Ash Road (6 page)

‘For crying out loud, Dad,' he said, ‘we're wasting our time. What's the use of picking the stuff?'

‘You'll pick,' the old man said sourly, ‘until I say not to.'

‘They'll only knock them back, Dad.' John didn't say this just to suit himself. He said it because he knew it was a fact. ‘By the time the factory truck gets here tonight they won't be worth a cracker.'

‘Now look! Everyone's berries are the same. The factory's got to take them or go without. If they can't put them in cans they'll jam them.'

‘They don't make jam out of fruit like this.'

‘I've seen the fruit they make jam with!'

‘Honest, Dad,' said Lorna, ‘it
is
pretty hopeless. You can't pick them. They go to mush.'

‘Don't you turn against me, too. It's bad enough putting up with him. You know what your mother's illness is costing us. We've
got
to get them off.'

‘Well I think it's time Mum went into a public ward, like the doctor says, whether she likes it or not. It's not fair on you, Dad.'

‘I'll decide what's fair and what's not fair, and when I want your opinion, Lorna, I'll ask for it.'

It was useless. You couldn't argue with him. It always ended in a row. He always went deathly white, and his worn and weary face frightened her. There was a streak in his nature that wouldn't give in, even though he was so tired deep down that the effort of argument exhausted him. He'd probably kill himself in the end; or drop dead for want of giving in over some issue at a sensible time.

So they went on picking, each keeping pace with the others in adjoining rows. Old man George knew that the fruit was rotten, but a devil in him wouldn't let him stop, kept telling him there was a chance that the factory might not inspect the fruit closely, perhaps until tomorrow, might blame the carrier for bouncing it around too much on the back of the truck, might even accept it despite its condition for any of a dozen reasons. Then he heard the siren.

An urgent, demanding cry it was, wailing through the gullies, fighting to be heard over the buffeting wind. It came faintly at first, then broke over them like a wave. There was no denying it. There was something about a siren that welled up from the inside. It was almost like being sick.

‘See you later,' said John. It was not an apology or a request for permission to leave; he was running before it was fully out, running up the rows, up the hill, towards the house. His father watched him go, too numb at heart to protest, even to try to call him back. He stood almost still, dripping with perspiration, and his strength seemed to be flowing away through his feet into the ground.

‘Lorna,' he sighed. ‘Oh, Lorna...'

He may not have meant it that way, but his manner of utterance committed her. She'd have to stick it out. She'd have to take John's place. She'd have to pick until she fainted from heat or the old man gave in.

3

Fire Warning

Peter Fairhall was making his way up from the creek towards his grandparents' house when he heard the siren. He was out in the middle of the paddock, walking carefully between the rows of young gladioli planted by the bulbgrower who rented a few acres of Fairhall land. Peter's grandfather hadn't farmed the place in years.

It was the first time Peter had heard a fire warning in the bush, but he recognized it instantly for what it was and stopped in his stride.

He had sometimes wondered what it would be like to hear the siren when the danger was real, when everything was tinder-dry and the notorious north wind was squarely set to fan an inferno. Now he knew. He felt nothing but unbelief. How could there be a fire? How could it possibly happen? It happened in the newspapers, but not in real life. There was a gap between the page of a newspaper and real life. It wasn't distance; it wasn't time; it was the difference between what happened to other people and what happened to oneself.

But the siren still blew. It swelled and faded and swelled again, and Peter realized that he was faintly unnerved, at a loss, as if suddenly cut off from the normal and unthinking processes that would have continued to impel him up the hill towards the house. He had stopped moving. He had almost stopped breathing.

Fire would be very dangerous on a day like this. There was no sign of fire nearby, but perhaps he had been smelling smoke for a while without realizing it. He could see a clear horizon at about five miles in the south and the west, and a hazed horizon of about twenty miles in the east. His eyes spanned that vast arc of country in a few seconds, and there was nothing vaguely like a smoke cloud. Only in the north was his horizon shortened by the brow of the long hill. There could have been a fire in that direction, for the sky there looked different; it was brighter and whiter, and though he avoided the sun there was something odd about it. He sensed that there was a veil across it, like the filmiest of silks or chiffons. And the wailing siren told him what it was.

