ONE THAT GOT AWAY

ONE THAT GOT AWAY
1730 words





Apart from the smell Spindrift Bay is as pleasant a village as one could find anywhere; Population one thousand two hundred and fifty eight, McGarrity’s Hotel with Karaoke every second Friday and plenty of work if you’re not fussy. Most of us go to the freezing works at Tangora. Baldy Kirton and his boys run two trawlers, long line and crayfish pots. His fish plant stinks a bit, especially in summer, but we just hold our breath when we walk past and the houses up on the hill plant roses and lavender in their gardens.
Being so small we soon get to know what’s going on. Gossip goes around here at about twice the speed of light. When someone new comes to the Bay the first to spot them are Kevin and Stan at Speedy Service Panel Beating, next to the bus stop. If they’re having a quiet day Kev and Stan can watch them all the way down the main street, past Tanya’s Hair Salon, McFarlane’s Farm Supplies and Patel’s Superette. By the time a newcomer passes Harwell’s Real Estate Kev’s worked out what they do for a crust and Stan’s made some pretty educated guesses at why they’re in town and where they’ll stay. They’re not always right, of course, but they never let facts get in the way of a good story
When it comes to jumping to conclusions Young Kevin could be the high, long and wide champion of just about everywhere. He has this unparalleled talent for taking off from a flimsy premise, building an hypothesis in space before he leaps to an incredibly complicated conclusion, usually landing flat on his face. Like the time that young bloke in a T shirt and jeans got off the bus with his sports bag. Kev and Stan watched him stride past Harwell’s Real Estate, MacFarlane’s Farm Supplies and Patel’s Superette. By that time Kev had decided the newcomer had come to sign on Baldy’s trawler. Turned out he was the new Pastor for the Baptist church. Kev maintained he was half right, because JC was a fisherman wasn’t he? Once Kev reaches a conclusion the combined power of all McFarlane’s tractors won’t shift him.
The trouble with young Kev is he’s never been anywhere. Other youngsters finish school and head off to Polytech, or overseas on their great adventure. Not Kev, all he ever wanted to do was fix cars and drive hot rods. So he stayed here in Spindrift Bay, population one thousand two hundred and fifty eight last census, helping Stan fix things at Speedy Service & Panel Beaters and joining the boy racers in Waimari on Friday and Saturday nights.
You’d think Kev would learn, especially after what happened with Dulcie. She arrived one hot Friday in November. The smell of Mrs Barraclough’s roses almost smothered the perfume from Baldy’s fish plant. The bus pulled in at 2:15, as usual and a few bored faces looked down to the main street where Bert Arthur’s fox terrier was sniffing around the lamp posts. The door hissed. The driver strutted down to open the luggage compartment But Kev and Stan’s attention was riveted on the blond getting off the bus. She looked about sixteen going on thirty two and she wore pretty much what Kev and Stan did under their overalls, black singlet that didn’t quite meet the jeans which were at least two sizes too tight and bulged in interesting places.
The bus driver unloaded a backpack, nearly as big as its owner, and probably heavier. He helped the girl settle the straps over her shoulders. She fastened the waist belt and shrugged it into place before setting off through the town. Kev was so mesmerised he dropped his spanner. The back pack on legs turned towards the noise and smiled. That smile would have made Julia Roberts look tight lipped.
“Hi Stan!” she called, but kept on walking.
“Whaawrrh!” breathed Kevin, “Who’s that?” And Stan could tell he was already constructing a hypothesis about an international film star coming to make a movie that would feature Kev as the home town boy who conquered her with his charm and sophistication.
“Buggered if I know,” said Stan, staring at the green pack tramped past the Superette. “Wait a minute! Yes, I do know! It’s young Dulcie.”
“Dulcie?” the only Dulcie Kevin could remember had been fat and spotty, two years ahead of him at Spindrift Bay Primary.
“You know, George Baylis’s daughter. Lived in the yellow house up on Devon Street. “
“Dulcie Baylis?” She was the fat, spotty one. “Scrubbed up O.K hasn’t she. What’s she doing back here?”
“Same as all the young ones, I suppose. Come home when they can’t get a job.” Tom Ferris from the organic farm rang to ask when his ute would be ready so Kev and Stan went back to work.
Meanwhile the back pack and its owner strode up Hill Street and that was the last Spindrift Bay saw of them for the best part of a week.
“See young Dulcie’s back.” Stan remarked to the regulars in McGarrity’s on Friday night.
“Yeah. Don’t reckon she’ll stay long,” said McFarlane’s Farm Supplies, draining Speights through his moustache.
“Nothing here for young ones,” said Baldy’s eldest, pouring himself DB dark Brown, “‘specially girls.”
“There’s a couple of sheilahs on the line at Tangora,” said the Tasman Brown. He drives the works bus over the killing season and helps Baldy in the fish plant the rest of the year. “They do pretty well with the knife too, considering.”
The consensus was that Dulcie, who hadn’t bothered to come home for her Dad’s funeral, would sell the yellow house on Devon Street and take off again.
