Ash Mountain

by Helen FitzGerald

  ‘You’re not size eight, are ya?’

  Tricia’s words made her inhale, probably a good thing. Screw teeny-tiny Tricia Gallagher, whose sheep-dipping injury had obviously been way exaggerated, no sling or bandage or nothing.

  Despite a curtain-opening malfunction, Fran exited the changing room with attitude and jeans: ‘They’re perfect, ta, I’ll take them.’

  They did not fit her. They had cost all her money. She had been unable to offset the outfit with the lavender off-the-shoulders Olivia Newton John top, even though it was on sale, and did not have a pair of suitable shoes. At the end of the small strip of shops, Fran began running. She would run all day every day between now and the Blue Light Disco. She would eat nothing but watermelon. She held off till the monument carpark, then cried while running all the way home, her terrible jeans swinging in her London Emporium bag.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Nine Days before the Fire

  Her dad had offered Brian Ryan Junior a lift home after that fateful Blue Light Disco, and just before arriving at this beautiful farmhouse, Fran had vomited in the back seat. Her zipper had burst at some point during the evening and blackberry nip bile was dripping all the way down her stomach. Her feet were bleeding, she had lost her dead mother’s shoes, and she did not want to be in a car with Brian Ryan Junior, nor look him in the eye ever again.

  The week after the disco, Brian Ryan Junior ran away from home to be a vegetarian, reappearing twenty-eight years later as a sad vegan with four children and a new name: The Captain.

  Seriously.

  Weirdo.

  She felt like vomiting now too. She should stop thinking about acid-wash jeans and just knock on the door. Thankfully, Vonny did it for her.

  Twin girls, around nine, answered, both wearing nothing but a large T-shirt.

  ‘Have you got any cheese?’ asked one.

  ‘Amy!’ said the other, before correcting: ‘You got any cheese, please?’

  A thirteen-year-old-ish girl, dressed in jeans and a short T-shirt, intervened, slapping the one who wasn’t Amy on the back very hard: ‘Scat! Sorry about them. Oi! Get off that! AMY!’ The girl disappeared to get Amy off something, and was immediately replaced by a sixteen-year-old girl. Fran wondered if girls might continue to appear this way all the way to ninety, and was beginning to understand their father’s new nickname. She wouldn’t be surprised if she soon heard a whistle.

  ‘Can I help you?’ This teenager had the apron, hair and joylessness of a Victorian farmer’s wife.

  ‘I’m Fran Collins, from next door, and this is my daughter, Veronica – Vonny.’

  Vonny said ‘hi’ as politely as she could, which was rudely. It was a relief that this girl –

  ‘Rosie,’ she said, no smile.

  – was even ruder.

  ‘Dad asked me to drop this off, so I’ll just pop it here, shall I?’ Fran was about to put the chainsaw on the ground and get the hell out of there when:

  ‘Fran! Fran Collins!’

  Guttural shards had turned out to be hereditary.

  ‘It is you!’

  A middle-aged man was standing in front of her. If she looked hard, she could see that his teeth were the same, but nothing else. He had been stretched and redrawn and it had turned out well.

  ‘Congratulations on keeping your hair,’ she found herself saying. Brian Ryan Junior had turned out to be a silver fox. He hugged her as if they were old friends, and she forgot the Blue Light Disco for a moment.

  ‘I’ve made fudge,’ he said. ‘Come.’

  They had no choice, so followed him into his vegan tree-changer’s kitchen. The fudge smelt good. The twins had been put in charge of icing it.

  ‘Rosie, take Vonny and get a handful of mint, yeah?’ said Brian Ryan Junior.

  Both girls looked horrified, which somehow spurred both adults to make this happen, no matter what.

  ‘Can I have your phone before you go, V, need to check something.’ Fran extended her hand, and Vonny met it slowly and with hatred. There was a slight tug of war, which Fran won, and the girls headed off to bond over herbs.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about something,’ said Brian Ryan Junior, shooing away his icing-covered twins and cutting a piece of fudge for Fran.

  That fudge! Perhaps Brian Ryan Junior would be The Captain to her from now on … The Captain.

