Joe laughs. It's funny how much he says, makes you think he says, with so little… how green your eyes are tonight, tama… I'm happy to see you happy. He leans over and kisses the boy.
"Put your shoes on before you go out. It's getting dark, and you won't be able to see where to put your feet."
The wind has dropped.
It is growing very dark.
The shag line has gone back to Maukiekie, bird after bird beating
forward in the wavering skein.
The waves suck at the rocks and leave them reluctantly. We
will come back ssssoooo… they hiss from the dark.
Maukiekie lies there in the evening,
that rock of an island,
not much more than an acre and bare
except for a mean scrub of bushes and brown guano-eaten grass,
where the shag colony spreads its wings in the sunlight
and haggles over footspace at night;
Maukiekie at nightfall,
all black rock crusted with salt and birdlime
and sleeping life, and
nearest to land
the stone hawk, blind sentinel
watching the cliffs.
Aiieeee, pain and longing and relief… too long I've been away from here. Too long that's been just a memory.
Tears come to my eyes whenever I hear a gull keen, or watch a shag pass on whistling wings.
O land, you're too deep in my heart and mind.
O sea, you're the blood of me.
The night darkens.
It is too easy, sitting here in the rock seat, to put words to the seasounds. Words round the waves breaking on shore, smacking the rocks. Especially now, when it's quiet, and there's only yourself listening in the dark.
(Well, there's them… and I think it was a mistake I brought them… but how can I send them away now?)
But my family is gone.
I am alone.
Why did I lose my temper that night and wound everybody with words and memories?
("It's the bloody horrible way you've remembered everything bad about everybody, and kept it and festered it all your life…")
They started it. I finished it.
They are gone beyond recalling. I am gone too. Nothing matters anymore.
She stares into the dark. Maukiekie is just a shadow on the sea, wound round with crying birds.
Twenty-five years. That's a long time. A quarter of a century.
A generation. They were the only people who knew me, knew
anything of me, and they kept on loving me until I broke it…
do they love me now?
Six years is a long time to be alone. To be unknown, uncared
for. Cut off from the roots, sick and adrift.
They must have wiped me out of their hearts and minds…
why can't I do that?
Why do I keep on… careful, you're wallowing, back in the
slough of selfpity and greasy despair… but why do I keep on
grieving? When all meaningful links are broken? Forever.
(Because hope remains. Get rid of your hope, Holmes me gangrenous soul. Do you really think you could apologise? Say you were wrong? Ask for forgiveness that might not be given? Never!)
She shudders.
Aie, quit it. Listen to the sea, not to words in your head-
There is an alien sound, a slight scrunching sound like someone… ahh, yes.
She watches him trudging past in the dark.
You really are a very stupid child. For all you know, there might be something terrible lurking in the shadowed cliff at your side, just waiting to sink its fangs in your flesh… (a mad sheep, woman? Don't be barmy!)
She sits up shivering.
"Anything wrong?"
Joe pads over, torch in one hand. She can just see the boy lying against him, cradled in his other arm.
"It's all right," he whispers. "Sim's been sick, that's all."
"O." She settles quickly back down under the eiderdowns. "Can I help?"
"No, I'm just cleaning up." There's amusement in his voice. "For a small boy, he can surely throw up plenty."
Yech.
"Yeah, I'll bet." She's glad to have never wiped up anyone's vomit.
"It was probably the car, the travelling. After-effects. You know."
"Yeah," says Kerewin. "Mmmm," sleepily. Joe grins to himself.
"You know what?" he asks Simon, very softly, his mouth close to the child's ear.
Simon taps his neck, No?
"I think she's glad I didn't ask for help… she's gone back to sleep a bit too quick, eh?"
The boy giggles.
"Hush up."
He kneels again, and mops up more of the mess on the floor.
"She sounded like she might have thrown up too, if I'd said Yes, I need help. That'd be a bit hard on me, eh."
Finger brushing his neck, light as a moth touch, No.
"Cheeky brat," Joe whispers.
She can hear the rustle of his voice, and the boy's quick hushed laughter, but the sea is loud, louder-
It's good lying against Joe like this, thinks Simon. All the muscles are soft, the strength in abeyance. He has let his own body go completely limp, relaxed into the curve of arm, the curve of his father's chest.
Joe finishes the floor, and shines the torch round to check — yep, sick over my bed too — he's only just made it over the side of his own bunk.
"Talk about making a thorough job of it, Himi… that must have accounted for everything in your gut from last week on."
After he's done rubbing and wiping, he creeps over and puts a pot on the still-hot range, and heats milk.
"Think you'll go to sleep all right, without any more dope?"
Simon nods, smiling at him in the firelight. He gestures to Joe.
"With me?" the man murmurs. "It's a bit cramped in those bunks, fella."
He pours the milk into two mugs.
"Might be an idea though… you really finished being sick?"
The child giggles softly again as he tells him No. He has found
the whole episode hilarious apparently.
Joe hefts him higher against his shoulder, and sits on the floor with the boy in his lap.
"You truly all right now?"
He nods, and then leans his head back to look up at Joe. One of his hands rests on the man's wrist, loose and quiet. With the other he touches his forehead, and then his scarred back, and gestures to the bunk where Kerewin sleeps.
He can feel his father's heart start to beat urgently hard. He stretches up and touches Joe's lips.
"She's keeping quiet? Or I'm to?"
The whisper is high and strained.
Both, say the upraised fingers. It's okay, he mouths, it's okay, and suddenly the word is turned into question and entreaty, Okay? Okay?
"Aue, aue… okay, tamaiti, okay…" he strokes Simon's hair away from his eyes, and kisses him. "Taku aroha ki a koe, e tama."
All still, all silent, except for the sea.
They can't even hear Kerewin's breathing.
Joe sighs.
"Eh, I don't know why I hit you," he says in a low voice, talking more to himself than his child. "I'm drunk or I'm angry, I'm not myself… even when it's necessary to beat you o I don't know, it's not like I'm hitting you, my son…" Simon moves, and Joe looks down to see what he's saying.
It feels like it is, says Simon wryly
He closes his hands over the child's small hands.
"Thank you for not holding grudges," his voice lower still, husky and shaking a little. "God knows I deserve your hate… but you don't hate," he says wonderingly, "you don't hate."
The boy looks at him, eyes glinting in the firelight, saying nothing. Then he smiles, and leans over, and bites Joe's hand, hard as he can.
"Shit!" the man gasps, hissing with pain, and pulls his hand to his mouth. "Bloody brat, what's that for?"
Aroha, mouths the child, grinning, aroha, and his smile is wickedly broad.
Joe sucks his hand until the ache dies, then holds it out in the firelight.