"Wow, you've noticed… I'm probably the only person in the country who nurtures the dear golden souls."
Simon is still standing, left in the dark, rigid and lonely.
She does something she hasn't done before, turns and reaches to him, sitting him down on her knee. For a moment he stiffens, looks at her quickly, his eyes shuttered.
"You're making the place look untidy, wickedness," says Kerewin easily, but she won't smile at him. Something flickers in Simon's eyes, then he smiles tentatively, folding his lids over the light come back.
Don't look in. Nobody look in.
"Mind you," continuing as though she hadn't moved, "I also look after a stand of mushrooms hereabouts, and my patches of puha and my karengo beds are very carefully tended."
"Aue," Joe shakes his head. "E hoa, ka pai."
"What for?"
He stands up, and stretches, and doesn't say why. Just, "My turn to make coffee?"
Kerewin shrugs. "Okay. Good idea."
As he goes past them towards the bench, he reaches out and taps Simon's face. The boy flinches, but the tap can't hurt him.
"Lucky," says Joe, and continues on his way. For a moment, the boy is tense, then he smiles weakly at Kerewin — a lame duck grin, I'm wrong and I know it — and twists sideways, and leans against her.
"You going to sleep?"
He glances up, then puts his thumb in his mouth and starts sucking it.
"Yerk," says Kerewin, grimacing, but makes no other comment.
She says to Joe,
"This place is almost self-sufficient. The range can live off driftwood. There's a coal seam on the property I could mine, and extract kerosene for the lamps if I needed to. I've got four solar panels providing hot water, and two that charge the nicad batteries… only the stereo and the drawing light need the electricity anyway."
"Why the emphasis on self-sufficiency? Do you believe in the millennium or something?"
"Nope. I just like to be able to do most things for myself."
"I've noticed that too," says Joe.
Later that night he said, "You're very tactful." "Peaceloving is the word. There seemed to be a fair sort of row brewing there." He sucked in his breath. "It was a bad thing he was going to
do."
The child is back in his arms, and sound asleep.
"There is a vicious streak in him, Kere, and I'm frightened it might be bred into him." Face full of gentle sadness, "I don't know what to do sometimes."
"Buggered if I would either. Probably pick up the nearest hunk of four-by-two and wallop him with it if he ever does flick a match at me. Warn him." She chuckled.
"Mmm… it's okay for adults, we can hit back, but he'll take on kids, and kids smaller than he is too. Like he fights a lot, when he's at school."
"Candidly, there can't be too many there who've smaller than he is."
"Maybe not… but he starts the fights I'm told. And he fights dirty."
"He likes fighting?"
"I don't think so… well, I don't know. Every time there's trouble, and I go along to find out what started this lot, I get about fourteen conflicting stories. But fairly often, Himi's started it. It's not always the others picking on him."
She puffed quietly on her pipe.
"You, uh, put a slightly different emphasis on a similar statement when you first came here."
He quirked his eyebrows and grinned, impishly. He looks so like Simon for a second that it's funny.
"I couldn't tell you all the bad bits at once."
She laughed.
("All things considered, I don't think he's too bad a kid." O true," said Joe quickly, "I mean, it's so bloody awkward for him not being able to talk out loud. He gets to screaming pitch very quickly with anyone who doesn't bother to try and understand him. Hardly anyone bothers. You're the rarity, eh."
"Yeah, rara avis all right," she kept her face straight.
"He, well, as for the others… they start off with good intentions, I think, but then they get embarrassed, or say he's cute, or put words into his mouth-"
"Hassles," said Kerewin equably.
But she thought about it.
Just for an experiment, she went into Taiwhenuawera, where she hadn't been before, and spent the day as a mute.
She smiled at questions in pubs, and wrote down answers. She went into shops and bought things by listing them or pointing. She had quite a time getting a bus ticket back to Whangaroa.
It was infuriating. Everyone she met talked more loudly than normal, as though the volume would penetrate the barrier of her silence. Many people stared and whispered to each other behind their hands. And some, kind in manner, simplified their speech and repeated key words, as though she were dumb as well as mute.
it
On the Friday night of bad memory, she had gone into her cellar, cultivated spiderwebs and all, and selected a bottle of dandelion wine, first of the vintage she laid down a year before.
She is just sitting down to admire the bottle, 1979 says the label, Estate bottled, when the radiophone goes.
It's Joe.
"Tena koe," he says.
His voice sounds odd, hesitant, timid.
"Tena koe."
Pause.
"Uh, Haimona there?"
"No, haven't seen him today. I thought he was going to school?"
"He was, but I've just met Bill Drew and he says Himi didn't turn up."
His voice has returned to normal.
She can hear the background clamour now.
Joe adds, "There was a bit of fuss this morning. He wanted to go and see you, and I insisted he went to school."
"Fair enough. He hasn't been all week."
"He didn't think so. I had to play heavy father." Pause. "Looks like he skipped it, anyway."
She hears a door bang, and the noise of voices and laughter becomes louder.
"Just a minute, Kere-" Muffled sounds. He's covered the
speaking end. "You still there?" he asks a moment later.
"Of course."
"That was Polly Acker, eh." He laughs. "You know, the lady with Pi Kopunui?"
"No, I don't… wait a mo, is she the one they call the half-nhalfer?"
"Yeah! Half-and-halfer!" He sputters. Now he sounds drunk. "Anyway she just said she saw Haimona at Tainuis' this afternoon. By the gate. So that settles that, eh?"
"Mmm."
"Probably didn't want to go to you because he thought you'd tell on him eh."
She is obscurely hurt by that.
"Bloody hell, Joe, I'm not your son's keeper. I don't give a damn what he does and where he goes, as long as he doesn't annoy me. I'd no more tell on him than-"
"Easy, e hoa, easy. I was just joking sort of… uhh, what's the time?"
"Close to six." It's getting dark, outside.
"You doing anything important? Because it's my turn for tea, ne?"
"Well, nooo…"
The fire's bright. Bream is playing Recuerdos d'Alhambra in the background. Half a dozen potatoes, still in their jackets, are baking in the oven. She's made garlic butter, and has two ham steaks ready to fry. The dusty bottle waits, wine glinting golden inside.
The first bottle… to drink and eat in peace, in music. She's had little enough of her own company these past few weeks, and she is beginning to hunger for solitude.
"Look, what say you come here? I'll send a taxi, you have a night out, meet some of my friends? I'll arrange for a meal."
"What about Sim?"
"O him, he'll be okay at Tainuis'. Marama and Wherahiko think the sun shines outa his arse excuse me. He's the whitehaired boy round there, literally. You'll come? Please?"
Goodbye potatoes in their jackets, ham, and Bream, and dandelion wine… because who's the only live and caring chessplaying friend you got round here?
"Okay man. I'll see you say, in half an hour?" Joe says O hell good, that's good. "You at the Duke?"
"Course!" The background racket blares up again. "God, here's Pi. Looking for his missus." Giggle. "See you Kerewin." Clunk. She stands looking at the radiophone.