‘No.’
‘We’ll light the fire in a mo, get a good blaze going before the fireworks. Tell you what, old mate, you can do the honours.’
‘What honours?’
‘You can light the fire. Fancy that?’
‘If you like,’ says Wolfe.
‘What’s up, Wolfie?’
‘Nothing.’ He doesn’t like Tom using Petra’s name for him. It feels as if Tom is trying to get him to like him, trying too hard to be a friend.
‘Pull the other one,’ Tom says. ‘Come on, what’s up?’
‘You never … nothing.’
‘Come on, it’s like pulling bleeding teeth!’ Tom hugs Wolfe against him so that his nose is squashed against the roughness of Tom’s jacket. Wolfe pulls away. ‘Christ, I’m not that bad am I?’
‘It’s just that you never took me out when you said you would.’
‘Oh that. Is that all? I’m sorry mate, that was out of line. I should have said. Tell you what, I’ll take you with me, next chance I get.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘And …’ Wolfe struggles, ‘it’s just that I don’t know about you. I never know whether you’re going to be there. What if you leave us? What about Mum?’
Tom is silent for a moment, and his face gazing at the unlit fire is as serious and nearly as sad as the guy’s. Then he shakes his head and sighs. ‘I know it’s rough, mate. But look, let’s get the fire lit now. Come on,’ he tries to make his voice sound cheerful, ‘we’re having a party.’ He gives Wolfe a box of matches.
‘But Mum says I mustn’t …’
‘It’s all right, I’m – what do they say? – supervising. Just strike one and light the paper at the bottom in a few places.’
Wolfe opens the box and nervously strikes a match against its rough side. Nothing happens at first, just a grating sound. He strikes quicker and harder and there is a little spark.
‘Have another shot,’ Tom says, and Wolfe lights the match and almost drops it. ‘That’s it, now quick, before it burns your fingers.’
Wolfe holds the flaming match gingerly between his finger and thumb. There is no time. He flicks a look at the lolling guy, at the black and silent mouth, and then he flings the match onto the paper and turns away.
‘Hey … all right, light another one then,’ Tom says, but Wolfe hands him back the matches. He wants to run away and not see the guy burning, but Buffy and Bobby come outside and he is trapped into being brave. He turns to face the fire. Tom has started the blaze going in several places around the bottom and the flames swiftly bud and blossom and lick upwards over the dry paper and wood. The guy’s face is lit for a bright moment as the flames slither up, and his eyes meet Wolfe’s, and Wolfe wants to cry out his sorrow. He wants to leap into the flames and save the guy, but then he sees that the the big red lips are open in a smile. It is like joy. The brim of the hat flares like a halo and just for a moment the face is blazing with joy. Just for a moment, and then it flickers black and warps and smokes and dissolves into feathers of ash fleeing upwards in the blasting heat.
‘That is what he was for!’ cries Wolfe.
‘What’s that?’ says Tom, but Wolfe cannot speak, he is transfixed by the bright upward flow of the fire, the crackle and whoosh of it. The face has gone but the hat blazes on and the woollen hair frizzles to nothing and smoke.
‘Good grief!’ exclaims Petra coming outside with Nell and Rodney, ‘that’s gone off like a bomb!’
‘Spot of turps makes all the difference,’ Tom says.
‘I don’t think there was any need for that,’ Petra grumbles. ‘It was perfectly dry. Anyway Tom, this is Nell and Rodney …’
Wolfe half listens to the grown-up talk of weather, the offers of tea or wine, and he watches the flames. His face is hot, his cheeks baking like potatoes. The fire is beautiful and the guy is nothing now but a darkened ghost in the brightness below the flaring circle of the hat.
He feels a cold creeping on his back as if someone is watching him, and he turns to see Rodney’s eyes upon him. Not his eyes, but the lenses of his glasses that reflect the leaping flames.
