Fire-Raiser

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘O Britannia, Britannia, pity our distress!’ Irene cried to Kitty. ‘The imperious Kaiser marches his German horde across our plains to carry death.’

  ‘Bugles!’ cried Mrs Bolton. ‘Tara, tara! Drums!’ she cried, beating her plump fists up and down. ‘Britannia, speak!’

  Kitty was tangled in her flag. She jerked it free, kicking out her feet, and said, ‘Poor little Belgium, brave but powerless against the foe. Shall she be trampled underfoot while we stand by neglectful of our pledge? Fight we must and fight we will. Who will follow? Sons and daughters, speak!’

  ‘I will follow,’ the boy who was Canada cried.

  ‘I.’ Australia.

  ‘And I.’ India, Melva Dyer.

  ‘Step forward when you say it. Be bold,’ Mrs Bolton said.

  ‘And I,’ said Egypt, June Truelove.

  ‘Good! Good!’

  Phil stepped forward. ‘And I.’

  ‘Louder, boy! New Zealand is loudest.’

  ‘And I.’ Phil faced Kitty. He held his paper by his face and read, ‘Mother of Empire! Our New Zealand home is so far from the white cliffs of Old England –’

  ‘No, Miller, no. Round vowels. Whait cliffs, whait. Say it.’

  ‘White.’ Phil said, but still it sounded ‘whoit’.

  ‘Whait,’ Mrs Bolton cried. ‘You sound like a navvy, boy.’

  Noel said, ‘Mr Hedges reckons New Zealanders should talk like New Zealanders and not be little mock-Englishmen.’

  ‘Well, fortunately Mr Hedges is not in charge of this pageant. Irene! Where are you, Irene? Say it, dear. Whait! Show him.’

  Irene, red-faced, caught off guard, said in a small voice, ‘White cliffs.’

  ‘There,’ Mrs Bolton said, ‘do you hear that, Miller? That is the true English sound. Now try harder, boy…’

  ‘Here comes Charmy-Barmy. White, skite,’ Phil said. ‘You sound like a cow with bloat, Chalmers.’

  ‘Moo-oo,’ Noel joined in.

  They were on the footbridge over the river, throwing in sticks and shelling them with pebbles. Irene and Kitty came along from the town side of the river.

  ‘It’s not her fault,’ Kitty said.

  ‘I don’t ask her to make me pet,’ Irene said. She struck a pose. ‘Bugles! Tara, tara. Drums, ratatat-tat. Bolters, speak! Our New Zealand home is so far from the whait cliffs of old England…’

  The boys grinned. Irene, without thinking, went on, ‘We know who the fire-raiser is.’

  ‘Who?’ the boys said, pushing their heads at her.

  Irene blinked. She didn’t know how it had got out, and she said lamely, ‘Kitty knows.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Someone,’ Kitty said.

  ‘Of course it’s someone, dummy.’

  ‘You don’t know anything,’ Phil said. ‘We know. It’s Marwick.’

  ‘We’ve got proof,’ Noel said.

  ‘What proof?’

  ‘A motor spirits can. Sunk in Buck’s Hole.’

  ‘Kitty saw him,’ Irene said.

  ‘Marwick?’

  ‘He knocked me over again. Outside Mr Chalmers’ office.’ The boys stared at her, unbelieving. ‘He ran the same way. And held his arm up.’

  ‘You call that proof? We found a can sunk in his pool. By his house.’

  ‘You didn’t see him put it there. Anyone could have put it there.’

  ‘It’s better than a bloke who runs with his arm stuck up.’ Phil threw a pebble at a stick in the weeds and scored a hit. It made him feel good. ‘Go home and practise talking, Chalmers. You might learn to say proons.’

  Irene went red. ‘You stink. Go and have a bath. Go and put some flea-powder on.’ She jumped back as Phil lunged at her, and Kitty took her arm and pulled her away. They ran off the bridge, leaving the boys, and ran up Leckie’s Lane and along past the school to Kitty’s house. Mrs Wix gave them milk and pikelets. Then she asked Irene to play the piano.

  Still cross, Irene sat down and raced through The Harmonious Blacksmith – the Handel she had learned for Frau Stauffel. She did not enjoy it, but soon began to like showing off. Kitty and Mrs Wix clapped when she finished. She began to be ashamed. Music was not for skiting with. So she played a Chopin nocturne, and felt sadness welling up in her, and kept control of it with her fingers, and felt almost happy when it was done.

