The Bone People (44 page)

I wonder if he's dreaming now? Joe says he does, hence the trichloral and put him to bed soon after we

finished trimming his hair... though it wouldn't have needed dope to make him sleep. He was exhausted... and

what is there about cutting hair that should bring home his nightmares to him? And damn it, soul... Joe and

his care and love of the brat -- and then the casual admission that the only way he can control Sim is to whack

him into submission. What about korero, Joe? What about our tribe's famous talk-it-out with all concerned? It

worked tonight. Give the urchin reasons, and time to think things out, and he responds, even more than you'd

expect. You can bring him round with a little talk, a bit of humour and sympathy, round to wherever you

want. E man, you can't be so short on understanding, even given your past, that the only way you can handle

Simon P is to knock him about. And if he's such a burden, you've said yourself that the Tainuis would take

him tomorrow. So, given that you love him, why not take that extra time and trouble with him? Instead of

yelling like tonight... and I wonder what would've happened if I hadn't come along just then? To hell,

Holmes, what's the point of thinking about this? You know damn well you'll never say it to Gillayley.

The candle flame has "steadied now, and the moths are darting closer.

If I'm going to sit here, I might as well drink and forget about bloody Gillayleys....

Down to the cellar, using a torch to explore the labels of the bottles.

Frontignac, pinotage, port and muscatel;

hock, riesling, sauterne, and liebfraumilch;

mead, burgundy, chianti, and dandelion wine;

Cider? Perry? Arrack? Beer? Stout? Ale?

Holy mother, I didn't realise I had so much grog stored away--

More labels in the steady beam; rum, tequila, Scotch, bourbon, cognac, and liqueurs of all degrees... claret

and sherry, madeira and sack, and ah hah! what better? Gloom-defeating champagne--

There's half a case of it left. And I thought that bottle I took from upstairs to Moerangi was the last of it...

dear spirits, remind me to visit more often... take two, and hope they'll do.

Upstairs rapidly to the livingroom, where the smell of dead ashes hangs heavily everywhere.

"Ah choices, choices..." standing in front of her minor grog hoard.

"Lessee, what's a fitting cup from which to drink the health of God in bloodless wine?" She runs her fingers over the wine goblet collection.

A thin shell of pottery, lopsided, coloured brown and yellow, speckled like a thrush breast; wooden goblets

with carved stems; the three pure bubbles of crystal, brittle upon the thinnest possible stalks; matt pewter;

engraved silver; a clear hemisphere of aquamarine, flawed and scintillating with light on that one side; the

thick, chunky cut glass that Charles, long ago prince of doomed distant Stuarts, was supposed to have owned;

translucent bowls of porcelain brought back from Japan; two handsized lacquer bowls; a jade cup that held as

much wine as an eggshell on a tall pedestal of fretted ivory... no two quite the same. All rare, all strange...

especially the odd little pottery bowl that Simon used on his drinking spree--

She holds it in her hand a moment, reverently.

Two and a half thousand years old, dug from a gravesite Greece, my precious... what brews were drunk in

thee?

But she chooses one of the crystal bubbles, and picks up a opener, a mirror, and wanders back to her

bedroom.

And here I go, knocking round the bottle, holding my heart open and hoping my mind keeps closed--

Tuneless bellowing, Holmes--

She watches the candle light spurt up, from the wind of the opening door.

Do not dance, do not get excited, flame; it is only me come in--

She opens a bottle of champagne, and sets the mirror by the candle. She can see her face in it, a candlelit

ovoid, with gouges for eyes, shadowmouthed.

"Hi me. I shall converse with thee. There is nobody near so fluent, so full of shining wit. You know the right

things to say, to titillate me, to appall. I shall assure thee, give me praise, comfort... no end of good it'll do,

talking to a mirrored me."

Her voice raps into silence.

She shudders.

I think I'm going off my head.

They say if you can think it, you can't be it.

The candle rears up and smoke clouds the mirror.

