The Fire-Eaters Page 2

  “Such a world we live in,” said Mam.

  She smiled. She nudged Dad.

  “So, Mister Chef,” she said. “What wonders have you prepared to welcome us home?”

  “A banquet,” he said. “Come and see.”

  We headed to our house above the beach. A light burned in the window. Pale smoke rose from the chimney.

  “McNulty,” said Dad. “You'll have to take me, Bobby, show me where he was. Mebbe he'll be back in the same place again. Who'd believe it, after all these years.” He opened the little gate into our garden. He squeezed my arm. “He was always harmless, son. Don't be hexed by him.”

  We had his little pasties hot from the oven, with carrots and potatoes whipped into a cream. He gave me half a glassful of his beer. There was rice pudding, sweet and rich beneath its scorched skin. We mixed jam into it and sighed at such deliciousness. The lights were low, the curtains open. Every minute the window filled with light. Dad's thoughts kept turning to the war, to his voyage home, to McNulty.

  “Skin!” he said. “He said loads of stuff about skin. He said he'd seen men who dressed in the skin of a beast and became the beast. Men in lion skins snarling like lions. Men in antelope skins leaping like antelopes. Tiger skin, ape skin, snake skin. Put them on, he said, say the proper words, and you can turn to anything.”

  I rubbed my hand. A mark was left where McNulty's tiny drops of blood had fallen. Or was it a mark I'd always had? I fingered the coin he'd given me in payment. I recalled his breath, his skin, his deep dark driven eyes.

  Dad lit a cigarette. His breath rasped as he inhaled. I cleared the table with Mam. In the kitchen, she crossed off yet another day from the calendar.

  “Just another week till that new school,” she said, and she beamed at me.

  The air grew cold. Dad threw more sea coal and lumps of driftwood onto the fire. I sat with him and watched TV. There'd been more nuclear bomb tests in Russia and the USA. President Kennedy stood at a lectern, whispered to a general, shuffled some papers and spoke of his resolution, our growing strength. He said there were no limits to the steps we'd take if we were pushed. Khrushchev made a fist, thumped a table and glared. Then came the pictures that accompanied such reports: the missiles that would be launched, the planes that would take off, the mushroom clouds, the howling winds, the devastated cities.

  Dad spat into the fire. He cursed and lit another cigarette.

  “This isn't enough for them,” he said. “This quiet, this beauty, this peace. Listen to them. They're animals, howling for blood.”

  He inhaled.

  “Maybe we should go far away,” he said. “Where none of their nonsense can ever reach us.”

  “Australia!” called Mam.

  She came through the door with my school uniform in her hands.

  “Australia! That's what it was going to be. I'll take you away to where it's hot and clean and new. That's what he said. Australia, my love! A new life! Come on. Put this on, bonny boy. Let me make those changes.”

  She drew me to her, put the blazer on me and giggled. She knelt beside me with pins gripped in her teeth. She snapped down my sleeves, turned up the cuffs to the level of my wrists, and tacked them with pins.

  “Keep straight,” she kept saying. “You'll finish no quicker by jiggling about.

  “Anybody'd think you'd be proud,” she said.

  I sighed and rolled my eyes at Dad and watched the window and let her have her way. The heat of the fire scorched my legs.

  “There,” she said. “Now let me look at you.”

  She pushed me away and sat back on her heels.

  “Fasten it up properly, then. That's right.”

  I saw the tears in their eyes as they smiled at each other.

  “Bobby,” she said. “Put it all on. Go on, love, with the new shirt. Go on. It won't take long.”

  I stood there.

  “Go on, eh?” said Dad.

  In my room I stripped off my jeans and sweater and put on everything: the socks and flannel shorts, the white shirt, the dark tie. I tied on the heavy black shiny shoes. And I replaced the blazer, the too-long, too-wide covering of black with golden battlements shining from its pocket.

