Rocking Horse Road (4 page)

Only Bill Harbidge raised the subject. The Queen
was giving her Christmas message when Jase's dad
told him that whoever killed Lucy was smart to
dump her body in the ocean. The water flushed away
all traces of the killer; no bodily fluids (by which he
meant cum) and no fingerprints. Jase's dad also told
him, and Jase told us, that Lucy wasn't dead when
she went into the water, although the person who
strangled her probably thought that she was. Lucy
Asher was just unconscious. There was water in her
lungs. Technically she had drowned.

We gathered in big Jim Turner's garage in the
afternoon of Christmas Day to hear these details.
Christmas lunch still sat heavy as a medicine ball in
our stomachs. The Turners didn't own a car and they
kept an uneven pool table out there. The garage was
also used for storing bags of sheep manure, which
Jim's dad made him dig into the sandy vegetable
garden every autumn. It always carried the musky
odour of sheep shit and wool; a smell we eventually
came to like. There was a dart board hanging behind
the side door and a bench-press with heavy metal
plates, which we used to test our manliness while we
were waiting for our turn on the table.

That Christmas afternoon the talk was not just of
how Lucy died. That day and right up to New Year,
the manner of her death became a minor part of our
conversations. It was in the Turners' garage that we
began to construct our memories of Lucy's life. Roy
Moynahan recalled seeing Lucy cut her lip, two
years before. We would have been in our first year
at high school, form three. Lucy had been drinking
from the tap in front of the school library. Some boys
had been pushing in the queue and Lucy's face was
shunted forward on to the steel tap. Roy told us that
he had seen blood flowing freely down Lucy's chin
but that she had not cried. For a day or two there was
dry blood smeared on the edge of the tap, and then
someone washed it away.

Another of us offered up the story of how he had
dropped some carefully drawn maps from his social
studies folder in the playground. The easterly wind
had snatched them away. It had been Lucy Asher and
a friend who had helped him get them back.

Lucy Asher riding her bike to school on a rainy day
beneath a sky as low as a parking building's concrete
ceiling. In memory, the hem of her dress was soaked
dark by the water coming up off the road in a hissing
arc. The wet material clung to her thighs.

Lucy raising her hand to tell the teacher she had
'women's trouble' and would have to go to see the
school nurse. The way the boys in her class had
sniggered behind their hands (this was a received
memory; one that came to us through Pete's brother,
Tony Marshall, who had been in Lucy's class. It was
not as authentic or trustworthy as our own memories
but was added to our store nonetheless).

Lucy Asher coming second in the intermediate
girls' beach racing three years before. We recalled also
the feelings, new at the time, that had stirred in us
when we witnessed the way the lifesaving girls had
begun to fill out their red togs. Over the long winter
months, while cocooned inside the heavy layers of
their school uniforms, they had metamorphosed into
seemingly different creatures.

Lucy, glimpsed from a car window, standing
among a group of friends at the bus stop on a Friday
afternoon. We speculated that she was on her way into
town to see a movie.

Lucy putting up posters of her lost cat, Marmalade,
on lampposts up and down Rocking Horse Road. A
reward of five dollars was offered.

Lucy and her sister, Carolyn, sunbathing on the
wide top step at the school pool. Lucy was lying on
her back with her wet hair fanned out around her
head to dry on the almost-too-hot concrete.

Lucy Asher playing hockey on a Saturday morning
in the sea mist that sometimes covers the whole of
New Brighton during spring and autumn. Lucy
ghosting up the right wing with the ball. Now seen.
Now lost in the shifting walls of mist. Eventually the
game had been called off because the mist showed no
sign of clearing and it was considered dangerous to
carry on.

From that day on the Turners' garage became our
meeting place. Most days a few of us would drift in
during the late mornings and play doubles and talk
about Lucy. Amongst the cicada-click of pool balls and
the clang of the metal weights being slid home, with
the smell of sheep manure in our nostrils, we gifted
memories and half-memories to each other.

