Dark Fires Shall Burn (5 page)

‘But Mum, I think you've had —'

‘Now, or you can forget about tea. I'll send you straight up to bed.' She turns a glowing smile on Frances. ‘Gosh, Frances darling, you're looking grown-up these days. Will you let me braid your hair? Nancy won't let me lay a finger on hers.'

Frances nods and surrenders her head. Nancy, making her way to the kitchen, bristles at her mother's hands swiftly moving through Frances' hair and the look of pleasure on her friend's face.

‘And what time will you be expected home, Frannie?' Nancy hears over her shoulder.

‘I can come home when I please,' Frances says, which is a flat lie, Nancy knows.

Nancy returns with a watered-down Jameson for her mother and two glasses of milk, warm from the bottle being left out all day on the bench. She puts the glasses down heavily on the table and folds her arms. ‘Here.'

‘Thank you, Nancy. What a wonderful hostess you'll make some day.'

‘Thanks, Nance.' Frances smiles, takes her milk and sips it, and leans back into Kate's hands, busy in her hair.

‘Let me tell you girls a thing or two that you will certainly need to know about women's trouble. They call it the curse. Let me see … where to start?'

FOUR

‘Go on, piss off,' Annie snaps at Jackie, pushing him away as he tries to drape a rough arm around her shoulders. He is drunk, cocksure, swaying like a man trying to keep his balance on a boat in an unkind sea. He must have started early today, Templeton observes. Annie had given Jackie the key to the Lennox Street place — not that it mattered, for he could pick the lock in a snap if he chose.

‘Aww, come on darlin',' Jackie hisses into her ear. ‘Five pounds, that's all I need. Me and the boys need to get out of here until something blows over.' His hand spans her waist and draws her close. He whispers something Templeton can't hear and kisses her neck sloppily.

‘What have you done this time?' Sally inquires as she strikes a match. The whiff of sulfur flits across to where Templeton sits on the steps of the house on Lennox Street. The smell makes him feel slightly ill: he already has a furry, soiled taste in his mouth from smoking too much. Not that there's much else to do. The Monday shift was always the worst — men greedy for news of the economy grabbing the papers out of his hands and tossing coins on the ground for him to stoop and scuttle to pick up. Now to come home and find Jackie … His mood is sour.

‘Shut it. It's none of your business,' Jackie's mate Will tells Sally. The veins on his neck stick out, each as thick as a child's finger. He is beef to the ankles. Jackie's other mate, Frank, would never be considered a short man, but standing next to Will he looks like a runt.

‘I told you, I don't have a bob.' Annie wriggles from Jackie's touch but still twirls playfully. ‘It's been a bodgy start to the night. I'd give it to you if I had it.'

Jackie grins toothily but his eyes are cold and red-edged.

‘Dot's with a bloke now,' Sally says, cocking her head at the upstairs door. ‘Although she ain't likely to want to pass her takings on to you lot.'

‘That's the first one we've had yet.' Annie says, darting a look at Jackie. ‘Don't know what's up. Normally this time of evening it's like Central Station.'

‘When will she be out?' Jackie demands.

‘I don't know! You tell me. When the bastard's good and done I reckon.' Sally rolls her eyes, and Will sniggers.

‘Well, we'll just have to wait for her then,' Jackie says and suddenly his hard look evaporates. ‘Give us a kiss.' He pulls Annie into his arms and plants one on her lips.

‘Lay off,' she says, and squeals but allows him. Jackie moves behind her and envelops her in his wiry arms. He's been Annie's bloke for nearly eight months, far longer than any of the others. Templeton envies his coppery stubble: a full crop by five o'clock after a morning shave.

‘Fucken typical,' Will grumbles. ‘We could be out here all night.' He passes a handsome silver flask to Frank after tilting it into his own mouth. Quite the collection of fancy knick-knacks Jackie and his boys have procured over the years, Templeton thinks. Will Worthington had been the only one of the three to go to the war, off in '41, where he fought the Italians at Benghazi as a gunner. Crack shot he'd been, too. Done a whole bunch, he liked to brag. Somehow he'd managed to get out early and didn't have to serve again, and the party the boys had for him when he got home was the stuff of legend — they were on the piss for days. Dot said that they had drunk his whole back-pay in two weeks. VD, she reckons was the discharge.

