The Great Fire

by Shirley Hazzard

  When he’d read, he got up holding the two pages, and walked from one room to the other, from need of movement; unable to act on responsibilities now identical with passions. Against all reason, she must move ever farther from him, at benefit to no one and at drastic cost to them both. Her youth, which kept them apart, scarcely existed in the face of such a letter. One year ago she had been the quaint little mermaid first mentioned by Ginger, odd product of neglect and intuition: the changeling. Who now wrote from the crucible of adult suffering.

  When her parents were settled in that far archipelago, he would ask them to release her. He must speak to his mother, he would write to Bertram Perowne. He would write to Helen, and sat at once to do so.

  GEORGE LAISTER’S WHEELCHAIR was of poor quality and governmental issue. On one leg he had an artificial foot in a boot of unrelieved blackness. On the other leg, his trouser was turned down over the amputation. His hair was white and freshly washed, he was shaved and neatly dressed. Had been, like the room itself, put in order for the visit.

  He said, “Good of you to come”—not meaning it, not meaning anything.

  Leith said, “I should have come long since. I’ve been away, but should have known.”

  Dick Laister brought a chair. He left the room, closing the door and shooing away a woman who’d been standing, agog, in the hallway.

  Leith said, “It was seeing Dick come in, with the wood, my first day home.”

  “Put you in mind? They like to say, the old days, good old days. They weren’t that good. We were worked to death. There was the first war, and the Depression. Decent people begging in the streets. Then this showdown.” Dismissive gesture to his feet. “Dick’s not on for that, he’s going away.”

  “He’s going away to learn.”

  “We’ll see what comes of it.” He said, truculent: “I’m not much company, I know that.”

  “Would you come over, George, if I picked you up one day? Before Dick goes off. We could work it out.”

  “We’ve only got a Land Rover here, I can’t get into it. Besides, there isn’t the petrol.”

  “I’d fix all that. Get you out a bit when the good weather comes. Get you to the sea.”

  “‘Twas the sea did for me.”

  “Come on, George, I’m not being Lord Bountiful, I need a bit of rehabilitation myself.”

  “I know you got hit. You got over it, though.”

  Leith laughed. “What do you know, as to that? I only mean, I’ll be glad of the spring.” He said, “I know that your wife died.”

  “On top of all.” Still surly: “Your father’s gone. Will you take over?”

  “I have to find out what that means. I’ve written a book and must be busy with it awhile.”

  “He wrote books, too, your dad. Never took much note of me.”

  “Or of me, I sometimes thought. That, too, I must work out.”

  Dick Laister came back. Leith got up.

  George shook hands. “You’ll be glad to go, I’m no company”

  “I’ll come back, if you’ll let me.”

  “I woonder.”

  Dick said, “Come and have tea.” They stood in the corridor. “No fun, I know.”

  “I think we can do something for him, change the picture a bit.”

  “He’s hard to help. But, yes, the atmosphere’s no good here.”

  “We can talk about it.”

  There was a long communal room, dated without being picturesque: evidence of toil, where women had aged over blackened pots and sodden laundry, setting down endless thick meals to men who struggled in from fields and animals. A place of glum silences, occasional harsh laughter, endurance; some brutality. On the turn for change. Two labourers, sinewed, sardonic, were warming themselves by a stove, one tall, one short. Both had clearly been soldiers. These were Dick’s cousins, who grunted in Leith’s direction and came to shake hands. At a long bench by the table, Laister’s young brother got up, transferring his fork to his left hand; smiling. A tortoiseshell cat came curving to his ankles.

  There was a girl, a child of nine or ten.

  Leith sat where suggested. Dick Laister, though keeping himself in hand, was more in charge here; more familial in speech and mood. His cousins helped themselves from a tureen on the table. Places had been laid, but no woman showed herself—except for the child, who stared at Leith across the table. Lank, light hair; grey eyes, implacable. A lacklustre pinafore. A jostle of front teeth. Speechless, yet not shy. Leith asked her name, which was Edith.

  There was mention of Madge: “Wait till Madge gets wind of that,” “Madge won’t go for it, not Madge.” Leith thought of Melba Driscoll.

