King Rich

by Joe Bennett

  Annie wanted to speak. She formed the start of several sentences in her head. She said none of them.

  ‘Ah well,’ said Paul after thirty seconds or so, and he plucked the remote off the arm of the sofa.

  ‘Oh, Paul,’ said Annie.

  ‘No worries,’ he said.

  Later, in bed, in the attic with the sloping ceilings, the one room of the flat that Annie liked, and where there was only about one square yard of floor where Paul could stand upright, they lay side by side on their backs, less than an inch apart at the hip. Her skin could feel his body heat. He always radiated heat. He burned fuel at a prodigious rate. He ate and ate and yet was lean.

  ‘Annie,’ he said to the ceiling.

  She waited for him to go on.

  ‘What chance is there of you changing your mind?’

  ‘But I haven’t made up my mind,’ she said.

  ‘When will you?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, and she wanted him to seize her and kiss her.

  ‘Goodnight, Annie,’ he said, and he rolled the heat and bulk of his frame away from her towards the wall and the bed-base squeaked like a nest of mice. ‘Oh, and I think you ought to go home for a bit.’ Within ten minutes he was snoring.

  Chapter 5

  Sunshine wakes him, a shaft of it across his face. It takes seconds to assemble the explanation of where he is, how he got there, the broken city beyond. He lies awhile in the unaccustomed freshness of the sheets, just watching the light cross the room. He tries to reconjure the sense of wellbeing from last night. It does not come. The day is jangled, sharp-edged and unsatisfactory and he feels a remote uneasiness, a sort of precursor to dread, its cause undefined. And with it there’s the familiar morning hollowness, and he gives in to it without a fight, without even thinking of fighting.

  The beer is warm but it is beer. He sits with it at the window and lets it fill the hollow, draw a veil over the unease, push dread offstage. Beer is the friend whose hand you don’t want to let go. He can see to the Port Hills, burnt late-summer brown. In the distance you would not know that anything had happened. But in the foreground below, rubble, crushed cars, shattered glass and no people. They must have thrown up some sort of cordon. He sees only a pair of soldiers patrolling on Cashel Street with guns. It is good to observe them unobserved, to spy. Later a police car slowly negotiates the rubble. Aftershocks come at intervals. The building seems to sway with each of them. At every shock Richard finds himself hoping for another big one. When he is halfway down the second beer he glimpses between buildings a contingent of men and women in hi-vis vests and hard hats passing along Manchester Street in the direction of Cathedral Square. They are talking excitedly.

  Two Heinekens and a Johnnie Walker later the sun climbs out of sight of the window and Richard realises he is hungry. He slides into a pair of fluffy slippers like hooped poodles.

  In the ground-floor kitchen vegetables and crockery litter the floor. On the hob, a fish fillet sits in a pan. A deep-fryer is cold and gelid, the basket of shoestring fries still buried in it. On the far side of the kitchen several sacks of washed potatoes and onions in bags of red netting. Inside a double-doored fridge the size of a master wardrobe there’s a mass of meat, several beasts’ worth of meat. Gas and power are off but Richard finds the little trolley that is wheeled into the dining room to make show-off dishes, instant wok stuff, flambéed crepes. And he would like to wheel it out into the bistro now, for the theatre of it, the self-amusement, but he does not dare to risk being seen.

  A spark clicks at the turn of the dial and the gas flares fierce and blue. The frying pan he chooses is copper-bottomed, posh. From the fridge a fistful of bacon. The noise and smell of the sizzling briefly worries him and he turns the gas down a little, goes hunting for eggs, finds them, dozens of them, no, thousands, stacked on trays in a pantry that held them snugly. Only the top two layers are broken. He flicks the bacon onto a plate, cracks two eggs into the fat and hears a noise.

  He turns off the gas, stands still, barely breathing. The noise again. From the back wall, the door there. A scratching and then, yes, a whining. He slumps with relief, breathes out. Goes to the door, puts his ear to it, then gently depresses the handle, opens the door a crack, peers out, then opens it wide.

