Facing the Flame

by Jackie French

  ‘You okay?’ asked Sam with concern. ‘No labour pains?’

  ‘No. No, I’m fine.’

  She didn’t look fine. Sam’s expression showed he didn’t think so either.

  Scarlett looked past Jed, through the windscreen, and saw it. Bushfire smoke: a white smudge rising into the clarity of blue sky to the west. Nancy had predicted a bushfire summer, but so far it hadn’t come. Nor did this wisp of white look like it was a danger. Scarlett had known how to judge bushfire smoke since her earliest lessons with Nancy, on the precious visits to Overflow for the River View kids who couldn’t go home for the weekend. The whiter the bushfire smoke, the further away.

  She leaned forwards and pointed. ‘Sam?’

  ‘Yeah, I know about it.’ Sam had been in the Gibber’s Creek Bushfire Brigade officially since he was eighteen and unofficially since he was old enough to hold a hose or a rake hoe. ‘We think the Forestry control burn flared up again. But it’s crossed over into the national park, so we can’t do anything unless NPWS call us in.’

  ‘Are they managing it?’

  ‘“Under observation”,’ he said dryly, ‘which means no, they don’t have the staff to do anything. Wind’s south-easterly,’ he added reassuringly to Jed. ‘Blowing it right away from us.’

  An easterly would have forced the fire back on itself, potentially putting it out. A south-easterly would mean the fire front would spread, but the spire of smoke was tiny and far away, at least a hundred kilometres. And that was not what Jed was worried about, thought Scarlett, watching Jed’s blank face as she leaned back in her seat.

  Sam parked next to the ute, then hurried round to help Jed slither up out of the low seat while Maxi barked, ‘I have guarded the house well. I deserve a treat!’

  Leafsong had left lunch in the fridge, a tempting-Jed kind of lunch with gado gado, Jed’s favourite peanut sauce over eggs from the commune’s chooks out the back, Broccoli Bill’s salad mix and home-made tofu, plus goat’s-milk yoghurt contributed by Mack, who worked with the Beards at the factory and was the best engineer in the country, according to Sam; she was certainly one of Australia’s few female engineers.

  Jed sat obediently on the sofa. She put her feet up obediently, ate, drank and told Sam to, ‘Stop worrying, darling, I’m fine. Go and fret about a misbehaving hydraulic ram or feral solar panels or something.’

  Scarlett waited till the ute vanished down the road. A car passed the Dribble driveway: another blue Holden. Or was it the one that had passed them before? Strange to see cars on this road, as from here it only led to Overflow. Must be visiting Nancy . . .

  She turned back to Jed. ‘What’s wrong? And don’t say nothing, because I know there is. You’ve been strange since I got back from Sydney.’

  ‘Pregnant women are allowed to be odd.’

  ‘I’ll remember that bit of knowledge for my obstetrics exam. Jed, there’s been something worrying you since last Wednesday. I could hear it in your voice on the phone.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve been hovering like a mother hen?’

  ‘Yes. And mother hens don’t hover. They strut and peck and cluck.’

  Jed clutched a cushion, almost, thought Scarlett, as if it were a baby to protect. Or a shield to protect her. ‘Promise you won’t tell Sam? Or Michael? Or anyone?’

  ‘No, I can’t make that promise. But I promise I’ll only tell them if they urgently need to know.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Jed slowly. She hesitated, as if searching where to begin. ‘You know that bloke who was sitting by the water cooler in the waiting room this morning?’

  Scarlett nodded. She had pointed him out to Jed, the only bloke there who wasn’t with a woman, but Jed hadn’t even lifted her head from the old Women’s Weekly she’d picked up from the pile. Scarlett wondered if the man was waiting to take the receptionist out to lunch. He hadn’t said anything to anyone, just sat there reading an old Bulletin magazine, though he had smiled at her and Jed when he’d noticed her looking.

  ‘He’s Merv.’

  For a moment Scarlett thought Jed said ‘mauve’. Then it clicked.

  That Merv. Scarlett felt a shiver of hatred run through her, and an aftershock too. She hadn’t known she could hate like this before. If she had been a tiger, she’d have put out her claws . . .

  ‘Merv turned up here last Wednesday,’ whispered Jed. ‘He tried to blackmail me, threatened to tell everyone around here what happened — or his twisted version anyway. I told him that everyone knew and to get out. Maxi leaped at him and scared him.’

