by Paul Butler
“Kathleen,” I said, allowing tenderness to come into my voice, “you have to go now.”
“Please don’t go inside there again,” she insisted, still holding onto my cuff, watching my eyes for a promise.
“As soon as you’re out of sight, I’m just going to raise the alarm.” I nodded and squeezed her fingers with my free hand. “I’ll find you later.”
She held my gaze for another second, backing away at last. Then with a brief, desperate smile she turned and ran toward the perimeter fence.
_____
The fire had taken over, its blazing heart swelling over the whole block now, the remnants of O’Brien’s buildings – blackened crossbeams, a still-glowing fence stump – like forsaken lovers with no option but to watch as the impassioned flames moved on. I had ceased trying to help now. I had helped at first, not for O’Brien, or even for myself. I knew my life at the farm was over even before the flames spread. I’d done it only for Kathleen, for the panic on her white face when she realized what she had done. I had run from door to door to see if anyone had barrels of water, and when small buckets only could be had, I’d thrown the contents – salt meat and all – into the monstrous body of the flame which only sizzled and reared as though in appreciation for the extra food. When a fireman yelled that they needed kerosene to start their engine fire, I ran from place to place for that too. But no one would believe me.
“Kerosene?” said Mrs. Myron, the blacksmith’s wife. “To start a fire? There’s already a fire started, you fool! Why would they want to start another?”
I hadn’t been able to help because no one had trusted me. They had looked at me sideways and narrowed their eyes, and I had seen that, in drawing attention to myself, I had dug myself into a hole. Tomorrow I would be O’Brien’s shifty, daft-eyed rogue who ran around in a panic as the blaze spread from house to house. Everyone would draw the same conclusion.
So now I watched from the other side of the street while men and boys like ants conveyed tables, chairs, and boxes from the houses already burning and threatened. The wind scooped the flames high into the still-blue sky, and swept glowing shingles from one roof to another. Burning scraps spun, blinking with flame, scattering southward across the road, circling at my feet, curling at the edges as they went from orange, to black, to powdering grey, to dust.
With no water in the pipes, the fire brigade was a weaponless army, soldiers running this way and that to no purpose as the battle raged around them. The reservoir tank behind the farm had opened to reveal only an empty space and a blackened, oily mush. So the fire had danced and spun its way unchallenged through the whole neighbourhood. Despite the initial horror at my lost livelihood, despite a regret for the guilt Kathleen would feel, part of me rejoiced. Better to lose my job through a vast, crashing disaster that would surely ruin O’Brien as well, than to squeak, and plead, and hope, and find that one piece of carelessness too many had weighed the scales minutely against me. If I had to go, the blinding sheet of flame before me was the way I would like to go. Goodbye O’Brien, with your swaggering, yeoman pretensions. I still had one crown buried under one of your smouldering fence posts, and another tucked close to a tree root near my father’s grave. This would be my new beginning. My old world had been pulled out from under my feet by someone who loved me. I was filled with trepidation for the future but also a pre-dawn glimmer of hope, and I was not sorry.
Thirteen
Kathleen
I was as distracted as a wounded moth flying in circles around a lamp. I had gone straight past Mrs. Stevens’s house, walking in the same daze until I came into the centre of town. Only at the crossroads at Water Street, with no road straight ahead except into the harbour, did I realize I had no reason to be here. Carriage wheels rolled past and merchants’ boys with iron poles took down the shops’ awnings. Realizing it must be close to six o’clock, I turned to begin climbing the way I had come. My feet were almost too tired to obey.
I had wandered the woods close to the farm for some while, glancing back for reassurance the fire would be doused. At first I had thought I would be lucky. There was only billowing, black smoke which seemed to duck and diminish in the wind. I had calmed myself with the idea that it must have looked much worse than it was, that the thickness of the smoke had concealed only the merest and most fragile of flames which wind and time would extinguish. But then, a little later, I had glimpsed through the bushes an orange glow, steady and menacing. I had snagged my way through the twigs and branches to Military Road. Gazing back once more, I had seen that beneath the swirling smoke, tongues of flame leaped high into the rich blue sky of late afternoon. There had been voices too – exclamations and cries of dismay – and the continuous ringing of a bell.
