Rocking Horse Road (19 page)

It is not an exaggeration to say that we were
appalled by the photos. Our faith was shaken. We
could not match the Lucy we knew with this brazen
doppelgänger spread out in front of us.

The pictures were obviously taken on several
different occasions. In some, Lucy's hair was tied back
with a ribbon. In others she wore unbecoming makeup.
Our Lucy pouted and posed like a stranger. Most
of us had seen her naked before, on the beach, in the
half-hour before the forensics people screened her off,
but we had subsequently convinced ourselves that it
was the type of nudity we associated with children,
with sisters and mothers. There was an innocence to
Lucy in death that these photographs called a lie. Our
treasured memories of her were defiled in front of us.

There was absolutely no doubt in our minds that
SJ had murdered Lucy. We agreed that she must have
seen the huge mistake she was making by involving
herself with someone capable of twisting her in this
way. We quickly saw how things must have gone.
After he somehow duped her into posing for these
photographs, Lucy must have tried to call it off. In a
fit of rage he had strangled her. It was obvious. Wasn't
it also likely (more than likely, probable) that he had
manipulated her (blackmailed her) into posing for
these photographs in the first place? Of course it was.
What other explanation could there be?

When we couldn't stand them any more, Jase
Harbidge gathered all the photographs together.
There was no question of taking them to the police,
even though we knew they were important evidence.
It was bad enough that we had seen them. We're not
ashamed to say that more than one of us was openly
upset as Jase carried the photographs outside. We
stood in the lee of the garage, beneath the last autumn
leaves still stubbornly clinging to the pear tree. The
Turners had a rusting, half-gallon drum that Jim's dad
used for his bonfires. The drum had a lid, and inside, it
was half full of leaves and twigs that were still dry. We
all watched in silence as Jase tipped the photographs
inside the drum. Roy Moynahan had a box of matches
in his pocket along with his Marlboros. The wind
blew out several matches before we clustered around
in a circle tight enough to create some shelter. The dry
leaves caught first and then the photographs. They
curled up from the outside in. The chemicals made the
flames flare orange and yellow.

Even on the far side of the garage, the southerly
sought us out. It swirled and eddied, snatching at the
burning contents of the drum. No one had thought
to put the lid back on, and flaming leaves and half
photos rose up past us into the air. They were tossed
wherever the wind saw fit. Some blew into our faces,
causing us to scatter and swat at our heads as though
we were under attack from a nest of wasps. Flaming
photographs caught in the branches of the pear tree.
More went up and over the roof of the Turners' house.
Several blew sideways across the lawn at ground level
and then caught in the hedge.

A few months before, when the drought was at its
worst, we would have set fire to the garage and the
house and probably to the whole Spit. Even with the
recent rain, the hedge was still dry at its centre. Several
small fires caught and flared up inside it. We stamped
and beat them into submission the best we could but
there were more flare-ups and some threatened to
grow out of control. Jim eventually thought to get his
father's garden hose.

By the time we had put out the hedge fires and
checked that there were no other fires around the
Turners' house, the photographs were gone. Either
they had been consumed, rendered down into single
layers of ash or, more likely, they had blown away into
the night. We imagined them flaming upwards. Al
Penny, quite recently, recalled a fleeting second where
he had looked up into the low dark sky and, through
the branches of the pear tree, had seen Lucy's face,
cleansed by the flames, as she smiled down at him.
'She was so beautiful. And then she was gone.'

Later we went back to our homes and had dinner
with our families as though nothing were wrong. If
we were more surly or distracted than usual, no one
bothered to comment. Our families were used to our
secrets and our sullen silences, which by then they
mostly labelled 'teenage moods' and shrugged off.

