Dark Fires Shall Burn

by Anna Westbrook

  ‘Go. Away.’

  That’s what you look like.

  ‘Go away!’

  Make me, Lily says and dances on tiptoes, her face suddenly grotesque, like a carnival mask.

  Nancy runs into a woman walking towards her. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbles.

  ‘Watch where you’re going, miss,’ the woman says angrily.

  Ha ha ha. Lily contorts herself. They’ll put you in Callan Park Mental Hospital.

  ‘They will not! They don’t put children there.’

  They do if they kill someone. Bet you that’s where they’ll send you. Or to the gallows. They hang women too, you know. Murderesses.

  ‘I’m not listening to you anymore.’ Nancy walks the rest of the way home with her fingers jammed in her earholes, ignoring the perplexed looks of passers-by.

  She charges through the front door, planning to go straight up to bed, but the sight of the house causes her to halt. Everything is different. Her mother, made-up and dressed, is wrapping crockery in newspaper and packing it away into boxes. She would have been careful not to use any paper showing Frances, Nancy knows before she even sees the dark spidery print crunched up around a serving platter.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Nancy tries to sound calm. ‘Where’s Izzy?’ Izzy had been around every day lately.

  ‘Oh, thank God you’re home. I was starting to get quite worried. Izzy left hours ago. Where have you been? I asked you not to go out anywhere without telling me.’

  ‘I was just out playing on the street.’

  ‘Well, I’m packing up. Getting a headstart, at least. Most of this is going to auction. We simply won’t be able to take it on the ship.’

  ‘We’re not really going!’

  ‘Yes. We are. Nan, what did you think? That I was joking?’

  ‘But not now! Not when we still don’t know.’ Nancy chokes on the gross unfairness of it all.

  ‘When we still don’t know what?’

  ‘Who killed her. When we still don’t know who killed her!’

  ‘Nan, sweetheart. The police are looking. But we may never know that.’

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Nancy hisses, furious.

  ‘The sooner we put this all behind us, the better, as they say.’ Kate’s mouth is determined. ‘Iced tea on the table if you’d like some.’

  ‘I can’t believe you are giving up. Why is everybody giving up? No one even tried!’

  ‘Giving up? Don’t be ridiculous. What can you or I possibly do?’ Kate looks Nancy in the eye before turning away. ‘Now. That’s enough of that kind of talk. I need to get organised. The auctioneer needs to evaluate what is going to sale, and what’s … oh, I don’t know. What’s going in the bin, I suppose. You look frightful: you’re covered in muck. Take those socks off to give me to wash. Why don’t you go upstairs and draw yourself a bath?’

  Nancy stands at the foot of the stairs, feeling as if she is about to throw up. This is not happening. She wants to howl and kick and bite.

  Aunt Jo’s room is already cleared out, the space suddenly huge. How quickly one moment of time is overwritten by the next, and what trace is left? Not even a ghost in the wallpaper. The people who live here next will never know Aunt Jo, never know she died quietly right there in the corner. Nancy shivers, remembering the stiff form in the rocker and Pinky yapping at her blue feet.

  Passing the door to her mother’s, she sees the room already half-packed, the rest in disarray. Empty glasses rest in rings of condensation, cluttering her vanity and bureau tops. Nancy examines the perfume bottles. Her mother never bought Joy again, and swore for years she could still smell the rose and jasmine soaked into the floorboards.

  She picks up the bottle her mother uses now, Yardley’s English Lavender, and twists it open to breathe in the scent. Then she sees a small box at the foot of the bed. Nancy picks it up and shakes it. It is locked. Something heavy rattles inside. A leather-bound pouch of keys lies on the table. She tries key after key. After three or four attempts, a large brass one twists obligingly and the lid springs open.

  The box is lined with green velvet, and sitting snug in the custom-made depression is a handsome pistol. She stares at it, breathing deeply. Careful not to touch the trigger, heart suspended in the roof of her mouth, she takes out the gun: her father’s. She flicks the curlicue at the top of the barrel and it pops out to the side. There are five empty sockets and one bullet in a chamber. She closes the box and locks it, leaving it exactly as she found it.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Templeton carefully rinses clean each skull and arranges it on the ledge in the cliff descending in size order from possum to mouse. He sweeps the rest of the bones into one box and takes it further back up the cliff to the scrub, where there is not just sand and rock but soil, and partially buries it.

