The Fire-Eaters (8 page)

I couldn't answer. He flexed the strap.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, sir. I have my eye on you, Robert Burns. I know you now.”

He moved on. I heard kids gasping for breath around me. I kept my eyes to the front. The other teachers looked down on us, expressionless.

Todd said it again. I didn't turn.

“What is your name, boy?”

“Daniel Gower.” He said it calmly, confidently. “Sir,” he added.

“What is this, Gower?”

“It is my hair. Sir.” “It is too long.”

There was silence. Then Todd spoke again.

“No boy looks at me like that. Put your hand out. Put your hand out!”

I flinched as the strap struck Daniel's hand, as it struck his other hand.

“You will have your hair cut,” said Todd. “You will never again look at a teacher like that.”

He moved to the front again. He held a file of names.

“Many of you will find that you are separated from
those you knew before. This is not a play group or a happy family. When your name is called, step forward.”

He began the roll call of the names. I was separated from Diggy, Col and Ed. Ailsa's name was called and nobody stepped forward. My name was in the same group as Daniel's. As we moved forward together, he squeezed my arm.

“He's an evil bastard,” he hissed.

We sat close together in the classroom that was filled with single desks. Our teacher, Lubbock, sat before us.

“Some of us have begun to be taught our lessons early,” he said.

He showed his teeth in a half-smile.

“It's not too bad a place once we've settled you in,” he said.

He taught us how to rise and say good morning when he or another member of staff entered the room. He gave out exercise books. He laid his strap on the desk in front of him.

“Put your hands together,” he said.

I pressed my palms against each other, trying to press away the last of the pain.

“We will say the Lord's Prayer,” he said.

A
ilsa giggled at the chicken that pecked around her feet. She picked pea pods and put them into a white enamel bowl. She kept moving away from me.

“Stop pestering me, Bobby Burns,” she said. “But why weren't you at school?” I asked her. “You must be stupid, man.”

“I know.” She laughed. “I know, I know. I always was.”

“I don't mean that. You're really clever, man.”

“I know that and all!”

I kicked the sandy soil.

“Dad left school at twelve,” she said. “Losh and Yak were expelled. So mebbe it's just the family way.”

She led me to the far end of the garden, where there was a fence half buried in the dunes. We sat on an ancient white-painted bench. I helped her to shell the peas. We looked out over their house toward the distant
city. We could see the cranes, the steeples, the first of the tower blocks.

“Anyway,” she said. “They work that hard, and they need somebody to look after them. What's it like, anyway?”

“It's OK.”

She laughed.

“Aye. I'll bet.”

“Some of them's Nazis,” I said.

“I can imagine.”

She popped a pea into my mouth, delicious and sweet.

“It's fine for you, Bobby,” she said. “But I don't need it. Daddy says the coal'll last forever, even after all the pits is closed. We've got a place, we'll make a living. I love it here. I don't want nowt else.”

We went on shelling peas.

“You'll leave, though,” she said. “You'll go somewhere really fancy, won't you? University, all that kind of stuff.”

“Will I?”

“You know you will, Bobby.”

I tried to imagine all those years ahead, leaving home, going to another town. University. Nobody I knew had ever been to university.

“But you could, too,” I said.

She laughed.

“Me? A sea coaler's daughter? A Spink at university!”

“You should be proud of who you are and where you come from.”

She popped another pea into my mouth.

“Oh, I am, Bobby,” she said. “Mebbe that's why I want to stay who I am and where I am.”

I turned my face from her. I listened to the sea beyond the dunes. I thought of the waves pouring in and pouring in as they had forever.

“They'll come for you,” I said.

“Who will?”

“The council. They won't let you stay away from school.”

“They've been already. Daddy just told them to hadaway and shite.”

We laughed together.

“But they'll be back,” I said.

“Let them see if we care.”

She stood up and set off back toward the house.

“Anyway,” she said. “School, university, all that stupid stuff. Yuck! There's more important things.”

“Like what?”

“Like miracles. Do you believe in miracles?”

“Eh?”

“You're supposed to, you lot. Howay. Come and see.”

S
he put the bowl of peas on a bench inside the door. She took me around to the back of the house. There was a wooden shed there.

“It is a miracle,” she said. “Be quiet.” She smiled. “It's lovely, Bobby.”

She carefully inched open the door. She crouched, low to the earth. She made soothing noises with her breath. “Hello,” she whispered. At first I saw nothing, then there it was, curled up on a little bed of straw. It was a fawn, no bigger than a baby. Its eyes glowed, reflecting the daylight that fell through the dusty window above it. There was a bowl of milk beside its head.

