Halfmen Of O Read online

  MAURICE GEE

  The O Trilogy: The Halfmen of O

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Contents

  1. The Message

  2. Jimmy Jaspers

  3. Odo Cling

  4. The Woodlanders

  5. Marna

  6. Bloodcat

  7. Morninghall

  8. Underhand Chop

  9. Throat of the Underworld

  10. Wings

  11. Into the City

  12. Motherstone

  13. An Exchange of Gifts

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  THE HALFMEN OF O

  Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s best-known writers, for both adults and children. He has won a number of literary awards, including the Wattie Award, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, and the New Zealand Fiction Award. He has also won the New Zealand Children’s Book of the Year Award. In 2003 he received an inaugural New Zealand Icon Award and in 2004 he received a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement.

  Maurice Gee’s novels include the Plumb trilogy, Going West, Prowlers, Live Bodies and The Scornful Moon. He has also written a number of children’s novels, the most recent being The Fat Man, Orchard Street and Hostel Girl.

  Maurice lives in Wellington with his wife Margareta, and has two daughters and a son.

  Also by Maurice Gee

  The World Around the Corner

  Under the Mountain

  The Priests of Ferris

  Motherstone

  The Fire-Raiser

  The Champion

  The Fat Man

  Orchard Street

  Hostel Girl

  For Abigail

  1

  The Message

  Our story begins on Lodestone Creek one summer holiday. At least, Nick’s part in it starts there. Susan had been involved for the whole of her life, though she did not know it. And Jimmy Jaspers, with his nose for an easy dollar, had been working for the Halfies since he came to the creek in spring. They found him when he started fossicking round the gorge. But he had only glimpsed their world, and though he thought he had the Halfies sized up, and knew they were tough as old boots, he didn’t have a glimmer of their real nature. He thought he would be more than a match for them. As Brand was to say, Jimmy did not really understand evil.

  But to get back to Lodestone Creek. It ran down out of the bush through the Ferris farm and joined the river at Devil’s Elbow. Some early miner had given the place that name. He must have been down on his luck. There was nothing sinister about the bend, and the farm enclosed in it was a lively place – mooing cows, gobbling turkeys, that sort of thing. It lay south of Collingwood in Golden Bay, in one of the lonelier corners of New Zealand.

  Susan Ferris had lived there all her life. Nicholas Quinn, her cousin, came with his parents for a couple of weeks each January. He lived in Auckland, far away. Nick and Susan pretended that they got on pretty well. It kept the grown-ups happy. In fact, Susan found Nick’s boastfulness hard to take. He seemed to think that people who lived in cities were the only ones who knew anything. Five minutes with him was enough. Then she had to get off on her own. So he accused her of being stuck-up. He thought she was weird as well. He was not alone in that. His mother, Susan’s aunt, declared her strange, and his father had been heard to say that she needed a swift kick in the rear-end to wake her up. Nick agreed with that.

  This year – the year of our story – she seemed worse. Nick and his mother and father had driven down the length of the North Island. They had crossed the strait on the ferry – rolling in ten-foot waves – and driven through the Rai Valley and Nelson and over the Takaka Hill and through Golden Bay. They reached the farm on the bend of the river and it seemed to Nick they had been weeks on the road. But when he found Susan by the waterfall on Lodestone Creek all she could say was, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ She went on staring into the water.

  He was mortified. She didn’t have to pretend to like him but she might say hello. A year ago he would have pushed her in. Today he just got in his togs and dived in the pool, straight into whatever it was she was staring at in there. He felt he was making a sharp come-back. But when he came up from his dive she was walking down to the river – strolling away, careless, quite remote, and he realized he hadn’t hurt her at all, she hadn’t even noticed.

  ‘You keep out of my way and I’ll keep out of yours,’ he yelled. She made no sign of having heard, but kept on walking neatly over the boulders, her blue towel trailing from her hand, and soon she went out of sight towards the Elbow.

  ‘That got rid of her,’ Nick said. But he was disappointed. He’d hoped they might be better friends this year. It was time they stopped carrying on like a couple of kids.

