The Denniston Rose

by Jenny Pattrick

  No one knew how it started. Sparks from the boys riding the shovel, maybe, or from the powder charges, though the men always maintained they were well above where the fire first took hold. Josiah Scobie believed it was the sun on a bottle thrown into the bush by some drunk at the Camp. He preached a great sermon next Sunday on the dire consequences of drink and how evil earns its just deserts.

  Billy Genesis knew it was the devil, sending him advance notice that he’d be the next sinner to be fried, right here on earth as well as later in hell.

  Bella Rasmussen saw the first wisps. Sitting with her feet up in the sun, back to the log wall of their home, she rocked back and forth and sang to the child in her belly. She hummed one of Con’s lonely sea songs — cool, smelling of salt and ice, a good one for a hot afternoon. She smiled to feel a breeze rising, coming from below, from the sea. There would be a wind tonight, the sooner the better. Something else came with the breeze. A whiff of smoke, always a good smell to Bella, reminding her of campfires and stories. But she knew also the dangers on this high plateau, where tanks were the only source of water, so she heaved to her feet and walked out to locate the source. This was not the heavy bitter coal smell of a cooking stove but the sweet tang of burning wood. On the Hill no one burned wood without careful thought. It was too precious.

  She walked, not alarmed yet, down their stone path, out through the gate and over the barren rutted earth of the Camp to the point where the clearing stopped and dark trees and scrub crawled up over the edge. Through a break in the scrub she saw a fine blue line snaking up, wavering now as the breeze freshened, thickening as she watched. Walking faster now, she found the slash in bare rock that marked the beginning of the track. Brennan and Rose were on their knees poking at something.

  ‘There’s a fire in the bush, Brennan. Run and get Mr Rasmussen. You’ll find him up at the Bins.’

  ‘Come on, Rose!’ says Brennan, running already.

  ‘I want Rose here with me,’ says Bella, not quite sure why, and sends the boy on his way.

  Bella and Rose shout down to the gangs on the track.

  ‘Fire!’ sings Rose. It is a game to her.

  ‘Fire!’ shouts Bella Rasmussen. ‘To your left! Towards the Incline!’

  They hear the message shouted down from worker to worker, ringing against the stone walls.

  ‘They will soon have it out,’ says Bella, holding tight to Rose’s hand. ‘It has not taken hold.’

  But the wind, an enemy today, rises and veers. It blows on a dull red heart that otherwise might have smouldered and died. Little yellow flames reach up tall and then taller, fingering through summer leaf litter that, for once, is dry. Soon the fire is burning on two fronts, jumping from bush to cracking bush. The twiggy, delicate manuka, white with flower, is gobbled by flames greedy for its oily leaves. Sweating men do what they can, bashing with sacks, but the slope defeats them. They cannot get to the centre.

  ‘Get back to the Camp!’ shouts Josiah. ‘We must protect the Bins!’

  The miners retreat to the Camp and stand in a line, looking down to see where the fire will arrive. They are tense but excited. The moment before a sporting event: Men versus Fire.

  ‘Michael!’ says Rose, remembering. She lets go Mrs Rasmussen’s hand and runs back up the path to the top of the Incline. Michael is there, safe, still puffing from his last mad scramble, sitting between the rails with Brennan beside him.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ says Brennan, touching one of Michael’s impressive bruises.

  ‘Yes,’ says Michael proudly. ‘Did you see me go, Rose?’

  ‘The fire’s coming,’ says Rose. ‘It might burn the Bins.’

  All three look over to the massive collection of sheds and offices. That would be a sight.

  ‘It might burn your house, then,’ says Brennan.

  ‘No it won’t,’ says Rose, but she starts walking back. The boys follow.

  The Camp is dark with smoke now. Con the Brake is rampaging through the thick air brandishing a sack. His wild excitement adds to the confusion. Bella directs the Camp people, handing them wet sacks or sending them to fill tins of water from their own water tanks. No one can see where the attack will come from.

  ‘Here! Here!’ shouts Con. ‘Over by the men’s quarters!’

  ‘That is only smoke, man,’ says Bella. ‘Look in front of your nose! It will come through at Lord Percy’s!’

  ‘Mrs C. Rasmussen!’ roars Con the Brake. ‘Get up to Hanrattys’ this moment! This is no place for you!’

