A City of Strangers (11 page)

“Stand back!” he called down, and hit with all his strength at the glass beneath the window handle.

By now lights were going on all over the Estate. Selena's was not the only call to the Fire Station, though it was the first. As she came out of the phone box, on the corner of Grange Street, a woman came out of her house, in curlers and dressing gown. She put her arms around Selena.

“Christ, love, was it you? Were the bastards after you?”

“No, it's not our house. It's the Phelans'.”

“Oh. Then they were after the Phelans.”

Together they ran back along the Avenue. The fire was burning with hideous brilliance and a terrible lump came into Selena's throat as she thought: My baby could be born without a father. From the broken window upstairs smoke was billowing, but it did not have the acrid, somehow unnatural power of the smoke from downstairs. A little knot of neighbors had gathered, looking lurid, almost threatening in the flickering light and smoke. One of the men had replaced Lottie Makepeace at the bottom of the ladder. As they drew near, Selena saw that one of the women from the house opposite was carrying a crying child.

“He's got Dale out,” she explained. “Your husband's a marvel.”

“I know. God—I wish the fire engine would come.”

From the distance, on cue, they heard the sound of a siren, and at that moment Selena saw her husband—it had to be him—in the smoke-filled window upstairs, carrying something in his arms. The man at the bottom darted up, and then slowly came down, bearing a burden in his arms.

“Jackie,” said the neighbor. “That'll be Jackie.”

“Please God, don't go back in, Malcolm,” prayed Selena. “Come down. They're on their way.”

But he disappeared again into the smoke.

Now the engine was arriving. It came from the direction of Grange Street and pulled up outside the Phelans' in a wailing crescendo, scattering the bystanders. There was no sleeping through this: By now lights were on in nearly every house. “Hurry, please hurry. My husband's in there!” Selena shouted. But she needn't have. In a moment the ladders were off the engine, up against a wall, and hoses were being trained on the house. Masks were pulled on, windows were broken. And suddenly, in the midst of all that activity, Selena saw through the smoke issuing threateningly out of the broken upstairs window two shapes, cumbrously intertwined. Her heart leapt up in gratitude.

Malcolm was big, but he was having problems. It was a heavy, unyielding, unhelping shape that he was half-leading, half-carrying. But now there was expert help. A fireman positioned a ladder a foot away from the one Malcolm had used, and one fireman went up each. Slowly, clumsily, the three men eased the body out of the window and began carrying it down the ladder. Through the smoke Selena could see that it was wearing a nightdress.

She saw too that the fireman holding the body's legs was pulling at Malcolm's arms, telling him to come out. Surely . . . yes: With a heart-thump of relief she saw him climbing out of the window, onto the ladder.

She held herself back. He would not want her to go over to him now. He was a policeman, back on duty, and she was a policeman's wife. The restraint cost her dear. She looked down toward Wynton Lane: She could see the top stories of the houses, and there were lights in two of them. An ambulance was shrilling near, down the Lane, and turning into the Avenue. But from the other direction, from her right, she heard a shout and running feet. Turning she saw Michael and Cilla Phelan.

The bus from Manchester had let the Estate children off at the corner of Grange Street. The bus had gone on, but as soon as the two children had turned into the Estate they had realized that there was a fire. Selena and the neighbor who was still carrying Dale, now quiet, ran forward to intercept them.

“Don't go any closer. There's . . . there's been a fire at your house.”

“We can see
that,
” said Cilla.

“What about Dale? And Jackie?” demanded Michael.

“Jackie's all right, I think,” said the neighbor. “And this is Dale. He's fine.”

Michael looked up at her, put up his arms, and took the small bundle. He nursed it with an odd, reserved tenderness.

“That's Jackie over there by the gate,” he said to Cilla. “Go and get her. . . . What about Mum and Dad?” he asked Selena.

“Your Mum—well, she's out. We'll hope she'll be all right. I . . . I don't think your Dad is yet.”

“He'll happen have been sleeping downstairs in front of the telly. He often does if he comes back late from the pub.” He looked toward the house with an expression of wonder and fear. “If our Dad's downstairs, I reckon he's dead.”

“They're putting Mum into the ambulance,” announced Cilla, returning with her sister. “She looks
terrible.”

Selena and the neighbor looked down at the girl's face, half illuminated and half darkened by the unnatural light of the flames. It showed neither pity nor fear—only an avid interest, and a sort of pleasure at being in the center of a sensation. The two women looked at each other, but said nothing.

