HE HALF SPRINTED down Palmerston Street so he wouldn’t be late, but he was there before her. He sat down by the window. Big Mavis Hutton, who had been at school with him until last year when she left to work here in her mum’s shop, came out from behind those dangling lines of plastic in the doorway that keep flies out. She stood behind the cake cabinet guarding her mother’s lamingtons, which looked like giant pink speckled bits of Lego. The two of them stayed in stand-off until Linda arrived on her bike. He watched her get off but didn’t see anything.
She wore her navy school uniform, which suddenly seemed incredibly old-fashioned. He had that same belly-swoop of long-ago schooldays as she came in.
She didn’t smile, and sat down like you see wives doing in prison visiting rooms in TV dramas.
‘Did you order?’ she said.
Order? ‘Well, I was going to buy a lemonade. What would you like?’ Damn! He had no money. ‘A white coffee?’
‘Yes.’
‘I … um … don’t get paid till end of the month.’
‘It’s all right.’
She took a $10 note out of her blouse pocket to check it, then put it back in. He kept watching the pocket for a few moments because it was over her right breast. He looked up. She was frowning.
‘Right is starboard,’ he said. ‘I know quite a lot of nautical information now.’
‘How could you do that, Royce?’ she said, in a small voice. Christ, she looked like she was gonna cry.
‘Do what?’ Stare at her pocket?
‘That. What you did with that damn Mrs Turton.’
Oh God, this was serious. He’d never heard her swear before. ‘Look, Linda, it didn’t mean anything …’ What the hell did that mean? He’d heard it in movies and thought it was pathetic. Now he realised it’s what you do say when you’re in a situation like this. In other words you say three parts of fuck-all.
Her incredible blue eyes had a little line of water at the bottom. The left one spilled. Port. Shut up!
‘I thought we were …’
He leaned forward, a bit amazed. ‘What?’
‘When I heard what you’d been caught doing I was just so …’
‘What?’ Christ, did he really want to know?
‘Disgusted!’
He flicked a glance at the cake cabinet. Bloody Mavis Hutton was still there, ears flapping. ‘Could we have a white coffee and a lemonade, please, Mavis?’
‘Look, Linda.’ He reached over the table and put his hand on top of hers, which were lying there. Put his hand on top of hers! And she didn’t move. It was the most intimate thing he’d ever done with her and it was in the middle of a bollocking about someone else! Christ, life’s a funny thing.
Then she took one hand out from under to wipe her eye and he realised she was so upset she probably hadn’t even noticed his hand.
It seemed a good tactic to get in first with something, steer the conversation. Anything she was going to say was going to be pretty grim. ‘What did you think we were?’
‘I just started crying in front of Dana Glover when she told me. I couldn’t help it. She said Mrs Turton had no clothes on and you were with her.’
She scrunched her eyes up and sort of pulled her mouth down in this incredibly ugly way.
‘Jeez, Linda, don’t do this to yourself. Look, I’m really sorry. Really, really sorry. Hell, if I’d known it was going to hurt you like this …’ And he stopped, shook his head. He’d stopped because his throat was gummed up with pre-crying. A sudden, shocking, out-of-nowhere wave of remorse engulfed him and paralysed his words. He stared at her and she stared at him, head-shaking and speechless and both out of focus with tears. ‘I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t have. Honest,’ he rasped, and then wet himself. With tears. For the first time that he could remember, his eyes made tears. He was looking at this dreadful pain that was making the face of the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen go ugly. He’d done that, and he felt so bad he wanted to die. All he wanted to do was help her.
What he did next was powered by pure emotion: it had no thought or plans in it at all. He skidded his chair around beside her and put his arms around her. It’s what human nature wanted him to do. She did some sobs into his shoulder and he rocked her and said, ‘There, there.’ She lay there, not sobbing any more, for about a minute.
The trouble with waves of remorse is that they’re waves. So they keep going. The remorse-wave washed over him, and away, and left him holding a weeping girl and staring into the little piggy eyes of Mavis Hutton.
