King Rich

by Joe Bennett

  ‘Then your father returned to his ways.’

  ‘His ways?’

  ‘The stories. It was all over town. It didn’t seem to bother him that he had a wife and daughter. And it reflected on the business, of course.’

  ‘What exactly…?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Annie, but it’s not my job to tell you things about your father that your mother hasn’t. I’m not sure that I’d want to anyway. I know it’s not fashionable but I happen to hold religious beliefs that say what your father did was a sin.’

  Annie was on the point of interrupting but Denise swept on.

  ‘Raewyn was dead right to kick him out. I begged Karl to do the same, to buy him out if necessary, anything, but Karl said personal life was personal and your father was the creative brains behind the business and so on. For me the firm was tainted after that. And I wasn’t the only one. People didn’t like it. Clients left in droves.’

  A container ship bound for Lyttelton was steaming with infinite slowness across the sparkling horizon. And Annie noticed with a little frisson of shock that Shag Rock had all but gone. The old outcrop of rock that you could walk out to at low tide and clamber over, whose volcanic sharpness would rake your hands with a thousand tiny lacerations that stung in the salt water, had crumbled to almost nothing, levelled by the quake. Annie remembered the shape of it, remembered swimming further along the beach, remembered the dozens of happy dogs that romped there on weekend afternoons. Who else was in the picture? She could recall neither her father nor her mother. Only the dogs and the sharp scratchy rock and the blinding light on the sand.

  The more Denise spoke the further Annie felt she was being taken from the remembered truth, the father who had shown her ducks, who had drawn for her, had held her to the window on a winter’s morning.

  ‘Of course,’ Denise was saying, ‘after his accident the writing was on the wall. He couldn’t draw any more and that was the only thing he’d been good for. Karl tried to find things for him to do but nothing worked and he drank more and more and eventually Karl bought him out. Very generously, I might add, considering how he’d damaged the business’s reputation. If it had been me, he’d…’

  ‘Have you seen him since?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Thank you for your time,’ said Annie. ‘Please don’t get up. I can find my way out.’ And she did, astonished at her own abruptness.

  Sin. The word rang in Annie’s skull as she strode down Mount Pleasant Road. What had she meant? Did it matter what she meant?

  That her father had had an affair? That he’d had serial affairs? That he’d had a gay affair? Whatever it was it had to be sex. Nothing upset a clenched woman like Denise as much as sex. Or rather the thought of sex. Or rather the thought of people enjoying sex.

  Oh, how men screwed up over sex. With women it was the lure of love that felled them, the hope and the delusion of love, but with men, sex. Even her father, it seemed. Fathers were men. And men fell. Had she ever really known him?

  When she reached the bus stop Annie kept walking. She wasn’t due in Park Terrace till noon. She wanted to think and it was good to walk and the view from Mount Pleasant Road was startling, the sort of topographical panorama you never got from the city in a swamp. She looked now across the Heathcote valley to Ferrymead, where a swarm of primary-coloured concrete barns housed a supermarket and hardware stores and the surrounding salt marsh had become a car park.

  Beyond lay the great blue sump of the estuary, draining plain and city, hooked in by the stretch of sandy spit that was South Brighton. There, thought Annie to herself as she counted the intersections down from the pier to Jellicoe Street, was the roof of the little wooden house where her father had grown up and which for Vince would always be the place where something happened that mattered more than almost all the things that had happened since. A little bit of love, beneath one tin roof out of thousands. And those thousands were dwarfed by the great sweep of Pegasus Bay, stretching far to the north until it reached the distant snows of the Kaikouras. To Annie’s left the bulk of the city was little more than a smudge, its heart denoted by a scatter of taller buildings, but with nothing to tell you from here that it was no-go, was cordoned off, was most of it doomed to fall.

