The Bone People (48 page)

suddenly caught up in the people swarm. All the tight inner communing with self is given over to the sweep

of herd emotion. She stretches her arms, sickness forgotten,

Ae, a wide embrace! A long and broad joying!

At the bar, Joe swipes out with his elbow, catching someone in the back.

"Watch what you're doing!"

"Outa way!" he yells, ignoring the protest, "my lady troubadour is back!"

"Ah to hell!" calling back as loudly, grinning wildly.

The original guitarist is thumping out the coke-song, and all the pub is rocking with the tune.

"And snow white purple doves!" bawls Joe.

"You got that a bit wrong old son," she punches him lightly on the shoulder, still grinning. His shoulder

muscles are soft and relaxed. His smile is similarly loose.

"Nice song," he says, slurring it, "very niessh shong."

"Yeah."

It's gone eight o'clock and the after-tea drinkers are swarming everywhere.

Kerewin chattering to herself,

"So ergo, the ego ain't. It's a pervert symptom, a warp of Self. This little warp of human life we weave... what really is the

cockroach individual? A baggage of unthinking urges. A ragbag thing of no account? A freak, a mystery?

And does the warring self survive body dissolution? Heaven help us! the ancients' essay and ours to pierce

the veil are mere baby meddling, needling into a gloom beyond attempt."

She coughs on a mouthful of wine.

Joe nods.

The man on the right nods. "Go on," he says.

"Come and play darts," urges Joe, which is a suitable comment on the whole, he thinks.

"I can beat you in this state. Let's stay friends."

"Aw, I'd never live it down if you win. Play friendly."

She ponders, the clatter of the crowd growing and growing in her head.

The rainbow end. The phoenix helix. The joyful Nothing. The living abyss... what does he mean, he'd never

live it down?

"Aw bullshit. Crap. Shit. Dung. Excreeetia. Processed anything. Come on," dragging herself off the barstool,

"I'll give you a game anyway. An I mean, give."

Joe stands up. And promptly sits down on the floor.

"Upsadaisy," says the man on the left, bending down to help.

"Man, that's rude. That's crazy. Upsadaisy s'though I'se Simon's size." Joe is blinking furiously.

"Well downsadaisy then," says the bloke huffily, and lets go his arm.

Joe, on his feet again, pats the man.

"S'okay e hoa. Don' know what'm doin eh. Full right up to here," pointing. He blinks again, tears trickling from his dark eyes. "Honess beer but ah damn deceeful whishky." He sounds as though any moment he's

going to break into a full-fledged howl.

"Pissed as farts the both of them," says the rightbarside.

She thinks, Simon.

A start, a wrench, of sickness, deep in her gut. The bright wine flowing in her blood until the blood curdles...

ah treachery!

"Joe?" the word treacling out. "Ring a taxi, e mate?"

He looks at her blearily, head bobbing up and down.

"S'okay, sokay."

She clenches her glass for self-control.

Solidity of glass, metal that evaporates under your squeezing fist, until the only solidity is your painfully

ground teeth. That alone is reality. And do this under a smile, with guarded face, lest someone see and sneer.

She moves, without haste, over the miles to the toilet again. Brushes past the woman coming out, throws

open the toilet door, and throws up down the toilet, violently. Pulls the door hastily closed

Beer and whisky and wine and little baby cockles... she kneels, head on her arms, waiting for the retching to

stop.

O mother of us all, that's the first time in my life I've ever been sick through drinking... this is the gift he

would give me?

Her breath condenses on the silver bar of her rings.

Te koha... aha koa iti, he pounamu... he's probably forgotten about it, if it existed. I'd better too.

He is standing under the phone, the public phone on the wall. His head is down, eyes closed, arms folded,

slumped against the wall.

"E Joe?" breathing into his ear.

"AieeE!"

"Sorry fella, but you looked like you'd gone to sleep eh?"

"Orrr," he massages his face, his eyes, his neck.

"You all right?"

"Drunker'n hell." Squints at her. "You okay?"

"Worse for wear too--"

He stretches, groaning.

