Dark Fires Shall Burn

by Anna Westbrook

  ‘The handwriting is all different.’ Kate says, composing herself. ‘As if they’re by different men. Or different people, I suppose.’

  ‘I’ve noticed that.’

  ‘And this one cannot even spell. D-E-E-R? Peggy, you need to take them down to the station.’

  ‘What will they do about it? Police can’t seem to catch a fly with their mouths hanging open.’

  ‘Peggy, these could be clues! They could find that monster! Who knows? They have — they have,’ she fumbles for the words, ‘special people who work these things out. Special detectives. Hell — forgive me the language, Peggy — they should call Scotland Yard and ship them out here! Goodness me, if there wasn’t a time and a place.’

  ‘What clues are in here, Mrs Durand? I’m not a fool. I’d rather they chase down actual leads than waste time on nutters,’ Mrs Reed says and Nancy hears her pick up Thomas from his crib. Nancy returns to collect her shoes, clattering down the corridor noisily and taking her mother’s hand, assessing that their welcome has expired.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Durand, Nancy.’ Mrs Reed nods at them. ‘Thank you for your visit. I’ll let you know if there’s anything further you can do to help.’

  ‘Come on, Mum.’ Nancy tugs her mother’s hand. Kate’s face is blurred with tears, her dumb mouth opening and shutting. ‘Let’s go home now. Thank you for the keepsake, Mrs Reed. I’m sorry for your loss — for Frances.’

  They set out for home and it takes Nancy a block before she realises her mother’s eyes are still pouring tears, although her face is pointed dauntlessly ahead and her posture is impeccable, and the only sound she makes is the staccato of her heels on the footpath. Nancy rehearses things to say, the sort of comforting things she heard adults say after her father’s death, but each one sputters and dies on her lips, like an engine that won’t turn over.

  ‘We have to leave here,’ Kate says finally, as she rams the key into the lock of their front door.

  ‘Leave where?’

  ‘This place. This city. This horror. I won’t raise my daughter here.’

  ‘But I don’t want to leave!’

  ‘Right now, I do not care very much for what you desire.’ She opens the door and, with more force than she might have intended, parcels Nancy into the house. ‘There is a bloody madman out there.’

  TWENTY

  The first johns of the evening come in. A tall, thin, pale fella in a fancy suit, who is so white and bland that Templeton thinks he looks like a loaf of bread. A rangy soldier who seems more interested in cracking jokes and necking beers with Snowy and Errol than actually getting what he is paying for. And two young fellas, barely seventeen, that he heard on the doorstep daring each other to come in.

  The girls go upstairs with them, one by one, leaving Templeton smoking by the fireplace, marooned. He feels ill: his nerves are giving him trouble and there is a tremor in his hand that only a lit cigarette will fix, and he often feels, when standing, that he may visibly tremble or, worse, be sick or faint. He turns the memory of Frances, half-naked and bruised black around the neck, over and over in his mind like the reel of a projector, willing it to catch fire and erase under his incessant replay.

  Dolly counts money under a harsh green tablelamp that illuminates the creases in her face beneath her powder. At about one in the morning she sends him off for more beer. She takes his hand and folds it around a key to one of the three cars she has parked out back and tells him where to go and what to say.

  ‘Him? Come off it, his feet won’t reach the bloody pedals on the Ford,’ Snowy says with a laugh.

  ‘You know how to drive, lad,’ Dolly says, and it’s not a question.

  ‘Yes ma’am,’ he answers. How hard could it be?

  High on nervous energy, and slightly unsteady on his feet from the brandy, he fumbles open the car door and slides into the driver’s seat. A streetlamp throws an isosceles of orange light into the vehicle, and all else is quiet amid the rows of slumbering terraces. He clings to the steering wheel as he starts the thing up and backs it fitfully out of the yard, almost scraping it on the wall. He is trying to figure out what to do with the clutch as the engine belches, convulses and stalls. Dolly wants him to get to a place on Foveaux Street and knock four times, then twice more on the side door. That is the easy part. He needs the car to carry the crates back.

