Fire-Raiser

by Gee, Maurice

  ‘What makes it go?’ Irene said.

  ‘Water momentum,’ Noel said. ‘It closes this valve and the water gets forced up into the chamber and along the pipe. Then the valve falls open and it all happens again.’ He enjoyed explaining things, liked feeling clever. ‘Simple,’ he said.

  Phil had been in the scrub, watching Edgar Marwick. He came back and looked at the ram. ‘We’ll jam it,’ he said.

  ‘What for?’

  Phil jerked his thumb at Irene and Kitty. ‘They’ll jam it. When he comes to fix it we do a search.’

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Kitty said.

  ‘If you like.’ Phil did not mind Kitty, it was Irene he didn’t like. ‘Do you reckon you can do it, Charmy-Barmy?’

  ‘Of course,’ Irene said. She was disappointed with Kitty and felt betrayed.

  ‘You have to stop this valve.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Bit of wood. Bit of wire.’

  Irene, wanting to be more important than Kitty, took a hairpin from her hair. ‘Will this do?’

  ‘Yeah. Good. You stick it in here, in the hinge. Stop this thing from moving. Not till you see us by the barn. When you see him coming, clear right out.’ He grinned. ‘If he catches you, he’ll eat you for his breakfast.’

  Irene curled her lip. ‘I’m not scared.’ She was terrified. Kitty grinned at her, but she looked away. She sat down by the water with her back to the ram, and only when the three had sneaked away, jumped up and ran a few steps after them. She wanted to see them for as long as she could. Phil looked back. ‘Don’t forget to take the hairpin out.’

  They kept below the riverbank, circling the farm. A tongue of bush ran into a paddock and they followed it and came within twenty yards of the barn. ‘What’s he doing?’

  ‘Sharpening tools.’

  Edgar Marwick had a grinding wheel set up on a trestle and cutting tools spread out on the ground. He was sharpening a sickle. The wheel grated like a dentist’s drill as he worked the treadle. A stream of sparks played on his hands.

  ‘Come on.’

  They crept in the bush and the edge of the barn moved round and hid him from sight. They ran for the barn, bent at the waist – and Irene, in the scrub by the river, saw them cross the band of grass like three galloping dwarfs. She saw them at the corner of the barn, stacked almost on top of each other, peering round at Edgar Marwick. Now she had to jam the valve.

  She went back through the scrub to the ram and saw it sitting there, ugly and fat, and felt it would snap at her, defend itself. She still had the hairpin in her fingers and she sneaked up on it as though it were someone she had to surprise and prick with the points. Clap, clap, thump, thump, it went. She saw the valve working like a tongue, greedily, and she almost closed her eyes as she stabbed at it. The pin went in. She wondered why the ram didn’t squeal. But it was worse than that. It was suddenly dead. In the silencing of its tongue, she heard the river rushing. Water gushed like blood through the open valve. She jerked her hand away and wiped it on her dress.

  In the yard Edgar Marwick finished one side of the sickle. He turned it round. Water had stopped spurting into the tank at the side of the house but the absence of the noise did not strike him. He turned the wheel and ran the sickle blade across it. The children watched from behind the barn. He was side on to them and the comet-tail of sparks ran up his arm into the crook of his elbow.

  ‘She must have done it by now,’ Noel whispered.

  ‘She’s messed it up. Probably wet her pants,’ Phil said.

  ‘She’ll do it,’ Kitty said. ‘Look! He’s stopped. He knows something’s wrong.’

  Edgar Marwick laid down the sickle. He held his head up, as though sniffing the wind. He swung round in a half circle, not looking for anything, but trying to find what troubled him. Then he had it; silence in the tank. He strode to it, leaped up on the stand, hauled himself upright. He jerked the hose out of its hole, and swore, and rammed it back. He leaned out like a shunter on an engine, looking at the river, his face as red as his shirt, then he jumped down and strode away with yard-long strides. He vaulted a fence, kicked a thistle, hacked it with his heel, strode on, making for the river.

  They watched him climb another fence.

  ‘Now,’ Phil said. They ran round to the double doors of the barn. ‘Kitty, you keep watch.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’ Noel said.

  ‘Benzine. Rags. Anything. That red balaclava.’

