Fire Song

by Libby Hathorn

  They were all sitting at the table, and Pippa’s round eyes were moving from face to face, smiling. She could smile! It was all right for her, being little, but she didn’t have to deal with -

  ‘You say grace, Grace!’ They both laughed as if it was an old joke between them, but then Gracie bowed her head and closed her eyes. Ingrid bowed her head, too, but she somehow couldn’t close her eyes. She clenched her hands as if this was going to be hard, sitting here in the safety and warmth of Mrs Harry Williams’s kitchen.

  ‘For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful,’ Gracie said simply, as if she truly meant it. They all said amen together and that was when Ingrid saw something else that was amazing. Pippa had not spoken, but for the first time in months and months, her lips silently framed a word. ‘Amen,’ they said, Ingrid was sure of it. Amen. What was happening here? She felt tears in her eyes again. In the middle of all this horror, something good was surely happening if Pippa was trying to speak.

  ‘Tuck in now, girls,’ Mrs Harry Williams urged them and they did.

  ‘My mum is the best cook,’ Gracie began as she took the first mouthful and, for once, Ingrid was not inclined to correct her.

  ‘Now go on with you, Gracie,’ Mrs Harry Williams said, but she sounded very pleased.

  And then there was a comfortable silence broken only by the scrape of cutlery the chink of china. Between mouthfuls, and she ate heartily, Pippa stole more smiling glances. Ingrid smiled back, but suddenly she felt sick. How could she be sitting here, smiling at her little sister, and eating Mrs Harry Williams’s food like this?

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Williams, but I can’t eat any more. It was delicious, though.’

  ‘Gracie said you eat like birds over there. Well, never mind, love, long as you got some good into you.’

  After tea and the washing up and just before Ingrid was ready to take off for the hospital, Mrs Harry Williams said she had an idea.

  ‘Before you go up town with Blackie to see your mother,’ she suggested from the sink, ‘I think we should all go into the lounge room and say a special prayer for her.’

  No! As far as Ingrid was concerned, saying grace together was enough praying for one night.

  ‘I’d rather get going,’ she said, but weakly, because Gracie and Pippa had shot out the kitchen door and were already halfway up the hall. Mrs Harry Williams simply took Ingrid’s hand and led her into the lamplit lounge room, all inviting with its overstuffed lounges, its clutter of wickerwork side tables and its one large wooden glass-fronted book case that looked so grand.

  ‘Let’s all kneel down,’ she said, and knelt herself to show the way. Ingrid watched Pippa fall to her knees as if it were the most normal thing in world. And then she watched Pippa gaze adoringly at Mrs Harry Williams’s face, as she waited for her next words. She and Gracie knelt down, too.

  ‘Now close your eyes and think about your mother, girls. Gracie, you think about Mrs Crowe, and let’s all of us think about how God loves her and ask Him to help her recover.’

  There was quiet in the room as they all knelt there on the emerald green carpet, with the grandfather clock ticking away in the hall. Mrs Harry Williams left enough time for her to think of Mum lying in hospital with her screwed up face and wonky eye and how she wanted so badly for Mum to be all right again. But she didn’t leave enough time for much else, because her voice came out soft but nice, in a specially made-up prayer for Mum.

  ‘Dear Lord, we need your guidance and your love. Two little girls here are facing a difficult time in their family life. Their mum lies stricken in the hospital and needs our love and our prayers for her good health to return, which we offer now.

  ‘We need your help for her wellbeing and cure, we need your help for this to happen. We need you also, Lord, to help us think clearly, truly and bravely, and to face whatever is to come.’

  Ingrid wondered how she knew that this was exactly what she needed right now. To think clearly and truly and bravely. But she did.

  ‘For we trust in your divine wisdom, and that whatever may be, in this serious matter, you will be with us and you will surely guide us all through this.’

  Ingrid wanted someone to guide her, because she knew she was about to do something dreadful.

  ‘We know we must put our trust and our love in you. Amen.’