  Taking a steadying breath, he tries again. He creeps up the street, clinging to the curb, as slowly as possible. He can’t park, so he drives the car up over the gutter, half onto the footpath, and gets out. After the requisite number of knocks, a thickset man with fingers like sausages opens up. He grunts, nodding at a stack draped with hessian sacking. Templeton’s arms ache loading the cases of beer into the back seat and feel weightless and jellified on the wheel driving the way back. But he has done it. Quivering with triumph, he crosses the threshold on return, a case under one arm.

  Snowy looks at him sourly. ‘There better not be a scratch on that car.’

  ‘Good boy. You help yourself.’ Dolly tosses him a bottle, which, to his great relief, he catches.

  Another bloke raps on the door and Snowy opens it. The man sits in the lounge making stilted chat about the horses until Roberta is free. He pays Dolly and gets to it.

  If they haven’t finished in twenty minutes, Errol goes and hollers at them to hurry up. ‘Errol does it just to come up and have a good perv,’ Dot had told him. ‘Peeping bloody Tom.’

  Errol is just stirring when the john comes down. After he leaves, it goes quiet for a while. The girls drape themselves over chairs and smoke until they are all disturbed by a loud knock.

  ‘Hello, dolls!’ A short, freckled, curvaceous woman barrels through the door. ‘No business here? None at mine neither. Let’s have a drink!’

  ‘Who is she?’ Templeton asks Roberta, enchanted by her energy.

  ‘Nellie Flanagan.’

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘Hell’s teeth, don’t you know anything?’

  ‘No. I guess not.’ He shrugs.

  Soon Nellie Flanagan is whipping records from their delicate paper sleeves and plonking them on rotation. The music is unlike anything Templeton has heard before. It is raucous, vulgar, exciting. Nellie chassés from left to right, her hips making tight revolutions, her wrinkles of flesh roiling against her periwinkle dress like fish beneath the skin of the sea. She hoots at each new tune.

  ‘What’s this godawful noise?’ Errol says, neck scarlet.

  ‘Jive, baby! It’s jive.’ Nellie dances over and tickles his chin.

  ‘Nigger music,’ snorts Snowy, leaning on the mantelpiece.

  Dolly ignores Nellie. She re-counts the money at her table under the green lamp — her nightly habit to count twice, Templeton knows now. Her deft hands move quickly. She lays a Colt .45 on the table next to her right hand before she begins to tally up.

  ‘Come up and dance with me,’ Nellie cajoles, moving towards Errol.

  ‘No, I’m right here just as I am, Nellie. Ain’t going to do no savage dance.’ Errol puffs on a cigarette. ‘Anyway, I got the best view from here, don’t I?’ He looks her up and down.

  ‘I heard that it was once a Red Indian war dance,’ Lorraine says, sour-faced in the corner, where she sits with her arms folded. She shoots a dark look at Nellie.

  ‘I think it’s marvellous.’ Annie tries to copy Nellie’s gyrations. Sally begins to dance too, giggling. She picks it up straight away.

  ‘You’re a natural.’ Nellie slaps Sal’s backside.

  ‘Won’t you show me how to do it?’ Annie asks.

  Templeton watches as Nellie instructs Annie in her moves. Nellie Flanagan is not pretty in a typical way, too hard-faced and a tad plump, he decides, but there is something alluring about her. Annie’s face is pink and her hair wild. Her brow is already sheeny with perspiration. She looks sweaty and beautiful. T
empleton is glad to see her looking happy like this. ‘Lucky, come up here,’ Annie says with an outstretched arm.

  ‘Not me.’

  ‘Do as you’re told.’ Dot laughingly shoves him up from his seat.

  Giddily, Templeton bobs around with the three dancing women, trying to mirror their movements and at the same time stay out of their way. Errol alternates between clapping in time to the music and slapping the armrest of the lounge like a tom-tom. Even Dolly looks up, licking her index finger to peel off a note from the pile of cash, and cracks a smile.

  The needle rips to a halt at the end of the short record and Nellie folds up into an empty chair like an exhausted flamingo. ‘Oh my! I’ll teach you gals how to really boogie. Just you wait,’ she warns them wickedly. She reaches into her purse and pulls out a small folded square, tipping out the envelope’s contents on the bureau. A dune of snow forms a clump on the dark wood. To Templeton’s right, Dot breathes in sharply.