  The dog backs off in surprise. Its ears flatten. Its tail wags deferentially. It is wearing a worn leather collar. Richard looks around the hotel’s delivery yard. Empty, flanked on three sides by tall blank walls, the fourth side leading presumably to Manchester Street. He fetches bacon from the fridge, holds it out for the dog. It approaches cautiously, takes the rasher, gulps it down but stays outside. Richard fetches more bacon, lures the dog in, shuts the door while it’s eating.

  He offers the dog the back of his hand to sniff, then strokes the soft fur of its neck. It’s a mongrel of sorts, a bit of huntaway perhaps, a bit of lab, the sort of dog that all dogs would be in only a few generations if people just let them alone.

  In the giant fridge Richard finds a flat cardboard box of steaks, porterhouse. He tosses two to the dog, fills a bowl with water and places it on the floor. The dog slurps greedily.

  ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me, dog,’ he says, and the dog looks up and wags its tail. While Richard fries his eggs and eats at a bench of stainless steel, the dog tours the kitchen floor, finds plenty to keep it busy.

  The tour done, it comes cautiously to Richard, who strokes the dome of the dog’s head, feels the angles of the skull. The dog leans against his thigh. A registration disc dangles from the collar but no name tag.

  ‘Friday, I’ll call you Friday.’ Richard chuckles and the dog’s tail swings in response. ‘Shall we go get a drink, Friday?’

  To cross the floor of the bistro Richard loops the belt of his dressing gown through the dog’s collar. ‘I know you, Friday,’ he says, ‘you’ll dawdle.’

  But on the leash Friday becomes a trained dog, as faithful to Richard’s pace across the floor as a guide dog, the leash never once going taut. ‘Good boy, Friday,’ says Richard when they are safely in the stairwell. ‘Very good boy,’ and he ties the belt back round his waist. ‘Go on then, up you go.’ The dog bounds ahead then turns and stops on the landing and looks back at Richard.

  ‘Patience,’ says Richard, smiling. He grasps the rail and as he sets his foot on the first step the dog barks. ‘No, Friday, no,’ hisses Richard. The dog falls silent but looks eagerly down towards him, ears cocked, tail going strongly as if this were the start of some ritual game.

  Richard lays a foot on the next step. The dog barks. Richard stops. The dog stops barking.

  ‘Here, Friday,’ says Richard, ‘come,’ and to his surprise the dog trots back down the stairs and sits in front of him on the bottom step.

  ‘Stay,’ says Richard and again he unhitches the belt and loops it through the collar. He starts back up the stairs, hauling on the rail with his right hand and the dog keeps pace with him step by step, the pattern of all patience, and pauses beside him on the little landing between floors as Richard leans against the wall and regains breath.

  Past the mezzanine to the floor where Richard slept, but he goes down the opposite corridor now in search of the sun, releasing Friday to bound ahead of him. He opens a door at random and the room is so bright that he has to close then shade his eyes. The fridge retains a hint of coldness and he chooses a Heineken over the red wine that he’d thought of having, pouring it into a tooth glass from the bathroom floor.

  ‘Cheers, Friday,’ and he raises his glass to the sitting dog whose tail sweeps back and forth across the carpet like a windscreen wiper.

  With difficulty Richard drags the one easy chair over to the window and collapses into it, breathing heavily. The sun is warm on his legs and feet. The window looks out over roofs to the north and northwest. Through a gap between bank buildings he can see the broken steeple of the cathedral and the staved-in roof of a building beyond. There is smoke in the air though he cannot see where from. The distant Kaik
ouras retain a little cap of snow, glistening like dew.

  Sensing calm, the dog curls in the sunlight, a paw tight against Richard’s slippered foot. Richard feels privileged by the contact.

  Another aftershock, and the dog is instantly awake and on its feet and looking round for the source of the attack.

  ‘It’s all right, boy,’ says Richard, ‘here, come here,’ and he stretches out an arm as the building shakes and wheezes, and he smiles at the beast and makes coaxing, clucking noises, and as the tremor rumbles to its end the dog comes to him and accepts the offered stroking on the neck and chin, and rubbing of the silky ear between the thumb and forefinger. ‘You’ll be okay with me,’ says Richard, and as he speaks he means it. And he’s pleased to see the dog’s tail rise a little and swish from side to side. ‘Contra mundum, Friday, contra mundum.’

