by Anne Fine
Still, not even the thought of this unhappy possibility could take the edge off their good cheer. And as the last wall fell and the fire burned lower so they could finally see their colleagues on the other side playing their hoses in gorgeous glistening loops over the flaring rubble, Colin found his own spirits rising to match. Praise be to Mother! If she’d done nothing else in her long life, she had at least achieved what eighteen councils in a row had failed to do – get rid of Chatterton Court for once and for ever.
And, on this score, a party atmosphere seemed to be developing all round now. None of the flats’ inhabitants appeared in the slightest bothered by this dramatic and colourful destruction of their habitat. Slipping back under the rope, Colin strolled between clusters of cheery people, some clutching a few possessions, one or two even guarding piles of plastic bags. After a while, he realized most of the conversations were centred round the happy coincidence of Tor Grand Insurance’s recent Special Promotion: a taster offer of one month’s free contents insurance, prior to checks or inspection. It seemed that, gamblers to a man, and furnished with prepaid envelopes and the chance to win a speedboat, pretty well everyone in Chatterton Court had, in the past week, whiled away a few unemployed minutes filling in an application form with some wildly inflated opinions of the value of their property. Indeed, the general view appeared to be that Mel’s altruistic gesture of bribing her painter to set fire to the building had simply anticipated by a few days the plans of a slightly more dilatory gang of professional arsonists.
But, lest this thought seemed churlish, Mel was the happy toast of all. Some smouldering embers had been borrowed to start a small, informal baked-potato franchise. Much of the burning of the boiler house provided the flash and excitement of any reasonably colourful firework display. And, Colin noticed, the former denizens of Chatterton Court appeared to have every confidence that their council would provide, not simply adequate emergency accommodation overnight, but somewhere more permanent to live in the morning. Indeed, he heard the words, ‘Nowhere they put us could be worse,’ spoken so many times, and with such confidence, that it was a man on the verge of proud to call himself a council officer who wandered back towards the firemen as they reluctantly prepared to admit to themselves that, regretfully, the best of the show was now over.
‘Still, classic while it lasted. Couldn’t be faulted. And if I’d had the sense to take a video of how that boiler blew, I’d have the great bulk of my men through their practical examinations first time.’
‘Nice little run here, too, if you recall.’
‘Splendid. Possibly even a record-breaker.’ The fireman turned to Jamie-boy. ‘You were on our tail all the way, weren’t you? What do you reckon? Mount Oval down to here in under three minutes?’
‘Two forty at the most. And if I’m being anything, I’m being hard.’
‘Between here and Mount Oval?’ Colin was filled with admiration, till he remembered they were allowed to speed through all his council’s brooding lights.
Jamie-boy sighed. ‘Would have been a sight faster, but for that idiot who shot ahead of us into the roundabout.’ He turned to Colin. ‘You know the bloke. You’re always tangling with him.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. What’s his name? Stanley? Jemmy? You know! That nutter with the pods.’
‘Pods?’
‘All over the pavement. Crunch-crunch. Crunch-crunch. Outside his restaurant.’
‘Do you mean Haksar?’
‘That’s the one. I hope he cooks a whole lot better than he drives. He was spinning round that roundabout like a nut in a blender.’
To a man less absorbed in a last pretty flare-up of the embers, Colin’s distress might have been evident. ‘Where was he headed, for God’s sake?’
‘Sorry?’
‘When he came off the roundabout! Which way was he going?’
‘Up towards West Priding – luckily for him, or we might just have stopped to book him for driving like a bloody astronaut on wh—’
But Colin wasn’t listening. He’d already gone.
Mr Herbert could not have apologized more graciously or more often.
‘I simply don’t know what to say to you, Colin. My workmen know the rules about smoking on other people’s property, and they’re usually most careful.’
‘Be fair,’ the fire officer said. He was still panting from the second run. ‘Your bloke was standing outside, after all. He was hardly to know those windchimes had been stuffed with tissue paper.’ He shook his head admiringly. ‘Nasty, floaty stuff, tissue. It catches all too easily. In my experience, it’s part and parcel of a lot more fires than people are prepared to give it credit.’ He gave Colin’s mother’s scorched buddleia one final going over with the last of the hose dribbles. ‘Mind you, it was only luck that the wind happened to be in the direction of the woodshed.’
