by Paul Butler
Smoke stung my eyes, and blurred the picture. I pressed my palms into them and stumbled to my knees, heart speeding with a new panic. Would that hazy image of mother and daughter be the very last thing I would ever see? I rubbed my palms hard against my eyeballs hoping somehow that this might challenge this one stark fact. For a moment, suns of yellow and pink appeared. I pressed again and thought of Tommy, of the sensitive lines down the sides of his cheeks, the gentle crow’s feet spreading from his eyes. If I could only lodge him forever in the fallen darkness of my vision, I thought. Tears spilled at the idea and my palms became slippery against my face. My breathing quickened; I craved the fuel of air to keep this vision burning. But the smoke clogged my throat and my mouth sputtered when I tried to inhale. Keeping my eyes tightly closed I managed to stand and turn. I groped for the window with my wet hands. My fingers touched the glass and metal but I stumbled again, falling now backward, tipping one way then the other, then spinning on a smoke spiral.
In a few moments more, the discomfort faded and I was weightless, floating off, tasting the night, watching our chimney stack cave inward and give way to an enveloping plume of smoke.
The fire, I could see, was burning all over. Angry spots dotted the city, and travelling walls of flame, like reverse waterfalls, banked larger stretches of the blaze. Some buildings, like the Church of England Cathedral, blazed in a fresh, excitable fury, red tongues of flame licking the stone, then leaping in the joy of conquest into the rich dome of night. Whole city squares where the fire had already been merely smouldered and smoked, like embers from a giant’s fireplace, carelessly spilled. People stood around like wingless insects, watching the flame; some huddled in the green next to Government House, clusters of things – tables, chairs, trunks, bed frames, grandfather clocks – beside them.
Guilt, like discomfort and pain, had fallen away. I knew this was my doing, yet I did not feel responsible. I had only one concern in this place now. Tommy was lying like a broken doll only feet from the servants’ door of Mrs. Stevens’s house. Reckless, foolish, drunken Tommy with his wise eyes and his innocent soul. It wrung my heart to think of Tommy on his own, like a friendless imp in an uncompromising furnace. If I could have spilled my soul to save him I would have done so, but I was gliding far from this place. I was dying. By the time he wakened, I would be gone.
Epilogue
AFTER
July 10, 1892
Tommy
The debris was cool beneath the thinned-out soles of my shoes. Plumes of grey ash swept around the broken landscape, circling the chimney stacks which stood like blinded orphans unaware they were alone. From the position of the chimney stack before me – I had counted their number carefully down the former street – I knew I must be close to the spot where I had once tapped on the glass until she came.
I took three short steps. The ash rose to my tread, little clouds like balloons expanding. Somewhere in all this, I thought, were the remains of the floors she had scrubbed, the coverlets she had smoothed, the bed she had slept in. From where else could I conjure her memory?
An hour ago I had stood at the back of the Roman Catholic Cathedral, sick with nerves and longing, waiting for her name on the lips of the thin, white-haired priest. I had come within the walls of my greatest enemy in order to cause a disruption, to scream obscenities over the Latin, to spit at the cross. This was the place that had rejected me, and in doing so had pushed both Kathleen and me over the brink. This was the place that housed the all-seeing eye that punished Kathleen for the crime only I knew she had committed. I had come for revenge. I had come to infect the smug congregation with my own knowledge of their evil God. But once I had arrived, something had changed. I had seen the notice on the door announcing “service for the victims of Friday night’s blaze,” and I had sensed something in the atmosphere, an undertone amidst the shuffling skirts and the whispering voices; this afternoon Kathleen seemed to inhabit the silences between details. I had shrunk into the background, so meek in demeanour that even the fussy verger let me stay with barely a sidelong glance. Was this because he had sensed self-punishment and suffering was all he respected?
The old priest hesitated when he came to the list of the dead. I found myself craving even the mention of her name as a man dying of thirst might crave the distant drip of a tap. “Miss Catherine Molloy, of Bulley’s Lane,” he said, his tongue poking through his thin grey lips, “an elderly girl, not married.” I sunk back into the wall, my spine digging into the cold stone. “Mrs. Catherine Stevens from Meeting House Hill . . .” I thought my heart would explode as the moment came closer, “. . . her daughter, Miss Louisa Stevens . . .” his feet shuffled and he coughed slightly, lowering his voice, “and a servant girl – name not known.”
It took some while to realize this was all. The priest left his lectern and took his position behind his altar. He held his host and gave his incantation. The congregation mumbled its response. I drifted through the door and descended from the Cathedral to this place, glancing back through blurring eyes. The Cathedral – triumphant and entirely unharmed – overlooked the city’s crumbled remains like a proud and upright judge.
Now, on the site of Kathleen’s former home, the dust rose as high as my eyes. I blinked with the grit but did not raise my finger to remove it. I would let the particles lodge inside my eyelids if they wished; I would never try and extract from myself the dust of Kathleen’s life. “What earthly use are you, Fitzpatrick?” one priest had asked me; another had summed up Kathleen’s life with the words: “servant girl – name not known.” We were outcasts together now, one in death, one in life.
I felt the touch of metal on the toe poking from my disintegrating shoe. I gazed down through the still-rising cloud and saw the outline of a box under layers of dust. I crouched slowly, my heart skipping a beat. I took the object out between my finger and thumb and tried to pry it from the mass of black and grey. It came loose after a moment. I lifted it and with my fingers wiped away light ash from the upper surface. Revealed was an illustration of a robin’s head. The bird was joyfully singing, beak open. A plump red berry hung from a spring of holly.
