Fire (22 page)

Keith, also terrified and aware that there suddenly seemed to be smoke seeping into every part of the store, decided it was time he got out himself, and told Max he was going back downstairs to recheck the first floor.

Then the lights went out.

Peg, who was on the late lunch shift, said ‘Bugger, that’s all we need’, and walked over to the window. It faced east and from her vantage point she could see down to the busy wharves and right out across the harbour, but only a portion of the lower end of Queen Street.

‘There’s a whole lot of people on the street,’ she remarked.

‘It’s the week before Christmas,’ Nyla snapped, annoyed that the power had gone out because she needed to use the steam press.

‘No, I mean they’re all over the road. And the traffic’s stopped.’

Nyla came over and joined her. ‘Look, there’s a fire engine. And another one. There must be a fire somewhere.’

‘I thought I heard sirens,’ Daisy said.

Beatrice Button looked up from the hat she was working on. ‘Are they stopping?’

Nyla stood on tiptoe. ‘I can’t see, they’ve gone out of sight. But I can’t hear the sirens any more.’

Very calmly, Beatrice said, ‘Girls, just to be on the safe side, I think we should go and find out what’s happening.’

Daisy, Nyla and Peg stared at her.

‘Do you think the fire’s here, at Dunbar & Jones?’ Peg asked nervously.

‘Of course not,’ Beatrice replied. ‘But if there is a fire, and it’s in a building close to us, it might be a good idea to go outside.’

She set her work aside and stood up. ‘Now, grab your things, but only if they’re handy, and we’ll go and see, shall we?’

Mopping his sweating face with his handkerchief, Keith trotted down the public stairs to the first-floor landing, then continued on down towards the ground floor. The temperature seemed to be increasing with every step he took, and the smoke was certainly much denser down here now, stinging his eyes and catching in his throat and making him cough.

When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he grasped the handle of the door closing off the stairwell, then screamed and whipped his hand back; the handle was red hot. Flapping his arm wildly, he pulled his jacket sleeve down over his other hand and snatched the door open, and was immediately sent reeling by a blast of air as hot as a furnace. Flames exploded into the stairwell, and Keith only just managed to kick the door shut again. He staggered dazedly back up the stairs, burnt hand forgotten, then slumped against the wall on the first-floor landing to
regain his breath. Through the window, he could see on Wyndham Street below, and on Queen Street to his left, that four fire engines had arrived, and that the police were halting traffic on both streets and erecting barricades. He was horrified. Had it been only twenty minutes since he’d gone down to the basement and seen just a few wisps of smoke down there? What had happened? How had the fire escalated so quickly?

He tried the window, but it had been painted shut and wouldn’t budge. If he could smash it, though, he could get out that way and crawl across the roof of the verandah and then jump off—it would be a drop of only about ten feet at the most. He started coughing again, and realized that the smoke was getting denser by the second.

And then it hit him, with far more force than his terror of being caught in the fire. His beautiful money, his precious emergency box, was locked in the White Room kitchen!

He spun away from the window then, and almost banged into Max Jones.

‘Keith, what are you doing?’

‘Just having a last look—’

‘No, come on, man, it’s not safe. Get upstairs! Now!’

Max grabbed Keith’s sleeve and started pulling him up the stairs. He fell over on the landing and barked his shin atrociously, but Max kept on yanking and pulling him, not letting him go and making sure he kept going up.

‘It’s the most ghastly shock, I know,’ Max said between great gasps for air, ‘but we’re management, Keith.’ He took a firmer grip on Keith’s jacket. ‘They’re relying on us, we can’t let them down.’

But Keith, fumbling in his pocket to make sure he hadn’t lost his keys, wasn’t listening.

Irene hurried down the public stairs. She was late meeting Vince, but this time she really didn’t want to be: she was that desperate to see him, to feel his arms around her and be comforted. And she was worried. She had stopped off at furnishings to make sure he was still coming but hadn’t been able to find him. Or anyone, actually. But perhaps he was already down there, or maybe it was something to do with the power going out. In the back of her mind she had heard sirens outside but the sound had hardly registered.

