by Mark Tilbury
Tony stirred.
Chloe approached him, arms outstretched, Ruby Rag Doll hanging from one hand. ‘Ladybird, ladybird, ladybird, ladybird…’ She chanted.
Tony opened one eye and saw his daughter standing beside him. The smoke was getting thicker, rolling through the lounge like a black fog. At first, his mind refused to register what he was seeing. ‘Chloe?’
‘Ladybird… ladybird… ladybird…’
The smoke triggered the alarm on the landing, bringing Tony fully awake. He jumped off the sofa and swept Chloe into his arms.
‘Ladybird… ladybird… ladybird…’
The chair by the fire was already ablaze, offering the flames a springboard to the curtains and the artificial Christmas tree. Tony ran into the kitchen and closed the door behind him. He put Chloe down.
‘Ladybird… ladybird… ladybird…’
‘Chloe? Listen to Daddy!’
The child looked at him, mouth hanging open in a small O.
‘I need to put you out in the garden. I want you to be a big girl and wait outside while I get Mummy.’
‘Ladybird, ladybird, ladybird…’
Tony considered slapping her. Actually pictured himself doing so. Instead, he knelt down and shook her by the shoulders. She was only wearing a thin nightdress, and it would be freezing outside, but he had no choice. There was no way he could get out via the front door, and he couldn’t risk leaving her alone in the kitchen whilst he went upstairs to get Mel.
‘Ladybird… ladybird… ladybird…’
He shook her hard enough to jolt her head. ‘Chloe? Wake up, sweetheart. Wake up for Daddy.’
Chloe clutched Ruby Rag Doll to her chest. ‘What’s that yucky smell?’
‘The house is on fire, Chloe. You’ll have to go into the garden while I get Mummy, okay?’
Chloe nodded.
He took off his jumper, wrapped it around her shoulders, and led her into the garden. He cursed the builders of St Kilda’s Close for not constructing rear access to the property. There was an eight-foot wall separating it from the park, but no gate. ‘I won’t be long. I promise.’
‘Is the Tall Man coming?’
Tony’s mind stalled. ‘Who?’
‘The Tall Man.’
‘No.’
‘What if he’s hiding somewhere?’
‘He’s not. No one can get over the wall. I promise.’
‘Did he start the fire?’
‘No… you need to be a big girl for me, okay? I’ll be back as quick as I can.’
‘Okay.’
‘You stand right by the back door. I’ll leave the light on so as you can see.’
‘Is he going to kill us, Daddy?’
Tony looked at the terror in his daughter’s eyes and almost abandoned going back for Mel. ‘No one’s going to kill us, sweetheart. Not while Daddy’s here.’
Chloe choked on a sob. ‘I’m scared.’
‘I’m just going to get Mummy. I’ll be right back.’
He walked back inside and closed the door. He looked at the phone on the wall, thought about calling the emergency services, dismissed it. Every second counted now as far as Mel was concerned. He was about to open the kitchen door when something exploded. There was a crash, followed by several loud popping and spitting noises. He imagined lights and baubles exploding on the Christmas tree, sending fragments of glass flying across the room.
Don’t open the door.
Tony’s hand stalled on the handle. It was basic common sense not to open a door leading onto a fire. The sudden rush of oxygen only fuelled the flames. Tendrils of black smoke were already leaking underneath the door. He opened it half an inch and peered through the gap. The room was ablaze, orange and yellow flames reaching right up to the ceiling. The sofa, where he’d been sleeping just a few minutes ago, was unrecognisable as a piece of furniture. Thick black smoke billowed from it, reminding him how close he’d come to perishing. One thing was certain: he wouldn’t last two minutes if he tried to get through the lounge, let alone up the stairs.
He closed the door, snatched the phone from its cradle, and called the emergency services. He gave his name and informed the operator that Mel was trapped upstairs. Told her he would wait in the back garden with his daughter because he couldn’t get back through the house. There was no rear access. The only way out was over a high wall backing onto the park. The operator advised him to wait by the wall. She would inform the fire brigade of their situation.