For no reason, she hears Joe talking in the bach at Moerangi: "It was a good idea. I could see out the window

that way, and who came in the door."

O yes. Mirror of course. From his flat-on-the-back phase of childhood. And he also said -- how did those two

bits go?

"I used to get afraid that I'd look up into the mirror and see nothing there."

And,

"I had this nightmare eh. One day, I'd look into the mirror and somebody else would be looking back out of

my face "

Nasty.

She leans carefully over, and swivels the mirror round so she can't see in it.

It was a nice idea, to practise the old discipline of mirror and candle again, to use image and living light as

pointers to the self beyond self.

But not in this state, gentle soul. It's a bad stage when you get talking to mirrors, and right at the moment, I

think you're unstable enough to see other people looking outa your eyes.

She rests back against the headboard of the bed, and begins drinking steadily.

The cold white eye of the moon looks in. A bottle down, and a bottle to go--

Over the lip of wax

a river spills,

flame reddens flickers

flares, stills,

and the river congeals--

The black wick slopes over, leaning out of the flame.

The world is night, quiet night.

She wets the rim of the bubbleglass, and strokes round and round slowly. The crystal begins to sing.

"Getta guitar?"

She squints at the wine.

In the uneasy light, she can just see her reflection.

"Was it thee or me who spake?"

Silence.

"Musta been me."

She sets the goblet down by the backwards mirror with great care, and fumbles her way downstairs.

"Stuhupid barstard, shoulda brought the light."

The toadstools by the seventh step glow palely green. She reaches into the niche and pinches one off, and

splutters into a chuckle.

"Brought it!" triumphantly. But the phosphorescence fades even as she speaks. "Ah sheeit," throwing it down on the stone, "hope I squash you."

Darkness, darkness, all around.

The distant crying of the sea... or is it my heart in me? Thou nede not be afrayed of any bugges by night... it

must be the livingroom circle by now... this step? What if I've stepped out of my retreat and this downward

spiral goes on and on in the black forever? Steep deep, deep where light suffocates and people become tiny

creeping shades unseen ever except by horrible--

"Thank heaven," in a loud voice, stepping out into the livingroom. The great window lets in enough

moonlight for her to see by.

Wonder when me new one's coming?

She lights a lamp quickly, and another, and another, and their flames all seem to run together in a blurring

winery flicker.

"I can see. Short of. I mean, sort of. Sort. Of. Thank you." She bows to herself, to the lamps, to the moon.

Take it easy, Holmes, take it slow.

"Bugger the guitar, I need tucker, I need food."

Hunting through the cupboards, remembering with a vague despair that she'd eaten the remaining tinned food

yesterday and earlier today, and had meant to get more when she went into Whangaroa, but....

"Ah typical," she sneers in derision at herself. "Floating on a lake of grog, and sitting on a mountain of tobacco and assorted weedery, and watch ya got to eat?"

A jar of lumpfish caviar.

She sighs.

"Better than nothing."

She blows out two of the lamps, and takes the other up the spiral with her. On the floor below the toadstool

niche there is a small shining smear. Her eyes fill with tears.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that. Too impatient y'see... do you see? Don't be berloody dense, woman,

how could a toadstool see? Well, the Toad mighta retracted and shat an eye eh?" She starts to giggle-It

becomes a dirty lowdown chuckle, blatting out, a gutty bleat she can't stop.

Easy! says herself, cold and furious. Quit it!

She sobers momentarily, bends down swiftly and kisses the slimy patch on the stair.

"Really sorry," she says, and continues upwards, marvelling at the ease with which she'd bent. Never do it sober, sweet, you'll bust your spine--

She stops in the doorway.

"Only half a bottle left? Hell, it'll have to do...."

She puts the lamp by the great candle and slumps onto the bed. The lamp goes out. Face flushdown in the

rubicund dark -- e hine! Haere mai ki te kai!!

O yeah... sitting up stupidly, and fishing for the small jar. Sticks her tongue in and sucks a mouthful out.

Squelching the tiny oily globules... dunno whether it's the salt soy taste or the burstingunderteeth scrunch...

delicious anyway.

