Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  She was sitting on the sofa, watching Royce rip the last of his books to shreds. Unquestioningly, she swivelled to look at him.

  ‘Why didn’t you open the door?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Oh, was that the door? I thought I heard something.’

  That night, with Royce safely stowed, he went to her bed. He mounted her almost immediately and pumped unrestrainedly. The tenor of her breathing did not alter. He had rapidly reached that irritating state of pre-ejaculatory exhaustion when she suddenly gave a terrific roar, wrapped her legs around his ribs and bucked and battered against him with a violence he had known only at sea.

  Next day he drove her and her son to the Newmans bus in Christchurch. He waved to them as they set off for Westport. Only the kid smiled back at him.

  That was the only time they made love – even though he moved back over the hill a year later. They met sometimes at Macromart or on the street and said hello. But the faint squint of puzzlement on her brow, at such meetings, was no deeper than it had been before the interlude.

  Now they were to meet again, in the company also, of fishermen, lawyers, school teachers and policemen. And her goddamn son, Royce.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  EVERYONE HAD THOUGHT the little bastard’s episode with Penny Turton was the last straw. But, oh no, the son of Tommy Rowland couldn’t have just one last straw. No, it was a typical Rowland special: a double-banger. Royce Rowland broke the camel’s backs with two last straws.

  ROYCE WILL GO floundering. He can do so now, even in the still-chilly pre-spring. He has the wherewithal. It is a bright yellow survival suit that he has purloined from the Catalina seaplane, last week, when the school was taken to see through it. (For $20 you could also be taken for a ride. Royce was broke. So were most. In fact only Karen Phibbs and her yicky boyfriend Grant went up; parentally sponsored, of course – him with ears see-through pink with self-consciousness.) But Royce’d whisked the survival suit out of its compartment at the rear, pushed it with his foot down to the front – amidst a scrum of accomplices – and booted it out the door. All under the noses of Inky Staines, Beatrice Ellen Ann and Flight Captain Marshall.

  Flicked it behind a gorse bush, from whence he retrieved it that night.

  NOW THEY ARE at the Orowaiti River, near Kirkwoods’ bach.

  Royce and Jimmy have brought the net, carrying it between them on their bikes in a brilliant feat of synchronisation. Clive, in the carrier bag on his bike, has cigarettes and beers for later. Gilbert, a useless fisherman for all his technical knowledge, brings up the rear with flounder sacks – and the yellow suit.

  Royce dons the suit. It is his suit, possession being nine-tenths of the law. There are a bracing few moments when he is down to his undies in the crisp October afternoon. Soon, however, he is snugly confined in the one-piece, booted, gloved and hooded survival suit. Only his face protrudes uncovered from an oval aperture.

  Movement becomes jerky, for the rubber is unyielding. Walking is done as swing, a throwing forward of alternate boots. Sound has become murky, accompanied by that vaguely disquieting inner booming somewhere behind your temples. Gilbert is goldfishing something to him, which transpires to be – on third attempt – ‘Stop shouting.’

  The project had taken longer than expected and they are late. In fact the tide has just turned and is now going out. Damn. There may be a few top-of-the-tide stragglers, but otherwise this floundering expedition is going to be a pretty hopeless exercise. Never mind, the lesson has been learned. They will be earlier next time, and the suit can still be tested.

  Royce attempts to bend to pick up the pole but the gods of rubber and gravity conspire to ensure he can’t. Eventually it is handed to him. He steps inside the rope straps of the net and walks towards the water, dragging it behind him. It is Jimmy’s father’s net, taken from its winter storage in the dead of night.

  The water has no feel to it at all, it is simply a pressure. He leans slightly into it to counter the out-going tide. The pressure flattens the rubber against his leg as the water reaches his knee. Then his thigh. He looks back; he is perhaps twenty yards from his cowering comrades on the bank, shiveringly bored already, rubbing the bright fabric of their football jerseys for warmth. The bed beneath his booting has now hardened into the crab-holed tidal mud; walking is easy. The water has reached his waist.