  ‘And leave you in charge? Your child will need a home, let me remind you! The fire, man!’

  Gangly Lord Percy, hair and eyes wild, windmills through the smoke.

  ‘My garden!’ he screams. ‘My cabbages! The fire is coming through!’

  ‘To Lord Percy’s!’ shouts Con the Brake, rallying the troops. ‘Josiah! Bring your gang over here!’

  But Josiah and the English miners are running up the slope towards the Bins. Josiah has seen the way the fire is moving, driven by the wind. There are now two tongues of flames, two fronts to fight. One has reached the Camp and will be driven across it, towards the Cork end, where, please God, the sheer rock wall will halt it. The other is pincering from the south, from the other side of the Incline. A finger of fire has separated from the main thrust and climbed through the thinner scrub beside the Incline. It will bypass the Camp and drive around to threaten the Bins, where the great conglomeration of sheds and stacks of coal invite disaster. Already it is racing up through scrub, drawing a wide curve of leaping orange flame.

  ‘To the Bins, to the Bins!’ shouts Josiah. Saving the Camp is not their battle. In a tight group the miners run up to the Bins. Their boots crunch through loose coal.

  ‘A hose, a hose, in God’s name surely there is something!’ shouts Josiah, but they can find nothing. The best they can do is to fill empty kerosene cans from the tap on the side of the big Bins water tank and to dampen sacks. Their preparations seem pitiful in the face of the crackling flames that are now creeping onto the plateau, but the miners stand fast, solid as fenceposts, waiting to see where fire will strike.

  Below at the Camp people are screaming and running. Someone calls up for help but the miners are looking in another direction.

  ‘There is only one house down there worth saving,’ says Josiah, ‘and that can be rebuilt. The Bins is our livelihood. It goes, our jobs go.’

  ‘True,’ says Eddie Carmichael, mine manager. ‘I appreciate this, lads.’

  Josiah smiles. ‘We are doing this for ourselves, Eddie, not the Company.’

  Eddie points. ‘Here it comes! This way, this way!’

  ‘By God, Jimmy Cork’s must be burning!’ shouts Tommy Jowett. ‘Can you hear those chickens?’

  ‘Aye,’ says Josiah.

  ‘It’s coming around this side!’ shouts Arnold Scobie, and the men start running. ‘It will take hold!’

  ‘It will not,’ says Josiah. An order.

  Five of the men stand shoulder to shoulder, flailing together, slapping the wet sacks again and again like angry parents where the sparks are running. The Scobies, in line, hand tins of water forward. Josiah flings the water, high and wide, to spatter over the wooden shacks at the back of the Bins. Back go the empty tins. No one speaks. Eyes and shoulders concentrate on the rhythm, on carefully passing a full tin down the line and tossing the empty one back again, fingertip to fingertip like a ball.

  A corner of one of the sheds catches. Josiah flings again and again.

  ‘Listen to those cranks down at the Camp,’ he growls to his brother Arnold. ‘They should be up here with us, not shouting and screaming over their few bits and pieces.’

  Arnold nods.

  A window shatters in the heat and flames pour out.

  ‘Dear God,’ says Josiah, ‘we’ll have to go inside, men. Bring the sacks.’

  ‘Let it go, Josiah,’ says Tommy. ‘We can’t save it. Once it gets to the coal …’

  ‘We’ll give
it one more go. Watch your step, though!’

  Josiah kicks open the door and sends an arc of water shimmering into the flame. The men charge in, sacks bashing and flailing, charge out again for breath. Another spray of water, another charge. The flames falter. A sheet of yellow flame dies as quickly as it had risen, and the men cheer. If only the tank water holds out they may just win.

  At the Camp it’s another matter. Lord Percy’s hut and garden are charcoal. So are the men’s quarters. The wind blows erratically along the ledge of the Camp — sometimes this way, sometimes that — driving the fire before it. Where the dwellings are close together, nothing can stop the advance of the flames. All the tents and half-canvas shacks have blossomed into flame, one by one, like a row of great flowers opening in the heat. Here and there are bare spaces where no one has built. Small groups of people gather in these spaces, to see where the flames will attack next.

