Fire Song (3 page)

‘Cat got your tongue?’ he joked, because she was frozen, hand still on the gate, eyes wide with fright. Only Blackie,
lively at her feet, was wagging his tail in greeting. Looking into her stricken face, he added quickly, ‘No need to be frightened, young Ingrid. Natalie told me you were curious to see the new lockup.’

‘Oh no, really, I was –’

‘And you know, now is a real good time, on account of there being no non-paying guests, not a one.’ He opened the gate wide. ‘Just leave the old mutt out here – looks like he’d settle right there in the shade.’

What was she to do? She’d have to go along with it, or he’d guess that something was amiss. She nodded, tying Blackie’s leash to the gate to hide her confusion.

‘It’ll give me a break from my paperwork, too.’

And she was walking down the path, as he called cheerfully over his shoulder, ‘Only Mrs Jenkins here at present. You know Mrs J, don’t you?’ She nodded. A plump happy-go-lucky woman, Mrs Jenkins did the cleaning at the lockup and the cooking, when anyone was being held. She liked it when the lockup was full, because it meant extra money for her. She made sure she cooked wholesome and comforting meals, and often gave the inmates a little extra something before the paddy wagon came to take them away. Especially the town drunk, Jervis, who usually spent a night in the clink after being drunk and disorderly, some folks said, just to get a decent meal. A Mrs Jenkins special.

Ingrid passed through the front of the house where the rooms were fitted out with office furniture: at least four typewriters, though there were never more than two officers on duty here, two telephones – not the kind attached to the wall, either – a big wireless-looking thing, heavy wooden
filing drawers, and stacks of important-looking manila files. She trod softly down the short hall to the two holding cells, wishing she could think of something cheery and lighthearted to say.

‘In trouble are we, missy?’ Mrs Jenkins joked from the bathroom, where she was cleaning furiously.

‘Hullo, Mrs Jenkins,’ she murmured, her cheeks reddening at the thought of the trouble that lay ahead.

‘Natalie’s schoolmate wanted to see the new lockup,’ Terry boomed.

She tried to add an enthusiastic, ‘Yes, I was just passing by,’ but her voice came out squeaky and not at all convincing – even to her own ears. ‘Going shopping for my mum,’ she managed. That sounded better.

‘You sure are a big help to your mother.’ Mrs Jenkins smiled at her, as they passed by. She didn’t add,
and I wish I had one like you at my place, instead of three noisy boys, who wont do a hand’s turn round the house!

‘Out here.’ Terry was holding open a door that led to another narrow hallway and into the holding cells, each with a heavy metal door.

They were such small lonely rooms! He was grinning at her.

‘You can go inside one, Ingrid. I won’t lock the door on you. Promise.’

‘Thank you!’ If a real live snake had been coiled under the bed she couldn’t have stepped inside more gingerly. She looked around at the tiny cream walled room, the very place where your freedom would be taken, if you’d done something wrong, where you’d be locked up away from the world, if you’d broken the law! The minute she was inside, it
took all her self-control not to cry out. Ingrid bit her lip and looked around intently, nodding at each scant thing she saw.

A bed attached to the wall was folded down and the mattress looked extra thin. The grey cover was stretched smooth as a piece of lino and there was a pile of extra blankets stacked at the foot of the bed. It’d be cold as sin here on winter nights.

There was a chair, a plain wooden one, like the teachers had at school. In the corner was a tiny enamel sink with a single tap, and under it a bucket, also made of enamel. The one window was high and, of course, had thick bars set all across it. These helped make a pattern in the blotch of sunlight on the floor, which shivered because a vine of some sort had attached itself, its leaves out there fluttering, annoyingly free in the breeze.

She raised her eyes from the crossword pattern, trying to think of something to say. She wanted to get out of there, and he must have seen her alarm.

‘It’s okay, Ingrid. These cells are bigger’n usual and there’s a fuel stove just out here in the corridor that we light up in winter time to make the place more cosy.’ He seemed so proud of the cells, she had to say something.

‘It looks comfy enough for a –’ She was dragging the words out of somewhere. ‘I mean, plenty of blankets.’

‘Too right!’

Don’t run,
she said to herself as she left the cell and walked slowly back up the hall. Don’t dare run!

‘Bye, Mrs Jenkins, and thanks, Constable Brooks. Thank you very much for letting me see. It was interesting.’ She spoke slowly, making sure to use his title, and not just say ‘Terry’ like she did before. As she opened the fly screen
door to leave the police station once and for all, she heard Mrs Jenkins from down the hall. ‘Serious little thing, ain’t she?’

‘Bit of a frightened rabbit, today. Nat reckons she can talk the leg off an iron pot, though, and that she’s real clever at school,’ he said, turning back to the desk and his typewriter, where four sets of paper with thin carbon in between three of them, awaited his attention.

