‘Tommy.’
‘Yes, Maisie?’
‘Please drive a little slower, and go straight home.’
‘Anything for you, Maisie.’
It was as we were nearing the terrace that he said, ‘Let’s elope, Maisie. What about it, eh? Let’s go straight on.’
This should have come over as something funny, but it didn’t, and Nardy’s words came back to me: Don’t get too fond of Tommy. And now my voice took on the tone of a jocular reply as I said, ‘I’ll elope you! If you don’t pull this contraption up slowly and not jerk my stomach into my mouth. Whoever taught you to drive wants to take lessons.’
A minute later he was helping me out of the car, and there was laughter on his face as, bowing towards me, he said, ‘That’ll be one pound seventy-five pence, ma’am.’
I went to push him, but he caught hold of my hand, and like that he ran me up the steps and pushed open the door, to enter the hall hand in hand and to see Nardy crossing it. He had on a white apron and he was carrying a dish. He looked at us, and it was some seconds before he said, ‘You’re back then.’
‘Only just,’ I said. ‘He’s as mad as a hatter.’ I now jerked my head back towards Tommy. ‘He shouldn’t be allowed on the road.’
‘How did you find Gran?’ I was walking into the dining room with Nardy now, and I answered, ‘Oh, much better, really much better.’ He placed the dish in the middle of the table, then turned towards me, and swiftly I put my arms about him and said, ‘I love you. The more I see of other men, the more I love you.’
‘That’s comforting.’
My arms still about him and aiming to take that look out of his eyes, I went on, ‘You know what Gran said, she said that love suited me, so much—’ I gave an embarrassed laugh before finishing, ‘I would one day end up being quite canny-looking.’
‘You’ve always been canny-looking to me, much more, beautiful. It’s got nothing to do with how you look, it’s the whole of you.’
We were in as tight an embrace as my shortened arm would allow when a voice from the doorway said, ‘Oh. Oh, I’m sorry.’
We turned to see Tommy standing there, and I, purposely making my voice airy, said, ‘Oh, that’s all right, Tommy. There’s nothing to be sorry over. I was merely telling my husband how much I loved him and, as Gran would say, how I’m the luckiest lass in the lane.’ And I smiled at Nardy, who was now taking off his apron, then walked past Tommy who was still standing in the doorway, and as he looked down on me I noticed the pain in his eyes.
It was ridiculous. Here I was in this house where I had spent an agonising childhood, a torture-filled marriage, and now there were two men who…loved me. I could hardly make the claim to myself when I knew I had been the most fortunate of creatures in finding Nardy, but now that Tommy, too, should have an affection for me seemed beyond belief. As I was constantly reminding myself, I was still me, and no matter what they said, I was a plain woman.
If it hadn’t been for the children’s chatter and George’s usual raw remarks dinner would have been a very strained affair.
After it was over and the dishes washed and the breakfast set for the next morning, we had a game of Monopoly in the kitchen with the children.
It was close on ten when they went to bed, and after a drink in the sitting room, Tommy admitted to being tired and he, too, said goodnight. Then Nardy took Sandy out to do his last little bit of business, and when he returned he laughed as he said, ‘He got it over quickly because it’s enough to freeze you out there.’ I said goodnight to George and as usual his goodnight made me breathless. He then shook Nardy’s hand as if for a long farewell, as he was wont to do each night, and we went up to bed, Sandy bouncing before us and straight into a blanket-lined basket.
It was as we were lying enfolded in each other’s arms that Nardy said to me, ‘What happened in the car?’
‘Happened in the car? What do you mean?’
‘Well, you came bouncing in together like two children who had been up to mischief.’
‘Oh, Nardy, that was Tommy, Tommy’s way. He…when I got out of the car, he said, “That will be one pound seventy-five pence, ma’am,” and as I went to push him he caught my hand and ran me in. Nardy, Nardy’—I took his face between my hands—‘all this should be the other way about. It’s I who should be afraid of your being interested in anybody else. Don’t you see?’