  ‘Oh,’ Kitty sighed, ‘that was wonderful.’

  ‘Why can’t you play like that, Kitty?’ Mrs Wix said.

  Irene said, ‘Your piano needs tuning, Mrs Wix.’

  ‘Oh, does it?’ Mrs Wix wasn’t pleased.

  Irene played a note to demonstrate. ‘Uugh.’ She shivered. It almost hurt her. ‘It’s not a very good piano, really.’

  ‘Well, we shall have to get a new one,’ Mrs Wix said. ‘I’ve got your stuff ready,’ she said to Kitty. ‘You mind your manners up there. We can’t have them thinking you don’t know a fork from a spoon.’

  Noel and Phil had decided to tell Mr Wix about the can. There were pies to be made for White’s Landing that night and Mr Wix was surprised at the boy his son brought along to help. He made him have a soapy wash, no nonsense, and put him in an apron. Cleanliness in the bakehouse was his first rule. But he found the boy eager to help, and started to like him. He let him dust the work-bench with flour. They rolled the pastry and lined the trays and Wix hopped along with a basin, putting in steak and kidney.

  ‘What calls back the past like a rich pumpkin pie?’

  Phil was puzzled. ‘This isn’t pumpkin, Mr Wix.’ He pointed at a pie. ‘That one’s short.’

  ‘Can’t have that.’ He topped it up. ‘Like to be a baker, Phil?’

  ‘If I could eat what I baked.’

  ‘The tragedy of bakers is that they all have dyspepsia.’ He seized the end of a roll of pastry and made Phil take the other. They covered the pie trays as though with a sheet. Then Wix started cutting round each with a knife.

  ‘Can I do that?’

  Wix got another knife. ‘You start that end. A nice neat cut, no hurry.’ Phil worked happily.

  ‘Dad,’ Noel said. He had been looking after the fire. He came to the table and started gathering up the pastry off-cuts. ‘We found a benzine can today. Motor spirit. With holes chopped in. Phil and me.’

  Wix stopped cutting. ‘Where?’

  ‘Sunk in the creek. Buck’s Hole.’

  ‘Just down from Marwick’s place,’ Phil said.

  ‘We reckon Mr Marwick must be the fire-raiser.’

  ‘That’s jumping a bit far,’ Wix said. ‘Big can?’

  ‘Five gallon. Marwick’s is the closest house.’

  Wix set to with his knife again. He finished the pies and started crimping them. He gave Phil a fork. ‘Here, Phil, bung a hole in top. Who have you told?’ he asked Noel.

  ‘No one yet.’ He wondered if he should tell his father about Kitty and Marwick, but decided not to. He felt it would take away from the importance of the can.

  His father finished the pies and waited till Phil had made the holes. He slid them into the oven and closed the door.

  ‘It’s something I think McCaa should know. Tomorrow’s Saturday, so I’ll take you round. All right with you, young fellow?’ he asked Phil.

  ‘Yes,’ Phil said. ‘What are we going to do with this spare dough? Can we make some tarts?’ He was intoxicated with the nearness of food.

  Wix laughed. ‘I’ll tell you what. We’ll knock up a couple of pasties. That can be your pay.’

  Kitty had not enjoyed her meal with the Chalmers family. Every time she saw Nancy Dormer, the big sister of one of her friends at school, dressed up as a maid, she felt herself blush. It seemed wrong, and more wrong still when Nancy called her ‘Miss’. And the food was not very good, not as good as her mother made, and there was not enough – but no one offered second helpings.

  ‘Don’t breathe so loudly, Nancy,’ Mrs Chalmers said. ‘We don’t really need to know you’re there.’ Kitty blushed harder. She heard her own breathing afte
r that.

  Things got better in the parlour after dinner, when she and Irene sat far away at the other end of the room and took turns with Irene’s kaleidoscope while Mr Chalmers read the newspaper and Mrs Chalmers did embroidery.

  ‘Ha!’ said Chalmers. ‘That’s good!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sir John French says the war will be won in three months.’

  ‘It should go on longer, to teach the Germans a lesson,’ Mrs Chalmers said.

  Irene and Kitty took no notice of that conversation. They had laid the kaleidoscope down and crept behind a sofa, and there they talked about Edgar Marwick. It seemed to them their proof was better than the boys’, but the boys could show their can and Kitty had nothing to show. It would only be her word against Marwick’s.

