The Trouble With Fire

by Fiona Kidman

  DOREEN’S HUSBAND, SAMSON, SMELT THAT same deep pungent tang rising from pine needles, even closer, while he scanned the treetops for a hint of fire. It was 1976, the beginning of the fire season, and high above the forest he sat in a tower watching for tendrils of smoke. It was easier at night to detect the start of a fire, any spark like a lighted match in a dark room. Samson had been a fire spotter for twenty years. He worried that the new techniques of detecting fires, like infra-red, might put him out of a job, but so far he was still being sent up the tower at Rainbow Mountain. Here, in the thermal area, where steam rolled out of the earth in unexpected places, a spotter could be fooled into believing there was a fire when there wasn’t, so as he saw it, it was a specialist’s job. In America, in the old days, news of a fire was dispatched by carrier pigeons. The idea of owning a cage of birds for company was appealing. Here, you just phoned up headquarters.

  In the summer, he would stay for six weeks at a time, living like a hermit, alternating twelve-hour shifts with periods of deep exhausted sleep. People thought it was an easy life up there, sitting and watching for something that might never happen. A Dharma Bum they called him and laughed, as if he was a character in a novel, and he knew that a man called Jack Kerouac had written his job description into the record. He could see how he must look like a beatnik, his hair matted and tangled, his beard heavy, But people couldn’t know how he loved his work, how the treetops were like a sea, changing and shifting all the time, depending on the time of day and the weather — blue green in some lights, bottle green in others, a faint lime tinge in early morning, dense black outlines at night. In the winter, he thinned the trees, and tried not to think about the fact that eventually they would be felled and turned into paper. It was enough to put a man off wiping his bum.

  All the same, sometimes, towards the end of a stint in the tower, when days had turned into weeks, he found himself imagining fire, almost wishing it to happen. He had seen forest fires in his time although under his watch they never got out of control. One nearly did, and he remembers this mysterious and beautiful conflagration, short-lived though it was, with something akin to longing.

  Samson had known Doreen since he was nineteen and she was sixteen, and that was not far off quarter of a century, and already they were grandparents. Now that the children had grown up, Doreen worked in a bakery shop in Tokoroa. Toke, they called it. We live in Toke, near the forests. Doreen iced Sally Lunn buns with white icing and raspberry buns with pink, the Sally Lunns first, so she could add cochineal to what was left over from the first batch of icing. The baker’s name was Mr Isaacs. It was not that he was exactly formal, but he was older, and Doreen and the two girls who worked in the shop always called him that, although they called his wife, who did the accounts and the ordering, by her first name, Mary.

  Doreen told him in detail about her job, because now she had an interest outside home, and he had heard enough of the kids to last him for a lifetime. She felt responsible for things going well, because she was in charge of tasting, and also for the way the front counter was run. She took orders while the two girls made the egg sandwiches. Doreen checked their mix, tasting a spoonful to make sure there was enough mayonnaise, and not too much parsley. Some of the customers, and it was mostly men who drove trucks, weren’t keen on green muck in their sammies. That’s what they said to her, and she said, ‘We’ll see to that, for sure.’

  ‘You should just leave it out,’ Samson said.

  ‘Well, some of them do like it. Joe Blake gets mad when we leave it out.’

  ‘You mean Joe Paki? Drives for the firm?’ He was talking about the logging company.

  ‘His name’s Joe Blake.’

  ‘Blimey, where did he get his fancy ideas from? He was Joe Paki when I went to school with him. Didn’t he marry some girl from Auckland? I expect that explains it. I’m not that fussed on parsley myself.’

  Doreen just shrugged. She got a buzz out of working in the shop, the girls were company for her while Samson was away and the money was great. Her savings account was growing and every now and then she showed it to Samson. When there was enough they would visit their eldest son, who had gone shearing in Western Australia. Neither she nor Samson had ever been to Australia, never boarded a plane. Not long now, we need a bit of adventure in our lives, she would tell him.

