None of them helped make sense of living.
She watched the sealight grow.
What the hell did I offer my sanctuary to him and the brat for? Though I've left myself an out… I can always say They are there. Maybe I should just sneak away to the baches myself… they used to say,
Find the kaika road
take the kaika road,
the glimmering road of the past
into Te Ao Hou.
The moon came out of a cloud bank
Ah my shining sister, bright core of my heart, maybe this year in Moerangi I'll find a meaning to the dream?
A mist was obscuring the depth of stars. The night grew towards dawn. She got up unsteadily and stretched, groaning against the stiffness.
Sitting on wet sand, what'd you expect numbskull? Numb bum, rather… anyway, twenty minutes' walk to bed, and a long lying in… thank God for wine, and so easy sleep. Moerangi can rest holy and ghostly in my dreams tonight.
And as for those teeth? She grinned.
Undoubtedly, somewhere beneath not too distant waves, deceitfully mirroring a babyhood of milk and honey, small ivories….
She stares at the screaming painting.
The candlelight wavers.
The painting screams silently on.
She hates it.
It is intensely bitter.
O unjoy, is that all I can do? Show forth my misery?
All the fire has gone.
She is back in the haggard ash dead world.
She picks up the painting and slides it away behind her desk.
There are a lot of drawings, paintings there.
The new one can scream in company.
And what's the use of keeping them?
A pile for keening over?
"You are nothing," says Kerewin coldly. "You are nobody, and will never be anything, anyone."
And her inner voice, the snark, which comes into its own during depressions like this, says,
And you have never been anything at anytime, remember? And the next line is-
"Shut up," says Kerewin aloud to herself. "I know I am very stupid." But not so stupid as to take this.
I am worn, down to the raw nub of my soul.
Now is the time, o bitter beer, soothe my spirit;
smooth mouth of whisky, tell me lies of truth;
but better still, sweet wine, be harbinger of deep and dreamless
sleep-
"Wordplayer," she says sourly. "Mere quoter," feeling her way down the dark spiral to the livingroom circle.
And until the time Joe wakes, groaning at the shrill snarl of the alarm clock, groaning at the thought of another dull and aching day; until the time Simon wakes, and listens, and dresses very quickly, and exits via the window for his new retreat; until then, Kerewin drinks her way into a kind of cold and uncaring sobriety.
It's as though nothing has changed.
3. Leaps In The Dark
WHAT DO YOU SEE AT NIGHT?
"In dreams?"
He shudders and shakes his head emphatically.
"In the dark you mean? What do I see in the dark?"
No. He waves the paper, WHAT DO YOU SEE AT NIGHT?
"Okay, what do I see at night? Stars?"
No.
"The night itself, like darkness?"
No, no.
"Ah you mean something that can't be seen, like ghosts?"
No, a lot, frowning.
"Hell Simon, I see the same things I see during the day except they are, they seem so dark as to be deprived of colour. I don't see anything different."
He tries again.
ON PEOPLE? scratching his head with the pencil, frown still in place, writing again finally, ON PEOPLE.
"I don't see anything on people. Do you?"
He nods wearily. Then he keeps his head bent, apparently unwilling to look at her.
Kerewin's turn to frown.
What the hell would you see on people in the dark. Shadows in the daytime, yeah, but at night?
It's the word shadows that gives her the answer.
"Wait a moment… Sim, do you see lights on people?"
Head up fast, and his bright smile flowering. O Yes.
In the library, the books spread round them,
"Well, that's what they are. Soul-shadows. Coronas. Auras. Very few people can see them without using screens or Kirlian photography. Only other person I've met before who could see them unaided, could see them all the time, night and day. That's where you had me puzzled, fella."
He touches by her eyes.
"No, I can't see them. I'll bet Joe can't either."
Right, says the boy, grinning wolfishly. He writes quickly, SCARED SAID NOT TO SAY.
"Yeah, I can understand why. It's a bit scary when someone can see things about you that you can't see for yourself… if he said not to say, why'd you ask me?"
YOU KNOW. YOU ANSWER.
I know, I answer eh?
She settles herself more comfortably in the bed, crosses her hands behind her neck and stares into the dark.
Well, I do know a lot. Encyclopaedias of peculiar facts and wayward pieces of knowledge. Myths and legends by the hundred… but not generally the kind of things a child wants to learn.
These odd conversations we hold. Glance and gesture, intuition and guess, brief note and long wordy enquiries and explanations… and Sim drinks up answers so avidly. All kinds of answers. Why? is the boy's motto, why does, why is, why not? Food, weather, time, fires, sea and season, clothes and cars and people; it's all grist to the mill of why.
I know a lot and I answer, but increasingly I have my own why.
Why isn't Joe doing the answering?
When I go to the pub these days, the locals talk to me. I have, for example, been fed incredible tales of Simon's wildness by one Shilling Price. Just as well Joe keeps him toeing the line, he says, or we'd all be bowled over eh?
Bill the barkeep says discreetly that old Shillin's apt to exaggerate y'know? Take it all with a grain of salt, he suggests, and then proceeds to regale me with the time Simon set off all the town's lamppost fire-alarms. He's a bit of a devil, that boy, finishes Bill.
Hmmm. I get the feeling that the child's exploits are only tolerated because Joe is well-liked.
He's certainly a mystery.
The more he comes round, the more I'm intrigued.
His background is old hat to the town, to Joe — but it fascinates me. So why not try and find out who he is? I could kill a bird or two thereby: give Sim an understanding of his dark past, that shield against the dread unknown in nightmares he needs. And Joe, who worries about what he's taken on — I suppose you would worry about fostering a moody little nobody, it might turn out cuckoo in more ways than one — Joe could reconcile himself with a known quantity.
I think it's because Joe's afraid of what might be in his child's past that he keeps Simon on so short a lead. Like tonight, all amicability:
"E Kere! Good to see you again!" mmmm, hongi (it's been all of a day). Picks up Sim, kisses him, "You been good, e tama? Had a good day?"
"Weelll," I'm grinning as I say it, because what happened did look funny. This pintsize hero taking on an adult. Not to worry, I assure Joe, it was just that the mail bloke got a bit huffy when Simon badfingered him. "That replacement fella, who's taken over Grogan's run for his holiday, you know him?"
Joe knows, nods coldly, his eyes on his son. Simon's shrinking back against the wall. I don't get to finish the story because the boy gets hit, twice, hard. "I told you before, don't you ever-"
Apparently, digitus impudicus is out, no matter what the circumstances (the new postie was inept: leaning out of the cab of the van, he missed my mailbox altogether and the letters dropped in the mud. I'm swearing O shit and Sim goes round, picks it all up, salutes the bloke rudely, bloke glowers, goes to cuff him, child ducks, bloke smacks hand against my box, swears. Sim ups him again, bloke practically froths at the mouth. He stamps on the accelerator, and stalls van. I get sore cheek muscles from laughing so much.)