Rocking Horse Road (21 page)

We drifted out ourselves soon after. We were
almost the last to leave. On the way out we said a final
farewell to Pete's mum. She stood by the door looking
as though a strong breeze would be enough to knock
her over.

When we got back to our homes we couldn't believe
that they were unchanged. We've talked about it since
and agree that the thing about death that surprises
us the most is that, for those who are left behind, the
days are essentially unaltered. It seems wrong to eat
our dinner at the same table, to brush our teeth with
the same brush, to sleep in the same unmade bed as
we have always done. There is a disloyalty in the
continuation of even mundane tasks. The death of a
close friend, and Pete Marshall really was, should be
a volcano that blows everything around it apart. But
instead, it's a tremor in the night, which barely rattles
the cups. It's an earthquake on the other side of a vast
ocean, which, if you're not careful, you can sleep right
through.

Pete's funeral was on a Thursday. The following
weekend there was an All Black test on in the city.
A group of us held tickets and, given the price, it
seemed silly to waste them. Besides, we didn't feel like
hanging around at home, not that week. There was
some comfort to be found in each other's company
and in the atmosphere of a big game.

It was the second test of the Lions tour and we
enjoyed the game, although it won't go down as one
of the greatest clashes between the two teams. Since
we were teenagers Lancaster Park has been renamed
after a corporate sponsor and there is a new stand that
rises up on the west side like a sheer wall. It's also
true to say that we don't follow rugby like the true
believers that we were at fifteen.

These days it's hard to remember just how
much stock we put in the game, both the playing
and supporting. It seems unbelievable how much it
underlined our lives. As we grew up on the Spit, rugby
was a natural extension of ourselves, of our fathers,
and our neighbours. Rugby has gone professional
now and is dominated by the physically superior
Maori and Islanders. There are far more games played
and the season barely seems to have finished when
it is cranked back up. It's hard not to be cynical: not
to feel that the game is just another product to be
sold and consumed. Rugby is now something for the
advertising guys to trade on with carefully packaged
appeals to nationalism.

Mark Murray was sitting with us at the Lions game
that day. Mark never comes to the games, although
he'll sometimes watch them on telly. That day though
we had an extra ticket and he'd surprised us all by
agreeing to tag along. Mark's wild hair is long gone. It
thinned and receded in a sharp V in his late twenties,
to the point where he now allows only the shortest
stubble to grow. He sat quietly watching the All Blacks
and the Lions, not talking, just staring at the field,
where the play ebbed and flowed under the brighter-than-bright
lights.

We all understand his reluctance to return to the
park. We have lived with the way certain places cause
the past and the present to bump uncomfortably up
against each other. Mark was here at the first test
against the Springboks back in August of '81. He had
gone to the game with his father. Mark told us later
how he saw the first protesters run on to the field
from the embankment. They had to run through the
narrow corridors left between the rolls of barbed wire
that circled the field. Most of them were nabbed by
the police and bundled back over the fence but some
got through. About twenty people linked arms on the
halfway line and waited for the riot police to arrive,
batons drawn.

All around Mark the forty-thousand-strong crowd
of mostly men began to bay 'Off! Off! Off!' The guy
standing right next to Mark was on his feet, his face
beetroot red and swollen with yelling. Mark told us
later that he thought the guy might burst. 'I'll never
forget what he was saying.'

'Kick them! Kick the commie fuckers!'

Someone else, behind, was yelling 'Kill em Kill
em! Kill em!' over and over again until his voice was
hoarse.

'I felt sick,' Mark told us later. And then he said
something that none of us have ever forgotten. 'It was
like being inside the mind of whoever killed Lucy.'

Tug Gardiner was there as well, in a different
part of the stadium. He was also with his father. He
remembers seeing a policeman punch a protester full
in the face. The guy walked up to the cop, hands at
his side, and the policeman just drew back his fist and
dropped him. Later, as the protesters were herded off
the field, there was a deadly rain of bottles and cans,
many of them full, from the crowd. One anti-tour guy
got hit on the head, the brown bottle shattered, and
he fell to the ground like a shot steer at the abattoir.
The crowd roared its approval as though the All Black
winger had just scored in the corner. Tug looked
around and saw that his father was laughing.

