He hasn't noticed anything untoward. Her manner may be reserved, her voice tight and controlled, but he's got warmth and companionship enough for a dozen, and he's determined to give some away. And after the talk, he's determined to go to sleep.
Why bring Himi up now, thinks Joe dreamily. It's good he's gone to bed because it's late, and if he's caught a flu — did I say he caught the flu? — well, he'll get over it all right. He's rarely that kind of ill.
"But as soon as he's better, it might be an idea we head south for that holiday, eh."
That penetrates.
Joe raises his head.
"We?" he asks joyfully. "All of us? You coming too?"
"Yes," she says. "I think it might be a damn good idea if I come along in case you," she stutters over the next few words,
Bite or slight or might happen? thinks Joe sleepily, I dunno-
as she finishes, "and anyhow, I can use a change of scenery too."
Joe grins slowly and secretly, hiding the smile in the crook of his arm.
Ahh tama, she likes us eh. She wants to be where we are, after all. It'll all work out fine, Himi, all work fine,
and he gives up the struggle to keep listening to whatever Kerewin might say, and falls very peacefully asleep.
II. The Sea Round
4. A Place To Sleep By Day
"Tea time," says Kerewin, and turns the car off the main road.
"Bloody pines," snarling to herself.
"Huh?"
"Look at it."
Cutover bush going past in a blur. Where it isn't cutover, it's pines. They start a chain back from the verge and march on and on in gloomy parade.
"This place used to have one of the finest stands of kahikatea in the country."
"And they cut it down to make room for those?"
"They did," she says sourly. "Pines grow faster. When they grow. The poor old kahikatea takes two or three hundred years to get to its best, and that's not fast enough for the moneyminded."
She pulls up hard. "I hate pines," she says unnecessarily.
Joe grins. "I gathered. They've got their uses though."
"O there's room in the land for them, I grant you, but why do they have to cut down good bush just to plant sickening pinus? Look at that lot, dripping with needle blight dammit… this land isn't suitable for immigrants from Monterey or bloody wherever. Bring the kete, eh."
She slams the door when she's out.
He looks at his son.
"What's she in a bad mood over?"
Simon winces. Joe lowers his voice. "You hurting?"
The boy says No. He's spent the last three days in bed, all taken care of by his father who's suitably sympathetic to, and thankful for, flu, this time.
Might've been a lie when I said it, but thank you for making it come true. He strokes the child's hair. "Sure?" he whispers.
Sure, he nods.
"Well, it must be the pines that have upset her." He leans over the seat and picks up the kete, full of sandwiches and teamaking gear. "You feeling hungry, e tama?"
He winces again.
"Ah hah, that's the problem is it?" Joe grins cheerfully, "Don't worry. We'll eat your share, and you can have a double helping at tea or whenever we get to this place."
He picks his son up, and joins Kerewin.
It's a good place where she's standing, despite the alien trees.
There is a stone-bottomed creek twenty yards away, and the ground slopes towards it. The sun is high, and the air is warm and windless.
Kerewin has taken her jacket off, and is booting pinecones.
"Now that's a good way to show your opinion of them." He plonks the kete on the ground, and sets Simon beside it.
She lays her boot into another cone, and it cracks against a tree trunk fifty feet away.
Joe whistles. "Mighty! I'll bet you didn't intend to hit it though-"
For answer, she kicks again, and a second cone shatters on the same tree. She rubs her nails on her shirt collar, and breathes on them carefully.
"Right," says Joe, challenged, and zooms in on a grand-daddy cone, thick and hard and bristling with club-ended spines. It explodes on impact.
He shakes his head in mock surprise.
"Gee, poor tree…"
"Poor bloody cone, more like. Anyway that was a fluke," Kerewin dismisses it. "We'll try for best out of three. You've got to hit under that bole, and pinecones that break up before arrival don't count."
"Done. Haimona, be scorekeeper."
The boy, looking less unhappy now he's out of the car, kneels up to watch.
"Turn and turn about," says Kerewin, "And you can go first."
His cone gets there, off centre and under the bole. It skids off at an angle on impact, still intact.
Simon coughs, and hides his eyes.
"Any rude remarks from you Himi, and you can pick up all the pieces after."
"Fine performance," she says, and Joe smirks, "Yeah, it wasn't = too… "
"I meant the finger wagging," she says, and launches herself at a hapless cone.
It speeds in, dead on target, and splits neatly in two, halves lying defeated at the base of the tree.
"Haiieee," sighs Kerewin, "who is like me?"
The boy whistles, and holds up two fingers.
"An extra point for prowess? Accepted with thanks, but really unnecessary."
"Cheating. We didn't agree on that."
"So? He's the official scorer. You appointed him yourself."
Joe mutters to himself, sights, and sends the pinecone flying with a short vicious swipe.
"Equalled mine, shall we say?" she says thoughtfully.
The cone bursts right on the bole in a shower of chips.
She boots another one away. It doesn't break, but is accounted better than Joe's first effort by the official scorekeeper.
"Help yourself to the liquorice allsorts, fella me lad," she turns
to Joe, smiling smugly. "Loser stands me a drink, eh?"
"Bribery and corruption," he growls, and kicks hard.
It is spectacular, soaring away in a magnificent parabola and whistling down to hit directly under the bole. He rubs his hands, and smiles nastily. "A jug for me, nice and cold."
Kerewin frowns at a pinecone. It is a fat little brown one, its knobs still closed, not too heavy but weighty enough. She swings her leg and hits the cone with calculated force.
"Beuteefull, beuteefull," she intones solemnly, listening to pine chips raining down. Perfectly on target, and this spectacular disintegration at the end of it.
She turns to Joe, who has flung himself down on the ground.
"Two perfect and an excellent against two perfects and a fair, right Simon sunshine?"
Joe whimpers.
"You can't tell me he's an unbiased judge."
Facedown, he can't see the coldness that comes into Kerewin's eyes.
"O, he does all right. That's a glass of pure iced orange juice you owe me, and endeavour to see there's three shots of tequila in it."
He lifts his head and brushes some of the pineneedles out of his hair. "Done," he says in a normal voice, and then drops his head again and says sobbingly, "Beaten, beaten by a mere female. I can't stand it," pounding the ground with his fist.
"I think you better bring your da a drink of something quick. The sunshine's addled him. Or maybe it's the pinescent. It does peculiar things to people-"
The boy comes over, radiating concern, mouth full of liquorice, hand full of a cup of soft drink. He dribbles the drink carefully into his father's hair and the man shrieks in surprise.
"Oath tama!" scrambling to his feet and grabbing for his son.
She stiffens. You hit him and I'll drop you like a log.
But Joe is smiling, and Simon ducks behind Kerewin giggling wildly, and whichever way Joe swings to catch him, dives the other way.