Rocking Horse Road (17 page)

The diary starts on Lucy's seventeenth birthday,
May the twenty-ninth, seven months before she died.
There is an inscription on the inside cover —
To Lucyloo
from Dad
. To the uninitiated the details might seem
mundane, even trivial, but we were teenagers and in
the grip of something huge and powerful that held us
tightly, even jealously. All that year it had shaken us
awake in the morning and had laid us down in our
beds at night. It muttered from the dark corners of our
rooms as we tossed and turned. It is enough to say
that we hung on every word Pete read.

May 29: Mum won't let me go out with Sarah and
Megan tonight!!! She says I have to stay here for a
FAMILY DINNER. Sarah says Mum still treats me like
a baby because I'm the eldest and I only have a sister.
She's allowed out because she has four older brothers and
her parents are too tired to care. If only my parents were
Catholics too and not boring old Presbyterians who are
allowed to use a rubber. Worse luck me.

June 2: Bought the latest Bowie album. It's great.
David's hair looks great on the cover. Still too cold to
swim. Can't wait for weather to get warmer. Read in the
Woman's Weekly that lemon juice in your hair makes it
lighter. Have been doing it every night but not sure if it's
working. Mum wanted to know where all the lemons from
the shop were going. Have to be more careful about what
I pinch.

Lucy did not write in her diary every day. Many
pages were tantalisingly blank or contained nothing
but absent-minded scrawls; swirling labyrinths from
which there was no way in or out. Pete held these out
in the gloom for us to peer at. Some days she wrote
only a couple of words. 'Weather crap' is a typical
entry (August 21). The first reference to SJ is on June
the thirteenth.

Met SJ in town today. He was shopping for a shirt by
himself. Really weird to see him doing something so
normal. I saw him before he saw me. I almost kept on
walking but soooo glad I didn't. He asked if I'd like to
have tea with him at the Ballantynes' tea room. Almost
said no but he's really easy to talk to. Keep thinking about
him. He has really nice teeth.

June 20: SJ smiled at me today but didn't stop to talk
because he was walking with some of the others.

July 16: Some little twerp spilled chocolate milk in the
shop the other day and most of it must have gone under
the fridge. Now it smells DISGUSTING! Mum blames
me for not cleaning it up properly.

August 7: School holidays. Haven't seen SJ for days and
days. Feeling sad and lonely which is silly because we
hardly ever talk anyway. Think he might have gone away
with his family. Mum really being a pain. Might kill
myself.
[Then in differently coloured pen]
THAT WAS
A JOKE! HA HA

The batteries in Jim's torch were fading fast. As Pete
read, the light dimmed until the book was almost
indistinguishable from the darkness in the garage.
Pete's voice stayed clear and steady but he leaned
further and further forward so that by the last few
pages he seemed to be about to devour the diary.

September 14: Played tennis with Sarah today. She
thrashed me — as usual. Feel bad about not telling her
what's been going on but SJ has made me promise not to
say a word. He's right that people wouldn't understand
about our friendship. Taking the bus into town to meet
him again today. Think Mum might be getting suspicious
about all the time I'm taking off from the shop. Had a
big fight about it. Think she's been nosing around in my
room. Will take this diary with me to school from now on.
Too dangerous here.

September 28: SJ invited me back to his house tonight
after softball practice. Of course we had to go separately.
It wasn't like how I imagined it. I thought he'd have heaps
of books and stuff like that but he's hardly got any. HE
KISSED ME!!!!!! About time. I liked it apart from the
way he got a bit rough at the end before I said I had to go.
Good that I did leave and not just for the obvious reason.
Mum freaked out anyway when I got home because she
said anything could have happened to me biking home in
the dark. Had another big argument so I'm writing this
in my room instead of having dinner. Had some poached
eggs and toast at SJ's anyway but Mum doesn't know
that. Hope she thinks I'm starving.

P.S. Kissing S was not at all like kissing Phil. Don't know
if I should go back.

And then Lucy seemed to lose interest in the diary.
October and November were mostly blank. The last
entry was on the thirtieth of November, about three
weeks before Lucy was murdered and around the time
school finished for the year. It was a list of Christmas
presents to buy for her family and friends. SJ was not
mentioned. Only two were crossed off; a book called
The Painted Years
for her dad and lavender soap for
her mother.

