Sniffing, George stood in the yard behind Cadwallader’s Quality Meats. Something was burning. Bushfires somewhere and not all that far away. There was a pall of reddish-brown smoke extending from the north-west right down to the south. Overhead the sky appeared almost misty, as if veiled in yellow gauze. As he watched the hazy yellow sky above turned a sullen grey and sparks began to drift through the air. Hurriedly he stumped into the shop, where The Boy was wrapping up a parcel for a customer. Trying to tune into the local station, he fiddled with the dial of the radio. Although the static was awful, he’d just about picked up a signal when the clanging of the fire bell drowned out the crackling of the radio. It sounded close, as if the fire engine was pulling into the square. He limped across the sawdust to open the shopfront door for the customer and would have followed had Mrs Blunkett not blocked the way. Her light blue eyes were popping and her usually neat hair was dishevelled. ‘The pub’s on fire,’ she shouted, as if George were yards away rather than inches. ‘The fire brigade’s here! I’ve shut up the post office.’ The shop door banged behind her as she fled.
‘Fewest words she’s ever uttered,’ George said, trying to quell his trepidation. The fire engine was parked in front of Bates’ hotel and firemen were directing their hoses on flames that were ripping through the building. Dense black smoke began to drift down towards him and the roaring of the flames was frightful.
The drill in a bushfire was to stay inside with the doors and windows shut and rolled-up wet towels across the bottoms of the doors to stop any sparks getting in. Yet this wasn’t a bushfire and he had to get the boys out of school fast. He had to find Eileen too and The Boy had to get home.
He locked up the shop behind them. No time to worry about rolled-up wet towels now. People were running everywhere, coughing and spluttering and shouting. Davies, the Jingera policeman, and a couple of his cronies were guiding people towards the road to the lagoon. The smoke was so dense George couldn’t see the way up to the headland. Fear flowered inside him and he broke into a sweat. Somehow he had to get past the hotel and up the hill to the school to find Jim and Andy. Sidling by people running down the hill to the lagoon, he headed for the vicinity of the road leading up to the headland. At this point the way was blocked by a volunteer fireman with a blackened face, whom George recognised as Taffy Hughes. ‘Can’t go up there, George. The road’s been cut. The pub could collapse on that side any moment.’
‘Got to get to my boys. They’re in school.’ George was joined by a few other anxious-looking parents.
‘The school’s already been evacuated. The teacher’s taking all the kids down to the beach through the back lanes. Don’t worry, they’re all right.’
Davies now came running up, stuttering in his excitement. ‘You’ve got to get onto the beach. Get over to the lagoon as fast as you can. The Bournda Forest fires are pretty well out of control, they reckon, and they’ve shut all the roads out of here.’
Back past the shop, George limped around to his house a few hundred yards beyond. Eileen already had the hose connected to the rainwater tank that supplied the kitchen sink and was hosing down the roof. ‘Thank God you’re here, George,’ she said, voice rising. ‘The kids are already on the beach, Mrs Burton told me, and I didn’t know whether to stay or to go. I’ve had the radio on and they say we’ve all got to get out. Jingera is ringed by fire.’
‘It’s not ringed by fire,’ George said calmly, although this wasn’t how he felt. ‘It’s only Bournda Forest that’s burning. The hotel’s caught on fire as well, God knows how. It looks pretty much under control, though it could spread.’
Together George and Eileen stumbled along the path and out the gate. As they crossed the square, he glanced at his shop and the bakery next door. Both were intact but he wondered for how much longer. The hotel was still burning fiercely, flames leaping into the sky and debris blowing towards them. The street was full of people, all running in the same direction, and forming a stream that flowed down towards the lagoon and across the footbridge onto the beach. George and Eileen hastened past the post office. Although Peter Vincent’s distinctive car, the grey Armstrong Siddeley, was parked outside there was no sign of him.
Halfway down the hill George thought he saw two rows of schoolchildren lined up on the beach close to the surf, and felt a flicker of relief. Then a cloud of dense black smoke swirled down from the hotel or the bush, and obliterated the view. Spluttering, and with eyes watering so much he could hardly see the way, he pulled out a handkerchief. He gave it to Eileen to tie over her face, before removing his apron, which, until now, he’d forgotten he was still wearing. Even with this held over his mouth and nostrils, the acrid smoke still tore into his lungs at each breath and he began to cough. Please God, may my boys be safe, he pleaded to the celestial being in whom he didn’t quite believe.
‘Pull yourself together, George,’ Eileen said, and only then did he realise he’d been voicing his pleas aloud. Despite this lapse, she took his hand and semi-dragged him along. His gammy leg, aching in the spot where it had broken years ago, hurt with each step.
At last they were over the bridge and stumping along the short track to the beach. Still hand in hand, they staggered across the sand, and there were the children in two rows by the water’s edge, just as he’d seen them in his vision on the hill. They were sitting cross-legged, as if they were in a school assembly. Catching sight of his parents, Andy waved, and George’s heart turned over. But Jim was nowhere to be seen. Miss Neville and Ilona Talivaldis were roaming around the children as if they were herding sheep or cattle. George went straight up to the school mistress.
‘Where’s Jim?’
‘Can’t find him anywhere. He didn’t return after the lunch break. I thought he might have been with you.’
‘He’s not.’ George now began to feel deeply alarmed. After collecting Andy, he hurried back to Eileen.
‘That bally boy!’ Eileen shouted. ‘I’ll skin him alive when he comes back.’
‘I’ll find him,’ said George. ‘Keep Andy with you.’
George could feel sweat pouring down his back and soaking the waistband of his trousers. Jim had no idea of how dangerous a fire could be and for an instant George hated his son for destroying his peace of mind. And for putting at risk his own bright future: the brilliant scholarship, the science degree, the radio telescope. Jim’s stupidity could hardly be credited. To play truant today of all days.
Stumbling from group to group, George asked if anyone knew where Jim was. No one had seen him, not since lunchtime at school. The heat was searing and the air so dry it was hard to breathe. Gusts of wind shifted sparks, and soon there were so many specks of debris whirling about that it was almost as if a swarm of locusts had descended on the beach. Then the wind metamorphosed into a westerly gale and there was an abrupt thundering sound, as if planes were flying low overhead. Turning, George was just in time to witness a great ball of fire jump the lagoon, leaping from the treetops on the Jingera side of the river to the treetops on the beach side. An instant later the crowns of all the trees in the strip of bushland between the river and the beach exploded into flames. The sky turned red as the flames burned higher and higher.
Panic rising inside him, George found it increasingly hard to see through the clouds of black smoke billowing across the beach. People who had been spread across the sand now ran towards the surf and formed an uneven line along the breakers’ edge. George’s heart was hammering as he edged his way past, searching for his beloved son.