King Rich

by Joe Bennett

‘He wasn’t a big guy, your dad, and he went down but he was more or less okay, just a bit groggy, and the girls had a go at the other guys and kept them off while I got Rich away, but that’s what was going on. Those blokes sensed his beauty and hated it. Don’t ask me why. It’s the saddest thing.

  ‘Rich and I had been mates for years. We knew instinctively what the other guy was thinking or what he might do. But in that last year at school the whole intensity went up a notch. For me at least, though for him too, I think – I hope. Do girls have friendships like that? Do women? I don’t think my wife did.’

  ‘Yes and no,’ said Annie. ‘But go on.’

  ‘That last year we were inseparable. Everything was vivid. It was as if whatever we were doing mattered, was of epic scale. I remember so much that happened then, remember it in colour over forty years later. Whereas I couldn’t tell you anything that happened last week.

  ‘It was that gap between the end of childhood and the start of everything else. We spent most of it surfing. Rich lived in Brighton. His mum was lovely. Dad wasn’t around. Dead or divorced, I didn’t know and never asked.

  ‘We had these old long boards and if you got it right you rode like a king. This was the sixties, remember, all freedom and the Beach Boys and it felt like the dawn of the world. It was always going to come to an end, but that was part of the wonder of it. Come February he was going north to art school. And I was going the other way, to Otago.

  ‘And there was this one particular afternoon and we were in the water and Rich caught a wave and stood and he was silhouetted against the sky, and I can see him now, so lean and handsome and I felt this sort of crushing in my chest. It was so sudden and so strong.’

  Vince paused. He had been looking out across the city as he spoke, but now he looked across at Annie.

  ‘I’ve never told anyone this,’ he said.

  ‘You know you don’t have to,’ said Annie.

  ‘Oh, but I want to. I used to be ashamed of it, or at least scared of someone finding out. But that wore off and since then I’ve sort of hugged it to myself as a secret, something private and vivid and good. But telling Rich’s daughter feels like the right thing to do.’

  Annie looked at him. He seemed happy, this sixty-year-old man reliving memories from before she was born, happy.

  ‘We ate fish and chips on the dunes that evening and our shadows stretched thirty, forty yards across the sand and dunked our heads in the sea. And then we went up to the Ozone – the landlord there would serve anyone – and we bought a bottle of port, Sailors’ Port it was, I can still see the label, and we were heading back to the dunes through this line of macrocarpas, when I heard Rich call. When I turned he wasn’t there and he called again and I looked up and there he was in the tree, grinning. He reached down to haul me up and I can see and feel now how we gripped each other’s wrists. His wrist was thin but he had long, strong fingers and veins on his forearms. We climbed high into the tree, higher than I would have dared to go alone.

  ‘From up there we looked out over the dunes and the sea to one side and Brighton on the other and the headlights of cars moving along Marine Parade. And we sat each in the crook of a branch with our backs against the trunk and we passed the port between us and drank from the bottle and I don’t remember that we said much. It was just magical up there, overlooking the world, and that brilliant sense of no one knowing we were up there.

  ‘Rich lit a cigarette and when he struck the match his face lit from below like some Halloween lantern, only beautiful, and he saw me looking and he smiled and blew out a cloud of smoke. Pall Mall was the brand he smoked. For as long as I smoked, I smoked Pall Mall. I’m boring you.’

  ‘No,’ said Annie, ‘you’re not boring me. The opposite in fact.’

  ‘We finished the bottle and swung down out of the tree like gibbons, letting go of one branch without knowing where the next one lay below. It must have been midnight or so, I don’t know, but Brighton was silent and the moon was so bright it cast shadows. It felt like we owned the world. And through the dunes you could feel the thump of the waves.

  ‘We crept into the house to avoid waking Rich’s mother. I’d stayed there a hundred times, sleeping on a mattress pulled out from under his bed. But that night when the door of the bedroom shut behind us, Rich spread his arms and smiled. Even then a part of me wanted to back out, a part of me was shouting no and he must have felt it in the muscles of my back and he just held me and eventually I relaxed and I ran my hands over his back and without saying anything we got undressed and into bed.’