  Another man came in, broad, heavy, in his thirties: again the evident soldierly past. Sat down, helped himself. Troubled, troubling, troublesome. Dick Laister spoke to him, and he nodded at Leith. The men talked about the government, criticising: “Better than t’oother lot, at all events”—with a glance at Leith, testing the waters. Dick said, forestalling, “Major Leith, here, was in the ranks, Tone.”

  The angered man said, “I saw you got the Military Medal, among the rest”—a medal given only in the ranks; but Tony could make it an accusation.

  They had no time for Attlee, but liked Bevin and Bevan well enough.

  Leith was eating stickily on bread and honey. The cat got up on the bench beside him, nuzzling her hard apple of a head beneath his arm. He rubbed at her with his elbow, down her arching back; said, “I can’t touch her with these honey hands. She’d be washing herself for the rest of the day.”

  Dick’s young brother remarked, “She’s got no oother plans.”

  Edith told Leith, “I want to go to London.”

  “Someday you will.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “Very likely.” He said, “We’ll have an outing.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’ll have to choose.”

  “It’d be better you choose.”

  “Why so?”

  “If I did the choosing, you’d get fed up, and show it.”

  Leith said, “Edith, what a woman you’re going to be.”

  One of the men said, “She’s as good as a show, the little mawther.”

  Edith kept her eyes on Aldred’s. “Are you married?”

  The men hooted. “Wait till Madge hears.” “Don’t get your hopes up, Ede.”

  Child or not, it was the timeless challenge, and they had to put it down.

  Out of her depth, the girl reddened but persisted. “Are you, then?”

  “Not at the moment.” Holding her gaze, he said, “Soon.” The table took note.

  “Is she pretty?”

  “Yes. Most girls are pretty, I find. She has her own way of being.”

  “What’s that, then?”

  “She’s got through a lot without much help. That’s often true for girls.” As you’re discovering, Edith.

  The men listened, uncertain whether he was making a fool of himself or not. The posh voice was always fair game, but then, all speech is an exposure. Dick Laister and his young brother were above that—though how they’d managed it, God knew. The girl was in a class of her own, like the cat.

  Laister took him to the station in the Land Rover. “Thanks for this.” Peered along the track. “Ah well, my cousins. Jeff blusters a bit, but he’s okay. Tone’s on edge. Fell in with a bad lot, he’s in a spot of trouble. Got himself arrested as an accessory.”

  “What’s his war record?”

  “Record’s good. A bit brutal. Not a bad bloke, really. Shows off, talks big.”

  “When does the case come up?”

  “End of the month. At Guildford.”

  “If you can get the papers quickly to me, I’ll do what I can.”

  Laister said, “Train’s coming.” Put out his hand. “That’s good of you, really good. Everything’s been good. Thanks.”

  Leith said, “We’ll have to think about your father.”

  When Dick Laister got back
to the farm, Tony said, “I thought your fine friend talked wet. With Ede, I mean. Giving the kid notions.”

  Jeff said, “Ede doesn’t need anyone to give her notions.”

  “I thought it was okay.” Laister poured himself a cup of overbrewed tea. “Tone, I need your court papers. Leith’ll do what he can.”

  Edith said, “I think he’s divine.”

  Aldred was home in time for dinner. His mother, who was stitching a black lace hem by the fire, looked up with pleasure. “There’s hot water for your bath.”

  That evening, he wrote on the end of a letter to Helen: “Yes, I do tell my friends about you. Sometimes I also tell those who are not my friends—flourishing you like a safeguard, a talisman.”

  19

  IT IS MAY, Aldred, and we’ve known each other for a year. And winter begins in the Antipodes, where I never could have imagined myself when I sat on your bed that morning of the terrible death, which was the start of our love, I think. And Ben and I had just come around the world, as if specifically to meet you there. A journey measured to the last inch.

  My darling, we’re installed now in this house. In a way, I regret the hotel—having got used to it, and having had my own isolated room there rather than being exposed to a household. I got used to its curry-coloured curtains, I suppose, and its mustard carpets, and to the kindly help who brought mutton and potatoes and blancmange, in the dining room, and extra blankets to one’s bed. To the trams rattling past the central crossroad, and the total silence that fell at 6 p.m. each evening—except on Fridays, when shops are open late and I could go to bookshops—of which there are several, small and good.

