The Fire Starters

by Jan Carson

  I’ll turn sideways in the doorway then, permitting Christine to squeeze past and get straight to her date, but she won’t leave just yet. Instead, she’ll raise a hand, beckon me into the kitchen and take her file pad from the odds-and-ends drawer, where it currently lives. ‘Sophie was laughing a lot today,’ she’ll write. And, as seeing ‘yawn’ written down will often induce yawning, reading this sentence will make us both smile broadly. ‘Next thing you know she’ll be trying out words,’ Christine will write next. ‘You’ll have to keep a record for when she starts doing speech therapy.’ Then, she’ll lift a slice of pizza from the mushroom-free side of the box, kiss me lightly on the cheek and jog down the drive to her date and the evening ahead.

  I will remain in my kitchen for half an hour, holding the file pad in my hands as the untouched pizza cools and turns solid inside its box. I’ll read her words over and over again, and wonder if ‘next thing you know’ is just a turn of phrase or something I should fear imminently. I’ll tear the paper out of the pad and stuff it into my pocket, feeling it crumple against my thigh and the piece of paper I shoved in there on Tuesday. This will seem like centuries ago because I was happy on Tuesday and full of the future. I’ll fish out the old note, unfold it and read ‘SORRY’ written in my own hand. It’ll look like a fortune-cookie message all of a sudden coming true.

  ‘Sorry.’

  I’ll know for certain then, without being specific, that everything good will eventually end. Something will have to be done about Sophie and I will have to do it. I’ll take a drink for my nerves and follow it with a second. Neither glass will take the edge off my fear. I’ll stop short of a third because I’m still a father and I take the responsibility seriously: there is Sophie to think about, sleeping upstairs. I will feel like a condemned man.

  But all this is two days away. Today is Wednesday and Ella Penney is arriving in my surgery at just the right moment.

  The child enters my consulting room first. Her mother is just two steps behind, holding her anorak draped over one arm like a waiter’s towel. She lifts her daughter on to the treatment table, though she’s old enough to climb up by herself. The woman scans the room and eventually perches uneasily on the plastic chair beside my desk. She has tired blonde hair hanging round her face in tails. It is the colour of nicotine-stained ceilings. Black roots are beginning to grease out of her scalp. She is wearing a cheap pink coat, so bright it drains the last of the colour from her face. She could be anywhere between eighteen and forty. It’s hard to tell sometimes with the women in the East, especially those who drink.

  The child is not like her mother. She has copper-coloured hair hanging straight down the sides of her face, like the continuous pour of a waterfall. She has eyes the colour of deep seawater and rarely blinks. She’s wearing wellington boots and a kind of cape, though it is not the weather for winter clothes. Her face is exactly the same shade as photocopier paper but it would be wrong to call her pale. Pale is a negative word, implying a lack of colour. Her whiteness is a luminous thing like porcelain, like unmarked snow, like Christ himself recently transfigured. She glows. It is hard for me to imagine this white-hot creature coming out of her mother. Perhaps she’s one of those children who saps the life out of everyone she touches. I think of Midas. It is not exactly the right metaphor, but it sticks.

  The child’s name is Ella Penney. She is seven years old, almost eight. I know this because she’s telling me. She’s telling me many, many things without being asked: she’s getting a dog for Christmas, not a puppy, an actual dog. She’s the second tallest kid in her class. She can count to twenty in Spanish. She demonstrates this with great flourish: ‘Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis …’ I have not yet had a chance to speak. ‘… siete, ocho, nueve, diez …’

  I look directly at Mrs Penney and raise an eyebrow as if to say, ‘Help me out here.’

  Mrs Penney interrupts her daughter mid-flow: ‘Quiet now, Ella. Let the doctor talk.’

  Ella Penney stops talking. For a moment I forget that I am the doctor. This happens sometimes during a consultation. I must now ask questions about the child’s health and what has brought her here today. I sit in my chair staring at her yellow wellington boots. The ceiling light is reflected once in each toe, like the sun in a puddle. I’d like to ask what her favourite colour is and whether she has picked a name for her future dog. The presence of this child has changed the atmosphere of my surgery. It’s warmer in the room now. It’s easier to breathe. It’s all of a sudden a place I might want to linger in, like bed, first thing after waking.