Torn between a natural instinct to help Mel and not wanting to die a hero, Tony walked back into the garden and whisked Chloe up into his arms.
‘Where’s Mummy?’
‘Mummy’s fine, sweetheart. The fire brigade are coming.’
‘Is she still in bed?’
Tony didn’t answer. He walked to the bottom of the garden, rocking her gently from side to side.
‘Is Mummy awake?’
‘Yes.’
‘How do you know?’
‘The smoke alarm will have woken her up.’
‘What if she didn’t hear it?’
‘It’s too loud not to hear.’
‘Even if she was in a dream?’
‘Yes.’
Tony gawped at the house, begging God to let Mel be all right. If anyone deserved to die in that fire, it was him. He questioned his own response. Could he have done anything any differently? Rushed up the stairs before the fire had taken hold? But his main priority had been to get Chloe out of the building. Everything else was secondary. He couldn’t comprehend how quickly the fire had spread. How rapidly it had devoured everything.
‘Is Mummy going to die?’
‘No. The firemen will get her out.’
‘I don’t want her to die.’
‘She won’t die.’
‘I want her.’
‘I know.’
‘I love her.’
‘Me too.’
After a lengthy silence, Chloe said, in a small, croaky voice, ‘You can’t hide anymore, Tony-baloney. The truth will always out.’
Tony tried to respond, but his brain was as frozen as his body. He held his breath, waiting for Chloe to say something else, his heart stomping all over his chest. He could feel Ruby Rag Doll’s head pressing against his throat, sandwiched between him and Chloe. He had a sudden urge to rip the bloody thing away from his daughter and feed it to the burning house.
Thankfully, Chloe said nothing else. She lay in his arms, shaking, sniffing and sucking her thumb.
After what seemed like an eternity, a siren blared through the night air.
‘The fire brigade are here,’ Tony announced.
‘Will they get Mummy out now?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
Tony stood shivering, hugging Chloe to him, begging God to let Mel be all right. After what seemed like hours to Tony’s tortured mind, a fireman appeared at the top of the wall. He shone a flashlight into the garden. ‘Mr Hollis?’
Tony looked up. ‘I’m here.’
‘I’ll put a ladder over the wall and get you both out.’
Tony’s legs grew weaker, his breath more laboured. It was as if whatever was holding him together for the sake of his daughter was no longer required.
The fireman climbed into the garden. He squatted down in front of Chloe. ‘Hello, honey. My name’s David. You okay?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You’re a very brave little girl.’
‘My wife?’ Tony said. ‘Is she all right?’
‘She’s suffered smoke inhalation, but she seems okay. The ambulance has taken her to the John Radcliffe Hospital to get her checked over.’
‘Thank God.’
The fireman smiled at Chloe. ‘You ready to go up the ladder with me?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Then I’ll come back for Daddy, okay?’
‘Not that he deserves it.’
The fireman didn’t seem to notice the implication of the little girl’s words. ‘I’m
going to carry you up the ladder and give you to another fireman when we get to the top, okay?’
‘Okay.’
Tony watched David climb up the ladder with Chloe and Ruby Rag Doll hanging over his shoulder. Near the top, Chloe looked at him, eyes wide. ‘You could say you’ve burned your bridges, Tony-baloney.’ And then she was gone, whisked into the waiting arms of another fireman.
Tony’s knees buckled. He crouched down, shivering and praying for an end to this nightmare.
36
King was in no mood to sleep. Running on adrenalin, he paced around the wine cellar in his blue and green checked dressing gown like an animal marking its territory.
‘“O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.”’
The cellar amplified the words, rolling them around the bare stone walls, lending them a theatrical quality. He’d wanted to drive to St Kilda’s Close and watch the house burn, but as usual his lover was behaving like a mouse who’d eaten too much cheese and subjected itself to unspeakable nightmares.