  Soon he forgot her. He stood under the waterfall and felt it beat on him like hammers. It seemed to be trying to nail him into the rocks. When he’d had enough of that he climbed to the top of the fall – taking care, making sure of each grip. It was a long way down. But heights didn’t scare him. Rock climbing was a sport he meant to take up when he was older. He sunbathed on a warm stone ledge at the top, with water running by so clear that it magnified the pebbles. This stream flowing into the Aorere River was his favourite place in all the world. He saw it for only a couple of weeks each summer, but it was more real to him than the quarter-acre section he lived on in Mt Eden. Sometimes he lay in bed at night and travelled up it in his mind, from the waterfall to the place where the gorge closed in like a pair of grey stone hands making a steeple. This year he meant to try panning for gold. The creek had been worked over pretty thoroughly in the old days, but it was worth a try. Prospectors came there still. It wasn’t called Lodestone Creek for nothing.

  Nick was one of those people who could not keep still. He spent five minutes lying in the sun and then he was up to have a look at the gorge. One day he meant to go through and see what was on the other side. Susan’s father had said to stay out of it; there were deep holes and falls of rock, and, he said, giant eels that would take your foot off with a single bite, but he grinned when he said it and Nick knew he was only having him on. Susan had said there was an old gold mine on the other side. She had been into the shaft a little way, but the timber holding up the roof was rotten and it was dangerous to go far. She seemed to be warning him, but he took it as a challenge. If she could go in it would be easy for him. One day soon he was going to try.

  He ran along rocky shelves sloping to the water. It was a game with him to travel up the creek without getting his feet wet. It meant making long jumps, and stepping on boulders that tipped under you, and crawling along stone walls like a fly. He made it easily that day, probably because he was a year older. Soon the noise of the waterfall faded. He stopped. Far away cattle were mooing. It was getting on for milking time. A dog barked. Insects sang. But there was another sound. It was like a motor – like a chain-saw or mower, very distant. Then he noticed that instead of being clear as glass the water had taken on a brown cloudiness. Someone or something up ahead was stirring it up. He went on curiously. The noise became louder; and soon there was no mistaking it: the noise of a two-stroke engine. It came racketing down Lodestone Creek, bouncing off the rock walls, slamming here and there, until Nick thought the top would come off his head. Already he’d guessed what it was: some sort of home-made suction dredge.

  He came round the corner and saw it – the motor from a Morrison mower floating on a raft no bigger than the top of a school desk. It made such a hideous noise in the stream bed that everything, the trees, the boulders, seemed to vibrate and be on the point of falling apart. Nick yelled out but could not hear his voice. This wasn’t gold prospecting, he thought, this was like being in the middle of Queen Street.

  An old man was wading in the stream, bent almost double, sweeping the botto
m with a gadget like a vacuum cleaner. He was wearing boots and thick trousers, held up by a knotted piece of twine. He had no shirt but a woollen singlet that might once have been pink. Nick came up on him, jumping along the boulders.

  ‘Gidday,’ he yelled. The old man did not hear. Nick came round and looked at him side on. He was an ugly old man: a big rough nose, coloured with veins, a drooping lower lip, all wet with spit and yellow with tobacco, and loose skin under his chin, like a turkey’s wattles. Nick didn’t mind. He seemed like a real prospector, one of those old blokes with a pack and shovel who’d worked the rivers in the old days.

  ‘You finding any gold?’ he yelled.

  The old man saw him. He swung round eyes of a reddish colour and pinned Nick on them. Then he ploughed back to his motor and switched it off. A sudden dreadful absence of noise came on Lodestone Creek. It seemed to make Nick dizzy. He couldn’t move. The old man came at him, churning up water with his boots.

  ‘You been spyin’ on me?’ He put out a hand large as a dinner plate, tough and brown as boot-leather, and held Nick by his jaw. ‘Let’s ’ave a look at yer, sonny.’ He forced him up against a boulder. Nick tried to cry out but could make no sound. The old man’s fingers dug into his cheeks. Breath fell on his face, heavy and wet. It had the stink of carbide and tobacco.