There was a second ambulance by now, come to be in readiness, but it was a long time before it was needed. A police presence had also got to the scene, and Malcolm Cray could get away and come over to see his wife. He said “OK?” and they stood, arms around each other, in a closer communion than words could give. The hoses were giving the house a terrible dousing. From the little hallway the fire had spread, taking in every piece of gimcrack furniture, every pile of discarded clothes or toys that lay around the place. The furniture in the living room had been a firetrap—the suite, bought secondhand with a grant from the Social Security Office, was the main source of the acrid fumes. The fireman who penetrated it finally found a man there, but the word was immediately passed out that there was no question of his being alive. The ambulance men outside had a sheet, and when the body was stretchered out through the back door it was thrown over it, to keep it from the curious gaze of bystanders.

At her shoulder Selena Cray felt her husband's body racked with sobs. She turned and put her face in the horrible-smelling blue material of his shirt.

“You couldn't have saved him, love,” she whispered. “No one could.”

“God help me, I didn't want to,” her husband sobbed.

O
n the morning after the fire, Algy Cartwright was the only one from the houses in Wynton Lane to walk through the Belfield Grove Estate. He had had a breakfast of fried eggs and bacon, had washed up, and hadn't turned the television on even for the news headlines. Now he was on his way to buy tobacco and his morning paper at the newsagent's on Grange Street. At the blackened shell of the Phelans' home he paused for some time, listening to the comments of the little knot of spectators, mostly women with small children, and unemployed men. At the newsagent's he bought the
Yorkshire Post
as well as his usual
Daily Mail,
to see if it had anything about the fire.

None of the residents of the Wynton Lane houses spoke to each other face to face that morning, but there was a great deal of telephone activity.

“Mr. Cartwright? Algy?”

“Yes.”

“It's Lynn—Lynn Packard here.”

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Packard.”

“Just a small point, Algy: I don't know if you've heard about the fire last night.”

“Aye, I have. I've just been past there.”

“Ah. . . . It did occur to me when I heard—Jennifer phoned a few
minutes ago; she'd heard about it from our cleaning lady—it did occur to me that we should . . . distance ourselves, as far as possible.”

“How do you mean?”

“I shouldn't have to sp— . . . Sorry, just talking to one of the assistants. What I meant was that we shouldn't shout it from the rooftops that we were . . . well, strongly opposed to his moving into the Lane.”

“Oh, aye, I get your drift.”

“Because he was, I believe . . . the main casualty.”

“That's right. I heard the women talking on the Estate. The wife's in hospital too, though, I gather, and very poorly.”

“Yes, well, I think we should be careful, because people could, well, get the wrong impression.”

“I reckon you're right, Mr. Packard.”

“Of course, the likelihood is that it's completely accidental, especially granted the man's likely habits when he's drunk . . . ”

“Oh, aye, that's true enough.”

“But still, as I say, I think we should be careful. I thought perhaps you could talk to Mrs. Bridewell, as an old friend.”

“Yes, I could do that, though she's a woman who knows her own mind, Mr. Packard, and you've got to remember she's on the Council. I could ring Mrs. Eastlake, too. She's the one who—”

“Started it. Right.”

“She's taken a big interest. She was actually out in her garden the other day, so Mrs. Bridewell says.”

“Really? Well, I'll ring the son. He seems to be a bit lacking in backbone. And I'll ring Copperwhite too.”

“Yes, I'd rather you rang him, Mr. Packard.”

“We need to present a united front. It's nothing to do with us, and we don't want to get involved.”

“Right. Pity the thing came up really.”

“Yes . . . as it's turned out.”

“Of course, I agree there's no point in running along to the police and saying ‘We were trying to stop him buying a house in Wynton Lane.' But you've got to remember I'm on the Council, Algy. I have to be very careful, the newspapers being what they are. I certainly couldn't have anything to do with
concealing
things from the police.”

“No, no, I'm sure that's not what Mr. Packard has in mind. Just that we shouldn't go—”

“Advertising the fact? Well, that's fair enough. But aren't we jumping the gun a bit? Is there any evidence that the fire wasn't completely accidental?”

“Mr. Packard made that point. All I have to go on is the women talking—the women from the Estate, as I walked through to get my paper. They were convinced it was arson. One of them thought they'd got the wrong house—there's a black girl lives next door, apparently. But the rest thought it was the Phelans who were aimed at—and ‘good riddance' was the general feeling as far as Jack Phelan was concerned, though it was thought terrible that the kiddies might have been hurt.”

“Yes, but can they know it was deliberately started? The man was probably drunk and started it with a lighted cigarette or something. Investigations by Fire Officers take quite some time, as a rule, so I don't see how they can
know.”

“I suppose they were just assuming. All the more reason, if it's not certain yet, for us to sit tight and say nothing.”

“Quite. And I can stir things up a bit at Housing and see that something is done about getting the Phelans rehoused.”

“The remaining Phelans.”

“Yes. The remaining Phelans.”