  ‘You ever been to the Fifty-Fifty Club? Oh boy, you’ll just adore it!’ Nellie says breathily as she goes through her purse again until she brandishes a straw.

  ‘The one that Jew runs?’ Snowy huffs.

  ‘Oh, don’t be crass,’ Nellie rebukes him. ‘The world’s had enough of that kind of nonsense. Here you go, lovies.’ Gesturing at the snow, she grins long and wide, blithe and unfazed. She bends over the makeshift table and executes a long, deep, elegant huff. ‘Come and get a taste of some real top-quality stuff.’ She wipes her nostril with a handkerchief.

  Dot approaches the bureau. Her eyes turn to Nellie. ‘May I?’

  ‘Of course, sweet thing. Don’t you have nice manners!’ Nellie leans an elbow on the table and offers her the straw. Dot bends and inhales her line, their heads pressed close together. As she draws back, Nellie leans forward. ‘That’s right. That’s the ticket!’ She says encouragingly. ‘Good stuff, isn’t it?’

  Dot smiles. Templeton notices that the room is watching.

  Sally gets up to put on a record and the opening clicks of the Andrews Sisters’ ‘Rum and Coca Cola’ explodes out of the record player. Dot and Nellie start to dance, hips and chests fused, stepping effortlessly back and forth. Dot’s smiling face looks opalescent.

  Working for the Yankee dollar. Oh, you vex me. You vex me, the sisters sing.

  Eventually Errol clambers to his feet to poach Nellie. ‘Show me how it’s done then,’ he orders.

  Dot gives her up and flops in a chair, out of breath. Templeton can see her ribcage fall and rise, and her eyes, ever alert, casting about the room.

  ‘Oh, you great big oaf! You’ll never get it. You’ve got two left feet.’ Nellie twirls under his gigantic hand.

  ‘You look like a bloody Yank, Errol,’ Snowy says with a guffaw. ‘Twinkle toes.’

  Dolly lets a chuckle rip and tucks the pile of cash into her strongbox. She sits back, watching, and lights her pipe. No one but Templeton sees her tuck the pistol into her skirt pocket.

  Templeton moves towards the powder on the bureau. He’s never had a chance to try snow — Dot and Annie always kept it for themselves — but he fears he will look a fool if he tries to snort it. Finally, Roberta comes over to join him. Nellie pauses Errol’s dance instruction to hand over the straw. Roberta sucks hers up first and then Templeton leans over, trying to copy her. On his first try he forgets to hold the other nostril shut and so no powder comes up the straw. He looks about him, embarrassed, but Roberta nods encouragingly, and everyone else is watching the dancing, so he tries again. This time it works, and the caustic rush glitters in his sinuses and his jaw goes numb like it’s been set on ice. Roberta slips out the front hallway and he follows.

  He hears the sounds of the street with more clarity and distinction than ever before: the screech of far-off infants, old drinkers hawking and spitting on the streets, husbands yelling at wives, mongrel dogs pleading to the moon. He feels incredible. For the first time in the last days, thoughts of Frances etherise and dissipate.

  ‘Nellie Flanagan goes around with Elsie Tipper,’ Roberta blurts out.

  The name Elsie Tipper has a familiar ring to it, as did Dolly Jenkins the first years he was in Sydney. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Let’s just say Tipper is who you do not want to meet late at night in a dark alley. She was Dolly’s sworn enemy and she’s one mad, rough-as-bags old bitch. Dolly has only recently come to terms with her.’

  ‘What do you mean, “goes around with”? Nellie’s one of her girls? She works for her?’

  ‘No, you daft bugger! Goes around with. Like, she’s her girl. If you know what I mean.’ She punches his shoulder. ‘In the old days they used to call ’em Smoking Ginnies. My dad told me. The ones who don’t like men.’

  ‘Don’t go with men? But … but — what could they do together?’

  Roberta cackles and slaps him softly on the side of his head. Her feet slide a bit on the cold stone and she rights herself, her eyes blazing strangely. ‘What do you think they do?’ she teases.

  ‘I don’t know!’ He colours.

  ‘Well, they don’t just lie down and kiss and cuddle, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He grabs her wrist, harder than he’d meant to.

  ‘I mean that there are plenty of things you can do in bed without a cock.’ She shakes him off, flexing her eyebrows and running her tongue over her bottom lip.