  ‘Yeah,’ growled the old man, ‘you got ’er face. How’s that, eh? Yer better tell me sonny, else I’ll bash yer.’

  He’s mad, Nick thought. His eyes were watering and he tasted blood in his mouth. He tried to break away. The old man let his face go and gripped him by his arms. His fingers dug in like clamps.

  ‘Fire away, sonny boy.’

  ‘What –?’ Nick said. He swallowed. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘How come you got ‘er face?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That girl with the yeller hair.’

  ‘Susan? You mean Susan?’

  ‘Dunno ’er name. I seen ’er though. She’s the one. Looks like you, she does.’

  Nick held his head as far back as he could, trying to get away from that dreadful breath. ‘She’s my cousin,’ he managed to get out.

  ‘Ahh. That’s it, eh? Cousins, eh? Listen younker, I’m gunner let yer go, but don’t yer try an’ run, see? I can move. I can catch yer any day.’

  Nick believed him. ‘What do you want?’ he said, almost crying. Something terrible was happening, but he could not tell what it was. The old man let him go.

  ‘Yer can take ’er a message, see. And don’t yer tell anyone. No one but ’er.’

  ‘All right,’ Nick said. All he wanted was to get away. The old man gave a growl. He stepped back, keeping his eyes on Nick. ‘Stan’ still.’ He bent down and fished in the water with his hand. In a moment he came up with a flat pebble. He took a clasp knife from his pocket and opened a blade. ‘Keep still, sonny. I can chuck this thing.’ He began to scratch the pebble.

  Nick swallowed. He ran his tongue over the bruised insides of his cheeks. He massaged his arms. The old man gave a grin. ‘Didn’t mean to hurt yer, younker. Get this message to ’er an’ I’ll give yer some of me gold.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ Nick said.

  ‘Suit yerself. ’Ere now, yer take this. Yer give it ter that girlie. Not when anyone’s round, mind. Else I’ll come fer yer. I’ll do yer in.’

  Nick took the pebble. He did not look at it. ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘Yer can go. Pansy sort of kid, ain’t yer? I reckon that girl’s got more fight. Not that it’ll do ’er any good. Get goin’ before I bash yer.’ He raised his arm and made as if to strike Nick’s face back-handed.

  Nick ducked. He ran. His head was dizzy, almost as if he had been struck. He heard the old man laughing, but did not turn back. Instead of going down the creek he climbed through the scrub into a paddock and started across it to the swing-bridge over the river. His towel and clothes were at the waterfall, but never mind that. All he wanted was to get to the house and tell someone, get the police down to arrest the old man. Tears ran down his face. He felt he had been close to something evil.

  As he ran he heard the motor start. It sounded flat and deadly. But at least it meant the old man wasn’t after him. He slowed down and became aware of the pebble in his hand. He raised his arm to send it flying, then realized it was evidence, it was proof the old man was mad. He looked at it. The message stood out white on the grey stone. He stared at it without understanding. It was no word but some sort of diagram. He turned it upside-down but it made no more sense that way. It was a rough circle with a curve like an S running through it. Somehow it frightened him. He ran again, threading his way through patches of blackberry. The sound of the motor died away. The sun was sinking over the mountains. The thought of running home through shadows filled Nick with dread. He went between the concrete blocks and steel wires anchoring the swing-bridge. Then he stopped.

  Susan was on the bridge. She was leaning on the rail half-way across, with her blue towel draped about her neck, staring in her dreamy way down into the depths, past the granite boulders large as houses, to where the water turned its deepest green.

  Nick went on again. The bridge began to bounce. She gave a start and turned to watch him coming. ‘Nick,’ she said, when he got close. He made no answer, tried to push by her. But she said, ‘Nick, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. It’s nice you’ve come.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Nick said.

  ‘Nick –’ she looked at him closely, ‘what’s the matter? How did you hurt your face?’

