Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"Pedderass?" she scans the note again, wrinkling her nose. "Would you mean pederast?" Simon lifts his open hands to her, I don't know.

Where the hell does he get these words from?

And abruptly, with painful clarity, heard the languid Luce Tainui say, "Why, Binny Daniels." Two days ago in the Duke, and still the hooks in that conversation stick in her throat like a half-swallowed bidibid. She says, swallowing, "A pederast is a person who makes love, has sex that is, with

children. Particularly young boys. Why?"

Anger is starting to drive her heart harder.

Simon gives her another note. The purple shadows ringing his eyes make them curiously luminous and birdlike.

IS BINN?

Sheeit. Binny Daniels is the proverbial dirty old man. A solitary gaffer in a long khaki coat, caught several times and finally put away for a year for feeling up schoolboys. Now he drinks in solitary at the Duke, where the regulars rubbish him savagely and aren't above sly punches, and the barman doesn't serve him very often. He buys half a gallon of sherry and trundles off home to bed with it, early each night.

"Yes, Binn Daniels is. Did he bother you?"

The boy shakes his head, already busy on the next note. He is writing more than gesturing at the moment.

HE GIVE ME A KISS AND SAY I CAN HAVE MONEY ANYTIME. HE STINKS

"Ulp," heart beating hard as haka-stamping, and as war-ready. "That was all?"

It had better be, but the child shifts uncomfortably. He has been moving and walking as though he was a wooden doll ever since he arrived this morning. She half expects to hear his joints click; Simon the graceful burdened with twitches. An experimental act, she'd thought, a phase, a put-on, but now buggery comes to mind. I'll gut and deball the old bastard if he's touched you.

The bruised-eyed child shakes his head, but he means nothing, nothing happened.

NOTHING, he writes, BINN OK.

Nothing, he emphasizes, shaking her hand once, ready to touch as ever but flinching before the cold anger in her eyes.

So I'd better believe you rather than make a fuss. But where'd you get that bruise Sim? And why're you looking so strained? I think I'd better do some asking round. About all sorts of things…

"Good." She says it lightly, and grins down at him. "That stink isn't the only thing sour about that old man. He could do you considerable damage… sunchild, do me a favour?"

Simon, weak at the knees with relief that the flickery swords of flame have been sheathed, and that Kerewin is still Kerewin and not wild at all with him, would do anything in the world for her. His smile is full of promises.

"If you want money, come here for it. I've got more than enough. If you want kisses, there's all your Tainui relations ready and willing, not to mention Joe. But don't go round to Binny Daniels' place again,

eh. Not for any reason whatever. The bloke has a nasty reputation, and he earned it."

He crosses his heart and cuts his throat, I promise, I promise, and he asks for two dollars, and thanks her profusely, and he smiles all the time.

"You been back to Binn Daniels?"

He is startled out of his retreat. No No he says, lifting his head from his arms.

"Where'd you get this from then? You pinch it?"

The boy shivers. No, barely moving his head. His eyes are fixed on Joe.

Kere, he mouths, and his shoulders slide up to hunch by his ears.

Possible, thinks Joe, but is it begged or stolen? and at that moment, Simon offers a note. He is shaking now, a hopeless seemingly uncontrollable shudder.

Joe goes over to pick it up from him. GAVE SHE GAVE IT, but the child won't look at him, and the knuckles of his clenched fists show through as though the skin is transparent.

Ahh, what can you do Ngakau?

Once on Monday night, because the suspense of waiting over

Kerewin's visit to the Tainuis' farm got too great, and the boy

woke up at the wrong time, and blundered into the kitchen

at the wrong time.

No school Tuesday.

Once on Wednesday: Binn Daniels.

School all right, sent home with a headache at lunchtime, God

knows he'd have an ache everywhere else, why not his head?

Thursday.

Sneaked off to Kerewin's Friday morning, but she sent him

home in the afternoon claiming she wanted to draw in peace.

He doesn't remember why he thrashed him last night. It had

been a forgotten, better forgotten night. Only when he'd

wakened the child for breakfast this morning — "Himi, it's

nearly nine o'clock, where the hell are you?" thinking, I'll bet

he's drifted off to Kerewin again — he'd been curled up in

a foetal ball on top of the bedclothes, arms wrapped round his

chest, knees drawn to his chin, and his face still wet from

weeping. He couldn't stand properly. Hunched over and

moaning, he clung to Joe.

"Whatsmatter?" His head was throbbing horribly. "Sweet

Jesus, did I do that?"

Which was silly of him to ask, even considering the nature

of the morning. Who else would?

Don't hit him any more, man. You'll break him again.

He's been kneeling here all of the morning. Keeping out of the way.

The shower wasn't much help. Nor were the aspros.

Ahh god, Ngakau, you and your bloody temper. He eases himself down beside the boy, and lights himself a smoke.

He passes it across to his child,

"You feeling any better?" his voice very gentle.

The boy coughs and hacks on the smoke like he's an old man of eighty, and the tears spin down his cheeks, while his fingers shake on the cigarette, but you can always win him by declaring peace. After a while, he even smiles.

"It's been a bad week, e tama."

The boy leans against him, sideways, gingerly. Joe slides an arm round him, touching and no more. "I think we'll go on that holiday very soon," and Simon grimaces.

He don't want to go? Don't ask for the moment-

"You know if Kerewin's coming?"

She don't say, says the child.

"O don't she?" Joe smiles at him, "o don't she?" he breathes out. He ruffles Simon's hair, smoothes it again. "Tama, you've never told Kerewin, have you?" in the same quiet-as-breathing voice.

His son shakes his head.

"Why?"

There's a long silence.

Because she'll know I'm bad, the boy mouths, and starts crying. Because she'll know I'm bad, he says it again and again, gulping miserably through the silent words, She'll know I'm bad.

"O Christ," says Joe, and cries with him.

He rings Kerewin at two, and gets her out of bed, it seems… she snarls into the mike, "Who the hell is it?" and takes a lot of sweet talking before she's at all conversational.

"Two in the afternoon," he joshes at last, "you'd better admit it's late in the morning for waking e hoa!"

"I had a very late night," she says briefly.

"Drawing?" he asks, and after her "Yes", "Have you finished?"

"Why?"

"Well, Himi really wants to come round, but not if you're busy like yesterday."

"He won't bother me today. I stomped most of yesterday's work to death anyway."

He's sympathetic. Then he adds, The boy is a bit under the weather with flu, does she mind? he truly wants to come?

"If you don't think he's going to keel over or anything."

"No way," Joe assures her, "he's just a bit achy with it." He

doesn't think it's a catching kind, well, he hasn't got it, and he has had every opportunity to… he won't send him for an hour or two yet, but expect a taxi before I go to the pub, eh. "I still got the washing to finish," mourns Joe. "You wouldn't, by any chance, want to try your hand at some interesting washing?"

"No bloody way, man. Okay, I'll expect Simon soon, and you when you arrive, doubtless." "Right," says Joe, crossing his fingers, it might be okay yet, I've patched up all the fights, tama's coming better, it'll be all right, "And thanks from the bottom of my heart, Kere. Ka pai, e hoa."