‘Not really, dear, because big fellows like Tommy always arouse the mother instinct in women. They start by being sorry for them.’
‘Well, I have no mother instinct except towards you. Oh, good gracious me!’ I now flounced from him, making the bed bounce, and, my tone changing, I said, ‘I can’t believe this.’ Then rising on my elbow I looked down on him and said, ‘Mr Leviston, stop this nonsense at once. I want to hear no more of it, ever.’
In answer, he smiled gently, saying, ‘Lie down, Mrs Leviston, I want to put my arms around you. But before you do, would you mind switching off the light? Thank you.’
In the darkness we lay close, laughing now and loving before we both fell into a deep sleep …
Sandy was inclined to night sickness, especially should he have been given titbits of anything fishy. At home I could control his titbits, but it was impossible to stop the children taking pieces off their plates and holding them in their fingers and wagging them under the table. It was a kind of a game to see which one of them could attract him first.
Sandy was a very intelligent animal. Whenever he was about to be sick he would endeavour to wake us, not by barking but by a series of sounds that was very akin to muffled language, and was always accompanied by a paw scratching not too gently on whatever part of your anatomy he could reach.
I was usually the one whom he managed to waken first. And I was aware that his talking was penetrating my sleep. Yet in this state I must be dreaming because I couldn’t feel a paw scratching my arm or my neck.
Gradually I came out of sleep and into the awareness that he wasn’t just talking, but was whining. I leant over the side of the bed and put my hand towards his basket. It was empty. I next groped for the light and switched it on, and there I saw him standing by the door. And when I said, ‘What is it, dear?’ He didn’t move far from it but began to bark.
Most poodles have a yapping bark but not our boy. He has a hard shrill bark that one would have credited would come only from a larger animal.
I got out of bed and tiptoed towards the door, whispering now, ‘What is it? What is it, dear?’ Yet, as I stood bending over him I was conscious of something strange, and when my mind put into my sleepy brain a name that I could attach to this oddness, I became suddenly wide awake, and at the same instant pulled open the door, only to scream, ‘Oh, my God!’ and bang it closed again. I now stood bent double, half-choked with smoke; then I was screaming, ‘Nardy! Nardy!’
‘What is it?’ He was sitting up.
‘Fire! Fire!’
‘What? No!’
I threw his dressing gown at him and got into mine; then I grabbed up Sandy and once again I was at the door. But Nardy pulled me back, saying, ‘Stay where you are.’ He pulled open the door, then turned his back towards the hallway and coughed before thrusting me further into the room yelling, ‘Stay there! Shut the door!’ And then he was gone.
Presently, I heard cries and muffled screams coming from the landing. I rushed now to the window and, pulling it open, I put my head out into the frost-filled night and screamed, ‘Fire! Fire!’
This bedroom window was at the back of the house and, looking down, I could see the whole of the yard and part of the garden illuminated with a warm red glow.
In panic now, and still clutching Sandy who had his forelegs tight around my throat, I rushed across the room and opened the door, only to see, through the smoke, that the same red glow was coming from the direction of the stairs.
The next thing I knew I was knocked to the floor. Automatically, I let go of Sandy, but his legs clutched my neck and he seemed to da
ngle from me, assisting the smoke to choke me as someone pulled me forward.
Now I knew we were in the bathroom and that there were others packed there. As a wet towel was thrown over my head I managed to gasp, ‘Nardy!’ And George’s voice, like a far distant croak, came at me, saying, ‘He’s here. Now do as I say. Follow me, right down. Come on. Betty is behind you, then Gordon, then Kitty with Nardy.’
I didn’t ask where John and Tommy were. George seemed to be in charge; they must be all right.
Just before George pulled me forward out of the bathroom I managed to open the top of my dressing gown and stick Sandy’s back legs down inside of it to where he had the support of the cord around my waist. But his forelegs were still round my neck.
We were now on our hands and knees crawling towards the landing.
