There was a pause and then a pleasing whoosh. The fire spread quickly. The black polythene covering the darkroom window melted away, curling in on itself, and the long flames tasted the outside air. Despite the rain the fire quickly reached out and up into the roof, and then the flames were flickering through the broken glass of the other bedroom as well. Flames stalked the house, moving quickly from room to room. We soon felt the heat on our faces, even though our backs were chilled and stiff. In no time, the flames had a stranglehold on the house. We had to move back or risk being scorched.
We stood, panting from the exertion, watching the raging fire. Our anger had been building up since Jase had found the photographs of Lucy. In fact, it's probable that it had been building since Pete had discovered her body on the beach. Now at last it was exorcised. Nobody spoke or met anyone else's eye.
Only now did we notice that the lawn was completely flooded. Where we had scooped sand was under water. Water lapped at our ankles. Looking around we saw that the road and the sections of the nearby houses were all the same.
We didn't know what to do or what to think so we just stood, ankle deep, watching the fire. We stood like that for what seemed a long time. The firelight reflected in the surface of the water. We ignored SJ. He lay on his back, still, light and dark flickering across him. He was no more to us now than a bag of old clothes someone had discarded in the rising water. It was only when the first siren sounded, still far away, thin and whiny like a mosquito
in the night, that we were roused from our trance. One by one we turned and walked away into the darkness of Rocking Horse Road.
The nay-sayers' worst predictions about the Spit had finally come true. On the night of July 6, 1981, the Spit sank beneath the waves.
What had happened was that the huge downpour, two hundred millimetres in less than eight hours, had combined with an unusually high tide. The rain had sunk down into the sand of the Spit as it usually did, but had met the elevated water-table, until finally the water had had nowhere left to go.
All up and down the Spit, people and animals became confused as to where the ocean and the estuary started and finished. As he walked home in the darkness Jim Turner saw a school of silver herring swimming down the middle of Rocking Horse Road. The light from his torch flashed off their sides and they darted left and right, away from the bow wave Jim's feet pushed in front of him. Roy Moynahan told us of being almost home and standing on a small stingray that twisted and turned under his foot so that he fell. Later he found the razor cut in his jeans where its tail had slashed. We agreed that he was lucky not to have been badly cut. For weeks afterwards people living down the Spit spoke of finding dried starfish in gutters and gardens. Hardy crabs turned up still alive under woodpiles and in drains months later. There was even a story going around that someone sat on their outdoor toilet and felt something tickle their bum. When he or she (it varies in the telling) jumped up and peered into the bowl they found a fair-sized octopus curled up down there.
Standing in the driveway of his parents' house Tug Gardiner looked across the flooded road and saw the Ashers. They were on the front step of the dairy. The light was on in the shop so he could see them clearly. It was the first time we could remember seeing all three of them together since Lucy's funeral. Even though it was the middle of the night they were all fully dressed. Tug told us that they did not speak but just stood and looked out at the water, which had risen up past the second step and was moments away from spilling over into the shop. He watched them for a long time, and even after the water rose up and touched their feet they did not move. 'It was impossible to tell what they were thinking,' said Tug.
When dawn came, it revealed an almost continuous stretch of water right through from the estuary to the sand dunes. Apart from the dunes and the rectangular roofs of the houses, the Spit had sunk back into the ocean. That was the photo on the front page of The Press the following day; an aerial shot, taken from a helicopter, in which you could see the roofs of nearly all of our homes (The Press, July 7. Exhibit 124).
The flood waters only rose until the rain stopped and the tide fell, which was just before dawn. Then the flooding started to vanish as quickly as it had appeared. By mid-morning the water had already soaked down into the sand. All that was left was the damage. In our homes the carpets were sodden and smelt of the sea, and of the estuary. A ring of wet sand was left around the walls just above the skirting. By lunchtime our fathers had began to call their insurance companies and by evening assessors were roaming our homes. Men in suits opened silted ovens and peered into our wardrobes where our shoes lay draped in seaweed.
Our fathers took time off work. They spent the next week ripping up carpets and throwing ruined furniture into piles. We helped haul sodden wool and rubber underlay out into communal skips that appeared on the road. Our mothers mostly remained inside, grimly scrubbing at the walls and vacuuming bare floorboards until we couldn't stand the noise.
Eventually the insurance companies paid out and we ended up helping repaint all the rooms. We helped haul in new couches and televisions. We watched men staple new carpet over the boards. With all the changes, we began to feel that we were living in different homes from the ones we had grown up in. There were different smells, the musk of new carpet and that sharp chemistry of fresh paint. There were unfamiliar colours everywhere.
The Springboks slipped into the country on July 19. We were too busy with the clean-up and coping with all the changes to get excited by their arrival.
