Fire-Raiser Read online

  Maurice Gee

  THE FIRE-RAISER

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Contents

  1 The red balaclava

  2 Miss Perez

  3 Buck’s Hole

  4 Clippy pays a call

  5 The letter

  6 At Chalmers’ warehouse

  7 The ram

  8 Kitty plays the piano

  9 The moon, and other things …

  10 Britannia meets the Kaiser

  11 Girlie’s Hole

  12 The white lady

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  THE FiRE-RAiSER

  Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand’s bestknown writers for adults and children. He has won a number of literary awards, including the Wattie Award, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the New Zealand Fiction Award, the New Zealand Children’s Book of the Year Award and the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement.

  Maurice Gee’s children’s novels include Salt, Gool, The Fat Man, Orchard Street, Hostel Girl, Under the Mountain and The O Trilogy. Maurice lives in Nelson with his wife Margareta, and has two daughters and a son.

  ALSO BY MAURICE GEE

  Under the Mountain

  The World Around the Corner

  The Halfmen of O

  The Priests of Ferris

  Motherstone

  The Champion

  The Fat Man

  Orchard Street

  Hostel Girl

  Salt

  Goal

  Chapter One

  The Red Balaclava

  The Jessop fire-raiser had been quiet for almost three months. Some in the town believed nothing more would be heard of him. Others held the opinion that his last fire had so nearly got away and destroyed the row of houses behind the church that he had become frightened, perhaps that he felt remorse and would give himself up one day and ask forgiveness for his sins from God. The vicar of All Saints, the church burned to the ground on Christmas night, 1914, held that opinion. He was wrong. All of them were wrong. The man with the fire in his head – so Thomas Hedges, headmaster of Jessop Main School, described him – had drawn back to make a better jump. He had reached the point where he wanted to burn a building with some live thing inside.

  On the night of 23 March 1915, he was out again. As usual, he had not waited until the town was asleep. He liked to see large crowds at his fires and taste their fear. He hugged himself at such times. He bit the insides of his cheeks to stop himself from shouting his delight. Light and flame, which he found glorious, bathed him like water and made him newborn. So he was out just after 10 o’clock on the twenty-third, creeping through the lanes and alleys of Jessop, by hedges and board fences, by park and riverbank, sack on his shoulder, black baggy coat lapping his ankles, and red balaclava tight on his head. No one saw him, no one had a glimpse. He threaded his way into the town as though on tracks only he knew. He was a big man, agile, strong. When he came to the fence at the back of Dargie’s Livery Stables he hefted his sack over with one hand and set it down on the other side, then vaulted after it like a boy. For a moment he crouched in shadows, looking at the building, the roof tall as a church, the weatherboards warped by forty years of Jessop sun. He loved that old timber. It would burn like kindling wood. Then he ran to the door of the office where old Dargie sat all day, joking with his grooms, and broke it open with a pinchbar from his sack. He went through the room in three strides, but opened the door carefully on the other side. He did not want to alarm the horses.

  The big shed at Dargie’s was ninety feet long. The darkness in its ceiling was like a cloud and the fire-raiser gave it an anxious glance, as though it might open and pour down rain and douse his fire. The windows on the street side let in light from the gas lamp outside Wix’s bakery. It made the grain sacks gleam like fat gold ingots and the straw on the floor like golden thread. It caught the name ‘Dargie’ on buggies and carts, and shone on chains and harness and the worn leather of horse collars and the iron rims of wheels. It lit the rungs of the ladder going up to the loft at the far end of the shed, where a fringe of hay hung down like a beard below a mouth. Along the left-hand wall were a dozen horse stalls, but the light was blocked by wooden doors and the fire-raiser could not see how many were occupied. He heard a snicker though, and the stamp of a hoof in straw, and it made him smile. Dargie’s business was going downhill as motorcars and lorries took the place of horses, but the fire-raiser guessed that five or six animals were stabled tonight. He had nothing against horses. He liked horses, but a time had come when his fire must consume life. The horses were not important. Outrage, power, pleasure, were important.

