Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"Umm, meaning?"

The child sighs. His hands writhe together a moment, then he shakes his shoulders, and reluctantly takes out his pad and pencil again.

We don't seem to like doing this.

He writes quickly, pad on foot-propped-up thigh: he stands remarkably steady on his uninjured foot.

In the darkened room, his eyes have lost their opal brilliance. They scan Kerewin's unmoving face as she reads.

TAINUIS HOME AT SEVEN I AM MEANT TO BE THERE CAN I STAY HERE SP (Simon)

She grins at the underlining. She says, quite kindly,

"Thanks for the explanation. I've got a message out for your father to come and get you, so I dare say he'll be here shortly. And no, you can't stay. I'm not keen on anyone staying here, particularly children."

The boy sits down, right where he'd stood.

She gathers the dishes and stacks them in the sink. She goes and sits down under the portrait that dominates the room. She lights a cigarillo, and starts talking to herself.

"Once I had to work at horrible jobs to earn enough money to buy food to eat in order to live to work at horrible jobs to earn enough… I hated that life, I hated it to my bones. So I quit. I did what my heart told me to do, and painted for my living. I didn't earn enough to live on, but I wasn't too unhappy, because I was loved at home and I loved what I was doing. Money was the only problem… then it all changed. I won a lottery. I invested it. I earned a fortune by fast talking. And while I was busy blessing the god of munificence, the lightning came. It blasted my family, and it blasted my painting talent. I went straight out of one bind into a worse one. Very strange. I never could understand why-"

She leans back against the wall, and knocks the edge of the portrait.

"That is an enlargement of a painting by Fujiware Takanobu. He was a genius, who could capture a soul in limning and pigment, and do this in such an ascetically elegant way that the heart stands still to see it… one time, I could do something like that. Not any more, o child, not any more-"

She doesn't look at the boy.

"I am in limbo, and in limbo there are no races, no prizes, no changes, no chances. There are merely degrees of endurance, and endurance never was my strong point." She adds a moment later, casually conversational, "I'm just gonna stick on some socks and shoes before my toes drop off. Then I think I'll light some lamps. You think it's getting too dark?"

O god if there is one, running up the spiral to the bedroom, careless of the cold — and the hard knock of the stone steps against her feet, get rid of that child. I need my peace. I need to get drunk.

She longs for the Gillayley father to arrive and carry off his offspring, right now. A loud and boisterous Viking type she'd bet, from the child's colouring. Yer rowdy Aryan barbarian, face like a broken crag, tall as a door, and thick all the way through.

She slips on thin leather kaibabs over woollen socks, and when the numbness of her feet has warmed to prick and needle sensations, walks silently back down the stairs.

The child is now sitting in front of the portrait of Minamoto-no-Yoritomo, and he's looking at it fixedly. He doesn't shift as she softfoots it into the room.

«

Ah to hell, I'll start drinking anyway.

"Crystal goblets, earthen cups," meandering over to the grog cupboard as she chants, "juice of grape, or squshed hop?"

She settles on stout, opening a couple of bottles with her knife, flicking the tops into the sink. Bugger the dishes, they'll be there tomorrow. She pours a schooner full, and settles back on the sheepskins.

(Momentarily, she sees the chain at the freezing works where fresh-killed sheep carmine-throated, are grotesquely hooded by their own skins. The skins slip along the floor as the white carcasses jerk and sway above them on the moving hooks… what deaths to occasion your comforts?)

and takes a deep swallow of stout.

It goes down, bitter as bile.

"Have to stoke the fire soon." It has settled into a red bed of embers.

"Light the lamps soon too."

There's a scratching noise, lighter than a mouse-scrabble but still heard over the rain. The boy is writing again.

She turns round a bit, nonchalantly, so she can see the child if she wants to.

"Becomes a ritual, eh? Build wood and coal into a fire. Care for the wick in the lamp and grow a light from kerosene."

The urchin has sidled crabwise closer. He's waiting to see whether she is going to notice him.

Kerewin turns round a bit more.

"You brought me a message?"

'I'll TONIGHT PERHAPS. 'I'll JOE COMES PERHAPS. CAN I HAVE A DRINK PERHAPS. SP

Wonder what the latest word we've learned is?

She grins inwardly but says, "Of stout?" astonished and puritan and also dodging the issue.

The boy nods, looking surprised at her tone of voice.

"Well, okay then I suppose."

She finishes her glassful with a hurried swallow and pours him a drink.

A twelve ounce schooner should stop you, my lad, and again the inward grin, this time mean with anticipation.

Over he comes, hitching along the floor, crawling actually like he's half his age, with a smile in place that lacks even a vestige

of embarrassment. The bandage shows startlingly white under the frayed jeans cuff. Good as your remaining teeth boyo. Thin-fingered hands round the glass — so you still need two for drinking a full one, eh? Split chin upwards, and the dark grog practically seen outside your skinny throat… what's the mark? Pink and satin-shiney, like a scar.

She fingers the two scar-like lines that run in parallel across her own throat, while staring in awe as the child keeps on swallowing and swallowing, downing the drink without needing a breath it seems.

He lowers the glass at last and grins hugely.

"Something tells me," says Kerewin, fascinated, "that that is not your first drink. I think I better get another glass for me, and you can keep that for your own." She fetches a mug and another two bottles from the cupboard.

"Well," raising the mug in a loose salute, "kia ora koe, and we might as well have a session."

Glass to glass, chink.

The boy chokes a little.

Kerewin staring at air rising in the black depth of her drink:

"Why do you want to stay tonight? Aside from the fact it's raining?"

Gillayley: shrug.

"Write it down dammit, if you can't think of any other way to say it. A shrug tells me nothing."

He looks slyly sideways, away from her eyes.

"Well?"

Gillayley: sigh. Followed by a hiccough.

He hears the sound with an expression of pained surprise.

She collars the last of the bottles of stout, and watches him from under her lids.

I'll be hellishing popular if I send it home drunk.

"I'll put it another way then… why don't you want to stay with the Tainuis, whoever they are, for the night?"

SHE PETS ME AND CRY FOR JOE SP

"You needn't sign these damn things. I can see who they come from… pets you? Who?

MARAMA. SHE KISS ME AND she's leaning, watching over his shoulder now,

"I know, cry for Joe… ah sheeit, archetypical small boy distaste! I love it, I love! Ah beautiful!"

Hey easy, a couple of bottles of stout shouldn't cause that much mirth… but look at his face, delicious! Careful, now he's looking at you like you were kind of nutty-

She sobers. She says straightfaced,

"I'm sorry, but that just seemed funny… now I understand, and sympathise a little. I don't like people kissing and fussing over me either. Can you tell me when Joe — uh, he's your father?"

Groggy nods.

"When Joe is likely to be home?"

Obligingly, the urchin writes a clear answer.

NO. SP

The initialling is obviously a reflex.

"Well, unless your father arrives first, you can stay here until the Tainuis ring. Okay?"