The Bone People (70 page)

I tried a basso profundo. More than one word and it tickled the throat to a desperate squeak. So he discovered

I wasn't male under the denim and leather and silk.

"Censored. Never thought a woman could use a hammer like that... don't tell me yer rar carpenter by trade?"

"Nope. I paint pictures for a living and hunt snarks for a hobby," said glibly while already teetering to my feet away.

"Gawn... I'm a deepsea diver," blink blink, "yer really a painter though?"

"Yeah," receding.

"I'm really a diver."

"O really? In that case, I've got work for you mate," thinking, if he's a deepsea diver, I'm a pickled prawn.

He was.

He hunted all round the baches. He hunted me down. The next day indeed. He was sheepish and hungover

and he asked lamely,

"On the off chance yer know, did yer really have work? Or yer joking?"

I had been joking, but suddenly wasn't.

He had the slenderest of hopes that I was a generous eccentric who wanted yet another go at the "General

Grant". I destroyed that, but offered him a little sugarlolly consolation prize. He snapped it up with

astonishing haste.

"It's the challenge I love," he said, diver Finnegan of the deep. He explained morosely that there wasn't any work these days, no-one getting wrecked, no oil-rigs to bolt down, just pissy surface work he made do with,

waiting without hope for real dives.

"This 'II be a challenge all right. It's in deep and dirty water. There's a reef and rocks and currents all round.

It's probably in pieces, but I want as much as possible brought up and how much will it cost?"

Am I becoming responsible about my whims? I thought about that for all of a minute while he scribbled away

in the back of a dirty little notebook, scratched his head, hummed, and finally said,

"About $450 a day. Dunno how long it'll take either. Have to be two of us, good surface joker, and then

there's the boat etcetera etcetera."

He didn't exactly end it like that, but I accepted his quote and put

a limit of two weeks on the operation. See? Responsibility creeping into me from all angles ...he went off

happy to Whangaroa, laden with something else that had nothing to do with the stranger cruiser -- a set of

plans, and an offer for Piri Tainui to become my building and salvage-operation supervisor. (About ten

minutes after the offer was communicated to Piri, I got a telegram back. Damn thing said simply "AE" one

hundred times, and I swear it was still smoking when I took it out of the envelope.)

I had spent many nights happily drawing and redrawing those plans. I decided on a shell-shape, a regular

spiral of rooms expanding around the decapitated Tower... privacy, apartness, but all connected and all part

of the whole. When finished, it will be studio and hall and church and guesthouse, whatever I choose, but

above all else, HOME. Home in a larger sense than I've used the term before.

Because.

Because when I rang the fuzz in 'Roa to get permission to go ahead salvaging, I was enthusiastically greeted

and enthusiastically permitted. Actually Morrison said, "You don't need permission from us. We couldn't

spend thousands of the taxpayers' money finding out the identity of a couple of corpses, but if you 're that

curious, we-- "

"The corpses don't interest me a damn," and that was when I heard about all kinds of escapades and

peregrinations, and had this o so hesitant and gingerly feeler extended to me. I said I'd think about it.

Morrison, bless those dewy eyes and that fluffy copper mustache, reduced himself to plead. "Look, there's

sure to be a next time, he's made it back once already, can we let you know so I don't have to, to -- look, can I

ring you?"

Sure, I said, and gave him the number of my headquarters, the Hamdon pub.

Holy Mother! Did I say I would think about it?

It made me want to dance. It made me want to weep. It made rebuilding so bloody pointed and poignant and

REAL. Commensalism -- right on. But this had a dawn air to it, the day yet to come. And what we could do

with the day--

Learn to label with new names, for a small start.

Yesterday, the cat Li went exploring. It wauled from the alley round by the tankstand, back of the bach. I

didn't hurry to find out why. It wasn't a distressed yowl, just a come-hither call. I strolled round to her,

smoking my pipe.

"Watchagot, Li? Too big a spider?"

