After the fire, a still small voice - By Evie Wyld Page 0,92

and there were green ants. Besides, he’d need more drink if he was going to avoid the hangover. Maybe he was sick, he thought, as he ambled on, untangling himself from a vine of stay-a-while and feeling genuine surprise at the rash of blood pricks it left round his ankle. An hour or maybe two or maybe ten minutes later, he came to the cane of the Haydons’ boundary. The cane was thin and low, and it was more of a wade than a swim through it to their farm. Bob’s car wasn’t around and it occurred to Frank that maybe it was Vicky he wanted to see anyway. It was hot as buggery, the air was low and wet, and he was still deaf. He could feel sweat creeping down the skin underneath his beard. He scratched at his throat and felt the lumps there – hives, maybe, or boils, something growing under his skin, hatching out.

He stood outside the house and looked at the place. The big veranda all around hung with seashell wind chimes and pot plants that wrapped themselves round the corner posts. A small wind moved his hair, cooled the burn of his beard. Vicky appeared at the door in a loose white shirt, her bare legs flowing out of it, her chafed ankles and scarred brown knees.

She mumbled something that Frank couldn’t understand. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Can’t hear you. Damn water in me ears.’

‘I said,’ she shouted, ‘Jesus, Frank, you look like a fuckin’ monster!’ She jerked her head towards the indoors. ‘Come in and have a sit in front of the air-con!’

She sat him by a machine that he could feel vibrating through his feet, it sounded like a tractor even through the buggered drums of his ears, and she went from the room. The air that came out of it was antiseptic, cold enough to give him an instant headache and burn the tunnels of his nose. It was a beautiful thing. When she came back, she was wearing a pair of worn men’s shorts and holding a jug of water with ice and a glass.

‘You look like you’ve done a pretty good job at dehydrating yourself!’ she called at him from in front of his face. He took the water she poured for him and felt it go sharp down his neck. It was as though there was a spine in his throat, a stuck dry fishbone that he couldn’t get wet. Vicky mumbled something and Frank shook his head at her, closed his eyes to feel the blast of cold on his eyelids. He felt hands on his face and opened his eyes to see she’d brought a basin of soapy water and some scissors. He blinked as she cut away at the tufts of hair round his face, twirling them loose round her fingers. He felt the disgust of himself and it made him angry that she was there to see it, but he couldn’t stop her. He watched her watching where she cut, her tongue pink between her lips, her eyebrows drawn together. When she produced a razor and began to massage warm water into his beard he felt the dirt coming free, watched in amazement as she smiled and the lather grew up round his face. He heard the scraping from inside his body, felt the overpowering itches being scratched. The water in the basin was dark grey with hair and dirt and blood before she switched to a new razor.

She was talking now, softly to herself perhaps, and he could hear a mumble, but not the words. Her frown deepened as she shaved under his chin and he saw her wince at something there. She got up and went to the kitchen and when she came back she had a box of matches, tweezers, and a pin stuck on the end of a cork. Outside there was a roll of thunder and, as it passed over, Frank’s ears cleared and hot seawater ran down his neck. There was a whine from his tear ducts. ‘I can hear,’ he said.

‘It speaks,’ said Vicky.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Ticks. You’re buggered with them.’ She tilted back his head and heated the pin in the flame of a match until it was black, then approached his throat with it. He felt a small warmth, a pressure and Vicky went in with the tweezers, her eyes squinting. Frank held his breath and she moved back. ‘Got ’im,’ she said under her breath