The Bone People (20 page)

She washed the boy's face with witch-hazel and warm water, and gave him a mug of hot milk that had honey

and some of her manuka brew in it. Then she carried him up the spiral and deposited him on her bed.

It was after she'd collected her sleepingbag that she remembered the limp.

"What's the matter with your legs?"

OK, say his fingers, they're okay.

"Why're you limping then?"

He grimaces. He kicks at the air, a short distance only. But they're OK, the fingers assure her.

"Who kicked you?"

No response.

She shakes her head doubtfully.

"Your legs, boyo... you want some help for them?"

No. He looks at the floor, and then up at her, suddenly smiling. OK, he gestures again, firmly.

But it looked as though he had needed that moment to gather his strength to smile.

"Okay, Simon pake..." and Joe's word for him is right. The brat is as stubborn as they come, when he wants to be.

"You know how to turn that lamp off?"

Yes.

He's leaning against the bed now. She asks again from the doorway, "Who did it, Sim?" His face twists, but he says nothing. She exhales noisily. "So be it. Sleep well, sweet dreams."

But her impatience shows through her voice and gives the words a sardonic ring.

Joe arrived before seven the next morning, creeping up the stairs in the near dark and whistling her awake.

He clucked over his child's bruised face, over the obvious pain he showed walking, and -- strangely to

Kerewin's eyes -- held Simon's hands a long moment, and said something very softly and very quickly, so she

couldn't catch the words.

He refused coffee or breakfast for either of them.

"I've got an appointment, out of surgery, so I'll go along now," he said. "We'll see you soon."

She didn't see either of them for over a week.

"What else was there?"

She stands on the footpath, tapping the stick thoughtfully, carefully, against her teeth.

Of course, tobacco. What you came to town originally for. Sweet hell, who else could blunder through life

like this but me?

A car slams on its brakes, stopping with a squeal a couple of yards before her. The driver curses and leans on

his horn. Up you, thinks Kerewin, and keeps on strolling across the road.

In the sweet tobacco-scented gloom of the little shop, she says to Emmersen behind the counter,

'You ever noticed how the only time traffic moves in this one-horse town is when you go to cross the street? I

think they sit there, waiting for hapless pedestrians."

Emmersen grins obligingly. He'd seen the near-accident from the window. He doesn't say what he thinks.

Kerewin is too good a customer.

I managed to get you some more of that Dutch aromatic," he says.

"Goodoh. I'll have it. Any Sobranies?"

His eyes flick to the side, "Gidday!" he says, and then he smiles back at her, "I got some, yes."

A pair of thin hands wind themselves round the middle of the stick at her side.

"Well, I never, look who's here--"

Simon P, with a smile all over his face and his eyes green blue as a hot summer sea.

Me! he mouths, and grins more broadly still.

"Yeah, who else?" she laughs and reaches a hand to him.

"Well, possibly me?"

Joe is standing in the shop doorway, with a grin as broad as his son's.

"Berloody oath! I thought you two had gone walkabout or something--"

Ah dammit, slow down heart... ridiculous, ridiculous, you who love your own company, you should be

feeling dour not spasming with delight.

"Tena koe," he adds, and comes to her, and places his hands on her shoulders, and hongis quickly. "If we'd known you were going to be glad to see us, we would have come much sooner--"

She shakes Simon's hand, "It's good to see you both again," peering hard at the boy, "and you're looking remarkably good."

"In all senses of the word," says Joe cheerfully. "Has it ever been a quiet week... better get him squashed like that more often eh?" He laughs and scuffles his hand through the boy's hair.

She feels her stomach muscles tense, and the joy leaves her.

"I think not," she says coolly.

But the child is swapping bright smiles with his da: they clearly think the idea funny.

Well, my soul, it takes all sorts to make a world--

She shrugs lightly, and takes her hand from Simon's hold.

"The Sobranies?" she suggests to Emmersen. He is standing smirking at them.

"O yeah, right away... I got a couple of cartons of the black ones, OK?"

"Uh huh. Cigarillos?"

"Something new and special you may care to try... I'll just get 'em from the back."

He nods to Joe, smiles at Simon, and vanishes.

