The Fire Starters

by Jan Carson

  ‘No worries,’ I whisper. ‘We were just leaving.’

  ‘Why are you whispering?’ asks the smallest of the three.

  ‘The baby’s probably sleeping,’ replies the original one.

  ‘It’s not. I can see its eyes. It’s totally looking at us.’

  ‘It’s not an it, Dean. It’s either a wee girl or a wee boy.’

  ‘Here, mister, is it a wee boy or a wee girl?’

  I can tell these boys aren’t drug addicts. They’re too pleasant, too aware of other people. They’re clearly interested in Sophie and trying to be polite. Maybe they have younger siblings at home.

  ‘She’s a wee girl,’ I reply. ‘Sophie.’ I say this as quietly as possible, hoping the boys will match their voices against mine.

  ‘That’s a nice name,’ says the tall one. ‘There’s a girl in our class called Sophie.’

  ‘Pure minging she is too,’ says his mate. ‘No offence on your wee girl, mister.’

  ‘None taken,’ I say. I wonder what these three are doing in the play park after ten. I know we should leave right now but I can’t seem to move. I’ve never once felt any Hippocratic responsibility outside the health centre, but since Sophie, it’s inside me, like the bends, clenching and unclenching in anxious waves. I can’t help feeling concerned. It’s probably something to do with becoming a father. I keep my hands clamped against Sophie’s ears, using my knees to balance her and, as a kind of excuse, mumble something about the child having an ear infection. I wish I was standing up. It would be easier to evoke authority if I wasn’t sitting on a swing, but I’m wedged here now and it would be something of a palaver to stand.

  ‘Are you lot here to take drugs?’ I ask. I use my ‘diagnosis terminal’ voice. It is both empathetic and firm.

  ‘Naw, mister, we’re not druggies,’ the tall one says defensively.

  ‘Wee bit of weed sometimes,’ adds the short one, winking at me, ‘but nothing harder. Not ever. Not after what happened to your fella that used to run about with our Pete.’

  ‘He’s blind now, so he is. Can’t see shite and he was in a coma for weeks. He near died three times. They done the paddles on him to bring him back, like on ER.’

  ‘Bad ecstasy,’ they say, all at once, as if this is the punchline to a joke they’ve told hundreds of times before.

  I nod solemnly. I wish to appear sympathetic, but also older, a kind of youth worker. ‘So, what are you doing here, then?’ I ask.

  ‘Nothing,’ says the tall one.

  ‘Nothing,’ says the short one.

  ‘Setting a Tall Fire on the climbing frame,’ says the only one who hasn’t spoken yet.

  The other two turn to glare at him, ‘Jesus, Sheepy, you’ve a mouth on you. We’re not supposed to let people know who we are. That’s in the rules.’

  ‘Your man here’s dead on. He’s not going to say anything. You’re not going to tell anyone you saw us, are you, mister?’

  I’ve only really heard the part where the young lad called me ‘dead on’. No one has ever called me ‘dead on’ before. I’m a little drunk on this and, without fully considering the implications, reply, ‘Yeah, sure,’ like a sitcom American. It’s only a little bit of arson. There are no CCTV cameras around, nothing to link me to the boys or the incident. I’ll leave now and take Sophie home. I won’t even see them starting the fire. I’m a doctor, not a policeman. I’m not responsible for these young lads.

  ‘See?’ says the one they call Sheepy. ‘Your man’s a legend. He’s not for telling anyone. He’s probably on our side.’

  ‘What side’s that?’ I ask, all of a sudden wondering exactly what I’m turning a blind eye to.

  ‘You know, the Tall Fires and all.’

  ‘What’s a Tall Fire?’ I ask. I’ve never heard these two words paired together before. I’m not entirely ignorant. I know something’s going on in the city. I’ve caught snippets of the news, seen the smouldering remains of burnt-out buildings, but I’ve not really been paying attention. I’ve been preoccupied.

  The three boys laugh as if I’ve made a hilarious joke. I don’t laugh. All of a sudden I begin to feel as if the outside of the circle is sealing up against me again. I lift Sophie from my lap and zip her back inside my tracksuit top.

  ‘What exactly is a Tall Fire?’ I repeat.

