Bobby was one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. He came from Edinburgh and had made his way to New Zealand in 1995 for much the same reason that I had. We had both been dumped unceremoniously by long term girlfriends and sought solace in the rarefied air of the South Island.
I was sleeping on a friend’s sofa
and Bobby was a lodger staying in the spare room. I passed him in the corridor
on my first night and we shared the sort of suspicious hello that occurs when
strangers who have a common friend meet.
The next day, I took a walk through
the pretty streets of Christchurch. This was sixteen years before the
devastating earthquake destroyed that city. Back in 1995 it was a delightfully
quaint place with the faint air of a provisional English town. I strolled
around in the sunshine and picked up some postcards to send home. It was
lunchtime and I found a corner in a city centre pub to fill them out. It was
Monday and the only customers in the pub were sad old men staring into their
beer like terracotta soldiers and the occasional tourist like me.
And then I noticed Bob, who was
nursing a pint and studying the crossword in the Christchurch Times. I asked if
I could join him and we fell into easy conversation. We discussed the vagaries
of love and how nobody thought about blokes like us when they claimed that the
world was a patriarchy.
Bob had been working on building
sites and had finished his contract the previous Friday. He now seemed intent
to drink all his earnings. We settled in for the afternoon and toured a lot of
city centre pubs that sadly are no longer there.
At 10pm we entered the last
watering hole for what we promised would be our final beer of the night. In my
memory, it was really busy which seems at odds which my current experience. One
of the great disappointments about Auckland is that pubs are mainly interested
in selling food and they close up soon after the last desert is consumed. And
as Kiwis don’t have a Spanish eating culture, this is usually around 8pm.
We ended up wedged in the corner
with a crusty old sea farer called Fred. He had the sort of white beard and
belly that could earn him extra money in the run up to Christmas if he was
willing to wear a red suit and let small children sit on his lap.
It turned out that Bob could get
a conversation out of a corpse and he was soon quizzing Fred on his life on the
high seas. Fred claimed that he was from the West Coast of New Zealand and was reluctantly
in the ‘big smoke’ to settle a court case related to over fishing. His boat,
the “Westport Belle” was moored in Lyttelton Harbour, which was just over the
hill from where we were drinking.
We told him we were at a loose
end and in search of adventure. So, he invited us to accompany him on his
voyage back to Westport. He even offered to lash Bob’s beat up old Holden
station wagon to the deck so that we could drive back across the Southern Alps.
The trip involved navigating Cook Straits, which is one of the most treacherous
seas in the world. But I was young and dumb at the time and that didn’t faze
me.
We returned excitably to our
digs, explained to our hosts that we off early on an awfully big adventure and
that we would see them in a week or so.
The next morning, we turned up
slightly hungover at the pre-arranged meeting point. A few rusting fishing
boats dangled from the pier. However, none matched the description or carried
the name we were looking for. We searched for a while and then headed to the
Port Authority office. A kindly old man sat behind the counter, round rimless
glasses perched precariously at the end of his nose.
We asked for the whereabouts of
the “Westport Belle”. He looked up ominously and stared at us for a minute, as
though we had mentioned words that would release demons. “The Westport Belle
sunk twelve years ago”, he muttered. “With the loss of all four lives on
board.”
Bob and myself exchanged a
nervous look. Were we the victims of an extravagant joke or did we meet a ghost
on our odyssey around Christchurch’s pub scene?
We slunk back to Bob’s car and
pondered our options. The last thing we wanted to do was head back to our
friend’s house with our tales between our legs and admit that we had been had.
So, we decided to head off on a road trip anyway. We headed north to Kaikura, a
beautiful town famous for whale watching. We arrived around 6pm and found some
lodging and retired to the pub. Those were the good old days when I could hold
up a bar for two nights in a row.
The next morning, we gingerly
made our way down to the pier and boarded the metal hulled whale watching boat.
Twenty minutes later, I was chundering into a plastic bucket like a food
poisoned child. We did a see a few whales though which kind of made it
worthwhile. When we got back to shore we had to decide on our next move. We
could sleep in the back of the station wagon, so we decided on a slow trip back
to base.
When we finally returned to our
friend’s place, they were keen for news. We muttered that we had a good time
and claimed to be too tired to talk. We went to bed and the next day we were relieved
that the subject was never mentioned again.
I lost touch with Bob after that.
I hope he managed to find love again like I did and that maybe like me, he decided
to make New Zealand his home.