  Far away, at the shallow end, the cowardly bastards are dinking about on the dry stones – they have reneged on their promise to at least come out to knee level. Well, stuff them …

  Aargh! There is an explosion: a bomb has gone off inside the survival suit. It is about to burst.

  The whole nature of the thing is changing: it’s expanding, capturing him in its centre, pinioning him with intense pressure inside it, pushing his arms out in crucifixory pose, spreading his legs, swelling to Michelin-man proportions, pushing him backwards until his feet swoosh upwards and he topples helplessly onto his back in the water, immobilised: a giant yellow starfish.

  The bloody thing has inflated – turned him into a boat. Yes, a boat. A boat heading out to sea on the out-going tide. Arrgh! He is captive in the pneumatic middle of an inflatable survival suit.

  The net! They can haul him in on the net.

  The rope straps have burst. The net has gone.

  All attempts to do something about his plight just bring home to him the starkness of it. Movement, beyond the faintest squiddling of his fingers and toes, is impossible – he cannot paddle or steer his vessel in any way. Ye gods, he can’t even move his head. At the periphery of his vision he can see three striped figures running down the riverbank; he must be moving quite quickly. They won’t be able to accompany him much longer: creeks, brambles and cliffs will impede their progress. A sort of iceberg of dirty brown river suds floats between him and his bright companions on the riverbank, and he can see them no more.

  Gilbert will think of something; Gilbert will oversee the rescue.

  Will he float into the bank before he reaches the rivermouth? He certainly wasn’t in the middle of the river when he exploded, but from his attempts at navigation – by recourse to his movement in relation to the strato nimbus overhead – he reckons he is moving towards it all the time.

  What happens if he crosses the mouth of the Orowaiti and heads out to sea? How will they find him?

  Will he get tipped over? How seaworthy is he? If he got turned on his face he’d never get back up again. But the Catalina people must have thought of that. It’s no use having people save themselves from a crashed seaplane, then capsizing in their survival suits.

  What about waves? He can’t turn his head away from them. An unexpected direct hit in his face could drown him. He can hold his breath when he sees them coming, but what if he falls asleep?

  Come to think of it, this would be quite an easy thing to do. For all the many drawbacks, Royce has to admit it’s very comfortable in here. You’re weightless, rocking pleasurably and turning in slow, relaxing circles. It’s even quite warm.

  Yep, you have to admit, as survival suits go, this one is really doing its job.

  The trouble is, it sort of depends on your definition of survival. Sure, he’s not sinking, so, as far as the suit is concerned it is doing everything it’s supposed to do. But it’s carrying him out to sea, and whether that constitutes survival is a moot point.

  But then how do you explain to a survival suit that there’s more to survival than simply staying afloat?

  ‘TED, THAT YOU? Yeah, Tip Casey here. We’ve just received a call from Mrs Kirkwood, out Utopia way. There’s an individual in a Catalina survival suit floating down the Orowaiti River. Yeah, bright yellow, you can’t miss it. We’ve got men on their way down to the lagoon with our own police inflatable and the surf lifesaving people are taking their rubber duckie down as well. We’re gonna have to bring the chopper up from Greymouth – yeah, theirs is the only one with a body harness and rescue ring – but that’s gonna take over forty minutes so we’d like to borrow you Land
SAR boys to keep a visual on him. Get as many bikes and four-wheel-drives down the North Beach as you can, ASAP? Yeah, bright yellow, yeah. Oh, fuck it, Ted, pick up any other colours you see too, willya? Over and out.’

  ‘THAT YOU, SERGEANT? Yeah, Lew Hughes, Marine Department. Tip, I hear you want some info on the tides? Yeah, well she’s a two point two in the Orowaiti today. Speed? Christ, I dunno – how long ago did he go in? Right, well, I reckon he’d get up to about two knots. You got a helicopter on the way? Yeah, that chopper’s got a sou’west wind behind it so that might hurry him up but the wind’ll be pushing on the survival suit too; that bloke could be three mile offshore by the time they get there. Listen, Bob Dodds’s out there, Tip, off Mohikanui, ’bout eight miles out. The Aurora. He could be there in half an hour, I reckon. Yeah, I reckon, Tip. There’s a strong nor’west tide line out there: victim’ll be halfway to Granity by time the chopper gets there. I reckon Bob’s your best bet. I can get him from here – I’ll give him a call.’

