The Trouble With Fire

by Fiona Kidman

  She choked on a sob in the narrow bedroom of Viv’s house. The polyester pillowslip was already wet from her steady silent tears.

  In the darkness, Doreen said, ‘We’ll be all right,’

  ‘I’m frightened,’ Rachel said.

  ‘Yeah. I’d never been on a plane until today. That was bad enough. But what about this big one tomorrow? All the way to another country.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Rachel, who had been on several planes before. ‘It’ll hurt, won’t it?’

  ‘Not much, I reckon. It won’t be so bad as having a baby. It half kills me. I’ve had three, all boys. I couldn’t go through that again.’

  ‘Is that why you’re having your abortion?’

  ‘Go to sleep,’ Doreen said, her tone sharp. ‘You need to rest.’ Very soon Rachel heard her breathing turning into shallow snores.

  In the morning, the whole suburb was blanketed with fog so thick it was almost impossible to see even the street lamps ahead as Viv drove them towards the airport, inching her way along at a crawl. She had tried to phone the airport but all the lines were busy. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, several times. ‘What if the airport’s closed? What if the plane can’t get away?’

  ‘Can we go the next day?’ Rachel asked. She was nauseous again.

  ‘It’s possible. I hope not though.’

  ‘I should get back to Toke tomorrow,’ Doreen said, sounding panicked.

  ‘Try and stay calm,’ Viv said, although she didn’t sound any calmer than Doreen.

  The closer they got to the airport, the more dense the fog appeared. When they got out of the car it felt tangible, like a shawl thrown around their faces. They learnt at the counter that the earliest the plane might leave was midday, and by that time it would be too late for the women to go to Australia, have their operation and board the evening flight back to Wellington.

  SOS managed to arrange for flights the next day. Doreen was in two minds as to whether she would go or not. She and Viv held an urgent private conversation among the milling chaos of people who hadn’t been able to board the flight.

  Doreen was very pale when she returned to Rachel’s side. ‘I have to go to Sydney,’ she said to Rachel. ‘I don’t have any choice. It’s funny, isn’t it, you forget that it’s real, you forget why you’re here.’

  Viv drove them back to the house. ‘Go back to bed,’ she said. They knew she meant keep out of the way of the boys. Later, when the house was quiet, and everyone had left, Doreen said, ‘Let’s get out of here, go to town. I might as well see something while I’m here.’ The fog had rolled away, and the sky blitzed the house with sunlight. Overhead they heard the roar of a big plane.

  As their bus carried them into the city, Doreen began to relax, asking Rachel if she’d had trouble getting the money, because that had been the biggest drama for her, and how could you be sure the people in the bank wouldn’t talk about her going away? Rachel said that it was more than the tellers’ jobs were worth. And then she found herself telling Doreen how she had worked at the bank and everything that had happened to her so far, and how she was supposed to be in Wellington looking at university courses.

  Doreen grimaced when she heard about Mark. ‘You worked with him? It never pays to get your meat with your bread, Rachel.’ Although she was more cautious, she did tell Rachel that she was twelve weeks gone and if she didn’t go to Sydney tomorrow they wouldn’t take her at the clinic. It was just as well she had had some savings, she added, and that was all she was going to say on the subject.

  The city was busy and the shops looked full of promise. They peered in clothing shops and wished they had their normal figures so they could try things on. ‘Not long now,’ Doreen said, and squeezed Rachel’s arm. At the beginning of Lambton Quay they came to a milliner’s shop, full of the kind of hats you could wear to the races.

  ‘We can try these on, at any rate,’ Rachel said. ‘C’mon.’

  The woman behind the counter asked if they were shopping for a special occasion, and Rachel said that yes, they were, a real celebration. She chose a hat with a short brim and a garland of ruffled ribbon around it. ‘Gorgeous,’ said the assistant. Rachel found a big lacy navy blue picture hat, its front brim pinned back with a pink gauze rose, and handed it to Doreen.

  ‘Off with that bandeau,’ she ordered, and in a moment Doreen was shaking her fair hair loose.

  ‘You’ve got lovely hair,’ Rachel said. ‘Why don’t you wear it like that all the time?’