Those of us who weren't at the game saw the
protests on the
Six O'Clock News
. We watched as the
police clashed with the thousands who were throwing
themselves in wave after wave at the police defences,
trying to get inside the park to stop the game. Blue
greatcoats and jabbing batons. Police boots on the wet
road. Police lines, riot shields held out front, marching
forward into static protesters. Batons smashing down
on motorcycle helmets, driven into faces, breaking
collar-bones and noses and teeth, shattering eye-sockets.
Blood and men and woman of all ages on
the ground. It was hard to believe that we were not
watching the news from someone else's country. The
next day there were pictures in the paper of people
lying unconscious on the road. There were black
and white images of protesters being led away with
broken noses and open wounds on their heads and
blood covering their faces.

Over the following weeks we watched the television
coverage of all the other games as well. The provincial
games in Nelson, Napier, Rotorua, and of course the
other two tests in Wellington and Auckland. Through
it all we had a growing sense of sadness and unease.
We had the feeling that we were witness to something
important being broken. It was something we couldn't
put a name to but that we had previously taken for
granted, and we knew instinctively it could never be
fully repaired. As Pete said at the time, 'I suddenly felt
like Mum and Dad had told me I was adopted.'

We continued playing and watching rugby after the
Springboks returned to South Africa, but something
had turned over inside us. Only Jim Turner played
beyond high school and then only because his father
insisted. Jim's dad still clung to Mr Templeton's belief
that if Jim managed to cultivate the right killer instinct
then he could go all the way. But after his first season
for New Brighton Jim moved away from home and, in
the same week, gave away the game for good.

A few days after Pete's funeral, Tug Gardiner got a
call from the funeral director. Apparently Mr Marshall
had left instructions. His ashes were to go to 'Terrence
Gardiner. Do I have the right person?' Tug hadn't been
called by his real name in forty years. That was Pete's
little joke.

The man from Hayward and Turnbull drove over
to Tug's place to personally deliver Pete's ashes. They
came in a small, square box that looked like marble but
was actually some type of thick plastic. There were no
instructions from Pete for what he had wanted done
with his ashes, just a standard mention in the will
about them being scattered at a place and a time of
their recipient's choosing. But that was a no-brainer.

We waited for the weeks to pass. Our lives ticked
by after the funeral pretty much unchanged. Every
now and then we'd think about the fact that Pete was
gone but mostly it felt as though he'd simply decided
to take a break and would be rejoining us when he
had something new to offer. The days grew longer
and the weather eventually warmer, although it was
a wet spring. In November the cabbage trees bloomed
strongly, just as they had done when we were fifteen.
That was supposed to mean a long hot summer.
Looking at the halos of white flowers that sprang
out from every tree, we couldn't help thinking about
Pete's dream, the one where Lucy had looked up at
him from beneath the flowering cabbage tree.

Finally the day came. We gathered down on the
beach, shortly after dawn, four days before Christmas.
The sign warning people about rips and swimming
near the channel has long gone. There's a new one
further up the beach, closer to the surf club — but
despite the constantly shifting sands, we all knew the
spot to meet; we could find it blindfolded. The day
wasn't going to be as hot as back in 1980, but it was
good day nonetheless. There were only a few wisps of
high cloud and a gentle on-shore breeze. Jase Harbidge
brought along a chillybin of beers and ice, and when
we were all there, we cracked the cans open and stood
looking at the waves as we drank.

There was a bit of banter and some talk about
going for a swim, but no one had their togs. Of
course, that led to a few jokes about naked arses and
the effects of cold water. Someone brought up the
subject of the salty bottles of beer we had once drunk
on New Year's. Other memories came out and were
passed around.