  He reached into the pockets of his coat and hauled out handfuls of cotton waste, and into his sack for rags, old shirts, old dresses. These he stuffed into cracks and crevices, into the buggies, the feed sacks, working fast, with an eye gleaming now and then at the office and the high double doors to the street. Once a cart rumbled by, hooves went clop on the road, and the carter whistled Bonnie Jean. The fire-raiser squatted in a hollow until the sounds were gone. He grinned with elation as he crept out, and licked his lips and cleared his throat and spat in the hay. He felt he had rubbed shoulders with the town and picked its pocket. From his sack he took a gallon can of benzine. He unscrewed the cap and tossed it away and poured the liquid on hay and rags and grain sacks. It gleamed like glass and gurgled like a tap. A horse in the nearest stall snorted and the white of its eye showed over the door. The fire-raiser snarled, ‘You can squeal all you want in a minute.’

  He saved a quarter gallon – sloshed it in the can to make sure – and climbed the ladder to the loft like a spider in a web. Hay lay thick up there, springy under his feet, and he fluffed it up before splashing it with benzine. He threw the can further back in the loft where it boomed softly and made the horse snicker again. ‘Shuddup!’ he said. He took a box of matches from his coat and rattled it – the sound of matches made him lick his lips – and chose one, felt its beautiful round head and dry wood stem. Matches were magical to him and full of secret whispers, promises. He scratched it on the box and flame sprang out. The red balaclava bloomed like a rose. He let the matchstick burn, knowing the power in his hand, and when the flame had nothing more to feed on, thrust it like a gift into the hay. Flame filled the inside of his head. It ran along his arteries. It licked around his bones. He gave a whinnying scream, like a horse, and capered in a dance, swimming in the red and yellow light. Then he seized a torch of hay and leaped with it flaming in his hand, with his black coat flapping, down to the hay pile in the shed, and rolled in it, setting it on fire, and ran along the wall, touching things as though with a wand, waking them up. Flames ran like snakes. He kept up with them, whooping. Horses reared and screamed in their stalls. He came to the double doors and burst them open and stood in the entrance, looking at the furnace he had made. Then he raised one arm, with fingers hooked, saluting, and gave a soundless yell, and vanished into the night. In Dargie’s Livery Stable the fires leaped and the horses screamed.

  It was late for Irene Chalmers to be up, and late for Noel and Kitty Wix, but bedtime was not a fixed part of Phil Miller’s day. He went when he felt like it and most nights was out in the streets of Jessop, round the pub doors, watching the night life. Phil was the son of Charlie Miller, tally clerk once, and then a drunkard, and over the hill now at White’s Landing working in the sawmill and living in the camp. Phil lived alone. He scavenged and ran errands, delivered this and that, and picked up things he claimed were lying about. He wasn’t a thief, though he got close, or a vagabond either. Nor was he a schoolboy, although he went to school, barefoot, three days out of five. If asked, he would have called himself a Port boy. At Jessop Main School his gang was Port Rats. They had a running war with the River Rats.

  Phil he
ard the alarm for Dargie’s fire and saw the glow in the sky and beat the brigade there. He was one of the first to arrive, coming into the street just as the mayor’s car stopped. If he had looked he would have seen Irene Chalmers in the back, and that would have made him curl his lip. Maybe he would have shouted some insult, or spat on the car. He could spit twenty feet. But the fire was well alight, leaping in windows, and Wix the baker was rescuing horses and Phil ran to help. So Irene Chalmers, ‘Charmy-Barmy’, was spared his contempt.

  Irene had been to the Princess to see Bronco Billy’s Wild Ride. Mrs Chalmers found the movies vulgar and was telling her husband so as they drove home. They were not going to that sort of thing again. Irene didn’t listen. This went on all the time and she had learned to float away until her name came up. Then she got very sharp and clever, and stayed very quiet, just putting in coughs and sniffs when they were needed. If she did it right she could make her father stand up to her mother, make him tell her, ‘Leave the child alone’. Tonight she let it go on like voices in a bedroom, and she replayed little pieces of Bronco Billy. She had been enthralled. Even bald old Trumbull thumping on the piano had caught her up, although she knew the easiness of what he was doing. Bronco Billy crouched on his horse’s neck while arrows whistled by, and gallopy-gallopy-gallop went the piano. Then, somehow, she was at a fire, and real horses stood on their hind legs, and her father was running down the road. Phil Miller was there – ‘Fleabites’ he was called – and no doubt he was to blame. She wanted to see better and she got out of the car and ran after her father until she felt her face go hot with fire. Her mother caught her and tried to take her back, but too many people were in the way, and her mother got interested too. They stood in front of Wix’s shop and watched. Irene was able to say next day she was one of the first to see the fire.

