"You don't wear it?"
"No. For one thing, it's too big. For another, I haven't got a suitable cord. Anyway, you can see it back at Taiaroa, and tell us what you think."
He looks at the pendant in his hand. "I'm glad this didn't have voices with it… you ever dig on the island?"
"Yeah. I got a yard of guano and a chipped shovel. Maukiekie is as solid as a bloody rock."
The dreamhold island.
Shags slide off its top with reptilian grace.
Bullkelp weaves and snakes by the base.
Rimu rimu tere tere e-
Why should I feel sad?
My memories are refurbished. They've got their souvenirs. It's been a good holiday. I've enjoyed most of it. They seem to have enjoyed most of it.
So why should I feel sad?
She doesn't know.
She stares at Maukiekie a long time before going back inside the baches.
The wind rises to gale force, the day before they leave. Seas drive hard up the beach, and out on the reef the blowhole booms above the roar of the waves.
"Winter's back with a vengeance," says Kerewin, and calmly goes on packing.
She has turned the old bach inhumanly tidy. The sand they've trodden in, is swept away and the floor polished. All the familiar dead flies are dusted off the sills. Even the spiderwebs that hung in jointed cables round the lamphooks, and grew in furry webs in the corners, spangled with sucked-dry corpses — even the webs are gone. The bunks are made for the final time, but all the clothes they had hung from convenient projections — top of ladders, bunk ends, or slung over chairs — are sorted and folded into three piles. "Yours, and yours," she says, and goes down the beach, dodging waves, to clean and lockup there. She scrubs down the dinghy, o keep safe till I come back, and stacks the oars, and anchor, and all the fishing gear. Bars the boatshed door, and puts shutters over the windows. The black bach is eyeless again, blinkered against its enemy.
"It's going to be a high wild tide," she tells them when she returns, "but that wind'll drop before too much longer. Then all we have to worry about is rain. Or maybe snow."
"Great." Joe keeps on staring at the fury before him. The great waves roll in, crests streaming away before the wind like long white hair. Near shore, the sea is latticed with a scum of yellowish froth. There is a constant grinding thunder as shoals of rocks rumble up and down in the violent boil of water. At last he says,
"Aue tama, we better get our stuff packed too."
The boy spends an hour going through his hoard. He selects all the seacrystalled glass, two perfect lampshells, one black and one red, and three of the holed stones; a paua shell Joe had garnered from the reef, and the big crab claw Kerewin jokingly calls his roach holder.
("Lookat it, chela of Ozius truncatus, defunct, perfect for gripping the teeniest roach…."
"Struth Kere, he's got more than a taste for booze as it is. Don't encourage him to start on anything else.")
He piles all the rest of his collection into a kete and staggers to the door with it.
"Where are you putting that?"
On the beach, point point.
"What about all those stones Kerewin wanted?"
Simon lifts his eyebrows.
"You're growing to be a bit of meanie, fella. Leave some where she can find them. She might have been serious about keeping them for her family."
OK signs the boy and lurches outside.
He stands behind the fence and throws each piece to the hungry waves, telling them thank you and goodbye. The bag is still heavy with holey stones when he has finished. He takes it round to the back of the old bach, where there's an alleyway between the building and its landward fence. Some craypots and a rusted tank are stored there, but it doesn't seem used for anything else. All she had done was look into it without commenting, when she was showing them round. He squats beside the tank and forms words with the stones. He croons to himself, They won't know, They won't know, making the letters good and big. But he hasn't enough stones, and the last two letters of the third word have to be left off. He looks at his message for quite a time, wondering whether it would be better, safer, to kick the phrase into disarray. It looks vaguely threatening as it is. He shrugs. It's too late. Whatever is going to happen, will happen, and there is nothing at all he can do about it now.
He leaves the message as it is.
The rain has ceased. The sky this morning is so pale a blue it appears white at first glance. The wind is gone. The air is very stilclass="underline" the sea roar is magnified, and every birdcall piercingly clear.
A clean refreshed land, she thinks, walking along the tideline for the last time.
Maybe there are such things as second chances, even if dreams go unanswered-
(Back by the car, Joe says, "I don't want to go either, but you've got school, and I've got work, and we don't have any choice eh?" Sighing, "If only she would-" He smiles unhappily to his child, his words an echo in his head, if only she would, if only. Simon smiles bleakly back. "Would you like it if I asked her to marry me?" and the child's smile lightens and his eyes go bright kingfisher green. "Ah, you would too," the man laughs, and his heart is easy all of a sudden.
Should I ask her when she comes back to us? No, not yet, not yet….)
He contents himself by saying as they leave,
"We been good? We can come back?" grinning broadly, his eyes dancing.
He's glad to get away from the place? Ah hell, who cares? "Oh yeah," says Kerewin coldly. "There's always next time."
III. The Lightning Struck Tower
7. Mirrortalk
HELLO, AGAIN.
I planned to try and unravel the tangle of dream and substance that is me, my family, Moerangi… but I am overwhelmed by futility. What use is it to know? What use is it, when I am gutted by the sense of my own uselessness?
Through poverty, godhunger, the family debacle, I kept a sense of worth. I could limn and paint like no-one else in this human-wounded land: I was worth the while of living. Now my skill is dead. I should be.
But I can't.
Let the razor sleek into my flesh. The numb night of overdose send me stillness.
So I exist, a husk that wishes decay into sweet earth.
Writing nonsense in a journal no-one ever sees.
"Ah to hell, Holmes, you take yourself far too seriously." Locking the book away in its chest.
I can hear it whining in the dark to itself, Despair, despair, there's no-one here. I should climb in with it, and we could whimper in company. Each unaware of the other.
She had dropped the Gillayleys at Pacific Street, refusing their offer of dinner. She had sold the car at the nearest sales yard, and walked home.
This Tasman sea is grey and wild, and there is no island with dream marae at its core… There was a film of dust over everything in the Tower.
The suneater burred on in the late afternoon sun, but its beat is irregular, the crystal mounting hazy.
Stasis. A hell in itself. No change. All this waiting for me, to no avail.
Maybe I should load up Aihe and sail off somewhere? Dunno. Go back to Moerangi? Dunno. Sleep for a week? Burn my brain
with booze? Anything? Dunno-
You're wounded, soul, too hurt to heal. Maybe so. I dunno-
He says, stamping up the stairs,
"It was good to go away, but it's better to get back home eh?"
"Yes."
"We were round at Tainuis an hour ago, and Christ, what a reunion! You should've been with us… everyone carrying on, Ben, the old people, Piri's up north but he sent a telegram saying hello, even Luce… you'd think we'd been gone years rather than weeks."
"You're appreciated."
He squeezes her shoulder. "E, so are you-"