Vertigo Read online

  Anna works with her laptop on her knees. She writes to her sister in Hong Kong, imagining Stephanie in her apartment tower and overlooking the glittering harbour while they are here in the smoking bush without water or electricity. But she does not envy her sister; the glow of the candlelight makes her strangely content. ‘There is a bushfire in the hills,’ she writes, ‘but it seems unreal. I suppose we ought to feel terrified but instead we feel calm. Perhaps it’s because we are by the sea and just a short sprint to the water.’

  But later that night, sitting on the edge of the bed, her mood darkens and she is seized by a spasm of fear mixed with indignation. What if the fires in the foothills sweep across the grasslands tomorrow? What if they reach the coast? And what about this house? It has only been theirs for such a short time. Are they never to have a home? And what, if anything, would be left after a fire? She begins to rub moisturiser into her throat and suddenly her hand is trembling and her familiar night rituals seem absurd. The threat of loss is beginning to chew at her mind like a small, gnawing rodent and when she turns out the light it’s a long time before, exhausted, she drifts into a fretful and vivid dream. She is living upstairs in a rickety wooden building that looks like a decrepit department store. The upper balcony is alight and already flames are flickering along the mezzanine balustrade. Downstairs there are rooms crammed with her possessions, things she didn’t know she had: antique wall tapestries, bead-encrusted cushions, intricately wrought chairs that are thickets of cast-iron. A large open cupboard is stuffed with neatly folded linen, layer upon layer of embossed tablecloths. And the flames are burning nearer, the upper balcony close to collapse, yet she continues to rummage through the bric-àbrac. Ah, but where is the boy? She had almost forgotten him. Where could he possibly be? Is he hiding again, playing his childish games? Luke is standing in the doorway, clutching suitcases in each hand. Hurry up, he says, we have to get out of here, we have to get out of here now. But what about the boy, she groans, we can’t go without him, we can’t leave him behind —

  She wakes in a prickly sweat, and her heart is lurching in her chest. The fact that she can hear it pounding makes her suddenly aware of the stillness outside. It’s first light and the wind has dropped. Relief, at last! She goes out to the kitchen and Luke is there, frying bacon over the gas ring and listening to their battery radio. ‘They’ve issued a full alert for tomorrow for the towns along the coast,’ he says. ‘That’s us.’

  ‘What do we do?’

  ‘Pack a suitcase and put it by the door.’

  ‘But the wind has dropped.’

  ‘Not for long. The forecast is for hot nor’westerlies in the afternoon.’

  Over breakfast they listen to radio bulletins, which by now are being relayed every half hour. The small town of Wolga in the hills, where they drove with the Watts only the Sunday before, has been incinerated and the historic hotel where they ate lunch razed to its blackened stumps. More worryingly, a second front has broken out on the coast, though it is several kilometres to the north of Garra Nalla. To reach them it would have to burn down through a long strip of bush reserve that ends at the northern tip of their settlement, and this would take days. From the north, at least, the wind is in their favour, and although the highway to the north is closed, the fire is moving slowly.

  Around ten in the morning, Alan rings. ‘Bette’s a bit jittery,’ he says. ‘She can’t decide whether to drive the kids south or keep them here.’

  ‘What do you think?’ asks Anna.

  ‘I’ve told her it’s always risky to drive in a fire and they’re better off here with their backs to the sea. I think she needs something to take her mind off it so I suggested a game of tennis.’

  He can’t be serious. ‘Alan wants to play tennis,’ she mouths to Luke, raising her eyebrows and pulling a face.

  ‘Why not?’ he says. ‘Better than sitting around waiting.’

  It’s an odd sensation to play with the sky overhead a brown pall of smoke. A helicopter flies low over the court, only this time it’s a Forestry chopper, and they look up and wave. A light ash rains on their skin; it settles in the creases of their clothes while the grit leaves a bitter coating on their teeth. Behind them, on the Watts’ deck, Briony and Zack cavort around an old soccer table, shrieking and whooping and spinning the long metal rods with such manic intensity that the fixed plastic dolls go rattling into a blur. We’re all mad, thinks Anna, as she walks to the baseline to serve, and with her back to the others she removes her asthma puffer from her pocket and takes two furtive indrawn breaths.

  With only six games played they are spent. Exhausted by the heat and sodden with sweat they go home to shower. After lunch they congregate on the headland and from here, for the first time, they can see signs of the coastal fire burning towards them from the north. Against the horizon is a pale grey smoke plume that wasn’t there yesterday, while black smoke is billowing up from a distant promontory. Luke has brought his field-glasses and they take it in turns to focus on the burning sandhills, on the low, lazy flames flickering among clumps of marram grass.

  There is nothing to do but to go home and wait. Luke resumes his work on the laptop, but Anna is restless. She needs a task, a manual task, something with a lot of chopping and slicing and shredding, and she sets to work on a coleslaw.

  In mid-afternoon, the hot nor’westerlies blow in. A strange light settles over the paddocks and the sky turns a dull greyish yellow. The trees in the garden begin to whip violently and the house shudders. Anna finds it impossible to settle, but Luke sits for more than an hour at the kitchen table, tapping away at his laptop while the wind churns and churns through the garden and the river wattles thrash at the windows, their leaves rasping against the glass in a frenzy. From time to time the roof booms in a convulsion of iron and the old doors rattle on their hinges.

