Dark Fires Shall Burn

by Anna Westbrook

  As Nancy turns back on Lennox, she sees a group of older girls leaning in the open doorway of a boarded-up former shop. They have a phonograph inside and she recognises the tune: a Scottish song her father had often played. Last night as I lay on my pillow. Last night as I lay on my bed. Not what she expects this crowd to be listening to.

  She pretends to do up her shoe buckle and feigns reading the old billposter about Vita-Brits still pasted up in the shopfront, her ears pricked to the music.

  Her mother used to collect records. She has hundreds in her bedroom, but now only seems to play the same three or four on grim repeat. My Funny Valentine ad nauseam. A new record was a ritual her parents had shared, sliding it ever so carefully from its envelope and placing it on the turntable. Nancy remembers the scrunch-crackle of the first rotation, and how greedy they all were for those waxy, shiny 78s and the souls preserved in their black flimsy sheen.

  ‘Hey, you! Come over here,’ a blond boy yells. The three girls fix their eyes on her, coldly. They all wear nylons, real ones, and Nancy can’t help but stare. One has that peach-coloured stuff on her face, and lipstick, maybe the same Max Factor kind her mother has on her dresser but barely uses.

  She sidles over and is overwhelmed by scent: Pond’s, tobacco, some sort of sweet liquor, and, overlaying everything, that rich woody jasmine stink of the Tabu that soldiers brought back from Europe. She bites down on her lower lip and stands there dumbly, one foot on the pavement and the other in the gutter.

  ‘What’s your name?’ the girl with tangled, honey-coloured hair demands.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ She wonders just what these girls might do to her if she gives them cheek, and what will happen if she comes home with a shiner. But then again, perhaps her mother wouldn’t even notice.

  ‘Well, quite the little scrapper, aren’t you?’ The girl steps towards her. Nancy sees that around her eyes the skin is creased like paper. Eyes ten years older than her face.

  ‘No,’ she answers, running her foot along the gutter.

  The dark-haired girl holds out a bottle of gin and waggles it at her. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Nancy replies primly, aghast.

  ‘She’s friends with the other one. I’ve seen them playing together round the church,’ the boy says.

  ‘How old are you?’ asks the same girl with the dark hair.

  ‘Twelve.’

  ‘Hmm.’ She shakes her head at the boy. ‘Are you sure? I don’t think so. The other one looked older. Thirteen. Maybe fourteen.’

  ‘What other one?’ Nancy asks, confused.

  ‘They’re friends. I’ve seen ’em together,’ the boy insists. Nancy can see a patch of crimson pimples on his chin. He must be about fifteen. He could easily be taken for one of the girls with hair that long. ‘I’ve seen her mucking about with Frances,’ he says to the blonde girl, who might even be his sister, it occurs to Nancy.

  ‘How do you know Frances?’ Nancy asks, incredulous.

  ‘She was by here last night,’ the blonde says.

  ‘Last night? What are you talking about?’

  The record sticks. My bonnie — my bonnie — my bonnie —

  The youngest-looking girl leaps up to take the needle off, and in her hurry she sends the thing tumbling. There is a horrible rip of the needle and then the wood splintering against the floor. She scrambles around with the broken pieces of record player, which looks like a hopeless jigsaw. ‘I’m so sorry, Annie.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Sally! You can pay for that,’ Annie snaps at her. Turning to Nancy, she says, ‘We found the girl, your friend. We found Frances wandering the street last night, with no place to go, and … we let her sleep here.’

  ‘Here?’ Nancy leans to see inside the house and from the open door she witnesses the tatty curtains, the lurid lampshade, the empty bottles on the floor. ‘But why did she come here? She doesn’t know you. Why would Frances come here, of all places?’

  ‘Shhh,’ the clumsy girl says, still on her knees. ‘Jackie Tooth.’

  ‘Shut it, Sally.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘You go on now,’ the blonde girl tells her firmly, and when she does not move, the girl’s pitch climbs, and she advances from the step with her chest puffed out. ‘Clear off!’

  Nancy rushes home in the dark, her mind twisting on the name — what kind of name was Tooth? — and the fact that Frances had spent the night with those girls. Unbelievable! She slides through the gate and into the house, all the lights on. Her mother had not even noticed she was gone.

  TWELVE

  Outside Dolly Jenkins’ place on Palmer Street, where the girls and Templeton have gone to look for Jackie, a black police van mounts the curb. Annie motions to the others to hang back.