  The house is on a height, with mist in the mornings. I cannot say that anything is like Japan, though it may sound so. The rooms are fairly large, fairly sunless; elderly. A garden is shaded by trees, chiefly beech, and enclosed against the incessant wind by a hedge of yews. No flowerbeds, but many plants and bushes of the cool-flowering kind—fuchsia, hydrangea. Camellias have bloomed since we came, in streaks of colours such as I never saw. There are ferns, and bunchy groves where violets and lily of the valley will appear when September comes round.

  Oh my dearest, will I still be here for that? How can this go on? And how can it change? Like punishment, being sent so far. Why are we punished, who have done no wrong?

  On the sheltered north, where some sun arrives, a wistaria, bare except for greenery, is strangling a derelict arbor. All this gets some attention from Jimsy Frazer, from Dumfries, who does the neighbourhood gardens; and also from Miss Fry, who occasionally comes to sew for my mother and to make expert repairs to the mouldered curtains, furniture, lace mats, and even the carpets of the absent owners.

  Miss Fry brings a hush. Swift at her work, infinitely polite, she no doubt observes us; but of herself tells nothing. A dozen ready sources inform us, however, that her name is Elinor, that she speaks French (which makes her a prodigy in this land), and that she lost her fiance late in 1914. Near sixty, she lives with widowed mum in Kelburn, a suburb adjoining ours. Miss Fry has such a good face—handsome yet somehow bare, perhaps from giving so much unreciprocated attention. Spare, also, in build, and well dressed always, in one or other of two “costumes,” as they’re called: jacket, skirt, and blouse of subdued and Fry-like tones.

  What she brings is not “hush” but calm. She’s the best thing that happens. Also—forgive vanity—she notices me, and looks up from her work when I appear. No one else does that, here.

  At evening in her room, writing her letter, Helen Driscoll was repossessed of her powers. It was the sole occasion of her exile: the hour preserved from, and for, another life. Distilled in that exercise, existence was emblematic in its materials: a pad of blue imported paper, a good black fountain pen, the envelopes marked AIR, for freedom, on which she wrote his name; and the tiny Florentine leather box with its flutter of New Zealand stamps. If the incidents of her days were weighed for possible recounting in the letter, that was less for their interest than as an opportunity for expression, even for artistry. A girl transported to the last curve of the globe might write what a great man would read at the self-sufficient northern heart of the world. The love that moved her then was nearly joyful, no longer victimised by distance.

  Miss Fry’s time was afternoon. It was Helen who prepared the tea tray and carried it to where Miss Fry, in an overall of ochre linen, sat at her work: always the small circular black tin tray, the white-and-gold Rockingham cup, and two ginger snaps poised like coins on the saucer. Miss Fry—who said, “Thank you, how kind,” as the tray arrived, and “Thank you, delicious,” when it was removed—one day looked up over a porcelain rim with delicate receptivity. Additional words came to be exchanged—though never, as days wore on, many words at a time; for Elinor Fry dealt with friendship as with some quick creature, lizard or leveret, that might dart from an obtrusive hand.

  Miss Fry has invited me. Next Sunday at four, I make my way to Nightingale Road. Her mother is said to be a personality, though that, at Wellington, might signify the least quiver of animation. Did I tell you that I wore my green coat in the town and was stared at? In these islands, virtue begins with self-effacement, and any sign of life is flashy. Decent persons are home by six, when they too, perhaps, like the streets of their capital, fall silent. Despite this, there is, maddeningly, enough genuine decency to make dislike impossible.

  I hear from Tad Hill, whose green coat draws such disapproval. He’s back in America, and leaving the army. He means to study Japanese in California—he says, “At Berkeley” When he goes there to be interviewed, he’ll visit Ben, of whom I have otherwise only clinical news. I write, but never learn whether the letters are read to him. Tad will carry a letter to him from me. Remembrance of that day when he was taken away, and of my last sight of him, has grown bearable because of what you did—for him and for me. Your impulse to rescue, that is the more beautiful, yes, for being part of your reserve.