  ‘What can I do for you, Ella?’ I ask. Even as I’m speaking I understand that I’ve got the situation the wrong way round. There’s nothing I can do for a child so luminous. I should be asking what she can do for me and how long I’ve got with her.

  Ella Penney smiles at me. She has a smile like a sonic boom. ‘I broke my arm,’ she says. ‘I think they put the cast on too tight. My fingers are going blue.’ She wiggles them to demonstrate.

  ‘Oh, we can’t have that,’ I reply. ‘Do you mind if I take a look?’

  She reaches her right arm out towards me and I can see the tooth-white cuff of the cast emerging from beneath her cape. Her fingers are a little greyer than they should be. This is not a good sign.

  ‘Can we take that cape off so I can see your arm better, Ella?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ exclaims Mrs Penney. She sits bolt upright in her plastic chair. The handbag tumbles from her lap, vomiting tissues, biros and loose change all across the surgery floor. She goes down on her knees to scoop everything back.

  ‘Sure,’ says Ella Penney.

  She slips her cape upwards, over her head like a sweater, and she is naked from the waist up. She has not lost the soft round of her baby belly yet but I can tell the flesh around her nipples is already beginning to swell in anticipation of breasts. She is milk white all over, her chest as pure as her face.

  It is impossible not to stare.

  Spanning the gap between her arms and sides, like an infant pterodactyl, there is a pair of perfectly formed wings.

  It is utterly impossible not to stare.

  I find myself rising from my chair and striding across the surgery floor to take a closer look. I hadn’t intended to do this. It is an involuntary reaction, like sneezing or crying over a cut onion. I am inches from her armpits with my eyes. I am staring with furious intent. Now, I am running my fingers across her left wing. Ella’s mother makes like she’s going to intervene, then seems to lose the inclination. She slumps back in her chair and watches. I should probably have asked permission first but I’m not functioning properly now. I am sucking the air in and out of my mouth through my teeth, my breath making a kind of soft whistling noise. I can’t remember how to make words.

  Ella Penney raises her arms for me. She’s done this before. The folds in her wings concertina out and she is a bird in blue jeans and welly boots. I take her good wrist in my hand, stretch the arm out fully and eat her with my eyes. I forget that she is a child. She is only a patient to me in this moment, less than a patient, really, a specimen. I am taking careful notes in my head. I am writing a book.

  There is a fretwork of tiny bones running through each wing at intervals. Between these bones a thin membrane of skin is stretched tight, almost transparent in places but fleshy and tough, like the loose fold between a thumb and forefinger. A fine blondish down covers each wing. I blow gently on the skin’s surface and watch all the little hairs rise as one, like ears of corn, gently inclined. I can see where the wings join her arms. The flesh is thicker here and smooth as old scar tissue. I touch this place with the tip of my gloved finger and she trembles, possibly with pain or the shock of my hand, which I’ve often been told is much too cold for a doctor.

  ‘I can’t fly,’ she says.

  I haven’t asked but of course I’m wondering. She pulls her hand away from me, folds the unbroken arm across her chest and lets the other hang limply by her side. I snap back into myself a
nd retreat to my chair. The room is spinning slightly. I reach for my notebook hoping stationery might make me feel safe or, at the very least, grounded.

  ‘You can fly, Ella,’ says her mother, firmly. ‘You just don’t want to.’

  ‘I can’t fly, Mum. You know I’ve tried. The wings don’t work. I can do other things, but I can’t fly.’

  Mrs Penney turns to me. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor,’ she says. ‘I should have explained. I was hoping we’d be able to get that wrist sorted without having to go into the wings but, as you can probably tell, our Ella’s the sort of wee girl who does whatever she wants to do, no thought for the consequences.’

  I have a hundred thousand questions. I want to record our conversation. And take pictures. I want to gather all the lady receptionists inside my surgery to witness this miracle. I’m thinking about phoning the BBC. Instead I ask, ‘Has she always had the wings?’

