He came out of the nursery and looked about the landing. Then he went down the stairs. He had only just learned how to use stairs and went carefully, sitting on each step before he placed his feet.
‘Ruby?’ he called. There was no one about. The kitchen door was open. Everything was neat and put away. Joan wasn’t standing by the stove peering into a saucepan, or mixing butter and sugar in a bowl. Oliver went into the pantry. There was a big green tin in the pantry with a picture of a girl’s face on the lid. Oliver liked the girl in the picture and he had seen Joan put bits of leftover cake in the tin. Oliver could just see the tin on a shelf over his head.
‘Olly do it,’ he said, pulling a kitchen chair over and getting up.
The pantry shelves were interesting. There was a side of bacon wrapped in a fine white cloth, a glass bowl full of blancmange and a rhubarb pie in a dish. There was a china blackbird in the centre of the pie. Oliver tweaked the bird’s open beak with his finger. Further along was the green tin. He pulled at the lid but it was stuck. Finally the lid fell back. The tin was empty.
It was then Oliver noticed the matches.
PJ stood outside the shop eyeing the jars of sweets, savouring each sort in his head even if not in his mouth. In his mind he grouped the sweets according to colour, and he was starting to learn the names. Reds were the glowing satin cushions, the fiery raspberry drops and luscious cherry lips. Browns were toffees, nut brittle, butterscotch, golden humbugs and the fuzzy-tasting taffy. Liquorices were black and bull’s-eyes striped; peppermints and nougat were white. Edinburgh rock, Peggy’s leg and love hearts were pink and puzzling, as they had writing embedded in them. PJ relished them all.
Saturday afternoon was PJ’s half day. It was the day he got paid, the day for pleasure, the day for the sweet shop. Sometimes on a Saturday afternoon he went to the roller-skating rink or down to the livery stables to check the Hastings’ horses and have a chat with Seamus McGuire, a lad from Mayo who worked there. Always PJ went to the sweet shop. Walking back through the town he would think of his favourites, opera caramels, and imagine the soft toffee coated in pink or white icing dripping aching sweetness against his tongue. Then he’d stop in front of the shop and join the children gazing at the sweets. PJ would open the door and the bell would tinkle. He would step into the shop, look carefully at the glass jars around the shelves, then, as if having finally arrived at a difficult decision, would say, ‘Tuppence worth of them opera caramels, please.’
It had started with a bag of dolly mixture that Geoffrey bought for Oliver. Hastings had offered some to PJ before taking the bag up to the nursery. PJ, who had never had a sweet before, was entranced. Now PJ bought sweets for Oliver also. A penny mixture or a sherbet fountain.
‘You’ll ruin his tea,’ Ruby would say, helping herself to one of PJ’s opera caramels.
‘Ah, get along,’ PJ would say.
‘Be a Briton and mind Master Oliver for ten minutes while I go down to my sister.’
‘Sure I will,’ PJ would say, sitting on one of the old seagrass chairs under the apple tree. Taking Oliver on his knee, he would show him how to suck the sherbet out of the bag through the liquorice straw, while Ruby climbed up on the coal bin and was off over the fence and down the alleyway to where her sister was in service a few houses away.
PJ came out of the sweet shop and popped two caramels in his mouth, one in each cheek. He pushed the paper poke in the pocket of his jacket. Something was happening at the far end of Revell Street. Something grey and ominous. Smoke.
PJ ran. He ran faster than he had ever run in his life. He felt as if he were flying. He knocked shopping baskets askew, he pushed ladies’ bustles aside, he collided with bicycles and people who called him rude names. PJ heard nothing. He just ran.
There was a crowd outside the photographer’s. Smoke was coming thickly from the rear. People were shouting and running around the back. A ragged line had formed, passing buckets to be filled and refilled from the horse trough. There was the sound of the fire bell ringing.
‘Must be the chemicals they use in the photographs,’ a man said, waiting for the next bucket and looking at the flames.
‘All these new things, no good at all,’ said another. ‘Just as well there’s no one inside.’
Smoke curled about the building from both sides and embraced in the front in elaborate grey cockades. PJ looked up. In the window over the green-and-white striped verandah something seemed to stir. There was a tiny, jerking movement at the lace curtains. PJ moved closer, squinting through the scrolls of smoke. Suddenly he saw. A small figure barely reaching the sill, arms flailing like a moth battering itself against the glass. Oliver.