  They slink around the corner to a safe distance to watch the upcoming show. ‘Look at that.’ Sally points. ‘Swarms of coppers. I hope it’s a murder.’

  ‘Bądź cicho.’ Dot slaps Sally on the thigh. ‘What a thing to say.’

  ‘What? I just — I just mean it’d be exciting if it was,’ Sally mutters. ‘Not of someone we know.’

  ‘They’re going in,’ Annie says, and points at the sandstone double-storey terrace. They can hear the commotion even at this distance: plates shattering and raised voices and doors slamming. The police are like rats on a garbage heap, Templeton thinks, as a few come out with crates of beer under their arms.

  ‘Get out, ya mongrels!’ A woman’s full-throated voice precedes a massive figure, in her robe and nightgown, with curlers springing from her animated head. ‘They’re taking all my grog! You filthy bastards.’ She hawks a luminescent arc of spittle onto the road.

  Two blokes loom in the doorway behind her. ‘That’s Snowy Thompson stepped out, and his mate, Errol Boyd, behind him,’ Annie commentates. ‘Big heroes in the Great War.’

  Snowy has a face you could sharpen a knife on. He puts his arm around Dolly’s shoulder. The cops stand back. A young constable, not much more than a boy and still upholstered with puppy fat, squares up to them. ‘Listen here,’ he begins hoarsely, the chinstrap of his hat pushing the loose flesh of his throat into a double chin.

  ‘G’day, officer! Fancy a two-for-one?’ He is interrupted by a girl standing on the second-floor balcony, wearing only petticoats, who yells out a taunt. Her companion whistles at him through her fingers. The constable’s face turns a ferocious red.

  ‘Let’s wait.’ Annie warns. ‘This could get ugly.’

  ‘Now, listen,’ the constable begins again. ‘We have an order to confiscate —’ His voice is smothered in uproar. Dolly Jenkins wrestles a crate out of a hapless cop’s grasp, jowls wobbling over her ropes of pearls.

  ‘Oh, wouldn’t I like to put an axe into you. Take it on back to the station and have a bloody knees-up, hey? Well, I’ll be damned if I’ll have a bunch of coppers drinking my best beer,’ Dolly shouts, undaunted.

  ‘That is outrageous, Mrs Jenkins,’ the flushed constable splutters. ‘It is illegal alcohol. We will, of course, be destroying it.’ He takes a bottle of beer and knocks the top off with some difficulty and empties the lot in the gutter.

  ‘You bastard!’ Errol lunges at the cop but Snowy contains him with an arm thick as a leg of lamb across his chest.

  One of the girls on the balcony shouts down, ‘What a waste. That is premium quality.’

  ‘Go on,’ the constable says to his men, looking at Snowy. ‘Dispose of it. Dispose of it all. Don’t worry about taking the tops off. Smash them! Come on. Smash the lot.’ He takes out his truncheon and lays into a crate, busting brown glass and froth explosively.

  A girl on the balcony takes off one of her Chinese slippers and hurls it at the constable. ‘Enough,’ he roars, ‘or I’ll have you all nicked for vagrancy! For riot. For assaulting a police officer. Just try me!’

  The g
irls fall silent. They look on grimly as the police upturn and smash bottle after bottle. Beer flows into the storm drain, a river of foaming piss. Templeton can see that Errol and Snowy are a couple of bulls at a gate, veins popping in their necks as the police hold them back with truncheons.

  ‘Those cops have all got their brains in back to front,’ Annie sneers. ‘They could have made a packet slinging that lot off themselves.’

  ‘The police wouldn’t do that!’ Templeton says, shocked.

  ‘Idiota.’ Dot rolls her eyes at him but smiles.

  ‘Not as sharp as she once was. Not buying off the right people anymore.’ Annie shakes her head. ‘Twenty years ago — hell, even ten, when this place was known as Razorhurst — she used to rule Sydney. The coppers shit their britches coming in here.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Sally asks.

  ‘Dolly Jenkins?’ Annie says in a loud whisper. ‘Only one of the sharpest madams and grog-runners in Sydney. The woman built a bloody empire! Used to be good-looking back in the day, a real knock-out. Married an Aussie after the Great War and came out on the wives’ boat real young. Said to have been the best whore in East London.’