Then, suddenly, Mr Beaumont and Mr Max were staggering towards her up the stairs like a pair of drunks, Mr Max calling out something she didn’t quite catch. They both looked very peculiar, dishevelled and, well, rather grubby. And why could she smell smoke?

Mr Max barked, ‘Go back upstairs, there’s a fire.’

‘What?’

‘In the basement, and it’s spreading. Get back upstairs.’

Irene gasped. But what if Vince was already down there, waiting for her?

‘I’m going down,’ she said.

Max grabbed her arm. ‘You can’t get out, not this way. The fire’s reached the ground floor and the bottom of the public stairwell is blocked off.’

Irene’s eyes widened. ‘Oh Jesus, it’s serious, isn’t it?’

Wishing she would just shut up and get moving, Keith snapped, ‘Go on, go back up!’

‘But what about everyone on the ground floor?’ Irene exclaimed, the magnitude of the situation finally sinking in. ‘And the first floor? And how will we get out if we go back up?’

‘The ground, first and second floors have been cleared. The fire brigade are here, they’ll get us out,’ Max said.

He started to lead Irene back up the stairs, but she wrenched her arm out of his grasp.

‘But there’s dozens and dozens of people still up there! It’s lunchtime, they’re in the caf! And what about the workrooms? How will we all get out?’

She lunged over to the window and looked out over Wyndham Street. The footpath opposite was empty except for firemen, but when she pressed her face against the glass and looked to the left she could see the crowds of people behind the barricade across Queen Street.

Max pulled her gently away. He knew she was a staff member because he’d seen her in the typing pool, but he couldn’t remember her name. ‘Come on, Miss, let’s go up and see what we can do, shall we?’

Numbly, Irene turned to him and nodded, then let him lead her back up the stairs.

At the top they crossed the floorings department and headed for the staff stairs beyond the showroom, the only access from that point on to the floor above. Reluctantly, Keith followed Max and Irene into the staff stairwell, consoling himself with the thought that there still might be time. There had to be.

Halfway up the stairs, Irene stopped and said, ‘Did you hear that?’

‘What?’ Keith said impatiently.

‘That banging. I heard something banging.’

‘Where?’ Max asked.

‘On the landing, I think.’

Max clapped his hand to his sweating forehead. ‘Oh God, I didn’t check the lavatory.’

He dashed back down the stairs and hammered on the door to the second-floor landing toilet. It was ancient and dank and smelly and hardly anyone used it, preferring instead to take the extra few minutes to whip up to the more wholesome staff toilets upstairs.

The response was immediate—someone inside yelled that they were locked in and to let them out.

Max unlocked the door and Terry came staggering out. ‘Smoke!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can smell smoke!’

‘There’s a fire in the basement,’ Max said, and propelled him towards the stairs.

Terry blinked like someone who has been rudely awakened by the bedroom curtains being whipped open on a bright, sunny morning. ‘I was in the dunny,’ he said to Irene, ‘and then the lights went out and I couldn’t get the bloody door open.’

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Daisy’s probably upstairs.’

And then regretted it, because if Daisy
was
upstairs, that meant she wasn’t outside, down on the street, safe.

By twelve-thirty-five the ground floor was a roiling chaos of smoke and flames. The fire had burnt up from the basement through the wooden floor and was relentlessly consuming everything in its way: the manchester and fine linen especially imported from overseas, the smart suits and hats in menswear, rows of handmade Italian leather shoes, hundreds of uniforms for Auckland’s poshest schools, silk scarves and stockings in the haberdashery department. At the cosmetics bar, pots of expensive face creams and lotions
heated up and burst, and lipsticks liquefied instantly. Tea services, coffee pots, trays and cake stands in the silverware department tarnished, warped and then melted, and china plates and vases, and the glass shelves displaying them, exploded.

Then, with a series of bangs so loud that war veterans watching in the street involuntarily dived for cover, the huge plate-glass windows along both street frontages blew out, showering the footpaths and several firemen and constables outside with glass. A great groan went up from the crowd, and everyone rapidly moved back a few feet.

