Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  UNBIDDEN, HE HAD another memory of his father. Royce had this sort of fluffy toy dog thing – it wasn’t really a dog; it was the ear off a much bigger fluffy toy dog – but he had to have it when he went to bed. You sort of stroked it, burrowed your fingers into the fur, and it took all the night worries away. Well, one day he was playing with it outside – it didn’t have a name – and he was throwing it up in the air and catching it. And one time it didn’t come down. Well, this was pretty mysterious – but worse, it was a terrible loss. He had to have that thing and he made this pretty clear with a lot of screaming and crying. Everyone looked and looked – even old Scotty Ames was out scouring the bushes in the back yard. No luck. He had to go to bed without it. Then late at night his father came in with it. Royce was awake because he couldn’t sleep, but he pretended to be asleep. His father put it beside his cheek – it was cold – and bent down and gave Royce a kiss on the forehead. (He’d given him another kiss that Christmas, when he’d come in, pretending to be Santa, and put a silver trumpet at the foot of Royce’s bed.) Somehow – he couldn’t quite remember how – Royce found out that his father had climbed onto the roof in the middle of the night and found the dog in the spouting – maybe he’d gone to bed and then had this vision of where the thing might be.

  Anyway, in his memory Royce was looking down at himself when he was young and seeing himself there with his eyes clenched up tight, pretending to be asleep. Frankly he couldn’t remember if he had kept his eyes shut, but he sure as hell was gonna keep ’em shut in his memory. Because if he’d opened them he’d see a dead man. Well – no one’d ever said he was officially dead because they had no proof – not dead, only missing. But Royce didn’t want to be the one that provided the proof by opening his eyes and looking at a dead man.

  RACHEL STOPPED BESIDE him and bent over. You could smell this nice perfume. ‘We’re going to serve dinner now. I’ll come and talk to you after that. We thought it best to keep your fish off limits – it’s a pretty realistic container it’s in – hence the curtain. So don’t go opening it up to general view, will you?’

  ‘No. Can I have a look?’

  ‘Oh, sure. But don’t draw attention to it. Why not wait till the film’s on, after dinner? It’s perfectly okay, I promise you.’

  ‘Right. Ta.’

  You couldn’t see down her front – the blouse had a little bow tie. Which made sense, cos they must do a lot of bending down over people. But the skirt had pleats and swung about a bit, which did give you a reasonable chance of seeing quite high up her legs. Nice legs, in dark blue stockings. Window seat? Hell no – aisle seats were where the view was.

  Most of the rows had two seats, then five, then two more, but down here where he was the plane came in a bit, towards the tail, and there were only two, four and two. That meant the fish was taking up six seats. Cripes, that guy on the TV must be weeping! Mind you, when you looked around, there were quite a lot of other empty seats. New Zealanders didn’t seem to go to Japan. They were all too busy going to London with Selwyn Toogood.

  Next to him was a bloke with hairy ears (well, the left-hand one was, anyway) who was reading the New Zealand Herald. He did it with his elbow on the armrest, so Royce had to lean out into the aisle. This was all right at first, unless there was an air hostess going past, but after a while he started to ache. Not painfully, just a restless need to lean on his other side. Jesus! The bloke was only up to page five and there were millions of them, by the looks. Royce waited. Minutes passed. The bloke lifted his elbow to turn the page, Wham! Royce’s elbow was down there before you could blink. The bloke turned the page and put his elbow down again without looking. It came into contact with Royce’s, which was steady as a rock. He turned and gave a long glare that Royce could feel on the side of his face because he was looking straight ahead. The bloke turned away and read the rest of his paper with his arm bent up like the front paw of a tyrannosaurus. He seemed to read a bit more quickly after that.

  Further down the row was a woman and a nun. The woman looked sourer than the nun. Hell, why hadn’t he brought a book?

  THEY HAD THEIR dinner, which was very nice. You could choose between chicken and something French so he had the chicken. When he’d finished he put his wee aluminium and plastic containers in a neat stack; there were seven of them. The bastard had got the armrest back – he must have bolted his dinner at a million miles an hour.

