Keri Hulme - The Bone People

And she loves him for a moment for his concern.

She picks up the lamp and the shadows gyrate again. "E Joe, e hoa, ka pai."

She adds, "When I was ten years younger, I read all I could to find out the why and wherefore of it. From the Kama Sutra and Kraft-Ebbing to a pile of know-yer-own body books. I decided I was one more variety in varied humanity. It doesn't worry me now, but it does seem to worry others."

"Not me now. You've explained. You're Kerewin, and I love you, as Haimona does, but we'll keep it, as they say, platonic. All right, e hoa?"

"All right," she's smiling for the first time that day. "So let's have that drink…."

"Right on. But I'd better go home soon and get Sim off to bed." Time, he thinks, as she leads the way downstairs, time and care and tenderness. It'll get through to her. I can wait. I wasn't joking when I said we were masters of patience. I can wait for a year, years if need be, because she is well worth waiting for. O dear Lord, in spite of her arrogance and coldness, she is well worth waiting

for.

As he walks down the spiral he thinks it will be far less than years of waiting.

She dreamed that night she was sitting in front of a table, its edges defined by shadows. There were cards on the table, but they had nothing on them. She picked them up and called, her voice weak and querulous, "Where is the message? Where is the message?"

And at once brightly coloured pictures appeared. Trump cards, Tarot trumps. But they weren't stable. The colours ebbed and flowed and the pictures changed as she looked at them.

The pair chained to the column in the card called The Devil shifted and stretched and became The Lovers. The Fool stepped lightly forever towards the abyss, but the little dog snapping at his heels ran on to bay at the Moon. The benign placid face of the Empress became hollow-eyed, bone-cheeked, and Death rode scything through the people at his horse's feet.

The more she looked, the more the archetypes danced and altered, until they ran together in a rainbow fluidity that turned white. Except one card glowed.

The scene was there for a split second, but in that second she was drawn into the card. The sky split and thunderbolts rained down, and she started falling, wailing in final despair from the lightning struck tower.

And woke, pressed hard against the sheepskin she sleeps upon, heart beating hurtfully fast.

A falling dream, and the Tower of Babel? Astral travel, and the House of God?

She didn't, then, think at all of her Tower.

She spent most of the day making a frame for the self-portrait, the wood is rewarewa, blond and fine-grained and sanded to satin "rush. The frame is an inch wide: the painting life-sized, head and shoulders. Her face glowers back at her, caged with wood.

Same to you, whatever you're thinking. I'm thinking you're just

dartboard-sized, so watch it." She grins to herself, scowls back at the portrait.

She waits until after seven, after their tea she figures, before taking a taxi to Pacific Street.

She tucks the painting under one arm and strolls up the path. Say hello, drop the painting, and beat a hasty retreat, she decides.

But she can hear Joe yelling before she's close enough to the door to knock.

Oath, what's up now?

She can't hear the words. She kicks the door so he'll hear, and I there's sudden silence after. Rapid heavy footfalls as the man comes striding down the hallway. He jerks the door open and peers out } belligerently.

"O it's you," his frown vanishes, "come on in. It's cold eh."

"Very… what's the trouble?"

"What?"

"I heard you yelling. I assume it wasn't at the budgie?"

"No it wasn't. Simon threw a plate at me."

"He what?"

"Threw a plate… you come and see if you can't talk some sense into him. He's in a real shitty mood."

She leaves the painting by the door.

"Okay… that's the picture, by the way," and walks into the kitchen.

The boy is behind the table, pressed against the wall.

"Right," hands on her hips, "why're you chucking the crockery round?"

He snarls.

She pulls a face back, and turns to Joe.

"All I did was suggest his hair needs cutting, and he flings the plate. He very nearly hit me too. Up to then, we'd been having tea, all quiet and amicable. I haven't touched him, just shouted. He zapped round there," pointing to the table end, "as soon as the plate left his hand."

"I'd shout too. More likely I'd throw my plate back, and make sure it hit."

"It's good dinner ware. I can't afford to be hurling it about."

Simon goes on glaring at them both, still tight against the wall.

She faces him again.

"You don't like your hair being cut, I take it?"

"He doesn't. He hates it. There's always a fight over it, but I've got to do it… well, you can imagine the scene at the barber's can't

you?

"Yeah. What don't you like though, Sim? It being cut short?"

"But I don't cut it short," says Joe plaintively. "Just trim it, so it doesn't tangle so much. I'm damned if I know why he fights it. I know he gets rubbished by other kids… I've heard them."

The boy remains where he is, sullen and unmoving.

Scared as well as defiant, she thinks. Wonder what it feels like to be small and afraid, knowing either of us can do what we like with him? And I wonder how many times he has retreated there, before being hauled out and beaten?

"Mmm," she says to Joe, and walks closer to Simon, standing in front of him, looking him over for a minute and more. He stares up at her. The budgie chitters.

Joe moves to the sink, and opens a cupboard. She hears the susurration of a brush across the floor, then the clink of china pieces being swept up.

The boy's defiant scowl stays in place most of the time, but he can't bear it towards the end. Kerewin just stares, her gaze revealing nothing. He lowers his eyes, and starts to snivel.

"He normally get a hiding for breaking plates?"

Pause in the sweeping.

"Yes," says Joe.

She hears him put the brush down.

"But… last time it was breakfast he threw, and I got wild. I was already late for work and him having a tantrum was the last straw."

"O yes. I came round here that night, I remember. Before going pubbing. There was porridge and plate all over the floor. That was the time," she says reflectively, "yeah, that was the time he arrived at Taiaroa with his face punched. Or was it slapped?"

"Slapped." A low voice, but the sound has the flat echo of the action.

Simon is still crying.

"And with a few sundry kicks, I recall."

"Yes."

She hears the broom picked up, the sweeping resumed. He says,

"It was a bit of a fight. He said he wasn't going to school, and like I said, I was late. So when he persisted, I slapped him a couple of times, and slapped him more when he swore at me. Then he hefted the plate at me, and it hit. It hurt too. So I kicked him."

The budgie twitters.

Clatter as the broken bits of plate are dropped in the rubbish tin.

The boy sniffs, tears dripping off his chin.

"Well, to me he got a gross overdose of punishment that time. This time he goes scotfree, eh?"

The boy stares up at her, his mouth opening in surprise. "I wasn't going to hit him," and the boy's stare switches to him. I said I wouldn't, without you agreeing, and I meant that."

"I've said."

"Yes."

"Goodoh." She kneels on the floor beside the table, close to the

boy. "Now you, what's so terrible about a haircut?" Scotfree? That means get off? Nothing happens?

He starts to grin.

She has seen him smile through tears a few times now, and it always gets to her. It probably shows how emotionally wobbly he is, but it looks like old hearts and flowers getting on top of his woes, come what hell may. Joe notes the smile too.