The Bone People (39 page)

making puns on his second name. He's got this sweet high feeling everything is going to work out fine from

now on, and it's as heady as gorse wine.

He wrinkles his nose. High's the word, he sings in himself, and giggles in a kind of whimper, all the way back

home.

6

Ka Tata Te Po

It's been a smooth week: this is the first flaw in it.

For his cold had cleared up in a record two days;

("and two bottles of whisky," says Kerewin, pointedly.)

the weather has held fine and windless;

("Maori summer," he says. "In the middle of winter?" "When better to get a bit of brown in?") and the fishing has been superb.

Simon's made the acquaintance of barracouta, ling, trumpeter, and rig, and red cod, kelp cod, and rock cod.

He gets taught to use a scrubbing brush without getting his bandaged thumb in the way.

He cleans fillet after fillet after fillet that Kerewin slices away from rigid fish. Sometimes the world seems all

silver scales and gelatinous eyeballs and bloodcoloured seawater. And the squabbling squawling greed of

gulls.

But Kerewin boasts, "Another record year for the Holmes and Gillayley Smoked Fish Corporation!" The

racks in the smokehouse are filled with slabs of ling and couta and cod, already pickled and dried. "A

hundredweight in there if there's an ounce -- keep us going a while back in Whangaroa, e Joe?"

Ulp, thinks Joe. It's been fish for breakfast, dinner and tea, and it looks like it's going to be fish for snacks,

chowders and sandwiches for months ahead. He sighs. You could get tired of fish.

But you don't get tired of this place, he reflects, while standing outside the old bach wondering how to

approach Kerewin.

He relishes the days at sea, whether fishing or simply lazing in the weak winter sunshine. He walks the

beaches a lot: the reefs aren't alien places any more. The black rocks have their secrets, but he feels welcome

there now. And best of all, he loves the quiet evenings when the wind has dropped and the homing birds call

high above his head, mysterious and lonely. Ah, peace, peace... it is well named, this place of healing beauty

where you can, in perfect safety, sleep by day--

Only, at the moment, Kerewin is playing something brutal and discordant.

Aue. If she feels like that sound... even Himi wouldn't like that.

And his child is now passionately, wholeheartedly, openly in love with music.

"He's worse than the transistors," says Kerewin. "He's been warbling along the beach like a demented

canary... y'know a way to shut him up?" "No way! It's great." He's still not sure on all the details as to why his son has suddenly discovered he can sing -- "Well, port a beul, wordless mouth music," Kerewin the

cyclopaedic -- but he is as delighted and enthusiastic as the child with the ability. It's the only vocal advance

Simon has ever made, and besides, as Joe tells her repeatedly, "Sweet Lord, it's tuneful. He really can sing") Simon's had sound nights all this week, and there's been no trouble of any kind during the days. Ah, we never

had it so good, thinks Joe. For the child is sweet-tempered, he's happy, he's helpful, he's entertaining (and he's

healing up beautifully, from the belt-cuts on his body to his hook-bitten thumb).

He starts.

"Eh, I must've been dreaming, tama. You want your shirt and suit?"

The boy flips an affirmative, and pulls faces.

"At that?"

Yes.

"I think it's pretty horrible too," he whispers. "But you get your gear, and I'll go and talk," holding up crossed fingers.

("Where's your old jeans?" he'd asked a few days back. Kerewin said blithely that she'd chucked them out.

"They fitted where they touched, and that was hardly anywhere. Can't you get him some clothes that fit? I'm

tired of seeing the brat go round in what looks like the tailend of the ragbag." "Thanks. Can I help it if he doesn't grow like I'd planned?" But she said since it was her aesthetic sense that was offended, she'd shout the boy new clothes. In an Omaru store she says to Simon, "Open slather, boy. Choose your own gear." She likes his choice of jeans, of a denim suit, but tries to dissuade him when he opts for a florid lime and tangerine silk

shirt. "I mean, those bright flowers are okay Himi, but don't you think those blue whirlpool things are a bit

much?" "I'll shout you that," says Joe, and to Kerewin's groan, "I think I'll have one myself too." "Ah hell, you'll get mistaken for an Islander, and goodness knows what they'll think of him." "I can imagine," says Joe ruefully, looking down on his son. The child's hair reaches half-way down his back now, and with the

flowery silk, and his earring, and Kerewin's turquoise pendant he's taken to wearing -- "E, they'll think you're some kind of leftover mini-hippy," and both adults laugh. He pushes Simon's fringe out of his eyes. "You

look beautiful really, tama. Tika.")