  ‘Good dog,’ said Scarlett. Maxi looked up, hoping ‘good’ might lead to ‘biscuit’, then lay back by the fan when it didn’t.

  ‘He left,’ said Jed, beginning to sound desperate. ‘I thought I’d scared him off, but he’s been everywhere around here and around me ever since. At the bushfire meeting, today at the hospital. His car passed us on the way back.’

  ‘The blue Holden?’

  Jed nodded.

  ‘I’ve seen the car pass here today,’ said Scarlett grimly. ‘You have to tell Sam. And Michael. And the police.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Why not? He’s . . . hunting you. Trying to make you afraid.’ And succeeding.

  ‘Sam would probably break his nose. Or Michael would.’

  Scarlett shrugged. ‘Excellent. Anyway, you already did that once.’

  ‘Then he might have them up for assault too.’

  ‘Jed, darling, you’re not thinking clearly.’

  ‘Of course I am! I know how to handle this. I can look after myself!’

  ‘And you are nine months’ pregnant and, trust me, nine months’ pregnant women do not think clearly. First of all, you need to tell the police. I know they can’t do anything unless Merv commits a crime, but they need to know about him. And you know Constable Ryan — he’ll have one of his “calm little talks” with Merv, let him know he’s being watched. It may be all that’s needed. And then if Sam or Michael do punch him — or I run over his feet in my wheelchair or Leafsong brains him with a rolling pin — the police will know it’s because he’s threatened you. Well?’ Scarlett added as Jed said nothing.

  ‘You’re right. But I . . . I don’t want to think about it. Don’t want to talk about it! Especially to the police. They didn’t believe me last time. I know everyone sort of knows what happened. But not the details. Not how bad it really was. It was all over and now it’s back again . . .’

  ‘Sshh.’ Scarlett leaned up and hugged her till she stopped crying, then wheeled out to the phone in the hall, picked it up and carried it and its cord over to Jed. ‘Call now. The police station, not triple zero. I’ll be here with you the whole time. Then it will be over and you needn’t wonder what to do any more. And I’ll tell Sam and Michael what’s happening, and make them promise not to talk to you about it. Not one single word.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Jed reluctantly. The phone rang just as she reached for the receiver.

  Scarlett picked it up instead. ‘Hello? Oh, hi, Nancy.’

  She expected Nancy to demand a report on the day’s appointment and the baby’s progress. Instead Nancy said, ‘Thank goodness. I was hoping you were there. I don’t want to worry Jed about this —’

  ‘Wait a sec.’ Scarlett wheeled out of the living room, saying over her shoulder, ‘It’s just Nancy. You rest while I tell her how things went today.’ She closed the door as Jed nodded, then picked up the receiver again. ‘Talk,’ she said.

  ‘A strong wind’s coming. It’s a bushfire summer already . . . the wattle set so much seed and the indigofera bloomed prolifically. You know . . .’

  She did indeed. Nancy had made sure every kid who’d spent the weekends at Overflow could read the bush as well as Fun with Dick and Jane.

  ‘You know we need four things for a bad fire,’ said Nancy. ‘Lots of fuel — we’ve certainly got that since the spring rains. Heat — yes. And now there’s going to be wind. Have a look at the stars tonight.’

  Sca
rlett hmmed her assent. The stars twinkled brightest when there was wind high in the sky, a high wind that caused strong wind below.

  Nancy was still talking. ‘The wombats have all moved into the old deep warrens and, this morning, I saw a brown snake sleeping coiled up next to a rock wallaby. That means bad wind coming soon.’

  Snakes and other animals did share living spaces, but only at times of pressing necessity . . .

  ‘How soon?’ Scarlett asked crisply.

  ‘Maybe Wednesday, I think,’ said Nancy. ‘The grey currawongs flew past here this morning, down from the mountains, but they’ve all gone now. That means it’s going to be bad up in the mountains, as well as here. Michael is letting everyone in the fire brigade know to be on full alert.’ She gave a tired sigh. ‘It doesn’t mean there will be a bushfire, of course. Animals just predict the potential for a bad fire. You need a spark too — lightning, though there’s no storm coming that I can feel, or some idiot throwing a cigarette butt out of a car window or using a welder out of doors or taking a trail bike through long grass.’

