Fire

by Deborah Challinor

  ‘Who was he, Irene? Who was the man?’ Ruby asked gently. ‘Was it the farmer? Because it’s not too late: he could still be brought to justice.’

  Irene looked mildly surprised. ‘The farmer? Hell, no, it was my father.’

  The others gaped at her.

  She shrugged. ‘After he’d gone, we all just kept on with our lives. I went to secondary school and then secretarial college. Mum still does for the farmer out at Tuakau—his wife’s a bit of an invalid and they’ve still got a couple of kids at home. I don’t think they’ve got the heart to kick her out of the cottage anyway.’

  ‘And have you seen him since? Your father?’ Beatrice asked.

  ‘No,’ Irene said. ‘No one has.’ She pushed her hair back off her face, as though she were trying to sweep all of those bad memories out of her head. ‘Shall we say a prayer? I’ve got one. Well, I think it’s a prayer, but it might be just a poem. And I can’t remember all of it, but Mum used to say it to us sometimes. When things weren’t going well.’ Then, for the first time since any of them had known her, Irene looked unsure of herself. ‘Shall we hold hands?’

  No one hesitated, and when they were linked around the table hand in hand, Irene closed her eyes and began:

  Christ be with me, Christ within me,

  Christ behind me, Christ before me,

  Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

  Christ to comfort and restore me,

  Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

  Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

  Christ in hearts of all that love me,

  Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

  When she’d finished, Irene kept her head down for a moment. Then she looked up and smiled, and Allie thought that she seemed…lighter, somehow.

  ‘I don’t know why,’ Irene said, ‘but that prayer always comforts me. It makes me—’

  But she didn’t complete the sentence because someone screamed; it was Simone.

  Below them, on Queen Street, a constable opened the back door of a police car and leaned in.

  ‘If I let the pair of you out, will you give me your word that you’ll stay behind the barricade?’

  Sid nodded, followed, after a moment, by Sonny.

  ‘Because if there’s any more trouble, I’ll have to send you down to the lock-up,’ the cop warned. He removed the handcuff from Sonny’s wrist. ‘And I bloody well mean that. All right?’

  Sid nodded again, but Sonny was already out of the car, gazing up at the flames that had now breached Dunbar & Jones’s second-floor windows.

  ‘Look!’ Simone was pointing past the table at which Allie and the others were sitting.

  They whipped around and there it was—a long, narrow tongue of flame flickering up the wall, blistering the paint and warping the floorboards it had burnt through. And even as they watched, the flame divided into two, then three. And then it took hold, igniting the matchlining in seconds and sending ribbons of black smoke unravelling across the ceiling.

  Someone shouted, ‘Move! Get out of here!’ and for the second time they were up and running from the cafeteria.

  Out in the hallway, Louise turned right and ran down the corridor that led to the dressmaking workroom at the far end. Allie, Irene and Ruby followed her, but Beatrice had stopped.

  Ruby turned around. ‘Bea! Hurry!’

  Her round face a picture of terror, Beatrice called: ‘The others, Ruby, they’ve gone towards the tailoring workroom. You’re going the wrong way!’ And then she grimaced and clutched at her arm.

  ‘Bea? What’s the matter?’ Ruby ran back down the corridor, her spectacles on their gold chain bouncing on her chest. She glanced down and tore them off.

  Beatrice collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor.

  Allie, watching from the doorway of the dressmaking room, ran back after Ruby.

  Smoke was beginning to billow out of the cafeteria now, and Allie saw that the flames had almost consumed one wall and were moving out across the ceiling. There was a terrible smell, sharp and noxious, and she could taste the greasy smoke in her mouth. She looked right and peered down the hallway, which was rapidly filling with smoke, but there was no sign of Simone and the others.

  Beatrice’s legs were splayed out in front of her. Her dress had ridden up, revealing beige stockings and an inch of pudgy blue-veined flesh above them. Kneeling beside her, Ruby briskly tapped her cheek, as though Beatrice had passed out and she was trying to revive her.

  ‘Stop that, Ruby,’ Bea mumbled. ‘You’re hurting my face.’

