King Rich

by Joe Bennett

  Ben had still said nothing.

  ‘Every man and his dog,’ said David, ‘and his dog’s favourite pop singer, and the pop singer’s religious representative, and little Miss Westenra singing ‘Amazing Grace’ like the frightfully spiritual person that she no doubt is. But we all know who will be the star attraction. The crowd will flock to see William, with those equine teeth of his, and that unmistakably German jaw. Will he manage, what is the phrase they use these days, to bring closure? I fear he may have come a little early for that, perhaps, but who is to say what magic the royal touch cannot weave.’ And he made such a theatrical job of failing to suppress a chuckle that Annie found herself warming to the old boy once again.

  The maid brought out a platter of deep-fried prawns and other morsels on ceramic spoons.

  ‘Please, Ben, Annie, do not stint yourselves. I am afraid I eat very little these days, the digestion not being what it was, but it gives me great pleasure to see a healthy appetite in the young. Just help yourselves. There is plenty of everything. Me, I shall merely sip at the glass that fortifies, if you’ll forgive me. And please, Ben, Annie, do not allow me to prattle on. I spend so much time alone that I become loquacious in company, and when the company includes a beautiful young woman, well, I can barely contain myself.’

  Annie looked Ben full in the face. He smiled in response but the smile seemed unlit from within.

  ‘Tell me, Ben,’ said Annie, ‘what is it exactly that you do? Steph did tell me, I think, but I didn’t really take it in.’

  ‘Oh nothing much, this and that – the family business, you know.’

  ‘No, I don’t know.’

  ‘Nor do you need to know,’ exclaimed David. ‘I am sorry, but I have not brought you here to talk shop. I was hoping that for once the conversation would soar on wings of inspiration, that it would transcend the humdrum and the everyday, and we would speak delightedly of, I don’t know, of anything except the bloody family business. What do we think, for example, of our imminent controlled explosion, as if the phrase were not by definition an oxymoron?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Oh, perhaps you have not heard the news. We old men have so much time to read the paper we assume everyone else does. No, Annie, they have announced that they will bring down the hotel in town, the perilously leaning one, with a controlled explosion. It is apparently too dangerous to demolish by any other means. The decision has proved enormously popular. It seems that the earthquakes have done nothing to quench the human appetite for destruction. I believe the right to press the plunger is to be auctioned off, with the proceeds going to charity to ease the niggle of tastelessness. They will also be offering, if not ringside seats, at least seats at a convenient vantage point on, would you believe it, a temporary grandstand, as if for some sporting event. It’s all a bit gruesome but apparently the precarious state of the building is preventing other work going on around it and it’s all for a good cause and am I boring you?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Annie.

  Ben was looking down at the table, apparently not listening.

  The maid appeared with more and splendid food.

  * * *

  ‘I must be going,’ said Ben. ‘I’m sorry. Work. Thank you for the lunch, Uncle David. Can I give you a lift anywhere, Annie?’

  ‘No, no, off you go, my boy. I’m afraid I’m going to keep Annie here a little while longer, not only to indulge an old man, but also for her professional skills. Meanwhile, dear boy, you must tend the family shop to ensure that I shall not be flung into a pauper’s grave. Go on, be off with you and send my regards to your no-good father. Chop chop.

  ‘Not the sharpest pencil in the box,’ said David when they had heard the lift doors close on his great-nephew, ‘but a nice enough young man and a surprisingly good father.’

  ‘Surprisingly?’

  ‘Oh,’ said David, ‘let us just say that there were times in his youth when one might not have predicted such a thing of him. But then we all have our periods, don’t we? Especially in the turbulence of youth. Hormones have so very much to answer for. Stephanie has been good for him.’

  ‘She didn’t tell him I’d visited,’ said Annie.

  ‘Did she not? Well, I’m sure it’s no concern of mine. Now Annie, I was serious when…’

  ‘But you knew I’d been to see Steph. That’s why you invited us here today.’

  ‘Please, Annie, let us hear no more of this. I have kept you behind because as you can imagine at my age the doctors are forever foisting pills upon me. So many have now accrued that I am hoping you might cast a professional eye over them to reassure me with a second opinion, as it were.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not a doctor.’

