‘I think I can hear it,’ said Carmel. ‘I can hear the fire.’
They all went quiet. It sounded at first like heavy settled rain, but it wasn’t rain; it was the unmistakable crackle of flames.
Something heavy and huge crashed to the ground above them. A wall? There was a dramatic whoosh of air, like wind in a storm, and then the flames grew louder.
Jessica made a sound.
‘Are we all going to die down here?’ asked Zoe. She looked up at her father with disbelief. ‘Is she seriously going to let us die?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Napoleon, with such matter-of-fact, grown-up assurance Tony wanted to believe Napoleon had special knowledge, except that Tony was a grown-up too, and he knew better.
‘We’ll all put wet towels over our heads and faces to protect us from smoke inhalation,’ said Heather. ‘Then we’ll just wait this thing out.’
She sounded as calm and assured as her husband. Maybe Tony would be the same if one of his kids or grandkids were here.
He thought of his children. They would grieve for him. Yes of course his children would grieve for him. They wouldn’t be ready to lose him, even though he didn’t see them that often these days. This knowledge felt like a surprise, as if he’d spent the last few years pretending his children didn’t love him, when he knew they loved their dad, for Christ’s sake. He knew that. Late last year, Will forgot about the time difference and rang in the middle of the night from Holland to tell him about his latest promotion at work. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I wanted to tell you first.’ Thirty years old and he still wanted his dad’s praise. According to Mimi, James was always posting pictures from Tony’s football career online. ‘He shows off about you,’ Mimi said, rolling her eyes. ‘Exploits your fame to pick up girls.’ Then there was Mimi herself, his baby, bustling about his house, setting things right. Every time she broke up with another dickhead she turned up at his house to ‘give him a hand’. She couldn’t lose her dad right now, when she was still dating dickheads.
He wasn’t ready to die. Fifty-six years wasn’t long enough. His life felt suddenly incredibly rich and abundant with possibility. He wanted to repaint the house, get another dog, a puppy; it wouldn’t be betraying Banjo to get a puppy. He always got another puppy in the end. He wanted to go to the beach, eat a big breakfast at the cafe down the road while he read the paper, listen to music – it was like he’d forgotten music existed! He wanted to travel to Holland and see his granddaughter perform in one of those stupid Irish dancing competitions.
He looked at Carmel, who he had written off as a kooky intellectual because of her glasses. He’d asked her how she came to teach English to refugees and she explained that her dad was a refugee from Romania back in the fifties and a next-door neighbour took it upon herself to teach him English. ‘My dad didn’t have any aptitude for languages,’ said Carmel. ‘And he’s very impatient when he feels insecure. It would have been a tough slog. So my sister and I both teach English as a second language now. To honour Auntie Pat.’
Who the fuck did Tony honour? Who the fuck did Tony help out? He didn’t even give back to the sport that had given him so much joy. Mimi had been at him for ages to coach a local team of kids. ‘You might even enjoy it,’ she said. Why had he been so against the idea? Now he couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than standing on a field in the sunlight teaching kids to see the music and poetry of football.
He met the frightened eyes of the woman whose hand he still held. She was as nutty as a fruitcake, talked too much, had clearly never seen an AFL game in her life. She wrote romance books for a living. Tony hadn’t read a novel since high school. They had nothing in common.
He didn’t want to die.
He wanted to take her out for a drink.
chapter sixty-nine
Frances
The nine guests huddled in the furthest corner of the yoga and meditation studio, wet towels draped over their heads and shoulders, while Tranquillum House burned to the ground.
Frances listened to the sound of the hungry flames and wondered if the crash she’d just heard was that beautiful staircase. She remembered how Yao had said on that first day, ‘We won’t sink, Frances!’ and imagined ripples of fire consuming that beautiful wood.
‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,’ murmured Jessica into her knees, over and over. ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.’
Frances wouldn’t have picked Jessica as a believer, but maybe she wasn’t, because she couldn’t seem to get any further than ‘hallowed be thy name’.
Frances, who had been brought up Anglican but lost religion sometime back in the late eighties, thought it might not be good manners to pray for deliverance right now, when she hadn’t even said thank you for so long. God might have appreciated a thankyou card over the years.
Thank you for that long, hot, sex-filled summer in Europe with Sol.
Thank you for that first year of my marriage to Henry which, to be honest, God, was one of the happiest of my life.
Thank you for a career that has given me virtually nothing but pleasure and I’m sorry for all that fuss about the review. I’m sure that reviewer is one of God’s children too.
Thank you for my health, you’ve been quite generous in that regard, and it was rude of me to make such a fuss over a bad cold.
Thank you for friends who are more like family.
Thank you for my dad, even though you took him a little early.
Thank you for Bellinis and all champagne cocktails.
Sorry for complaining about a paper cut while others suffered atrocities. Although, to be frank, that’s why I gave up believing in you – that whole paper cuts for some versus atrocities for others thing.
Carmel cried into her wet towel and jumped at the sound of yet another crash.
Frances imagined the balcony of her room hanging at an angle and then smashing to the ground in a shower of embers.
She imagined billows of black smoke illuminated by fiery light against a summer night’s sky.
‘The smoke in here isn’t getting any worse,’ she said to Carmel, to be comforting. ‘Napoleon and Heather did a good job with the towels.’
She could still smell and taste smoke, but it was true, it wasn’t getting any worse.
‘We might be fine,’ said Frances tentatively.
‘We will be fine,’ said Napoleon. He sat between his wife and daughter, holding their hands. ‘It’s all going to be fine.’
He spoke with such assurance and Frances wished she hadn’t caught sight of his face as he readjusted the wet towel, because it was filled with despair.
It’s coming for us, she thought. It’s coming for us and there is nowhere to hide.
She remembered Masha saying, ‘I wonder, do you feel that you’ve ever been truly tested in your life?’
Jessica lifted her head from her knees and spoke in a muffled voice through her towel. ‘She never even heard all our presentations.’
It was cute the way she still wanted to see logic in Masha’s actions. She would have been the kid who couldn’t stand it when the teacher forgot to do the quiz that had been promised.
‘Do you think Yao is still alive?’ asked Zoe.
chapter seventy Yao
Yao dreamed of Finn.
Finn was very keen that Yao wake up.
‘Wake up,’ he said insistently. He banged together a pair of cymbals. He blasted a horn in Yao’s ear. ‘Mate, you really need to wake up to yourself.’
Yao returned to consciousness while Finn receded. He felt the imprint of something soft and scratchy against his cheek. He lifted his head. There was a cushion on Masha’s desk. He remembered the feeling of the needle in his neck. The surprise of it, because that was not a decision he could respect.
He heard the sound of something burning. He smelled smoke.
He lifted his head, turned around and saw her, smoking a cigarette, looking out the window.
She turned to face him and smiled. She looked sad and emotional, but resigned, like his fiancée when she broke off their engagement.