Fire Song

by Libby Hathorn

  Mum was seated at the blond wood dressing table with its big oval mirror, with all the drawers hanging open. She looked up to see Ingrid’s reflection – her serious face – and turned at once.

  ‘Don’t just stand there staring, child.’ There was that queer smile on Mum’s lips.

  ‘Like I told you, Ingrid, there’s not too many of these fellas left.’ She was holding out the one precious ten-shilling banknote, pressed extra smooth where it’d been kept under the drawer liner for who knew how long. ‘But soon there’ll be heaps of them if you do as I say!’ She couldn’t help glancing up at the mirror as she spoke. ‘What a hag!’ she said almost gaily, as Ingrid crossed the room – the smell of kero mixing with the smell of lavender in the air.

  Mum had caught sight of her own untidy hair, and was running Grandma Logan’s old brush through it now, the gold coloured one with the tapestry back that Ingrid loved so much. Up in smoke, up in smoke. Something banged out that refrain in her head and made her stomach feel strange.

  ‘Smokes, love,’ Mum said and Ingrid flinched. ‘Hey – you needn’t look at me like that, either. I’ve got to have some now. Get me a pouch of Drum tobacco and more papers. And some milk. Take the billycan. And tell Mr Spicer I’m putting this money towards the bill.’ Mum had ticked up pounds and pounds worth of stuff at the grocer’s, till even Mr Spicer had been forced to say no. But now, today, with her plan in mind, she was brandishing what had to be the last precious note. ‘Don’t take Pippa. She’ll slow you down.’

  ‘No, Mum. But I’ll take Blackie for his walk.’ Why did her voice go shaky meek? Like it always did, when she got anywhere near her mother. Pathetic.

  ‘Don’t be too long, lovey.’

  Lovey! This was what Mum could be like: terrifying one minute and your best friend the next.

  ‘Lots to do today.’ And then she tried to hug her daughter. For the first time in her life, Ingrid pulled away.

  ‘Hoity-toity today, are we?’ Mum turned back to the mirror, unfazed. ‘But you’ll understand one day. You’ll realise your old mother was right!’

  Ingrid hated going into Mr Spicer’s, having to ask for sugar or flour on tick, feeling Mrs Spicer’s angry eyes on her, even as Mr Spicer pressed a broken biscuit into her hand. Apart from anything, the man always smelled of treacle or something sickeningly sweet and his manner was treacly, too. But this morning, she set off bravely on her errand. She had to get right away from the house for a while, find some time to think about this calamity away from Mum. Free of Mum’s voice and her mad intentions. She had to plan something to save them.

  But who should she ask? Whose help could she rely on, to stop this terrible, frightening thing? Not Uncle Ken’s, who could sweet-talk Mum a treat. He was far away in Queensland and there was no new telephone number. Daddy wouldn’t be any help, either, because who knew where he was to be found – though he’d come here quick as he could, if he knew what was going on. And not her big brother, darling Freddy, of course, because he was far away, too. She had to fetch his precious letter from its hiding place. This was the only one that had come from Wallerawang in two years. It was all she had of him. But, letter or no, Freddy was too far away to help right now.

  She was passing by the police station. She knew someone in there. The police, then? The neat brick building, a house at the front, it had two new holding cells at the back. She knew that, because her schoolmate Natalie Brooks had described it in detail, promising her, ‘You can come and look at the new cells, my brother Terry said so, whenever you want, Ingrid. When they’re empty, that is. But not you, Gracie. I didn’t say you.’ Natalie liked her friends, Ingrid thought, but she also liked to play them one against the other. Still and all, she told Natalie she’d like to go one day after school.

  Natalie’s older brother was a policeman stationed there. He was a big, freckle-faced bloke, with goldeny red hair. He’d come back from the Police Training School in Sydney, the Brooks family’s pride and joy, to a job with the local police.

  She’d probably find him on duty today. He was nice, friendly. Maybe she could talk to him privately, ask his advice. Ask him to speak to Mum. Talk her out of it.

  Her hand was on the front gate. But, then again, maybe if she said anything at all about Mum’s crazy plans, things would happen all too quickly, and they might be out of nice, friendly Terry Brooks’s hands. To set a fire on purpose like this was a crime, wasn’t it?

