Days of Fire

by Rebecca Fernfield

  “We’ve reached the city, now let’s get home!”

  Chapter 19

  Michael slams the door of the kitchen cupboard shut. There’s nothing to eat, not unless he wanted to chow down on a tin of cat food or a packet of bread sauce mix.

  “What’s up with you?” Tess snaps as she steps into the kitchen.

  He turns to watch her saunter across to the kitchen sink, pulling the fluffy pink cord of her dressing gown tight around her waist. She turns the tap. It chugs, splutters and sprays water into the bowl. She hits the tap.

  “What’s up with this?”

  “Same as everything else. There’s a power cut.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Why would that stop the water running?”

  He groans.

  “Electricity powers everything. They use it to pump the water through the pipes so it comes out of the taps.”

  She bangs the taps again.

  “How am I meant to have a cup of tea then?”

  “There’s some water left in the kettle,” he says with a smirk. Let’s see if the silly cow fell for it.

  Tess walks to the counter, lifts the kettle, replaces it and flicks the switch. She huffs.

  “Got ya!”

  “Stupid sod!”

  “Just my way of getting through the day.” His belly growls. “We haven’t got any food.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m starving.”

  “And?”

  “And it was your turn to do some shopping. I can’t do everything, Tess. I did a twelve-hour shift yesterday and ended up having to stuff my face with biscuits because you hadn’t sorted out the shopping.”

  She turns away and walks to the fridge.

  Irked, he opens the wall cupboard and looks in. “See—there’s bugger all in there. I can’t live on bloody packets of cheese sauce. And what’s this?” he says grabbing a packet laid flat on the surface. Crumbs drop off to the unwiped counter below.

  “Chilli con carne mix. My mother would never have served this up to my dad!” he complains.

  “I’m not your mother.”

  “No, you’re definitely not,” he spits. “She was a real woman—made sure her men were fed when they returned home—didn’t sit around on her lazy arse watching the telly and doing her nails all day.”

  “I don’t do that!”

  “Well what do you do, Tess? It’s not the washing or the cleaning, or the shopping, or the cooking is it? Eh? Look at this place it’s a shit-hole!”

  His stomach growls again and he steps towards her as she slams the fridge door shut. “See, it’s empty isn’t it!”

  “So?”

  “So, I’m starving woman.”

  “Well, bugger off to the shop then and buy some sodding food.”

  “What?”

  “Go buy yourself some food.”

  “So, I have to work all week whilst you laze around here and still have to go do the shopping?”

  “Yeah,” she challenges.

  “Right! That’s it. I’ve had enough, Tess. There are women out there who would love to get their hands on me. They’d cook my tea, do the cleaning and dress up nice.”

  “Go and find one then.”

  “I will,” he says staring into her angry face. “Anything’s got to be better than your lazy, fat, hairy arse.”

  Tears well in her eyes as her face reddens, but he’s unmoved. He’s seen it too many times—turning on the waterworks when she hears something she doesn’t like. He’s had enough of her—she’s just a parasite living off his money. He should have listened to his mother; Tess was just a scrounging little tramp. It wouldn’t be so bad if he got what he wanted from her upstairs, but she couldn’t even be arsed with that—not any more.

  “Tess,” he says taking a step back. “This isn’t working. You and me. We’re just not a good match. I want you to leave.”

  “You pig!” she throws back at him. “After everything I’ve done for you!”

  He can’t help but let out a sardonic laugh. Is she for real? “Everything, Tess?” he snorts. What a joke! “You’ve done nothing for me! Seems like I’ve just been shelling out for you. I pay for the food, the gas, the water, electricity-”

  “Not today!”

  “Pah! I buy you clothes and I’ve even paid the vet bills for that damned cat even though it attacks me at every opportunity!”

  “I didn’t ask you to!” she snaps back.

  He sighs and leans back against the kitchen worktop.

  “You keep saying that you want to go back to your Mum’s. Do that,” he says with a calm determination. “If you pack your bags, I’ll even help carry them.”