  ‘Which is precisely why I have asked you, Annie. Doctors tend to see themselves as juju men and missionaries, savers of life, keepers of the great secret. They are, to be frank, smug. Whereas you, if you’ll forgive the expression, it is meant as praise, are an ordinary woman, or to put it perhaps more felicitously, a woman of sturdy common sense. And if that sturdy common sense could just cast an eye over this battery of pills that seem to have become my lot in life, I would be forever grateful without holding you in any way responsible for any consequences, however catastrophic.’

  The pills proved unremarkable, just the array, indeed, that Annie would have expected for an elderly man in reasonable nick but for some prostatic hyperplasia, elevated blood pressure and a little hardening of the arteries.

  ‘You’re in good medical hands,’ she said.

  ‘To hear that from your lips is the most enormous relief,’ said David. ‘I cannot begin to thank you.’

  Though to be frank, Annie thought, he showed no signs at all of feeling relieved.

  ‘Forgive me if I do not come down with you in the lift,’ said David. ‘I doubt we shall meet again. It truly has been a pleasure for me, even if for you Park Terrace has proved a dead end. And if I could offer you a skerrick of advice, as an old man who has had the chance to see a little of the world, I think you have done as much as anyone could ask in looking for your father. You owe him nothing. And you have a life of your own to live.

  ‘But enough. I have, as you may have noticed, an appalling habit of playing Polonius. You must be itching to escape. The cab is on our family account. Please make what use of it you wish this lovely afternoon.’

  The doors of the lift opened and Annie awkwardly half embraced the bent old man, laying a kiss of sorts near the bridge of his nose, and stepped into the lift.

  ‘For the carnival is over. Bye-bye, Annie, bye-bye,’ and as the metal doors came together he was waving with one old hand and with the other holding the walking stick that supported his slight and ancient frame. It was only as the lift was descending that Annie decided where she was going next.

  * * *

  ‘Is he expecting you?’ said the guardian of the reception desk without warmth.

  ‘No,’ said Annie, ‘but I think he’ll see me.’

  The woman made the sort of face that suggested she knew a bit more about such things than Annie did.

  ‘I’ll tell him you’re here. What did you say the name was?’

  ‘I didn’t. Just say Annie.’

  ‘Annie?’

  ‘Annie.’

  The first name clearly piqued the secretary’s interest more than she wanted to let on. In a manner that struck Annie as last century and then some, she tottered in her heels to what was presumably Ben’s office door, knocked on it with a single knuckle while putting an ear to the panel, then opened the door only wide enough for her to shimmy through, as though there were a bird flying loose in the office that could not be allowed to escape.

  Ben emerged within seconds. When Annie saw his face it was as if the last tumbler had rolled in a complicated lock, and nothing now could stop the mechanism cascading till the door of the vault swung heavily open.

  ‘Annie,’ said Ben in an urgent, low voice. He named a bar on Lincoln Road. ‘I’ll see you th
ere as soon as I can get away. I promise.’

  And Annie went.

  Chapter 23

  He’s made three place settings. Three knives at each, three forks, three spoons, set with sparkling precision on the gull-white cloth. Four glasses at each: a tumbler for water, a champagne flute, a tulip glass for the white wine, a balloon for the red. And he has composed an identical grove of mini-bar bottles at each place setting: wines, spirits, mixers, spring water. It has taken him all morning to fetch the bottles from the rooms. He has laid a Christmas cracker beside each setting, and cocktail umbrellas, and he has placed mini-bar food in courses: an hors d’oeuvres of Pringles, entrée of salted peanuts and main of a chocolate chip cookie. For dessert a thin bar of Suchard chocolate.

  In the centre of the U formed by the three tables he has placed a bowl of water and a duvet folded to form a plump bed that the dog has already occupied. It lies and watches Richard work, its front paws crossed, its head laid to one side of them, its body a long stretch of spine that curls to allow the back legs to fold together on one side. When Richard pauses to recover from some small exertion, the dog’s eyelids lower within seconds. When Richard moves again, whether in one minute or in five, the lids rise immediately.