  Rachel pulled down this folding seat where she’d sat at take-off. You could see the nice blue plumpness of her thighs as she leaned forward.

  ‘Well, so what’s all this about? I think I’d be lynched if I announced that there’s no ice in the whiskey for anyone except first class because of a fish. We’ve got three galleys, with eighty pounds of lumped ice all up, packed in dry ice. What we use on a trip is evidently exactly how much you need for your fish.’

  ‘If it’s eighty pounds it is, yeah. Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be – it’s an adventure. I think a coffin’s the weirdest thing we’ve ever carried in the nursing bay, but we’ve had some doozies. Fortunately there are no nursing mothers on this trip to share the bay with your fish. We quite often carry stretcher-cases, gurneys for broken skiers – that sort of thing. The engineers just pull the bolt from the locking mechanism and rack the seats forward. And there’s anchorage points, so your fish is well battened down. So what is it?’

  ‘A bluefin tuna – 716 pounds.’

  ‘That’s enormous! And it’s worthwhile taking it all the way to Tokyo?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll get enough to pay off a fishing boat that got sunk, and have some left over. A lot left over, actually.’

  ‘Well, you might be worth cultivating.’ And she laughed. Royce analysed the statement and the laugh for overtones and found not a one. ‘Actually,’ she went on, and leaned even nearer as she dropped her voice, ‘your fish isn’t the only cause of modification on this plane. We used to call in at Nadi and the King of Tonga used this service quite often. They rebuilt two first-class seats to hold him, and you’d never believe some of the things that happen in that seat nowadays!’

  He analysed that statement too; getting warmer.

  Somebody’s little call light came on and Rachel went off to fix them up. When she came back she said, ‘Well, do you want to have a look at your little friend?’ Her face looked really mischievous and inviting. Hey, she was inviting him into a curtained-off area!

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he said, heart hammering.

  ‘Right, well, don’t pull the curtain back too far.’ And she left.

  Once he was in there, he knew he couldn’t have done anything anyway – not in front of his fish. The sight of the big, wide golden coffin and the knowledge of its poor, vandalised contents purified him somehow. He rubbed his hand along the smooth cool surface of the box. ‘I’ll look after you, fish,’ he murmured thickly.

  He didn’t stay in there long; it was somehow too sad. He swished back the curtain to depart. A fat lady in brown was coming out of the toilet. She saw beyond the curtain. She put her hands to her face, pulled her mouth down in a bow shape and screamed: ‘There’s a dead person on this plane!’

  During the pandemonium Rachel disappeared up the front. A minute or so later the captain’s voice came over the intercom. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to tell you about an unusual item of cargo we are carrying on Flight 207 today. We have a record-breaking fish – a bluefin tuna – on board, down the back of the second cabin in our nursing bay. It’s on its way to the fish market in Tokyo and for reasons of preservation it had to be carried in the cabin instead of the cargo bay.

  ‘Now, it’s in an unusual container – well, a container that’s perhaps, sadly, too usual – it’s in a large waterproof box that may at first glance look like a coffin. Rest assured, ladies and gentlemen, it is not. The contents are simply a large and totally harmless fish. I’ve seen it – one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever laid eyes on. So, there’s no cause for alarm. Now, we are at 33,000 feet trav
elling at a speed of …’

  Royce stopped listening; he was busy fielding hostile glares. Well, maybe not hostile, maybe just glares – but your average glare can look pretty hostile, even when it’s just in interest. (He’d noticed that about the human face – when it’s just sitting there in neutral, not being in any particular expression, it can look quite savage.)

  ‘Well I never,’ said the sour lady next to the nun.

  ‘I wish you every success, my child,’ said the nun, and smiled like an angel.

  ‘I thought I smelt something,’ said the man next to him, who was now reading the classifieds, one by one.

  ‘No, it’s airtight,’ replied Royce crisply, ‘and if you could smell it, it would smell of fresh seaweed, which is quite pleasant. It’s in Phase One.’

  The bloke went back to the classifieds – probably the ones with the words ‘petite, busty and adventurous’ in them.