  Somewhere in that city her sixty-year-old father might be living a life of sorts. But Annie was tiring of the search. And for the first time in a while she thought of Paul in London. Seen from this distance he looked good. Most people Annie met she found hard to define. They seemed such a mix of qualities, muddy and mingled, good and bad. Not so Paul. He was as clearly defined as characters in books and films. He was loyal and clumsy and honest. He could never be subtle or duplicitous or venomous or scheming. He’d do what he said he’d do. If he didn’t like something he’d say either nothing or that he didn’t like it. You knew where you stood with Paul.

  And as for love, well now. The magazines were full of it, the movies were full of it, the arts both high and low were full of it – where would either opera or pop be without it? – but the world Annie lived in didn’t seem full of it. It was a rare substance, it seemed, love, hard to define and far from durable.

  Halfway down Mount Pleasant Road a roof of terracotta tiles had all but gone. The quake had simply flung them off, had scattered them like a wet dog shaking. It had left only a frame of wooden rafters to which a few last tiles clung. Annie could see through the frame of the roof to the sea below and the remnants of Shag Rock.

  This part of the road was so steep that gravity all but hauled Annie into an involuntary jog. Up towards her came a hi-tech buggy, all plastic joints and buttons and moving parts, bearing a boy who looked old enough to walk. Behind him, head down so Annie could see only the crown of her hair, legs far out behind, a bag of shopping slung over the handle, the mother. The child, unaware of her fierce exertion, kicked his sandals against the footplate and squirmed as if bored. Annie wanted to slap him, or to help push. She did neither of these things. As the mother passed Annie heard the heaving of her breath.

  Chapter 21

  It comes from far below but after so many days of silence Richard senses it as though it were within his body, as if the building and he were the same thing. The drilling comes in bursts. He feels as much as hears the hardened metal biting into the concrete. Even here, so many floors above, it shakes the dusty air. He can see the motes jigging in a light shaft.

  He has heard no preparations, no footfalls on the stairs or in the building. He has seen no vehicles or work gangs in the street. He keeps a calming hand on the dog’s neck. When the burst of drilling stops the dog’s neck muscles soften, the body shape changes. At the very instant it resumes, before Richard can register that it has resumed, those same muscles stiffen again. The dog thrusts its flesh forward to become tauter, taller, more massive under threat.

  ‘It’s all right, boy,’ he says and he keeps his hand there, feeling for the time when the dog will relax. The drill is biting into the building. Perhaps a dozen years ago he watched the building going up, the giant foundation hole that the water had to be pumped from, the mass of steel, orange with brief rust before it was swallowed, encased by the concrete pours. The concrete trucks, whole fleets of them, like giant revolving eggs. It’s into that concrete that they are drilling now, the concrete that’s become the basis of his world.

  He remembers hours spent watching from the benches in the mall, where the kids in low-slung trousers skateboarded and sometimes shouted out to him and he tried hard to say nothing back, but just to smile. They weren’t bad kids, most of them, but they were kids, and he winces and dispatches the memory and reaches into his pocket.

  The drilling is coming from a single corner of the building, the corner towards High Street. The dog whines, a noise it rarely makes, and Richard gets up without a plan and his thighs protest at the effort after the morning of work but he persists and the dog stays close as he crosses the banquet hall, leaning on furniture, against walls. On the landing he pulls open t
he smoke door to the stairs. The noise is magnified, bouncing off the raw concrete, the unsoftened surfaces. The noise gnaws at the skull. The dog hesitates. Its spine has curved towards fear, its tail quivers near its legs. Richard coaxes the dog through the door and together they climb.

  He climbs to put distance between them and the threat. When a burst of drilling stops, Richard sags with fatigue, grasps the handrail, feels racked with infirmity. He looks up the well of the staircase. It is hard to tell how many floors remain. When the drill resumes they start upwards again, man and dog. Each step climbed is an act of flight, though the noise in the stairwell seems not to diminish. The space holds it, makes it ring.

  Four floors, five, six, and it is clear now, when Richard looks up, that they are nearing the top. The drilling stops. Richard keeps going, hauling on the handrail. Five more minutes and they have climbed as far as they can climb. The stairs end in a door like any other, which opens onto a lightless corridor. Richard’s slippers plough into deep carpet.