PJ leaped for the verandah post and shinned up it. He ran along the iron roof, hearing Oliver’s screams.
‘Sure, I’ll get yiz out, Master O!’ PJ shouted, reaching the window. The child was too small to push up the sash himself. PJ looked about for something to break the glass. Across the road a horse was tied to a hitching post.
‘Get them stirrups,’ PJ shouted to the crowd below. It seemed an eternity while the horse was unbuckled. PJ could hear the fire advancing through the house. ‘I’ll get yiz out!’ PJ shouted again. Oliver continued to scream.
‘Here, lad,’ a man shouted, throwing the tack up.
‘Stand away, Oliver!’ PJ shouted. ‘Stand back!’
The child, face clenched in terror, made no move. He just pressed his face against the glass, beating at the pane with tiny hands.
‘Get back! Get back!’
It was no good. Oliver stayed where he was.
PJ ran to the spare-room window. With all his strength he swung the stirrups. The window broke and smoke poured towards him. PJ hit the glass again to widen the hole, and forced himself over the sill. The room was dim with smoke, thick and choking, the fresh air at PJ’s back cool and marvellous. PJ was not sure he could go on, not sure at all. Oliver in the next-door room was screaming louder than ever.
PJ had never been in these upstairs rooms before and the furniture reared up malevolently at odd angles. He couldn’t breathe. There was a terrifying crackling from the stairs and a bright gold light as the fire swept upwards. PJ’s eyes ached, his throat felt scalded, the rest of his body seemed very far away.
‘For Christ’s sake, PJ, if there’s fire, keep down,’ dead Mick Sullivan’s voice suddenly said. PJ remembered him saying that and dropped onto the floor. It was better down there. More air. He wriggled his way to the door and opened it. Crawling into the heat on the landing was like entering an oven. On the floor among the furniture PJ was uncertain which way to go, but if he didn’t hurry he and Oliver were both done for. He made it across the landing with its searing heat and into the main bedroom. Oliver’s screaming had ominously stopped. The smoke was so thick now PJ could make out nothing. He headed for the murky patch of light that he imagined was the window.
‘Oliver! Oliver!’ he shouted. ‘Where are yiz?’ There was no answer.
Behind PJ the landing was now on fire. The bright crackling was at the bedroom door. The room seemed suddenly alive with gold lace — the hangings over the bed were alight. PJ pawed about the floor trying to find the child. There was an excruciating pain against his leg as a burning drapery fluttered down and set his trouser leg alight. His ankle felt as if it were in the grip of tigers. PJ rolled over to put out the flame and as he did so he touched Oliver on the floor. He caught the boy by his collar and stumbled to the window.
Firemen were running down the verandah. Firemen with hoses. PJ fiddled with the window, which stuck as he tried to push it up. His lungs were bursting, his arms were logs. He heaved harder and the window reluctantly moved upwards. With a huge effort PJ gathered Oliver in his arms and tumbled him out over the sill, then slithered over himself.
Chapter 14
The burnt building reared up at Geoffrey from across the street. Elements of the house were still intact, appearing like the charred remains of some horrific creature, destructi
on having been partially controlled by the efforts of the fire brigade. The main bedroom, where Huia slept, had been totally destroyed and the brass bed had crashed through the floor into the studio. The studio, with all Geoffrey’s equipment, plates and photographs, was now a black pit, oozing dark water. Geoffrey’s room on the side was the most sound: the floor hadn’t given way there. The frame of the bed still stood.
It was five o’clock in the morning. Geoffrey couldn’t sleep. His mouth and tongue seemed covered in a pelt of evil-tasting fur and his head thumped. Behind him in the hotel bed, Huia slept. He was grateful for that. Her hysterical crying the night before had added another horror on horror’s head.
The first Geoffrey had known of the fire was Champ barking and a policeman shaking his shoulder.
‘Mr Hastings?’ the constable had said. ‘You’d better come with me, sir.’
