Evie Wyld - After the Fire, A Still Small Voice

‘Is this about him?’

Her shoulders squared, her back moved as she breathed in. She unscrewed the milk and poured some over his tea bag. ‘Doesn’t have to be. I mean, it couldn’t hurt just to go and take a look.’ She put the milk down. There she was, standing there, not understanding. ‘I’d like to see where you grew up. I’d like to meet him. It couldn’t hurt.’

‘I’ve told you, you don’t know what you’re talking about.’

She stirred her cup, wiped the spoon on a tea towel and stirred his. Her voice shook. ‘I think you are being unfair.’

He didn’t reply. The silence was better than what he was thinking, that she could fuck off out of his business and that not having a family of your own didn’t entitle you to glitch in on everyone else’s. She took his tea bag out with the spoon, squashed it against the side of the mug, stepped on the bin pedal and dropped it in. It made a dull pat in the empty bin bag. She squatted to find the sugar in the cupboard, all in silence, all with her back to him. He knew this quiet, it was when her eyes were filling up and she was steeling herself against speaking. It was the thing she did that was not fair because he hadn’t done anything wrong and she was threatening him with tears anyway.

She inhaled loudly through her nose. ‘Why can’t we go?’ Still he stayed quiet. One sugar, two and three, and she stirred the cup and a small brown dot of tea spattered on to the sideboard. Her hand trembled and she set down the spoon with a bang. She breathed in again. ‘You don’t know what it’s like. You have this link and you just want to ignore it. You know what it means to me. You know.’ Her voice almost cracked, but she was not crying, she was angry. ‘I mean, what could he have done? Did he kill someone? Did he molest you?’

‘No.’

‘Did he beat you?’

‘No.’

‘Then for Chrissakes what else is there that is so unforgivable?’

She rested her hands on the sideboard, hunching her shoulders. He picked at the wax tablecloth. She turned with both mugs in her hands, planted his down in front of him and made to leave the room with hers. ‘Well, you can stay here and be silent all you like. I’m going to Sydney on Friday.’ Frank stood and the chair squeaked on the lino. He looked at her, glowered over her, felt his heart beat in his throat and she avoided his look and walked away. He sat down, put his hand to his forehead, waited until the heartbeat slowed. He pressed his fingernails into his scalp. He looked at his tea, the small bubbles in it and the black specks that had escaped the bag.

She came running back into the room. ‘Wait!’ she shouted. Her eyes were red.

‘What for?’

‘I forgot to boil the water.’

She hadn’t gone to Sydney that time and it had blown over.

A few months later he’d held her face and squeezed it hard, and she was crying. He’d seen the light go out, he’d seen that that was it, his last chance and it was gone.

‘Creeeeeee!’ went the Creeping Jesus. ‘Creeeee craaaaa!’

‘I don’t really believe it. You don’t seem like the sort of bloke that’s capable of that kind of a thing, mate.’

‘Well. You never know.’

‘You try and find her?’

Frank shook his head. ‘We’re better off not knowing each other. New starts.’

‘You miss her?’

‘I try not to think about her.’

‘And what about now?’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘Now you’re telling me this stuff — now you’re thinking about her. What’s that like?’

He paused like he was thinking, but inside he was blank. ‘Sometimes I’m worried that if I found her it’d start again. Like I said, we tried before and some of the time it was fine. But it’s always there. I miss her but.’

The night around them went quiet, even the cicadas turned away, as if the land held its breath to listen.

Bob stayed until the last of the beer was gone. They should both have been stupid with booze, but it went down like water and made no difference to Frank. Bob did not slur his words and when he got up to leave his walk was straight and casual. He shook Frank’s hand and they shared a smile. You’ve done it now, you silly arsehole , he thought as Bob’s tail-lights disappeared round the corner of the sugar cane. If you hadn’t already done it before .

She’d talked to him about growing up in the home early on, it poured out of her with the tip of a prod from him. She was one of those doorstep kids, too young to talk when she was left there. She didn’t remember her mum, didn’t remember being taken in. Did remember her first foster family, her foster-dad who insisted she call him daddy and hold his dick for him while he grunted into her hands. She remembered getting sent away from them, back to the home, the interviews as she got older, sets of people coming to see if they liked her, deciding no, they did not, and leaving. And Frank remembered that first time he’d blown up at her and the look on her face, and the thought, Oh God, I’ve made her life worse, not better .

That last holiday with his mum and dad they’d had a small fire by the shack just as the end of the light went from the sky, and his dad had opened beers, one for himself and one for his mother. Clams hissed and squeaked in a wide billy, letting off the smell of burnt bacon. They sat, the three of them, on legless beach chairs, leaning back and digging out pippie flesh with cake forks. His dad told stories about when he used to be a dag, living out the back with a mob of stupid boys. He told the one about the bloke who went to test the sharpness of his knife on his leg and cut an inch down, through his jeans, and sliced open his thigh.

When his mother went back inside for more beer from the cold box something shrieked in the cane, but his father didn’t seem to hear it. He looked up at the sky. Frank swapped his mother’s half-full beer bottle for one that was nearly empty and drank from it in the dark. He held the beer in his mouth, an unsure taste like he’d accidentally put diesel or earwax in his mouth.

‘It’s a funny place, this place.’ His father spoke quietly, still with his head turned to the sky. He saw that his eyes were closed. ‘There are some things you can’t get away from, Franko. And that’s the pity.’

Again the thing in the cane. Frank’s mother appeared in the lit doorway with shining bottles of beer.

The first night of R and R the air smelt of sesame oil and spilt beer. Leon and Cray watched the other men cruising around with the little Viet girls, who smiled happily at the drunk, hysterical men in their big new Hawaiian shirts. They’d drunk rice wine themselves and got drunk quicker than he had expected. They watched a couple, a girl in a long, green, shiny-looking dress who laughed at everything her soldier was saying. His arm was round her neck and she somehow supported him on her tiny shoulders. He was in another place, his eyes rolled forward and back in his head, he pointed at the air like he was pointing at a bird’s nest. There was wet on the man’s face, sweat or wine or tears and spit, Leon couldn’t say. But the little girl laughed and the man liked it, and he nuzzled his head awkwardly against her neck. They weaved away and out of the room, half dancing to the music, which was something hokey and old, a waltz.

Cray pointed the bottle at them as they went. ‘You could be getting that sort of game on, mate. Nothing to stop you.’

‘Yeah,’ said Leon. ‘Maybe later on. Maybe tomorrow.’

‘Christ, mate. You’ve come on leave too early — if I could I’d be all over it like the itches. I’m having trouble even looking at these women. You’re not nancy or anything, are you? I’ve always suspected.’