When the time seemed right, Tug put his empty
can down on the sand and took out Pete's ashes
from the duffle bag he was carrying. He carefully
prised open the lid. We watched in silence. Most of
us expected Tug to say a few words and then take
out a small handful and toss it gingerly. We thought
that maybe he would offer the box around so that
we could each take turns at scooping out a bit of the
ashes. But Tug simply upended the whole box in one
quick movement. The finer ash blew up and swirled
back towards the dunes, but most of it scattered on
to the beach near our feet, where it quickly became
indistinguishable from the sand.

No one had bothered to dress up. We were middle-aged
men in shorts and T-shirts. There was a builder
and a journalist. A librarian stood next to a guy
between jobs who had sold cars for years. A manager
of a supermarket stood on the sand shoulder to
shoulder with a guy who has a gib-stopping business.
There was a cop down from Wellington. We were just
normal guys, none of whom would stand out in a
crowd. We were locals, down at the beach. Apart from
our solemn faces and the empty box Tug held, you
wouldn't look twice if you saw us there. We were just
a group of men clutching tightly to the past.

Sometimes it is impossible to distinguish between
those memories of Lucy that are our own, ones we
have actually lived, and those that we have merely
gathered together for safe keeping. They shift and
move in life's currents.

Lucy on the swings, suspended between the sky
and the sandy earth. Just hanging in the air.

Lucy, older now, seen in passing, through the
condensation on a car window.

Lucy, waiting with two friends, at the graffitied
bus-stop up by the kids' playground.

Lucy in the school grounds at lunchtime, doing
nothing much.

There she is in a photograph hung on the wall of
a room knee-deep in flowers. She is sitting next to her
sister on a park bench. Her father has a protective
hand on her shoulder.

We remember Lucy's smiling face flaming into the
sky.

Lucy, wearing the red togs she competed in, still
with wet sand clinging to her shoulder. She is smiling
and holding the trophy out to the photographer like
a gift.

Lucy with her hand up in class.

The back of her head glimpsed for a moment amid
the wet-day throng in the corridor at school.

Lucy Asher's dry blood smeared on the edge of
the silver drinking fountain. The water cascading into
the basin catches the sun.

Lucy Asher riding her bike to school on a rainy
day. The sky is a concrete ceiling. The hem of her dress
is soaked dark, the water coming up off the road in a
hissing arc.

Lucy with Carolyn, sunbathing on the wide top
step at the school pool. Her hair is wet, fanned out
around her head in a dark halo.

Lucy Asher dropping a white paper bag full of
Jaffas, which spill and roll across the linoleum floor
of the dairy, escaping into the corners and under the
shelving like scared mice.

Lucy Asher looking solemn and alone at the front
of the class. The teacher's voice drones on about
volcanoes.

We remember her picnicking with her mother and
sister down on the beach when she was about eight
or nine. Her togs were too big for her then and baggy
with sea water.

Laughing Lucy behind the counter as she talks
on the phone while giving change. Her music is up
loud.

Lucy dancing with us in the firelight on New Year's
Eve. The light from the flames flushes her cheeks. Her
feet are bare on the cool sand.

Lucy ghosting up the right wing, stick in hand,
ball at her feet. Now seen. Now lost in the shifting
walls of autumn mist.

Lucy Asher's murder was twenty-seven years ago
and in another century. It has never been solved. The
police still have DNA evidence taken from under
one of Lucy' nails, but in the early eighties a DNA
database was undreamed of. Even now, when DNA
matching has solved Teresa Cormack's murder and
the Maureen McKinnel case, plus several other almost
forgotten crimes, the sample from Lucy Asher has
never been linked to anyone. The police's hard copy of
her file sits somewhere gathering dust. Although the
case is technically still open and under investigation
there's no one in uniform to whom the name Lucy
Asher means a thing. Apart, that is, from Grant Webb.
He is now a detective and lives up in Wellington. He
keeps us informed if there is a case that shows any
similarities to Lucy's, or if a likely suspect turns up.