Roots of Evil(66)

Through the steam and the smoke she could see the bare roof timbers now, like the bones of a skeleton sticking out through a dead body. There were two of the nightmare roasting-apple heads at the window now, and the screaming was going on and on, all mixed up with the crackling fire and the spluttering hosepipe and the dreadful bones of the house, and the really terrible part was that it was starting to become annoying, that screaming, so that Lucy wanted to shout to it to shut up…

She sobbed and began to run towards the house, but somebody caught her and held her back. Edmund. Lucy struggled to get away from him but he held her tightly, putting his hands over her ears to stop her hearing the screaming, but Lucy heard it anyway. She heard, as well, Edmund’s voice saying in a horrified whisper, ‘I’m so sorry, Lucy. Oh, Lucy, I’m so sorry.’

The fire engine came clanging along the lane, the sirens shrieking, so that if either Mariana or Bruce Trent were still screaming from within the flames, no one could hear them. The firemen ran about, unhooking ladders, and connecting steel hoses to taps, and huge powerful jets of water rained down on the house and clouds of steam rose up. The flames hissed angrily for a few moments, and then died down.

A little night wind had started up, and it blew the billowing smoke straight into Lucy’s face. It was dark heavy smoke and it was laden with something greasy and too-sweet…As the terrible rich scent reached Lucy’s stomach, she pushed Edmund away and was violently sick on to the rain-sodden ground. People came to help her – putting their arms around her, telling her everything would be all right, please not to cry, oh the poor darling child—

Everything would not be all right, of course, because nothing would ever be all right again in the entire world. The world would forever consist of two helpless figures with nightmare heads, screaming as they burned up. Lucy was sick on the grass again, and somebody sponged her face, and somebody else wrapped blankets round her. She tried to stop shaking but could not, and she tried not to look at the house.

And all the while, the night-rain beat ceaselessly down on the burning house and on what lay inside it.



There had to be an enquiry, of course, and there had to be an inquest. Sympathy was extended to Lucy and the rest of the family, and a verdict of accidental death was recorded. It was a terrible tragedy, but it was nobody’s fault, said people. It had been a freak accident – a bizarre sequence of events that could not possibly have been predicted. Perhaps a spark from a faulty bit of electrical wiring had started the fire, or, more probably, someone had carelessly thrown a cigarette down somewhere. It was not very likely that anyone would ever admit to that, however.

One or two people murmured that if only Mariana had not gone running up to the attics and if Bruce had not then chased up there after her, they might still be alive. The top part of the house would still have burned, and anything in the attics would have been lost, but for goodness’ sake, what were some bricks and timber and a few bits of jumble against two people burned alive!

Edmund had told his father what had happened, of course, even though he was not sure if his father entirely understood – you could not always tell these days. Severe clinical depression, the GP had said a few months earlier, summoning Edmund from Bristol University because he had not wanted to have a patient sinking irretrievably into the twilit world of melancholia without somebody in the family being aware of it. He added that the condition had probably been present for years under the surface, although you could never be certain about these things. Oh no, it was nothing anyone could have spotted, Edmund must not blame himself for any of it. Who knew what went on in the minds of even the closest of friends or family? Well, yes, he would have to say that the psychiatric consultant he had called in did think this particular case was progressive, but nil desperandum, because there were treatments and drugs that could help. An institution? Oh dear goodness, they did not need to think about that kind of thing for a long time yet, he said.

The best thing for Edmund to do was to keep his father as much in the ordinary world as possible – there seemed to be this strong tendency to look back on the past, had Edmund noticed that? Well, anyway, cheerfulness, that was the watchword. Edmund should try to keep his father’s mind focused on pleasant things: bits of family news, his own studies, light-hearted events in the world – not that there were many of those these days, eh?

It was difficult to tell if the news of the fire and the deaths of Mariana and Bruce Trent distressed Edmund’s father or not.

‘Everything was burned?’ he kept asking Edmund. ‘In the fire?’

‘Yes. The top floors of the house were ruined.’

There was a long silence, and Edmund could almost feel his father trying to clutch at the rags of his own sanity. It was a relief when he asked a perfectly sane question about Lucy. ‘What will happen to her? Where will she live?’

‘With Bruce Trent’s family, I think.’

‘Not with Deborah?’

‘No. Deborah suggested it, but I think everyone agreed Lucy would be better off with her father’s family. I should think she’ll spend holidays with Deborah, though.’

‘Ah. Yes, of course.’ For a moment Edmund thought his father had sunk back into the dreadful darkness and he was just preparing to leave when his father suddenly said, ‘Deborah would have liked having Lucy with her. Pity about that. But bring Lucy to visit me one day, will you?’