Fire (26 page)

Irene took a big breath, then let it out again slowly.

‘I’ve got something,’ she said. ‘And this isn’t a confession either, because I never actually did anything wrong, I understand that now, but it is something I need to get out.’

The others waited, quiet and acquiescent, knowing that whatever Irene had to say, no matter how shocking or embarrassing it might be, it would be all right, because she was one of them; she was their friend.

‘There were five of us at home,’ Irene began. ‘I was the eldest with two brothers and two sisters. Being a Catholic my mother couldn’t stop popping us out, although I think she wanted to. She got quite sick after Roy, he’s the youngest, and either she couldn’t have any more babies or Dad left her alone, I’m not sure which. Dad was a sharemilker and we lived out at Tuakau, in a little cottage on the farm. We all went to primary school out there and we were really poor. I mean dirt poor. We didn’t wear shoes to school and our clothes were full of holes Mum was always trying to patch and darn.’ Irene frowned. ‘Mind you, hardly anyone wore shoes to school, not just us or the Maori kids. There were
quite a few Maoris at the school and they used to ride in from all over the place on horseback, three or four of them to a horse, and I used to be really jealous because I always wanted a horse but Dad said I’d never look after it. Which was probably true.

‘And we all used to help on the farm, when we were old enough. I’d help Dad in the milking shed in the mornings and in the afternoons when I got home from school, and the little ones all learned to do that as they got older. Mum didn’t like it—she said it stopped us from doing our homework—but I still did mine, at night. It wasn’t an easy life, I suppose, but we were happy enough, for a while anyway. Mum was a good cook and she could turn anything into something worth eating. And she grew most of our vegies and made bread and did all those sorts of things a good wife’s supposed to do.’ Briefly, Irene smiled. ‘Unlike me. I can’t cook to save myself. Poor Martin. So we were all right for food, but we hardly ever had money for anything else, which is why all of us kids went around looking like we’d got our clothes from St Vincent de Paul’s. Which we did sometimes. Mum used to go into town once a month and stock up, I’m sure of it. And sometimes she’d come home from her CWI meetings with things from the other ladies, but we hardly ever had anything new. No, actually that’s not true. I had a lovely coat once, that the farmer’s wife gave me. It was royal blue wool and had a scarf attached to it with white fur pompoms on the ends. But Mum told me I could wear it only for best, and seeing we never went anywhere nice, it hardly ever got worn. It got handed down of course, and when it got to my two little brothers, Mum just cut the pompoms off so it didn’t look so girly. But they didn’t get to wear it much either, and I think
by the time we all grew out of it, it was still nearly as good as the day I was given it.’

She reached for a cigarette and lit it, the others waiting patiently.

‘Dad started drinking heavily when I was about six. There were only three of us kids then. He fell off the tractor one day while he was feeding out, and the back wheel ran over him and broke his pelvis. He was in hospital for quite a while and apparently when he was discharged the doctors told him he would have to find a less physical job. But hell, no, my father was a man of the land and that’s where he was going to stay! According to him, anyway. He couldn’t accept it. Or wouldn’t. I don’t know. Anyway, when he came home I would hear him and Mum arguing in the kitchen late at night because she wanted us to move into town so Dad could get a job that wouldn’t be so hard on him, and he wouldn’t have a bar of it. “Do I
look
like a bloody townie, woman?” he’d shout back at her. And if she went on about it, which she sometimes did, he’d just stomp out of the house and we wouldn’t see him ‘til milking the next morning, and he’d always stink because he’d have got stuck into the booze and slept in the barn. But we got used to that.’

Irene paused for a moment. ‘And then, when I was ten, it started. A man told me one day that I was a very pretty girl, and after that he started paying me a lot of attention. By the time I was eleven I was sleeping with him.’

Louise gasped and her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Having sex?’ she whispered, her eyes wide with shock.

Irene nodded, her white, soot-smudged face impassive.

Ruby and Beatrice exchanged quick, horrified glances,
but Allie stared directly at Irene, marvelling at the calmness—or was it a deep, flat emptiness?—in her friend’s eyes.

‘And that went on for about three years,’ Irene continued, ‘until I started getting my periods. After that he said it would be too dangerous, that I might get pregnant, and then he left.’ Her mouth twisted in a sort of half smile, half frown. ‘He left me.’

