Dark Fires Shall Burn

by Anna Westbrook

  His mind slides wildly, thinking about Frances. He keeps coming back to one thought: he had never seen Jackie sweat like that. Not even after Bob Newham took a shot at him.

  FIFTEEN

  It is a windless morning when they bury Aunt Jo, only three days after Nancy found her cold in her chair. The June frost nibbles at exposed skin as they huddle at the open grave deep in the Catholic side of Rookwood. Nancy, daydreaming, had left her mittens on the train, and she tries now, as she gazes down upon the austere mahogany lid of Aunt Jo’s coffin, to bury her hands in the sleeves of her coat for some snatch at warmth. She shifts from foot to foot. It feels as though the priest has been talking for hours.

  ‘You look like a dancing Cossack thistle from Fantasia,’ Lily teases. She’s come back. She never liked Aunt Jo. She never liked Pinky, either. She was glad when Nancy’s mother announced she was going to let the Sisters of Mercy find a home for the little dog out on a farm. ‘I can’t take care of a dog as well as a child,’ Kate had said yesterday while going through Aunt Jo’s things. ‘Too much responsibility.’

  That means they’re going to drown him in a bucket of water, Lily had told Nancy cheerfully.

  ‘Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,’ recites Father Eoin, his palms moving up and down mechanically. He inflects upwards on the odd syllables of the liturgy, as if asking God a question.

  Kate Durand stands in the expensive mourning clothes she had worn to her husband’s funeral in absentia on a February scorcher, the day they dedicated the plaque. None of his mates had even been there because they were off at the war. And so it had been just her mother’s friends, and a greybeard soldier sent to be the official, and a rogue kookaburra laughing somewhere, maybe to say thank-you for the giblets.

  There are not many people at Aunt Jo’s funeral, either. Nancy knows her mother is not even listening to Father Eoin. She can see her looking through her veil into the canopy of gum trees, and then she whispers to Izzy. Izzy, her mother’s closest friend, is dressed à la mode, like all her mother’s friends from the thespian society, with their loud headscarves and drawn-on eyebrows. Nancy can barely tell them apart.

  ‘Requiescat in pace. Amen.’

  ‘Amen,’ they echo dutifully.

  After a few moments the priest opens his eyes, and that is their cue to disperse. With a word to Kate, each of the small group wanders away like dazed pigeons, and the gravediggers who have been leaning on their shovels off to the side, respectfully, move in. Behind her, Nancy hears the sound of earth yielding to the spades and raining down upon Aunt Jo.

  ‘What are you going to do now, love?’ Izzy frets, clutching Kate’s arm and petting it hard, as if this were a scene from another of their infernal plays.

  Kate murmurs, a little unstable on her feet. Nancy wonders if she’s already had a drink today, or if it is her high heels sticking into the turf.

  ‘Well, I just think that the best thing for it is for you to come and live with me, like I said the other day,’ Izzy carries on, her blonde waved hair bobbing earnestly about her chin. She turns to Nancy, who is trudging along behind. ‘The two of you, of course! How would you like that, honey?’

  Nancy shrugs. No, she would not like that at all.

  ‘Oh, poor little darling, you must be upset about your aunt, hmmm?’ An arm smelling of musk falls around her shoulders. ‘She was in the winter of her life.’

  ‘She wasn’t that old,’ Nancy mumbles.

  Izzy ignores her. ‘Just for a little while. Till the dust settles, what do you think?’

  ‘Izzy, we couldn’t. That is too kind.’ Kate flutters her gloved hand in front of her face politely.

  ‘Nonsense! It will get you both out of the doldrums.’

  Izzy Hickey, Nancy remembers her mother telling her, had an English fella during the war but he threw her over for an American nurse. She’d been beside herself when she found out. Almost a danger to herself, her mother had said. Whatever that meant. It sounded dramatic.

  ‘That’s lovely of you, but really, Nan and I will be quite comfortable for the meantime. What with John’s pension and the rest of it, we’ll be fine until I — oh well, who knows? Until I’m not feeling so out of sorts. Maybe we’ll even move back home. I’ve been thinking of it lately, even before Jo. And nothing to keep me here now. I’ve still got family there. And I miss the culture. The theatre.’

  Nancy stops walking at this news. What about Frances? What about school? Her whole life is here. She can’t let her mother go off on a harebrained plan to return to Ireland and take her too. It would be kidnap, surely. She sees dismay in the clench of Izzy’s forehead as well.

