Royce, Royce, the People's Choice Page 24

  Anyway, he’s not a bad feller, Terry. Good mate, is Terry. The three of them had had another beer after that. When Royce looked up from that particular round he found that the bar was just about empty. Few locals, Terry, Stan and Marjorie. ‘Bob ’n’ Nadine gone, then, Squeak?’ he said when he got to the bar for his shout.

  Squeak gave this massive yawn that sent about four chins down towards his sternum. ‘Went about an hour ago. You saw them off.’

  Oh.

  Christ, what about Betty? Where was she gonna stay? ‘Where’s Betty, then?’

  ‘Left before Bob. Gonna get a bed at the Albion. Said she’d be in touch tomorrow.’

  ‘Ah, did she?’

  ‘Yeah. Said it to you.’

  Hmm.

  Was a bit of a hazy trip back to the boat, but one of the advantages of having your sea-legs is you don’t fall over as often when you’re pissed.

  Messed about in the galley for a bit, then beddy-byes. Got down the ladder and into the fo’c’sle without damage. Although he was sitting down by the time he got to the bottom of the ladder – dunno how that happened. Bit of a bump on landing, too; might just have fallen down the ladder.

  Had got a couple of bits of clothing off before crashing.

  AT SOME STAGE of the evening – towards the very end, he suspected, when life begins to feel as if it’s taking place at the bottom of the sea – Marjorie’d said she’d had a think about it and decided she hadn’t changed her mind after all.

  She’d said it at a time when he was carefully noticing how her jeans divided her vertically in two, with tight, interesting bulges on each side of the seam, and her decision came as a fairly big disappointment.

  This fairly big disappointment came as a really big disappointment. After all, he had all this faithfulness to Linda to get up and running and it wasn’t a good start. How the hell do you get this monogamy thing going?

  HE FELL BACKWARDS on his unmattressed bed into sleep. He was toppling down a well, into the depths of slumber. Above him the mermaid was hurtling upwards, away from him as he fell. Her hair swirled around him like strands of rhubarb in his grandmother’s pies. He wasn’t sure how pies and mermaids and Linda’s hair had got mixed up together in his mind, but they were. Rhubarb: crisp as celery when uncooked, syrupy as jam when it was. He was watching his grandmother cutting the stalks of garden rhubarb on her big, lined breadboard. Cutting them into cubes, then splitting down the grain of the larger pieces so that they fell into two on the board. Sometimes not quite cut in two: split open. Bifurcated. Above him, distant now, the mermaid lay bifurcated in the water and her long hair washed between her clefted legs.

  Meanwhile he was asleep. It was a sleep undisturbed by motors, collisions or shipwrecks but greatly disturbed by expectation.

  Royce woke up with an explosion of cold water in the face from Bob to find that the Aurora had backed into the Zephyr in the night, and sunk it to the bottom of the lagoon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE BLACK SHEILA – Betty – did a friggin’ runner with the fish. Dooley had known she might. She’d bribed that air-headed bloody Marjorie Shaw into giving her an FLD. Five hundred American fuckin’ dollars she’d paid for it. Mind you, no use getting too far up yer high horse; everyone’s amenable to bribery. He’d’ve probably given her an FLD for $US500 as well. And thrown in a Fish Transport Docket as well. Just like bloody Marjorie Shaw had.

  Human nature, that was the trouble. She needed help, and human nature being what it is, that help got bought. Probably bribed Ray Hill to bring a truck down, forklifted the coffin into the back, and off. Or someone else as greedy as Ray. Which was anyone with a bloody truck. Headed for Nelson or Christchurch probably – he’d phoned both ports. And both airports. A 700-pound tuna in a fish-tail coffin shouldn’t be that hard to find.

  OLD CAPTAIN CALMWATER’S boat wasn’t insured, of course.

  ‘Nae need, Dooley,’ ole George used to say. ‘Built leek steel: hearrt kauri. Th’ knew hoo ta build vessels in those dees. An’ if she do sink, ee’ll be own er, so wha’ weel ee care?’

  He, of course, wasn’t insured either.