  Doreen was the thrill in his life, the one who could quench his secret thirst for flames. These days, when it was time for him to go home, he tried to get there during the day, so that he could clean up and shower properly before she arrived. He didn’t look like a bum then, although he kept his white-blond hair collar length and a little loose and wild because Doreen liked it like that. Then he would pretend he wasn’t there when she unlocked the front door, until the moment she walked into the bedroom, and he was lying there on the bed as naked as the day he was born. She screamed the first time, and swore at him, son of a bitch, what if I’d got the axe from out the back, but then she’d laughed. They hadn’t got up until the next morning, and she was so done in it was all she could do to go to work. This had been going on for a few years, and he knew she could tell when he was home now, had learnt to check the garage to see if the ute was there, but she still pretended it was a surprise. These days they got up in time for dinner and then they watched television until it was time to go to bed properly. She didn’t have the stamina any more, she said, with a lazy laugh. Remember I’m forty.

  She didn’t seem forty to him, plump and hearty perhaps, but then she had always been solid. I eat too much at that damn bakery, she said sometimes.

  Forget it, he said, you’re just right. They had had this conversation a score of times. She would wrinkle her short little nose at him, pushing her bandeau up on her head. Ever since she was in high school she had worn her curly, almost frizzy, fair hair the same way, the wide white bandeau clipped to her head with hairpins.

  It was during one of Samson’s stand-down times that a call came in the evening to say that someone was laid off sick, and he was needed up at the tower sharp the next morning. Doreen had taken the call, and without even asking him had said he would do an extra shift. He couldn’t understand this. It wasn’t like her. She’d always let him make the decisions, and this was his job, not hers, she was talking about here. Perhaps it was working in the bakery: she’d got used to telling those girls what to do. It felt odd, though, as if some piece of his life had been jolted out of shape.

  When he had come home the week before, he’d done their trick, their ‘thing’ as he called it, and she had turned on her heel at the bedroom door. ‘I’m not up to much today,’ she said. And that had been that. She was sorry, she said later, she had a really heavy period, clots as big as side plates; perhaps she was getting the change early. Only he didn’t think she had her period because, as a rule, he could smell her when they lay in bed and there was no smell; she just lay on her side with her back to him, and would not let him put his arm over her. In the morning, her face was grey, the way it was when she was pregnant. But that was a long time ago. The first baby had come when she was eighteen, and the last when she was twenty-four. Later that day, sitting up among the treetops, he supposed he must have imagined it.

  Then he saw it, a sudden snake gleaming in the trees. Wildfire, or that’s how it looked to him, because it was close to the tower and one of his favourite trees had exploded nearby, then the flames leapt a firebreak and began snatching others in their wake. He made a hurried phone call, before clambering down from the tower. This was against the rules, because spotters were supposed to stay at their post and report the progress of the fire, but he couldn’t resist it, he needed to save the trees.

  THE PLACE WHERE THE TWO women were to stay was a narrow terrace house, so close to the neighbours that you could almost touch the walls next door, a house that land agents probably described as full of character, but the charm, if there was any, didn’t translate into comfort. The room where they were to sleep was narrow and on the dark side of the hou
se. Their two single beds were covered with beige candlewick spreads. Above one stood a bookshelf with books that the children of the house had apparently discarded. Dorothy’s Little Tribe, some Ethel Turners and The Little Red Schoolbook, an odd combination. Or perhaps the books belonged to their mother, Viv, who had met them at the airport off the Rotorua plane. Dishevelled and apologetic, she was dressed in a navy blue suit with a straight skirt and padded shoulders. She was sorry, she said, but she got held up at work and she knew they could do without waiting around at the airport at a time like this. Were they okay? She asked this often, which, they tell each other later on, is stupid. On the way from the airport, Rachel had to ask her to stop the car because she needed to throw up, but they were in a no stopping zone until they got past the roundabout at Cobham Drive and by then it was almost too late. But Rachel had had practice at eating toast under her mother’s watchful eye in the mornings, and slipping to the bathroom between bites, so she managed to hold on. Doreen had dark circles under her eyes. She hadn’t slept the night before, she told them, and she was just so damn tired.

