After the Fire, A Still Small Voice Read online

  With the sea still streaming from his ears, he found his hat and dragged his shorts on to wet legs while sandflies and mosquitoes bit and blew by him. He ignored them and poked around in a rock pool, squatting by its side. There used to be abalone on the rocks, but not now. Fingernails of crab shell floated among the weed, an empty hairy leg – octopus dinners. His insides garbled with the thought of clean fresh food. Sea animals would fill him up with goodness, push out the jam rolls and meat pies of the city.

  ‘Yars yars yars,’ he said into the rock pool, stirring up sand with a stick. The sky rolled in the moon and then it was night time.

  He woke in the dark with the feeling that there had been some noise or movement in the shack, like a soundless bird had flown in one window and out the other ruffling the air as it went. He listened for feathers landing on the floor. Past the frogs and insects, the drill of night things, he heard it again. The night sounds dipped and let the noise through – a faraway cry, something prehistoric like the noise of a pterodactyl in an old plasticine movie. His ears became full of the sound of his own blood and he ticked off in his head all the explanations. ‘Bird’ was what he arrived at. Some kind of bird was what the Creeping Jesus was. Owl. Jabiru. Cockatoo. He listened past his own breathing, past his own blood, then past the outside noise, banana leaves on corrugated iron, past the scrubbing of the gum trees in the little wind, he listened so that his body went stiff, though he didn’t dare clench his fists for the noise it might make.

  Again, like wind dropping, the nightbirds tucked their heads under their wings and the sound echoed from far away in the bush, a siren, a vowel noise that was long and thin, and when it reached its peak it broke and turned into a low howl, tailing off like a sad question. He kept his eyes open until they wouldn’t any more and when he slept there was nothing.

  At dawn something scrambled across his feet in the snub end of the sleeping bag and he fell on the floor kicking the air furiously. He didn’t find a spider or a mouse, but a pair of balled-up women’s toe socks that had been hidden at the bottom of the bag. He held them in both hands, resisting the urge to bring them up to his face. Those shapes, those spaces between her toes. He went outside to the burnt-out fire, holding the socks between his index finger and thumb now, like they might sting. He put them in the ashes of the mattresses, then fossicked around for a piece of wood to put on top of them and hide them from view. He used a few twigs to make a pyramid over the socks and lit them, watching until they were on fire.

  The sky was pale and the morning dew had already burnt off. A troop of magpies gurgled in the blue gums and he could smell hot eucalyptus and salt water. From the borders of the cane came a crumping noise as something large sloped off towards the trees. A lost cow, maybe, or a feral sheep down from the hills. He threw more wood on top of the socks and made a billyful of tea to start the morning off.

  Before the iron roof turned to a griddle he was up on a ladder, patching up the rust-bitten roof. Even in the first sheets of sun the metal began to expand and shift, creaking and popping in the heat, and he couldn’t rest his hand in one place for too long, feeling that he would leave the skin behind. On the roof were all kinds of uglies: leaf insects, their tails up and ready to strike, spiders – redbacks, huntsmen, fat black-bodied ones and hard little yellow jumpers. A whitetail nestled in a rusted pipe, which he gingerly rolled off the roof, then watched as the bugger tottered away after the pipe hit the ground. The banana tree nodded softly, making a sound like rain on the roof. It was a good sound. He filled his lungs with hot air and stood upright to piss in the direction he had thrown the spider. He rolled an orange between his palms, softening it, then bit into it with his front teeth and sucked it hard so that stars came to his eyes. He looked at the cane flowing softly in the breeze that never seemed to reach him, saw the tops of three or four tractor sheds like capsized boats above the level of the cane. He took a strong back swing and hurled the sucked-out orange in the direction of one of the roofs, saw it swallowed up and was surprised for a second that there were no ripples.

  When he turned round and saw the face watching him from the edge of the clearing he had to crouch down, his heart fat and loud, to stop from falling over. The person slipped out of the cane and strode forward, and Frank clutched his hammer tightly. The man walked quickly and lightly towards the shack, one hand up in what was possibly a friendly gesture. He let his hammer go and stood up. ‘A-roo, a-roo, a-roo!’ called the man, jogging a bit now to come and stand at the bottom of the ladder.