  ‘I’m going to look in the shed,’ Kitty said.

  ‘OK. But watch out for him.’

  The boys went in and Kitty slipped across to the door of a shed close to the house. Edgar Marwick kept his tools inside. She had a last look at him and saw him approaching the scrub by the river, and thought she glimpsed the blue of Irene’s dress moving in the teatree. She hoped Irene was getting away, but there really wasn’t time to worry about her. She went into the shed and started rummaging in corners.

  In the teatree Irene watched Edgar Marwick approach. She remembered him from the time in her father’s office and on the steps when he had knocked Kitty flying. Then he had seemed wild and dangerous, but now, as he grew taller crossing the paddock, as his boots ate up the land, he was like someone from a nightmare. He was magical, terrifying; she felt he could strip the bushes away with his eyes and uncover her, and reach out with an arm and pick her up. She almost felt his hand squeezing her. She imagined she could hear his boots and feel the ground trembling. Irene was used to managing adults, but knew that here was one she would never control. It was like being shown that beyond grownups was another group of beings, magical and powerful and not to be approached. She began to creep backwards, and was surprised to find her legs carrying her. When she could see him no longer she turned and ran to the river-bank. She approached the pot-bellied ram with a sidling step, scared of it too, and seized the pin and gave it a jerk.

  It would not come out.

  It was as if a hand in there was pulling against her. She gave another jerk, but it stayed fixed, and she gave a whimper of fright and looked through the scrub. Edgar Marwick’s red shirt bobbed up and down as he climbed the last fence.

  Irene knew she had no more time. She left the hairpin and scuttled sideways like a crab, and tipped herself down a bank almost into the water. A willow tree stood there, with half its roots reaching out like fingers, and she wriggled under them and found she could stand in a little chamber and see through a crack in the turf all the way back at ground level to the ram. Edgar Marwick came through the teatree. She saw him from his waist down, and saw him pause two steps from the ram – he had seen the pin – and come on with a single stride, and saw his hand reach down and give a jerk and the pin came free. She wondered why the ram did not start up, but it stayed silent. She heard Marwick grunt, and swear; a word she hadn’t heard before, but she knew it was filthy. From the way his feet moved, she knew he was hunting with his eyes. He was only ten steps from her and she saw him take those steps, and stand above her, she almost felt his hand leaning on the tree. His boots were only six inches from her nose. She stayed as still as a lizard, but her heart was banging; as loud as the ram it banged, and she couldn’t understand why Edgar Marwick didn’t hear. He kicked the ground and fine gravel came through the crack and stung her lips. He swore again, and turned and went off in his loping half-run, and she saw the hairpin shining in his fingers as he disappeared in the scrub.

  Irene stayed where she was. She did not move for a long time. She could not be sure he would not come back. At last she crept out, and she crawled through rabbit trails in the scrub, and lay on her belly, lower than the grass-tops, watching the barn. She saw Kitty come running out of a shed by the house.

  Noel and Phil had searched the barn, gone right round the walls, shifted everything that would shift, looked behind everything. Now they sat on the huge hay pile that occupied it – they had climbed it like a mountain – wondering what to do next.

  ‘We better get out. He could come back.’
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  ‘Quiet a minute.’ Phil listened. ‘We don’t have to go till the water starts in the tank.’

  Noel wondered why he hadn’t thought of that. He didn’t like the way Phil was having all the ideas.

  ‘There’s nothing here. We should look in the house.’

  ‘Not with the old tart in there. He wouldn’t keep benzine inside, anyway.’

  Noel looked round again. The air was thick with dust and soon his hay fever would start. Then he saw a little door in the wall, half buried in hay. ‘Did you look in there?’

  ‘Didn’t see it,’ Phil said.

  They slid down the pile and cleared hay in armfuls from the door. It stood chest high and was only two feet wide, fastened with a bolt. Phil worked it loose and opened the door. A grain sack covered something like a blanket. Phil pulled it aside. Two large cans of benzine stood on the floor, with smaller ones clustered round. A pile of cotton waste and rags lay at the back.

  The boys let out a sigh. ‘That’s it. We’ve got him.’

  ‘There’s a funnel. He fills one of the small cans when he goes out for a fire.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Phil breathed. ‘Now that sergeant’s going to say he’s sorry.’