  But Kitty Wix discovered it. Kitty Wix was first. Normally her father baked early in the morning, but now and then a special order came from White’s Landing – loaves and pies for logging gangs on special contract – and he baked at night so the carrier could load up at daybreak. Kitty and her brother, Noel, sometimes came to help. They were there, in the bakehouse, on the night of the fire. George Wix opened the oven and looked at the loaves at the very moment the fire-raiser was climbing into the loft. The baker was wearing an apron and a white cap, a costume that made him play the clown for his children. He was a brisk, plump man, given to snorts and whistles and exclamations of mock woe. Quotations bubbled from him, apt, inapt, and comic verse, or tragic verse given a comic inflexion. His tongue could not be still and seemed to bounce along in time with his hands, always busy. He peered at the loaves and cried, ‘Lordy, Lordy! A smell of burning fills the startled air. Hand me that paddle, Noel. And bring your basket. You too, Kit, or else the multitudes will not be fed.’

  He spilled out the hot loaves and Noel humped his basket to the table and tipped them on a cooling tray and spread them out. Wix filled Kitty’s basket. He tapped a loaf with his forefinger and listened like a doctor listening to a chest. ‘You have baked me too brown, I must sugar my hair. Kitty love, leave those and run along home. And take a loaf for your Ma. Noel, stoke up. We can’t leave White’s Landing without ’umble pies.’ He closed the oven door and hopped across to a bench, where he pummelled a great lump of dough with his fists. ‘Off you go, Kit. Don’t dawdle.’

  Noel was feeding lengths of wood into the firebox. ‘She’s scared of the dark.’

  ‘I am not,’ Kitty said. ‘I want the best loaf, that’s all.’

  ‘All Wix loaves are best loaves. Hurry, love. Your Ma’ll be dropping her stitches.’

  Kitty chose a loaf and wrapped it in her apron and held it to her stomach like a hot-water bottle.

  ‘Tell her Noel won’t be long. It’s midnight for me. Who ne’er the mournful midnight hours –’

  ‘Weeping on his bed has sate,’ Kitty finished. ‘You’re silly, Dad.’ She let herself out into the alley leading to Dargie Street. To tell the truth, she was scared of the dark, but the alley was lit by the gas lamp in front of the shop, so this part of the walk didn’t worry her. She unwrapped a corner of the loaf and nibbled the crust, carefully, so her mother wouldn’t notice. At the end of the alley she heard a strange noise. It seemed to be a sound of wind and a neighing of horses, almost as if a gale was coming and horses were galloping ahead, escaping it. She stepped into Dargie Street and saw at once the windows of the stable all lit up. The double doors were wide, like oven doors, and from inside came a flickering like a magic-lantern show. She had no time to understand that the thing that flapped and loomed like a huge black bird was a man, running on the road, and his vulture skull a red balaclava, before he knocked her tumbling back into the alley mouth. Her loaf went flying and rolled in the gutter. She knelt on hands and knees, with her head poking into Dargie Street, and watched him run away out of the light with a long, wolfish, loping stride and one arm raised sideways, crooked, black, and the fist on it shining like an egg. His coat came to his ankles; it writhed and flapped. He seemed to her eight or nine feet tall. His balaclava gave him a round inhuman head. Then she heard the horses screaming, saw the flames, and scrambled to her feet and ran down the alley and burst in at the bakehouse door.

  ‘Dargie’s stables are on fire!’ she screamed.

  That was how Kitty Wix found the fire, and how George Wix was on the spot to save the horses. He sent Noel running to ring the firebell and sent Kitty knocking on doors for help. By the time she came back, all the horses were out. Phil Miller was holding one by the mane, even though it reared and lifted him off his feet. She ran to help. ‘Easy, boy.’

  ‘She’s a mare,’ Phil Miller said. He was so contemptuous, she came back at him, ‘I saw the man who lit it.’

  ‘Garn!’

  ‘He knocked me over.’

