Fire (23 page)

‘Who’s he?’ Allie muttered to Louise. She’d seen him around, but hadn’t had any dealings with him.

Beatrice heard her. ‘That’s Colin Crowley, the head accountant.’

Mr Crowley cleared his throat, as though preparing to announce that year’s dividends to a meeting of Dunbar & Jones’s shareholders. ‘I say we stay where we are. The fire brigade is down below, they have ladders and rescue equipment, and they’re experienced professionals who know exactly what to do. However, Mr O’Brien has just suggested that we all go trotting down those stairs, quite possibly through a wall of toxic smoke and fumes, then hurl ourselves out of windows if necessary. It doesn’t add up. It’s not a risk I’m willing to take, and I don’t think anyone else should, either.’

‘Typical accountant,’ Louise whispered.

There was another round of muttering, punctuated by the occasional sob, then some people started moving
towards the door to the stairwell, while others stayed where they were, clearly not sure whose advice to listen to. After a few minutes, by far the largest group stood clustered around the stairwell, Norm O’Brien at the front doing his best to keep everyone calm before they went down.

The exercise started off in an orderly manner, but then a bottleneck developed at the top of the stairs, and people began shoving.

‘Hey, cut it oot!’ someone shouted, and Allie saw that it was the big Scottish woman who ran the staff cafeteria. She had arms like hams and hands bigger than most men’s, and she’d raised one of them now, threatening a girl who was trying to wriggle her way to the front of the queue. ‘Ah’ll boot yis erse if ye cannae wait ye turn! Yis ent the only bugger wantin’ tae get oota here! Jist settle doon, ken?’

Fighting an irrational but hysterical urge to laugh, Allie said to Louise, ‘What did she say?’

The Scottish woman waded in and started hauling people back, eliciting exclamations of outrage and some muffled swearing, but the bottleneck unjammed itself and people began to descend the stairs in tandem, which was all the narrow, unlit stairwell would allow.

When it came to their turn Louise tightened her grip on Daisy, Allie took hold of Beatrice’s hand, Peg and Nyla linked arms and Ruby brought up the rear. They were about halfway down the flight when someone near the top fell, setting off a chain reaction below them as people went down like lines of dominoes. Allie was shoved into the wall and hit her face hard enough to make her lip bleed; Beatrice was knocked to her knees.

Struggling to turn around against the seething mass of
people trying to right themselves, Allie held out her hand. ‘Are you all right?’

Beatrice, her bun knocked skewwhiff and her spectacles hanging off one ear, nodded. ‘I’ve ruined a perfectly good pair of stockings, though.’

Allie helped her up, then looked around for the others, relieved to see them only a few steps further down. The stairwell had always ponged to some extent, of age and worn wood, but now it stank of smoke, and of sweat and fear.

They started shuffling forward again, feeling the floor with their feet so as not to fall down the next step. Then the procession bumped to a halt again.

‘What’s happening?’ someone further up shouted.

A disembodied voice from the front called back, ‘There’s someone coming up.’

They waited for what seemed like an age. Then the voice ordered, ‘Turn around, go back up.’

‘Why?’ Beatrice demanded.

‘We can’t get out this way. Turn around.’

Someone burst into tears.

They all turned and shuffled back up to the landing, then out into the hallway again.

The last group to leave the stairwell were coughing and spluttering and rubbing streaming eyes with filthy hands.

‘
Terry!
’ Daisy shrieked and, shoving people out of her way, threw her arms around him.

He hugged her back, his face buried in her hair. He was sweating heavily and his face was scarlet from coughing. ‘Thank God,’ he kept saying as he rocked Daisy. ‘Thank God, thank God.’

‘I thought you were caught in the fire,’ she sobbed.

‘I was stuck in the second-floor lav. Mr Max let me out.’

Allie, delighted for Daisy, prayed that Sonny was still out doing his delivery. If he had been in the basement when the fire had started…But he would have escaped, she was sure of it.

Then she noticed the others who had come up the stairs: Mr Max, whose shirt tails were hanging out, and an equally scruffy Mr Beaumont, who was bending over with his hands on knees. He couldn’t stop coughing and there were long strings of saliva swinging out of his mouth. Allie looked away. Then she saw Irene. Her hair was all over the place, she’d lost a shoe and her face was dirty, and Allie had never been so pleased to see her.

Allie waved out and Irene came over. They hugged, then Irene stepped back.

‘Have you seen Vince?’

‘He’s here somewhere. I saw him before,’ Allie replied.

Irene spotted him and called out, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

‘I’m so glad you’re safe,’ Allie said.

