The snark says, Maybe he's discovered how to use a new kind of soundwaves. You know what happens with subsonics-
Ah shuddup-
The child is motionless. If she listens very carefully, she can hear his breathing. It is abnormally slow.
Simon P. Gillayley, no wonder you're considered an oddball. Emotionally disturbed, not all there, says the grapevine… do you do it often, lie before what's essentially a rubbish pile and fall into a trance? What with that, and fighting, and stealing, and absconding from school not to mention home… and anything else I haven't heard about yet?… the hat fits. The reputation's deserved. And yet…
Unbidden the thought drifts in, Why does he trust me?
Why should he trust me? I don't trust anyone, I've never trusted anyone. Not even as a child, when everyone is supposed to be innocent enough to trust the world. Maybe I became too early aware of myself, aware of the shivered base that we all have to build on.
knew too much. The smarter you are, the more you know, the less reason you have to trust or love or confide.
So this one is very stupid?
Simon touches her hand. His eyes are wide open and sparkling, and he's grinning fit to split his face.
"E hine!"
She comes to the car.
"Joe'll be here in a minute."
"I know. How are you? Well in every respect?"
"Yes. I'm fine."
"That's good." He sits back into the shadows a little, his hands folded in his lap.
His face is tired but his eyes are stern, aloof. He is not a friendly looking man.
His wife, smiling and nodding with every phrase he says but not so far venturing a word herself, is small and plump and full of friendship. She had waved out before the car stopped, snared Simon and cuddled him, crooning over him while the old man sat stiff and straight and unsmiling in the back.
Wherahiko Tainui asks, "Was it a good two days?"
"Fair enough. The weather was good."
"And what do you think of him?"
"Who?"
"Joe's boy, Haimona."
"o, Sim." She rubs her forehead thinking, This is an inquisition and so far they haven't even bothered to introduce themselves. Well, Joe said over his shoulder, This is Kerewin, before catching his child up, but neither of them had acknowledged it. She says coolly, "He strikes me as being older than his supposed years, and sort of wild."
"Wild?" Wherahiko pounced on it as though it was an insult, "wild?"
She shrugs.
"As though he is growing up wild. Fey."
Marama says comfortably, "I think I know what Kerewin means, love," beaming at her. "He seems older because he doesn't act like most kids, and he seems wild because he does unexpected things."
"That's more or less it. Wild in the uncontrolled sense."
Wherahiko grunts. Marama says,
"We've heard so much about you, dear. Why haven't you called in?"
"Well…."
"You were probably waiting for an invitation," says Wherahiko, and all of a sudden he smiles, and the wrinkles and creases cause his face to lose all its fierceness. "Now you've got it," he adds, and Marama says, "Anytime you'll be welcome, any time at all."
"Well, thanks. I will call in." Within the next decade, she thinks, still cool at being treated in what she considers to be a rude and casual manner.
"Tomorrow," says Wherahiko.
"What?" She is startled.
He stabs a finger toward Joe and Simon coming over the lawn. "We want to talk to you, or at least, I want to talk to you… Marama can have you after," he grins again. Then his face falls back into its ordinary severity. He whispers, "I need to talk to you about them both."
And she turns bewildered, to watch Joe and Simon laughing and sparring in the sunshine. Two days apart, and they make it seem a year of bitter separation by the way they carry on reunited.
"Tomorrow then dear?" Marama is saying. "Any time you like, Kerewin love," and the two old people flash her smiles.
"I'm invited to the Tainuis' tomorrow," she says to Joe, "and I'm buggered if I know why."
"O, they been wanting to meet you for a while now." He shrugs one shoulder. "I thought they'd never get round to asking you though. They're both very shy."
"That's one thing they didn't strike me as being… I'm a shrinking flower in my own fashion, so what're you doing tomorrow?"
"Avoiding Marama or Wherahiko, I hope," and he says, after her startled "What?" "O there's been trouble between us that goes back to Hana's death. We had a proper — go coming back over the hill." He shrugs that uneasy one shoulder lift again, as though he is hunching to take a blow on his body instead of his face. "It started when I wouldn't let them have Himi to look after when Hana died. They never forgave me. They still think I'm making a pissawful job of bringing him up. Whatever I do with him is wrong… they'll probably tell you some awful lies about him and me."
Kerewin laughs.
'As though I'd believe them… I've seen enough to know you're doing a great job. You've got patience and time and love, and that's what he needs."
He looks at her quickly,
"Yeah, that's what he needs… would you mind if I didn't come with you then?"
Okay. I might see if I can invent an excuse for not going anyway." He looks unhappy, but he smiles gently at her.
Jesus, thought Joe, this whole thing is going to explode and come I crashing down round my ears, but what can I do? What in the name of heaven can I do?
It's not wrong, he tells himself. Well, not bad wrong. What else is there to do?
He won't listen, he won't behave, he won't do as I say, what else] is there?
He hugs himself, deriding the movement of self-sympathy as he makes it (Ngakau, you're as bad as he is).
The feeling of roosting in a false calm, knowing that the mother I of all hurricanes was about to break loose and destroy the world,} was getting stronger daily.
You should explain it, he says to himself forlornly. She'll probably! understand… if they just tell her pointblank… he shudders. I can't tell her yet, it's not the right time. She doesn't know us well enough, know me well enough. Anyway hell, it's not wrong.
He dreads tomorrow.
She remembers the afternoon as a golden easy haze, wound through with talk and laughter. A sweet three hours with the only jarring note her own conscience.
And you were going to turn them down cold.
Drinking the wine Marama bought especially for her visit ("We don't drink," says the old lady, and Wherahiko adds, "The doctor told her and me if we boozed, we'd keel straight over. I don't believe him," he chuckles richly, "but I'm not dead keen to prove him right, eh"): eating the food that had been especially prepared for her ("Ben killed the pig last night when we got home, eh. Nothing like really fresh pork for a roast, though I'd choose to hang him for a while if I wanted him for a pickle.").
And you were going to say you had to see a man about a dog or some such-
She recalls suddenly, while Wherahiko is showing her the family photo album (there is a wedding picture of Joe and Hana, and a family shot of the Gillayleys in their heyday, Joe beaming, Hana a serene non-smiler, Timote a toothless grin, and Simon looking wild and smaller and unhappy, his fingers wrapped in Hana's skirt — "He used to hate having his photo taken," says Marama fondly, as she looks over her husband's shoulder), that Piri had said he wanted to see Joe about a dog.
Piri is still at work. The only other brother here is the eldest son Ben, a short nuggety blackbrowed man who seldom smiles. When he does, it is slow and beautiful like a rare flower unfolding.
Wherahiko asks a lot of questions, about herself, about her work, about the Tower, about her view of the world.