Keri Hulme - The Bone People

"And," adds the operator, "it's well known he's not all there. Emotionally disturbed or something."

"Well, he's been no trouble so far." She feels somehow defensive of the child.

"Lucky you," and there's another pause. He says, "As I see it, you've got alternatives. You can ring the cops and have him picked up. That makes life hard for Joe, and as I said, he's a good bloke. It can't be easy bringing up a kid on your own, even the ordinary kind… I don't think the police have come into it since Simon tramped all Mrs Hardy's lettuces to death. Or you can keep him there until morning, say late morning, because I guarantee Joe'll be up and

I

about by then. And choice number three, throw him out on his ear right now."

"It's still wet," she says briefly. Then, intrigued, "Why on earth did he stamp on Mrs Whatsit's lettuces?"

"I don't know. Can't have liked their faces or something. As I said, the kid's batty. Deficient."

"So I don't really have alternatives?"

"If he's no trouble, your words, and you're too humanitarian to kick him out or get the police in, no, you haven't got much choice."

"Not humanitarian, worried about my lettuces… actually the slugs got all the last lot so it doesn't upset me one way or the other."

"Well, in that case I'll leave a note for the graveyard shift to get hold of Joe, and if you sleep in late, you shouldn't have anything to worry about."

"Thanks."

"And listen, Joe'll make everything right by you. He's good like that."

"Yeah. Thanks again."

"S'all right," says the operator, cheerful and kindly, "Let's know what happened sometime eh?"

"I will. Goodnight."

"Goodnight… O…."

"What?"

"Check your silver," click.

Ha bloody ha. I'll just turn the brat upside down and shake him thoroughly before he leaves.

And speaking of leaving, the stout is due to exit.

Running up the dark stairway, surefooted, lightheaded, giddy in the spiral between the walls-

Her original plan had included a garderobe, but there'd been problems. A convenient stream was one, the stench another. Let Genet sniff his farts like flowers, she preferred other incense. So a modern watercloset flush in the medieval stone-

She sneaks to her bedroom doorway: there is a curled shape dimly visible on the bed.

No movement. No sound. She cannot hear any breathing.

A sudden absurd fear, that the unwelcome guest has somehow changed into an even more unwelcome corpse, grips her. Stupid! she says furiously, Stupid! She stalks down the stairs, shoulders high, still listening intently.

Frae ghosties an ghoulies

an longlegged beasties

an things that gae bump!

in the night,

guid God deliver us-

"Stupid," she tells herself out loud, when safely in the light and warm of the livingroom circle.

But what would you have done if he really had died? Forget him. He'll go away with the morning.

She has no appetite for food now. She hunts out the sleeping bag she had last used during Tower-building, and gets ready to go to sleep.

But she sits a long time, staring at the fire.

"Of all the daft days… fit for the logbook, I think."

She takes it from the bottom shelf of the grog cupboard, and dreams what to put in it.

The pages are mainly blank, because there are 1000 pages. There are no headings, dates, day names. She has filled in some pages at random with doodles and sequences of hatching. Small precise drawings and linked haiku. Some days were a solitary word. "Hinatore" says one, "Nautilids!" another.

She notices the child's battered sandal by the andirons and draws it with careful realism on a page she marks "Today."

Then she lies back in the sleeping bag, hands behind her head, and listens a long time to the rain-

in

Between waking and being awake there is a moment full of doubt and dream, when you struggle to remember what the place and when the time and whether you really are.

A peevish moment of wonderment as to where the real world lies.

And there is nothing so damned and godforsaken, thinks Kerewin, as to wake up looking at a pile of dead ashes.

Not only looking at: practically in. With some atavistic instinct her body had moved closer and closer to the only source of heat as the room grew colder during the night.

Interesting if the whole lot had caught fire, eh. Immolated Holme in more ways than one… what would burn though? me; the matting probably; shelves and grog and the records and stereo; cupboards; o precious guitars — and then the stone walls would stop it going further. But a fine contained inferno. A private introductory malbowge.

She shudders and crawls out into the cold.

What a mental inventory to make — the worldly goods to accompany the cremation to Valhalla — and at the hellish time of

and she suddenly remembers, standing naked and shivering and glowering at the world, the guest. The vandal, the vagabond, the wayward urchin, the scarecrow child — six thirty three ay em.

It is dark outside still. The moon glows palely, slewed away in the west. And through the thickness of the Tower walls, she can feel frost.

Aue and ach y fi, the cold and my chilblains. And that bloody little bugger upstairs. All miseries hemming me in together.

"Sheeit and apricocks," says Kerewin to the immune walls, and gathers her clothes on, hustles them on, and sneezes and shivers her way to the shower room.

Somewhat warmer, cleaner, and altogether more self-possessed — that is herself some twenty minutes later. Now venturing into her bedroom with the same lightstepping care she would use on looking into a taniwha cave.

"Brushing the embers out of my hair and whistling merrily," she announces, "it's me."

She can hear breathing, but the boy's idea of a comfortable bed was to pile the quilt in a heap and crawl somewhere inside the centre. She can't see any part of him.

"To unearth anything, we begin by digging," but she isn't very keen on the idea.

"Hey! You there?"

No answer. No movement.

So she untangles the end of the eiderdown and pulls it away.

He sleeps, pale and quiet, his mouth open. The small angular face no longer looks tight and strained. He sleeps in a strange twisted fashion, head turned to one side, body warped round. He also sleeps with his clothes on, sandal and all.

— His eyes slide under their lids side to side, and open. His arm comes over abruptly, shielding his chest, and the other wraps across his face in an instant.

Then, out of his unsure second, he lowers his arms, looking surprised and sheepish all in the one face.

"Well, good morning, and where did you learn that luverly block?"

The boy raises his eyebrows for an answer, disclaiming knowledge. The bruiselike shadows under his eyes have deepened to mauve.

"Did you have a good sleep? Or are nightmares catching?"

He smiles.

"Mmm. Well anyway, in case you're wondering, it's tomorrow, the Tainuis are safely over the hill, your father is picking you up sometime this morning, and what do you want for breakfast?"

From hearsay, children wallow in milk. She considers her normal breakfast, black coffee and yoghurt, while watching something like

guilt slide across his face and vanish, and composes a list of alternatives.

"You like, say, porridge? Coffee? Milk? Fruit? Blackpuddingeggsanonions?"

He nods to the lot, sitting up now and holding his hands with the fingers spread out.

God knows what it's trying to say, but she answers,

"Hokay, so you'll be eating for a month of Sundays."

He leans back on his elbows and yawns a yawn that is partly sighed.

"I'll leave you to get up then. You know where the bathroom is. I'll be down on the next floor, doing exciting things like lighting the fire and burning the breakfast."