  Rachel came back from down the front and knelt in front of him. ‘Well, that bit of damage control didn’t go amiss. It’s probably better to have it out in the open – there shouldn’t be any more trouble.’

  A very tall, stern old man in a tan suit came down the aisle from the front cabin – perhaps from first class. He had black beady eyes, white goatee beard and a fine long red nose.

  ‘That your fish, sir?’ he said to the man next to Royce.

  ‘No, it’s not, definitely not,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t bring fish on aeroplanes.’ He stuck his head back into his paper as if he was committing suicide. He’d been on that paper about two hours now.

  ‘It’s mine,’ said Royce.

  ‘Ha. I’d give a lot to take a look at that fish, sir,’ said the tall old man in a wonderful American accent, much fuller and rounder than Betty’s.

  ‘Sorry, but I’m not going to open it till tomorrow morning,’ said Royce. ‘I want to keep as much heat out as I can.’ There was also the possibility of a smell – not a bad one, but enough to get this bastard beside him whinging. ‘You could see it then.’

  ‘I’d be obliged. Magnificent fish – faster than a cheetah, did you know?’

  ‘Well, I knew they were fast but I’d never thought of it like that.’

  ‘Yep, rockets of the sea. You’ll have seen the streamlining on them. Fins fit into special gooves, eyes are flat to the head with no goggling – they have specially modified scales just behind the head that act as spoilers to produce slight turbulence to cut down drag.’

  ‘Wow, you know your stuff.’

  ‘Well, I sure hope so. I teach marine biology at ULCA. Morton Sparrowglass. Pleased to make your acquaintance.’

  ‘Yeah, yours too – Royce Rowland. I caught him in the sea off Westport.’

  ‘Really?’ the professor was looming above Royce, easily holding on to the luggage rack. ‘Can you specify a little more clearly the location of the catch?’

  ‘Westport – on the West Coast. Just down from Karamea … um … north of Greymouth.’

  ‘Ya, ya – we’re talking South Island here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well. That’s got me beat – you sure?’

  ‘I was there. I hooked it.’

  ‘Do you know there’s no record of bluefin down there?’

  ‘Yes, this is the first one ever caught there.’

  ‘More than that – it may well be the first one to ever be there. Wouldn’t that be remarkable?’

  ‘Wow. You could mention it in a lecture’

  ‘I certainly might. Fish can be quite conservative in their migratory patterns. Tunny – that’s what we call tuna – still swim from the Bay of Biscay, around Ireland to get to the Baltic. They started heading up that way before the English Channel formed and to this day they don’t know it’s there. Sounds like you might have caught the Vasco da Gama of the tunny world!’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘A great explorer. You’d better catch up on your history, young man. I wonder what could have induced the bluefin to change its pattern? What’s the temperature of the water down there?’

  ‘Well, I’m not quite sure …’

  ‘Bluefin like it over twenty-one degrees, even though they’re warm-blooded. They like the food you get in twenty-one degrees. Your sea off Westport might be warming up.’

  ‘Yeah? Then others might come in too?’

  ‘Oh, my gosh, there’s no doubt about that. Tunny operate in squadrons.’

  ‘… Yeah, littler ones do – big bluefins hunt alone.’

  ‘There is, however, a possibility it escaped from a net. I do know that off the coast of Cape Trafalgar in the Bay of Biscay they catch bluefin, drug them and put them in nets until they’re ready to fly them to Tsukiji. It could well be that other countries do the same, and that a fish escaped from a boat that was towing a netload up the Tasman. Remote possibility. But then so is an entire species changing its migratory habits. I doubt, for example, we’ll see the day the tunny swims up the English Channel …’

  ‘Excuse me.’ There was a sweet little old lady tapping on the hip of the professor.

  ‘Why, certainly, ma’am, I’m fearfully sorry for blocking your way.’ He curled against the curtain while she tottered past, presumably on her way to the loo. She had faded blue hair and matching veins, which you could see through her fine clear skin, like Willow Plate patterns. She stopped just past the toilet door. ‘Ooo-oo?’ she piped in that old ladies’ way as she peered into the galley behind Royce. ‘Is there anybody there?’

