Prowlers

by Maurice Gee

  ‘They’ve got someone there who does first aid. Just a nick with a razor blade, she’d pop out.’

  ‘What about Phil?’ I asked.

  ‘He was shaking too much to shoot again.’

  Shane walked up to him – limped up, surely – and plucked the gun away by the barrel and threw it back-handed into the sea. It went fifty yards Peacock claimed. Then he turned Phil round and marched him back towards the creek.

  Frog-marched? I wanted to know. But it wasn’t that. Shane helped him along, half lifting him with an arm round his waist. ‘You’d better look after him, Mr Peacock,’ he said. Then he went back and joined the others in the sea.

  Peacock tried to help Phil over the sandhill but Phil wouldn’t take any help. ‘I didn’t like the look of him,’ Peacock said. ‘I told him he should go home. But he wouldn’t. Told me to clear out. Got in the boat. Drove away, top speed. There was nothing I could do.’

  ‘When they found him had he caught any fish?’

  ‘There was no rod. He must’ve dropped it when he had the heart attack. The boat was in the back of the island there. The police reckon he must’ve been dead quite a while.’

  Peacock’s problem was whether to tell his story to the police. He thought he might be in trouble for not telling it sooner. I advised him not to bother. Nobody was hurt unless it was Shane and if I knew him he wouldn’t complain. Let it lie, I said, why make trouble? That was what Peacock wanted to hear. He shook hands with me, half bowed to Kate, and went away.

  That’s how Phil Dockery died of a heart attack. The thing you couldn’t have, Phil, it got you in the end. For all the tricks and stratagems and ways of attack you knew, you were as ignorant of love as a sandfly, a barracuda. You wanted to take him into yourself. Can’t do that, Phil, it doesn’t work that way. But don’t you see you had him there a moment, when he helped you back with his arm around you? That was enough if you’d recognized it. That would have lasted you for the rest of your days. You did not need to go out there and die.

  I wanted Peacock to say you’d caught a fish.

  Phil, you’re filled in. Dockery, you’re docked.

  I know the place, the back of Bucket Island, where boulders go down into the sea. I’ve an urge to come and join you, Phil.

  Do you remember your bit of third form Latin? You were always bottom – ‘Waste of bloody time!’ – so I’ll translate. Hail and farewell!

  So, the sky and the mountains and the sea. The sun, the river. Kate at her typewriter, making Kitty spiky or smooth.

  I’ve come round to Kitty’s view of things: you can take out your eyes and wash them in a basin of cold water.

  The comet is there, invisible in our daylight sky. I’ve been offered a visit to the observatory and turned it down. I don’t even want my binoculars. I’ve spent too much of my life looking through lenses. The naked eye is good enough for me.

  I wait, as I’ve said, in a scientific spirit, but with senses readied and imagination primed. I know it’s just a cloud of cold gases in the sky but how marvellous if it should lean to me and burn me in a blue or yellow fire.

  Let’s burn my notebooks first, shall we, Kate?

  Acknowledgements

  I have made several borrowings from Glenn Busch’s Working Men and David Gee’s Our Mabel and am pleased to acknowledge the debt. I would like to thank Dr Royd Thornton of the Cawthron Institute, Nelson, for permission to use the Institute’s library and consult its archives. The Lomax Institute in my novel resembles the Cawthron in size, constitution and one or two parts of its history but no close likeness is intended. The Lomax scientists are imaginary, although some of their work was first done in the Cawthron by its staff.

  I am grateful to the New Zealand Literary Fund for its generous encouragement and support.

  M.G.

  THE BEGINNING

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  First published in New Zealand in 1987 in association with Faber and Faber Limited 3 Queen Square London WC1N 3AU

  Copyright © Maurice Gee, 1987

  All rights reserved

  ISBN: 978-1-74-253954-6