Fire

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘Well, hurry up! And don’t take all the hot water!’

  By the time Donna came out, with her hair in a towelling turban and wafting her hands about because she’d done her bloody nails in there as well, it was nearly half past nine. Allie ran herself a short bath, because as predicted there was hardly any hot water left, and lowered herself into it, wincing as the warm water stung between her legs. It had hurt when she’d peed as well. The memory of what had caused it made her stomach do a slow, thrilled flip.

  She soaped herself everywhere and washed her hair, because it stank of smoke even though she’d been outside nearly all of the previous night, and ran her hands over her legs, thinking that perhaps she should shave them even though she would be wearing longs today. But when she climbed out of the bath and opened the bathroom cabinet to grab her father’s razor, she noticed that where it usually sat was now a small metal box with a padlock on it. She laughed and closed the cabinet again.

  Breakfast was the usual Sunday morning affair—late and unhurried. Colleen wanted to know who’d used all the hot water. No one said anything. Sid was reading Best Bets.

  ‘Did you have a nice time last night?’ Colleen asked.

  Allie nodded, her mouth full of toast. She swallowed. ‘Yes, it was great.’

  ‘And where was it, the party, in the end?’

  ‘Someone’s house, on the back lawn.’ Allie thought that it would save a lot of unnecessary questions if she didn’t say that it had been a house on Kitemoana Street.

  ‘And what time are you going out today?’

  Allie wished her mother would stop interrogating her, although she supposed she just wanted to know what was going on. ‘Eleven o’clock, it’s supposed to start.’

  ‘Sounds like a yawn to me,’ Pauline said. ‘A picnic at the Domain.’

  ‘Will there be teddy bears?’ Donna asked sarcastically.

  ‘As long as it’s not bloody teddy boys,’ Sid muttered from behind his Best Bets.

  ‘Will you put that bloody thing away?’ Colleen said crossly. ‘We hardly ever get to sit down as a family these days.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Sid said. ‘We do it twice a day.’

  ‘Yes, but we never…oh, never mind,’ Colleen grumbled as she got up to put more bread under the grill. Over her shoulder she said, ‘It would just be nice to sit and talk about things for a change, instead of bickering about everything and then rushing off in all directions. Sunday’s supposed to be a day of rest. And for families.’

  ‘I am resting,’ Sid said. ‘Are we going to meet this bloke of yours today, Allie?’

  Allie nodded. ‘He’s picking me up.’ She was a bit nervous, not sure that her parents would appreciate Sonny’s motorbike quite as much as she did.

  ‘Will he come in?’ Pauline asked.

  ‘I suppose so.’

  Allie wasn’t much looking forward to that either, knowing the way her family could behave. With luck she could get away with just quickly introducing him, then, pleading lateness, they could race off and leave her parents and sisters to talk about him as much as they liked. She glanced up at the clock. ‘I’ve got to go and get ready.’

  After she’d cleaned her teeth, done her hair and put on a dash of make-up, she went back out to the kitchen, sat down and lit a cigarette. Her father was still there, making a little pile of hand-rolled smokes. Her mother was rolling out pastry on the bench, Pauline was reading a book and Donna, despite insisting earlier that she had to go out, was still there.

  ‘Perhaps we should all go and wait in the sitting room,’ Colleen suggested.

  Allie looked at her mother in horror. ‘What for?’

  ‘We always use the sitting room when we’re receiving company,’ her mother replied. She was smiling to herself, but Allie couldn’t see it because Colleen had her back turned.

  ‘We do not,’ Sid said, who was grumpy now because Colleen had used yesterday’s newspaper to wrap up apple peelings before he’d quite finished with it. ‘We never have that sort of company.’

  ‘We want to make the right impression, though, don’t we?’ Colleen said.

  Allie, realizing her mother was having her on, relaxed. ‘He’ll only be here a few minutes and then we’ll be gone.’

  Pauline cocked her head. ‘Is that him now?’

  Allie recognized the low rumbling sound of the motorbike’s engine. Donna and Pauline leapt up from the table and pounded down the hall to peer out through the sitting room windows.

