‘What’s the plan for this place?’ Gordon asked. The volunteer firehouse’s future always seemed to be hanging by a whim of the state government property department or a connection with the local mayor. Miraculously, the place hadn’t been turned over to developers. For a time it was protected by the influence of Sam’s father over the local press, back when there was a local press and Sam’s father had influence. Before the bureaucrats decided there couldn’t be fires so close to the beach. All that water—what could go wrong? Now the firehouse’s survival seemed a marvel of benign neglect.

‘It can’t go on,’ Sam said. ‘The land value’s too high to keep a firehouse in this location. It’s like we’re under a rock that nobody has turned over. They will.’

‘And convert it into another fuck-off house,’ Gordon said.

‘Fuck-off units,’ Sam corrected him. ‘More yield in it. For retired pricks who managed to hang on to their dough. So they can flip the bird at the likes of us.’

‘It’ll kill the old folks. Kill history.’

‘I wouldn’t sentimentalise it, brother,’ Sam said with a twinkle. ‘We did our best to kill this place ourselves, if you’ll remember.’

‘We thought there was no tomorrow. There were quite a lot, it turned out.’

‘All pretty much the same as the todays.’

As boys, Gordon and Sam, together with Gordon’s elder brother Owen, had been members of the BSLSC where Sam’s father Tony was president. Having imbibed the obscurely origined but deeply felt tribal hatred of clubbies for firies, the three boys figured that they could become legends of the surf club if they burnt down the firehouse. As the youngest, Gordon would do anything Owen and Sam suggested. Their compound of petrol and sticks and dune grass was blackening the exterior wall and climbing towards the flammable wooden eaves when Gordon panicked and ran off, terrified of what they had unleashed, to raise the alarm.

Sam had subsequently grown fascinated with the firehouse and the men and engines that emerged from it. Girls led changes in history, and Bluebird girls loved the men who rode the sides of the engines. Sam would leave the BSLSC and become a fire service volunteer at eighteen, devoting his weekends to back-burning drills. Gordon had pondered becoming a firie until Sam’s place as the most influential presence in his life was taken over by Kelly, who convinced Gordon that he was better than that. Kelly would change her mind about him, but too late. Gordon went off to the News, and the weekend demands of journalism had put paid to volunteer fire work. It was one of those sliding doors that had slammed shut on him, spiritually jamming his fingers.