  His skulls watch him eyelessly as he sits smoking on the cliff, as close to the edge as he dares. He likes to peer down at the dark green spume and make himself giddy with flirtation.

  There was a picture of a mushroom cloud today in the papers, and copies sold like hotcakes. The Yanks are testing bombs on Bikini Atoll to scare the Soviets, apparently. He’d never heard of the place, but he’d been more than slightly relieved to learn it wasn’t off the coast of Sydney. The news said that people’s flesh had melted off their bones in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Wasn’t that a good-enough test for the Americans?

  ‘We will all be dead before we know what hits us,’ one man, on his way to platform two, had said dourly. ‘I can’t see the point of worrying about it.’

  Even so, Templeton is in good spirits. He has money in his pocket — another three pounds to add to the first — and he is starting to think of what he should save for. A new suit, certainly, and a silver cigarette case with his initials embossed on the side, and a hairpin for Dot, or perhaps a brooch. Screw Annie and Sally.

  On the tram back from Bondi, he marvels at how little people care that bombs are blowing up in the Pacific, as though it were happening on another planet. Everyone going about their daily business. There are rainbow lorikeets in Paddington, darting like green missiles, breasts ablaze in sunset colours, waiting to shriek his arrival as he rounds the gate at Tipper’s place on Glenmore Road.

  Bob Newham stands across the road in case of any troublemakers, a favour he’s been doing for Tipper these past couple of nights, and he pats the bulge in his jacket where his Colt sits in its holster. ‘What they call a man-stopper,’ Bob says.

  Nellie and Dot are downstairs, drinking and smoking and listening to 78s in the parlour. He could hear ‘What a Little Moonlight Can Do’ from outside. There is a piano in the corner for folks to play if they fancy, but he’d heard no one except Tipper take a crack at it. Tipper loves nothing better than to tell the story of when, ‘wet behind the ears’, as she describes herself, she’d followed a girl to Chicago in the early Thirties and ended up bouncing at a jazz club in Kansas City.

  ‘Deal me in.’ Templeton draws up a chair to the table where Dot and Nellie are playing Blackjack.

  ‘Shilling gets you in.’ Nellie barely looks up, and sounds ill-tempered. Judging from the pile of money at Dot’s elbow and the diminutive stack of coins at Nellie’s, she is losing badly.

  ‘Spot me?’ Templeton asks Dot. ‘You look like you’re flush.’ He doesn’t want her to know that he’s got his own coin and have to explain where it came from.

  ‘Here you go, you little bludger.’ Dot laughs. ‘Good fortune smile on you. I want that back!’

  They play a few rounds, Nellie getting steadily drunker, and Dot not far behind. Winning is easy.

  ‘Dot?’ He’s been meaning to ask and he’s got his pluck up tonight. ‘Have you heard from Annie?’

  It’s Dot’s turn to deal and she throws the cards roughly, cutting them on the table and then in half again. ‘Have you seen her walk in here?’ she says curtly, and
he can hear that the subject is closed for discussion.

  ‘I mean, has she sent a message or … anything?’ he ventures nevertheless.

  ‘She’s a piece of work, if you ask me,’ Nellie chimes in. ‘I know she’s your sister and all, Lucky, but her and Jack Tooth are made for each other. What a pair!’

  ‘Nell,’ Dot warns.

  ‘What? Well, she is. What does she expect? To go turncoat on you both. Leave you to look after the lad — her own brother?’

  Templeton bristles. ‘I can look after myself.’

  ‘Don’t make any money though, do you?’ Nellie shoots back. ‘It’s us that feeds ya.’

  ‘Nell, leave him alone.’

  ‘I just wanted to know if she’d sent any word, that’s all, to see how we were.’

  ‘No, Aniołku. She hasn’t.’ Dot lights a wilted cigarette. ‘Roberta neither,’ she adds as an afterthought.

  A tapping on the side door interrupts them and Bob steps through, showing in two men and a woman. ‘Pardon me. Is Ms Tipper here?’ the taller man asks, looking about like an inquisitive bird. He must be at least six-foot three, Templeton thinks, and he’s well built, with an unusually long and graceful neck.