  ‘It’s him, he’s here!’ Pauline shouted, loud enough for Sonny to hear from the street.

  Half a minute later there was a knock at the back porch. The door was already open: Allie jumped up but Donna had already yelled out, ‘Come in!’

  Sonny appeared in the doorway. His hair had been freshly combed—ten seconds ago, Allie suspected—and he was wearing corduroy trousers and an open-necked shirt. He looked very handsome. Allie wanted to give him a kiss but didn’t think it would be the thing to do in front of her parents.

  ‘Everyone, this is my friend, Sonny Manaia. Sonny, this is my dad, Sid, and my mum, Colleen, and this is Donna and Pauline.’

  Sonny said hello. Donna and Pauline simpered, Colleen smiled brightly and Sid stuck out his hand. ‘Pleased to meetcha,’ he said, pumping Sonny’s arm up and down. ‘Have a seat.’

  Sonny looked at Allie, who said, ‘I think we should make a move. We don’t want to be late.’

  ‘Ah, it’s only a picnic,’ Sid protested. ‘Come on, sit down, lad, have a cuppa. Put the kettle on, Col, there’s a love.’

  Allie’s heart sank. But it turned out to be quite a pleasant half-hour, despite her sisters whispering and tittering on one side of the table and her mother rummaging about in the cupboards trying to find biscuits that weren’t stale and saying if it had been just a little later Sonny could have had a nice slice of hot apple pie. Sonny immediately asked her father what he thought about the All Black test in Wales the day before, and Sid’s eyes lit up—‘We were robbed, boy, robbed’—and he didn’t shut up for the next twenty minutes. But eventually, after making a show of looking at both her watch and the clock repeatedly, Allie managed to drag Sonny away. Unfortunately, the whole family followed them outside to wave them off.

  ‘Oh,’ Colleen said when she saw the motorbike. ‘I’m not sure I like the look of that. Is it safe?’

  ‘In good hands, it is,’ Sonny replied.

  ‘Yes, motorbikes can be very dangerous, Allie,’ Donna said, smirking.

  Allie gave her a dirty look.

  ‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ Sid said admiringly. ‘I used to have a motorbike, you know, a BSA. Lovely machine. Allie’s mother and I used to take some pretty hair-raising spins on it, didn’t we, love?’

  ‘You never told us about that, Mum,’ Allie said.

  ‘Yes, well, you be careful,’ Colleen said quickly. ‘People have been known to come a real cropper off motorbikes.’

  ‘I’ll be very careful, Mrs Roberts,’ Sonny assured her.

  ‘Yes, you do that,’ she replied, holding his gaze a moment too long and leaving Allie with the uncomfortable feeling that it might not only be motorbikes her mother was referring to.

  Sonny smiled his most charming smile, which was very charming indeed. ‘Right, then. Thanks for the cup of tea. Are we off?’

  Allie nodded and stepped back as Sonny swung his leg over the bike and turned the engine on. She hopped on and waved back at her family as Sonny cruised with exaggerated care down to the intersection with Kepa Road before he let out the throttle and roared off.

  They crossed Orakei Bridge and rode into town, then turned onto one of the little winding streets leading up to the Domain.

  ‘Where’s it supposed to be?’ Sonny called over his shoulder.

  ‘Winter Garden and Fernery.’

  He turned up a narrow side road that would take them past the War Memorial Museum, monolithic and pale and looking like the bottom tier of a particularly utilitarian wedding cake,
and around to the other side of the hill. Everywhere, Allie could see evidence of preparations for the royal tour. Apparently, the queen was going to visit the

  hospital on Thursday, then drive around the Domain in an open car during a rally of children’s groups. She felt sorry for the queen in a way—by the end of her tour her poor arm would just about be falling off from so much waving.

  Ahead of them, Allie could see the domed roof of the grand brick-and-glass building housing the Winter Garden.

  She pointed and Sonny changed down a gear, slowing as they approached.

