After the Fire, A Still Small Voice Read online

  When the breastbone of the chook shone like a fin in the moonlight, he leant back in his deckchair and smiled broadly, felt his wide thick teeth glowing in the dark, felt his feet rooted to the ground. I did the right thing, he thought. I did the right flaming thing after all. The small wound in his palm throbbed with chicken juice and it made him laugh out loud, a great crack. Silly old bastard.

  Creeping Jesus in the cane mawed again, but this time it gurgled, something between a purr and a grunt that was swallowed by the deep dark of the night. He put the lid on the camp oven and took himself off to bed, dirty and smelling of dinner.

  There was work in the morning, which he was happy about. How long had it been since he’d showed up somewhere to the slow wave of a hand, the nod of ‘How are ya?’ It was what he’d imagined when he’d first gone to Canberra, that he’d slot in and be one of those men who weren’t afraid of a bit of hard work, who drank a cup of coffee out of a tin cup and got on with it. But when he’d got to Canberra the contact he had was nowhere to be seen and he was stranded, no place to stay, no hard hat or boots, and he’d had to sleep in a bus shelter the first four nights. He’d found work as a cleaner, doing the post office headquarters where the toilets were filled anew with the runs every morning at four. It had been hard smelling that and still smile at the miserable-mouthed bastards in the canteen, as they wolfed down their eggs and beans and fried bread only to shit it out again later into the freshly scrubbed toilets. He’d got himself a bed at the YMCA with a bunch of other hopeless cases and looked longingly at the men who lunched together at the side of the road in their hard hats and reflective gear.

  Charlie stood by the derrick in the flaying heat, wearing a yellow sou’wester. His legs were bare and it looked from the right angle like he wore nothing else underneath. He had the hood up to shade his eyes from the sun and dark lines of sweat ran from his hairline. His cheeks were wet and shiny as polished stones. He was chatting with a plimsole-wearing girl from the marina café, whose apron was longer than her skirt. Frank could hear the sound of their conversation, and it was all smiles and they both giggled at each other. Charlie took the lemon lite from the girl’s hand and had a drink of it before passing it back, and Stuart gave a snort, tried to catch Frank’s eye, but he kept his face turned away.

  Instead, Stuart turned to Linus. ‘Don’t like your mate, Linus.’ Linus looked up with total lack of interest. ‘What’s his trouble?’

  Linus laughed and went off down the pontoon holding a heavy iron hook in both hands like an injured bird.

  Stuart stared darkly at Charlie. ‘Fuckin’ boon,’ he said.

  Frank bit the inside of his mouth, feeling the word echo round the marina.

  ‘Don’t be a prick, Stuart.’ Bob walked past, yanking on his work gloves. ‘She doesn’t like you anyway.’

  ‘It’ll be his fault Ian’s not working,’ Stuart muttered to the floor, but loudly.

  ‘Hey!’ Bob said sharply, climbing into the fork cabin. ‘I said, don’t be a prick.’ Stuart picked at something, maybe a splinter in the palm of his hand, as Pokey walked by eating a large pink apple. He eyeballed Stuart, but didn’t speak, just crunched on his apple, drips of juice hanging in his beard. Frank tried to keep his eyes elsewhere on the edge of the wharf as Bob backed towards it in the fork, but Stuart was wound up. Now everyone else was safely deafened by the motor, he carried on as they hooked pallets.

  ‘I’m all for Linus, he’s me mate an’ all, but, fuckin’, in general – you don’t want to get in with them – that’s what I was saying it is with Ian Mackelly’s kid.’ Frank gave the thumbs up to Sean who was operating the derrick and the pallet swung slowly into the air, turning slowly, cellophane glinting in the sun. Frank wanted to look like he wasn’t interested, but it couldn’t have been that convincing because Stuart carried on, ‘She used to hang out with the blacks at school. Sooner or later these white girls hang around with the abos – they all get into trouble.’

  ‘I think you’d better drop it, mate.’