  ‘Hello,’ said Frank and the man beamed with brilliant white teeth. He had the look of a young boy dropped into a grown man’s body. The skin of his face was salt-rubbed, his eyes red and bright from the sun.

  He squinted up at Frank ‘How is it?’ he asked, presenting a bronzed hand so that Frank had to come down the ladder and shake it. ‘Bob Haydon – heard a noise someone was moving in around here.’

  Frank took the hand which was cool and big. ‘Frank Collard,’ he said in what he hoped was a friendly tone. Unable to think of what else to say he added, ‘I’ve moved in.’

  ‘Can see that, mate!’ Bob talked in a shouty way, like a welcoming dog. ‘Sorry for sneaking up on you, was having a bit of a ramble and wondered what was going on – sometimes you get kids around here, you know, up to no good and that sort of thing.’

  Frank nodded and smiled, wondering how long Bob would stay for. ‘Can I getcha a drink?’ he asked, thinking Bob would probably say no, that he couldn’t and had to be getting on.

  Bob looked at his wrist where there was no watch. ‘Why not? Wet the head?’

  Rooting through the cold box Frank’s stomach moaned, but he found the beers anyway, floating among sliced cheese and wet bread. Beer for breakfast. Not a great start.

  Bob perched on the steps and lit up a cigarillo. He flapped out a match and delicately put it back into the match box after testing it was completely out with his fingers. ‘Ta,’ he said, accepting the bottle, and seeing as his other hand was full, he angled the bottle head on to the skin of his inside elbow removing the screw top with a quick jerk of his forearm. ‘It’s a good place you’ve got yourself, mate. Always wondered who it belonged to.’

  ‘Was my grandparents’, long time ago – haven’t been here since I was a grommet, though. Don’t think my old man would’ve either.’

  ‘Ah – well – I’ve only been here meself a year or so – me an’ the wife are westies, tell the truth. Perth. Other side of the bloody world it feels like some days.’

  Frank nodded. ‘’S a big place.’

  A fly landed on the outside corner of Bob’s eye and he blinked it away. ‘Good-oh. ’S just you, Frank? You’re not fixing her up for the family or nothing?’

  Frank tightened his bum and swallowed his beer in a lump. ‘Just me, I’m afraid . . .’ he was going to go on and wing it, say something jovial.

  But Bob said, ‘Seems like a pretty lonely thing to do.’

  Frank looked up at an aeroplane that glinted cleanly.

  Bob smiled and shook his head. ‘Look, I’m sorry, mate, I’m going on like a lunatic. Thing is we’re all a bit jumpy at the minit. A friend’s girl’s gone missing, been gone a fortnight and we’re all pretty pip to it just now. ’S why I was lurking in the cane there.’

  ‘Sorry to hear it,’ said Frank. ‘You reckon she’s just done a bolt? Saw the posters in town, she looks about the age to.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Bob, not agreeing but being polite. ‘Yeah, let’s hope so.’ There was silence and Bob looked into the middle distance.

  ‘So, do you work the cane?’ asked Frank, the question coming to him like a lightning bolt.

  ‘Nah, tried it for a bit, but if you don’t know what you’re up to it’s a bugger’s muddle. I do a bit of fixing up of cars, but my wife keeps chooks. We get by – less work than proper farming. We live over east.’ Bob pointed with his chin. ‘You can see our water tower from here – connected by the cane.’

  Frank loo
ked, knowing that he wasn’t tall enough to see over the cane. He nodded. ‘Chook farm, eh? Meat or eggs?’

  ‘Both. You got any need for a couple of hens? Dead or alive?’

  ‘I could definitely think about it.’

  ‘You do that. So,’ said Bob, with the look of someone who had finally come to the meat of the conversation, ‘are you a fishing man, Frank?’

  Frank shrugged.