He listens to the savage tune Kerewin is throttling her guitar into producing, and thinks, I'll talk, but will she

listen?

It's not blues, it's not rock, it's not folk or imitation electronic,

and sure as hell, it's not any Maori music he's heard before. He says, at the inner door,

"E hoa?"

Notes rear and slash at him.

"What are you playing?"

"Shark music," says Kerewin sweetly. "Dirges and laments, coronachs and requiems, all for my fellow

sharks."

He shudders.

She feels like that?

O God.

He had said to Simon when the two of them came back, "What's the matter? Have you upset her?"

The boy shook his head. I caught two fish, he said, showing off again.

"I heard. Too many times already. That wouldn't make her wild, though."

Kerewin had stalked off to the old bach looking as sour as curdled milk, and she hadn't said a word before

she went.

Simon sighed, and wrote BROTHER.

"Hers? Here?"

He took his father to the door, and pointed out where, exactly.

"And so?"

They talked, said the boy, flapping his fingers open and close.

"And that made her mad?"

Simon frowned. It hadn't seemed as though the woman was upset.

She and the stranger had looked at each other for a minute without saying anything. Then the man had said,

"Is, umm, yours?"

"No. A friend's." "You staying here?"

"For another week or so." "You're well?"

"Yes." Long pause. "Everyone?"

Dot and Celia are dead. Mag's married. Two kids. Everyone else is okay."

"Mmmm," said Kerewin. The man sighed. 'I don't suppose you're coming... ?"

"I'm not."

He sighed again. Okay then."

"Okay... Sim, get a move on home." She had turned on her heel, walking back fast to the baches.

He stayed, flashed the man a smile, watched him till he went out of sight. He had been a peculiar looking

person, a foot taller than Kerewin, with black eyes and reddish brown hair, as thick and as curling as

Kerewin's.

He had given the boy a sad smile back.

Funny, thought Simon, and ran to catch the woman up.

Who? he asked.

"A brother of mine," and she began kicking the sand, sending it flying in sprays and showers.

Simon stopped dead in his tracks.

"Didn't you know I was part of a family?"

No he didn't. Questions are sprouting from him like fungi from a stump.

"Well, I am. I have a mother and half a dozen siblings and about a thousand other relations most of whom I

only meet when I'm doing something wicked in front of them and they say, I'll tell your mother, Kerewin

Holmes. I'm your great-aunt Tilda on your father's side." She booted more sand, viciously. "Now get along

home before those fish go off."

He told the gist of this to his father, and Joe said, "Well. I dunno... I better go and see if I can smooth things over. Have a wash, put your new duds on, and I'll see if I can't talk our grim lady into having an afternoon out

somewhere."

He asks her now,

"What's wrong? What can I do?"

"I'm just playing bad music and --"

"Himi said your brother was here."

"Bloody little telltale." The tone is light.

"I asked him why you'd gone away looking mad. More or less."

"That's the reason, more or less."

"So I thought I better come along and see if you'd like to come with us to that Hamdon tavern, where I'll offer you all the drunk you can drink and all the comfort you want."

Very subtle, Ngakau. Now she'll probably jump all over the top of you.

But she leans against the bunk post, and lets the guitar rest belly down on her knees.

"You know what, my friend Gillayley? A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be

most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have

surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart."

She is very close to weeping and he has never known Kerewin to cry.

"I dunno," she adds. "Maybe they took the heart and left the

One thing about having Himi for your child: you learn to read what people meant but didn't say.

"I am Kerewin the stony and I never cry. I want to like or even love you, but I don't trust anyone now."

