Rocking Horse Road by Carl Nixon Page A

sort one from another. The time she got Tug
Gardiner's change wrong so that she gave him five
dollars too much. 'Now I wish I'd told her and given
it back,' Tug admitted to no one in particular. Lucy
dropping a full bottle of milk that caught the edge
of the counter as it fell and shattered on to the lino.
Lucy accidentally brushing a sweaty palm with her
fingertips as she gave change. Lucy smiling to herself
when she thought no one was watching, as though
recalling a private joke.
    Some of the memories we had heard before; others
were new. Before New Year's no one had ever brought
up the time Lucy had gone door to door selling Girl
Guide biscuits. Now we discovered that this was a
memory several of us shared. Lucy had turned up at
our doors in the twilight in her blue uniform. Matt
Templeton said his family had bought eight packets
from her and that his six sisters had scoffed the lot
that same evening.
    Pete picked up a piece of wood and threw it into
the fire. 'I wonder what she would've been doing
now.'
    We sat silently as, collectively, we tried to imagine.
Surely more than one of us conjured up a vision of
Lucy, dressed to go out to a New Year's party, seeing
the light of our bonfire and coming down to the
beach to investigate. She might have chosen to walk
barefoot across the sand, her shoes dangling from her
hand. It was not beyond possibility. Would she have
been alone, or with a couple of friends? Whatever the
details, in our imaginations she came forward out of
the darkness, not at all shy. After all, Lucy had seen us
often at school and we were regular customers in the
dairy. We were younger boys and not intimidating.
She would have known at least a couple of us by
name.
    Yes, Lucy would have stayed and talked. Maybe
we would have been brave enough to crack a few
jokes. Someone would have passed her a beer. Lucy
would not have hesitated to sit on the sand and drink
with us (we were sorry then that we hadn't thought
to bring other, more girlish drinks or even glasses).
Matt Templeton was always good at talking to girls.
Roy Moynahan could be funny in a not too gross way
when he put his mind to it. We could have succeeded
in making her laugh.
    Someone might have fetched a ghetto-blaster and
some tapes from their home so that we would have
music. Fire and music and beer. It was not beyond the
realms of imagination that we might have taken turns
to dance with Lucy Asher, right there on the beach, in
the flickering orange light of a fresh new year. And
who in our small tribe did not imagine that it was
him who succeeded in standing next to her when the
countdown to midnight ended?
    The beer seemed to have a will of its own. It travelled
through us with a determination we had not previously
encountered. Matt Templeton was standing in the
darkness pissing in a high arc into the tussock for the
third time that evening, when Mr Asher surprised him
by silently cresting the dune close by. Matt must have
been pretty startled because, as he later recounted
what he had seen, we noticed that his right foot was
wet and caked with sand.
    Tall and thin, Mr Asher had stood for a moment in
the moonlight. Matt did not think that Mr Asher had
seen him. Matt told us later that the light from the fire
fell short of where he stood but there was enough light
to see the deep furrows on Mr Asher's brow. He was
holding something in his hand that Matt described as
being 'as big as a chillybin but wrapped in a towel. I
didn't get a good look at it, whatever it was.'
    Matt stayed perfectly still and watched, but Mr
Asher did nothing more than stand and stare across
at our fire for a long time. If Mr Asher was aware of
Matt's presence he gave no sign. They were two figures
playing stiff candle, in the dark. Eventually, Mr Asher
half-walked, half-slid down the dune's face. He began
to walk south, down the beach away from our fire.
Gulls sleeping on the sand squawked uneasily as Mr
Asher approached them in the darkness, but did not
take to the air.