The Bone People (5 page)

She leans back against the wall, and knocks the edge of the portrait.

"That is an enlargement of a painting by Fujiware Takanobu. He was a genius, who could capture a soul in

limning and pigment, and do this in such an ascetically elegant way that the heart stands still to see it... one

time, I could do something like that. Not any more, o child, not any more--"

She doesn't look at the boy.

"I am in limbo, and in limbo there are no races, no prizes, no changes, no chances. There are merely degrees

of endurance, and endurance never was my strong point." She adds a moment later, casually conversational,

"I'm just gonna stick on some socks and shoes before my toes drop off. Then I think I'll light some lamps.

You think it's getting too dark?"

O god if there is one, running up the spiral to the bedroom, careless of the cold -and the hard knock of the

stone steps against her feet, get rid of that child. I need my peace. I need to get drunk.

She longs for the Gillayley father to arrive and carry off his offspring, right now. A loud and boisterous

Viking type she'd bet, from the child's colouring. Yer rowdy Aryan barbarian, face like a broken crag, tall as

a door, and thick all the way through.

She slips on thin leather kaibabs over woollen socks, and when the numbness of her feet has warmed to prick

and needle sensations, walks silently back down the stairs.

The child is now sitting in front of the portrait of Minamoto-no-Yoritomo, and he's looking at it fixedly. He

doesn't shift as she softfoots it into the room.

»

Ah to hell, I'll start drinking anyway.

"Crystal goblets, earthen cups," meandering over to the grog cupboard as she chants, "juice of grape, or squshed hop?"

She settles on stout, opening a couple of bottles with her knife, flicking the tops into the sink. Bugger the

dishes, they'll be there tomorrow. She pours a schooner full, and settles back on the sheepskins.

(Momentarily, she sees the chain at the freezing works where fresh-killed sheep carmine-throated, are

grotesquely hooded by their own skins. The skins slip along the floor as the white carcasses jerk and sway

above them on the moving hooks... what deaths to occasion your comforts?)

and takes a deep swallow of stout.

It goes down, bitter as bile.

"Have to stoke the fire soon." It has settled into a red bed of embers.

"Light the lamps soon too."

There's a scratching noise, lighter than a mouse-scrabble but still heard over the rain. The boy is writing

again.

She turns round a bit, nonchalantly, so she can see the child if she wants to.

"Becomes a ritual, eh? Build wood and coal into a fire. Care for the wick in the lamp and grow a light from

kerosene."

The urchin has sidled crabwise closer. He's waiting to see whether she is going to notice him.

Kerewin turns round a bit more.

"You brought me a message?"

'I'll TONIGHT PERHAPS. 'I'll JOE COMES PERHAPS. CAN I HAVE A DRINK PERHAPS. SP

Wonder what the latest word we've learned is?

She grins inwardly but says, "Of stout?" astonished and puritan and also dodging the issue.

The boy nods, looking surprised at her tone of voice.

"Well, okay then I suppose."

She finishes her glassful with a hurried swallow and pours him a drink.

A twelve ounce schooner should stop you, my lad, and again the inward grin, this time mean with

anticipation.

Over he comes, hitching along the floor, crawling actually like he's half his age, with a smile in place that

lacks even a vestige

of embarrassment. The bandage shows startlingly white under the frayed jeans cuff. Good as your remaining

teeth boyo. Thin-fingered hands round the glass -- so you still need two for drinking a full one, eh? Split chin

upwards, and the dark grog practically seen outside your skinny throat... what's the mark? Pink and satin-

shiney, like a scar.

She fingers the two scar-like lines that run in parallel across her own throat, while staring in awe as the child

keeps on swallowing and swallowing, downing the drink without needing a breath it seems.

He lowers the glass at last and grins hugely.

"Something tells me," says Kerewin, fascinated, "that that is not your first drink. I think I better get another glass for me, and you can keep that for your own." She fetches a mug and another two bottles from the

cupboard.

"Well," raising the mug in a loose salute, "kia ora koe, and we might as well have a session."

