The pork is meltingly well-cooked, full of the sweet slightly gamey flavour of a beast fed in the backbush all its short life. The salad is excellent, and the corn good enough for frozen stuff.
"You're no amateur when it comes to cooking, eh?"
He is strangely bashful. He mumbles under his breath, and Simon mouths SPEAK UP SPEAK UP so obviously that Kerewin sputters and chokes on her wine.
"Shuddup," he pushes his child's hair all over his face. "No more wine for you, smartass."
The boy's been drinking with them glass for glass, although his glass is considerably smaller. Still, his face is flushed and his eyes too brilliant.
"I like cooking," says Joe, "so what do we have for tea? Mainly fishnchips… I'm generally feeling too tired and it's a helluva lot quicker and easier. No dishes either. But every so often, I like to do something special, like this. I learnt how, off Hana. Man, could she cook-" his voice trails away, and he stares over Kerewin's head, his eyes glazing. Shakes his head sharply after a minute and says roughly,
"You touch any more wine and I'll belt you, guest or no guest."
Simon had sneaked himself another glassful, grinning conspiratorially at Kerewin.
Now he subsides to the back of his chair and scowls sulkily at his father.
O dear. It'd spoil the meal if they fight-
She belches quietly, and says, peacemaking,
"That is the best meal I've had since lunchtime, bar none. Seriously, Joe, it was splendid."
Joe brightens, stops scowling back at his child.
"You liked it truly?"
"Man alive, it was, he, kapai"
He squares his shoulders, and the sour expression vanishes.
"I'm glad. It is a small thing to offer you, but I hoped you'd like it."
"So much I'll even offer to do the dishes, and that, friend, is unheard of from a Holmes. At my place, I leave 'em for a month or so until I run out of plates."
"Uh uh. That's my job, and his," jabbing a finger at Simon.
He stands, slightly unsteady, they've drunk three bottles of good German wine between them.
Well, you've got a relief for tonight." She heads for the sink. "E!" he calls out. "We'll leave them for the morning. Let's go sittinroom. I've built a fire. The room'll warm in no time."
to the sittingroom.
He shows her over the house first, the child beside her, holding her hand again, and making surreptitious comments with his fingers. All of them are lost on Kerewin who is using most of her attention to stay straight and look sober.
The house has six rooms, the pattern typical older State house, found in thousands all over the country.
A bedroom with a double bed in it, antiseptically clean, with heavy curtained windows.
"My room," says Joe, flicking the light on and switching it off
again.
"His room," gesturing into a small lighted sunporch. "Sweet Jesus, tama, must you chuck all your clothes on the floor? Pick 'em up."
She gets a good look while the child gathers the clothes and dumps them on his bed. The room is on the righthand side of the hall, going in, right at the back of the house. Sparsely furnished like every room she's seen so far; a wooden dresser against the wall, a three-quarter bed. On the bed though, is a bright coverlet made of squares of crocheted wool; all colours, orange and violet, scarlet and shocking pink and vermilion, cornflower blue and sunflower yellow and limeleaf green. It is the only burst of colour she's seen in the house, excepting the budgie.
That's one thing — everything is so drear. Small wonder the brat escapes twice weekly —-
"Nice counterpane," she says, and Joe answers, "O, Marama made him that. She's Piri's mum, and considers herself your nana, right?"
The boy, having rearranged the disorder in his room, nods. He looks resentful at having had to do it.
"Out," says Joe, and waits till the child has gone into the hall before switching the light off.
Next place on the guided tour?
"O, that's the bathroom."
Spruce, clean tiled floor — hellishingcold on these winter mornings because there's not a bathmat in sight.
Simon disappears into the toilet.
"Go get undressed when you've finished," Joe says to him. "You can stay up a while yet."
He whispers to her, "With any luck he'll flake."
For the first time she wonders whether the man has anything else in mind other than conversation. In which case, he has struck out.
"That's the spare room Only junk in there."
But she realises she misjudged the words. In the sittingroom he says,
"I don't want to give him his dope on top of the drink he had. I didn't realise he was getting himself quite so much, or I would have pulled him up short before. But anyway with luck it'll send him to sleep naturally."
The fire brightens this room, but there is nothing in it otherwise that is cheering. A faded sofa beneath the window that looks out into the street. Three chairs with pale spots and rings from slopped glasses on the arms. And a glass-doored china cabinet with nothing in it.
He has been following her guarded survey, and when he sees her glance linger on the empty cabinet, he chuckles.
"Ask Himi where the stuff inside went," he says cryptically.
"O?" but the man just grins.
He sits on the hearthrug, poking at the fire, whistling softly to himself. He makes no attempt to start small talk, and she appreciates the silence.
Simon comes in, his feet bare. The bandage she had put on, is gone.
Joe says, "All right?" and at the child's nod, "Come here, then." He scrutinises the child's heel and comments.
"So far the splinter has grown to be about as big as he is. Wonder where it'll stop?"
"It was about an inch actually. Big enough if you stepped nn it suddenly, I suppose." Joe's eyebrows rise.
"I thought about half an inch, and then I was being generous. Tough luck, tama. Where did you go to step on it anyway? Probably deserved it, eh."
Simon kneels beside him, but disdains to answer. Instead, he reaches up to Kerewin, inside the denim folds of jacket, to where the rosary is lying.
"O," says Joe, surprise and something akin to awe in his voice. "You're giving them away?"
The boy looks at him, still wine-flushed, but now his eyes are dark.
Kerewin says slowly,
"They were his gift to me this morning, and I appreciate them very much. But maybe an heirloom isn't to be alienated?"
Joe shakes his head. "They're his, to do what he wants with them. More later, eh." Back to his son, "Miracles never cease. Do you remember, hey no. Let's forget that a moment. Kere wants to ask you a question."
"I do?"
He weaves a hand at the china cabinet.
"O yeah. What about the cabinet, Sim? Why's it empty?"
Simon's stare at his father is both reproachful and vindictive.
Toe laughs, at him.
It was a sore subject. Once upon a time it was full of trinkets and junky glass stuff, the sort people give you but you never really
need."
"Really? Well, anyway, the cabinet was stuffed with them. One time Simon got wild at me, I even forget what for now, and cleared the whole lot out. By the very simple expedient of throwing them at the walls. There was one hell of a heap of glass splinters. With weird little bits sprinkled through it — some of those uh mathoms are held together with very strange things. Little springs and sprigs of plastic and odd rubber bands."
"Goodbye the debris of years," she says, not knowing what else
"Yeah, that's what I thought too, after I calmed down. Most of the junk had been souvenirs or birthday presents or wedding gifts. A lot of sentimental memories attached to it, but not much other value." He looks down blandly at his child. "There is a moral to that, Kerewin. Haimona is rough on possessions, his own or others'. I was surprised to see his beads as a gift to you, but it's entirely in keeping with this iconoclast." He ruffles the child's hair back into place. "Hana, my wife, hung some pictures in his room, quite colourful and pleasant. I thought he liked them. They went west a year back, didn't they?"