Wildfire

Jim nodded. ‘If she’ll have me. Isolation postings do kind of throw people together, and she thinks we should take the winter to get reacquainted.’

‘Makes sense.’

‘Sense doesn’t have much to do with the way I feel around Sally. You ever feel that way about a woman, Simon?’

Yes, Simon thought. This morning, when I saw a woman called Shea playing in the lake. ‘I’ve never married,’ he said evasively. ‘Too busy getting to the top. The women I go out with are the decorative, sophisticated ones that a man in my position is supposed to be seen with. You know, the kind that get photographed in the glossy fashion magazines. Wouldn’t be caught dead without at least a quarter of an inch of make-up on. Wouldn’t be caught dead without an escort who wasn’t at the top, either,’ he finished cynically.

‘Doesn’t sound as though you like any of them very much,’ Jim observed.

‘Liking is not what it’s about.’ Simon pushed back from the table. ‘Hell, I didn’t even like myself very much. And that is the last remark of a personal nature that you’re getting out of me today.’

‘OK, OK,’ Jim said, slapping the back pocket of his jeans to see if he had his wallet. ‘Although if you’re into that kind of woman, Shea is definitely not the one for you... Want anything at the store?’

‘No, thanks.’

Simon started stacking the plates, and a few moments later heard Jim’s truck drive away down the dirt lane that linked them to the highway. So the lissom swimmer in Maynard’s Lake was called Shea. She was twenty-nine years old, unattached, and, if he could trust the intonation in Jim’s voice, a very independent lady. Apparently he was going to meet her, sooner or later.

In his brother’s opinion she was not the right woman for him.

Or else he was the wrong man.

CHAPTER TWO

AT FIRST glimpse the scene in front of him was one of utter confusion. Simon stood beside Jim’s truck in his jeans and T-shirt and new steel-toed boots, taking everything in, and gradually the various components began to make sense. The weather-beaten building on the far side of the road appeared to be functioning as dormitory, kitchen, and command post; two men with sleeping rolls disappeared inside it, and from it wafted the smell of chicken soup. Heaps of gear stood around in the dust: pumps, shovels, chainsaws, and big yellow bags of hose. He remembered those long lines of hose from the course he had so light-heartedly agreed to take. Filled with water, they were astoundingly heavy.

From behind the building he heard the decelerating whine of a helicopter engine. Helicopters, he now knew, were used for water-bombing and for transporting ground crew to fires unreachable by road. The truck parked near Jim’s had a shiny aluminium water tank, and the volunteer fire truck behind it carried a portable tank. Two bulldozers were lined up further down the track.

His gaze shifted, almost unwillingly, to the west. There, on the horizon, was the reason he was here.

The smoke was yellow more than blue, a thick, ominous cloud over gently rolling hills. He had somehow expected the smoke to be lying still, crouched like a predator over its prey. Instead it was full of roiling movement, billowing high into the sky. Although he was too far away to see flames, the surging smoke alone was enough to make his heart beat faster.

Jim was jogging back towards the truck. ‘I checked in with the fire boss,’ he said as soon as he was in earshot. ‘Four of us are going to do mop-up on the flank that’s furthest from the road—you want to take a run down to the helicopter and find out from the pilot how soon we can go? I’ll grab a couple of bunks in the meantime.’

Glad to have something tangible to do, Simon headed across the dirt road. The dozers had pushed it further to the west, in a tumble of rocks and earth. Better a helicopter than drive on that, he thought, nodding at three men in filthy orange suits who had just come out of the command post. Their faces were covered with soot, their eyes red-rimmed, and again he felt his heartbeat quicken. London, more than ever, seemed like another world. He was suddenly, fiercely glad to be here. Whatever he was to do in the next twenty-four hours would be real and useful.

More so than putting pigment on canvas.

He went past the corner of the building. The engine of the helicopter had been turned off and the blades were still. It did not look large enough to carry four men and a pilot.

Simon walked round the nose. Someone was balancing on the narrow step that was two feet from the ground, and was reaching into the cabin. With a jolt of surprise he saw that the body in the dirt-streaked beige flying suit was definitely not a male body; the curves under the cotton fabric were female curves, and the waist far too slender to belong to a man. All the warnings of sabotage so liberally posted in Heathrow Airport rose in Simon’s mind. He said sharply, ‘What are you doing here? Get out of that cabin!’

