Spit had awakened to hear his grandfather banging and opening and then banging and opening again and again the front door. At first Spit lay still and did nothing because it was not unusual for his grandfather to wander around in the middle of the night making a noise and shouting nonsense. Sooner or later it would stop and the old man would drop exhausted on his bed to sleep it off, groaning and twisting and covering his head but eventually subsiding. But this time it seemed different because Spit could see a reflection of a light through the boiler’s window. Instead of simply shouting, his grandfather was also singing, which he sometimes did when he was working at his bench, but never in the middle of the night.
Spit got out of bed, and still wearing the old shirt he slept in and pulling on his trousers, he went through the house and found his grandfather holding the front door open and wrenching violently at it as if he wanted to tear it off its hinges.
‘Grandpa,’ Spit shouted at him. ‘You’ve got to stop. You’re making too much noise.’
But he knew his grandfather couldn’t hear him. What puzzled Spit was the hurricane lamp which his grandfather had managed to light. It was on the path leading to the gate. Deciding quickly that it was the best thing to do, Spit picked it up but didn’t blow it out. Old Fyfe was still singing, but sometimes he laughed the grim and curious and agonised laugh which was often a sort of punctuation to his shouting. When Spit tried to pull his arm he held the door tight and shouted, ‘I’m awfu’ cold … awfu’ cold.’
‘You can’t be cold,’ Spit told him.
‘It’s an auld auld killick,’ Fyfe said in his agony. Then he left the door and walked down the path to the gate, which he also tried to pull off its hinges. It was too well made, and Fyfe suddenly crumpled to his knees and held his hands to his ears and began to moan.
‘It maun kill me, cairgie … It’s awfu’ bad …’
‘Come on, Grandpa. Come back inside,’ Spit said anxiously, aware that though it looked like the old man’s usual behaviour in such moments, this time there was something else that was different and disturbing. Spit held up the lamp and caught a glimpse of tears running down his grandfather’s face. Then, in a quiet, almost normal but pained voice, his grandfather looked up at him and said, ‘Go away, cairgie … run away, d’ye hear me. Run away from me. Go on … Go on, I tell ye.’
Spit had never before heard that sort of calm if desperate sense in his grandfather’s voice, and he didn’t know what to make of it. ‘Go on w’ye,’ Fyfe shouted as if he was trying desperately now to contain some terrible danger that could not be held off much longer. ‘Run off, cairgie, and don’t come back. Don’t ye come back, do y’hear …’
Spit understood the words but he couldn’t grasp the meaning or the reason. He shifted from one bare foot to the other, holding up the hurricane lamp so that he could see his grandfather’s upturned face. What he saw was a subterranean terror in the old man’s eyes, and it was the first time in his life that Spit felt frightened by his grandfather’s behaviour.
‘What’s the matter, Grandpa?’ he said. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Will ye go …’ the old man groaned.
Spit knew that he had to stay; above all he had to stay. ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to get inside. It’s no use shouting out here. You’ve got to go in.’
The old man’s face made some final tortured gesture towards sanity, clawing at it, trying to convince the boy. Then it broke into madness as if everything he had been holding back had finally defeated him and had now overcome him. He no longer saw. He no longer recognised. He seemed no longer to have any link with anything except the awful torture in his own mind. And, seizing the lighted lamp from Spit, he walked slowly up the path and threw it through the open door of the house.
It was too unexpected for Spit to stop him doing it, and as the lamp glass smashed and the kerosene spilled and caught alight Spit ran straight into the flames. Without thinking about it he tried to damp them out with his bare feet. When he felt the burning pain of it he looked around for one of the buckets of water that were usually kept near the stove. One bucket was empty and the other one only half full, awaiting a fresh refill in the morning. He threw the half bucket of water over the flames which made no impression on them, so he rushed out and down to the river to fill one of the buckets on the banks. By the time he had struggled back to the house with it, the whole floor was alight and also the curtain that divided off his grandfather’s bed. He threw the water over the floor but again it made no impression, and though his grandfather was standing in the doorway looking at the flames and shouting, Spit ignored him and ran back to the river once more for water. But this time he knew as he threw it on the flames that it was hopeless for him to go on alone.
‘Grandpa, get out. Don’t stand there,’ he cried.
The old man didn’t see or hear, and Spit pulled him out of the doorway. Then he set off down the river and up the slope to the house he knew best, Sadie Tree’s. The back door was a wire screen door so there was no use hammering on it. Instead he shouted, ‘Mr Tree. Mr Tree. Our house is on fire. Mr Tree …’
It took a few minutes, but Jack Tree heard him and called out, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Spit MacPhee. Our house is on fire. Will you come and help me?’
‘Did you call the fire brigade?’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘All right. I’ll do it.’ Mr Tree shouted from somewhere within. ‘Go up to the Andrews on the other side, and Tim Evans. Get their help. I’ll be down.’
