Shielding his eyes against the searing glare, his brown-rimmed glasses also acting as a thin barrier, Childes took a fast look back inside, skin on his hands and face immediately scalded by the exposure, breath torn, it seemed, from his throat by molten fingers. He staggered away again, varnish on the wood he had rested against beginning to bubble and crack, the door ready to ignite.
The stairway was ablaze. And closer, near to the entrance and within the flames, something black sizzled. Only briefly did he wonder whose body it was.
Childes wanted to run, to leave the grounds, to get away from there; afraid for himself, yet aware of the danger for those on the upper floors, the boarders and few members of staff who lodged at La Roche. The alarm bells would have aroused them by now and they would be confused, panic-stricken, their first thought to escape by the easily accessible main stairway, not knowing its lower reaches were already destroyed, perhaps fright and haste overcoming the carefully indoctrinated fire-drill they had rehearsed so often.
Before running to the rear of the building where the fire-exit was located, Childes reached into the inferno with one hand and grasped the door's handle, shouting out in pain at the touch of scorched metal. Forcing himself to maintain a grip, he banged the door shut, knowing it was a small gesture to prevent a draught being sucked in to aid the flames in their journey up the staircase, but hoping the action might make some difference. The door bounced against its partner, the wood already warped from its original shape. Childes left it and jumped down the steps, running alongside the school, passing dazzling windows, ducking as glass shattered.
Turning the corner, coolness hit him like air from an opened freezer door, changing perspiration on his face into cold liquid drops. He was in darkness, no fire-glow on that side -yet. Areas of reflected light began appearing on the lawn as lights were switched on in dormitories and corridors. Feeling the wall to his left for guidance, Childes hurried forwards, turning a corner again, soon reaching the fire-door itself. Finding it already open, a glass pane smashed at waist level where a hand could be put through to pressure the lock bar inside.
Childes wasted no time pondering the who or the wherefore: he pushed his way in, reaching for the light-switch he knew to be nearby.
Acrid smoke had searched out that part of the building although, as yet, the swirling clouds were thin and nebulous. The alarms, so much louder inside, served to stoke his fear with their incessant shrill, but he forced himself onto the stone steps, taking them three at a time, jangled nerves reminding him of a similar upward flight only a few days before. This time, though, there was more than one life at stake.
Smoke grew thicker as he went and the crackling rumble of the fire itself could be heard. Then voices, footsteps descending, growing louder. More light from above, glimpses of movement on the stairs. Thank God, they were on their way down!
He paused on the first floor, both hands resting on the iron stair-rail, and scanned the corridor running off from that landing. The far end was an inferno, rolling flames filling the space from floor to ceiling. Sweltering heat roared from the passageway to wash over him.
Onwards. Foolish to stop, even for a second. Foolish to take time to consider the danger.
The voices were near, now perhaps only one flight above, and Childes continued to climb, smoke beginning to sting his eyes, the air itself becoming parched, somehow burnt dry, even though the heart of the blaze was some distance away. It made him wonder how much ground the fire had gained below. The first stumbling figures appeared above and he quickly covered the distance between them.
A girl of no more than ten or eleven tumbled into his arms, her face streaked with tears, the hem of her nightdress flapping loosely over bare ankles and feet.
'You're safe,' he told her, looking over her head towards the other girls crowding behind. 'You'll soon be outside.'
'Mr Childes, Mr Childes, is that you?' came a breathless voice from somewhere in their midst.
A figure, taller than most of the girls, worked her way through. Like the pupils, she was in night attire and she clutched her dressing gown around her as if for protection against the mounting heat. Incongruously, she wore normal flat-heeled walking shoes. For a moment, he thought it might have been La Roche's principal, but he quickly recognised Harriet Vallois, history tutor and one of the house-mistresses.
'Are all the girls out of their dormitories?' he asked, shouting over the noise of the alarms and frightened girls; some of the girls were coughing into cupped hands because of the worsening atmosphere.