  Fact of the matter was, the stern of the Aurora bunted the Zephyr fair on the stem. Popped the strakes out of the rabbets clean as a whistle. Every last clinker plank – from the wale down to the garboard – burst open. Down she went in moments. Oh yeah, they sure knew how to build boats in those days. Not a dent in the kauri, of course. There it was, sitting on the bottom of the bloody Floating Basin, every plank as good as new.

  How had it happened? Kid denied all knowledge. Marjorie Shaw sort of backed him up. Said she’d gone back to the Aurora with him – ‘just to make sure he made it without drowning,’ she reckoned. Yeah, maybe. Who knows what really happened? But she reckoned nothing. Did he start the boat up? he’d asked her. No, she’d said. Probably true. Hell, you didn’t get Marjorie Shaw on board, then start messing around with engines. There’s better things to mess around with.

  But maybe he’d wanted to impress her? Show off? Prove what a big-shot fisherman he was: ‘You wanna see me drive this boat, Marjorie?’

  Well, she reckoned he hadn’t and he reckoned he hadn’t, so who knows?

  Who else could it’ve been? Best bet was the fishnapper, Betty. If two big things happen at once, it’s more logical to combine them than to look for two separate causes. Had she been gonna set off in the Aurora with the fish? Maybe take it back out to the squiddies? That would certainly be the best way of getting it back to Japan. Which’d be the logical place to take it – biggest fish market in the world, in Tokyo Bay. Must be worth something if she’d pay 500 Yankee bucks for a landing docket.

  Yeah, that could be it. She’d been slipping outa the moorings with the fish when she’d backed into the Zephyr. That was it. Pranged up, kid so shickered the hit didn’t wake him. She goes into Plan B: got hold of Ray Hill or someone, headed off to God knows where …

  Yeah, that was it. Small matters like how had she got the fish onto the boat – and then off again, and what had she intended doing with the kid etc, came into his mind, waited to be answered, and were shooed away again by Dooley’s inclination. He hadn’t trusted Betty from the start, and he’d been right. There the matter rested as far as he was concerned.

  OLD GEORGE DIDN’T take it out on the kid. Why not? Bob wondered. Here he was, the major suspect in the sinking of the Zephyr, and bloody old George believed him. This friggin’ kid had a charmed life! Royce said he’d come on board, crashed in a pissed stupour and not woken till Bob’d doused him in the morning, and Captain Calmwater believed him. Only dent in Royce’s story was he’d missed out the bit about Marjorie coming on board with him. But then he’d looked totally shocked when this bit of information was mentioned. Could well be he was so mullocked he didn’t know. Might even have had his way with her without remembering. It’d be typical of him. Can shag women in his sleep, the lucky little bastard.

  George had rung Bob at around half past seven in the morning, in an agitated state. He’d gone down to get the tide out to the training wall for kahawai and his boat wasn’t there. Then he’d seen it through the murk, sitting on the bottom of the lagoon next to the Aurora, with a broken bollard floating above it, still tied to the mooring rope.

  The kid had been a total mess. Bob’d had three goes at waking the bastard before he threw water in his face. He’d reckoned he’d known nothing about Marjorie Shaw, and she reckoned she knew nothing about him until Bob’d produced this little silver-grey purse he’d found by the wheel. This is what made Marjorie fess up to having been there – because the purse was bursting with US dollars. ‘Okay, if you weren’t here, this isn’t your purse,’ he’d said to her; ‘better get it down to the cop shop, eh?’ ‘All right, I was here,’ she hissed. ‘Now gimme the purse.’ But she still reckoned nothing had happened between her and the kid; she’d just seen him home, then gone. She must have got distracted when he fell down the ladder and forgotten her purse, she said.
All of which may or may not have been true, but then sexual shenanigans weren’t the point at issue. The point was: the purse was found beside the wheel, so why had they been standing there? So the kid could start the motor? They both said no. Bob had been in two minds until George had absolutely believed the kid, and then Bob had gone with the mind that said it wasn’t him. Bob knew of about fifty bad things the little arsewipe had done, and he’d promptly confessed to every one of them, so statistically it was likely he was being honest this time. Statistically, in fact, he was probably the most honest person Bob knew – he had so much to be friggin’ honest about.

  So overall, the kid hadn’t done it.

  So who had?