“It was dead,” she whispered. She looked me in the eye as if she was testing if I believed her. “I found it in the yard yesterday morning. Like a fox had been at it, or a dog or something. Like it had run here, been chased
here, and they got it here. Wasn't breathing. Heart wasn't beating. Dead.”

I touched its soft coat with the back of my hand. I felt its warmth, its little beating heart. It didn't seem to be scared. I put milk on my finger and touched its tongue. It licked gently.

“Daddy said bury the poor thing,” she said. “But I couldn't. I put it in a basket beside me bed. I put a blanket on it. I told God to heal it. I stayed awake for ages, long after Daddy and the lads were fast asleep. I just kept telling God to heal it. I stroked it. I told it that I loved it. Nothing happened. And I fell asleep, and all night I dreamed of it running through fields and woods and the sun was shining bright. Then I woke up in the morning and it had its eyes open and it was looking up at me.”

She stroked it with both hands.

“Isn't it so beautiful?” she said.

“Aye.”

“Yak said deer play possum sometimes. Daddy said we must've been mistook. But I don't think we were. It was dead and it came alive again.”

I let it lick more milk from my fingers.

“D'you believe me, Bobby?” she said.

I felt its wet tongue on my skin. I looked into its trusting eyes.

“Aye,” I said.

“That's good.”

She lifted the fawn into her arms and stood up and carried it out through the door.

“You got to believe, don't you?” she said. “Or nowt'd ever happen. Nowt worthwhile.”

She set it on the ground outside and we watched it rise and totter on its skinny legs.

“Go on,” we said. “Go on, little'n.”

She giggled.

“I'll keep it here till it's strong,” she said. “Then I'll put it back into the wild.”

The sun fell on the fawn, its dappled fur, its dark eyes, its skinny legs. So beautiful.

“What I don't understand is why it's so young,” said Ailsa.

She looked over the fields, past the pitheads, toward the distant woodlands where it must have come from.

“How d'you mean?” I said.

“It's so late, Bobby. It should've been born in spring, not now when the days are getting darker and colder.”

She clicked her tongue and shook her head and smiled. She whispered into its ear:

“What were your parents thinking of?”

Then she lifted it up and put it back in the shed to protect it from the fox.

“There's no good in dead things, is there?” she said. “Best keep lovely things like this alive.”

I
dreamed of McNulty's fire. I dreamed that he stood on the quayside at Newcastle and breathed the fire into the air and it did not stop. It spread all around, engulfing the market stalls, the cranes, the warehouses, the arching bridge, and there was nothing but the great roar of the flames and the screams of those who'd been taken. The river became a river of fire that raced toward the sea and flames a mile high leapt from the water and the smoke blotted out the sun. I stood with Mam and Dad at our window and we had gas masks on and we saw the fire rushing toward us and there seemed nothing we could do and nowhere we could run to and we just held each other tight and then I screamed: “Breathe, Mr. McNulty! Breathe back in!” And the fire paused, and rushed away again, back to the quayside and into McNulty's throat.

Then I woke and the night was so still, so quiet.
The lighthouse light swept through my room. Dad snored next door. I knelt at the window and looked out past the Lourdes light. The beach was so calm beneath the stars. Rock pools lay like scattered glass and the sea like a great mirror. I closed my eyes against the returning lighthouse light. I tried to pray but I didn't know what to pray to and the things I whispered seemed so childish.

“Look after us. Don't let terrible things happen.”

I opened my eyes. The universe went on forever and forever and it was so empty and so silent and I seemed so useless. I lifted the half-heart given to me by Ailsa and held it in my palm.

“Look after the fawn,” I whispered. “Don't let it die.”

I went back to bed.

I sighed and said what I knew I should say.

“Forgive Todd. Forgive Lubbock.”

But I knew that was useless too, because I hated them too much.

I fell asleep again at last.

“Hello, bonny,” said McNulty. I smelt the fire on his breath. “Come and help me, bonny boy.”

W
e sat on stools at wooden benches in the biology room. All around us were pictures of animals opened up, with their muscles and hearts and lungs all exposed. Glass jars in glass cases held tapeworms and frogs and lizards. There was a story that somewhere in the school there was a human fetus, preserved like these animals in formaldehyde, but only sixth-formers were allowed to see. Above the door as in every room, Christ hung in agony on his cross.