  When the boys realize that I’m in earnest, that I have very little idea what’s been happening on my own doorstep, they tell me all about the Tall Fires. They are like prophets gathered round my feet, prophets who cannot keep their story straight and only deal in half-truths. It’s difficult to pick the facts from their laddish swagger but, after ten minutes or so, I have the bones of it and I’m shocked.

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I say. ‘You seem like really nice lads. Why are you getting involved in this? You could end up getting yourselves thrown out of school. Or worse.’

  ‘Them bastards are trying to restrict our civil liberties,’ says the tallest one. Even as he wraps his tongue around this sentence I can hear the speech marks and the spot where it’s been lifted from some older man’s mouth.

  I leave then, assuring the boys that I won’t tell anyone they’ve been here. I wish I had something wiser to say but I’m not a philosopher and all I can think of is, ‘You’re nice lads, don’t be getting involved in this nonsense,’ which is the sort of thing their mothers might say or an old Sunday-school teacher. I know I have no clout with them, no means to change their minds. As I close the park gate behind me I see them hauling their duffel bag up the rungs of the climbing frame. My concern is tempered by curiosity. I wonder how on earth they’re going to set solid metal bars on fire.

  On the way home we drive over Connsbrook Avenue and past the Strand. There are sirens screaming in the street. Yellow police tape circles the entire block. People are standing behind it, staring and pointing as the old cinema burns. At the top of Pims Avenue I’m stopped by a policeman directing the traffic. I can see the Strand up close now. I’ve driven past it almost every day for decades but I’ve never been inside or taken the time to study it properly. I note the distinctive architecture, the aqua-blue walls, and the film listings board, its corners beginning to curl in the heat. Two films have burnt off already and the front doors have shattered, scattering tiny fragments of glass all across the pavement. The wall next to me is made of glass bricks stacked end to end in a kind of feature. Amplified by the flames, these iced cubes are casting an ungodly glow across the street and into the car. The whole building is a giant torch, beaming up Belmont Avenue. It burns like a pagan shrine, the sort of horror you might travel miles to see.

  This is a Tall Fire.

  I have a name for it now, and a muddled history. Something in me wishes to park the car and worship. Something stronger compels me to drive away quickly. The red light turns green. The policeman signals my car forward with both sweeping hands. As I drive off I glance in the rear-view mirror. Sophie is sleeping in the back. The light from the fire is drifting across her face in waves. She is flickering yellow, orange and demonic red. She does not look anything like me. I cannot take my eyes off her.

  The Boy Who Sees the Future in Every Liquid Surface

  Connor talks vaguely of dark shapes and sadness. The world curling into itself like a piece of orange peel left too long in the sun. He sees strangers weeping in empty rooms. Children hurt for no reason. Many, many fires, burning brightly. When he looks at water he sees photographs of people he doesn’t know, all muddled up together and moving quickly. It’s like flicking through the TV channels at speed. He is eight when he says this. He has not yet learnt what a metaphor is. By the time he turns ten, Connor covers his eyes every time he leaves the house. It’s easier not to see with a blindfold on. He reads widely, books borrowed from the Holywood Arches library and, thus armed, learns how to say precisely and exactly what is wrong with him. Connor sees the future in every liquid surface. Puddles. Toilet bowls. Tea paling in the cup. The rain, which is ever present in East Belfast. Si
nks. Spilt drinks. His own piss and blood. His salty tears. He no longer limits himself to water. Any wet substance will do. Even a closed tap terrifies him. The future isn’t something he wants to stumble upon first thing in the morning while brushing his teeth.

  Connor is fourteen now. He rarely leaves the house. He takes his drink in a child’s sippy cup and bathes, twice a week, blindfolded in a darkened room. Even on dry days he keeps the blinds drawn and the curtains pulled for fear of condensation on the window. ‘Sometimes a raindrop can be worse than the ocean,’ he says. No one really knows what he means by this. How could they? They’re blessed with ordinary temporal eyes. Occasionally Connor will ask to be taken to the sea. His father will drive him to Helen’s Bay and sit beside him on the sea wall while Connor shudders, like a struck thing, yet nevertheless lifts his head to stare out across the Lough for as long as he can manage. He says he’s trying to build up a resistance. He says he isn’t unfortunate, just peculiarly blessed. His father doesn’t believe him. He thinks his boy is looking for answers. Perhaps Connor wants to see the end of it all.

