Roots of Evil(65)

People were saying this was all absolutely dreadful, but the fire brigade was on its way and the fire would soon be under control, and Bruce and Mariana would probably be able to have the place reroofed on the insurance. In fact where were Bruce and Mariana? Had anyone seen them?

Between one breathspace and the next, a situation that had been quite serious, but in control, spiralled shockingly out of control. A man who had found the garden hose and had been connecting it to the water tap at the side of the house suddenly looked up and pointed at the tiny skylight window at the very top of the house. One of the women screamed and then clapped a hand over her mouth.

‘What is it? What’s happening?’

‘There’s somebody still inside the house!’

‘Where? Oh God, where?’

‘Up there. The attic window.’

And then Lucy saw the flash of colour at the skylight window in the attics. Bright jade green. The distinctive outfit her mother had worn for the party. Green silk and the jade earrings she often wore in the evenings, because she loved vivid colours. She saw that her father was there as well, standing next to her mother, and quite suddenly she could feel her father’s arms around her, and she could smell the nice scents of him – soap and clean cotton shirts, and the disreputable old jacket he wore for gardening – and she wanted him to be down here on the wet grass with her more than she had ever wanted anything in her entire life.

‘Shout to them to make a dash for it!’ cried one of the men. ‘They might just do it – if they run straight through the flames.’

‘Handkerchiefs over their mouths so they don’t breathe in the smoke,’ said a woman. ‘That’s what you do. Or sleeves – anything. Shout to them to do that!’

‘They’ll never make it!’ said Edmund. ‘Both stairways are in flames.’ He was staring up at the attic window, his face sheet-white, oblivious of his own burned hands. Lucy looked at Edmund’s burned hands. My fault. I lit the oil lamp and it overturned…My fault that my parents are trapped up there…

‘If they smash the window—’ said the man who had thought they could make a dash for it. ‘Yes, listen, if they smash the window, they could just about squeeze through – they could jump down—’

‘They’d break their legs,’ said somebody. ‘They’re thirty feet from the ground. More, probably.’

‘Better to have broken legs than burn alive,’ said the first man angrily.

Bruce Trent’s hands were beating uselessly on the tiny window – the window that was never opened because hardly anybody went up into the attics, and that certainly would not open now – and in the livid light of the fire Lucy could see her mother’s face stretched in a silent scream of fear and entreaty. Get me out…We’re trapped…The little pulse of panic and horror redoubled. They’re-trapped, they’re-trapped…And it’s my-fault, my-fault, my-fault…

‘Jesus Christ, can’t somebody do something!’ demanded one of the men. ‘Where’s the fire brigade? They have been called, haven’t they?’

‘Yes, I phoned them and they’re on their way.’

‘They’re going to be too late! We’ve got to do something—’

‘No, it’s all right,’ said the woman who had said about handkerchiefs. They’ve managed to smash the window. Look, Bruce is knocking all the shards of glass out—’

‘The window’s too small,’ said the man who had phoned the fire brigade. ‘They’ll never do it.’

‘They will. Bruce is helping Mariana to climb out—’

Mariana Trent was trying to get through the tiny window, crying out to the people below to help her. It was appalling to see her like this, the silk skirt rucked up above her knees, her legs cut and bleeding from the jagged window-frame, and her face crimson and shiny from the heat. There was a terrible moment when Lucy thought her mother’s head looked exactly like a giant baked apple in the oven – just at the moment when the apple-skin had turned scarlet with the heat and was starting to split, and all the juices were running out. She tried to shut this picture out and to think of the figure as her mother but the dreadful image stayed stubbornly on her mind. A thin figure with a giant baked-apple head trying to climb through a window…


It was screaming, that grotesque figure; its mouth was open. It was halfway through the tiny window when the flames reached the frame, and there was a burst of flame as its hair caught light and a shower of sparks, and the thing that Lucy could no longer think of as her mother flailed wildly with its hands, trying to beat out the flames. But the flames caught at one of the hands and ran up the arm, and the figure fell helplessly back into the burning-up attics.

Lucy could not bear it. She sank on to the rain-drenched grass, wrapping both arms around herself because she was shaking so badly she thought she might break apart, and she was dreadfully cold as well, which was stupid with the heat of the fire and everything.

The garden hose was spurting water on to the fire, but every time it got close enough to do any good the rubber began to melt from the intense heat. There was smoke everywhere – huge black clouds of it, and lumps of burning timber and charred wood were falling on to the garden. In the distance Lucy heard the wail of the fire engine, and looked up hopefully because perhaps it would all be all right after all. But the fire station was miles away – it was on the other side of the town, and when Lucy remembered this she did not think the firemen would get here in time.