Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"Right as rain, Sim," she says, still smiling, and he hugs her, blending his ready tears with his jackolantern grin. "E Joe, your disgusting child is kissing me knees," she lifts the boy quickly and stands with him. "I don't mean that nastily, sea imp, I truly don't. It's just an odd place to get salutations, that's all."

Joe says simply, "He was worried, now he's glad. I was worried as hell."

She walks to the range where Joe stands, arms folded against his chest now, his face so puffed with bruises his grin is crooked.

"Jesus," he says fervently, "I'm glad you're okay-"

"Urn yeah. What's for tea?"

Some of that is put on, mate. Nobody could sound that happy I'm all right after the smacking round you got.

"We haven't got any ready. We were too worried," he says again. "When you flaked, I didn't know whether to get a doctor or not. I didn't know where to get a doctor anyway. Your breathing sort of relaxed and sounded ordinary after a while, so we crossed our fingers and hoped. We didn't know whether you'd give us the umm boot, or whether you'd wake up wild again, or what. So we commiserated with one another on our various hurts, and kept a weather eye on your bunk. And then we woke you… wasn't it?" "Well, it was nice to hear your voice again, loud and all." The brown eyes level with her own are so open she feels she could slide in and poke round in the chambers of his soul.

He really does mean it, Holmes. No ill will at all.

"What was it? The uhh?" waving a hand round the region of his stomach.

"I haven't the faintest idea. It's never happened to me before, but it might be an ulcer. I drink enough to support one."

"I hope not."

"You and me both, man. How're you?" It's a clipped-on casual query.

Joe grins lopsidedly.

"Battered but not broken. I got aches and bruises but that's okay. In an odd way, it is penance you know?"

"I can believe it." She shrugs. "I been wild at you since last week. Since I found out how you've whacked him. Nobody should take the kind of hidings he's been getting, not for any reason at all. But

let's forget it. Drop the subject. If you can believe I'm both sorry and glad to beat you up, you can also believe the matter is closed as far as I'm concerned. Provided you don't beat him like that again."

"First things first," he says slowly, and Kerewin thinks, Yeah, here it comes, you were lucky and all that crap, but he goes on, "I'll tell you all the why of the past whenever you want to hear it. Meantime I swear, on his head," hand motioning to but not touching the child's bright hair, "not to hit him again. If he deserves it, I'll tell you and you can decide… I mean that, that if, uhh God-"

"Assuming I am willing to assume some responsibility for him," she interrupts coolly.

The man gazes into the fire.

"Yes."

"I sort of hoped," he adds, and falls silent again.

And I do believe he's going to cry.

She says quickly,

"Say a smidgin of responsibility, a scantling, a scruple of responsibility I accept. After all, you're not that big, boy."

The child grins.

Joe sniffs and rubs his hands across his eyes. "Ahh Kerewin, I don't know… I need a dictionary to talk to you." He thinks, You bugger, you cold lady you. "Anyway," breathing out heavily, "that'll be good. We'd love you to help… and the other thing is, I don't hold any grudge against you, but that's the first time any one person has dropped me in a fight without a weapon of some kind. How'd you do it?"

"Ah hah," says Kerewin, "geddown you," and slides Simon down to the floor. "Say you get that bottle of Tattinger I've been saving for emergency celebrations in the new bach. Then we can chat over it. I'll even cook tea while we do. But to be frank, you didn't have a snowball's chance in hell against me."

Joe doesn't answer, except to ask gently, before going out for the champagne.

"The ulcer?"

"Will be made comfortable and sedate by good wine… if it's an ulcer. It might have been because I was using muscles and techniques I haven't used for years… anyway, the champagne please, so we can celebrate."

As she stokes the fire she says to Simon, broodingly.

"Though I'm not sure what we're celebrating. Not what's happened certainly. The future, maybe…."

Simon leans against her, and stares into the flames. His face is composed and his eyes are unreadable.

By the time Joe returns, she has scrubbed potatoes and put them in the oven; made a tangy mayonnaise from yoghurt and honey and wheat germ oil; grated carrots and sliced an apple thinly. It's a large green grannysmith, and she only peeled it partly.

The boy plays teeth with the peel before eating it.

"Provide you with some you're missing eh?" and he grins a green ghastly grin. He turns it on Joe when he comes in.

"Yurk, and after the way you eat toothpaste, too." He gestures to the bottle, "I open it?"

"Yeah please." She goes on chopping up vegetables; cabbage into shreds; clove of garlic squashed; piece of green ginger skinned and sliced into fragments… "Quick stir of that lot, slather in the mayonnaise, and there's your salad, complete-"

Joe sniffs.

"Smells piny. Nice."

"Tastes piny too. Great, if you like turpentine… where'd I put the pork chops?"

"They're in the safe. I'll get them if you like, and you can continue the struggle with this cork?"

"S'okay, you're doing fine. I'll get "em."

The stars glitter and wink in the deep of night. The rain still falls soft on her skin.

It was just beginning when we came back up the beach… hell, I can't understand him. Either of them. It doesn't make sense to be without any reproach… or are they both masochists? They don't act like they are, but it's a bloody kind of love that has violence as a silent partner. And Sim hugs Joe as if he's never been thrashed, and Joe just grins at me amidst his bruises. Penance? Strangeness? Her, I don't know-

Joe asks when she comes back in,

"Any champagne glasses?"

"No. Recycled peanut butter jars that do double duty, beer and water. Even champagne at a pinch."

"Sacrilege," he says in a stagy whisper. "Two or three?" in normal tones.

"There's three of us."

"Ka pai."

The pinpoint bubbles tremble and sniz at the surface. The wine is pale as the light on straw.

"Ahhh… here's to peace and solace all round."

"So say we… and may the rest of this holiday be ah, as stimulating as this first day but a little more easy and quiet."

"Hear, hear," says Kerewin in a deep hollow voice. She asks a minute later, mouthfuls later, "Are you disliking this, fella, or is that face-twisting because of the fizz?" Joe squints at his child. "He

doesn't like it. And you don't want to say, eh."

"Right. Rescue what remains, and fill his glass with mead." She reaches down a bottle from the shelf behind her. "He does like this. At least, he drinks it."

The boy blushes.

"O?" asks Joe. "Words behind words?"

"If only you knew… that's what started this whole thing off, believe it or not, but Himi can tell you if he wants. Only if he wants."

He doesn't want. He most emphatically does not.

"Okay, past is past," says Kerewin, and refills their glasses.

The silence is profound. Joe eyes Simon, and the boy stares guardedly at the champagne bubbles in Kerewin's glass, and Kerewin looks from one to the other, shaking her head. "You ever notice," trying to change the subject, "how loud your swallow is when there's no other noise?"

"Mmmm. O well, to hell. How long's tea going to be?"

"About half an hour. You hungry?"

"Very, but I was wondering how you have a bath round here, and whether there was time for Himi to have one before tea."

"Well, he could go and have a shower — there's one rigged up at the back of the boatshed — but he'd probably freeze to death before he got clean. The alternative is, you heat water on the range, and fill the old tin bath. It's in the boatshed too, but can come in here. It'll take about ten minutes for the water to heat, so you could squeeze in a bath between now and tea."