  ON THE SUNDAY, Helen set out in small rain, wearing a mackintosh and stout shoes that could draw no glance. Devoid of glances, suburban streets rose and fell over Jurassic slopes. No car or person passed. There was the indoor bark of a bored dog and a shake of drops from low cold branches. Weatherboard houses stood back from footpaths, insubstantial. Roofs of corrugated iron had been painted dark red. Behind low palings or a hedge of box, gardens laid out like military grids were unlikely to grow riotous with the seasons. Air of an uninhabited freshness rushed at crescents and inclines with its southern chill. There was, too, a southward vision of grey sea, and of the distant gorse-grown hills that shaped the bay. Across the strait, and beyond the flung skein of farther land, the matter of consequence was the South Pole, to whose white magnet the nation was irresistibly drawn, even while directing its yearnings elsewhere.

  In the large setting, the city was small, rickety, irrelevant: unresponsive to destiny. And Helen saw herself creeping, Lilliputian, over that disregarded topography, walking to Kelburn without expectation of change.

  Dreaming, once more, the only possible dream.

  Near Nightingale Road, a cyclist saluted her. This waterproofed boy—who steadied a basket between handlebars—was Sid Briggs, whose parents helped with dinners. Cooking and serving, the Briggses also rented out for an evening not only tableware but, for a set fee, a centrepiece of hothouse fruit that could be returned next day with additional payments for items consumed by any inconsiderate or defiant guest. (The grapes, snipped and dusted, might do another round or two; while a softening of pears or peaches could be disguised by greenery.) As to parties, the father—in youth a boxer, and known yet as Tiger Briggs—would arrive early to set up drinks, while Sid, in the kitchen, deftly chopped and spread. However, it was Mrs. Briggs who ran the show, gave tongue, and cultivated her legend. Of short, pouting build, her liveliness ever within bounds, she had sized up the situation and was content to be a character—who knew, at the grander gatherings, what the Prime Minister would drink, and was mindful of the ulcer of
the High Commissioner; who rallied to the greetings of Sir Keith or Sir Patrick, but never quite took a liberty—liberty being, to her, of small importance. A measure of power, benign yet attestable, was what she was after, in her black rayon dress, apron scalloped in organdie, and cuffs white as the paws of an immaculate pet. At home she recounted to her men what she had heard and overheard, and reigned in consequence.

  Helen had observed Mrs. Briggs, as she was beginning to notice others who had exempted themselves from the national desire to belong elsewhere, even if this meant that they would never leave these shores. No one quite belonged here, not even the indigenous people, who were themselves invaders. The British experience was tentative, almost apologetic: successive generations remained, but as settlers. While Mrs. Briggs had settled conclusively. Fatalité des lieux. Her example aroused respect; and filled the girl with terror.

  At No. 12, Helen pushed a solid gate. Chimneys were visible above old trees. Shrubs, still sporadically in bloom, gave place to autumnal flowers. The roof was slate blue, and otherwise distinctive—being large and high with fretted woodwork about the eaves. Upstairs and down, bay windows shone like mirrors, displaying curtains of white gauze. Not gaiety, but airiness.

  And Miss Fry was in the doorway, mildly smiling and extending her mild hand.

  Helen gave up coat and umbrella. She had not opened the umbrella, and her hair hung flat and darker. She had no sense, these days, of her appearance. At such a moment, could forsake her adult life, and was shy. Miss Fry, however, would not take up the slack of authority—as people are apt to do on their own ground. And they were thus briefly immobilised.

  The living room was warm and waxed, and reflected the care of Elinor Fry. Charcoal briquettes the size of duck eggs were burning in the grate. There was expansiveness, a simplicity quite free of that cut crystal and walnut veneer on which the neighbourhood liked to insist. Chairs, a desk, a sofa, aged and admirable, came, clearly, from the great elsewhere beyond the seas. There was a large rug from the Indies. Glazed cases held the leather colours of old books. In a farther room, on open shelves, books lined a wall. Everything appeared to be in an agreeable state of use. On a table, a lamp was lit against the dark day. Overhead, a glass disc hung from three bright chains.