  Maxwell Jones was also a little late for the Dunbar & Jones staff Christmas picnic. He sat impatiently in one of the elegantly upholstered chairs in the foyer of his home in Remuera Road, the case containing his Santa suit on the floor beside him, tapping his foot, checking his watch and waiting for his family to hurry up and come downstairs. Anton, his driver, was already waiting outside with the car, dressed in his customary plain dark suit, as Max thought it was rather pretentious to be driven around by someone wearing a uniform covered in shiny buttons, as if he were royalty or something.

  His wife, Estelle, had woken up this morning with one of her bad ‘heads’ and had had to stay in bed until it had subsided, which had put them behind schedule. Then the children had performed, saying that they didn’t want to spend all day at the Domain hanging about with children they didn’t know and probably wouldn’t like, when they could be with their friends. But Max had put his foot down: he liked to promote the idea of family values and cohesion, both among his staff and as part of the store’s ethos, so his wife and children would accompany him.

  He had married late, not until he was thirty-eight: until then the store had taken up all of his time, and his interest. But one day his father, James, had taken him aside and asked him outright if he wasn’t one of those pansy fellows. When Max, unsure whether to laugh or be mortally offended, had said no, he wasn’t, his father had pointed out that it would probably be tactical, and at the very least practical, if he found himself a suitable wife in the not too distant future. Someone who would be an asset at social functions, who could hostess private events held at the Jones residence, and who could provide him with children who would reinforce the store’s reputation and image as a family business. His father had also hinted that, unlike Max’s grandmother Isobel, he had no intention of keeping a stranglehold on the store’s reins until he finally collapsed and died at his desk, and that Max’s time might come sooner rather than later.

  So Max had gone out and found himself a wife, which hadn’t been too difficult. He was moderately good-looking, personable and heir to one of the most successful retail enterprises in the country. He had chosen Estelle, a renowned social butterfly and daughter of a very well-to-do banker and his wife, who had pots of old money from down south. Estelle was a lot younger than Max—twenty-seven when they married—was very pretty, charming and popular, and not terribly bright. Now, ten years later, she was still attractive and charming, and still not very bright. If Max didn’t keep an eye on her chequebook and how much she spent, she invariably found herself in all sorts of trouble. They could afford her extravagances, but it wouldn’t do for her to go around running up debts all over town. Estelle was, however, as predicted by his father, a delightful hostess, a real asset to Max, and not a bad mother, either, given the material she had to work with.

  Max sighed. He had no idea why two of his three children were turning out the way they were. The youngest, five-year-old Emily, was still quite a sweetie, but then she wasn’t old enough yet to be anything else. However, nine-year-old Philip and eight-year-old Amanda were little horrors, even if he did say so himself. They were spoilt, arrogant and really quite rude. If Grandmother Isobel had still been around she would have sorted them out, he was sure of that, but they ran riot over Estelle and he didn’t have the time, and anyway it wasn’t his job. He wondered, quite often, if sending them away to boarding school would do the trick.

  But his children and his failure to arrive at his own company’s staff picnic on time weren’t the only things bothering him this morning. He was concerned about a report he’d received some weeks ago from a maintenance firm he had contracted to assess the extent of work required on the store over the next two years. The three buildings comprising Dunbar & Jones were on the whole sound, but there were some matters that would definitely need attention before too long. These included the lifts, which were getting a bit long in the tooth and needed a thorough overhaul, and the fact that there were cracks in the façades of the middle and Wyndham Street buildings. Also, some of the windows couldn’t be opened, the electrical wiring required modernizing in some areas, the bolts attaching the fire escape to the back wall of the building were showing signs of corrosion, and the cisterns in the staff toilets were on their way out. None of it was urgent, but something would have to be done within the next year.

  Max hadn’t been surprised—the buildings were, after all, really quite old. Work on the fire escape, in fact, was already under way, since that was a matter of staff safety. He wasn’t looking forward to paying for it all, however. Dunbar & Jones could bear it, but the expense would make a bit of a hole in the company’s future profits, which wouldn’t endear him to the shareholders. But there was no way around it.

