The Fire-Eaters (17 page)

I
bowed my head as I told the tale. I looked up when it was over.

“So it was all that Daniel's idea?” said Mam.

“It was my own idea to join him.”

“And this Mr. Todd. Surely he can't be—”

“Yes, he can,” said Dad. “I've known plenty fellers like your Mr. Todd.”

Mam stroked my head.

“You,” she said. “Why d'you make everything so hard for yourself?”

Dad tapped my skull.

“Too much going on in there, that's why.”

“And why didn't you come and tell us?”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“For what you did?” he said.

I sighed.

“No,” I told him.

“Good lad. We didn't fight a war so that berks like your Mr. Todd could hold sway.”

They looked at each other.

“There's more to education than reading books and scribbling in books,” said Dad. “There's ancient battles to be fought.”

She clicked her tongue.

“Battles!” she murmured.

“Aye,” he said. “You know it as well as I do, and you know this lad's got right on his side.”

We put the TV on for the news. When it came we trembled. The Russian ships had not turned back. America was ready to sink them. All U.S. nuclear forces were on alert. It was assumed that the Russians were ready too.

Dean Rusk, the American secretary of state, was interviewed.

“We're in as grave a crisis as mankind has ever been in,” he said.

“We must try to stay calm,” he said.

He chewed his lips.

“We're standing at the gates of hell,” he said.

Mam held me tight. “You wouldn't be going to school anyway,” she said. “Not in these dark days.”

Afterward, we just sat close together, leaned slightly against each other. The sea boomed. The fire hissed in the grate. Daylight faded.

“How much warning will there be?” said Mam.

“A few minutes,” I said. “A few seconds.”

“None,” said Dad.

I saw Joseph's silhouette struggling toward the bonfire across the beach. The lighthouse light moved across him.

Mam held me tighter.

“Stay inside,” she whispered.

C
ouldn't sleep that night. As if the whole world couldn't sleep. I sat beside the Lourdes light. My own reflection gazed fearfully back at me. I made a funnel of my hands, and peered through myself. I watched the turning light, and as I watched, the light began to slow. It inched across the sea toward the land. Then stopped, dead still. And then went out. And for the first time ever, our lighthouse light was dark and still. Breath was shallow, heart was slow and light. From the room next door, not a sound. I imagined them lying there together, hands linked, eyes half open, listening, waiting.

I ripped some pages from my notebook and I wrote.

Keely Bay. It's a tiny corner of the world. It's nothing to the universe. A tatty place, a coaly beach by a coaly sea. I know that we don't matter. Maybe nothing matters. Whatever happens the stars will go on shining and the sun will go on shining and the world will go on spinning through the blackness and the emptiness. But it's where I live and where the people I love live and where the things I love live. My mam and dad. Ailsa Spink and Mr. Spink and Losh and Yak. Wilberforce the pony. The miraculous fawn. Joseph Connor and his mam and dad. Daniel Gower and his mam and dad, McNulty in the dunes. The crabs and limpets and snails that live in the rock pools, the anemones and starfish and seaweed, the rocks, the water, the shoals of fish that live in the sea, the seals, the dolphins we see sometimes, the jellyfish, every single grain of sand, every single grain of coal. The rickety beach café, the Rat, the post office, the pines, the lighthouse, the swinging lighthouse light, the dunes, the shacks. Foxes and badgers and deer and rats and voles and moles and worms and centipedes and the adders that we see on the paths in summer, and the bees and wasps and butterflies and midges. Crows and linnets and skylarks and gulls. Chickens and eggs and peas and tomatoes and raspberries. Chrysanthemums, hawthorn, holly, birch. I can't name everything, but save them. If these things can be saved, then maybe everything can be saved. Save Diggy, Col and Ed and Doreen. Save Lubbock, Todd and Grace. Save good Miss Bute. Take me. If somebody has to be taken, take me. I live in Keely Bay beside the lighthouse, near to everything I love. I'm in the window with the Lourdes light. My name is Bobby Burns. Take me.

T
he sun woke me. It was sludgy yellow, slithering over the edge of the sea. My head was on my arm. My body ached. I scanned the world for fire, for cascading dust, but there was nothing. I folded my notebook pages, shoved them in my pocket and went downstairs. I put the kettle on. Mam came soundlessly behind me in bare feet and put her arms around me.

“Good morning, Rebel Heart,” she said.

Then Dad. He hugged us. He switched the radio on and it told us an American plane had been shot down over Cuba and…He simply switched it off again. He breathed deeply and tapped his chest. Chucking the tabs would save him a fortune, he said. He'd start saving for holidays now. She laughed and said, So we're heading for Australia! Mebbes Scarborough, he said. We had breakfast. He crunched his toast and said he was looking forward to work again. He winked. And getting this
lad back to school again. And getting the roof fixed, said Mam, and getting a lick of paint on the doors before winter, and getting the draft-proofing done again, and… She told me to eat but I couldn't eat. I licked some honey from a spoon she held out to me. I sipped some tea from a cup she held up to me. She called me lovely boy. She called Dad lovely man. She started to sing “The Keel Row,” but she stopped halfway through and we all listened to the world but there was nothing.

“We'll go out,” she said, so we all put boots and coats on and we went out onto the beach. We walked through the soft coaly sand and the line of rubbish and jetsam and the firm wet sand beyond. We laughed at the size of Joseph's bonfire, and we saw other distant bonfires, heaped on the beaches before the little villages and settlements to the south.

Soon Joseph came to us, carrying yet more timbers. He yelled out a good morning.