  Leaning over her, Ruby demanded, ‘What’s wrong, Bea? Are you hurt?’

  ‘I think I’m having a heart attack.’

  ‘Oh, you are not,’ Ruby snapped. ‘Get up!’

  ‘I can’t…I can’t seem to move.’

  ‘Have you got your pills?

  ‘I’ve lost my bag,’ Beatrice said through clenched teeth, then made a groaning noise that ended in a sharp, high whimper.

  The sound of an explosion came from inside the cafeteria, followed immediately by a bigger one, and a wave of burning dust and debris blew out through the open door.

  ‘Beatrice, for God’s sake get up!’ Ruby shouted.

  Beatrice muttered something and her hand fluttered weakly, but otherwise she didn’t respond.

  Ruby grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘Beatrice? Bea!’ She looked up at Allie in desperation. ‘I can’t leave her, you know. I won’t.’

  Something else exploded in the caf and seconds later flames shot up from the stairwell at the other end of the hallway.

  Ruby sat down on the floor. Weeping now, but silently, she slid her arm behind Beatrice’s neck and pulled her tight against her. Beatrice’s eyes were closed and her breathing had become very shallow. ‘I’m here, love,’ Ruby whispered. ‘Don’t worry, I’m here. I won’t leave you.’

  She looked up at Allie. ‘There’s no point waiting for me, I’m staying with Bea. Go down to the dressmaking room and barricade yourselves in there. If you can keep the smoke out you’ll have a little more time.’

  And then she laid her cheek against the top of Beatrice’s head and closed her eyes.

  Allie watched them for a second, her heart aching, before she turned away and ran back down the corridor to the dressmaking room, the heat radiating from the cafeteria almost seeming to push her along.

  Irene and Louise pulled her in, then slammed the door. It was quieter in here, and there wasn’t much smoke yet. They leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, not from exertion, but from panic.

  Their eyes met.

  ‘No one’s coming for us, are they?’ Allie said flatly.

  Louise pushed herself off the wall and went over to a window. Allie and Irene followed.

  The workroom was in the north-eastern corner of the building, and there were windows in two of the walls. One set looked down over Queen Street, and the other, at which they stood, faced the harbour. An alleyway separated Dunbar & Jones from the building next to it, creating a gap that looked to be at least twelve feet wide. The building opposite was a storey shorter than the department store, so if they jumped at least they wouldn’t have to leap up as well as out, but the distance between the two buildings seemed enormous.

  ‘Can we do it?’ Louise said, almost to herself.

  Allie felt her bowels cramp as she stared down at the smoke-filled alleyway, and at the flames bursting from the second-floor windows. ‘Oh God, I don’t think I can, I really don’t.’

  ‘We’d have to push off from the windowsill,’ Louise said. ‘We wouldn’t be able to get a running start.’

  She set her thumbs against the latches on the sash window in front of her, released them and shoved. Nothing happened. She put more weight behind it; there was a muffled creak, but still nothing budged. Peering closely at the join between the sill and the actual sash, she swore. ‘It’s been painted shut.’ She tried the windows on either side. ‘They all have on this wall.’

  All
ie ran to the windows that overlooked Queen Street and tried one. It slid up easily. She leaned out and squinted down at the street. Smoke pouring from the windows below stung her eyes and she could feel the heat in her throat. ‘Hey!’ she shrieked, waving her arms madly. ‘Up here! We’re trapped!’

  Carrying a wooden chair, Louise appeared at Allie’s side. ‘Move out of the way,’ she ordered, then heaved the chair out of the window.

  It arced out for a few feet then began to drop, seeming to fall for a very long time before it hit the verandah roof above the ground floor and bounced off, shattered, and finally came to rest in several pieces in the middle of the street. Allie tried not to imagine what the same fall would do to a human body.

  Heads turned below them and arms came up to point.

  Allie and Louise waved furiously. A group of firemen ran to a spot below them, disappearing from view as they neared the building. Then two long ladders were carried over and laboriously heaved into place, propped against the verandah.

  ‘They’ve seen us!’ Allie said to Irene, who was standing in the middle of the room, watching calmly. ‘They’re putting ladders up!’