  ‘HARRY SYMES? YEAH, Tip Casey. We got an emergency off the coast of Utopia: somebody’s put to sea in a bright yellow survival suit. Thing is, there’s a delay getting the chopper up from Grey – it’s gotta come up from the Haast. Can you get your Cessna up there for a visual on him? We’ve got Bob Dodds on his way in the Aurora, you could keep an eye on him too. Thanks, Harry. Hey? How’s Bob? Yeah, he was in the middle of a trawl. He’s not what you’d call happy – had to window the net; lost about two ton, he reckons. I wouldn’t like to be the poor bugger in that survival suit when Bob gets him aboard.’

  THINKING ABOUT THE universe is not difficult when it’s all you can bloody well see. Lying here, staring up at it, it sort of dominates your attention. Thing is, Royce doesn’t really want to think about the universe because – well, frankly, he’s always felt that the origins of the universe don’t bear close scrutiny. The explanations that teachers like Noddy in science have given him are friggin’ pathetic:

  It went Bang.

  What did?

  Well … we just don’t know what went bang, nods old Noddy.

  Great. Really convincing. There doesn’t seem to be any real, water-tight, compelling reason for the universe to exist at all. But he doesn’t want to give it grounds for disappearing by saying that out loud, so he’d better change the subject.

  Flounders. Why can’t you catch flounders when the tide is going out? They have to be somewhere. Why are they only catchable when the tide’s coming in? Can’t you just turn the net around? But then maybe the flounders don’t turn around. Maybe they’re always swimming away from the net. And eventually you just chase them out to sea – like where he’s heading right now. Shit. Change the subject again.

  Sex.

  You can get twice as many fingers into Mrs …

  Hell! That might have been his last sexual experience. If he drowns out here he will have had … eleven bouts of sexual intercourse, about forty feels – plus the ones that came before the bonks, of course. And – naah, breasts don’t count.

  It’s not a hell of a lot. According to Australian Post, Mick Jagger’s probably had ten thousand. They reckon John Lennon used to come out of the bedroom in a towel and call, ‘Next.’

  Who in all the world?

  Linda Harvey.

  What, more than Jane Fonda? More than Olivia Newton John?

  Yeah, maybe.

  Wonder Woman?

  … Yeah, more than Wonder Woman.

  You kidding me? There’s Wonder Woman, standing outside a bedroom door, next to Linda Harvey, both down to their knickers, and both waiting for you to choose – and you’re saying you’d take Linda Harvey?

  Yeah.

  Royce feels his chin firm in his thoughts as he defends the love of his life … so far. Yeah – Linda Harvey. At least I’d be seeing her in her knickers for the first time. Wonder Woman’s in hers every bloody time she comes on TV. And anyway, afterwards, what would you have to say to Wonder Woman? She’d just rabbit on about her Hollywood friends: ‘I was just saying to John Travolta and Harrison Ford and Robert de Niro and Jack the other day …’ and you’d just be lying there, dumb. And then what if she said, ‘What about your friends?’ Gilbert? Jimmy? Clive? Feefi friggin’ Fyfe? Give us a break!

  Yeah, Linda Harvey. November 30th. ‘Happy birthday,’ he’ll say.

  ‘Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh G …’ she’ll say.

  Maybe she’ll cry when she finds out about him. He thinks about Linda Harvey crying. Then he thinks about Linda Harvey crying in the bath. Beside the bath are her knickers. Then he can’t tell if she is crying or not, because he’s stopped looking there – but she’s still in the bath. He wonders if she does it to herself. Before his mind has time to say ‘probably not’ he has a hard on.

  Jesus! Here he is, floating out to sea, and he gets a hard on. You get those with – what’s its name? – rigor mortis. When you die you get a hard on. Well, when they find him they’ll see his hard but they’ll never dream that he had it before he died, pre-rigor mortis.

