Royce, Royce, the People's Choice Read online

  A hilarious love story about a teenager and a fish.

  Royce Rowland is a 17-year-old sexual and social reprobate who has been sent to sea with a tough skipper in an effort to straighten him out. But as with everything, Royce goes on board with his own interests at heart: he wants to trawl for the fabled giant squid. He does catch something unexpected, but it isn’t a squid, and in its wake comes a conning prostitute who is determined to make off with it.

  And so Royce embarks on a Ulyssesian journey pursuing his catch through New Zealand waters and on to Japan. En route, he is to discover true love — for a fish …

  Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following for the use of their photographs: for the catch on pages 157, 165, 183, 189, 201 and 376, thanks to Paul Brewer, who owns the boat, Robbie who caught the tuna, and the other crew members Johnnie and Ryan. Thanks also to De Coro Fishing Supplies Ltd in Tauranga for their photograph; Tim Spear who secured the Japanese shots; Lee Scanlon of The Westport News for the photograph of Peter Hawes on page 1; David White for the photo from NZ Fishing News on page 239; Walshie for the Westport boats; Carolyn Donaldson for the photo on page 54 and Janet Hunt for the photographs on pages 12, 79, 131, 232, 268, 273, 279 and 283. For the tuna painting on page 359, grateful acknowledgement is made to the artist Fiona McLeod.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgements

  FOREWORD

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  EPILOGUE

  APPENDIX ONE

  APPENDIX TWO

  APPENDIX THREE

  APPENDIX FOUR

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Some species of fish, like the tunny, are unaware of the existence of the English Channel, a physical feature which was scoured out of the landform by the sea in recent times. Recent, that is, in geological terms. Thus the Channel wasn’t there when, some millions of years ago, the tunny made their first migrations to the Baltic and the North Sea. To this day they habitually take the long way round – far to the west of the British Isles.

  Professor Morton Sparrowglass

  UCLA Scientific and Technical Department

  of Deep-sea Fisheries

  The sea off Westport is also young, geologically speaking, and there are fish whose habits were formed before it grew. So they never went there. Not at first …

  FOREWORD

  PETER BENCHLEY’S NOVEL The Deep is based on the extraordinary coincidence of two ships sinking, one exactly on top of the other. The fact is – the true fact is – that there was a third, precisely atop the other two. Such was the improbability of Nature, however, that when rendering the story into Art, Benchley omitted one of the trio.

  I, rather more boldly, have omitted none of the improbabilities of the following story. I believe it passionately, and have transferred it from Nature to Art only because of a need to bridge the gaps in memory of the protagonists. Where they have remembered perfectly, I have recorded; where they have forgotten, I have embellished – embellishments based always on their best efforts of memory, and with the corroboration of others in the know.

  Overall, this is the most sincere pub story I have ever heard. It is about real people and real events and its consequences are evident to this day. If it is not true, a story equally unlikely is required to account for present circumstances.

  MY LITERARY STYLE has been described – not necessarily flatteringly – as ‘Dickensian’. I assure you, you offend the people in this book (all under assumed names) if you regard them as larger than life, or implausible.

  Those who find them so have never been to Westport.

  I listened patiently to Royce Rowland, Bob Dodds, Dooley Morgan et al, telling me how they had ‘shot the gear’, ‘tied the Jesus knot on the cod-end’, ‘dropped the wobbly bars’ … until I realised there was only one way for me to make sense of working in the sea off Westport – to become a ‘grommet’ (deckhand) myself. And I did. For the maritime scenes, therefore, I take over the hard work from Royce Rowland. The thoughts, experiences and (alas) the sexual adventures, however, remain resolutely his.

  Equally, I acquainted myself with Royce’s journey to … no, I won’t say, it will spoil the story. Suffice to say, I have been from one end of Royce’s odyssey to the other, and visited the important places there-between. I thank Creative New Zealand for the funding to do so.

  There are many other people I have to thank – fishermen, teachers, schoolmates, ‘middle management’ officials, friends, enemies, barmen/maids, tycoons, tunnelling contractors, lawyers, lovers, gangsters, pilots, airline hostesses, good-time bar hostesses, wives, travel agents, other people’s wives, and, overwhelmingly, Royce himself – but for their own sakes, it is advisable that I do so under the aliases used in the following pages. Perhaps I can say thanks to Stuart, Mac, Fossil, Flag, Simon, Atsu, Scotty, Mioko, Clive, Tim, Gary, Bert, Mark, Steve, Graham, Roger, Arthur, Peanuts, Rory, Neil, John, three Daves (one the boss), Peter W, Beatrice Ellen Ann, Peter J, John E, Fishing News and Bob without giving too much away, but in the main, the protagonists will know who they are – and I fervently trust that no one else does.

  Equally I have hidden the identities of the actual airlines involved in the story, and have used instead, the names of two popular and well-patronised carriers of the time: Air New Zealand and Qantas, neither of which took the route described in this book (see Appendix Three).

  I refer critics of the quantity of nicknames appearing herein to Appendix One.