  ‘What do we do? Take it with us?’

  ‘Leave it here. We bring him out.’

  ‘He won’t come. He won’t believe us.’

  ‘Get Kitty. She can see.’

  Noel stood up and started round the hay. Then he stopped. Footfalls sounded on the hard-packed earth of the yard. Edgar Marwick appeared in the door. He stood, red and ogrish, arms akimbo, legs wide. He seemed to blot out all the light from outside. A noise began in his throat and swelled into a shout of rage that echoed in the barn.

  ‘Marwick!’ Noel yelled. He ran back to Phil. ‘Split up.’ He kept going back along the wall. Phil scrambled up the stack and squatted on top. He saw Edgar Marwick still in the door, and saw him start in, and pluck a hayfork from the wall as he went by. He got ready to run down to the door, but Marwick changed direction and started up, using the fork to anchor himself on the slope.

  ‘Look out!’ Noel yelled.

  It brought Marwick round with a suddenness that made Noel trip as he turned to run, but he jumped up and went along the chasm between wall and hay, past a padlocked door in the back of the barn. Instead of sloping upwards, the hay made a cliff that could not be climbed, and at the far wall it was packed in tight, leaving no gap for him to go through. He heard Marwick panting. In a moment he would come round the corner and Noel would be trapped at the end of an alley. He dived at the hay and burrowed in. Deep in he went, pulling hay after him, hiding himself. Then he stopped. His nose was running from the dust, but he knew he mustn’t sneeze or make a sound. He heard Edgar Marwick stepping softly, and then a hissing sound that froze his blood – the sound of fork prongs sliding in hay. Everything was changed. Adults were brutal, and the game had turned to death. A step had been taken that changed the nature of things. Tears burst from his eyes. He opened his mouth in a soundless howl. Then he heard a distant yell, and heard something crack against the wall, and Marwick bellow.

  Phil had seen the danger; Marwick stepping like a wading bird, head moving, this way and that, the fork stabbing beak-like into the hay. From a little half-loft in the roof he grabbed a handful of rusty six-inch nails, an old whetstone, a broken door-hinge, and scrambled for a better view, then started pelting Marwick; first the hinge, then the whetstone, last the nails, one by one, like daggers. A nail struck, chipping skin from Marwick’s forearm. The man gave a cry, of disbelief as much as pain. He ran back to the corner and along the side of the barn, and started up the easier slope at Phil. At that moment a piercing call came from outside the barn. ‘Edgar!’

  He stopped. He listened.

  ‘Edgar! What’s happening in there?’

  Marwick glared at Phil. He held up the fork and prodded it in his direction. ‘You wait there. I’ve got you.’ He turned and walked to the door.

  When Kitty heard the first bellow from the barn she ran out of the shed and went a few steps in that direction, then changed her mind and jumped up on the veranda of the house. She ran along it, hoping to see into the barn from there, but all she could see was a slope of hay. A voice, her brother’s, yelled, ‘Look out!’ Then there was silence. She could not imagine what was happening. Marwick must be back, but why the silence? She looked towards the river and saw nothing, no Irene there. Then cracks and bangs started in the barn, hard things hitting a wall, and Marwick’s voice gave another yell. She made up her mind to go and see, but as she began to move, the door on her left started to open. She had time to run a few steps and hide behind a wicker rockingchair before Mrs Marwick came on to the veranda. The old lady called her son, called twice, shrill as a parrot.

  He appeared in the barn door. Kitty, kneeling, saw him from under the chair.

  ‘Those two town boys. I’ve got ’em cornered.’

  ‘What are they doing in there?’

  ‘I don’t know. Pinching stuff.’

  ‘Be careful, Edgar. Don’t hurt them too much.’

  ‘I’ll hurt ‘em.’ He went back into the barn. Mrs Marwick looked as if she would climb down from the veranda, but changed her mind and stood holding a post. Kitty backed away from her into a glassed-in part of the veranda, but found it blocked by a wall at the other end. It shocked her. She had expected to sneak down there and get away.

  ‘Edgar! Edgar!’ Mrs Marwick shrieked.

  Kitty looked through the glass to see what alarmed her. A Jersey bull stood in a pen at the back of the barn. She saw its wicked eyes and the rope of slobber from its chin. Then Noel was there, scrambling over the rail, with Phil behind him. They dropped into the yard and ran for the paddocks.

