Fire-Raiser Read online

  Chapter Two

  Miss Perez

  Phil Miller, in holey pants and greasy shirt, was scavenging next morning in the ruins of the stables. He kept his bare feet clear of the hot ashes and kept a mound of rubble between him and the police sergeant, McCaa, and two of his constables, who were poking about where the loft had been. Phil was no favourite of theirs. He’d had more than one clip on the ear from McCaa.

  Something black and round caught his eye. He pounced on it and rubbed it on the rolled-up black bundle under his arm, and saw it shine. A penny, still warm from the fire. He put it in his pocket and sent a look in McCaa’s direction. They were excited along there and one of the constables was heaving at a beam. Phil took his chance to dig in a pile of ashes with a stick. Nothing there, but a shine of brass caught his eye across by a half-fallen wall and he worried out a carriage lamp from a tangle of scorched boards. It was as hot as a kettle and he was squatting by it, wondering if he could hide it and pick it up later, when the sergeant’s shout bounced like a fist on his skull and the man was standing over him. He put up his arm to shield himself. ‘Not doing anything, Sir. Just having a look.’

  The sergeant hauled him to his feet by the back of his shirt. ‘Pinching eh, young Miller? Got you this time.’

  ‘No, Sir. Just looking.’

  ‘What’s this then?’ He pulled the bundle from under Phil’s arm and let it fall out to its full length. It was a coat, long enough, the sergeant thought, for a man on stilts. The buttons were gone and the collar was green with age, but once it had been a very good garment. ‘Where’d you get it?’ He sniffed the cloth. ‘Not burnt, eh?’

  ‘I found it,’ Phil said. He did not expect to be believed.

  ‘Pinched it, more like.’

  ‘No, Sir. Found it just now. Under the footbridge.’

  ‘What were you doing there?’

  Phil told the truth. ‘I went for a pee, Sir.’

  ‘I catch you peeing boy, I’ll skin you alive. Pee on your own place.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  The sergeant grunted. He let Phil’s shirt go and felt in the pockets of the coat and pulled out some threads of cotton waste.

  ‘There was a bit more of that. I chucked it away,’ Phil said.

  ‘What else was there? What did you pinch?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  McCaa watched him suspiciously. As crooked as a creek, this boy, a real little jailbird in the making. He felt in the pockets again. ‘Just lying on the ground there, eh?’

  ‘No, Sir. It was rolled up. Sort of hidden.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Up the top of the bank, under the boards. In some blackberries.’

  The sergeant saw a blackberry leaf stuck to the cloth. He nodded. ‘Did you see anyone hanging round down there?’

  ‘No, Sir.’ He wasn’t going to say that two men, railway clerks, had seen him peeing and shouted at him.

  ‘All right, I’ll keep it,’ McCaa said. ‘Now you clear out, young Miller. Get to school. I see you here again you’ll get a thick ear.’

  He watched the boy hurry away, and thought sourly that in a year or two he’d be burgling houses. A pity he couldn’t lock him up now and save himself trouble later.

  He rolled up the coat and told his constables to keep busy and went down the road to George Wix’s house. He’d spoken to the girl already and got nothing useful. He had learned not to trust stories from children, but she was very sure of herself, that miss. Perhaps she would recognise the garment. He spoke to her in the living room, with her mother and brother listening. The size of the coat, when he held it up, supported Kitty’s story that the man had been big.

  ‘It was all flapping round him, like wings.’

  ‘And long like this?’

  ‘Yes. Round his ankles. And he had the red thing on his head.’

  ‘Balaclava,’ Mrs Wix said, knitting in her chair.

  ‘His head was like a ball – you know, all round. And he ran funny.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Like a horse. Kind of galloping.’

  Noel made a sound of neighing and his mother leaned at him and poked his rump with a knitting needle. ‘That’s enough from you. You’re sure someone lit it, Sergeant?’

  ‘We found a can, Mrs Wix. Motor spirit. Dargie didn’t keep any of that.’

  ‘He had his arm up,’ Kitty said. ‘Like a club.’

  ‘And he didn’t look round? You didn’t see his face?’ McCaa said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re lucky,’ Noel said. They all looked at him. He grinned and cut his throat with his finger.