‘I’m not yet,’ Irene answered, her voice low. ‘None of us are. We can’t get out the way we just came up.’

Allie’s heart sank. ‘Why not?’

‘There’s too much smoke. I was going down the public stairs when Mr Max and Mr Beaumont told me I couldn’t go that way because it was blocked by the fire. So we went to the staff stairs on the second floor and there was smoke coming up them from the floors below. Mr Beaumont had a coughing fit and we had to cover our faces so we could breathe better. We were only in there for a few minutes and the smoke just got worse and worse. We nearly passed
out, all of us.’ Irene’s voice started to waver. ‘Mr Beaumont said the fire’s actually burning out of control on the ground floor. He burned his hand.’

Allie put her arm around her, feeling the slim shoulders twitching and shaking.

‘We’ll get out, Irene, don’t worry.’

Irene stared back at her. Her lipstick had disappeared and there was a shadowy smudge of mascara under each eye. ‘Will we, Allie? Will we really?’

Allie didn’t answer. She was too frightened to speak.

S
onny looked at his watch and swore. He’d miss Allie completely at this rate: her lunch break would be over by the time he got back.

The sideboard had taken ages to deliver because the old bint who’d bought it couldn’t decide where she wanted it. First it was ‘Against this wall, thanks, boys.’ Then it was ‘No, I think it might look better over here’, followed by ‘No, perhaps it was better where you first had it.’ And it had weighed a bloody ton, not the sort of thing you could easily heft between the two of you and trot all over the house with.

He glanced at Hori. ‘How long till we get back, d’you reckon?’

‘Dunno. Twenty minutes? Fifteen, if we’re lucky.’

‘Put your foot down, eh?’

‘You in a hurry?’

‘Yeah.’

Hori gave Sonny a sly look. ‘To see that sheila of yours?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Maybe definitely,’ Hori said, smirking. ‘She’s nice, though, eh, that Allie.’

Sonny nodded. They drove on in silence for a while, through Newmarket to Khyber Pass Road, then on to Symonds Street. At the intersection with Karangahape Road, Sonny pointed through the windscreen. ‘What’s that? Can you see that?’

‘What?’

‘Smoke, over there on the right. Where’s it coming from?’

Hori squinted. ‘Dunno. Queen Street?’

As he watched the huge, roiling black clouds rising above the tall city buildings, a feeling of dread settled in the pit of Sonny’s stomach and his hand tightened on the door handle.

They turned off Karangahape Road and into Queen Street, and Hori narrowly missed driving into the back of the car in front of him. Below them, stretching down Queen Street, was a long line of vehicles, all stationary. At the front of the traffic jam, dark smoke was pouring out of the first-floor windows of a building on the left-hand side of the street.

Sonny immediately knew which building it was. ‘Jesus Christ, that’s Dunbar & Jones,’ he said, and flung open the van door. ‘Come on!’

Hori shouted ‘What about the van!’ after Sonny’s retreating figure, then shrugged, reversed a few feet, moved the van closer to the footpath, and ran after him.

They dodged through the crowd clogging the footpath and the street, elbowing people out of the way to get past. When Sonny spotted a cluster of Dunbar & Jones staff members huddled behind the barrier the police had erected, he barged over and demanded, ‘Has anyone seen Allie Roberts, the blonde girl from the dress department?’

Mrs Wolfe, who knew Allie, said in a wavering voice, ‘I don’t think she’s out yet. I haven’t seen her.’

Ice settling on his heart, Sonny said, ‘Is this everyone who’s out?’

Mrs Wolfe nodded. ‘The ground floor’s been cleared. We were told to stand here, so everyone who comes out can be counted. That way they’ll know…’ She trailed off.

‘Are the firemen in yet? What about the top floor?’

Starting to cry now, Mrs Wolfe blurted, ‘They can’t go in, the fire’s in the stairwells.’

‘
What about the top floor?
’

‘I don’t
know!
’ Mrs Wolfe wailed. ‘I think they’re still in there!’

Sonny turned to watch the dozens of firemen, now furiously playing high-pressure hoses onto the first-floor windows facing both Queen and Wyndham Streets. Several teams were attempting to raise extension ladders against the building’s façade, but the verandah over the footpath was proving an obstacle: even from the very top of the ladders, the windows would still be out of reach. Another three fire engines arrived, nosing their way through the traffic and into the cleared section of street in front of the building.

Sonny eyed the police barrier across Wyndham Street, behind which a crowd was also gathering, and decided he’d have a better chance where he was. He ducked under the barrier and, dodging around fire trucks and leaping over hoses, sprinted straight for Dunbar & Jones’s front door.