Mum would be arrested, if they knew. Of course she would! Taken there first of all, and more than likely locked up in that cramped dull room with the straight ugly bed and the straight ugly walls, if she breathed a word of it. The thought of Mum locked up anywhere! She’d go good and mad. And it would be her fault. A crazy idea, talking to Constable Brooks, nice and all as he was. She shouldn’t have involved any constable at all! No police.

She grabbed at Blackie’s leash and left the neat grassy yard of the station, grateful for the touch of spring sunshine on her skin, but shivering at the danger of her idea, and at her lucky escape.

Outside, along the road, everything seemed cheerfully normal. The black asphalt road that careered past Blackheath station and went further on into other mountain towns, the gravelly path she was on right now and the grassy nature strip, the line of little houses, the shops up ahead, all suddenly a study of freedom and wonder. She was unusually glad to be taking in every bit, as if she’d just emerged from two weeks or two months inside that holding cell herself.

‘Lucky, lucky, lucky old you.'The song began in her head as she stepped out with big wide steps, swinging the string
bag jauntily, Blackie running, joyous beside her. But these words were soon overtaken with others.

Fire! Liar! Fire! Gone up in smoke, burnt down to the ground.
That damned fire song again, and she slowed down, let poor old Blackie strain on the leash and, frowning, shook her head hard to get rid of the words. Mum and how to stop her – that problem hadn’t gone away, couldn’t, until she found someone to talk some sense into her. Certainly not nice, friendly Constable Brooks, though.

The question remained. Who on earth could she ask for help?

W
hat about their neighbours? Maybe it would be safer to start close to home. Right next door was Gracie Williams, who was in her class at school, and her mother, Mrs Harry Williams. Mum liked to poke fun at her, especially for still calling herself ‘Mrs Harry Williams’ when, as she said, precious Harry had pissed off to the city years ago. She said it so nastily that it made Ingrid feel a bit sorry for Gracie ‘s mum, who could be a bit of a pain – even a lot of a pain – at times.

Mrs Harry Williams had a good heart and in fact Mum knew it, though she could go on and on about her faults. The time Pippa was sick with a high fever and had taken that fit, a ‘convulsion’ they’d called it at the hospital, Mrs Harry Williams had been right there. She’d bundled the lot of them into her beaten-up old car and got them up to the hospital faster than any ambulance could’ve taken them. And then she’d left a cooked dinner on their doorstep that night.

‘Practically no flavour, this stew, almost inedible,’ Mum had said, though Ingrid noticed she was tucking in. Since Pippa was all right again, she took large mouthfuls of the
practically inedible stew. It was Ingrid who couldn’t eat much at all. All she could think about was the way Pippa still looked all pale and washed out.

‘But it was kind of Mrs HW, now, wasn’t it, love?’ said her mother.

Mum wouldn’t, or couldn’t, accept any friendship in the ordinary way of things, like other people in town did – easy at the back fence or in each other’s kitchens over cups of tea. That wasn’t her way.

‘Give her an inch and she’ll take a mile,’ was what she said about Gracie’s mum. ‘And with all her religious claptrap, she can be an extra big pain in the side. Pity her God’s no good at bringing that man of hers back home.’ She had something like that to say about every woman who’d tried to be her friend.

‘Had to sell that car of hers just to keep going and then she said it was only because she was sick of driving. Stuff and nonsense. She should face facts like everyone else, that’s what,’ Mum said once, watching Mrs Harry Williams through the louvres on the back verandah, as she pegged her few rags of clothing on the line.

But Mrs Harry Williams didn’t face facts, and most nights, people said, she set a place for her husband at the table, as if he might walk in the door any minute.

She always gave advice whenever Ingrid went to their place, which was not often, because Gracie really wasn’t a good friend. And if you did venture in, you had to listen to Gracie’s mum going on and on. Mostly, it was to do with God and church. When Ingrid thought about it, she couldn’t see any use in talking to Gracie’s mum about the calamity, because she’d probably go straight to that minister
fellow of hers. He was a middle aged man with a droning voice, cold, blue disappointed eyes, and an outsize balding head. Mum described him as self-satisfied. He’d once paid a call to
Emoh Ruo
to see whether Mum cared to go to church and was quite cross when she said that she didn’t.

Ingrid agreed wholeheartedly with Mum’s opinion of the minister, because she’d gone to church with Gracie a couple of times. But she thought that maybe a prayer-song as she walked along wouldn’t hurt. Not one of his, but one of her own. She concentrated hard on mouthing the words silently.

