The Bone People (29 page)

Sheesh, she says, and pushes him down into the covers, plonking all the rest of the bedding on top of him.

She swings her legs over the side and pulls down her clothes from the top bunk.

He stares at her.

He's never seen Kerewin naked before. And she's pale, cream, except for her arms and feet, and face and

neck. They're brown and freckled. She has no scars, not even the pale kind Joe has curving up his left side, no

marks at all except for the strange ones across her throat, but hair grows thickly and oddly under her arms and

at her crotch. Her breasts are small and pointed, and hang on her chest. He's seen breasts before -- Piri's Lynn

fed Timote for over a year, but hers were fat and brown. Kerewin's are that cream colour, different at the

ends.

He suddenly realises, for the first time in his life, that his skin is the same pale shade, except for the scarred

places.

"Berloody oath, another freezing day," she shivers, and the things round her neck, long piece of greenstone and small silver cross and the medal that is covered by a clear blueish stone, clink and jingle together.

She pulls on her silk shirt and jersey, stands up, drawing on her pants and jeans very quickly, slides back onto

the bunk muttering, "Where the hell are my socks? Move over chief, I left them down the bottom there

somewhere."

He waves a hand airily, I'll get them.

He shuffles up with them, moored by blankets, crawls onto Kerewin's lap and holds onto one wrist so that she

can't easily chuck him off.

"Which is being awkward, you."

She slips on her socks onehanded, and looks at him. "You want a cuddle? Or you just being a pest?"

You got the idea, he smiles.

Why can't it always be like this, when they like me? Why can't it be good all mornings?

She cups her hands over the boy's shoulders.

"Better?" she asks in a whisper.

He raises his eyebrows and purses his lips.

"As read... I'll see if I can't think of something that works quickly. Get down, Sim."

She reaches up to the other bunk and gathers his sandals.

"Put 'em on," she's whispering still. "Or, as my Nana used to say, you'll get a cold in the kidneys."

She can clean out the grate, raking the live coals forward out of their dun coating of ash, and set a fire, very

quickly, very quietly.

They're eating porridge twenty minutes later, and Joe still hasn't stirred.

He woke suddenly, when the boy dropped the plate he was drying, and he woke in a foul mood.

He sat up so quickly he banged his head against the bunk above, and that didn't improve his temper.

"What'd you do? Come here!"

"S'okay, Joe. He dropped a plate. Accidentally." You hear the last word?

Joe muttered something unintelligible, clasping his head in his hands.

"What's that?"

"I said, Jesus what a morning."

"Oh. In that case I won't ask you the traditional question always asked of newcomers to Moerangi."

"Unhh?"

"That's, Did you have a good sleep? The answer's invariably Yes."

"Unhh."

"You knock yourself hard then, Joe?"

"Yes," he says shortly.

Kerewin looks at Simon and rolls her eyes.

"Well, we're just going along to the other bach. Have a happy getting-up. That's if you're getting up... it's ten after ten now."

He grunts.

A place to sleep by day?

Ta hell.

Only because you couldn't get a decent sleep at night.

It's a sour day.

His mouth tastes sour.

His eyeballs feel gritty.

His joints ache, he's got cramp in one shoulder, and chilled kidneys it feels like.

Half the bedclothes are on the floor.

The air is bitterly cold, and it's blowing a gale outside.

"Inviting. Deelightful. Just the place for a holiday," he snarls to himself. "O this is gonna be a fun fun time."

He crawls awkwardly out of the bunk, bruising his thighs on the concealed board edges, and knocking his

head again.

He puts on as many clothes as possible, jersey and cardigan and thick woollen shirt, his woollen jeans. Feet

and hands are stiff with cold, and he squats in front of the range, trying to warm them up.

"Jesus, I need a pee."

He huddles under further layers of clothes, jacket and parka and socks and boots, and braves the wind. And

rain, it turns out. The toilet's got a leak in it, situated right over the tin, which is okay for the toilet but

inconvenient for anyone doing their business. Wind leaks through the door, round his ears, up the can, and by

the time he's finished he knows he's never been this achingly cold in his life.