  “Rargh!” she screams at him and launches herself forward. Her arm wrapped in its fluffy pink micro-fleece arcs through the air. He catches it before she has a chance to slice her neon pink nails across his cheek.

  “That’s it!” he says, all patience lost. “Get out of my house! I’ve tried to treat you nice, but you’re nothing but a psycho-bunny-boiling-lazy-good-for-nothing-scrounger.”

  “Get off of my arm!” she screams. “Or I’ll call the police.”

  He throws her arm away from him. What the hell had he ever seen in her?

  “Pack your stuff, Tess and get out of my house.”

  “I’m going! I can’t stand you anyway. You always stink of garlic and you’re crap in bed.”

  He sags against the kitchen counter as she runs up the stairs spewing a flow of obscenities. He listens as she stomps across the floors and realises with relief that the banging and crashing must be the sounds of her packing her belongings. She didn’t have that much—just clothes and toiletries, though the toiletries alone would fill a suitcase.

  Half-an-hour later the front door slams shut and she’s gone. He sighs with relief and looks up to the ceiling. Please don’t let her come back this time! Walking to the living room window he watches as she lugs the heavy bags down the road. He would have helped her if she’d asked. “Aagh!” he shouts as pain rips into his thigh. “Bloody cat!” he shouts again as the animal’s claws prick through his jeans as it bats at his leg with venom. He grabs for the moggy and clutches it by the scruff of its neck then strides to the front door and throws the offending animal onto the grass. “And you stay out too! … And don’t come back neither!”

  As he closes the door he notices how busy the street is, not with cars, they’re stationary, but with people walking or on bikes. Several have numerous shopping bags slipped over their arms and some have backpacks. He frowns and thinks back to the chaos at the supermarket last night. The window would be boarded up by now. There wouldn’t be any point in them going anyway; they wouldn’t get served. Oh well, they’d realise that once they got there. His stomach growls again and nausea washes over him. If he didn’t get something to eat soon, he’d barf!

  He walks to the freezer. Inside sit the fish fingers he’d taken - OK stolen - from the supermarket last night. Any shame he feels soon disappears as his stomach growls again and he reaches for the packet. There were a couple of bread buns left, so he could have a fish finger sarny—food of the gods! He looks around the kitchen with a frown, his mind whirring as he thinks things through. If he didn’t have electricity he couldn’t cook and if he couldn’t cook he couldn’t eat! He’d have to improvise—he’d make a fire—in the garden. He looks out of the window. Yep! Sunny now that the rain has cleared up.

  An hour later his belly still grumbles though now it feels bloated too. The fishfingers took longer to cook than he thought. They had looked cooked, although a little burnt, but when he took a bite, and his teeth bit into the cold flesh, it became obvious they weren’t. He’d put them back on the fire and by the time they were cooked he’d had to discard the coating and just eat the fish on its own having stuffed the bread buns down as he’d waited. Not bad, but not great either. He sighs. No work, no telly, no gaming and an aching belly.

  As the flame dies down on the barbecue he looks up to the sky—a perfect day for a
spot of hunting. Perhaps he’d snag a rabbit or two and have a proper barbeque. With Tess gone there was no one to pull a face at the rabbits and pheasants he brought home or pull him down for catching them. He wipes the grease of the fish fingers from his hands against his jeans and decides that now was the perfect time for a spot of hunting. Technically, it was poaching, but needs must when the devil drives and all that.

  His bag packed, he slings it across his shoulder and reaches for his bike then wheels it down the passageway and out to front of the house. The path is still busy with people walking. He recognises Joe walking towards him. He’ll brazen it out and not look away. As he opens his gate, and Joe gets a little closer, he can see that the man has blood on his face and his gait is awkward.

  “Joe!” he calls. “You alright?”

  The man walks to him then rests against the garden wall.

  “What happened?”

  “Bloody women at the supermarket!”

  “Eh?”

  “It’s out of control, Mike! Never seen anything like it in my life.”

