The Fragments

by Toni Jordan

  They follow him out into the foyer. The ceiling is high and it’s markedly brighter here. A large group of older women are chatting and laughing close to the entrance: a club perhaps, or a group of friends out for one last look at the exhibition or a late lunch at the cafe. Straight-backed in tailored trousers with cardigans or jackets. Silver hair and chunky bead necklaces; rich auburn bobs. One outlier has ink-black hair worn long and loose.

  ‘Which one is she?’ Philip’s gaze flicks from side to side, evaluating the women, weighing them.

  Jamie dashes ahead and stands between the women and Philip and Caddie, facing them, hands up.

  ‘Stop. Just stop. Has she spoken with a lawyer? Someone to look after her interests, before you pair parade her in front of everyone?’ Jamie says.

  ‘Caddie,’ says Philip, quietly. ‘I’ll ask every old woman here, just watch me. And you, James, are in the way.’

  Jamie looks from Philip’s face to hers. Caddie understands how he feels. He wants to give Rachel a warning. It’s the way she’s felt herself: this urge to protect. It’s not only because Rachel is old and vulnerable. It’s more than that. There’s something shiny and rare about her that anyone can see. She wants to put her hand on Jamie’s. It’ll be all right: she projects this thought towards him.

  And all at once, something shifts in Jamie’s eyes. He holds her gaze for a beat. Steps to one side and waves his arm. ‘I guess I can’t stop you.’

  ‘Caddie?’ Philip says.

  Caddie swallows and raises her arm. ‘Her. That’s Rachel Lehrer.’

  She points to the other side of the foyer, and Philip spots the woman sitting alone on a concrete bench against the wall. She’s wearing a pale floral short-sleeved Queensland dress. Cotton. No gloves.

  Philip waves at her from across the room. He beams. The woman stands and waves back.

  ‘Leave this to me,’ Philip says.

  30

  New York City, 1939

  It strikes Rachel now that the strong smell is gasoline.

  ‘We need to get out of here,’ she says.

  ‘I think you’re right.’ Charles heads toward the back door and tries to slide it open. It isn’t budging.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Rachel says. ‘No one knew the books were here.’

  And Inga says: ‘Fischer.’

  On this corner of the city, in this packed warehouse that was once a stable, Inga looks up. One of the high windows is open and they can see a face in shadow between the bars.

  ‘Fischer?’ calls Charles. ‘Sam?’

  The man in the window raises a box of matches. He takes one out and strikes it. In the sudden small flare his face is visible before he flicks the match inside the warehouse. It lands close to where they’re standing.

  Inga finds it and stamps it out, but now they are all running between the pallets in the dark warehouse. Fischer and his typesetter fingers are fast. The lit matches make graceful crescents and lie on the floor twinkling, Rachel thinks, like the fireflies that she would watch dancing on the grass on summer nights when she was a child. Fischer is lighting them, one, two, three, and they have no hope of finding them all in time.

  A match lands on a puddle near a pallet of books to the right. There is no big explosion, no boom. The puddle flares into flames, beautiful in the gloom. The flames move up along the edge of the pallet, crackling. On the other side of the room the same thing is happening. The flames are dancing now, and hissing. They move quickly. They are living things.

  The world has become a forest of fire. Somewhere in the centre of the warehouse, something snaps and crashes. One of the beams, perhaps, or part of the ceiling. The noise is like nothing Rachel’s heard. Her eyes sting. She coughs once, twice.

  ‘Up there,’ Inga says, pointing to the high window.

  Fischer is gone. The bars are solid and the space between them is narrow, but the window itself remains open. It must be sixteen feet from the ground.

  ‘You just might fit,’ says Charles.

  Inga takes Rachel’s arm.

  ‘Now.’ Charles takes off his scarf and wraps it around his face so that only his eyes are visible. ‘There’s no time. We’ll lift her up. Then, when she’s up, she can pull you up. The two of you can go for help.’

  Inga can’t meet his eyes. She knows, and he knows, how long that will take.

  He reaches for a box of books, and then another, and he stacks a pile of them. She scrambles to the top. She’s still a good five feet below the bottom of the window frame.