  He looked up. Annie held his gaze but said nothing, not wanting to break the spell.

  ‘When eventually Rich fell asleep he was lying across my arm, and I could feel the rise and fall of his breathing, and in the half dark I stared at the features of his face, the smooth skin of his shoulder and chest. The curtain was thin and the window beyond was bright with moonlight and I didn’t want to sleep and though I lost feeling in my arm I kept it there as long as I could without waking him. I can remember it all with such clarity. It was as though I knew this moment would matter to me more than any other. Though in the end, of course, I fell asleep.

  ‘When I woke in the morning, we were wrapped around each other. I can remember precisely the feeling of how nice it was to wake up pressed against someone else. The feeling lasted about two seconds. Then the guilt came. I was seized with guilt. There’s the world for you. Guilt.

  ‘I knew, there and then, just knew we’d be found out. Rich was still sleeping. I wanted to kiss him but I didn’t dare. I didn’t regret what we’d done. But I dreaded being found out. And I was sure we would be. I peeled his arm from my chest and slid out of bed. Our clothes were scattered together on the floor. I dressed as quietly as I could.

  ‘Rich’s mum was already banging around. I liked her but I didn’t want to face her then. I listened at the door till she went to the bathroom. I turned for one more look at Rich. His eyes were open. He was smiling. “See you, Vince,” he said. “Take it easy.”

  ‘I was wound up so tight I felt I was going to snap and he looked so relaxed I half wanted to throw myself back into bed or burst into tears or scream or something but I didn’t.

  ‘“Yeah,” I said or something like that, and I just turned and left and let myself out the front door. And it seemed to me extraordinary that Brighton was still there and unchanged. I somehow felt the world ought to have been altered by what we’d done. It should have been a different place.

  ‘I got a bus back into town. I remember blushing on the bus because I was sure people knew. And I’ve never told anyone. Except you. His daughter. You’ve got to laugh. Now, at any rate. You’ve got to laugh now.’

  Vince paused. ‘That was the last time I saw Rich.’

  ‘What, ever?’

  Vince nodded. ‘I thought I’d wait for him to ring. He didn’t. There were no mobile phones back then, of course. There were only a couple of days before I headed south to varsity and I had lots of stuff to do. Then I got on a train and went south. And he presumably went north. And that was that. I got immersed in a new life and I got a girlfriend and it was all new and different. When I came home for the first holiday I rang Rich’s place and his mum told me he’d got a flat up north and I wrote down the phone number. But I never rang it. There seemed no point at the time. I always sort of assumed we’d catch up again one day.’

  ‘That’s sad,’ said Annie.

  Their glasses were empty. Night had settled over the city. No lights had come on in the centre of town.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Vince. ‘I don’t know.’

  Chapter 14

  The corridor ends in a heavy security door. ‘Exit via Car Park’, it says, and there is a picture of a stick man running from a fire. Richard turns the handle and puts his shoulder against the door. The door opens a little and the dog squeezes through but the closing mechanism is too much for Richard and the door clangs shut. Within seconds Richard hears the dog’s cla
ws on the door, mildly at first, then with increasing vigour.

  ‘It’s all right, boy,’ says Richard through the thick door. ‘It’s all right.’ But the claws keep scratching. The noise chafes at Richard’s head. Halfway down the corridor a rubber plant stands in a brass pot. Richard tips the pot on its side and rolls it. Gravel spills from the surface but the soil seems to be held in place by the fibrous roots. He puts his shoulder to the door and the dog shoots instantly through the gap as, with a grunt of exertion, Richard heaves the pot over the transom to prop the door open.

  Richard supports himself on the door jamb, panting as the dog leaps about him in delight. He pats the dog, calms it. ‘I wouldn’t leave you,’ he says.