  ‘That’s enough, Noel. You get off to school. Leave Kitty alone.’

  ‘I think they can both go, Mrs Wix. They did very well last night. I wish we had more like them.’

  So the Wix children went to school, feeling pleased with themselves. They hoped Mr Hedges would mention them in class. But Hedges, ‘Clippy’ Hedges, was in no mood to praise. He was mad as a bottle of ants, to use his own phrase. On his way to school he had dropped in for a word with Frau Stauffel, the piano teacher, and found her red-eyed from a night of weeping. She gave him a letter to read, and from the first sentence he had popped and fizzed.

  Dear Madam,

  I am writing to terminate Irene’s piano lessons. Payment has been made to the end of the term and as we have no contract, I must ask you to refund the money at your earliest convenience. Irene will shortly be going away to a private school and will continue with her music there.

  Yours faithfully,

  Ann Chalmers

  ‘You will not make repayment. You will not do it,’ Hedges said.

  ‘That is not important,’ Frau Stauffel said.

  ‘Payment is a contract. We’ll take her to court.’

  ‘But Thomas, it is not money I care for. It is Irenee. This woman, Ann Chalmers, she thinks music is for frilly girls to catch a husband. But this is not a girl, this is Irenee. She is wunderkind –’

  ‘Now, my dear. You must not use that language.’

  ‘It is my language. And his. And his.’ She pointed to busts of Beethoven and Brahms on the mantelpiece. ‘And Irenee is not some tickler of ivories. She is musician.’

  ‘Yes, Lotte, yes. I’ll see Mrs Chalmers. I’ll tell her Irene must have her chance.’

  ‘To this woman I am Hun. I shall stomp on her with my piano.’

  He left her thundering out a stomping tune, and was pleased that she had turned from tears to anger, but anger still fizzed in him as he faced his class and he shook his head at Irene as she came to the piano. He took out his tuning fork instead, and banged it on his desk and only began to simmer down when he heard its note. Hedges was a man who liked children, unlike many teachers he had known. He wasn’t with his pupils long before a sense of expectation filled him, a sense of happy futures. He was oppressed as well by a knowledge of meanness, cruelty and pain, all waiting round corners, but he never let that bother him more than a mild headache or a bit of heartburn would have. He believed one must carry on as though life were the happy thing it could be. Children deserved no less.

  He was a square-built man with an ugly face: nose like plasticine dented by a thumb, eyes that went one this way, one that, but saw well enough, and mouth like a leather purse, full of crooked teeth. His skin was pitted from some childhood illness and one of his ears mauled as though by a cat. Children had been known to cry at the sight of him, but those in standard six, his class, were proud of his ugliness. He had been at Jessop Main School twenty years, five as headmaster.

  The class sang Men of Harlech, then Hedges wagged his thumb at Irene and she trotted to the piano, bright and eager, and gave the keys her beautiful sure touch. She did not know, Hedges guessed, what her mother had done.

  Hark hark the lark at Heaven’s gate sings

  While Phoebus ’gins to rise…

  The playing was much better than the singing.

  ‘There,’ Hedges said, ‘that’s opened our lu
ngs. Now we’ll stretch our minds. Arithmetic.’

  ‘Sir, Sir?’ cried a boy called Bob Taylor.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘Some British ships got sunk in the Dardanelles.’

  ‘And some French,’ Kitty Wix said.

  ‘The Turks are floating mines down with the current,’ Noel Wix said.

  ‘I know, Wix. I’m glad to see you’re reading the newspaper. Arithmetic.’

  ‘Sir,’ Phil Miller said, ‘the British captured Neuve Chapelle.’ He pronounced it ‘Newve Chappie’.

  ‘Neuve. Neuve. Watch my lips. Neuve Chapelle. That’s here.’ Hedges strode to the wall-map, which was pinned with flags in a crooked line. He shifted one a quarter inch. ‘But you see, it’s no real advance…’ He stopped and faced the class, and grinned. ‘Nearly, but not quite. Get your books out.’

  ‘Did you see the fire, Sir?’ Taylor said.

  ‘Why did Mr Wix cover up the horses’ eyes?’ Irene asked.

  ‘So they couldn’t see the flames.’

