Bad Girls Good Women

‘Who lives here?’ she asked.

‘My father.’

‘And who’s your father, when he’s at home?’

‘Sir Percy Bliss, Bart.’

‘Hot dog,’ Julia had said.

Alexander left his car slewed at an angle in the driveway and they went inside. They walked through the rooms together. Sir Percy was away, and there was no one at Ladyhill. Julia was impressed in spite of herself. It wasn’t so much by the dim rooms with their panelled walls hung with English pictures, or by the Long Gallery with views over the gardens beyond the house, or even by the great half-tester bed with its yellow brocade hangings that Alexander called the Queen’s Bed, but by the difference in Alexander himself. In London he was vague, almost diffident.

Julia had seen him once or twice glancing uneasily around Markham Square, or the Rocket, as if he was wondering what he was doing there. But as he showed her around Ladyhill he seemed more solid, as if the place and his love for it defined him. He did love it, she could see it in his face, and in his hands as they rested on a carved newel or measured the depth of a window embrasure.

Suddenly, startling, Julia liked Alexander Bliss. She liked him, and envied him. She felt that she was adrift, not anchored like Alexander to his old house and its gardens. At Ladyhill, the freedom that she had set such store by seemed no more than rootlessness.

She shivered in the silent house.

‘It needs people,’ she announced. ‘Lots and lots of people. Mad parties.’

Alexander smiled. ‘Perhaps it does.’ He put his arms around her, and kissed her demandingly. Lots of people, Julia remembered.

After her dance with the sideburns man someone else had claimed her, and then one of Mattie’s retinue of men. She drank some more whisky and then some champagne, and reached the elusive stage of being drunk when everything seemed warm, and simple, and deliciously funny. The crowd began to thin out a little as the staider guests left. Alexander stood at the foot of the sweep of stairs, saying goodbye. When he looked back at the dancers he realised that the stayers were going to stay all night. The music was coming from the radiogram now, and the group had put down their guitars to join the dancers. One of them took off his shirt to dance bare-chested, with the sweat shining on his shoulder blades. Mattie reached our reflective to touch the muscles in his back with her fingertips, and Julia laughed. At that moment everyone was her friend, but she loved Mattie for all the years that had just slipped out of her reach with the strokes of Big Ben. It was just New Year’s Eve that was troubling her. She didn’t want to celebrate the death of a year, let alone a decade.

She looked for Bliss, wanting to put her arms around him, but she couldn’t see him anywhere. She turned instead, smiling back at the laugher around her, ready to plunge into the party once more.

She never knew how the next thing happened. The crush was much less than it had been at midnight, and she couldn’t remember afterwards who had been at that side of the room. Someone must have stumbled, or swung an arm too wildly and reached out to steady themselves. Julia saw her Christmas tree shiver as if it was alive, and then it titled, slowly at first, and then it fell in an arc of fire. The candle flames licked through the dark branches, and the branches crackled fragrantly as the scarlet tongues devoured them.

For an instant, still in the grip of euphoria, Julia thought how beautiful it was. The blazing tree hit the floor, with its glass balls splintering around it. The dancers scattered backwards and a girl screamed. The record was still playing but it seemed that there was a long moment’s silence. And then the heavy velvet curtains caught fire. A sheet of flame sprang upwards from the floor, blindingly bright in the dim room. A second later the dusty velvet drapes and braided tassels were blazing like the demolished tree.

There was another scream, but this one was caught and stifled by a belching pall of smoke. The horrified stillness in the room broke into a panicky scramble of bodies. Julia was carried towards the door, almost falling and then clawing her way upright again. The smoke billowed out, as acrid as her sudden terror, and she choked on it. There was a babble of shouts and screams now and a man’s voice rising over them commanding, ‘Don’t push. Don’t panic.’

The joyous crackle of leaping flames was louder than anything else, drowning out the music and the shouting.

The first dancers to escape stumbled out into the hallway.

Julia saw that the man with the sideburns had wrapped himself in one of the rolled-back rugs. Under this protection he was trying to tear down the flaming curtains. They fell in a shower of vicious sparks, and the heavy wooden cornice pole crashed with them. It was already alight and before Julia’s eyes the whole of the panelled wall beside the dark gape of the window flowered into bright tendrils of flame.

She heard herself scream too. ‘Bliss!’ The roar of the fire grew deafening as it took hold. ‘Bliss. Where are you?’