"Nah, three cards beats two pair, Sim."

Followed quickly by, "Why the hell didn't you say they were two pairs of eights? You barsstard."

Clinks as a pile of cents is trundled away, presumably to Simon's side.

"No."

"Okay, yes then."

"Ask yourself, I'm not."

"Uh uh, my fine feathered little friend, that will most emphatically take those."

Crickle crickle slip slip slip.

"Hell hell hell," followed by soft giggling from the boy.

"What're you laughing for?"

Silence.

"O, sheeit."

Then, among the card noises, four "No's" from Kerewin, each one more annoyed than the last.

This is going to be one hell of a holiday, he thinks. I've got a suspicion today is going to live up to its

morning.

He avoids looking at either of them when he turns around and sits at the table engrossed in his selection.

From the snatches of talk that filter to him he gathers that the poker finished early, that Simon doesn't want to

do anything thank you, and that Kerewin'll be damned if she'll have him hanging round in her hair.

He grins to himself, I give this venture two days and then we'll go home, and sinks deeper into reading. He

had no idea that the chambered nautilus was such a fascinating creature, or that a mind could be as gently and

whimsically dirty as Leunig's.

If there was any kind of rift between the woman and the child, it hasn't lasted long. They sit on one side of the

table, eating lunch and swapping small talk, leaving him stranded by himself on the other.

It isn't that they're excluding him deliberately from the conversation. He has cut himself off, and he isn't

invited, by look or remark, to rejoin them.

He attempts to, once.

"My mouth tastes like it's full of sawdust."

"Meaning the food is yuk?"

"No, no," he says hastily. "I didn't take the time to wash properly this morning. The water was a bit cold eh, and I've still got this thin North Island blood."

"You could have put more coal on the range and heated the water. Which reminds me, boyo. Get the porridge

pot when you've finished your dinner, and we'll do all the dishes at once."

So much for trying, he thinks, and goes back to his reading.

And when he's finished the heap he brought across, he stares out the window.

The tide is nearly full out. The wind still blows strongly. Waves sweep up the beach, rise and crest, and are

flattened to seaward flying spray. But over by that island -- what did she call it? Makihea of something --

where the waves are sheltered from the offshore wind, they are breaking in great showers of white spume.

Gulls are making light of the wind, sailing in beautiful easy spirals away to the south. Other birds are beating

in an ungainly way against it, getting nowhere fast.

"Kawau pateketeke? Kawau paka? Kawau tuawhenua? Kawau

tui?"

"You're nearly right," Kerewin is back on the floor, playing poker again. "Stewart Island shags, and I don't know the Maori for that... kawau rakiura, perhaps? At least, it's most likely to be them. They live and nest on

the island."

"Stewart Island? This far north?"

"O, I've seen them further north than this. Don't ask me how or why they came here though."

"Poor fellas probably got blown here by the wind." "Unusual wind. The prevailing bree-eze is a northerly of some variety or the other."

"Bree-eze being a Holmes-type understatement?"

"Well, the one flaw with this place, aside from the trippers, the Japanese fisheries offshore, and the general

pollution, is the ahh, rather regular wind we get."

"O," says Joe, forlornly.

"But don't let it worry you, man" saying it more kindly than she's said anything today, "Why, I've stayed as little as a month here, and had two whole windless days."

An opening. An invitation.

And anyway, what the hell is dignity good for? Keeping your nose high and your backbone stiff?

"Well, that doesn't sound as bad as I thought... you got a nice little pile of calcium around somewhere?"

"I could get you some if you really want it." Kerewin, watching him get up, sounds cautious.

"I thought I'd grow a streamlined sort of shell, so I could bask in comfort on the sand."

"O splendid idea... though did you notice those things whirling past the window a moment ago?"

"Yeah, the leaves?"

"No, they were limpets...."

What's funny, asks Simon, what're you laughing for?

Joe squats beside him, and ruffles his fringe.

"The demise of gloom, fella, that's what."