  Richard finishes his beer. With a gasp of effort he heaves himself out of the chair, fetches a small array of bottles from the mini-bar and stands them by the chair. The sun is warm through the glass. He can see only roofs and the broken spire and the distant mountains. He twists open the cabernet sauvignon, glugs at its deep, thick redness and stares out towards the pale sky of high summer. He can feel the welcome oblivion of sleep stealing towards him. And as it comes an image rises unbidden in his mind, an old familiar image, a tent in a stand of trees near the Grey River, and afternoon sunlight dappling naked flesh. Richard pushes the image away, forces it down.

  He is woken by the dog’s paw scraping his thigh. Drowsy, fogged, he pushes the paw away without opening his eyes. The dog whines.

  ‘Shhh, dog, shhh.’

  Quiet, and Richard is falling back into the luxury of sleep when again the paw scrapes his thigh with soft urgency and the whining restarts.

  ‘What is it?’ and he hauls himself up into the cruelty of consciousness. He feels a sudden stab of pain between his shoulder blades but it just stabs and goes.

  The dog is prancing on its toes, eager for something. Richard listens for noise in the building – nothing. The dog whines again. Richard puts his right hand on the arm of the chair, twists his weight over it and levers himself up. The dog dashes to the door, but Richard’s leg has fallen numb and buckles under him and he collapses back down into the chair.

  ‘It’s all right, boy, I’m coming.’ He rubs the leg into life and heaves himself back up. The dog is already at the door and pawing at it. When Richard opens it the dog bounds towards the fire door leading to the stairs.

  ‘Oh, bloody hell,’ says Richard but he follows and on the stairs he again leashes the dog with the dressing gown belt to keep it from barking and down the stairs they go and the dog leads him across the lobby to the kitchen and then through the kitchen to the outside door and Richard opens it and the dog bounds across the yard and by the wheel of a delivery truck the dog walks twice in a tight circle, then squats like a weightlifter and concentrates.

  Richard looks away out of engrained politeness. And to encourage the dog to relax and be thorough he makes a tour of the yard. There is little to see except the access lane leading to what he thinks must be Manchester Street, where a row of little shops, a convenience store, an old-fashioned greengrocer’s, is fronted with a barricade of brick and rubble, all fallen from the Edwardian second storey. Richard is tempted to go for a closer look but even as he thinks of it a soldier ambles into view. Richard holds himself flat against the wall. The dog sees the soldier too. It stiffens and stares. It is about to bark.

  ‘No, Friday, no.’

  The dog looks across at him. The soldier has been joined by another, both of them brown-skinned, looking barely out of their teens and cradling weapons as mothers cradle babies.

  ‘Stay,’ whispers Richard to the dog. The soldiers look relaxed, do not seem to be expecting any action. Richard inches back along the wall. He is acutely aware of his fluffy slippers, his legs bare beneath the dressing gown. He reaches the end of the wall and turns into the yard and out of sight. He peers back around the corner. The soldiers are still there. The dog is looking his way.

  ‘Here, Friday, come,’ and the dog bounds to him and jumps up at his chest and Richard staggers against the wall and all but falls. ‘Down, boy, down,’ hisses Richard and the dog lies immediately flat on the tarmac and looks up with a sort of Famous Five eagerness. Smiling, Richard leads the dog back inside. ‘Home,’ he says as he closes the heavy kitchen door behind them, and he goes to the fridge for a steak for the dog. ‘Home.’

  Chapter 6

  It seemed to Annie that Terminal 3 had been designed to make leaving the country easier. The mean low ceilings. The overcrowding. The incessant overloud public address system. To work here would be a species of hell. Compare it with the airports of the tiger nations, the places that looked ahead rather than back – Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai. Hugely spacious halls, the ceilings as high as the ceilings of medieval cathedrals.

  ‘Shit, I hate Heathrow,’ said Paul, placing coffees on the too small cafeteria table which Annie had wiped with a paper serviette after shifting the mass of detritus left by previous customers. When Paul sat it seemed that the winsome little chair might buckle and splinter. Everything felt shoddy, gimcrack, tawdry.

  Paul had insisted on coming with her all the way across town on the Tube, on carrying her bag, even on queuing beside her to check in. ‘It’s Saturday,’ he said, when she said for the tenth time she’d be fine. ‘What am I supposed to do? And besides, we live together, don’t we?’