  ‘What we need,’ Irene said, ‘is a way of telling on him without anyone knowing it’s us.’

  ‘Anonymous,’ Kitty said. ‘We could write “fire-raiser” on his gate.’

  ‘No. I’ve got it. Wait here.’ Irene went away and Kitty stayed sitting behind the sofa. In a moment Irene was back. She had writing paper and pencil and envelope. ‘We’ll write a letter to the police, but not put our names.’

  She knelt on the floor and printed in square letters: ‘Mr Marwick burnt down Dargie’s Stables.’ Kitty grabbed the pencil. ‘We saw him.’

  ‘What shall we sign it?’

  Kitty grinned. Boldly she wrote: ‘Britannia’.

  ‘Now you.’

  Irene wrote: ‘Gallant Little Belgium’. They felt very clever and wanted to add more things, but in the end left it as it was. There was a bareness in it that made them shiver. They felt that Marwick must know and was lurking round the house.

  ‘How are we going to get it to the police?’

  ‘Post it. There’s a box on the corner.’

  Neither of them wanted to go out in the dark. They put the letter in the envelope and sealed it. Kitty wrote the address: ‘Sergeant McCaa, Jessop Police Station’, and printed ‘Urgent’ in the corner. ‘It won’t need a stamp.’ She looked out the window at the dark. ‘We could wait till morning.’

  ‘It’s better now. No one will see us.’

  Kitty swallowed. The letter seemed to bulge as though something inside was trying to get out. ‘Do you think he knows?’

  ‘He didn’t look at you.’

  But for Irene, too, Marwick was close, with his green-eyed face and loping run and upraised arm. She thought of him as silent, quick, and mad.

  Then suddenly her mother was by the sofa, and both girls gave a little scream.

  ‘What are you girls up to?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Chalmers,’ Kitty said, ‘you gave us such a fright!’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Irene had taken the letter and turned it over so her mother would not see the address. ‘It’s homework. Letter writing,’ she said.

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘You gave us such a fright,’ Kitty said. She had not known she could talk in such a la-di-da way. But it wasn’t going to work. Mrs Chalmers reached out her hand. ‘Give it to me.’

  They were saved by a shout, and by a thunderous knocking on the front door. Chalmers started up from his chair. ‘What on earth! I’ll go, Anne.’ He went out quickly, paper in hand, and Mrs Chalmers followed into the hall.

  ‘Come on, quick,’ Irene said. She led Kitty out another door and through the dining room into the kitchen. Nancy had gone home. They let themselves into the garden and ran across the lawn and through a side gate and reached the street a short way along from the house, hearing quick voices at the front door. Soft-footed, they ran to the letterbox on the corner. Irene pushed the letter in and they heard it whisper down on top of others. ‘There. Done it.’

  ‘Listen! That’s the firebell,’ Kitty said. The sound came distantly from the centre of town. ‘No, it’s the engine.’

  Chalmers ran out the gate and climbed with two men into a car. It came along towards the girls and screeched to a halt. Chalmers leaned out the door. ‘What are you girls doing? Get back home.’

  Mrs Chalmers was calling from the gate. They ran to her.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘How dare you go out like that? You won’t have friends again, Irene, if this is how you behave.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘Your father’s warehouse is on fire.’

  Chapter Six

  At Chalmers’ Warehouse

  He had spent a night and a day brooding on his wrongs. His fire at Dargie’s seemed a feeble thing, far away in the past. He made no decision to go out again, but found himself preparing – rags and crowbar and benzine in a sack, old jacket ready on a hook in the barn, with the red balaclava in the pocket. He did not choose a building. He simply found it ready in his mind.

  Before leaving, he went into the house to look at his mother. A sound of music came down the hall, a sound of voices wailing in love or grief. He stood under the hall chandelier, with its lusters sparkling like jewels, and listened a moment. The record ended. He heard her winding the gramophone, then it started again, the same record, tenor and soprano howling away. He curled his lip, and opened the door a few inches. The music swelled and he pushed the door open further and looked in. His mother sat in her chair with her stick on her knees. Her head was tilted, cheek on hand, and tears dripped from her chin on to her bodice. He had a moment of pity for her, pity and love, and pushed it away like the music. He closed the door and left her there, with silver tears rolling on her cheeks.

