Gypsy - Lesley Pearse [29]
It was then that Beth realized they had lost everything. Their home, their clothes, their money. All gone.
They were destitute and homeless.
Their landlord and Mr Filbert, the tenant in the shop, would have insurance, but they had none. Sam hadn’t even got a suit of clothing to put on to go to work in the morning. As for Molly, she had just a nightgown, a napkin and a blanket.
Beth shivered with fear, not the cold. Someone put a blanket around her shoulders and she heard them asking if they had someone they could go to. Tears came then, scalding hot tears that splashed down her cheeks on to Molly, who had fallen asleep in her arms.
Two more fire engines arrived, one going to the back of the building, but the fire was still raging and it looked as if the ironmonger’s on one side and the haberdasher’s on the other would go up too. Policemen were trying to get the huge crowd to move right back well out of the way.
‘How did it start?’ someone shouted.
‘Someone set it purposely,’ Beth called back. ‘I saw them running out the back gate. They put paraffin through the letterbox, they wanted to kill us all.’
One of the policemen came over to her and asked her to repeat what he’d just heard her say. ‘Have you any idea who it could have been?’ he asked.
‘Try looking for Jane Wiley.’ She spat out the name. ‘She used to be our lodger.’
Mrs Craven suddenly appeared through the crowd with her husband beside her. ‘I’m here, lovey,’ she called. ‘We won’t see you and Sam homeless after all you’ve been through.’ She pushed her way over to Beth and opened her big arms to encircle her and Molly. ‘You come with us now.’
Barefoot, with only a cotton nightgown and her fiddle to her name, and Molly in her arms, Beth walked with the Cravens to their home, leaving Sam to follow once he’d found someone who could take in Ernest and Peter. The Cravens’ two small rooms had been the haven Beth had run to many times in the past months when she had a problem, or just needed someone older and wiser to talk to. But she was very aware that it could only be the most temporary refuge now, for her neighbours were too old to have the disruption of unexpected guests, and too poor to have to feed them.
Beth couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t just the hiss of water jets playing on the fire, or firemen shouting to one another less than forty yards away across the back alley. It wasn’t even the hard floor of Mrs Craven’s living room, or the smoke-laden air that kept her awake. It was the knowledge that Jane Wiley had started the fire viciously and wantonly.
She didn’t know how anyone could be that wicked, for even if she hadn’t actually intended to kill them, she must have set out to destroy their home.
Everything gone — clothes, furniture and money — but even worse, to Beth, was the loss of all the little personal things and family photographs, mementos of her parents and grandparents which could never be replaced. She was touched that Sam had thought to rescue her fiddle, but it seemed such a frivolous item to save.
Practical as ever, Mrs Craven had found a couple of napkins and a baby gown for Molly and made an impromptu cradle for her out of a drawer. She’d said that the Salvation Army helped people in their position by giving clothes and boots, and she had no doubt the neighbours would make a collection for them too. But Beth was too demoralized to find any comfort in that.
‘It’s the best we can do for now,’ Mr Craven said as he handed Sam a shirt, jacket and boots belonging to a neighbour the following morning.
Sam put them on gratefully, but their owner was clearly a great deal bigger than Sam and they made him look like a clown.
‘At least I’ve got my own trousers still,’ Sam remarked. ‘I won’t have to worry about them falling down round my ankles.’
‘They’ll understand at your work,’ Beth said, sensing he was anxious about what the office manager was going to say about his appearance. She went over to him and straightened the shirt collar.
‘Don’t worry, Beth,’ he