Geoffrey had opened his eyes. It was getting dark and he was lying in the cemetery. What had he done? Was he being arrested? He glanced down at his waistcoat and saw the remains of vomit on it, though he had no recollection of how it got there. Both his brandy flasks were lying beside him, their stoppers off. Good God, he thought: drunk and disorderly in a public place.
‘Glad I’ve found you,’ the policeman went on. ‘Someone told us they saw you headed up this way a few hours back. A bit under the weather, are we, sir?’
‘Am I being arrested?’ said Geoffrey, feeling he’d better know the worst.
‘Not that I know of. Just want to get you down to the station and have a chat about the fire. A bit of a worry, you and your wife and the servants off and the young nipper there alone.’
‘Fire?’ said Geoffrey. ‘Oliver, alone?’
‘Your place,’ said the policeman. ‘A real humdinger but all under control now, though at one stage the brigade thought it would spread all over the town, like in ’69. Thank God they got it in time and everyone out and accounted for. Sounds as if that Irish lad was a bit of the hero. Your boy wouldn’t have made it, if it hadn’t been for him.’
‘PJ?’ said Geoffrey, feeling his knees falter. Angels, broken columns and Celtic crosses whirled in a mad dance and the twilight sky sloped violently to one side.
‘Head between knees,’ said the policeman, his hand pushing down hard on the back of Geoffrey’s neck.
Birtwistle hated women’s fuss. Tears, sobs and carry-on really gave him the hump. It was always the same: you had a good time, a bit of a fling, and at the end there was the devil to pay.
No sooner had he told Huia he’d be off on Monday than she’d started. Wanting to run away with him — as if he could support her — pestering him about whether he loved her, and crying full bore all over his shoulder and the hairs of his chest. When the crying abated she got angry, flouncing about the room in her shift, shouting.
‘Bloody low-down louse,’ she ranted from the end of the bed. ‘No wonder your missus left you for the collar-stud man.’
‘Sewing-machine salesman,’ Birtwistle corrected her.
‘Who cares?’ said Huia.
‘Cut it out, Hu,’ said Birtwistle. ‘I’m off for three months, not three years. A quick skip around the towns and camps of the coast and I’ll be back. We’re not even leaving Westland.’
‘Still,’ said Huia, gathering her hair in her hand and stabbing hairpins in it. ‘You’re going and you don’t care.’
‘Course I care, Hu, there’s just no choice.’
‘I could come with you.’
‘Told you, Hu, I can’t support you.’
‘I could do something in the show.’
‘Christ almighty, what?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Huia. ‘Be one of the stocking ladies in the Greek tableau.’
‘Got two of them already.’
‘Tricks,’ said Huia. ‘I could do tricks on horses.’
‘You’re a loony,’ said Birtwistle, laughing. ‘Come here. Give us a kiss before you have to go.’
Still sulky, Huia came over. Birtwistle leant out of bed and caught her body, his hands under the shift. ‘There’s so little time left, Hu,’ he said, nuzzling her ear. ‘Don’t spoil it fighting. Hop into bed and I’ll get rid of that sourpuss face.’
Huia turned to him. ‘Stan,’ she said, ‘I’ve only got you.’
‘What about that kid of yours?’
‘Oliver?’ said Huia. ‘I’m no good with him. I think I’m a lousy mother or something.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Honest. It’s as if Oliver wasn’t really mine at all.’
‘Stop the breast-beating,’ said Birtwistle, running his finger around her navel.
By the time Huia got home the fire was out.
In the following days Geoffrey thought of himself and his wife as being like figures on a Glockenspiel clock. Shock had sapped emotion: they were a pair of automatons moving stiffly about on parallel paths, performing both solitary and joint tasks. Together Geoffrey and Huia visited and collected Oliver and PJ from the hospital, and agreed not to sack the remorse-filled Ruby in spite of her negligence.
‘Just hopped out for ten minutes, down to my sister’s,’ Ruby told them, gulping tears. ‘Master Oliver was fast asleep so I reckoned it wouldn’t hurt.’
Alone, Geoffrey decided what household articles were worth salvaging, spoke to the police, the fire brigade and the insurance company, and rented a house. Recriminations came later.
‘What I’d like to know, Huia,’ said Geoffrey, ‘is why you had to go out that afternoon, especially after I’d told Ruby she could go to her sister’s?’
