King Rich (13 page)

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.

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 look 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.'

‘I can,' said Annie.

‘You're sweet,' said Ben.

His story was twenty years old but he'd never had the chance to tell it. It poured from him. Living with Rich hadn't been easy. Once the family found out, they'd leant on him. Uncle David was the patriarch even then. He'd worked on Ben subtly, pretending to sympathise, but sowing seeds in his head, tempting and manipulating. Underneath that mannered formality and old-world charm beat a heart of pure self-interest.

‘Money became a worry. Rich gave almost everything to Raewyn and you. But then the business started to flounder. Karl used to come round for serious meetings sometimes. Have you met him? Lovely man, but he got depressed. Rich and he were partners but basically Karl was the businessman and Rich did the drawings. But this was the early nineties. Computers were just starting. Rich was a pen and pencil guy. And the company fell out of favour in town. Though I wouldn't be surprised if Uncle David had something to do with it.

‘If I hadn't had the flat for next to nothing we'd have struggled. It didn't seem to bother Rich much, but it got to me. I suppose I was used to not having to think about money. It was sort of always there, not flashed around of course, but like a big cushion always behind you, the family stash. Rich said time spent worrying over money was time wasted, and he was probably right, but I was young and I wasn't strong and I worried. And then, well, you know about his accident.'

‘Was it an accident?'

Ben sighed, paused. ‘God, I hope so, Annie, I bloody hope so, but I just don't know. A jogger found him on the side of the road, down the far end of Salisbury Street, near the Barbadoes cemetery. His left hand and wrist had been crushed, run over by a car probably, bones broken. A raft of internal injuries, some of them serious, and his face had been smacked so hard the jaw was broken. He'd lost a couple of teeth and others were loosened. The cops said it was a hit and run. But I don't see
how it could have been and no one's ever been done for it. Do you want me to stop?'

Annie shook her head, not quite trusting her voice.

‘I didn't know where he was. When he didn't come home I thought he'd just got drunk. It was only when Karl rang the next day that I worried. Karl got onto the cops and tracked him down in hospital. We went to see him together.

‘They'd had to operate to save his hand, and the docs were worried about his insides, his liver and kidneys and that. But they had to wait for the swelling to go down.

‘I went in every day for a week. With his jaw as it was he couldn't speak so I'd just tell him things. Sometimes I just read to him.
Robinson Crusoe
, would you believe? There was an old copy in the nurses' room. Rich seemed to love it. If the other patients were asleep I'd hold his hand under the blanket, his good hand. The other one looked done for, despite the operation. He was a wreck, Annie, a real bloody wreck.'

Annie had been looking down into the grey Formica of the leaner, hearing only the words, unaware of anything else. She glanced up now.

The bar had begun to fill. The working day was coming to an end and professionals, young and not so young, were dropping in, people in suits and shoes. The cell phone couple and the gambler had gone. River Queen was bleeping desperately for attention.

‘Ben,' exclaimed a loud, wiry-haired lawyer type, glass of red in hand. ‘Oh, sorry, am I interrupting something?' He ran
his eyes swiftly over Annie, and gave Ben a hint of a smirk of approval.

‘Roger, mate,' said Ben, ‘good to see you. We must catch up. I'll call you tomorrow, okay?'

‘Do you want to go somewhere else?' said Annie. ‘You wouldn't want Uncle David to know about this.'

‘Oh Annie,' said Ben, ‘he'll know already. Or within the hour at any rate. You've no idea what this city is like. But don't worry. I'm in credit these days. And besides, that's pretty well it. I was reading to Rich one afternoon and he put his good hand over the book and I stopped and he gestured for a pen. I found one and he got me to hold the book open while he wrote on it. Of course he was left handed, so with his right he wrote like a four-year-old. “Bye,” he wrote in great big clumsy letters. I laughed. He was tired and I'd stayed too long. I kissed him on the forehead and left. And the next day he'd gone, discharged himself.'

‘Why?'

‘I've often asked myself. I don't know. Pride, maybe, hating to be confined, looked after. But I knew he wasn't coming back to me. Now he really was broken down. He didn't want to inflict that on me. And I think he suspected that he'd got me into trouble with the family. That's what the “Bye” meant. And then of course things started to happen in my life. Great-Uncle David was all reason and kindness and full of suggestions. And I did a bit of work and finished my degree. And Steph virtually flung herself at me and she was good, funny company
and everyone loved her and she came emphatically from the Christ's College/St Margaret's side of the tracks, and everyone liked us as a couple and, oh, it was easy, Annie, and I'm not a strong guy. And I love my kids. I bloody love my kids.'

He smiled. ‘I seem to have gone on a bit. Sorry.'

‘Ben, do you know where Rich is?'

‘No.'

‘Do you think he's alive?'

Ben paused, then shook his head.

* * *

On Lincoln Road the rush-hour traffic was nose to tail, frustrated by a forest of road cones steering it around drain covers thrust up by the quake. Annie was surprised by how unsurprised she had been by Ben's story. It was as if she had known it from the moment she saw him in the car outside his house. Every subsequent detail had confirmed it, from Steph's frostiness to old David's bombast, and Annie had merely been waiting for the truth to push its snout out, sniff the air and then emerge to show its form.

The truth of Ben's words had been incontestable. He spoke of kindness, brightness, selflessness. Though she doubted she was much closer to finding her father, if indeed he was alive, Annie felt pleased she'd come. She had discovered a part of his life that she hadn't known before, something to put under her pillow back in wintry London.

How tired she felt. It was warm early evening and she must have drunk close to a bottle of wine since midday. Now as she took a minute or more to negotiate the intersection with Moorhouse Avenue, a lone pedestrian in vehicle-land, where all was exhaust fumes and gritty air and car yards with plastic bunting and the airborne anger of engines, she felt drawn to the coolness of the softly dappled world under the trees of South Hagley. Crossing the footbridge over the stream that was little more than a trickle now in late summer, she lay gratefully down in the shade of a small oak. She lay on her back, crossed her feet at the ankles, closed her eyes and breathed slowly. In the membrane of her eyelids she saw the veins of tiny blood, sensed the pink thinness of skin, its translucent frailty, made of heat and light like the leaves of the oak, sensed the whole random mud-stirred arbitrariness of it in the sun through the leaves and the warmth of the ground and the pulse of the blood in her flesh. Tiredness stole at her mind, veiled it, shut it down.

Snuffling. A small tongue against her cheek. She was instantly awake and sitting upright.

‘Bingo,' came a woman's distant urgent voice. ‘Come here, Bingo.'

Bingo was a whippet, now cringing several yards away from Annie, a hunched and shivering beast, little more than a skeleton in skin, but one that could outrun the wind.