  By late afternoon the winds have risen in intensity to a roar. It’s a throttling, metallic sound and the rattling of tin and flapping of corrugated iron play on Anna’s nerves. Even Luke is spooked.

  ‘This is bad,’ he says, ‘it must be a hundred and forty ks an hour.’

  Impossible, she thinks.

  ‘I’m going up to the headland,’ he says.

  ‘You can’t go out in this wind.’

  ‘I need to see what’s happening. I need to get oriented.’

  ‘Wait for me.’

  ‘Anna, you can’t be serious. What if your breathing is affected?’

  ‘I told you, it’s not happening. I’m okay.’

  Impatiently he hovers by the back door while she winds a silk scarf around her nose and mouth and looks for her wraparound sunglasses. Then, with shoulders braced, they hurl their bodies forward up the hill, staggering into the wind like drunks. As they walk they can see a cluster of townspeople already standing on the headland, tottering in the strong gusts and shielding their eyes with cupped palms. Gil is there, alongside Alan, and both are staring out to the northern end of the lagoon, to the rocky outcrop of Rittler’s Point. The sky above the western foothills is lit with a great wall of flame and a mass of greyish white smoke is being blown out towards the sea. At the bottom of the foothills lie the grasslands, grazed to a stubble, except for where they are bisected by a long narrow corridor of bush, and it is here that a spot fire has taken hold and is raging towards the highway and the trees behind Rittler’s Point.

  Within minutes the fire has jumped the road and the bush at the rear of the point is rent with great orange flares. Anna opens her mouth to speak and can only gasp for she knows there are houses concealed in among those trees. ‘Jesus, look at that,’ whispers Luke, his breath hot on her neck as they watch the outline of a roof dissolving into smoke and flame. At that moment the point erupts with a deafening boom. Trees are exploding into fire-bombs and great shards of burning bark are being flung into the air and out to sea. Even here, across the lagoon, the air is vibrating from the explosive force of the firestorm, while all around them, small black embers are swirling and
gliding on anarchic currents of air. And now the sandhills are alight, the flames from the boobialla rearing up into a rapidly darkening sky. More and more embers are flying out to sea, so far out that the watchers are filled with dread, for the wind is driving the flames towards them, and with such force that there is no way that the fire won’t jump the lagoon.

  People have begun to come and go, returning in boots and woollen clothing and carrying rakes. The afternoon is dim, the sun obscured; the only light emanates from the wall of flame that burns along the rim of the foothills and the hissing snake-fire in the dunes. From time to time an errant gust hurls a shard of burning bark across the lagoon and someone takes to it frenziedly with a bough or rake.

  For an hour they watch their sandhills burn, standing around like useless sentinels. Then Gil, who has been looking out with his arms folded and his hat jammed down low over his eyes, turns to the others and points. ‘The wind’s changed,’ he says. ‘It’s turned around.’ And they see that this is so, that the fire in the sandhills is burning now on the lee side of the wind and that the flames are burning upright. No longer driven by the wind, they struggle against it, their progress slowed and visibly slackening.

  ‘That fire’s not going to jump that lagoon now, not against the wind,’ says Gil. He turns to Luke. ‘With luck, we might have seen the worst of it.’ He cups his hands and shouts down to Alan, who, along with a dozen others, has stationed himself at the edge of the lagoon, in wait for flying embers. ‘The wind’s turned!’

  Alan looks up and nods. ‘I know,’ he shouts back, ‘but we still need to keep a lookout.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ offers Luke. ‘I don’t know if I could sleep tonight while those sandhills are burning.’

  ‘Me neither,’ says Gil. ‘There’s a few of us can hang around, we can keep up a bit of a roster.’

  It’s then that Bette gives a sharp cry and points away from the dunes to the northern sky behind them. ‘Look!’ When they turn they see for the first time that a monstrous cloud of smoke is surging towards them from the north. So intent have they been on the fire on the southern beach that in the near darkness they have paid no heed to their rear. But now the smoke cloud from the north is billowing out over the coastal reserve like a looming squall line, except this is not a storm cloud, and there is something different about it, something incandescent and alive. Within its dark, surging mass there are orange flecks and glimmers and its lower rim is lit by a golden corona of flame. This can mean only one thing: the very air is alight.

  Alan jabs his rake into the sand. ‘What the fuck is that?’

  ‘It looks like it might be blowing in from the northern front,’ says Gil. ‘But that’s miles up the coast, surely to Christ it wouldn’t have got here already —’ He stops in mid-sentence. A yellow and red fireball is unravelling from the black underbelly of the smoke cloud. In one incandescent arc it catapults high over the paddocks, across the freeway and down into the bush at the edge of the settlement. In an instant the canopy explodes into flame.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Almost in one breath the watchers beside the lagoon break into a run. Alan is yelling ahead to Bette. ‘Take the kids to the beach. Wait on the rocks!’

