Facing the Flame

by Jackie French

  But of course he’d served his country all his life.

  She’d say goodbye to the man at the memorial. But this farewell was for the boy he’d been.

  ‘Andy!’ she called and heard the echoes. Andy, Andy, Andy. And then, as she had called to him every dusk, all through her childhood, ‘Dinner’s ready when you are!’

  Ready, ready, ready, said the echoes. Flinty stood and smiled at her valley, its present, past and future, then turned to put on her sausages, boiled beans and mash.

  Chapter 60

  DETECTIVE SERGEANT RODRIGUES

  There’d been a lot of wreckage to clean up after the fires. Homes had priority so that new houses could be built. No one had bothered with the ruins of the old church on the edge of Drinkwater for months. Gibber’s Creek was big enough these days to have other churches. But finally the bulldozer had moved in . . .

  . . . then stopped work, after only ten minutes, while the driver hurriedly called the police.

  Now Detective Sergeant Rodrigues looked at the bodies that had been exposed among the half-burned wooden walls and the ash of old wooden shingles from the roof. Three bodies, two tucked neatly side by side, the third several metres away from them. The bones of the first two were half decayed. They had been there for a long time, probably under the floorboards, if he was any judge, and he should be after twenty-two years on the force, though the forensic team would be able to tell more.

  The third body was more recent, a man. The skeleton still wore flesh, though fire and vermin had eaten most of it away. The position of his wrists and ankles indicated he had been tied up when he was burned.

  Fire had not killed this man. He had been murdered.

  If he’d had a wallet, it had burned with his clothes. No one from the district was missing.

  Maybe they’d never know who he was. But with luck, there’d be enough skin left to take a fingerprint and, with even more luck, there might even be a record of his prints, assuming this man had had contact with the legal system during his life.

  Otherwise there’d be the days of hunting through missing persons’ files, in case he’d been a tourist, passing through, a victim of a robbery. Yes, a very possible scenario. Or maybe he’d had enemies who’d caught up with him here. A dentist might recognise any work done on his teeth.

  And the other two bodies? Detective Sergeant Rodrigues stood and stretched.

  They’d been waiting a long time for someone to find them. But Detective Sergeant Rodrigues was good at problems. He was pretty sure that — eventually — he’d find out what had happened to all three.

  Chapter 61

  SCARLETT

  Scarlett surveyed herself in the mirror. The A-line dress hung in soft folds of green silk and lace, gathered under her bust so it looked like she had a bust. She hesitated, then shoved some more tissues into her bra. Yes, that was better.

  Long drapery hid legs that were no longer stick-like, now she was able to spend an hour a day walking between the bars, though still far too thin.

  A red-haired elf peered back at her. Once she had longed to be an Amazon with long blonde hair, striding across the world. But elves could be pretty. Even, she admitted, beautiful.

  ‘Yes, Cinderella, you shall go to the ball,’ she whispered. She checked her eyeshadow — green, to match the dress, and her eyeliner wasn’t smudged — and wheeled her chair out of the bedroom.

  ‘How do I look?’ she demanded.

  Alex smiled at her from the doorway of his room. Which was still his bedroom. They had not yet shared a bed, literally or metaphorically. ‘If I tell you that you are the loveliest woman in the world, will you remember two things?’

  ‘I tend not to forget anything,’ said Scarlett.

  His face became serious. ‘Then I can tell you that you are the loveliest woman in the world. But you must also remember that my grandfather was a very, very good con man and I may have inherited his talents.’

  ‘Or he may have been a Russian prince.’ She did like the idea of going to her first ball with a man who might be a Russian prince.

  ‘Scarlett, I am already living rent free in your extremely comfortable apartment. I let you feed me with the eggs and fruit and casseroles from your Gibber’s Creek family, who kindly send up enough for me as well. You are even paying for tonight’s tickets.’

  ‘You hired your own evening jacket.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘What is the second thing I must remember?’ asked Scarlett warily.

  ‘That you really are the loveliest woman in the world.’

  People stared as she wheeled in, at Alex’s side. Some whispered, which she pretended to ignore. Alex glared at them until they stopped.

  A few people had to move their chairs aside so that she could get to their table, which was embarrassing. Events like this never expected wheelchairs.

  She hadn’t thought about who they’d be sitting with. Not Barbara, she thought. Please not Barbara . . .

