Royce, Royce, the People's Choice

by Peter Hawes

  He’d taken quite a shine to this red wine that came in dinky wee bottles and there was a mischievous old lady called Myra Perks on his right, who didn’t drink, but got bottles for him as well. The bloke on his left was pretty disgusted with it all – probably an off-duty parson or something, so you just had to reach over him as the trolley went by, and ride a few sighs and snorts as you did.

  System wasn’t quite as good after Hong Kong: the old lady had gone – with a name like that he’d thought she’d be going all the way through. But at least the bloke had gone as well – probably turn out to be her husband.

  After Hong Kong the air hostess on the right had given him two more bottles and said they were shutting down for the night. Must have known all along.

  So here he was in the gloom of a sleeping plane again, heading home with the money for old Captain Calmwater’s sunk boat. The change left over from the robbery by Robin Hood-san.

  Who had sunk the Zephyr? Him?

  Into his mind came Sticky. The thought wasn’t about Sticky sinking the boat – though he had a fair idea his mind thought he had, and that’s what had brought him forward. It was more to do with the day they’d looked at the smelly bear. That’d been Sticky holding his hand, all right. Sticky must have really liked him back then. Mainly because of his mother, probably. He might well have been holding her hand with his other one.

  Then Sticky’d tried to kill him. He was gonna take him on the deck in the storm. He might have been going to push him overboard, or he might have backed the storm to do it; but that’s what he had in mind. Royce knew that now.

  Royce had killed the fish. In a funny sort of way he was coming to think that if you’ve got death you’ve probably got love not far away.

  In a funny sort of Oriental way, that is. He could never have explained what he meant – but Minikui’s father could have.

  His father had never held his hand as far as he could remember. His father wasn’t even dead – just missing. If death brought love, what did missing bring? Not a lot.

  He was flying away from his fish. He was leaving it behind. A brutal thought came into his mind: maybe his thought-master believed that horror was a better mood than misery, because it suddenly said, ‘The fish doesn’t exist any more.’ Oh God, that was probably right. Please, mind, don’t dwell on it – don’t let’s think about where it has gone!

  Desperately Royce tried to persuade his mind to think of the fish as missing. But it didn’t – instead it switched on this upwelling of total joy. What the hell was going on? Was his mind mad? Why had it brought these thoughts of the fish being gone for ever, then plugged into happiness? Well, let’s face it – his fucking mind was as pissed as he was. Then this sort of thought-essence seeped into his head – not a whole picture or idea – just a feeling. It was telling him that missing was no good; missing was limbo. What you wanted was a total picture – and you could only have that when a thing was gone. And gone for good: not missing. Extinct. And suddenly, like tumbling dye when you first put it in a glass of water, this image started forming in his head. It was the fish, spinning and rolling into form until it was so huge and clear that it filled his whole mind like on a Cinerama screen. And there it was – his fish – electric, radiant, bright-eyed and deep – hurtling through the freedom of the sea like a thunderbolt.

  It’s in here, his memory was telling him, not extinct, not missing – here – alive in your memory for ever. For ever. He would be able to conjure that memory at will. One day – after night-school art classes, which he would begin immediately – he would paint the portrait of the memory of that fish.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  IF HIS FISH had led others into the sea off Westport, Royce would catch them. Respectfully, with mild love on both sides of their life and death. But he’d never feel like this again. They’d just be fish like john dory and conger eels. A way of life – a living. Because his fish was special and unique. You can only have one fish in your life.

  And another of those shattering, elemental thoughts came into his mind: THERE ARE NOT PLENTY MORE FISH IN THE SEA.

  The most shattering part of the thought was that it instantly transformed itself into a question: Does this apply to people?

  Secretly – and, let’s face it, drunkenly – Royce went through the people who mattered to him, comparing his feelings for them with his feelings for the fish …

  Holy kermoley; this would have to stay secret, for ever.

  Because after some long, rambling minutes of cogitation, there were just three people left.

  And the fish was still winning.

  3) His father?

  No. His father was missing; missing wasn’t complete and couldn’t qualify for total love.

  2) His mother?

  Cripes, let’s face it; she was missing in parts, too.

  1) Linda Harvey.

  He begged his mind – he injected images of her into it. Of her glowing with fright and purpose in the harbour lights; of her leaning towards him into their first, amazing kiss; of her staring at him with glazed, amazed eyes as she murmured ‘Oh Gordon.’ But his perverse, bloody-minded mind kept countermanding these images with shots of breasts and little bare arses – none of them hers. (Well, it didn’t have copies of hers in there, anyway.) Bombarding him with private parts of other people. The bits he’d seen inside the bras and knickers of all the girls he’d ever been with.