When Dulcie walked in with Nancy from Harwell’s seven heads continued studying wet rings on the bar, while seven pairs of eyes swivelled through ninety degrees following the two women to the hens’ table. Stan’s ex and the two sheilahs from the meat chain were already there. They kissed the air around Dulcie’s cheek and chirruped enthusiastic greetings.
The karaoke sheilah came in to set up. She keeps her gear in a trailer that she tows behind her old Ford Falcon and she dresses like Elvis in his final days. Stan helped her carry everything in, mainly because his ex was at the hens’ table and he never missed a chance to show her what she’d lost, like a nice helpful gent that other sheilahs appreciated. But his ex was busy talking to Dulcie and took no notice. Then the Karaoke sheilah talked him into singing a duet with her about endless love. His ex kept on talking to the sheilahs from the meat chain.
Stan went back to the bar. Kev almost had his neck in a knot trying to keep Dulcie in his sights.
“Go over and chat her up,” Stan suggested. “Take a jug for the table.”
But Kev just kept staring, building his dream about why such a cracker had come back to Spindrift Bay. Baldy’s youngest took a jug over while Nancy was singing Scarborough Fair and he spent the rest of the night perched between Dulcie and Stan’s ex, wrapped in engrossing conversation that required his chair to move ever closer to Dulcie’s while he emphasised each point with a touch on her arm. Often he thought of something so confidential he needed to whisper close to her ear, at the same time lifting a tress of blonde hair to improve audibility.
About ten o’clock Dulcie and the other women took off. Baldy’s youngest came back to the bar, but by that time we were discussing the perennially dismal state of Kiwi cricket and he didn’t enlighten anyone about why Dulcie had returned to Spindrift Bay.
Time went by. Nancy never nailed a ‘FOR SALE’ sign to the Baylis fence, and no photograph featuring the yellow house as a ‘des res’ appeared in Harwell’s window. .
Of course Kev and Stan, being blokes, didn’t pry in to what had brought young Dulcie back. They just happened to mention it in passing to Mrs Patel at the Superette, Steve Hodges at the Fire Brigade, Barney McGarrity at the pub and a few other cronies, just to make conversation, like.
“See young Dulcie’s back in town,” Kev remarked to Nancy when she came in for a warrant of fitness.
“Yeah,” said Nancy, communicative as a clam.
“She planning to sell her Dad’s house?”
“Don’t think so. I could do with a few extra properties but Dulcie hasn’t mentioned it.”
“She should have come back for her old man’s funeral then.” said Kev.
“Couldn’t, she was in Chile on a study tour.” Nancy drove away down the main street.
When Stan’s ex dropped the children off for his weekend she told the men to mind their own business and whatever Dulcie Baylis decided to do was entirely her own affair. After his ex had sashayed down the front path in high heels and higher dudgeon, Stan’s daughter, full of nine year old hubris, announced,
“I know what Dulcie’s doing.’”
“Yeah?” said her Dad, “What’s Dulcie doing then?”
“She’s a hooker.”
Kev’s beautiful fantasies came crashing down in a cloud of disillusion. September 11th was nothing compared to the crash of his dreams.
“How’d ya know that?” asked Stan.
“Dulcie told Mum. She said she needed money over the holidays and so she was going to be a hooker, down at the wharf. Mum said she wished she’d thought of it first,” Stan’s cherub sent her father a roguish glance under her eyelids.
“That’s enough of that, young lady. Ya don’t know what ya talking about.”
“Do too,” But the men had heard enough. They sent the girls to play outside.
Stan, seeing the desolation on Kev’s face, tried to comfort him.
“Heard quite a few ‘Varsity girls do it when their loans get too high. They stop when they graduate.”
“She should be run out of town,” snarled Kev. He avoided Karaoke evenings after that. He ignored Dulcie when she spoke to him in the Superette. Stan told him Dulcie seemed to be spending most of her time with Baldy’s youngest. Kev grunted, and broke the end off a nut he was tightening in the vet’s station wagon.
On the last day of February Kev and Stan watched from their workshop doorway as Dulcie boarded the 12:38 bus north. Baldy and his youngest were there. Dulcie hugged them both and Baldy’s youngest planted first a peck on her cheek and then a real lip smacker which lasted until the bus driver beeped his horn. Nancy and Stan’s ex came along to wave goodbye.
“See young Dulcie’s gone then,” Stan remarked as Baldy came in for a spare fuse for his boat engine.
“Only temporary,” Baldy told him. “Best little hooker I’ve ever had. She can bait a string faster than I can. Got one more semester to go then she’s coming back to Spindrift Bay permanently.” Baldy hitched his belt and rested one foot on a box of wing nuts. “She’ll be Dr. Baylis, Ph.D.in Marine Biology! She wants to work on the trawler, something about conserving pelagic fish populations. What she doesn’t know about fish isn’t worth knowing. Taught me a bit I’m telling you.”
“Bet she did!” Kevin slammed down the bonnet of Nancy’s 4 wheel drive so loud Bert Arthur’s fox terrier stopped piddling on the plane trees and took off down the main street.
But Kev’ll never learn. He’s got his eye on the new receptionist at Mon Desir Motel, all short skirts and long legs. She’ll eat him for breakfast.