  They’d taken the oldest Whittaker boy, who was only fourteen, far away on account of fire. The police had come to find him when Medley’s farmhouse burnt to the ground, and it was lucky old Medley got out, or it would’ve been worse still for Warren Whittaker, everyone said. He had burnt his own hands in setting the Medley shed on fire and then the grass fire that had gone out of control – and it was his hands that finally put him in. Warren Whittaker had gone to court and now he was in a boys’ home so far away from the Blue Mountains, no one in his family could go to see him. Not that anyone but his mother felt any real sympathy for him.

  Even Mum had called him crazy, and there was that awful official word the whole town branded him with. ‘Yeah, the lad’s a pyromaniac – sick in the head.’ It wasn’t the first time Warren had set fire to things. Once it was an old car in the back lot of the picture theatre; another time a pile of logs in a paddock out along the Megalong Road. And then the dry grass fire that had sped all the way to the Medley house! But Mum didn’t spit at Mrs Whittaker, the way some of Medley’s relatives and others had, when she walked in the street.

  ‘Poor woman with her pyromaniac son!’ she’d said, when she heard about it. The use of the official word embarrassed Ingrid, but she was glad Mum felt something for Mrs Whittaker, because she certainly did herself. Pyromaniac! Ingrid had run the word round in her mouth, as she almost did now. It sounded appalling. A pyromaniac would need putting away, for sure.

  ‘Hiya, little Ingrid Crowe. And what can we do for you?’

  Terry Brooks had come right out to the square of clipped lawn in front of the police station just to talk to her. Maybe he guessed something was up!

  ‘Cat got your tongue?’ he joked, because she was frozen, hand still on the gate, eyes wide with fright. Only Blackie, lively at her feet, was wagging his tail in greeting. Looking into her stricken face, he added quickly, ‘No need to be frightened, young Ingrid. Natalie told me you were curious to see the new lockup.’

  ‘Oh no, really, I was –’

  ‘And you know, now is a real good time, on account of there being no non-paying guests, not a one.’ He opened the gate wide. ‘Just leave the old mutt out here – looks like he’d settle right there in the shade.’

  What was she to do? She’d have to go along with it, or he’d guess that something was amiss. She nodded, tying Blackie’s leash to the gate to hide her confusion.

  ‘It’ll give me a break from my paperwork, too.’

  And she was walking down the path, as he called cheerfully over his shoulder, ‘Only Mrs Jenkins here at present. You know Mrs J, don’t you?’ She nodded. A plump happy-go-lucky woman, Mrs Jenkins did the cleaning at the lockup and the cooking, when anyone was being held. She liked it when the lockup was full, because it meant extra money for her. She made sure she cooked wholesome and comforting meals, and often gave the inmates a little extra something before the paddy wagon came to take them away. Especially the town drunk, Jervis, who usually spent a night in the clink after being drunk and disorderly, some folks said, just to get a decent meal. A Mrs Jenkins special.

  Ingrid passed through the front of the house where the rooms were fitted out with office furniture: at least four typewriters, though there were never more than two officers on duty here, two telephones – not the kind attached to the wall, either – a big wireless-looking thing, heavy wooden filing drawers, and stacks of important-looking manila files. She trod softly down the short hall to the two holding cells, wishing she could think of something cheery and lighthearted to say.

  ‘In trou
ble are we, missy?’ Mrs Jenkins joked from the bathroom, where she was cleaning furiously.

  ‘Hullo, Mrs Jenkins,’ she murmured, her cheeks reddening at the thought of the trouble that lay ahead.

  ‘Natalie’s schoolmate wanted to see the new lockup,’ Terry boomed.

  She tried to add an enthusiastic, ‘Yes, I was just passing by,’ but her voice came out squeaky and not at all convincing – even to her own ears. ‘Going shopping for my mum,’ she managed. That sounded better.

  ‘You sure are a big help to your mother.’ Mrs Jenkins smiled at her, as they passed by. She didn’t add, and I wish I had one like you at my place, instead of three noisy boys, who wont do a hand’s turn round the house!

  ‘Out here.’ Terry was holding open a door that led to another narrow hallway and into the holding cells, each with a heavy metal door.

  They were such small lonely rooms! He was grinning at her.

