Quite why the power of the water was so strong she did not know. There had been much rain lately and perhaps the wells and the reservoirs were full. Perhaps the pump on the fire-engine was particularly strong and efficient. Whatever the cause, the first hose snaked, leaped in its custodians’ hands and then straightened its kinks rapidly as the water filled it and burst out of the nozzle at a rate so swift that when it hit the drawing-room windows of Quentin’s, at which it was pointing, the impact was so powerful that the glass shattered.
Tilly screamed, Silas shouted and several of the guests set up a noise to match, and Tilly turned to try to plunge across the road to stop the firemen with the hose.
‘Oh, no!’ she was crying. ‘There is no fire in my house – it’s the other house – no –’ But Silas seized her arm and held her back.
‘They have to, my dear,’ he cried. ‘It is essential to make the adjoining properties wet in order to stop the fire from spreading – see? They’re doing it on the other side too.’
She turned her head and through eyes streaming with a mixture of irritation caused by the smoke and tears of distress, saw that a third engine had now arrived and was, indeed, dousing the adjoining house, as the first engine went on struggling with Dorcas’s house. And then she flinched and sprang back to stand close to Silas as with a great roar the upper part of the front of Dorcas’s house collapsed in a great shower of sparks and leaping flames which in any other circumstances would have been regarded as positively beautiful.
A sort of sigh went up from the onlookers, a faint hissing sound as if they had all drawn a breath through their teeth at the same moment in sympathy with the house’s pain, as though it had been a sentient thing, and Tilly looked over her shoulder at them, at the upturned faces lit to a vivid orange by the greedy clamour of those high bounding flames and felt her own face crumple.
Silas held her close then and she was glad of it, burying her face in his coat and holding on tight. He started to speak to someone over her head, but still she paid no attention. All she could do was cling to him as the thought pounded and throbbed in her head.
Eliza did this. Eliza did this. Eliza –
It took several hours finally to douse the fire in Dorcas Oliver’s house. It was still dark when the firemen at last hauled in their hoses and made their weary way back to their equipages, but there was that lightening in the air that spoke of a new dawn approaching. The people who had been watching had vanished one by one, the residents of the street whose houses had, to their good fortune, not been affected by more than the stench of smoke to go gratefully to bed, and the others to make what shift they could in the dreadful state their houses had been left in by the licking of the flames alongside and the floods of water that the firemen had poured into the houses to save their fabric.
Tilly sat curled up in her kitchen, her feet tucked up beneath her, with Eliza sitting on the stool beside the grate. The fire in the range had been allowed to go down, and now Eliza began painstakingly to find dry coal in among the wet pieces in the scuttle to start it up again. The floor was awash with an inch or more of filthy water, for it had flooded down the area steps and in through the kitchen door and windows which, like the upper ones, had been shattered by the force of the firemen’s over-eager hoses. It slapped about the table legs and the chairs like an ill-tempered tide on a sluggish sea; the gay rag rug with its brave colours looked bedraggled and muted as it half floated, half sank in a corner of the room and the smell everywhere was disgusting.
‘They must have drawn some of their water from the drains,’ Eliza said heavily. ‘It’ll take all the time we got to get this clean again. Oh, Mum!’ And she burst into a flood of tears that shook her sturdy body as though it were an aspen tree.
Tilly sat and stared at her, not knowing what to do. Her normal instinct would have led her to reach over to Eliza and hug her and comfort her, but how could she? How could she possibly when she was so sure that Eliza herself had been the origin of all this horror? All she could do was sit there with lacklustre eyes and watch Eliza as the tears and sobs racked her body, and wait until she had recovered.
She did eventually and also sat there dumb and miserable, staring into the fire which was at last beginning to catch, though it looked as low and as sullen as Tilly felt, for the coal had been wetted very thoroughly.