  ‘The world is full of idiots,’ said Scarlett.

  ‘Exactly. The land is ready to burn. But four times out of five even in years like this there’s no fire at all. Nineteen times out of twenty there is a fire, but it’s put out quickly . . .’ Nancy sounded like she was trying to convince herself.

  ‘Can you substantiate those figures, Mrs Thompson?’ asked Scarlett, trying to make her laugh.

  It succeeded, though the laugh was wobbly. ‘Of course not. You know perfectly well I can’t even balance my cheque book . . . But can you make sure you’ve got Jed ready to leave quickly if necessary?’

  ‘Yes. Though Sam says Dribble won’t burn, not with the firebreak and the river on three sides, and the new sprinkler system he’s put in.’

  ‘Probably not. But the middle of a bushfire isn’t the place for a pregnant woman. And more people die of the heat, smoke inhalation and lack of oxygen than flames.’

  ‘What about Overflow?’

  ‘We’re ringed by firebreaks and the river channels too. A fire shouldn’t get anywhere near the house, except from spot fires and burning debris, and we’ll be on hand to put those out.’

  ‘If there is a fire, should I bring Jed to Overflow?’

  ‘Only if the road to town is cut off. The last thing we need is Jed in labour when we’re trying to hold back a bushfire. Take her into town — the Town Hall is the designated evacuation centre, same as always, but maybe she could stay at the Blue Belle — in the storeroom, don’t let her climb those stairs. Thank goodness the hall and café are made of corrugated iron and hardwood. At least the hospital is near the centre of town. Its gardens should act as a firebreak.’ Scarlett could hear the doubt in Nancy’s voice. Could fire really burn to the centre of Gibber’s Creek?

  ‘We saw smoke on the way back from Canberra this morning,’ offered Scarlett. ‘But it looked too far away to come here.’

  ‘That little fire now has a half-kilometre-wide fire front,’ said Nancy. ‘Do you know what a hundred-kilometres-an-hour wind means?’

  ‘That fires are blown at a hundred kilometres an hour?’

  ‘No. More like five kilometres an hour. But in a strong wind, burning debris can fly twenty kilometres ahead of the front and start another front. Which means that fire front could burn through Jeratgully, then here, and keep going to Gibber’s Creek in a few hours, if the wind is strong enough and coming from the right direction.’

  ‘Do you think it will?’

  ‘I just don’t know.’ Scarlett could almost see Nancy shaking her head, the way her eyes crinkled from decades of sun and smiling. Darling Nancy, who had let a badly crippled kid create her own personality, not just be the girl in bed four.

  ‘Maybe it will be put out long before it gets to you or us. We have good bushfire brigades these days, Nancy. All the things like currawongs and wallabies and brown snakes . . . they don’t know there are people and hoses and backburns that can stop a fire in its tracks.’

  ‘Maybe. Probably. I don’t know,’ repeated Nancy tiredly. ‘I wish Matilda were here, or Gran.’ Suddenly she sounded much younger and more uncertain than her fifty-two years.

  ‘Have you talked to Flinty about it?’

  ‘Of course. Rocky Valley’s on full alert. They have been ever since Forestry lit that stupid control burn.’ She made an obvious attempt to change the subject. ‘How was the ultrasound anyway? All okay?’

  ‘Absolutely fine. The baby’s head is in position.’

  ‘All this new machinery,’ muttered Nancy. ‘Any good doctor or midwife can tell what position a baby is in. Of course Jed is fine. Just get things ready in case you have to leave, will you? Jed’s things. Your things. Stuff for the baby. Anything that’s really precious to you.’

  Books, thought Scarlett. But books could be replaced. Neither she nor Jed had any possessions from their childhoods. Dribble mattered, and Overflow and Drinkwater and the Blue Belle Café. People mattered, and the land . . .

  . . . and maybe the lace stockings Grandmère had given her. And the photo she’d taken of a group from anatomy discussing diseases of the colon. Alex had been in the centre, laughing. And Jed’s wedding photos . . .

  ‘I’ll see to it,’ she said quietly. ‘And I won’t tell Jed.’ Let her think she was just getting stuff ready for the hospital, and other stuff to take to the flat in Sydney. ‘Take care of yourself, Nancy.’