Spit was off up the well-worn path to the railway line, and he repeated his cries at the back doors of the Andrews’ house and the Evans’. Then he raced back to the house and found Jack Tree already there and the fire so fierce now that it was sending sparks high in the air and crackling fiercely. Mr Tree was running back and forth to the river carrying buckets of water which he threw over the flames, but now it was obviously out of control.
‘Where is my grandfather?’ Spit shouted.
‘Down by the steps. Get some more buckets.’
‘It’s no use,’ Spit cried. ‘It’s no use any more.’
‘Do as you’re told,’ Mr Tree ordered. ‘Get the buckets.’
They were joined by Mr Andrews and his son Jolly and then Mr and Mrs Evans and Joan Gillespie their neighbour. There were only enough buckets and kerosene tins with wire handles for six people, and though they all poured water onto the fire it was obvious that it couldn’t be put out. By the time the volunteer fire brigade had reached the railway line, and were on the river bank with a hand pump, there was not enough left of the house to bother about. As the fire began to subside in the ashes, the only thing left standing was the charred boiler. By now, too, there was a little crowd of people from the houses along the railway line. They had all done their best, but it was Mrs Tree and Sadie who went looking for Spit and found him, dripping wet, fifty yards along the river bank holding his grandfather half in and half out of the water.
‘Did he go under?’ Mrs Tree said. ‘Is he drowned?’
‘No. He fell in,’ Spit said. ‘But I got him out.’
With Sadie’s help from above, and Spit pushing from the water, Mrs Tree pulled old Fyfe up on the bank.
‘He’s sick,’ Spit said. ‘He fell in. He didn’t know what he was doing.’
Old Fyfe was now lying so twisted and helpless that Mrs Tree said to Sadie, ‘Go and get your father. Quick.’
As Sadie ran off, Spit said, ‘He didn’t know what he was doing. He just threw it in …’
‘Threw what in?’ Mrs Tree said.
‘The hurricane lamp. He just threw it in.’
‘He needs a doctor now, Spit. He’s unconscious. Are you sure he didn’t go under?’
‘No, he didn’t. He’ll be all right,’ Spit insisted.
‘But he looks bad, Spit. He needs help,’ Grace told him.
‘I tell you he’ll be all right,’ Spit insisted.
When Mr Tree arrived, black and wet, Mrs Tree simply pointed to old Fyfe and Mr Tree looked closely and nodded.
‘We’ll get him up to the house and I’ll get Doctor Stevens,’ he said. ‘You stay here with him, Grace, and I’ll get the others to help.’ He dropped a hand on Spit then and said, ‘Your house is gone, Spit. There’s nothing left of it.’
‘Oh no …’ Mrs Tree said.
‘It’s all right,’ Spit said, fighting back. ‘My grandfather will build another one.’
‘Maybe. Maybe,’ Jack Tree said. ‘But you wait here until I get back.’
Spit had to push away Jim Evans’ dog, Patchy, who had escaped and was pawing and licking him as he stood guard over his grandfather. ‘Get away, Patch,’ he was saying as Jack Tree and Jim Evans and two others returned and lifted old Fyfe off the ground and set off up the slope with him.
But Spit was already ahead of them, trying to stop them. ‘Where are you taking him?’ he said, blocking their path.
‘He needs a doctor,’ Jack Tree told him. ‘We’ll take him up to our back verandah and get Doctor Stevens.’
‘He can stay in the old boiler. It didn’t burn down.’
‘It’s burned out, Spit. It was all that paint on it. And anyway it’s half-full of water,’ Mr Tree said. ‘In fact you’d better come with us too. You can’t stay down here.’
‘Come on, Spit,’ Mrs Tree said. ‘We’ll look after your grandfather.’
Spit, confused now, followed them up the slope, holding on to his grandfather’s wet shirt. And Sadie, walking beside him, whispered, ‘Maybe he was drowning and you saved him?’
‘No, he wasn’t. He just didn’t know what he was doing.’
‘How long was he in the water?’
‘Only a little while. His head didn’t even go under.’
‘Did he jump in?’ she asked softly. ‘Is that what he did?’
Spit didn’t deny it. ‘But he didn’t know what he was doing.’
Spit would never remember afterwards all the details of that night, but in its sequence he would remember the long wait in Mrs Tree’s kitchen for Dr Stevens to come, and Mrs Tree and Sadie sitting silently beside him.
