The Bone People (10 page)

"He will learn not to steal," says Joe, his mouth tightening.

"Yes." She turns round, hearing the slipping step come up behind

her, and looks into eyes that are now intensely green. "Help yourself to fish or fandangles here, I don't give a damn. But tell your father first. Saves trouble, eh?"

It wasn't the stealing that bothered him, or the blow she'd bet. It was being found out.

But the grin he was offering was pure bedevilling merriment.

"So okay," Kerewin shrugs, "and how about tea?"

Simon poured the beer: the head took half the glass.

"Spoiler," said Joe.

It settles down, a hundred thousand bubbles snapping out, cream diminishing to clear brown liquid.

"I'll pour my own, thanks" she said, and did, ignoring the child's pained expression.

She settled comfortably back, hand curled round her glass, and watched the chequered board.

Joe was the sort of player he said he was, not very good.

"A while since you played?"

He smiled ruefully. "I used to play at college. Then I played my wife a few games, after I quit there. I haven't played since she, for a while."

The hesitancy, the catch in his phrasing. He doesn't like mentioning her death.

She considered her next move for two seconds before making it.

"O hell." Joe screwed his eyes shut. "I should have seen that two moves back." He opened his eyes and sighed. "Sim, get my smokes from your bag, eh." He looked at Kerewin,

"I resign?"

"Well, you can play it out if you really want to, but you're doomed." She sounds smug, she knows. But she

likes winning.

The child brings back a packet of cigarettes. He takes out two, and lights them.

She says hastily,

"I don't smoke those cigarettes, thanks all the same," and Joe replies,

"The other one is probably for him. If he had proper manners," reaching up and catching Simon round the

waist, and sitting him down on his lap abruptly, "which he hasn't, and can't seem to learn, he would have

handed you the packet first."

The boy's already got one cigarette in his mouth, giving the other one to Joe.

"Ka pai, e tama... but see you remember others first next time." Simon gestures to Kerewin in a quick pointed traverse that sweeps to her face round to her side pocket and back to himself. Then he

lies back in the strong circle of his father's arms, and blows a smoke-plume at her with calm expertise.

"Even so, you still offer... he says you smoke something you keep in your pocket, but if you want a smoke

you can have his?"

"Ah, no thanks..." she took out the silver container lined with cedar wood that held her cigarillos. "He's right, I normally smoke these. A pipe or cigars on occasion, but rarely cigarettes." She lit a cigarillo. "Ahhh,"

hunting for words that didn't sound too critical or meddlesome, when Joe says,

"Him smoking eh? Well, he's allowed to when I'm around. He doesn't inhale much, just plays at it. Makes

him feel grownup or something," and he leans over and kisses Simon's upturned face. "No harm done

anyway."

"None of my business, I know, but it's a little unusual to find the matter treated rationally. Most parents I've had the misfortune to meet don't think about it at all. They instantly assume if their young kid smokes, it's

wrong. Doesn't matter if they smoke themselves -- watch out, kid! A good example of how parents in our

society tend easily to tyranny -- I shall make or mould my child as i see fit, without too much reference to the

developing personality or needs of the child." She grins suddenly. "And here's me talking who classes

children as something more remote from humanity than your average snail!"

Joe smiles. "You're a dispassionate observer, or at least uninvolved... it's awkward to treat this one as my

personal property. He's apt to remind me he's a developing personality about two dozen times of an evening.

In a particularly stressful way, at that."

"Heigh ho for children's lib," as she puts down her beer, and begins to set up the chessboard again.

Smoke clouds grow and dwindle. The game continues, a leisurely vying of mental strength. And a reaching

out from either side, a growing pleasure as the knowledge comes. This is someone I shall be able to call

friend.

Simon comes over, and looks, and cuts his throat crossways airily.

"Go get lost," says Joe, "I can see I'm not winning without your cheerful interpretation." Kerewin coughs.

"Simon? There's another bottle of beer in the cooler. Would you open it for us, please?"

And,

"You can pour my glass if you want, yes."

"Don't get sarcastic, that's all," says Joe.