‘Help me, oh God, to find someone. Something awful is about to happen and I believe it’s not just the fire Mum is going to light. That’s bad enough. And I don’t want to tell all the lies I will have to tell about it. Maybe it’ll be something worse than a fire for Mum and me and Pippa and the boys. So be quick, please be quick. Like now, dear God, right now!’ She let out her breath as if she’d been holding it a good long time.

Then it came to her. Perhaps it was an answer to her prayer. There and then she thought of Dom, still one of her best friends at school, even though his dad didn’t come to see Mum any more. The boy everyone at school liked to call her
Eye-tie
boyfriend – not that she dared repeat that boyfriend kind of talk. Mum had got furious the day she mentioned that Natalie said Dom was sweet on Ingrid. Mum was so strange and angry Ingrid had taken it back and said it was only a joke really. And Mum had said tersely, ‘Just as well,’ and she’d never mentioned anything like it again. But Dom was her good friend.

He was nice to talk to, and she knew she could trust him, the same way she could trust her big brother, Freddy. Dom
would more than likely come up with something. And he wouldn’t involve the police, the minister or the teachers. He’d think it out for himself as he always did. She was sure of it.

Then again, what could Dom do really if he didn’t talk to his dad about it? The Italian man some of the townsfolk still called the
dago
as if he were someone so different from all of them. Dago or not, she really liked Dom’s dad, so that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Maybe she should bypass Dom and go straight to him. She’d ask him to help them, this small bright-eyed man with the soft way of talking, the man Mum had first of all liked so much. But she didn’t like him anymore – or so she said.

Mum had shocked some of the people in town by dancing with him in the church hall. Sergio Fratelli, the new greengrocer, hadn’t exactly been welcome to that social event in the first place. And yet he had come to that dance soon after his arrival in town, his hair glossy with brilliantine, and his shoes extra shiny, his smart blue and white striped shirt and his navy tie putting every other man to shame.

Mum had sat herself down gracefully, right beside Mr Fratelli. Of course this gave the dago the right, Mrs Smithers said later, to ask her to dance, just as if he were one of them. Well, really, with his sharp clothes and those overdone continental manners of his! Mum had danced with him more than once; and Dom had danced with Ingrid. He didn’t stand back shy like the rest of the schoolboys clustered in the doorway, but was eager to show that he knew how to dance, too. And he did.

It didn’t seem to matter that Robyn Smithers had sidled up to Ingrid, when they stopped for supper and said in that smiling way of hers, ‘You know, Ingrid Crowe, I wouldn’t be
caught dead dancing with that dago’s son. And Natalie said she wouldn’t either.’

Ingrid had danced with Dom again after that and then she’d laughed like mad, because he insisted on dancing with her baby sister and let Pippa stand on his shoes exactly the way Uncle Ken had done with her when she was little. Round and round the dance floor. Pippa’s cheeks were bright pink with excitement and everyone was laughing, especially Mum.

And when the band took a break, Dom had come back to her with drinks of green cordial and they’d gone out into the cool of the yard. They sat at the base of a huge tree so old its branches reached the ground in places and its great lumpy roots thrusting out of the ground made rough seats for them. Sitting so close to Dom she could smell a mixture of wool and open fire and brilliantine. There was a silence as they both sipped their cordial. And then, looking up into the great spreading branches, she said, ‘I can see why people make up stories about whole worlds in a tree – you know, magic worlds!’ And then she regretted saying it in case Dom thought that made her sound like a little girl bringing up the subject of fairies and magic.

The music began again and with a smile Dom pointed to the yellow lit window, where people bobbed past in time to the music. She smiled, too, because it was funny to see so many heads made unfamiliar by their jigging movements as they went by.

And then he said one of those ‘Dom comments’ that could sometimes leave her unable to think of a thing to say.

She saw that his gaze by this had passed from the brightly lit church hall, past the purplish shadows cast at the side of the small stone church, to the churchyard itself defined with
dark headstones, the older ones already askew. ‘The living and the dead, hey? In one swoop. ‘Was he making a joke? She knew his mum had died long ago in Italy. Was he angry thinking about that? What?

But he took her hand and she didn’t have to say anything. She could see his face change in the dim light as he leant towards her and kissed her gently. It seemed the most natural of things to happen. She kissed him back, tasting the lime on his lips and this kiss was not like the first, or like those kisses she reserved for Pippa or any other kiss she had ever known. This kiss was one she wanted to prolong as he did, but could not, because suddenly she heard her name being called.

‘Ingrid! Ingrid! Where are you?’ Robyn Smithers was sillouhetted in her sticking out dress on the hall steps, peering into the darkness.

‘You better go,’ Dom said, but not before he had squeezed her hand.

‘And I’ll see you inside.’

‘Coming,’ she answered, before Robyn came down the steps and saw that Dom was with her and reported them in some ghastly way to her school friends.