  He gropes along the wall, finds a door frame, a handle, pushes open the door and is assailed by afternoon light that forces him to close his eyes and hold the jamb for a moment to recover from the sensory shock. He lets the light filter through his lids, the eyes adjusting slowly. Then he raises his good hand as a visor and opens them fully and here is a place of private luxury he had not thought existed.

  Such glass. Floor to twice head height, and on the other side of it the city, the whole of it, spread out like a map. How it must have swayed up here in the quake. The place was vacated in haste. A low table lies on its side against the window, broken wine glasses nearby and some shrivelled dusty olives. Several Perrier waters, unopened, have been flung to the floor. With his slippered foot Richard nudges one of the bulbous little bottles, corrals it to where a pair of chaises longues are aligned to the huge windows. Wheezing from the exertion, he lowers himself onto the soft upholstery. When he unscrews the cap the water fizzes weakly. He sips at its peppery mineral warmth. The dog, intrigued by new territory, is fossicking round curtain feet and skirtings, has sniffed at blackened olives and found several shrivelled morsels to gulp down.

  The view to the west and north is unimpeded. The alps like a young dog’s teeth, the plains, the city in its entirety, the suburbs stretching to the sea, the winding silver ribbon of the Avon, the sea itself like wrinkled foil this late afternoon. And a sense of lordship, of dominion.

  ‘I am the king, Friday,’ says Richard and he chuckles. He swigs at the Perrier. But water is no drink for a king. The king rolls off the chaise longue onto all fours, then pushes with puny force on its frame to get himself to his feet. It does not take him much shuffling to find the bar. A glass-fronted fridge of champagne, a cupboard of standard spirits, most still intact, and another of lurid cocktail beauties, Curaçaos and peach brandies, several monk-brewed stickinesses.

  Whimsically Richard mixes a Bénédictine and vermouth, pole-axer strength. He sighs at the imminence of relief, raises his glass to the dog, says ‘Bottoms up’, drains the glass, lets it shock his tongue and throat, and rests against the bar front as it seeps south. And he is seared with pain, a pain that doubles him over.

  Hand on gut, groaning, crying, he fumbles along a wall and on a hunch he climbs a short stair, opens a door and he is in time. Sitting triggers a fierce and foul release, a draining ache of expulsion that makes him moan and bends him double, his body jack-knifed over his knees, his flesh suddenly sweat-drenched.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ he says. ‘Jesus bloody wept,’ as another burst, a racking, burning spasm, sucks all the strength from his body.

  The spasm fades, the pain with it, like a wave receding. Calm comes, brief and sweaty, then the pain again like a knife thrust, a knife twist, that he’s not sure he can bear and he writhes and screams and slumps. Again the pain withdraws, like a besieging army, gone away, he guesses only to recoup its forces, plan another attack. He sits still. He waits. His eyes are closed. He is scanning the horizon of his guts, surveying it in nervous dread of the first heralds of returning pain. If it comes again he thinks he will faint, will expire.

  It comes again. He screams but it is brief and he does not expire. Relief. A minute. Perhaps two. He is scared to move, to hope even. But it seems to be over. He is sweating and he is cold. He is emptied. But already he is faintly yet undeniably reviving.

  How persistent the body is. How independent of the mind. Its will to go on, to restart the stuttering engine, is beyond conscious control. It is wired in. It just is. Like the upturned fly that keeps buzzing its wings, trying to be again. And when even the wings fail it still feebly stirs the air with its feet, as if somehow there were yet a chance to recover. Flesh doesn’t know the word hopeless. Flesh doesn’t give up.

  Still with his head down, his eyes closed, Richard becomes aware that the dog is at his side. He reaches out a weak hand and the dog comes to it, walks under it till the hand lies limp on the dog’s shoulder. He draws strength from the contact, from the dog’s mere being, from the heat of its flesh. ‘I love you,’ he says.

  He opens his eyes, sees the dog’s paws on the bright-lit tiles of the floor. Cautiously he raises his gaze towards the source of the light. The bathroom is glazed like the room below. The curved wall in front of him is a panorama of city, sea and mountain.

