The Bone People (31 page)

knife into her.

"It's not, it's not," moaning aloud, hands still kneading.

"What's matter?"

He has got himself to his hands and knees.

"Fire-er-er," word lengthened sobbingly by the stabbing anguish, "O no, it's not."

It is diminishing. She huddles over, keeping her hands tight, lest

her intestines fall out. Seppuku I kidded, it kids me not... what slipped or tangled or pierced? Joe presses her

shoulder gently.

"Get your hand off me," she is panting hoarsely and sweat runs in steady drops down her face.

He takes his hand away. He sits wearily back on his heels, and reaches an arm out for his child. Whispering is

all he can do, "Aue, tamaiti..." and Simon scrambles to him as though the arm were the only shelter left in the world.

She was still pallid and sick and ill-tempered when they got back to the old bach.

She'd refused help in walking, Joe's or Simon's.

"Okay, you lend me your shoulder, Himi, I can use it," the man said ruefully, and leant enough weight on the boy to kid him he was helping.

She'd refused food and drink and all care offered, and ignored Joe's tentative apology. She climbed into bed

with her clothes on, burrowed under the eiderdowns and fell asleep, immediately, deeply, unnaturally.

She didn't wake until it was dark.

Joe says, unintentionally louder than anything he's said for the past two hours, "Well, maybe they only go

when she whistles at them or something, honey, but I can't get them to light."

She whistles, a sharp three notes like anyone calling in their dogs.

"Nope?" she questions into the silence. "Hell, we'll just have to use matches after all"

They laugh. They laugh heartily and immoderately considering the feeble nature of the joke, but it is warm

kindly laughter.

And with undertones of anxiety yet, thinks Kerewin, but she grins at them widely from round the side of her

bunk, a supple grin, an easy grin, a white flag of a grin for their white flag of laughter.

It seems silly to keep a war going. She is so deep in peace her very bones feel soft with it. And they're

waiting, their smiles still at the ready, Joe with his hands cupped over the child's shoulders, Simon hanging

with both hands onto one of his father's.

Like he's trying to throw him, judo fashion, she thinks irreverently, but likes the forgiveness and acceptance

implicit in their pose.

"All right, people," she says, and swings her legs over the bunkside. The movement doesn't bring even a

twinge to her belly-muscles.

Weird, me soul... snatched out of thickets and thatches of furze and turned around taverns where thorns drank

us... a rip from a burning bush or a ghost-dagger in the gut, but

not even a small bulge of hernia or tender swollen muscle to show where--

The boy has danced away from under the shelter of his father's hands, coming to her, by her before her feet

hit the floor.

Eyes so wide and dark you can read the question like type coming up on a screen, Are you all right now?

"Right as rain, Sim," she says, still smiling, and he hugs her, blending his ready tears with his jackolantern grin. "E Joe, your disgusting child is kissing me knees," she lifts the boy quickly and stands with him. "I don't mean that nastily, sea imp, I truly don't. It's just an odd place to get salutations, that's all."

Joe says simply, "He was worried, now he's glad. I was worried as hell."

She walks to the range where Joe stands, arms folded against his chest now, his face so puffed with bruises

his grin is crooked.

"Jesus," he says fervently, "I'm glad you're okay--"

"Urn yeah. What's for tea?"

Some of that is put on, mate. Nobody could sound that happy I'm all right after the smacking round you got.

"We haven't got any ready. We were too worried," he says again. "When you flaked, I didn't know whether to get a doctor or not. I didn't know where to get a doctor anyway. Your breathing sort of relaxed and sounded

ordinary after a while, so we crossed our fingers and hoped. We didn't know whether you'd give us the umm

boot, or whether you'd wake up wild again, or what. So we commiserated with one another on our various

hurts, and kept a weather eye on your bunk. And then we woke you... wasn't it?" "Well, it was nice to hear your voice again, loud and all." The brown eyes level with her own are so open she feels she could slide in

and poke round in the chambers of his soul.

He really does mean it, Holmes. No ill will at all.

"What was it? The uhh?" waving a hand round the region of his stomach.