  “Oh, Bobby,” she whispered when I went back down. “Oh, Bobby. What a man.”

  Then there came a knocking at the door. A deep voice called in from the dark.

  “Bobby! You in, Bobby? You coming out?”

  Mam's face darkened.

  “Joseph Connor,” she said.

  She looked at her watch.

  “It's too late,” she said.

  “Bobby!” Joseph called.

  “He's too old,” said Mam.

  She looked at Dad, and he smiled.

  “Come on, love,” he said. “It's still holiday. Give him half an hour, eh?”

  She clicked her tongue.

  “Not a moment more.”

  I yelled that I'd be just a minute. I went upstairs and changed again. I ran into the dark. He was nowhere to be seen. I crossed the lane toward the beach. When the lighthouse light came round I saw a body draped across a heap of seaweed. It rose and leapt at me and wrestled me to the sand.

  “That was a pretty uniform I seen you in,” he whispered. “What a lovely little schoolboy you're gonna make!”

  I twisted and kneed him in the crotch. I rolled him over and sat on him and pressed his shoulders to the earth.

  “A pity that some of us is just too bloody thick to make the grade,” I said.

  He roared and shoved me off. I ran full pelt from him toward the sea.

  “Come and catch me, Dumbo!” I yelled.

  “I'll get you, nancy boy!” he answered.

  We ran a quarter mile or so. I waited for him at the water's edge. We leaned forward, grasped our knees, gasped for breath, roared with laughter. The water soaked the sand around our feet. He put his arm around me.

  “What'll we do?” I said.

  He took ten Players from his pocket. I shook my head when he offered me one. He lit up and breathed out a plume of smoke. I turned my face away. I saw flashing airplane lights move across the stars.

  “Let's go down the new kid's way,” he said.

  We walked on. We were bathed in light, then plunged into the dark.

  “I saw an escapologist today,” I said.

  “Aye? I seen Ailsa. She was asking where you were.”

  “I saw him stick a skewer right through his cheeks.”

  “I seen her again with her dad in the water getting coal. Not a stitch on her legs, Bobby.”

  “He had this … dunno. Power in him.”

  “Should've seen her. She says she's not gonna go to your school, you know.”

  “I know. She's daft.”

  “She says she doesn't see why she should just ‘cos she's proved she can.”

  “So she'll go to your place?”

  “Doubt she'll go anywhere. You know what they're like, that lot.”

  “Aye.” I shook my head. “She's daft.”

  The new kid's house was where another of the lanes came down onto the beach. It had been a fisherman's place; then it had become derelict and half buried in the sand. Now there were a garage and some new rooms at the back and a huge window at the front facing out across the sea.

  We shut up as we got closer. We walked with our heads lowered and our knees bent. We crouched at the dried-out battered knee-high fence. The curtains were open. The new kid was sitting on a box, reading a magazine, holding his hair back with his hand. There were boxes all around him. His dad was stretched out on a sofa with a book. His mam took a record out from its cover, put it on a record player. The sound of drums and saxophones drifted into the night.

  “Bloody jazz,” said Joseph.

  We watched. We kept ducking when the light came round. The new kid's dad poured some wine. The new kid swayed, like he was half dancing. Somebody said something and they all laughed together.

  “Seen them by the lighthouse, on the headland,�
�� said Joseph. “They had sandwiches and that. They were taking photos.”

  “He's called Daniel,” I said.

  “Aye. He's a jessie, eh? Look at him.”

  He lit another cigarette.

  “Don't,” I said. “They'll see.”

  “No, they won't. Light inside, dark outside, they'll never see nowt.”

  He breathed out smoke. “He'll be with you,” he said. “He'll be at your school. Him and you and all the other nancy boys.”

  “Don't be stupid.”

  “What?”

  “Nowt.”

  “Huh. Look at them.”

  He threw his cigarette away and stood up and climbed across the fence. He crouched low and prowled toward the window.

  “Joseph, man!” I whispered.