  8

  Eleventh, Twelfth, Thirteenth

  This is Belfast in July. It’s too hot for good sense, too hot to breed anything but further heat.

  Tonight the city’s heartbeat can be heard clearly without amplification of any kind. Thadump, thadump, thadump: the sound of drums thundering down the little streets. On and on and crisply on they go, until the entire city is catching its breath in time to their brisk snaps. The noise of them begins with the dinner dishes and stamps its thick beat into the wee small hours. It is a vague grumble, rising above the traffic hum, like the sound of distant gunfire, or biscuit tins stamped upon. It is not a sharp noise but it is persistent and racing, as a heart will race under pressure.

  Thadump. Thadump. Thadump. With distance this noise becomes softer and more like wet thunder. It is the noise made by large drums, hung from the neck and balanced against the belly. These drums are hit with sticks, hit so quickly it’s as if a stutter is trapped in the drummer’s wrist, a devil thing defying speed. They are known as Lambegs. Lambeg is also the name of a small village between Lisburn and Belfast. There is a garden centre there, cottages and fields; it’s the kind of place you might drive through without noticing. During parades the Lambeg swaggers about like a mouthy drunk. It can only be worn by men or, sometimes, a mannish woman. Such a thing could bend a girl in two.

  Tonight it is too hot to bear a closed window. In the East the sound of drums comes tramping uninvited into the kitchens and living rooms of people who do not wish to hear them. Their children ask, ‘What is that noise, Dad? Is it guns?’

  And the fathers reply, ‘No, son, it’s only the drums.’

  The children are relieved to hear this. They will fall asleep picturing the kind of formal drums played in American marching bands. They will fall asleep smiling, confident that a drum cannot be wicked, as a gun is wicked in the wrong hands. They will sleep like pinched nerves, flinching each time a drum crack floats through their open window. They have never seen a Lambeg for real, only on the television news.

  Up close a Lambeg drum is a ludicrous thing, impossible to fear. The frames are painted with crude pictures: King Billy, soldiers at the Somme, red hands, Princess Di. ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image,’ the King James states quite clearly, but here, in painting-by-numbers simplicity, are all the icons of the Protestant faith, honoured, paraded, immortalized, like those awful Catholic saints.

  The drummer waddles in front of the parade on legs reduced to tiny stumps. The look of a Lambeg, pinned to a man’s belly so he leans away from the drum’s weight, is like a woman fat with child. Walking any distance with such a burden requires brute strength and a short-sleeved shirt. Occasionally there will be blood on the drummer’s wrists, deep pink grooves bitten into his neck and always, even on a cool evening, greased pools of sweat, like continents, spreading out beneath his armpits and up the line of his back. His mouth will be clamped grimly shut, his eyes pinned. All his energy is in his wrists flicking the drum, snapping, and flicking again, driving the blood and thunder out of its stretched skin.

  Up close this is a sharper, more metallic sound. Tinna. Tinna. Tinna. Tinna, like a child going at an upturned saucepan. It is not music but neither is it noise. There’s an art to handling a Lambeg as there is an art to managing any difficult thing. This cannot be understood from a distance.

  There is nowhere to go from the drums tonight. Even the nicest parts of Belfast are thick with their death rattle.

  Tonight is the tenth. Tomorrow will be the Eleventh and the following day the Twelfth. In other cities these are merely dates, numbers in the summer calendar. In this city the Twelfth is a holiday. It is pronounced with a capital letter, as is the Eleventh (though, like Christmas Eve, it is a date worth marking only after the lights go out). The Eleventh is for bonfires, the Twelfth for parades, piss-ups and commemorating proud Protestant victories of the past. King Billy. The Battle of the Boyne. All the truths, and well-learnt half-truths, which keep the Orange ordered. ‘Remember 1690,’ they say, the year it all kicked off, and three hundred years later they remain hell-bent on remembering, though the details have worn thin from passing one generation to the next. This year, like a three-for-the-price-of-two deal, the Thirteenth will be for the World Cup Final.