He’d been with Charles for over fifteen years now, but sometimes it felt closer to fifteen lifetimes. His propensity toward doubt had served as a stark reminder to King that loyalty had its limits. Charles’s weakness, as far as the child and its mother were concerned, had made it all too clear that his tongue was close enough to betrayal to make his death inevitable. He’d taken to the spare room like a housewife with a migraine, and he could jolly well stay there and rot.
All the way back from the house-warming party, Honeywell had hopped from repentance to paranoia to self-loathing and back again like a rabbit on amphetamines. After a particularly nasty incident, when they’d mounted the pavement and narrowly missed a wheelie-bin, King had found it necessary to take the wheel and drive the rest of the way home in that diabolical tin can Honeywell had the audacity to call a car.
He stopped stalking around the basement and stood in front of the purple freezer. He addressed the door. ‘Have you any idea of the trouble you’ve caused me, Purple-five?’
Purple-five seemed neither roused by guilt, nor interested in engaging him in conversation. He felt compelled to take her head out and hurl it across the room. Smash it into a thousand ice cubes. But he had long since learned to control his emotions after the unfortunate event at his mother’s house with his first love, Big Al. Unless one was cursed with a tendency toward necrophilia, which King certainly wasn’t, Big Al had proved to be neither use nor ornament after the attempt to achieve orgasm through strangulation.
‘“Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.”’
Purple-five didn’t seem appreciative of Shakespeare, either. No surprise. Her crude upbringing would never have put her into contact with great works of literature. The rubbish they taught in schools was of sufficient quality to inspire illiteracy. By definition, a fool was someone who repeated the same thing over and over, expecting different results. The education system seemed happy to operate by the same deluded mandate, with all the eloquence and finesse of a dung beetle.
‘Why did you have to spite me?’
Purple-five exercised her right to remain silent. It wasn’t lost on him that she had inhabited the body of a child connected by its mother to Charles. The link was tenuous, and inadmissible in a court of law, but there all the same. It was as if she’d somehow chosen Chloe Hollis to spite him.
‘I am “pierced to the soul with slander’s venom’d spear,”’ King told the freezer door. ‘But revenge, as you well know, dear Amy, is a dish best served cold.’
Purple-five didn’t seem to appreciate humour, either.
What if the fire doesn’t kill them?
Honeywell’s words drifted across his mind like tendrils of smoke. He tried to dismiss them, but they came again, louder, more emphatic. What if the fire doesn’t kill them?
He walked to the wall-to-wall wine rack, selected a bottle of Sassicaia and studied the label. Perhaps a glass or two of a decent red might help to calm his nerves. These past few weeks had been testing, to say the least.
He went to the kitchen, uncorked the wine and poured a small measure into a glass. He swirled the dark liquid around the bottom of the glass, savouring its lavender bouquet, and treated his taste buds to its finesse and grace. Calmed by the wine’s delicate beauty, he filled the glass and walked into the lounge. He sat in his leather recliner and raised his glass to a photograph of his mother on top of the mantelpiece. ‘Happy New Year, Mother.’
Mother stared back at him, eyes hardened by the years of abuse suffered at the hands of her uncompromising brutal husband. His mother was a true fighter. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised to learn that her heart had been cast from granite. King liked to believe some of her indestructible nature had been transferred to him via the umbilical cord whilst in the womb.
He took a sip of wine and told his mother how much he missed her. He could see from the tenderness lurking behind her frosty stare that she missed him, too.
‘“Death lies on her like an untimely frost upon the sweetest flower of all the field.”’
His mother didn’t seem moved by her son’s sentimental, if not misplaced, ode to her, courtesy of Romeo and Juliet. He sipped his wine, recalling the endless hours spent at the family home locked in the library, with only the words of Shakespeare to offer solace.
His trip down memory lane hit a pothole as he realised his mother might also now be inhabiting the planet as someone else. Another thought, more worrying: What if she now occupied the body of someone he knew? It had been over nineteen years since her death. That left room for a considerable number of potential rebirths since then. Tens of thousands, millions, even.
