The Bone People (69 page)

on the guitar.

Nice to see those hands looking so neat . . . guitar's a hard funky sound, but you'll do, friend instrument,

you'll do ----

"You're lucky Holmes, my harmonious soul. Not everyone gets second chances." She thinks, while her

fingers slip into picking tunes,

I can paint again, and I will.

I will make overtures to the family soon, because now I can.

Whether they accept or reject me, is up to them.

Rebuild at Taiaroa? We have might and money and we may ----

And then?

She steps lightly round the quagmires and sinking sands of what comes next to the tune she picked in a long-

ago pub, Simon's mead reel.

And what about them?

If Joe picked up the note, he might come home for Christmas. He might like the commensal idea. I think I

rambled a bit in that note, but he'll understand . . . God, I hope he hasn't been warped too badly by jail, and

the jail of memories ---- And the goblin brat, oddbod spiderchild indeed, the catalytic urchin who touched

this off?

Cataleptic then, bald as an egg on the palm of God, with shookup brain and terrible blank eyes where once

the sly underhand mischief flickered; where once the strange self-awareness showed; where once the

lovelight shone. All gone. Unseeing, the sunchild. Too deep in the dark to know anymore. If he hasn't come

back to himself, he's dead to me. Dead to us.

as the overture to La Gaza Ladra swoops and soars and dips, I'll enquire. I'll see if I can be of use ---- She

thinks, by the firelight,

Art and family by blood; home and family by love... regaining any one was worth this fiery journey to the

heart of the sun.

It was that hour before dawn when souls are least attached to bodies. When kehua roam. When, particularly if

the tide is going out, old people slip easily away from deathbeds. The eery hour when dreams are real.

She sat outside the door, and thought the dream over.

The land is unknown. Bare and deserted, no trees, no obvious rocks, just low brown rolling hills.

"Haere mai!" Welcome!

But also, Come here--

She had been aware enough to ask, Kei whea?

"Haere mai," now a deep insistent pulse.

A light came up, and the scene began to turn, as though a

camera was panning slowly round 180 degrees.

Bare waiting hills, and the aged night sky... but down in the

gullies, she can see bush starting to grow and straggle up the

bare slopes. The landscape keeps turning, and the next sign

of life is a wrecked rusting building, squat on a tableland.

She walks to it, "Haere mai!" chanted by many voices now,

filling the land like the thunderous pulse of a mighty sea.

She touched the threshold, and the building sprang straight

and rebuilt, and other buildings flowed out of it in a bewildering

colonisation. They fit onto the land as sweet and natural as

though they'd grown there.

The karanga grows wilder, stronger.

The light bursts into bright blue daylight, and the people mill

round, strangely clad people, with golden eyes, brown skin,

all welcoming her.

They touch and caress with excited yet gentle hands and she

feels herself dissolving piece by piece with each touch. She

diminishes to bones, and the bones sink into the earth which

cries "Haere mai!" and the movement ceases.

The land is clothed in beauty and the people sing.

Very peculiar, my soul. I have never dreamed like that before. The welcome chant lingered in her ears. A

cool wing of wind brushed her face.

Where is the land I am invited to?

She reached into her pocket and took out a smoke for the first time in a month, and lit up.

The only wrecked buildings I have any connection with are my Tower... and the old Maori hall at Moerangi.

The smoke spreads out and away.

She packs all her gear next morning, except for the guitar and a bottle of whisky. And Simon's rosary draped

round the bottle and lying shining on her note: "My name is Kerewin Holmes. My home is The Tower,

Private Bag, Taiaroa. Communicate that my joy may be full, okay? Kia koa koe--"

Then she walks out, closing the groaning door behind her for the last time.

The pack is light: books and board, bits of food and the remaining bottle of whisky, a few clothes. The only

other thing she carries is the harpoon stick.

Kerewin te kaihau Indee . . . if I don't find a town soon, that'll be all I eat for a while, too,

grinning to herself.

Under this sun, with this new buoyant body, she feels nothing will go wrong.

Three miles up the road, she's picked up by a sheep-truck driver, and he lets her down at the next small town,

just in time to satisfy the appetite the walking grew.

She replenishes her wallet, has a couple of beers in the local pub, some quiet conversation about the weather,

and then sets off again.

She's not in a hurry, or worried about getting there, but the transport is strangely available for her. Another

lift from a truckie in time to catch a Railways bus in time to catch the train.

She's walking into the kaika by nightfall.

Whistling to some words that have come into her mind, and wishing for a guitar to make it a processional,

stick swung alongside instead, matching her easy stride,

O, never silent by the sea

always something talking

water on rocks

water on sand

wind and birds

your heartbeat and

others' words »

whatever knocks

keep right on walking

Listening is for free--

There is no-one at the baches. She breaks into the old one, and settles in.

The sea rolls on.

A sheep coughs asthmatically behind the hill.

A beetle burrs past.

She stands on the old marae site.

The hall door hangs crookedly open.

"Tena koe... whakautua mai tenei patai aku. He aha koe I karanga ai ki a au?"

It is very still.

Kerewin waits, hands on her hips, head cocked to one side, listening.

What do I expect? I come and say hello, I've come back, did you call me, and wait for... lightning? Burning

bushes?

It is very dark behind the door. "He aha te mahi e mea nei koe kia mahia?" Sea distant on the beach; birds in the night; her breath coming and going. Nothing else.

I ask what it wants me to do, and there's silence.

Nothing else. She sighs.

Typical, Holmes... expectations always greater than reality. So be it. I'll come again tomorrow when it's light.

As she turns away, a great warmth flows into her. Up from the earth under her feet into the pit of her belly,

coursing up like benevolent fire through her breast to the crown of her head.

She feels her hair literally start to move.

Shaking with laughter, shaking with tears, shook to the core by joy.