The body went absolutely still. Then the woman turned to look at him. Her eyes the cold grey of a November sky, she said precisely, ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You heard me—you’re trespassing.’

In a single lithe movement that brought a frown to his face, so familiar did it seem, she jumped to the ground. ‘I’m not in the mood for jokes,’ she said. ‘What do you want?’

‘I came here to tell the pilot that four of us need transport out to the south flank of the fire—’

‘OK,’ she said impatiently, ‘you’ve told her. We can—’

‘You’re the pilot,’ Simon said blankly.

‘I’m the pilot,’ she repeated, unsmiling. ‘I’m not in the mood for chauvinist remarks, either.’

He had not been about to make any. Although his assumption that a pilot had to be a man was about as chauvinistic as he could get.

For a moment Simon regarded her in silence. She looked tired and dirty and hot. While her hair, tawny-blonde, was pulled back into a ribbon, wisps of it stuck to her face; there were shadows like bruises under the level grey eyes. Her nose had an interesting bump in it, and her mouth was too generous for true beauty. He wanted very badly to make that mouth smile.

He said straightforwardly, ‘I’m sorry. I should never have assumed that you had to be a man.’

She gave him the briefest of nods. ‘OK. We can leave in about half an hour. I have to refuel first.’

Turning away from him, she knelt down to unlatch the cargo pod in the belly of the helicopter. Plainly he was dismissed. Yet something in the way she moved, in her slimness and the curve of her back, made Simon say with a gaucheness rare to him, ‘I don’t know your name.’

She was hauling a fuel pump from the pod. Resting it on the ground by one of the skids, she brushed her hands down her trousers and stood up. She was tall, perhaps five feet nine. He liked tall women. ‘Shea Mallory,’ she said.

Shea...he could not have come across two women named Shea in the space of three weeks. He croaked, ‘Do you have a cabin on Maynard’s Lake?’

She frowned at him. ‘Yes,’ she said in a clipped voice. ‘How do you know that? I’ve never laid eyes on you before.’

She had not laid eyes on him. But he most certainly had laid eyes on her. Although his heart was banging against his ribs, at another level Simon was not even surprised to learn her identity, for every movement she had made in the last few minutes had told him who she was. Feeling colour creep up his neck, fighting to keep his voice casual, he said, ‘I’m Simon Greywood. Jim Hanrahan’s brother.’ He held out his hand.

Shea took it with noticeable reluctance and gave it the lightest of pressures before releasing it. ‘The one from England,’ she said. ‘The artist.’

‘That’s right,’ he said, smiling at her in a way a number of women in London would have recognised. ‘I’m here for the summer.’

She did not smile back. Instead she gave his spanking-new T-shirt a derisive glance. ‘Aren’t you afraid you’ll get your hands dirty?’

He felt his temper rise. ‘I did apologise for my mistake.’

‘I wasn’t referring to that particular mistake.’

‘So what have you got against me, Shea Mallory?’

‘I’ll tell you,’ she answered, scowling at him as she thrust her hands in the pockets of her trousers. ‘I helped Jim write that first letter to you, so I know how much it meant to him. His parents didn’t tell him he was adopted until he turned twenty-five...once he discovered he had an older brother, he wanted to get in touch with you right away. So he wrote to you. And for six weeks you didn’t even bother to write back.’

‘That’s true,’ Simon said shortly. ‘But—’

‘With all the money you’ve got, I would have thought you could have picked up the phone—seeing that you were too busy painting rich people to write a letter.’

‘This is really none of your business—it’s between Jim and me, and nothing to do with you.’

She raised her voice over the growl of an approaching truck. ‘He and I went canoeing four weeks after he wrote to you. He was really upset—and he’s my friend. In my book that makes it my business.’ She glanced to her right. ‘Now you’ll have to excuse me, that’s the truck with the oil drums. Be back here at quarter-past nine.’

The truck lurched down the track and came to a stop three feet from where Simon was standing. The driver gave Shea a cheery hello and climbed out. Simon, knowing he had definitely got the worst of that round, strode up the hill to find his brother.

Jim was standing by a pile of gear chatting to two other men, whom he introduced as Charlie and Steve. Simon said, ‘We leave at nine-fifteen.’

‘We’ve got time for a coffee, then,’ Steve said, and headed for the kitchen, Charlie hard on his heels.

‘Jim, why the devil didn’t you tell me Shea was the pilot?’ Simon demanded.