  ‘She was born with them,’ explains Mrs Penney.

  ‘Incredible,’ I gush. I sound like a cartoon doctor.

  ‘She’s not the first in our family. I’m from up round Cushendall originally and it’s not like there’s hundreds of flying children or anything, but out in the country it’s not uncommon to have one or two born every generation. The farmers used to rely on them for flying over the glens, keeping a wee eye on their sheep when the weather forced them off the mountains. Course they don’t do that any more. Most of them have four-by-fours and the like. But flying’s bred into the country folk, and even now, it’s not uncommon to hear of a flying wean. I wasn’t that shocked when Ella came out with wings. I’ve a second cousin who has them. The husband nearly passed out, though. He’s pure East Belfast. He’d never heard of a flying child. He thought she was some kind of mutant. It took him ages to see what a miracle she is.’

  ‘And she can fly?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course she can fly,’ says Mrs Penney. ‘Can you not see the wings on her?’

  ‘No,’ says Ella Penney, talking over the top of her mother. ‘I can’t fly but they keep pushing me off ladders and things to try and get me started.’

  ‘It’s like birds, Doctor. Sometimes you have to give them a wee bit of incentive to get the wings going.’

  ‘Is that how you broke your wrist, Ella?’

  ‘Yeah. Dad pushed me out of the monkey puzzle on to the back lawn. I landed funny. My arm made a noise like when you stand on cornflakes. I knew it was broke straight away.’

  ‘And who set it for you?’

  Mrs Penney cuts in, ‘There’s a doctor in the Royal we always go to, Dr Kanuri. He’s an Indian fella, but his English is not too bad. He looks after all the Unfortunate Children. Most doctors don’t even know they exist. Dr Kanuri says it’s better that way. People don’t know how to deal with them. Other doctors would probably do experiments or put them on television or something. Dr Kanuri’s more keen on looking after them. Course, there are way more Unfortunate Children in India than here but Dr Kanuri’s been able to track down a fair few of them now. When Ella was born there was just one support group in Belfast. Now there’s two, East and South, and they’re thinking about starting another in the city centre. Obviously we go to the one in the East, for handiness’ sake.’

  I cross my arms. Then I cross my legs. It’s good to feel the pressure of my own body pushing into itself. I don’t feel real right now.

  ‘Unfortunate Children?’ I ask, and before Mrs Penney can begin another of her long, rambling explanations, Ella jumps in.

  ‘Kids who aren’t normal,’ she explains.

  ‘Like they have special needs?’

  ‘More like special powers.’

  ‘Like flying?’

  ‘I told you. I can’t fly. I’ve got other powers instead, better powers than flying. I can bring things back to life.’

  ‘Like Jesus?’

  ‘Naw, nothing as big as a whole person and nothing that’s so old it should be dead anyway. I do a lot of insects and worms, a hamster once, tons of plants. I just have to touch things and they’re not dead any more—’

  ‘Stop talking rubbish, Ella,’ Mrs Penney interrupts. ‘You can’t bring things back to life. You have wings. You’re meant to fly. The rest of it’s all in her head, Doctor.’

  ‘So,’ I say, allowing myself space to let the information swell, ‘let me get this straight. There are lots of children with wings in Belfast.’

  ‘Not really,’ explains Mrs Penney, ‘there’s a handful of flying children, a couple that float, one that sort of hovers half a foot off the ground, not what you’d call loads. But there are quite a few children with different gifts.’

  ‘So, there are lots of these children with special powers all over Belfast and Dr Kanuri looks after them.’

  ‘He doesn’t exactly look after them so much as get us together every couple of weeks, kind of like a support group. It’s really more for the parents than the weans – it’s not easy having an Unfortunate Child.’

  ‘Why are they called Unfortunate Children?’

  ‘Dr Kanuri just decided that’s what they should be called. I think it’s translated from what they’re called in India. In India the Unfortunate Children get left to starve to death in ditches and bins. People think they’re a kind of curse. Dr Kanuri prefers to call them miracles.’

  ‘And there are Unfortunate Children in East Belfast?’