  I refer critics of the strenuous sexual content to Appendix Two.

  Please note, the photographs of ‘Royce Rowland’ are not current – he is somewhat older today, but still handsome, charming, bothersome and incident-filled. And – may I stress – happily and faithfully en-partnered. He pursues the same trade today, but no longer out of the port in this book. Typically he made no further financial gain after his first ‘hit’ but the industry he pioneered persists, to the benison of all those who ply the sea off Westport.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Royce, Royce, the people’s choice …

  ROYCE. EVEN THE name had a hint of roguishness about it. Royce Rowland, born to cause incident, far too angeli
cally appealing for the moral good of himself or his squirming young admirers; far too shrewd not to see the consequences of his actions, and far too wicked not to take them anyway.

  Graham Daly (MA) looks up wonderingly from his notepad, drawn by the mischievous chanting from the corridor beyond his office door. ‘How very much of a headmaster’s day’, he muses, ‘is taken up by Royce Rowland.’ In corroboration of this silent assertion he bends back to the notepad beneath his pale, freckled hands and continues his letter to Sergeant Tip Casey:

  … and although in perfect agreement with the sentence meted out to Royce Rowland, may I, on behalf of Westport Technical College, request that the fifteen days of Periodic Detention be arranged to fall on weekends …

  Graham Daly liked Royce Rowland in a way. It was the same way in which he had liked the boy’s father, Tommy – a liking tempered by seething and perplexed self-loathing at the existence of this secret fondness.

  Graham (MA) had gone through school with Tommy Rowland – at this very school, Westport Technical College, of which he was now headmaster – he in the A stream, Tommy in the D. Graham had been top of his class in everything, every term, and dux in his last year. Tommy had been bottom of his class and passed nothing. Every year Tommy was voted ‘Most Likely to Succeed’ by the school magazine. Graham was never mentioned.

  … on down life’s long path rolls Royce.

  Much of Royce Rowland’s rascality was genetic, inherited from his father. Tommy Rowland had had extensive experience with trouble, but trouble only of the spectacular, improbable variety. Tommy never bothered with standard trouble, oh no. Unique trouble only. So, when he was divorced from Royce’s mother, it couldn’t be for the predictable old reasons of violence, ennui or adultery that every other divorcer makes do with, nope, Tommy got divorced because he couldn’t explain his sunburnt bum. ‘Backside bright as an Anzac poppy,’ ran the legend, ‘rest of his back as grey as cement where his singlet had been.’

  A hot year it had been, that one of 1965, temperatures got into the eighties (they measured in Fahrenheit back then) for weeks on end. And probably hottest of all down in the sand dunes of North Beach where Tommy had gone – they said – with Dell, wife of Bernie Wyse. Tommy’s own wife Laura saw the posterioral glow that night – sunburn comes into its own after sunset – and rang the town lawyer next morning.

  Legend? Reality? Call it legendary reality. What was real was the divorce and the fact that Tommy left Westport in February 1965 for Nelson to work on inshore trawlers. Royce was four when his father left home. And seven when Tommy abruptly disappeared at sea.

  ‘Disappeared’ – not ‘died’ – Tommy Rowland couldn’t simply and unassumingly die, as most folk do, he had to draw attention to his demise. Die a larger-than-life death, so to speak.

  Larger-than-life death. Hee hee. Graham Daly (MA) liked that one. And true. Tommy had somehow managed to totally and profoundly disappear from the surface of the flattest sea anyone could remember. To this day (Graham glances – from tidiness and habit – at the calendar: 9 September 1978), neither Tommy’s body, nor that of his deckhand, Des, had ever been found. No wreckage, no oil, no message. The Angela II and her crew simply vanished, on a dead flat sea, off the coast of Opunake.

  So just as Tommy Rowland had genetically endowed his son with waywardness, he contributed to it again by the absence of fatherly control. Royce was a faulty product of both nature and nurture. Well, Graham Daly MA, has plans for a cure; yes indeed, an inspired alliance of constabulary and school. The headmaster of Westport Technical College gave the rubberised end of his pencil a thoughtful chew, leaned over the softness of his belly and continued his letter:

  Acquiescence to this request would be of great value to the college, as on week days Royce Rowland is usually attending school detention, a practice we would not wish to have superordinated by his attendance at alternative detention. We hope you concur, thereby allowing our disciplinary efforts to unite, to the ultimate benefit of Rowland himself. Thank you. Yours …

  Graham Daly wrenched the letter from his lined pad and bore it to the door. ‘Penny,’ he said to his bright secretary, ‘type that up for me to sign, will you?’ He returned to his office, took a cane from the rack behind the desk, stood firmly but lightly on the soles of his sensible shoes and made three practice swings, wincing at vestiges of tennis elbow. He felt a tingle of butterflies. You had to be on top form on these occasions; the little so-and-so had an eye for weakness.

  Royce, Royce, the people’s choice …

  They chanted it as Royce ran down the touchline; as he climbed the board for his next invariably beautiful swallow dive – as he waited outside this office for his semi-diurnal caning.