  ‘On my back, quick.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she says. She looks from one face to the other. ‘You should go first.’

  Charles says, ‘Now. We don’t have time for debate.’

  ‘Please, do as he says. You have to try. Please. Please try.’

  ‘When I’m up there, I can lift you up.’ She tries her best to smile. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

  They all nod. When she is up there, she will help him to lift her up.

  Later, she will realise there was no need to rush. If they had thought slower, acted slower, there would have been plenty of time. There was time to kiss them both, to put her soul in order. What hadn’t she said? A million things.

  Eat your vegetables. Rug up when it’s cold out. I should have buried you in kisses, carved your name into my skin with an ivory pin.

  There’s another crash and the lights go out but she can see by the glow of the flames. Charles climbs up, bows low and she scrambles upon his back like a child. His knees sway and then, with a great force of will, he stands up straight. Growls and huffs like a bear. She reaches higher, leverages herself until she has a knee on his shoulder. She stretches until she can grab the bottom of the iron bars. They’re already warm. Charles, below her, yells like a woman in labour.

  She feels Charles’s strong shoulders beneath her feet and she pulls herself up until her face is level with the bars. She slides one arm through, followed by her shoulder and head. She can see the skyline sparkling in the distance, the narrow, dirty street below. Those blessed cobblestones, that garbage, those discarded tin cans and newspapers. There’s no sign of another human, not even Fischer. The air is cold, brittle. Underneath the window are a number of timber crates, unevenly stacked, a makeshift ladder that Fischer must have constructed to climb up and light the fire. With her arm through the bars, she can almost touch the top crate. She inches forward but when she reaches the width of her chest, she’s stuck. The space between the bars is too narrow.

  From below, four hands push at her feet and legs and buttocks and back, taking the weight from her arms. She expels the air from her lungs, she sucks in her stomach and manoeuvres her breasts and rotates her chin.

  She cannot manage it. There is nothing she can do to force herself through.

  31

  Brisbane, Queensland, 1986

  Shop-worn and bruised—that’s how Caddie feels, standing beside Jamie and watching Philip charge across the foyer towards the waving woman in the floral dress. In ten years, in twenty, in two hundred years this merciless concrete bunker will look exactly the same as it does now, while Caddie is immeasurably older than she was an hour ago. She’s not finished yet, though. She needs to be standing out the front at exactly 2 p.m.

  And then she catches a movement near the entrance in the corner of her vision. Another woman has stepped from the glare of outside into the quiet foyer. This woman is older again, perhaps seventy. Pale pink knee-length dress, large red tote. White gloves, to match her white pumps.

  Caddie’s hand goes to her mouth. She can hear Jamie’s sharp inhale. Philip pauses halfway across the room to register this new arrival.

  She’s been distracted by Jamie’s presence; it’s later than she thought. Jamie, Caddie thinks, in a rush of hope. She turns to face him and angles her head towards the entrance. ‘Is that lady here for you?’

  ‘Oh.’ Jamie squeezes her hand. ‘Yes, I think she is.’ Then he waves and calls to the woman: ‘Hello! I’m so glad y
ou could make it.’ He passes Philip on his way across the foyer. ‘One of my best buyers,’ Jamie says. ‘Serious collector of 1930s first editions. Hope you don’t mind my inviting her.’

  ‘Be my guest, mate.’ Philip flicks his hand as though Jamie is a fly. He continues across the room and Caddie should ignore him and his schemes, should tell him to fuck off and never see him again but she can’t, not yet. She jogs a few paces to catch him, after a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure that Jamie is fine, murmuring to the woman in pink and steering her towards the ticket counter.

  Philip reaches the woman in the floral dress first and thrusts his hand forward. ‘Associate Professor Philip Carmichael,’ he says. ‘We’re honoured you could come.’

  ‘Miss Lehrer,’ the woman says, shaking Philip’s hand. ‘Miss Rachel Lehrer.’

  Caddie stands beside Philip while he talks to Rachel Lehrer. In the background she can hear his VIP guests chatting and clinking glasses in the reception room, the arch murmur of academic gossip. She thinks about how hard she has worked as she smiles at Rachel Lehrer, here in the foyer of the gallery, and hears her tell Philip she doesn’t understand what all this fuss is about. She has never met Inga Karlson, she says; has never read any manuscript.