  ‘Ireland? Well, that’s drastic!’ Izzy says with a titter. ‘You shouldn’t make any decisions until you’re feeling better.’

  ‘No.’ Kate takes her arm. ‘No, you’re quite right. I’ve not been myself since … since — yes, you’re right. That was a good word for it. Since my doldrums began,’ she says. There is a strange, shellacked look of calm in her eyes.

  They walk in silence in the direction of the train station, passing other funeral processions grander than their party, with vanguards of horse-drawn coffins, dwarfed by wreaths of lilies and trailed by little boys in black suits and white bowties. Aunt Jo’s box had come in a plain van, and no one had brought lilies.

  As they approach the house, Nancy thinks glumly of the inescapable spread that Mrs Roberts would certainly have prepared: the raisin scones, ham sandwiches and pies. The horrible silence, the terrible pleasantries that awaited once they entered. But Mrs Roberts almost unhinges her front door upon hearing them arrive. She is carrying two covered baskets and deposits them on the step. A wrapped tray of cold veal chops slithers out of the wicker and comes to rest next to Nancy’s shoe. Mrs Roberts’ face is almost the same shade of milk-grey.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ Kate cranes her neck dramatically to see down the street. ‘I expected at least the rest of the neighbourhood would have come to pay their respects. Jo was an old Tartar but she was still a good person.’ She pulls off her gloves, exasperated, and looks with dismay at Mrs Roberts’ offerings. ‘I suppose now we’ll have food up to our ears.’ She finally gets the key in the lock and opens the door. ‘Let’s go inside. It’s too chilly out. Help me with bringing it all in at least, Izzy.’

  Once inside, they pile the food onto the table, making mounds of sausage rolls and sandwiches.

  ‘How are you, Mrs Durand?’ Mrs Roberts almost falls forward onto Kate to hug her and clasps a pair of plump hands around her shoulders.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Kate says primly, reaching to disentangle Mrs Roberts and step around her.

  ‘Oh but my love, have you heard the news? Today of all days!’ She is clearly in a flap.

  ‘Heavens, what could be the matter?’ Kate asks. ‘Are we at war with the Soviets?’

  ‘No, no, no. It’s more shocking.’ Mrs Roberts sounds despairing.

  ‘What is it?’ Izzy asks, darting forward to take Mrs Roberts’ palms in her own. ‘You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘What is all this about?’ Kate turns brusquely. ‘I have just buried my husband’s sister.’

  ‘Miss Hickey. Oh, Mrs Durand!’ begins Mrs Roberts. ‘Perhaps we should send Nancy to play in the other room.’ She takes Nancy’s face and strokes her beefy thumb over her temple. Nancy looks at her. There is a gravy stain on the undergirded hull of her bosom.

  ‘Mrs Roberts!’ says Kate, casting a look at Nancy. ‘Do be serious. Please. Tell us what is the matter at once.’

  ‘It’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. Lord have mercy!’ Mrs Roberts sits down heavily in a kitchen chair. She gropes for the opened newspaper in her wicker basket. A greying curl escapes from its pin and obscures her face.

  ‘What is it?’ Kate takes it from her.

  ‘You’ve not seen the papers?’

  ‘O
f course not. We’ve just come from a funeral. My mind has been elsewhere,’ Kate says icily. ‘I’ve had no time to read the papers.’

  Nancy watches her mother’s eyes skim the tiny print, and her face collapses. There is a pause as she meets Mrs Roberts’ eyes in understanding. Then: ‘Oh, Nan. Oh, my poor girl. Come here, my darling,’ she gasps, beckoning her over. Fear gushes through Nancy and she remains rooted to the square of green linoleum. Why does it concern her what’s in the newspaper?

  ‘What has happened?’ In frustration, Izzy takes the corner of the paper to turn the cramped headline towards her and then, when she reads it, puts a clenched hand to her lips. ‘How awful! Do you know the child, Kate?’

  ‘Come here, Nancy.’ Her mother beckons again, her eyes moist.

  But Nancy will not. She has the same feeling as when she walked home that night from speaking with those girls on Lennox Street: the sensation of having been snared by something she does not understand.

  ‘It’s Frances, isn’t it?’ Nancy says quietly. ‘She’s dead?’ The words fall rudely, impertinently, into air.

