The Bone People (36 page)

Drop it, lady.

"You said a while ago that he'd been in hospital before you picked him off the beach, and the way he reacted

indicated he'd had a tough time then. Did he react the same way when you first took him to a doctor?"

In her way, she is trying to help. Don't blow, Ngakau.

He breathes out deeply. "As soon as he realised Elizabeth Lachlan was a doctor, yes. He had met her before

at home though -- she was a good friend of Hana's -- and he liked her. He still likes her, but he manages to be

very scared of her at the same time. You ever watched somebody throw up because they're afraid?"

"Aside from this morning, no."

"He does that every time it's necessary for us to see Elizabeth. And as far as other medics are concerned, he

baulks absolutely. There's a limit to how far you can fairly push him. I can hardly thrash him because he's

frightened."

"What other medics?"

"O, Elizabeth's locum. The hospital doctors. A bloke in Hamilton, that was when we were on that holiday bus

tour... he got rundown from being travel-sick, and, I suppose, all the fighting. I thought a doctor might be

able to give him something better than Dramamine eh, but as soon as Haimona sees the bag, that's it. He

screamed himself into hysteria and that isn't exactly fun to watch or try to handle. The poor bloody medic

didn't know what he'd struck. He kept looking at me sideways as though, This his kid or has he pinched it? In

the end, he shot him full of tranquilliser, and I thought the needle would break, Himi's arm was that rigid."

Kerewin stops playing, zang in the middle of a chord.

"Needles. A lot of people are pathologically scared of them."

"I don't think so." He switches the boiling jug off. "The first time we took him to Elizabeth's didn't involve injections..." he stops, screwing his face up in perturbation, "Wait a minute, it did though. I'd forgotten that...

he had a hell of a chest cold, and Hana couldn't clear it up. So we see Liz and she prescribes some goop or

other, and he was okay till then. She suggested she give him a tetanus

booster, because he'd had a course of that in the hospital... yeah, that's right." He snaps his fingers. "All of a sudden things happened. Sim went wild but not till then. Not till he clicked to what she was preparing and

who was going to get it. Maybe that is why all the ruction." Then he shrugs, and begins making tea.

"Well?"

"Well, what does it matter? He's still going to perform if he has to visit a strange doctor."

"Not if he knows what scares him. If you know why you're scared, your fear diminishes."

"O yeah? And that's the crunch, Kerewin. Why is he scared of needles?"

"He might have a genuine phobia. That can be dealt with. There might be some other reason. We could try

and find out and help."

Joe grimaces.

"I take it you haven't tried yet, asking him questions about his past."

"Nope." A quick riff.

"You get nowhere fast. I think he tries to give you answers, but he doesn't want to remember anything. I don't

think he can remember much anyway, and it all seems to have been bad. If you keep on questioning him, he'll

weep or get sick or, as he did with Hana one time, have a go at you." He shakes his head. "Maybe it was the only way he could think of then to stop her asking questions but it upset her... Himi too. Anyway, if you

persist, he'll have nightmares the next time he sleeps, regardless of how much I dope him."

"O," says Kerewin, staring at the sleeping child. "In that case, there goes my next line of investigation." She starts picking a tune, watching her fingers now. "Because of that luverly reaction to my bastard French this

morning -- you did notice?"

He nods, his eyes cold.

"I was also going to casually sing the odd song, like this," a simple melody, "Sur Le Pont D'Avignon, and see if he reacted at all. I was also going to polish up my school-learnt French and very casually drop the odd

sentence into ordinary conversation. Just to see what happens." She stops playing abruptly. "Or did you or Hana speak French to him?"

"We did not. I don't know French. Hana couldn't speak French." His voice is clipped. For the first time, his anger is showing through.

She laughs quietly.

"E Joe, my friend, do you think I hate the poor silly little bastard?"

He doesn't mean to, but it bursts out,

"I don't know, but you weren't much bloody help a while ago, and he needed you then. He kept asking... o to

hell with it."

