Red Shoes by Carmel Bird

Author:Carmel Bird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ligature Pty Limited
Published: 2021-11-11T20:05:15+00:00

A Child Alone

That sealed it for Celeste. The detailed and revealing chronicle of the life of Celeste went into the archives at Hill House, under a file marked ‘Judas’. Charity returned to New Haven and life went on as usual, except for the absence of Celeste.

Charity told the police that she had gone for a walk on the beach, as she often did, at about ten o’clock at night. As she was returning at about half past eleven she suddenly saw a column of flame shoot up into the sky behind the trees on the top of the hill. She stopped in fright and amazement as the single lily of fire bloomed up into the darkness with a volcanic thrust, and then she began to run. She ran towards the house where she and Celeste were staying, ran up the path that led from the beach to the house. And as she grew closer it dawned on her that the only source of the fire she could see was the house itself.

By the time she arrived the whole house was in flames, the windows had split and sparks were falling on the surrounding scrub. Unless Celeste had escaped beforehand, she would be trapped inside. I always lock the door when I go out, Charity said. It is the safest thing to do. A child alone.

Charity ran down the road to the shop where she used to buy the vegetables and fruit and use the phone and post the letters, post the chronicle home to Petra. Frantic, she battered on the door until Mrs Edmunds came out in her dressing-gown. Mr Edmunds was a volunteer fireman, and he called the base and then he and Charity got in his jeep while Mrs Edmunds rang the police.

By the time Charity and Mr Edmunds got back to the Apartment, the building was falling. Celeste’s bed, containing Celeste’s sleeping body, was visible deep in a twisted cage of glowing and burning timbers, in a scarlet and golden inferno that spat and crackled and laughed as it burned. Two men from the fire base came in a water truck to douse the fire and spray the surrounding scrub; the policeman arrived. Like a bird of prey homing in to feed on a fresh corpse, a helicopter came. It contained a police doctor (the pilot was Reg Hughes) who pronounced Celeste dead from asphyxiation. Celeste, a mound of bubbled dark flesh stuck with charred scraps of sheet and blanket and pyjamas, was taken in the back of the policeman’s jeep to the small hospital not far from the airport. She had inhaled smoke while asleep, had not regained consciousness, and had then burned in the bed.

There was a local inquest. The finding was accidental death caused by the inhalation of smoke from a fire of unknown origin.

Charity stayed with Mr and Mrs Edmunds for two nights.

– So the poor child was sound asleep.

– Yes, she didn’t wake up when the fire started—something, a nightdress or something, must have accidentally fallen onto the pot-belly.

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