Silas appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Are you all right?’ he called, peering down. ‘Stay there and be warm. As soon as I have seen to it that all is well up here, we shall contrive a bed for you, Eliza. Your bedroom is well enough, Tilly. Duff has checked all the rooms and it is the drawing room and dining room which have suffered most, and the big front bedrooms. But the maids have managed to go to bed, and most of the guests, though there has been some doubling up – Mr Grayling has gone to share with Mr Cumming and Mrs Grayling, she’s gone to share with Miss Barnetsen. I dare say we should try to get them back to their rooms again tomorrow – they do so fuss over being apart, the Graylings! Are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Yes,’ Tilly said dully. ‘I’m all right – oh!’ She sat more upright. ‘Please, do ask Duff – did he deal with the cab and fetch Polly and Georgie? I left them there at the end of the road.’
‘No need to fear,’ Silas said reassuringly. ‘Polly fetched herself and the baby home and the cabbie, as far as I can tell, chose to do without his fare and took to his heels. No one is hurt, happily.’ He had come downstairs now and was standing on the bottom step of the staircase looking across at her. ‘I’d come across to you but I’ve only just changed into these dry boots.’
‘It’s all right,’ Tilly said and closed her eyes. ‘I shall stay here for a while. Just as long as I know everyone is safe and comfortable.’
‘I’m seeing to the last of them,’ Silas promised. ‘As soon as all are settled I shall return, minus boots, and carry you upstairs. You must take off your own boots, Eliza, when I come back for you, and wade through barefoot. I am afraid I cannot carry you for you are too buxom for me – but we are arranging a bed for you, Duff and I, in Tilly’s morning room. I trust that will be all right, Tilly?’
‘Anywhere you choose,’ Tilly said, her eyes still closed and at last he went, stamping away upstairs with some impatience to continue his efforts. She should have been grateful to him, she knew; he had set to to help in a very definite manner and that was important, but all she could do now was be glad he had gone so that she could think again about what to do about Eliza.
‘I have to say it, Eliza,’ she said suddenly, almost surprised to hear the words coming out of her mouth. ‘I have to –’
Eliza lifted her head and looked at her. She too had been sitting in silence, miserable and unresponsive to Silas’s energy. ‘Say what, Mum?’
‘You wanted this to happen,’ Tilly said. ‘Didn’t you?’
Eliza gaped. ‘Wanted it to – oh, Mum, what a thing to say! To want our lovely house in this state! Oh, Mum!’
Once again there was a sound from above as the door to the main part of the house swung open and voices could be heard coming from the hallway. She identified Miss Knapp’s confident bellow, and the more twittering tones of Miss Barnetsen, and then the door swung again and shut it all out. Tilly looked up. But the door remained closed and no one stepped forward into the light of the one lamp they had burning on the kitchen table.
‘Who is it?’ she called but there was no response and she turned her head back to Eliza. ‘Everything is at sixes and sevens, the doors are probably all warped and will have to be replaced. There is so much work to do here now, and what will my guests do while it is in hand? And what will it cost? And you wanted it to happen.’
‘Oh, Mum!’ Eliza said and burst into tears again, her face crumpling and turning an alarming shade of red. ‘Oh, Mum, how can –’ And could say no more.
Still Tilly couldn’t bring herself to comfort her; all she could do was sit there, curled up in her rocking chair and staring at her and feeling the bitter hurt and ang
er invade every part of her being.
Again Eliza managed to stop her weeping and at last looked up at Tilly through swollen lids.
‘Mum, I know what I said to you that day but I never meant it! I mean, I did wish it to happen to the house next door, I can’t say I didn’t, but not like this. Not with our house hurt so grievous. I wanted to see the other house lose its pull on that Dorcas, that I did want and – and – but to say I wanted all this to happen –’ she gestured piteously – ‘I couldn’t want such a thing. How could I?’
‘But you made it happen,’ Tilly said and her voice was metallic in its coldness. ‘Didn’t you? It just went further than you thought it would.’
‘I made it – Mum, what are you saying?’ Eliza jumped to her feet, oblivious of the water that still swirled about the floor, though it did seem to be oozing away a little through the interstices between the stones. The cellar, Tilly thought in a vague sort of way, must be almost full of it. ‘I don’t deny I said to you as I had this hope as something’d happen to get that Dorcas woman away from us and us left in peace and maybe with a bigger house into the bargain, but I never would have – I couldn’t have! How can you think such a thing, Mum? How can you?’