  ‘Yeoooo,’ they cry, like old-time revivalists every time the final is mentioned. You cannot pass a pub or drinking room for hearing this barbaric whoop come leaking through an open window. ‘Yeoooo’ is local-speak for overwhelming joy, or sometimes mortification, or simply not having anything coherent to add to a conversation but wishing to have your voice heard none the less. In this case, ‘yeooo’ is a small word – not so much a word as a guttural yelp – which speaks of anticipation, fraternity and three whole days of wild hedonism.

  ‘Yeooo. How about this three-day weekend, mate?’ they say, as they raise their pints to the football-themed adverts, now looped between every programme on TV. ‘Sure, you can’t be bad to that.’

  They are happier in this moment than weddings, babies or honeymoon nights will ever make them. They would never say this to their wives and girlfriends. Women do not understand what football does inside a man. Speaking isn’t even necessary when men are in a group, with other men, watching football. The ease of this is half the appeal. The same can be said of marching. They do not know what the women have as an equivalent, possibly drinking tea. The men of the East intend to suck every good second out of their weekend: the parades, the drums, the drink, the football, the smell of sweat, and other men pressing against them, like brothers or would-be lovers.

  It’s not even the weekend yet but most people have already started drinking. Beer and whiskey and wine from cardboard boxes with spouts. Vodka, gin and neon-coloured fruit drinks in glass bottles. These are more for the women but go down like greased ice in this heat. Shandy, neat bourbon and home-made sangria, tinned pineapple and orange slices islanding on the surface, like the stuff they serve in Benidorm. The wives have made gallons of sangria in washing-up basins. They are serving it with soup ladles, in plastic pint glasses from Poundland. These days, everything that can be bought from the pound shop is bought from the pound shop. It is a constant disappointment that Poundland doesn’t sell drink of any kind.

  The women let the children have a sup of sangria with their burgers. ‘Sure it’s only glorified fruit juice,’ they say, and turn a blind eye when the same kids come back to swipe a tin or two from the ice bucket. They remember the taste of being nine and ten themselves: how you could claim drunkenness and go buck mad on a quarter tin of Harp, passed between friends. They open another box of wine and tell stories about being young and running the streets. When the wine is finished, there’ll be beer, and after that a runner dispatched to the offie for more beer and cigarettes before closing. They’ll drink anything that comes to hand this weekend, sopping up their drunkenness with tray after tray of lardy chips. They
’ll continue to drink for the next three days, only sobering up in time to make work on the fourteenth.

  Between the sun and the football there is a general assumption that this year’s Twelfth will be particularly glorious. Most hope the Tall Fires won’t get in the way of their merrymaking. Others retain the old fondness for violence. They wouldn’t say no to a good riot, if the opportunity presented itself. They watch the news each night, hoping it all comes to a head in time for the big day. The old people are stuck records on how the Twelfth used to be: sunshine, music and neat uniforms, properly worn, no trouble with the police, no trouble with the other side, and certainly no trouble with young lads getting plastered in the street. It is only the heat making them think like this. Sunshine has a sly way of bringing out the nostalgia. The past is almost always brighter than it actually was. The city would do well to remember this. It should be written with paint on the gable end of a few houses, one in the East, one on either side of the West. It’d make a change from Georgie Best and balaclavas.

  It is stupid hot in the streets tonight. The neighbours’ cats are sleeping on the roofs of parked cars, baking slowly against the warm metal. No one feels the need for a jumper. There are children, sitting scuff-kneed on the kerbs, sucking ice pops while they shove pennies and small stones into the molten asphalt. The sun is still hanging high behind the cranes, soft yellow on hard yellow, like raw egg running over a cooked one. There hasn’t been a clean lick of rain in four weeks.

  Hosepipes are banned entirely and the car wash on the corner of the Newtownards Road is shut. There’s talk of drought in the country too, fields parched and crops ruined. The city folk don’t care. Their world is made of brick and slate. They haven’t been near a field in years. Seeing the stern-faced farmers on the news, standing outside Tandragee and Doagh in their wellington boots, is like seeing famine victims, bloat-bellied in some faraway country. These are not their people. This is not their country. They turn the TV to another channel and have, in a moment, forgotten all about the poor farmers and their ruined fields.