She couldn’t see him anywhere. The room was thick with smoke now, and she coughed and gasped as it filled her lungs. The door seemed so far away. She was sure that she would never reach it and fear spread through her as fast as the fire itself. A hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her forward. Her tight dress hobbled her and she almost fell again, but the surge of people pushed her forward. Half carried and half dragged there, she lurched through the doorway into the hall. Cold, fresh air bit into her lungs and she gulped at it, her eyes steaming. She rubbed the palms of her hands into her eyes and turned to look where she had come from.

The last of the dancers tumbled out after her, retching, and blinded by the smoke. A great black cloud of it licked after them. Julia could see nothing beyond it, but she could hear the fire as it leapt upwards and onwards. Water. She must get water to quench it. She imagined ducking through the smoke to pour water where the Christmas tree had collapsed into flame, and half turned to run for the kitchens.

The heavy main door banged open and she smelt the frosty purity of the night air rushing past her as the fire sucked it inwards. Julia felt it like a living thing now. It gave a great roar of satisfaction as the air fed it. Through the smoke she glimpsed its red heart, and sparks that cascaded downwards in a mocking torrent. No one could get into that room now.

Telephone. She must telephone for help instead.

‘Get everyone outside,’ someone shouted. ‘Then for Christ’s sake shut the doors.’ Julia’s guests began to stream out into the darkness. She saw Mattie, her fact blackened with smoke.

‘Come on,’ Mattie yelled at her. ‘Get out.’

‘I’ve got to ring for help.

Julia tried to push past her, to Bliss’s little office on the right of the stairs, and the nearest telephone.

‘No,’ Mattie screamed. ‘Julia!’

Then at last she saw Bliss. He ran towards her from the stone archway that led through to the back of the house. His face was the colour of ice.

Julia stumbled towards him. ‘The fire brigade,’ she shouted helplessly.

‘They’re coming.’

Alexander was methodically throwing open every door to check that the room beyond was empty. He slammed the doors shut again and the roar of the fire devoured the sound. Another obliterating blanket of smoke rolled around them and he caught at her arm.

‘Is everyone out of there?’

She nodded, and at once he was pulling her over the stone flags to the big door. She tripped in her tight dress and the thin fabric ripped, freeing her to run. The arched portico framed the night beyond, then it was overhead, and then with Alexander’s arm supporting her they escaped into the darkness. The cold hit them and Julia saw ahead of her the dark, glossy’ ovals of the clipped yews reflecting an ugly red glow. The crowd of people milled at the foot of the shallow flight of steps, their faces turned upwards to the house. Julia and Alexander looked the same way, and understood how quickly and how terribly the fire had taken hold.

The windows of what had been the drawing room, where only a few minutes ago they had been dancing in the flow of candlelight, were now blind eyes from which the smoke coiled in the thick ropes. The flames had reached the first floor, and came darting lasciviously from the windows. The crash of breaking glass and falling timber was just audible through the voice of the fire itself.

‘Is everyone out?’ Bliss shouted hoarsely. ‘Is anyone missing?’

The panic had subsided. The guests were numb with shock, and silent in awe of the fire’s horrible vitality. They muttered to one another, and shook their heads. It seemed that everyone was accounted for.

Julia stood motionless, watching. Bliss’s fingers were like iron hooks digging into the flesh of her arm. Looking upwards at the windows in the gable end of the near wing, she thought of the magnificent beams that supported the roof of the Long Gallery, and the floor of broad oak boards that separated the gallery from the burning bedrooms beneath.

She shivered violently in the city air. And then she remembered.

The words stuck in her throat at first. Bliss looked at her, then gripped her other arm and pulled her closer.

‘What is it?’

‘Flowers. Flowers was upstairs, with a girl.’

They whirled apart and went blundering through the silent huddles of people. ‘Has anyone seen Flowers?’

No one had seen him. There were only white, shocked faces, and none of them was Johnny Flowers.

Julia remembered, with a beat of horror, what he had said in the shadows at the top of the stairs. The party to end all parties. She dared not look up at the lurid windows.

Fear crystallised into certainty within her. She finished her desperate circuit and collided with Bliss again.

‘Not here.’

Alexander turned his face to the house. Julia saw the reflected light of the fire in his eyes.

‘They must still be inside.’