‘Hey, you!’ a policeman yelled. ‘
Stop!
’

Sonny ignored him and sped up. He’d almost reached the door when he was tackled by a pair of constables, who wrestled him to the ground. Avoiding his kicks and
punches as best they could, they dragged him back behind the barrier.

But they weren’t unsympathetic. ‘Sorry, lad,’ the older of the two said as they bundled him into a police car, ‘but you can’t go in there. It’s too dangerous.’

‘My girl’s in there,’ Sonny protested, blood trickling from his nose from where he’d hit the footpath. ‘I’ve got to get her out!’

‘I know, lad, I’m sorry. The fire brigade is doing the best they can. Now, are you going to sit here quietly or do I have to handcuff you to the car door?’’

Sonny didn’t reply.

Ruefully, the policeman reached into his jacket.

In Coates Avenue, Sid was looking for his painting overalls in the washhouse and wondering if they were on the line, when he heard someone come pounding down the path at the side of the house. A second later Bill stuck his head around the door, looking very perturbed.

‘Have you heard? Dunbar & Jones is on fire. It’s on the radio. Your Allie works there, doesn’t she?’

Sid straightened up. ‘Ah God, oh no,’ he said, and closed his eyes.

Bill grabbed his sleeve. ‘Hurry up, we’ll go over in the van.’

Then Sid was in the passenger seat and Bill was tearing towards the city, hitting his horn and swerving around anyone in his way.

Several miles away behind the counter in the Mission Bay
Tea Shoppe, Colleen was making a pot of tea and only half listening to what her customer was saying. Then, suddenly, she registered.

‘A fire? At Dunbar & Jones?’

‘Yes! A big one!’ the old lady said, lifting her handkerchief and pressing it against her wrinkled mouth in distress. ‘They’re saying there’s people trapped inside. Isn’t it terrible?’

Colleen dropped the teapot, not even noticing when the hot water scalded her legs. Ducking from behind the counter she ran to the bus-stop just outside the shop, crying out in fear and frustration when she saw that a bus wasn’t due for another thirty minutes. She sank to her knees, covered her face with her hands and burst into tears.

In Remuera Road, Estelle Jones sat in her large, beautifully decorated living room and stared unseeingly at the vase of cream roses she’d just finished arranging, wondering if she would see her husband again and wishing she’d said goodbye properly to him this morning. She’d not even bothered to look up from the book she was reading, only offered him a silent cheek to kiss as he left.

In Avondale, Marion and Neville Bourke stared at each other in horror across the kitchen table, then Marion started to weep and had to tell Susan it was because she’d just peeled a big, fat onion.

Agnes Farr stood absolutely still in the middle of her sitting
room, her hands over her mouth and her eyes squeezed shut, thinking of all the things she’d never said to her precious younger daughter.

Rob Taylor dropped his spanner, leapt into his truck and screeched out onto Parnell Road, leaving a wake of exhaust fumes behind him. Leaning on the horn the whole way, he raced down into Beach Road, then into Customs Street, only to discover that he couldn’t drive any further. Swearing loudly, and terrified at the thought that his lovely Louise might be somewhere inside that huge dark cloud rising above Queen Street, he abandoned his truck and started running. But the footpath was also jammed, and it took him almost ten minutes to make his way to the front of the crowd. And when he had, when he gazed up into the streams of black smoke and hot, orange flames pouring out of the first-floor windows of Dunbar & Jones, his heart almost stopped.

In Kitemoana Street, Awhi Manaia marched out of her kitchen and roundly kicked a bucket someone had left on the back steps. It sailed down the raggedy back lawn, followed by her slipper, and hit the ground in a series of tinny clanks. She stomped down after it, retrieved her slipper, then retreated to the back steps and sat down, willing herself not to weep. Sonny was her special child, the Manaia she had always believed would hold the family together, after she and her brothers and sisters had died. It was part of the reason that her husband had been so hard on the boy. Pera hadn’t wanted him to grow soft in any way,
to allow him to sit on his backside and do nothing about what was happening to Ngati Whatua but whine, as some of the others had started to do. Though in some ways she couldn’t blame them—it had been, and would continue to be, a long and bitter struggle—but doing nothing but whine was tantamount to giving up.