  From somewhere came a mental murmur of Sticky. With it came a tang of unfairness – hell, there was absolutely no evidence, and Sticky, overall, was a decent sort of bloke. But he wasn’t himself. And he wasn’t himself because of this kid. This kid’s doings had driven him nuts.

  Could be a bit of revenge going on: Sticky sees the kid shambling back with Marjorie Shaw, and that would set him off big time – here’s the kid scoring yet another woman after messing around with Sticky’s. He waits until they’ve done whatever they did, waits until Marjorie sets off home, skids on board, starts up the motor, puts her in reverse and scarpers. Bingo, down goes thirty grand’s worth of uninsured vessel.

  Kid carries the can whether he did it or not. He was on board; boat was in his charge. They’ll probably refloat the Zephyr; probably restore it. But the cost will come outa the kid’s hide for the next twenty years.

  And suddenly, there was Sticky! Sauntering down the wharf, hands in pockets, radiating that total innocence that made you just know he was guilty.

  ‘Heard about the accident,’ he said.

  ‘That a fact, Sticky?’ purred Bob. ‘Mind telling me how you heard?’

  Sticky gave that pause that was like drawing your hand back for a straight right. ‘It was on the wireless, Bob.’ And he smiled about sixteen teeths’ worth of happiness.

  Shit. He was probably right. Both cops and the traffic cop were down here, and so were the harbourmaster and various Marine Department and council flunkies as well as the big serious Westport News reporter they called Scoop. Bloody TV was probably on its way over from Christchurch.

  ‘You’re looking very cheerful for a man without a job, Sticky,’ said Bob.

  ‘Heading up to Nelson, Bob. Might lease out the Normandy and do a season of scallops.’

  ‘Might just look a bit as if you’re running away, Sticky.’

  ‘Got nothing to run away from, Bob, you know that.’

  ‘How would I know that, then, Sticky? Eh? Look, old George’s over there, mourning his vessel. Why don’t you wander over, look him dead in the eye and tell him where you were early this morning?’

  ‘I really don’t think George would be interested in where I was this morning, Bob. Might be more interested in what the kid was doing, eh? Like having nookie with other people’s women and sinking other people’s boats.’

  ‘You seem to know an awful lot about it, Sticky. You hear that information on the wireless too?’

  ‘I get my information from a far more reliable source, Bob – Dooley Morgan.’

  ‘When you heading to Nelson?’

  ‘This afternoon.’

  ‘Just cast your eye over the back seat before you set off, check there’s not a 700-pound fish in there.’

  He looked deep into Sticky’s faded, tawny eyes. There was no surprise in them. ‘Yeah, I heard you’d lost the kid’s fish. All them people deprived of the joy of looking at it, eh, Bob? All them trophies you’re not gonna get.’

  Suddenly Bob had a conviction. That tuna wasn’t on its way to any far-flung fish market somewhere; it was at the bottom of the Buller River, weighted down with a railway wagon wheel or something.

  ‘You took that fish, you shitbag,’ he growled. ‘Outa sheer bloody-mindedness, you pinched it and biffed it in the river. Well, it’ll rot and float soon enough, and if I see so much as a morsel of it, I’m coming after you.’

  ‘You know, Bob,’ replied Sticky airily, ‘I remember my days of dredging the berths around here – say, right under where the Buller Lion is right now – and the thing I most remember is the incredible number of eels we used to suck up. Water around this harbour must be about fifty percent eel, I’d say, Bob. Big carnivorous eels.’ He turned to leave.

  Bob called after him: ‘Which did you do first, Sticky – sink the Zephyr or the fish?’

  Sticky gave a wave with the back of his hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  HE’D BOUGHT THE rubbers from the Chow. He went down there when he was between haircuts. This meant passing Angelo’s fish shop, who knew exactly why kids went down to the Chow’s fruit shop. Angelo’d be standing at his fish shop door as you came back. ‘Buying the plums, again, huh, Royce? Eh? The banana? The nice juicy orange? Eh? Apple a day keep doctor away, no? Much jigga-jig, eh? You have the fun.’ And the blackheads on his chin would dance like sandflies as he laughed his big dirty laugh.

