Past Praying For (17 page)

It
had been no part of his intention to become further entangled in his relationship with Hayley Cutler. But when she had phoned his office so unexpectedly that afternoon, saying that her kids were off to a rock concert and then staying over with friends...He had hesitated for the fatal second which allowed her to say, ‘I’ll get in the oysters, if you bring the champagne, and we can move on to the Southern Comfort later. Any sort of comfort you care to name, in fact.’

The
low, creamy voice affected him irresistibly. What difference did it make, anyway? He could pull the plug on the whole thing any time he chose, tomorrow just as easily as today.

After
that it was the easiest thing in the world to phone Lizzie and tell her he would be dining in London and back late. He didn’t know whether she believed him or not, but then he didn’t really care, as long as she made the right noises and didn’t ask questions.

And
so it came about that he was lying in Hayley’s kingsize bed, under Hayley’s black sheets, dozing in sated satisfaction, when they heard the sirens.

They
both sat up, but it was Piers who leaped out of bed, and from the window caught a glimpse of the fire engine as it raced through the village. It was only seconds later that the siren stopped.

Piers
swore. Hayley, who had sunk back on to her pile of scarlet and black pillows, raised her brows in lazy enquiry.

‘F
or God’s sake, it’s a fire in the village! That means that everyone and his dog will be out on the streets, gawping. Throw me my trousers, will you?’

She
made no move to help, and her lips tightened just a fraction, but her voice was caressing as she said, ‘Well, honey, there are no problems, only opportunities, as they told me in business school. Why not stay a bit longer, till the fuss is over?’ She patted the bed suggestively.

By
then there were more sirens.

‘
You have got to be joking,’ he said savagely, shrugging himself into his shirt and grabbing his tie from the floor. ‘If it’s something big, they could be here for hours. And Lizzie will be awake – how could I possibly tell her I’d been out to dinner until breakfast time?’

‘
Sure. And who knows? It could be your own house, even.’

Piers
blanched, and swore again as he lost his balance, dragging on a sock. He thrust his feet into his shoes without tying the laces – he could attend to the finer points of his appearance once he reached his car, parked in a shady corner of the common – and snatching up his jacket hurried to the door.

A
belated impulse made him stop. ‘Sorry it had to end this way. That was – what can I say? – fantastic.’

‘
The best,’ she purred as she snuggled back into the luxuriously-piled pillows. As he shut the door, he did not notice that her eyes were hard as pebbles. He did not hear her sit up and punch those same pillows in a passion of rage.

Piers
had kept to the shadows of the trees and shrubs which overhung the pavement when he arrived, but with lights popping on in houses all over the place, he dared not risk that now. The alleyway leading to the common turned and ran along the backs of the houses; there was a fence at the bottom of Hayley’s garden which was awkwardly high and would do nothing for his city suit, but the alternatives were worse. Swearing and sweating, he heaved himself over it and reached his car without mishap. He sat there for a moment, thankfully, regaining his breath, then drove slowly home.

Elizabeth
was sound asleep when he went in, her hand tucked under her cheek like a child’s, but Paula tapped on the door a minute later. She had been wakened by the fire engines and was too excited about the fire to notice her father’s uncharacteristically dishevelled appearance. With a finger to his lips, he warned her not to wake up her mother, and gave his whispered agreement that she could go along for two minutes to see what was happening.

He
came out in his pyjamas when he heard her return ten minutes later.

‘
It’s the Boltons’ garage,’ she said in a breathless whisper. ‘They’ve got loads of fire engines and police cars and everything.’

He
was startled. ‘The Boltons’? Nobody hurt, though?’

She
shook her head. ‘It’s just the garage and Mrs Bolton’s car, that’s all. Ben said the car might blow up and we could all be wiped out, but I don’t believe him. The flames were brilliant, though.’

She
sounded wistful, but didn’t try to argue about going back to bed.

He
switched off the bedside light and slid quietly into bed himself. That had been a near thing! It just showed, these risks were simply unacceptable, and the resolution he had made that morning took firmer root.

***

Wakened by the sirens, Margaret Moon had left the vicarage in haste, with an unarticulated sense that it formed some part of her duty to be where trouble was. Now, she was regretting her failure to subject impulse to the discipline of scrutiny. She found herself contemplating a row of backs, dramatically silhouetted against the swirling flames and the spotlights from the fire engines, and feeling awkwardly redundant. It was her vocation to help, but all she was doing at the moment was gaping vulgarly at someone else’s disaster, no better than the despicable voyeurs who clutter the motorways after a pile-up.

And
could she, she wondered with her usual painful honesty, be quite certain that it was pastoral duty and not prurience which had prompted her impulsive action? She felt uncomfortable and foolish, unable now to walk away without making an even more elaborate statement.

There
was a sudden shower of sparks, prompting a collective ‘Oooh!’ from the crowd, like spectators at a fireworks display. As the heads swivelled, Margaret noticed that Suzanne now stood a little apart, her shoulders hunched as she looked bleakly straight ahead.

Margaret
touched her arm.

‘
Mrs Bolton – Suzanne – are you all right? You’re looking very chilled; can’t I take you off somewhere to keep warm while the experts deal with all this?’

The
woman turned. She was shivering so violently that her teeth were chattering, though probably as much with shock as cold, and for a moment she stared at Margaret as if she barely knew her. The strain showed nakedly in her face, until she straightened her shoulders and pinned on her social smile.

‘
Oh Margaret, it’s you! I’m so sorry, the light dazzled me for a moment.’ Her voice was much too bright. ‘No, honestly, I’m absolutely fine, just a little bit shaken, obviously. It’s awfully kind of you to offer, though.’

