King Rich

by Joe Bennett

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  Karl looked up. His eyes were full of distress. ‘Two years, maybe three. He wasn’t well, Annie. Honestly he wasn’t well. If I were you, well, perhaps that’s not for me to say. But I’ll tell you one thing: he’d be bloody proud of the way you’ve turned out, Annie. He’d be so bloody proud.’

  Annie kissed Karl on the forehead, promised to return before she flew home, waved a bright goodbye to the nurse and got down the corridor and comfortably out of earshot before she withdrew into a little window alcove, turned her back on a passing orderly and, as unobtrusively as she could, burst into tears.

  * * *

  ‘I’ll go,’ said Vince. ‘You don’t have to. It’s my fault.’

  ‘But she’s my mother.’

  ‘Look, Annie, oh shit, can I get you a drink? Something really nice.’

  Annie nodded. She seemed to be living on booze these days. But soon, she told herself, she’d be returning to her safer, simpler life. Ample time for detox then, and she suddenly had an image of the little flat in Turnpike Lane and Paul being tall in it, Paul stooping in the bedroom, cramming himself into the shower, the breadth of his shoulders. And a feeling came with it that she tried to pin down – pleasure? Relief at the familiar? – but it was gone as fast as it came, and she was back in a restaurant on Clyde Road with dapper Vince. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt of duckling yellow, perfectly pressed.

  As soon as she’d found the restaurant she knew that Vince had brought her there to apologise. It was twee, expensive and self-consciously French. The tables were decked out in red and white gingham. A notice announced that it had only just re-opened after the quakes. There were hanging baskets and two wickerwork cockerels by the front door and also a pair of live poodles tethered to an old-fashioned boot scraper, white very Parisian poodles straight from the groomer, with bobbles of fur at each ankle like Elizabethan ruffs. Annie presumed that they belonged to a customer rather than being some cruel form of branding. Even so, they were nervous beasts and they had managed to twist their leads around each other, shortening them. As she passed through the door Annie had briefly considered untangling them, but then thought she’d just tell the waiter.

  ‘Important stuff first, Annie. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone to the paper without asking you. I was…’

  Annie raised a hand to cut him off. He didn’t need to plead. She had already thought it through. It wouldn’t have made any difference if he’d asked her. She’d have said yes. Her mother had never been much of a reader, of books, newspapers, anything really. And she was 250 miles away. The risk would have seemed negligible

  ‘Forget it. Look,’ said Annie, fishing her phone out of the Santorini bag, ‘here’s the text she sent this morning. “Arriving ChCh 3.35pm, NZ5472.”’

  ‘Is that it?’

  Annie nodded.

  Vince laughed, then bit it back.

  ‘No,’ said Annie, ‘you’re right. It’s brilliant.’

  The moment she’d seen it Annie had acknowledged its miniature excellence. There was the implicit criticism of Annie and the implicit assumption that Annie would be at the airport to start the process of contrition. And behind it lay the cruel tactic of acting the bully while playing the victim. It was vintage Raewyn, devastatingly effective. Of course, it all depended on Annie feeling guilty but the mother knew her daughter. Annie did feel guilty. Or at least a part of her did. It was not a part she was proud of but that didn’t make it go away.

  She had not yet decided how she would handle her mother. It depended, she realised, on whether she went on the attack. If she did it might make things easier. If she didn’t, well, Annie would find out.

  ‘May I order?’ asked Vince.

  Annie nodded.

  ‘Good, because I already have.’

  The waiter brought two violet-coloured drinks, faintly bubbling.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Vince, raising his.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Annie to the waiter, a young man in white shirt and black waistcoat and a ponytail. ‘Those dogs out there. Do you know whose they are?’ And Annie pointed out the tangled leads and added that perhaps they might enjoy a bowl of water.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said, to Vince. ‘Cheers.’ The taste was sweetly festive.

  ‘Kir Royale,’ said Vince. ‘Two of these at lunch have got me through many a tough afternoon.’