‘Wanted to,’ said Huia.
‘Obviously,’ said Geoffrey. ‘And Oliver could have died, while you were off enjoying yourself. I’m not going to ask where, but I suspect with some man.’
Huia drew in her breath. ‘That’s a lie, a dirty lie. You always think bad of me.’
‘I’d like to think otherwise.’
‘And what about you, Mr Bloody High and Mighty? Why was I the one who should have been here? Why weren’t you looking after your darling boy, not up at the cemetery drinking yourself shickered?’
She was right, Geoffrey thought. They were both culpable. Oliver’s rescue from certain death by PJ, and the minimal burns both boys suffered, were undeserved as divine grace.
‘Point taken,’ said Geoffrey, overwhelmed by remorse. ‘When it comes to caring for Oliver, we’re both up to our necks in guilt.’
‘Hope you drown in it,’ said Huia, going out the door and banging it shut.
Bugger him! Huia thought later, sitting at her bedroom mirror, angry and exposed. Geoffrey knew she had been unfaithful. More infuriating, Geoffrey was right, of course. She should have been at home seeing to Oliver, not tumbling about the bed with Birtwistle. No good mother would have done what she did. She thought of the night Florrie had run away, remembering the feeling of terror and the cold wet earth reaching around her. Huia began to cry, tears slipping down her face and into the hairpin tray. Stan Birtwistle was the only person who cared for her or wanted her. Stan, she thought. Stan.
Stan Birtwistle was fixing the tent ropes. ‘Bloody thing,’ he said angrily, tugging on the rope and causing the ladder to sway with his effort. He hated the constant erecting and dismantling of tents and seats, carrying gear, heaving trunks. Birtwistle thought of himself as an artiste and found these other activities demeaning. Bodybuilding was, after all, a more genteel occupation than what the rest of the troupe offered, yet Stan with his superior strength was called on more than the others for these endless bloody tasks. McCaskey was adamant that every member of his company was expected to be a worker as well as a performer. When the vaudeville troupe led by the boy Hale — splendid in scarlet coat, gold leggings and playing a piccolo — arrived in townships and settlements, few would guess that the gorgeously dressed occupants of the decorated wagons would, in less than an hour, be transformed into washerwomen and labourers.
‘Someone to see you, Birtwistle,’ shouted McCaskey, coming
into the marquee. McCaskey was an American. He wore a red silk scarf and a satin cummerbund. He styled himself a colonel and claimed to have fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War. He bragged how he’d ridden with Buffalo Bill Cody as a scout and ‘discovered’ him as a stage performer. Little of this was believed. The gossip among the artistes in McCaskey’s Royal Variety Troupe was that the Buffalo Bill story was pure invention, and that far from being a colonel, their boss had at best been a very junior army officer, imprisoned and cashiered for his part in the bungled hold-up of an Idaho stagecoach.
‘Hoof it, boy!’ said McCaskey to Birtwistle.
‘I’m busy,’ said Birtwistle.
‘It’s a lady, a real pretty gal.’
Birtwistle came down the ladder. Jumping off the second-to-last rung he turned to see Huia in her violet riding habit.
‘I’ve come,’ said Huia, throwing her arms around him.
‘Not here,’ said Birtwistle, conscious of the watching McCaskey. ‘Come on outside.’
‘Don’t be long, Romeo. You’re busy, remember?’ said McCaskey, lighting a cigar.
‘I’m not going back,’ said Huia. ‘I’ve left, left for good.’
‘You can’t stay with me,’ said Birtwistle, glancing about, hoping they weren’t being overheard.
‘Aren’t you pleased? Don’t you love me?’
‘Ah, Hu, that’s not the point. Just get along home and I’ll see you back in Hoki at the end of the month.’
‘You can’t stop me being here,’ said Huia.
‘No, but you can’t live off me, either.’
McCaskey appeared at the opening of the marquee. ‘Are you going to introduce me to the lady, Birtwistle? Or is this powwow private?’
‘Mrs Hastings, Colonel McCaskey.’
McCaskey bowed. ‘Honoured.’
Huia smiled. ‘You’re the boss around here, aren’t you?’ she said.
‘I sure am,’ said McCaskey.
The Love Apple Page 17