Barely a head on it, professionally poured.

"See?" says Joe, spreading his hand, "told you, eh? Smart arse," he mutters to himself. Pushes his king over.

And the third game.

"Moonmaker, sunraker, o wild song for my ruby guitar," sang Kerewin, very quietly, "ah hah," sneaking up on a bishop.

And Simon, ceased from wandering round the room, lay peacefully stealing fallen chessmen from Joe's side

of the board and adding them to Kerewin's hoard.

It was a much longer game.

He can feel mind muscles long-unused, stretching and beginning to feel their way to action again. He played

with concentration and was aware that the woman was directing only half her attention to the game, and that

the half was enough.

"You are top good," he burst out, "too good. I feel as though every move I make is manoeuvred, that I'm doing exactly what you want me to do."

"On the contrary," she said mildly. "I play opportunist chess, and it's largely dependent on what you do. Or don't," grinning wolfishly.

He looked at her. Looked at his doomed bishop and castle-bound king. Looked at small Simon smiling his

gap-toothed happy-idiot smile up at his marvellous newfound friend.

(SHE GOT RINGS. SHE PLAY THE GUITAR FOR ME.

"She liked you?"

NO.)

"Aue," said Joe, but wasn't miserable at all. In this strange round room, warm and full of a golden feeling of companionship, Himi good and sweet beside me, how could I be? "E hoa, I think you just won again."

Dark man lying full length by the fire, pale child huddled at his side.

The firelight dances, ruddying them and the chessboard, all men now neatly packed away. Wars of small

kingdoms in forgotten lands, what do chessmen dream of in the dark? She was brewing cocoa, a final drink

before the Gillayleys left.

For herself and Joe at least: the boy had drifted off to sleep towards the end of the last game, and his father

was reluctant to wake him.

"He doesn't sleep well," he said. "If he falls asleep, I leave him sleeping. Else I have to feed him dope, so he'll go down at night."

Evocative phrase, 'go down at night' -- down to Sheol or some other gibbering dark, or ride the restless

tumbril of dreams--

"Dope?" she had asked.

"O, some stuff from the medic. Red and syrupy. Doesn't taste too bad."

Stirring sugar and cocoa and a little warm water together, until the whole achieved the consistency and

fragrance of melted chocolate:

"Joe, why doesn't he sleep well?"

The man's smile is crooked.

"Bad dreams. He doesn't like going to sleep because he'll dream bad dreams." He twisted round and looked in open wonderment at the still child. "Spooked, would you believe?"

"Spooked, I'd believe."

He wasn't quite joking, nor was he truly serious. There was a strained gaiety in his voice.

"Scared of ghosts and things in dreams... if I was proper Maori I'd...."

Into the following silence,

"You'd what?"

"Hah, I don't know." He laughed quietly. "Maybe take him to people who'd know what to do, to keep off ghosts in dreams." Laughing again, a dry unfunny sound like a cough, "See? Bloody superstitious Nga Bush?

Get the Maori a bad name, eh?"

Kerewin, carefully looking into the cup,

"When I worked at Motueka in the tobacco a few years ago, I knew two girls who were really spooked. One

was Pakeha, the other, city Maori. They heard things breathing on them at night, and there was no-one there.

Damp patches appeared on the ceiling and the floor of their bach, and no-one spilt anything. And books and

jugs would fall over when there was no wind, and no-one to touch them, eh. And then the footsteps started,

and they couldn't sleep any more... the whole thing was quite stupid, but it had gathered a menacing quality

from somewhere. Or something."

Joe was staring, unmoving.

"So the Maori wrote to her mother, who went into a trance, and found out an aunt of the girl didn't like her

going round with another woman. She had spooked them. Makutu, nei? The mother said to go to a Catholic

priest and get some holy water, and bless themselves and the bach. She was one of the people who know

what to do."

"It worked?" There was tension tight in his voice.

"It worked. No more odd things happening. No more scared girls." She brought over the mugs of coffee.

"Probably one pissed-off aunt though," she said, sitting down.

Joe grinned.