  Was that Pippa’s breathy voiced ‘Amen’? Ingrid’s eyes had been closed tight this time, but when she opened her eyes it was Gracie who was next to her.

  Trust and love. She couldn’t put her trust and love in anyone, least of all in a god who Mum said didn’t hear anyone’s prayers. ‘As if he’d have time,’ Ingrid remembered her saying, as she dismissed the very thought. But she’d added something of her own, despite what Mum had said. ‘I need a miracle, please, dear Lord. A miracle!’

  Mrs Harry Williams sighed as she got up, just the way Grandma Logan used do when her knees were hurting her, and she seated herself on one of the lounge chairs.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Now we should all feel a little better after that.’ Then she smiled at Ingrid. ‘She’s going to be all right. I’m sure of it. I heard from one of the nurses this afternoon that she is doing well, your mother. It’ll just take a bit of time, and some extra special looking after, to get her right.’ And she looked at Pippa with that soft look of hers, and added, ‘For the time being, you are not to worry about a thing. You girls are welcome to stay right here. In fact, I insist on it.’

  For the time being…

  ‘Thank you,’ Ingrid murmured, blushing at her kindness and the thought of all the terrible things she and Mum had said about Mrs Harry Williams. She was the one Mum especially liked to mock, and now this neighbour was showing real concern for all of them!

  ‘I have some cake in the kitchen. Why don’t you go and get down the cake tin, Grace dear, and we can all have a slice before Ingrid goes.’

  Gracie, with Pippa close behind her, raced back to the kitchen. Pippa didn’t give her sister even a backward glance. But Ingrid didn’t move. It came to her that this was the moment.

  ‘May I ask you something, Mrs Harry Williams?’

  ‘Of course, dear, anything you like. I know what a worrying time it must be for you.’

  Ingrid cleared her throat. Out in the kitchen she could hear Gracie dragging a chair to the cake cupboard and she could picture Pippa sticking close by to her, quite another child in this cheerful house. She’d be licking her lips in anticipation, while Gracie cut those careful slices. Cake was a rare treat in their house.

  Ingrid looked at Mrs Harry Williams and knew she had to just come out with it.

  ‘If you were to do something bad, Mrs Harry Williams, something you knew was very wrong, because you knew it would help the people you loved, would that really be wrong? Do you think God would still love you?’

  ‘Well now, Ingrid, you know that God loves everyone and that means sinners too – them maybe more than anyone else. As long as they saw it was wrong, what they were doing. And it would depend on what kind of wrong.

  ‘Just what exactly do you mean anyway, when you say “do something wrong”. Like what?’

  Ingrid cast about for something that would never lead to Mrs Harry Williams knowing she had to burn down a house for her mother’s sake, and for her father’s sake as well. What wrong thing could she say? Then she thought of a conversation at school the other day about convicts being transported to Australia, some of them for as small a reason as stealing a loaf of bread!

  ‘I’d steal for my family, for sure,’ Dom had said in a playground conversation after that lesson, as he studied his sandwich. ‘If they were hungry and that – starving to death for a piece of bread – course I would!’

  ‘So would I,’ Ingrid said.

  Evan Evans said he would too.

  ‘I wouldn’t ever let my family starve to death,’ Robyn Smithers said. ‘I’d get them bread any way I could. If that meant stealing, then so be it!’ And she’d taken a big d
ecisive bite out of her own sandwich, as if one of them was going to tear it out of her hands.

  ‘What about you, Goody Two-shoes Gracie? Would you steal for your mum?’ Robyn asked, munching away, because Gracie was looking at the ground.

  Then the bell rang and nobody ever heard her answer.

  In the Williams’s lounge room, Ingrid cleared her throat again and said, ‘I mean like someone stealing bread or medicine or something so that their child might live.’

  ‘Well, that’s something every mother might do for a child, certainly. And I think God would understand. You might like to talk to Reverend Parsons some time on all this. He’s a good man to talk to about such things. And clever! He knows such a lot.’

  ‘I hate Reverend Parsons. He wouldn’t know what it’s like to be a child whose mother wants him to burn their house down! Now would he?’ she wanted to say to Mrs Harry Williams. But she didn’t dare.

