Fire in the Sea

by Myke Bartlett

  ‘Why do you want my number? I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘How modest. Mr Freeman was very grateful for your actions and, I can assure you, you’ll be handsomely rewarded.’ He was still fossicking about in his satchel. When this proved fruitless, he patted all of his pockets before finally finding his handkerchief. He mopped again at his shiny forehead.

  ‘What do you mean, rewarded?’ Sadie asked. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

  ‘Just your name and number. Under M, ideally.’

  Sadie scrawled her details on a page cluttered with addresses. ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Mr Freeman. Is he going to be okay?’

  ‘Oh. Didn’t I say? He died ten minutes ago.’ The lawyer’s voice and manner were all business. He took back his address book and put them in his satchel. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ He doffed his handkerchief as if it were a hat and left.

  Sadie didn’t see where he went. She could hear Tom saying her name but she wasn’t listening. Her throat was tight and, although she couldn’t be sure why, she felt guilty. She knew nothing about this man and now she never would. Did he have a family, a wife?

  Somewhere out there, she thought, someone would be waiting up for him.

  3

  SOME GREAT REWARD

  Uncharacteristically, Sadie’s grandmother let her sleep in. Any other morning, Ida would have knocked on the door at nine and then again at nine-fifteen and finally, at nine-thirty, would have come in and told her to stop wasting a beautiful day. She was a small, determined English woman who had never quite lost the bedside manner of a wartime nurse. Today, Ida woke Sadie only by accident, holding a conversation at the front door.

  ‘Is your granddaughter at home?’ a man’s voice asked.

  Sadie peered down the hall. Ida had the front door barely open. ‘I’m afraid she’s not available.’

  One of the two men stepped into view. He was young and clean cut, with a name badge pinned to his suit jacket. Sadie recognised him as one of the God squad that was forever cycling around town. She was grateful to her grandmother for fending them off. She’d been snared on the doorstep before. Sometimes she wondered if they sniffed her out, these religious types. Perhaps they caught an irresistible whiff of grief.

  ‘We’re setting up a new youth club. We’re even hoping to put together a netball team.’

  ‘I’m not sure she would be terribly keen.’

  The second man appeared from behind the door. He was pretty much identical to the first, except for his blond hair. ‘We’re committed to local young folk,’ he said. ‘Where does she like to hang out? Perhaps she’d prefer a film night?’

  Ida’s smile tightened into a polite, but firm line. ‘Thank you, but no.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll come back another time.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that.’

  The door clicked shut.

  Pushy, Sadie thought, even for door knockers.

  Turning back into the house, Ida saw her granddaughter peering out and gave her a smile.

  ‘I’ve just made a pot,’ she mouthed, in case the God squad were still listening. ‘Grandpa’s in the garden.’

  Sadie never had to ask where her grandfather was; the information was always offered. She wondered sometimes if Ida was simply keen to reassure her she hadn’t been abandoned. Not again.

  Opening the blinds, Sadie could see him with a shovel, digging up the lawn near the chicken coop. He was a tall, wiry man with a crest of white hair, as vigorous at eighty-nine as he had been at fifty. He said it was the tai chi classes he took three times a week on the Fremantle esplanade.

  Ida called out to Stan that Sadie was awake. Stan stopped digging out a patch of weeds, rubbed sweat and grit from his forehead, and waved.

  Sadie waved back, thinking of old Mr Freeman dying alone.

  Her parents had died together. Sometimes that was a comfort. They had been driving back from Christmas in the hills. The roads were steep and winding, shining with a rare summer shower. One minute Sadie was dozing in the back seat and the next she was woken in hospital by her grandmother.

  Since then, grief had always been with her, waiting for Sadie to think, say or hear the wrong thing. A remark, a tarot card—everything was booby-trapped, capable of setting her aflame.

  Still, she didn’t hide from it. She wanted to prove that she was strong enough to cope. So she studied hard and made no excuses, for herself or anyone else. She read her father’s history books and wore her mother’s dresses. Sometimes, a dress would release a trapped ghost of her mother’s perfume, or the grain of a dog-eared page would remind her of hiding under her father’s desk. In these bubbles of lost times, she was as close to them as she ever would be again.