The storm proper hit as most of us were eating
our dinners. The wind suddenly began to blow even
harder. The rain flung itself at our homes, rattling the
glass in the windows, beating on our roofs with wet
fists. Everyone had to raise their voices to be heard.
After dinner, the televisions were turned up until they
blared. The late news led with the damage the storm
had caused in Dunedin and in the other cities and
towns further south than us. Roofs had been lifted,
cars turned over on exposed stretches of road. There
was heavy flooding nearly everywhere. Stormwater
systems could not cope with the record rainfalls.
Wry shopkeepers were shown wading down aisles,
moving stock on to higher shelves. One old bloke, still
in his pyjamas, gave the thumbs up as he was carried
by a fireman from a flooded rest home. The highway
south of Timaru was closed because the ocean had
sent waves big enough to undermine a stretch of road,
which had crumbled into the sea.

But we did not need the television to tell us
about the force of the storm. We watched the way
our fathers tensed with each unfamiliar noise from
outside; listening for the crack of falling branches, or
the scream of nails pulling free. Our mothers were
either silent and serious as they served up our meals,
or they put on masks of jovial good humour. Which
was more painful was hard to say.

Tug Gardiner woke in the night. He lay listening to
the rain, which was still throwing itself against the
roof and walls of his raised room. The room now felt
to him like a boat trying to ride out the storm. The red
numbers on his alarm-radio glowed 12:30. He'd been
woken by a dream. It had been about Lucy. The dream
had snapped him into consciousness like a slap. He
was wide awake and his pyjamas were soaked with
sweat, though it was cold in his room.

'I knew for sure I had to go,' he told us later. He
dressed in the dark and climbed down the steep steps
from his room as quietly as he could manage. His
raincoat was in the hall cupboard, where he also found
his father's golf bag. Tug pulled a wedge free and felt its
weight. He swung it experimentally in the narrow hall
and then, satisfied, he let himself out into the night.

At houses up and down Rocking Horse Road we
were doing the same. Each of us had woken at the
same time as Tug, 12:30. We woke sure of what we
had to do. We are the first to admit that the whole idea
is ridiculous when committed to paper. Here on the
page, in black and white, it is absurd — something we
would normally dismiss as the worst sort of nonsense.
But the truth is that the dream was exactly the same for
each of us. We
all
dreamt of Lucy that night. She was
standing on the beach at the spot where Pete Marshall
had found her body. She was clothed in a soft white
light and there was a small finger-bone of driftwood
in her matted hair. We could see the circling bruises
around her neck. Lucy's eyes were fixed on ours. She
did not speak but wore an expression of unfathomable
sadness. She implored us. Even without words we
knew what she was asking.

Only Jase Harbidge encountered any difficulty in
getting away. When Jase passed, fully dressed, through
his darkened kitchen on his way to the back door, he
found his father sitting at the kitchen table staring at
one of his wedding photographs by the light from
the hall, where the bulb was always left burning. Bill
Harbidge took in the heavy crowbar that hung from
Jase's hand.

'I've gotta go out,' said Jase.

'Sure,' his dad said and glanced towards the
window where the rain dripped down the glass. He
went to the fridge and began making himself a sandwich.
Jase watched him but was unsure of what else to
say, so he just turned and walked out of the house.

The wind seemed to have lessened slightly but
the rain was still falling when we slipped from our
homes. Like the stormwater systems down south, the
gutters and underground pipes down New Brighton
could not cope with so much water in such a short
period of time. Rocking Horse Road had started to
flood hours before and large pools of rainwater were
now lapping against the edges of the footpaths. In
some places the water from both sides of the road had
met in the middle, forming dark lakes through which
we waded.

Tug met Pete Marshall near the Ashers' dairy. As
though their meeting had been planned, they fell
into step, although neither of them spoke. Jim Turner
reported seeing Jase ahead of him on the road. Others
were drawn to the beach and the light from their
torches flickered and wove down through the sand
dunes as they followed the tracks. Behind the dunes,
foaming white waves stampeded on to the beach.