He patted Linda’s shoulder. ‘I’ll get your coffee. You’ll feel better.’
She sat up, nodded and got stuck into some hanky-work.
He went to the counter.
‘That’ll be $3.70,’ said Mavis Hutton.
‘Look, we’ll pay later, Mavis, all right?’
Mavis Hutton stared at him like a full moon.
‘Come on, Mavis,’ he whispered wheedlingly. ‘I’ve got a crisis here.’
‘Have you ever!’ Her pale, cracked lips moved like a dying skate’s. ‘Whole town knows that.’
But then, in an act of morose charity, she turned and swished through the plastic strips.
He sat down with the drinks, resolved to say nothing. Although the big wave that had made him cry at his own hurtfulness had gone, he still felt stink about himself and really, really sorry about Linda. Best thing to do was go with the flow – let her get it out of her system and just take it on the chin.
She sniffed – a great big hearty haul-back that was amazingly impolite and yet so innocent, somehow. Perhaps it was the most intimate thing that had happened between them. Her nose was red at the tip and she was still rubbing at it with her little hanky.
‘Have there been others?’ she said, not stopping the rubbing.
Holy kermoley: this was gonna be rough. He stared at her, waiting for the pandemonium of advice from his brain to settle down. Suddenly he felt a great calm. ‘Linda,’ he said quietly, ‘you haven’t really got the right to ask me that.’
He saw her pupils flare and her mouth fall open in a gasp. Jesus, he was distressing her all over again, in a different way. And perhaps an even worse way because he was sort of pulling rank – putting a distance between them she hadn’t known was there. But he still felt calm. ‘See, what I did was pretty gnarly, and it stuffed up Mrs Turton’s life, and the whole town’s pretty disgusted with me. But I haven’t betrayed anyone, Linda. I haven’t been unfaithful to a girlfriend or anything, because I haven’t got a girlfriend.’
There were new tears, and they were of a new kind. She battered them back down her tear ducts with blinks. But they were there. She shook her head and her hair waved like kelp. ‘I thought we were …’ She was looking down and her voice was hoarse. ‘Oh God, how can I have done this!’ she hissed suddenly, and lurched out of her chair for the door.
‘We could be!’ he called, rushing after her.
She sort of immersed herself, more than she needed to, in the ceremony of getting on the bike, never looking at him at all. He dangled beside her on the footpath. She rode off. ‘We could be, Linda. It’s what I want most in all the world.’
She whizzed over the road, nearly getting skittled, then down Wakefield Street. It wasn’t the way home, so God knows where she was going. He stood watching her, then realised they hadn’t paid.
He took off, at 11.4 pace.
‘I LOVE HIM, I love him, I love him, murmured Mavis. He used to sit by me in Standard Three. He was my partner at the school ball, and when we did Black Nag he put his arm around me although he didn’t have to. None of the other boys put their arms around their partners in Black Nag, but he did. And then she arrived from England with her yellow ponytail and posh way of talking …’
HE WENT IN through the back door, which was never locked. She wasn’t in the kitchen. He carried on up the passage to the lounge and there she was, lying on the couch with a blanket over her.
‘So. You’re back are you?’
‘Yes, I am.’ The stupidest conversations he’d ever had were all with his mother.
‘Ah, so you’re back, then. I was just having a lie down.’
‘Yes. You are. What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, nothing, I’m just depressed. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Yes. I actually got in last night, Mum, but I have to stay on the boat at nights. It’s part of the job.’
‘Part of the punishment.’
‘Yeah, I suppose so.’
‘Penny Turton’s gone to Christchurch, they say. He’s still here, living in the house.’
‘Jeez, Mum, let’s give that one a rest, shall we? What have you been up to? Been out at all?’
‘I went up the street – oh – yesterday. So you’re back. How long for?’
‘We go out again tomorrow. I told you I have to stay on the boat, didn’t I? I won’t be staying here.’