Hi

Sitting in front of a Moerangi fire, the last for some time. Cat purring on my lap. I'm contemplating

leavetaking.

She unlocks the small wooden chest that holds her Book of the Soul.

Pretentious bugger, Holmes, taking yourself that seriously--

She weighs the book in her hand. A thousand pages of Oxford India paper, bound with limp black leather

covers, the title blocked in silver.

You could expose me to hell, you could give all my secrets away, little miseries and whining self-pities

cloistered together... but you've been my last resort, a soul-hold beyond even the bottle.

I

She opens it at the last page she filled in, a third of the way through. Sees, in her thin Italic hand, the lines,

So I exist, a husk that wishes decay into sweet earth. Writing nonsense in a journal no-one ever sees.

Bloody hell, we've come a way since then. Where to start?

She writes:

It's been a rare year, o paper soul, not least because this is the third time I've talked to you. It is now nearly

the great Christ Mass, the start of another year, the start of another life. Great changes -- where to begin to

record them?

With me, natch.

I'm weaker and whiter and wambling, but growing fatter and stronger as the days go. A feeling of

burgeoning... it's the only simple word that encapsules the flight and the flower.

I'm working hard, I'm painting easily, fluently, profoundly. I smile often. I have direction in my life again,

four directions -- make that five -- no, six. I am weaving webs, and building dreams and every so often this

this wonder seizes me unawares. Which is a far distance on from the moribund bag of bones of a month ago.

You know what? I lost three and a half stone... imagine the glowering heavyweight, twelve stone plus in its

bare feet and britches, reduced to that extremity!

But I'm putting fat back on with devotion, eating as though my life depended on it. I'm nine and a half stone,

rising ten... I still do interesting things like fold up under weights I would have hefted easily not that many

months ago (for instance, tried carrying four sheets of iron, sevenfooters, 26 gauge, pitched over and damn

near cut my head off). But we work full days, and we sleep, how we sleep! peaceful and pleasant dreams of

nights.

History, cts, practicalities: I started rebuilding the Maori hall because it seemed, in my spiral fashion, the

straight-forward thing to do. It didn't take long for curious locals to drift round to find out who I was and why

I was playing with their relic. I was recognised, saluted, and they shrugged when they found it was my time

and money being given free, and left me to it... only on the Saturday, a few came by to help prop up bits of

four by two and handle up the tin. And by late Sunday, we've got the roof done and the outside straight and

sober looking. A real working party (we weren't that straight and sober Sunday night).

I was left to me own devices for the week -- it was only a matter of relining walls and putting down new floor

boards. Light carpentry, and it all fitted together so easy and slick, it might have been building itself.

And on Friday, they came with the new door, and the windows we'd decided to order. They came with a keg,

and blankets, and mattresses,

and guitars, and two blank-eyed sheep that were promptly converted to mutton. They came with gallons of

glorious rainbows, a tin of paint from everyone's shed. They came with a surplus of song and willing hands.

And on Sunday I'm greasy with picking mutton-bones, and more than slightly riddled with good brown beer,

and I'm singing with the rest inside the tight sweet hall that's got a heart of people once more.

The prayers and the hallowing will be done this coming Sunday, and, glory of glories, the old gateposts from

the old marae, each with their own name, will be re-erected.

We have not just a hall, but a marae again. The fire's been relit, and I sink gracefully back into oblivion

having lit it.

"It's so easy," they kept on saying. "It's the right time to do it, eh?"

Timing is all, my friends.

"What dyou get out of it though?"

A party, I say grinning. Laughs.

But I also got two strange and unlooked-for bonuses.

When the first half sheep was outside cooling, a cat wraith came round.

Dear ghost, I was thin but this was parchment skin on starved bones. It gnawed at the scraps of fat on the

ground, at tiny bits of leftover offal. Nobody kicked, but nobody stroked it; nobody owned and nobody

wanted it... with an excess of kindness brought on by the beer, I shared my lunch with it, and now find the

first of my responsibilities hath come home to roost. Maybe in that way, its thinness was advantageous. It slid

into the bach without me noticing, and then fed itself into my heart.

It is a very young cat, not much more than a kitten indeed. From the pale-brown colour and wedgehead, I'd

say it was a Siamese's bastard. It has the dark brown mask, but no other markings. Its tail is another leg, a

feeler, a toucher, a finger.

It needs such a subtle tail. It has no eyes.

I thought it was the starvation, eh. But the sockets are empty and sealed. I don't think it ever had eyes. The

mask has no relief.

I named it. One must name cats, people, whoever whatever comes close, even though they carry their real

names hidden inside them. I named this one, Li.

The hexagram name, The Fire, Brilliant Beauty.

For it is not a remote cat, as one would think blindness would make it. It winds about me, begging for touch.

It sits on my shoulders, throbbing with the small rough sound of content. It can perch there, admirably

balanced, while I walk.

It is a civilised cat, and a keen and curious cat. It gets to know where it is very quickly; who is there, what is

there. It is an armed and raking cat, with wicked scythe claws, always retracted when I touch but otherwise

ready for anything (as a luckless gull, disputing Li's food this morning, discovered). It devours food -- but it

has a stronger need for affection. (It hates other cats... it's a female, and since I suspect bastard Siamese are as randy as the true breed, that'll probably soon change... but for the moment, other cats are greeted with an

edgy growl, and the dull dun fur stands up in ridges and flakes.) Fiery cat. Strange cat. Neat cat.

I have never owned an animal before. I am glad of her.

My second bonus was a man, and his trade.

He was beery-eyed, a droop-bellied fellow who wobbled over to where I was sitting, and flopped down.

Nearly went through the clean new floorboards of the hall we've yet to name.

He said, "Hiccup. Sheesh. How're yer gain mate?"