  ‘University people, I thinks to myself when I kept getting all those letters. They must know something I don’t. Couldn’t for the life of me guess what.’ Her accent is broad and rich, old-fashioned Queensland.

  Philip shrugs, can barely stop himself from grinning. ‘Never mind. It was a flight of fancy of Ms Walker here, who has a bit to learn about textual analysis. I did warn her it was very unlikely.’

  ‘If you don’t mind telling us,’ Caddie says, ‘what exactly is your connection with Inga Karlson?’

  Connection? Her father was some kind of cousin from Austria, she says. She might be the only living Karlson relative. She’s grateful for the money, don’t get her wrong. It’s been a blessing all these years. She owns a nice little house, goes on a cruise every year. Helped her niece and nephew through university. She sponsors two African children. She writes them letters. Their photos are on her fridge. The rest goes to the church. She came to the exhibition on the first day out of curiosity, that was all. That was when she met the young lady here. She’s never been one for made-up stories.

  ‘That book must be good? Because new books come out all the time, don’t they?’ the woman says. ‘Modern ones, you know. Danielle Steele.’

  ‘So, you haven’t read the manuscript?’ Caddie says.

  ‘What manuscript is that, love?’

  ‘A misunderstanding.’ Philip pats the woman’s hand. ‘You quoted a line at Caddie, is that what happened?’

  ‘It was a bit dull, wasn’t it? The exhibition. I tried to memorise some of the burnt bits. Like a little game, so it wasn’t all a waste of time. Did I stuff them up? Sorry, love.’

  Philip chuckles. ‘Don’t give it a moment’s thought. No harm done.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just say this, in your reply?’ Caddie says. ‘Why didn’t you write back and tell us? Or ring? Why didn’t you ring? You were so brusque. You could have explained. I thought. I thought you were hiding something.’

  ‘Truth is, I don’t like talking about the money,’ Rachel Lehrer says to Philip. ‘There’s a lot of con artists about. My pastor is very particular about that. I must say he wasn’t happy about me coming here at all. There’s pictures of naked people in here, are you aware of that?’

  ‘Surely not,’ Philip says, eyes wide.

  The woman pats his arm. ‘Mind you, the love of God can transcend even the godless to put power in the hands of those willing to do his good works. Inga Karlson was godless, I understand.’

  On the other side of the foyer, in the doorway of the reception room, Malcolm Kirby appears. ‘Philip,’ he calls out. ‘Tick tock, mate.’

  Philip gives each white cuff a tug. ‘I’m going to leave Ms Walker to see you out. I have a presentation to give. An exciting development in the Karlson arson case.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ the woman says. ‘Any chance of cab fare back home?’

  ‘This way, Miss Lehrer,’ Caddie says, as she leads her towards the door.

  ‘Ta, love.’

  The woman seems unsteady on her feet after all the excitement, so Caddie takes her arm. Philip is still on her mind. She knows him well, has known him well for years. She listened when Jamie told her of his experience, too. So why is she disappointed? Because she hoped, despite the evidence, that he was a better man. Because she wasted so much time adoring a person like that. Because she’s sad for him: to have been blessed with such gifts and yet be so small.

  When a taxi pulls up, Caddie gives the woman a twenty and opens the rear door for her.

  ‘Slightly off script, Miss Lehrer,’ Caddie says, ‘but still your best performance since that tube of toothpaste.’

  ‘I’d been sitting there for a while. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t need me.’

  ‘I hoped I wouldn’t need you. Still. A wise woman once told me: hope for the best, prepare for the worst.’

  ‘It was the most fun I’ve had in ages. And your professor! What a spunk.’ The woman kisses Caddie on the cheek. ‘See you soon, Cadence.’

  Caddie waves as the taxi takes off, then she jogs back inside, buys a ticket and heads for the exhibition. This is the return visit she promised herself, when was it? Five months ago? Everything in her life has changed. It no longer seems important to linger through the relics again, to pore over every artefact, including the sad ones about the fire. Now, in the final hour, there is no one here except for her and—she sees them on the far side—Jamie and the woman in pink.