  This battle went on for some time. Then the screen his thoughts were projecting onto divvied up into lots of little squares – like how a fly sees. Now there were dozens of little squarefuls of fanny and breast – all of them repeated many times, like wallpaper. And in the middle square was the mermaid. In the middle square was Linda Harvey as he knew she was going to look when at last it happened.

  When he took his eyes from her square, the lines between the others had gone and the breasts and fannies were sort of congealing together into a mass and becoming infinite. And beginning to undulate. They were turning into waves. Waves around the mermaid.

  Then they were washing over her. The waves were turning into the sort that had bashed at the Aurora on the night of the storm. Sometimes she disappeared under a seething wash of private parts, then she’d come up again – but she couldn’t last. The fanny waves were going to drive her under. She was going to be missing at sea.

  Well, he was gonna save her.

  He took control of the vision, turned into the fisherman in the painting and dived down into the sea. Not just the waves, but the whole sea under them was now made up of female anatomy and he was swimming through it, down towards the mermaid that he saw fleetingly through partings in the human sea. Down he went and he was gaining on her. Gaining, gaining …

  There were fewer fannies and tits between them now, and the sea was brightening. It was being lit by a radiance so beautiful it was religious. He was almost there; few impediments remained between him and the mermaid. Just a few more clefts … just a couple now …

  His fish swam into his mind. It swam past his eyes in slow dazzlement and he knew that on the other side was Linda Harvey.

  And that’s where the dream faded – sort of hauled out of his mind by the retreating fish as its feathered tail swished finally from view. And he knew he’d had a vision like old Christian people used to have when they lived in the Old Testament.

  And he knew he’d seen the path of his life. And he dedicated himself to it.

  His mission was to rescue Linda Harvey. He must bring her to the surface of that female sea and save her from the fate of missing. To do so would involve many breasts and many fannies, but he would prevail. By the age of, say, twenty-four, he would have brought her to the surface of what he somehow knew was called the Sea of Possibility. There he would find a little grey liferaft – stunningly enough, a replica of the one that brought Betty into his life. He would haul his true love aboard, and there they would float, together in tumultuous and eternal fidelity, above the breasted, many-clefted sea.

  In
about six years from now.

  In the meantime …

  Contented, Royce fell into a warm sleep.

  HE IS ON a motorbike – the old Indian they said his father used to ride so skilfully. And in this dream he rides it pretty damn skilfully too. On the pillion is Linda Harvey, arms clenched tightly around him, hair frisking in the sky around them like the hair in the water around the mermaid.

  And soon she is as naked as the mermaid – that hair now lying in a golden whirlpool around her, on a blanket in the dunes. She is pale and slim, just as he had seen her in his mind that long-ago day as he’d floated in the sea off Westport. There are the lovely soft, round, pale-nippled breasts of the mermaid, and there – oh yes – there the very clefted font of her that made her so much more than a mermaid.

  He stands above her, clad now only in his fisherman’s bonnet and dark blue smock. He turns his head to the voice of the waves of the many-clefted sea as it calls yearningly to him: ‘Come, Royce; come back to us.’ Then he turns away from that voice and those waves, for ever.

  She reaches for him – holds him up, then pulls him down down down into the depths from which he will never stray again.

  It is November 30th; he is twenty-four and deeply in love.

  And the savage summer sun beats down upon the joyously driving buttocks of Royce Rowland in the dunes of North Beach beside the sea off Westport.

  OH GORDON, OH Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, of Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon,

  Oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon, oh Gordon oh Gordon, oh Gi …

  EPILOGUE

  AT 7.45PM, NOVEMBER 2nd, 1978, the Buller Lion was sailing north-west at fourteen knots, with Mount Taranaki about twenty-five miles to her starboard beam.

  The Buller Lion had left Westport at 8.55pm the previous evening with 2000 tonnes of cement, 716 pounds of tuna and 2 stowaways. She had made her way, in glassy seas, up the West Coast encountering slight chop off Cape Farewell, then cruised against a short tide into Wellington. After off-loading 500 tonnes of cement, she had headed out again, at 6.15pm next day.

  The sea was preternaturally flat, due to what they called the ‘Omega Block’ – a meterological configuration that sometimes traps a central high-pressure zone between two lows. The lows are centred over Tasmania on one side and the Chathams on the other. In between is a static high and the result is a sea so flat it seems to have been punctured.

  At latitude 39’ 36:56 south, longitude 173’ 17:259 east, they passed the newly founded Maui derrick, one mile to starboard.

  On the seabed directly beneath them, at that moment, lay the ruins of Angela II, an inshore trawler that had foundered and sunk here on Sunday, April 7th, 1968.