"Ahh," sighs Joe, positioning himself, back to the counter and resting on his elbows.

"Dunno how much you missed us, but we missed you a lot, truly," his dark eyes are serious. "And it was really because we thought you might like a rest from us that we didn't bother you."

"Considerate... I did wonder where you'd got to, briefly."

The boy is climbing his fingers up the whorls carved in the stick: his face is nearly clear of bruising. Only

yellowing contusions round his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth. And he's moving easily-- one way, she

thinks, children have it all over adults. Fast clean healing.

She asks, "Did you find out who was responsible?"

Joe touches a finger to his lips, as Emmersen comes in. "Muri iho, e hoa."

"Have to learn to speak that, one of these days," Emmersen says. "Maybe I'm a bit old to learn though... how about these?"

"Never seen them before. Were they recommended or something?"

Emmersen opens a box.

"Try one," he offers. "The sales bloke reckoned they were strictly for connoisseurs, and I figured you were a connoisseur."

Joe giggles. "Knows how to sell, eh?"

"At connoisseur prices too, I'll bet." She sniffs the slim cigar and rolls it gently between her fingers. Tightly rolled leaf, not too dry. She lights it.

Everyone's looking at her, brown eyes, seagreen, pale-blue: all expectant, waiting for her decision. She keeps

them waiting for three draws.

Then she says, "Weelll..." and passes it to Joe.

"O thanks..." He breathes out a fine plume of smoke. "Hmmm..." He hands it back.

Emmersen is twitching with ill-concealed suspense. He smiles anxiously, and she smiles blandly back.

"Haimona?"

She passes him down the cigarillo and the boy chuckles.

He leans against her, holding the smoke in front of him. He makes a performance of inhaling a mouthful,

tasting it, and expelling the smoke in a thin jet.

Joe puts his hand over his mouth.

Emmersen's eyes are bulging, and he's gone a strange raspberry colour.

Kerewin asks the child, "You'd buy it, or you wouldn't?"

Emmersen chokes.

Simon hands it back to her. He scratches his head, holds his chin, darts a green glance at Emmersen,

obviously wonders whether or no, and finally shakes his head.

Emmersen has gone redder still.

"O bad luck," says Kerewin. "Joe?"

I like it actually. Bouquet a bit tart, and it hasn't got the bold maturity of your Cuban '65, and and..." he's starting to break up. for goodness' sake, put the joker out of his misery, Kere."

Emmersen swallows. "I thought..." he begins, the flush fading From his face, leaving it normally sallow. He swallows again. "I thought," and there is a note of real misery in his voice.

Kerewin interrupts.

I was in two minds about this purchase. I thought if I could have got a majority consensus... anyway, he's too

young to know

a decent smoke from your average dockleaf. I'll have what you've got. They are good."

Emmersen's sigh is loud with relief.

"Just for a moment there," shaking his head, "you had me worried..." he's smiling his nervous smile, "though I did think you were having me on, but... but--"

Kerewin smiles too, her lips lean and her eyes narrow.

"But you never can tell for sure," she leers. "On the other hand, the day I take Simon's advice as to what to smoke, is the day I enter my dotage. Hell, he smokes his father's cigarettes."

Joe says, "Hey! What d'you mean...?" and Simon giggles, and Emmersen, busily wrapping up the tobacco

and Sobranies and cigarillos before she can change her mind, laughs uproariously.

Joe says with embarrassment they'd been looking for her, because uh he wondered if Himi could stay a

couple of nights? He explains in a rush. Wherahiko Tainui's got a bad heart, he's been going over the hill for

specialist treatment, now he's been told not to drive anymore, and Marama can't drive, Ben is busy, and Piri's

tied up with his job, and the other son is outa town and,

"Berloody oath," Kerewin bangs the stick down hard on the road, "of course Simon can stay. I wondered where he had got the bad habit of begging from. I can hear, loud and clear."

Joe grins shyly. "Well you know, I don't want you to think I'm just using you, as a babysitter. Just visiting

when convenient, even if it looks like that. Truly it isn't."

Kerewin says drily that if she had thought that, they'd've both got the message, weeks ago.