  ‘And how about what a child was prepared to do for her mother?’ she wanted to ask, but, again, she didn’t dare.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Harry Williams,’ she murmured. She wanted to go now. Up to the hospital and tell Mum the news about Freddy, for one thing.

  ‘Hmm.’ Mrs Harry Williams hadn’t budged. ‘There’s something I want to say to you, Ingrid.’

  Ingrid sank back, engulfed in tapestry. Did she know something? Could she possibly have guessed at something about the kero and Mum’s dark plans?’

  ‘Yes?’ her voice was small. But when she looked up, Mrs Harry Williams was smiling at her.

  ‘Gracie and I have had a talk. I’ve explained a few things to Grace – family matters that we don’t need to go into right here. Private stuff, really. But I’ve decided that I’m not to be called Mrs Harry Williams anymore. You see, I’m really Mrs Winnie Williams, so that’s what it will be from now on. In fact just plain Mrs Williams. There. But you can call me Auntie Winnie, if you like – seeing you’re such a good friend of my Gracie’s and you’re staying here with us for the time being.’

  So everyone had family matters that were not to be gone into, private things that were difficult to talk about. Even the Williamses. Ingrid felt relieved.

  ‘Oh!’ She didn’t know quite what to say, but she knew one thing. She certainly couldn’t call Mrs Harry Will – Mrs Winnie Williams – ‘Auntie’. Not when she thought of Auntie Ivy and her favourite Auntie Marj.

  ‘Well, now,’ Mrs Williams said, ‘I think it’s time for cake! You’ll need a coat. It’s cold and it’s coming up a bit windy out there.

  ‘And maybe we’ll walk part of the way to the hospital with you – just for company, lovey. Don’t want you to feel all alone, pet.’ And then she was on her feet and giving Ingrid a hug as if she were little like Pippa.

  ‘C’mon, we’ll get through this all right. You’ll see.’

  She blinked away her tears at Mrs Winnie Williams’s constant kindness to her.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. And she meant it.

  9

  Come what May

  They’d all gone out into the night and, just as Mrs Williams said, a wind had come up and they were buffeted through the streets. They clung together, Gracie and Pippa giggling a bit as they swung along the pavements. Ingrid felt a strong arm around her, a protective hand holding hers.

  ‘My goodness!’ Mrs Williams’s sou’wester was swept from her head and Ingrid found herself laughing along with the others as they went helter-skelter to retrieve it and then marched on into the wind. She would hate seeing them turn back, when the hospital came into view. Pippa would cling and make little laughing sounds in her throat. It would be like tearing her away from something solid and good that she didn’t understand, but knew she needed. It would be like tearing her away from all safety.

  ‘I’ll be fine from here, Mrs Williams. Honestly.’ She had to say it. ‘The dog won’t leave my side on the way back home.’ She was beginning to panic that she’d never get the time with her mother that she needed, let alone any time after.

  ‘We’re going back home now, lovey. No worries.’

  ‘We’re blowing back home, Mum!’ Gracie yelled.

  ‘Pippa’s shivering a treat, aren’t you, little one? You look after her, good old black dog, won’t you?’

  ‘Bye bye, Ingrid,’ Gracie said, as if Ingrid were going on a long voyage and Pippa hugged her hard. To her surprise, Mrs Williams kissed her goodbye, too. She wasn’t going to war or anything. But they were clearly a huggy, kissy family.

  ‘I’ll only stay a little while,’ she promised them. ‘See you real soon.’

  After the cold crispness of her windy walk, the warmth and antiseptic smell inside the hospital made her feel a bit sick. She knew she’d better not think about baked dinner, the way her tummy was heaving. The duty nurse smiled at her, as if she were an old friend and, yes thanks, she knew the way to Ward 3 Bed 3.

  ‘Your mother already has a visitor, dear,’ the nurse called after her and Ingrid almost stopped in her tracks.

