Maybe it will make my dying that much easier… when I come to die, there will be little left to die.
I'm already a ghost with set wings, stalking tombstone territory.
Three days to the firestorm.
Three days to go.
Joe says that morning,
"I'll stay in 'Roa for a couple of days, if that's all right with you?"
"Of course it is."
"Okay then… I need to sign the papers for the house, and get everything sorted out. Before."
"Of course," but she says it more gently this time.
He pushes the hair away from his face. "You'll be all right, e Kere? I mean, I'll come out each night if you want some company.""I'll be fine… take good care of yourself, and I'll see you Friday."
"Ae. E noho ra," as he swung away down the steps.
"Haere ra."
She listens to his footsteps clatter away.
"Everything sorted out," means the bare house cleared; the budgie given away to the Tainuis; the lawyer seen again and the house disposed of. Preparations for what may be a long stay behind stonier walls than these.
She sighs, and starts on the final work on the Tower.
She finishes nailing the last sheets of iron on the temporary roof to the livingroom circle, and has clipped up a PVC guttering before the afternoon begins. She no longer marks passing time by meals, but by the position of the sun. She doesn't feel like eating these days, though over the past week her appetite for drink has returned. So she is playing a melancholy thoughtful tune, her mind cloistered in a wine haze, when the radiophone buzzes.
It takes several seconds for her to realise what the sound is. More than a month gone by since it rang. And last time… taipa.
"Ah, hello?"
"Hello," says the operator, in subdued tones. "I've got a call for you from Doctor Lachlan waiting."
Lachlan? Lachlan? Sheeit, that's Simon's doctor, Simon's?
Her heart has started to beat crazily fast.
"Put her through."
"Right away."
The voice is distant. She turns the volume control full up, concentrating against the haziness of the wine. "Hello, Elizabeth? What'd you say?"
"I said, is Joseph there?"
"No, he's in town."
"But I've tried his number and he-"
"You'd better leave him a message here if you can. I don't know exactly where he is at the moment, and he's had his phone cut off… he got some nut calls the week he came out of hospital. Nasty ones."
"Oh…" the voice fades and fuzzes.
"Oath, this is a bad line… I can't hear you, Elizabeth."
"I said, in that case would you mind telling him that Simon is conscious but not recognising me, and not responding to very much at all."
"O God."
The tinny voice grows stronger.
"He isn't reacting to sounds, and it appears he has difficulty in focusing on anything. We're not sure how much he can see, but he can move his limbs. And he did more or less co-operate when the neurologist carried out a simple test. He can understand some things I think."
The operator has obviously been fiddling with the connection. The line is now clear, free of all hums and buzzes.
"No idea how much?"
"No, though I personally think he's aware of where he is, for instance, and what's happened to him."
"Others don't think so?"
"Well, they don't know Simon's reactions as well as I do, and you know how difficult it can be, trying to understand him."
I never found it that hard…
Saying aloud,
"He doesn't recognise you at all?"
"He doesn't, but that kind of amnesia is normal after the sort of head injury that's involved here. And as I said, we don't know how much he can see or hear."
"Do you reckon it'd do some good if Joe caught the late flight and came?"
"No," says Elizabeth decisively, "and dissuade him if he has any idea of visiting. Aside from the fact that the police are sure to object, I think the child is terrified by the possibility of this happening. We're doing our — "
"He's terrified of hospitals, that'd be — "
"In this instance, we are all sure that the source of Simon's very evident fear is a recurrence of what has already happened far too often." Cold, authoritative, brooking no disagreement, and implying that Kerewin is somehow guilty for being involved.
So I am, she thinks dully, and I'm probably wrong for thinking Sim would want Joe to help him now. Would I want someone after they had done such damage to me? Even if I loved them? No way….
The conversation ends in small talk, goodbyes.
She thumbs the operator recall button. He says anxiously, "Is everything all right? I was very upset when I heard what had happened."
"Not half as upset as I was," says Kerewin drily. She sends Joe a long telegram in Maori, and then settles down to drinking in earnest.
The boy entombed by deafness? Possibly blind? Mentally deficient?
Aue-He would be better off dead. Better by far that he had never woken again.
The rain begins to fall that night, the first heavy rain for nearly six weeks. She weeps with it, stirred to tears for the first time since the night of horror.
Maudlin Holmes, o tear besotted soul… think on the bright side. He may be all right. (What? Frozen deep in his terror, waiting for the next nightmare to happen?) Besides, we use only a, what is it? tenth of our brain? So, if he's lost a bit, it's not to say that he is subnormal, ineducable. (The tenth of the brain theory is estimation and unprovable… and who's going to bother to educate the urchin now?)
It's a question she has steadfastly been avoiding since she first heard from Piri that Joe had been charged with assault on the child, and doing grievous bodily harm. She knows with intuitive certainty that the one thing the court will do is order a change of custody. That Joe will lose his child for good, for ill, but definitely forever.
She works in the cold drizzle, helped by whisky, piling wood in a high teepee. Dribbling fuel oil over it, and ladling out kerosene. It takes all day to build the fire. It has to be done carefully, for in the centre, in a small chamber all of its own, she has set the tricephalos.
Like unto the phoenix laying its egg, I have laid me down the last work and monument I'll ever make. May this pyre burn it to terracotta. A very hardshelled triumph… and who knows what will rise if it hatch?
She pours the rest of the whisky on the completed fire-nest.
She is tired nearly to death.
Her weakness is frightening now. She stands by the cunningly piled wood, wondering that it has taken her ten hours to do what would have been accomplished in two a month ago.
If I'm going to burn out this quickly, it might not be worth taking off. It might be better to stay here, and just lock the door towards the end… but it's too late now. I've done my wrecking… besides, someone would have come here eventually and discovered one hell of a mess. I will go away to a quiet desert place and make a skeleton of me in peace and solitude.
What a pity, she thinks, as she drops the bottle at the woodpile's edge, that we humans don't have aesthetically pleasing skeletons. None of the elegance and beauty of your humble mollusc. Just a knobbily serrated jumble, headbone connected to de breastbone etcetera etcetera. On the other hand, maybe just as well… something might decide to start collecting us-
She goes inside, seeking more whisky to warm the still-living body she owns.
The moon's up, and inching round the world.
It's outside the window when Joe gets back.
He comes straight across the room and kneels down beside her.
"You feeling bad?"
"Quite. Goood. Act-u-ally," looking at him through bleary eyes.
He looks harassed and tired, and the sick greyness is back in his face, and yet for seconds he grins at her, merry and charming as ever he was.