  ‘Some good shores around here. Get your nice pelagic type, come in close to the bays, you can get out there on the right day on a surf ski with a hand line and come back a happy man. Just last week I was out there, trolling – 40-kilo line – light-weighted squid and pilchard duo – bait got monstered, I take off like a steam train; next thing I’m being pulled through a school of bluefins, two or three pretty big bronze whalers feeding in there. Took two hours to get the thing back, had to hold her head out of the water for twenty minutes before I could haul her up. All the time I’m thinking something’s going to come and take the side out of her, or me, or both! Anyway, monster of a thing, 15 kilos. Wife made sashimi the first night and now we’re on to a steak a day. It’s a good freezer.’

  Frank’s mouth was dry and he tried to keep up with a look of interest and friendliness.

  Bob looked at him. ‘You using an eski? I’ve got a kero fridge you can have if you’re after one.’

  Frank felt like a heel. ‘If it’s going spare I could really use it, thanks.’

  ‘No worries. It’s a nice place you’ve got. Got a nice feeling to it.’ Bob drained the stubbie, unfolded upwards off the step. ‘Righto, Frank – well, you need anything – turn left out the end and we’re second track you come to.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll bear it in mind.’

  ‘No wuckin furries,’ Bob said, shaking hands again and smiling with a squint that made the sun always in his face. ‘’Sgood to meet youse anyways. I’ll come by some time soon with that fridge.’

  It was awkward not knowing how to see the man off, to walk with him all the way to the end of the track seemed a bit much, but he was still talking, so Frank followed.

  ‘Looking for work?’

  ‘Will be. Would you know of anything going?’

  ‘Could be. I work the marina on and off. Usually there’s something a bloke can do. You look a strong enough bloke, Frank.’

  ‘I do okay.’ He tried not to pink up. ‘Done a bit of labouring around the place.’

  Bob looked at the horizon. ‘There’s a fella, Linus, works the marina – he’s a bit older than the usual – might remember your grandparents.’ Frank stopped, surprised. ‘Don’t worry, mate, I just parked me car round the corner so’s I could sneak up on you – you don’t have to walk me home. Aroo,’ Bob said with a wave and disappeared round the tallest cane.

  2

  The day the king of England died it was all over the wireless and Leon was supposed to care, even in the heat with the cream on the cakes turning sour and the flies making it in through the fly strips. The Pancake Day decorations in the shop were taken down to make way for a Union Jack, a picture of the dead king cut from the paper to hide the centre where his mother had fouled up the lines. That long face and the hair combed over like a pill, that Pom look like he’d eaten too much butter. Even when his father unveiled a red, white and blue tiered ‘Cake of Mourning’ and put it in the window to melt in the sun, and the butcher’s wife balled a hanky up to her face when she saw it, even then, what held Leon’s attention were the fine rabbit-brown hairs that had started to separate his face into sections. He took his time running his fingers over them, knowing that this was it – this was the thing that would save him from the pet names and public cuddles of his mother. This was manhood in all its creeping stinking glory and it had happened to his face. It was one of the best things, that he was the only boy in his year with a hairy face. It was rumoured that Briony Caldwell had one but she shaved it off, dry, with her dad’s cut-throat every morning.

  From the downstairs wireless came the sound of the British national anthem and his father singing boldly over the top of it.

  God save our great big king

  Long live the lovely king

  God save our king!

  ‘You can’t save what’s already dead,’ Leon’s mother’s voice cut over, but it only made his father sing twice as loud and Leon saw out of the bathroom window how the postman shook his head at the foreign voice that rom-pom-pommed out of the bread shop, and slipped his letters under the door like he always did, rather than bringing them into the shop and risk talking to the European type of loonie that lived there.

  Work could start on a wedding cake up to a month in advance. Leon was sous chef and he took the job seriously. Even when he’d been younger there had never been a time when it had been okay to lick the bowl.

  ‘That is for inbreeders. If you are happy to eat the batter, why bother cooking it at all?’

