The Bone People (15 page)

"Hmm."

"Well, there was a coroner's court, to get back to the story. I testified. Piri testified. Tass Dansy testified. Half of Whangaroa testified, one way or the other, and enjoyed it very much. The pathologist said the woman was

in her late thirties, the man in his early thirties, and both had been in good health. No distinguishing marks or

scars -- most unusual, said the pathologist, and left it at that.

"The police never got a report of any people of their description missing, and they made enquiries as far

afield as Britain. The bodies and the survivor were, and are, unidentifiable. The one object that might have

helped is in two hundred fathoms of current ridden water, and nobody wants to have a go at getting to it. You

know, I often wonder about the others on board, because I think there were others. Aside from Tass seeing

maybe a couple extra, Himi used to be scared of meeting people, like he expected to see someone from the

wreck he didn't want to see."

"How much does he remember?"

"Nothing that he's telling, if he remembers anything at all. Sweet Jesus, he was too young to know how old

he was. He didn't even know his name, or if he did, he couldn't ever tell us. Hana called him Simon Peter

because he initially reacted to that name most of all. We tried lists of them, hundreds... actually, he reacted to

quite a few, some of them odd as hell. We thought they might have been people he had known or places he'd

been to or something like that. I'm pretty sure that O'Connor was the name of the people he was with, for

instance."

"People he was with? Not his parents?"

"Not according to blood groups, definitely not his parents."

"A real live mystery... what other names?"

"Well, one morning he heard something on the radio and got really agitated. Tried to drag Hana to listen to it.

What he wanted to hear was over by the time she got there, so she rang the station and they kindly sent her

the news broadcast, because that's what it was. And the item Himi went almost berserk over was about a

shark attack on a Dunedin beach."

"O, I remember that."

"Well, where did it get us? Nowhere, because he shut up tight and wouldn't say any more. Another thing used

to be Citroen cars. He had a bee in his bonnet about them for some reason. And fires... he doesn't mind them

now, but at one time he was even afraid of matches."

"A strange collection... how do his beads fit in? Are they your, were they your wife's?"

Joe shakes his head.

"The case was my wife's, that's all. Those beads were his lucky talisman for over a year. He wasn't separated

from them ever. Not in bed, not in the bath, not anywhere. Nobody got to have a good look at them for quite

a while. They were in the pocket of the woman's blouse. They were shown to him to see if he knew them. He

knew them all right. He grabbed them, kissed the ring on them, and thereafter wouldn't let them go. For over

a year, as I said. If you wanted to see them, you had to fight him for them, literally. One time, when the

police were still trying to find out who he was, a senior detective type came from Wellington to photograph

them, and try and question Himi. He would have been about four at this time, I suppose."

Again shaking his head before a vivid memory.

"And my oath! the racket! We told him we were only going to look at his precious beads, but it didn't make

an iota of difference. In the end, I grabbed his arms and pinioned his legs, and carried him out of the room,

after Hana had removed the beads. We were regarded as poison for a month after."

"He holds grudges, eh?"

"No," says Joe, very slowly, "no, he doesn't hold grudges. He was

just too frightened of us to trust us for a while, and that's after we had looked after him for over a year. By the

way, he's only sort of adopted. Because no-one can find out who he is, it couldn't ever be finalised. And

besides, my personal status had altered the last time they asked about him. Hana, and my other son, had died

by then."

"I am sorry." They are always inadequate, words... if I knew you better, or I was a warmer person, I would hongi, but--

"Yeah." He sits, looking into the flames. "Timote was ten months old, and Hana was thirty, and they died of flu. Which has always struck me as stupid and unfair. Imagine, flu!"

He spits. There are tears filling his eyes.

She doesn't say anything.

"O drink up, Kerewin. I'm boring you." He puts the bottle down. "Excuse me please, I'm going to check on Himi." He strides out of the room, banging the door shut.

O hell, she thinks, a fine end to the night. He's a right emotional boil, and so's the kid, and I suppose no

wonder the both of them.

She looked at the wine settling flat in her glass, and drank it, morosely.

Kerewin, beneath the distant luminous dust of stars: so that's what there is to know of Gillayleys in their

queer strait antiseptic haven. She stretched her arms, wide as a cross, and something small and bony snapped

in her chest.

She swore, and closed her arms in a hurry.

Snapped a wishbone without a wish... what would I wish for anyway? A return of the spirit of joy? It won't

come back by

wishing--Maybe, considering this rintin shambles of a night,

I should wish something for them... for Simon, what? A real name? No, something better. A shield to raise

against his dreams, and for the other, a relief of that need he shows so plainly, for dead wife and dead child.

But there's only one way to do that, send him to them-- Anyway to hell, I forgot to wish.

She walked on, her bare feet sinking in the sand. There was a crust on it from the past night's rain. No-one

walked on this beach much.

O chief of my children, primate of woes, come sink in the fleece of your old mother, Earth... but seriously

Holmes, there is something wrong with the brat, beyond what Joe says. For that matter, there's something

wrong with the fella as well.

Chanting into the night,

"O all the world is a little queer, except thee and me, and sometimes, I wonder about thee."

I know about me. I am the moon's sister, a tidal child stranded

on land. The sea always in my ear, a surf of eternal discontent

in my blood.

You're talking bullshit as usual.

Only what to do about the urchin's bitter dreams? Or the man's

evil shadows -- the ghosts riding on his shoulders? The miasma

of gloom that shrouded his lightning smile?

He'd come back into the room, the tears barely dried on his cheeks, cups of coffee in his hands.

"Do you know what? He's smiling in his sleep."

She got the impression that that didn't happen too often.

The coffee was strong and sobering.

"I've got to go to work tomorrow eh."

"That's today now."

"Yeah, that's the hell of it."