‘Why didn’t you tell someone?’ Allie said, aghast.

‘I…I just couldn’t, that’s all,’ Irene replied, staring down at the table top. ‘And he said that if I did tell, no one would ever love me again.’ She looked up and added almost casually, ‘Mind you, he said that anyway. He said I was used goods and no one would want me after what he’d been doing. And that I’d always belong to him.’

‘Who was he, Irene? Who was the man?’ Ruby asked gently. ‘Was it the farmer? Because it’s not too late: he could still be brought to justice.’

Irene looked mildly surprised. ‘The farmer? Hell, no, it was my father.’

The others gaped at her.

She shrugged. ‘After he’d gone, we all just kept on with our lives. I went to secondary school and then secretarial college. Mum still does for the farmer out at Tuakau—his wife’s a bit of an invalid and they’ve still got a couple of kids at home. I don’t think they’ve got the heart to kick her out of the cottage anyway.’

‘And have you seen him since? Your father?’ Beatrice asked.

‘No,’ Irene said. ‘No one has.’ She pushed her hair back off her face, as though she were trying to sweep all of those bad memories out of her head. ‘Shall we say a prayer? I’ve got one. Well, I think it’s a prayer, but it might be just a
poem. And I can’t remember all of it, but Mum used to say it to us sometimes. When things weren’t going well.’ Then, for the first time since any of them had known her, Irene looked unsure of herself. ‘Shall we hold hands?’

No one hesitated, and when they were linked around the table hand in hand, Irene closed her eyes and began:

Christ be with me, Christ within me,

Christ behind me, Christ before me,

Christ beside me, Christ to win me,

Christ to comfort and restore me,

Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,

Christ in hearts of all that love me,

Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

When she’d finished, Irene kept her head down for a moment. Then she looked up and smiled, and Allie thought that she seemed…lighter, somehow.

‘I don’t know why,’ Irene said, ‘but that prayer always comforts me. It makes me—’

But she didn’t complete the sentence because someone screamed; it was Simone.

Below them, on Queen Street, a constable opened the back door of a police car and leaned in.

‘If I let the pair of you out, will you give me your word that you’ll stay behind the barricade?’

Sid nodded, followed, after a moment, by Sonny.

‘Because if there’s any more trouble, I’ll have to send you down to the lock-up,’ the cop warned. He removed
the handcuff from Sonny’s wrist. ‘And I bloody well mean that. All right?’

Sid nodded again, but Sonny was already out of the car, gazing up at the flames that had now breached Dunbar & Jones’s second-floor windows.

‘Look!’ Simone was pointing past the table at which Allie and the others were sitting.

They whipped around and there it was—a long, narrow tongue of flame flickering up the wall, blistering the paint and warping the floorboards it had burnt through. And even as they watched, the flame divided into two, then three. And then it took hold, igniting the matchlining in seconds and sending ribbons of black smoke unravelling across the ceiling.

Someone shouted, ‘Move! Get out of here!’ and for the second time they were up and running from the cafeteria.

Out in the hallway, Louise turned right and ran down the corridor that led to the dressmaking workroom at the far end. Allie, Irene and Ruby followed her, but Beatrice had stopped.

Ruby turned around. ‘Bea! Hurry!’

Her round face a picture of terror, Beatrice called: ‘The others, Ruby, they’ve gone towards the tailoring workroom. You’re going the wrong way!’ And then she grimaced and clutched at her arm.

‘Bea? What’s the matter?’ Ruby ran back down the corridor, her spectacles on their gold chain bouncing on her chest. She glanced down and tore them off.

Beatrice collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor.

Allie, watching from the doorway of the dressmaking room, ran back after Ruby.

Smoke was beginning to billow out of the cafeteria now, and Allie saw that the flames had almost consumed one wall and were moving out across the ceiling. There was a terrible smell, sharp and noxious, and she could taste the greasy smoke in her mouth. She looked right and peered down the hallway, which was rapidly filling with smoke, but there was no sign of Simone and the others.

Beatrice’s legs were splayed out in front of her. Her dress had ridden up, revealing beige stockings and an inch of pudgy blue-veined flesh above them. Kneeling beside her, Ruby briskly tapped her cheek, as though Beatrice had passed out and she was trying to revive her.