  Annie watched the waiter cross to a pair of trim middle-aged women in three-quarter-length trousers. She was grateful that he did not appear to point her out to them. A minute later he carried a bowl of water outside. But he did not untangle the leads and the women did not leave their table. Annie tried to put it from her mind. Snails. She should have guessed.

  ‘I know,’ said Vince. ‘But I happen to like them. Or at least I like what they come with.’

  Watching and imitating, Annie gripped a shell in the pincers provided, used the two-tined fork to winkle out the shrivel of meat, and popped it, with only the slightest hesitation, into her mouth. It was nothing, a texture only, a substance to carry the rich twins of garlic and butter.

  ‘In case your mother tries to kiss you,’ said Vince.

  She ate all six of her snails and tipped the shells to her mouth to drain the liquor and mopped the plate with slices of baguette as the waiter brought a bottle of pinot noir.

  ‘Not from Blenheim,’ said Vince as he poured. ‘I thought that in the circumstances…’

  And Annie smiled. An hour ago she’d been weeping for her father in a hospital corridor, but the twin effects of booze and cheerful company were potent. She felt herself submitting to the present tense, the pleasures of the food and drink and Vince’s company.

  ‘I’ve learned a lot,’ she said, ‘in the last two days.’

  ‘Let me guess,’ said Vince. ‘Your father had an affair with a young man from a powerful local family.’

  Annie stared.

  ‘Oh, look,’ said Vince, ‘our mains.’

  Over sizzling little entrecôte steaks and shoestring fries and an oil-drenched salad of leaves and tiny tomatoes and half-blackened shards of roasted red peppers Vince explained how the story in the paper had winkled out a former draughtsman for Hamilton and Jones.

  ‘He remembered you, even,’ said Vince. ‘He called you Rich’s little princess.’

  Annie was growing used to the signature notes her father left behind. The draughtsman remembered his deft drawing, his geniality, his calm. But also in the latter stages his drinking, and the grim state of the business before his departure.

  ‘And after Karl bought him out?’ she said. ‘Do we know anything? Karl reckons he may have seen around town a couple of times, but that’s it.’

  ‘I was going to keep this,’ said Vince taking his cell phone from his pocket, ‘until we’d finished eating.’

  An aftershock rattled the restaurant and kept rattling it. A strong one, a floor-shifter. Everyone looked up, senses alert for how long, how strong. The poodles at the door erupted, flinging themselves away from the building only to be pulled up short by the twisted leads and flung back against the window glass. And suddenly, awfully, they were fighting, the pair of them biting, screaming, a single ball of fur and terror, throttled by their own panic, blood spattering the glass. Annie dashed from her seat and out of the door but could find no way to intercede between the flashing jaws and claws, just didn’t dare, just knew they’d blindly bite and tear her flesh, stood hopelessly by as one dog ripped at the other’s ear and more blood spurted and the dog screamed. And the owner, too, had run from the restaurant and was screaming at the dogs but they were deaf with terror and fighting for life and Annie looked around for something to force between them when a sudden wall of water drenched the dogs and they stopped.

  The ponytailed waiter laid aside the pitcher, placed a leg between the dogs, bent down and unclipped the lead from one. Both dogs shook themselves. The owner checked them over. Their wounds were superficial.

  ‘Bravo,’ said Annie to
the waiter. The rest was none of her business and she went back inside.

  The pinot trembled a little in her hand.

  ‘You all right?’ said Vince.

  She nodded, but it had been unnerving, horrible. There was still a brown smear of blood on the window of the restaurant. The dogs’ owner did not appear to thank the waiter, but just waited outside with the dogs, her back turned to the restaurant, while her friend settled the bill.

  Only when the women had gone, the dogs trotting side by side on their leads in the tiptoe style of poodles and seemingly the best of friends, was Annie able to return her attention to Vince.

  On his cell phone was the image of a rambling three-storey weatherboard house, one that looked to have accreted over the years like a coral reef, rather than ever to have been designed. The place was painted a generic cream and the spouting bled with rust.