  ‘Knocked you silly.’

  Thomas Hedges arrived, panting. ‘I’ll take her, Miller. Watch your feet, Kitty.’ He had been in the observatory on Settlers Hill. It was his ambition to discover a comet and he spent long nights searching the sky. When the firebell rang, he used the small telescope to study the glow, and when he saw how big the fire was, he ran down to help. The mare reared as he took her and George Wix hurried up and tied a cloth round her eyes.

  ‘A bad business, Mr Hedges.’

  ‘Are all the horses out?’

  ‘She was the last. We’d better get them down to Fleming’s yard.’

  ‘Our friend again, I dare say.’

  ‘I saw him,’ Kitty said, but the men were leading the horses away, and the brigade was coming with a clangour, and no one heard. Mr Chalmers, the mayor, was running about importantly, trying to make people move back. He flapped his hands up and down, he pushed as though pushing an invisible wall, but no one moved. Kitty felt sorry for Irene Chalmers, having such a feeble dad, but Irene, watching everything with her china-doll face, did not seem to care. She took no notice when her mother covered her ears so she would not hear a fireman swearing at his hose.

  They coupled up, they ran the hoses as close to the building as they could come, and turned the water on and sent it hissing and crashing through windows and doors, but nothing was going to save Dargie’s Livery Stables. The flames seemed wetter than the water and they poured everywhere, and were like a wind at the same time, slapping and thumping, puffing and beating. In the end they turned into a throat, gulping roof and walls. Great storm-clouds of smoke rolled up and vanished in the dark and sparks rode with them, swarms of busy flies. Noel, panting back through the streets after ringing the firebell, thought half the town was on fire and could not believe, when he turned into Dargie Street, that all that pulsing glow came from one fire. He was disappointed not be welcomed back as a hero. Nobody noticed him. He found Kitty and said, ‘I got there. I rang the bell,’ in a loud voice, but she said, ‘Noel, I saw him! The man who lit it. He knocked me over,’ and then, not pausing, ‘Dad got the horses out. Me and Phil Miller helped.’ He was bitter about being so far away,
running alone through dark streets while that was going on. He watched a wall go crashing down and hoped nothing would be left of Dargie’s.

  The fire-raiser stood at the front of the crowd, further up the street. His mouth was open, tasting the fire. He had been one of the first to arrive, and though George Wix had saved the horses, he was not disappointed. This was his biggest fire yet. Bigger than the church, the barn, the shop, the derelict house. Almost as big as the fires he had dreamed of as a boy. He felt the fear around him, all of it a tribute. Horses in the flames would have been even better, but this was enough.

  Chalmers came by and tried to move him back. He moved. Why not? He had to be part of everything. Another wall fell, with a whump and thump, and flames rolled like breakers and the sparks were like bees on fire. The fire-raiser laughed soundlessly. He gave mighty whoops in this skull. And stood in the crowd, a citizen of Jessop, watching the fire.

  His balaclava was in his pocket, his pinchbar in his jacket, its curved handle snug in his armpit. His old coat was hidden under the bridge. He was a big man, middle aged, with green eyes and lumpy bones in his face. Some people thought he was good looking, others that he would be if he did not look sullen so much of the time. Kitty Wix, if she had seen him, would not have recognised him as the man who had bowled her over.

  She and Noel went home, and George Wix lit his dead stove to bake the batch of pies for White’s Landing – they would not be up to his usual standard. Chalmers, the mayor, drove his wife and daughter home and went back to Dargie’s, but there was nothing he could do. Hedges went home, telling Phil Miller first that it was late for him to be wandering round and he’d better be off. He dreamed of comets that night. Phil Miller dreamed of rescuing horses and riding away on one, high into the mountains, into freezing snow and icy winds – but that was at four in the morning when the temperature always dropped and his thin blanket failed to keep him warm. The fire-raiser left soon after the mayor. That seemed the proper time. He was not interested in steam and ash and hosing down. He walked through the streets and over the bridge, where he forgot to collect his coat – his fire-coat, he thought of it, and the balaclava his fire-hat – and back to the sleeping farm in the bend of the river. He had a full, fat smile on his face. He would not need another fire for a while now. This one sat inside him like a meal. He would lie in his bed and digest it.