"Got us a taxi ordered... said it was for you, but I'll go to Tainuis' eh. Pick up tama. It's on the way."

"Beaudy. I'll shout you home."

His eyes fix on her.

All pupil, black, blank, but with an ice-glitter sheening them.

"Yeah." Eyelids hooding the blackness. "You do that. Shout us outa the way home."

They wait in awkward silence for the taxi to arrive. They sit in silence all the way to the Tower. The driver

whistles tunelessly under his breath the whole way.

So much for merrymaking, Holmes... you should've stayed home happily strangling the meece--

She gets out by her bridge. "Goodnight, Joe." And because that sounds baldly rude, she adds, "Thanks." He smiles, a dark bitter smiles that makes the deep lines on his face seem more like scars than ever.

"For nothing, eh?" He leans out. "Open it sometime. You can have it as a memento of those two idiots who used to bother you and waste all your valuable time." He puts the small packet in her hand. She stares at him.

His eyelids droop.

"G'night," he says, and leans away from her, into the covering dark.

Her hand tightening into a fist, she goes to the driver's window.

"That should be enough to cover the trip both ways," passing him a note. "Gee thanks," he says guilelessly.

She slams the back door of the taxi. The driver says something like Toodleloo in the background, and puts

the car into reverse. It goes, headlights cutting a slice in the night. The lights vanish. The sound dies. ...,„, .

She leans against the tower door,

"Well, that seems to be that."

A far-off cloud in the deep of space. The drunken circling stars.

"Aue, Mere-mere quite contrary," she trys to laugh.

Or is it Kere-kere quite contrary?

She closes the door with a thump! as though that would keep the phantoms of the night outside.

8

Nightfall

TRY KEEP ALITT ill Ion guron

your feee he slumps.

The world goes away some more. The night comes closer still.

Blinks in weary vagueness.

Try.

Keep eyes. Them open. See the dark come.

Can't.

Nothing.

Badbadbad.

Fucking useless Clare.

Among the chaff and evil reedy voices round that hummock in unconsciousness he can hear the one he hates.

Singing. It's too near the threshold but go back up....

Hey! shh Sant' Claro dulce and gentle

a throbbing double kick, and the plateau tilts. Deeper, it welcomes. The voices are rejoicing.

"Ah no."

He hears himself say it. For one second the bonds at his throat loosen. And he is bitterly sick.

Another kick. A raking almost harmless kick, but it tears across the skin of his chest. Across Kerewin's bruise

island. Something breaks.

He feels the air stir, Joe slip after the kick.

Crush. And the dead weight doubles his pain.

The world tilts more, and helpless he begins to slide, downwards, underground, into the box. Turning

pinioned. Sound. A scream.

Suffocating. Deep dark.

It is almost night.

That morning he watched the sun come up, head on his arms, his arms on the window sill. That morning Joe

was in a bitchy mood, saying, "Don't go round to the Tower."

That morning, Mr Drew leant across his desk, frowning, and handed him the envelope. "You'd better take

that home to your father, Simon."

He didn't go back to school after the lunch break.

He went round to Binny Daniels, hoping for money, however he can get it.

From the gateway he could see the old man was dead.

The flies were humming a strong lively song. They were impatient when he came through them, skidding

onto him, face and eyes and hair, as though they thought he was more of the feast.

Binny Daniels had slipped and fallen. He'd done that often enough.

This time, he'd fallen on top of his half g of sherry. It broke apart under him, bits tinkling down the path. But

a long freak shard had daggered in, into the old man's groin. He had bled a lot. Great clots and puddles of

blood have spilled on the concrete. The flies seethe merrily over them, jostling and shoving and wanting

room for more.

Binny Daniels had tried to hold his artery's pulse to a stop. But his fingers are narrow and fleshless and they

ache with arthritis, and the remaining strength ebbs out so fast. He still clutched at the hole though, the glass

blade's tip sticking obscenely out. Diamond bright in the afternoon sun.