It took Pete just under half an hour to read the entire
diary aloud. His last words hung in the air and then
drifted away through the cracks in the garage walls.
We stood in the quarter-light of the dying torch and
listened to Aslan coughing. We looked everywhere
but at each other. We did not want to see each other's
faces; to see written there our own feelings, which we
did not have the experience to pin down with names.
We were uncertain if men could even speak to each
other of such things. We just stood there lost in our
thoughts. In that way our emotions were stillborn in
the darkness — unnamed and unembraced.

Eventually three white candles were rummaged up
from a box in the corner. They were placed in old tin
cans on the bench that had become our shrine to Lucy,
and solemnly lit. The diary was carefully arranged so
that it sat propped up immediately below the photo of
Lucy. The three flames danced in the cross-draughts
and in the ebb and flow of our breaths. The flickering
light reflected off the glass in the photo frame and
off Lucy's trophy. The running girl seemed to move;
dipping even lower as she crossed the finishing line,
and then springing forward and up in triumph.

It is impossible to say when the first of us slipped
out of the garage that evening and it has never been
established who was the last. Each of us knew when
our time came to leave; to say goodnight to Lucy and
to slip silently away. Tug Gardiner was still in his
dark cowl. Al Penny's overlarge slippers flip-flopped
on the concrete path. Jim Turner reported that, from
his room, he could see the candles flickering through
the cracks in the garage walls until they burnt out just
before dawn.

It would be safe to assume that none of us slept that
night. How could we? We lay in our beds wrapped in
our thoughts. Who among us did not stare into the
hollow space above his bed and, with the white noise
of the waves whispering suggestions in his ear, try to
put a face to the initials SJ?

We spent the rest of May going over all aspects of
Lucy's life, hoping to shed light on the identity of SJ.
None of the guys we had on our photo wall had those
initials. There
was
one person who lived in the area,
Steven Jones, but he was nine years old, and what
we called in those days a mongol. There were three
other Stephens in the South Brighton area and at least
another dozen boys whose name started with a hiss
and a twist. But we knew we were clutching at straws.
It wasn't proof of anything to be called Stephen or
Stuart, Jamison or Johnstone.

As we racked our brains, even we couldn't help
noticing that the anti-tour movement was growing
stronger. It began to dominate the
Six O
'
Clock News
and the papers. Someone had the bright idea of telling
everyone who was opposed to the tour to leave their
taps running. It became commonplace to walk into a
public toilet and find all the taps jammed on full, the
water swirling away down the basins, the white noise
hissing like an angry possum in the small concrete
room. Outside taps were also targeted. Everywhere
water was left running. We thought it was ridiculous.
What did they hope to gain by wasting all that water?
We turned taps off when we found them but when
we came back again they would be twisted on even
harder. After a while we gave up and just ignored
them until a background of running water became
normal.

One evening the Prime Minister came on the telly
to make an announcement about the Springbok tour.
His broadcast had been well advertised and people
were keen to hear what he had to say. In everyone's
homes the sets were on ready to hear the special
telecast. Later we heard that a million New Zealanders
watched him that night. We knew that our fathers
didn't like Muldoon. The man they called Piggy, Piggy
Muldoon. They hadn't voted for his National Party,
which was the party of farmers and business owners
But they still sat on the couch and nodded along with
what he said.

'Apartheid — the vast majority of New Zealanders
abhor it, like racial discrimination everywhere. But
need we hate the South Africans taken one by one?
The government will not order the Rugby Union to
abandon the tour. The issue now rests with the New
Zealand Rugby Union. I say to them, think well before
you make your decision.'

Most people down the Spit agreed that this was fair
enough. Sport was sport and politics was something
else. Muldoon had also made a good point when he
said that New Zealanders and South Africans had
fought together in the war. Only Jase's dad seemed
doubtful. Bill Harbidge rarely drank any more and had
lost weight. Jase told us that his dad was punching the
bag for half an hour in the garage every evening. He
was even cooking dinner for Jase and his sister a few
times a week. After Muldoon's broadcast he turned
off the television. 'The Rugby Union isn't going to call
it off.' He shook his head. 'It's going to be a bloody
mess.' The next morning Bill Harbidge got up early,
put on his uniform and reported back for work.

The week after that, all the letterboxes on Rocking
Horse Road were stuffed with instructions for how
to make a Molotov cocktail. The sheets of white
A4 paper nestled up to the supermarket flyers and
coupon books. The newspaper reported that identical
flyers had been appearing in various suburbs of the
city over the last week. The police wanted to talk to
the people responsible. Anyone with information
was urged to come forward. But in the end no one
was caught.