‘Bad luck,’ corrected Colin, since the man’s more sensitive colleague had not yet managed to arrive in time to do so.
‘And then there was that stripper in there – practically uncovered, if you please!’
Christ! Had he spotted Suzie?
‘Paint’s bad enough. But stripper! Well, you might as well drop matches in a tank of kerosene.’
They all gazed at the dripping, roofless ruin that had been Colin’s hideaway. Then at the blackened walls of Holly House. ‘It’s only the back, really,’ said the fireman, reeling in his emptied hose. His voice had taken on that tone of glum wistfulness with which Colin was becoming all too rapidly familiar. ‘And a lot of that’s nothing but smoke damage.’
‘Still,’ Mr Herbert said to Colin, ‘I can’t see your mother being very pleased.’
Colin gazed up at the windows, each with its brand-new sooty eyebrow. ‘I could ask them to keep her in hospital another day or two. Till I’ve cleaned up a bit.’
He waited for Mr Herbert to offer to lend him a couple of men to give him a hand. But there was an uncomfortable silence, till Mr Herbert suddenly thought to dig in his breast pocket. ‘Well, I can at least give you this.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s what you said you wanted when you rang in all that hurry.’ Sensing there might be a moment of stickiness when he sent in the bill, Mr Herbert made a point of repeating in front of the fireman as an uncommitted witness, ‘“Mr H.,”’ you said. ‘“Double time for your men if you can get that sodding Certificate of Approved Electrical Installation fixed up and watertight before my mother’s out of hospital.”’
‘Really? Did I say “sodding”?’
Holy Joe Herbert shot him a look of reproof. ‘Indeed you did. And as I said to Mrs H. at supper afterwards, that’s not like Mrs Riley’s Colin. In fact, frankly, after that sort of language, if it hadn’t been for thinking of your poor dear saintly mother, I wouldn’t have leaned on my men as hard as I did to get the job finished.’
Through phantom drifts of bills for restoration and repair, Colin sensed, rather than saw, his first real glimmer of hope since, skidding round Mount Oval, he’d seen the wreaths of smoke rising from beyond the end of Green Lane. Maybe his world was brightening. This fire, after all, had been an accident. Maybe, charged with some sense of inner satisfaction that came from presuming he had successfully reduced Colin’s home to a heap of charred rubble, Mr Haksar had simply been shooting off with such verve to lay in a fresh supply of uncontaminated turmeric. Perhaps, when Mr Herbert so casually let drop the little word ‘finished’—
‘Finished? Did you say finished?’
Mr Herbert looked smug. ‘Oh, yes. We had the cabling buried by last night. It was only trying to get that massive overgrown hydrangea back upright that fetched us back this morning.’ He gazed round. ‘Still, the garden looks nice again, doesn’t it? I think the men have done a lovely job of stamping things back in. And just so long as anything that decides to die has the sense to take long enough, she might not even cotton it was your fault, Colin.’
Having sloughed off responsibility so stylishly,
Mr Herbert turned back to the paperwork he was signing.
‘You realize this form’s dated back from months ago, when we first started working in the house. Will your mother mind that?’
‘No,’ Colin told him. ‘She won’t mind at all.’
And he practically had to force himself not to reach out and snatch it.
The fire officer snapped the catch on his portable hose reel. ‘Well, that’s me finished. Except, of course, for filling out your “dangerous structure” warning.’
‘Dangerous structure?’
The fireman nodded at the only bit of woodshed that was still standing. ‘That wall behind the mangle could come down in a puff of wind.’