Jim blinked. ‘For one thing, I didn’t know...there are seven or eight different pilots. For another, I didn’t want to engineer any kind of an introduction and be accused of matchmaking.’

‘You don’t have to worry—she can’t stand the sight of me.’

‘Whyever not?’

‘She thinks I should have picked up the telephone the minute I got your letter.’

‘That’s not exactly her business,’ Jim said thoughtfully.

‘That’s what I told her. Which didn’t endear me to her.’

‘Oh, well, I suspected she might not be the woman for you,’ Jim said with a dismissiveness that grated on Simon’s nerves. ‘Why don’t we grab a coffee and a doughnut before we go? It’s going to be a long day.’

Simon subdued various replies, making a manful effort to pull his mind off an encounter that had left him as stirred up as an adolescent. ‘Won’t we need gear out there?’ he asked.

‘The Bell—the big helicopter—took it out half an hour ago along with another crew. This isn’t a bad fire, as forest fires go...a good way for you to get your feet wet.’

The fire was not foremost in Simon’s mind. He had now seen two sides of the woman called Shea: the laughing creature playing in the water, and the cold-eyed pilot of a government helicopter. Although he was still smarting from her rebuff, this did not in any way diminish his desire to find out more about her. Both sides of her had got under his skin. Nor, he was sure, were these two facets of her personality the whole woman.

Besides which, he was determined to make her smile.

At him.

* * *

At nine-fifteen the four men headed towards the helicopter, Simon now arrayed in his orange overalls and carrying his hard hat and ear protectors. The sharp tang of smoke filled the air.

Shea was sitting in the helicopter doing her pre-flight check. Without making it at all obvious Simon engineered it that he was the one to sit beside her in the front. After doing up his seatbelt, he put on the headset, prepared to enjoy himself. The cockpit was small, so he was sitting quite close to her. Unlike the women he was accustomed to, she did not smell of expensive perfume. She smelled of woodsmoke.

She checked over her shoulder to see that she had her four passengers. Then, all her movements calm and unhurried, she flipped a number of switches and opened the throttle. The blades started to whirl, faster and faster, and the cockpit jounced up and down. After waiting a couple of minutes for the starter to cool, she turned the generator on, wound to full throttle and did the last of her checks.

Then her voice came over Simon’s headset. ‘Patrol three to fire boss. Taking off with four mop-up crew for the south flank of the fire. Over.’

‘OK, patrol three. The Bambi’s out there already. Proceed to the head of the fire for water drops. Over.’

‘Roger, fire boss. Over and out.’

The Bambi, Simon knew from his course, was the brand name for the water-bombing bucket. His muddled feelings for the woman beside him coalescing into simple admiration for her skill, he watched as she eased up on the throttle with her left hand, her feet adjusting the anti-torque pedals. As gently as a bird, the helicopter lifted from the ground, the dust swirling from the downdraught. She turned the nose into the wind, picked up the rpm’s, and with her right hand on the cyclic drove the machine forward and up. Feeling much as he had on his first plane trip, Simon saw the depot fall behind them, the trees diminishing to little green sticks, the dozer road to a narrow brown thread.

He said spontaneously, ‘How long have you been a pilot?’

‘Four years on helicopters. Three years fixed-wing before that.’

As she brought the helicopter round in a steep turn to face the fire, his shoulder brushed hers. The contact shivered along his nerves, much as the ripples had spread over the surface of the lake. Because her shirt-sleeves were rolled up, he could see the dusting of blonde hair on her arms, and the play of tendons in her wrists as she made the constant small adjustments to the controls. She wore no rings. Her fingernails were rimed with soot.

Why dirty fingernails should fill him with an emotion he could only call tenderness Simon had no idea. Fully aware that everyone on board could hear him, he said tritely, ‘You like flying.’

‘I love it,’ she said. ‘It’s what I like to do best in the world.’

The fire was closer now, so that Simon could see its charred perimeters and the columns of smoke shot through with leaping flames. I want to make love with you, Shea Mallory, he thought. I don’t know when or where or how. But I know it’s going to happen. I’m going to make you laugh with passion and cry out with desire, your cool grey eyes warming to me like mist burning off the lake in the sun. And you’ll find there’s something else you like to do the best in the world.

Deliberately he leaned his shoulder into hers again, and with a quiver of primitive triumph saw her lashes flicker and felt her muscles tense against his. So she was not as unaware of him as she might wish to appear.