“What have you found?” came a voice.
I looked up to see a man standing two chimney stacks away. He was well-dressed, balding, with a moustache covering most of his mouth. I expected him to accuse me of looting. Rage prickled in my blood, and my ankles pulsed into life, ready to push me into battle. But then he smiled mildly, poking his stick into the ash.
“I am looking for something, my friend, something terribly important.”
I drew the music box into my chest and stood, quivering with the lost opportunity for violence.
“It’s a special kind of photographic equipment,” he continued. “Of course it’s lost. Everything is.”
“Yes, everything is lost.”
He smiled again, and scratched the side of his head. “That’s not . . .” he hesitated, hunched his shoulders and looked down, “that’s not anything that could be part of a camera is it?” He looked up suddenly, hopefully. “The thing that’s in your hand, I mean.”
“No,” I said. “It’s a music box. I gave it to someone.” The lid had been warped by the heat and moulded into place. My fingers had already begun trying to pry it off, but I knew it was useless.
“Ah,” he laughed, gazing eastward into the horizon. “Music box. Lovely! What a world of joy and fantasy such novelties contain!” His smile faded slowly and he repeated the word “lovely.” Then he moved off slowly through the rubble, dipping his stick into the ashes and stirring without conviction.
_____
July 28, 1892
Horses’ blood makes my shirt cling. It didn’t take long to cool down once it was spilled, and my skin is chilled. No one has seen me yet, but it won’t be long. I may make it easier for them. I’m tired, and here on the Cathedral steps is as good a place as any for a rest. What be
tter way to mark this early battle than to be found on the threshold of my enemy’s house?
I was surprised at the tears. I knew there would be some regret; these animals were once my companions. Why should I have to cut through their beauty, I questioned, to get to Him? But this, I knew, is war, and war is not for the faint-hearted. The horses had first suggested themselves in the words of the hymn. They were indeed bright and beautiful, their pale coats catching the moonlight. And they’d been present when Kathleen dropped the match. It was they who had alerted me. Were they His spies also? Had they whispered their secret on the wind, and brought God’s fiery vengeance on Kathleen? I hated superstition, but this time I couldn’t be certain. It might be true, and that was enough. Since Kathleen has been taken from me, a sheen of peace has descended upon this city – a calm, optimistic return to work, a repeated invoking of words like “mercy” and “faith,” words that scorched me like burning coals. Peace is unbearable to a soul in torment. I had to rupture this serenity, and something had to suffer in the process.
The battlefield reveals itself like a dead forest under the glimmer of stars. Chimney stacks rise in hope and crumble at the edges, promises half broken. Faith is not a word I have ever used, but I, too, have a pact. The world around me is inside out. Peace is war. Justice is on its head. He who is said to create has destroyed my world. I must repay Him in kind.
Afterword
1892 is a novel inspired by the same historical event featured in the non-fiction book St. John’s: City of Fire. Although 1892 is strictly fiction, a statement claiming that any resemblance to people living or dead would be disingenuous to say the least; the fire that razed the eastern portion of St. John’s in 1892 did indeed originate in Timothy O’Brien’s barn, and Tommy Fitzpatrick was the name of the employee whose pipe is believed to have been responsible. The novel is woven around known history, and Tommy Fitzpatrick’s pipe is as much a part of the historical landscape – and lore – of late-nineteenth-century St. John’s as Water Street, the finger piers, and the Basilica (then known as the Roman Catholic Cathedral). The spirit in which I have approached this book is that of a novelist, not that of a historian. I have written the story which came upon me in whispers as I researched and wrote St. John’s: City of Fire.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my publisher, Flanker Press, and the whole Flanker team for their enthusiasm and attention to detail. I would also like to thank the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, which supported this project, and the City of St. John’s. I would like to acknowledge the various historical archives and the staff who helped me with the research for both St. John’s: City of Fire and 1892. These are particularly the Centre for Newfoundland Studies at Queen Elizabeth II Library, Memorial University; the Provincial Archives at The Rooms; the Newfoundland Collection at AC Hunter Library; and the City of St. John’s Archives. I would like to mention also Edward Chafe, who caught me at the last minute with information which turned out to be important, in different ways, for both St. John’s: City of Fire and 1892. I’d like also to thank my wife, Maura Hanrahan, for her wisdom and support.
About the Author
Paul Butler is the author of St. John’s: City of Fire (Flanker Press, 2007) and the novels NaGeira (Flanker Press, 2006), which made Donna Morrissey’s 2007 “Canada Reads” shortlist, Easton’s Gold (Brazen Books, 2005), Easton (Flanker Press, 2004), Stoker’s Shadow (Flanker Press, 2003), which was shortlisted for the 2004 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards, and The Surrogate Spirit (Jesperson Publishing, 2000). He has written for many publications in Canada including the Globe and Mail, the Beaver, Books in Canada, Atlantic Books Today, and Canadian Geographic. He has also contributed to CBC Radio regional and national. A graduate of Norman Jewison’s Canadian Film Centre in Toronto and a winner in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters competition (2003, 2004, 2006, and 2008), Butler lives in St. John’s. His website is www.paulbutlernovelist.com.