  ‘I took a wedding booking for next Monday, from Emily Nelson.’ He was showing her a photo of a woman on his laptop. Blonde extensions and Botox, a Real Housewife of Melbourne type.

  Fran didn’t understand what he was talking about, and needed another piece of fudge. ‘Your little girls really seem to want some cheese,’ she said, keen to stick to food-related conversations.

  He sighed. ‘I know.’

  ‘I can get them some, if you like, it’d have nothing to do with you.’

  He thought for a moment then shook his head. ‘I’d never agree to that.’

  Fran shook her head and helped herself to another piece of fudge. ‘No, well of course you wouldn’t.’

  They smiled, the deal was done.

  He was showing her something, the woman on his laptop, that’s right. ‘I don’t get eyebrows these days,’ she said. This Emily woman’s were jet black and over-arched. ‘So she’s getting hitched in your shearing shed?’

  ‘Next Monday.’

  ‘And you’re telling me because…?’

  ‘Because she’s marrying this man.’ The Captain zoomed out to include the man on Emily’s arm.

  Fran was now looking at The Boarder. Thirty years on and he was exactly the same, but this was not a good thing. His hair should have greyed. His shoulders should have rounded. His smile should have altered. Blackberry nip – she could taste it, and it was rising. She put her hand over her mouth.

  The girls were back with the mint and it was clear neither were happy.

  ‘You going to the dance?’ The Captain said to Vonny, who was wanting her phone back, and to shoot Fran in the head.

  ‘The Blue Light Disco, in two hours, Rosie’s going. You could go together.’

  ‘So sorry,’ said Vonny, ‘I’ve got nothing to wear.’ She now looked like she wanted to shoot everyone in the head, with a machine gun.

  ‘Rosie has so many clothes!’ said The Captain. ‘Stay. You girls should get ready together. What do they call it? “Prees”? Pre-drinks. Non-alcoholic, obvs.’ He stared out his daughter, who was still wearing the apron and a very unhappy expression.

  Rosie had blinked before her dad, and was therefore required to play host to Vonny. ‘You wanna?’

  ‘Okay, cool,’ Vonny said, putting her hand out to retrieve the phone from her mother, then following her new friend to the bedroom.

  ‘Blue Light Disco?’ Fran said to The Captain.

  And this is what The Captain said to Fran: ‘They’re much safer these days.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Thirty Years before the Fire

  Her dad had done his best, but she could really do with a mum right now; a living one with bigger feet. After the London Emporium fiasco, he had been so upset for his little girl that he had entered The Shed of the Dead for the first time in ten years, which is when he’d packed his wife’s every belonging into boxes and locked the double doors. The shoes shocked Fran. High heels with sexy Italian names, like Amalfi by Rangoni and Silvia Fiorentina. Fran couldn’t imagine wearing anything like this, or being closely related to a dead woman who had. She had slept with one particular photo album from the age of five to ten, and realised she should not be surprised by the shoes. Her mother, Sofia Biagi, was North Carlton’s answer to Sofia Loren. She was a woman with curves, and had worn outfits to accentuate them.

  Fran had obviously inherited her father’s practical fashion genes. But not tonight. Tonight she was all over Sofia Loren. She hadn’t been to an event like this before, one with boys and music and no parents. It had been more than a year since the attempted gang-fingering episode and the arrival of the ostriches
, and it had taken a lot of apricot bottling to persuade her dad to let her go – she still had calluses on her hands from pipping those things. Having made the decision, they were both determined to make this the happiest night of Fran’s life.

  They decided on a pair of silver glitter shoes with a three-inch heel because they had an open toe, which might allow her extra size and a half to spill out. The jeans required a wire coat hanger and a lot of lunging from one corner of the bedroom to the other. She was moving a tad like Dame Miriam McDonald, in fact. Maybe that bird was just wanting to get into her jeans too. The top had been more difficult to sort, until her dad had a brainwave, taking a pair of scissors to the shoulders of a shrunken black t-shirt and announcing: ‘Oliva Newton Who?’