In the late afternoon, the wind drops. One moment, the bach is being buffeted and the iron on the roof is

singing, and the next, everything is quite still. The sea sounds very loud.

Kerewin stands. "Anyone coming for a walk? I'm clogged to here," waist level apparently, "with smoke, and the last molecule of oxygen escaped, screaming for all its dead siblings, two seconds ago." "Yeah, it is that bit stuffy... where we going?" "Where'd you like? We can go that way, and see the north reef. Or we can go that way, and see the south reef. Or of course we could go inland, and see a resentful steer or two."

"North, make it north... I figure every step I take south brings me that much closer to Antarctica."

"North it is then. That way I won't be able to show you where you were last night, me sleight-fingered knave,

but then at the moment I don't want to either." The boy grimaces.

"Y'know," she puts on her windbreaker, "I thought I was doing your child a kindness. I gave him 20 cents in cent pieces, and more or less the rudiments of poker. So far, he's won nearly three dollars off me, and had the

gall to repay the original loan. The luck of ould Ireland indeed." Simon isn't amused. He scowls.

Inside he shivers. Here we go--

Joe says, "Really?" but doesn't sound sympathetic. "What do you mean, you don't want to go?" he asks his son. "Go get your jacket on, and back here at the double." The boy goes stamping out, slamming the door

behind him. "Uh ah," says Joe, moving towards the door. "Uh uh," she says, putting her hand against it.

"Leave him be, eh." She removes her hand.

One more step man, and down you'll go.

"If he really doesn't want to go for a walk, why make him? A drag for you, not to mention me, and a drag for

Simon P." "Fair enough," he says after a moment, "fair enough." They wait outside the bach for the boy. And they wait. "Ah to hell, he's probably holed up under the bunks or something." "Well, we'll leave him under them... does he really do that?" "On occasion," says the man sourly. "Goes to earth rather than does what he's told."

"Leave him a note saying where we've gone, eh," after another minute has passed. "That wind won't stand still for hours."

"The fifth commandment," Joe spaces his words to match time with his writing, "with Haimona," the note seems studded with exclamation marks, "is, Honour thyself and thyself, and don't give

a damn about longevity, the land, or the Lord. There, and much sweat may it give him."

"What's on it?"

He's folded it already, and slipped it into the doorcrack.

"No threats... e Himi! Haere mai!"

He sang it out again, as they were moving down the beach.

"Silence and nothing moved... let the little termite stay happy in his hole, Joe. Forget him for a while."

"Yeah." He shook his shoulders and breathed out hard. "I just worry, that's all."

"Too much," she says blithely, "and watch your footing here." She began to run nimbly over the rocks.

Watch my footing, thinks Joe in the night. Watch my footing. He murmurs it aloud, into his sleeping son's

ear.

Aue, what a day.

But it's over now.

And with luck and no more troubles, we're out of the woods, sighing.

He whispers Ouch, for himself.

Kerewin the quick, she of the very fast very hard foot, sleeps soundlessly as always.

"Christ alive," he says in soft wonder, "Christ alive, she's a strange lady. What did she say? The world's a fiery wayward place, why has it eaten me?" I

Crippled with bellyache, her knees dug deep in the sand, Kerewin had gone whiter than anyone he had ever

seen.

"I burn to be out of it, and'll burn out of it," she'd groaned in a kind of snarl, and had refused their hands.

He stretches gingerly, easing his bruised body to a new angle without waking the child at his side.

But she'll be okay, little peace-and-war maker, as you'll be okay now. As I will. As we all will be together.

Sweet dreams, he tells himself, and is still smiling when he sleeps.

Kerewin has dreams of teeth.

Beginning with a replay of the time, the last time she'd been at Moerangi, when after a week of agony, she'd

looked at the inside of her mouth in the mirror.

Jaw abscess

Swollen gums, with pus-extended ridges.

Ah God, make it go away.

There was a matter outlet, not yet breached, a gumboil where some of the infection had gathered.

It was the constancy of the ache that was unbearable.

The dream had dwelt on the moment when she had taken a razor-blade and attempted, using the mirror as a