But when she spoke into the intercom she glanced over her shoulder, and her voice was utterly impersonal. ‘We’ll land in that bog to the right of the perimeter—the gear is stashed near by, and the ground’s dry.’

She was addressing all four of them, not him alone. Simon’s lips quirked. He liked an opponent of mettle. Larissa, his companion of the last several months, would never have reprimanded him about Jim as Shea had, and certainly would never have been seen with dirty fingernails. Larissa was an ambitious young model who had liked him for his fame and money, in turn furnishing Simon with her ornamental person at all the right parties. While the gossip columnists would have been flabbergasted to know they had never been lovers, Simon by then was just starting to acknowledge how badly askew his life had become, and was not about to encumber himself with a love-affair. As for Larissa, she was quite shrewd enough to know that the appearance of an affair could be just as useful as the affair itself. Yet the few decorative tears she had let fall at a farewell dinner for him had by no means been fake.

Shea’s shoulder twisted against his as she checked the visibility around her. ‘Fire boss, this is patrol three coming in to land. Over.’

‘We read you, patrol three. Over.’

Again, fascinated, Simon watched the interplay of feet and hands as Shea eased the helicopter down towards the bog. The tangle of alders and tamaracks grew closer and the long green grass fanned out in the wind. The landing was flawless. Over the intercom she said, ‘Keep low when you get out, and don’t go near the tail rotor or the exhaust. Good luck, fellows.’

Simon unbuckled his belt, sliding the shoulder harness over the back of his seat. But before he took off the headset he said sincerely, ‘Thanks, Shea—my first helicopter ride, and with a real pro.’

As if she was surprised by the compliment, she glanced sideways at him. A flash of sardonic humour crossed her face. ‘Hope your first fire goes as smoothly,’ she said.

He held her gaze. ‘Do you ever smile?’

She raised her brows in mockery. ‘At my friends.’

‘You and I aren’t through with each other. You know that, don’t you?’

She said gently, ‘You’re holding up the fire crew, Mr Greywood. Goodbye.’

‘There’s an expression I’ve picked up from my brother that I like a lot better than goodbye. See you, Shea Mallory.’

He got up, bent low because the cockpit wasn’t constructed with six-foot-two men in mind, and with exaggerated care laid the headset on the seat. Even though he had had the last word, he suspected round two had gone to her, too.

Why then did he feel so exhilarated?

He swung himself down to the ground. Crouching, he ran beyond the whirling disc of the blades, the wind flattening his clothing to his body, the noise deafening. Two Lands and Forests employees who had been standing near by hurried towards the helicopter, dragging a large orange pleated bucket; Shea raised her machine five feet off the ground and the men, wearing gloves against static, attached the metal cables of the bucket to the belly of the helicopter. When the job was done the helicopter rose into the sky, the bucket dangling incongruously, like a child’s toy.

One of the men grinned at Jim. ‘You have to be careful doin’ that—if the cables get caught in the skids, you got a crash on your hands. You guys headin’ out for mop-up? Your gear’s just beyond that clump of trees. We’re joinin’ up with another bunch thataway. See ya.’

See you, Simon had said to Shea; but the helicopter was now lost in the smoke and his confidence seemed utterly misplaced and his exhilaration as childish as the Bambi bucket. One small word had banished them both. Crash, the man had said, as casually as if he were discussing the weather.

Accidents happen. Helicopters crash. Simon strained his eyes to see through the thick blanket of smoke.

‘Coming?’ Jim said.

With a jerk Simon came back to the present. Shea, cool, competent Shea, would be truly insulted if she knew he was worrying about her crashing, he thought wryly, and forced his mind to the job at hand. And there it stayed for the next eleven hours. Each man was given a sector to work at the tail of the fire, that desolate, charred acreage where the fire had already passed. Simon dug up tree roots where embers could be smouldering; he chopped down snags; he set fires to burn out the few remaining patches of green; he felt for hot spots in the soil where fire could be burning underground and burst to the surface days or weeks later.

It was a hard, tedious job, without a vestige of glamour. Because daily workouts in a gym in London had been part of his routine, Simon was very fit. Nevertheless, by nine o’clock that evening when the beat of an approaching helicopter signalled the end of their day, every muscle and bone in his body was aching with fatigue.