Then I knew a moment of real terror when I saw not only the bannisters of the stairs blazing but also the carpet itself. But I was being pulled upright as in turn was Betty, and then we seemed to be all dancing from one flaming tread to another until we reached the great blaze of the hall. Here it seemed that all hell was let loose and everything more that was to happen happened at once. Water sprayed onto us; my face was speared with stinging jets; hands were reaching out and pulling us towards the door. At the same time there was a crash behind us and I turned to see the lower part of the stairs fall inwards and Nardy and Kitty, whom he seemed to be holding in his arms, disappear from view. Yet, not entirely. Nardy’s head was sticking upwards above the tread of the stairs, but Kitty must have fallen through into the cupboard below. In this instant, I remembered Howard Stickle saying that there was dry rot in the stairs. This was when he had loosened all the stair rods in an effort to finish me off that way.
As I gave a muffled scream someone lifted me bodily and carried me outside and into the cold night and a great bustle of noise. And when I was stood on my feet I strained to go back towards the house, but the fireman’s arms were tight around me. Then Betty and Gordon were clinging to me, and Sandy was whining like a child.
When I heard a voice above the melee shouting, ‘Get them into the ambulance, I cried, ‘No! No!’ And now I almost tore Sandy’s legs from my neck and pulled him up from the dressing gown and thrust him into Betty’s arms; then I clawed at the man who tried to restrain me, crying now, ‘My husband! My husband!’ And his voice came as soft as a woman’s, saying, ‘There now. There now. Look, they’re coming out.’ And there was George on one side of Nardy and the fireman on the other and behind them another fireman, and, lying across his arms, was Kitty.
I flew to Nardy and was about to put my arms around him when George, his face ashen and his hair singed to his scalp, said quietly, ‘Leave him be, Maisie. Leave him be.’
Something in his voice made me step back and my tortured gaze went over my husband’s body. His face looked all right, but then I saw that the lower part of his dressing gown was a charred mass and his pyjamas seemed to be sticking to his skin.
As for Kitty, her body was quite inert and what must have been her nylon nightdress was like a black veil from her neck downwards.
As one in a nightmare, I watched them both being laid on stretchers and put into the ambulance, and as the door closed on them I rushed to get in, but was held back by George. For a moment I was standing pressed close to him. He had only one arm around me and for the first time I noticed that the other was hanging limp by his side. He now pulled his arm from me and clasped his brow, and his voice sounded almost a whimper as, his head jerking upwards, he cried, ‘Oh Christ! I thought they were out. I yelled up the stairs. I thought they were out.’
I, too, now gazed upwards in horror to where, hanging out of the fanlight in the roof of the attic, was the figure of John. There was a great commotion all about us. I had been unaware until then of all the people huddled in groups with coats over their nightwear. But as the turntable ladder passed the top of the now blazing windows and swung close to the jagged hole in the roof, everyone became quiet. We watched the fireman put his arms out towards John, but the boy appeared too terrified to grasp the man’s hand; then it seemed that he was tossed from the window, and he was clutched in the fireman’s arms. Hastily now the ladder was pulled away and the man descended. And now George was holding John in one arm and trying to still his loud crying. Then once again the ladder was being hoisted towards the roof; but there was no one now at the gap to take the fireman’s outstretched hand. And I cried inside myself, Oh no! No! Tommy! Please! Please! Don’t give up.
The next minute we could see the fireman lean forward from the ladder, to which he was attached by some form of lead, and grip the sides of the fanlight window and then disappear from view, and in doing so he lifted the silence from the crowd in the sound of a concerted moan, and a voice near me said feelingly, ‘Silly bugger. Stupid bugger. Fanlights are hell to get out of.’
Then suddenly the moan changed into a drawn out ‘O…oh!’ as the fireman’s head reappeared through the gap. Then silence again as the man obviously struggled to help Tommy upwards. He seemed to straddle the intervening distance between the window and the ladder with his feet while pulling Tommy’s bulky figure forward.
When they both became still I realised the fireman was giving himself and Tommy time to breathe.