‘What else am I to think?’ Tilly cried, staring up at her. ‘Do you not think I want to believe you? But if it was not you, what happened? There is a house that has been empty these many years now and never a hint of a problem and then when Dorcas comes back and – and makes us fear for the future – you tell me that you wish it would burn so that she would no longer want to have it and would sell it to me and – then it happens! What else am I to think? Who else could have done it? For I am sure as I sit here that this is no accident, Eliza. And I have no doubt that the firemen will soon find out what happened and how. They will be back tomorrow to inspect the place and I dare say they will know what befell. They are very clever at such matters. I was told that when the insurance was settled for this house – as though they were warning me. As though I needed a warning! Perhaps I should have warned you, however.’
‘No!’ Eliza said as though it was all she could manage to get out. ‘No – no –’
They were both silent then as the fire settled once more in the grate to a dull redness, and the muffled noises from beyond the green baize door disappeared. Tilly sat and stared at the embers and tried to get some sense of order in her weary head; and had to admit she was almost asleep with the sheer exhaustion of it all.
When she heard the gulping start, and the sniffing, she thought, how can she have more tears to shed? Has she not shed them all already? And did not take her gaze from the fireplace. But then Eliza said sharply, in a voice that had quite controlled its own tearfulness, ‘Who’s that?’ and Tilly whipped her head round and stared.
Eliza was again on her feet and had started to wade across the floor to the staircase; and she reached forwards into the darkness when she got there and pulled and then came back; and it was Polly she had by the elbow, a Polly who was weeping as though her heart would shatter into so many pieces it could never be healed again.
*
It took them half an hour to stop the weeping. Silas and Duff came back to the kitchen to report that the household had settled down at last, everyone but themselves in a bed, and were startled to see Polly.
‘I saw her into her room myself,’ Silas said, somewhat aggrieved. ‘Carried the baby up, saw him put to bed and thought she’d settle herself. What are you doing here, girl?’ But Polly wept on and could not be persuaded to speak at all.
It was Duff who found the answer. Looking rather absurd with his trousers rolled up and his legs bare from the knees down, he lifted the girl bodily and gestured with his chin at Eliza who at once moved out of his way. Tilly also stood up and after a moment Duff sat down in the rocker with Polly and held her in the crook of his arm and let her weep her misery out on his shoulder.
‘She has had a difficult day, to say the least of it,’ he said in a low voice. ‘The visit to her brothers, and now this. And she is still very young. She will get over it. Perhaps, Eliza, some tea to restore us all? Is it possible on so low a fire?’
‘I’ll manage something,’ Eliza said and seized a poker and went to work, coaxing the stubborn embers into some semblance of life, and then paddling away to fetch cups (she did not waste any effort on saucers) and milk and sugar.
The tea, when she made it, was scalding hot and very comforting to the five wet and bedraggled people, for even Polly was persuaded to lift her head from Duff’s now soaking wet shoulder and tremulously take a cup from Eliza’s hands.
‘Now, Polly,’ Tilly said firmly. ‘Are you all right? Will you go to bed now? Georgie may wake and need you.’
The eyes that had almost disappeared into the puffiness of the tear-stained face brimmed again and Tilly said hastily, ‘There is no need to hurry, Polly. It is just that it is very late – indeed almost morning and –’
Duff bent his head and set his cheek alongside Polly’s streaked wet face. ‘What is it, Polly?’ he murmured. ‘What is it that has worried you so? You can tell me, can’t you? It is safe to tell all of us – we’re your friends. We won’t hurt you.’ And he glanced up at his mother over the child’s head as though to obtain her agreement.
Tilly gave it at once. All she wanted was to get Polly away to bed and then everyone else. The matter of what Eliza had done had still to be dealt with but not, she knew, now. It was too late, there was too much going on, they all needed sleep. Tomorrow – or later today, rather – would be soon enough. ‘Of course, Polly. We’re all your friends. No one will hurt you.’