'Matron and Miss Todd are checking,' the teacher replied, a quivering of her lips suggesting that she, too, was close to tears. 'They sent me on with this group.'
He clasped her shoulder, more to steady her than to comfort. 'Is Miss Piprelly with them?'
'N-no. I passed her rooms and knocked at her door, but there was no reply. I assumed she would have gone straight up to the dormitories, but… but there was no sign of her!'
The burning thing in the hallway!
Childes shuddered. The body might well have been that of the arsonist, destroyed by its own intent, caught in its own trap. He couldn't really be sure that it had been Estelle Piprelly lying there, a frizzling lump of blackened meat; he couldn't really be sure, yet somehow he was, somehow he had no doubts.
Harriet Vallois was looking back up the stairway, her eyes wild, desperate.
'Get the girls out!' he snapped, sharply increasing his grip on her arm. The sudden pain made her spin round towards him once more.
'Get them out!' he repeated, pulling her forward and handing over the girl still clinging to him. 'Keep them all together and don't stop for anything.' Then, closer to her ear, 'You haven't got much time.'
Her alarm increased. 'Won't you help me?' she pleaded.
Oh yes, he would love to help by leading her and the girls away from that place of impending death in which a body lay crisped and inhuman in the main hallway, where God-only-knows-what might still be roaming the corridors and where ravenous flames ate away the very innards of the building.
'You'll be okay,' he reasoned with her, 'there isn't much further to go. I've got to try and help those still left upstairs.'
He gave her a firm but gentle shove downwards and reached for the nearest girls, encouraging them to follow. The rest quickly fell into step and he urged them to take care not to lose their footing, reassuring each one as they went by. He estimated that at least thirty had passed him and more were continuing to trickle down. Childes had no idea of how many of La Roche's three hundred pupils were boarders, but a calculated guess put the figure at sixty or so. Apart from Estelle Piprelly, only two staff members and the matron were in charge of the girls at night. His pace quickened even though the effort of climbing was becoming harder, the air more difficult to breathe. The higher he went, the more dense the rolling smoke became. The soot-filled fumes were like some insidious scout, exploring and seeking out, giving gleeful warning of its master's seething approach. Louder, also, was the grumbling resonance of the fire itself, with timbers cracking somewhere deep within the furnace like rifle shots. And over all were the stridulous alarms inciting their own special panic.
Beginning to choke, he drew out a handkerchief and held it to his mouth. More girls appeared, their spluttering cries preceding them.
'Keep going!' he shouted to them, though they did not need his bidding. Two older girls were supporting another whose hysteria had virtually rendered her helpless. Childes was tempted to lift the screeching girl and carry her down himself, but realised that despite their difficulties the trio would make it to the exit.
Someone staggered into him and he held out his arms to prevent the figure from falling.
'Eloise!' he said, recognising the other teacher who lodged at the school.
Miss Todd gaped at him, bewildered, unsure, her plump chest rasping noisily as she sucked in spoilt air.
'How many are left up there?' he yelled close to her face. She shook her head, impa
tient to be away. 'For God's sake, try to think!''
'Let me go,' she begged. 'There's nothing we can do!'
'How many?' he insisted, gripping her flailing arms tightly. 'We looked, we searched! Some were so frightened they were hiding in the bathrooms. Others were screaming from windows.'
'Did you get them all out?'
'Oh let me go let me go!’
He held her rigid. 'Did you get them all out?'
Girls pushed past, all of them clinging to the stair-rail for guidance, shoulders jerking and eyes streaming tears. Their screams had merged into a kind of wailing. The teacher broke away from Childes and joined them in their flight, her arms going around the shivering shoulders of one, giving comfort in spite of her own desperate fear.
She turned to call back to him. 'Some of the girls went in the other direction, towards the main staircase! Matron went after them!' Then she hurried away, pushed on by those behind.
Childes wasted no more time. Covering his mouth with the handkerchief, he mounted the remaining flights, passing no one else on the way. He had lost count, but he suspected that most of the boarders were on their way down.