She asked, when Simon was in bed, why he wasn't staying with his Tainui relations. Joe looked away from

her. "The less he stays there the better," he said bitterly. He never said despite his "Later," who had hit his son in the face, and Kerewin, sensing a family quarrel, didn't bring it up again either.

On the second day, Kerewin said,

"We'll make use of the fine weather. Both the tide and my stomach are right for pipi-hunting. So put your

jacket on, eh."

She sighed luxuriously.

"And just think, muttonbirds next month, and the whitebait season soon after. Who could ask for more?"

Simon raised his eyebrows, and then put on a smile so she wouldn't notice the dark seeping into his eyes.

I could, he thought.

The truck stopped beside them, halfway to the beach.

"Kia ora korua," said Piri, climbing down out of the cab. He leant over to greet Simon, then stopped, as

though the child had struck him. He tipped the boy's face towards him and studied it a moment.

"Run into another door?" said Piri lightly, and then he turned to Kerewin, his eyes hard. She shook her head, and he looked back again to the boy.

"You didn't run into a door," and Simon stared at him, his face unmoved. "Did you?" as he released the child.

Simon kept on staring at him, without moving his eyes. Piri bit his lip. He started to say something, stopped,

then shrugged.

"O well," he said at last. "O well." He smiled quickly at Kerewin, his eyes still hard. "Nutty child, eh."

"Unlucky, but not, I think, witless."

Piri's real grin bloomed.

"Right. Tell Joe I need to see him about a dog when he gets back, eh." He kept on smiling. "He'll

understand."

Simon has her hand, and is shaking it unobtrusively. Once, pause, once again. No. Don't. What? She glances

at him, but he is staring at his feet.

"Okay, when I see him."

"Right you are," Piri climbs back into the cab. He slams the door. "You going to town or anywhere I can take you?"

"Just for a walk."

"Good day for it. We'll see you later then. E noho ra, Himi, Kerewin."

"Haere ra, e Piri."

Simon didn't let go her hand, nor did he wave goodbye.

The truck vanishes.

"Yeehai, boy, what was that all about? Don't you like Piri?"

He shrugs.

"Well, what was the handtugging in aid of?"

Nothing says the boy, a thumb and forefinger making O.

"I take it all back. You are nuts."

He shrugs again, looking at her with the bland say-nothing expression.

"Beach and pipis then."

"Here," she says, standing right on the edge of the low tide mark. She spades out sand with the butt of the harpoon stick, but water rises in the hole faster than she can throw it out. She resorts to shovelling with her

hands. She jars her finger and whoops with delight,

A small triangular shell, like a chip of dirty china. She scooped it out and dug her knife into the back of it,

severing the connector

muscles. The shellfish went limp and oozed water. She tore off the top shell and cut the fish from the bottom

one, and ate it.

He watches, his mouth agape in horror. She digs again, this time in the middle of a group of siphon holes, and

uncovers a colony.

"Want one?" He closes his mouth with a snap, and shakes his head vehemently.

She chuckles, and prises another shrinking pipi from its shell.

He flutters his hand with distress.

"It moves, it's alive? Yeah, I know. So is an oyster when you eat it. And that was what you were enjoying a

couple of weeks ago. Very nice, weren't they?"

His mouth draws down.

"I can assure you," speaking thickly, her mouth full of soft sweet and salt flesh, "that an organism like this doesn't feel pain as we do. It doesn't realise its impending death. It's just cut and gulp, and that's it for the

pipi." I bloody hope so, anyway.

"You understand Sim?" Schloop, carve, swallow, as she downs another pipi.

The little boy quivers.

"Look, it would be wrong, very wrong, to eat a fowl or a frog alive supposing we had the stomach to do it.

But not these."

She hopes he won't ask why, because she isn't sure herself. She suspects it's because even a lowly frog, not to

mention a fowl, could make one hell of a racket as you gnawed 'em. All the helpless pipi could do, was spurt

a feeble squirt of water and die between your teeth. Dammit kid, you've started to make me feel guilty.

The boy sighs.

He goes away by himself, and stands on all the tell-tale siphon holes.

She follows, and wherever his footprints become many, digs down, and brings up another horde of pipis,