  The second thing bothering him was his store manager, Keith Beaumont. Keith wasn’t a bad sort, and indeed he was a very efficient manager in his fashion, but for some time there had been a regular discrepancy in the accounts. The office supervisor had come to him some months ago, concerned that, on a disconcerting number of occasions, neither she nor her staff had been able to balance the books. Furthermore, she had gone over the accounts very carefully and eventually noticed that some of the dockets for returned items appeared to have been tampered with. She had interviewed her staff very rigorously indeed and was satisfied that none of those she supervised directly were responsible. Max believed her. She was a very conscientious woman, with a high regard for her staff and a genuine concern for their welfare. She had come to him, not with a desire to dob someone in, but to protect her workers.

  So Max had told her to leave it with him and to go on as though nothing were amiss, while he tried to get to the bottom of the problem. Not wanting to create an atmosphere of inquisition, or to alert whoever was responsible, he had not discussed the matter with anyone else, but had begun to double-check the accounts himself. When he realized that this would achieve nothing more than confirmation of the docket fiddling, he decided to take another approach and keep an eye out for anyone on his staff who was spending more than they should or otherwise generally acting in a furtive manner. That hadn’t worked, either. There were far too many employees for a start, and plenty of them had run up enormous staff accounts, though he was only looking for people spending actual cash, and a disturbing number of them seemed to act furtively on a regular basis.

  Then, several weeks ago, Anton had mentioned in passing that Keith Beaumont used the same bookie that he did, and very regularly by all accounts, and the penny had wobbled, if not dropped. Max had no proof, but Keith had been behaving rather oddly over the past year or so for no apparent reason, and he had access to the accounts office and the safe any time he liked, and the authority to cover up any discrepancies that might be of his own making. It saddened Max, the possibility that Keith might be embezzling from Dunbar & Jones, but, if he was, the week before Christmas was not the time to do anything about firing him, especially with the queen coming and the possibility of it getting into the papers. But what if Keith was indeed embezzling, and got it into his head to make off with all of the Christmas takings? Max sighed. Oh God, perhaps he should talk to Keith this week after all.

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, we’re ready now,’ Estelle said from the top of the stairs. As Max watched, she descended, followed by the three children, Philip and Amanda dragging their feet noticeably.

  Max had suggested to Estelle that the children didn’t wear their smartest c
lothes out of deference to the parents on his staff who might not be able to dress their own children in quite the same, expensive, fashion, and she had chosen wisely: the children looked smart, but not ostentatious. Estelle was wearing a very pretty pale pink frock, a large straw sunhat, and a simple rope of pearls at her throat and her pearl earrings. Max himself had forgone his suit and tie in favour of casual, but smart, trousers and a cream shirt, though he still couldn’t decide whether to wear the sleeves down or rolled up.

  He collected his Santa case and stood up. ‘Good. Right, we’ll go then, shall we?

  Grumbling, Philip and Amanda preceded him out of the door and climbed into the back seat of the car, a Rover 75 sedan purchased late the year before and still smelling very satisfyingly of new leather. The children’s bad mood disinclined anyone to say anything on the short trip to the Domain, except for Emily, who hummed the whole way in between pointing out what she considered to be sights worthy of note.

  As the car approached the Winter Garden and Fernery, Max saw that many of his staff had already arrived. A colourful, shifting throng of people was milling about outside the Winter Garden building, and several vans, carrying the food prepared by specially engaged caterers (who had cost a fortune), were parked in an orderly row along the narrow road in front of it. They would never all fit into the building, so the plan was for everyone to lay out their picnic rugs on the Domain grass at the edge of the sportsfield and help themselves to the buffet. No alcohol would be served because it was Sunday, and anyway Max didn’t agree with his staff drinking in public, especially when onlookers might be aware that it was the Dunbar & Jones Christmas function. There would be various games throughout the afternoon, and at three-thirty Max himself would duck off, dress in his Santa costume, then reappear in the Rover bearing an enormous sack containing a gift for every child attending the picnic. It was the part of the proceedings he particularly enjoyed.

  ‘Here comes Mr Max,’ Louise said.