He arrived at the top floor where the smoke was almost overpowering. His eyes were blurred, his throat painfully dry. With dismay he saw that the flames had reached that level, for there was a glow from further down the corridor he now faced. It was considerably softened by the whirling haze, but he was sure its source was the other stairway.
Bending low to avoid the worst of the smoke, Childes ran along the passageway, looking into dormitories as he passed.
A bout of coughing made him clutch his chest and sink to his knees. Realising he was near one of the washrooms, he crawled inside to find the air much clearer. He staggered to a basin and turned on a tap, removing his spectacles and splashing water on his face. He grabbed a towel, throwing it into the basin to soak, then wrapped it around his neck like a scarf, pulling the sodden material up over his nose and chin.
First checking toilet cubicles and bathrooms, he went back out into the corridor, the wet towel serving as a mask against the fumes. The fire's sound had become a low roar and the heat was stifling as he drew near the main stairwell. He was about to enter another dormitory when a different noise caught his attention, faint under the melee of alarm bells and burning, splintering wood, but distinct from them. The screaming seemed to come from the heart of the blaze itself.
Pulling the towel over his head and holding one end across most of his face, Childes moved along, touching the wall on that side for support as much as guidance.
Sparks leapt upwards from the stairwell, shooting into the air like volcanic debris, while writhing flames were consuming tongues, licking at walls, woodwork, rolling in white-hot balls towards the ceiling. The landing was not yet ablaze, but the flooring was beginning to smoulder, smoke rising like steam.
Childes went to the rail, quickly pulling back his hand when he touched the peeling wood.
The girls were bunched in a corner just below, opposite where he stood, the stairs ahead of them in flames. As were the stairs behind. They had attempted to leave that way and had been stopped by a rapidly advancing wall of fire. When they had rushed back up, they had found their line of retreat cut off by flames that had leapt ahead of them, currents of displaced, turmoiled air sweeping them upwards.
Several of the girls appeared to be unconscious, while the rest huddled or pushed against each other, hands and arms covering their faces from the approaching heat. There were six or seven girls down there (they were grouped so closely, it was impossible to count) and the matron was with them, her back to the fire, arms stretched out as if to protect her charges.
Childes moved around to the edge of the stairs, descending a little way, but the heat soon drove him back. A blazing impenetrable wall blocked the wide staircase. Maybe he could leap through the flames onto the landing below where the girls crouched, but what good would that do him? What good would that do the girls? He hurried back to the balcony.
'Matron!' he called. 'Mrs Bates, up here!'
He saw the matron raise her head and he yelled again.
Her face turned in his direction, looked up. She saw him. Childes thought there was a sudden look of hope in her expression, but shimmering heat distorted everything.
The matron left the girls, advancing only a few feet to the edge of the landing. 'Is - is that you, Mr Childes? Oh, thank God! Please help us, Mr Childes, please get us away from here!'
Several of the night-clad girls were staring up at him now, although they still cowered back in the corner.
Help them, yes; but how? But how? He couldn't get down to them, and they couldn't reach him.
The matron was bent over, retching and choking, the air itself boiling. She stumbled back, away from the inferno. A sudden flare-up of yellow-white light sent Childes reeling back, too. Flames shot towards the ceiling, biting into rafters there. They just as quickly diminished, disappearing back into the well to become part of the broiling mass. The rafters, however, had not been left unscathed; they had begun to burn fiercely. There was very little time left.
A ladder might have helped, angled between the balcony and the landing below. But there was no time to go back down and find one. A rope, then. They could loop one end beneath their arms and he could pull them up, one by one. How many could he save before his strength gave out, though? And where the hell would he find a rope in the dormitories?
'Help us!’ came the cry again. The girls, too, had begun to call out to him.
'Keep away from the stairs!' he shouted, seeing that some of them had ventured forward to stand by the matron. Childes recognised Kelly among the group, her face darkened with smoke-grime, tear trails descending through the dirt on her cheeks. She stretched out a beseeching hand towards him, a vulnerable weeping child, and the memory of a charred and gristled arm hit him, freezing his movement, shocking him rigid.
