The Fire Starters

by Jan Carson

  ‘Do not harm civilians.’

  ‘Do not be seen.’

  ‘Start your fire thirty feet off the ground.’

  ‘I’m the Fire Starter.’

  In the background, the music playing, loud as a pneumatic drill, is the Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’. It is easy to imagine devil horns concealed beneath the hood.

  Once all the cardboard signs have been revealed, a black screen appears, with five words printed in white capital letters: ‘LEAVE OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES ALONE.’ This is the sole demand of the person orchestrating all the Tall Fires. He or she is one person with a hundred arms, all of whom are willing to set their own protest fires. The city will burn until the politicians agree to lift their restrictions, for it is all but impossible to stop a fire moving in so many directions at once.

  No one knows who the Fire Starter is, no one except Sammy Agnew, and he’s not quite ready to admit this yet. He’s recognized something familiar in the slope of the Fire Starter’s shoulders, the way he moves his hands and holds his head at a cocky angle, like he’s looking for a slap. At first it was only a suspicion. Sammy couldn’t be sure. Didn’t want to believe it. But he’s watched the video so many times now. Over and over on his laptop, keeping the sound down so his wife can’t hear. His first instinct is always to protect her. Sammy’s tried not to see it. He would do almost anything to be wrong. But, he knows who’s behind that mask. He’s almost certain. Still, he could be wrong, couldn’t he?

  It is five o’clock now in the East. The fire brigade has gathered in the car park of Connswater shopping centre. They’re doing their best to control a small fire on the second level of the multi-storey. Having been lit beneath a Vauxhall Corsa, the fire has already caused one small explosion and spread to the cars on either side. The heat is building itself into a wall. Beneath their masks and fireproof jumpsuits the firemen are slick with smoke-sweat. A group of teenagers have gathered by the trolley park. Soon they will be lobbing things at the firemen and paramedics. They won’t be sure why they’re doing this but will feel the itch of necessity in their elbow joints, a kind of violence inherited from the previous generation. When the bricks are pressed into their hands, they’ll draw their arms back and pitch like professionals.

  Half a mile away in Orangefield, Jonathan Murray catches the acrid stench of burning car in the back of his nose. He coughs on the choke of it. His eyes begin to run. Despite the heat he closes his window. He hasn’t watched the news in months, or read a paper. During this period he’s left the house for ten minutes at most, dashing to the little Tesco at the top of the road and back. Lately, his world’s been reduced to a three-bed semi off the Castlereagh Road, and he’s pretty much tied to it. He doesn’t know about the Tall Fires or the ban on bonfires over thirty feet. He doesn’t even know this is a World Cup year, though he’s vaguely aware that it is warm outside and must therefore be summer. He has not thought about anything but his daughter for six weeks now.

  It has taken him a long time to call her a name. This name is Sophie and he has not yet settled on it. The fear of her is the first thing he thinks about each morning. He carries the weight of her presence to bed each night. Under different circumstances he might have loved her but he won’t allow himself to love her now. He will not be cruel to her either.

  He closes the curtains over the window but the smell of smoke is still in the room. Jonathan’s grown up in the East and this smell is not unfamiliar. It must be bonfire season. Where have the weeks gone? It’s a year already since Sophie’s mother.

  She’s sleeping on her belly tonight, the white hump of her nappy lumping under the blanket. Because of the heat, he has not dressed her in three days. It’s nice to get a break from the laundry. Who knew how many outfits a baby could go through in a day, or how many times they’d need feeding? There have been so many things to learn.

  Jonathan stands over Sophie’s cot and watches the breath come in and out of her. She’s not so dreadful when she’s sleeping but it’s hard to trust her. He bends down and peers at her face through the cot’s bars. Her lips lift slightly at the edges. This is no longer wind. She’s beginning to smile. Other stages will come soon and, before he can stop it, there will be words.