  She turned back. Nothing happened for a long minute, then a helmet appeared above the edge of the verandah. The helmet tilted and, through the smoke, she could see a white face peering up at them. A hand waved: Allie waved back. The fireman continued to climb, then another one appeared on the second ladder.

  One of them shouted something.

  ‘What?’ Louise yelled back.

  ‘How many of you?’

  ‘Three!’ Louise replied.

  ‘Anyone hurt?’

  ‘No!’

  The firemen climbed further, but it was becoming obvious that the manoeuvre wasn’t going to work. Allie felt sick. The men were getting higher all right, but they weren’t getting any nearer; once they’d climbed past the verandah, they just kept on going straight up, the six-foot gap between them and the side of the building barely shrinking at all. In fact, they looked quite silly balanced on top of their tall ladders, which only reached up to the ceiling of the first floor anyway, swaying in the wind of the fire like small flowers on particularly lofty stalks.

  Allie burst out laughing. She could feel herself beginning to lose her grip. Her head felt light and dreamy again, her heart was racing and she found herself wondering what it would be like just to jump, to stand on the window ledge with her arms outstretched like a picture of a white, radiant, burning angel she’d once seen, and just let go.

  Louise turned away from the window and, apparently in slow motion, slapped her.

  Allie’s hand flew to her stinging cheek. ‘You can’t slap me!’ she exclaimed, and slapped Louise back.

  ‘Stop it, you two,’ Irene said. She walked over to the window.

  Below, the firemen had retreated back down to the level of the verandah roof and were now standing on it. They seemed to be performing some sort of odd dance, stepping carefully and gingerly placing their booted feet here, then a little to the left, then further to the right.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Allie asked, her stinging cheek forgotten. She felt a little better now.

  Louise and Irene didn’t reply, they were too busy watching the firemen below. Eventually they seemed to be satisfied with whatever they were doing and bent down and began to haul up one of the ladders. Slowly more and more rungs appeared, until the entire ladder had been dragged above the verandah. Between them, the firemen managed to wrestle it up against the building’s façade, its base planted squarely on the corrugated iron roof of the verandah. Allie realized what they’d been doing—looking for places where there were struts beneath the iron, for support.

  One of them started climbing again, right to the very top of the ladder, close enough for the girls to see his dirty, heat-reddened face and his white teeth, and the look of anticipated victory in his eyes.

  And then a fireball exploded out of the second-storey window in front of him and he disappeared completely, the remaining bottom half of the ladder cart-wheeling slowly out into the air before clattering down onto one of the fire engines in the street.

  Allie screamed and they hurled themselves away from the window. Louise, on her backside on the floor, tentatively touched her face.

  ‘Have I been burnt?’

  Picking herself up, Irene said, ‘No, but the front of your hair’s gone frizzy.’

  ‘It feels like I’ve been burnt,’ Louise muttered, her fingers still examining the planes and hollows of her face. ‘It stings.’

  Allie said in a quavering voice, ‘That poor fireman.’

  Irene went back to the window. ‘There’s two more coming up onto the verandah. But they’re not pulling the other ladder up. And one of them’s waving. And yelling, but I can’t hear what he’s saying.’

  They leaned out of the window again, ready in an instant to throw themselves backwards if there was another explosion.

  One of the fireman was indeed shouting.

  ‘What’s he saying?’ Louise demanded.

  They strained to hear him.

  ‘Is he telling us to climb down?’ Allie suggested after a moment.

  Louise said, ‘Right-o, I’ll just get my emergency ladder out of my handbag.’

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ Irene said. She had turned away from the window and was staring across the room at the doorway into the corridor.

  ‘What?’ Allie asked, then she followed the direction of Irene’s gaze.

  Thick black smoke was pouring in under the door, curling gracefully upwards, meeting the ceiling and rolling down again, putting out blind, sooty fingers that seemed to be searching and reaching out. For them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Louise lunged for a bolt of cloth lying on the heavy wooden cutting table in the middle of the room. ‘Help me!’ she cried, tugging at the end of it. It was a rather fine wool, destined for Dunbar & Jones’s new autumn collection of suits and coats, due on the runway in about two-and-a-half months’ time.

