"A strange collection… how do his beads fit in? Are they your, were they your wife's?"
Joe shakes his head.
"The case was my wife's, that's all. Those beads were his lucky talisman for over a year. He wasn't separated from them ever. Not in bed, not in the bath, not anywhere. Nobody got to have a good look at them for quite a while. They were in the pocket of the woman's blouse. They were shown to him to see if he knew them. He knew them all right. He grabbed them, kissed the ring on them, and thereafter wouldn't let them go. For over a year, as I said. If you wanted to see them, you had to fight him for them, literally. One time, when the police were still trying to find out who he was, a senior detective type came from Wellington to photograph them, and try and question Himi. He would have been about four at this time, I suppose."
Again shaking his head before a vivid memory.
"And my oath! the racket! We told him we were only going to look at his precious beads, but it didn't make an iota of difference. In the end, I grabbed his arms and pinioned his legs, and carried him out of the room, after Hana had removed the beads. We were regarded as poison for a month after."
"He holds grudges, eh?"
"No," says Joe, very slowly, "no, he doesn't hold grudges. He was
just too frightened of us to trust us for a while, and that's after we had looked after him for over a year. By the way, he's only sort of adopted. Because no-one can find out who he is, it couldn't ever be finalised. And besides, my personal status had altered the last time they asked about him. Hana, and my other son, had died by then."
"I am sorry." They are always inadequate, words… if I knew you better, or I was a warmer person, I would hongi, but-
"Yeah." He sits, looking into the flames. "Timote was ten months old, and Hana was thirty, and they died of flu. Which has always struck me as stupid and unfair. Imagine, flu!"
He spits. There are tears filling his eyes.
She doesn't say anything.
"O drink up, Kerewin. I'm boring you." He puts the bottle down. "Excuse me please, I'm going to check on Himi." He strides out of the room, banging the door shut.
O hell, she thinks, a fine end to the night. He's a right emotional boil, and so's the kid, and I suppose no wonder the both of them.
She looked at the wine settling flat in her glass, and drank it, morosely.
Kerewin, beneath the distant luminous dust of stars: so that's what there is to know of Gillayleys in their queer strait antiseptic haven. She stretched her arms, wide as a cross, and something small and bony snapped in her chest.
She swore, and closed her arms in a hurry.
Snapped a wishbone without a wish… what would I wish for anyway? A return of the spirit of joy? It won't come back by
wishing-Maybe, considering this rintin shambles of a night,
I should wish something for them… for Simon, what? A real name? No, something better. A shield to raise against his dreams, and for the other, a relief of that need he shows so plainly, for dead wife and dead child. But there's only one way to do that, send him to them- Anyway to hell, I forgot to wish.
She walked on, her bare feet sinking in the sand. There was a crust on it from the past night's rain. No-one walked on this beach much.
O chief of my children, primate of woes, come sink in the fleece of your old mother, Earth… but seriously Holmes, there is something wrong with the brat, beyond what Joe says. For that matter, there's something wrong with the fella as well.
Chanting into the night,
"O all the world is a little queer, except thee and me, and sometimes, I wonder about thee."
I know about me. I am the moon's sister, a tidal child stranded
on land. The sea always in my ear, a surf of eternal discontent
in my blood.
You're talking bullshit as usual.
Only what to do about the urchin's bitter dreams? Or the man's
evil shadows — the ghosts riding on his shoulders? The miasma
of gloom that shrouded his lightning smile?
He'd come back into the room, the tears barely dried on his cheeks, cups of coffee in his hands.
"Do you know what? He's smiling in his sleep."
She got the impression that that didn't happen too often.
The coffee was strong and sobering.
"I've got to go to work tomorrow eh."
"That's today now."
"Yeah, that's the hell of it."
"I used to hate that," she said. "Having to get up at some ungodly hour to go to work. Feeling out of kilter with my body time. That's the thing I value most now, that I can get up at five, before the sun's awake if I wish, or stay in bed till tomorrow."
He sighed. "I'd love that. But I work in a factory, work in a factory, work in a factory-"
"I know. I've worked in factories too."
"You know what I think's worst? It's not getting up."
"The monotony? Noise? The twits around you? Bosses?"
"No, being a puppet in someone else's play. Not having any say." He spread his hands and looked through the fan of fingers. "It has its compensations, I suppose. I've paid off the house, and I've got some money in the bank. We're clothed and we eat. All the good old pakeha standbys and justifications. Though it's hard hours. I start at seven and I never get home before five. Sometimes six. Even seven. Too long to be away from Haimona, eh?"
"Sounds it, a bit… what does he normally do during the day then?"
"School," said Joe laconically. "He's meant to go to my cousin's afterwards. And when he goes to school, he mainly does too."
She asked hesitantly,
"If you don't have to work, all the time, why don't you take a break?"
"I'd dearly love to take a decent holiday. I've got several weeks coming to me… but I don't know. I've tried it all ways. Stayed at home, and we got in each other's hair. Sent him to Tainuis while I took off, and he fought Piri's kids, antagonised all the adults, even Marama. And she thinks he's an angel incarnate. So then I tried I one of those bus-tours, last Christmas. We went north. I thought
he might like seeing all the places I grew up in. Something a bit different from here."
He leaned back and lit himself another cigarette.
"Sweet Jesus, was that ever a disaster. I wound up locking him into the hotel bedroom wherever we stayed for the night, and going down to the bar and drinking myself blind. Right way to win friends and influence people, eh. You can imagine what we were like during the day… I won't do that again."
He bent his head.
"I forget how much I paid out for damage to hotel bedrooms, but it wasn't altogether his fault I suppose."
The fire crackled.
Kerewin said,
"You like fishing, don't you?"
"Yeah."
"Well, I could find out whether any of my ex-family are using the baches at Moerangi. That could be an idea for a holiday you might like to consider. Not much to do except fish, but it's nice there. Quiet. Healing."
Joe nodded, looking at her quizzically.
"Ex-family?"
"O, we rowed irreparably…"
We wounded each other too deep for the rifts to be healed.
She sat down on the damp sand, stretching her legs in front of her and leaning back on her hands.
Strange.
Webs of events that grew together to become a net in life. Life was a thing that grew wild. She supposed there was an overall pattern, a design to it.
She'd never found one.
She thought of the tools she had gathered together, and painstakingly learned to use. Future probes, Tarot and I Ching and the wide wispfingers from the stars… all these to scry and ferret and vex the smoke thick future. A broad general knowledge, encompassing bits of history, psychology, ethology, religious theory and practices of many kinds. Her charts of self-knowledge. Her library. The inner thirst for information about everything that had lived or lives on Earth that she'd kept alive long after childhood had ended.