  ‘And you can send Royce Rowland in now, Penny,’ he called.

  On down life’s long path rolls Royce …

  They may as well swap it for the bloody school song.

  CHAPTER TWO

  OLD BEATRICE ELLEN Ann was fantastically talented at smelling fruit. She didn’t just say, ‘Royce, bring that piece of fruit up here’; she’d say, ‘Royce, bring that banana up here.’ In fact she was saying it right now.

  They’d learnt about smell in biology. Sharks, for instance, can pick up one atom of smell in a million atoms of sea. And men butterflies can smell lady butterflies from half a mile. Well, Beatrice Ellen Ann was like that with fruit. She could distinguish between the various races of fruit – she had ‘well-adapted fruit sensory organs’. When Darwinism had killed off all the human race that couldn’t smell fruit, Beatrice Ellen Ann would survive.

  ‘Put it on my desk, Royce, thank you.’ She had her arms folded. She always did this when she was angry, as if showing you she’d like to put you in a headlock. And she made her lips hard. She had very nice lips most of the time, although the rest of her face was a bit puckered. Shrinkage with age. Where did it shrink to? It must dissolve from the inside. So then you’d swallow it. And pee it out later. Holy kermoley, you digest your own face then squirt it down the dunny!

  Royce shambled down the aisle between desks, smiling in a friendly fashion, giving Billy Mosley’s ear a tweak on the way – bastard – making some of the girls laugh with the way he held the banana, and then putting it on the desk up the front.

  Beatrice Ellen Ann was still crossing her arms in an artificially angry way. ‘Thank you, Royce. Is there anything you’d like to say?’

  Why did she always leave herself open like that? ‘Yeah. Did you know, Mrs Hartley, that the first three letters of your first name are the same as the initials of all your first names? B.E.A.’

  She was a huge blusher. People who blush that easily shouldn’t leave openings like that. She was gushing out blush like sweat right now.

  ‘Which are all very nice names, Mrs Hartley. We all think so, don’t we?’

  ‘Yeaaah!’ shouted everybody.

  ‘Keep quiet, all of you!’ squeaked Beatrice Ellen Ann. She always squeaked at crisis time – her voice had no big-time temperament. ‘Royce Rowland, get back to your desk and zip your lip until the end of class or you’ll be here till 4.30 tonight!’

  He was already here until 4.30. She must have forgotten. Hang on, it wasn’t her who’d given him the detention; it was Inky in metalwork – for breaking three drills on steel plate.

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU doing tonight?’ asked Dana Glover when he got back to his place.

  ‘Going round to Gilbert’s. Play a bit of cards, put on a few records. Why?’

  ‘Thought you might be going down the Gren.’

  ‘Nah. I’m cutting back on drinking; just leave it till the weekend. Anyway I’ve got no money.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘Nah. Not tonight.’

  It was one of the bravest things he’d ever said. Much braver than telling Beatrice Ellen Ann he knew her first names. Dana Glover was the third girl who’d let him – and the wildest, once you got there. Which wasn’t every time – in fact it was hardly ever. And yet you’d think it was going to be
every time by the noise she made. Once you started fiddling around she just left you and went into this wonderland of ecstasy in her head, which didn’t seem to have a hell of a lot to do with you. It made you wonder who she thought she was with. She moaned and panted but crossed her legs at the same time; she’d be pushing your hand away while she was giving you a three-week hickey. Weird.

  He’d analysed her moans one night, and decided she was saying, ‘Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon …’ so he’d whispered, ‘Oh Dana, it’s me, Gordon.’ It had worked, as a matter of fact – it was one of the two times they’d done it. Afterwards she’d said, ‘Who’s Gordon?’

  Most times she was hard work wasted. But it worked for her. She got herself really worked up by not doing it. Self-frustration. It was sort of the opposite of masturbation. She probably lay in bed at night, hovering her hand an inch over her fanny, for practice.

  And he’d just turned her down!

  She always had money, too. Her father was rich: Glover’s Watchmaking and Horology. They used to joke with her that horology meant brothel-keeping, but they were still pretty proud to have a word like that in the district. It was the biggest word most of them knew.

  ‘Well, Royce?’

  ‘… Mrs Hartley?’

  ‘It was your homework last night.’

  ‘Right …’

  Beatrice Ellen Ann gave a sharp sigh that sounded like something in German and folded her arms again. Headlock time. ‘Can somebody remind Mr Rowland what he learnt by heart last night?’

  Karen Phibbs put up her hand. Always bloody Karen Phibbs. Sat in the front row and put the date at the top of every page so she’d know what day she’d learnt that Ethiopia was in Africa or that Cape Horn was stormy. Quite pretty, with a figure that was totally wasted on her, and was girlfriends with boring old Grant Franklin in 6B who she’d probably marry and have babies with. Nice mouth, but it made this little hiss every time she said ess. She was a School Cert first-timer so she was a really keen studier.