  ‘You can go inside one, Ingrid. I won’t lock the door on you. Promise.’

  ‘Thank you!’ If a real live snake had been coiled under the bed she couldn’t have stepped inside more gingerly. She looked around at the tiny cream walled room, the very place where your freedom would be taken, if you’d done something wrong, where you’d be locked up away from the world, if you’d broken the law! The minute she was inside, it took all her self-control not to cry out. Ingrid bit her lip and looked around intently, nodding at each scant thing she saw.

  A bed attached to the wall was folded down and the mattress looked extra thin. The grey cover was stretched smooth as a piece of lino and there was a pile of extra blankets stacked at the foot of the bed. It’d be cold as sin here on winter nights.

  There was a chair, a plain wooden one, like the teachers had at school. In the corner was a tiny enamel sink with a single tap, and under it a bucket, also made of enamel. The one window was high and, of course, had thick bars set all across it. These helped make a pattern in the blotch of sunlight on the floor, which shivered because a vine of some sort had attached itself, its leaves out there fluttering, annoyingly free in the breeze.

  She raised her eyes from the crossword pattern, trying to think of something to say. She wanted to get out of there, and he must have seen her alarm.

  ‘It’s okay, Ingrid. These cells are bigger’n usual and there’s a fuel stove just out here in the corridor that we light up in winter time to make the place more cosy.’ He seemed so proud of the cells, she had to say something.

  ‘It looks comfy enough for a –’ She was dragging the words out of somewhere. ‘I mean, plenty of blankets.’

  ‘Too right!’

  Don’t run, she said to herself as she left the cell and walked slowly back up the hall. Don’t dare run!

  ‘Bye, Mrs Jenkins, and thanks, Constable Brooks. Thank you very much for letting me see. It was interesting.’ She spoke slowly, making sure to use his title, and not just say ‘Terry’ like she did before. As she opened the fly screen door to leave the police station once and for all, she heard Mrs Jenkins from down the hall. ‘Serious little thing, ain’t she?’

  ‘Bit of a frightened rabbit, today. Nat reckons she can talk the leg off an iron pot, though, and that she’s real clever at school,’ he said, turning back to the desk and his typewriter, where four sets of paper with thin carbon in between three of them, awaited his attention.

  Mum would be arrested, if they knew. Of course she would! Taken there first of all, and more than likely locked up in that cramped dull room with the straight ugly bed and the straight ugly walls, if she breathed a word of it. The thought of Mum locked up anywhere! She’d go good and mad. And it would be her fault. A crazy idea, talking to Constable Brooks, nice and all as he was. She shouldn’t have involved any constable at all! No police.

  She grabbed at Blackie’s leash and left the neat grassy yard of the station, grateful for the touch of spring sunshine on her skin, but shivering at the danger of her idea, and at her lucky escape.

  Outside, along the road, everything seemed cheerfully normal. The black asphalt road that careered past Blackheath station and went further on into other mountain towns, the gravelly path she was on right now and the grassy nature strip, the line of little houses, the shops up ahead, all suddenly a study of freedom and wonder. She was unusually glad to be taking in every bit, as if she’d just emerged from two weeks or two months inside that holding cell herself.

  ‘Lucky, lucky, lucky old you.‘The song began in her head as she stepped out with big wide steps, swinging the string bag jauntily, Blackie running, joyous beside her. But these words were soon overtaken with others.

  Fire! Liar! Fire! Gone up in smoke, burnt down to the ground. That damned fire song again, and she slowed down, let poor old Blackie strain on the leash and, frowning, shook her head hard to get rid of the words. Mum and how to stop her – that problem hadn’t gone away, couldn’t, until she found someone to talk some sense into her. Certainly not nice, friendly Constable Brooks, though.

  The question remained. Who on earth could she ask for help?

  4

  Neighbours

  What about their neighbours? Maybe it would be safer to start close to home. Right next door was Gracie Williams, who was in her class at school, and her mother, Mrs Harry Williams. Mum liked to poke fun at her, especially for still calling herself ‘Mrs Harry Williams’ when, as she said, precious Harry had pissed off to the city years ago. She said it so nastily that it made Ingrid feel a bit sorry for Gracie ‘s mum, who could be a bit of a pain – even a lot of a pain – at times.

