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Carl Nixon

If These Walls Had Ears

On his first night in the house, Andy lies on a mattress in the empty lounge with the windows wide open and listens to the neighbours beating their son. It sounds to Andy as though they are right in the room with him. There’s no driveway between the sections, only a sagging, paling fence, four metres all that separate the two houses. The temperature must still be up in the mid-twenties even though it’s after eleven o’clock. Not even the ghost of a breeze moves the tips of the kowhai trees, which have been planted one to a house all along Tern Street.

At first he could only hear the noise of their TV: theme songs; hollow canned laughter; the surge in volume as the adverts for post-Christmas sales are recycled every fifteen minutes.

And then the boy starts up. Andy guesses he’s maybe, what, eight or ten? Around that anyway, by the sound of him, a bit whiny and demanding.

A woman; irritated, screechy as a parrot. Andy listens to her move through the gears from grumpy needling to threats, and then she’s at full throttle. It’s all, “You do what I say!” and “Screw you, you spoilt little shit!”

The kid yells back at her over the tinny laughter from the television.

Andy lies on his back in the dark room. There’s no furniture at all unless you count the mattress. Dust hangs in the warm air. It’s rising up into his nostrils every time he rolls over. He tries not to listen to the shouts and the swearing being flung over the fence.

Then he hears the clear slap of flesh on flesh.

The boy cries out sharply.

A new deeper voice, male, a volcanic rumbling. Short, hard sentences like explosions.

Andy rolls over again, his back to the noise, and stares at the dark shadow that is the brick fireplace. One of the first things that he’s planning to do is rip that out. If he can be bothered, he might even clean up the bricks; use them to make a paved area down the back of the garden.

Christ, half the neighbourhood must be hearing this.