  Con the Brake’s house is under threat. Everyone is dashing and beating. The water has run out. Tom Hanratty has come to lend a hand, and here is Totty, her dress sooty, baby Sarah wailing on her hip, Elizabeth at her side. She’s desperate to find her son.

  ‘Michael!’ she calls into the roiling smoke. ‘Michael!’

  Michael runs full tilt out of blackness, coughing and screaming. He doesn’t notice his parents, but finds Con and pulls desperately at his arm.

  ‘Rose’s house is burning!’

  ‘Get on home, Mickey. This is no place for you.’

  ‘Rose’s house!’

  Con the Brake pushes the boy away.

  ‘Jimmy Cork’s inside! And Rose’s mother is gone mad!’

  Con is caught. For a moment he stands quite still in all the mayhem. ‘Rose?’ he shouts. ‘Rose? Is she safe?’

  ‘I can’t see her,’ wails Michael. His face is a mask of soot and tears. ‘I can’t see her!’

  Con flails with one hand, shouts over his shoulder with the other, ‘Oh God, Oh God. Tom! Tom Hanratty! These people need a leader.’ To Bella he shouts, ‘Rose is in danger. Tom’ll take over here.’

  Bella’s great cry is half anguish to see her man disappear into the smoke, half outrage that he should leave his own house and wife for another’s.

  ‘Michael!’ shouts Totty. ‘Come up here! Michael! ’

  But the boy has run back into the smoke towards the Corks’ end.

  Tom has arrived, stout and reassuring, with an armful of sacks. ‘Go back with the girls!’ he shouts to Totty over the crackle and pop of exploding wood. ‘I’ll see to things here.’

  ‘Michael!’ wails Totty. Tom turns her gently and pushes her in the direction of the path. ‘Con is seeing to the children. Off with you.’

  Tom is already running back into the smoke. Little Elizabeth Hanratty, clinging to her mother’s hand, screams to see him go.

  On a Sunday; Con the Brake might sit in church, thinking about his misdeeds and hearing the preacher preach hellfire and damnation, and he might imagine, sitting there, promising never to do it again — how fearful those fires of hell would be and how dreadful the screams of the damned. Well, nothing he could imagine, not even with the preacher fanning the spectacle with his fiery words — nothing could be dreamed up worse than the Cork corner of the Camp, the day of the fire of ’84.

  The chickens, what’s left of them, are mad with fear. Rose’s mother had always clipped their wing-feathers to stop them straying. They flap madly a few feet in the air and flop back to run on scrabbling feet round and round against the paling fence, then back the other way, necks stretched, beaks wide open, cackling like mad witches. The rooster, red eye glaring, red wattles shaking with rage, screams damnation louder than any visiting evangelist. On and on he crows, and the flames build higher.

  The hut is a sheet of fire. Against the yellow and red, Rose’s mother is a dancing black dervish, whirling a blanket high above her head. Her mouth is open but the sound is drowned. The mad silhouette dashes again and again against the flames. On stage it could be a dance of great wild beauty but this is real. The blanket is only fanning the fire.

  Con sees a writhing on the ground a little to one side. It’s the two boys, Michael and Brennan, holding Rose down. She is a good match for the two of them. Con sees her fling them both off and run at the burning hut as if towards water. The boys and the man run after her. Rose’s mother, whirling the blanket, capers on, unheeding.

  For one moment Rose disappears into the flames. The boys rear back in despair. Con, roaring like a bull, charges the yellow curtain, scoops the girl with one arm, and brings her out before the boys can take breath to scream. Rose’s yellow curls are on fire and so is her smock. Con snatches the blanket from the mad woman, rolls Rose and holds her tight. The girl is silent now, but struggles grimly. Both boys are howling to see the blanketed lump that is Rose. Con holds her, fighting the thrashing limbs.

  ‘Rose, Rose, little sweetheart,’ he sobs. ‘Lie still, little one. Oh Jesus, lie still!’ He fears she will damage her burnt skin.

  Rose’s mother has left the fire now and is clawing at Con’s back.

  ‘So! You come at last, and see what a disaster! All I have is burning in there!’

  Con shrugs off the mad woman. ‘And Jimmy?’ he grunts.

  ‘Jimmy, yes Jimmy! All! All! All what you have done! See how it turns out!’