We converged on SJ's house, coming out of the
surrounding darkness singly and in pairs. Tug and
Pete were the first to arrive. Tug's hood was back up.
He tapped the head of his golf club with a metallic
watch-tick against a fencepost as he waited. Jim
Turner had blacked his face with shoe polish so that
the whites of his eyes showed bright in what little light
there was. Both Al Penny and Matt Templeton wore
balaclavas and Mark Murray carried a softball bat.
Pete Marshall had stopped to collect Lucy's trophy
from the Turners' garage and bore it through the night
like a silver talisman. No one mentioned the dream.

When we had all gathered on the street, we walked
on to SJ's front lawn. For a moment we were at a loss.
The dream had brought us here but had not told us
what to do when we arrived. The only light came from
a naked bulb above the front door. We were facing
south and the rain drove into us; those who weren't
already saturated, soon were.

Although we did not notice it straight away, the
rain had already formed puddles on the lawn where
the ground was low-lying. One puddle was reaching
out to embrace another and another. If we'd cared to
look we would have seen the same thing happening
in front of all the houses we had passed. The road
flooding was not unprecedented, but elsewhere on
the Spit puddles were unnatural. Water normally
vanished instantly into the sand. But we were not
interested in the puddles or even in the storm. Our
focus was on the house.

Mild Al Penny was the first to throw one of the
whitewashed rocks that ringed the garden. The rock
arced through the darkness. We watched its progress as
it travelled through the air and then carried on through
the bedroom window. The shatter of glass cut through
the noise of the wind and the rain. There was a pause,
and then the bedroom lit up. We could all see SJ clearly
as he peered out through the ragged pane. He had been
startled from sleep and was wide-eyed. As more rocks
began to hit the house, his head darted back inside and
the light in the bedroom was turned off.

There were more than enough rocks, hundreds.
Some bounced off the weatherboards, others found
their mark. More glass shattered and fell and not just
in the bedroom either. The windows of the darkroom
and the lounge and the louvred panes in the toilet all
shattered. The rocks that went high landed on the iron
roof. They roared and growled as they rolled back
down, adding their voices to the storm's.

And then SJ was standing on his front step. He had
pulled on a T-shirt but was still wearing his pyjama
pants. He was lit from above so that we could not see
his eyes. Where they should have been there were only
dark sea-caves inside which, we were certain, lurked
a black soul. He shouted garbled, angry threats into
the darkness but he might as well have been yelling
at the slanting rain. We knew that he could not see us,
or if he could, that we were only darker shadows in
the night.

Who threw that next rock? We don't know (even if
we did, we wouldn't tell, right to this day). All that we
will say is that it was a good throw, hard and accurate.
The rock struck SJ on the forehead just above his left
eyebrow. A communal sigh of satisfaction rose from
us. There was immediately blood and SJ clutched at
his head and staggered forward. That involuntary
movement took him down the single concrete step,
out of the light from the bulb above the door. Perhaps
if we had been able to see him more clearly, what
happened next would have been avoided. Then again,
probably not.

More white rocks flew, striking him on the body.
Nobody was holding back now and we were not kids
any more. At fifteen the power in your arm is there and
your eyesight is sharp. SJ staggered again and fell. He
tried to regain his feet. White rocks flew in like tracer
in the night. Behind the dunes the waves crashed. The
storm rumbled above and the wind howled. The rain
beat down on us and him. We closed in, forming a
wide semi-circle in the darkness. A large rock struck
his left knee and he cried out and fell again. He did
not try to get up this time but simply curled up in a
ball and took all that we had to give. By then he had
stopped shouting, and if SJ was moaning we could
not hear it above the rushing sound in our ears.

When the rocks close to us finally ran out we threw
whatever was at hand. The golf club helicoptered
through the air into his body. Someone threw a potted
geranium that fell short, the pot shattering. In the
end we resorted to snatching up the very earth. We
hurled the sodden sand, darting forward, yelling in
berserk, open-mouthed rage. The silver trophy was
the last to go. It pierced the darkness, striking SJ on
the shoulder where he lay, still now. The silver girl
broke as she rebounded, the metal separating from
the plinth where it was only glued, and both parts lay
on the ground.