  She did look perfection – you could hardly see the zip strain at the very top of the jeans, not if she kept the scissored T-shirt in place, which would mean no arm-dancing, which would be fine, as Fran had never danced in public with her legs, let alone her arms. The only time all limbs had been on fire, along with everything else in her body and brain and soul, was in her bedroom with ‘Wuthering Heights’. It’s me, I’m Cathy… Freedom so dangerous it only existed behind a locked door. Kate herself had probably only pulled it off in that field cos there was security.

  Earlier, Fran’s dad had presented her with a bucket of reduced-price makeup from his chemist. He’d never let her wear makeup before, let alone brought her these colourful beauties in their clicking plastic cases. She organised them on her chest of drawers, by facial area, and then by colour. She opened and shut them, smelt and touched them: mascara, nail polish, dark-brown foundation. She was having a ball, and ended up deciding on green eyeshadow, liquid eyeliner, pink rouge and bright-red lipstick. Once she was certain she was truly perfection, she cat-walked into the lounge with aplomb: ta-da.

  Her dad pounced from his brown velour, moving-parts armchair. ‘By Jove, I think she’s got it!’ He then turned up the volume on his record player, waltzing a solo celebration to The Seeker’s ‘The Carnival Is Over’.

  ‘Honestly, Dad, that song?’ She kissed him goodnight. ‘At the beginning!’

  Heels in plastic bag, runners on feet, Fran took off down the driveway, waving back to her twirling, melancholic father before powering towards her town of Ash Mountain.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Day of the Fire

  GRAMPS

  There she went, running down that track again.

  ‘To dump Aron dial 0800 8001,’ someone on the telly was saying. ‘Or, if it’s Michelle you want to dump, add 2, that’s 0800 8002 if you want to say goodbye to Michelle. Who goes? You decide.’

  It was a difficult one. Michelle was cruel and wore bikinis. Aron was kind and did not bring anything to the party.

  The Drill was that he should do two things when asked to follow it: he should dial Triple Zero, and he should park his wheelchair in the middle of the hall because help would arrive. Help would arrive.

  He was never much of a rebel, only and often rebel-adjacent, but was already failing to follow The Drill. He was in his bedroom, looking out at the dust pit he had imprisoned himself in till the end of the world, which was now, apparently – it was even the end for this house, the safest in the Shire, nothing but brick and dirt.

  He was supposed to follow The Drill.

  ‘Hello Google,’ he said.

  Fran had installed the device the day after she arrived, along with many of her other suicide-prevention solutions, and had made him practise for over an hour.

  The machine was not responding. Oh, he remembered, he had to say hillo for hello and Boogle instead of Google. ‘Hillo Boogle,’ he said.

  ‘Hillo,’ replied Boogle.

  Outside was the hell he imagined he’d go to if he swallowed the pills. Armageddon was visibly and rapidly heading this way. The heat from the window panes hurt the parts of him that still felt, and he was surprised not to revel in it. For months he had prayed to feel anything, this … yes, give me agony, and yet he found himself pressing a button and moving away from the heat of the glass, away from the main attraction, the flames that were now visible outside, saying, Ha ha, I know, right? I told ya over and over, yet you were still, ‘She’ll be right.’

  ‘What is it like to burn to death?’ Gramps said to Boogle.

  It sounded bad, and Gramps found himself thinking of his medication, which was in the small bedroom, in a chest, locked.

  ‘Stop. Call Vonny,’ he said to Boogle, and was astounded when it worked. ‘Vonny, are you okay? Where? Vonny…’ He was cut off, and Fran was calling. She should hide in the monument, he said, praise the Lord he had something to say to his baby girl. ‘See you on the other side in fifteen. Go.’

  Boogle went dead, along with the lights and the telly.

  He was stoned. While his daughter was napping in the lounge, he had managed to retrieve the vegemite jar and attach a joint to the claw of the reacher grabber.

  That’s right, the world was on fire. The windows were rumbling. Tornadoes were flying into the enclosure. Miriam and Ronnie were going bananas.

  His wife’s ashes were in a pale-blue biscotti tin on the bookshelf in the hall. He parked his chair beside it and with his finger coaxed the tin until it balanced precariously between the shelf and his limpy knee. One wrong move and Sofia would wind up on the gold carpet. He made three carefully considered moves, each involving a finger wriggle and/or chair acceleration. He’d done it. Sofia would be with him.