‘Stop that, Ruby,’ Bea mumbled. ‘You’re hurting my face.’

Leaning over her, Ruby demanded, ‘What’s wrong, Bea? Are you hurt?’

‘I think I’m having a heart attack.’

‘Oh, you are not,’ Ruby snapped. ‘Get up!’

‘I can’t…I can’t seem to move.’

‘Have you got your pills?

‘I’ve lost my bag,’ Beatrice said through clenched teeth, then made a groaning noise that ended in a sharp, high whimper.

The sound of an explosion came from inside the cafeteria, followed immediately by a bigger one, and a wave of burning dust and debris blew out through the open door.

‘Beatrice, for God’s sake
get up!
’ Ruby shouted.

Beatrice muttered something and her hand fluttered weakly, but otherwise she didn’t respond.

Ruby grabbed her shoulders and shook her. ‘Beatrice?
Bea!’ She looked up at Allie in desperation. ‘I can’t leave her, you know. I won’t.’

Something else exploded in the caf and seconds later flames shot up from the stairwell at the other end of the hallway.

Ruby sat down on the floor. Weeping now, but silently, she slid her arm behind Beatrice’s neck and pulled her tight against her. Beatrice’s eyes were closed and her breathing had become very shallow. ‘I’m here, love,’ Ruby whispered. ‘Don’t worry, I’m here. I won’t leave you.’

She looked up at Allie. ‘There’s no point waiting for me, I’m staying with Bea. Go down to the dressmaking room and barricade yourselves in there. If you can keep the smoke out you’ll have a little more time.’

And then she laid her cheek against the top of Beatrice’s head and closed her eyes.

Allie watched them for a second, her heart aching, before she turned away and ran back down the corridor to the dressmaking room, the heat radiating from the cafeteria almost seeming to push her along.

Irene and Louise pulled her in, then slammed the door. It was quieter in here, and there wasn’t much smoke yet. They leaned against the wall, breathing heavily, not from exertion, but from panic.

Their eyes met.

‘No one’s coming for us, are they?’ Allie said flatly.

Louise pushed herself off the wall and went over to a window. Allie and Irene followed.

The workroom was in the north-eastern corner of the building, and there were windows in two of the walls. One set looked down over Queen Street, and the other, at which they stood, faced the harbour. An alleyway separated
Dunbar & Jones from the building next to it, creating a gap that looked to be at least twelve feet wide. The building opposite was a storey shorter than the department store, so if they jumped at least they wouldn’t have to leap up as well as out, but the distance between the two buildings seemed enormous.

‘Can we do it?’ Louise said, almost to herself.

Allie felt her bowels cramp as she stared down at the smoke-filled alleyway, and at the flames bursting from the second-floor windows. ‘Oh God, I don’t think I can, I really don’t.’

‘We’d have to push off from the windowsill,’ Louise said. ‘We wouldn’t be able to get a running start.’

She set her thumbs against the latches on the sash window in front of her, released them and shoved. Nothing happened. She put more weight behind it; there was a muffled creak, but still nothing budged. Peering closely at the join between the sill and the actual sash, she swore. ‘It’s been painted shut.’ She tried the windows on either side. ‘They all have on this wall.’

Allie ran to the windows that overlooked Queen Street and tried one. It slid up easily. She leaned out and squinted down at the street. Smoke pouring from the windows below stung her eyes and she could feel the heat in her throat. ‘
Hey!
’ she shrieked, waving her arms madly. ‘
Up here! We’re trapped!
’

Carrying a wooden chair, Louise appeared at Allie’s side. ‘Move out of the way,’ she ordered, then heaved the chair out of the window.

It arced out for a few feet then began to drop, seeming to fall for a very long time before it hit the verandah roof above the ground floor and bounced off, shattered, and
finally came to rest in several pieces in the middle of the street. Allie tried not to imagine what the same fall would do to a human body.

Heads turned below them and arms came up to point.

Allie and Louise waved furiously. A group of firemen ran to a spot below them, disappearing from view as they neared the building. Then two long ladders were carried over and laboriously heaved into place, propped against the verandah.

‘They’ve seen us!’ Allie said to Irene, who was standing in the middle of the room, watching calmly. ‘They’re putting ladders up!’