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, Frank, like I said, Linus’s me mate – an’ most’ve them are fine on their own – it’s just in a pack they’re trouble – look at the old bastard now.’ He nodded to Linus who was laughing with Charlie, the girl gone back to the marina café. ‘All thick with that bug-eyed fella. Joyce Mackelly’ll show up a week from now, but she’ll be messed up. All’s I’m saying is if you’re a girl and you hang around with that sort, sooner or later you are going to get yourself beat up.’

  Stuart wiped a greased hand across his chin and made off towards the boat.

  With the drop toilet out of use, Frank had taken to going in the sea. It took some getting used to, the waves made it difficult to balance and he worried about having everything wash back on to him. After a few goes, swimming quickly away, he found it was easiest to perch on the top of a half-submerged rock, hang his bum over the edge and face out to sea. The rock was pretty comfortable and he could spend a good half-hour there, depending on the tide, perched with a lap full of cool water making him feel weightless from the torso down. The problem of the backwash was resolved, as what came out would be sucked down behind the rock and washed out to sea to be dealt with by whatever fish were ripping the water open; he could see their grey fins and white bellies from the easy chair. He could watch the weather, the shape of the sea, the difference in the horizon and the height of the white horses. A sacred type of crapping, he decided.

  Memories came to him then, old ones he thought he’d finished with. He remembered when Eliza had turned up without Beth and she had a small bag of resin and a bottle of rum. ‘It’s lolly day,’ she’d said as she held them up in plain view of a woman walking past the shop. The woman had tutted and Eliza looked after her, laughing loudly so that the woman quickened her pace. They went out to the jacaranda and ate the resin sandwiched between pieces of chocolate. It was sweet and awful tasting, and nothing happened so they set about the rum, taking quick swallows and clearing the backs of their throats with it to get rid of the musk of the mull. And then, soon after they’d got a quarter-way through the rum, things started to happen. Eliza snorted rum out of her nose when a duck took off nearby and laughed about it, tears rolling, balls of her hands shucked into her eye sockets. Frank had only been able to smile with his top lip.

  ‘You look like a pervert!’ Eliza managed to squeak out between hysterics. And then it went quiet and they did some sitting still and Frank was worried that he might piss himself, even though he was sure he didn’t need to go. Eliza’s face was multi-sided. She had a new hair wrap that he hadn’t noticed before, purple and black thread wound around in stripes just above her ear. Like a bandicoot tail. He’d never seen a bandicoot.

  ‘Bandicoot,’ he said out loud and Eliza looked at him as if she didn’t know who he was. But she did. He reached out and touched the side of her boob, which he could see was next to her armpit where it belonged. She shrugged him off. Maybe they didn’t know each other. He sweated. Had he just touched a stranger’s boob? Would he go to jail? Her bandicoot tail twitched.

  ‘My mum’s had it off with your dad. Did you know that? That kinda makes us brother and sister.’

  Frank waded back into the shore holding his fists tightly at his sides, that ache in his jaw from clenching. There were headaches some mornings and he’d tried going to sleep with a piece of bread in his mouth to stop the grinding, but had woken up choking. To shake off the feeling he ran the length of the bay, then turned and ran back. He kept on up and down until sunspots clouded over and he felt weak and steaming, then he slopped himself in the shallows like a hot dog.

  4

  On his sixteenth birthday Leon was confronted by a heart-shaped cake that his mother had baked. ‘We can have a party, chicken, if you’d like,’ she said in a way that made his toes grip the insides of his shoes. ‘You can invite your friends, we can have maybe some sherry and cake.’ To look at it, so bright and red, made him uncomfortable.

  ‘Thanks, Ma, but
I’d rather not, ta.’

  ‘Why, sausage? Are you embarrassed?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘No, a few friends – man friends – want to take me out somewhere, is all. I’m just busy, and . . .’ He let the ‘and’ fill the room.

  ‘Oh? And who is taking you out?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual crowd.’ He tried hard to think of who that might be. ‘Darren, Sid, Johnny. Des. Mark.’ He said boys’ names as they came to him.

  ‘Darren Farrow? That boy who hit you?’

