She drinks more wine, orders large whiskies in a row for Joe. "Her?" she hears him say, back to her, "her? NO way, all she's in love with are her bloody paintings." She could be a thousand miles away.
Who knocks
on the rotten boards of my heart?
Let me in, let me in,
It's me — Kerewin-
Too true.
"Scuse me, Joe," to his unhearing ears, and walks to the toilet, each step purposely in line, effortfully straight and steady.
"Deafer and deafer and drunker and drunker," she croons, and the pub recedes entirely away.
A silence like the most intense music-
… the stench of the airfreshener is vilely plastic. She is beginning to feel sick. But outside the toilet she is suddenly caught up in the people swarm. All the tight inner communing with self is given over to the sweep of herd emotion. She stretches her arms, sickness forgotten,
Ae, a wide embrace! A long and broad joying!
At the bar, Joe swipes out with his elbow, catching someone in the back.
"Watch what you're doing!"
"Outa way!" he yells, ignoring the protest, "my lady troubadour is back!"
"Ah to hell!" calling back as loudly, grinning wildly.
The original guitarist is thumping out the coke-song, and all the pub is rocking with the tune.
"And snow white purple doves!" bawls Joe.
"You got that a bit wrong old son," she punches him lightly on the shoulder, still grinning. His shoulder muscles are soft and relaxed. His smile is similarly loose.
"Nice song," he says, slurring it, "very niessh shong."
"Yeah."
It's gone eight o'clock and the after-tea drinkers are swarming everywhere.
Kerewin chattering to herself,
"So ergo, the ego ain't. It's a pervert symptom, a warp of Self. This little warp of human life we weave… what really is the
cockroach individual? A baggage of unthinking urges. A ragbag thing of no account? A freak, a mystery? And does the warring self survive body dissolution? Heaven help us! the ancients' essay and ours to pierce the veil are mere baby meddling, needling into a gloom beyond attempt."
She coughs on a mouthful of wine.
Joe nods.
The man on the right nods. "Go on," he says.
"Come and play darts," urges Joe, which is a suitable comment on the whole, he thinks.
"I can beat you in this state. Let's stay friends."
"Aw, I'd never live it down if you win. Play friendly."
She ponders, the clatter of the crowd growing and growing in her head.
The rainbow end. The phoenix helix. The joyful Nothing. The living abyss… what does he mean, he'd never live it down?
"Aw bullshit. Crap. Shit. Dung. Excreeetia. Processed anything. Come on," dragging herself off the barstool, "I'll give you a game anyway. An I mean, give."
Joe stands up. And promptly sits down on the floor.
"Upsadaisy," says the man on the left, bending down to help.
"Man, that's rude. That's crazy. Upsadaisy s'though I'se Simon's size." Joe is blinking furiously.
"Well downsadaisy then," says the bloke huffily, and lets go his arm.
Joe, on his feet again, pats the man.
"S'okay e hoa. Don' know what'm doin eh. Full right up to here," pointing. He blinks again, tears trickling from his dark eyes. "Honess beer but ah damn deceeful whishky." He sounds as though any moment he's going to break into a full-fledged howl.
"Pissed as farts the both of them," says the rightbarside.
She thinks, Simon.
A start, a wrench, of sickness, deep in her gut. The bright wine flowing in her blood until the blood curdles… ah treachery!
"Joe?" the word treacling out. "Ring a taxi, e mate?"
He looks at her blearily, head bobbing up and down.
"S'okay, sokay."
She clenches her glass for self-control.
Solidity of glass, metal that evaporates under your squeezing fist, until the only solidity is your painfully ground teeth. That alone is reality. And do this under a smile, with guarded face, lest someone see and sneer.
She moves, without haste, over the miles to the toilet again. Brushes past the woman coming out, throws open the toilet door, and throws up down the toilet, violently. Pulls the door hastily closed
Beer and whisky and wine and little baby cockles… she kneels, head on her arms, waiting for the retching to stop.
O mother of us all, that's the first time in my life I've ever been sick through drinking… this is the gift he would give me?
Her breath condenses on the silver bar of her rings.
Te koha… aha koa iti, he pounamu… he's probably forgotten about it, if it existed. I'd better too.
He is standing under the phone, the public phone on the wall. His head is down, eyes closed, arms folded, slumped against the wall.
"E Joe?" breathing into his ear.
"AieeE!"
"Sorry fella, but you looked like you'd gone to sleep eh?"
"Orrr," he massages his face, his eyes, his neck.
"You all right?"
"Drunker'n hell." Squints at her. "You okay?"
"Worse for wear too-"
He stretches, groaning.
"Got us a taxi ordered… said it was for you, but I'll go to Tainuis' eh. Pick up tama. It's on the way."
"Beaudy. I'll shout you home."
His eyes fix on her.
All pupil, black, blank, but with an ice-glitter sheening them.
"Yeah." Eyelids hooding the blackness. "You do that. Shout us outa the way home."
They wait in awkward silence for the taxi to arrive. They sit in silence all the way to the Tower. The driver whistles tunelessly under his breath the whole way.
So much for merrymaking, Holmes… you should've stayed home happily strangling the meece-
She gets out by her bridge. "Goodnight, Joe." And because that sounds baldly rude, she adds, "Thanks." He smiles, a dark bitter smiles that makes the deep lines on his face seem more like scars than ever.
"For nothing, eh?" He leans out. "Open it sometime. You can have it as a memento of those two idiots who used to bother you and waste all your valuable time." He puts the small packet in her hand. She stares at him. His eyelids droop.
"G'night," he says, and leans away from her, into the covering dark.
Her hand tightening into a fist, she goes to the driver's window.
"That should be enough to cover the trip both ways," passing him a note. "Gee thanks," he says guilelessly.
She slams the back door of the taxi. The driver says something like Toodleloo in the background, and puts the car into reverse. It goes, headlights cutting a slice in the night. The lights vanish. The sound dies…,„,
She leans against the tower door,
"Well, that seems to be that."
A far-off cloud in the deep of space. The drunken circling stars.
"Aue, Mere-mere quite contrary," she trys to laugh.
Or is it Kere-kere quite contrary?
She closes the door with a thump! as though that would keep the phantoms of the night outside.
8. Nightfall
TRY KEEP ALITT ill Ion guron
your feee he slumps.
The world goes away some more. The night comes closer still.
Blinks in weary vagueness.
Try.
Keep eyes. Them open. See the dark come.
Can't.
Nothing.
Badbadbad.
Fucking useless Clare.
Among the chaff and evil reedy voices round that hummock in unconsciousness he can hear the one he hates. Singing. It's too near the threshold but go back up….
Hey! shh Sant' Claro dulce and gentle
a throbbing double kick, and the plateau tilts. Deeper, it welcomes. The voices are rejoicing.