  ‘Edgar, they came through the bull-pen. They got out through the loose board in the back,’ Mrs Marwick cried. She came to the corner to watch them better. She had only to turn her head to see Kitty. ‘Chase them, Edgar. Run!’ Kitty heard boots thud by the veranda. She heard the panting of a heavy man and the squeak of wires as he climbed a fence. Noel and Phil had a good start. She was sure they would get away. It was herself she was worried about. Perhaps she could run by the old lady – but her arms looked so wiry and strong. She would shriek for her son. And any second now, watching the chase, she would turn into the glassed-in part of the veranda.

  Kitty took her only way of escape. Quietly, bent almost double, she opened a door and slipped into the house.

  Chapter Eight

  Kitty Plays the Piano

  She heard a faint click as the door closed, and looked around to see where she was. It took a moment for her eyes to get used to the gloom, then she saw that she was in a hallway. Chandeliers of brass and glass hung from a ceiling so high she had a sudden fearful sense this house was made for giants. Big heavy chests and cupboards lined the walls. Pictures in carved frames hung from a rail – cattle with lowered heads, grey lakes, mountains that seemed horned. The trees and flowers had all their colour faded out. A strip of floral carpet, dark red, dark blue, ran down the hall, and Kitty followed it, sliding her feet to make no sound. She tried a door handle, but it was locked and her hand came away coated with dust.

  Suddenly the door she had come through opened. Light flooded the hall. Mrs Marwick stood there, half in, half out, looking away through the veranda glass at Edgar Marwick chasing Noel and Phil. Kitty had no time. She was beside a second door and she took the handle, turned it, found the door unlocked. She pushed softly. It opened with no sound. She slipped in and closed the door behind her.

  Now she was in a dark room. She stood with her back to the door, waiting for her eyes to adjust. There were shapes all about, like boulders, like cattle, but in a moment she saw sofas, chairs, sideboards, a black piano. The shimmering in the gloom was a brass fire-guard. She smelled dust and mould, and also caught a whiff of rot, perhaps a mouse or rat dead in a wall. Across the room was something she took for a huge door but when she saw it better it turned
into red and gold drapes running almost from ceiling to floor. A door stood beyond the fireplace, on another wall. Kitty threaded her way to it, through the crowded furniture. It was locked, with no key in the keyhole. She turned to the drapes, pulled them open two or three inches. Dust rained down, silver in the sudden light. Kitty tried the window but the catch was rusted solid and would not move. The panes were frosted with dust and when she rubbed a circle, showed only dirt on the other side. She gave a little breath of fear. The only way out was through the door she had come in by.

  Kitty stood in the corner and listened. She thought she heard steps padding in the hall, but was not sure. And the soft creaking – was that feet or noises of the house?

  After a while she moved out of the corner. She saw better and her fear began to slip away as she looked at the room. Gloomy pictures, cousins of the ones in the hall, hung from a rail. Pockets of dust lay in their carved frames. Half a wall was taken up with books in a glass case, but she could not read their names and they did not look as if they were meant to be read. Their rounded backs seemed glued to each other. She drew a tiny flower in the dust on the glass. Then she looked at the framed photographs on the mantelpiece. And blinked. Went close. She was not wrong. Every photo was of the same girl. She was two or three here, eight or nine there, in clothes with lots of ribbons and frills, and smiling in one, serious in another – but the same girl. And there she was on the piano, too, in a bonnet like the one Miss Muffet wore in nursery-rhyme books. Kitty picked her up and looked at her. A pretty face, with a fat happy mouth. She looked as if she’d had lots of cake to eat. She didn’t look the sort of girl who’d want to sit still for photographs.

  Kitty put it down. She looked at the yellowed music on the piano and smiled as she saw scales she could do – easy scales. This girl could not have been very good. She touched a key and brought away her finger smudged with dust. Then she pushed the key down softly, B flat, wanting to make the softest velvet sound; but the key was dead. She kept her finger on it and felt a sponginess. It puzzled her. She threw a quick look at the door; released the key and pressed again, a little harder. No sound, and the sponginess still there. She felt as though someone had stuffed a cloth into her mouth.