He waits the space of three breaths before saying, casually, kindly, "And I thought my tribe were the devout

cannibals. At least they used to check first whether the dinner still had a use for the heart

or not."

He would dearly love to hold her in his arms, as though she were Simon needing comforting. He would

dearly love to kiss her, and use the endearments he hasn't said since Hana died. But that would upset her, not

help her, and with all his heart he wants to help.

Kerewin makes a sound that could have been a gulp of laughter or a half-swallowed sob.

"Those bastards, and I mean my tribe, never worried about such small tripes or trifles--"

He laughs. He makes sure it doesn't sound like obliging laughter. But he thinks, Aue! Trust her to wriggle

away under cover of words. And if she could turn the situation into colour, she'd overwhelm me with rust and

verdigris or some such rainbow--

"Aiiieeee--" She lets her breath out noisily, sniffs once, and

stands. "It's a good idea, man... but what about half-pint? I don't know whether they'll let him in up there."

"You know Sim... if we wanted his heart in aspic, to fill a gap so to speak, he'd hand it to us on a plate."

"E you bastard! You're pinching my style!"

"No, no," he says blandly. "It's merely contagion... Himi'll stay quite happily by himself in the car, if that's the way it's got to be. We can ferry drinks out to him, and let him get merrily plonked on coke or something."

"After some of his recent performances, it'll take more than coke to set Sim on his ear."

"Or something, I said," grinning.

"Yeah, well... heigh ho for revelry and loud indecent cheer." She fits the guitar back in its case and bangs the lid down. "You fellas getting fancied up?"

"Course... we'll startle the natives eh?"

"You may. I shall be as conservative as a Tamaki pig."

He thinks, when she gets into the car ten minutes later, that it depends on what your idea of conservatism is --

sure, she's wearing a sober denim suit, and a prussian blue highnecked jersey, but it's conservative to wear six

large rings? Her left hand is studded by four silverset cabochons of greenstone, and there's a star sapphire

with three dolphins circling it deiseal in gold on her right hand.

The massive gold signet she always wears is on her right middle finger, and he privately thinks that's enough

by itself.

He just says, "You expecting a fight, eh?"

"Tcha, Gillayley. I'm a pacifist, remember?"

"I remember," he says wryly, "very well."

There's no-one but the barman in the bar.

"Gidday," he says smiling. "Nice weather we're having eh?"

"Best winter I can remember for a while," says Joe. "Can I have a jug and two sevens, and you want anything else, Kere?"

"Not at the moment."

"Two beers coming up." The barman draws the jug. "Nice to have someone in the bar this time of day. It'd make a man cry, the quiet of it normally."

"No afternoon regulars?"

"Not for half an hour or so yet."

Simon slides in round the door, and stands just inside.

"I thought," Joe begins, but the barman grins. "Yours?" he asks, thumb to Kerewin.

"Mine," says Joe. "I'll throw him out eh?"

"Nah, no way. Wanna raspberry drink, ummm?" The barman hisses to them, "Is it a boy or a girl?"

Kerewin guffaws.

"He's a boy," and Joe waits resignedly for a crack about the length of the child's hair.

"Nice kiddie," says the barman. "Got one of me own about his size. What's your name?" he asks Simon.

The boy edges closer, his eyes flicking around their faces.

"Bit shy eh?"

The barman's beaming fondly. He obviously dotes on children.

"I wouldn't call him shy," says Joe. "He can't talk though."

"O hell," the man is blushing as though he should have known about it, "jeez, I really put my foot in it, didn't I?"

"I'm sorry," he says loudly, then drops his voice to whisper level "Is he ahhh backward? He don't look it."

"A little too forward if anything," says Joe. "Come on Haimona, don't skulk."

"Looks like you're allowed in after all," Kerewin turns to the barman for confirmation.

"Yeah yeah, sure, nobody minds. Lotsa them bring their kids in on the weekend. Gives the place a real nice

feel if you know what I mean."

"Civilised drinking?"

He agrees heartily. "No fights or swearing or nothing. Even the rough blokes mind their manners... what'd

you call him, mate?"

"Haimona. Maori for Simon."