At intervals throughout the day he had caught the distant mutter of an engine, and had seen Shea’s blue helicopter swinging round the head of the fire with its load of water. Now he was almost relieved to see that it was not Shea’s small machine but the larger Bell that was sinking down into the clearing near the small knot of men. He didn’t have the energy to deal with Shea right now, he thought, heaving himself aboard. All he wanted to do was sleep.

The Bell disgorged them behind the command post. ‘Great way to spend a Saturday evening, eh?’ Jim said, a grin splitting his blackened face. ‘You OK?’

‘Do I look as bad as you?’

‘I’ve seen you look better...there’s a lake half a mile down the road, we could take the truck and go for a swim.’

‘Don’t know if I’ve got the energy,’ Simon groaned. ‘Is this how you Canadians separate the men from the boys?’

A light female voice said, ‘It’s one of the ways. Hi there, Jim, how did it go?’

‘Good,’ Jim said, and rather heavy-handedly began talking to the man with Shea, a tall, good-looking man in a beige flying suit like Shea’s.

Said Simon, ‘Good in no way describes the day I’ve had. But you, Shea, look good.’

She was wearing jeans and a flowered shirt, her tawny hair loose on her shoulders in an untidy mass of curls that softened the severity of her expression. He added, ‘That was a compliment. You could smile.’

‘You’re persistent, aren’t you?’

‘Tenacious as the British bulldog, that’s me,’ Simon said. ‘How was your day?’

‘Great. The fire’s under control—got stopped at the firebreak. So now there’ll be lots more work for you,’ she finished limpidly.

Jim and the pilot had moved away. ‘Unemployment is beginning to seem like an attractive option,’ Simon said.

‘I didn’t think you’d stick with it,’ she flashed.

‘I’d hate to prove you wrong.’

‘Be honest, Simon,’ she retorted. ‘You’d love to prove me wrong.’

It was the first time she had used his name. He liked the sound of it on her tongue. Very much. What the devil was happening to him? She was an argumentative, unfriendly and judgemental woman. Why should he care what she called him? ‘If I stick with it, will you smile at me?’ he asked.

He saw laughter, as swift as lightning, flash across her eyes. She said primly, ‘I don’t make promises that I might not keep. And I distrust charm.’

‘I have lots of sterling virtues—I don’t drink to excess, I don’t do drugs, and I pay my taxes.’

‘And,’ she said shrewdly, ‘you’re used to women falling all over you.’

‘You could try it some time,’ he said hopefully.

‘I never liked being one of a crowd.’

His eyes very blue in his filthy face, Simon started to laugh. ‘I think a woman would have to be pretty desperate to fall all over me right now. I stink.’

‘You do,’ she said.

‘Hey—you’ve agreed with something I’ve said. We’re making progress.’

Glowering at him, she snapped, ‘We are not! You can’t make progress if you’re not going anywhere.’ Looking round, she added with asperity, ‘Where’s Michael gone? We’re supposed to—’

‘Is he your boyfriend?’ Simon interrupted.

‘No.’

Until she spoke he was not aware how much the sight of the good-looking pilot at her side had disturbed him. He said indirectly, ‘I hate coy women.’

‘You like complaisant women, Mr Greywood.’

‘Then you’re a new experience for me, Ms Mallory... Michael’s over by the oil drums.’

She tossed her head, turned on her heel, and stalked over to the stack of oil drums. Well pleased with himself, Simon headed for the kitchen, and when Jim joined him a few minutes later said, ‘I could do with a swim—you still interested in going?’

‘Sure,’ Jim said. ‘What did you say to make Shea look like a firecracker about to explode?’

‘I have no idea,’ Simon said blandly. ‘But thank you for diverting the estimable Michael.’

Jim put a hand on his arm and said soberly, ‘Don’t play games with Shea, Simon. She’s not one of your sophisticated types—she could get hurt.’

‘She’s not going to let me get near enough to hurt her.’ Simon shifted his sore shoulders restlessly. ‘Let’s go for that swim.’

CHAPTER THREE

THREE days passed, hot, cloudless days where the wind blew ashes in ghostly whorls among the charred stumps and fanned the flames of back fires. Simon’s muscles grew accustomed to the hours of hard labour, labour which he was finding oddly satisfying. There was nothing romantic about mopping up after a fire. But he knew he was protecting the unburned woods from further outbreaks, and that pleased him inordinately. Not even the news on the second day that the fire had leaped the break and was again out of control could entirely dissipate his pleasure in a job as far removed from painting portraits as he could imagine.