  Con turns away. If Jimmy is inside, he’s done for. If not, why is he not here when help is needed?

  At last Rose stops jerking. Con lifts the blanketed bundle. Gently he separates the folds so she can see out. One side of her face is yellow and red like the fire, the skin folding and drooping away from the flesh.

  ‘Rose, Rose, be still,’ whispers Con the Brake. ‘Your father is dead. He cannot be saved. But your mother is here.’

  Rose turns her head away. Silent tears run down. Goodness knows what other damage may be wrapped inside the blanket. Only her poor face is visible. Con remembers her arrival at Denniston, wrapped in a tarpaulin parcel, with the hole cut for her face. He turns to Eva, who capers and flails still, shouting curses.

  ‘Angel! For God’s sake listen! Your house and husband may be burned but your daughter is alive and in need, if you care.’

  ‘My daughter! My daughter!’ screams Eva. ‘And you? Is it not yours too? Take her, then.’ She picks up a clod and throws it, like an angry child, at Con. She reaches down for another. Brennan and Michael stop their howling and gape to see her mad antics.

  Con turns away, sheltering Rose from the onslaught.

  ‘I will take Rose to a safe place,’ he says. The mother continues her barrage as Con, walking soft as a cat, heads back across the Camp. The boys, silent now, cling to his coattails, one each side. Behind him Con hears Eva screaming on. Curses or laments you couldn’t tell.

  The hut has caved in and the fire is dying but Rose’s mother will not leave the burning husk or Jimmy’s body inside it. Young Brennan, looking back, sees Rose’s mother snatch a charred pole from the wreckage and poke the embers as if she’s fishing in a red sea. Sparks shoot up. Eva screams and dances like a dervish.

  At the Camp and the Bins there is more smoke now than fire. A skeleton of building is exposed towards the front of the Bins but the main bulk is safe. Josiah’s gang have isolated a small pile of smoking coal, shovelling it to one side where it may safely burn itself out. Half the shacks at the Camp are smouldering ruins, sheets of iron and charred beams sticking up at crazy angles out of the ashes. Con’s great log cabin still stands, though one corner is charred. The Camp people stand near it in the smoking air, as if gathering around a hearth for comfort.

  ‘Jimmy Cork is gone,’ says Con the Brake to Tom. ‘The mother is still there — mad, you know, but unharmed.’

  Suddenly rain falls: steady, cleansing, roaring rain. The people groan with pleasure.

  Bella Rasmussen, the apron over her huge belly black with soot, comes out from the house with a kettle of tea. She sees Rose lying in Con’s arms.

  ‘Rose!’ shouts Bel
la.

  ‘She is burned but not in danger. I am taking her to Totty. You have enough here,’ says Con. He has difficulty looking Bella in the eye.

  Bella reaches out to touch Rose but stops and draws breath at the sight of her face. It is streaming with rain, the skin floating downwards off a flaring cheek.

  ‘Oh, Rose,’ says Bella, ‘my Rose of Tralee.’ She beats her fists against her apron. ‘Take her up quickly to your place, Tom. It is chaos here. Tell Totty to bathe the face all night with a soft flannel cloth in a solution of carbonate of soda. I will come in the morning.’ Tom takes the still bundle from the big brake-man and walks into the sheeting rain. Michael and Brennan follow behind like dogs, but Bella calls Brennan back.

  ‘Where’s your Dad, then?’

  Con growls, ‘They are all up at the Bins, all the miners, saving Company property while people’s houses burn.’

  ‘The Company is your livelihood too, man,’ says Bella.

  Con glares. ‘Down here it is lives, not livelihood. Which is more important?’

  ‘Good God, husband, you would start up an argument on your way to hell! Where’s that Brennan?’

  ‘Here,’ says Brennan.

  ‘Ask your father if he would send a message to Granny Binney to come in the morning if she can make the trip. Her ointments are needed for Rose’s face.’

  ‘Aye,’ says Brennan.

  ‘Well, go on then, boy. Your father will be frantic.’

  ‘What about Rose?’

  ‘Rose will live, but her face will be less scarred for Granny’s curing.’

  ‘But where will she live?’

  ‘We will see to that, Brennan. Rose will never lack for a roof.’