  ‘Global bloody warming,’ her grandpa said, washing his hands at the kitchen sink.

  Sadie was reading the paper at the table, halfway through a triangle of buttered toast. She looked up, mouth full.

  ‘The television was saying this morning that everything’s getting cooler. Ask me, they should be spending more time out of their air-conditioned studio. Bloody stinking. Sixteenth day with no wind, I make it. Incredible. Those fires are still going too. Could smell them, wind or no wind. Still, some bugger will put them out, the days will cool and then we’ll all forget again, won’t we. When there’s no panic, everything seems too difficult, doesn’t it. More tea?’

  Stan had never done small talk. His conversations followed the headlines he stuck on the fridge—injustices and crusades: clippings of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Vietnam and Japan, mushroom clouds and detention camps. He had arrived in Perth fifty years ago, tired of post-war London, and had been arguing ever since. The house was full of old pamphlets, windows marked with faded stickers for women’s rights, Korean flags and anti-nuclear marches. One of Sadie’s earliest memories was holding his hand at a protest rally. How proud she had felt, standing up for something, even if she wasn’t sure what it was.

  Cold water hissed in the kettle as Stan frowned across at her. ‘Your nan says there were some nutters at the door, asking for you. We’re not losing you to some cult, are we?’

  Sadie mimed affront. ‘No way, the great spaghetti monster in the sky would never forgive me.’

  ‘Quite right.’ He gave her a wink. ‘It would take a lot for you to disappoint me Sadie, but that might just do it.’

  Never, Sadie thought. ‘Is this a good time to mention my new tattoo?’

  Stan’s laugh rattled the spices in the pantry. The kettle began to murmur. Sadie realised her grandfather was watching her.

  ‘That was a brave thing you did last night,’ he said.

  Sadie couldn’t quite look at him. ‘I didn’t do anything, not really.’

  ‘It gives me hope, you know. That this world has people like you in it. People who do what’s right.’ He jabbed a finger at the newspaper, at a picture of some politician. ‘Shame it’s also full of idiots like him. Have you read that yet?’

  Sadie shook her head, listening. She was glad to move on to a conversation that wasn’t about last night.

  An hour passed over the morning paper and then there was an empty afternoon in front of her. She wasn’t sure she could stand another day with her cousins. Before she realised it, Sadie was staring at the wall, thinking of last night. Of the lithe figures standing over Mr Freeman. And the demonic masks they wore.

  There was still no breeze. The beach was infested with tourists dragging themselves from their towels to the surfless sea. Swinging her leg off her bike, Sadie looked out towards the horizon, where a convoy of cargo ships waited. It had occurred to her that there might have been a small boat moored a short distance off shore. The assailants might have swum out there. Now, in the glare of the afternoon sun, it seemed unlikely. She would have seen a boat in the moonligh
t, seen the attackers come up for air.

  But what other explanation was there?

  Sitting in the patchy shade of a Norfolk pine, Sadie wondered if she had just imagined the whole thing.

  When she got home, there was a car she didn’t recognise in the drive. An old grey Jaguar. Her grandparents were both in the lounge, as was Mr Frobisher who was sitting in Ida’s armchair, sipping tea. He was wearing the suit he had worn the previous night and he looked just as overheated. Stan sat in his own armchair, frowning. No one was saying anything.

  ‘This man tells me you’ve met. He says he’s a lawyer,’ Stan said.

  Frobisher stood up, brandishing a manila folder. ‘This is a will, made last night by Mr Jacob Freeman in the minutes before his death.’ He proceeded to rattle off the names of witnesses and legal jargon that Stan, Ida and Sadie ignored. They were waiting for the point.

  Frobisher opened the folder and held it out to Sadie. She wasn’t sure if she should take it.

  ‘You’ll notice your name and address. Mr Freeman was most insistent.’

  Ida put a hand lightly on Stan’s arm and smiled at the lawyer. ‘Has he left Sadie something, Mr Frobisher?’

