arms and hauled me out of bed. Vaguely, I was upright. The devils were howling; they went on howling, and a thin stream of bile rose in my throat.
I clung to the edge of my desk. I trembled; I was ineffectual, elderly, one hand across my mouth. ‘Put on your SHOES,’ Julia yelled. ‘Come on, you idiot, put on your SHOES.’
She threw open the door. The corridor was swarming with evacuees. Claire was standing square across it, her arms wide: ‘Back,’ she said. ‘No. Stop. Back. That way. That way.’
‘Oh, let us through, Claire . . .’ somebody wailed, above the wailing of the siren. Claire shook her head.
I saw her face, her set jaw, and I pulled at Julia’s arm. ‘It’s real?’ I said.
We tramped as Claire directed us: our possessions abandoned, empty-handed, some barefooted, a couple of lucky souls in their boots: some shivering already in thin nightdresses, some stout in quilted housecoats. ‘Close your doors, close your doors,’ Claire bellowed. ‘Now move, move, MOVE.’ Some girls had their hair done up in elaborate rollers and scarves and pins, and two of the glamorous engaged girls from the third year proved to have identical tartan dressing-gowns and sheepskin slippers. Out into the London night we scattered, like a company of pink and blue bunny rabbits let loose from a nursery tale.
The air was cold and raw, its relief indescribable. I doubled up and retched, felt Julia’s hand warm and protect the nape of my neck as milk dribbled painfully into the gutter. Muted now, its job done, the siren sobbed within our walls. The fire brigade was already on hand, and some girls gave little practice screams when they realized, for the first time, that this was an emergency. Someone said, ‘I hope Nigel had the sense to bolt.’
Jacqueline, the receptionist, was sharp-nosed in a pink satin wrap; did she possibly, I wondered, have a sex-life of her own? Flapping her hands, she urged a bunch of us across the street. ‘Keep back, girls, keep back, a minor incident, soon be tucked up in our beds again . . . ’ But just then another fire-engine bounced down the street. The roads were being sealed off to stop anyone coming into the area; cones and tapes stopped the traffic from the British Museum direction. ‘Where is it, where did it start?’ Julia demanded. ‘I am sure we are entitled to know.’ Half the girls from B Floor had been forced to come down a fire-escape, shocked, half-asleep, a freezing metal spiral tumbling them into the dark. ‘It was horrible,’ one of them sobbed, ‘horrible.’ Her friend put an arm around her and looked embarrassed. Girls bleated about their crushed heels, and limped across the road looking for steps to sit on.
The bursar was moving among us with a list. A plume of icy breath issued from her mouth. ‘Floor wardens, floor wardens, where are you?’ she called.
I became conscious of a presence beside me: white, palely glowing. It was Sophy who moved among the displaced and dismayed, like a column of ectoplasm, like some eighteenth-century ghost. She was wearing her full fencing gear; only her head was exposed, and her face was grey under the street lamps. I turned – and Sue turned – just in time to see Sophy’s Roger legging it – bursting from a group of shivering inmates and sprinting away, away towards the safety of Bedford Square: towards the world, green leaves and taxis and safety. Never look back: never look back.
Sue turned to me, her jaw dropping, her eyes alight with a growing glee. ‘What – ?’ she said. ‘Why – ?’
‘Some unusual perversion,’ Julia said thoughtfully. ‘An unusual sexual perversion. On our very corridor. How intriguing.’
The bursar did not see Roger go. She glowered at Sophy and said, ‘Really, Miss Pattison, I hope you haven’t been clumping about in your room, ruining the parquet. Really! And in the middle of the night, too!’
It was two o’clock. We were forced down the street by a cordon of staff and firemen, but like a wave we surged back. It was clear, by now, that this was no minor incident; the fire had taken a hold. ‘Soon have you somewhere warm, girls,’ the warden called out. Her face was bleak. A rumour spread that some girls had panicked and lost their bearings, run down to the basement and had climbed out through the dining-room windows; they were caged in the building’s inner courtyard, with the withered shrubs and the smoke and the crackling timbers. ‘Oh no, oh please . . .’ someone was saying; Claire and the other wardens buzzed from group to group, saying not
I don’t know if you’ve ever been at the site of a disaster. I seem to have avoided them, except for this one. What my memory retains is a series of snapshots, with some sound-effects: the fountains and jets, the steam, the crump and crash, the mouthing of men and the gleam of their helmets, the false planets of street lamps fixed and brooding over all: once, a distant screaming, and a huge flash of white light. We had forgotten we were cold; we jostled for a view, craned our necks, barged against each other in the crowd. The situation – and what we were told of it was at variance with what we could see – was changing from second to second. And naturally we were fascinated to see all our possessions go up in smoke – our clothes, our textbooks, next week’s essay in note form. Some girls held hands and sniffled; others – how odd people are – were smiling broadly, though perhaps they did not know it. ‘That’s our room,’ others said, pointing. They were picking them out, tracking fingers through the smoke. ‘That’s ours, C20.’
In front of me, in the quaking, hysterical press, an unknown voice whimpered, whimpered on and on. ‘My teddy bears,’ she said. ‘My Afghan coat.’
‘Good riddance,’ said her room-mate. ‘That coat stinks anyway. And now you’ll have to grow up, won’t you?’ She turned, and slapped the whimperer smartly across the face.
There were gasps of shock; someone said, Tor heaven’s sake, Linda, get a grip!’
The firemen said, ‘Come on, girls, we’ll soon get you taken care of, be good girls and move back now, no use crying over spilt milk.’
I thought, do they go to cliche school? Is it part of their training? Then someone screamed. It was Eva, our near neighbour: the poor sap who shared a room with Sophy. ‘Look, oh look! Up there, on our floor!’
I looked. Outlined against a window, I saw a single figure; a silhouette, a blackness against red. It was Lynette. I knew her at once: I would have known her anywhere. I saw her put up her arms, like an angel about to fly. Then flames leapt from her head.
As it happened, no one else died. Tonbridge Hall was gutted, the cause of the blaze never established, not completely; but the lists had worked, the regulations and drills and fire-wardens, the shouted commands and the hurry, hurry, the pitching out into the shivering dark.
At the inquest, it was easily established that Karina was the last person to see Lynette alive. She took the witness-stand, looking monstrous, huge; which was understandable, as we were now coming into March. Her face was grim and set as she told of the moment when the siren went off.
Woken from deep sleep, her first thought had been that the kitchen was opposite, with its fire-extinguisher; she had dived across the corridor to get it. It was not what we had been told to do; but it was natural, and even mildly
