"O yeah, right away… I got a couple of cartons of the black ones, OK?"
"Uh huh. Cigarillos?"
"Something new and special you may care to try… I'll just get 'em from the back."
He nods to Joe, smiles at Simon, and vanishes.
"Ahh," sighs Joe, positioning himself, back to the counter and resting on his elbows.
"Dunno how much you missed us, but we missed you a lot, truly," his dark eyes are serious. "And it was really because we thought you might like a rest from us that we didn't bother you."
"Considerate… I did wonder where you'd got to, briefly."
The boy is climbing his fingers up the whorls carved in the stick: his face is nearly clear of bruising. Only yellowing contusions round his eyes, and at the corners of his mouth. And he's moving easily- one way, she thinks, children have it all over adults. Fast clean healing.
She asks, "Did you find out who was responsible?"
Joe touches a finger to his lips, as Emmersen comes in. "Muri iho, e hoa."
"Have to learn to speak that, one of these days," Emmersen says. "Maybe I'm a bit old to learn though… how about these?"
"Never seen them before. Were they recommended or something?"
Emmersen opens a box.
"Try one," he offers. "The sales bloke reckoned they were strictly for connoisseurs, and I figured you were a connoisseur."
Joe giggles. "Knows how to sell, eh?"
"At connoisseur prices too, I'll bet." She sniffs the slim cigar and rolls it gently between her fingers. Tightly rolled leaf, not too dry. She lights it.
Everyone's looking at her, brown eyes, seagreen, pale-blue: all expectant, waiting for her decision. She keeps them waiting for three draws.
Then she says, "Weelll…" and passes it to Joe.
"O thanks…" He breathes out a fine plume of smoke. "Hmmm…" He hands it back.
Emmersen is twitching with ill-concealed suspense. He smiles anxiously, and she smiles blandly back.
"Haimona?"
She passes him down the cigarillo and the boy chuckles.
He leans against her, holding the smoke in front of him. He makes a performance of inhaling a mouthful, tasting it, and expelling the smoke in a thin jet.
Joe puts his hand over his mouth.
Emmersen's eyes are bulging, and he's gone a strange raspberry colour.
Kerewin asks the child, "You'd buy it, or you wouldn't?"
Emmersen chokes.
Simon hands it back to her. He scratches his head, holds his chin, darts a green glance at Emmersen, obviously wonders whether or no, and finally shakes his head.
Emmersen has gone redder still.
"O bad luck," says Kerewin. "Joe?"
I like it actually. Bouquet a bit tart, and it hasn't got the bold maturity of your Cuban '65, and and…" he's starting to break up. for goodness' sake, put the joker out of his misery, Kere."
Emmersen swallows. "I thought…" he begins, the flush fading From his face, leaving it normally sallow. He swallows again. "I thought," and there is a note of real misery in his voice.
Kerewin interrupts.
I was in two minds about this purchase. I thought if I could have got a majority consensus… anyway, he's too young to know
a decent smoke from your average dockleaf. I'll have what you've got. They are good."
Emmersen's sigh is loud with relief.
"Just for a moment there," shaking his head, "you had me worried…" he's smiling his nervous smile, "though I did think you were having me on, but… but-"
Kerewin smiles too, her lips lean and her eyes narrow.
"But you never can tell for sure," she leers. "On the other hand, the day I take Simon's advice as to what to smoke, is the day I enter my dotage. Hell, he smokes his father's cigarettes."
Joe says, "Hey! What d'you mean…?" and Simon giggles, and Emmersen, busily wrapping up the tobacco and Sobranies and cigarillos before she can change her mind, laughs uproariously.
Joe says with embarrassment they'd been looking for her, because uh he wondered if Himi could stay a couple of nights? He explains in a rush. Wherahiko Tainui's got a bad heart, he's been going over the hill for specialist treatment, now he's been told not to drive anymore, and Marama can't drive, Ben is busy, and Piri's tied up with his job, and the other son is outa town and,
"Berloody oath," Kerewin bangs the stick down hard on the road, "of course Simon can stay. I wondered where he had got the bad habit of begging from. I can hear, loud and clear."
Joe grins shyly. "Well you know, I don't want you to think I'm just using you, as a babysitter. Just visiting when convenient, even if it looks like that. Truly it isn't."
Kerewin says drily that if she had thought that, they'd've both got the message, weeks ago.
She asked, when Simon was in bed, why he wasn't staying with his Tainui relations. Joe looked away from her. "The less he stays there the better," he said bitterly. He never said despite his "Later," who had hit his son in the face, and Kerewin, sensing a family quarrel, didn't bring it up again either.
On the second day, Kerewin said,
"We'll make use of the fine weather. Both the tide and my stomach are right for pipi-hunting. So put your jacket on, eh."
She sighed luxuriously.
"And just think, muttonbirds next month, and the whitebait season soon after. Who could ask for more?"
Simon raised his eyebrows, and then put on a smile so she wouldn't notice the dark seeping into his eyes.
I could, he thought.
The truck stopped beside them, halfway to the beach.
"Kia ora korua," said Piri, climbing down out of the cab. He leant over to greet Simon, then stopped, as though the child had struck him. He tipped the boy's face towards him and studied it a moment.
"Run into another door?" said Piri lightly, and then he turned to Kerewin, his eyes hard. She shook her head, and he looked back again to the boy.
"You didn't run into a door," and Simon stared at him, his face unmoved. "Did you?" as he released the child.
Simon kept on staring at him, without moving his eyes. Piri bit his lip. He started to say something, stopped, then shrugged.
"O well," he said at last. "O well." He smiled quickly at Kerewin, his eyes still hard. "Nutty child, eh."
"Unlucky, but not, I think, witless."
Piri's real grin bloomed.
"Right. Tell Joe I need to see him about a dog when he gets back, eh." He kept on smiling. "He'll understand."
Simon has her hand, and is shaking it unobtrusively. Once, pause, once again. No. Don't. What? She glances at him, but he is staring at his feet.
"Okay, when I see him."
"Right you are," Piri climbs back into the cab. He slams the door. "You going to town or anywhere I can take you?"
"Just for a walk."
"Good day for it. We'll see you later then. E noho ra, Himi, Kerewin."
"Haere ra, e Piri."
Simon didn't let go her hand, nor did he wave goodbye.
The truck vanishes.
"Yeehai, boy, what was that all about? Don't you like Piri?"
He shrugs.
"Well, what was the handtugging in aid of?"
Nothing says the boy, a thumb and forefinger making O.
"I take it all back. You are nuts."
He shrugs again, looking at her with the bland say-nothing expression.
"Beach and pipis then."
"Here," she says, standing right on the edge of the low tide mark. She spades out sand with the butt of the harpoon stick, but water rises in the hole faster than she can throw it out. She resorts to shovelling with her hands. She jars her finger and whoops with delight,
A small triangular shell, like a chip of dirty china. She scooped it out and dug her knife into the back of it, severing the connector
muscles. The shellfish went limp and oozed water. She tore off the top shell and cut the fish from the bottom one, and ate it.