Keri Hulme - The Bone People

His hand comes out, pauses, and then as if reaching over a barrier, takes her hand. How touching, says Kerewin's innermost being, the Snark, squirming through a gamut of connotations, that and the guileless Gillayley smile. Too much.

"Agreed then. Sooo, it's about lamplighting time, not to mention fire-resuscitation. You want to help? You can uh, hold things," removing her hand but gently.

As she collects kerosene and lamps, putting much into the child's ready arms, she considers two things.

Is it better the devil you don't know?

Or simply, variety is the spice of life?

And she wants to know more and more, the halloween pumpkin grin renewing the query every minute, how the brat comes to lack teeth on one whole side of his jaw.

The lamps are hung, hissing quietly: she gets busy on the fire, piling logs and heaping coal on top. The coal dust flares and crackles, and all the shadows in the room retreat to the corners.

For the first time she can see the child clearly. Slender and prominently boned, his smallness making him seem frail. A sallowness about his face, a waxen depth that accentuates the bruise marks of tiredness under his eyes, and the narrowness of his face.

Hey where you been? Watch you been doin?

For, as he stands there waiting on her next move or gesture so he may make his reciprocal offering, all the vivacity has gone out of him.

My god, he really is desperately tired.

Well, the long walk — if he walked here.

The tension of being caught, and wondering what I would do.

The drink of course.

And maybe all this is like a fine drawn duel to him, words

against his miming.

"You're tired, Simon?"

He examines the question, screwing his head into his shoulders, and nodding once.

Yes, more than tired.

"Well, why not go to bed until someone calls?"

He even starts to droop wearily, but he frowns. Yes, again, but it's given reluctantly.

"My bedroom's upstairs. You can use it for a while. This way," and she vanishes up the dark spiral.

She don't like me around much. I'm staying though.

He stands still a minute, gathering his strength for the long walk up the stairs.

A spiral staircase can be surprising, because you can't see more than a step and a half in front. Kerewin, coming rapidly back down to find out anything that may have happened, nearly knocks the child all his slow progress back.

"Whoops and hie," grasping the handrail to halt herself. "I wondered where you'd got to."

He looks to his foot, and up again, apologetically.

"Well, keep going, the trek'll soon be over." She edges carefully past him. "It's colder up here than I thought. I'm going down to get you a hottie."

This godzone babytalk. Hottie lolly cardie nappy, crappy the lot of it, she snarls to herself. But what to say that the kid'd recognise? I'm gonna get you a bedheating hotwater bottle?

She's back with it as the boy arrives at the doorway.

"Go in, then. It's not as bad as it looks."

Actually, she is proud of this room. The bed and roofbeams are hand-adzed totara, and the floor is covered with palecream sheepskins. There is a double-windowed oriel, and the glass is a shallow summer sea, aquamarine and pale beryl green. A lot of leaded panes like jewels. One could sit on the broad sill and absorb sun and sea alone.

"Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous seas," she quotes blandly, seeing his star? fixed on the window. "I'd open them and show you a forlorn fairy or something except you'd probably die of pneumonia soon after."

Silence. "Well," she says, "here's the hotwater bottle, there's the bed. Get under the eiderdown.on top, you should be okay. The toilet is through that door," pointing, "you want anything else?"

The child shakes his head numbly.

It hasn't taken long for the rot to set in. Suggest I know he's tired, and he's ready on the instant to flake.

"Right. If you do, come downstairs and ask; otherwise, I'll come up and wake you round seven. Sweet dreams meantime," and she walks slowly out the door but speeds down the stairs.

"Ahhh," stretching long and hard, "peace and tranquillity."

Freedom from overseeing eyes.

It is now early evening, dark sky outside studded with rain-washed stars. The rain has eased to a thin drizzle.

She drinks another bottle of stout, but her hands become restless. She gets down her golden guitar, and plays low languorous chords, watching the night grow deeper all the while.

But she keeps on listening with one ear for any sound from upstairs.

Blast the brat, he's beginning to haunt me.

An enemy inside my broch… a burglar ensconced here.

and it suddenly occurs to her that the child may really have been stealing and has been playing for time ever since.

God o Hell, my jade.

Ahh, come on!

He's not old enough to know greenstone from greywacke.

But what say someone else has heard about it, some local brand of Fagin, and-

She lays down the guitar and pads swiftly upstairs.

Past her bedroom. Listen. Not a sound.

Into the library.

There's a drawing light on the desk. She takes it to the full extent of its cord, and shines the light onto the chest. She opens the lid, her heart thudding. On trays in the pale pool of light, a hundred smooth and curvilinear shapes.

Two meres, patu pounamu, both old and named, still deadly.

Many stylised hook pendants, her matau.

Kuru, and kapeu, and kurupapa, straight and curved neck

pendants.

An amulet, a marakihau; and a spiral pendant, the koropepe.

A dozen chisels. Four fine adzes.

Several her tiki, one especial — so old that the flax cord of

previous owners had worn through the hard stone, and the

suspension hole had had to be rebored in times before the Pakeha

ships came.

A very strange pendant she had picked up long ago on Moerangi

beach. As always her hand goes to it, stroking it, I am here,

I am here.

Jade of my heart, your names a litany of praise; kahurangi;

kawakawa; raukaraka; tangiwai; auhunga, inanga, kahotea;

totoweka and ahuahunga

It's all there.

She derides herself, You idiot, did you really think that, that scarecrow would pinch your precious hoard? Ea, you ought to give the berloody lot away….

She says softly,

"It's becoming too precious. Too important. To care for anything deeply is to invite disaster."

She picks up the curious pendant one last time, to fondle and admire before she goes downstairs.

At seven precisely the radiophone buzzes. The operator answers her "Gidday, and Hooray" with "Miz Holmes, there's been some kind of holdup."

"O," a sinking premonitory feeling in her stomach.

"Yeah, I been doing some quiet checking up. The Tainuis left for over the hill early this morning by all accounts, and Simon Gillayley was supposed to be with them."

"Bloody hell," says Kerewin, "but his father? His mother? Anyone?"

"Lessee, Hana died two, maybe three years ago. If Joe's not around, the Tainuis usually are."

"And Joe isn't around?"

A long pause.

"No," he says, and she can hear him chewing his lips. "Ah, has there been any trouble?"

"No, I fed him, he sat round, and then went off to bed at my suggestion. He seemed helluva tired. I assume he's still there."

A current of surprise wafts to her.

"I take it he takes off fairly frequently?"

"O Periodically," the operator's tones are restrained, "like about twice a week."

"Sol got the impression you are surprised by something?"

"Yeah, when you said there's been no trouble. There always is. The kid's got a touchpaper temper. Also, he specialises in sneak thievery and petty vandalism."

A little break of silence while she absorbs that lot.