"Kept asking why I didn't come and play surgical assistant? Because I wouldn't have been any help at all, not

even holding him, or offering words of comfort from a distance. I would have been too busy being as sick as

he was in the boat, only continually so."

All the taunt and humour has gone from her voice. "I have an achilles heel, Joe, strange in a fighter. I can't

stand watching anything get hurt, helpfully or no. I even kill fish as soon as they're caught... I couldn't have

done anything to help you or Sim, even if I had grogged up large on that revolting port and brandy

concoction. I'm sorry it's upset you, and I'll say I'm sorry, and say why, to Simon soon as he wakes. But no

way was I going to have any part of your operation."

The guitar begins to sing again in counterpoint to her words.

"Back to what I began to say... I wouldn't put Sim on any kind of verbal rack. If he pukes merrily at one

mangled phrase, do you think I'd attempt backhanded questioning like 'Quelle appellez-vous in the dark old

days ma petite chou'?" Somehow the first bars of the Marseillais have sneaked into her playing. "I like ould Ireland, and I'll take care not to hurt him with words... it'll all be done with extreme and subtle care. The fish

is in the freezer next door," an arpeggio of harmonics, "I took some photos of it more or less entire," a series of brisk minor chords, "though I don't suppose he wants to be reminded of it, eh," zing as she brings one high note skating down a dozen frets, "e hoa?"

He is smiling broadly now.

"I dunno, Kerewin, I dunno... we couldn't have cared less if it had been anyone else, but we love you. So I

think we better kiss and make up at all opportunities," and because he can feel her drawing away from him,

even though she's made no overt move, as soon as he mentioned love, he adds quickly, "metaphorically

speaking of course, otherwise we'd be doing bloody nothing else down here."

She laughs and sets the guitar down. "Yeah, well, it must be the sea air or something."

"As for the fish, he'll love the photos. He wanted to know when we'd be going fishing again so he could catch

another one... he suggested this afternoon."

"Ah youth and resilience... if he really wants to go fishing again today, I'll get him out even if I have to swim and tow him."

Joe says drily that maybe today was enough of an introduction to the sea again, without getting that close to

it, and as it happens, the boy sleeps till dark.

He wakes seemingly relaxed and at ease with himself and the world. His thumb isn't hurting him much, and

he is made happy when Kerewin explains apologetically why she stayed at the other end of the beach and

didn't offer to help. He gloats over his fish, making three trips out to see it, lying stiff and glistening in the

freezer. He eats tea, and stays up quite a while, playing cards with Kerewin and Joe, and winning. By

cheerfully concealed cardsharping,

they deal him hand after hand of straights and flushes and aces four high, just in case his luck isn't it. He

swallows his trichloral with a smile, kisses them both goodnight, and goes happily to bed.

And wakes them both at three in the morning, starting up in the dark and screaming uncontrollably. On and

on and on.

Joe strives, cajoling and pleading in English and Maori and begging interrogatives that are beyond language,

to reach the child wherever he is.

She shivers. It is totally unlike the boy not to respond.

So that's what lies behind those throw away phrases Joe uses. He has nightmares, you know? And, Spooked

would you believe? This is the shadow to Simon's light.

The self-control, the unchild-like wit and rationality he often shows, the strange abilities he has, are paid for

in this coin.

The noise is full of abject fear, of someone driven to the point where only terror and anguish exist. Nothing

else, not even a memory of anything else, sounds as if it remains.

Worse than the screaming under the shower, o my heart... and you were going to poke happily round and pry

something interesting out of that deep? Interesting... aue.

It's too cold to stay sitting up in nakedness. She finds her shirt and jersey, and dresses in them, sits tailor-

fashion in the middle of her blankets and eiderdowns.

Something Joe has said or done has worked.

Or maybe the spasm of terror doesn't last the way it sounds, forever.

Now she can hear the sea again, a breaker line coming down the beach, the dull boom of the blowhole in the

northern reef. The hiss of retreating waves.

"Kerewin?

"Kerewin?" says Joe again. "Are you awake?"