  Doreen put the hat on, staring at herself in the mirror. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she breathed.

  ‘Mother of the bride, I take it?’ said the assistant.

  Doreen looked shocked and took the hat off. ‘I’m sorry,’ she stammered. ‘We shouldn’t have bothered you.’

  Outside in the sunlight, she was still shaking. Rachel put her arm through the other woman’s. ‘I wouldn’t mind you for a mother,’ she said. ‘Honestly.’

  ‘You would,’ Doreen said, her voice short again.

  ‘Oh, go on,’ Rachel said, ‘it’s kind of funny. One extreme to the other.’ A lunchtime demonstration was in progress, university students protesting about war, unemployment, apartheid — it was hard to tell what it was all about, because the placards carried different messages. Doreen and Rachel had arrived at the entrance to the cable car that carried people up the hill to the university. Doreen had lightened up again. ‘We should go up there,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard about this cable car, it’s like the one in San Francisco or somewhere. You could tell your mother you really had been to the university.’

  As the red cable car clattered up the hillside, Rachel felt suddenly exhilarated. Next year she would be living here, among all this bustle. She would do a science degree, and wear jeans and sweaters each day, with a bag full of books slung across her shoulder. The brick bank seemed far away.

  AT FIRST SAMSON THOUGHT DOREEN was just late back from work. He wished she was there waiting for him, not because he wanted her to jump into bed with him — something told him his little joke, their private ‘thing’, was over for the time being, perhaps for good — but because he wanted to tell her about the fire, about the suspected arson and about how he had beaten the flames. He wanted her to put gauze bandages on his burnt hand, the way she had for the kids when they were little, and dab cream on his face. Doreen knew what to do, she always had.

  Instead he attended to it himself. There was a quietness, an absence, about the house that felt remarkable, and he felt fear wash over him for the first time that day. Yet everything around him looked normal, untouched, in its place. Doreen’s car was in the garage. The cat prowled around his feet, hungry and discontented.

  At seven o’clock, he picked up the keys of the ute and drove into town. A sense of urgency had overtaken him.

  The lights at the bakery were all out but still he banged on the door and called out. When nobody replied, he thought about going over to the Isaacs’ house to see if they knew where she was. But that didn’t seem like a good idea. A man should know where his wife was. And then he thought that this was one of the first times he had come home earlier than he was expected. Sure, he had given her ‘surprises’, but they weren’t real ones, except for that once. She always knew what day to expect him. Perhaps she had gone to visit a friend. Maybe she did this sometimes, when he was away. He wondered if there were more things he should have asked her about her life.

  Back at the house, he found Mary Isaacs, the baker’s wife, feeding the cat in his kitchen. She dropped the spoon when she saw him. ‘What are you doing here, Samson?’ she said, straightening herself. She was a wiry woman with white hair and big quick eyes, but now she looked scared of him.

  ‘I could ask you the same.’

  ‘I heard about the fire,’ she said. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Where’s my wife?’

  Mary said that Doreen had gone to see a doctor in Rotorua — nothing to worry about, just a little lump she had discovered — and Mary ha
d told her just to go right away, so that she could get it cleared up. She couldn’t get an appointment until late in the day.

  ‘Look,’ Mary said, ‘she didn’t want to worry you, Samson. I told her to stay overnight.’

  ‘Why didn’t she take her car?’ he asked, perplexed. ‘It’s not serious, is it?’

  ‘I’m sure it’s not. She must have got a lift.’

  ‘Well, who did she go with?’

  ‘Look, Samson, I can’t tell you that. I might have got it wrong.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have gone on the bus?’

  Mary took a deep breath. ‘Oh, now you mention it, I think she did,’ she said, and walked out quickly. Later, she told Doreen, I walked out of that damn house of yours too fast.

  POTTS POINT. KINGS CROSS. THE riot of old houses, and eccentric-looking people in the street and young men with needles hanging out of their arms and women leaning against doors, vamping at strangers. Sydney Harbour, as dark blue as posters Doreen had seen of the Mediterranean Sea, she said, and so much more exotic than she’d imagined. She gazed around her, eyes full of wonder. Rachel had been to Sydney before, although not here at the far fringe because her parents didn’t think it a healthy place to take a young girl. Her hand was still sore from being squeezed by Doreen’s on the plane. She had given a small shriek on take-off, and sat fidgeting and frightened when they came in to land. Doreen clung so hard that her wedding ring felt as if it was cutting Rachel’s palm.

  But now, as they travelled through the city, driven by a person from the Contact organisation who met the women when they arrived in Sydney, her face had become strangely still, almost peaceful, as if the ordeal was over. ‘I might as well have a good look,’ she said, ‘I don’t expect I’ll get here again.’

  ‘Of course you will,’ Rachel said, because it was just something to say, and reassuring Doreen seemed to have become her duty, even though her heart was full of terror and a longing to turn back.

  ‘I don’t reckon so. Not now,’ Doreen said, closing her eyes for a moment. Just as they were about to leave Viv’s house that morning, something odd had happened. A phone call with a message for Doreen. Nobody was supposed to know where they were, except for a relative or friend to get in touch with if there was a real emergency. (Rachel hadn’t given her name to anyone. Only Mark knew where she was and his was the last name she would have put down. She figured that if she didn’t return from this trip, sooner or later someone would track her down. The friendly family doctor, whose referral letter she had in her purse, would have told Penelope she was pregnant in three seconds flat.) The call for Doreen had been from someone called Mary. She had asked Viv to give Doreen a message: Samson came home early.

  Rachel couldn’t help overhearing, because Viv was puffy-eyed and shooing them towards the car when she told Doreen. Two early mornings like this would kill her, she said. When Doreen got the message, she appeared to hesitate again. Then she had shrugged, and said, ‘I might have known.’ She had followed Viv and Rachel out to the car.

  Rachel put her hand on her stomach and tried not to think about why she was here, about how much she wanted this baby, and how she could have loved its little silky gingery head, cradled in the crook of her elbow.

  As if reading her thoughts, Doreen said, ‘I’ll take care of you.’ She appeared totally recovered from her earlier panic.

  And then they were at the door of the clinic, with its sterile white rooms, and men and women in white coats, their voices soothing. Before long Rachel was asleep and when she came round from the anaesthetic, there was a big bloodied wad of gauze bandage between her legs, and her body felt empty, drained of everything, as if she was just an idea of herself hovering above.

  RACHEL AND DOREEN DIDN’T HAVE seats side by side on the plane going back to Wellington. Doreen was sitting several rows back. She looked normal, just as she had the day before. Two other young women were delivered to the check-in by the Contact people; they looked as white and barely able to stand as Rachel.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ Doreen said again to Rachel. ‘Just hold on. It’s only three hours and you can have another lie-down.’

  She disappeared towards the back of the plane. A stewardess took a blanket out of an overhead locker and put it over Rachel. ‘Press the button if you need any help,’ she said quietly.

  A young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, stacked his bag above and took his seat beside her. He had fervent brown eyes, and a short back and sides haircut, although these were details she didn’t observe closely that night. The lights in the plane blurred before her, like the lights in the operating theatre, dim haloes, frail and shadowy. Halfway across the Tasman Ocean, she found herself shivering and calling out for water. The man pressed the call button.

  When the water came, he held the cup to her lips, because her hands were shaking so much. ‘It’s all right, Rachel,’ he said. ‘I know what you’ve been through. I see it all the time.’

  ‘How do you know my name?’ Rachel’s teeth were clenched together.

  He laughed easily. ‘Your name’s on your bag. You’re not very good at travelling incognito, are you?’ He introduced himself as Joshua. He was a typewriter salesman who crossed the Tasman on a regular basis, checking and ordering new stock from a Sydney warehouse. ‘Everyone can pick out you girls on this flight. Don’t worry. Give me your hand,’ he murmured. ‘It’s all right, I won’t put it under the blanket.’ Rachel did as she was told, hypnotised by his voice. ‘Jesus loves you,’ he said. She felt a huge wave of drowsiness wash over her. From far off, she heard him say something about sin, and that she could be forgiven, if she followed the Lord’s way from now on.