By the time he’d finished his wine, he was grateful for being gay; at least it meant there was no possibility of incest. After the third glass, his thoughts had veered towards the possibility of investing in the skills of a psychic medium to see if his mother had risen from the ashes of her premature death. As his mind stumbled along a corridor between sobriety and drunkenness, he hunted inside his head for possible born-again mothers. Perhaps a waitress at his favourite restaurant. A checkout girl at the supermarket.
The cleaner.
The very thought of that duster-wielding hag being related to him almost negated the effect of the alcohol. She had the personality of a wart-hog, and the manners to match. How the devil she performed her duties without breaking something was beyond him, but she seemed to manage it and obey simple orders such as where she could and could not take the hoover.
Relief. She was far too old. At least forty – perhaps more. With another glass of wine fermenting in his belly, and thoughts of his wonderful mother fermenting in his head, he decided he would indeed enlist the help of a psychic medium to shed light on his mother’s whereabouts. Until this unfortunate business with Purple-five turning up as bold as brass in Chloe Hollis, he’d been of the firm opinion Mother was nothing more than dust and bones. But now everything had changed forever. Anything, it now seemed, was possible.
He walked into the kitchen and poured more wine. He overfilled the glass, leaving a small puddle of dark liquid on the table. Normally, this would have sent his cleaning obsession into overdrive, but tonight he didn’t notice. He walked back into the lounge, wine dripping from the bottom of the glass like droplets of blood.
‘Oh, Charles, why do you torment me so with your reckless thoughts?’
Like his mother, Charles didn’t offer an answer. King imagined him sitting up in bed, besieged by the Christmas ghosts, eyes wide, terror quaking on his lips, pleading for mercy.
‘The man who parts company with integrity shall join hands with uncertainty,’ King slurred, quoting a play he’d once started to write. He’d abandoned the cursed thing after act one with a bad case of writer’s block which had threatened to tip him towards suicide. It was only the attention of several rent boys that had saved him from complete destruction. The ritual burning o
f the ill-fated manuscript had also proved therapeutic, as if the characters who had caused him so much anguish were perishing in the flames.
He allowed his mind to relish a future without Charles. He could go where he liked, when he liked, and not have to watch every move he made. Charles was always accommodating of the rent boys because they offered no threat to the stability of their relationship. It was just casual sex with sadomasochist benefits. But God help equilibrium if he should dare to share an intimate moment with another man.
‘“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock…’” King said, opting for Shakespeare in preference to his own work. It was one thing to admire a great artist; quite another to emulate him. As much as it pained him to concede it, his talent for writing was often as fruitless as his talent for acting. But one thing separated him from other mortals: he was aware of his limitations, and a man aware of his limitations was a man also aware of his strengths. Like a fine wine, his creative mind was maturing.
‘All good things come to those who want,’ he told the empty room.
Wait.
King paid scant attention to the pedantic side of his brain. Not tonight. He had better things to do than to get into an argument with the word-weasel. Such as formulate a plan to rid the world of Charles Honeywell. Not that he wouldn’t miss his former lover. They’d shared some good times together; especially playing One False Move. Those endless hours engaged in battle. Marred only by Charles’s refusal to grant Purple-five a pardon after she landed on the Death Square. King had been sorely tempted to pull rank and send his lover’s game piece to the cage out of spite. But he was not a man given to unfairness, and Purple-five had met her fate as sentenced.
Another thing he’d miss was his lover’s cooking; his beef bourguignon was a delight, as was his steak tartare. He was also a good lover, when he put his mind to it. Considerate, complicit, and with a half-decent pain threshold to boot.
‘One doesn’t cast off one’s worn-out coat for fear of freezing. One simply looks for another coat,’ he said, the alcohol teasing his brain with renewed resolve to write another play. Perhaps a tragic tale of two lovers torn apart.