Glass to glass, chink.

The boy chokes a little.

Kerewin staring at air rising in the black depth of her drink:

"Why do you want to stay tonight? Aside from the fact it's raining?"

Gillayley: shrug.

"Write it down dammit, if you can't think of any other way to say it. A shrug tells me nothing."

He looks slyly sideways, away from her eyes.

"Well?"

Gillayley: sigh. Followed by a hiccough.

He hears the sound with an expression of pained surprise.

She collars the last of the bottles of stout, and watches him from under her lids.

I'll be hellishing popular if I send it home drunk.

"I'll put it another way then... why don't you want to stay with the Tainuis, whoever they are, for the night?"

SHE PETS ME AND CRY FOR JOE SP

"You needn't sign these damn things. I can see who they come from... pets you? Who?

MARAMA. SHE KISS ME AND she's leaning, watching over his shoulder now,

"I know, cry for Joe... ah sheeit, archetypical small boy distaste! I love it, I love! Ah beautiful!"

Hey easy, a couple of bottles of stout shouldn't cause that much mirth... but look at his face, delicious!

Careful, now he's looking at you like you were kind of nutty--

She sobers. She says straightfaced,

"I'm sorry, but that just seemed funny... now I understand, and sympathise a little. I don't like people kissing and fussing over me either. Can you tell me when Joe -- uh, he's your father?"

Groggy nods.

"When Joe is likely to be home?"

Obligingly, the urchin writes a clear answer.

NO. SP

The initialling is obviously a reflex.

"Well, unless your father arrives first, you can stay here until the Tainuis ring. Okay?"

His hand comes out, pauses, and then as if reaching over a barrier, takes her hand. How touching, says

Kerewin's innermost being, the Snark, squirming through a gamut of connotations, that and the guileless

Gillayley smile. Too much.

"Agreed then. Sooo, it's about lamplighting time, not to mention fire-resuscitation. You want to help? You

can uh, hold things," removing her hand but gently.

As she collects kerosene and lamps, putting much into the child's ready arms, she considers two things.

Is it better the devil you don't know?

Or simply, variety is the spice of life?

And she wants to know more and more, the halloween pumpkin grin renewing the query every minute, how

the brat comes to lack teeth on one whole side of his jaw.

The lamps are hung, hissing quietly: she gets busy on the fire, piling logs and heaping coal on top. The coal

dust flares and crackles, and all the shadows in the room retreat to the corners.

For the first time she can see the child clearly. Slender and prominently boned, his smallness making him

seem frail. A sallowness about his face, a waxen depth that accentuates the bruise marks of tiredness under

his eyes, and the narrowness of his face.

Hey where you been? Watch you been doin?

For, as he stands there waiting on her next move or gesture so he may make his reciprocal offering, all the

vivacity has gone out of him.

My god, he really is desperately tired.

Well, the long walk -- if he walked here.

The tension of being caught, and wondering what I would do.

The drink of course.

And maybe all this is like a fine drawn duel to him, words

against his miming.

"You're tired, Simon?"

He examines the question, screwing his head into his shoulders, and nodding once.

Yes, more than tired.

"Well, why not go to bed until someone calls?"

He even starts to droop wearily, but he frowns. Yes, again, but it's given reluctantly.

"My bedroom's upstairs. You can use it for a while. This way," and she vanishes up the dark spiral.

She don't like me around much. I'm staying though.

He stands still a minute, gathering his strength for the long walk up the stairs.

A spiral staircase can be surprising, because you can't see more than a step and a half in front. Kerewin,

coming rapidly back down to find out anything that may have happened, nearly knocks the child all his slow

progress back.

"Whoops and hie," grasping the handrail to halt herself. "I wondered where you'd got to."

He looks to his foot, and up again, apologetically.

"Well, keep going, the trek'll soon be over." She edges carefully past him. "It's colder up here than I thought.

I'm going down to get you a hottie."

This godzone babytalk. Hottie lolly cardie nappy, crappy the lot of it, she snarls to herself. But what to say

that the kid'd recognise? I'm gonna get you a bedheating hotwater bottle?