  Viv was one of the Sisters Overseas volunteers who picked up pregnant women from the outlying areas and delivered them to the Sydney flight that left Wellington at six in the morning. At midnight on the same day, they were picked up from the incoming plane. SOS sent groups on Tuesdays and Fridays. This was a better arrangement, so they could support each other after their terminations. Some day, Viv said, we’ll win the battle and get legal terminations in New Zealand. After that there were awkward silences. The SOS woman did not ask questions. As they had driven through the suburbs, Doreen said in wonder: ‘I thought it would be nicer than Toke. I thought Wellington would be different.’

  There was nothing awful about the house, but it felt damp and the absence of light in the rooms seemed oppressive. Nor did Viv appear to have much time for housework. Piles of boys’ clothing, washed and unwashed, took up space on most of the chairs. Viv sighed, and swept them aside to make space. Some smudgy paintings hung in the sitting room. Doreen studied them with curiosity.

  ‘Did your children do these?’ she asked Viv.

  Viv looked at her, almost speechless. When she saw Doreen was serious, she said, ‘They’re quite expensive, actually. My husband got the house in Kelburn when we separated. It’s pretty flash, he thought he’d got the better of the bargain. I got the pictures, but they’re sky rocketing in value. Who knows, I might get the last laugh yet.’

  Rachel didn’t like the paintings much either. Her mother had Austen Deans landscapes in her blue and white sitting room. But she saw that busy, weary Viv belonged to a whole different kind of world from the ones that she and Doreen, in their different ways, knew and understood. Her mother’s friends were smart, in their own eyes, but they would be scornful of people who admired modern art and got involved in causes like sending girls off to have abortions in Australia, and read the kind of books Viv did. Education, in Penelope’s eyes, was a step towards professional status for a man and a better marriage for a girl. Rachel sensed that the enlightened Viv would take a poor view of this.

  For the past two months Rachel had watched Mark with a fierce, urgent gaze full of longing, admiring his ginger hair, the way it curled back from his forehead, his light hazel eyes, the rust of freckles across his face. She was sure she was in love with him, and certain he could only return it, even though he barely acknowledged her presence in the bank these days. It was understandable, of course, what with his wife expecting any moment. She wondered if both the babies would have hair the colour of his. But he must know how she felt. Nobody could have made love like they had and not understood that they were right together.

  Mark had said, when she told him, ‘Don’t look at me, it’s not mine.’

  When Rachel said that yes, it was his, he said everyone at the bank knew she was a right little player. Why else would he have made a pass at her. He bet it could have been any of half a dozen blokes she’d had it off with.

  ‘I’ve only had two others,’ she said. ‘That wasn’t even this year.’ And then she had begun to cry, while he sat without moving, except for the drumming of his fingers on the steering wheel. They were parked at Sulphur Point, the hot volcanic edge of the lake, where the ground was a dirty yellow and gulls wheeled over the rubbish tip that lay beyond it. ‘I thought I was pretty careful,’ he said. ‘I pulled out.’

  ‘You did not,’ Rachel cried. ‘You couldn’t get enough.’

  They started down the track of an ugly quarrel then, and in the end he sat defeated, and asked her what she was going to do about it.

  When she was silent, looking out the car window, he said, ‘You don’t expect me to do anything, do you?’

  ‘My parents will find out soon,’ she said.

  ‘Jesus. You’re not going to tell them about me?’

  After a while, she agreed that, no, she probably wouldn’t tell them. His mother-in-law played tennis with Penelope.

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out. There must be somebody who can fix you up.’

  ‘I expect I’ll die of sepsis.’

  ‘Shut up, bitch.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’

  ‘I said shut it, Rachel.’

  The day after that, at work, he gave her a slip of paper with a phone number in Wellington. ‘My sister gave it to me,’ he said stiffly. ‘Only you didn’t hear that.’