  He picked up his gear from the barn and put on his jacket and slipped into the night. The town seemed hostile, like a fortress. He picked his way in by secret ways – across the railway bridge, down back alleys, over a silent park where children’s swings creaked in the breeze, and seesaws and slides climbed to nowhere. He went through a building site, sliding on piles of sand, and climbed a bank into palm trees that sharpened their sword-leaves on each other. There, in the dark, he took out his balaclava and pulled it on. It was not for disguise; it was his sign. It seemed to light a fire in his head. Nothing would turn him back once it enclosed him.

  The brick wall at Chalmers’ warehouse stood six feet tall. He heaved his sack on top, hearing the benzine slop and the can boom faintly. He climbed and squatted, baboon-like, then dropped into the yard and pulled down his sack. The weight of it, the liquid weight, made him ache with anticipation, and the building, with its yellow bricks and beautiful dry wood, beckoned him. He ran to it. He saw his reflection dimly in a window, a flash of teeth, a ball of fire in place of his head. ‘Ha!’ he said, and stepped close to himself. He took his crowbar out of the sack.

  ‘Now, Chalmers, you’re going to get it! You’ll see what I can do.’

  Noel and Phil came strolling down the street and stopped on a corner under a gas lamp. They were eating pasties, Phil more hungrily than Noel, who had already had his evening meal. Phil crunched the last pastry and licked his fingers.

  ‘Your old man makes good stuff.’

  Noel broke off a corner of his pasty. ‘Have a bit.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Phil took it and gobbled. ‘I reckon it’d be great being a baker.’

  ‘Clippy reckons you should go to college.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. It’s all right for you jokers. I’ve got to go to work and earn some money.’

  ‘He reckons you could be top of the class.’

  ‘What for?’ Phil belched to show his indifference, but Noel saw he was pleased.

  ‘You could be something rich. A doctor, eh?’

  ‘Fixing boils and sores. I’d rather be a baker.’

  ‘How about a scientist? That’s what I want to be.’

  ‘Yeah, making stink bombs. That’d be okay.’

  A muffled thud, a tinkling of glass, came from the looming bulk of Chalmers’ warehouse. The boys jerked round, peering into the dark, then looked at each other.

  ‘That was inside.’

  ‘Burglars?’

  ‘
It could be the fire-raiser.’

  They stood a moment, wondering what to do. The building was silent.

  ‘We should get the police,’ Noel said.

  ‘What if it’s just a cat?’ Phil made up his mind. ‘I’m going to have a look.’ He ran silently on his bare feet down the alley at the side of the warehouse and waited for Noel at a place where dirt was heaped against the brick wall. ‘Give us a lift.’

  Noel made a step of his hands and heaved Phil up. ‘See anything?’

  ‘No.’ Phil pulled himself on to the top of the wall. He sat with a leg dangling on each side. ‘It’s dark in there.’ He hauled Noel by his shirt until he got a leg over. They sat together on the wall, waiting for something to happen.

  ‘Must have been a cat,’ Noel whispered.

  ‘Maybe.’ Phil dropped into the yard. Noel took off his shoes and socks and left them on the wall. He lowered himself beside Phil and they crouched in the shadows. Then they scuttled across to the warehouse wall. Noel caught a glint on the cobbles. ‘Glass. Watch out.’

  ‘Someone’s jemmied the window,’ Phil whispered. He looked at the cracked frame and broken pane. ‘He must be in there.’

  They crouched at the window, looking down the long cave of the building. High dusty windows let in light that barely reached the grain sacks and the bins. Alcoves, fissures black as pitch, opened on the sides. Nothing moved. Tiny rustlings and scuttlings came, mouse sounds, and the building creaked in the breeze, but that was all.

  ‘There’s no one here,’ Noel whispered.

  Then a match scraped. A sheet of flame flapped across the grain sacks. A man stood in it, arms raised, fiery-headed, red and black. He screeched like an owl. He was like the devil.

  ‘The fire-raiser,’ Noel yelled.

  He swung on them. His eyes were like cat eyes in the night; they were tunnels deep into his head. He charged at them, outlined in a band of fire, then swung aside and burst the double doors open with his foot. The boys ran to the corner and saw him come tumbling into the yard. He had lost his flames and was ordinary – a man in boots and ragged jacket and red balaclava.

  ‘Get him,’ Phil yelled.