He shivered. It was a strange feeling, almost like a vision. He saw a horizon of fire and a sky of fire. It was so real that he could almost feel its flashing heat: a wave of heat so fierce that his eyes actually watered. He saw the hills in flames, the trees burning like a forest of gigantic tapers, even though at the same time he saw them as they really were, dusty green and brown, wind-tossed, as he had seen them on rough days in January ever since he could remember. What a stupid thought it was; what a terrible thing to think up; almost like wishing it to happen. But what a sight it would make; what an incredible spectacle it would be: the earth burning, the sky burning, people fleeing. He could see the black figures silhouetted against the flames, running grotesquely with their arms waving over their heads. But now he was separate from it himself; he was seeing it, but he wasn't in it. It was like watching a film on a screen. You knew it wasn't real and the actors couldn't get hurt, even when the fire overtook and overwhelmed them.

But the sound he could hear was the siren still wailing, a sound with a strange ability to drift about in the air; at one moment close and immediate, a few moments later distant and far away; like a ship on a violent sea heaving into sight then vanishing into troughs.

‘Peter!'

Perhaps the sound was a trick of the wind, that horrid wind roaring in the timber, blustering against him, raising puffs of dust from every area of dry ground, imposing upon the birds extraordinary patterns of flight, flaking leaves from trees, snapping dead twigs from high branches and throwing them to the earth.

‘Peter! Peter, come here!'

He had heard his grandmother's voice the first time, really, but the effort of acknowledging it had been beyond him. He turned and saw her standing near the hen-house. ‘Coming,' he called, though it was the last thing he wanted to do. It was an invasion of his privacy; almost like an interruption in the middle of reading a long-awaited letter. Her demanding voice seemed to have destroyed something.

‘Hurry on. Hurry on,' she shouted.

‘Oh golly,' he groaned.

‘What is it, Gran?' he called. ‘What's wrong?'

‘Can't you hear the siren? It's a fire. You'll have to go home.'

He felt suddenly bereft; something he valued greatly seemed to have been taken from him. ‘Oh no,' he said, ‘not that. Whatever for?'

A motorcycle howled up the long hill trailing a billow of orange-coloured dust. It flashed past Peter's vision, through the trees, and roared on up the hill and over it. He knew who it was. John George wasn't going home. He was going out to do a job like a man. But of course John
was
a man. He wasn't a molly-coddled kid.

Pippa heard the siren, too. She was down the hill not far from the creek where her father had his pump—the pump that never worked when it was supposed to; only when it didn't matter. It was not the same creek as the Fairhalls'.

Pippa was looking for Julie, and the possibility that Julie might have wandered away and become truly lost had assumed a sudden and grim reality. Until the instant of the siren the thought as such had not occurred to Pippa; after all, when Julie had been naughty she always went to earth, simply froze and remained silent. One could stand and bellow her name half a dozen paces from her and never guess she was there. Julie wouldn't answer until she thought the crisis was past, until the voice that called her began to get tired. Finding Julie when Julie knew she was in disgrace was just about impossible.

For a few moments Pippa was frightened. The bush along the creek was thick and wild and Grandpa Tanner said there were old mine holes in it, though no one had ever come across them. How terrible it would be if Julie really were lost and a fire came. Pippa couldn't suppress a little cry of anguish. She had never thought of anything like that before, but she had never heard a fire warning before, either, on a suffocating midsummer morning like this one. She called Julie's name loudly; at least she intended to call it loudly, but her voice came with a break in it. The only response was a distant wind-blown cry from Stevie: ‘Gee whiz. Wombat tracks!'

That was Stevie all over. His help was worse than useless. Most of the time he forgot what he was about and started stalking birds or rabbits or turning over stones looking for beetles and shiny black worms with yellow bands on their bodies.

‘Stevie,' she cried, ‘can't you hear that siren?'

