The Hiding Place Read Online Free PDF Page B

the bar.
    Frankie – il cappello! shouts Salvatore, gesturing to the hat on the counter. Frankie isn’t listening. He winds between the booths, heading not for the exit but for the narrow door
marked Private which will lead him up the stairs to his old home, to his old life – to Joe Medora’s new office. He’ll find out for himself if Joe doesn’t want to see him.
Salvatore smooths the felt brim of the hat with his fingers: his eyes track Frankie’s footsteps across the ceiling.
    ~  ~  ~
    Our yard door is locked, so to get round the back of the house, you have to climb over the side wall and drop down on to the flags. Those in the know, when they’re out
slipping the lead off someone else’s guttering, use the outhouse roof as a sliding brake. A foot on the lintel, one hand gripping the frame, then the other hand, and down with a silent jump.
Fran has another way of sneaking in: she pushes aside the fencing at the rear of Number 4, sweeps the slat back into place, and throws her leg over the low chicken-wire that separates our backyard
from the Rileys’. Fran sees the smoke leaking out from under our kitchen door, and stands amazed.
    There is a rush of action, shouting in the street. Alerted by their mother, the Jackson boys come bouncing off our outhouse roof like a pair of experts. They knock Fran sideways on the concrete
path. Martineau surfs down after them, slices his palms on the broken slate, and lands with a crack on his knees. He moves the boys away and puts his shoulder to the hot wood of the kitchen
door.
    My mother, on the wrong side of the wall, hears her baby burning on the inside.
    ~
    Our kitchen thick as tar. A sudden suck of air that punctures heat, and the fire becomes fury. Flames spill in a river across the floor; scalding oilcloth, blistering wood,
boiling the blankets on my bed. The boys shield their foreheads with their arms and flail about like drunkards, tipping over chairs and shouting. They are devils out of Hell. It is burning burning
burning – and then Martineau lifts me with his great scored hand and hauls me out to daylight.
    ~
    By the time the fire engine arrives, we are all in the alley, the yard door is battered open, and the Jackson boys are the heroes of the hour. They pat each other’s
shoulders and brush bits of cinder from their clothing. They are all arms now, describing the heat to their friends, pointing to the flames gulping at the window. Martineau bends and grips his
mossy knees, breathing in shallow bursts. From under his fringe, he watches my mother. She stands in the pouring rain, her head raised to heaven: she won’t look at me. She carries me loosely,
this charred little thing, as if I have fallen from the sky. She is sure I am dead. When the ambulanceman holds out his red blanket, she drops me into it like a swathe of kindling.
    Later, undressing Fran in the back bedroom of Carlotta’s house, my mother finds two dingy cigarette butts and the box of spent matches. Her heart turns mad with blackness.
     
    tinder
    My right hand is fine. There’s little damage, and the fingers are quite beautiful, in the ordinary sense of them actually being there, bending, flexing, pointing things
out to strangers who stop in their cars and wind down their windows to ask directions.
    But the left hand. People who don’t know me stare when they see it. They look away, then sidelong at my face in search of further evidence. There are scars there too: if they get close
enough they could find them. But not many get that close: an outstretched hand, my left one – it’s enough to ward them off.
    I lost the fingers. At one month old, a baby’s hand is the tiniest, most perfect thing. It makes a fist, it spreads wide, and when it burns, that soft skin is petrol, those bones are
tinder, so small, so easily eaten in a flame.
    But I think of it as a work of art: a closed white tulip standing in the rain; a cut of creamy marble in the shape of a Saint; a church candle