  ‘You go with her,’ says Luke to Anna. Already, half-blinded by smoke, they are sprinting along the road.

  ‘No,’ she says, and he is not inclined to argue further for they have reached the bottom of the driveway to their house. Anna flings open the back door and they head for the bedroom to scrabble in the wardrobe for woollen clothes. Luke takes out his heaviest sweater, an old favourite in thick navy-blue rib, but after contemplating it for a few seconds tosses it onto the bed. Anna wishes that she had taken up Luke’s suggestion and bought a wide-brimmed akubra instead of mocking his own purchase (‘cowboy!’) earlier in the year. The windows are already secured and she runs to the bathroom and plunges the entire pile of towels beside the bath into its lukewarm water, wringing them out and rolling them into thick ropes that she can jam against the doors. Through the window she can see Luke in the garden. As he strides toward the back fence, wet sugar-bag in hand, the red-gum beside the garage gives off a great crackling whoosh and dissolves into a column of flame.

  The speed with which the fire-ball engulfs them is something they will later replay in their heads, over and over, because it is scarcely credible. One minute the squall line of cloud, the next a maelstrom of smoke and flaming embers hurtling into the backyard. Luke runs towards the nearest of these and begins to beat at it in a fury. The noise of the wind is infernal; within its incendiary metallic roar he can hear the ferment of the trees, their hiss and crackle as they combust into a firestorm. A geyser of white-hot cinders sprays above the fence line like a giant Roman candle and he sees that the side gate is alight, only a few metres from the veranda. Anna, too, has spotted this. She opens the door, bucket in hand, and in that moment a great tidal wave of flame comes roaring up through the she-oaks behind the top fence.

  ‘Get back inside!’ Luke dives for the door and slams it shut behind them.

  For a moment they stand there, gaping at each other in horror. It’s too late now to run for the rocks. The fire has swept around to their right and they have no clear path to the beach. They could take a circuitous route to the left but who knows what lies on the other side and what if they take a wrong turn and are trapped? Through the window they can see flames licking at the wooden steps to the veranda and Luke is about to run out with the hessian bag when she pulls at his arm. ‘Listen,’ she says. In all the din they can hear a new sound, the hum of an engine. From out of the smoke that obscures their driveway a red fire-truck emerges, reversing up to the edge of the veranda and flattening a bed of pink geraniums. A squat figure in a bright yellow fire suit and white helmet jumps from the truck just as Luke opens the back door. The firey pushes up his visor and beckons them both towards him. ‘Get in the truck!’ he yells. They run to the passenger side and clamber on top of the second fireman, who shrinks back in his seat to accommodate them, and incredibly the fire is sucked in through the open door so that flames dart into the cabin. As the young firey yanks at the door the truck is already hurtling forward and jammed together in a fug of soot and sweat, scarcely able to breathe, they throttle down the smoke-filled driveway, flames leaping at the windows and racing them to the turn-off. Luke can only stare as the stickers on the windscreen peel away into tight curls while the side mirror on the truck begins to melt and buckle out of shape. Thank God the driver had the foresight to back in, he thinks; they would never have had time to turn.

  Taking his bearings from the Norfolk pines on the bluff, barely visible in the smoke, Luke guides the driver to the turning circle beside the lagoon. There, breathless, they sit limply, shoulder to shoulder, hearts pounding in the fetid cabin. The driver is a solid man with a protruding gut and he is heaving. He flings open the cabin door, steps down heavily and comes around to the passenger side where Luke and Anna have spilled out onto the gravel, mumbling apologies to the young firey they have almost fallen over and whose name they still don’t know. ‘Best to stay by the water for now,’ says the driver. His voice is raw, his face streaked with grimy sweat. And then, as Luke turns to thank him: ‘Are you lucky or what?’ he croaks. ‘We didn’t know you were there. We drove in to get away from the front. Big mistake. Or could have been.’

  Luke nods. ‘Thanks,’ he says, ‘and good luck,’ and in a quick, instinctive gesture the two men shake hands. The firey clambers back into the truck and accelerates off down the road, disappearing into what is now premature night.

  In the gloom of smoke haze that obscures the lagoon, Anna recognises many of the locals. Almost everyone has waded waist deep into the water to escape the radiant heat and they clasp their children to their chests or perch them high on their shoulders. She slips off her thongs and joins them, the slimy mud beneath her feet oozing against her ankles as her body yields and sways with the flow of the incoming tide. Within an hour the water in the lagoon will be ov
er their heads and they will have to swim for it. Around her neck is a plastic bag with her back-up CDs that she had fastened to her wool sweater before she ran from the house. The sweater is itchy and sticky hot; she would like to remove it, but how? In the brief exposure to radiant heat as she ran to the fire-truck, the plastic bag had melted and the discs are welded now to her sweater, all one messy accretion. Plastic? How stupid of her. Why didn’t she grab one of the calico shopping bags that hang on the coat rack beside the back door? Hang? Or should that be hung? (For what could be left of that coat rack?) Luke is beside her, grasping her arm now and holding her to him as if at any moment the tide might drag her away. ‘Are you alright?’ he keeps saying. ‘Are you alright?’