She's back with it as the boy arrives at the doorway.

"Go in, then. It's not as bad as it looks."

Actually, she is proud of this room. The bed and roofbeams are hand-adzed totara, and the floor is covered

with palecream sheepskins. There is a double-windowed oriel, and the glass is a shallow summer sea,

aquamarine and pale beryl green. A lot of leaded panes like jewels. One could sit on the broad sill and absorb

sun and sea alone.

"Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas," she quotes blandly, seeing his star? fixed on the window. "I'd open them and show you a forlorn fairy or something except you'd probably die of

pneumonia soon after."

Silence. "Well," she says, "here's the hotwater bottle, there's the bed. Get under the eiderdown.on top, you should be okay. The toilet is through that door," pointing, "you want anything else?"

The child shakes his head numbly.

It hasn't taken long for the rot to set in. Suggest I know he's tired, and he's ready on the instant to flake.

"Right. If you do, come downstairs and ask; otherwise, I'll come up and wake you round seven. Sweet dreams

meantime," and she walks slowly out the door but speeds down the stairs.

"Ahhh," stretching long and hard, "peace and tranquillity."

Freedom from overseeing eyes.

It is now early evening, dark sky outside studded with rain-washed stars. The rain has eased to a thin drizzle.

She drinks another bottle of stout, but her hands become restless. She gets down her golden guitar, and plays

low languorous chords, watching the night grow deeper all the while.

But she keeps on listening with one ear for any sound from upstairs.

Blast the brat, he's beginning to haunt me.

An enemy inside my broch... a burglar ensconced here.

and it suddenly occurs to her that the child may really have been stealing and has been playing for time ever

since.

God o Hell, my jade.

Ahh, come on!

He's not old enough to know greenstone from greywacke.

But what say someone else has heard about it, some local brand of Fagin, and--

She lays down the guitar and pads swiftly upstairs.

Past her bedroom. Listen. Not a sound.

Into the library.

There's a drawing light on the desk. She takes it to the full extent of its cord, and shines the light onto the

chest. She opens the lid, her heart thudding. On trays in the pale pool of light, a hundred smooth and

curvilinear shapes.

Two meres, patu pounamu, both old and named, still deadly.

Many stylised hook pendants, her matau.

Kuru, and kapeu, and kurupapa, straight and curved neck

pendants.

An amulet, a marakihau; and a spiral pendant, the koropepe.

A dozen chisels. Four fine adzes.

Several her tiki, one especial -- so old that the flax cord of

previous owners had worn through the hard stone, and the

suspension hole had had to be rebored in times before the Pakeha

ships came.

A very strange pendant she had picked up long ago on Moerangi

beach. As always her hand goes to it, stroking it, I am here,

I am here.

Jade of my heart, your names a litany of praise; kahurangi;

kawakawa; raukaraka; tangiwai; auhunga, inanga, kahotea;

totoweka and ahuahunga

It's all there.

She derides herself, You idiot, did you really think that, that scarecrow would pinch your precious hoard? Ea,

you ought to give the berloody lot away....

She says softly,

"It's becoming too precious. Too important. To care for anything deeply is to invite disaster."

She picks up the curious pendant one last time, to fondle and admire before she goes downstairs.

At seven precisely the radiophone buzzes. The operator answers her "Gidday, and Hooray" with "Miz

Holmes, there's been some kind of holdup."

"O," a sinking premonitory feeling in her stomach.

"Yeah, I been doing some quiet checking up. The Tainuis left for over the hill early this morning by all

accounts, and Simon Gillayley was supposed to be with them."

"Bloody hell," says Kerewin, "but his father? His mother? Anyone?"

"Lessee, Hana died two, maybe three years ago. If Joe's not around, the Tainuis usually are."

"And Joe isn't around?"

A long pause.

"No," he says, and she can hear him chewing his lips. "Ah, has there been any trouble?"

"No, I fed him, he sat round, and then went off to bed at my suggestion. He seemed helluva tired. I assume