"Ah hell, I should've kept inside the faith. Might have helped me after all." He said it lightly. Then, slowly,

"You speak Maori, and know a bit about, about things. Are you Maori by any chance?"

Kerewin, blue-eyed, brown-haired, and mushroom pale, looked back at him. "If I was in America, I'd be an

octoroon." Paused. "It's

very strange, but whereas by blood, flesh and inheritance, I am but an eighth Maori, by heart, spirit, and

inclination, I feel all Maori. Or," she looked down into the drink, "I used to. Now it feels like the best part of me has got lost in the way I live."

Joe was very still; so softly, that it was almost on a level with his breathing,

"That's the way I feel most of the time." More loudly, "My father's father was English so I'm not yer 100%

pure. But I'm Maori. And that's the way I feel too, the way you said, that the Maoritanga has got lost in the

way I live."

He shook his head and sighed.

"God, that's funny. I never said that to anyone before, not to Piri or Marama or Wherahiko, or Ben. Not even

to my wife."

"She was Maori too?"

"Tuhoe."

"Yeah."

He drank the rest of his cocoa at one swallow.

"Ho well." He slides his hands under Simon and gently lifts him, and stands in a graceful exact movement

straight to his feet. The child doesn't stir.

"Kerewin...."

"Yes?"

"I don't know how to say thank you except this way." He says very formally, "Ka whakapai au kia koe mo tauatawhai."

Kerewin smiles. "Ka pai, e hoa."

Joe gives her a brilliant smile back. "We see you again?"

She considers, for all of a second,

"I'll give you a ring, eh?"

"Yes. Well," moving to the doorway, "anything you want or need, and think I can help, just give me a yell.

You got friends," he smiles to her again, "one crazy kid and a mixed-up Maori. Should take you far--"

"How about this non-painting painter who's not sure whether she's

coming or going? You'll get a long way with me, too--" She's aware

that this is the first time she's said "Pax, friends," to anyone for a decade.

"Do you need a hand to carry that bag?"

He shakes his head. "Would you give us the parka out of it though? I'll bet it's still drizzling outside."

"It is."

Holding the sleeping boy with one arm, Joe adjusts the parka over his own head with the other, so the jacket

forms a tent-like covering, sheltering the child as well as himself.

"You'll be OK on the bike?"

"We're used to it. I'll just park him in front and he'll probably go back to sleep before we're out of your road."

Kerewin chuckles.

"I'll believe it, unlikely and all as it sounds.'

Rich night. A promise of times to come... maybe. She sat a long time by the fire after the echo of the bike's

engine had died. No sound now but winds and trees and the omnipresent sea.

Going! Going! The clock's just gone eleven.

She stretched and groaned and yawned herself awake.

"Gorecrows, gorecrows," moaning it for no good reason except it fitted the sound she wanted to make and her bloody turn of mind.

It was raining. Heavy grey clouds rimmed the horizon of the livingroom circle. A small patch of blue sky

scarred with white said the day was trying to come fine.

There was a template of a drawing in her mind, spidery and shadowed, a remnant of dreams. She doodled

with a fine-tip on a block of heavily textured paper, making tangles of lines, but the spider shadow was still

obscure. She felt it to be worth digging out.

"You are there!" digging the tip hard into the paper, grooving it and spoiling the woven abstract patterns. "Ah to hell, come out."

Ripping the page off the block and hurling it against the wall didn't achieve anything. Hitting her closed fist

on the table didn't do much either. She jammed her hands into jean pockets, breathing hard.

"Get your fishing gear, Holmes."

Funny how words echoed now, where before they sounded right, her voice for her ears.

"Calm down, o soul. Be reasonable, a serene and rational being."

Her heart belies the words, therdunk, therdunk, beating harder and harder.

I am exceedingly angry for no good reason.

"Ah shit and apricots, why'd it have to be this way?" calling loudly, anguish in her voice. "I have everything I need, but I have lost the main part."

"Damn. Damned. Damned." Thumping the handrail so it quivers, all the way downstairs. At the bottom, the

flukes are shaking.

She soothes them with a finger, and then leans her head upon them.