  A visitor? Mum didn’t have many friends in this town. Surely Freddy hadn’t got here already? But no, that was impossible. She’d spoken to him only a few hours ago. Maybe Uncle Ken had been told. But he was far away in Queensland and both her aunties were in Kyogle. So who on earth could it be?

  The ward was almost empty, except for a grey-headed woman, pretty in her pink floral bed jacket with its floppy silk bow, leaning back on the pillows, fast asleep. And there was Mum’s bed at the end, with the curtain drawn and the sound of a voice, low and quiet – a man’s voice, definitely.

  Daddy! She had to stop herself running the full length of the ward, tearing back the curtain and jumping into his arms. Daddy had come home! But even as she passed by the old woman’s bed, she heard the accent. It was the da – it was Mr Fratelli, Dom’s dad. She stopped, sick with disappointment, and about to turn away and go, until she heard him say things that made her stay, however guilty, listening to every word!

  ‘There’s no bride coming here, Elizabeth. And there never was. I have been running away for a long time, and now I want you to know everything. I want to stop all this – this running. I want to be here in this town. To see you again, perhaps? Per favore?

  Ingrid was astonished. Running away. Staying put. Seeing Mum again. What on earth was Mr Fratelli going on about?

  ‘No you don’t.’ Mum’s voice sounded slow for her, as if she were medicated, but still on the edge of angry. ‘You can’t do that. And you won’t want to be near me, not looking the way I do. Don’t be silly!’

  ‘I like the person you are, Elizabeth, despite what you are thinking. To me you are bellissima, a beautiful woman.’

  ‘Look here, my face might take months, a year – might never –’

  Never? Mum, no! A snapshot of her at the blond wood dressing table, fussing over her beautiful face, peering into its flawless beauty, and always, always finding fault. And now. Ingrid shrank back from the curtain.

  ‘Non importa.’ As he went on, his voice was getting louder. ‘And never say never. Look how you are using your hand tonight to eat your meal. Look how you can move – better than this morning. Think what tomorrow will bring. Look at me, please, Elizabeth. Right. Now, look into my eyes, please.’

  Isn’t this what Mum had said to her this morning, to look into her eyes, even the wonky one, when she’d made her promise to carry out her dreadful mission? Mr Fratelli wasn’t putting anything like that on Mum. Not at all. There was that squeaky little sob in Ingrid’s throat again, it was so unfair. She had to get out of here. But she didn’t move.

  ‘I want to tell you something,’ he said. Ingrid was sure he’d taken out his handkerchief and was mopping his eyes, for his voice had become husky. ‘I want to tell something of my story.’

  ‘Mr Fratelli.’ Mum’s voice was stronger than when she used to say his first name, Sergio. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything. God knows we all have our damned sad stories to tell. You don’t need to tell me yours. Anyway, another sad s
tory? I don’t want hear it.’ But there was not the usual bite in her voice, she was trapped in that bed, and he went on.

  ‘My story is long and too terrible, but I will make it short. I am innocent of the crime they said I did. Just one person started the rumour, and then it grew. One newspaper took it up, then another, and then it became fact. The rumour blew up, more and more fantastic, about my business, about my stealing from others. I’m telling you I was being damned, though not in a court case. I was being judged by the people who were reading the print and I was found guilty.’

  ‘There’s no need, please.’ Mum had recovered enough to say that.

  ‘But there is need.’ And then a miracle. Mum made no comment. Mum was listening to someone – for a change.

  ‘When you see something in the print, a lie for you and your family – the shame is terrible. I had no money, you know, to fight by the law, no will left when my wife passed away. So I ran when I had the chance to migrate. Not from the law, because there was no case against me, but away from my town and my country.’

  There was a brief silence between them.

  ‘We were broke. So I came here to find a better life. I am happy that my son is settled in so well, to get an education that I never had. My greengrocer business is successful here – beyond my dreams.’

  ‘When I met you, I said to myself I might find some happiness again, too. Then I got scared I’d drag you and your family into the messy life behind me. And that’s why I told you I was having a bride coming from Italy sometime. But now –’