  Sadie read the document in front of her. She found her own name and kept skipping between it and the man’s name, trying to make the connection. Jacob Leonard Freeman. Sadie Veronica Miller.

  ‘No,’ she said. She felt at once strangely weightless and incredibly heavy. ‘He’s left me everything.’

  ‘What?’ Stan was on his feet.

  ‘Conditionally,’ Frobisher said quickly, mopping his brow as he peered up at the sinewy man standing over him. His manner had been officious and, Sadie thought, somewhat superior. Now, in the shadow of her grand-father, Frobisher seemed suddenly small.

  ‘And what does that mean, conditionally?’ Stan demanded.

  ‘Mr Freeman has no known family. He has been estranged from all his relatives for at least fifty years. As far as we know, there are no living descendants. However, should any next-of-kin make themselves known, the inheritance will pass to them.’

  ‘Ridiculous. That makes no sense whatsoever.’

  ‘Mr Miller—’

  ‘Mr Greene. Stanley Greene. Sadie has her father’s name. Don’t go jumping to conclusions unless you want to look like an idiot.’

  ‘Stan,’ Ida said again, calmly but with enough force to make him sit down.

  The lawyer continued: ‘If no family member makes a claim within the next twelve months, all belongings will pass to Miss Miller in perpetuity.’

  ‘Why not wait twelve months then?’ Stan asked. ‘Why tell her now? In three weeks, she’ll have school to worry about. Exams.’

  Frobisher seemed tired of questions. He snapped the latches shut on his satchel. ‘There are responsibilities attached. Mr Freeman didn’t want to leave his house or belongings unattended. It’s all in the documentation. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’

  Without waiting to be excused, Frobisher left. He barely looked at Stan, but Ida saw him to the door.

  Sadie was staring at the will, waiting for it to make sense, and then she saw the address: 1 Ocean Street, Cottesloe. A house. Right on the coast. She had a feeling she knew exactly which house it was.

  It seemed impossible. She looked at her grandfather. ‘He left me his house,’ she said.

  Stan stood up and snatched the will off her. ‘You don’t need this,’ he said, carrying it away to the study. ‘None of it.’

  4

  OCEAN STREET

  It was possibly the biggest and certainly the oldest house in Cottesloe. Three storeys of worn limestone and greying timbers. In front of it there was nothing but a vacant lot, the coastal road and then endless sea.

  Every other house on the steep street was immaculately maintained but this one had been decaying for decades. Long, brown grass grew in patches behind a half-collapsed picket fence. Every window was coated with dust, and leaves from several seasons past stuffed the sagging gutters.

  Sadie had been right about which house it was. She had often stopped her bike on the beachside path to admire its sagging grandeur. Now she stood on the pave- ment with her grandparents, pulling at the strap of her mother’s handbag, and waiting for Frobisher. She wondered if he was late, or if there were legal complications. Part of her hoped there were, that all of this would come to nothing.

  Stan had one foot on the first of three steps that led to a short garden path. He stared up at the house as if staring it down. Ida looked from his back to Sadie and smiled. Sadie couldn’t quite manage to smile back.

  There had been no relatives at the funeral that afternoon. It was held at a squat brick crematorium on the outskirts of Fremantle. The director, a tall man in a narrow suit, read through the service with care. There were no eulogies. Frobisher had hurried in at the last minute, sweating in a black suit and already looking at his watch.

  Now he arrived at Ocean Street in a taxi, carrying his satchel and a large brown paper bag.

  ‘Good good, you found the place,’ he said, pushing past Stan to make his way up the crumbling brick path. He shoved his satchel in an armpit while he checked through a dozen keys. He tried each one in the door, with diminishing patience, then tried each again, with more effort. Finally, the lock crunched and he shoved the door open onto a dark, cool hallway.

  Sadie waited.

  Ida frowned. ‘Sadie?’

  ‘If we’re going in, we’re going in,’ Stan said.

  Sadie wasn’t sure why she felt so hesitant, as if crossing the doorstep was going to change something.

  ‘Sadie?’