There was no reply; she couldn't see him; didn't know where he was; she guessed he was already on the trail of the wombat with everything else forgotten. Then she heard him breaking out of the bush surprisingly close to her, and he appeared at the edge of the cleared land in the gully. ‘Say, Pippa,' he yelled. ‘That's the siren.' He stood with legs apart and arms apart as though about to engage an enemy in combat. ‘The siren,' he shrilled. ‘There's a fire.' And he started running up the hill.

‘Stevie,' Pippa cried, ‘come back! We've got to find Julie.'

‘Blow Julie,' yelled Stevie—or that was what it sounded like; the roar of wind in the trees didn't make hearing easy. ‘You find her. I want to see the fire.'

She could never stop him. It was a waste of time and breath calling after him. He was off, as fast as he could go, beyond all hope of claiming his attention over the wind.

She was on her own, and the tossing bush was all around her, and the wailing siren seemed to be crying inside her.

‘Julie,' she screamed suddenly. ‘Answer me. Where are you, Julie? You won't get smacked, Julie. Answer me, sweetie!'

Stevie pounded up the hill and saw his parents near the apple tree, Dad in shorts and singlet, Mum in her dressing-gown. Mum looked tall and thin in her dressing-gown, though she wasn't really. She was gripping Dad tightly, almost desperately, by the arm, but Stevie didn't take much notice of that. Mum and Dad were always hanging on to each other as if they were afraid one or the other was going to vanish into thin air. ‘Gee,' Stevie cried breathlessly. ‘Where is it, Dad?'

They must have heard him, but they ignored him, as they so often did, until he appeared flushed and excited, practically jumping up and down in front of them. ‘I don't know,' his dad said. ‘Somewhere in the north, I think. Doesn't matter where it is. Anywhere's bad.'

Bad? Stevie didn't know what was bad about it. He thought of fires as things the fire brigades lit, usually in the cool of the evening, and everyone stood and watched the sparks and the flaring foliage and said, ‘What a sight!'

‘Can we go to it, Dad?' Stevie said. ‘Come on, Dad. Be a sport. Let's go.'

His father didn't seem to be listening. Then they heard the motorcycle coming up the road. They heard it howl past with a blare of sound, and Stevie spun away to the side of the house to gasp in admiration at the dust cloud. ‘Gee whiz,' he said, ‘that's really moving...John's going,' he yelled. ‘Can't we go, too?'

His father was frowning; he seemed agitated. ‘It's certainly on,' he said. ‘That's John, all right. Of course, it
had
to be today.'

‘The boy'll kill himself if he goes at that pace,' said Mrs Buckingham.

‘Can we go too, Dad?' shrilled Stevie.

‘Be quiet,' his mother snapped. ‘You're not going anywhere. No one's going anywhere.'

Mr Buckingham firmly disengaged his wife's clinging hand. ‘Perhaps I'd better get the car out, at that,' he said, ‘and take a look. Probably only have to drive to the top of the hill. I think we need to know what's going on.'

‘I don't agree. If you want to find out what's going on, use the telephone. Ring the brigade. Or ring the Collinses if you don't want to worry the brigade.'

‘The Collinses have been away for a week,' he said patiently. ‘You know that as well as I do.'

‘Ring Bill Robertson then. You're always saying he's a friend of yours. He'll be able to see from there.'

‘For heaven's sake,' said Mr Buckingham, ‘simmer down, will you...'

Stevie looked at his mother in surprise. She sounded like a different person from the mother he knew. ‘Dad,' he said, ‘we're going, aren't we? Come on, Dad.'

The man seemed to become aware of the boy as the answer to a problem. ‘You go yourself, lad. Run to the top of the hill, and if the smoke looks close get back here at the double. You'll be back before I'll have time to raise anyone on the phone, anyway. Go on, off with you.'

Stevie glanced at his mother and immediately wished he hadn't, because she said in a tight and strained voice, ‘I don't think he should go. I think it's most unwise.'

‘Oh, for pity's sake,' said Mr Buckingham. ‘Do you think I'd send the lad if I thought there was any danger? The sky would be
black
if there was any danger. You're a real panic-merchant, you are. Go on, Stevie; off you run.'

Stevie ran. He wanted no more arguments. But his mother's voice, shrill and strident, pursued him. ‘What about Julie? Where's Julie?'