packed tight and all staring upwards towards the flaming mass inside the railings.
Dashing back, he climbed the stout sleepers that he’d had put up to encase the spare land they had bought only a few months earlier. When he dropped on to the other side he saw men dragging a hawser from a river boat, and he ran, scrambling and falling over the debris, yelling, ‘Jimmy! Jimmy!’
He grabbed hold of a man’s arm. ‘Are they out?’
‘Who, mate?’
‘Me . . . me brother.’ He was looking wildly around him. ‘And . . . and Janie.’
‘There’s nobody in there, man. Anyway, look at it, nothin’ could live long in that, they’d be choked with the smoke afore now.’
‘ Jimmy! Jimmy!’
He was hanging over the rail yelling down into the wherries when a woman appeared. She swung round the end post from the passage and he stared into her face, made pink now by the reflection from the fire. ‘Janie!’ He gripped her arms. ‘Where’s . . . where’s Jimmy?’
‘Jimmy? I . . . I left him. I left him here, I’ve been up home.’
‘Oh my God!’
He turned now towards the house and gazed upwards. It looked like a huge torch. Flames were coming out of the two bottom windows but only smoke out of the upper one. As he stared there came the sound of breaking glass. It could have been caused by the heat but instinctively he swung round to Janie, and there flashed between them a knowing glance. Then she put her hand over her mouth as she cried, ‘God Almighty, Jimmy!’
He raced towards the steps, but as he attempted to mount them the heat beat him back. To the side of him two men were playing a hose that spurted intermittent water into one of the bottom windows. His hand was gripping the stanchion of the balustrade over which a sack was lying; it was the hessian hood that Jimmy wore when working in the rain. Tearing it from the railing he dashed towards the men and pulling the hose downwards he saturated the sack; then, throwing it over his head, he went up the steps again, and into the house.
Everything that was wood inside was alight. The floor felt like slippery wet mush beneath his feet. Blindly he flew over it and to the ladder. One side of it was already burning but he was up it in a second and had thrust the trap-door open.
The room was full of smoke, but through it he saw the glow of the burning bookcase at the far end. Coughing and choking he dropped flat on the floor and pulled himself towards the window, and there his groping hands touched the limp body, and it wasn’t until he went to drag it towards the trap door that he realized that both Jimmy’s hands and feet were bound. There was no time to unloosen them. So gripping him under the armpits, he pulled him backwards towards the trap-door, but there he had to pause and stuff the wet hessian into his mouth and squeeze the water down his throat to stop himself from choking.
To descend the ladder he had to get on to his knees, then hoist Jimmy’s slight body on to his shoulder. By now he wasn’t really conscious of his actions, one followed the other in automatic frenzy. Even the agony of gripping the burning rungs didn’t penetrate his mind.
The room now was one inferno of hissing flame and smoke; his coat was alight, as was Jimmy’s guernsey. Half-way along the room he felt the floor giving way, and as his feet sank he threw himself and his burden in the direction where he thought the door was. His lungs were bursting, his whole body seemed to be burning as furiously as the room.
One hand groping blindly, he felt for the opening, and found it. The steps were below. He let Jimmy slide to the ground. He was choking. He was choking. Dimly he was aware of yells and screams and at the same time he felt the whole building shudder. That was all he remembered.
He was alive when they raised the burning beam from him, then beat the fire out of his clothes.
When they carried him to where Jimmy was lying covered with coats, Janie stumbled by his side, and when she went to take his blackened hand, his skin came away on her palm.
As if totally unconscious of the turmoil in the yard she knelt between the two men with whom she had been brought up, and she groaned aloud.
Someone went to raise her up but she pushed the hands aside. The voices were floating over her: ‘We must get him to the hospital. Get a stretcher, a door, anything.’ Then there followed a period of time before a voice said, Here, Mrs Connor. He’s here, Mrs Connor,’ and she lifted her head to see a tall figure dropping on to her knees at the other side of the man who was her husband. She stared at the woman who was putting her arm under Rory’s shoulders and crying to him, such words, endearing words that she had never heard said aloud before. ‘Oh my darling, my darling, dearest, dearest. Oh Rory, Rory, my love, my love.’ Such private words all mixed up with moans.
Janie felt herself lifted aside, almost pushed aside by a policeman. He was directing the lifting of Jimmy on to a stretcher. When they went to take up Rory they had to loosen the woman’s hands from him, and she heard the voices again saying, ‘We must get him to hospital.’ And now the woman’s voice, ‘No, no, he must go home. Both of them, they must come home. I . . . I have the carriage.’
‘They’ll never get in a carriage, ma’am.’ It was a policeman speaking.
‘A cart then, a cart, anything. They must come home.’
There were more voices, more confusion, then a discussion between three uniformed men.
When they carried the two still forms out of the yard Janie followed them. They crossed the waste land to avoid the fire which was now merely a mass of blazing wood to where, on the road stood a flat coal cart that had been commandeered. She watched them putting the two stretchers on to it, and as it moved away she saw the woman walk closely by its side. Then the driver got down from a carriage that was standing by the kerb in the road and ran to her. She watched her shake her head at him, and he went back and mounted the carriage and drove it behind the cart. And Janie followed the carriage.
Even when it turned into the drive and up towards the house she followed it. She stopped only when it moved away to the side, past the cart and towards the stables. She watched the men who had accompanied the cart lifting the stretchers off it. She watched the servants running up and down the steps. Then everyone disappeared into the house, and for a few minutes she was standing alone looking at the lighted windows, until the coachman came racing down the steps, rushed into the yard, turned the carriage and put the horses into a gallop and went past her.
Then again she was alone for a time and she stood staring unblinking at the house. She did not move when the carter and three other men came down the steps and mounted the cart and rode away.
She did not know how long she stood there before she saw the carriage return and the doctor, carrying his leather bag, get out and hurry into the house, but she imagined that it was near on two hours before he came out of the house again.
As he went to get into the carriage she seemed to come out of a trance and, stumbling towards him, asked, ‘Please, please. How is he? How are they?’
The doctor looked her up and down, her odd hat, her cloak, her clogs. She looked like a field peasant from the last century, and not a peasant of this country either. He peered at her for a moment before he answered, ‘The young man will survive but Mr Connor is very ill, seriously so.’ He made an abrupt movement with his head, then stepped up into the carriage, and the driver, after giving her a hard stare, mounted the box, turned the carriage and was about to drive away when a servant came running down the steps, calling, ‘Will! Will!’ When the coachman pulled the horses up, the servant, gripping the side handle, looked up at him and said quickly, ‘The mistress, she says, you’re to go straight on after dropping the doctor and . . . and bring the master’s people. You know where.’
‘Aye. Aye.’ The coachman nodded and cracked his whip and the horses once again sped down the drive.
The servant now looked at the woman standing to the side of the balustrade. ‘Do you want something?’ she asked.
Janie shook her head.
‘Did . . . did you come with them?’
Janie nodded once.
The servant now looked her up and down. She had never seen anyone dressed like her, she looked a sketch, like a tramp, except that her face didn’t look like that of a tramp for it was young, but she looked odd, foreign,