  She turned to her grandmother. It wasn’t the moment, she decided, for opening up. She puffed out her chest. ‘If anyone finds any coins down the back of any armchairs, they’re mine, okay?’

  Off the hallway was a large living room with burgundy drapes, a Persian rug, an armchair and a broad oak desk. Two walls were lined with bookshelves, the others crammed with paintings and old photographs. In a gilt frame was a painting of a young woman in old-fashioned dress, buttoned up to the chin. She was quite beautiful, Sadie thought, with her dark eyes glaring across the room.

  Next there was a dining room adjoining a kitchen. A half-drunk cup of tea was left on the bench.

  On the second floor there were six bedrooms, only two with beds. Of the rest, three were empty and the other was a junk room, its tall shelves piled with odds and ends. There were six filing cabinets, drawers open and contents spilling onto the floor. The bathroom had a clawfoot bath and the wall tiles were yellowed like a smoker’s teeth. There was a single toothbrush in a glass by the basin.

  These small signs of the former occupant upset Sadie. One day, would a stranger be poking through her things, knowing nothing of their significance?

  In each room, Ida would coo twice: once at the size and once at the condition. Stan would note some design or structural flaw—damp perhaps, or subsidence— and shake his head. To Sadie, the house was a curiosity, but it didn’t quite seem real.

  The attic was better kept than any of the other rooms, although a similar number of pictures cluttered the walls. Stan peered intently at black-and-white portraits of fighter squadrons, perhaps thinking he might recognise a face. A number of the portraits were of the ancient Greeks, and there were busts of heroes and gods and monsters on the mantelpiece. Sadie recognised Zeus, Kronus and Poseidon.

  Beside these, balanced on the corner of the ledge, was a dark wooden box that might have been a cigar case. The grain felt warmer than Sadie expected in this cold house. With half-hearted interest, she lifted it and attempted to prise the lid loose. When it refused to budge, she put it back on the shelf.

  Sadie.

  ‘Sorry Nan?’

  Ida shook her head. ‘I didn’t say anything, love.’

&
nbsp; Strange. Sadie thought she had heard her name, as clear as a tap on the shoulder. She turned, ready to accuse a suit of armour standing dusty in a corner. Mounted on a wall were swords of all kinds—cutlasses, broadswords, scimitars, katanas. Beside these were parchment maps of worlds that no longer existed. Monsters no longer waited in unknown seas. Other shelves were filled with clocks and strange artefacts.

  ‘It’s like a museum,’ Sadie said, ‘of weird and useless things.’

  ‘Well, useless or not, they’re all yours,’ Ida reminded her.

  Stan didn’t look away from the photo in front of him.

  ‘I don’t want them,’ Sadie said.

  But then she looked out on the Indian Ocean stretching before her from Fremantle Harbour to Scarborough Beach. The sunset had painted a prizewinning blaze of orange and pink across the well-hazed blue.

  She couldn’t help herself. A little thrill ran through her. A spark of happiness. Something was finally happening to her.

  Then she heard Frobisher yelling.

  Sadie sprinted down two flights of stairs and found the lawyer on the other side of the rear screen door. He had gone out into the backyard, where a dog had found him and sunk its teeth into his arm. It was a tan and white bulldog, with a face like an unmade bed.

  ‘Bloody thing! Down! Get down!’

  Sadie pulled open kitchen drawers one after another until she found a rolling pin. No sooner had she opened the back door than the dog released its grip on Frobisher and went for her instead. As its mouth opened for her bare arm, Sadie shoved the rolling pin in. The beast bit down on the end and pulled.

  ‘Sit you stupid thing!’ Sadie commanded. ‘Sit!’

  Her boots were beginning to slide, along with the straw doormat on the veranda.

  ‘You’re wasting your time,’ Frobisher shouted. ‘He was the only one it ever listened to. The thing’s a menace. Should be destroyed.’ He held up his ragged sleeve. ‘This suit was tailored by Anderson and Sheppard!’ he barked. The dog’s growls and huffing were becoming increasingly aggressive. But it soon tired of its tug of war, let go of the rolling pin and went for Sadie’s legs.