  ‘I will. If there is a fire, the boys are staying here. I’d rather they were here where I know what’s happening. Scarlett, truthfully, I don’t know if that fire up there is going to spread. Just that the wind will be strong. And hot. I . . . I’ve seen fire and wind signs before. But never so many at the same time.’

  Nor had Scarlett ever heard Nancy speak like this. Nancy who could survive anything, even the internment camp in World War II in which nearly every other woman died.

  ‘You’ll know what to do when the time comes,’ reassured Scarlett. ‘You always do. And I’ll get Jed safely into town at the first sign of smoke nearby. We’ll get through it. Truly we will.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Nancy. The phone clicked as she hung up. Scarlett looked out the kitchen window beyond the hall. Impossible that wind or fire could disturb this peace. She could just see the mountains from here, the faintest flour dusting of smoke, the river glinting . . .

  No pelicans on the river. No black swans either. Heat breathing ripples up from baking land . . .

  She wheeled back into the living room, phone on her lap. ‘Just Nancy, checking up on you.’ She plonked the phone down on Jed’s knees again. ‘Now ring the police.’

  ‘Yes, Grandma.’

  ‘You’re going to adopt me as your grandmother as well as your sister?’

  ‘You’re behaving like one.’ But Jed was smiling, as if relieved to have the decision taken from her.

  Scarlett thought of Grandmère, elegant, loving. ‘Okay, I’m sister and grandma. Which means I’m going to be a great-grandma as well as an aunt soon. Cool! Now, call.’

  Jed did.

  The breeze grew muscles, elbowing burning leaves into the air. They settled on a ridgetop, flared, blew to the next, each new blaze creeping more slowly down into the gullies.

  The fire spread, no longer clinging to life. Growing.

  Chapter 16

  FLINTY

  Flinty sat upon the rock and gazed at the mountain creek and shining rocks of her empire. Though not one where she was empress. Some places might have a ruler of their ecology (such a useful modern word — ecology — she’d chuckled when she’d first read it): a glacier perhaps, a vast iceberg, a volcano, a river sweeping silt onto fertile plains with each flood . . .

  No, here each part was insignificant until added to the rest. The mountains looked important, but mattered less than the rocks slowly eroding to create their thin covering of soil; the mice that spread the seeds that would grow to twisted, wind-sculpted trees, each tiny alpine pl
ant that held the precious soil together.

  Could you love a land and still be scared by it? She knew she was as much part of her land as any frog or pygmy possum, yet there was one great difference between her and a frog or possum — or a snow gum too.

  They accepted what the land gave. Migrated, in the case of the grey currawongs, before the fires or blizzards came. Ran, like roos, or buried seeds deep, like mice, to see out a dry time, and simply stopped breeding, like the ants, so that their smaller colonies could survive a drought.

  But she was human. The indigofera and wattles had to wait for fire to come to them. Flinty watched for it, to prevent it or halt it, sitting up there not just after dinner, watching memories as much as stars, but looking for smoke, for high clouds that meant a wind change, for flocks of birds that might say from which direction the worst would come — and where, possibly, might be safe.

  It should have been difficult to warn your neighbours that fire might sweep across their valley when the air felt like warm silk, and the nearest blaze was thirty kilometres away and heading in the opposite direction. But the people of Rocky Valley had known Flinty McAlpine, later Flinty Mack, all their lives. When she’d warned them that the snow was melting and a flash flood was on its way, they had saved their pumps and moved their stock, and the rage of the water passed, leaving nothing worse than twisted fences and vanished floodgates.

  She had been right about the 1960s drought. The valley had put down silage and sold stock while they were in good condition and the prices were high. Those who could got jobs early, without waiting till the mortgage was so massive that no pleading or scrimping could save their farm.

  She’d predicted the ’69 locust plague too. The late frost that same year had meant no one had put in their pumpkins or tomatoes till late November. She, like everyone in the valley, had grinned on the morning of 20 November when the ground was white and Flinty was right again, even though the early fruit was frozen on the apple and plum trees, except where the more canny had put out smoke pots.

  And so now firebreaks had been burned around the old schoolhouse, where her granddaughter had her veterinary clinic, and the hall and paddocks next to it designated as evacuation points for humans and livestock. Even the Jeratgully Bushfire Brigade had listened to her warnings and burned a firebreak around their hall, though the village around it was frighteningly vulnerable.