"I know this bit," and she snaps her fingers for Yes and No.
"Most of it is shortcuts." He blows on his coffee. "One time we tried proper sign language. It got him good at spelling, but it was too slow. He likes to say things as fast as possible, preferably without having to write them down. All you need to know about his hand-language is that it's mainly derivation. You know, from an object, or a way of doing things that is ordinary, or from ordinary things, or things… O b, bother," and the bother sounds so forced after the fluent stream of obscenity a few nights back that Kerewin laughs out loud.
"A right mess-up," says Joe, his face darker by a flush. "Was it the bother?" She nods.
"Well, I'll admit that it's not what I'd ordinarily say, but I was getting mixed up. I was lecturing, or trying to." He is looking down at the floor again. "Umm, Kerewin?"
"Yeah?"
"I'd like to talk to you a bit if you've got the time to spare. Otherwise, I'll just say thank you properly, and we'll go?"
"By all means, talk."
They went to the fire and sat down round it.
"Well, it was this chessman, the queen. Borrowed," he says with a grin, handing it back. He lets his hand drift down to settle on his son's shoulder then. "I was going to give him a hiding, because that seems to be the only way to get across the message that he's not to go roaming off to other people's houses and burgle them or whatever… and he produces the chessman. Sort of like a truce-flag?" Joe's hands go up, imitating Simon's gesture. Simon is still, holding his cup.
"Up till then, all I knew was that he had gone to your place and broken in, and that you'd looked after him until Piri picked him up. Piri said you seemed a nice sort of person. A lady, he said you were. Sim wasn't sure whether you were man or woman until Piri said that," the man's grinning again.
Kerewin smiles into the fire.
"So Haimona brings out this chesspiece, not to save himself the beating so much as to say something about you, you know?"
"I can imagine."
"Well, it started me thinking. He said how you started to teach him chess, and how you were patient with him when he tried to talk with you."
She remembers her sneers, and jibes, and coolness, and decides Simon/Sim/Haimona is a diplomatic little liar.
"And that you didn't exactly like him, but you were still kind and patient. That was impressive, because generally he's either treated as an idiot, or deaf as well as mute — you've no idea how many people raise their voices to him! Or they talk over him, as though he'll vanish and not be an embarrassment any more. It works too. He generally vanishes from that kind of person very fast." He broods a moment, hand back on his small son's shoulder. "So there it was. We spent an hour wondering why you were different, decent. And — how can I put it?" speaking to Simon now. "Good for you? Good for him," says Joe, looking straight at her.
Kerewin looks back, eyebrows raised.
The man eases down to lie supported by his elbows.
"I mean, it can be bad at school. He comes in for a lot of, o, a lot of petty bullying and shitslinging there. Not just because he's different being dumb, but because he's a bit of an outlaw." The child and his father swap grins. "Like this Monday, well Monday last week. He missed two schooldays before the weekend, and when he went to school on Monday, someone started having a go at him. 'Cops get you again, Gillayley,' style of thing."
Joe draws a deep breath.
"If you push him hard enough, he'll fight you to make you understand. It's his last resort, spitting and kicking… he'll do his damndest to punch into you what he wants to say. That's bad, I know, you know," wagging a finger at the boy, "but he's still trying to talk to you," lifting his eyes to Kerewin, "you know?"
"I can imagine," she says again.
"If you won't listen after that, or you fight him back, he'll despair, and literally throw himself on the ground. And stay there, and shake. It looks like a fit. It isn't. Say the medics. It is sheer frustration and despair that you won't listen, you won't converse, when he's got something to say that's important to him."
Kerewin nods.
"So last week, the little bastards do this push-and-tease-the-oddie business until Simon stupid obliges them by giving up and getting sick. And then you won't go to school for the rest of the week, will you?"
Simon is squinting at the gold grass floor.
"So. Today, I came here and left the note and then I took the morning off work, and went along with him to school to find out what started everything off this time. And all those sweet smiling little kids said, 'Your Simon started it, Mr Gillayley, he's bad isn't he?' And they all believe it, or know it's a very safe bet, on his Past record, that I'm going to believe it… but I don't know…."
Kerewin asks,
"What did the teachers say?"
"Nothing much. They didn't see it happen. Anyway, they've more or less given up on him now. Because he can be unapproachable
— you've never been coldshouldered till Sim's done it to you, believe you me! Even I've been on the receiving end- Some of the teachers tried to help. In his first year there, last year, one lady tried very hard, but it was too soon after. The death of my wife. And he was upset about that. So this year, they shoved him in the special class to begin with, all the slow learners and near nuts and that. Patently ridiculous, because he can read and write as competently as kids twice his age. Well, nearly. So then they put him in Standard One, and he's not fitting in there either. They recommend an institution of some kind or the other. For handicapped kids, you know the kind."
He leans over and ruffles the boy's hair.
"And they'll put you in that kind of place over my dead body," he says grimly.
"Look," he says, after a minute, "he's bright. He can understand anything you put to him, Kerewin. He doesn't need special care and attention. He just needs people to accept him."
She thinks,
There is something peculiar about all this pleading. As though I'm being set up, or primed-
She says carefully,
"You mentioned he was considered to be a bit of an outlaw. My radiophone operator said, quote, he's a well known local oddity, specialising in sneak thievery and petty vandalism, unquote. Is it just because he doesn't get on with people at school, or is there some other reason?"
Joe flushes.
"I should imagine his muteness, and the fact that my wife died, and he doesn't get a woman's care. I should think those reasons make him a bit unsettled."
He is watching the floor again, away from her, away from his son.
"There is a wildness in him sometimes," he says. "It comes maybe from those reasons. Like the running away… the child psych said he was trying to find his own mother, his other parents, even if he doesn't think that knowingly. That he won't face up, can't face up, to them being gone. Not here," still looking downward, still with the dark flush suffusing his face.
There's something bloody peculiar about this whole conversation. It doesn't feel right. Has he got some strange hope I'm going to be the kid's substitute mother? Bloody oath… and all you can do, Simon obstinate, is stare unconcernedly into the fire.
Almost as though he caught her thought, the boy turns round and smiles broadly to her. She smiles back, wondering again what happened to his teeth.
"How old are you, Sim?"
She says to Joe, while watching for the child's answer, "I guessed anywhere between five and ten, going by size and behaviour. I still would, but after what you've said, I'd bring the upper limit down."
The boy is looking at her in a considering way, mouth down at the corners.
Joe says softly, "He doesn't know. I don't know. Nobody does."
He picks up a chip of coal and flicks it into the fire.
"Well, you can see I'm not his blood father," he says into the silence. "Do you remember a Labour weekend three years or so back, when there were terrific storms? Out of season storms?"