"This is it. This is home."
She stops the car by an ochre-coloured bach at the end of the beachline, by the shelter of a massive thicket of African thorn. She gets out, and stretches her arms high about her head, weaving her body back and forth under her stiff shoulders. She drops her arms suddenly, throws back her head and screams,
"YAAAHEEEAAAA!" and runs on to the beach.
Joe looks at Simon.
"Sea air," he says mildly to the child, who is staring at the running woman in disbelief.
She's standing on the orangegold shingle, arms akimbo, drinking the beach in, absorbing sea and spindrift, breathing it into her dusty memory. It's all here, alive and salt and roaring and real. The vast cold ocean and the surf breaking five yards away and the warm knowledge of home just up the shore.
"Ahh," she sings wordlessly, hugging herself, oblivious of the two behind her. She stamps her feet in the shingle, bends down and throws off her boots, and stamps again, bare feet tensing against the damp cold stones.
"I am back!" she calls in a high wild voice, "I am here!"
The wind blows more strongly it seems, and a larger breaker than the ones before comes crashing down in front of the woman and sends long white fingers speeding towards her. The foam curls round her ankles and Kerewin cries aloud with joy.
"O Thou art beyond all good but truly this land and sea is your dwelling place-"
She spins round, dancing herself round, spreading her arms wide in a welcome, her eyes alight.
Tendrils of her joy and possession steal to them, and the man runs across the gap calling, "Tihe mauriora!" and Kerewin laughs and holds him and hongis. And the child runs into them both, literally, blind in his need to be with them.
She picks him up, and holds him one-handed on her hip.
"Tihe mauriora to you too, urchin."
One arm still round Joe's shoulders: they are knit together by her arms. She can feel their heart beats echo and shake through her.
She says softly, but clearly above the thunder and swash of the sea,
"Welcome to my real home. For now it is your home too."
Nobody says anything for minutes.
Aue, if only we could stay like this, thinks Joe, and at the other side Simon stares down at the nearby waves with no fear at all.
Then Kerewin shakes her head and says, "O berloody oath, can you see my boots round here anywhere?"
"That big sea," she adds thoughtfully, and puts Simon down on his feet, and unlinks her arm from Joe. She grins to the child, "Tuppence a sock boy, and a shilling a boot, shall I translate?"
He grins back, shaking his head. Nothing for nothing, his hands making noughts and circles in the air.
They find one sock, sodden and sandcovered.
"Well, the sea'll give the rest back," she says resignedly. "Or it won't, as the case may be. I prefer going barefooted anyway."
"May you what?" asks Joe, watching Simon. The boy crouches, and unbuckles a sandal, and looks at his father again.
"O sure, if you want to. It's your feet."
He-ell, watching the child take off his sandals and socks, now there is a thing about childhood I had forgot. Imagine having to ask whether you can go barefoot or not-
But she remembers similar requests and prohibitions now, from twenty years and more back. "The childhood years are the best years of your life-" Whoever coined that was an unmitigated fuckwit, a bullshit artist supreme. Life gets better the older you grow, until you grow too old of course.
Simon stands, walks round, grimaces.
Cold and hard, the gravel under your tender unaccustomed feet?
"Yeah," aloud, Kerewin the unsympathetic, grinning like a hyena, "bit hard on the soles until you're used to it eh… o, and a warning for you. See that thorn bush?"
The thicket rears behind them, a livid green impenetrable mass, studded with wicked-looking pale spikes.
"Walk wary of it. There's bits and pieces of it strewn all over the beach. You stand on a hunk, and you'll think the splinter you got a while back, nothing, nothing at all. Okay? Watch where you're going, especially near the bushes."
Joe says, "Somehow I find the idea of shoes extremely appealing. It's winter, remember you fellas? Kerewin, look at your feet. They're turning blue for goodness' sake." Her toes have gone a dull bruised-looking pink.
"It is a bit chill," admitting it with reluctance. "I suppose we better get a fire going… c'mon, I'll unlock a bach or two, and we can settle in."
She tells them, "We own five of these baches, all of us owning them, not anyone separately."
"What if some of your people turn up and want a bach?"
"Well, we'll only be using two. Besides," she shrugs, "I sent a telegram saying I would be here until the middle of June. That'll keep them away."
The two baches she opens squat next to one another, an iron boatshed between them. They are roughcast buildings, one supplied with electricity, the other heated by an old coal range. Small, neat as the inside of ships, with that compact air of a cabin, the baches contain a minimum of furniture.
"That one is known as the New Bach," she says, pointing to the ochre crib next to the thorn bush, "because we acquired it last of all. This one," over the small footbridge past the boatshed, "is called the Old Bach because we got it first. We're fairly pedestrian with names here."
The stream that flows onto the beach between the two baches is no good for drinking water, she says. "If you saw the cattle staling in the pond you'd know why, eh. So all the water we got is rainwater. The tanks are full, but it pays to go easy on it." Joe, walking behind her over the footbridge to the old bach, "These fences are pretty heavy… what comes lolloping up that you've got to keep it out?"
"The sea. See up there?" gesturing to the south end of the beach. "Those concrete foundations?"
"Yeah."
"There used to be baches on top of them. The sea ate 'em. Our black bach right at the end — we call it the Black Bach, incidentally," her grin flashes at him, "that one only survived because of the way it's dug into the cliff. The sea bashed into it but the pullback action never could get into effect… I think," her voice has grown suddenly dreamy, "I'll go along there and see how the old place is. The boat we'll be using is stored there. After I've said hello to that, I'll walk along the tideline for a way and a while. See you later."
Joe looks round the old crib.
The firelight from the range is flickering on the ceiling, but the kero lamps glow bright and steady.
The beds are made up on the bottom two bunks, and he's unrolled the sleeping bag for the child on the bunk above him. On the other top bunk, he's put their suitcases and the two guitars. He has arranged the food they brought in the cupboards. Bread and butter and bacon in the safe in the boatshed; milk in the fridge in the New bach; fruit and vegetables tucked away tidily in boxes and bowls; Marama's cake and biscuits in tins- "Watch out for the furry gentlemen," Kerewin had warned. "Meece love here."
There are traces of them in all the cupboards… or there were. He's been working on that with disinfectant and hot water. It looks like nobody has stayed in these baches for a while.
And to top it off, he's got a pot of soup near the boil on the range, and a kettle singing briskly beside it.
"Haimona?"
The boy looks down from his bunk.
"You busy?"
He smiles and shakes his head.
"Like to go and find Kerewin while I make the toast?"
He nods and kneels up, holding out his hands.
"Okay…" lifting him down. "Going to take you a while to get used to going to bed upstairs eh?
"Lazybones," he adds, shuffling the boy's hair out of his eyes. Simon peaks his brows… If you say so.