  Dolly disappears inside, as if beaten, and Snowy and Errol follow. The police slam their car doors and accelerate fast, leaving the stink of burnt rubber in the air. But then Dolly reemerges, swearing, blocking the doorway with her bulk and cradling a shotgun in the crook of her arm. With the crack of gunshot, they all jump.

  ‘Jesus!’ Templeton says, eyes wide. ‘They’ll put her away for sure.’

  ‘I wouldn’t think so.’ Dot’s lip curls. ‘She only brought it out after they had gone. She’s clever. And maybe a little bit bark and not bite.’

  ‘Bet on that, would you?’ Annie mutters as she steps out of the shadows, towards Dolly.

  ‘Oi! Catch the show?’ Dolly waves and her smile displays the gold bridgework of her teeth, one or two missing on the side.

  ‘Dolly.’ Annie crosses the street and pecks her on the thickly powdered cheek.

  ‘Hello, darl. Come in and have a drink, with your friends. They thought they’d cleaned me out, but they were wrong. Coupla little places they didn’t think to look. Ha!’

  Templeton remembers Annie recounting the first time Dolly clapped eyes on her, fresh off the train. ‘Well, ain’t you a stunner,’ Dolly had said. ‘Look at that face! Come and work for me. I’ll make you rich enough to buy some stockings, darlin’. And a helluva lot more.’

  Annie had said no, thank you. But that feels like a long time ago.

  Dolly ushers them inside and heaves a bureau from against the wall with a grunt, revealing a hidden panel behind. She taps it mysteriously and the door springs back. Three shelves appear, loaded with an arsenal of bottles, each glistening a secret. ‘Will brandy do you?’ She lines up glasses and rubs them down with a velvet rag, grinning like a wolf.

  Templeton looks about the broad, oblong room, with its staircase against one wall, leading up into darkness, and a farrago of furnishings: seamy velvet armchairs; long, low-backed couches; Japanese screens, backlit by bulbs struggling through wilted lampshades; a large fireplace set into the brick. The walls are covered in paintings and hung photographs and framed needlepoint, cluttered to the point of whimsy. He wants to examine them, but now is not the time.

  Snowy and Errol are already dealing a hand of rummy at a card table in the centre of the room, slouching in simple chairs. Dolly sets their drinks down first. They do not take it upon themselves to say hello.

  ‘Thanks.’ Annie nods as she takes the slender-stemmed glass from Dolly’s chunky fist. After swilling a sip of brandy in her mouth, she reaches into the pocket of her dustcoat for a cigarette. It’s a bit ratty and damp but, as Templeton has seen her do many times, she snaps the broken bit off and lights up. ‘To tell the truth, we’re actually after Jackie. He been around today?’ She tries to exhale with an air of casualness.

  Dolly ignores Annie’s question, sitting down in an Edwardian parlour chair and closing her eyes. She withdraws a funny little wooden pipe from a leather pouch, stuffs it expertly from a tin of tobacco and strikes a match, all without looking. After a while her eyes open, green as the patina on old bronze, and alight on Templeton. ‘This funny old thing?’ She pinches the stick between index and thumb and waves the bowl at him. ‘Well, I bet you won’t guess where I got this from.’

  ‘No, ma’am.’ He shakes his head.

  ‘I bought this pipe from an Arkansas Negro at the Booker T. Washington. Ain’t she a beauty?’

  ‘So, Jackie …’ Annie begins again.

  ‘In trouble, is he?’ Dolly turns her head sharply.

  ‘Would it be Jack Tooth you’re after?’ Errol twists around from his card game to face them, suddenly interested.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Annie asks.

  ‘Bob Newham’s out of Long Bay. You might have heard,’ Dot says. ‘They had a bit of a run-in the other night. Bob took a couple of shots driving by.’

  ‘Bob Newham? That’d be Robert Newham’s boy.’ Errol, putting down his cards, claps his hands on his chest and leans back in his chair. ‘Wouldn’t think Jackie would want to get mixed up with that lot. Bob senior and me were kept for nearly a month in a bloody dog-pound when we got back from France. Then we had to be seen by a reffo doctor to get coupons for tobacco and deferred pay. Mister Boyd he called me. Some bloody Balt or Eyetie, swarthy as an Arab. We liberated your country, you know mate? Mister Boyd! That’s me dad, I said. You can call me Lance Corporal Boyd.’

