"Shit no!" ducking even touching it. "I only meant that it's not normal… I've never even heard of anything like it, and if I'd made it, I'd want to find out o I dunno…"
"My poor innocent suneater…"
She's put it down, and is refocusing the mirror.
"It doesn't worry me. I figure if I'm meant to find out more about it, I will."
He shakes his head dubiously.
"You know what that reminds me of? Things Himi makes. Things he reckons make music."
"O yes. The music hutches…"
… that had been a week ago, when she'd gone for a walk along
the beach. The boy had tagged after. He sat down a little way
apart when she stopped for a smoke. He started picking up
debris off the beach, and randomly at first, and then with a
steady and abnormal concentration, he had built a spiralling
construction of marramgrass and shells and drift chips and
seaweed.
"What are you doing?"
He whistled and pointed to it.
It whistles?
He lay down on the sand with his ear by it, and she went
to him, puzzled. Simon got up quickly. Listen too, he said,
touching his ear and pointing to her. So she did, and heard
nothing. Listened very intently, and was suddenly aware that
the pulse of her blood and the surge of the surf and the thin
rustle of wind round the beaches were combining to make
something like music.
She adds, "They only make music when someone's listening. They're focusing points more than anything, and I'd love to know where he got the idea for them."
Joe says sourly,
"O God knows where. He started making the bloody things about a year ago. Now he's obsessed by them."
He scowls.
(The child, when first discovered building them, had written for him THEY MAKE MUSIC. He was feeling wild and joyous from the vigour of the sea wind and the roar of the sea, and had hugged him tightly, and called him a nutcase. But he was worried by the look in his eyes. Secretly, when Simon was sleeping his drugged uneasy sleep, he had stolen back down to the beach, and examined by torchlight the structure his strange little son had built.
Feeling foolish, he had lain down beside the husk and listened, absorbed, for nearly quarter of an hour. Then he became scared,
"It's different," he assured her. "It's got fourteen kinds of eyeballs in it."
He had gone to especial trouble to get the fourteen different fish. "Even unfroze a whitebait," he told her. "Enjoying it?"
"Yeah," said Kerewin, deftly avoiding another eyeball. She noticed Joe wasn't too keen on swallowing them either.
He admitted when she finished, "There was really only cods' eyes there… unless you count the scallop's… but there truly was fourteen different kai moana. I thought you'd like the macabre touch?"
She looked at him consideringly.
"Mmmm. But you wait and see what's going to be lurking in my next offering."
Despite the hammer she gave him,
("Ah hah, worrying isn't it? Do you eat it, or does it eat you?")
tea this night turned out to be rock oysters.
"The only patch of rock oysters on this coast," says Kerewin triumphantly. "I couldn't believe it when I saw them first. I don't think anybody else knows about them. They're a freak colony. I've taken care of them since I found them, but I figured now they should be harvested for their own good."
They knocked them off the rocks in dozens —
"Kerewin, isn't this illegal?"
"Yep. Isn't it enjoyable?" —
and carried half a sackful stealthily away.
Back in the livingroom circle, Joe asks,
"Do you remember asking us if we wanted to come and have a holiday at a place of yours?"
"Yes." She looks at the dirty white shell, shining white and brown inside with purple shadows where the muscles had hung on.
"Well, I can take holidays soon, and Himi's got the May holidays coming up. Can we?"
"Yes."
He wipes his hands on the seat of his jeans.
"You coming too?" very casually.
She bites the last oyster in half.
"Umm, I don't know."
It is very peaceful. Leaning back, eyes closed, she can hear the, a rattle from something the boy is playing with, the rustle of Joe's paper.
"Hey, did you read this?"
"Nope. What?"
"Some tripe from these back-to-the-landers. You won't believe it, but here goes-
"The breeding of guinea pigs requires a minimum of land, little time, and practically no outlay. They feed on scraps, grass-clippings et cetera, and their flesh is nourishing and tasty. They return a reasonable amount of meat per beast.. shit, they give recipes even! I ask you, can't you just see Mrs Average slaughtering little Mary's pet guinea pig for the Sunday roast?"
She grins, eyes still shut.
"Nope, not yet. But if food ever got really short, I can see the knives come out all over suburbia… they've got a point, these fanatical fellas. The more self-sufficient you are the better."
"I had noticed… don't you bloody dare!"
The sudden yell jerks her eyes wide open.
The boy stands quickly as Joe orders, "Give them here. At once."
A box of matches, tossed to the man.
"Sailing bloody close to the wind, Haimona."
Simon stares back, unmoving, his body taut, his face hard.
Joe throws the box in the air, again and again.
"Just what in the name of all gods and little fishes is going on?" she asks plaintively.
Joe sighs. He catches the box a final time, then holds it up.
"He thinks it's funny to flick matches. You know how?"
He faces the fire, takes out a match, holds it against the striking strip with his thumb, and flicks it. The match flares explosively into flame and arcs into the fire.
"Dunno who taught him to do it," he says wearily. "Maybe he taught himself. But he had one all lined up ready for a go. At you."
She looks at the child, and then down at the floor. There's the match, lying right where the brat dropped it at Joe's yell.
You poisonous little creep.
"You," to Simon. He doesn't move.
"Turn round," Joe has a snap in his voice she hasn't heard before.
The boy turns slowly, insolently slow. He doesn't look at her, staring off to one side.
"I don't think that's funny, throwing fire at people. Why do you?"
The angular face is blank as a mask.
"Ah to hell with you then." Kerewin swivels her chair around, turning her back on him.
"What were you saying, Joe?"
He's still eyeing his son, his own face set and hard.
"Well," eyes unmoving, "Well, I was going to say that I had noticed this place is pretty self-sufficient."
She settles back in the chair again, and makes her voice low and easy.
"I'm a secret back-to-the-lander." She laughs. "Not really, but you know originally this place was going to be a dome or a yurt or an icosa. I was going to build it out of recycled goodies. Run goats and fowls, and a guinea-pig or two, and have a vegetable garden about six acres square. Then one night, while I was still in the planning stages, I sat down on the beach and thought, Holmes, what do you want? Because all these were other people's ideas… nothing wrong with them, but they didn't really fit me."
She lights her pipe, the flame glowing orange in the dim room. She can see Joe relaxing, his gaze now turned to her.
"I decided I didn't want livestock, because they demanded care and involvement… and anyway I'd never wanted them, just eggs and milk and meat. I could get that elsewhere. I'm a fisher, a forager, a hunter-gatherer, not a farmer. I don't grow much, though I like my herbs-"
"And dandelions!" The man is smiling again.