The Fire

pastel shades of gold and scarlet shone splendid in the evening light slanting through the high windows of his immaculate room.

they called it a masterpiece — those papers scattered across the table — and the collector, a gatherer of textiles and pottery who had wandered far and brought back what he could, declared it a success in the quiet way a man does when the night is already closing in around him. his wallpaper was a wild and wonderful blend of colour and life, full of African adventures, lion skins and giraffes moving across the walls in frozen motion, all tangled up with Anglo-French draperies that hung heavy and rich, and rare things from Indonesia that seemed to breathe with old sea winds and temple bells.

and then there was the candle — the sombre little flame he burned for his mother, on the writing desk below the chintzes from Liberty of London. it flickered and bent in the draught, throwing a trembling golden light that torched the edges of everything and made the lion skins burn black. a little heart of warmth and memory, beating steady in the ornate room.

he must have left it burning when he slept.

the draught took it to the Liberty chintz first, and the chintz to the draperies, and the draperies to the wallpaper, and the whole mad collection of colours and fabrics and faraway things went up together — the giraffes, the lion skins, the papers they called a masterpiece, the temple-bell silks from across the sea. the flames reached up the walls like ghosts of journeys never finished. a life’s gathering, gone in a single bright hour, lit by the small flame he’d meant only for his mother.

alone now, in the boarding house.

the candle for her
burned the whole world he’d gathered—
nothing left but her.