He moaned, swaying there, the towel - now almost dry, its moisture sucked by the heat - falling limply around his shoulders. Thick, choking smoke weaved and dodged around him, tufts of fire sprang up between the floorboards. Shrieks brought him to his senses and a splintering crashing of wood made him peer over the balustrade again.
A section of stairway had fallen inwards, leaving a deep, seething chasm before the landing on which the group sheltered. The girls and the matron had retreated into the corner once more, where they huddled together, those on the outside beating at the air with clawed fingers as if they could push back the terrible engulfing heat. More had slumped against and over their companions.
'I'm going to get something to lower down to you!' he yelled. 'I'll be back soon!' He did not know if they even heard. And would it be a useless gesture anyway? Could he really haul every one of them across that inferno? Childes pushed the begging questions from his mind.
He could feel the scorching heat of the floor through the soles of his shoes as he scrambled away. A thick swirling fug filled the corridor. He sensed the building pressure - like steam trapped inside a boiler because of a faulty valve-release - the atmosphere itself seeming to become combustible, ready to explode into one huge incandescent fireball. He sucked in oxygen-starved air and was instantly seized by a choking fit. His lungs felt scorched dry.
Childes did not stop. On hands and knees, chest and shoulders heaving, he crawled onwards, his palms tender against the hot timber, until he found an open doorway. He scrambled through, kicking the door shut behind, rolling onto his back, allowing himself the briefest, gasping respite. The haze was not as thick inside the dormitory, although the rows of beds were seen through a swift-curling fog. Pushing himself to his knees, he reached for the nearest bed and pulled off sheets.
Still crouched, he tied two sheets together, scrambled to another bed and tore off more, refusing to accept the hopelessness of his efforts.
It was when he was tying one of these to the two already joined, his eyes blurred, a pain in his chest as if a knife was lodg
ed sideways there, that Childes heard the muffled sobbing.
He looked around, unsure of the source. He heard only the crackling rumble of the fire. Bending low to the floor, he searched beneath beds and found no crouched figures. He completed knotting the sheets, then stumbled towards the closed door.
The sobbing again.
He whirled, his back slamming against the door, and scanned the room, eyes skimming over rumpled bedclothes, discarded dolls, past crazily whirling mobiles, over posters that were beginning to curl downwards from their corners. His glasses were grimed with soot and his own perspiration; using a corner of sheeting, he wiped them clean, still listening for the sobbing as he did so. The sound was soft, quiet, but had become more distinct from the other noises. His gaze came to rest on a store cupboard set in the wall at the far end of the room.
No time. There was no time to look. He had to get back to the girls on the landing.
Nevertheless, dropping the sheets, he ran the length of the dormitory.
He pulled open the cupboard doors and the two whimpering, sobbing girls, crouched there in the darkness among hockey sticks and tennis rackets, hanging raincoats draped over their heads and shoulders, screamed and cowered away from him.
Childes reached in and the girl whose shoulder he touched flinched and screamed even louder, forcing herself deeper into the recess. He took her arm and pulled her away from her companion, using his other hand to bring her face round towards him. He just had time to see she was one of the juniors when the lights went out.
He lost her in the darkness and screams pierced all else. Childes dropped to his knees and groped forward, finding their shivering bodies and encompassing them with his arms.
'Don't be frightened,' he said as soothingly as possible, conscious of the tightness in his own voice. 'The fire's burnt into wires downstairs, that's why the lights have gone out.' Still they pulled away from him. 'Come on now, you know me. It's Mr Childes. I'm going to take you out of here, okay?' He tugged at them, but still they resisted. 'All your friends are waiting outside for you. They'll be getting anxious by now, won't they?' The others on the landing - Oh God, he had to get back to them before it was too late! 'Come on, we'll just go right on downstairs, then you can tell your friends how exciting it was. Just a quick walk downstairs and we'll be out.'
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