  ‘Honey, I’m so sorry,’ says her mother, her voice cracking. ‘They just found her yesterday.’

  ‘No!’ Nancy slams her hands to her ears. ‘No. No. No. No.’

  ‘Nancy, come here. Come with me, child. Come and have a drink and a sandwich,’ Mrs Roberts rises from her chair. The widow’s pink face looms at her, her kindly eyes pleading, the lines around them deep, as though made by a fork pressed into beeswax.

  ‘I don’t want a bloody hell sandwich!’ Nancy shouts. She has never cursed before, certainly not in front of her mother.

  Mrs Roberts opens her mouth in a shocked oh and retreats.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Roberts.’ Kate runs her hands through her hair, the colour leached from her face. ‘She gets her temper from John.’

  ‘Of course. It’s the shock.’ Mrs Roberts nods.

  ‘Show me,’ Nancy screams at her mother. ‘Show me the paper! I want to see what it says.’

  ‘No, baby.’ Kate shakes her head firmly, the paper crumpling in her fist. ‘You don’t want to read it.’

  ‘Give it to me!’ Nancy snatches it, tearing a corner from the broadsheet page, but her mother holds it tight.

  ‘No, no, no, honey. That’s enough. That’s enough now, bairn.’ Kate takes Nancy in her arms and keeps the paper out of her grasp. She presses her hands to Nancy’s ears and rocks her. But Nancy wriggles away and bolts upstairs, tripping on the landing and hitting her shin. Turning, she rips her black dress shoes off, bursting one of the little brass buckles, and hurls them. They hit the floorboards at the bottom of the stairs with loud clunks. She runs up the next set of steps, her bare feet slapping, and she starts to scream, louder than she’s ever screamed in her life, pounding on the sideboards. She throws open the door to her room and skids along her mattress headlong, her face ploughing into the pillow.

  ‘Oh, Frances,’ she says when she retrieves her breath, her whole body shaking.

  It was Aunt Jo’s fault. If she had only waited a few more days to die. Nancy knows it’s a nasty thought, but she doesn’t care. If Aunt Jo were alive, Nancy wouldn’t have missed another two days of school. She had not been back since she and Frances had run away together on the day of the infernal women’s trouble. She had not sat on the gate in the morning, as usual, swinging her sandalled foot, batting it idly against the fence post, always earlier than Frances. She had not been there waiting, waiting to greet someone who would never again arrive.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘All this fuss over one dead girl,’ Errol carps as he sprawls on Dolly’s sofa, idly stroking the English roses embossed on the wallpaper above his head. He takes a sip from the longneck under his arm, boots resting on the table, relishing the passive attention he commands.

  Annie and Sally are playing bridge with Roberta and Dolly, but no one is concentrating, and all are failing to remember the auction and neglecting to count. Snowy is pacing idly, and his restlessness and inability to sit down is like a serrated knife across Templeton’s nerves. Lorraine had declined cards and is, as she mentioned more than once, writing a letter to her sweetheart serving in London.

  ‘Hope he comes home and takes her away,’ mutters Dot as she stocks the stove in the corner with more wood and shuts the door, blowing on her hands.

  ‘It’s cold as a nun’s cunt in here,’ Errol says. He’s only in his shirtsleeves, the buttons undone to mid-chest, exposing a grayish singlet and a snarl of chest hair. The singlet leaves his tattoos on display: on his right bicep he boasts a roughhewn heart with a dagger buried in it, and on his left forearm a topless woman with lips and nipples filled in red.

  ‘Well, put some more clothes on, you daft bastard,’ Dot says. She does not shy from sparring with him. Templeton knows she’s aware he is unlikely to hit her — at least unlikely to go for her face, as he’d have to reckon with Dolly. ‘Watch out for the Scot. He is no good. The Szkoci, mean drunks, all of them,’ Dot had warned Templeton yesterday.

  Snowy takes a long drink from his tall bottle and Templeton watches the rise and fall of the powerful barrel of his ribs. Snowy looks at Errol and pops his knuckles one by one.

  They had all seen it in the papers: that dead girl in the cemetery, killer on the loose. Dolly had sat silent and lugubrious for an hour, sucking on her pipe. ‘It’s a shame. Bloody dog that did that!’ she says now, puffing away. ‘Somebody’s baby.’