  ‘There’s about twenty of them all told. Some have better powers than others. To be honest, Dr Murray, there’s a couple of them I don’t think should even qualify as Unfortunate Children, like the one who can hold her breath really long underwater.’

  ‘I’d hardly call that a special power. She’s probably just got larger-than-average lungs.’

  ‘And there’s that boy in the tree,’ adds Ella.

  ‘Exactly, pet. What’s so special about sitting in a tree for five years? Anyway, Doctor, we meet every Thursday evening in the Portakabin behind Inverary community centre. Sometimes the children come. Sometimes it’s just the parents. It’s been a godsend having people to talk to, people who understand.’

  I sit back in my chair. I look at Mrs Penney. She is deadly serious. She is used to not being believed, I can tell. She’s holding her handbag like a kind of shield. I look at Ella Penney and the strange contraptions clinging to her armpits. The light from the surgery window is gleaming through her, making her wings translucent so I can see all the tiny blue veins spidering beneath her skin. She is the best thing that has happened since Christine. She’s possibly even better than Christine.

  ‘You think we’re mad, don’t you?’ asks Mrs Penney. ‘Every doctor we’ve ever talked to thinks we’re mad, except Dr Kanuri.’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I definitely don’t think you’re mad.’ I stand up and turn towards Mrs Penney. Without being told she seems to understand that she should be standing too. She does so. We look hard at each other. Ella knows enough to hold her tongue. She watches from the treatment table. I am the first to move. I’m moving before I’ve even thought to move: it’s that instinctual. I wrap my arms around Mrs Penney. At first she braces herself against the hug. She is a wall, a brick, an unyielding sort of thing. Then I feel her body loosen and she is embracing me back.

  ‘I think I have an Unfortunate Child too,’ I say. I whisper this into the cup of her ear, quietly so Ella won’t be able to hear. The next breath is the deepest breath I have drawn in almost three months. When we pull apart Mrs Penney is crying. I hand her a tissue from the box on my desk and she reaches one to me. I’m also crying. I hadn’t realized.

  Later, as I’m loosening Ella’s cast, while the child is preoccupied with pinched flesh and tight bandages, Mrs Penney leans in to whisper in my ear: ‘It’s not your fault,’ she says. ‘Just remember that it’s not your fault.’

  I try to remember this but it’s hard to make it stick.

  Mrs Penney writes down directions to the community centre where the Unfortunate Children of East Belfast meet. She offers to pick me up if I don’t want to go a
lone. She says, ‘Call me Kathleen,’ and I do, twice, as she’s on the way out of the door. She doesn’t ask anything specific about Sophie. For this I am extremely grateful.

  After the Penneys leave, I cancel my next patient. This is terribly unprofessional. I tell the lady receptionist I have a migraine and must lie down for an hour. I lie down on the examination table and cry and cry and cry. I try to make myself stop by digging my thumbs deep into my eye sockets and can’t. I wonder if these are tears of relief. I’m not exactly sad, but neither am I happy. It is as if the fear has shifted to another part of my body and, for the moment, my lungs are better equipped for breathing.

  Above my head, on the filing cabinet, the spider plant, which was previously dead, seems to be greening again. I know that Ella Penney touched it. Or perhaps she doesn’t even need to touch. Looking might be enough for her, or thinking of good health, like Jesus and the man whose daughter was dead, miles away, and then, all of a sudden, wasn’t. It feels as if a miracle has happened in my room and I need to sit for an hour or two in its glow.

  Lois, the Daytime Vampire

  It’s much easier in the summer. Most nights it doesn’t get dark till ten or after. Still, Lois has to be careful. Once dusk starts glooming over the rooftops the tingling begins. Her teeth sting. Her nails smart. The skin beneath her freckles starts to pink up. If she stays outside for too long, letting the night creep over her, her whole body feels like it’s on fire. Lois’s whole body might well be on fire if she let herself linger in the dark. She’s never hung around long enough to find out. The movies seem to suggest a kind of rapid combustion takes place. Daylight. Screaming. A sort of pressurized crumbling and, afterwards, a small patch of ash, smoking on the ground. Common thought leans towards evaporation.