Childes moved around to the edge of the stairs, descending a little way, but the heat soon drove him back. A blazing impenetrable wall blocked the wide staircase. Maybe he could leap through the flames onto the landing below where the girls crouched, but what good would that do him?
What good would that do the girls?
He hurried back to the balcony.
'Matron!' he called. 'Mrs Bates, up here!'
He saw the matron raise her head and he yelled again.
Her face turned in his direction, looked up. She saw him. Childes thought there was a sudden look of hope in her expression, but shimmering heat distorted everything.
The matron left the girls, advancing only a few feet to the edge of the landing. 'Is - is that you, Mr Childes? Oh, thank God! Please help us, Mr Childes, please get us away from here!'
Several of the night-clad girls were staring up at him now, although they still cowered back in the corner.
Help them, yes; but how?
But how?
He couldn't get down to them, and they couldn't reach him.
The matron was bent over, retching and choking, the air itself boiling. She stumbled back, away from the inferno. A sudden flare-up of yellow-white light sent Childes reeling back, too. Flames shot towards the ceiling, biting into rafters there. They just as quickly diminished, disappearing back into the well to become part of the broiling mass. The rafters, however, had not been left unscathed; they had begun to burn fiercely. There was very little time left.
A ladder might have helped, angled between the balcony and the landing below. But there was no time to go back down and find one. A rope, then. They could loop one end beneath their arms and he could pull them up, one by one. How many could he save before his strength gave out, though? And where the hell would he find a rope in the dormitories?
'Help us!’
came the cry again. The girls, too, had begun to call out to him.
'Keep away from the stairs!' he shouted, seeing that some of them had ventured forward to stand by the matron. Childes recognised Kelly among the group, her face darkened with smoke-grime, tear trails descending through the dirt on her cheeks. She stretched out a beseeching hand towards him, a vulnerable weeping child, and the memory of a charred and gristled arm hit him, freezing his movement, shocking him rigid.
He moaned, swaying there, the towel - now almost dry, its moisture sucked by the heat - falling limply around his shoulders. Thick, choking smoke weaved and dodged around him, tufts of fire sprang up between the floorboards. Shrieks brought him to his senses and a splintering crashing of wood made him peer over the balustrade again.
A section of stairway had fallen inwards, leaving a deep, seething chasm before the landing on which the group sheltered. The girls and the matron had retreated into the corner once more, where they huddled together, those on the outside beating at the air with clawed fingers as if they could push back the terrible engulfing heat. More had slumped against and over their companions.
'I'm going to get something to lower down to you!' he yelled. 'I'll be back soon!' He did not know if they even heard. And would it be a useless gesture anyway? Could he really haul every one of them across that inferno? Childes pushed the begging questions from his mind.
He could feel the scorching heat of the floor through the soles of his shoes as he scrambled away. A thick swirling fug filled the corridor. He sensed the building pressure - like steam trapped inside a boiler because of a faulty valve-release - the atmosphere itself seeming to become combustible, ready to explode into one huge incandescent fireball. He sucked in oxygen-starved air and was instantly seized by a choking fit. His lungs felt scorched dry.
Childes did not stop. On hands and knees, chest and shoulders heaving, he crawled onwards, his palms tender against the hot timber, until he found an open doorway. He scrambled through, kicking the door shut behind, rolling onto his back, allowing himself the briefest, gasping respite. The haze was not as thick inside the dormitory, although the rows of beds were seen through a swift-curling fog. Pushing himself to his knees, he reached for the nearest bed and pulled off sheets.
Still crouched, he tied two sheets together, scrambled to another bed and tore off more, refusing to accept the hopelessness of his efforts.
It was when he was tying one of these to the two already joined, his eyes blurred, a pain in his chest as if a knife was lodged sideways there, that Childes heard the muffled sobbing.
He looked around, unsure of the source. He heard only the crackling rumble of the fire. Bending low to the floor, he searched beneath beds and found no crouched figures. He completed knotting the sheets, then stumbled towards the closed door.
The sobbing again.
He whirled, his back slamming against the door, and scanned the room, eyes skimming over rumpled bedclothes, discarded dolls, past crazily whirling mobiles, over posters that were beginning to curl downwards from their corners. His glasses were grimed with soot and his own perspiration; using a corner of sheeting, he wiped them clean, still listening for the sobbing as he did so. The sound was soft, quiet, but had become more distinct from the other noises. His gaze came to rest on a store cupboard set in the wall at the far end of the room.
No time. There was no time to look. He had to get back to the girls on the landing.
Nevertheless, dropping the sheets, he ran the length of the dormitory.
He pulled open the cupboard doors and the two whimpering, sobbing girls, crouched there in the darkness among hockey sticks and tennis rackets, hanging raincoats draped over their heads and shoulders, screamed and cowered away from him.
Childes reached in and the girl whose shoulder he touched flinched and screamed even louder, forcing herself deeper into the recess. He took her arm and pulled her away from her companion, using his other hand to bring her face round towards him. He just had time to see she was one of the juniors when the lights went out.
He lost her in the darkness and screams pierced all else. Childes dropped to his knees and groped forward, finding their shivering bodies and encompassing them with his arms.
'Don't be frightened,' he said as soothingly as possible, conscious of the tightness in his own voice. 'The fire's burnt into wires downstairs, that's why the lights have gone out.' Still they pulled away from him. 'Come on now, you know me. It's Mr Childes. I'm going to take you out of here, okay?' He tugged at them, but still they resisted. 'All your friends are waiting outside for you. They'll be getting anxious by now, won't they?'
The others on the landing - Oh God, he had to get back to them before it was too late!
'Come on, we'll just go right on downstairs, then you can tell your friends how exciting it was. Just a quick walk downstairs and we'll be out.'