The ladder swung away from the roof and billowing smoke. And within a minute or so the two men had reached the street. The fireman was still on his feet, although he stood bent over while he coughed the smoke from his lungs. But not so Tommy, for his tall body had concertinaed: his head was sunk deep in his shoulders, and his knees were pulled upwards. Once again a stretcher was brought, and the next minute he, too, was whisked away in an ambulance.
Of a sudden I thought I was going to faint. It was only George’s voice that checked me and beat me to it, for he said quietly, ‘Maisie, look after them, will you?’ And thrusting John into my arms, he himself toppled over on to the road, and as if from a distance I heard an ambulance man saying, ‘No wonder, look at that hand.’
I looked at the hand that one of the men was laying gently across George’s chest. It was black and it looked as if the fingers were burnt to the bone, and two of them were hanging at a funny angle.
There came a blankness in my mind. I don’t remember Mary arriving; I only heard her say, ‘Oh my God!’ before she got into the ambulance with George. I then recall myself being bundled into an ambulance with the children, and we were all crying …
What followed in those early hours is confusion. At one point I must have fainted; but by daylight the following morning the children and I were back at Gran’s.
It was sometime later in the morning when the doctor appeared. ‘You all right?’ he said.
I couldn’t say yes, I just moved my head, then I muttered, ‘I’m…I’m about to go to the hospital.’
‘I’ve just come from there.’ He looked to where the children were standing and he went towards them, saying now, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’
‘Dad and Tommy?’ It was John asking the question, and the doctor said, ‘Your dad’s fine. It’s just his hand. And Tommy, he’ll be home shortly.’
It was Betty who now said, ‘And Kitty, Doctor?’ And at this he paused before answering, ‘She’ll be fine.’ Then he put his hand on my elbow and, pushing me towards the door, said, ‘Get into the car. I’ll be with you in a minute. I’m just going to have a word with Gran. How’s she taken it?’
‘Not very well. It hasn’t done her any good.’
‘No, I shouldn’t think it has.’
It was a full ten minutes later when he himself got into the car, and we had gone some little distance when he growled, ‘By God! Somebody’ll pay for this.’
It was then I gave voice and put a name to the feeling that had been raging behind a shield in my mind since I had stood in the road and watched the flames coming out of every window in my old home.
‘Stickle.’
‘Who else? It seems it must have been set off in thre
e different places, so I’m told. The sitting room window was open. If there’s any justice he’ll do a long stretch for this.’
The sitting room window! I thought back to the time when he had mislaid his key and I happened to be at Gran’s, and he had got in by the sitting room window. He had said afterwards that a different sneck should be put on it as anybody could get in by slipping a knife underneath it as he had done. I had done nothing about it because at that time if a burglar had got into the house he wouldn’t have frightened me half as much as my then husband had done.
As I whimpered, ‘He’s determined to get me,’ there appeared on the front of the windscreen, as if he were seated on the bonnet of the car, the face of Hamilton. He looked like a wild horse might: his eyes were blazing; there was smoke coming out of his nostrils; his lips were right back from his teeth. And as I stared at him I knew that some part of me was in rebellion, while yet another part was sick with fear.
When he turned and galloped away into the darkness I said, ‘Nardy. How bad is he?’
‘His legs are no pretty sight. They had put him under when I left. But…but the child, Kitty, she’s in a bad way.’
There was a catch in my throat as I said, ‘Really bad? I mean…’
‘Yes, really bad. Her slippers must have had plastic soles and her nightie was made of that inflammable material. Damn and blast it! Like Nardy, her legs got it. But it was the smoke almost did for her; and Tommy had a bellyful of it, too. By what I’ve heard he owes his life to a fireman who must have risked his own neck to get him out of the attic. And Tommy had risked his own to push the boy out. God! Why didn’t you poison that fellow when you had the chance.’
Yes, why hadn’t I? But such a thing had never crossed my mind; until I tried to finish him off by raining his own collection of bottles on him.
In the hospital a nurse led me towards a bed; not the same one I had last seen Nardy in; this one was covered with a plastic cage.
Goodbye Hamilton Page 13