Even the beach was different after the storm. Cliffs of sand rose up where once there had been gently sloping dunes. Several of the landmark pines down in the reserve had been blown over, and within weeks they were cut up with chainsaws and the wood hauled away by men with hungry fireplaces and an eye for a bargain. Jim Turner's father told the insurance man that the flooding had done considerable damage to his garage. One whole wall apparently collapsed in the storm. We all suspected that Mr Turner's own efforts with a rope tied to the back of his neighbour's car had a lot more to do with the damage than the southerly. When Al recovered all our stuff from the garage the morning after the storm all four walls were still standing. Either way, the garage was demolished and replaced with a new aluminium one, paid for by the insurance company. The pool table was hauled off to the dump, and although Jim's dad said he would replace it, he never got around to finding another one.
Our world had also changed in more subtle ways. We now had to take our shoes off at the doors of our homes, and hose down our feet when we came inside from the beach. Items of furniture that had been damaged by the water were replaced and our mothers also seized the opportunity to rearrange the old stuff. We now bashed our shins in our own homes when we attempted to navigate our way in the darkness. Some of us found ourselves sleeping on new beds, in rooms where our rugby posters and advertising for the tour were not allowed to be pinned back up for the sake of the new paint. A lot of our personal stuff had been damaged by the water; anything that had been below knee height. Clothing, shoes and favourite tapes, ghetto blasters and old school projects had all been chucked on to the skips.
At first the undamaged stuff was tidied away in cupboards, but then when it became apparent that life had moved on, it was put into plastic rubbish bags and left out on the footpath to be taken away. The upshot of it all was that after the flood of '81, which was what everyone began calling it, we started to feel like strangers in our own homes. We awoke in the night and didn't know where we were.
Our thoughts turned to the lives we would have when we inevitably broke from our parents and struck out by ourselves in the world. For the first time in our lives, that seemed like a real possibility.
SEVEN
For the record, we did not kill SJ. He suffered a severe concussion and needed twenty-three stitches to his head (Medical Report. Exhibit 88). His left wrist was broken, probably by the impact of the golf club. His left knee was shattered and had to be reconstructed and, the doctor's report noted, later in life he would probably suffer from rheumatism in that joint. We are not sure if that prophecy has come to pass. SJ also had extensive bruising to his back and legs, which had taken the brunt of the stones.
All up, he spent ten days in hospital, during which the police interviewed him twice. The first time was in regard to the attack on him. Against our expectations SJ must have recognised at least one of us, because the police moved quickly. We were all picked up in the days following the storm and were questioned separately and made to give formal statements. We tried to explain to the interviewing officers how we had come to know Lucy Asher, what she meant to us. From their blank looks, it was plain that they didn't get it. In the end we gave up and just stuck to the basic facts, to yes and no answers. We won't deny that we were scared, but the truth was that after the police heard what we had to say about Lucy's diary and the photographs, their focus quickly shifted. We had offered them a bigger fish to fry.
During their second interview with SJ the police wanted to talk to him exclusively about the murder of Lucy Asher. They quickly established two things. Firstly that he had been sleeping with Lucy. And secondly that, during the weekend Lucy had been killed, SJ was staying with his parents in Dunedin. He had been best man at his older brother's wedding. More than sixty witnesses could vouch for him on the night Lucy was murdered.
The truth came out as easily as that. SJ had not murdered Lucy Asher, after all. He had committed no crime, not in a strictly legal sense. Lucy had been
of age. SJ was guilty only of an indiscretion and a betrayal of the school's trust. He declined to press charges against the 'unidentified youths' who had assaulted him (The Press, July 9, 1981. Exhibit 125), undoubtedly out of fear of what would be reported in the papers about him if the case went to trial. It was a course of action we're sure the police strongly advised him to follow. Jase Harbidge's dad was still a cop and had influence. Each of us got off with a strong lecture from the police on the dangers of 'vigilante justice', and we were passed back into the care of our parents. They were, in most cases, less understanding than the police had been and more drawn out with their punishments. Several of us were forbidden to go to the Springbok game at Lancaster Park. That was a bitter blow.
The day he got out of hospital SJ packed his car with what little he could salvage from the gutted shell of the house, and left South Brighton High School and the Spit forever. None of us was there to see him leave. We do know that he moved to Australia about six months later, where he taught for a while but then gave teaching away. We last followed up on SJ a few years ago: he was married with twin sons, then in their teens, and living in Adelaide, where he worked for Fuji Xerox as some type of middle manager.
Pete Marshall died on October 31 last year, only four months after he was diagnosed with cancer. He was forty-one, the same age as the rest of us. Pete left instructions that he wanted his funeral service to be held outside. 'I want it under the sky. I don't want any fucking roof,' is what he told us from his final bed. We passed on the sentiment, if not the exact wording, to the Anglican minister who delivered the service. A nice guy, even if he was a little bit overeager. Grant Webb referred to him as 'the Labrador', and we knew what he meant. The guy was all barely restrained enthusiasm and bouncing good humour.