  His father taught him to prick the cake using the thinnest skewer, to make sure it was properly baked. The ritual was carried out with every cake, even though no cake had ever been too wet. ‘It’s all mathematic formula – like Albert Einstein,’ he would say, weighing up the ratio of flour to egg and the weight to the wetness. ‘You make a mistake and it’s only down to your own stupidity,’ sagely extracting the perfectly clean skewer, steaming hot, and fixing Leon with a look that conveyed that something of grave importance was going on.

  The icing was white like light in a copper pan or the sun off the water. It burnt a flash into your eye. It was shaped into a brick and rolled out flat like a pillowcase, then folded back in on itself until it was thin and could be draped over the cake in one piece. Dressing the lady, his father called it, and he thumbed the sheet gently into the creases of the cake, like he was circling a narrow waist. Then he would line up his coloured dyes, each thumb-sized bottle with a handwritten label, every shade of colour separately explained: Buck-eye Brown – the approximate softness of antler moss; Baker’s Rose – a warm cheek; Australian Copper – flesh tone; Holiday Red – a fun-time girl’s lips.

  Glancing at the notes he had made about the couple to be married and talking the process through with Leon, his father would add tiny amounts of dye to the unset marzipan.

  ‘She had a beautiful mouth, that young lady – almost the same colour as her cheeks, but so big, those lips.’ A single drop of red dye would spider out, an ink spot on white linen, and find its way into the creases of white sugar. Pounded with a wooden spoon, the pops and cracks of air bubbles bursting against the side of the stoneware bowl would reach the shopfront where his mother served the everyday cakes. From the blanket of white would come the hue of skin. A dot of blue and yellow produced the lawn for the couple to stand on, the earth that cemented them to their wedding day, the memory of wet grass, the touch of each other’s hands, damp from attention.

  Once the marzipan had rested, his father took pinches of each colour and lined them up on the back of a hard-backed cookery book, which he would hand to Leon. He’d talk him through rolling and kneading, teaching him, not too much, but just enough – don’t make the sugar sweat.

  Out of Leon’s paws came a crumbling mess, a mix of nose and hat, of shoe and skin that ran together from the heat of his palms, blending grey in the middle. Out of his father’s hands a tiny sculpture, a person in a pleated dress, with a nose like a blade, grasping her wedding handkerchief, thin as a leaf, perfectly able to stand on her own two feet. Undiluted dye picked out the lips and eyes. The black dye was used only on the man – for his hair and shoes, sometimes a moustache if his father was feeling playful. He never used black on the bride. ‘Black is black,’ he would say quietly, his face close to the statue he was working on, his eyes fixed, ‘but brown is a mixture of everything. Brown is better for a woman. When painting a woman you must dip your brush in a rainbow.’ He would look at Leon here, stop his work to ask, ‘You know who said that?’ When Leon shook his head he would go back to work, as if he’d decided not to tell him a great sec
ret. ‘Well, whoever it was, he knew his women.’

  When he was younger Leon would poke his tongue out of the side of his mouth and frown as his hand shook with the effort of stillness, and his paint-brush gave his monster bride a red slash on the head, a beard instead of eyebrows or a target on her chest instead of a flower.

  His father would sit the pair next to each other, and examine their work side by side. ‘Your bride has a well-rounded bosom,’ he would say, ignoring the fact that she had only one. Looking at his own work, his father would stand with his hand on his chin, sucking his tongue and say, ‘You know – I think I really need to do more work on noses.’

  Leon would squint at the perfect tiny woman who stood on the bench top, and his palms would itch to be as large and gentle as his father’s. On his fourteenth birthday he could roll out a perfectly formed woman, but his hands still shook when he tried to paint her. The couple his father had made for his own wedding sat high up on a shelf in a bell jar but Leon knew them by heart. His mother held, for some reason, a stuffed bear against which you could see the tiny pinking of her fingernails. Her lips were bowed and smiling, and she had bitter-chocolate hair that reached to her pencil waist. The toe of one shoe pointed out underneath her skirts and it was blue like a duck egg. His father wore a sugar tuxedo broadly stretched over his chest. On his lapel was a poppy and you could make out the black seeds in its centre. He wore a moustache that he didn’t wear now, two lines neatly executed in black.