‘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.