  ‘That’s a long time ago, Mum. It’s fine.’

  The last time he’d seen him, Darren had been leaning solidly against a girl behind the Four Square at night. He’d seen Leon looking and given him the finger, which he trailed down the girl’s front and hooked under her shirt, all the while meeting Leon’s eyes. His fat had turned hard and he was thought of as a dangerous kind of a bloke now. It was a pity that he’d never got around to running off to Korea. Leon imagined them having a drink together and it almost made him smile.

  His mother shook her head, but cut the cake for him anyway, and he ate a piece in front of her. It had too much colouring in it and it was dense and far too sweet; it made his teeth sing. She smiled and cut herself a piece and left immediately to have her bath, leaving her slice dead on the table, and he went to chop the date slabs that had cooled on the shop counter.

  A moment later a girl put her head round the door of the shop.

  ‘Got some black pears for youse.’

  She smiled as she bumped her way through the door, ricocheting it off her hip so that the bell rang several times before she got through. It took him a minute to recognise Amy Blackwell. She took up her space differently, as if she’d been taken apart and put back together in another way somehow. Her hair was piled on top of her head out of her face, her cheeks were pink from hefting the box of pears. She wore a pair of brown work overalls that were filthy, streaked with dirt and a pinch too small for her. She chewed gum and he could smell it on her breath. He looked at her chest in amazement. They’d just grown, like potatoes do.

  ‘Thought you could make a tart out of them,’ she said.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, frowning hard at the pears – it seemed important to look interested in the fruit. Amy blinked and shifted her weight under the box. The chewing gum cracked in her mouth.

  A woman came in wearing a hat and gloves, and frowned deeply when she saw Amy in her overalls. She averted her eyes and said, ‘Four rock cakes and a white loaf, please.’ And her eyes flickered across to Amy again, the corners of her mouth turned down. Leon put her bread in a bag and counted out her change. He could see Amy smiling with her box of pears, she was standing tall and straight, and she didn’t move when the woman tried to make out that she was in her way. She just smiled wider and the woman stared back at him like she wanted him to say something. Leon looked away. She marched out of the shop, her handbag hung in the crook of her arm. Amy rolled her eyes and he smiled.

  ‘Um, you think I could put this down somewhere?’ He fumbled from behind the counter and tried to take the box from her. Putting his hands underneath it, he trapped her finger under his, and remembered the day at school with Briony Caldwell and the secret up yours. Amy Blackwell looked him in the eye and he shifted again and had the box, but all that was in his head was the smell of her, earth, gum, sweat and old pears. The coldness of her finger clamped under his.

  She brushed a hair off her forehead. ‘Ta,’ she said. ‘Haven’t seen you around school in a while.’

  ‘Stopped going. I pretty much run this place now.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘’Sgood, thanks.’

  ‘Great.’

  ‘Yep.’ Leon shifted his weight under the box.

  ‘Well . . . see youse later then . . .’

  He stood clutching the pears, feeling like a handicapped. He should have given her a piece of cake. He should have offered her a drink, she looked hot and tired. He should have called the woman that gave her a dirty look an old cow and he should have looked happier about the pears and he should have got her to stay longer, asked her out for his imaginary birthday drinks. But the smell, the fug of pear and dirt and spearmint, made a change in the room. Something like light, like white fresh icing. Amy’s spearmint gum cleared all the tubes and passages inside him, and the cold dark something had gone from the door, he’d felt it leave. He blinked a few times as the feeling faded. The warm smell of bread and cake seemed stronger, like he hadn’t realised it before. It was a lovely smell.

  On a piece of newspaper he squeezed sugar roses and thought about what he would say the next time she came into the shop. He paid more attention to his work, he perfected his cherry slices, took minute care about the placement, the overlap of strawberries on the gateau, the thickness of the gelatin glaze. He thought about how he would present them to her if she ever came in again with her light like sun in a copper pan.

