Belle - Lesley Pearse [58]
Terrified Annie would burn to death, Mog tossed aside her blanket, leapt on to a dustbin, and scrabbled up on to the yard wall. In bare feet she ran along it and on reaching the house wall tried to stretch out to reach the window sill of Annie’s room. But it was at least three feet too far away.
‘Let me through!’ a loud male voice suddenly rang out, and Mog turned to see to her surprise and relief that it was Garth Franklin carrying a ladder, assisted by young Jimmy.
‘Annie’s in there!’ Mog pointed to the window and came back along the wall to get down again. ‘I think she must be overcome by the smoke.’
Garth moved at great speed. He practically threw the ladder against the window sill of the room and charged up it. He took something from his pocket and bashed it against the glass, then banged it several more times around the edge to knock out the remainder. Then he climbed in. Jimmy shinned up behind his uncle and leapt inside equally quickly, then all at once Garth was out on the ladder again while Jimmy helped hoist the unconscious woman over the older man’s shoulder.
As Garth came down the ladder with Annie, the sounds of popping glass from within were as loud as fire crackers. Mog held her breath because Jimmy had disappeared from view. But just as Garth reached the ground, and Mog was twisting her hands in agitation because she feared Jimmy was overcome too, he climbed out of the window carrying the cashbox and Annie’s fur coat.
At that very moment the clanging bell of the fire engine rang out. The crowd cheered and moved back as the four horses pulling the fire engine behind them galloped into the Court at breakneck speed.
But Mog could only think about Annie, and took her from Garth, wrapped her in a blanket and laid her down on the ground, kneeling beside her.
She had no idea what you did for people who were overcome by smoke, but all at once Annie began to cough of her own accord and opened her eyes.
‘Oh, my sweet Jesus!’ Mog exclaimed breathlessly, clutching her friend in her arms. ‘I thought you were dead.’
‘I thought I was going to die too when I couldn’t get the window open,’ Annie wheezed out before another coughing fit overcame her.
Mog sat Annie up, patting her back to help her cough out the smoke, and wrapped the blanket round her more securely. Mog was freezing too in only her nightdress but her sole concern was for her friend.
‘Has the whole place gone?’ Annie managed to croak out a few minutes later.
Until then Mog hadn’t even considered what the loss of the house meant; to her it was the people who lived in it that mattered. But as she turned her head to look at it, her eyes filled with tears. Every window had flames coming out of it. She remembered how excited she and Annie had been when they went to buy the chandelier and the Persian rug for the parlour. She had loved polishing the piano and arranging fresh flowers on the hall table. Almost everything, bedding, china, pictures and just about everything else in the house, had some little tale attached to it.
Even the basement, which was her domain, was well alight now. All those little treasures, her sewing basket, a photograph of Belle in a tortoiseshell frame, the silver-backed hairbrush that Annie had given her one Christmas, a china cat and other little bits and pieces she’d collected over the years that made her room her home, had been burned.
Mog supposed most people would think it shameful to work as a maid in a brothel, but she never had – in fact she’d taken a pride in keeping it clean and comfortable. Annie and the girls were like her family; the brothel had become her life, and now it was gone.
‘Yes, it’s all gone.’ Mog struggled not to break down. ‘But let’s just be glad no one died in there. Someone was trying to kill us all.’
Garth came over and put a blanket around Mog’s shoulders as she knelt beside Annie. ‘You two had best come back with me,’ he said gruffly.
Mog looked up at the big, bearded, red-headed man in surprise. She had always heard that he was hard and mean-spirited. ‘That is so kind, Mr Franklin,