"I haven't the faintest idea. It's never happened to me before, but it might be an ulcer. I drink enough to

support one."

"I hope not."

"You and me both, man. How're you?" It's a clipped-on casual query.

Joe grins lopsidedly.

"Battered but not broken. I got aches and bruises but that's okay. In an odd way, it is penance you know?"

"I can believe it." She shrugs. "I been wild at you since last week. Since I found out how you've whacked him. Nobody should take the kind of hidings he's been getting, not for any reason at all. But

let's forget it. Drop the subject. If you can believe I'm both sorry and glad to beat you up, you can also believe

the matter is closed as far as I'm concerned. Provided you don't beat him like that again."

"First things first," he says slowly, and Kerewin thinks, Yeah, here it comes, you were lucky and all that crap, but he goes on, "I'll tell you all the why of the past whenever you want to hear it. Meantime I swear, on his

head," hand motioning to but not touching the child's bright hair, "not to hit him again. If he deserves it, I'll tell you and you can decide... I mean that, that if, uhh God-"

"Assuming I am willing to assume some responsibility for him," she interrupts coolly.

The man gazes into the fire.

"Yes."

"I sort of hoped," he adds, and falls silent again.

And I do believe he's going to cry.

She says quickly,

"Say a smidgin of responsibility, a scantling, a scruple of responsibility I accept. After all, you're not that big, boy."

The child grins.

Joe sniffs and rubs his hands across his eyes. "Ahh Kerewin, I don't know... I need a dictionary to talk to

you." He thinks, You bugger, you cold lady you. "Anyway," breathing out heavily, "that'll be good. We'd love you to help... and the other thing is, I don't hold any grudge against you, but that's the first time any one

person has dropped me in a fight without a weapon of some kind. How'd you do it?"

"Ah hah," says Kerewin, "geddown you," and slides Simon down to the floor. "Say you get that bottle of Tattinger I've been saving for emergency celebrations in the new bach. Then we can chat over it. I'll even

cook tea while we do. But to be frank, you didn't have a snowball's chance in hell against me."

Joe doesn't answer, except to ask gently, before going out for the champagne.

"The ulcer?"

"Will be made comfortable and sedate by good wine... if it's an ulcer. It might have been because I was using

muscles and techniques I haven't used for years... anyway, the champagne please, so we can celebrate."

As she stokes the fire she says to Simon, broodingly.

"Though I'm not sure what we're celebrating. Not what's happened certainly. The future, maybe...."

Simon leans against her, and stares into the flames. His face is composed and his eyes are unreadable.

By the time Joe returns, she has scrubbed potatoes and put them in the oven; made a tangy mayonnaise from

yoghurt and honey and wheat germ oil; grated carrots and sliced an apple thinly. It's a large green

grannysmith, and she only peeled it partly.

The boy plays teeth with the peel before eating it.

"Provide you with some you're missing eh?" and he grins a green ghastly grin. He turns it on Joe when he

comes in.

"Yurk, and after the way you eat toothpaste, too." He gestures to the bottle, "I open it?"

"Yeah please." She goes on chopping up vegetables; cabbage into shreds; clove of garlic squashed; piece of green ginger skinned and sliced into fragments... "Quick stir of that lot, slather in the mayonnaise, and there's your salad, complete--"

Joe sniffs.

"Smells piny. Nice."

"Tastes piny too. Great, if you like turpentine... where'd I put the pork chops?"

"They're in the safe. I'll get them if you like, and you can continue the struggle with this cork?"

"S'okay, you're doing fine. I'll get "em."

The stars glitter and wink in the deep of night. The rain still falls soft on her skin.

It was just beginning when we came back up the beach... hell, I can't understand him. Either of them. It

doesn't make sense to be without any reproach... or are they both masochists? They don't act like they are, but

it's a bloody kind of love that has violence as a silent partner. And Sim hugs Joe as if he's never been

thrashed, and Joe just grins at me amidst his bruises. Penance? Strangeness? Her, I don't know--

Joe asks when she comes back in,

"Any champagne glasses?"

"No. Recycled peanut butter jars that do double duty, beer and water. Even champagne at a pinch."