  Hannah and Doug — Alex must have asked them specially — and Lachie, whom she knew from uni too, though she’d never met his girlfriend, Sue.

  ‘I saw you on TV after the bushfire!’ said Sue excitedly. ‘Did you know the man who saved the kid?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Scarlett quietly. ‘Not very well though. He was the brother of a friend of mine.’ For in the past few months Dr McAlpine had changed from being mentor to friend. Joseph had needed a friend, one who could talk to him about things other than the absence of his brother.

  ‘And the woman with the strange face who can’t talk but fed a hundred people . . .’

  Of course this nice young woman couldn’t know the heartbreak behind the TV images, the anguish that still continued for so many. Scarlett forced a smile, felt Alex’s hand warm over hers. Yes, Leafsong from the Blue Belle was her best friend. Leafsong had loved having a whole district to feed. No, as far as she could tell, Leafsong had just decided not to talk . . . A psychological problem? Just a personal decision. Yes, she’d once lived at River View herself . . .

  A sharp slash of pain there. She had longed to leave River View, but it had been home, had given her a life . . .

  The music began, a wild heavy beat. Scarlett managed a perfect smile. She had practised for this moment. ‘Go and ask someone to dance,’ she ordered Alex.

  He grinned at her. ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you you’re supposed to dance with them what brung you?’ He stopped. ‘Sorry, I forgot about your mother.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Alex, you know I can’t!’

  ‘I’ve seen you walk between those railings in the living room.’

  ‘Walking with supports isn’t dancing!’

  ‘Scarlett Kelly-O’Hara can face a bushfire but not a dance floor?’

  ‘It’s not that I’m scared . . .’ she began, then found herself lifted, Alex’s arms bearing most of her weight, her feet just touching the floor. If no one looked too carefully at her feet under her long skirt, it would seem that she was walking, dancing, feeling Alex’s heart pressed against hers. She laughed as he suddenly threw her up in time with the music, caught her as she dropped down.

  A tissue floated gently from her cleavage. She stared at it.

  ‘Scarlett, you dropped your hanky.’ Hannah, dancing next to them, winked at her, then slid it into her pocket.

  Scarlett glanced at Alex. He grinned again, knowing exactly where that tissue had come from and why. ‘Haven’t you ever heard that small is beautiful?’ he asked.

  ‘Schumacher was referring to economics, not —’

  He threw her up again, laughing. And then her feet touched the floor for a half-second before he caught her in his arms again, and no one stared at her, except, just possibly, in admiration.

  Scarlett Kelly-O’Hara danced.

  Acknowledgements

  The Matilda series is set in my heart’s country, the land I know better than the soles of my feet. (I rarely examine the soles of my feet.) It is based on places I have li
ved: for more than forty years here in the Araluen Valley and its surrounding mountains, and before that the outskirts of Brisbane, where I spent my childhood. The series is also about people that I know, as well as injuries, heart attacks and childbirth that I have experienced. Writers happily (and sometimes not so happily) cannibalise their own lives and those of their friends for their books.

  But this book needed to go to places I am unable to experience. While I have fought bushfires, I have never been blind in a bushfire, nor been blind elsewhere. I have, however, had the pleasure and privilege of a friendship with Elaine Harris, who has taught herself so many ways of seeing, with a depth of analysis that means she understands not just how and why she can do all she achieves, but can explain it to others. Through knowing Elaine, I have learned the ways a person who cannot see with their eyes can see with their other senses, from sounds to the change of the air moisture or heat on your skin.

  I wrote the Lu sections in this book, then sent them to Elaine in trepidation. Elaine accepted each scenario, from the mundane but still daunting task of getting breakfast in a strange place when you cannot see, to using the currents of air to find safe passage from a bushfire. She even asked, ‘But how did you know?’

  ‘Because you taught me,’ I replied.

  Elaine has taught me well. And if a reader thinks a blind girl would not be able to lead a horse to safety in a bushfire, they need to meet Elaine, indomitable in life as in friendship.

  This is also where I must admit that my horse-riding experience has been mostly expressed with phrases like: ‘We are so high up. Can we go slower? And lower?’ I have relied on the long experience of dear friend and editor Angela Marshall, who knows not only horses, but the world of those who breed them, train them and race them. If it wasn’t for Angela, the horses in this book would resemble long-legged wombats.