  ‘We’re old friends,’ says his smaller companion, a wiry, olive-skinned Balt or Greek, who takes off his jacket and hangs it on the stand by the doorway as if he does so all the time. He loosens his tie and takes a seat. His companion rocks back and forth on his brown wingtip Oxfords, palms turned outward and thumbs stretching his trouser pockets.

  ‘Are you? I’ve never seen you before,’ Bob says, but his tone is not unfriendly.

  ‘Oh yes. Way back. I knew it when this place was her father’s — old Lionel Tipper,’ says the Greek. ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘No, mate. Never had the pleasure.’

  ‘So it’s Else’s now, is it? After they lost Lionel Jr at Fromelles?’

  ‘I suppose it is.’ Bob claps his hands together. ‘But she’s not in.’

  ‘Oh well, perhaps we’ll wait then. In the meantime we’ll all take sherry, thank you,’ the tall one says with a nod at Bob.

  Bob looks at him for a long moment before loping off, muttering, to bring a bottle. Dot and Nellie fold their cards, intrigued by the newcomers.

  ‘Six glasses!’ the tall man calls out to Bob. ‘If you ladies would care to join us? I beg your pardon; ladies and gent.’ The tall man has striking eyes: the colour of the sea at Bondi in the morning, Templeton thinks.

  ‘Don’t mind if we do.’ Nellie holds up her drink.

  ‘Cheers!’ their female companion proposes, once they all have drinks. She is a real knockout: black curls set in fat corkscrews and a high, tiny waist cinctured by an emerald-coloured belt around rolling, even curves.

  ‘But what should we cheers to?’ Dot asks.

  ‘To new beginnings,’ the Greek says and stretches a hand across the woman’s shoulders.

  ‘New adventures,’ the woman says with a smile, arching her back.

  ‘Sláinte!’ Nellie smiles.

  ‘Yamas.’

  ‘Have you known Tipper long?’ Nellie asks the tall man. ‘I’ve been here since ’44 and I don’t think we’ve met. I would’ve remembered.’ She winks. Templeton rolls his eyes; she’s flirting, just as she had with Errol.

  ‘We go way back,’ the man says again. ‘She’s a very gracious hostess. She knows how to accommodate … all kinds of different tastes. She has what you might call an affinity with the uncommon.’

  ‘A soft spot for perverts, more like it,’ Nellie says. There is silence for a moment. Then Nellie hoots: ‘Lucky for us woofters and bastards who like a bloody drink!’

  The table breaks out in relieved amusement.

  ‘Another round! Another round, barkeep, if you please,’ Nellie yells, but Bob has peeled away outside so she pours from the bottle herself.

  Templeton shifts in his seat. He strains to finish the first drink and then stares gloomily at the next one as she pours it. He doesn’t like sherry. It leaves a burning, sugary trail down his throat.

  ‘Well, that’s precisely why we’re here, now that you come to mention it. What we’re looking for is a certain kind of, ah — show — that we’ve had here once or twice before.’ The Greek looks over at Dot. ‘Although it was rather a while ago.’ He leans and whispers something in her ear. Dot’s eyebrows raise and she crosses and uncrosses her legs below the table. He pulls out a thick stack of bills from his money clip and places it casually next to the ashtray. Nellie and Dot look at it, practically licking their lips like cartoon wolves, Templeton thinks.

  ‘I think we can provide what you’re after.’ Dot clears her throat. ‘Bob will make sure that we’re not interrupted. Lucky, run outside and tell Bob there will be no more visitors tonight.’

  Nellie walks over to the side bureau and pulls out a candelabrum. ‘Give me your matches, Dot.’

  But Dot is intercepted by the tall man, who is quick to draw his own matchbook, and soon five candles burn lustily. ‘Most excellent,’ he says.

  ‘If you say so.’ Templeton gets up from the table and turns the lamps down for them. He takes a half of gin from the shelf and pockets it, grinning crookedly. ‘We’ll want something to keep the cold out.’ He puts his hat on. ‘G’night, then. Enjoy yourselves.’

  ‘No. You can stay.’ The tall man reaches a hand towards him, brushing the front of his shirt.