  Sandra the hostess appeared, bright as a Smartie. ‘Oh, hello. You just needed to press your button and I would have come to attend you.’

  ‘No, no, it’s all right. You see, I’m a vegetarian.’

  ‘Yes. Well, Did you not get a vegetarian meal? We do vegetarian.’

  ‘Yes, I did, thank you. No, it isn’t that. It’s this fish. I find the nearness of so much meat rather unsettling.’

  ‘Well, would you like to return to your seat? It’s much further away than right here. Nowhere near the …’

  ‘No, I believe in bearding the lion in its den, dear. I think we should have been warned, so we could have made alternative travel arrangements. I have never eaten meat in my life and have no intention of doing so.’

  Her old voice was frail, but somehow insistent with hisses and squeaks. The professor gave a helpless little nod and retreated; he knew when a storm loomed – even one powered by ancient lungs.

  Sandra was bending over the little old lady, wary and placatory. ‘But it isn’t meat,’ she cajoled, ‘it’s a fish.’

  ‘No, no, I can’t accept that, dear. It is flesh and it is fated to be eaten.’

  ‘But in terms of this trip, we are only transporting it,’ said Sandra, with firm sweetness. ‘What happens after we land doesn’t need to concern you or us in the least – but while this fish is on the plane, it’s simply a fish. You see? You have absolutely nothing to worry about.’

  The old girl was glaring tremulously upwards from beneath a stooped bundle of agitated age. ‘I don’t think you should be splitting hairs with a woman of my years, young lady. The fact is, it is an animal made of flesh and the destiny of flesh is to be eaten!’ She turned to face an unpresent audience of vegetarians, then back to Sandra. ‘And some people, such as myself, find that very, very objectionable indeed.’

  Royce felt hotness run through him and into his eyes. ‘No!’ he exclaimed, ‘you can’t say that!’ Something was making him stand and flap his arms about. The newspaper guy was red-eyeing him – fuck him. ‘It’s not flesh. It wasn’t made to be eaten. It didn’t have a destiny. We gave it a destiny. It just thought it was made to swim in the sea … and make other tunas … and be a tuna. Because that’s all it did. By itself. Like all tunas. It didn’t decide it was food – we did.’

  She cornered her old body towards him, palsied with righteous anger. ‘There is too much hair-splitting going on here altogether. I am making a reasonable complaint about an objectionable item in my presence and I should not have
to tolerate such evasion and hostility at my age!’

  ‘No one is being hostile,’ said Sandra.

  ‘It is simply raw flesh, waiting to be eaten by non-vegetarians and I should not have to stand for it!’

  Royce was shaking, searching in his mind for something very important. ‘No,’ was all he could say. ‘No. You can’t say that.’ What was he trying to say? All he knew was that his fish had lost its tail and now this evil old woman was trying to take its soul away too. ‘You can’t go around the world looking at everything as either food or not food. Things are – things,’ he wailed. ‘They’re cows and bees and fish and elephants. They’re not food. Thinking about things like that is disgusting!’

  ‘How dare you! I am an old woman who has never eaten meat in her life …’

  ‘Look, let’s take you back to your seat, shall we?’ oozed Sandra. ‘Would you like a glass of orange? The film is coming on soon. It’s Grease. I’m sure you’ll like it. Do you know how to work your headphones?’

  Royce lurched across the corridor and stood by the coffin, curtained from the censorious world. He was shaken; puzzled by the emotion that the silly old woman had stirred up in him.

  He’d been angry with her, and he was pretty disgusted with himself for it. She was just a poor dithery old woman, and in a way she’d been right – we do see things as food. Everything. We see everything else as food except ourselves. He’d been going to point that out to her: ‘Well, you’re flesh – are you destined to be eaten?’ But it was too nasty. You can’t say that to a little old lady, no matter what.

  True, though. The only way for animals to be safe from us is for them to make friends with us. People don’t eat their friends. They don’t eat their dogs or cats or horses and budgies and that.

  And Royce wouldn’t eat this fish. He wouldn’t pervert its destiny like that stupid old woman was trying to do.

  That was probably what he’d been trying to say.