I had turned the questions over and over in my mind like a knot which could not be untied: how can the farm survive? how can Tommy escape this with his job? Then, cursing myself as a coward, I had reminded myself that the die was cast. Tommy and I would have to make out as best as we could together, without the farm. But what about others? a sickly voice had whispered inside me, its tone so frightened it could barely make itself heard. The fire had spread alarmingly.
Now, as I dragged myself back up the hill, I noticed how dishevelled I had become. A dry twig rested in the folds of my blouse and my hair had come loose, rebel locks trailing around my neck. I brushed off the twig, and tried to re-fasten my hair as I walked. Two red-faced boys on the other side of the road ran up the hill as fast as they could, nudging each other as they scampered on. When their footsteps died around the corner an odd hush descended upon the street. I realized they were on their way to see something unusual and spectacular, hence their rush and excitement; I desperately wanted not to know what the novelty could be.
By the time I reached the house my hands were shaking. I went in through the back door as usual but, once inside, I sensed something had changed. The air was heavy with the paraffin Dr. Glenwood used for this lamps, and there was a confusion of sound – a tapping and a muffled, agitated voice. I halted between the scullery and the servants’ entrance, listening. The first words I could make out were hoarse and rasping, only just recognizable as those of Mrs. Stevens.
“Dr. Glenwood!” she called, “I shall have to call a constable.”
It wasn’t so much the threat as the desperation of the voice and the way the air of the house was so dangerously laced with the paraffin that alarmed me. I moved quietly toward the source of the commotion, opening the door to the hallway. I caught sight of my employer standing outside the closed sitting room door. Her face was white, her eyes tired and bulging like a woman in shock. For the first time, in the half-light of the hallway, with the early evening sun streaming in a cathedral arc through the glass at the top of the door, I could see how petite and bird-like she really was. She tried to bang at the door with her open palm but succeeded in making only the tapping sound I had heard from the scullery. Then sighing and resting her cheek against the surface of the door, she seemed like an Egyptian wife mourning at the tomb of her husband. I wondered how long she had been beating with her palm this way and calling out her warnings.
She glanced up the hallway and saw me.
“Kathleen,” she said, standing to attention, her eyes suddenly hopeful. “You must help me.”
“What’s happened?” I asked, drawing up close to her. I felt suddenly sickened at the sight of the closed door, at the straight, dark crack where it lodged firmly against the frame. It had been so many hours ago that Dr. Glenwood had arrived with the intention of photographing Louisa. Why were they still in there? And why would the door be locked?
“It’s Dr. Glenwood,” Mrs. Stevens told. “I heard him. He has Louisa.”
Guilt rolled inside my chest like a loosened boulder, and I wanted to be on the other side of the world where I had never started a fire or allowed a young girl under my care to step into the darkness of a s
trange man’s desires. Nature was inside out on this island off the Americas. Good intentions turned into disaster. Ordinary people – like Tommy, like myself – became instruments of destruction against their wills.
“Dr. Glenwood!” I called in a voice much louder than Mrs. Stevens had managed and which surprised even me with its force. My employer shrunk away slightly, almost in deference it seemed. “Dr. Glenwood! Unlock this door immediately!”
I heard a stirring noise within, and then a strange gasp. There were some words too, but I couldn’t catch them.
“Now! Please!”
