King Rich (15 page)

He plaits three bathrobe sashes into a rope. It takes him half the morning. He tests the rope for stretch, then ties it to the mannequin arm. He knots two napkins together at the corners, his gnarled left hand a hindrance in this finer work.

‘Here, boy, here, Friday,' and the dog, with a touch of wariness, comes to be stroked and whispered to. He tells the dog to sit before he lifts a front paw and slides it through a slit between the knotted napkins. Then the other paw through the same slit. The dog does not feel constrained, does not struggle.

The man takes the free ends of the napkins and ties them together over the dog's back. With a little persuasion the dog accepts this and the tying of the free end of the sash rope to the napkin harness.

‘Okay, Friday, let's go.' Richard stands and shuffles towards the middle of the room. The dog comes at his side and he keeps a hand on the dog's neck and the strain comes on. ‘Come on, boy, come on,' he whispers, and as he hopes the dog braces
a little against the broad napkin harness stretched across his chest and the rope does not stretch as the one sash stretched, and he urges the dog on with encouragement and he adds his own puny strength to the dog's and there is a noise and the mannequin shifts in its shelving, balks as if wedged and then both the mannequins come free together, the arm of one wedged invasively between the legs of the other in a parody of intimacy. They clatter to the floor and the dog looks around in alarm, but Richard calms and whispers and soon the dog is happy to haul the two entwined figures across the expanse of carpet to the centre of the room and the place settings.

Richard rewards the dog with Tux. He drags his seat across to where the mannequins lie together, head to toe, the female arm between the male legs. He sits beside them, and as gently as he can he eases them apart, lays them side by side on their back. Both are slim and svelte and bald, with smooth bumps where crotch or breasts would be.

‘Rich never held a grudge. He knew what had happened but he didn't reproach me. It was a while before he even told me that he'd been kicked out, that he'd moved in with Ben. He wanted my advice on what to do about you.'

‘About me?'

‘You were his only reason for ever staying with Raewyn and now he couldn't see you. Raewyn had screamed at him to leave, calling him every name under the sun, threatening to tell you you had a pervert for a father unless he just went away and stayed away. He wasn't sure what to do.

‘I didn't know what to say. And besides, I had enough on my plate at the time. Business was way down. Several big contracts had fallen over, all at once. It was as if the town had turned against us. We had to lay off staff. Money was tight. And Rich was distracted. It didn't help. It was the lowest time between us. And he started to drink. He'd always liked a drink, but this was different. Lunchtime too. In the early days we'd often
drunk at lunch, just for the hell of it, because we could. And sometimes we'd do great stuff in the afternoon. But this was different. This wasn't celebration. It was joyless. It was drinking for the sake of drinking.

‘He could still draw, of course, but there was less and less call for his sort of stuff. Computers were just coming in and the industry was changing but he didn't want to know. He wasn't interested. One afternoon I told him not to bother coming in next time he drank at lunchtime. He'd had a bottle at least. He didn't get angry – I don't ever remember him angry. He just said, “Sorry, Karl,” and walked out.

‘After that he only stayed till lunch each day. I probably should have done more but I had young kids and I was worried about the business and Denise didn't always make things easier and, well, things slid. And then of course there was, well, you know about the accident.'

Annie nodded and listened as Karl told how they'd tracked her father down in hospital, how broken in spirit he'd seemed.

‘Was it an accident, Karl?'

Karl didn't look at her. He paused, looked at the far side of the ward, looked down at his hands, at the medical devices that held him in place. He sighed. ‘I don't see how it could have been, Annie. It seemed so precise and cruel. And the story of the hit and run seemed unconvincing. But in the end I just don't know. The police seemed satisfied and what was I supposed to do?

‘The curious thing was that business picked up after that. It was as if the city suddenly remembered we existed. Not that
that was any use to Rich. Of course he still owned half the company but he made it clear even with his jaw wired up in hospital that he wanted nothing more to do with it. I argued for a while but in the end I bought him out. It was a substantial sum of money, paid in instalments while you grew up. Almost all of it went to Raewyn by direct debit. The lawyers set it up.'

When she looked back Annie could see there had always been money around. Raewyn had only ever worked part time but the car was often changed and always newish. Decorators came in one year, new carpet in another. They hadn't gone without.

Karl was clearly tiring. His injuries were severe, worsened when he was dug from the rubble in Lichfield Street and lifted onto a stretcher. He would limp, apparently, for the rest of his life.

‘Just one last question then I'll leave you in peace,' said Annie, glancing over at the nurse, seated at her desk engrossed in some sort of paperwork. ‘That was, what, seventeen years ago. Have you seen him since?'

Karl nodded. ‘I think so, twice.'

‘You think so?'

‘It was hard to be sure,' and he felt for her hand again, whether to reassure her or to comfort himself Annie wasn't sure. ‘Once in the Square, by the old post office, and I called out to him but he went off down an alley onto Hereford. I followed him but he was gone.'

‘Did he see you?'

‘I'm not sure. But the second time he did. On Cashel Street this time, on the corner with High, where the kids hang out and skateboard. And I'm sure he recognised me and deliberately went away. This time I didn't follow.' Karl paused. ‘He looked old, Annie, seriously old. Older than he was.'

‘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.'