  ‘Surely that’s, that’s … illegal.’

  Roberta shrugs. ‘What’s fun that’s not illegal?’

  ‘Well, what’s Nellie doing here with Errol then?’

  ‘Getting paid, I imagine. But I think she’s a damn fool if the things I’ve heard about Tipper are even half true. She’ll put a hole right through him if she finds out something’s going on.’

  The crispness of sound and colour, the brief respite from guilt and fear, is already receding. He doesn’t want it to wear off, this glowing magic, this potion of forgetting. His eyes feel dry and hot. ‘How do you know?’ He nudges her, thinking about the night in Enmore Park and what he overheard between her and Dot. ‘About what two girls do in bed together?’ He suddenly wants to tell her about the man at the fountain but he cannot get a hold on the words.

  ‘Been around, dearest. Anyway, let’s go back inside.’ She gets to her feet. ‘I want another snort before Dot gets it all.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  ‘Shall I fix you a cup of tea, Mum?’ Nancy asks, the morning after their visit to Mrs Reed, and her mother nods. The house, penetrated by diagonals of soft light from the winter sun, is quieter without Aunt Jo and Pinky, and floating dust mites, disturbed from the cushions, circle them as they sit in the parlour. Nancy remembers a game of make-believe she used to play with her father. ‘Catch the fairies,’ he would tell her when the dust caught the light, and she would leap about, clapping her hands. ‘If you catch a fairy, she’ll grant you a wish.’ She had only cared about snapping up a fairy and never about the wish.

  She goes to fetch the tea, and when she returns, teacup balanced on the bone-china saucer, she sees that her mother has uncorked the bottle of port she keeps in the writing desk in the corner.

  ‘I thought you wanted this,’ Nancy says evenly, trying to hold back her irritation.

  ‘Of course I do. I’ll drink it as well. Put it on the table.’ Kate nods while filling up the narrow sipper glass. ‘Oh, Nan, don’t look at me like that. It’s been a horrible day, horrible week, horrible year — two, in fact! What do you want me to say?’

  Nancy puts the tea down slightly too hard and it slops over the rim. ‘May I go to my room?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake. I will not tolerate you raising your eyebrow at me. I am your mother.’ Kate tosses back the port and pours another. Sighing, she settles herself on the chaise longue. ‘I don’t know where you came from. Such a prim little thing. You’ll make a fine school marm one da
y.’

  ‘Good. I’d like to be a schoolteacher,’ Nancy says and crosses her arms.

  ‘Would you now?’ Kate studies her. ‘I thought that once, too.’

  ‘Really?’ Nancy asks, surprised. ‘Well, why didn’t you?’

  ‘I decided I wanted a husband more.’

  ‘I will never decide that,’ Nancy says with a snort.

  ‘Never say never.’

  ‘Why can’t I be a teacher and have a husband?’

  ‘That’s not the way the world works, my darling.’ Kate collects her tea, ignoring the spill, and sips it. ‘Thank you.’ She smiles weakly at Nancy, who is astonished at how old and exhausted her mother looks in this light, even though her makeup is immaculate.

  ‘May I go to my room now?’

  ‘Yes, you may,’ Kate tells her, and the way she says it makes Nancy want to cry.

  In her bedroom, Nancy shuts the door and drags her desk chair as a barricade. She has put Frances’ teddy bear, Winston, a bedraggled old thing in an unnatural shade of orange who smells a bit funny, down on her bed. But now this doesn’t feel right: she moves him under the pillow instead. Then, fidgeting guilty, wondering what Frances would think, she decides he should sit on the windowsill with the view of the garden. Frances would approve. From her bedside drawer she takes out the photograph of the two of them at Much Ado About Nothing and traces Frances’ outline with her finger. She puts the picture down on her bedside table, suddenly filled with a fizzing anger. Why had Frances been so silly as to follow someone into a cemetery in the dark?

  In the pocket of her cardigan is the diary. All last night she had struggled with the lock, trying many positions, but could not get it to open and release the diary’s secrets. Holding it up to her eye now, she realises that the mechanism is simple. Withdrawing a bobbypin from her hair, she gives the lock a determined jiggle. The clasp pops open and the pages yield in a flutter. Success!