  Together they step out onto the roof of the world, the top storey of five, open to the skies, a raw concrete deck and a scatter of cars. From the parapet Richard has a view up High Street. At the far end a group of men and women in suits and skirts topped with hi-vis jackets and hard hats are moving towards the Square. They go slowly, like tourists in Rome, gawping at ruins. Then they disappear behind the BNZ. Beyond it Richard can see the top of the stump that was the cathedral spire.

  A bright blue Audi convertible, low-slung and costly, has been left with the roof down, its plush interior now grey with plaster dust and dotted with birdshit. Leaves and blown litter have lodged in the foot-wells. Richard tries the handle on the driver’s door. Instantly the alarm sounds, ringing over the city. Richard dives back to the door, the dog with him, and they head deep into the hotel to hide. The alarm stops. Why, Richard doesn’t know. Silence seeps back in. Richard’s ears are pricked for footfalls, for voices. Nothing.

  * * *

  ‘What sort of person is your mum,’ said Vince, ‘if you don’t mind my asking?’

  Annie shrugged. ‘It’s hard to say with parents, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it? When you’re young, maybe, but I think I’ve got a pretty good idea now what sort of people my parents were.’

  Annie smiled. She took a swig of wine. ‘She lives in Blenheim now, with a man I’ve met a couple of times and who seems a reasonable bloke. She bullies him. I keep in touch and all that, but to be frank it’s a chore. I’d rather not. And I don’t blame Dad for what he did. These days, anyway.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Guess. I don’t know how Mum found out he was having an affair but when she did all hell broke loose. I heard her screaming at him late that night when I’d gone to bed. I couldn’t make out much of what they were saying – or shouting – but it ended suddenly with the front door being slammed shut and then there was silence. That was all.’

  As she spoke Annie felt again exactly how it had been as she lay and listened and waited and heard her mother’s footsteps coming up to bed. And in the morning Dad hadn’t been there but her mother had said nothing and Annie had gone to school as usual.

  When she’d come home that afternoon her mother had been through the house for everything associated with him. There had been framed drawings of his lining the stairs and hall. They’d all gone.

  Her mother had hugged her and said that her father had betrayed them and it was just the two of them from then on and he wouldn’t be coming back and Annie had cried and gone upstairs to her room and expected her mother to follow but she didn’t and Annie had lain face down on the bed crying. Later she’d stood by the window watching her mother carrying stuff out to the bonfire, carrying it out with utter determination till it was almost dark, his clothes, his shoes, his books even. She burned his books. ‘To be fair,’ continued Annie, ‘she did try to be a good mum after that, for a while at least. It didn’t come naturally to her, I realise now, but she did try. And she was forever buying me stuff. I think she must have struck a pretty good deal with Dad somehow, but at the time I just got on with things. And at nine you’re pretty resilient. I missed Dad but I got over it.’

  ‘What did Rich do for a living?’

  ‘I’ve thought about that. I don’t know exactly. Something to do with design, I’d guess. He took me to his office a few times. I remember big windows and angled boards that you stood at to draw on, but that’s all.’

  ‘Could we ask your mother?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie. ‘She doesn’t know I’m in the country. And I’d rather she didn’t. And besides, if she thought it would help find Dad she wouldn’t tell us. I guarantee it. She’s never forgiven him and she’s not going to now. But it shouldn’t be too hard to track down where he worked, should it? It’s not as though it’s last century or something.’

  ‘Actually,’ said Vince, ‘it is. But I’ve got a few contacts.’

  * * *

  On the north side of the car park roof a shed-like construction houses the pedestrian stairs. In front of it there’s a small porch where Richard establishes camp. It offers shade from sun and shelter from rain. More importantly, it makes them invisible from above. Helicopter traffic has shrunk since the first few days but several still drone in each day to hang like vast wasps over the ruins.

  Richard drags out a chair and footstool and arranges them under the porch. Then a bedside cabinet that he fills with bottles, glasses, snacks and dog biscuits. On the other side of the chair he sets cushions for the dog but when he stops to sit and drink a beer, the dog curls on the concrete, its shoulder warm against his ankle, head and paw draped possessively over his foot.

