Hideous kinky - By Esther Freud Page 0,27

were horrified.

‘The only thing to do’ – Bilal took out a cigarette and lit it – ‘is to burn them.’

I was sure I could hear the tick’s scream as it retracted its hundred sharp legs and shrivelled into a ball, dropping grey on to the sand. The dog lay motionless, its head on its paws. It understood we were only trying to help. Bilal left us his cigarette and a box of matches. We worked through the afternoon, searching out the bloodsuckers to watch them shrivel and roll dying on to the sand. There was not time to kill each and every tick before the shepherds in the field began to whistle, and, pricking up their ears, the dogs sprang up and trotted away through the trees.

The next afternoon the dogs were back. We rewarded them with bread and chick-pea salad saved especially from lunch. Once they had eaten we set to work. There was only one dog left to do.

‘We’ve almost finished.’ I hopped around as Bea pulled, red hot, on the cigarette. I ruffled the first cured dog, stretched out asleep, his eyebrow twitching. As I stroked his matted fur, my hand caught against something, up by his neck. I fingered through and found, nestled close in to the skin, that there were fresh ticks, smaller and less swollen, but growing.

‘Bilal!’ I called with such urgency that he came running half naked from his siesta. ‘He’s got new ticks,’ I sobbed, pointing at the dog.

There was nothing Bilal could say. ‘When they roll in the grass, the ticks, they jump back on.’

‘Don’t roll in the grass,’ Bea shook her finger at the dog. It wagged its tail sleepily.

Each day when the dogs came to ‘scrounge’ as my mother called it, we attempted to keep the ticks at bay with the cigarette-end Bea kept folded in a handkerchief especially. I secretly worried that they would never be cured. Our food supplies were running low and were most stringently watched by Mum, and without the promise of any reward I was sure the dogs would lose patience. They would lose patience, run out of blood and die.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There were fewer pedal boats on the lake, and at night it was cold enough to wrap up in a blanket and wait for supper to be ready. Mum made a soup with potatoes and a sprinkling of rice and lentils.

‘Not soup again,’ we moaned most nights. We bought bread from one of the shepherds’ wives who baked early each morning. She gave us goat’s milk in a flask which Bea and I refused to drink. There was almost nothing left in the cardboard box. No honey. No oranges. Only dried things in packets. That was why, Mum said, we should drink the milk.

One morning when I woke it was later than usual and Bilal was nowhere to be seen.

‘Has he gone to the well without me?’

Mum didn’t answer. She was sitting cross-legged with her back very straight. Her eyes were closed.

‘She’s meditating,’ Bea said.

‘Oh.’

‘Do you remember she used to do meditating in England?’

I shook my head. On a beach? I wondered.

‘Where’s Bilal?’

Bea shrank her voice to a whisper in response to the angry flickering of Mum’s eyelashes.

‘He’s gone to find some food.’

‘Where from?’

‘I don’t know.’

Our eyes travelled in the direction of the big hotel where the water tractors moored up. We knew that it must be very far away. Twice we had set off on a secret mission to find it. We had followed the shore line, expecting the hotel to appear in all its splendour around each jut of land, but as the hours passed and the sun began to sink towards the lake, we were forced back each time without even a glimpse of it.

We waited all day for Bilal to return. We didn’t even risk going in for a swim. In the afternoon when it was at its hottest we made a camp of blankets and took it in turn to keep watch. I watched for Bilal from all directions but mostly I waited for him to come from the direction of the hotel.

The sky was already turning a dusty red when I saw a small black shadow on the curve of the beach. It was Bilal. He was walking with his feet in the water. As he drew closer I saw that he had a cotton bag over one shoulder. It bulged as it swung against his hip. We ran to meet him.

’Sardines,’ he shouted when he saw