  ‘They could hear them, Sir.’

  ‘A horse’s brain works differently. It’s smaller than the human brain, compared with its body size.’

  ‘Their heads are bigger, Sir,’ Phil Miller said.

  ‘But the cranial cavity…’ Hedges tapped his head. Then he sighed. He knew very well what was happening, and liked it more than arithmetic. A principle of his teaching was to grasp children at the moment of their interest, and he saw interest in his class right now as well as cunning. ‘All right. Arithmetic later. Miller. Wix. Ask Miss Perez if she’ll step down.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘Walk, if you don’t mind. And ask politely. She’s a lady who’s used to ceremony.’

  Phil and Noel ran in the corridor. Phil, barefooted, reached the steps to the belfry first. They were not friends. Phil was a Port Rat and Noel a River Rat.

  ‘Quit shoving.’

  ‘You shouldn’t wear shoes, Wix. They slow you down.’

  They scrambled up the narrow stairs and Phil opened the green-painted door at the top. The belfry was a little room, ten feet square, with a bell-tower like a chimney on top. The rope hung down, greasy with years of handling, and was looped over a nail in the wall. A clutter of junk filled the room: old desks, old slates, Indian clubs, hoops, broken bats, deflated footballs, mops and buckets, maps and charts, a dented trumpet, a kettle drum. Phil threaded through and came to a tall cupboard in a corner. Like the door, it was tongue-and-groove and painted green. It looked like a coffin standing on end. Phil took a key from a nail. He swallowed and waited till Noel was at his side.

  ‘You open, eh?’

  ‘Sure,’ Noel said, and took the key. He was nervous too, but was not going to show it. He opened the cupboard and they looked at Miss Perez. She glimmered at them, smiling, with her head bent in a regal way. Her slender feet were in line with their knees, her hands, palm up, at her waist, seemed to offer, but the rest of her, so empty, seemed to want.

  ‘I wonder if she was pretty?’ Noel whispered.

  ‘She was probably fat. With a face like Hedges.’ Phil felt better, saying that. He reached in and took the frame that held the skeleton upright. ‘Grab it lower down. Come on, don’t stand there!’

  They lifted out Miss Perez and side-stepped with her through the desks and hoops. Going down the stairs, they carried her like a bed, Phil at the head, Noel at the feet, but stood her up, remembering ceremony, for her entry into Hedges’ room. The class sighed, and groaned, and gave a hiss of fear. Hedges, though, wouldn’t have any nonsense. If Miss Perez was going to cause awe, he meant it to be as a fine piece of engineering. His first job was to demystify her.

  ‘This is my good friend, Miss Perez. She apologises for her state of undress.’

  ‘Is that really her name, Sir?’ Kitty Wix asked.

  ‘Certainly, Kitty. I met her on an Amazon River steamer in ’98. She was a Spanish lady, a singer at the Manaos Opera. She threw herself into the river for hopeless love of an Italian tenor.’

  ‘Did she drown, Sir?’ Irene asked.

  ‘The piranhas ate her. Savage little fish. When we got her out, this is the way she was. Picked clean. If you look closely you can see teeth marks on her bones. The Italian tenor was so upset he sang an aria. It made us all cry. Then I bought her from the captain for seven shillings.’

  Kitty grinned. ‘That’s all lies, Sir.’

  ‘It’s a kind of truth, Kitty. When we know nothing we’re entitled to invent. But now – look at this, see the lovely way she’s put together. The variety of movements she makes is matched by the variety of her joints. This one here –’ he touched her elbow – ‘is a hinge joint. See how it rolls.’

  He pulled a lever on the frame supporting Miss Perez and her forearm came up. The class gave a cry, half shock, half excitement. Hedges ignored it. He demonstrated the movement again. ‘And there’s a pivot joint that goes with it, so we can get another movement. See. Like that. Up and down we go, and then we twist. Marvellous, eh?’

  ‘You were going to tell us about brains,’ Irene said.

  ‘So I was. Miss Perez could keep us busy for days. For a lifetime. Her loveliness increases –’

  ‘Sir,’ Irene complained.

