And now the world, itself aflame

burns the witch.

I read and reread the poem. Its lines built a connection between the burned now and an ancient past. Shirley Blakely’s other poetry had long inspired me. Not only the richness of her bush descriptions, the way she connected Victoria and Queensland through the vast landscape, but also her depictions of the pain, pleasure and obligations of motherhood. I couldn’t connect the poem’s passion to the elderly and rather confused woman Jack had described.

‘You can read a poem a hundred times and it’s different each time,’ I said. We drove on for a while. ‘Do you know if the Brunton Hotel’s still standing?’

‘It’s been damaged. It’s not destroyed.’

I’d seen reporters outside the hospital baying for blood. Performing there might be gone forever. I’d been welcomed because of Stephen. This had begun to turn last year when Caleb had his car accident. It would turn completely if he was publicly accused of this. I would be simply known as the arsonist’s mother. I wouldn’t belong here anymore. The community I had seen pulling together at the refuge would be the one that excluded us as those rumours continued licking at the structures of my life.

‘She was a good mother,’ Jack said, as if aware that the judgments other people would make about my parenting were on my mind. He was perceptive. I stared at the book and tried to understand him. Knowing he was Shirley Blakeley’s son showed me a little boy in him. I grieved for the loss of his innocence made worse, of course, in his fighting days in Iraq. It was too much to think about now.

‘I hope one day Caleb will say that about me.’

‘He will.’ Jack touched my hand then continued, ‘I think children grow like plants. Parents provide the right environment. Good soil… fertiliser…’

He didn’t have children and didn’t read many books. ‘You mean shit?’ I asked.

Jack smiled. ‘You know what I mean. Children grow into roles they were nurtured for. They flourish with care.’

I smiled back at him. He was trying to help. I’d remember this conversation when other mothers waved placards outside court. The fires had changed the narrative of my life. If Caleb was an arsonist, they believed it was my fault.

We left regular Victorian streets behind us, reaching the fire zone. It could have been another planet. The atmosphere was thick with smoke. The odd surviving eucalypt provided the occasional splash of colour, its leaves full of the oil that, evaporating, gave them their familiar blue haze, ready to ignite.

The landscape was apocalyptic, a black and grey nightmare brightened with fallen trees and stumps that glowed, as red as fresh wounds. Bruegel could have painted it. Gum trees love fire the way an arsonist would; they sicken without it. Now and then, like an obscene barbecue, the smell of burning flesh cut through the scent of eucalyptus oil and smoke. Black shapes roadside were the burned carcasses of animals, heat-frozen, belly up. Everywhere someone had died was a crime scene marked with blue-and-white tape. Some houses still stood, smoking, in fields of debris. Survivors dug through the ashes of their homes, archaeologists seeking their own history, a connection to their own past, museum pieces proving their lives had been real. And everything glowed. Everything was thick with smoke and underneath everything glowed.