‘I could fetch it down now,’ Mr Herbert offered, as if his conscience had been rather troubling him. The two professionals stepped with impunity through the permanent spell Colin kept laid across the threshold. He heard them chattering to one another. ‘Look at this rubbish!’ ‘It is astonishing, isn’t it, what people keep?’ They were speaking, thought Colin, as though he were dead or unconscious, or nothing to do with the place he had spent half his life in. And then he realized it seemed an age since he’d been here. Running his fingers through the charred silt across the workbench, he wondered what he ought to save. Should he, for example, rescue his poor neglected Suzie, for old time’s sake? He peered in the drawer, awash with hose water, and tugged it open, trying to pretend his only concern was for chisels. The magazine came out in a sodden lump. What were you supposed to do with books and papers that were soaking wet? Freeze them, then brush off water crystals, page by page?
Could he be bothered?
No.
The fireman rooted in the filth on the floor. ‘Now that’s worth saving.’ He tipped the worst of the water out of the spell box and handed it to Colin. Inside was clutter from another lifetime. Some greasy stumps of candle. A few scummy mirror shards. The hawkmoth chrysalis was none the better for a proper soaking. The fox’s tooth looked even dingier and more pathetic than usual. And there seemed far more stupid bleached chicken wishbones in the casket than he could imagine anyone ever wanting or needing.
Oh, and a photo of his father. He pulled it out, still sodden wet, and stared at it while the thoughts sprang. I’ll be the opposite of you. Where you stayed silent, I’ll speak up for her. Where you played blind, I’ll see. But, most of all, when you were gone, I will be there. Always. Whatever.
It was a pretty box, though. She’d like that. She could keep something nice in it. Jewellery, or beads or hairbands. Something like that.
Turning it over, he emptied his warped childhood on the floor without regret, and glanced at his watch. My God! What with there being no word yet from Mel, he had only a moment to nip along and order more dog food before it was time to play safe and fetch Tammy.
How strange it felt – how very comforting – to have a deadline nothing to do with work. Or Mother.
‘I have to go now,’ he informed the two of them. ‘I have to pick someone up from nursery.’
Nobody snorted. Nobody made a face. The fireman only asked him, ‘What about this shed? Will you be taking Mr Herbert here up on his offer?’
‘Yes,’ Mr Herbert said, pleased to have come to terms with conscience so easily. ‘Just say the word, Col.’
He looked from one to the other as they stood waiting. And then he simply said it. ‘Yes. If you would, please. Take the whole lot down.’
The wail of sirens had brought the gardeners out in force along the backs.
‘I see you’re finally making a success of getting rid of that horsetail, Edmund.’
‘Indeed yes, William. You see I’m working to a brand-new principle. “One in, three out”.’
Colin found himself, as usual, spotted through a bare patch. ‘Is that you, Colin? How is your poor, dear mother? Back amongst us soon?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Colin assured her. ‘Failing that, Saturday.’
Today, nosiness was clearly taking precedence over disapproval. ‘And things in the house? It wasn’t your place, I hope, that all those noisy sirens were headed for earlier?’
Colin put on a burst of speed in the hope that the Mansons’ thick beech hedge would screen the deceit in his headshake. But self-interest, as usual, had triumphed over general curiosity. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be off to the shop, would you, Colin? Would my asking a tiny little favour be in order? Just a packet of pins and a couple of bananas?’
‘And twenty Kensitas, if you’re that way anyway.’
‘And if Mr Stastny should happen to have any more of those little jars of horseradish—’
Turning, he spoke up so everyone could hear first time. ‘Happy to help. But I’m afraid that, this time, you’ll all have to give me the money first, because I’ve left my wallet in the car.’
Could they have slid away faster, with less fuss? He stood entranced. How easy things were when you dared step out of half-light. It was like growing muscles, or getting wings. It was like—
That’s right. It was like living.
Next time, he’d miss out that excuse about the wallet. Oh, yes, it was a sturdy and determined Colin who strode past the Emporium, whistling, to step in the shop and give Mr Stastny his order. Fearlessly he ambled back past the sprinkling of frost-tops still busy in their gardens, most of whom made great play of affecting not to notice him. Giddy with power, he slid in his car and made the vehicle coming up behind slam on its brakes as he pulled out. Driving back into town, he sped across two separate sets of amber lights. No sirens followed him. The world went on. He even dared leave the car up at the top end of Stemple Street without a ticket, gambling on getting back safely with Tammy before any warden dared slap on a fine. And it was only after he’d cut through the little alley beyond Market Square and, still humming cheerily, was taking the stone steps up to the nursery two at a time, that Colin even realized he’d just walked down Bridge Row without a thought.