  He made his way to the kitchen bench and removed the landline’s handset with his teeth, dropping it onto the tin in his lap. Having manoeuvred the chair to the correct angle, he was now able to complete part one of The Drill, by pressing the buttons on this mustard relic with his nose.

  From the kitchen bench he could see out onto the enclosure. Miriam was running harder and faster than she ever did when enticing Ronnie, which no-one would think possible.

  There was no fire in here, no flames near the phone, and yet the skin on his hand was changing.

  Gramps was impressed with the accuracy and speed of his nose-dialling.

  Outside he saw that Ronnie Corbett’s wing was smoking.

  He left the handset dangling from the counter and headed for the hall, where – according to The Drill – he should park himself until help arrived.

  ‘Thank you for your call,’ an automated voice was saying.

  But he was not parking his chair in the hall, he was heading for the door. He was using his teeth to open it.

  Where was Gramps Opens a Door when he needed it, Gramps Puts Out a Fire, Gramps Saves His Family? If he ever got this door open, it would be an agonisingly slow journey down the ramp to the ostrich gate, and so far he was unable to grip the smouldering lock with his teeth. He’d heard somewhere that most people are heroes in disaster situations, but that probably didn’t include people who could only open things with their teeth.

  He sacrificed his lips to grip the lock, and opened the door. As he left the house that he had built for his family, he heard a woman’s voice. It was coming from the dangling handset in the kitchen: ‘Thank you for your call,’ the voice repeated.

  And before the door slammed and the telephone lines toppled, he heard the rest: ‘You have voted to say goodbye to Aron.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Thirty Years before the Fire

  Fran stopped at the monument to replace her runners with the open-toe heels. She had a hand mirror in her bum bag, and looked herself over before dumping her shoes at the top of the tower and heading down the track. Blisters were well on their way by the time she stopped at the ten-foot-high, full-body statue of Bert Gallagher, erected to much furore, as he had killed himself due to losing all his money at the races. The debate regarding the statue’s erection had allegedly become more heated than the one involving the renaming of Massacre Gully.

  At the oval, she sat at Bert Gallagher’s feet and downed the blackberry nip she’d poured into her bottle. She gagged twice, jus
t managing to keep it down, then stood up as a confident Sofia Loren, who she would remain until she reached the double doors of the convent hall. She had friends waiting inside – of course she had friends – so there was no fear in pushing open the doors. Tricia, one of these friends, would be waiting for her in the foyer, as agreed. At the time, she didn’t realise how sad this was, that she hated her friend more than anyone in the world, and that her friend hated her even more, enough to say when she opened the door:

  ‘Told ya you’d need a ten! The zip’s bursting!’ Tricia was finding this so funny. ‘I can see your undies!’

  Sofia would probably have had something excellent to say back, but Fran was Fran again, her zipper wide open, she realised, her strawberry-themed briefs on show.

  Tricia and her two new friends – Tricia was really popular all of a sudden – continued to giggle as Fran gathered herself and made her way across the empty dance floor, wobbling in her heels at first, every bit forty-nine-dollars and ninety-nine cents. The dance floor was large and empty, yet another song of the unhappily privileged adding to the depressed vibe. ‘Down in Kokomo’, this one. She’d love the DJ to play Cher or Kylie, or something indicative of the empowerment of the times. Nowadays girls could be sexy if they wanted to be, like Fran was now in her acid-wash jeans, and they could be glamorous and angry too, if they wanted to be. The girls’ convent school, attached to this hall, had just closed forever. Thank God for that. The brothers’ college was cleaning up its act and taking in fifth and sixth-year girls after the summer. Fran was going to be one of twenty girls to go there, and the music was making her excited about it. Blue and red and white dots pinged all round, and by the time she reached the middle the DJ put on ‘Handle Me with Care’, a song she didn’t know well or particularly like, but it caused her to stop suddenly and fling off her heels, right there below the disco ball, the floor all hers to shapeshift the dots of light.