"Easy, e hoa. Be gentle now. They're gone."
"I," she says sweetly, "am as full of fight as seaweed, and hardened as the unshelled snail… lend us that guitar, would you mind?"
"Nah, sure, glad of a break," says the guitarist, bringing the strap over his head, and passing the instrument to her. "Here you go."
She checks the tuning swiftly, harmonics lingering in the air until she cuts them short with the flat of her hand.
On the open strings she picks a quick tune, says to Joe laughing, "I call this Simon's Mead Reel, though you don't know about that," chords A minor, while he shakes his head in bewilderment, and then she sings,
E wine,
puts a fog upon the mind,
drowns down those hard old memories
to a thin blear line,
e wine-
Fingers dancing over the strings, changing the tune an octave lower:
E wine,
through the cloud I see
him walk away from me,
but I'm gone beyond the caring time,
zing, and up again,
E wine, e wine…
a reeling tune, lightfooted, lightheaded, only just catching its balance as it slips and dances:
E wine,
just a shade that's left behind
caressing this hard bottle as I please,
drinking my shadow blind,
E wine… e wine… e wine…
voice trailing away, the quick picked tune going lighter and lighter and lighter it's gone- Clapping and hoots and "E bloody neat!'"s.
She grins round at them, belly of the guitar close to her, strong hands spreadfingered over the strings.
What did she mean, Simon's mead reel? Mead's a drink, reel's a dance, but what does Haimona have to do with them?
"Come on, give us another! More!" they start to drone, "More!"
"You really want another?" her grin sharp, and into the chorus of Yes, Geddonwithit, she strums a series of major chords. The crowd quietens fast, and she says, eyes glinting and very blue,
"This is a song for a friend of mine, same one I mentioned before as a matter of fact. You might know him,"
a note jangles, seemingly mispicked, but it comes again and again, until all ears are hearing it more than the surrounding chord.
"He's the son of Joe Gillayley here," twang, "a little kid, but very sharpwitted," a higher note has started to ring against the first jangle, "Hell, mimin' Simon caint talk, but hell he, got hands aint he?" zang/ping, zaang/piing, they duel back and forth, and the steady throb of the chords goes on underneath.
"Other words, he uses his hands to talk with, this small friend of mine, and this song'll let you do that too, if you want. But not at me, okay?"
Rustle and murmur all round: here and there heads swivel to look surreptitiously at Joe, and see how he's taking this introduction.
His heart is beating painfully hard, the thud going against the rhythm of the guitar, faster and louder in his ears.
Ah God, sweet Jesus, look at her… leanwristed, leanankled, but strong thickhipped body, ripe for bearing children no matter what she says… Lord, I could have more children by her… narrow waist I could put my hands around. Swaybacked she says, a draught mare, she says, paunched before I'm forty, beerbellied and wellbellied, she says, laughing her head off… laughing at me now, and having a go at Sim, that's not fair, he'd be hurt, but why? Why God? I love her, and she won't let me close. Either of us close. Any of us close-
The song has been going on but his ears have been deaf to it. The chorus has been caught up by the people round him, and is boisterously chanted complete with the gesture.
O spirals are spirals and sweetly curled, but two straight fingers can vee the world,
'Vee ther world!" bawls a voice in his ear, and the man, full of tipsy good humour, punches him lightly on the shoulder. It's all he can do, heart quaking, fists clenched, to smile tightly at him.
What does she mean by doing this? She knows he isn't allowed to do that. She's poking shit at me, and saying how little she cares for him? But it doesn't make sense-
His heart is weeping in him.
Another verse from Kerewin, unheard because the chorus has taken the tipsy man's fancy and he hums it out loud, ready to pounce as soon as it comes up again. WhangI as the chorus chord is struck hard and away the crowd goes, rowdy and laughing and upping each other as merrily as anarchists through it.
He is sick to his stomach through all the stamping and applause.
The silence, and her voice, come strangely to him.
"Well okay… this last one," boooo in sustained herd disapproval, "yeah, definitely last, this is cutting into my drinking time," dapple dapple hurr hurr hurr, "this last one is a bit different. Quiet, eh."
A simple chord sequence, D A7 G-
"Tenei mo Haimona, e hoa," and he stares wildly at her.
This is for Simon? But what about the others? When I was young and tree was full, of sweetly singing birds, then full of heart was I with song, o'erpowering great for words,
the key changes, slides into a dischord,
Not so now-
Her voice is unstrained, no longer outshouting the crowd, pleasant alto, easy on the ears,
When me and the tree were older both, and birds had left their young, words for my song I began to find, and to the tune give tongue,
again the wandering eddy of discordancy," With a vow-
Aiee, it's a gentle song, he thinks with thankful wonder. His heartbeat is calming down. Maybe it's just that I've taken it all up wrongly, maybe it's all right-
That all the good would sunlike shine, and beckon me ahead, but in grey age for my past I pine, with years my vow is dead,
the small bitter melody again, Forgotten now-
That's the way it happens, he thinks, we start out bright and something clouds us… if it's for Himi, maybe she's saying this won't
happen to him, this is her warning for him, her lesson- The chord sequence changes, Dm Am E, is hit harder,
Lightning blasted the tree, the birds are fled; Death hovers here for me. Yet not all hope is dead…
a ragged arpeggio, and then slowly the notes wind back to the original tune. Silence all round the bar, spread to the tables beyond.
His heart has eased to its normal beat, past the strain and pound of desire and bewilderment and hurt. He waits for the chance to sing with her.
O when I was young and tree was full,
he joins in, his bass mellowing the song further, and Kerewin smiles to him,
of sweetly singing birds,
then full of heart was I with song,
o'erpowering great for words-
The last chord dies into silence.
"C'mon, another!"
Again the beat of clapping, and the droning choir of "More!" but Kerewin shakes her head. "That's happy hour over for tonight, kiddies," slipping off the guitarist's stool and passing the guitar back to its owner. She joins Joe at the bar.
He slips an arm round her, whispers smiling, "Those were all your songs?" taking the arm away before she can resent it.
"O yeah. Sort of."
Little caches of verse, the hidden hoarded hopes of yesterday, things to sing and savour, saviour verses s'hope.
She takes a deep mouthful of the wine he had poured out ready for her.
Hear it, hum it, hymn it… stuhupid Kerewin.
To her left she can hear Joe bragging, Yeah, all songs she wrote for my son eh."
I did not.
… He's a little bastard," wipes mouth on back of hard brown hand,,but a gutsy little bastard. Wouldn't be mine if he wasn't, he boasts, wouldn't have kept him, eh?"
The man beside him grins. "Yeah? Sounds a good kid…."
From that you can tell? But he is good. Joe's golden boy the sunchild… I wonder if that's what bothers the man? He said
right at the beginning it didn't, but he's changed his tune on a lot of things since… maybe it hurts, everytime someone sees you two together, notes that blondness, and looks you over speculating, "Cuckold? Or so Pakeha a wife your blood can't show…?"