  ‘Pack of bastards,’ Snowy says, and heaves a boot up on the table.

  Templeton swallows and wonders why Dolly is looking at Annie so intently. Dot is standing near the bureau, blinking into her brandy, not saying anything, while Sally shifts from foot to foot. Templeton sees Annie frown, and knows she is choosing her words carefully. ‘So Jackie needs to take off. Get out of the city for a while till it blows over. I’ve got to get a bit of cash together to give him, help him out.’

  ‘Well, ain’t you sweet?’ Dolly looks as though the pieces are locking together. ‘That’s why his boys was in me ear about getting a car then.’

  ‘Bob Newham’s not likely to forget he’s got one light out thanks to Jackie,’ Snowy says with a snort. He downs his glass and gestures to Dolly for a refill.

  ‘Get it yourself, you big lump,’ she barks at him.

  He heaves himself up, muttering, and rattles the bottles, splashing the liquor about in filling his glass. Then he sits back down heavily to resume his conversation with Errol about yesterday’s horses. He flicks open a newspaper to the back page to study the race results.

  Dolly empties her pipe out in a half-eaten plate of sausage and mash, and the ash slides like slag down the hillock of potato. ‘Alright. Here’s how it is. I can help you out.’ Dolly stretches her plump stockinged legs. ‘Make you some money and leave you a few pounds more to put back in the pot for a rainy day, hey? I know how it is, love. Jackie’s been telling everyone that you lot is in deep for a load of snow.’ She purses her lips at Dot. ‘Especially you, dark eyes.’

  ‘What are you suggesting?’ Dot asks.

  ‘What say I buy you out of your debt and then you work it off. Here, for me.’ She gestures broadly and smiles, and Templeton thinks of the tinker who used to come to the back door once a year offering his mother once-in-a-lifetime bargains.

  ‘That’s kind of you, but it’s alright. I —’ Annie hesitates. ‘Well, um, no disrespect meant, but we just came here to see if you’d seen him. We can come up with the money on our own.’

  Errol is gazing at Annie, attention diverted from his conversation on fillies, his bottom lip hanging open in a way that makes him look slow and shows his cluttered, greyish teeth. Templeton suppresses a shudder.

  ‘We heard Bob down the Tradesman’s Arms just yesterday, telling everyone who’d listen that Jac
kie is a dead man.’ Snowy smiles.

  ‘What I’m saying,’ Dolly says, slowly and clearly, ‘is that I can make the problem go away. And you can make a piece for yourselves at the same time. Think about it, sugar. Jackie’s not a man to mess with.’ The loose skin of Dolly’s sunspot-peppered arms wobbles as she lights another bowl and sucks deeply. The smoke is pungent, brackish. ‘Don’t get caught in the crossfire of his blue with Bob.’

  Annie looks torn but Templeton’s blood rises. ‘We’ve been taking care of ourselves up till now just fine, thank you.’

  ‘Hello. I’m sorry — I didn’t realise Annie had a younger sister!’ Errol grins.

  ‘Leave him alone.’ Annie’s eyes flare. ‘Why do you care? Fancy him, do you? Thought you said you was a lance-corporal, not a rear-gunner in the war.’

  Errol leaps to his feet and knocks the drinks over, spilling brandy down the front of his trousers.

  ‘Sit down, melonhead,’ Dolly orders.

  ‘Get this bitch out of here.’ Errol curses at Annie and wipes at his crotch with a cloth. ‘She’s got a tongue on her. Why doesn’t she get over here and put it to use?’

  ‘Errol, that’s enough,’ Dolly says impatiently.

  ‘Mate, Blind Freddie could see she’s just tryin’ to rile you up.’ Snowy chuckles and claps Errol on the back. Errol slides back into his seat, scowling.

  ‘For how long? How long do we need to work for you?’ Annie asks Dolly at last.

  ‘Ah, now you’re talking.’ Dolly claps, delighted. Her pipe punctuates her sentences with little puckered sounds. ‘Hmm. This is what will happen. I want you girls here for one month. Working in my house. The pretty boy can stay too.’ Dolly looks over at Templeton. ‘I’ll find a way to make some use of him.’ She stretches out her hand as if to a shy dog. ‘I’ll keep you in food and drink. And I’ll see that no one else hassles you. But that’s it until you’ve paid off your debt. After that, we can talk.’