When Dr Stevens finally came and looked at old Fyfe, he told Spit that they would have to take his grandfather away to the hospital. This time Spit didn’t protest because he knew that it was out of his hands now. What had changed his mind was the sight of his grandfather when they had laid him out on the floor of the Trees’ verandah, and he had seen his grandfather under the electric light. Spit was still holding his grandfather’s shirt in a tight grip, but he suddenly let it go when he saw his grandfather’s face. It wasn’t the grey, grizzled, fierce and combative Scot’s face he had lived with for so much of his life; instead it was a white, shattered old man, helpless, almost lifeless, with the fire gone out of him so that his twitching mouth and staring eyes and his clawlike hands had invented a substitute who looked nothing like his grandfather. Spit knew that they had to take this one away, and when they had carried him out to Dr Stevens’ car Spit didn’t go with them, he waited at the door until he heard them drive away.
‘You’ll have to stay here the rest of the night,’ Grace Tree told him. ‘You can sleep on the old cane bed on the verandah.’
‘I have to get back,’ Spit said, opening the wire door to go.
She held him back. ‘What for?’ she said. ‘There’s nothing left, Spit. So wait until tomorrow.’
‘I want to see if my bike’s all right,’ he said.
‘Spit, you haven’t got a bike.’
‘He was building it himself,’ Sadie said, ‘from bits and pieces.’
‘Well you can’t do anything about it tonight,’ Grace told him. ‘There’s nothing more you can do. So wait here and I’ll get some covers for you. And Sadie – you go off to bed now.’
Sadie glanced quickly at Spit but didn’t say anything to him because he wasn’t looking at her or listening, and as he sat down at the kitchen table Grace went out to get the covers for him.
When she came back Spit had his head in his arms on the table. She thought he was crying, but when she touched him on the shoulder she realised he was asleep. ‘You’ll have to sleep in this,’ she said to him when he lifted his head. She gave him one of her husband’s old shirts. ‘Your clothes are still wet.’
‘I’m all right,’ Spit said, and when he lay down on the cane bed on the verandah, which she had padded with blankets for him, Grace didn’t argue with him but let him be, and in a few moments he was asleep – so heavily asleep that Grace sat on the couch near him for a while looking at his face which, in sleep, had lost its self-sufficiency and its rather serious and confident air, and was now the face of an eleven-year-old boy who was finally vulnerable and exhausted.
‘You’re going to need all the care and attention you can get this time,’ Grace said to the sleeping figure and, sighing as she left him, she added, ‘But it shouldn’t be from Betty Arbuckle.’
When Jack returned he found Grace asleep in a chair near the kitchen stove, and when he told her the kettle was boiling dry she said, ‘It’s the second time. What happened? What about old Fyfe? Is he all right?’
Jack washed his hands and sat at the table and watched her making tea. ‘When we got him to the hospital the old man sat up and began to fight and shout. He’s completely round the bend this time. They had to hold him down.’
‘What does Doctor Stevens say?’
‘He doesn’t think he’s got much chance of coming through this one.’
Grace thought carefully for a moment before saying what she had to say. ‘What about the boy?’ she said. ‘What will happen to him now?’
‘I’ll see Sergeant Joe Collins in the morning. The police will have to do something about him, or the council, or one of the churches.’
‘Or Betty Arbuckle,’ Grace said unhappily.
‘I suppose so. He’s a Protestant, so they’ll have to look after him.’
Again Grace hesitated and then she said, ‘Couldn’t he stay here for a while, Jack, until they sort it out?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Jack Tree said. ‘It’s not our problem.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt for a day or two.’
‘Not here,’ Jack Tree said. ‘How’s the tea?’
‘It’s drawing,’ she said and poured it. ‘But he can’t go back to that boiler any more, and Betty Arbuckle lives on the other side of town, miles from the river.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘He’s used to it down here. It’s where he lives.’
‘Yes, but not in this house. Have some sense, Grace.’
‘I meant just for a few days, until they know what to do with him.’
‘Joe Collins will find something.’
‘But it’s a shame, Jack, to just turn the boy like that over to the authorities or to Betty Arbuckle. Betty’ll send him away to that Boys Home.’
‘It’ll have to be done sooner or later if the old man’s locked up. So there’s no use getting soft about it. He can’t stay here, and that’s all there is about it.’
Grace didn’t argue because she couldn’t argue. But she knew that her husband was right. If old Fyfe was finally and completely mad, then sooner or later Spit would have to be cared for by some sort of authority. A few days on the back verandah wouldn’t be of much use to him.
‘He really is a nice boy,’ she said. ‘That’s the pity of it.’
‘He’s a tough little bushie,’ Jack said, ‘and he’ll survive anything. So don’t worry.’
‘I’m not sure about that,’ Grace said sadly. ‘He’s not as wild as you all seem to think he is.’
She washed the tea cups and listened to her husband cleaning himself in the bathroom. She took another look at the sleeping Spit, and it seemed to her that with the smell of smoke and fire and damp on him, Spit too had been burned to the ground. How, she wondered, would he emerge from the ashes this time?