Al Penny took to cutting articles out of the paper and
sticking them on the unclad wall with drawing pins,
next to the photo of Lucy from
The Press
. We read them
over and over until our talk became smattered with
reporters' phrases. It was not uncommon to hear Pete or
Jim or Roy Moynahan refer to the 'profoundly shocked
community' or to the police's 'growing frustration'.
Perversely, the weather outside was the hottest it had
been all summer. The sky was blue and cloudless. The
temperatures soared up into the thirties.

Lucy, like all of us, had lived on the Spit her whole
life and there was a rich store of small encounters and
sightings on which we could draw. It was true that
individually none of us could recall that much of her.

Because she had been two years older than us she
moved outside our sphere. But collectively we had
enough grasp on her life to truthfully answer, yes, we
had known Lucy Asher.

Lucy's funeral was held in the afternoon on Boxing
Day, in the Presbyterian church in South Brighton,
only a couple of streets away from our school. The
church is a concrete-block building in the shape of a
squat cross, with a tower on the front housing a bell
that we could all hear from our homes on a Sunday
morning. It's a relatively large building dating back
to the fifties when attendance at church was all but
compulsory. Even so, there wasn't room inside for half
the people who turned up to pay their last respects
to Lucy Asher. Everyone who lived in New Brighton
seemed to be there.

The funeral director must have known his stuff
because he'd erected two large cone-shaped speakers
above the front door of the church. In the end, about
two hundred people had to stand outside and listen
to the service through the speakers. The only people
allowed inside were relatives and proven friends of
either Lucy or her parents. We were just younger boys
who lived in the neighbourhood and so we stayed
outside in the sun.

A stand of cabbage trees grew in the middle of a
yellowed patch of lawn outside the church. Because
it was another hot, cloudless day, people tried to
position themselves in the narrow bands of shade
the trees offered. It was a long service and those who
had managed to secure some shade surreptitiously
shuffled sideways as the sun moved in the sky,
reluctant to give up their slice of cool to the person
standing next to them.

We were all there, apart from Al Penny. His parents
made a ritual out of setting off before dawn every
Boxing Day on their camping holiday to Kaiteriteri.
Al had been disappointed that he was going to miss
the funeral and had asked us to save him a copy of the
order of service to add to our collection of clippings.

The minister's voice came out tinny through
the speakers. It sounded as though he was making
announcements at the A&P Show. He listed the facts
of Lucy's life as though he was talking about a prize
calf, but only once mentioned how she had died.
Even then he referred only to 'the tragic manner of
Lucy's death', and called for a 'prayer for justice but
also forgiveness for the undoubtedly tortured soul
who is responsible'. That didn't go down well with
the people standing outside with us. Dark mutterings
rippled through the crowd. Anger shimmered in the
air above our heads.

When the minister was through, other people
went up to the microphone and spoke, including her
uncle, (her mother's brother) and two school friends.
Neither girl managed to finish reading out what she
had prepared. We shuffled from foot to foot as we
listened to their sobs. Through the speakers they
sounded like the cries of exotic birds trapped inside
the church. Later there were hymns but it felt strange
to be standing in the open air singing for something
other than a rugby international.

Near the end of the service Pete Marshall did
manage to slip into the church, but he soon came
back. He told us that he had only made it as far as
the rear of the nave where people were standing four
deep behind the last pew. From there he had not even
been able to see the coffin, and had only glimpsed the
minister. Pete's only reliable view had been the back
of dark jackets, and the hats of sobbing women, which
trembled as though in a strong draught.

Our only sighting of the surviving Ashers was
when the coffin was carried out. At the end of the
service the people outside divided. We had an idea of
how it would have looked seeing Moses part the Red
Sea. The people formed a broad avenue from the door
of the church to where the hearse had been reversed
through the gates. By pure chance we found ourselves
on the inner edge of the crowd, with an unobstructed
view.

The pallbearers were two uncles and four older
male cousins of Lucy's. They all stared straight
ahead as they appeared in the doorway. They walked
slowly, carrying the coffin at waist height. The Ashers
trailed behind: Mr and Mrs Asher in front; Lucy's
sister, Carolyn, immediately behind her mother like
a shadow.