  Mrs Harry Williams had a good heart and in fact Mum knew it, though she could go on and on about her faults. The time Pippa was sick with a high fever and had taken that fit, a ‘convulsion’ they’d called it at the hospital, Mrs Harry Williams had been right there. She’d bundled the lot of them into her beaten-up old car and got them up to the hospital faster than any ambulance could’ve taken them. And then she’d left a cooked dinner on their doorstep that night.

  ‘Practically no flavour, this stew, almost inedible,’ Mum had said, though Ingrid noticed she was tucking in. Since Pippa was all right again, she took large mouthfuls of the practically inedible stew. It was Ingrid who couldn’t eat much at all. All she could think about was the way Pippa still looked all pale and washed out.

  ‘But it was kind of Mrs HW, now, wasn’t it, love?’ said her mother.

  Mum wouldn’t, or couldn’t, accept any friendship in the ordinary way of things, like other people in town did – easy at the back fence or in each other’s kitchens over cups of tea. That wasn’t her way.

  ‘Give her an inch and she’ll take a mile,’ was what she said about Gracie’s mum. ‘And with all her religious claptrap, she can be an extra big pain in the side. Pity her God’s no good at bringing that man of hers back home.’ She had something like that to say about every woman who’d tried to be her friend.

  ‘Had to sell that car of hers just to keep going and then she said it was only because she was sick of driving. Stuff and nonsense. She should face facts like everyone else, that’s what,’ Mum said once, watching Mrs Harry Williams through the louvres on the back verandah, as she pegged her few rags of clothing on the line.

  But Mrs Harry Williams didn’t face facts, and most nights, people said, she set a place for her husband at the table, as if he might walk in the door any minute.

  She always gave advice whenever Ingrid went to their place, which was not often, because Gracie really wasn’t a good friend. And if you did venture in, you had to listen to Gracie’s mum going on and on. Mostly, it was to do with God and church. When Ingrid thought about it, she couldn’t see any use in talking to Gracie’s mum about the calamity, because she’d probably go straight to that minister fellow of hers. He was a middle aged man with a droning voice, cold, blue disappointed eyes, and an outsize balding head. Mum described him as self-satisfied. He’d once paid a call to Emoh Ruo to see whether Mum cared to go to church and was quite cross when she said tha
t she didn’t.

  Ingrid agreed wholeheartedly with Mum’s opinion of the minister, because she’d gone to church with Gracie a couple of times. But she thought that maybe a prayer-song as she walked along wouldn’t hurt. Not one of his, but one of her own. She concentrated hard on mouthing the words silently.

  ‘Help me, oh God, to find someone. Something awful is about to happen and I believe it’s not just the fire Mum is going to light. That’s bad enough. And I don’t want to tell all the lies I will have to tell about it. Maybe it’ll be something worse than a fire for Mum and me and Pippa and the boys. So be quick, please be quick. Like now, dear God, right now!’ She let out her breath as if she’d been holding it a good long time.

  Then it came to her. Perhaps it was an answer to her prayer. There and then she thought of Dom, still one of her best friends at school, even though his dad didn’t come to see Mum any more. The boy everyone at school liked to call her Eye-tie boyfriend – not that she dared repeat that boyfriend kind of talk. Mum had got furious the day she mentioned that Natalie said Dom was sweet on Ingrid. Mum was so strange and angry Ingrid had taken it back and said it was only a joke really. And Mum had said tersely, ‘Just as well,’ and she’d never mentioned anything like it again. But Dom was her good friend.

  He was nice to talk to, and she knew she could trust him, the same way she could trust her big brother, Freddy. Dom would more than likely come up with something. And he wouldn’t involve the police, the minister or the teachers. He’d think it out for himself as he always did. She was sure of it.

  Then again, what could Dom do really if he didn’t talk to his dad about it? The Italian man some of the townsfolk still called the dago as if he were someone so different from all of them. Dago or not, she really liked Dom’s dad, so that wouldn’t be a bad thing. Maybe she should bypass Dom and go straight to him. She’d ask him to help them, this small bright-eyed man with the soft way of talking, the man Mum had first of all liked so much. But she didn’t like him anymore – or so she said.