Jackie tells everyone that he was manpowered to the coalmines and that's why he didn't serve. ‘My arse was manpowered to the mines,' Dot had growled about that excuse. ‘He's a chicken-hearted bastard. A
tchórz
.'

Will is grumbling about Dot to Sally while Frank smokes and swigs from the hip flask. No one is paying Templeton much mind, as usual. He spots a fox as it runs across the road, fur quilled against the grain in patches like it's come backwards through a hedge. It's a handsome animal, large and well-fed. The fox pauses a minute, looking back into the street, nose in the air. Templeton wonders what it would be like to smell in Technicolor and read the night's secrets in invisible ink. Its topaz gaze fixes right on him before it bolts through the loose-planked fence and into the cemetery.

‘Don't see that too often in the city.' Frank follows Templeton's gaze, his hands dug deep in his pockets. He hawks and spits a wad of pearly phlegm aimed at the spot where the fox paused. ‘Get 'em all the time out in Wagga. I used to shoot 'em for the pelts and sell 'em for a penny when I was a lad.'

‘I'm thinking of packing it in,' Sally says loudly, playing up a yawn in Will's direction.

Frank turns. ‘Jackie, let's give it up, let's go. I think I know where we can get a car.' He tilts the flask again. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows.

‘We can drive it up to the mountains and be in Lithgow by morning, but we gotta leave now,' Will says, as he casually fingers what looks to Templeton like the outline of a revolver stuck in the waistband of his trousers.

‘Off you go then, why don't you?' Jackie looks up from Annie's lips. ‘But we need a couple of quid first, don't we? Otherwise we won't get very bloody far.' He is slurring and seems annoyed at his own drunkenness. Staggering away from Annie, he leans an arm against the brick wall and sets his head against it, muttering gruffly to himself under his breath. Annie is still, but her eyes don't leave him.

Jackie slaps himself. He kicks the wall hard enough for the thud to reverberate. ‘Come here,' he says to her. ‘Come here, darlin', ' Jackie coos, swaying over to Annie, grabbing for her. He takes hold of her face, thumbs resting on her cheeks, and forces her to look into his eyes: pale blue, like an ocean bath at low tide, but rarely as tranquil. ‘Who's my girl, eh? Now, don't you have a pound to give a man, at least?' He smiles lopsidedly.

Nobody moves. Nobody wants to be caught in Jackie's sights when he's like this.

Except Will. ‘She's told you, mate,' Will ventures. ‘They don't have any. We could be here all night at this rate.'

Jackie ignores Will. ‘I'll take the money,' he says, his face still close to Annie's. He makes a walking motion with two fingers along his forearm. ‘And we'll be outta your hair.'

The corners of Annie's mouth harden and she plants a hand on her hip. She looks over at Templeton, who is doing his best to stay inconspicuous, to the point of not breathing. Jackie's mood can take hold like a grass fire, and all it needs is the tiniest friction.

‘Stop pissing in my pocket, Jack.' Annie steps back. ‘I said we haven't made nothin' yet tonight. So however much you stand over us, you're not going to find a penny for the gaslight.'

Jackie's eyes are glazed, not entirely focused, and the air is still.

‘Now, what the hell have you all done?' Annie keeps it up. ‘If you don't tell me what's happened, how am I supposed to help you?' She waves her hand at each of the men. ‘Frank? Come on. How about you, William? Who's after you lot? What kind of trouble have you gone and got yourselves in?'

Jackie's lips purse as if he is actually weighing up telling her. He lets out a long, slow breath. Annie reaches out and strokes his face. ‘What happened?' she says gently.

Templeton knows Jackie will not tell, simply because he is an evil bag of rat droppings and he wouldn't tell anyone anything unless they forced him, unless they messed him up real bad, and then — even then — he could still be trusted only about as far as you could kick him. Couldn't Annie see? Templeton tries to resuscitate his failing cigarette. He looks compulsively at the front door, bargaining with God to let Dot emerge.