"Sacrilege," he says in a stagy whisper. "Two or three?" in normal tones.

"There's three of us."

"Ka pai."

The pinpoint bubbles tremble and sniz at the surface. The wine is pale as the light on straw.

"Ahhh... here's to peace and solace all round."

"So say we... and may the rest of this holiday be ah, as stimulating as this first day but a little more easy and quiet."

"Hear, hear," says Kerewin in a deep hollow voice. She asks a minute later, mouthfuls later, "Are you disliking this, fella, or is that face-twisting because of the fizz?" Joe squints at his child. "He

doesn't like it. And you don't want to say, eh."

"Right. Rescue what remains, and fill his glass with mead." She reaches down a bottle from the shelf behind her. "He does like this. At least, he drinks it."

The boy blushes.

"O?" asks Joe. "Words behind words?"

"If only you knew... that's what started this whole thing off, believe it or not, but Himi can tell you if he

wants. Only if he wants."

He doesn't want. He most emphatically does not.

"Okay, past is past," says Kerewin, and refills their glasses.

The silence is profound. Joe eyes Simon, and the boy stares guardedly at the champagne bubbles in Kerewin's

glass, and Kerewin looks from one to the other, shaking her head. "You ever notice," trying to change the

subject, "how loud your swallow is when there's no other noise?"

"Mmmm. O well, to hell. How long's tea going to be?"

"About half an hour. You hungry?"

"Very, but I was wondering how you have a bath round here, and whether there was time for Himi to have

one before tea."

"Well, he could go and have a shower -- there's one rigged up at the back of the boatshed -- but he'd probably

freeze to death before he got clean. The alternative is, you heat water on the range, and fill the old tin bath.

It's in the boatshed too, but can come in here. It'll take about ten minutes for the water to heat, so you could

squeeze in a bath between now and tea."

"Right. We'll get that over with."

Joe removes the bandages Kerewin had put on without a word. For a minute, strangely like his son, he won't

meet her eyes. When he does, his eyes are full of tears. It takes Simon's slow headshake, straight stare at his

father, so full of disgust, so full of disbelief, so exaggerated Regrets now? Ah come on, to break the tension.

"Ah you," says Joe, half-laughing, half-crying.

"Yeah, ah you," Kerewin grins helplessly to the child's sly grin.

There is, after all, really nothing else to say.

That curious impersonal property sense parents display over their young children's bodies... check this,

examine that, peer here, clean there, all as though it's an extension of their own body they're handling, not

another person--

She's amused by that.

Ostensibly, she's revolving her ersatz champagne glass (very odd tit Madame de Poitier would have had to

make this one, sausage-shaped and nippleless...) and watching the bubbles extinguish

themselves. But out of the corners of her eyes, she studies the man and his child.

Most of the time, Joe sits on his haunches and oversees. Simon is way old enough to bath himself, but he

checks what the boy does, and when he needs help, helps gently, competently.

Hell, the brat is positively chewed looking. Thick with wales. He'll carry his scars for life. Yet he doesn't

seem concerned. He flinches occasionally but not away from his father's ministrations, from the touch of

water... and the weird thing is, it's Joe who sucks his breath in each time, as though it was him that was

hurting.

Bloody mixed up pair, she thinks, fashed in the head and still making it in the heart.

And now I'm embroiled. She asks, covering her moroseness,

"That hole in his left earlobe... what from?"

"Huh?" and they both turn to look at her, startled.

"During the contretemps this afternoon, I noticed Sim has a small hole in his ear. Is it from an earring?"

"God help us," Joe sounds stunned, "you saw that while hitting me?"

"Yes, and I haven't forgotten I said I'd tell you where I learned to fight."

"I'm not sure I want to know now... probably a pact and personal teaching from some taipo," he says in a soft aside to the child that she is meant to overhear. "That hole, yeah, it's from an earring. He had a heavy gold

thing in it, like a keeper, when he arrived. He wore it until early this year. He got teased too much about it at

school, so I took it out for him. He still carts it round... in your dufflebag now, isn't it?" and Simon nods.