‘So, you’ve been to sea. Was it calm?’
‘Yeah, so they tell me. Wouldn’t mind if it stayed that way all the time but it won’t, of course. Have to get used to the storms, I suppose.’
‘So you were out with Bob Dodds?’
‘Yeah. He’s good. Tough, but fair. Bit of a practical joker, actually.’
‘And Sticky Moody?’
‘Yeah, Sticky’s boat’s out of the water for a month or so, so he’s crewing with us until then.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘Who?’
‘Sticky Moody. Did he say anything?’
‘So he didn’t say anything then?’
‘Well, he said quite a bit, actually.’
‘Oh, he did, did he? What about?’
‘Jeepers, Mum. About fishing, about the weather, about footie – he used to know Dad, evidently.’
‘So, what did he say about that?’
‘He just told me some stories. About how Dad sank the dredge. They used to work together.’
‘So, he told you that, did he? And what else did he tell you?’
‘That’s about all, really. Just general stuff, Mum. Nothing important or different, like.’
‘Oh, he didn’t, didn’t he?’
‘No.’
‘So, it was like that, was it?’
‘Yes, I suppose it was.’
SHE WAS SURE he’d nearly said something about it. You could tell when he was about to, and then changed his mind. You could see this hate come into his eyes. ‘I saw you. I saw you and him.’ He hadn’t said anything in the end. He’d stored it away again, for when it was really time and it would hurt her most. For fourteen years now he’d been doing that. Why do boys want to torture their own mother? If he’d said it, at least she could tell him they’d never done it again. But he didn’t.
IT WAS LATE-NIGHT shopping and Royce had a mission. He went into Denver Donaldson’s sports shop. Old Dudleg was behind the counter, stooped over a brass swivel he was fixing and still singing that dumb ad song he always sang: ‘Brylcreem, aliddle dabble dooya …’ Royce walked up to him and was almost there when he remembered he’d still got no damn money.
An idea occured to him.
‘Excuse me, Mr Donaldson, has Bob Dodds got an account here?’
‘Ah, young Rudolph Valentino, is it?’
‘Eh?’
‘Ever touch my daughter, you young larrikin, and I’ll be after you with a bullwhip.’
‘Sure, Mr Donaldson. Don’t worry, I promise.’ What, touch spotty old Janice Donaldson? Ha! You gotta be joking. And she’d jump at the chance – so stick that in your pipe, old Dudleg Donaldson.
‘Yes, Bob has an account here. Do you want something for him? You’re working for him, aren’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Well, next time he gives you a boot up the backside, tell him to give you one from me as well. What does he want?’
‘Um – some hooks.’
‘Bob’s a trawler.’
‘Yeah, thought he might have a go at a mako.’
‘So, shark hooks?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Suicide?’
‘… Yeah. What other sorts are there?’
Denver Donaldson aimed his long red nose like a gunsight at Royce. ‘Non-suicide,’ he said witheringly. ‘How many? Not long-lining is he? That would cost hundreds. He’d have to come in himself if that’s the case.’
‘No. Just about – three, I’d say.’
‘Three? Extraordinary.’ Denver Donaldson gave a little whinny of amusement to himself. ‘Three. All right. Has he got line?’
‘No, he’ll need line. Strongest you’ve got.’
‘For leaders?’
‘… Yeah. Leaders.’
‘Hi Seas Quattro, 1.9 mill? Is that what he had in mind?’
‘Yeah, I think that’s what he said.’
‘How much?’
‘Well, how much is usual?’
‘Oh, ten yards. How many leaders did he have in mind?’
‘Um – what’s a usual line?’
‘Five hundred yards.’
‘Yeah, he’ll have that, then.’
‘Of leader? Is he moving into mako fishing?’
‘Yeah. I think so.’
‘Interesting. Very well, I’ll cut them for you. Did he want them crimped?’
‘No. No, he didn’t want them cut, either. Just as line.’