  Sophie must not speak for there is no way of being sure what she will say. Jonathan is thinking about cutting her tongue out. He’ll do a good job of this because he’s a doctor. He has trained for seven years to cut bits off and sew them back on. This evening isn’t the first time he’s stood over his daughter’s cot and pictured himself slicing through flesh and curled muscle. He has considered the blood and the way he will stem it, the anaesthetic required and, afterwards, the painkillers. He is hoping it will not come to this, but if it does, he won’t allow himself a choice.

  Jonathan closes the window in Sophie’s room. It’s terribly hot tonight. There’s an atmosphere in the East like steam building inside a pipe.

  2

  Belfast Is For Lovers

  I have always been Jonathan. Never John. John is my father’s name. It is already taken. I am certainly not Jonny, though sometimes I call myself this at home and swagger from one room to the next, chin cocked like a wide boy. Jonny Murray is the name of a rugby player, or a young fella you’d meet in the toilets of a Cookstown nightclub, chatting away as he rinses his hands under the cold tap. Jonny Murray is easy in his own skin. He drives his car loosely with one hand and wears slogan T-shirts, a different one each day: ‘Loser’, ‘Harvard’, ‘Hello Ladies’. Jonny talks to women as if they are, all of them, speaking the same language. He is not afraid to dance or be looked at thoroughly, this being the root cause of all my fears.

  I think I’d like to have been Jonny, or maybe someone else entirely.

  But I’m Jonathan, only, ever, all three syllables. This wasn’t my choice. First I had parents, like pinched nerves, telling me, and then I was a doctor. There was no room for turning in between. I’ve thought about changing my name but it’s too late at thirty, and my patients wouldn’t trust a doctor named Jonny.

  In the past I’ve tried to shorten my name. Particularly at university when I was still trying with girls. ‘Hi,’ I’d say, extending my hand across the table to take the hand of a girl I didn’t know – any decent-looking one would do. ‘Jonny Murray, nice to meet you.’ But Jonny has always been a clumsy fit for Murray; too many Ys knocking against each other. My own name would catch on the back of my teeth, like dry spit. So many girls turned away from me, purposefully leaning into other conversations, I never even caught their names. Eventually I gave up. Then I was Jonathan again or, more often than not, silent.

  In the health centre I’m Dr Murray to patients and colleagues alike. I wonder, with my colleagues, if this is distance or just good practice between professionals. I listen outside the staffroom to hear if the other doctors are on first-name terms. It is impossible to tell from listening. They only say things like ‘Pass us a teaspoon,’ and ‘Is there any milk in the fridge?’ They rarely have the need for names of any sort. Still, I feel as if I’m on the edge of the outside of a circle. I’m almost certain the other doctors go by Chris and Sarah and Martin/Marty when I’m not around. I suspect that everyone is going to the pub after work and no one is inviting me. I try to tell myself that I’m not particularly bothered one way or the other and, in the evening, watch them leave the car park through a thin slip in my office blinds. They leave in separate cars, but this proves nothing.

  Lately, I’ve developed a kind of fantasy where the lady receptionists call me ‘Doc’. Their voices saying my name are like warm milk in a mug. I know this is a ridiculous thing to imagine, and impractical, for there are four doctors in the practice, each one equally entitled to the name Doc. Better to invent myself a personal nickname. ‘Minty’, perhaps, after the boiled sweets that share my second name. But I know the lady receptionists haven’t an A level between them. They are kindly creatures who type and answer phones. By themselves, they wouldn’t come up with something as sharp as ‘Mi
nty’. I have abandoned my fantasy now. I am, at all times, a pragmatist, even when daydreaming about the lady receptionists and the things they wear beneath their blouses.

  I don’t have a middle name. This was my parents’ doing. They had not planned on children. If pressed, they might have expressed a preference for dogs or garden ornaments over miniature versions of themselves. I was, and continue to be, an ‘accident’, though in truth I believe this word is an inaccurate term for the act of planting a child seed inside your wife’s belly. Accidents are occurrences without intent, such as broken crockery or crashed cars. Often alcohol is involved. Yet, ‘accident’ is how my conception has always been referred to in the Murray household. ‘Disappointing ending’ may be a better description, or ‘unfortunate repercussion’, for I’ve been told the act itself was carefully planned and even featured candles.

