After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,28
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