You have just eaten enough lumpfish to stock an ocean... so what? Whattabout me cod roe patties? Millions

and millions of codfry, never going to make it... and for that matter, think of eating a fish of any kind,

anything... all its potential gone... mind you, snark, you could eat people like me with impunity: we're kind to

mother earth, and don't seek to stock her with replicas of self... we're neither horned nor slatted, a twilight of

the genders, as Fletcher rewrote of Agathon... so come all anthropophagi and feast in innocence, least so far

as me potential reproductive processes are concerned... neat of Joe to be so understanding, or at least show a

mask of comprehension, that's more than most have done... damn hell, I've let a Gillayley back in my brain...

distant or near, they close in--

She leans on her elbow to stow away the empty caviar jar, and her elbow collapses under her. She falls

forward, on top of the candle. The flame spurts up and scores through her hair.

She jerks back, rubbing frantically.

There's a charred track through the front curls, and a vile stench of burnt hair.

"Ahh heeellll," she says wearily. "Ah to hell." The candle has gone out.

Woken once by a thin tinny whistling, like breath from a bronchial baby.

Then a small moan, and scuffling somewhere under the window.

Stiffen and tense, bent with the ears towards where the sound last came from.

It doesn't occur again.

The silence is ominous, nerve-wracking

Woken twice by having to get up and urinate.

She sways on the toilet, feeling sick and thickheaded. Her eyes are sore, and sticky with mucus. Her head is

throbbing.

"You getting old. Old, old old. Bladder worn out and self in misery, just from a few drinks."

There is an odd pressure on her bladder these days.

"Beer belly," she says critically, looking at herself in the mirror. "Fat gutted pig that you are."

All those innards pressing upon one another, she thinks, angry at her self-despoliation. No bloody wonder

you can't hold your water anymore.

She goes back to bed, and tosses restlessly for a long time, waiting on sleep.

When she wakes again, it is late morning, the sun streaming in through the sea-coloured window.

The air is stale, and soured by the smell of burnt hair.

Running her hand over her head and discovering the burned patch anew,

Sweet hell, what a morning.

She half-expects Simon to come around, even though it is the first day of the new term. But he doesn't turn

up.

"Just as well," growling to herself, standing in front of the mirror again. "I am fed up with Gillayleys to here,"

knifing her hand across her throat, scissors perilously close to the skin.

We did wake in a bad mood, didn't we? says the snark. Just because we got carelessly drunk and burned

ourselves, we start taking swipes at our near and dear friends.

"Near and dear friends be damned... what the hell are they doing to me? Sucking me dry, it feels like.

Emotional vampires, slurping all the juice from my home, that's what." Even with the new lightheaded

feeling a haircut gives her, she still feels resentful and ill-at-ease.

Better go back to being your natural self, dear Holmes. The loner on the fringes. Phase Joe and his brat out...

but I think I'd miss them. Think? You know you would! But don't think... play it as it comes. And enjoy this

peaceful solitude -- it makes a bloody neat change. And speaking of neat... this place is becoming a hovel.

She starts a cleaning binge. Niches in the Tower that have been undisturbed since the place was built are

rudely dusted. The bonsais get trimmed, the toadstools ruthlessly pruned, and the insect population gets the

kind of hurry along it's never had before. And she discovers mice everywhere.

There are tiny furrows from their teethwork even on the great candle she notices, while cleaning up the

splatters of spilt wax.

"Strangle-traps," with heavy emphasis on the strangle. "That's what it's gonna have to be."

What was that line of Nash? In "The Mind of Professor Primrose"? O yeah, "He set a trap for the baby, and dandled the mice." Got his priorities right, that fella

Normally, she dislikes killing mice. There is something about their beady-eyed furtivity, their wholesale

preying on humans, that appeals to her outlaw instincts. But at the moment, they're in her way, and they're

doomed.

She fantasises some baby traps though, while baiting the traps for the mice. Glittery things, she decides, that