  His mother fitted her hair bun back in place, always wet from a bath. She bothered Leon now and again about going back to school. ‘There’s more to life than just cakes and sweets,’ she’d say, but then would trail off as if something else had caught her attention. She’d rub her eyes and blink, then smile at him and walk into the back room where he would hear her looking through the bookshelves, flipping through the books one by one, picking things up and putting them down again, finding herself extra housework before the next bath time.

  At the malt bar the kids dressed up like Yanks with spit in their hair and the girls had tits like paper hats. On his day off Leon passed the place by and went into the pub where, if he sat with a cherry soda for long enough, the barman would serve him a glass of beer. ‘Cos I can see you’re a drinker,’ he said as he put it down. ‘But anyone asks and you’re pinching dregs.’

  The men at the bar were dangerous-looking sorts, some missing a limb or two, one who only had a thumb and little finger left on his right hand, and he would press the thumb up to his nose and point at people.

  That slow thick feeling crept up on him often, but it was all right in the pub. It didn’t seem out of place that his mouth moved ten times slower than everyone else’s when he talked, and after a drink the feeling just melted into the alcohol and no one could tell the difference anyway, because they were concentrating on getting the grog inside them before the pub closed. When he swayed to the toilets, carefully placing one foot in front of the other, no one looked at him funny. When he returned, the man with the lobster claw slapped him on the back and handed him another drink, without ever turning to look at him or stopping his conversation with his friend.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Leon clearly and he slowed himself back to his seat.

  Amy Blackwell did come again and this time she brought plums. He had been making the curd for a lemon tart, grating in the rind of a green lemon stroke by stroke and tasting in between. When the bell rang he barely broke his rhythm. ‘Beauty,’ he said, as he took the box of plums from her.

  ‘How’s it goin’?’ she asked.

  ‘Good,’ he said, this time really looking at the plums, knocking one of them on to its back, feeling it give. They were the dark purple type and he thought of upside-down caramel plum tarts.

  He got her some water and, with one hand leaning on the counter, she drained the glass and put it down heavily on the side, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

  ‘How’s school going?’ he asked, as she put down the glass.

  ‘It’s dumb and nuts,’ she answered, smiling, chewing her spearmint. ‘They reckon they want us to learn how to iron.’

  He moved back to the bowl. ‘You’ve come in the nick of time,’ he said. The room was rousing itself into a glow, he felt it at the back of his head, the lightness, the clearing. It made him stand straight, breathe deeply. He picked up a twist of pastry to dip it into the curd and absently wiped a finger round the outside edge of the bowl, collecting a stray thread of yellow that had trailed over the side. He offered her the pastry and the
glow off her was sun off water. She leant forward but passed the pastry twist and took the other hand, holding it in both of hers. She put his lemon-covered finger in her mouth, standing on tiptoe over the counter. His breath stayed in his chest and a breeze came into the shop, and he could smell the lemon and the plums and the scent of the skin of her throat.

  She looked at him the way she had when he’d caught her finger under the crate of pears. That finger raised behind the sheet of paper at school. She drew her lips to the tip of his finger, letting them make a pop sound at the end. ‘’S pretty nice,’ she said, dropping back on to her heels and wiping her mouth with the inside of her wrist. The shop bell rang and she left him, finger still held in mid-air, eyes round and big, the room a white flash in her wake.

  Later that week he took a plum crumble and two spoons round to Blackwell’s Grocers. They ate it in the dark of the storeroom, among the potato mud and the huntsman spiders, where even her breath smelt of wet earth. He could see the silhouette of her like a halo, and he put out a hand to touch the light on her hair and heard the unzipping of her overalls. The top of his nose prickled when she touched his skin, the warmth of her belly on his. She was hot inside so that he thought it might burn him but the white light that burst was cool and clearing like a swim in the sea. She laughed between deep breaths. They chewed gum afterwards, and there was the simple fact of it popping and cracking in the darkness, the white gum in their dark mouths.

  ‘I like it here with you,’ he said.

  She rolled herself on to him so that her chin rested just below his chest. Her chin was sharp and it hurt, but he let it alone, because it would be nice to have a bruise to remember the moment.