  When you die you do a big turd, too. He learnt that when he read The Godfather. Great. That’s just bloody marvellous: they’ll find his body and a monstrous waterproof turd beside it. Will it damage the suit? Will they want to use it again? Do turds attract sharks? Nah, sharks’re too clean. Eels! Conger eels! Christ, they make a living out of sewage: he’s going to get eaten by conger eels! He makes little bow waves in a new frenzy of escape.

  Ahead of him he hears the roar of the breakers.

  ‘What do you mean it’s stuffed? That’s a brand-new Evinrude sixty-five motor. Brand new Evinrudes don’t get stuffed.’

  ‘I’m telling you, it won’t go. The fuel line must be blocked.’

  ‘Great. Here we are a mile out to sea and you’ve fucked the motor. Take a line, dive in and tow us ashore.’

  ‘I can’t swim.’

  ‘You what? You’re a member of the Surf Friggin’ Lifesaving Association!’

  ‘I’m the secretary. I’m only here because the rest of you bastards are illiterate.’

  UNDERNEATH HIM ARE his second-worst nightmares. Brett Luff pulled a nine-foot tiger shark out of this sea, about right here. He hung it up in the yard at the back of his father’s butcher’s shop until old Dinny Knight, the Health Inspector, made him take it down to the dump because of the maggots.

  You get conger eels out here, big as elephants. The ones in the Sawpit are babies in comparison, they reckon.

  Billy Mosley brought a blind eel to school one day, which his dad found in one of his crayfish pots. It was pure white: every bit of meat and blood had been sucked out of it. In the pot too was a big dead octopus with a bite out of it. And three hollow crayfish shells.

  But his first worst nightmares are inside himself. He is locked in this hollow suit, rocking up and down on horrible big grey waves that rear up out of the far edge of his left eye, then sink away and out his right eye. The sky above has disappeared: it is just a shiny grey light that hurts his eyes. He keeps them shut and that makes him think about himself: inside. Inside he is a skeleton. And a skull. Inside he is made of the things they use in horror movies. Inside is a brain – a big grey walnut-looking thing that would make him scream if he could see it. Like if he saw his full eyeballs. The trouble is, he is starting to see them. He is starting to see himself in the bits that he soon will be, floating in the sea off Westport.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ST JOHN’S AMBULANCE. Report on marine retrieval, 4/10/78, by duty officer Daniel Ross

  1) Patient, Royce Thomas Daniel Rowland, extracted from sea off Westport by trawler Aurora at approx. 3.30pm, in estimate of skipper Rbt Dodds. Position: 141.31 S, 171.46 E.

  Patient remained on deck in survival suit until Aurora intercepted by Greymouth Search and Rescue helicopter 4.03pm. When asked why patient had not been extracted from suit R. Dodds replied: ‘We asked the b … if he had any clothes on in there, and he said no, so we just propped him up by the wheelhouse. Warmer for him; we had nothing h
e could put on.’

  S&R officer James Dunlop lowered to deck of Aurora, punctured suit with borrowed filleting knife and made initial examination for injury. No epidermal or vertebral damage found. Patient secured by dog clip to harness; J. Dunlop and R. Rowland winched into helicopter.

  Pre-intensive diagnosis found incipient hypothermia and some bruising to face which could have resulted from explosion of suit, or contact with hull of Aurora as retrieval expedited.

  Helicopter landed in Westport Technical College grounds, patient stretchered to ambulance and conveyed to Cobden St entrance, Buller Hospital. Transferred to gurney, conveyed to bed in preliminary ward, A&E.

  Accessed by Dr Alan Gray. Report: body temperature 36 degrees F – above critical (below 35 degrees F); breathing slightly shallow but untroubled; heart rate regular; slight paleness. Capillary refill 0.7 sec – above critical cyanosis level of one second. Left eye bruised and showing signs of blackening; probably a blow to head as patient was retrieved from sea.

  Patient held overnight for possible concussion. Released 8.10am, 5/10/78.

  2) Helicopter rescue of crew of broken-down SLA IRB not required. IRB towed into Floating Basin by police IRB. Lifeguards Jack Black and Brian Rowe refused paramedic attention and discharged themselves.