What sort of personal landslide was going on here? What else could change?
His charmed life, in a blink, one step through the doors. ‘Gone? Where? Who took her?’
The nursery helper was practically backing away from his panic. ‘Nobody took her, Mr Riley. She went off early, with her mum.’
His world came back to rights. ‘With Mel? Where?’
‘I don’t know. Home, I suppose.’
Best not to mention Mel no longer had one. Best just to catch up, and then break the news. Would they be on the bus? Or walking back through Abbey Shopping Centre? Either way, if he drove fast he’d probably make it. Again his sense of purpose lent him wings. And over-keen sight. A half a dozen times he must have thought he’d spotted them, their heads together on some bus, or reflected in windows, only to realize he was staring at strangers. So by the time he finally overtook them, walking past Chaffer’s Bonemeal Factory, his expectations had fallen so flat it was Mel who waved crazily, seeing the car slow.
‘Col! Hope you didn’t think Tam had been snatched. It’s just I came home early.’
Early? In his book, she was already a day late.
She caught his look. ‘Didn’t you get my message?’
‘Message?’ He scrambled from the car in time to counter Tammy’s suicidal charge into the street to greet him. ‘Col! Col! We did painting.’
Mel sounded more peeved on her own behalf than his. ‘Honestly! I couldn’t have made it clearer if I’d tried. Your stupid switchboard put me through to the wrong place. But the man said he had to get in touch with you anyway about the bill for some gas fire. And since I only had a couple of—’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ He had his Tammy in his arms, and nothing mattered. Though Mel did still have to be told. And, preferably, before she reached the end of the road and turned into Tanner Street.
‘I’m afraid there’s been just a little bit of trouble at the flats.’
‘I thought you’d take her to spend the night at your own place. Or at your mother’s.’
‘And so I
did. But—’
Too late. With some new elasticity in her stride, she’d covered the last steps and, turning the corner, seen in front of her, instead of the unfêted architectural bin-end of Priding’s least-favoured civic son, just a vista of clear skies and sunlight.
‘Col?’
Embarrassed, he shifted Tammy onto one arm, and slid the other through hers. ‘Bit of a shock?’
She took another step forward. ‘Where’s it gone? What happened?’
Tam hadn’t even noticed. All she was doing was poking sticky fingers in his hair, and twisting it tightly while she chattered about nursery.
‘Bit of a chapter of accidents, I’m afraid. Too long a story to go into now.’
Even charred rubble could take a moment to make its point. But things were sinking in. ‘Did it burn down? For God’s sake! Is it gone?’
She sank on the kerb. After a moment’s doubt, he lowered himself beside her, with Tam still clinging round his neck, smelling of poster paints and chocolate. They were sitting in a different street: sunlit, and shadowswept. He could see all the way to Abbey Towers, and the sycamores beyond. He could see traffic shooting cheerfully over the hump of the West Bridge, and even the arch of the entrance to Vane Park. It was like being in another world. And suddenly the thought struck. After his mother died, would he sit with the stuffing this knocked out of him, as shocked as Mel, finding it almost as difficult to believe that such an overpowering presence had vanished from his life? Would he be sad, or glad? Or just amazed? And would he, afterwards, be at a loss, like some poor actor locked in a telly series for years and years, who, when the show was axed, found that he’d lost, not just the part he’d played, but the one thread that held his life together, and seemed more real than any of the roles he faced in all his involuntarily salvaged hours?
Best not to brood. Shifting Tam on his knee, he slid his arm round Mel, to comfort her. ‘The general view, I think, is that, in the long run, it may all prove a bit of a blessing.’
Mel was indifferent to the long run and the general view. She shook him off. ‘All right for you! My things were in there! What about my stuff?’