Mrs Asher looked immaculately groomed, as
always. Everyone stared as she appeared at the door
of the church. She paused, blinking, at the top of the
three concrete steps that led down from the door, and
then held up her hands, cupping her face as though
trying to stop her features from tumbling down on to
the ground. Although she was normally pale, at Lucy's
funeral her skin seemed to be actually bloodless.
Unless you knew better you would swear Mrs Asher
had never in her life left the family dairy, had never
before exposed her face to the sun.

In contrast to his pale wife, Mr Asher was tanned
a deep brown. While Mrs Asher ran the dairy, he
supplemented the family's income with building
work — renovations and repairs mostly — much of it
done outside. He was a tall, quiet man whose forehead
was habitually furrowed. On the rare occasion when
we had seen him smile, a slow transformation, like
a retreating tide, took place. The high expanse of
skin above his eyebrows flattened out and we saw
pale lines where the sun had not reached. That day,
standing beside his wife, he raised a large hand to
shield his eyes from the glare.

As the coffin forged slowly on, Mr and Mrs Asher
followed down the steps. They walked between the
walls of silent people. Mrs Asher kept staring at the
ground, her hands still held up to her face. Mr Asher
frowned even deeper than usual. He kept looking
above the heads of the crowd as though he had seen
something of interest on the horizon; a flock of agitated
gulls, or an unusually shaped cloud. Some people in
the crowd even turned their heads to follow his gaze.
If anything, Mr Asher appeared to be embarrassed by
the situation he found himself in.

It was, however, Carolyn Asher who interested
us the most. Our eyes were drawn to her. She was
certainly never going to be as pretty as Lucy. Later we
all agreed on that. Carolyn was pale like her mother,
but with large freckles that sat across the bridge of her
nose. Looking at her we could tell that Carolyn and the
sun didn't get along. She was tall (which she got from
her father), too tall really for a girl, if she was going
to be considered attractive by boys. Carolyn was flat-chested,
with long, skinny legs. 'Lanky' was a word
people often used to describe Lucy's little sister.

But as she walked through the crowd that day,
following along behind her dead sister and her
parents, we couldn't help noticing Carolyn. It was as
though we were seeing her for the first time. For one
thing she had chosen to wear a black dress too short
for mourning. Her thighs were barely larger than her
calves but they were clearly visible. She moved like
a newborn giraffe coming to terms with height. But
mainly we noticed the way she held her chin high
and looked boldly at the people around her. It took
us a while to realise that she was singling out men
for special scrutiny. Men of all ages met her gaze and
quickly looked away. Everywhere she looked there
was a similar response; it moved from man to man
like a ripple through the crowd.

As she passed us, Carolyn met Jim Turner's eyes.
Maybe because he was big, she thought he was older
than fifteen. Jim managed to hold her gaze for a second
and then he too shuffled his feet and looked down.
When he looked back, Carolyn's eyes had moved on.

Jim told us, immediately after the funeral, that the
look Carolyn had given him had scared him.

'In what way?' we demanded to know.

'It was like electric,' he said, 'like reaching out and
grabbing an electric fence.' He paused, sensing our
scepticism, and then tried a different tack. 'Or at the
zoo, looking at a wild animal, a lion or something in a
cage.' He shook his head, aware that as an explanation
it was unsatisfying.

'Electric' or not, one thing we all understood
about watching Carolyn Asher walking behind her
sister's coffin, with her head high and her long pale
legs showing beneath her dress, was that it was
compelling.

Lucy's coffin was carried to the hearse. The back
doors were already open. The three remaining Ashers
stood back and watched as the pallbearers placed
one end of the coffin gently on to the rollers. There
was only the scream of a lone gull circling nearby
for accompaniment. The crowd was totally silent.
With her uncles and cousins pushing, Lucy's coffin
slid smoothly and silently inside the hearse. The
undertaker waited for a short while, a few beats that
only he could hear, and then closed the doors with a
heavy thud.