And I nearly choked. I nearly swallowed my whole bloody pipe. The cat was most perturbed, coiling into my

arms asking in a guttural croak why all the smoke? A screen, Li .. .Jesus in hell, who left those stones there

like that?

You see, my dear alter ego, I collected memories here in the mayday holidays. Joe collected a pounamu

chisel and large lungfuls of fresh

air. And the urchin went in mainly for stones, Maori sinkers, the whole beach worth.

And did he arrange them in six inch capitals, CLARE WAS HE?

ft occurred to me while I watched the stone words blur, that I'd never asked him what he called himself. Just,

what do they call you?

Well, I shall enquire of him discreetly and call him whatever he likes, though I would find it peculiar to fit

my tongue round son. I think I will leave that to Gillayley-senior.

Plots and plans flowering all over the show -- I've found out where he is. back of beyond, being mysterious,

carving he says, heading homewards and I'll see him at Christmas. He has a present for me, he says. He

giggled when he said it. Two can play that game: I shall have a present for him, strange and legal (by that

time). Ho ho ho!

We're nearing the end now, soul of the book. We're coming to the new beginning. This afternoon, Finnegan

rang. He said the police were all over what he'd rescued like flies on a dead sheep (his simile, not mine) and

they'll be ringing yer and bloody good he'd made it just in time eh mate?

Yes, I said, and thanks, I said, and didn't offer any bonus which wasn't quite fair, because it's apparently

damnably dirty and cold down there, a gloom of current-stirred soup... but Finnegan didn't care. He'd

triumphed over the sea again, lorded it over the deeps. "You shoulda been there, "he crowed, "you shoulda seen her break top... hull dripping crawlies and things and barnacles from here to my arse. Like she's been

down centuries not a few years. She's whole, nearly whole, though mind yer there's nothin 'yer can have

that'll be worth much--"

I should have been warned by that "yer can have--"

Piri was next.

"You heard from the inspector yet? You heard from Morrison?" and I could hear him hopping up and down

with some kind of joy. It giggles through his voice. It makes him sing the words gaily down the line. "O I

won't say nothing yet Kere, they got to let you know officialeee--"

I should have been warned by the officialeee.

But no.

I'm sitting sipping beer, stroking Li, wondering what price for each crawlie on the hull, when Dave says,

"Phone again, Kerewin me love... take it in the office eh, you 'II be able to hear yourself think in there."

"Miz Holmes?"

"Myself."

"Detective Inspector Gil Price here, Miz Holmes.. .your salvage expert will have let you know that he was

successful in recovering the hull of the launch that sank on--"

Oath!

He drones on in formal statement-sheet phraseology, and I hang there in suspense, smoothing Li beneath my

hand.

"There are several urrr," first human comment, "relics you will pare

find interesting. They have enabled us to close our file on the ah Gillayley child. The most interesting item,

or should I say items rather, we found behind the bulkheads however."

Very stagy pause.

"You found?" I oblige.

"Heroin," says the detective inspector smugly. You can hear him smack his lips fatly. "Nearly twenty pounds of pure heroin. Worth about three million dollars on the street."

More lipsmacking. Such bonuses don't often come the way of smalltown fuzz.

lam taking some time to catch my breath, because some happenings are starting to go click click click quite

nastily into place... put together needles and drug smuggling and nightmares and threats and o there's worlds

to go into yet, hells to explore--

"Wow," I say at last, coherent and apt and precise as always.

"I'm afraid you won't be able to claim this," he heheheh's discreetly and I he-he-he back with distinct

undertones of hysteria, "but we hope to be able to assist with your expenses for, just a minute constable, well, I suppose this can wait... Miz Holmes, if you've got a minute more, Constable Morrison and friend are

waiting to talk to you."

And then it was three again, the trinity regained in a microcosmic way.

Well, numero deus impure gaudet.

She flexes her fingers. She's been writing for over an hour. The cat yawns and stretches on her lap. "A few

more minutes, Li, so settle down. I want to do this properly."

