Keri Hulme - The Bone People

There has been little in the way of true joy.

I don't paint much any longer.

I can't, I can't, I can't.

I have taken to wandering a lot, gyrovague, te kaihau. There is a long desert beach here, my bush, and whispering stands of alien trees. An estuary. The sea all around, waves at night, and my retreat. Unsullied sky (except when I care to build a fire…) I am beginning to wonder why I started this parade of excised feelings again.

O yes.

Dear paper ghost, I know a little more about Simon P. P for pestiferous, prestidigitous, (and as his father has it) pake.

Simon P?

Simon the shadowed. Oddbod, spiderchild. A very unlikely but strangely likable brat. Me new toy is to discover whence Simon the Gillayley came from. Why there is a suggestion of the numinous in his shadow. Who else do I know who listens to the silence of God on lonely beaches? (Ah hah! That would be telling….)

Anyhow, I know more.

And I don't know what's worse: knowing as much nothing as I did before, or being cognisant with this futile misleading much I have now.

The saga:

Armed with the ring and the rosary, I went to the library. In Debretts, after hunting through a thousand dusty pages, found a saltaire with phoenix on flame-nest superimposed. Arms of a doddering Irish earl in his eighties. He had two sons. One died in World War II, and the other popped off in 1956. Remarried, with no issue, was the Irish earl. Fat lot of help.

I looked round the pile of peerages and lesser landed gentry, junk from the old dead world. Five hours of scurrying through those pages, and this is all we've got?

The librarian smiled.

Librarians' smiles look like bookends.

And there wasn't a Latin tag, Mater Compassionem de Virgo, or any such mixture.

Next, the jewellers.

My tame silversmith said the trinket was nice work, maybe fifty years old. Haven't seen any of that coral around for a while. Cabochon turquoises, v. similar to your ring. Very nice amber. Bloodstones — hmm, not really possible to say where these particular bloodstones originated. Can tell you one thing though. The turquoise isn't American, and the gold is very pure. Nowd'youwannasell?

Fat lot of help.

The fuzz really tried to be helpful.

I have a sneaking suspicion they have a sneaking fondness for the bandit child. They let me read all the reports on the dead boatcrew, and the follow-up after. All more or less as Joe told it.

"How's young Gillayley getting on these days?" asked a young constable, brown dewy eyes and a fresh fluff of moustache. "No more escapades?"

"Not recently," said another, "been very quiet out there these days."

They all grinned at one another like it was a conspiracy.

Fat lot of help.

So then, after the jeweller, the police, the library, the hospital records, even the local, it was a dead end. Think sideways. I had a child who was so old. Many tales of infamy. One tale (I incline to the suspicion) of emotionally biased fact.

A ring that led nowhere (you ever meet a ring that went somewhere?).

A rosary that served as an endowment and nothing much else.

An unreachable boat, no registration number known.

Corpses in a graveyard, decently interred after neat indecent dissections.

A strange wayward shut-and-bolted mind.

So what the hell, I wrote to the Irish earl.

Winter grew on — half a month more and it'll be the midyear school holidays, and the urchin won't need lies any more to cover the track of his days. He's grown a quarter of an inch, sideways. He looks that much less like a famine victim. The cheekbones don't sear through the skin so sharply. And he's not nearly as restless.

Behold, Holmes! Anchor and salvation of an erstwhile happy family. I hope. Joe is beamish — when he's not glowering. Joe? Don't let's digress any more, g. reader. But I better record this deathless bit:

Last month SP was an imp incarnate. We were shown a hectic quicksilver series of mood-reversals. For instance, one moment kneeling (it never sits) enjoying dinner, and the next, for some unknown reason, it slams the plate on the floor (the plate broke). No reason given: just a silent snarl as it tromped round my living circle, kicking at the window base Stop that Sim. Kick. You'll break the berloody window and I'm sour enough about the plate. Another boot. Stop it you little bastard, or I'll stop you. And what does Simon the self-possessed do? Breaks down snivelling. Not cries of desolation. An abject self-pitying whimpering. Which continued, despite threats and blasphemy until Joe arrived to take him home (about 40 minutes' worth). What are you crying for? asks the Kati Kahukunu (he's probably my 23rd cousin but we haven't swapped whakapapa yet). Nothing, whines our Simon shaking his hair, nothing. Right, says Joe, belting him smartly across the arse, there's something to cry for. Now stop it.

I can see I do not possess the family touch.

Anyway, back to the reason I dragged you out of the cobweb pile, self-odyssey.

Today I got a letter.

It's an airmail letter.

A sheet of onionskin paper, with a heavily embossed coat of arms. Ah so, phoenix on flamebed and NON OMNIS MORIAR in gothic type underneath. I shall not all die?

Mr (sic) K. Holmes,

The Tower, Taiaroa PB,

Whangaroa, Wetland (Sic),

New Zealand.

Sir,

I am directed by His Lordship, the Earl of Conderry, to acknowledge the receipt by him of your letter dated April 30th. I am to inform you that, if the ring is genuine, and not a copy, then it belonged to

His Lordship's younger grandson. This person, about whom His Lordship has no wish to know anything more whatsoever (underline, I underline) was disinherited for disgraceful propensities four years ago. He is known to have resided in your country during his worldly {peregrinations. His Lordship wishes you to understand clearly that he has nothing further to say on this subject, and asks that you refrain from entering into further correspondence with him on this, or any I other matter. He will not reply to any such correspondence.

I am, Sir,

Yours faithfully, scrawl.

Apparently one Gabriel Semnet, Secretary to His Lordship the Earl of Conderry. Isn't that luverly? Can't you hear aristocratic nerves jangling all the way round the world? Sucks to his ancient overbearingness… though I do like that bit about disgraceful propensities. Wonder what they were? However, assuming this isn't a wild goose chase, I think I have a peer's remittance man to track down in his haunts of vice in this lowly colony of NZ.

I have a purpose in life again!

But I've also discovered I'm a snob. For my first thought on discovering there was a possible though improbable connection between Simon P and decayed Irish nobility, (bastardy? greatgrandsonship? the tenuous link of gifts?) was:

Ah hell, urchin, it doesn't matter, you can't help who your forbears were, and I realised as I thunk it, that I was revelling in the knowledge of my whakapapa and solid Lancashire and Hebridean ancestry. Stout commoners on the left side, and real rangatira on the right distant side. A New Zealander through and through. Moanawhenua bones and heart and blood and brain. None of your (retch) import Poms or whatevers.

This is getting boring, ghost, I'm gonna immure you again. See you in another six years. snapping the book shut.

"Did you know your son might have Irish connections?"

Joe sputters.

"The IRA? Yeah, I'd believe…"

"No, you silly bastard. Look at this."

He reads the letter, frowning.

Where on earth did you come by this? I didn't know anything about it-"

"I did the obvious thing. Went to the library and checked through the reference books until I found a coat of arms that matched that ring. You know, on his rosary. Then I wrote to the bod concerned