It
was amazing how it all came out, Margaret reflected, as if at the touch of a button – the middle-class response. Suzanne had managed to make all the right noises, the ones which allowed people to make the socially appropriate offers of help in the comfortable certainty that they would not be embarrassingly accepted. That left everyone with their self-esteem intact – she, strong and self-sufficient, they kind and concerned – which worked splendidly unless the strength and self-sufficiency were as illusory as the kindness and concern. Margaret had long ago learned to free herself from the tyranny of this sort of convention.

‘
I know you feel obliged to say that, and I admire your bravery. But from experience I also know that women have a dreadful tendency to go on saying they’re fine, in case they inconvenience somebody else.’

Suzanne,
who had half-turned away, stopped. When she turned back, her lip was trembling.

‘
I don’t want to cry,’ she whispered.

‘
Of course you don’t, not in front of all these people,’ Margaret said briskly. This was not the moment for debilitating sympathy. ‘What you need to do is promise yourself a good bawl later, to get it out of your system. I promise to stand by with the man-sized tissues, and to keep you supplied with tea laced with brandy – it’s my secret weapon against the bad moments of life.’

Suzanne
managed a weak smile, but there was bitterness in it. ‘Most of my moments seem to be bad these days. This is just a rather spectacular example.’

‘
It’s that, certainly. But look, I really think they’re getting it under control.’

And
indeed, as she spoke, it became apparent that the flames were dying down. Hissing, spitting and steaming, the blaze subsided.

Its
final extinction was almost shocking in its abruptness, the fiery brilliance transformed in minutes to a charred and sodden greyness. The roof had not fallen in, the petrol tank had not exploded, the houses on either side were safe. Destruction limited, disaster averted. All in a day’s work.

They
would play the hoses on the timbers for a bit longer, of course, because smouldering wood could all too easily reignite, and rake out the rubble and set a watch, but the show was over.

‘
I really thought the whole thing was going to go up,’ Margaret heard one man say, in a tone that was almost aggrieved at the anti-climax; yawning and shivering, people were starting to disperse.

Ben,
still clutching Tigger, now sound asleep in his arms, went to huddle against his mother.

‘
Time we got you back to bed, young man,’ Patrick was saying when the fire chief and one of the policemen came across.

‘
I think it’s safe enough for you to go back to the house now, sir. Perhaps you could give us the key to the garage doors, and we’ll try to get the car pushed out, just in case.’

‘
Still no idea how it started?’ Patrick asked, but the fire chief shook his head.

‘
We haven’t had a chance to look yet. But we’ll find out, I can promise you that.’

The
policeman, the sort of fresh-faced lad who made everyone else feel old, added, ‘We’ll need statements from you, of course, but it’ll be time enough in the morning. Unless there’s anything you want to tell us now, I’d just make the most of what’s left of the night, if I were you.’

‘
But the men!’ Suzanne exclaimed. ‘They’ve worked so hard, I must make some tea for them.’

Margaret
could see what it had cost her to make the gesture; that she accepted Margaret’s offer of help without polite protest was eloquent proof of her exhaustion. Patrick took Ben and went to fetch the key; they followed more slowly.

From
the front, the garage looked oddly normal, with the double door still padlocked in place, but the side and back walls were almost demolished, and the outside of the car was burned and blackened. Firemen were using their huge boots to kick out charred timber and were pulling away loose struts, raking the hotter embers outside. They were calling cheerfully to one another, happy at the successful conclusion to the night’s work.

Margaret
glanced at the detritus as they passed, picking their way carefully along the path which was awash with foam, water and soggy ash. It had clearly been a garage of exemplary tidiness, and she contemplated, wincing, her own garage clutter being similarly exposed to public view. It was probably the sort of thing your mother should warn you about, like wearing clean underwear in case you were knocked down.

There
was nothing to shame the Boltons here. A barbecue, grill slightly twisted; a garden lounger now melted plastic and warped metal; a ruined lawnmower and an old umbrella reduced to a skeleton of spokes and a blackened bone handle...

She
stopped. It felt as if everything stopped: heart, lungs, brain, even time itself as she recognized the innocent domestic object, its handle familiar even under the coating of soot.

Her
father’s old umbrella, which had stood in her own hall until this very afternoon. Until she had given it to the old friend who had come to her vicarage for his beggar’s due.

She
opened her mouth to speak, but before she could frame the words, there was a hoarse, chilling cry from the fireman who had just opened the implacably pad¬locked doors.

***

‘Smoke inhalation,’ they said, then added, ‘most probably,’ which didn’t help when you had caught sight of the charred, blackened, twisted shape which had been the man you had warmed and nourished and laughed with only that afternoon, a man who had been drunken and destitute, yet blessed with a serene acceptance of his disordered life and an uncomplicated zest for chance-come food and warmth.

Suzanne
was in the bathroom, retching. Patrick had hustled Ben upstairs, mercifully before he had noticed anything further amiss. Margaret, ashen-faced, had sat down abruptly at the kitchen table when she realized that her legs had turned to rubber. Her lungs felt raw with the smell of smoke; was she imagining that it held a heavier stench than that of charred wood and blistered paint? She tried not to think about it.

After
that, everything changed. The firemen who had been so cheerily clearing up were removed from what had now become the scene of the crime; other vans arrived with plastic sheeting and arc lights, and the stolid, reassuring uniformed officers had been replaced by tough-looking young men in jeans and casual jackets. A policewoman in plain clothes, introducing herself as Jackie, was finding her way about the unfamiliar kitchen with the air of one who was no stranger to this duty, setting out mugs and making tea.