  He stood up right in front of the window. He spread his arms wide like he was daring them to see him. He stuck two fingers up at the window with both hands.

  “Joseph!” I whispered. “Joseph!”

  The light came round and swept across his back. The new kid jumped from his box. His dad sat up. Joseph turned and ran and vaulted the fence and raced into the darkness of the beach. I followed close behind. After a couple of hundred yards he went sprawling. He giggled and grunted as I threw myself down beside him. He cursed the new kid and his family. I laughed; then I sighed and said I'd have to go.

  “You're stupid,” I said.

  He got me by the throat. He shoved my face into the sand.

  “Don't call me stupid,” he snarled. “Bloody never. Right?”

  I tried to speak but couldn't. “Right?” he said.

  I twisted my head. I tried to spit, dribbled sand and saliva.

  “Right,” I muttered.

  He gave me one last shove, one last curse; then he got up and went away.

  Iwatched Joseph disappear; then I took my shoes and socks off and waded into the icy sea. I scooped up water and rinsed my mouth. I thought I tasted blood but it might have just been the salt. The night was clear and bright. I tried to discern the horizon, to see where the stars became the reflections of stars. I watched the airplane lights. I tried to distinguish the far-off roar of engines from the ever-present rumble of the sea. I looked toward the east. If the bombers came, is that where they would come from? I tried to imagine them, great crossshaped shadows, no lights, unmistakable roars. I tried to imagine everything destroyed: no beach, no dunes, no house, no family, no friends, no me. Nothing. Nothing left but poison sluggish sea and poison drifting dust.

  I watched the massive cone of light approach me.

  “Bobby!”

  The call came from behind me.

  “Bobby, is it you?”

  I turned. Ailsa. The light swept over her, and her eyes glittered and her face bloomed.

  She laughed and came in beside me.

  “I was looking for you today,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Daddy said you could have come and helped us. He would have paid you, Bobby.”

  “Mebbe another time.”

  “He says he can always use another hand.”

  We stood knee-deep in the water. I could feel the tiny fragments of coal swirling around my skin.

  “Daddy says it's the sailors,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “That wailing. Can you hear it?”

  I listened. Was it something, or was it just imagination?

  “Can you?” she said.

  “What do you mean, sailors?”

  “Dunno. A ship was torpedoed, and all hands were lost. In the last war, or another one. Not sure, really.” We listened together. She laughed. “Or mebbe it's just another story Daddy made up and it's just the seals. But…”

  And there they were, the sounds that could be howls and cries if we heard them in a certain way.

  “Sometimes I've heard laughter,” she said. “But nothing like this. What they howling for, Bobby?”

  “It's just the air. It's just the sea. It's just …”

  She touched my arm.

  “You know it's not. Are you worried, too, Bobby Burns?”

  “No. No.”

  “That's good.”

  “It's just that …” I felt my face coloring and I was glad of darkness. “… that it's all so…”

  Then my name was called again.

  “Bobby! Bobbeeeeee!”

  “Beautiful,” I said.

  She laughed.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know.”

  “Boooobbeeeeeee!”

  “I've got to go,” I said.

  She leaned to me and quickly kissed my cheek, and giggled, and pushed me on my way.

  The fire roared. We kept the television and the radio off. Mam hummed “O Sacred Heart” as she stitched my blazer sleeves. Dad lifted a blazing coal from the fire with tongs to light his cigarette. The flames flickered before his lips. He drew smoke deeply in, gasped it out again, coughed, caught his breath, laughed at himself.

  “Them damn things,” said Mam. “When you going to pack them in?”

  Dad winked at me.

  “When tomorrow comes,” he said, and he changed the subject to McNulty. “Mebbe he's there every Sunday morning,” he said. “I should try to get to talk to him, eh?”

  “Aye,” I said.

  “We'll go next Sunday. We'll take lots of coins for him.”