  After the initial ‘accident’ my parents enjoyed nine whole months of their own company. This should have been more than enough time to get used to the idea of children. They did not become used to the idea of children and, instead, spent those months drinking, dining out and holidaying with friends on the French Riviera, disguising their ever-growing problem beneath smocks and gathered sundresses. My father has told me that the discovery of Mother’s belly, blooming into its third trimester, came as a fresh shock every time she undressed for bed. He was unable to look at it directly and instead looked down the side of his wife with unfocused eyes, as one might both watch and not watch a particularly harrowing scene on the television. ‘What shall we do about this?’ Mother would ask, pointing towards the place where her trousers no longer met, and Father would shrug and say, ‘Let’s talk about it tomorrow.’ Wine would be poured, usually red, and the next evening the same scene would play itself out, like a last-season sitcom. When the baby arrived my mother was still saying, ‘What shall we do about this?’ but the answer couldn’t be put off any longer.

  This, it should be noted, was the sort of thing that passed for a bedtime story when I was a child. Perhaps it’s little wonder I turned out the way I did.

  Neither party had wished to own a child. The option of giving it to someone else was not to be considered either. My parents were professionals: she a lawyer, he working with money, not an accountant exactly but something similar. They did not move in the kind of circles where babies could be given away. Their friends and acquaintances would think them terribly common to have acquired a child without particularly wanting one. This was the sort of thing people did in housing estates. If word got out, they would no longer be invited to dinner parties. They’d be stared at, with whispers, in the dining rooms of Belfast’s better hotels. My parents could not see themselves as outcasts, so they kept the baby and called it Jonathan.

  Their imagination, much like their enthusiasm, was a creature of limited means. It could not stretch to a second name. Then they christened me and I could not get away from it. Without a middle name I was indistinguishable from all the thousands of other Jonathan Murrays populating the Western world, solid men, no doubt, with jobs in engineering, wives and family cars they kept for three years and traded up. There is no point in googling my own name for kicks. There are at least ten other Jonathan Murrays in Belfast alone, a hundred if I widen the search to include the rest of Ireland.

  I took my name as an excuse to grow into an unremarkable child. My parents did nothing to convince me otherwise. They were not the sort of cruel that is done with sticks or even words. I was never short of food or necessary gadgets, for my mother approached parenting as a competitive sport. She couldn’t bear to be seen falling behind her peers. Neither were my parents particularly engaged. It was not uncommon for them to pay the babysitter to attend my school concerts with a camcorder. They did not watch these videos afterwards but kept them on a shelf in the study in case evidence of their interest was ever required. On more than one occasion they forgot my birthday, presenting me with gifts several days before or after the actual date. They did not touch me kindly or unkindly. As soon as I turned sixteen they emigrated to New Zealand, claiming this was for work.

  I did not go with my parents to New Zealand. I was finishing my GCSEs. Two years after there would be A levels and then I’d go to Queen’s University to study medicine. My father had explained this to me at least two hundred times beginning on the day I turned twelve. It was written down for the lawyer and, like my name, could not be changed. There was money for a private boarding school, money for fees and also a car, should I want one when I was old enough to drive. All I had to do was let my parents leave me behind. It had taken sixteen years for them to manage this without appearing dreadful in the eyes of their friends.

  ‘It would be cruel to move you to New Zealand, Jonathan,’ my mother explained. (She’d organized a dinner party so the neighbours could hear her say this like a sensible parent.) ‘All your little friends are here in Belfast,’ she continued. ‘We wouldn’t want to take you away from them.’ Under pressure, I couldn’t think of a single person I’d call friend … maybe the kid who sat next to me in science and had once lent me a pen. I wasn’t even certain of this boy’s name. Timothy or Nicholas, I thought. Something prissy. But, I could see the hooks in Mother’s eyes. She was desperate, as was my father, folding and unfolding his hands urgently beneath the tablecloth. It would be good to be shot of them both. The weight of their disinterest was something I lugged around constantly, like a dead leg. So I said, ‘Of course, Mother. It’s best if I stay here.’ I wasn’t particularly bothered either way.