  ‘He lived here?’

  Vince nodded.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Vince paused, sighed slightly, involuntarily. ‘The manager of the KFC in town saw the story in the paper.’

  ‘KFC?’

  ‘Rich had worked there part time, cleaning up, you know, collecting the trays, wiping the tables, sweeping the floor.’

  ‘When? Recently?’

  Vince nodded. ‘The lunchtime shift. After lunch he “wasn’t reliable”.’

  Annie tried to picture her father, aged sixty, in the jaunty branded cotton smock they dressed their workers in, shuffling from table to table, dragging a little trolley, clearing away the casual leavings of the young, the soiled detritus of greed and grease. The kids would have looked right past him, through him.

  ‘“Nice and quiet” was how the guy described Rich. And that was all. He didn’t pretend to know him well. Just wanted to help if he could. And he’d checked his records, gave me the address of this place. It’s a boarding house of sorts.’

  ‘Of sorts?’

  ‘You wouldn’t call it exclusive, Annie. Basic, more like. I did a bit of research and found the landlord. About a dozen men lived there at any one time. Sort of one step above the street.’

  Annie spread her fingers over the screen to magnify the image. She tried to imagine her father stepping through the concrete nothing of a front yard, up those little steps to the shingled porch, opening the front door. But she struggled. She had no image for him. Probably bearded, drinking, and surely alone, or he would not have been there.

  ‘I want to go and see it.’

  Vince shook his head. The place was inside the cordon on Madras. He’d got the picture off Google Street View.

  ‘The landlord said Rich kept himself to himself. Paid his rent in cash. And drank. That was the sort of place it was. Everyone drank, he said. The building’s munted, is going to be demolished. He seemed pretty pleased about that. I suspect it was a bit dodgy tax-wise or rent-act-wise or whatever.’

  Annie could think of nothing much to say. It was as if she’d been hauling in a net and as more and more of it had come in over the stern of the boat it was becoming clear that the final catch would be negligible, a wretched disappointment, barely worth putting to sea for. Annie felt at that moment, ground down, oppressed by circumstance.

  ‘I suppose I’d better start making tracks for the airport.’

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ said Vince.

  She had expected him to offer and had made up her mind to decline. She needed to confront her mother alone.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she said.

  Chapter 29

  It takes a while to find the clothes he needs. He refuses to skimp or make do or accept second best. He drinks as he goes for strength, for numbness, but sparingly, hoping to keep his judgement long enough, his discernment. Too much, he knows, and he will err, will make choices he’ll regret. The dog finds the exercise of no interest, but tags along.

  He is easier to clothe – jeans and a white singlet. He lays them on a chair in the corridor. For her he wants the simplest summer dress, a young woman’s shift. He tries a dozen rooms but he finds only complicated stuff, stuff cut to hide the flaws of older wealthy women, stuff cut to flatter the fat, to mask the damage done by time, by chance and by excess. The old have all the money. The young have only flesh and hope.

  He has to climb to another floor and then another before he finds a wardrobe holding two simple dresses, one grey, one crimson, sleeveless, light, plain, cut from the silkiest stuff. They weigh almost nothing. To choose between them he needs daylight. He drapes both over his arm and heads outside to the roof of the car park. The corridor still smells of bleach, and he shudders at the memory, skirting the damage to the carpet, careful to keep the dresses from dragging.

  The brightness of the sun is briefly blinding. His eyes water, are slow to adjust. But as his vision clears he notes the smooth elegance of the dresses against the gnarled flesh and then that the dog has stiffened, is looking away towards the sea. And even as he swings his gaze to look he hears the thump of the helicopter.

  ‘Here, Friday, come,’ he calls, taking shelter under the concrete overhang. The dog is reluctant to relinquish its view, but he calls insistently, puts sternness in his voice and the dog comes. They have hidden several times thus as choppers toured the central city, carrying who knows what dignitaries or gawpers, all getting their fix of ruin. He unscrews a miniature vodka, a blaster, a hit.