“Old floorboards,” he told us. “Me dad was going to use them again but what the hell?”

He couldn't resist lifting his shirt, showing his dragon.

“But did it not hurt, son?” said Mam. “It bloody knacked, Mrs. Burns. But look, man. Wasn't it worth it?”

He lowered his shirt again, and tipped his head toward me.

“Things is OK?” he said.

“Aye, things is OK,” said Dad.

Joseph laughed. He rolled his eyes.

“What a kid! Fancy getting chucked out in his first term. I doubt even Losh Spink managed that.” He started to move away, then half turned. “You'll be around all day?” he said.

“Aye,” we said.

“Aye. That's good, eh?” he said, and he walked on to his fire.

We went nowhere very far: as far as the pines and back again, as far as the beach café, as far as the hawthorn lanes. We walked around the lighthouse and we stepped across the rock pools. We walked circles and spirals and figures of eight. The world stayed still. No wind. The tide moved in but the waves were tiny things that splashed almost silent on the shore. Gulls called and birds sang but their voices were frail like something from a dream. Joseph went on working, building his fire toward heaven. We couldn't stop ourselves from pausing, listening. We couldn't stop expecting hell.

We all just laughed when we saw Wilberforce. Here he came, unfettered, uncarted, trotting awkwardly down onto the beach. He snorted and kicked the sand. He stepped into the fringe of the sea and splashed. The Spinks came after him. They wore clean clothes and their faces were shining. They strolled like holidaymakers and waved when they saw us, and our two families moved toward each other.

“You're OK, then?” said Mr. Spink.

“Never better,” answered Dad.

Mr. Spink eyed him, checking the truth of what he'd said.

“That's good. But all the rest's a bad do, eh?”

“It is,” said Dad.

“And we thought the last one was the last one, eh?”

The two men approached each other. They shook hands and quickly held each other's shoulders.

“We've been all right,” said Dad softly.

“We have,” said Mr. Spink. He scanned the sea and sky. “Ha! Will you look at that daft pony!”

Ailsa came to my side and guided me away from the others. She was carrying her fawn in a cardboard box. It lay there contentedly on a bed of straw and looked up at us, so trusting.

“So it was nowt, then?” said Ailsa. “With your dad.”

“Aye, it was nowt.” I looked sideways into her eyes. “Or it was you.”

“Or you, Bobby, and the things we said.”

I reached down and stroked the fawn.

“Aye,” I said. “And all the things that we don't understand.”

She put the box down on the beach. She held my hand.

“Want to be with you all day long,” she said. “I don't want to go out of your sight.”

We walked.

“Don't worry, little fawn,” she said. “We'll not be far away.”

We wandered. We watched Joseph. Dad and Mam and Mr. Spink talked about the old days. Losh and Yak rode poor Wilberforce through the water, clinging to his mane as if he was a wild stallion; then they let him lie in the soft sand and they stroked him and whispered to him. All of us kept turning to each other, as if checking that each of us was there. My mind kept slipping, drifting. I saw myself as a little boy again, running to the water with my bucket and spade. I saw myself tumbling and squealing and being bowled over by the waves. I saw Mam picking me up and comforting me and putting me in the water again. I saw the three of us down there, Mam and Dad in stripy deck chairs, me building sand castles. I saw Ailsa toddling toward us hand in hand with her mam, and I saw again how lovely Mrs. Spink had been. I saw Joseph wrestling with me, grunting and growling and telling me how hard he'd make me. I saw Keely Bay as it had been all through my childhood, hardly changing apart from getting more tattered and worn. I know that Ailsa saw such things as well. Maybe all of us saw such things, for all of us kept entering such deep silences. We were surrounded by the ghosts of who we'd been before and who we'd known before. Outside us in the world, nothing happened, nothing happened. I went further back. I saw Dad as he had been in his boyhood photographs. I saw him on the beach. I saw
him truly, for he stood at the water's edge as real and solid as me, and I know I could almost have touched him; then he turned around and looked me in the eye. He smiled, he waved, I blinked, and he was gone.

As we walked, sometimes Ailsa and I murmured our prayers together. We wished and wished:
Don't let it happen. Keep us safe
. Sometimes when I reeled and slipped, and lost connection with the world around, I thought it must be the beginning of my death. I thought that this might be how it felt when my own prayers began to work, when I was taken as a sacrifice. I walked out with Ailsa to the rocks below the lighthouse and looked down into the deep dark sea. I stared along the beach to Joseph's waiting bonfire. I caught my breath and trembled. Maybe I wouldn't be taken. Maybe I had to give myself, to throw myself into water or fire, to lose myself in scorching heat or icy cold. “Not too close, Bobby,” said Ailsa, drawing me back from the brink. “Are you all right?” she said. “No,” I answered. “Are you?” She shook her head. We smiled at each other. How could we be all right?

Mam laid blankets on the sand. She brought food out for us all. Scones and bread and butter and cheese and golden syrup. Losh dashed home and brought a crate of beer. We spread ourselves out on the sand and ate and drank. Joseph came and ate hungrily. He reached out and took a bottle of beer and swigged from it and wiped his lips with his fist like a man. Ailsa let the fawn lick
butter from her fingers. Wilberforce nibbled the grass nearby. As we sat there, Daniel and his parents came out of their house. They paused and watched us for a while, then came shyly on. They carried some bottles of wine. Losh and Yak and Joseph watched them coldly.

“What they wanting with us?” muttered Losh.

But Mam stood up and greeted them and drew them in. Dad shook hands with Mr. Gower.