  Well, he’d got the goods: two packets: Durex Lubricated. He wouldn’t need six, of course, but no reason why she shouldn’t think he might.

  She arrived shortly before nine. He’d gone up the ladder to the wharf at ten to, on the galley clock, and she’d arrived almost immediately. She was early, he wasn’t emotionally prepared and it flustered him a bit. It didn’t matter: she was flustered too.

  It was all a bit disastrously formal, actually: saying how nice it was to see her, finding somewhere to hide her bike, telling her how to get down the ladder without incident, showing her around the deck – how the winches worked, where the hold was, how the net went out. Then into the galley and did she want a cup of tea? No; no, thanks.

  ‘Right. Well, I won’t make one then … Right.’

  Then she clasped her hands in her lap as she stood beside the cup rack and gave a sort of wistful groan. ‘Oh, this is awful, Royce. We’re so uncomfortable.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s stupid,’ he said. And kissed her.

  She came out of it radiant and relaxed. ‘Thank God,’ she whispered. ‘I still want to.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He took her by the hand to the ladder leading to the fo’c’sle and resisted the temptation to tell her to be careful – no more formality. He waited at the bottom for her. She came down facing him. Her sandshoes were at his eye level, then the hem of her green skirt. Then her thighs, her hips. Her stomach, flat beneath a brown belt. Her breasts and the touch of her hair reached him at about the same time. Then her – because it’s usually the face you think of as the person.

  And she did it again. With breath-taking co-ordination she stepped from the last rung of the ladder and straight into a stunning kiss.

  ‘I don’t care what happens, Royce,’ she said after it. ‘I don’t ever want you to forget that I wanted to do this. If I hate it or don’t want to do it again, that’s too bad – I just wanted to do it this time. I really, really wanted.’

  ‘You won’t hate it, Linda. And I wanted to do it too – more than anything in the world.’ And he fell into another kiss of her, feeling, in his throat, the hoarseness he’d felt that day in the Doo Duk Inn when he’d been upset by her upsetness.

  ‘What do we do?’ she said.

  ‘We don’t do anything. It just happens.’ She had a pale cardigan on against the evening chill and he unfurled it from her. He did it quite elegantly until one cuff got caught in her watch. He began to unbutton her blouse.

  ‘Do I do what you’re doing?’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘And she began unbuttoning the nice clean Hallenstein’s shirt he was wearing.

  Then, when it was off, she put her arms around him, squeezed him. ‘That feels so good; I can feel so much of your skin against me. I often wanted to do this when we were training.’

  ‘Really? I had no idea. I wish I’d known. Why didn’t
you?’

  ‘I wasn’t quite sure why I wanted to do it. Or what I wanted to happen after that.’

  ‘But you do now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He just loved her saying yes; he was making her say it as often as he could.

  He knew there was going to be trouble with the bra and there was. In the end she reached behind her with both arms (how can women do that?) and unclipped it. She moved slightly away from him and wriggled. It fell, she caught it and threw it aside. Her naked breasts were touching him, pressing against him. In a short time he’d see them, see them with his real eyes, not just his mind’s eye. Within a few seconds the sight of them was going to become a memory he’d never forget.

  He could feel the smoothness of her back under his hands and the tingle of her hair on his forearms. He ran his fingers down to the belt to check for looseness. Yeah, there was enough give. He swept his hands down the small of her back and under the belt. He pushed out, spread his hand across the cheeks of her bum and prised the belt down over them. She was helping him; she wanted to be naked. She arched back and wriggled the skirt free. ‘Can we lie down, now?’ she whispered.

  And this is when he knew he was trapped; this is when he realised he had been led up the garden path of a friggin’ nightmare – because there wasn’t any friggin’ bedding, was there? It was all up on the deck, still seeping blood and goo from that sodding stolen fish!

  He’d tried to engineer the dream so that bedding arrived from somewhere – at one stage his dream machinery had even turned her hair into a sort of mermaid-like mattress, but it was never the same again. He’d never got that reality back where his mind could make her say things that sounded just like what she would say. And he never got to see her naked, either. Course not – he never had, so his brain didn’t know what to put in the places he’d never seen. Cunning bloody thing – it’d probably planned all along to pull out of the dream at this stage.