The Fire-Eaters (3 page)

“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.

I
watched 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.

T
he 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.