‘Or be angry with you,’ Duff murmured. ‘Tell us what the trouble is.’
‘Oh, Mr Duff, sir,’ wailed Polly and again her face twisted into an agony of misery. ‘Oh, Mr Duff, it was me what made the fire next door, and I never thought, honestly, I never thought nothing like this would happen. But it’s all my fault, all of it, and oh, Mr Duff, what are you going to do to me over it? Will you send me to jail? And what will happen to Georgie if you do?’
Chapter Thirty-Six
THE LAST TIME Tilly had spent the whole night out of her bed had been fifteen years earlier, when Duff was three and had so severe an attack of croup that his life had been despaired of; she had sat and watched him, sponging him to reduce his dreadful fever, and filled the room with steam from the kettles which Eliza carried upstairs in an unending relay till the dawn had broken over Brompton, and had not gone to sleep until mid-morning when it was clear he was past the crisis.
Now, sitting listening to Polly, as the unglazed window behind her paled with the early light and the fire in front of her tried to produce some warmth in the bitter chill of the freezing morning – the water at the edges of the kitchen floor showed a dull gleam where ice had formed on it – she had the same odd sensations she recalled from that last occasion. She felt light-headed and remote as though she were not, in fact, herself at all. It was as though she were sitting on a cloud hovering over her own head and looking down on all that was going on, interested but dispassionate, there, but not a part of what was happening.
It was Duff who questioned Polly, gently and carefully, after Silas had almost frightened the girl into another attack of weeping by bursting into loud expostulations, but Tilly had reached out and held on to him to hush him and now he sat on the edge of the kitchen table, with Eliza beside him, staring hard at Duff and Polly with a mulish look on his face, but his mouth mercifully closed. Tilly sat on the small stool on the other side of the fire, her feet up on the fender to keep them dry, and also said nothing. All she could do was listen. It was all any of them could do.
‘Tell us from the beginning, Polly,’ Duff said in a matter-of-fact voice, neither hectoring nor making any offers of gentleness. ‘We cannot answer any of your questions until you have told us all there is that we should know. Are you saying you set fire to the house next door?’
She gaped at him. ‘Oh, Mr Duff, not what you coul
d call – I mean – oh, Mr Duff, I don’t know!’
‘Well, tell us what you do know,’ he said and looked at her with an unsmiling face. It was an odd conversation, for she was still sitting on his lap, but somehow he managed to set a distance between them for all that, and she behaved as though she were, in fact, standing in front of him with her hands folded on her apron in the time-honoured manner of servants being reprimanded. He has a great gift for dealing with people, Tilly discovered with a sudden excess of maternal pride. Dear Duff –
‘We cannot possibly understand it all until you do. All of it,’ Duff went on with a slight edge of asperity in his voice, for she had not answered, but sat staring down at her lap.
She lifted her head at that and peeped at him with a scared look in her eyes and bobbed her head and said breathlessly, ‘Yes, sir, Mr Duff.’
‘Well?’ he said, impatiently, and she took a long breath.
‘Well, it was like – what Mr Silas said to Missus and what Missus said an’ all, and anyway, there was always so much ‘ere, and any amount of it wasted, one way and another and no one never noticed if a bit went, so I thought it no ‘arm –’
‘I said from the beginning, Polly,’ Duff said.
‘I am tellin’ you,’ she protested. ‘I got to explain properly, don’t I?’ For a brief moment there was a hint of the old combative Polly there.
‘Then be clear about it. It is very late and we are all much in need of sleep, you included. So – what did Mr Silas say to my mother that is germane – that led to whatever it led to?’ For a moment Duff sounded very young again, and Tilly wanted to reach out to him. But she managed not to.
‘He said as ‘ow it was all wrong that some people should be beggin’ and some should be so comfortable like. ’e said we all ‘ad a responsibility to everyone, in a fair world. ’e said as ‘ow –’
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