  The mannequins in the cupboard are low down and wedged in. Richard does not trust himself to bend so far, fearing nausea or worse. He drags a chair across, sits and pulls on a mannequin’s arm, but he can get little purchase from his seated position. He undoes his dressing gown and pulls the sash from its loops. Still on his chair, he bends and loops the sash under the armpit of a mannequin and ties the end in a reef knot. ‘Left over right and under,’ he says, ‘right over left and under’ and he has a flashing memory of his grandmother tying… what? Parcels for Christmas, was it? And there had been a dog, a small white terrierish dog in the corner of the room, and he tries to add to the picture but is already losing the flashing vividness of the image, the felt reality, and he gives up, lets it go.

  He pulls on the sash. The mannequin shifts a fraction, then stays wedged. He pulls again. Nothing.

  ‘Here, Friday, here.’ The dog rises slowly, stretches its front legs and neck in a slow luxurious bow, then the hips and rear legs, its spine inverted like the keel of a row boat. It pads across to Richard, its tail lazily swinging. He strokes the dog’s head and neck, then offers the end of the sash. The dog looks at the sash, looks at Richard. ‘Here, Friday, take it,’ and he swings the sash, dangles it, in a bid to excite and entice. Half-heartedly the dog takes the end between its jaws. To get the dog to pull on it Richard pulls a little himself. The dog lets go.

  Richard tries again. This time the dog won’t even take the sash. It looks unnerved, worried. He calms the dog with stroking and soft words then slips the free end of the sash under the collar. ‘Left over right and under, right over left and under,’ he says again, though this time no image comes.

  The dog squirms, ill at ease. Richard stands and goes towards the centre of the room, then calls the dog to him: ‘Come, Friday, come.’ The dog starts to move, feels the tension on his collar and twists a little to see what is holding it back, turns to nibble at the sash.

  ‘No, Friday, no,’ and the dog turns to look at him again, and he calls it to him and the dog obliges and hauls and the sash stretches. ‘Come on, Friday, you can do it,’ but the stretch of the sash goes only so far and then snaps the dog’s head round and back and Friday whimpers.

  ‘It’s all right, boy,’ and he steps forward and the dog jumps all over him in bewilderment and fear. Richard staggers but does not fall. ‘It’s all right,’ he says again and he calms the dog slowly. When he tries to undo the knot on the collar the dog twists to see what’s happening there behind his head, in the most vulnerable of places for a dog, and it nibbles at Richard’s fingers. Richard says soothing things but the knot has pulled too tight for his fingers to undo and he has to unbuckle the dog’s collar. Freed, the dog prances nervously around, shaking itself, puppyishly appeasing.

  ‘Enough for one day,’ says Richard. ‘Enough.’ And as the dog begins to settle he rootles in his pocket for a drink.

  Chapter 24

  Despite having drunk several glasses over lunch, Annie ordered wine. The bar was afternoon empty but for a young couple so engrossed with their cell phones that they seemed not to register the presence of each other, let alone the rest of the world. In a corner a battered old man playing a pokie machine. River Queen, the machine was called, and it bore a picture of a half-naked Amazon of sorts posing on the prow of what looked to be a Viking long boat. Her hair streamed, her breasts were metallic cones and her lips were plump as sofa cushions. But she was not generous to the battered man, whose breasts slumped unconically and whose lips were grey and whose sweater had holes around its limp base and who was mechanically feeding money into River Queen’s slots. His face betrayed no emotion as she gave him nothing back.

  Annie sipped her sauvignon. Part of her wanted to laugh. Here she was having crossed the world to sit in a shabby bar waiting for a man in middle age to tell how he’d had an affair with her father. And she wondered now whether she’d known for a while.

  When Ben arrived the couple did not look up from their phones and the old man did not look up from River Queen.

  ‘Annie,’ said Ben. He sat on a stool across from her at the leaner. He looked a different man from the man she’d met over lunch. ‘Look, Annie, I…’

  ‘I know,’ said Annie. ‘It’s okay.’ And she smiled.

  Ben looked at her and she watched his lower lip pucker like a child’s, and he gulped as if trying to keep something down, and then his face crumpled. Now the battered old man did look away from River Queen. He swung his head slowly around and locked his gaze on Ben. But having stared fully and frankly for several seconds without any change of expression, he turned back to the bleeping, flashing machine.