  “Did someone hit you?”

  “Did someone hit me! You could say that. So, there’s no bread left, right?”

  Michael nods.

  “So, I goes to the freezer and there’s a bag of them part-baked rolls left at the bottom, most everything else has gone.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I reaches in and the next thing I know a trolley’s slammed into me legs. It was a fat bird with dyed black hair and thick, ugly eyebrows, y’know, them ones they paint on—look bloody stupid if you ask me and she had a moustache.”

  Michael laughs as Joe recounts his story. He’s pretty sure he’s talking about Vera from the Butter Room, or Aunt Sally as they call her at work.

  “The pain was chronic, but I tried to stand me ground and grabbed the edge of the freezer and reached in. I just grabbed the packet of rolls and the bitch did it again. Rammed me legs with her trolley. I fall to the floor and whack me head on the freezer as I go down and she grabs the packet from me. Brazen she was, Mike. Just brazen. Didn’t give a toss that she’d hurt me.”

  “Well, that’s what you get when that lot over the river move here—they’re not civilised like us.”

  “Not civilised is right. They’re bloody animals. It’s carnage, Mike. Bloody carnage.”

  “Listen. I’m sorry about … you know, the dog mess.”

  “Ugh! Forget about it.”

  “Yeah, well … do you want me to help you get home?”

  “Nah, I’ll be alright. The old woman’s at home. She’ll mother me when I get there, don’t you worry. Proper local girl she is.”

  “You sure?”

  “Course I’m sure! We were at school together.”

  “No, I mean, are you sure you can get home on your own.”

  “Yeah,” Joe replies and pushes himself away from the wall.

  Michael watches him until he turns the corner then mounts his bike and turns it in the direction of the road that will take him out to the countryside. Perhaps there he’ll find some solace—got to be safer than staying around here at any rate!

  Five minutes pass and he only has two more streets to go before he hits the main road out of town. Ahead two men step out from a doorway and run across the road in front of him.

  “Watch it!” he shouts as he swerves to avoid them. “Idiot!” he calls out as the man closest to him turns and scowls. “You could have knocked me off!”

  The man flicks him the finger and continues running, his back hunched by the weight of the object in his arms. A till! Curious, Michael pedals to the open door of the shop the men have just run from. The door has been broken and glass litters the pavement. Inside the shopkeeper, Eddy, lies slumped on the floor with what looks like a head injury.

  Standing his bike against the wall, Michael steps into the shop and crouches next to Eddy. His eye is already swelling and there’s a gash above his forehead—probably where they hit him. Michael watches as the man’s chest rises and falls and sighs. He’s alive he notes with relief.

  “Eddy! You alright, mate?”

  Eddy groans and rolls to his back.

  “Don’t move. You’ve been hit on the head by the look of it.”

  Eddy groans again.

  “Eddy!” a woman’s voice calls from the doorway. Michael turns to see a large woman, steely grey and white hair frizzed about her head bearing down on him. “What’re you doing to Eddy?” she snaps.

  “Nothing, Carol. I found him like this. I think you’ve been robbed. Two blokes scarpered before I got here.

  “Oh, hell!” she says crouching next to him. “He came down to open up. I told him not to bother as there wasn’t any power on and nobody would be in, but he insisted. He said people would want car parts, especially today. I don’t believe all this pulse business. Do you?”

  “Dunno,” Michael replies.

  Carol stands and looks across the counter to the bench at the back. “Yes, they’ve taken the till. Bloody … well, I can’t say it, but …”

  Eddy groans again.

  “Eddy!”

  His eyes flicker then open.

  “Eddy, it’s me, Carol.”

  “They took the till.”

  “I know. It’s OK.”

  “But the money! I should have put it in the safe-”

  “Don’t worry about that now. Can you sit up?”

  Michael reaches out his hand and pulls Eddy into a sitting position.

  “My head!” he groans. “The buggers whacked me. I went down like a ton of bricks.”

  “Just sit still,” Carol says with impatience. “I told you not to come down here, but would you listen!”