There is, strange and wonderful, a glimmer of laughter in his voice.

"Yes," and her voice sounds deadpan, even to her ears.

He chuckles, then sighs.

"Well..." if he was going to add anything, he has decided against it. There's a rustling of blankets. "You like a bed companion for a few minutes?"

"Looks like I get one, will I or nill I," says Kerewin drily. "Switch on a torch, e Joe. I put my smokes down somewhere here, but not even my owl-eyes can spy them. O, plonk whosit down first."

She says, "Greetings, and welcome to the ineffable couch of Holmes, my pipkin. Shall we entertain you with

silence and wondrous feats

of feet, or shall our fealty be wine and song and nightingales' hearts in jars?"

She can spout high-flown nonsense for hours on end if need be, her voice resonant and controlled. She makes

no mention of the child's shuddering, or that he's wet himself, nor does she enquire why he started shrieking.

It might be midnight at the oasis and ten thousand miles away. She holds him comfortingly and pours

Holmes-type paraphrases of the Arabian Nights into his ear, until he listens helplessly to that instead of to the

drub of his heart.

Joe listens too, and grins often to himself at the frequent punning and double entendre. Kerewin has a strange

vast knowledge of pornography, and a hitherto unrevealed sense of ribaldry. He hopes it's all going over the

child's head.

By the time he has got the coals wakened into a fire, and milk heating, she has talked Simon into a state of

relaxed, albeit bemused, calm.

"You want some milk too?" He takes Simon from her, wrapping a blanket round the boy as he does.

"Yeah, might as well."

"It'll be a minute... we'll duck along to the other bach. I left the dope there, but we'll be back in two ticks."

"Okay..."

Hope we can bank on the good old NZ tradition of Don't Interfere. I know there's other people here now, and

he must have been heard by everyone in every crib along the beach. If anyone thought we were beating him

up, and decided to check--

For the first time, it comes home to her that she is aiding and abetting the concealment of a criminal offence.

Whee, outlawry and small wars made to order, mysteries and pandemonium... what the hell did I do before

the Gillayleys arrived on the scene?

And she wonders how it would be if they left.

Tide in

Joe is an uncannily good darts player.

A gentle heft, and chk! the dart is as firm in the number, the double, the bull, as though it had grown from

there. He rarely misses.

He brought the dartboard back from Hamdon, with more groceries and a renewal of their grog supply.

"Ah darts!" Kerewin said gleefully, rubbing her hands and anticipating victory. Joe had smiled.

He won every game.

"No bloody wonder I've never seen you play at the pub," she grumbles. "You've probably been banned... how do you do it? Hypnotise the feathers or magnetise the points?" , "Years of practice. Years and years of

practice."

He told her more that night.

They've established a routine now. Tea and a drink or two, get the child settled in bed, and then play chess

and swap yarns and confidences until the fire goes out.

Simon's asleep in the top bunk.

(He's been listless all day, though good-humoured enough. "It always knocks some of the stuffing out of him,

eh," Joe says in an aside to Kerewin. "It takes a couple of good nights for him to get over it. And me."

She says, Yeah, she could see about the stuffing part. Must be taken mainly from the head, she thought,

straight faced "You notice those luverly purple hollows under his eyes? Whoever does the unstuffing has a

nice aesthetic sense. Purple shadows and sea green eyes... rather decadent, but an arresting combination.")

The kettle's singing a thin metallic song on the range; the sea is heard clearly now, washing laplap husssh by

the fence; Kerewin is smoking her pipe, having won the chess as usual; the lamp is dying as the pressure falls

off, and the kerosene burns out; and Joe says into the easy night, "About my one skill, darts... I had a funny

childhood." "Oh?"

"Funny horrible."

She takes the pipe out of her mouth, and squints into the bowl. "I had a good childhood, I suppose." "You were lucky." He stares into the bright ashes. "I wonder,

I've wondered--"

Kerewin is scraping the dottle from the bowl, attentive, but not urging him to continue. Joe goes on: