Dark Fires Shall Burn

by Anna Westbrook

  ‘I told you, I don’t have a bob.’ Annie wriggles from Jackie’s touch but still twirls playfully. ‘It’s been a bodgy start to the night. I’d give it to you if I had it.’

  Jackie grins toothily but his eyes are cold and red-edged.

  ‘Dot’s with a bloke now,’ Sally says, cocking her head at the upstairs door. ‘Although she ain’t likely to want to pass her takings on to you lot.’

  ‘That’s the first one we’ve had yet.’ Annie says, darting a look at Jackie. ‘Don’t know what’s up. Normally this time of evening it’s like Central Station.’

  ‘When will she be out?’ Jackie demands.

  ‘I don’t know! You tell me. When the bastard’s good and done I reckon.’ Sally rolls her eyes, and Will sniggers.

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to wait for her then,’ Jackie says and suddenly his hard look evaporates. ‘Give us a kiss.’ He pulls Annie into his arms and plants one on her lips.

  ‘Lay off,’ she says, and squeals but allows him. Jackie moves behind her and envelops her in his wiry arms. He’s been Annie’s bloke for nearly eight months, far longer than any of the others. Templeton envies his coppery stubble: a full crop by five o’clock after a morning shave.

  ‘Fucken typical,’ Will grumbles. ‘We could be out here all night.’ He passes a handsome silver flask to Frank after tilting it into his own mouth. Quite the collection of fancy knick-knacks Jackie and his boys have procured over the years, Templeton thinks. Will Worthington had been the only one of the three to go to the war, off in ’41, where he fought the Italians at Benghazi as a gunner. Crack shot he’d been, too. Done a whole bunch, he liked to brag. Somehow he’d managed to get out early and didn’t have to serve again, and the party the boys had for him when he got home was the stuff of legend — they were on the piss for days. Dot said that they had drunk his whole back-pay in two weeks. VD, she reckons was the discharge.

  Jackie tells everyone that he was manpowered to the coalmines and that’s why he didn’t serve. ‘My arse was manpowered to the mines,’ Dot had growled about that excuse. ‘He’s a chicken-hearted bastard. A tchórz.’

  Will is grumbling about Dot to Sally while Frank smokes and swigs from the hip flask. No one is paying Templeton much mind, as usual. He spots a fox as it runs across the road, fur quilled against the grain in patches like it’s come backwards through a hedge. It’s a handsome animal, large and well-fed. The fox pauses a minute, looking back into the street, nose in the air. Templeton wonders what it would be like to smell in Technicolor and read the night’s secrets in invisible ink. Its topaz gaze fixes right on him before it bolts through the loose-planked fence and into the cemetery.

  ‘Don’t see that too often in the city.’ Frank follows Templeton’s gaze, his hands dug deep in his pockets. He hawks and spits a wad of pearly phlegm aimed at the spot where the fox paused. ‘Get ’em all the time out in Wagga. I used to shoot ’em for the pelts and sell ’em for a penny when I was a lad.’

  ‘I’m thinking of packing it in,’ Sally says loudly, playing up a yawn in Will’s direction.

  Frank turns. ‘Jackie, let’s give it up, let’s go. I think I know where we can get a car.’ He tilts the flask again. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.

  ‘We can drive it up to the mountains and be in Lithgow by morning, but we gotta leave now,’ Will says, as he casually fingers what looks to Templeton like the outline of a revolver stuck in the waistband of his trousers.

  ‘Off you go then, why don’t you?’ Jackie looks up from Annie’s lips. ‘But we need a couple of quid first, don’t we? Otherwise we won’t get very bloody far.’ He is slurring and seems annoyed at his own drunkenness. Staggering away from Annie, he leans an arm against the brick wall and sets his head against it, muttering gruffly to himself under his breath. Annie is still, but her eyes don’t leave him.

  Jackie slaps himself. He kicks the wall hard enough for the thud to reverberate. ‘Come here,’ he says to her. ‘Come here, darlin’, ’ Jackie coos, swaying over to Annie, grabbing for her. He takes hold of her face, thumbs resting on her cheeks, and forces her to look into his eyes: pale blue, like an ocean bath at low tide, but rarely as tranquil. ‘Who’s my girl, eh? Now, don’t you have a pound to give a man, at least?’ He smiles lopsidedly.

  Nobody moves. Nobody wants to be caught in Jackie’s sights when he’s like this.

  Except Will. ‘She’s told you, mate,’ Will ventures. ‘They don’t have any. We could be here all night at this rate.’

  Jackie ignores Will. ‘I’ll take the money,’ he says, his face still close to Annie’s. He makes a walking motion with two fingers along his forearm. ‘And we’ll be outta your hair.’

  The corners of Annie’s mouth harden and she plants a hand on her hip. She looks over at Templeton, who is doing his best to stay inconspicuous, to the point of not breathing. Jackie’s mood can take hold like a grass fire, and all it needs is the tiniest friction.

  ‘Stop pissing in my pocket, Jack.’ Annie steps back. ‘I said we haven’t made nothin’ yet tonight. So however much you stand over us, you’re not going to find a penny for the gaslight.’

  Jackie’s eyes are glazed, not entirely focused, and the air is still.

  ‘Now, what the hell have you all done?’ Annie keeps it up. ‘If you don’t tell me what’s happened, how am I supposed to help you?’ She waves her hand at each of the men. ‘Frank? Come on. How about you, William? Who’s after you lot? What kind of trouble have you gone and got yourselves in?’

  Jackie’s lips purse as if he is actually weighing up telling her. He lets out a long, slow breath. Annie reaches out and strokes his face. ‘What happened?’ she says gently.

  Templeton knows Jackie will not tell, simply because he is an evil bag of rat droppings and he wouldn’t tell anyone anything unless they forced him, unless they messed him up real bad, and then — even then — he could still be trusted only about as far as you could kick him. Couldn’t Annie see? Templeton tries to resuscitate his failing cigarette. He looks compulsively at the front door, bargaining with God to let Dot emerge.

  Jackie turns his lipless face upwards and tugs on the brim of his hat so only his white chin peeps out in a gibbous moon. He fingers something in his pocket for a moment. Templeton knows it’s the razor he carries everywhere, an old-fashioned thing. The blade had been his father’s and it had class, a real beauty, not like the cheap disposable ones the Yanks brought here with them. ‘The one good thing that bastard ever gave me,’ Jackie had told Templeton in a rare moment of candour as he shaved cheerfully one morning.

  Jackie’s razor was mostly for show, Templeton knew, but he had used it at least once. Taken out some bloke’s eye. A row about a girl, so Annie said; she couldn’t get the full story out of Jackie. The eye made a pop coming out, apparently — a plum from a pudding. Templeton thinks about what an eyeball would look like, rolling down the road like a tom-bowler marble.

  ‘It’s about a girl again, isn’t it, Jackie? You’ve slept with some other tart and her bloke is after you?’

  Jackie’s open palm comes down hard against Annie’s cheek. Frank and Will stand up, but Jackie swivels with his arm still raised. They fall back. He hits her again. Annie does not flinch, her skin white with a spreading red mark, like wine on a tablecloth. She squares her face at him, daring him to go further.

  Will and Frank won’t intervene, Templeton knows. He is just as bad, just as yellow. It’s not like he hasn’t tried before, but it just makes Jackie angrier. Jackie’s always been jealous of Annie’s attention to Templeton. Better not to intervene. He feels his insides tumble with shame at what is about to happen. ‘Tchórz,’ he mutters. The power of Dot’s strange Polish words, like an incantation.

  Sally makes to get up, but Annie’s hand tells her to stop.

  ‘What?’ Jackie leans back, arms outstretched, looking around.

  ‘You’re a s
ow’s cunt, Jackie,’ Templeton spits out before he can stop himself.

  ‘What did you say to me?’ Jackie asks. He walks towards him. Templeton’s chest is thumping with fear and rage. He wants to repeat it but he dares not. Over Jackie’s shoulder Annie mouths run.

  ‘Say that to my face, you little cocksucker shit.’ Jackie jabs him hard in the breastbone. ‘Bet you sit down to piss, don’t ya?’ Jackie laughs at Templeton as he stands and flinches. Jackie collars him and twists the fabric in one hand.

  ‘Jesus, Jackie,’ Will says, pointing at the bruise already coming up livid on Annie’s face. He tips the flask to his lips and the liquor spills on his shirt, which he wipes with a wide, clumsy swipe. ‘Did you have to go and do that? Make a mess of her?’

  ‘Not going to make any money busted up like that,’ Frank adds, unhelpfully.

  Annie steps between Jackie and her brother. ‘Happy?’ she says, her voice barely audible. The corner of her eye socket already looks bruised. Blood dribbles down her face from where his ring zippered open her skin. She brushes the blood-streaked hair out of her eyes and pulls her shoulders back.

  ‘I don’t need your help, fucken bitch.’ Jackie changes tack, Templeton suddenly dropped. ‘I can get the money. Who said I couldn’t get the money?’ He slopes over to his pals and snatches the flask. ‘Fuck all a’ you anyway. Try makin’ it on your own without me.’

  ‘Nah, Jackie, mate. Hang about. It’s not like that.’ Frank looks at Will nervously.

  ‘Isn’t it? No — go on then. See how fucken far you get,’ says Jackie.

  ‘Come on now. We didn’t mean nothing.’ Will smiles tightly. ‘Tell us what to do, Jacks. Tell us the plan.’

  Jackie eyes them both for a second, and then begins to speak slowly. ‘We’ll hang on till Dot comes out. She still owes us for the snow. That’ll be a start. Unless one of you geniuses has a better idea.’ Jackie rubs his hands together, with a flash of challenge in his eyes.

  The door opens as if on some perverse cue, and a bloke stumbles out, buttoning up his coat with a dumb smile. He tips his hat to the women as he makes his way down the steps.

  ‘Alright, mate?’ Jackie says.

  The man pauses and turns amiably. ‘G’day.’

  ‘What are you looking at?’ Will snarls, blowing smoke towards him.

  ‘N-nothing,’ he stammers and his face falls, the realisation of his situation closing in. He tries to step off the back foot and dart away but, as though all have sensed the shift in the wind, Frank is already behind him, and he butts up against his chest.

  Jackie withdraws the razor from his pocket and palms it, the ivory handle yellowed to mustard in the sickly cone of the streetlight. Everyone looks at the thing. ‘Your wallet,’ he demands in a voice blunt as a cricket bat.

  ‘Alright, mate. Steady on now. I don’t want any trouble.’ The poor dolt rifles inside his coat and withdraws a worn leather billfold. ‘You can have it.’ He extends it towards them in one hand, the other hand up in submission.

  Will plucks it out of his grasp and opens it greedily. ‘There’s a few quid in here, Jackie.’

  ‘Clear off!’ Jackie commands and cocks his head. The man wastes no time, and scrambles away from them and into a sprint.

  Dot appears in silhouette on the step. ‘Annie?’ She is at her side in two swift steps. She does not ask what happened; there is no need.

  Annie nods at her gamely. ‘It’s alright.’ She speaks quietly, but Templeton can read her lips.

  The two women touch palms, as if they are about to launch off dancing, and Dot takes her by the waist. They stand still like that, close. Templeton can see the fury straining in Dot’s neck. She does not look at Jackie, or cannot. ‘What are you thinking, fleecing the trade?’ she flares at Will. ‘Word gets out that you are playing that game and we will never get another customer! It is a slow-enough night as is. Don’t you have better things to do?’

  ‘Have a nice knee-trembler, did we?’ Frank leers.

  ‘Why don’t you go home and give one to your mother?’

  ‘Well, don’t you just have more hide than Jessie this evening?’ Jackie looks up from inspecting the contents of the wallet and addresses Dot.

  ‘What did she do this time, Jackie?’ Dot gestures at Annie, bristling. ‘What did she do?’

  Annie disentangles herself from Dot and begins to walk away. ‘I want some air,’ she says.

  Suddenly they hear the shrill whirl of tyres as a car careens around the corner. Margarine-yellow headlights dip around the corner, framing Annie’s face in light. The car is going too fast for these streets at this time of night. Before Templeton can understand what’s happening, Jackie looks up and he and his boys spring into action, pivoting away, lowering the brims of their hats and sinking their chins into their collars. Templeton shifts just in time to avoid being trodden on by Jackie. The car slows down as it passes them and the headlights dim, but it’s still going too fast to make out who is in it. Jackie stares after the vehicle, craning his neck to get a better look, face puckered in the reflected light. ‘Let’s get off the street,’ he says tersely.

  They move inside together, the six of them. Templeton straggles behind for a minute, looking back after the car, and at the hole in the fence through which the fox disappeared into the rip of blackness. Something is in the air tonight, and it’s nothing good.