  Annie stepped off her stool, put her hand on Ben’s shoulder and kept it there a while. Then she went to the bar.

  ‘He all right?’ said the barman.

  ‘Fine,’ said Annie. ‘Just fine. Women trouble, you know.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ said the barman.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Ben taking the drink. ‘Embarrassing.’ And he blew his nose hugely like a child.

  Everything Ben told her, it was as if she had already known it. He spoke of her father as she remembered him.

  ‘We’d been seeing each other for a while. Rich hated the deception of it. I begged him not to tell Raewyn. I could see it wouldn’t turn out well. In the end she found out from someone else. And she just went for him. Called him everything under the sun. Filthy fag. Shirt-lifter. The works. How was her daughter supposed to cope with having a pervert for a father? All of that and then some.’

  ‘Seriously?

  ‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ said Ben. ‘She told him to get out and stay out, never to come anywhere near you. So he did. He thought it was simplest. For you.

  ‘He used to spy on you. You didn’t know, did you? Sometimes he’d watch you coming out of school, playing with friends. He’d report you were looking happy or had a new dress or had grown.’

  Ben paused. ‘Do you want me to stop?’

  ‘No, no,’ she said, and her voice came out steadier than she had feared it might, ‘go on, please. Tell me.’

  ‘I was young, remember, twenty-three, and my family had got its tentacles everywhere in this city, as you’ve seen. At Christ’s College the honours board in the house I belonged to was covered with the family name. But mine was never going up there. I was no good at rugby and nothing special academically. There was this one teacher, with a pot gut and a little bastard of a moustache, he reckoned he’d taught fifteen members of the family and he was very keen to inform me at every opportunity that I ranked number fifteen.

  ‘No one quite managed to pick that I was more gay than straight – it sort of wasn’t really thought possible. Jeez, that place was a time warp – but I don’t exactly loo
k back on it as the best years of my life. And then I went off to varsity with no great ambitions. That’s the trouble with a family like mine, you know you can’t escape it and sometimes it’s easier just to let it direct your life for you. I made a few little forays into the local gay scene, but it was hard because this is a small city where everyone knows you. But then I met Rich. And it was like opening a door into a different world.’

  Ben was speaking now with the urgency and relief of confession. He held Annie’s gaze. His eyes were greenish, his mouth wide and mobile. He had to be forty-something, but there was an innocence about him it would be hard not to warm to.

  ‘In the world I came from,’ he went on, bending forward over the leaner, ‘all the big stuff was considered dealt with. Life meant doing well in business, making money. After that came raising kids, not disgracing the family, doing a bit of civic or charity stuff. No one ever said as much, of course but it was there behind everything that was said, lurking unspoken. It was in the water, for Christ’s sake. You’ve seen what David’s like. Brilliant in his way and dripping charm, but ruthless. It would never cross his mind to buck the system because we are the system. And it’s been good to us. But with Rich, no, everything was different. Everything was up for questioning. Everything was to be doubted. And kindness mattered. “Be kind to people,” he’d say, “be kind to people.”

  ‘I saw a TV programme recently about some Indian sect who sweep the floor before they sit down so they don’t kill any insects. And I thought of Rich. A lover, not a fighter, as they say, and I’d never met a lover before. “It’s what you go on for, isn’t it?” he’d say. “Without love, why would you bother?” And he was right. I mean now, if it wasn’t for my kids, well…’

  Annie became aware that she had been holding her glass cupped between her palms. The wine was warm. She pushed it away.

  ‘Can I get you another?’

  She shook her head. She felt intensely alert.

  ‘But he was down on himself. “What do you want with a broken down old man?” he’d say. He was, what, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, younger than I am now. He drank a bit but he was in good shape. If I told him I admired him, trusted him, fancied him or whatever, he wouldn’t have it – he’d dismiss it or change the subject. Though it was a bit the same the other way round. I couldn’t see what he saw in me. He was so far beyond me, so much cleverer, so much kinder, so much braver and so much more himself, I just couldn’t see why he bothered with me.’