  Templeton looks to Dot. ‘Well …’ she hesitates. ‘Stay if you want, I suppose, Lucky. But he doesn’t have to do anything if he doesn’t want to,’ she says to the tall man, who nods his acquiescence. ‘We’ll just go and freshen up,’ she tells the strange trio.

  Templeton goes out to give the gin to Bob with his orders and returns to find the Greek and the woman whispering excitedly in low voices. The Greek is stroking her cheek. They must be a couple.

  ‘How long have you been here at Tipper’s?’ the tall man clears his throat to ask him, as he folds into the empty chair beside him.

  ‘Uh — a little while. Few days,’ Templeton answers through another unpleasant mouthful of sherry.

  ‘Hmm.’ He nods. ‘Fresh.’

  ‘I don’t work for her, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Templeton picks at his packet of cigarettes, making little white scratches on the cover with his fingernails.

  ‘Of course not. I didn’t mean to imply …’

  ‘Good. Because I’m not — that’s not what I — I’m my own man, is all. That’s what I’m saying. I work for myself.’ Templeton turns pink. He realises he sounds like an idiot. He sees that the couple have stopped fondling each other and are looking at him keenly, as though they find him entertaining.

  ‘You’re very good-looking, you know,’ the woman says. ‘Very androgyne.’ She takes a sip of her drink. ‘A little young.’

  The Greek seems to approve. ‘Not for Berlin though, back in the day. Not for Paris.’ He casts a sly eye at his friend. ‘They like them young there. Young and beautiful.’

  ‘Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.’ The tall man turns the warmth of his smile upon Templeton.

  Dot and Nellie come back down wearing only robes, Nellie’s long hair loose. They pick up the saffron chaise longue and drag it towards the table. Templeton can smell the gusts of Tabu they’ve put on. Nellie points a practised smile at the couple and then turns to Dot, who puts a hand on Nellie’s bare brown thigh and turns to face her. Nellie smirks at her, and Templeton can see Dot about to laugh before she regains composure.

  They kiss, tentative at first, with their lips closed, but then Nellie’s hand slides up to Dot’s face and their mouths open. Templeton sees their tongues. Dot kisses Nellie’s neck and her head lolls back. She licks her throat, and Nellie’s legs part. Dot’s hand moves up and down. The Greek and the woman lean forward, their limbs still intertwined. Dot slips her hand into
her mouth and sucks on her fingers. Nellie makes a sudden low groan. She takes Dot’s fingers out, licking them herself, and shoves them roughly down between her legs.

  Templeton sneaks a glance at the tall man. He is looking at what is happening on the chaise but disinterestedly, as if watching a horse race he hasn’t bet on. The couple’s cigarettes are burning down to twin red circles. And the woman is breathing heavily; Templeton can hear her from his seat.

  ‘Keep going,’ the Greek says, somewhat hoarsely, and the woman swallows and nods in agreement.

  ‘Do you want to see me make her take her pleasure?’ Dot asks them. She’s acting, Templeton knows she is, but he looks away, bashful. He doesn’t think Nellie is acting. She is quite naked, her robe long flung on the floor, and is enjoying herself vocally. Dot still has her robe mostly about her, for which Templeton is thankful. He clears his throat, wondering if he can make a swift escape. Dot slides off the chaise and throws Nellie’s thighs open, moving in close and putting her tongue in the shadow between them.

  Just as he is about to sneak away, he feels the tall man’s hand on his thigh under the table. The man looks at him with a question in his eyes.

  Templeton stands up awkwardly, a little too suddenly, and leaves the room to get some whisky. He’s not sure how this works. The memory of the man at the fountain rises involuntarily and stirs him. He dawdles at the shelves, hoping it will soon be over. But Nellie’s moans are too regular and show no sign of reaching a climax. They must be trying to stretch it out and give them their money’s worth; Templeton knows enough to know how it works.

  He pours a tumbler and downs it before he returns with the bottle. ‘Do you want a glass?’

  ‘This’ll do me fine, for starters.’ The man takes the bottle from him and necks it, eyes on Templeton before he looks away. ‘I need a stiff one.’

  ‘What? You don’t like it?’ Templeton says conspiratorially, gesturing at the show.

  ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t say that. I wouldn’t say that. Just not my cup of tea, exactly.’