  The helicopter comes ever nearer, the pulse of its engine changing nature and tempo, becoming just noise, ever greater noise, noise to shrink from. It is hovering over the building. The downdraught sends scraps of rubbish swirling on the roof, fills and flutters the dresses on his arm, would steal them if he didn’t clamp them down. The noise is head-filling, maddening and the dog is barking furiously. It escapes from his grip on the collar and dances out to the heart of the car park, barking up at the belly of the machine.

  ‘Here, Friday, here,’ but the noise is too great and the dog is defending their world and unbiddable with instinct.

  And as if warned off by the dog, the chopper takes its noise a little further away, tours around the building, it seems, as if inspecting it, and when Richard judges from the noise that it has reached the far side he emerges from under the overhang and hurries as best he can across the rooftop, still with the dresses on his arm. The dog follows him through the door and waits while he leans heavily against a wall, panting.

  The noise pulses through the building, threatening it with violence by vibration, as if to carry on the work the earthquake started, where noise and movement and violence are all part of the one destructive thing. The helicopter stays hovering around the building. Richard withdraws into one of the still untouched guest rooms, closes the curtains, drains a Scotch and lies on the bed, curling foetal, pulling a duvet over him. He gestures to the dog and it leaps up beside him and sits and pants but even though he lays a calming hand on the dog’s shoulders and says soft words the dog will not lie down, will not relax and curl. Richard buries his head under the pillows. The noise and movement still find a muffled way through.

  And then he hears and feels a further noise, and it takes a moment for him to recognise that he has heard and felt it before, knows what it is. They are drilling again, drilling deep into the walls of the building. Only now the drill is above them, and not far above, perhaps three floors above.

  He feels a growl surge in the dog’s throat, like the purr of a cat but swelling with threat and the will to fight.

  ‘Shhh, Friday, shhh.’

  His mind is racing to make sense of drilling both below and above.

  ‘They’re drilling at our bones, dog, they’re drilling at our bones.’

  And then he does make sense of it and it’s like a short, hard punch.

  ‘Oh, Friday,’ he says, ‘oh, Friday.’

  They drill on three sides. It does not take long. The drill stops and soon the helicopter engine changes note and sheers away and quiet seeps back into the building like a balm.

  ‘You’ll be all right, Friday,�
�� whispers Richard, in the newfound silence. And still on the bed he chucks the dog under the chin. ‘You’ll be just fine, I promise.’

  And despite everything he feels his throat swell with feeling and his old eyes blink and he gulps twice and then he rolls onto his side and he lays an arm over the dog’s shoulder and he buries his wet face in the dog’s neck and his body heaves like a child’s. But it does not last long. And soon he is asleep.

  Chapter 30

  Entry to the domestic terminal took Annie through a knot of smokers, between a brace of fiercely fragrant lavatories and past a bronze plaque to some forgotten minister of transport before leading her to the narrow sloping concourse and a seat to await her mother’s flight.

  A four-year-old stared at the arrivals gate through which, Annie guessed, he was expecting to see his mother come. A woman who had to be his grandmother stood behind him, her expression strained, her manner suggesting she would not be overwhelmed with grief when the moment came to give the child back. Suddenly, the boy shot forward with a noise like a wail and a broad-hipped woman of thirty-something, arriving in a stream of passengers, knelt when she saw him and those behind her had to step around her as her darling flew into her body and wept with relief. Grandma kept a reserved distance, her face a mask.

  Sitting next to Annie, a woman of perhaps fifty glanced up occasionally at the gate and then back to a word-finder puzzle in a cheaply printed magazine that consisted only of puzzles. She sucked at a blue Bic ballpoint. Then, without any outward display, she slipped the puzzle into her bag, stood and fell into step with a passing man of a similar age. They did not touch. He wore a fawn zip-up jacket and trousers so neutral they were barely even fawn. He towed an overnight bag. Annie watched the couple’s backs as they disappeared towards the luggage claim. As far as she was able to tell, they did not speak.