We were interested to see it isn't that hard to make
a Molotov cocktail. According to the instructions,
anyway. You fill up a glass bottle with petrol and then
stick a rolled-up rag in the top. Apparently you have
to make sure that the rag is pushed down into the
petrol before you light it. Otherwise the fuel might not
catch when the bottle is thrown.

No one was sure if the instructions were printed
by a group who thought Molotov cocktails might be
useful in stopping the tour, or being spread by tour
supporters who imagined walls of flame holding back
those intent on stopping the rugby.

On the evening of the anti-tour march, we all rode
our bikes up to Thompson Park to have a look. Even
though our parents had forbidden us from going
anywhere near, you couldn't have kept us away.

As it turned out, it wasn't the big show that we
thought it was going to be. A stage, just a few wooden
boxes really, had been set up close to the road where
the street lights lit the edge of the park at night. A
young woman in a long purple dress was testing the
microphone when we arrived. It was after six o'clock
and the march was supposed to start at half past but
there were only a few dozen people standing around.
We examined them closely from the safety of the pine
trees. What exactly did a commie look like? Or even
more interestingly, a lesbo? Mostly the people milling
around were in their twenties, university types. There
were a lot of natural wool jerseys on show but apart
from that they appeared pretty normal. In the absence
of any obvious distinguishing features we agreed that
maybe all the women there were lesbians.

For all the Templeton girls' talk they hadn't put in
an appearance. Mrs Montgomery was there, though.
She'd had the march poster up in her front window
for weeks. And there were others. For some reason
old Mr Robinson who'd come to the beach that day
with his rope, hoping to help a stranded whale, was
there. It was a surprise to see him wearing clothes
other than his togs and without a towel hung around
his neck. There were a number of older sisters of boys
that we knew, girls who had gone off to t-coll or to
do nursing. There was also a teacher from school, Mr
Jenson. He was only in his second year of teaching
and we were aware that he wasn't that much older
than the seventh formers. Still, young or not, we
were surprised to see a teacher taking part in such an
anti-social gathering.

By six forty the crowd had grown to about fifty.
The woman in the purple dress stood up on the box
and welcomed everyone. She had long black hair
tied back in a pony-tail, and the narrow face of a
pixie. She kept on glancing toward the edges of the
park as though expecting a sudden throng to appear,
bursting through the bushes. But no one else showed
and eventually she introduced the main speaker as
the leader of the southern branch of Halt All Racist
Tours. The man from HART had apparently been
to South Africa and had met with the leaders of the
anti-apartheid movement there at considerable risk
to himself. We anticipated a burly figure but when he
got up to speak he was small and fragile looking and
spoke in a gentle voice. He stood too far back from the
microphone. The thin crowd shuffled forward, people
cocking their heads to the side to hear, like brown
sparrows clustering over a handful of crumbs.

Back near the trees we could not hear anything he
said. His speech was entirely lost among the whish
of the easterly wind in the branches above us. There
was a roar of revved engine and a burst of throbbing
music. It was an orange Datsun that sounded as if it
had a hole in the exhaust pipe. We vaguely recognised
the driver as a guy from up North Brighton. He was
nineteen or twenty and a friend of Brent Cox. There
was another guy next to him in the passenger seat and
at least three more in the back. The driver accelerated
the car as he passed the park, gunning the engine and
blasting on the horn. There were a few shouts and
then the car sped off into the night. The HART guy
kept on speaking.

Any thought that the interruption was coincidental
vanished when the Datsun returned a couple of
minutes later. The tyres squealed beyond the low
bushes and there was a puff of white smoke. There
was shouting and laughter. The guy from HART still
kept on talking but a lot of people in the crowd turned
and looked towards the road and we could see them
shaking their heads.

The speaker was not dynamic enough to whip
up any obvious enthusiasm from the small crowd.

Perhaps sensing that he was losing his audience, he
finally announced that the march would begin. A
banner was unfurled and the woman in the purple
dress took one pole and the speaker the other. It had
grown dark while the speeches were going on, in the
slow, almost imperceptible way that night seeps into
open spaces. When the banner was raised it was hard
for us to read what was written on it. Others raised
smaller banners and home-made placards. People
switched on torches and the march set off out of the
park and on to Marine Parade where they swung
towards the shopping centre.