  We ate hot buttered toast and we smiled. I drifted. I heard the turning of the sea. I must have fallen asleep. I saw the skewer and the blood. I heard his voice: Pay! You'll not get nothing till you pay!

  Mam touched me.

  “You're snoring,” she said. “Just like you used to, years ago. Go on. Upstairs.”

  I heard them laughing fondly as I climbed.

  I sat at the table before my window. I switched my Lourdes light on: the little plastic grotto with St. Bernadette on her knees and Mary smiling gently down. Mam had brought it back for me from the parish trip last year. “A present from a place of miracles,” she'd said.

  I found a notebook and I wrote.

  Small, muscled, bare-chested man. McNulty. Joseph. The new kid. Ailsa. Drowned sailors, wailing. September 2nd, 1962. Sunshine after rain, then darkness. Autumn's on its way. What am I so scared of?

  Then I lay in bed and dreamed again and the blankets became chains and my sleep was a great writhing and struggling to break free.

  I was with Joseph. We were in the dunes beyond the headland. He stretched out with his hands behind his head. He had ice-blue jeans on and a black shirt and black pointed boots. I lay close by him and kept measuring myself against him. How would I ever get to be so big?

  He was talking about the future, about what he'd be. “It's still gonna be the building trade, like me dad,” he said. “He says he'll easy get me a start. There's gonna be all kind of building going on in town. Offices and restaurants and hotels and the motorway. The work'll last for years. I cannot wait, man. Money in me pocket, pints of beer, lasses. Hey, look.” He pulled his shirt up, turned over and showed me his back. “He had a good week last week, give us another quid, so I got the head filled in.”

  It was his tattoo, his dragon. The jaws with the massive teeth and the forked tongue gaped between his shoulders, the body with its scales and horns twisted all down his back, the legs with their great claws stretched around his sides, and the tail dipped down below his jeans. Most of it was outline, but bit by bit, when he could afford it, he was getting it filled in. When he'd talked about it first, I told him, Don't do it. You're too young, man. Think of when you're older. But he just laughed and cursed and called me a nance and said he was three years older than me anyway, so what did I know? In the end I even went with him to Blyth and I told the tattooist: Yes, of course he's sixteen.

  “It's lovely,” I said, and we grinned.

  “Aye,” he said. “It's lovely but you cannot stand it.”

  There was still some summer heat in the sun. There were a few families on the beach, sitting on blankets. Kids screamed a
nd played in the shallows. Dogs plunged into the waves. The wooden beach café was open; its tattered flag was flying in the breeze. Somewhere an ice cream van played “Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be.”

  “But you,” said Joseph. “You'll be something really fancy. And you'll clear off. And we'll never meet again.”

  “No, I won't.”

  “Yes, you will.” He punched me and we giggled. “We both know it. But never mind. Who could blame you? And we're still mates for now.” And then he pointed. “Well, I never.”

  It was Daniel, all alone. He had his jeans turned up, and he was wading through the sea.

  “What brings buggers like that to a place like this?” said Joseph.

  “Me mam says they work in Newcastle.”

  “Aye, but why come here? Keely Bay! It's nowt but coaly beaches and coaly sea and nowt going on. It's bliddy derelict, man. It's had its day.”

  I looked around: the dunes, the beach, the patch of pine trees to the north, the ancient timber holiday shacks, the rooftops of the scruffy village. Further inland, the pitheads with their winding gear, the distant moors.

  “Mebbe they think it's beautiful or something.”

  “Beautiful!” He elbowed me. “Is that the word? Howay, let's go and introduce ourselves.”

  We stood up and shuffled through the sand and crossed the lighthouse headland. Daniel was at the rock pools, lifting stones, inspecting the water, putting the stones back again. He held something for a moment on his hand and we saw him smile before he put it into the water again.

  “Ah,” said Joseph. “Doesn't he look sweet?”

  He strode across the rocks. I followed, a couple of steps behind.