He'd been sick, and the odd fly had buzzed eagerly up and landed on the halfdigested pulp, and he'd been sick

again.

He went round to the Tower anyway.

Kerewin said,

"You better not come here any more. Your father won't be dead keen on it."

She'd asked, "Where's my knife? The special one?"

She didn't believe he hadn't got it. Wise Kerewin. He'd taken it before the holiday.

The knife is Kerewin's talisman, her athelme. Made from German steel, superbly tempered. The bone handle

is riveted with three steel pins, and near the pommel is a brass-lined hole. A thong of rawhide

can be twisted through the hole and looped over the knife handle. The thong is attached to the sheath. The

knife can't fall out.

"I know I haven't lost it," Kerewin said.

There is no guard on the knife. A dimly golden crosspiece separated the curve of bone from the curving

blade.

He can see each detail clearly. In the flaring lights, it is all he can see.

The sheath is made of leather, oiled to a deep russet red. A rim of shagreen capped the sheath above the rivet

that completed the stitching. A second thong, which could be tied round the thigh, hung in a plait from a

steel-lined hole at the end of the sheath. A long time ago, Kerewin had engraved runes on the leather, filling

the gouges with white enamel, and they are still there.

When he first picked up knife and sheath, he had traced the runes and she had said,

"They're letters, but not our kind. They're called runes, cen, os, and hagall. My initials. They also have other meanings. It is a strange and providential chance that what they stand for and my initials, are the same thing."

There are more runes carved into the bone handle. An inscription, said Kerewin.

"Indeed, a dedication," she had added thoughtfully.

These runes are worn down to unreadable fineness.

It is mysterious, but he must remember it all. He is in the mystery, and needs to remember.

It is a small heavy knife, comfortable to hold, and excellently balanced.

It is good for throwing -- she had sent it thunking into the wood under the window to show him how.

It is good for gutting, skinning, slicing, chopping, ripping, and killing.

A knife with an edge keen enough for whittling, rugged enough to hack through bone. Kerewin asked, "So

where is it?"

She got very angry when he continued to deny he had it.

"I know where all my gear is, at all times. I know what's gone missing from here, and a lot has, boyo. From

paperclips to cowries and a helluva stack of smokes somewhere between. I don't give a damn about them but

I want my knife back. Get it, and I forget about all the other stuff, okay?"

What knife?

It is a peculiar feeling, sick to the stomach, with the dead Binny Daniels floating in and out of view, flies

humming over him in a black racing cloud, a peculiar feeling trying to be angry. To pretend to be angry. It is

necessary to be angry. He threw a punch at her, a neat punch sent overhand into the triangle between the

wings of her ribs.

He had forgotten how fast she could move.

It was a hard hit to get back, in the centre of his chest. He buckled to the floor and Binny Daniels went flying

into a thousand separate pieces, each loaded with a cargo of wildly buzzing flies.

When he got to his feet, she was standing just as she had finished the blow, eyes wide, one hand still balled in

a fist.

He staggered over, a hand on the numbness, the other fisted, and went to hit her again. She slid easily to one

side yelling "Simon." High and echoy and shocked. "Simon!"

He tried twice more, and each time she ducked.

So he'd turned fast as possible and before she guessed what he was going to do, kicked in the belly of her

amber guitar, lying there by the window.

The room became deathly still.

Huge pale blisters rose and spread under the varnish. The wood was smashed but the strings hung free, still

humming in the air.

Binny Daniels and the flies zoom back together.

Kerewin said, "Get out."

Her voice trembled.

Her hands trembled.

He can. see them still. Trembling to get hold of any part of him that can feel a hurt, and wreak vengeance on

him.

She puts them behind her back.

"Get out."

He stayed as long as he could, but the shaking that envelopes her is frightening.

Besides, Binny Daniels and his retinue of flies has practically come into the Tower now. He left.

There was a group of men in Binny Daniel's garden, talking in low guarded voices.

They've put a blanket over the twisted old body. "Jesus," says one, "get that kid away from here." The flies are everywhere, in high hungry clouds.

It was nearly dark.