Kehua! (35 page)

After Scarlet had drunk her coffee she assumed she would get up and pop round to her office to catch up with an article she
was writing on the new trend towards mineral face powder and whether it dried the skin, and also pluck up the courage to call
Louis and explain to him what she had done and why and how they could remain good friends. It would have to be done sooner
or later.

But Jackson had other ideas. To stop her leaving there was sex
and more sex until she was quite dizzy, and work was out of the question. Around the time that Luke was buying the steak for
the barbecue, Jackson asked Scarlet if she had any money with her because the rent was due soon and he assumed she would be
paying her share.

‘You don’t own this place?’ she asked in surprise. She could see herself contributing towards the community charge but rent
was somehow of a different order. Men were meant to provide the roof over one’s head.

‘No I don’t,’ he said, rather crossly. ‘I rent. I don’t want my ex-wife getting hold of any more of my property.’

And then he had to tell her about Briony and the kids, and Scarlet did not seem to mind so much about Briony as about the
fact that he had children old enough to be at university. In her mind he was still Jackson the young vampire.

Then he told her he was going to give up films and become a mature drama student again. She asked him how he meant to live
and he told her money was immaterial; he hardly imagined she worried about it. He had taken a line of coke and was not watching
what he was saying, so full of faith in the future was he. She was sitting up in bed, shocked, with her breasts bare. Jackson
fell upon them in adoration.

It was unfortunate that the girl with the bionic legs, who still had a key, called by to see what Jackson was doing and, seeing
Scarlet unclothed in the bed, advanced to join in their pleasure, stripping as she went.

It was at this point that Scarlet, tried beyond endurance, followed the path that her ancestors had trod before, and leapt
out of the bed. And seized the bread knife and advanced on Jackson. Jackson cowered instead of trying to disarm her and defend
himself
and she hated him the more for it; the bionic girl screamed with manic laughter; she loved this kind of thing.

It was good that this happened an instant before Beverley’s hair and the kowhai twig went up in flames together, and a good
thing that Beverley’s hair was fluffed up and so caught the flame, thanks to Scarlet, because the wairua and the kehua started
into wakefulness at the same time, and all screamed at Scarlet,
run, run, run!
Or else it was that Scarlet caught sight of her contorted face in the mirror, and dropped the knife and grabbed a coat and
ran, ran, ran, down the stairs, because the lift took too long, and out into the street, and into her Prius and back home
to Louis, home and safety.

Scarlet’s now redundant kehua and her fitfully attentive wairua made their way off to Robinsdale, there to join the others
in their spiritual home in the kowhai tree, to wait for their ancestors to reach out to claim them in the land of the long
grey clouds where they now belonged. It was not the best thing, the best urupa, but the best thing on offer. And I have seen
the Westway overpass gleam and glitter after a rain shower in the setting sun, and look like a golden path over the sea to
Tane.

As for Louis and Scarlet, the shock of her seeing him and he seeing her in the flesh was very great for both of them. The
Louis of her imagination, the Scarlet of his, were suddenly swept away by the reality of the other’s existence and they simply
clasped each other.

‘I want to move house,’ was all she said.

‘We’re going to have to,’ he said.

He had been on the phone to his mother. She said he had to choose between Nopasaran or MetaFashion, and he had chosen MetaFashion.
And in so doing he chose Scarlet, who thought perhaps she had better not risk losing Louis again, but would have the children
he wanted.

Down here in the basement a fuse burned out and I was in the dark again. I saw no flame: I heard no bell. I sat quietly in
the dark, unafraid, and all I heard was the man’s voice saying again, ‘So be it,’ and I knew that this time it had worked;
we had all exorcised one another. The lights went on again and I wrote The End and closed the document and shut the laptop
and went up the worn stone steps, and left them all to it, ghosts and characters alike.

But I worried about Patch. I was startled a day or two later to hear a dog barking but it was only Bonzo, visiting. All the
same I took a hair Bonzo left on the sofa and laid it, together with a hair from my own head, on the top of Patch’s gravestone
and lit them with a match and said a prayer for him and his whanau while the flame frizzled and flared. I thought I heard
a voice saying again, ‘So be it.’ It had taken him three goes at the exorcism, whoever he was, before all the ends were tied
and finally there was peace.