  “OK, Carol, love. Don’t go on.”

  “Well, I did, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, love, yes you did,” he replies with a sigh and puts his hand out to Michael. “Here, help me up.”

  “Did you see them?” Carol asks turning to Michael once Eddy is leant against the shop’s counter.

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “Did you recognise them?”

  “Kind of. I think one was one of the Greendale boys from the estate.”

  “Hah! Typical. That lot want locking up.”

  “Alright, Carol.”

  “Well, they do.”

  “You can’t tar everyone with the same brush, love.”

  “Pah! I don’t know how you can say that. It’s not the first time they’ve tried to break in here is it. Last time we caught them on CCTV. They’ve done it this time because they know they won’t be caught. Bloody little sods want stringing up.”

  “Is there anything else I can do?” Michael asks.

  “You got somewhere to go?”

  “Yeah. I was just headed out …” he stops. No, he won’t tell them where he’s going. “Just got to get somewhere, that’s all.”

  “Oh,” Carol says eyeing him with suspicion. “Well, never you mind. I can handle things from here.”

  “What about the door? I’ll stop to help you fix it up otherwise it’ll be more than the till that’s gone by morning.”

  Carol sighs and gives him her first smile. “Would you? Thanks. I hadn’t thought about the door till you mentioned it, but now you have, well, I think we’d best repair it so none of that lot can get in.”

  “Bloody boobytrap it!” Eddy says with a low chuckle.

  “Hah! Yeah. That would serve the buggers right,” Carol agrees.

  “Got any nails?” Michael asks. Boarding up the door would only take ten minutes or so and then he’d get off to the fields and catch himself some tea.

  Chapter 20

  Bill turns his face to the sun letting its warmth stroke at him and squints to the window. He’s still there—the man in the chair. Once or twice he’s got up and moved around, talked to the brunette. He’d even stood drinking a can of cola. Bill had sat completely still, his hat pulled low as the man had scanned the street. Cedric had turned up as regular as clockwork. He was the on
ly one who ever bothered to give him the time of day. One or two other workers had turned up at the shops further along the street to be met by locked doors and disappeared back down the road, back home no doubt, to their cosy houses. Bill grunts, scratches at his armpit, then takes a breath as the hunger hits him again. No food today. He’d joined the queue outside the soup kitchen this morning, they’d all been naïve enough to think that it would be open, but no, no electricity, no food, and they couldn’t hand anything out because the chillers had been off and their insurance wouldn’t cover them. He grunts again as he remembers Zelda’s face. The dark hairs on her lips had glinted in the light as she’d pursed them and turned them all away. She’d had the good grace to apologise at least—said it was health and safety. His belly growls and the nausea waves over him again.

  The takeaway across the road is shut, but there’s bound to be some bread in there. He takes another deep breath and pushes it out through his nostrils. It eases the discomfort somewhat but not the overwhelming sense of failure. No, that bites deep down into his bones. He was homeless. It was just circumstance. It wasn’t who he was. Or was it? Was he just another scumbag loser, a failure, a waste of space? No! Shut up Bill! He sighs and looks up to her office. The broad-shouldered blond is sat back in her chair again. Bill’s stomach grumbles and he looks across to the takeaway with its gaudy red sign. He chuckles. It reads Pizza Bill. That did it. During the months he’d spent on the streets he’d not stolen a thing, not one thing, but now … now the temptation was overwhelming. He had to eat, and soon. A fly dances over him.

  “Bugger off,” he says swatting at it. It darts away then buzzes back. “Blasted fly. Do I stink that bad?” Yes, yes you do.

  Bill pushes the sleeping bag away from his legs and swats at the fly again. That was it. He’d had enough. He squats and folds the bag neatly lengthwise then rolls it tight before stuffing it in his backpack. One thing he’d learnt on the streets—people would take anything that you left lying around. Everything he owned was in the bag, so where he goes it goes. He stands, stares at the pizza shop, then strides across the road. Stuff honour! He was hungry.