  Allie snatched up a pair of fabric shears and started cutting into the material, then simply tearing it when she had enough purchase. Louise took the cloth and wedged it against the base of the door. The smoke slowed, but still trickled inexorably through the tiny gaps at the sides and at the top.

  Irene stood at one end of the cutting table, looking thoughtful.

  ‘Could you give us a hand, Irene, if you’re not too busy?’ Louise snapped.

  ‘You said emergency ladders. Isn’t the display department in the room next door?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Well, won’t there be ladders in there? For putting up the displays?’

  Louise stopped what she was doing.

  ‘If there’s more than one,’ Irene went on, ‘we could tie them together, hang them out the window, then climb down and drop onto the verandah roof.’

  ‘We’ll need rope,’ Allie said.

  Irene pointed at the cutting table. ‘Use lengths of material. It’s wool, it’ll hold.’

  ‘It’ll still be a bloody long drop,’ Louise said. ‘And there’re flames coming out of the windows just below us.’

  Irene shrugged. ‘It’s better than waiting here to die, isn’t it?’

  They looked at each other, wondering how they would get back down the corridor, thick with noxious smoke, to retrieve the ladders from the display room. If there were any. But Irene already had the answer.

  ‘I’ll go,’ she offered.

  Allie and Louise stared at her.

  ‘I’m fit,’ Irene said. ‘I’m fast and I can hold my breath for ages.’

  ‘But what if there isn’t just smoke in the corridor? What if it’s on fire out there now as well?’ Louise pointed at the bolt of cloth still on the table. ‘Couldn’t we just make some ropes and climb down those?’

  ‘The flames coming out the windows will burn through them,’ Irene replied flatly. ‘We’ll fall.’

  Louise’s shoulders slumped.

  ‘I think we sho
uld draw straws,’ Allie said, wanting to be fair even now, but hoping like hell that she wouldn’t get the short one. She didn’t know if she had it in her to be that brave.

  ‘Look, I’ve said I’ll go,’ Irene repeated. ‘And I meant it.’

  ‘Then you’d better have this.’ Louise held out her piece of tablecloth.

  Irene took it.

  ‘You’ll need to wet it, won’t you?’ Allie said.

  But there was no sink in the workroom, not even a cold cup of tea left over from someone’s lunch.

  ‘We could pee on it,’ Louise suggested.

  There was a moment of silence. Then Irene said, ‘Not if anyone had asparagus for tea last night.’

  Allie snorted violently, and a string of snot shot out of her nose, making her laugh outright. She wiped it off her top lip with her sleeve. ‘Sorry.’

  Irene smiled faintly. ‘Forget the pee. I’ll just hold the cloth over my face and breathe shallowly.’

  ‘What about when you come back?’ Louise said. ‘If you’re carrying ladders you won’t be able to hold it in place.’

  Irene ignored her and moved over to the door. ‘When I say go, pull the material away from under the door and I’ll run through, then shove it back when I’m out. And don’t open the door again until I bang on it, OK?’

  Louise caught Irene’s gaze and held it. ‘Are you sure?’

  Irene nodded. ‘It’s only a few yards up the corridor, isn’t it? It won’t take me long. And it might be our last chance.’

  And then her hand was on the door knob and she said, ‘Go!’

  As Allie yanked the material out of the way, Irene opened the door and slid through the gap. A great billow of smoke rushed in, and then the door shut again and she was gone. Coughing, Allie slid the material back into place.

  ‘Christ,’ Louise said. ‘I hope she’s all right.’

  They waited, and waited. Louise looked at her watch. Five minutes had passed since Irene had gone: it was too long.

  Then something banged against the door, and Allie and Louise both lunged to open it. Allie got there first, pushing the material out of the way again with her foot. She wrenched open the door and staggered back from a wall of black smoke and flames so bright she couldn’t look at it. But Irene was there, with the ladders. She cried out and thrust them through the doorway. Louise grabbed them, then yelped and let go, her hands burnt. Hooking her foot through the rungs, she flicked them backwards through the doorway into the room.