There was a slumping sound and then the doorknob rattled. The lock turned and the door moved inward, only slightly, but the unnatural brightness of the sitting room revealed itself like a slim segment of some tropical fruit in the dim half-light of the hallway. Mrs. Stevens gasped and I pushed the door. There was another rustling sound as of someone slinking behind the open door. The paraffin lights were almost blinding, but I could see Louisa reclining on a rocking chair, her head to one side. At first I thought she was grinning and experienced a moment of relief, but as I moved squinting into the room, past the burning lamps and the squat, cloaked camera, I realized that what I took to be a smile was in fact a scarlet gag pulled tight around the lower portion of her head. The same red sashes circled both wrists; they were bound fast to the arms of the chair. Mrs. Stevens’s small fingers touched the back of my blouse softly like the wings of a hummingbird.
“Louisa?” she said, as though afraid of rousing her daughter too roughly. I had just noticed that Louisa’s eyes were closed.
“It wasn’t my fault,” came the breathless words from the door behind us.
Turning, I saw Dr. Glenwood’s eyes were turned puffy, his neck pink and swollen against his collar like that of a small boy in an ill-fitting school uniform. He was leaning back against the door’s ridge, gripping the doorknob.
“What’s wrong with her?” Mrs. Stevens gasped, now bending over her daughter.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he repeated in a strange, thin voice that was not like his own. “I told her, I warned her not to struggle so much against the gag.”
I turned back to Louisa. Even in this strange light I noticed her odd pallor – a tulip red in her cheeks giving way too suddenly to a pale blue tint of the skin around her neck and ears. It made her look waxen, like one of the exhibits at the Crystal Palace in London.
“Louisa, dear,” came Mrs. Stevens’s soft warble. I backed away, letting her view her daughter closer. I knew. But I didn’t want my words to sever the cord of hope in Mrs. Stevens.
“It was an accident,” said Dr. Glenwood. “I can’t take any responsibility.”
“Please, Dr. Glenwood,” Mrs. Stevens said frustrated, still not understanding, “can’t you help us?” Her fingers began to hover over the sash binding Louisa’s right hand. She started tugging ineffectively. Louisa’s fingertips, I noticed, were blue.
“Mrs. Stevens,” I said, moving forward again, “we need a doctor quickly. A doctor can do that.”
There was a movement behind us, a metallic clank. I turned to see the door close. Dr. Glenwood had disappeared. There was another clank, the sound of the door locking. I heard the front door open then close.
Tommy
The flankers spun from the glowing roof. Many in the crowd ducked and dodged the earthbound missiles. I wondered, at first, at the odd serendipity that would converge the sentiment of the city’s rabble upon the very point of my own greatest interest. There was a sea of flame and hundreds of burning houses. Why had they all congregated around this one on Meeting House Hill?
I searched among the figures for my Kathleen, in case she too had returned to watch the demise of her mistress’s home. It might be a job to find her tomorrow. I checked the faces of the women with shawls and hoods as I wove through the crowd. Despite their distraction, some of the people found time to move pointedly out of my path, casting disapproving looks at my attire. None, so far, were Kathleen, and many, I was surprised to find, were transfixed by the fire in a way quite distinct from those in other areas of the city. Everywhere there was a gasping wonderment, as well as a horror at nature’s destructive force. Here there was a general silence; the murmur of the crowd – when it came – had an altogether different flavour.
And then I heard it. From behind me, an answer to someone’s question: “They’re trapped inside. We heard the screams.” I turned like a whip, trying to find the speaker. From her finger pointing at the blaze, and from her posture – half turned to the gentleman who had made the inquiry – I judged it to be the plump woman with a blanket over her shoulders. I approached her, breathless.
“What did you say?” I demanded. The gentleman had also turned; he aimed his bristling eyebrows in my direction, but I persisted. “Did you say there were people in that house?” I pointed, as she had done, at the door upon which I had tapped my fingers several nights ago.
She nodded, but only slightly, as she might have done had a dog just stood on its hind legs and addressed her in words.