  ‘Didn’t hurt it.’

  ‘You’ve got bruises.’

  He felt his face where the old man had dug his fingers in. He shook his head. ‘Some old loony up there.’

  ‘Where? Did he hit you?’

  ‘Lodestone Creek. He reckoned he was giving me a message.’

  ‘What message? Who for?’

  ‘He was off his rocker. He had a knife. I’m going to the police.’

  ‘What message, Nick? Please. Was it for me?’

  ‘Why should it be?’ But he was alarmed at the change in her. Under its summer tan her face had gone white as paper. The deep green of the river showed in her eyes.

  ‘Give it to me, Nick.’

  Reluctantly he held the pebble out. ‘It doesn’t make sense. And I want it back. It’s evidence.’

  She took the pebble, held it lightly in her finger and thumb, like a skimmer. She turned it slowly round, looking at it. A tiny secret smile came on her mouth.

  ‘What was he like? The man who gave it to you?’

  ‘A nut-case,’ Nick said. ‘And he ponged. He’s got away from some loony-bin, I reckon.’

  She did not seem to hear. ‘Did he have … No, it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘He had bad breath. Give me that. I want it for the police.’

  ‘No, it’s mine. He said it was for me.’

  ‘He damn near broke my jaw,’ Nick said. ‘And he reckoned he’d chuck his knife at me.’

  Her face became uncertain. She bit her lower lip. ‘He’s kind.’

  ‘Have you ever seen him? He reckoned he’d come after me and murder me.’

  ‘No. He must be pretending. Don’t tell anyone. Please.’

  ‘You’re as mad as he is.’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for this message all my life. Nick, I’ve got to see him. Let me have one day. Let me have tomorrow. Then you can tell who you like.’

  ‘I’m not letting you go up there.’

  ‘There’s no danger.’

  ‘What does it mean, that message?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He made an angry sound.

  ‘It’s true, Nick. I know what it is, but I don’t know what it means. Let me find out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘By talking to him.’

  Shadows fell on the bridge. ‘Not tonight. I reckon it’s dangerous. Tomorrow morning. And I’m coming too.’

  ‘No,’ she said. And that had such a sure and heavy sound he c
ould not argue. ‘When I come back I’ll tell you all about it. Will you promise me, Nick?’

  He felt a kind of power coming from her. It was almost as if she was hypnotizing him. She took his hand. He nodded. He felt he was making some dreadful mistake, putting her in danger. ‘All right,’ he said; and with those words a door in him clanged shut, he could not escape. He understood for the first time how much he liked her. In spite of their squabbling, in spite of all their differences, she was precious to him, as though she were sister more than cousin.

  They walked home side by side. Nick changed in his room. He told his mother he’d bruised his jaw when he’d slipped climbing a tree. At the dinner table he watched Susan. She was as silent as ever, but now and then she gave her hidden smile. His aunt made remarks about his city appetite. When he thought of that old man his throat closed up and he could not swallow his food.

  They all watched television. Instead of the street lights and the screech of cars Nick was used to, outside was nothing but blackness and silence. He went to the window and looked out. There was a kind of waiting stillness out there, and against it the laughter on the set seemed no more than a chirping of insects. No lights. Black hills. A starry sky. Away south were endless valleys and mountains. Lead Hills. Boulder Lake. Gladiator Peak. West was the Heaphy Track – three days lonely walking to the cliffs and giant waves of the Tasman Sea. He shivered. Out in the dark the waterfall was falling, Lodestone Creek ran silent in its gorge. There, in the bush, a mad old man was sleeping, wrapped in blankets with his carbide stink. Nick made up his mind he had to tell someone. He turned back to the room. Susan was watching him. She gave a small shake of her head. She must know what he was thinking. He frowned at her and felt his aching jaw. Please – she made the silent word with her mouth. And he shrugged, and looked at his mother and father, at his uncle and aunt, laughing, with their faces red, at some joke on the TV set. What could he tell them? What help would they be? He turned back and looked into the night.