  ‘I’m sorry. The brain. You see how big this space is? I could get both my fists in if I tried. But a horse’s brain wouldn’t be much bigger than one fist. The human brain weighs three pounds. Think of three pounds of butter –’

  ‘It would melt, Sir,’ Noel said.

  ‘Three pounds of mince. That would be better. And every little particle crammed with cells, taking information in, sending instructions out, making all your senses work, and muscles. Making you laugh and cry and think. Let me see. The brain is a hive with millions of bees, and your body is a garden full of flowers, a farm with clover and buttercups…No, no, mustn’t get poetic.’ He scratched his head.

  ‘Why not, Sir?’ Kitty said. She’d been enjoying it.

  ‘Sir,’ Irene said, ‘Miss Perez has got a very round head.’

  ‘Yes, she has.’ Hedges felt the shape with both hands. ‘Some people would say that shows she’s musical. This little bump here –’ he put his finger on a bulge above the skull’s ear hole – ‘represents harmony. But of course, phrenology isn’t a science any more than astrology is.’

  ‘Would the fire-raiser have a bump?’ Noel asked.

  ‘If we believed in it, Wix, he certainly would. Destructiveness is here –’ he touched the place – ‘very close to music, strangely enough. But it’s nonsense. All we can say is, whoever lights those fires has got dark things in his mind. Or perhaps his mind is full of flames. Now that’s a science, a brand new science called psychology.’

  ‘Would Germans have a special-shaped head?’ Phil asked.

  ‘They’ve got square heads,’ Bob Taylor said.

  ‘Rubbish, Taylor,’ Hedges said.

  ‘That’s what my dad says.’

  ‘Your dad is wrong.’

  ‘If that’s a lady, Sir,’ Kitty said, ‘she should have one more rib than you.’

  ‘Who told you that, Kitty?’

  ‘God made Eve out of Adam’s rib.’

  ‘It’s in the Bible,’ Irene said.

  ‘You mustn’t believe everything you read in the Bible, Irene.’

  ‘Mr Hedges!’ cried a voice from the door. Noel and Phil had left it open and Mrs Bolton stood there, framed like a photograph. She was the senior woman teacher on the staff, and Hedges stalked in her life with cloven hoof. She saw herself as locked in battle with him, fighting for Christian behaviour, right belief of every kind. She was appointed saviour, she believed, of Jessop’s children. It was the main cause in her life, and she would not have had Hedges out of the school for anything.

  ‘Mr Hedges!’

  ‘Ah, Mrs Bolton. Captain Nemo welcomes you aboard.’ He pulled a lever and the skeleton’s hand came up in a wide-fingered salute.

  M
rs Bolton was not affronted, not afraid. She looked through Captain Nemo/Miss Perez. ‘I heard you, Mr Hedges. I’m not going to take it any further in front of the children, but I shall have a word with Reverend Wilmott.’

  ‘Perhaps you and he would like to count the Captain’s ribs?’

  ‘You told us she was Miss Perez, Sir,’ Kitty cried.

  ‘Ah, Kitty, she can be whoever we want. Remember what I told you, we’re entitled to invent. Now I think I’d better take the lady for some tea. Mrs Bolton has some things she’d like to say.’

  He picked up the skeleton and left the room. The class gave a sigh and made a desk-rattle of satisfaction.

  ‘Quiet, children!’ Mrs Bolton cried. ‘Settle down.’ She drew in her breath, settled on them damply, weightily. ‘Arms folded. Shoulders back. I want to talk about our patriotic pageant. Mr Wilmott and I have finished the words. We have a title now: Britannia Awakes! That is not to say she ever slept. Yesterday I had some gratifying news. Mr Jobling, our Member of Parliament, will attend. And the proceeds will go to the Belgian Relief Fund.’

  ‘Where will we do it?’ someone asked.

  ‘In St Andrews hall. In three weeks’ time, which is not enough. Not nearly enough, but that’s when Mr Jobling can get here. So, we must throw ourselves into it. There are songs to learn and costumes to make. And today I want to choose the speaking parts. Sit up straight.’

  The class obeyed. Most of them were eager to be in the pageant. But they already knew who would get the best parts.

  ‘Britannia. We must have someone who stands up like a soldier, who can use her voice. So – Kitty Wix.’