  The questions are still turning over in his head. He does not know how long he slept out there so close to her body, dying or dead — no more than a solid hour, surely, two or three at most. He twitches with guilt.

  ‘I knew her,’ he says, before he realises.

  ‘Did you now?’ Dolly looks at him. ‘Poor boy! Come here.’ She lays down her pipe.

  He walks over warily. ‘Only a little.’

  ‘Baby killers on the streets.’ Dolly cups his chin in her hand, surprisingly gently, turning it to catch the incoming sunlight. ‘What happened to your hair?’

  ‘I … I got …’ he stammers. ‘I got it cut.’ He had ducked into a barber before he had come back to Palmer Street, paid for it with the last of his coin and told the old man to do his best. He had flinched something awful when the barber took out his razor and sharpened it. His face told the man not to inquire why his head was in the state it was.

  ‘No matter. Still handsome. Almost as pretty as your sister.’ She strokes his collar maternally. ‘I was pretty once too. Did you know?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He tries to stay still under her touch, but her thick rings drag sharply against his skin. He can see her handkerchief, sprinkled with a light mist of rose-coloured blood, stuffed down her cleavage.

  ‘I was adored once.’

  He nods, helpless, wiping his sweaty palms on his trousers.

  ‘Best looker in East London, they used to call me.’

  ‘Do you think the coppers will catch who did it?’ Templeton asks her, not knowing what else to say.

  ‘Ha!’ Dolly says with a snort, a glimmer passing across her face. ‘Most of the Sydney police force couldn’t catch the clap in a Shanghai whorehouse.’

  ‘I’m dreadful at this game. Let’s play something else,’ Sally huffs suddenly and throws her hand face-up on the table.

  ‘One dead girl.’ Errol seizes the chance to command attention again. ‘And the whole world’s fussin’. Not like it’s some great loss.’

  He is slurring, Templeton notices, which is a bit ahead of schedule. The hands of the mantelpiece clock are scarcely at four, next to the framed photograph of a much younger Snowy, in his uniform before he fought at Ypres. Wipers as he calls it, when he’s in his cups and in the mood to talk, and the picture shows him standing with his arm around a decades-younger incarnation of Dolly, directing her smile past the camera lens, her eyes peering fixedly into som
e radiant future.

  ‘I mean,’ Errol’s boots shoot out and his heels grapple with the floor, ‘all me mates that got mown down in Africa, or their heads blown off in Guinea by Jap bastards? Who’s makin’ a fuss? Who’s bangin’ a drum about them?’

  Snowy puts a hand on Errol’s shoulder. Templeton feels flushed, conscious of his bare scalp. Dolly’s attention has moved away from him, and he takes a seat further from the fire.

  ‘But one dead girl and suddenly everyone’s up in arms!’

  ‘Come on, now,’ says Snowy. ‘That’s enough, mate.’

  ‘One dead girl, violated, outraged, whatever she was. Fucked — that’s what those newsmen really mean.’ Errol snicks a match off the book with a chuckle. He stabs at a passage in the newspaper with his thick, blunt finger. Templeton feels sick. ‘What about all the tens of thousands of men, eh?’

  ‘Shut up, Errol! It’s different. She was just a child.’ Dot throws her cigarette into the stove and glares at him.

  Errol eyes the room, obviously itching for a fight. ‘No! No, I won’t shut up. So what, just a child? I lost five brothers before they turned ten years old. They were children. Where’s their article in The Sydney Morning bloody Herald?’ Errol slams the dregs of his longneck down his throat.

  ‘That man is uglier than a hatful of arseholes,’ Roberta says under her breath to Dot, pressing in close to her.

  ‘A mate of mine, just a young bloke, like a son to me — you listenin’? Just back from Changi. Well, he got into his car when he got home. Brand new car. Holden. Beautiful thing. And y’know what he did? Do you?’

  Dolly is absorbed in a mantle of smoke, eyes closed and the small, round lenses of her reading glasses precariously low-set on her nose. The girls at the table exchange glances. Snowy paces, irritated that he can’t nudge Errol off this well-worn track.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you. He put a hose in it from the tail pipe in through the front window and wadded up the gap with rags. Then he got in and sat down and started the engine. Bob’s your uncle. Left his missus and his newborn son.’ Errol burps and wipes the back of his hand across his mouth.