  Half snoozing, Richard is suddenly aware of a blather of wings. The pigeon is lurching towards his chair. Three yards away it stops to cock its head, its eye a black ball bearing. Saying calming things to the dog, Richard reaches slowly into the pocket of his dressing gown, finds crumbs and baits his claw. He makes the kissing sound he uses with the bird. It flutters up to land on the forearm, and Richard can feel it seeking a point of balance on its clenched and crippled left foot even as it pecks at the biscuit.

  He adds more crumbs. Slowly, he sits forward. The bird sways and flutters its wings for balance but stays on his arm. He stands. For a moment he thinks the bird will fly but it stays with him, and he does a little tour of the car park roof with the bird perched on his arm, like some sort of debased urban falconer. He smiles at the image.

  He sprinkles crumbs on the parapet, the pigeon hops off, he returns to his chair and the dog settles back at his side. He breaks the seal on a baby bottle of cabernet sauvignon, as purple as venous blood.

  ‘Cheers,’ he says to the bird on the ledge and the dog at his feet and the world out there. ‘Cheers.’ Neither bird nor dog pays any attention.

  * * *

  ‘Listen to this,’ said Annie, sitting with her laptop at the table, as Jess fussed in the kitchen.

  ‘“Dear Miss Jones,

  ‘“I am aware that the convention is to begin emails with hi, but I simply cannot bring myself to address anyone in a manner that seems to me best suited to a Californian beach. Nor do I yet feel sufficiently well acquainted with you to address you by your delightful Christian name, and I refuse to use the ugly neologism Ms.

  ‘“All of which, I suspect, is sufficient to identify me as the ancient you met in the apartment on Park Terrace. My day was entirely made by your visit. It is not often that an old man gets to spend an hour with a beautiful and intelligent young woman (except, that is, when the beautiful and intelligent young woman is a relative in search of money, which, I’m afraid to say, she too often is).

  ‘“I digress, of course, because it is expected of an old person, and because I have time on my hands. But you do not have time on your hands, I would imagine, so let me, in that unfathomable phrase, cut to the chase.

  ‘“I promised to find out for you whether it is possible that your father had the lease of this apartment in 1992. It is not. As I may have mentioned the family name for the apartment is the Railway Station, in that it is a place of arrivals and departures. In other words it is occupied by members of the family who are making their way either onto the world’s stage or off it. I shall be the third family member to die here (assuming that
the good Lord is sufficiently merciful to spare me the horrors of a rest home), following in the disciplined footsteps of my Aunt Julia and rather less disciplined ones of Cousin Charles. And several younger scions have made use of the apartment while they found their feet. Among these is my great-nephew Ben, who had the lease in his early twenties from 1989 to 1993, which rather precludes your father’s being here at the same time.

  ‘“I am sorry to have to disappoint you, Miss Jones, particularly because I had hoped that your researches would lead to a further visit, but I cannot now see any reason that that might happen.

  ‘“I wish you success in your search for your father and of course if there is any way in which I can be of use, please do not hesitate to ask.”

  ‘What do you make of that?’

  ‘He sounds like a bit of a poppet.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘If he’s telling the truth, that is.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he be?’

  ‘You realise you’re dealing with Christchurch aristocracy here, don’t you? You won’t find a public committee or a property development or an election campaign without some member of that family being in it or on it or behind it in some way. They have power. And power and the truth don’t always go hand in hand.’

  ‘You’re a cynic, Jess. The old boy couldn’t have been sweeter. I’ve got half a mind to pay him a surprise visit in a short skirt.’

  ‘He sounds as though he could cope. You know who the Ben in question is, don’t you?’

  Annie didn’t.

  ‘Oh, he’s pretty prominent. In the family tradition he did a spell on the city council in his twenties – people always elect a name they recognise and besides he was rather pretty back then. I remember there was a fuss about young girls souveniring his campaign posters. Then, once he’d ticked off public service, he went into property development – as you do. Basically, he took over the family portfolio and doubled it, according to the media. The family trust must be one of the biggest landlords in the central city.’