She liked Dom Fratelli a whole lot more after that dance.

Next day Dom’s dad arrived at their place with a box of stuff for them from his fruit shop, and stayed in the kitchen talking to her mother for a good long time.

Mum stopped calling him the dago and he came quite often. Well, she’d only said the word once more.

He’d come at least once a week with fruit and vegies and Mum would let him take heaps of their lemons or whatever was in the orchard for his shop, though a lot of it was shrivelled or rotten with fruit fly since Grandma Logan died.

Ingrid loved those times, because Dom would come with his dad, and they’d talk about a lot of things they could never discuss at school, and though they didn’t kiss again, to Ingrid it always seemed to be in the air and close to happening in a peculiar and nice way. Once he helped her put up a swing in the orchard especially for Pippa. It made that quiet child yelp with joy, as her tiny feet almost touched the branches and her pigtails flew round in the wind, when he pushed her as high as he dared. And she thought that Pippa might actually say something, she was so excited.

And inside you could hear Mum’s laughter, a lovely sound mixing with Mr Fratelli’s. Once she and Dom had stood together to watch their parents dance with each other on the side verandah in that graceful way they had, while Grandma’s record player produced rills of bright music. Mum was pretty happy after those visits and, often as not, her happiness kept going.

That was when she told stories to the girls at night about when she was little and funny things that had happened. About all the boys who’d loved her when she was a teenager, one even hiding in the tree outside their house just to see her. She didn’t say whether it was their dad or not, but Ingrid guessed that it was. It was good to see Mum like this, all her anger melted away, her face soft, looking prettier than ever, after Mr Fratelli came to visit.

Mind you, that was well before he spoke to Mum about his bride, who it turned out was soon to arrive. His ‘pathetic, soppy little mail order bride', as Mum described her, narrowing her eyes and drawing really hard on her cigarette at the thought. Ingrid remembered how Mum had gone to pieces the day he came and told her that he shouldn’t really
visit them anymore. He had sent for this young woman from near his own home village in Italy, because Dom definitely needed a mother now. It was a terrible blow to Mum.

‘He’s a rotten little dago, just like they all said.’ She spoke bitterly that night with the venom Ingrid always dreaded. ‘He said he’d still bring us some fruit, but he can keep it far as I’m concerned.

‘He needn’t bother darkening my doorstep ever again. And that goes for his blithering fool of a son, too!’

Dom wasn’t blithering and Mum knew it, but seeing her distress, Ingrid said nothing in his defence. She remembered how dark Mum had been with her nasty comments that night and all next day, about Dom needing a mother from a village far away in Italy.

Ingrid could hear her slapping those big heavy linen sheets round, after she lifted them on the bleached white copper stick, one by one from the bubbling cauldron into the steaming tubs. She went to the laundry with the wicker basket, ready to take the wet burden of the sheets and Mum’s anger out to the yard – after Mum had finished with them.

The water flew when Mum’s strong, angry arms screwed those sheets round and round good and proper, as if she were screwing someone’s neck. The dago’s neck, really. Although the basket was heavy, Ingrid loved taking the washing out to Grandma Logan’s garden and up the yard to the clothes line, just short of the apple orchard, with Blackie getting up to greet her and Pippa trailing behind her, hoping for a leg-up into one of the trees.

‘Want an apple, Pippa? Say, “Yes, please, I’d like an apple!"’

She didn’t say a word, but she nodded.

‘Then wait a mo, Pip.’

Ingrid lowered the clothes prop, that big forked stick Uncle Ken had made for them, that wonderful time he’d visited them in the Blue Mountains. The prop always made her think of him, and then of Daddy as she brought the line down not too low, but low enough to spread out the sheets without letting them touch the ground. Then she raised the line triumphantly, up and up to the full height of the prop, where Mum’s white-as-white sheets whipped and flapped against the blue mountain sky.

Thinking about Mum’s anger, she decided she really should not go to Mr Fratelli for help, but to his son, who was still her good friend. Their place was on the other side of town. She could run there right after she had bought the tobacco and papers. She could fill the billycan with milk on the way back. Then she’d have to run fast on account of Mum waiting impatiently for her ciggies, and the time she’d already taken at the police station. She hesitated. There was no knowing what Mum would do when she was angry, if she had to wait too long. And getting to Dom’s…

She faltered. Maybe she should just do the shopping and get home.

Or then again, there were Ruth Klein’s parents. Mr Klein and Mrs Klein lived real close by, in a tiny wooden cottage down Hat Hill Road. Mrs Klein said she loved the name Hat Hill, it was so strange an image to conjure up. And she liked the way Australians used English. They have such a sense of humour here, she’d say, as if where she had come from there hadn’t been very many laughs.