  ‘Ha,’ says Richard and he is surprised that the thought becomes noise, enough for the dog to turn its head towards him and its pure brown eyes. ‘I love you,’ he says again.

  Chapter 22

  When the lift doors opened a maid was waiting to greet her, a maid as in maid, black dress, white bib and frill, the works. ‘Oh Jesus,’ thought Annie, who was wearing cork-soled sandals, cheap calf-length cotton pants, a halter top.

  ‘Shall I take your bag, madam?’

  It was a tote bag from Santorini with a picture of a donkey on it. She’d bought it before taking a ride on a donkey. When she did she regretted both the ride and the bag. The beast was a slave. It lugged fat white tourists up and down the steep steps between port and town, driven by habit and the gruff men with whips and moustaches and roll-up cigarettes. The donkey had stunk and the ride had been physically as well as morally uncomfortable. Annie had dismounted halfway and walked the rest. The donkey had seemed not to notice. But you didn’t waste a perfectly good bag. Annie handed it over.

  ‘Annie, it is such a pleasure. I can feel my spirits lifting like a balloon. You look so very summery.’

  He came in from the balcony overlooking the park, bent like a shelf bracket and leaning on his stick. Annie was awake to his flattery, the charm trowelled on so thickly it came close to being ironic, but she smiled nevertheless, was not displeased to see him. There was a value to the courtesies, the necessary lubricants of society, and a pleasure to be taken from his quickness of mind, however manipulative.

  Behind the old man came Ben, silhouetted momentarily against the picture window, trim, almost boyish.

  ‘My great-nephew. Have you met? I can’t remember. Ben, Annie, Annie, Ben.’

  The handshake took place from slightly too far apart. In profile in his car Ben had looked undistinguished, but now, front on, Annie could see how he had once been. A sensuous mouth, big eyes. She remembered the souvenired election posters.

  ‘No, we haven’t met. Though I have met Steph.’

  ‘Really?’ Ben looked momentarily alarmed.

  ‘You were at work. Steph gave me coffee. Didn’t she…’

  ‘I can do better than coffee,’ said David, and there was the maid again with a silver tray and flutes of bubbles. ‘I trust you are not driving, Annie. And even if you are I shall insist on sending you home by cab. Nothing shall stand in the way of a proper luncheon to humour an old man.’

  The spacious balcony had been set out with a table and chairs and sun umbrella. At each place setting a daunting array of forks, of wine glasses.

  ‘Now,’ said David, ‘there is a reason for this little luncheon that I think we should get out o
f the way before we open the door to pleasure. As I have already told you, Ben, Annie is on a mission to find her father whom she has not seen for a long time. She has been led to believe that he lived here in this flat at the same time as you did. I have explained to her that this is impossible, but Annie is a young lady of admirable persistence who was unwilling to accept the word of a geriatric. So I have brought the two of you here together so that she could hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were, rather than from the mouth of the horse’s great-uncle. Is that not right, Annie?’

  Annie nodded and looked at Ben, but he was looking doggedly at the old man.

  ‘I am truly sorry,’ continued David, ‘that we could not have been of more use to you in your search. But if there is anything that we can do, Annie, please don’t hesitate to ask. The family has considerable resources and we are not without contacts in this city. Anyway, your very good health, my dear Annie.’ He raised his champagne and the three of them chinked glasses.

  ‘You go back to London next week, I believe. Perhaps you will be catching the same plane home as young Prince William. It is kind of him, is it not, to come all this way to condole with us when he is about to be married. But then that is the job of royalty, I suppose. I am thinking of renting out this balcony for the memorial service, or whatever the thing is called. It offers a perfect view. But I shall not be sitting out here myself to listen to the musical pensées of David Dobbyn and company. I am sure it is all very well intentioned but it does seem something of a mishmash, does it not? From Mr Dobbyn to a Buddhist blessing via Dame Malvina Major. But perhaps you have not seen the programme.’

  ‘No,’ said Annie, ‘I haven’t, I’m afraid.’