It's still early morning when he arrives at the side road going past the Tainui farm.
Shall I visit? No way, I'll never make the Tower.
Another mile, plod, plod, and he reaches the turnoff. He knows it's a mile from Tainuis to the track, and three miles to the Tower to go.
The sun has wheeled round to be halfway up the sky and the covering mist has gone.
It's growing hot, he feels slack and faint, and his tongue is so dry he can't spit even.
Take a break, Claro. A fast break. A breakfast,
mentally groaning at that, but delighted by his wit. Words mean a lot more, these days. He wilts to the grass on the side of the track, spreading out the parka with shaking hands and lying down on it. He holds the oranges up in front of him to peel them. Any juice that dribbled could then be drunk. That was the theory. But it went down his neck and into unlickable regions like his eyes.
Damn and damn again.
The oranges are sweet and still juicy, even when he's finished mutilating them. And they're sticky. His fingers cling together when they're dry.
There isn't any water until just before the Tower, where the river comes out. So he scoots out onto the track, and rubs his hands with dust. The stickiness is absorbed. Indeed, if you rub your hands hard, it sort of peels off, dust and dried juice, in long spindrils. Interesting in a quiet sort of way.
He's so interested that he doesn't hear the car pull up behind him until a door slams.
He's jolted to his feet and running the other way into the bush before he has realised what he is doing. To get away before they catch him is now instinctive.
Someone's yelling, "Hey Simon! Stop!"
No way, crashing on through the broom and manuka until his feet betray him and he comes down hard. Not again, not again, not so close, pushing himself up. His heart is hammering, sight and sound drowned by its beating.
They're going to get me again
but as his vision and hearing clear, he realises there are no sounds of pursuit.
He can hear voices calling down the track, but no other noise.
He crouches down, listening as intently as he can.
The voices stop, the car doors slam: the engine starts. The car drives off.
Trust nobody. They'll be waiting again, Clare, someone will be hiding and waiting-
The car noise dies away. No other sound.
Just the flies, an occasional bird, his heart beat. Carefully, he creeps forward, pausing after each step, waiting for sounds.
There are none.
He steps forward more confidently. Still nothing.
Cautiously onto the track. No-one. Hugging himself with pure joy, Fooled you!
I'll get home now!
He is singing with delight.
They haven't touched the parka or the dufflebag. It's all there, just as he left it.
Talk about dumb, they can't even catch my gear,
packing the parka back in the bag, but keeping the transistor out. Music to march home by, one step two step, winding the volume up and walking steadily along the righthand rut to the Tower. He's sagging before he's gone another mile.
It never used to be this long, I know it didn't.
One foot in front of the other, stumbling forward, counting the steps in his head. The music still pours into his ear, but he can't keep any kind of pace with it.
I will say hellos. I will give them all my love. And then I am going to bed for a week.
The thought of bed and sleeping makes him tireder than ever. One step, two step, take it a step at a time.
This bend to go, and the next bend to go, and then there's the bridge, and over the bridge, there's the Tower.
Over the bridge, there's a ruin.
The music blares on.
He shakes his head, squinching his eyes shut and squinting when they're open.
It's my eyes again, it can't be like that.
Half the Tower seems to have fallen down.
He drives himself onward at a lurching run, over the bridge, over the dandelion studded lawn. The grass is long and snatches at his feet.
Up to the Tower door. Shut Tower door. Locked Tower door.
Standing there in the warm mid-December sunshine, both hands fastened on the great iron ring of the door handle, hands fastened as though they had melted there, transistor dropped and still shouting from the tall green grass.
A long time later, his hands drop numbly to his sides..
His bruised heart still beats, but he no longer cares.
Where? Where? Where have they gone? turning blindly away from the door and staggering as he goes, anywhere, nowhere, I don't care where, where have they gone?
The black burn scar reels past, black grass? no longer thinking just seeing, then his heel catches against something and he goes down backwards into the middle of ashes and cinders and small charred pieces of wood.
The world has burned and he is in the midst of desolation.
Lying in the ashes staring up at the wheeling sky. The black world round… why bother to sit up?
Because it looks like Kerewin by his feet.
Kerewin's head in the blackness at his feet. That is too terrible to endure looking at. He crouches, his eyes hidden,
but touch it, touch it, even if she has been burned here, touch her. Let her know you came back.
And the head is cold and hard as stone beneath his searching fingers.
Gone beyond thinking, drawn forward by his hands, he kneels in front of the thing. There are shadows and voices coming towards him, from all sides over the lawn.
It is Kerewin, it is Joe, turning round the third face, aiee it is me, and even though he is moaning aloud, somewhere in the cloudy anguish a thready voice says, Together, all together, a message left for you, and he clasps it to his chest as hard as he can, and will never let it go.
Not even when the hands come down on his shoulders, and take him again.
12. The Woman At The Wellspring Of Death
She travelled for weeks in an aimless way, all round the South Island.
Uprooted again. Truly Kerewin te kaihau… but I seek always for homes. I find, then I lose. And I'm not a traveller at heart, just a casual gypsy wandering out from my base and back. No more, because no base… and nowhere to go, no-one to trust. No marae for beginning or ending. No family to help and salve and save. No-one no-one no-one at all.
She arrived in the town, smaller than a city, larger than a country stop, and sat at the bus-station, wondering what to do.
Stranded again, me soul. Dreary bloody place this looks too.
She stood at last and gathered her guitar and suitcase in one hand, the harpoonstick in the other, and walked to the heart of the town. At the first hotel she came across, she entered and signed for a room. Sitting on the immaculate bed, she stared at her oppressive comforts and wished for a hand, to hold or be held by.
O for a voiceless pantomime… a celebrated fuckoff to all this. Wonder whether he's up and about? Or playing the discreet vegetable still?
She took off her jacket and unbelted the knife from round her waist.
I can't play pirates in the bar… Seafire, Troublemaker would be your better name… but I can hardly blame you for my shortcomings… and if I do, you may yet have the pleasure of slicing my sweet and tender blue veins. When the going gets too tough.
She polished the hook round her neck against her nose and shirt lapel for minutes (pale hair, dark hair, talking fingers, lovebent lingers) and then slid down to the bar and drank whisky until tea, and then drank whisky until the bar closed, and still as sober and clearheaded as when she started off, gloomed her way back to her room to contemplate emptiness again.
The whisky had one effect: she slept easily.
But only for a time. In the very early morning she woke, sweating and itching unbearably. Not only in the usual places, wrists and neck and hands, but also in hitherto pacific regions, centre of her back and the middle of each shoulder blade. She writhed and blamed it on the whisky, but secretly knew better. An old enemy had returned. One which was impossible to fight. Damn thee, itch of my own sick soul.