‘Five hundred yards of 350-pound line?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Are you sure? You can catch a mako on twenty-four pounds, you know. You can catch an elephant on fifty.’
‘No, I’m sure he wanted the other one. The first one you said.’
‘Very well. My lucky day.’ Denver ‘Dudleg’ Donaldson stalked down the back of his shop, bum waggling with an old war wound in his hip. He stopped by a sort of winch of cord, with a winder. He started hand-wheeling this thick red nylon stuff onto a smaller plastic drum.
‘I’ll be interested to talk to Bob next time I see him. Seems he’s found a mako slightly bigger than Jaws.’ And Denver Donaldson glared down his gunsight nose again – he sold guns too – before he went on, in this incredibly sorrowful voice: ‘I fear you have as much to learn about fishing, young Rowland, as you do about morality.’
He cut the line with a guillotine, black-taped its end onto the new spool and put it in a plastic bag. He set off for the counter, way down the front of his long, narrow little shop. Royce followed, then was stopped by a vision.
It was in the form of a dusty old painting, backed with cardboard, of a naked woman. She was lying on her back in the sea, her golden hair washing around her and her arms back, holding a shipwrecked young fisherman. Royce was transfixed. It was Linda Harvey.
‘Um, Bob asked me to get a poster too, for the boat – cheer it up, you know? I thought that one might be nice.’
Denver Donaldson limped back to stand beside him. They stared at the painting, set in an alcove between gaffs, nets and short, thick fibre-glass rods. Royce could sort of see the old guy turning to look at him as he said, ‘That is a piece of outrageous pornography.’
‘No!’ Royce was defensive and fierce on behalf of Linda Harvey. ‘No. It’s beautiful.’
The old guy looked at him searchingly then said, ‘I’ll wrap up Bob’s shark fishing equipment,’ and carried on up to the counter.
It was called The Fisherman and the Siren and was by a bloke called Knut Ekwell who’d lived from 1843 to 1912. The fisherman, in leather fisherman’s cap and dark blue smock, had a bit of a nebulous expression on his face and you got the idea the siren might be pulling him down more than holding him up. But she was amazing. Her hair became the water after a while, swirling around her in a whirlpool. She was pale and slim and amazingly what Linda Harvey must be like without … well, she was the dead spit of how Linda Harvey’d looked to his imagination in the bath, as he’d floated in the sea in his survival suit, so here was the confirmation. Lovely soft round breasts with small, pale nipples – but the thing that really turned her into Linda Harvey was her … you know. There it was, clear as day about two-thirds of the way down the painting, just held out of the sea. But not finished – in the way that Walt Disney didn’t finish his cartoon people that were nude. He didn’t put their bits in. Well, her … you know, was like that. It was smooth – no pubic hair – but there was another feature missing too. There was no way in, so to speak. It was exactly like Linda Harvey’s one was – symbolically speaking. No way in. It was the most amazing symbol of ‘Not yet’ that you could possibly get.
‘Would it be going on Bob’s account if I sold it to you?’ called Denver Donaldson, down the corridor-like shop.
‘… Yeah,’ said Royce, not moving his eyes from the painting.
‘A hundred dollars. All right?’
‘… Yeah.’ His eyes did not move, but by cripes they bulged. A hundred dollars!
‘Bring it up to the counter when you come,’ called Denver Donaldson.
Royce took it off the wall. It left a bright oblong impression in the faded yellow paint.
‘I didn’t find it pornographic when I was your age either,’ said old Denver. ‘Why I should be charitable to a guttersnipe like you I don’t know, but you can have it. You obviously value it enough to risk the wrath of Bob Dodds, which shows some sort of primitive worthiness. Yes, you can have it – no need to add to the trouble you’ll be in when Bob gets the bill for the line. Now, will that be all?’
Royce was staring back at the unslit fanny once more and the voice wafted to him on an ether of Brylcreem, from another time and another place. ‘Will that be all?’
‘Oh, and a dozen Durex,’ murmured Royce unthinkingly.