Pera had had a vision for Sonny, and the boy had begun to fulfil it of his own free will when he’d signed up to go with the artillery to South Korea. Pera had been so proud that day. He’d been a war hero himself, with the Maori Battalion. But when he’d come home, wanting to use his mana to lead his people, he’d discovered that things had changed while he’d been away. The government had been steadily eating away at the land and at the souls of Maori, and he was still treated by the Pakeha with the same disdain and disrespect he’d experienced before he’d gone away. It had torn at his heart and embittered him terribly, and he had retreated into a dark place of alcohol and violence.

And as he had sunk further into the mire, he’d become increasingly convinced that Sonny would be the salvation of Ngati Whatua, though he had never once, to Awhi’s knowledge, told his son that. Instead he had only stepped up his drinking and started beating the boy, and his brothers and sisters—and, yes, even Awhi herself. Pera’s brothers had tried to intervene several times, but that had only earned them a beating too. Sonny had been sixteen when his father had first hit him, and very near to becoming a man, but he’d kept his fists to himself and taken it. Later, though, Sonny had told Awhi that if his father did it again, there would come a time when he would fight back—and he would not pull his punches.

And of course it had happened again, many times, until
one night just before Christmas 1949 when Awhi had sent Sonny down to the pub to make sure his father got home in one piece, because she knew he would be blind drunk. When Sonny had discovered his father slobbering over some slut in an alleyway behind the hotel, he had dragged him off and beaten him so badly that Pera had been unable to get out of bed for four days. Neither he nor Sonny had told the rest of the family, but Awhi had seen the grazes on Sonny’s knuckles and the blood on his shirt, and had known in her heart what had happened. Then, a few months later, Sonny had come to her about it, and Awhi had seen how much it had hurt him to tell her the truth.

Yet Pera had still been delighted when Sonny had signed up the following year, insisting to Awhi that the boy had the makings of a fine warrior and leader, refusing to accept that Sonny despised him by then and was probably only enlisting to get away from him. Or perhaps even to atone for the beating he had administered to his father. Awhi knew it hadn’t sat well with Sonny, that he was ashamed of hitting a man so drunk he could barely stand, and of allowing himself to lose control.

But Awhi had not been delighted when Sonny had joined up. It had been bad enough when Pera had gone, but he had been older, and a much harder man than Sonny would ever be: she had known that if anyone would come home from the battlefields of the Mediterranean and Europe, it would be Pera. She just hadn’t realized how changed her husband would be when he did return. But Sonny was different. He was special. A leader, yes, but a gentle one, who would lead with common sense (which most of her other children seemed not to have been blessed with) and empathy and wisdom and a quiet strength, not the sort that relied on
violence and bullying. And now he was probably trapped in a burning building and she might never see him again.

She stared angrily at her slippers for a moment, then covered her face with her apron and started to keen.

Natalie Horrocks pushed herself creakily out of her chair, turned the radio off and went into the kitchen to gather together the ingredients for a sultana cake. Ted would be wanting a slice when he got home.

Martin Baxter already knew what had happened, because he was standing in the crowd outside Dunbar & Jones, staring up at the conflagration with tears streaming down his face.

Max had to raise his voice almost to a shout to make himself heard.

‘The fire escape! Has anyone tried the fire escape?’

‘We thought we’d be able to get down the stairs,’ Norm said defensively.

There was a brief lull, then a handful of people started to move away from the stairwell. And then they were running, down the narrow corridor that led to the tailoring and soft furnishings workrooms on the north-west side of the top floor.

‘Where
is
the fire escape?’ Allie asked.

‘You get to it through the tailoring workroom,’ Terry said. ‘Come on.’

By the time they got there, a crowd had gathered around
the long sash window that also served as an exit to the fire escape.

Max struggled with the window latch, fearing for a long, horrible second that it wasn’t going to open. He bent down, hooked his fingers into the handles and wrenched up the window, letting in a rush of smoke-tainted air and a flurry of ash.

Leaning out, he saw that smoke was pouring out of the ground and first-floor windows all along the length of the service lane. And then he caught sight of something so dreadful that he moaned aloud in despair: an entire section of the fire escape had been removed between the third and first floors, creating a gap of about twelve feet, a gap that would be impossible to negotiate.

Slowly, he pulled his head back in and turned around, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. Then he took a deep breath, and straightened his shoulders.

‘The maintenance programme…’ he began. ‘The contractors have started on the fire escape. I’m so sorry…’

Stunned faces stared back at him.

‘What?’ someone said disbelievingly.

‘The fire escape…it’s out of order,’ Max said. ‘We can’t use it.’

Standing at the rear of the group, Keith began to slowly step backwards. No one was watching him: they were all looking at Max Jones. When he reached the door, he slipped out into the corridor and hurried back to the head of the staff stairs.