  It lay now where its eleven tons had crashed – at terminal velocity – into the yielding sand of the seabed. Yet the sea at the time had been so calm that many searchers could not take the prospect of a wreck seriously. There had been an Omega Block in place at the time, after all.

  How had it happened? Like this:

  Beneath that seabed was another – lain down a billion years earlier, in pre-Ordovician days, when life was merely plankton.

  The phytoplanktons of those Archean seas – a fabulous fantasma of microscopic thimbles, crescents, pill-boxes, dragons, transluscent worms, goblins, spears, porcupines, flasks, balls and helmets – had photosynthesised those chemicals into the sky which one day you and I would breathe. They had then died and settled on the sea floor, to be covered by fine silts which metamorphosed, over millions of years, into rock.

  By the complicated processing of weight, bacteria, heat and magic, the little planktonic corpses were chemically changed into what we now call ‘natural gas’.

  This primal gas flowed over non-porous rocks and into the nooks and crannies of porous lime and sandstone. Seas came, seas died and land took their place. Sometimes beneath water, sometimes on dry land the gas remained. Until the Age of Extraction, which is now.

  Now and then a rookery or two of the natural gas was stumbled upon by earlier civilisations. The ancient Chinese, for example, learnt to channel gas through bamboo pipes to refineries, where, through its flames, they boiled seawater to produce salt. And in 600AD and thereabouts, for three centuries, the mysterious ‘Eternal Fires’ of Baku were worshipped. Much later George Washington saw ‘a burning spring’ rising from water, near Charleston, West Virginia.

  All which proves that natural gas does, on occasion, find its own way to the surface.

  The lightest, simplest and most voluminous component of natural gas is methane – a colourless, odourless, flammable gas formed by one atom of carbon binding with four of hydrogen.

  Methane is often called marsh gas because it is found near swamps. It is also the chief ingredient in firedamp, the gas that explodes in mines. In New Zealand, however, the abundance of methane is found, not in swamps or mines, but beneath the sea.

  In 1959 an oily alliance of Shell, BP and Todd Oil discovered the sea-bottled gasfields of Kapuni, and extraction began.

  In 1969 an even larger field was found in the sea off Taranaki. They called it Maui …

  IN 1968 SOME natural agency – probably the undersea earthquake of Richter 3.3, epicentre eleven miles from Eltham at a depth of 1.1 miles at 12.17am on April 5th – cracked the non-porous rock mantle above a pocket of offshore Taranaki methane. The methane poured through the fissure at tremendous force, pushing the ocean aside in its rush to the surface. Twenty-five miles off the coast of Taranaki raged a tornado of methane.

  For a short time – perhaps only days – a quarter-acre section of the sea off Opunake was composed entirely of methane.

  Methane is lighter than water. The density of this methane column would thus be far less than of the surrounding sea.

  In other words there was a hole in the sea.

  And, on April 7th, 1968 – while trawling for flats – into this hole fell Angela II.

  The prospect is nightmarish – far beyond the powers of the victims to comprehend. They were fal
ling off the sea. The hydrogen-depleted candyfloss of water beneath the vessel would have been incapable of supporting its weight. ‘She would have plunged to the bottom as if down a liftwell,’ said a MAF scientist.

  Initiative and ingenuity would have been unrewarded: had the crew jumped clear in lifejackets or with gumboots under their armpits, they would have simply plummeted downwards, through the porous water, to their death from the heights of a 50 storey skyscraper.

  ANGELA II WAS often detected by the echo-sounding devices of the time, but was invariably registered in the data as simply another of the many huge logs lying on the Taranaki seafloor. Just another frustration to local trawlers.

  Not until vertical slice technology was employed in the mid-1980s was she identified as a stricken craft.

  In summer 1988 – ten years beyond the scope of this book – the Jolly Jane, an ex-Nelson longliner equipped with Nimrod ES-30 Echo Sounder and SP 160 long-range omni-directional sonar, received horizontal profile views of a sea-floor object at latitude 39’ 36:56 south and longitude 173’ 17:259 east. Enough of the superstructure remained for it to be identified as the Angela II.

  And thus it became official: Angela II had been lost, April 7th, 1968, with all hands. And so, at last, Tommy Rowland and Des Oldham were officially dead.

  THE EFFECT UPON Royce was salutary.

  He had joyously married some years earlier, at the age of twenty-four, and had proved almost immediately unworthy of the strenuous vows he had made in the Presbyterian church. There had been acrimony, separation, mutterings of divorce.

  Upon receipt of the information about his father he had gone first to his mother.

  ‘I’ve got a father,’ he said. ‘And you’ve got a husband. He may be dead – but at least it’s a start.’