The Fire-Eaters

  “I feel that little,” I said. “And everything's that big and there's nothing I can do and—”

  “What way's that to talk?” he said. “That's not what we expect from the lad that took on the devil of Sacred Heart.”

  He pulled me to my feet.

  “Howay, Bobby, man!” he said. “At least you can yell and scream and stamp your feet and build a fire high as bloody heaven and you can yell out, No, bloody no, I won't put up with it!”

  He glared into my eyes, and his face shone red beneath the reddening sky.

  “No!” he yelled, and I clenched my fists and joined in with him.

  “No! No! Bloody no!”

  “Aye!” he said. “At least make a noise. At least say, I'm me! I'm Bobby Burns! At least if the worst comes to the worst you can say I been here, I existed!”

  The Spinks had finished their coal gathering and they headed toward us as we stamped and yelled. The dark and beautiful knotted shape of the family waded the edge of the turning surf.

  “Aye, aye!” shouted Yak as they came closer. “It's yelling Brains and Dragonback and a bloody great big fire! Here, have this!” he shouted as they came close by, and he flung a bucketful of soaking sea coal onto our heap. “This'll make the heart as hot as hell.”

  “Hope you're not waiting for Guy Fawkes Night,” said Losh, “‘cos there'll be no bloody Guy Fawkes Night.”

  Joseph laughed at him.

  “Heard the news?” he said.

  “Aye,” said Losh. “And it's nowt but bad.”

  “No, the real news. Our Bobby's been chucked out of school!”

  “No!” said Yak.

  “Diven't believe it!” said Losh.

  “Tell them, Bobby,” said Joseph.

  All their eyes were on me. The words stuck in my throat. Ailsa sat on her perch on top of the coal and looked me in the eye and knew that it was true. I nodded at her: Aye.

  Losh thumped his shovel on the wheel of the cart.

  “Howay,” he said. “Get up on this cart and we'll ride down to that school and sort the toerags out reet now. Who we gunning for? Who we going to hoy on top of the fire?”

  “It's the new kid,” said Joseph. “It's his doing.”

  “Might've known,” said Losh. He picked up his shovel. “Ponces from the South. Howay, let's gan and get him.”

  “Now, then, lads,” said Mr. Spink. He stood with his arm around Wilberforce. “Do your mam and dad know, Bobby?”

  I shook my head.

  “They're at the hospital,” I muttered, and Ailsa jumped down and came to my side and hugged me and something roared far far away and we all stood dead still and didn't dare to breathe till the noise was gone.

  “They're home, Bobby,” said Joseph.

  And I turned and saw the lights on, and a dark figure moving about inside.

  I shuffled slowly, silently through the sand. Hardly made a sound as I opened the front door. Hardly breathed. Not a soul in the living room. The fire'd been heaped up. I heard them moving in the kitchen. The smell of bacon frying, the sound of the kettle boiling. Mam started singing.

  “Oh, weel may the keel row,

  The keel row, the kee-el row.

  Oh, weel may the keel row,

  That my true laddie's in …”

  Then hummed the same tune again, higher and sweeter. She laughed.

  “Can you not wait till it's on your plate?”

  Dad smacked his lips.

  “Delicious!” he said.

  Then silence from them, then softer voices.

  “You big daft man,” she said. She giggled. “Go and see if you can find our Bobby. Tell him it's on the table now.”

  He came out of the kitchen, stood in the doorway.

  “Talk of the devil,” he said. “And he's black as the roads. What you been doing out there, lad?”

  I blinked. Couldn't speak. He grinned.

  “He's lost his tongue and all!”

  “Dad,” I said.

  “That's me.”

  “Are you OK?” I said.

  “Never better.”

  She came to his back. She drew her hair from her face and smiled at me.

  “But …,” I said.

  “But what?” he said.

  “But your coughing, and all the tests, and…”

  “They found nowt.”

  “Nowt?”

  “Just like I knew they would. Nowt. Just like I knew all along.”

  “But…But…”

  Mam nodded.

  “It's true,” she said. “Nothing at all.”

  “Mebbes a bug or something, eh?” he said. “Mebbes a little passing germ that's flown away and's looking for another body to land in for a while.” She put her arms around him. “Now, then,” he said. “Go and wash that muck off, else I'll be eating yours and all.”

  I went to the bathroom. I tugged out splinters from my hands and arms. They left little bulbs of blood on my skin. I washed with creamy white soap and scrubbed all the dirt away. The lighthouse light passed across the window, once, twice, three times. I looked into my empty pupils, black as night. I tried to think but had no thoughts to think.

  “Thank you,” I whispered. There was no answer. Maybe there was no one to answer. Maybe there was just nothing, going on forever and forever. Out there on the beach, someone laughed, maybe Losh, maybe Yak. Then Ailsa's ringing voice. “Thank you,” I said again.

  “Bobby!” Dad called. “I'm starting in on yours!”

  We sat around the table, eating our bacon and eggs and tomatoes and swigging mugs of tea. Mam hummed “The Keel Row.” Dad wrapped a slice of bacon in a slice of bread and chewed it and licked the fat that ran down to his chin. Sometimes we laughed gently. Mam said they'd had to wait an age to get a bus out of town, then there wasn't a seat to be found. She was going to complain and get that service sorted out. “It's getting beyond a joke,” she said. She kept topping the mugs up with tea. Dad grinned and grinned at the pleasures of his food, at the pleasures of being with his family. The rattle of the cart and the shadow of the Spinks moved past. I saw Ailsa's glinting eyes look quickly in at us. When they'd gone, Joseph's bonfire stood like a mountain before the sea.

  Mam leaned over and kissed me.

  “So, bonny lad,” she said at last. “How was school today?”

  And I searched for a lie to tell but could find none.

  Ibowed 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 sai
d.

  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.

  Couldn'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.

  The 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?