  From where Caddie stands, they seem like old friends. At ease, chatting, pointing occasionally to something in a display case. They could be a young man and his grandmother, out for the day—albeit a young man who knows his grandmother’s face only from photographs purchased in an Auchenflower pizzeria.

  Jamie and the woman hear Caddie approaching and they both turn. Caddie’s every step brings her closer; everything echoes with the click of her heels. To reach them, she walks past Inga’s childhood, the display about the fire. The newspaper headlines, the blackened timbers recovered from the scene; Inga’s pendant, the melted glass one with the bee design that was found in the ashes of the warehouse and used to identify the body.

  She walks around the fragments themselves until she reaches the two of them.

  ‘Here she is now.’ Jamie smiles at her. ‘May I present Caddie Walker?’

  ‘We’ve met,’ Caddie says.

  The woman nods at Caddie. ‘How could I forget your fond thoughts of evangelist readers? Also, you’ve sent me about a hundred letters.’

  She extends her hand to shake Caddie’s but before they touch, she stops. She inches off her left glove; she does the same with the right and slips the gloves in the outside pocket of her tote. She pulls up her sleeves and holds out her hand again. Caddie and Jamie can see her right forearm now. The long fingers are elegant but from the tips up to the woman’s elbow, the skin is stretched and shiny: puckered as if drizzled with pink icing.

  ‘I barely notice it these days. I just don’t like to be gawked at.’ The woman splays her fingers and flutters them as if playing an invisible piano. ‘Works perfectly fine, though.’

  She takes Caddie’s hand. Her grip is strong and cool and the ridges are a secret message, telescoping years down to seconds.

  Caddie swallows. ‘You’re a long way from home.’

  ‘Not at all,’ the woman says. ‘This has been home for many years. I love it here.’

  Jamie clears his throat. ‘You knew Inga Karlson,’ he says. ‘You read her work.’

  ‘To have known Inga Karlson,’ Caddie says, wondering how she can even speak the words, considering the tragedy and the decades that have passed. ‘That must have been a tremendous privilege.’

  This close, the woman’s face is laced with fine wrinkles
and the whites of her eyes have a yellowish tinge. Her breathing, too, is shallow and laboured. Something passes over her face that could be a smile.

  ‘I’ve reached the conclusion over my long life,’ she says, ‘that it’s a tremendous privilege to know anyone.’

  This is what Caddie’s been hoping for, for so long: talking to this woman, asking her questions. Although in this moment that one line—the seconds spent on this earth and the number of them that truly mattered—that one line is almost enough.

  The woman turns to Caddie. ‘Your young man’s been telling me what a brilliant researcher you are.’

  The corners of her mouth twitch up; Jamie’s face breaks into a wild grin.

  ‘My young man is slightly biased. Anyway, I’m pretty sure I’m currently unemployed.’

  ‘Even better. That means you’ve lots of free time. I’ve something you might like to read.’

  She reaches into her tote and pulls out a thick parcel wrapped in a floral oilskin. She weighs it in her hands before handing it to Caddie. ‘It’s strange to hand this over. No one’s read this in a very long time.’

  ‘Is that—’ Jamie says.

  ‘God,’ says Caddie, as she takes it. ‘God.’ Her hands are shaking and Jamie touches her forearm to steady it.

  Resting the parcel in the crook of one arm, Caddie peels back a corner of the heavy wrapping. Inside is a dense pile of printer’s galleys, slightly yellowed with a few crumbling corners. She flicks the pages: they’re covered in faded type with the occasional annotation in pen.

  At first, neither of them can move, or speak, or breathe. Then they both begin to laugh in the way of people overcome.

  ‘Is this?’ Caddie says at last. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘Can it be?’ says Jamie. ‘How can it be possible?’

  The woman ignores their laughing and gaping. Businesslike, she opens her bag again and produces a manila envelope which she places on top of the manuscript. ‘And here are some documents you’ll need, a contract—there are some places you’ll need to sign. Assorted bits and pieces. Use my lawyers, they’re very good.’