  THE FIRE WAS EXTINGUISHED ALMOST as fast as it had started, or that’s how it appeared to Samson, because there was no time to stop and think, just the whirling smoke to contend with, the scorching beautiful flames, the beating of the ground until his arms felt as if they would break, and then he was back up the tower watching for hot spots while the fire crew finished off the job. He expected a reprimand but his boss came in and said, ‘We’ve got it covered, Samson. You want to get home now, get yourself cleaned up, grab some rest.’ He was needed again the next day, so he had got off lightly. The boss reckoned that the fire looked like arson, and if someone had got away with one, they would want more, and Samson knew that was true. He could understand that. His hands holding the steering wheel before him were blackened as he drove home. There was a curious lightness in his head.

  VIV VOLUNTEERED TO MAKE PASTA, were they all right with that?

  Doreen didn’t think she could face anything to eat, thanks very much, but Rachel was suddenly famished and tried some lasagne, and would have had a second helping except that Viv’s two teenage sons had arrived home and were starving. The boys looked at them sideways, knowingly and with what Rachel figured was dislike. In the course of the conversation it surfaced that Viv and her ex shared the boys week and week about.

  Viv said, ‘Just ignore the boys in the morning. They’ll be asleep on the sofas in the sitting room. We’ll sneak past them just after four.’

  ‘I think I’ll turn in now,’ Doreen said. ‘If we’re going to be out of here at four.’ Doreen knew about early starts at the bakery; she knew that you needed sleep to cope with the day ahead, but she didn’t tell the others this. Her face was blank and stony.

  ‘You’re welcome to watch some television if you like,’ Viv said.

  Rachel saw that the boys wouldn’t like anything of the sort. She said, hastily, that she would go to bed, too. She and Doreen undressed with their backs to each other, without speaking. Viv had left electric blankets on, for which Rachel was thankful; it was so much colder here in Wellington than at home.

  When the light was off she lay on her side, waiting to hear the other woman’s breathing deepen into sleep, only it didn’t happen. An awful stillness had settled in the room. The muffled movements of Viv and her children lay beyond the closed door, and, in the house on the other side of them, the sound of a quarrel could be heard, a woman shouting at her children to go to bed. But within the room, it was as if a vacuum had formed. Both she and Doreen were trying to hold their breath. Rachel gritted her teeth and thought, Do not cry. At home her parents would be out on the v
erandah. She imagined Penelope saying to her father, thank goodness, Rachel has finally come to her senses. She had had friends in for coffee the morning before Rachel left, and she had almost sung with the good news. Rachel has left the bank. She’s off to Wellington to see about her courses at university next year.

  This was more or less true. Rachel had left the bank the week before. There had been a leaving afternoon tea for her, and a present that the staff had pitched in for: a set of French hand cream and matching talcum powder and soap. The manager had made a speech, saying what a useful member of staff she had been, and how the customers would miss her, and that there would always be a place for her behind the counter if she decided life in the city didn’t suit her.

  Earlier in the week, Mark had given her eight-hundred dollars and changed some of it into Australian money for her. She should count herself lucky, he said, because you had to show your airline ticket at the bank to get foreign currency; that was how he found out about his sister, the silly bitch. A pair of silly bitches, if you asked him. At least his sister had got married a few months afterwards, and if Rachel had any sense she’d find herself a man. There should be plenty in Wellington. It was a relief to him that she was getting out of it. She was too weary to remonstrate with him any more, he could say what he liked. None of it made any difference now. A part of her was still making excuses for him. He had had to find the money in a hurry, and had no idea how he was going to pay the mortgage for the next couple of months. Just what he needed, with the baby coming. Rachel had some money of her own; she could have got the rest from her parents, only she would have had to explain, make something up. Mark thought this was too big a risk. It was worth finding the money to get it sorted, he said. In return, she had promised to leave the bank, get as far away as possible. She’d put off thinking about university but now she promised herself she would.