“What business, sir, is it of yours?” the gentleman asked, but I barely heard him. I was already dodging through the sparks, then scuttling up the alley I had seen Kathleen take, whispers and gasps of the crowd echoing in my ear. By the time I made the rear door, heat kissed my ankle and smoke rose from my arm. The metal latch singed my fingertips with heat, so I wrapped my cuff around my fist and thumped the penny-shaped latch lever upward. The latch shook but did not open. I stepped back for a moment, wrapping my fist tighter. All along the eavestrough small flames rippled and the upper window was an open gash of fire. The chimney stack was smoking from its side. I stepped forward for another try but a tramp of footsteps made me glance to the side. It was the gentleman and two others – both in cloth caps, one with a stick. Had they some to help?
I opened my mouth to speak.
“Looting, sir?” the gentleman demanded, and with a flick of his hand, motioned his companions forward. The stick was raised and swung so quickly through the darkness I didn’t have time to dodge. The blow landed against my skull, shocking the bones in my neck. My knees hit the earth and every thought, dream, and anxiety leaked painlessly into the night.
Fourteen
Kathleen
At first I had thought it was the paraffin lamps causing the strange, smoky heat. But this had made no sense, even in the midst of distraction; one had gone out and the others were burning low. The horrors of this evening had already compounded into such nightmarish dimensions, I had thought nothing else could shake me. But I had been wrong. Very soon I found out that the fire I had started was eating now steadily through the whole city – a rumbling, hissing, smoking monster – and I, my employer, and poor Louisa’s body, would be lost in its belly.
Mrs. Stevens had stood over Louisa for an age, it seemed, after the door had been locked behind us. I had struggled with the door, turning the handle one way and the other, pulling, wrenching. My elbows had ached with the effort, but the door had not given even slightly. Who would have thought that something as simple as the turning of a key could prove so utterly fatal?
At length Mrs. Stevens had shaken her head gently and, with her trembling fingertips, touched away Louisa’s damp hair from her forehead. She tried, in vain and without much conviction, to untie the tiny knot behind her head. Did she understand? I had wondered. How could I tell her? After trying with the door I had stood behind Mrs. Stevens, a mute guardian angel waiting for the shattering sounds of grief, afraid to help her with the gag lest blood and other juices of death were to follow its unwrapping. But at last Mrs. Stevens silently withdrew from Louisa’s chair and sat down in the nearest stool facing her daughter. A single, small tear had run down her white, mottled skin. I had realized then that she understood.
I backed away to the far wall and tugged back the curtains. The windows of this room,
looking into the small back garden, were meant for airing only; they could not be crawled through. I pulled open the latch of the one nearest with the intention of calling into the night. Instead the cacophony of disaster scooped through the other way filling the room with human yells, shrieks, and a scattering hailstorm of children’s laughter. There were vaguer, more threatening sounds too: the moan of shifting iron and stone; the sizzle of sparks; the dull crash of falling timber. In desperation, I pushed my head, arm and half a shoulder through and yelled: “We’re trapped! We’re trapped!”
The window frame had me lodged in its jaws. I could go no farther, and soon stumbled back into the room breathless, hair tumbling over my forehead. I turned to Mrs. Stevens. She smiled at me in an odd, kind manner. “Poor girl,” she said almost too softly to be heard, “poor girl.” I wasn’t sure wether she meant my impending death or my state of dishevelment.
Soon there was a sound of tinkling glass upstairs. For a moment I thought this might be rescue, although the noise was unaccompanied by the tramp of climbing footsteps or the crash of a wooden frame. Then smoke appeared mysteriously, like a ghost, by the wallpaper, and I knew that the house was burning. I heard footsteps quite distinctly very close, near the alley, and then a voice calling someone “sir.” I pushed my head through the window again but couldn’t see as far around as the alley. More footsteps, this time dying away. I called out again: “Help! Please! An old lady inside!” Then I let my ribs rest against the window ridge. Dropping from the window and turning again, I found the room now full of smoke. I could see Mrs. Stevens’s profile now only in outline, like a very faded photograph. She was looking across the room at Louisa whose form was also obscured. From their respective postures, mother upright and attentive, Louisa slouched but comfortable, the two of them might have been taking tea together.