  ‘This girl needs a doctor,’ Joshua said to Viv, who had moved forward from the crowd when Rachel appeared through Customs. He had gripped her arm in the queue so she didn’t fall over. He was holding onto the overnight bag.

  ‘Oh shit,’ Viv said. ‘Thanks a bundle.’

  None of it was as bad as it first appeared. The Sisters had a doctor on hand who examined Rachel and put her to bed at her house for the night. The haemorrhaging abated by the morning: she didn’t need a transfusion, which was the big fear everyone had about the girls on the SOS flights. When she went to pick up the rest of her things from Viv’s place, Doreen had already left.

  Her period was really bad, she told Penelope, when she arrived home on a later flight. She would go to bed and rest up a bit. Yes, she had liked Wellington, and the people at the university were great and she would enrol for next year. In the meantime she would get a temporary job; perhaps one of the banks would take her on in Wellington. ‘No, Mum,’ she said firmly, ‘I don’t plan to make a career in banks. I promise I’m going to do a science degree.’

  This might have happened then, if Joshua hadn’t arrived one afternoon the following week. Rachel had gone to town to pick up a few odds and ends: a card to send to Viv, some cotton tops for the summer that was nearly upon them, new panties because her old ones were mostly ruined from all the blood. She shopped at the other end of town from the bank. The birth notice for Mark’s new son had been in the paper the day before. Mark and his wife ‘welcomed a strapping cute guy. Mother and baby well’. Rachel walked into her mother’s blue kitchen, her arms laden. She had bought a bunch of irises for Penelope. She thought she owed her something, even if her mother didn’t know it. An apology, perhaps. Penelope stood at the bench, wearing a gingham print blouse, a blue denim skirt and canvas slides, her face dark.

  ‘You might like to introduce me to your friend, Rachel.’ She was incandescent with anger.

  Joshua was perched on a stool at the breakfast bar, his grin wide and white like an advertisement for toothpaste. He looked like a well-groomed teddy bear, not at all evangelical. His suit and striped tie were the same ones he had worn on the plane.

  ‘You followed me,’ Rachel said.

  ‘I had to make sure you were all right. I explained to your mother how we’d met, that’s all.’ His smile was very s
ure. She saw then how intense his eyes really were. ‘You met on the Sydney plane,’ Penelope said. ‘A likely story. Is he the father?’

  When Rachel said no, of course he wasn’t, and Joshua had tsk-tsked and said that he was a man who had saved himself for marriage, Rachel gave Mark’s name. Penelope clutched the bench, strain lines appearing like cords in her smooth neck. ‘You’d better get lost,’ she said, ‘before your father gets home.’

  Rachel’s older sister was practising the piano in the next room. Rachel hadn’t known she was home. It sounded as if she was playing the Wedding March, although perhaps she imagined this. Whatever it was, it was tiddly-pom music. Soon her younger sister would be here, throwing her books on the table the way she always did. And, after that, there would be drama and tears, all the lovely order of her mother’s perfect house collapsed in ruins, her sister’s wedding spoilt. Sooner or later, before the night was over, Rachel would have to walk out of this house, whether ordered to or not.

  ‘I don’t think that’s Christian,’ Joshua said. ‘Rachel can be saved.’

  ‘Really?’ answered Penelope. ‘So save her then.’

  ‘YOUR MISSUS HITCHHIKING?’ SAMSON’S MATE said to him at the Cosmopolitan Club. He’d gone in to have a drink and steady his nerves before he went to see Mary Isaacs again. It was three in the afternoon. First he felt a fool that his wife had gone to the doctor’s and he didn’t know about it, but other people did, and second he was crazy with worry that there was something bad wrong with her. The night before he had turned the house over, and now realised that certain things were missing. Like her savings book. Their savings. He had rung their daughter-in-law in Auckland and asked if she had heard from Doreen, and when she said no, he had said, as casually as he could, ‘Oh, that’s right, she said she was going up to Rotorua. I forgot.’ He guessed there was no point in ringing the other boys. He didn’t think she was missing, not with Mary Isaacs prowling round his house, feeding his cat. His hands felt raw and worse than earlier in the day.