you think we look after him well?’
‘Look after – yes. Look at him!’
‘Why should he fade out? I see him as a sort of dark spark. He can be brought to life all right. But it takes constant fanning. Bellows even.’
‘Use them then!’ He went quickly past her into the room where Mrs Imrie had already started the conflagration. Chimneys were crashing in the street, red, green and orange flames unravelled from window to window, and from one a white bundle dropped, then another, to the gasping crowd below. Great swirls of living sparks were being blown for miles along the rooftops. No gush of water could quench these. No hosepipe, however long, catch up with them.
Mr Abson stayed with the Imries for two months more and then his work, whatever it was, took him to a neighbouring town where he remained another three months. And there he died. Three months ago. They had almost forgotten him. Or at any rate his face was not absolutely clear any more. But the manner of his death which they found in a newspaper, hearing further details from an acquaintance who lived in that town, jolted their memory in a peculiar way. He had failed to get out of the way of a lorry, the paper said. He had stepped out, said a witness, and stood still.
‘No, it was not deliberate, if that’s what you mean,’ said Mrs Imrie to a friend who had come in. ‘If it says “failed to get out of the way” then that’s exactly what it means. I wouldn’t say, now I come to think of it, that I ever saw him do anything exactly deliberately, would you, Brenda?’
‘Never. It would be that he didn’t know whether to put his feet backwards or forwards. I’ve seen him do just that on the thresholds of doors.’
‘You will never really know, will you?’ said the friend.
‘Never know what?’
‘Nothing. It’s all right.’
‘It’s terrible,’ said Mrs Imrie. ‘Poor man, he should have shown more in his face. That would have helped him. It would have helped people to take notice of him too.’
‘He would be clear enough to the lorry-driver,’ said her son. ‘It’s going to add another ghastly hazard to life if you’re only visible to motorists if you’ve got an interesting expression.’
‘He only thought of things later when he was in his own room. That wasn’t good for him, was it? Like secret drinking or something. I should have interrupted him oftener.’
‘Why are we talking like this? Could we help that bloody great lorry bearing down on him?’
‘Oh, how I sometimes wanted to give him a push!’ exclaimed Mrs Imrie. ‘If I could have given him a push when he was standing there – one hard push – it would have saved him!’
‘Rooted. Rooted to the spot,’ said the girl. ‘What does that remind you of? Are you thinking of a tree?’
‘Am I what?’ said her mother.
‘If he’d even learnt to dance, oddly enough,’ said the girl. ‘There are people who learn to dance simply to help them move their feet properly – to balance themselves. Did you know that? Hospitals send them.’
‘Hospitals now!’ cried Mrs Imrie, holding her hand to her head. ‘So now you make out he was a sort of patient. Some kind of case, I suppose.’
‘It never even crossed my mind. I simply remember he sometimes asked about dances I’d been to.’
‘Near enough a case,’ said the friend, ‘if he just stood there.’
‘What are we talking about now?’ said Mrs Imrie. ‘Has it come round to this again? “Failed to get out of the way” – I interpret that simply as I see it set down on the page.’
‘If you can see it simply,’ the friend said.
During the next few days they could have been no more acutely aware of Abson had be been following them around from room to room over the whole house. His death lit him up for them. He flickered with a red, unnatural light which flared or sank as their feelings about him flared or died. He was not silent. His identity demanded constant discussion and examination. Yet what did they know about him? They had scraped their memories. At the end of the week the girl, for the second time, rang the young man who had sat by the fire.
‘You’ll come round and help us out, won’t you?’
‘If I can. Are you still brooding?’
‘Oh, we’re stuck. It’s hateful. We’d almost forgotten him. And now this. We’ve got to start again, and there’s nothing to go on. He didn’t talk about himself and neither did we.’
‘Why not forget him again?’
‘How can I? I’ve got to get him clear first, if he’s to be properly washed out. What was he like?’
‘Look – I met him once only – at your house.’
‘But you had a feeling for him. Say something about him.’
‘It’s you who must say it. Or you’ll be haunted.’
‘Haunted by nothing! All I can think of is a spark and a tree. And don’t ask why. I don’t remember how they came in or when.’
‘Well think of them, then. Think hard!’
Later that evening, still having nothing to go on, she did think of them; for she was standing outside the open door of his room looking in at the place where, according to him, he had gone over and over things. What things? It was bare-looking now – a small room but with a high ceiling speckled in minute and scabby stars. A tree might grow in here. With an effort she could see it – this dry, grey tree with branches twisted at right angles round the corners of the ceiling and roots that had to bend back to fit the wainscoting. A rustling, creaking, cracking thing, dry to its sapless marrow. At first the dark spark settled lightly there like a crumb of dry ash, dead in the dead, bedroom air. Nothing kindled it here. It needed nothing, but took its life from some stupendous unknown fire blazing away miles from here. And gradually a microscopic speck of red began to burn at its centre. No movement fanned it, but still it expanded, fraying at its edges into palpitating spangles of rose-colour. Suddenly it ruptured, falling away into other sparks which went rolling and spinning along the branches, dropping down and falling apart again, multiplying, sprouting buds and shoots, roots, leaves, blossoms and fruits of green and yellow fire. The tree burned in silence. No part of it was reflected on the walls or the star-scabbed ceiling, and not a spark or speck of ash fell to the ground. At last a single white flame burst from the root and ripped up the length of the tree, reducing it in one flash, like the slashing upstroke of a knife, to ash and blackness. Then to nothing. Spark and tree went out.
‘I feel better about him now,’ the girl told her mother and brother that night after supper. ‘I can put him out of my mind.’
‘How’s that?’ her mother asked.
‘When you put everything together, looking back, you can see he was really alive.’
‘Was he?’ said her brother. ‘But now he’s dead.’
‘He wasn’t dead all the time though. Not grey as we thought. If he’d been dead alive as well as dead dead – that would finish me! But I can forget him!’
‘But he’s dead now,’ said her brother. ‘He stepped off a pavement.’
‘I prefer to think of it as going up in flame,’ said the girl. ‘It suits him – the way I’m thinking about him now. The way he was really alive all the time.’
‘Prefer all you like,’ said her brother, ‘but that’s the way it was. He stepped off a pavement.’
‘Don’t remind me of that fire,’ said her mother with a shudder. ‘Don’t ever bring that up again.’