  After this, I was mostly by myself. The length of this time was approximately fourteen years.

  It would be unfair to say that I didn’t try to make friends during this period. For a while, during university, I was part of a group of medical students. The collective noun for such a gathering is ‘class’; the alternative, ‘a lethargy’. Neither fitted the group well for they were the kind of keen achievers who did not require a classroom to suck the lesson out of life. They were not, on paper, compatible and certainly did not look like friends you’d photograph and keep. They understood themselves linked together by circumstance as much as choice. They knew not to speak of the odd way they looked when grouped around a table. Or the long silences. Theirs was a fragile kind of dependence, easily frayed.

  I was never quite sure if this was friendship. But it was better than the vast nothing of my previous years. I was often in the same place with these people at the same time: hospital canteens, lecture theatres, student pubs, cinemas … We talked to and about each other and sometimes arranged structured activities such as ten-pin bowling. At Christmas there was a Secret Santa and I both gave and received a pair of gift-wrapped novelty socks. It was a relief to open my own present and realize I had not failed by giving socks. On my birthday there was a shop-bought cake, and everyone sang ‘Happy birthday to you, dear Jonathan,’ awkwardly, in a restaurant. That was nice but I never, for a moment, felt particularly dear to any of them. I was one of seven: three girls and four boys. I understood it was only my white coat and stethoscope that bound me to the other six.

  During this period I would occasionally sit back in my chair, distancing myself from the table chatter, to look at the familiar faces sitting around me. ‘Are these people my friends?’ I’d ask myself. I didn’t really like them or enjoy their company, but perhaps friendship required something more than ease. Yes, I eventually concluded, having weighed up the evidence before me (Christmas socks, birthday cake, and the evening a rather drunk Nuala had kissed me up against a parked Clio), these were indeed my friends. This was what it felt like to have a friend and be a friend. It was a decidedly disappointing sensation.

  As a child, I’d ruined myself on the idea of friends. TV was to blame for this, which is to say my parents were actually to blame. They’d raised me lonely with a television set in every room. I did not trust friendship unless it was perfect and singing, and singing, or even dancing, on television, as it was in the movies. When I pictured myself with
friends it was always a sunny, blond kind of friendship I longed for, like the clean hunger I had for swimming pools every time I smelt chlorine. This was an indefinable American sentiment, all white teeth and laughter and beautiful people curled around each other, like children rather than sex. This sat ugly in East Belfast where the rain washed the lightness out of everything it touched. It did not take into account the real arms and weary smiles of those people who’d offered me a home for Christmas or study time in the library. Those people were not beautiful enough. They were not beautiful at all.

  I held my friends up against the television and understood them as pale fish in comparison. I’d hoped for remarkable friends and lovers. I had, by the final year of university, acquired neither. Still, all was not lost. There were things that could be done. We could try harder at being young. We could do better haircuts, and sex, and swimming in places where swimming was not generally permitted. We could be louder in conversation. This might be enough to redeem us. However, I did not know how to say this without leaving marks. Instead I said nothing and quietly shrank. I lost touch with every one of those people as soon as I graduated.

  Sometimes, in the run-up to my thirtieth, I would dwell on my teens and early twenties and tear up with the sort of disappointment that is like being sad for another person, even though that person is actually yourself. There had been no costume parties for me, no crazy road trips or summer romances. I wouldn’t have my youth back now or the chance to be reckless. This was a sadness I couldn’t share with anyone else. I had never once been in love with anyone. I couldn’t imagine myself loose enough. I blamed my mother and father for this. Occasionally, after two drinks, I’d set aside my parents, and admit that the disappointment was my own doing. My fault for holding myself like a closed cupboard, for being too tight to dance or risk my arm around a stranger’s waist. Knowing this didn’t help. By the time I turned thirty I’d settled into myself. I was a forgotten kind of person. I struggled to see how time or circumstance might change this. I wasn’t brave enough to try.