The scared little voice fought hard to stem the sobs. 'The… the… stairs are all on… f-fire.'
He stroked her hair, pressing close. 'We'll use the other staircase. Don't you remember fire-drill and the stone steps that lead out of the building? They can't burn, so there's nothing to be frightened of there. And you remember me, don't you? Mr Childes? I bet you've come into my computer classroom at some time to have a look, haven't you?'
As if by silent, mutual consent, they threw themselves into his arms and he held their small, trembling bodies close, feeling the dampness of their tears on his neck, against his chest. Without further words, he lifted the two girls and made his way back between the short rows of beds, carrying them on either arm, their combined weight hardly encumbering him for those few moments. He stumbled once, twice, using a red-glowing line he knew to be from beneath the closed door as a guide.
Yet another sound now mingled with the general muffled roar, this one distant, beyond the school itself, and growing louder with each passing second. Approaching sirens.
The two schoolgirls, one in pyjamas, the other in an ankle-length nightie, buried their faces against him, bouts of coughing jerking their bodies.
'Try not to breathe in too deeply,' he told them, swallowing with some difficulty to relieve his own parched throat. The towel had fallen from his shoulders and become lost.
When they were at the door, Childes put down the girls and fumbled around the floor for the discarded bedsheets. His fingers closed around the material and he drew it up, remaining on one knee, the two frightened girls staying close.
He forced himself to speak easily, discarding any hint of panic.
'I
know you both, I'm sure, but for the life of me I can't remember your names. So how about telling me, eh?'
'Sandy,' a quivery voice said close to his ear.
'That's nice. And what about you?' he asked, pulling the other to him. 'Aren't you going to tell me yours?'
'R-Rachel,' came the stuttered reply.
'Good girl. Now listen, Sandy and Rachel: I'm going to open this door and go outside, but I want you to wait here for me.' The fingers dug into him.
'I promise it'll be all right. I'll only be gone for a short while.'
'
Please don't leave us here!'
He couldn't tell which one had cried out. 'I've got to help some of the others, some of the older girls. They're not far away, but they're in trouble. I've got to go and fetch them.' He pulled their arms free, hating what he was doing, but having no choice. They struggled to keep hold of him, but he stood, the sheets over one shoulder, and felt for the door knob. Was it warmth from his own hand, or was the metal really hot? He yanked open the door.
To squint against the torrid glare, his skin contracting against the harsh blast of heat that swept in.
Shielding his eyes, he peered into the corridor and was dismayed at how much more the fire had spread.
The awful, splintering roar came just as he stepped out from the dormitory. No shrieks and no cries for help accompanied that sound - at least, none that he heard - but he knew its source, he
knew exactly
what had happened.
Yet he had to make sure. He had to be certain. If there was the slightest chance -
'Stay there!’
he screamed at the two clutching, terrified ten-year-olds. He ran, crouching low, ignoring the peeling sensation of his skin, knowing it was only drawing tight around his bones, not really breaking, that it only felt that way. He bumped off the wall as he ran, the tied sheets trailing behind.
Childes reached the wider area overlooking the main staircase, only a few areas of unburnt flooring left. Overhead, curious rolling waves of fire swept the ceiling.
He could no longer touch the balustrade that was part of the balcony over the stairs, for the wooden beam was engulfed, a burning log amidst a greater fire. But he could see sections of the stairway through occasional gaps in the flames.
Only there was no stairway any more, just bits of burning timber protruding from the walls. And there was no longer any landing below. Everything had collapsed into the screeching volcanic pit.
***
Childes returned to the dormitory, too numbed for emotional tears, his blurred vision caused by stinging smoke-whirls. The three tied bedsheets lay further back along the corridor where he had dropped them and were already beginning to flame. He staggered, an arm resting against the wall, but kept moving, knowing it would be fatal to stop. His pace quickened when he saw that the two girls were no longer by the doorway. He prayed that they had obeyed him, had not run off in the opposite direction, away from the oncoming fire. If they got lost in the thickening smoke…
The door was still ajar and he pushed it back so that the wood smacked against a bedside cupboard behind. His shadow was black against a yellow-red patch of shifting, soft-edged light and Sandy and Rachel, cuddled together on the nearest bed, watched him with wide fearful eyes.
'Come on,' he said, and they both felt the deadness in his voice. 'I'm taking you out.'
They ran to him and he scooped them up, one in each arm. Now they were heavy, but he would manage. Whatever it took, he would at least save these two. Childes backed out and headed down the long corridor, away from the worst of the flames, everything around them - walls, ceiling, floorboards - sizzling, ready to ignite, to explode into one huge conflagration. He could barely see and there was a steady growing numbness inside his head, a constricting of his throat. Flames shot out from the floor near a wall, forcing him to turn his back and face the opposite wall to squeeze by. There wasn't a murmur from either of the girls. Their arms were around his neck and they kept perfectly still, terribly afraid yet trusting. Perhaps they had sobbed out the worst of their terror inside the cupboard.
They were in semi-darkness for a while, smoke obscuring even the light at their backs, but another soft-hued glimmer soon came into sight ahead. Although this flickering glow acted as a beacon, it was unwelcome; he had hoped that the fire stairs were far enough away to be still untouched by the fire below.
After groping his way along, almost blind, sliding his back along the wall at one side, they finally reached the stone landing over the stairway. Childes all but collapsed onto hands and knees. Sandy and Rachel squatted by his side, waiting for his coughing fit to ease, they themselves choking into open palms.
Recovering enough to pull himself up by the metal railings of the stairs, Childes looked over the top. The stairway acted as a chimney, smoke pouring upwards to swill into the corridor they had just left. Through the sweltering clouds he could see several fires emerging from corridors below.