  She looked up into his face.

  ‘Don’t we?’ he repeated.

  Oh no. At that moment Annie knew a speech was coming, or something similar. The unresolved proposal had hung heavily between them.

  Paul put down his coffee, kept both hands curled round it and looked into the cup as if something swam there. ‘You know I don’t go in for this sort of thing much, Annie, but I want to say a few things before you go. Is that all right?’ And he raised his eyes like a hopeful child. Annie nodded but felt a tiny dread.

  ‘First, I like you very much. You’re good to be with and you’re easy to be with.’

  ‘Like a bloke, you mean,’ said Annie, before she could think. Immediately she wanted to call the words back. They seemed so sharp. But Paul was unfazed.

  ‘Well no, not really, for obvious reasons, but yeah, if you mean like a bloke because I’m comfortable in your company, then maybe, yeah and I don’t see what’s wrong with that. You don’t puzzle me and I’m not always worrying about what you’re feeling. I’ve got a pretty good idea I know what you’re feeling most of the time and if I haven’t you don’t burden me with it. So I like living with you. And you don’t keep pressing me to talk about feelings I don’t have. I may not be the most sensitive bastard in the world but I’m not going to start pretending I have feelings I don’t have. I mean, what’s the point? I hate lying and you don’t make me.’

  Annie made to interrupt but he held up his hand.

  ‘Please, I’ve sort of half prepared this in my head. So I like you a lot. But I’ve never said I love you because I don’t know if I know what love is. I mean in the sixth form I was obsessed with this girl called Sandra Walls. She was Barbie doll pretty and I fantasised about her and sort of hung around her like a puppy dog and if she said jump I jumped and I thought that was love. She enjoyed making me jump, of course, but I don’t think she liked me very much as me, so to speak, and the whole business didn’t make me happy and it didn’t lead to anything and I’m bloody glad now it didn’t. Was that love? If so, well, fuck it. If not, well, I don’t know what is.’

  Annie looked down into her own coffee. She’d known plenty of Sandra Wallses and she felt a pang of something that was more sympathy than anything else, affectionate sympathy for gangling seventeen-year-old Paul, but she kept her eyes down and swirled the last of her rapidly cooling latte.

  ‘But I do know one thing, Annie. I’d like to have kids. Lots of kids. Everyone’s all down on big families, these days. I’m not. I came from a big
family and my childhood was happy as hell and I’d like my kids to be happy. And I can’t see the point of living a life without having kids. It’s just a plain dead end and plain bloody selfish, and most people without kids seem to me to be plain bloody miserable. Because their own life becomes their everything and when that fails to live up to what they hoped, they’ve got nothing to fall back on, no bright-eyed little brats to cheer on as they go into battle against the world.’

  ‘That’s some speech, Paul.’

  ‘I haven’t finished. As I said, I don’t think I love you according to what everybody tells me love is or ought to be, but I do like you a lot and I do fancy you and I think you’d be a brilliant mother and if someone broke in here now and tried to hurt you I’d kill them. I mean literally, I’d happily break their bloody neck or whatever, with no doubts that what I was doing was right. And we’ve only been living together for six months.’

  ‘Eight,’ said Annie. Then, ‘Sorry.’ And she laughed and looked into his face with its heavy eyebrows and he looked straight back at her without smiling and she sensed the urgency in him, the sincerity, and she looked back down at the table. ‘You know how old people are sometimes asked the secret of their long marriage and they always say there are good times and there are bad times and the secret is perseverance or whatever, you’ve got to work at it, and everyone says, “Ah, isn’t that lovely and old-fashioned. What a pity we aren’t like that any more.” Well, I reckon the old buggers are right, you do have to work at it and the best sort of marriage comes from two people having spent a long time together sharing a house and a bed and having so much to do bringing up half a dozen kids that there simply wasn’t the time to wonder whether they’d hitched themselves to a soul mate. And then when the kids leave home one by one to go and do the same thing themselves the two old codgers are left together and discover that they’re fused at the hip. And maybe that’s actually what love is and everyone more or less knows it but doesn’t like to admit it because they prefer the Hollywood version. I don’t know.’