To us the whole thing looked pretty ridiculous.
Fifty or so people walking slowly behind a banner
in the gloom wasn't our idea of a real protest. It was
not the raging revolt we had imagined. It was more
like a Plunket group out for a stroll. As if sensing that
something was missing (five hundred or so more
people, perhaps) the woman in the purple dress
produced a megaphone. We trailed behind on our
bikes and listened to her broadcast slogans into the
darkness. She spoke in a hollow voice about the
Springbok tour as a sign that New Zealand supported
apartheid. 'Stop the tour!' she intoned. She quoted
figures about the number of blacks killed by the
South African police every year. 'Stop the tour!' A lot
of it we only half understood. Some of it we simply
didn't believe. 'Stop the tour' she implored the pulled
curtains and closed doors of the houses she passed.

The group marched on, in and out of the streetlights,
their torches bobbing along in the thickening
dark. The voice of the woman with the megaphone
called for the people inside their homes to come out
and join them. She harangued the front fences and
hedges, the white trellises and concrete flamingos.
She told them that they had 'nothing to fear, but fear
itself' (even we recognised that by using that one she
was plagiarising material from another, more popular,
movement).

The marchers seemed to be warming up, though.
Stop the tour! became a louder chant. Nearly everyone
joined in when the woman called for a song. 'We Shall
Overcome' rose up, surprisingly beautiful. By the time
they approached the Empire the group were well into
the second rendition.

All the noise drew the men drinking in the Empire
out on to the street. They spilled out of the big front
doors, some of them swaying slightly, others with
sloppy grins painted on their faces. Their happy
beer buzz was blown into tatters when they saw the
marchers. They took in the banners and the drip-tailed
signs and instinctively knew that they didn't
like what they were seeing. In the pale street-light the
men could read enough to know that they were being
attacked on some fundamental level.

NEW ZEALANDERS UNITED AGAINST
APARTHEID

The main banner was a bit wordy and it probably
took the half-cut regulars outside the Empire a few
rereadings to fully come to terms with it, but the
sentiment was plain enough. One marcher was holding
a square of white cardboard nailed to a tomato stake.
On it was painted, WE DON'T WANT YOUR RACIST
TOUR. Another read, RUGBY = RACISM. That
particular message was pretty easy to understand and
would've gone down like a truck full of wet pig-shit
with the blokes at the Empire. We didn't think much
of it ourselves.

Tug Gardiner and Jase Harbidge had ridden up
past the marchers. They were on the other side of the
road from the pub, their feet on the footpath, but they
were still sitting on the seats of their bikes. They said
later that they could hear the angry growl of the men.
Tug said it was a low rumble, like the workings of
some old half-forgotten machine as it slowly started
up.

'Who do they think . . . stirrers . . . bloody commies
coming down here . . . my dad died in the war . . .
poofters . . . lefties . . . decent family men who've
played . . . still love the game . . . only a game . . .
rugby is rugby and politics is something else . . . who
the hell do they think they are, calling
me
racist? . . .
bullshitbloodybullshit . . . fuckin dykes and commies
stirring things up when they don't have to. Finger
pointers. No hopers! Wankers!'

The machine rumbled up through the gears.

The marchers didn't seem to be anticipating any
real trouble. We saw the danger long before they did.
They were on the footpath on the same side of the
road as the Empire and still singing. The pixie-faced
woman in the purple dress and the guy from HART
were out front still holding the banner. The others
followed close behind, four or five abreast, the middle
of the march bulging slightly so that some people
spilled on to the road.

When they were almost at the hotel the front of the
protest met a wall of angry men. All signs of joviality
had gone from the faces of the Empire's patrons.
They wore granite masks and stood with their arms
folded across their chests. The singing faded and the
group shuffled to a halt. Without seeming to confer,
the line of mostly women at the front of the march
moved sideways, off the footpath and on to the road.
Silently they skirted the men. No one moved to stop
them but the men's dark muttering grew in volume.
It turned into sporadic shouts and then jeering. 'We
Want Rugby!' Someone yelled. 'We Want Rugby!'
Other men picked up the cry and soon it was an openmouthed
beery broadside into the passing column of
marchers.

A few of the anti-tour protesters, mostly people
on the edge of the group, began to return the shouts.
There were angry faces on both sides now. But most
of the marchers put their heads down, averting their
eyes from the wall of men. They moved quickly,
clearly intimidated by the glowering, shouting crowd.
A few of the younger ones stopped, though they
risked getting left behind by the bulk of the march as
it flowed around them.