He asks hurriedly into her silence, "Everything's all right?"
"No."
Another silence. She hears the sound of his fingers massaging his face again.
"Has he done something wrong or something?"
"Or something. Joe, you didn't by any chance mean, when you said earlier that you'd had to play heavy father, that you'd bashed him?"
More silence.
"O no way," but the denial sounds wavery. "Sure, I hit him a couple of times, but — "
"Where?"
"Where you normally hit kids."
His breathing has quickened, and the slur from sleep and drink in his voice has gone.
"Not across his face?"
"Hell no… is he hurt there?"
The deep voice has sharpened with concern; the denial is positive. Now it sounds like Joe as she knows him.
"Well thank God for that."
"E?"
"Ah sorry, e hoa. For a horrid moment I thought, well, someone's been playing amateur gestapo, and I thought, I mean-"
"O God… is Himi right there? Can I speak to him? Now?"
The child is weeping. He takes the mike, and taps it three times.
"E Himi, what's the matter? You all right?"
The small click of the child's nail tapping the receiver once, wait for it, twice.
"I'm glad," says Joe simply. Then he scolds, "Why didn't you come home? Why did you bother Kerewin? Why'd you-"
It seems the tinny distant voice berates the child for minutes.
Kerewin, still wild at an unknown assailant, tires of the scolding quickly.
Why bawl the brat out, when maybe it's not his fault, when maybe it happened near here, when he's hurt, and especially, when he can't answer?
She leans over and plucks the mike out of the boy's unresisting hand.
"You're being boring, Joe."
He stops, shocked. "O Kere, I didn't realise that — "
"Shit, man, he's hurt and all you can do is fill his ears with a diatribe? Be a bit realistic… do you want me to get a doctor?"
He says quickly,
"He's very scared of them. I don't think that'd be a good idea Unless he's hurt badly?"
"Weelll, he's bruised. Bruised a lot. I don't think anything's really damaged though. You want to risk waiting for the morning?"
"That'd be best," says Joe promptly. "I'll pick him up before I go to work tomorrow, and we'll go see Lachlan then. For some reason, she's less of an ogre than the others."
"Okay. It's your kid… you want to tell him goodnight? He's not looking particularly happy."
In fact, he's still crying, leaning against the wall in a sagging hopeless fashion.
"Ae. E pai ana, e Kere, e pai ana."
"That's okay," but the thanks in Maori don't, this time, draw the normal emotional response. He could be saying The moon, the moon, going by what she feels.
"Here's Simon," she says.
"I'm sorry," says the man, "I'm truly sorry. I didn't mean to upset you, when you've been in trouble, to hurt you. I'm really sorry."
The little boy nods, apparently unconscious of the radiophone.
"Take care of yourself, e Himi, and we'll see you tomorrow morning, early. E moe koe, e tama, and kiss Kerewin goodnight for us. E moe koe."
The child holds the mike, staring into it through the blur of tears for quite a time after Joe has hung up.
She washed the boy's face with witch-hazel and warm water, and gave him a mug of hot milk that had honey and some of her manuka brew in it. Then she carried him up the spiral and deposited him on her bed.
It was after she'd collected her sleepingbag that she remembered the limp.
"What's the matter with your legs?"
OK, say his fingers, they're okay.
"Why're you limping then?"
He grimaces. He kicks at the air, a short distance only. But they're OK, the fingers assure her.
"Who kicked you?"
No response.
She shakes her head doubtfully.
"Your legs, boyo… you want some help for them?"
No. He looks at the floor, and then up at her, suddenly smiling. OK, he gestures again, firmly.
But it looked as though he had needed that moment to gather his strength to smile.
"Okay, Simon pake…" and Joe's word for him is right. The brat is as stubborn as they come, when he wants to be.
"You know how to turn that lamp off?"
Yes.
He's leaning against the bed now. She asks again from the doorway, "Who did it, Sim?" His face twists, but he says nothing. She exhales noisily. "So be it. Sleep well, sweet dreams."
But her impatience shows through her voice and gives the words a sardonic ring.
Joe arrived before seven the next morning, creeping up the stairs in the near dark and whistling her awake.
He clucked over his child's bruised face, over the obvious pain he showed walking, and — strangely to Kerewin's eyes — held Simon's hands a long moment, and said something very softly and very quickly, so she couldn't catch the words.
He refused coffee or breakfast for either of them.
"I've got an appointment, out of surgery, so I'll go along now," he said. "We'll see you soon."
She didn't see either of them for over a week.
"What else was there?"
She stands on the footpath, tapping the stick thoughtfully, carefully, against her teeth.
Of course, tobacco. What you came to town originally for. Sweet hell, who else could blunder through life like this but me?
A car slams on its brakes, stopping with a squeal a couple of yards before her. The driver curses and leans on his horn. Up you, thinks Kerewin, and keeps on strolling across the road.
In the sweet tobacco-scented gloom of the little shop, she says to Emmersen behind the counter,
'You ever noticed how the only time traffic moves in this one-horse town is when you go to cross the street? I think they sit there, waiting for hapless pedestrians."
Emmersen grins obligingly. He'd seen the near-accident from the window. He doesn't say what he thinks. Kerewin is too good a customer.
I managed to get you some more of that Dutch aromatic," he says.
"Goodoh. I'll have it. Any Sobranies?"
His eyes flick to the side, "Gidday!" he says, and then he smiles back at her, "I got some, yes."
A pair of thin hands wind themselves round the middle of the stick at her side.
"Well, I never, look who's here-"
Simon P, with a smile all over his face and his eyes green blue as a hot summer sea.
Me! he mouths, and grins more broadly still.
"Yeah, who else?" she laughs and reaches a hand to him.
"Well, possibly me?"
Joe is standing in the shop doorway, with a grin as broad as his son's.
"Berloody oath! I thought you two had gone walkabout or something-"
Ah dammit, slow down heart… ridiculous, ridiculous, you who love your own company, you should be feeling dour not spasming with delight.
"Tena koe," he adds, and comes to her, and places his hands on her shoulders, and hongis quickly. "If we'd known you were going to be glad to see us, we would have come much sooner-"
She shakes Simon's hand, "It's good to see you both again," peering hard at the boy, "and you're looking remarkably good."
"In all senses of the word," says Joe cheerfully. "Has it ever been a quiet week… better get him squashed like that more often eh?" He laughs and scuffles his hand through the boy's hair.
She feels her stomach muscles tense, and the joy leaves her.
"I think not," she says coolly.
But the child is swapping bright smiles with his da: they clearly think the idea funny.
Well, my soul, it takes all sorts to make a world-
She shrugs lightly, and takes her hand from Simon's hold.
"The Sobranies?" she suggests to Emmersen. He is standing smirking at them.