Jackie turns his lipless face upwards and tugs on the brim of his hat so only his white chin peeps out in a gibbous moon. He fingers something in his pocket for a moment. Templeton knows it's the razor he carries everywhere, an old-fashioned thing. The blade had been his father's and it had class, a real beauty, not like the cheap disposable ones the Yanks brought here with them. ‘The one good thing that bastard ever gave me,' Jackie had told Templeton in a rare moment of candour as he shaved cheerfully one morning.

Jackie's razor was mostly for show, Templeton knew, but he had used it at least once. Taken out some bloke's eye. A row about a girl, so Annie said; she couldn't get the full story out of Jackie. The eye made a pop coming out, apparently — a plum from a pudding. Templeton thinks about what an eyeball would look like, rolling down the road like a tom-bowler marble.

‘It's about a girl again, isn't it, Jackie? You've slept with some other tart and her bloke is after you?'

Jackie's open palm comes down hard against Annie's cheek. Frank and Will stand up, but Jackie swivels with his arm still raised. They fall back. He hits her again. Annie does not flinch, her skin white with a spreading red mark, like wine on a tablecloth. She squares her face at him, daring him to go further.

Will and Frank won't intervene, Templeton knows. He is just as bad, just as yellow. It's not like he hasn't tried before, but it just makes Jackie angrier. Jackie's always been jealous of Annie's attention to Templeton. Better not to intervene. He feels his insides tumble with shame at what is about to happen. ‘
Tchórz
,' he mutters. The power of Dot's strange Polish words, like an incantation.

Sally makes to get up, but Annie's hand tells her to stop.

‘What?' Jackie leans back, arms outstretched, looking around.

‘You're a sow's cunt, Jackie,' Templeton spits out before he can stop himself.

‘What did you say to me?' Jackie asks. He walks towards him. Templeton's chest is thumping with fear and rage. He wants to repeat it but he dares not. Over Jackie's shoulder Annie mouths
run
.

‘Say that to my face, you little cocksucker shit.' Jackie jabs him hard in the breastbone. ‘Bet you sit down to piss, don't ya?' Jackie laughs at Templeton as he stands and flinches. Jackie collars him and twists the fabric in one hand.

‘Jesus, Jackie,' Will says, pointing at the bruise already coming up livid on Annie's face. He tips the flask to his lips and the liquor spills on his shirt, which he wipes with a wide, clumsy swipe. ‘Did you have to go and do that? Make a mess of her?'

‘Not going to make any money busted up like that,' Frank adds, unhelpfully.

Annie steps between Jackie and her brother. ‘Happy?' she says, her voice barely audible. The corner of her eye socket already looks bruised. Blood dribbles down her face from where his ring zippered open her skin. She brushes the blood-streaked hair out of her eyes and pulls her shoulders back.

‘I don't need your help, fucken bitch.' Jackie changes tack, Templeton suddenly dropped. ‘I can get the money. Who said I couldn't get the money?' He slopes over to his pals and snatches the flask. ‘Fuck all a' you anyway. Try makin' it on your own without me.'

‘Nah, Jackie, mate. Hang about. It's not like that.' Frank looks at Will nervously.

‘Isn't it? No — go on then. See how fucken far you get,' says Jackie.

‘Come on now. We didn't mean nothing.' Will smiles tightly. ‘Tell us what to do, Jacks. Tell us the plan.'

Jackie eyes them both for a second, and then begins to speak slowly. ‘We'll hang on till Dot comes out. She still owes us for the snow. That'll be a start. Unless one of you geniuses has a better idea.' Jackie rubs his hands together, with a flash of challenge in his eyes.

The door opens as if on some perverse cue, and a bloke stumbles out, buttoning up his coat with a dumb smile. He tips his hat to the women as he makes his way down the steps.

‘Alright, mate?' Jackie says.

The man pauses and turns amiably. ‘G'day.'

‘What are you looking at?' Will snarls, blowing smoke towards him.

‘N-nothing,' he stammers and his face falls, the realisation of his situation closing in. He tries to step off the back foot and dart away but, as though all have sensed the shift in the wind, Frank is already behind him, and he butts up against his chest.