Inside the building, the fresh supply of air sucked in through the holes in the display windows fuelled the fire anew, sending the flames reaching even higher until they grazed, then began to feed on, the ceiling above. Within seconds, the ceiling started to disintegrate, drawing more air up into the first floor. In the basement, the walls of the lift car finally burned completely away, as had poor Jock McLean, causing the smoke and fumes from the heart of the fire to be rapidly drawn up the shaft and spew out onto every floor except for the third, which the lift didn’t reach. The escalator well was also acting as a flue, allowing even more smoke and ash to dance through the first and second floors.

Until now the staff stairs had been relatively free of smoke, as someone had had the foresight to close the doors opening onto them from the shop floors. But as soon as the fire, fed by the new influx of air, burned through the basement door at the bottom of the stairs, the smoke began to billow upwards, filling and gradually poisoning the stairwell.

Allie almost choked on her egg sandwich as someone came running into the caf, slid over on the lino, then struggled to their feet and screamed, ‘
Fire! There’s a fire—get out!
’

She glanced at Louise, who was frowning.

There was a moment of almost complete silence, then everyone started talking at once and a couple of people started moving towards the door. Allie and Louise watched them for a moment, then got up and headed for the door themselves. Suddenly there were people running, and someone started to scream. Something banged into Allie and she almost fell over, but Louise grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet again. Then came the sound of breaking glass: heads turned, attentions caught for a moment by a man standing on the cafeteria counter, waving his arms.

‘
Slow down!
’ he shouted over the noise. ‘Everyone slow down! Walk, don’t run! Slow down!’

The stampede receded to a mad rush, and Allie found that she had a fraction more space in which to move.

‘Where is it?’ someone next to her said in a panicked voice. ‘Where’s the fire?’

They were propelled out of the caf and into the hallway that led along to the third-floor offices, which, though wide, was a tight squeeze for the ninety or so panic-stricken people jammed into it. And that was when Allie saw Daisy, pressed back against a wall clutching her handbag to her stomach and looking utterly terrified. Miss Button was behind her, and so were Peg and Nyla.

Allie waved out. Daisy saw her and screamed, ‘
I can’t find Terry!
’

Louise and Allie pushed and shoved through the jostling river of people until they reached her.

‘There’s a fire,’ Daisy warbled, tears streaking her cheeks. ‘I can’t find Terry!’

Miss Button said breathlessly, ‘We were just heading downstairs.’

Louise, her face so pale that her freckles stood out in sharp relief, nodded and hooked her arm through Daisy’s. ‘So are we. Come on, let’s see if we can find him on the way, eh?’

They merged back into the crowd, allowing themselves to be carried along towards the staff stairs that would take them down to the second floor. Some people were crying now, and whoever had started screaming was still doing it. Or perhaps it was someone else now.

Beatrice tugged on Allie’s sleeve. ‘Have you seen Ruby? Miss Willow, I mean?’ And then her round face lit up as she spotted Ruby at the other end of the hallway, waving madly.

Someone yelled for everyone to be quiet for a minute; Allie couldn’t see who it was but it sounded like the man on the cafeteria counter. When he climbed up onto a chair, she saw that it was. She thought his name might be Norm O’Brien. Or was it O’Reilly? Anyway, she wasn’t sure, but she knew he worked in appliances on the second floor.

‘We’re going to go down the staff stairs,’ he announced as the noise died down.

‘Who made you the boss?’ someone called. Allie turned around; it was Vincent Reynolds.

‘Look, you can get up here on this chair if you like,’ Norm said. ‘What’s
your
plan for getting us out of here?’

There was no response.

Norm went on. ‘If the power’s off, the lift won’t be working and neither will the escalator. And if the fire’s
taken hold, there could be smoke in the public stairwell.’

‘Won’t that mean there’ll be smoke in the staff stairwell, too?’ someone asked.

‘With a bit of luck someone will have closed all the doors opening onto it, so maybe the smoke won’t have got in yet.’ He paused. ‘And if it has, then we might just have to go down as far as we can, then climb out the windows.’

There was a rash of muttering, but Norm stopped it by raising his hand. ‘Look, it sounds drastic, I know, but what’s the alternative?’ he asked. ‘Wait here and hope someone comes to rescue us? Don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a go at getting out before it’s too late.’

Someone pushed his way over to Norm’s chair, a tall man wearing a suit, then turned to face the crowd.