  Dot takes the cigarette Sally rolls for her, lights it and sucks in the smoke. It comes back out her nose, reminding Templeton of a dragon in a picture book. Her shaded eyes blink before they alight on him. He feels a hot gush of something soft for her — perhaps it is affection — like he felt for his mother.

  Annie has regained her composure. ‘Why don’t we all go on over to Dolly’s, huh? Play some cards. Have a drink,’ she suggests with a false note of brightness, breaking the silence. ‘You boys can hide out there. No one’s going to mess with you at Dolly’s.’

  ‘Snowy Thompson will see to that,’ Sally says, walking over to Frank and running a hand down his chest with a smile. ‘Make your silly getaway in the morning.’ She flicks him on the nose with her little finger.

  ‘Who’s Snowy Thompson?’ Templeton leans in towards Dot’s lacquered hair and mutters.

  ‘Dolly’s bloke,’ she whispers back. ‘Used to box.’

  Frank looks to Jackie, who sums up his sorry pair of mates with a hefty protracted spit. He has sobered up remarkably, it appears. ‘Nah, we’ll stay here and sleep it off,’ Jackie says, considering. ‘With the two of you full as a couple of boots.’ He chucks his cigarette at them, and the sparks scatter a corona. ‘Bloody useless.’

  FIVE

  Nancy can hear the clicks and scratches of her mother’s record player floating up through the floorboards as she plays backgammon alone in her room. ‘My Funny Valentine’ plodding behind the closed door of the sitting room, the seventh time since it annoyed her enough to start counting. It’s late but no one has come to check on her, not even Aunt Jo, and her guts feel sore and twisted. The thing she has on between her legs, that her mother taught her how to fasten, repulses her.

  She fixed a snack after Frances left, toast and dripping and another glass of milk. Without Frances there her mother had looked at her, just the two of them in the room, as if she were some strange jungle creature wandered in the house. She had her stage smile on, the one that seemed far too big, when she patted Nancy’s shoulder and excused herself upstairs with a headache.

  ‘You’re a woman now,’ she called, halfway up the stairs. ‘Congratulations.’

  Nancy rolls the dice with more force than needed, and they clatter against the wooden board. She moves her pieces. Her room is sparse: a narrow bed against one wall, with a gold-and-red quilt her mother brought with her on the ship from Ireland that smells of lavender; a writing table; a chest of drawers, and little else. No pictures on the walls. She didn’t want to
put up film stars like Frances and the other girls at school.

  ‘Lily,’ she whispers. ‘Lily, are you there?’

  She rolls the dice again and moves the white pieces of her imaginary opponent, and then her own again. She likes the game, and likes best her own munificence in determining who shall win. Which self shall she deny this week, the white player or the black?

  She did not like the way Frances had slid in next to her mother or the way she had let Kate stroke and fuss with her hair. Nancy had barely said a word when she showed her out, not answering any of Frances’ questions about what the blood felt like or if she felt more grown up. At least she finally had something to capture Frances’ interest: lately Frances seemed bored of her stories, tired of her games, when a year ago she would come roaring out to play. Her mind turns on the spindle of Frances and she wonders how it is that she can miss her friend when she has gone nowhere.

  The milk swills in her stomach and the toast rises in her throat as she thinks of the gore seeping out of her. If this is what being a woman means, she does not want it.

  There is a pause and then ‘My Funny Valentine’ starts again in the next room, and she can hear her mother’s muffled movements through the floor, a crash as she bumps into something.

  Lily would keep her company. ‘Lily,’ she calls softly. She knows that other people cannot see Lily; that Frances thinks she is a nut, calls her drool-case if ever she talks about her. ‘It was fine when you were a babby,’ her mother had said. ‘A wee friend of the imagination. But not anymore.’ She had told her not to talk about Lily else people think her simple-minded.

  Even Nancy does not really believe. It is more like a comforting secret game, if rarely secret, or a game. Lily comes from England, straight out of the picture books Nancy has all about the place. She likes to roll the fancy words like London and Wimbledon around in her mouth as if they are bright marbles, along with Dover, Bristol, Kent, the words from the newspapers and the magazines. Nancy loves the grand, gay British sounds of ticklish, envelope and liquorice. Even though her mother hates the English, Nancy and Lily play milkmaids in the street, filling their pails with puddle water and manhandling the udders of imaginary cows to bring their labours to the court of King George.