Hokitika Town by Charlotte Randall

Author:Charlotte Randall
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781742287652
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2011-02-02T00:00:00+00:00

NINE

I melon cow lick. I haffta hang around Hokitika town till Ludo dry out, but Ludo aint drying. Haffta sleep with Kaspar because the hut burn down, but he all the time reading out of his Einziger and giving me lechers. He make me go on a trip to the beach tailings to pack up the tent and rescue the ekwipments. He also do some nice things for me. He take me to the opera house and the Bill Yard Hall, things Ludo were always too drunk or clapped out to do. Kaspar say Ludo isolate hisself in his hut on purpose. He say Ludo like one of them fanatics that isolate theirselves in the desert and say they seen God when rilly they only starving and mad. He say it dead easy to be a man what believe in the golden rule if yer don’t ever see no one. It even more easy to be Mr Simaritan when yer aint ever on the road to Jeriko.

‘Where that road?’ I ask. We having our dinner in the dining hall next to the Gridiron. Jes for a change, Kaspar say, and he do the paying, so I don’t argue.

‘What?’

‘Where that road? Mebee I take Ludo along it some time.’

Now Kaspar laugh his head off.

‘Yer wrong about Ludo,’ I say when he finish. ‘He look after me.’

‘Now I am looking after you. Am I now being the Good Samaritan?’

‘You a selfish pig. Ludo say so.’

Kaspar shake his head. ‘I am only reading from a different book.’

Blanche come in with her brother William. He such a lunatic and wandering about confused, everone call him Willy Nilly. I lucky because now Kaspar don’t get a chance to read from his book or give me a lecher. Blanche come over to talk. She invite us to the place she and Willy Nilly are gonna visit after their dinner. Kaspar look rilly pleased. He sit there grinning like Ludo do when he open a new bottle.

We haffta wait while Blanche and Willy Nilly eat, then we go to a cottage. In the cottage we go to a back room, dark with heavy clothings covering the winders. Some people sit at a big round table that have a light shining on it, one of them is a lady what’s done up in silks and velvets. Blanche, Kaspar and Willy Nilly sit down at the table and I creep in the shadders. All them people hold hands and a lot of crazy talk come on.

‘I hear a bell,’ the velvet and silk lady cry startled.

‘Yes, yes, very faint,’ a skinny lady with lots of warts agree.

I dint hear no fucken bell.

‘Now a breeze,’ the woman say, and she look all about her for the cause. ‘The breeze of a dear departed passing by.’

Dunno what that is but I pretty sure it the breeze that’s coming off the ocean and through them slits in the wood.

‘A caress!’ the lady say next. ‘Is that you, my dear? Fanny?’

Everone at the table indraw their breathings.

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