Keri Hulme: The Bone People

"Nope. I paint pictures for a living and hunt snarks for a hobby," said glibly while already teetering to my feet away.

"Gawn… I'm a deepsea diver," blink blink, "yer really a painter though?"

"Yeah," receding.

"I'm really a diver."

"O really? In that case, I've got work for you mate," thinking, if he's a deepsea diver, I'm a pickled prawn.

He was.

He hunted all round the baches. He hunted me down. The next day indeed. He was sheepish and hungover and he asked lamely,

"On the off chance yer know, did yer really have work? Or yer joking?"

I had been joking, but suddenly wasn't.

He had the slenderest of hopes that I was a generous eccentric who wanted yet another go at the "General Grant". I destroyed that, but offered him a little sugarlolly consolation prize. He snapped it up with astonishing haste.

"It's the challenge I love," he said, diver Finnegan of the deep. He explained morosely that there wasn't any work these days, no-one getting wrecked, no oil-rigs to bolt down, just pissy surface work he made do with, waiting without hope for real dives.

"This 'II be a challenge all right. It's in deep and dirty water. There's a reef and rocks and currents all round. It's probably in pieces, but I want as much as possible brought up and how much will it cost?"

Am I becoming responsible about my whims? I thought about that for all of a minute while he scribbled away in the back of a dirty little notebook, scratched his head, hummed, and finally said,

"About $450 a day. Dunno how long it'll take either. Have to be two of us, good surface joker, and then there's the boat etcetera etcetera."

He didn't exactly end it like that, but I accepted his quote and put

a limit of two weeks on the operation. See? Responsibility creeping into me from all angles…he went off happy to Whangaroa, laden with something else that had nothing to do with the stranger cruiser — a set of plans, and an offer for Piri Tainui to become my building and salvage-operation supervisor. (About ten minutes after the offer was communicated to Piri, I got a telegram back. Damn thing said simply "AE" one hundred times, and I swear it was still smoking when I took it out of the envelope.)

I had spent many nights happily drawing and redrawing those plans. I decided on a shell-shape, a regular spiral of rooms expanding around the decapitated Tower… privacy, apartness, but all connected and all part of the whole. When finished, it will be studio and hall and church and guesthouse, whatever I choose, but above all else, HOME. Home in a larger sense than I've used the term before.

Because.

Because when I rang the fuzz in 'Roa to get permission to go ahead salvaging, I was enthusiastically greeted and enthusiastically permitted. Actually Morrison said, "You don't need permission from us. We couldn't spend thousands of the taxpayers' money finding out the identity of a couple of corpses, but if you 're that curious, we- "

"The corpses don't interest me a damn," and that was when I heard about all kinds of escapades and peregrinations, and had this o so hesitant and gingerly feeler extended to me. I said I'd think about it. Morrison, bless those dewy eyes and that fluffy copper mustache, reduced himself to plead. "Look, there's sure to be a next time, he's made it back once already, can we let you know so I don't have to, to — look, can I ring you?"

Sure, I said, and gave him the number of my headquarters, the Hamdon pub.

Holy Mother! Did I say I would think about it?

It made me want to dance. It made me want to weep. It made rebuilding so bloody pointed and poignant and REAL. Commensalism — right on. But this had a dawn air to it, the day yet to come. And what we could do with the day-

Learn to label with new names, for a small start.

Yesterday, the cat Li went exploring. It wauled from the alley round by the tankstand, back of the bach. I didn't hurry to find out why. It wasn't a distressed yowl, just a come-hither call. I strolled round to her, smoking my pipe.

"Watchagot, Li? Too big a spider?"

And I nearly choked. I nearly swallowed my whole bloody pipe. The cat was most perturbed, coiling into my arms asking in a guttural croak why all the smoke? A screen, Li.. Jesus in hell, who left those stones there like that?

You see, my dear alter ego, I collected memories here in the mayday holidays. Joe collected a pounamu chisel and large lungfuls of fresh

air. And the urchin went in mainly for stones, Maori sinkers, the whole beach worth.

And did he arrange them in six inch capitals, CLARE WAS HE?

ft occurred to me while I watched the stone words blur, that I'd never asked him what he called himself. Just, what do they call you?

Well, I shall enquire of him discreetly and call him whatever he likes, though I would find it peculiar to fit my tongue round son. I think I will leave that to Gillayley-senior.

Plots and plans flowering all over the show — I've found out where he is. back of beyond, being mysterious, carving he says, heading homewards and I'll see him at Christmas. He has a present for me, he says. He giggled when he said it. Two can play that game: I shall have a present for him, strange and legal (by that time). Ho ho ho!

We're nearing the end now, soul of the book. We're coming to the new beginning. This afternoon, Finnegan rang. He said the police were all over what he'd rescued like flies on a dead sheep (his simile, not mine) and they'll be ringing yer and bloody good he'd made it just in time eh mate?

Yes, I said, and thanks, I said, and didn't offer any bonus which wasn't quite fair, because it's apparently damnably dirty and cold down there, a gloom of current-stirred soup… but Finnegan didn't care. He'd triumphed over the sea again, lorded it over the deeps. "You shoulda been there, "he crowed, "you shoulda seen her break top… hull dripping crawlies and things and barnacles from here to my arse. Like she's been down centuries not a few years. She's whole, nearly whole, though mind yer there's nothin 'yer can have that'll be worth much-"

I should have been warned by that "yer can have-"

Piri was next.

"You heard from the inspector yet? You heard from Morrison?" and I could hear him hopping up and down with some kind of joy. It giggles through his voice. It makes him sing the words gaily down the line. "O I won't say nothing yet Kere, they got to let you know officialeee-"

I should have been warned by the officialeee.

But no.

I'm sitting sipping beer, stroking Li, wondering what price for each crawlie on the hull, when Dave says,

"Phone again, Kerewin me love… take it in the office eh, you 'II be able to hear yourself think in there."

"Miz Holmes?"

"Myself."

"Detective Inspector Gil Price here, Miz Holmes.. your salvage expert will have let you know that he was successful in recovering the hull of the launch that sank on-"

Oath!

He drones on in formal statement-sheet phraseology, and I hang there in suspense, smoothing Li beneath my hand.

"There are several urrr," first human comment, "relics you will pare

find interesting. They have enabled us to close our file on the ah Gillayley child. The most interesting item, or should I say items rather, we found behind the bulkheads however."

Very stagy pause.

"You found?" I oblige.

"Heroin," says the detective inspector smugly. You can hear him smack his lips fatly. "Nearly twenty pounds of pure heroin. Worth about three million dollars on the street."

More lipsmacking. Such bonuses don't often come the way of smalltown fuzz.

lam taking some time to catch my breath, because some happenings are starting to go click click click quite nastily into place… put together needles and drug smuggling and nightmares and threats and o there's worlds to go into yet, hells to explore-