Not an arbitrary end, like when I crushed the suneater to death. Something of tender ritual, an exorcism of all

the past despair. A meet end to make a fit beginning.

She picks up the pen again, thinks a minute.

So we'll make that seven new directions for my life -- Deity might as well delight in yet another odd

number... imagine this a skewed compass rose, with a tempered steel needle flexing before a magnetic wind;

rose and needle myself, and the wind? the wind, my dear sour other self, is that of chance and change.

Direction one, is recovery; two, a renewed talent; three, rebuilding; and four, tying up loose ends, making the

net whole. Direction five is endeavouring not to dodge responsibilities, for me, or a wandering cat, or

whomever. Six is related: I know I can move, can lead, can direct. Therefore, I will. No more sequestration,

no more Holmes against the world. And seven is the pivot, the point of balance for the needle of my true soul

-- I have faced Death. I have been caught in the wild weed tangles of Her hair, in the gleam of her jade eyes. I

will go when it is time -- no choice! -- but now I want life.

It's been a rare year, o paper soul, and against all the preceding bitterness and bile, this one shining scrawl...

maybe I should fold you away to pull you out again in a decade, see whether the flowering, that now seems

promised, came; see whether it was untimely frostbit, or died without fruit, because you chart the real deeps

of me. No: I hold you a pelorus, a flexing mirror, strange quarters for the wind of God.

I follow the Chinese: on the funeral pyre of our dead selves, I place a paper replica of what is real. Ghost,

follow the other ghosts -- haere, haere, haere ki te po! Go easy to the Great Lady of the Night, and if we ever

meet in the dimension where dreams are real, I shall embrace you and we shall laugh, at last.

She caps the pen, closes the book softly. Packs it gently away in the wooden chest. Leans over and places it

in the heart of the fire, and closes the range door upon it. The blind cat leaps from her lap, and dances

highpawed on lean back legs.

"Yeah, cat Li, it's time to go."

Time to hit the high road.

Time to go home.

EPILOGUE

Moon water Picking

Ice crystal haloes round the stars, the crash of waves down on the beach, sweet-scented air breathed in with

the wine on my breath, breath.

It doesn't really matter, any of it... and on the instant, it does matter, and I hesitate to upset the moonshadow

of a stone.

Sudden flare and splash of light. The crack of fireworks brazening through the night. It's still dark, but the

day is drawing near.

Shaking her head over the din,

As well we're an cutaway place... someone's playing that accordion again, and there goes a guitar. They're

never all going to go to sleep at the same time. Someone always wakes up. Wakes everyone else up. The

reedy song winds plaintively above the throb of the guitars.

It's music and singing and talk talk talk... I come out into the dying night air and a bunch of rockets charge

moonwards. Shrieks and whoops and hollering as another snail-hunting party seeks its quarry in the dew-wet

grass. "Getit! Yeehai! EEEEK!"... maybe an especially speedy fella? The ones I saw inside were looking

distinctly puzzled by all the free greenery.

Teach Luce to ask for a real French salad--We play on, apes

and larrikins all.

Walking down the sinew of track stretched white and tight through the muscle of the hill. Seaward, to that

finger of land where the mauri waits, and spins its magic in deep silence.

He wanders through the brand-new rooms, through knots of happy people, chattering people, singing-tired

and weeping-drunk people. Couples of all kinds.

Two wrinkled old bodies, Kerewin's great great aunts, cossetted together, full of mothmirth and dry seedy

shadows of laughter. Knocking each other's ribs with sharp elbows, plucking at one another with bony

fingers, flickering from flame of dirty memory to flame of dirty joke. "So I sol' mesel' soul an' arse'ol, an'

never did regret it," husk husk croak croak tee hee hee.

He inclines his head to them.

Two people, pulsing by themselves in a darkish corner.

He steps over them.

Two more, his own relations, Wherahiko and Marama, arms about each other, keeping themselves warm. Pile

of grandchildren sprawled round asleep, young arms at angles and curve of sleeping cheek... but no bright

head here. Search on... his eyes do, while he stands.