"I used to hate that," she said. "Having to get up at some ungodly hour to go to work. Feeling out of kilter with my body time. That's the thing I value most now, that I can get up at five, before the sun's awake if I

wish, or stay in bed till tomorrow."

He sighed. "I'd love that. But I work in a factory, work in a factory, work in a factory--"

"I know. I've worked in factories too."

"You know what I think's worst? It's not getting up."

"The monotony? Noise? The twits around you? Bosses?"

"No, being a puppet in someone else's play. Not having any say." He spread his hands and looked through the fan of fingers. "It has its compensations, I suppose. I've paid off the house, and I've got some money in the

bank. We're clothed and we eat. All the good old pakeha standbys and justifications. Though it's hard hours. I

start at seven and I never get home before five. Sometimes six. Even seven. Too long to be away from

Haimona, eh?"

"Sounds it, a bit... what does he normally do during the day then?"

"School," said Joe laconically. "He's meant to go to my cousin's afterwards. And when he goes to school, he mainly does too."

She asked hesitantly,

"If you don't have to work, all the time, why don't you take a break?"

"I'd dearly love to take a decent holiday. I've got several weeks coming to me... but I don't know. I've tried it all ways. Stayed at home, and we got in each other's hair. Sent him to Tainuis while I took off, and he fought

Piri's kids, antagonised all the adults, even Marama. And she thinks he's an angel incarnate. So then I tried I

one of those bus-tours, last Christmas. We went north. I thought

he might like seeing all the places I grew up in. Something a bit different from here."

He leaned back and lit himself another cigarette.

"Sweet Jesus, was that ever a disaster. I wound up locking him into the hotel bedroom wherever we stayed

for the night, and going down to the bar and drinking myself blind. Right way to win friends and influence

people, eh. You can imagine what we were like during the day... I won't do that again."

He bent his head.

"I forget how much I paid out for damage to hotel bedrooms, but it wasn't altogether his fault I suppose."

The fire crackled.

Kerewin said,

"You like fishing, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I could find out whether any of my ex-family are using the baches at Moerangi. That could be an idea

for a holiday you might like to consider. Not much to do except fish, but it's nice there. Quiet. Healing."

Joe nodded, looking at her quizzically.

"Ex-family?"

"O, we rowed irreparably..."

We wounded each other too deep for the rifts to be healed.

She sat down on the damp sand, stretching her legs in front of her and leaning back on her hands.

Strange.

Webs of events that grew together to become a net in life. Life was a thing that grew wild. She supposed

there was an overall pattern, a design to it.

She'd never found one.

She thought of the tools she had gathered together, and painstakingly learned to use. Future probes, Tarot and

I Ching and the wide wispfingers from the stars... all these to scry and ferret and vex the smoke thick future.

A broad general knowledge, encompassing bits of history, psychology, ethology, religious theory and

practices of many kinds. Her charts of self-knowledge. Her library. The inner thirst for information about

everything that had lived or lives on Earth that she'd kept alive long after childhood had ended.

None of them helped make sense of living.

She watched the sealight grow.

What the hell did I offer my sanctuary to him and the brat for? Though I've left myself an out... I can always

say They are there. Maybe I should just sneak away to the baches myself... they used to say,

Find the kaika road

take the kaika road,

the glimmering road of the past

into Te Ao Hou.

The moon came out of a cloud bank

Ah my shining sister, bright core of my heart, maybe this year in Moerangi I'll find a meaning to the dream?

A mist was obscuring the depth of stars. The night grew towards dawn. She got up unsteadily and stretched,

groaning against the stiffness.

Sitting on wet sand, what'd you expect numbskull? Numb bum, rather... anyway, twenty minutes' walk to

bed, and a long lying in... thank God for wine, and so easy sleep. Moerangi can rest holy and ghostly in my

dreams tonight.

And as for those teeth? She grinned.

Undoubtedly, somewhere beneath not too distant waves, deceitfully mirroring a babyhood of milk and honey,

small ivories....

She stares at the screaming painting.

The candlelight wavers.

The painting screams silently on.

She hates it.

It is intensely bitter.

O unjoy, is that all I can do? Show forth my misery?

All the fire has gone.

She is back in the haggard ash dead world.

She picks up the painting and slides it away behind her desk.

There are a lot of drawings, paintings there.

The new one can scream in company.

And what's the use of keeping them?

A pile for keening over?

"You are nothing," says Kerewin coldly. "You are nobody, and will never be anything, anyone."

And her inner voice, the snark, which comes into its own during depressions like this, says,

And you have never been anything at anytime, remember? And the next line is--

"Shut up," says Kerewin aloud to herself. "I know I am very stupid." But not so stupid as to take this.

I am worn, down to the raw nub of my soul.

Now is the time, o bitter beer, soothe my spirit;

smooth mouth of whisky, tell me lies of truth;

but better still, sweet wine, be harbinger of deep and dreamless

sleep--

"Wordplayer," she says sourly. "Mere quoter," feeling her way down the dark spiral to the livingroom circle.

And until the time Joe wakes, groaning at the shrill snarl of the alarm clock, groaning at the thought of

another dull and aching day; until the time Simon wakes, and listens, and dresses very quickly, and exits via

the window for his new retreat; until then, Kerewin drinks her way into a kind of cold and uncaring sobriety.

It's as though nothing has changed.

1

Leaps In The Dark

WHAT DO YOU SEE AT NIGHT?

"In dreams?"

He shudders and shakes his head emphatically.

"In the dark you mean? What do I see in the dark?"

No. He waves the paper, WHAT DO YOU SEE AT NIGHT?

"Okay, what do I see at night? Stars?"

No.

"The night itself, like darkness?"

No, no.

"Ah you mean something that can't be seen, like ghosts?"