  This book, like many others, could not have been written without her help. Angela not only takes a dyslexic mess and turns it into a manuscript, but has the same kind of wide-ranging eclectic brain that I have . . . except that, luckily, most of the areas we have delved into deeply in the many decades of our lives have been different, as well as many that are the same but we can find snippets here and there that can be added to the other’s knowledge.

  Somehow, whenever a decade or two of fascinating research finally marries the themes and characters in my mind’s eye, Angela has always been Research Central, having discovered that the same eras and themes are irresistible.

  Despite the similarity of places and events in this book to times and places in my own life, no character is based on any living person. The wombats, however, are accurate portrayals. They’d probably object to being in this and all the other books. Wombats generally object to anything humans would like them to do. I didn’t ask them. Luckily, so far, no wombat I know has learned to read English, though some are interested in Bruce Whatley’s artwork in the Diary of a Wombat series. They even look vaguely approving.

  And now to confess: the early levity in these acknowledgements is because I simply do not know how to thank those who inspired this book, the women and men who risk life, health and injury for our country. I am no longer a firefighter, as I was decades ago — these days I’d be a liability, not an asset, which is a hard admission to make. The men and women of our bush and town fire brigades work, unpaid, for love of land and neighbours, or, simply, because it is their duty.

  This book is also based on the communities I have known that have lost not just their homes and possessions to bushfire, but also the familiarity of their lives. Homes and furniture can be replaced; community and neighbourhood friendships cannot, nor the assumption that allows you to believe ‘we are here forever’.

  As for the bushfire in this book: it is closely based on one I fought and lived through in 1978, with a few additions from other fires I have experienced. The methods of fighting it are the ones used in 1978, not today. Both firefighting methods and the ways bushfire brigades are run have changed greatly over the past forty years. But the methods, the brigades and that fire of 1978 are accurate, for this place and that time. And yes, Flinty’s and Sam’s firefighting methods work, though do not try them unless you have been taught for many, many years by someone who understands not just their land, but how it changes through the day and seasons and years.

  As always, all thanks possible to Kate O’Donnell for her extraordinary editorial insight; to Kate Burnitt for co-ordinating the editing and adding her own superb perspectives; and to Pam Dunne for picking up the errors that we always miss no matter how many times we read the book (yes, six people can read a book closely fifty times and still not notice it is Tuesday on page thirty-six, then Monday only five minutes and one page later). Also thanks to Darren Holt: the beauty of his cover design leaves me breathless. Even more importantly, it left my husband staring at it, simply for its beauty, and he is a man who appreciates a good diagram, not a cover.

  Once again to Cristina Cappelluto: thank you for the joy of being able to keep writing a series that I love so much, and more thanks than I am capable of expressing to Lisa Berryman, whose title is officially Publisher, but whose role is somewhere between collaborator, partner in crime, inspiration, confidence builder and the person who ensures that each book I write is the best I am capable of, as I could not bear to give her less.

  About the Author

  JACKIE FRENCH AM is an award-winning writer, wombat negotiator, the 2014–2015 Australian Children’s Laureate and the 2015 Senior Australian of the Year. In 2016 Jackie became a Member of the Order of Australia for her contribution to children’s literature and her advocacy for youth literacy. She is regarded as one of Australia’s most popular authors and writes across all genres — from picture books, history, fantasy, ecology and sci-fi to her much loved historical fiction for many different age groups. ‘Share a Story’ was the primary philosophy behind Jackie’s two-year term as Laureate.

  jackiefrench.com

  facebook.com/authorjackiefrench

  Copyright

  Angus&Robertson

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, Australia

  First published in Australia in 2017

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

  ABN 36 009 913 517

  harpercollins.com.au

  Copyright © Jackie French and E French 2017

  The right of Jackie French to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  HarperCollinsPublishers

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  Unit D1, 63 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632, New Zealand

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  1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF, United Kingdom

  2 Bloor Street East, 20th floor, Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8, Canada

  195 Broadway, New York NY 10007, USA

  National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

  French, Jackie, author.

  Facing the flame / Jackie French.

  ISBN: 978 1 4607 5320 0 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978 1 4607 0783 8 (ebook)

  French, Jackie. Matilda saga ; 7.

  For young adults.

  Nineteen seventies—Juvenile fiction.

  Country life—Australia—History—Juvenile fiction.

  Australia—Social conditions—Juvenile fiction.

  Cover design by Darren Holt, HarperCollins Design Studio

  Cover images by shutterstock.com

 

 

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