Nell cannot concentrate on the chat. Oh she must chat, of course, she must chat and she must be seen to sip her tea, but how can she in the poor light, when she cannot see clearly whether the cup is properly clean? The rim feels greasy against her lips and her throat clamps shut because, of course, she could never swallow strange tea out of a strange greasy cup in the darkness. She scrubs the back of her hand against her lips. She peers at the cup in the unruly firelight, and finds that her worst suspicions are confirmed. There is a crack in the cup and Lord-knows-what in there, living and breeding and dying and rotting. Everyone knows that germs flock into the cracks of cups and plates. She can almost feel the crawl of them against her hand. She must chat and she must hold the swarming cup and she must pretend to drink but she really wants to watch the fire, to enjoy the burning of the hat. The guy has almost gone now, there is just something that looks like a pair of feet paddling in the flames, and there, of course, is the remains of the hat, making a good display. Despite the cup, despite the annoying buzz of conversation to which she must pay heed, Nell feels a smile coming on. The hat has been cremated. There is a fizzing and a popping in the fire which is sure to be the stupid cherries.
‘Yes, lovely,’ she says to Petra, and guesses from Petra’s face that she’s made the wrong response, but however can she be expected to concentrate with so much going on? For, of course, there is also Rodney. She must be vigilant. She must watch his every move – and there he is now sidling up to the little boy with the outlandish name. It is all right, of course, for he is cured, but still, better safe than sorry.
‘Rodney,’ she calls, sharply. ‘Come and stand with me,’ and he comes almost too meekly, too obediently, like a chastened spaniel, and Nell is embarrassed and gives a strangled laugh.
‘The kids have been so excited,’ Petra says, ‘even Bobby who is so sophisticated and above us all.’
‘Our Rodney was just the same,’ Nell says, ‘always a one for getting himself into a state. Christmas Eve he never slept a wink. Only he was scared of the rockets, weren’t you Rodney? He always hid his little face in my coat, didn’t you?’ She squeezes Rodney’s arm and forces a grunt from him. If only he had a bit more about him … Still, at least he is respectable now, with his newly barbered head and his gleaming spectacles and shoes.
‘What about the fireworks?’ calls Buffy from across the fire.
‘We’re waiting for the others,’ Tom says. He is a very thin man with a thin cigarette, like a wisp of straw, dangling from the corner of his mouth. Even in this light he looks unkempt, and after all the trouble she’s been to with Rodney. Horrible to think that his lips, nicotine and all, have probably drunk from the very cup she holds in her hand now. She thinks longingly of her rubber gloves.
‘Others?’ she asks Petra, politely.
‘Oh, just Arthur and Olive,’ Petra says. ‘Would you like a top-up?’
‘No, thanks all the same.’ Nell’s stomach performs a little flip. Just Arthur and Olive! Oh Jim, she thinks, oh Jim, why aren’t you here? Stupid of me, stupid of me not to think. If Jim was here there would be something to hold onto, some support, for although she has Rodney firmly by the upper arm, she might as well be holding onto a gooseberry bush for all the good it does her. She breathes in deeply of the smoky air. Somewhere down the hill a rocket flares and dies, and she calms herself. There is nothing, after all, to fear. Rather, she should try to think of this evening as a triumph. She was here first, after all, looking neat and appropriate in her herringbone tweed coat and her little fur-lined boots. How will Olive compare? And the blessed hat is gone. It’s only a shame that Olive wasn’t here to see. What a fuss she would have made! Old tart shrieking and carrying on with her loud mouth and her foul tongue. What a shame they couldn’t have seen one of her performances, Petra and Tom, seen her in her true colours. Not a ver
y suitable influence for the kiddies.
‘I’ll just rinse my cup,’ Nell says in Petra’s ear, holding it away so that Petra cannot see that it is still full.
‘No need,’ says Petra, who, despite her advanced condition, is sipping wine.
‘No trouble,’ Nell says firmly.
‘Well, help yourself to another cup – there’s a potful – or a glass of wine, it’s all there.’ Petra does not seem to care about another woman in her kitchen. Nell tips her tea quickly down behind the plastic washing-up bowl in the sink. It is just as she suspected. Filthy. The stainless steel of the sink and draining board is coated in a greasy film and round the base of the taps is a ring of brownish sludge that she can practically see seething. Nell cannot bring herself to touch the taps, not with her bare hands, so she just inverts the cup amongst the jumble of crockery and cutlery on the draining board. One more cup will hardly make any difference to this germs’ paradise. The floor is sticky to walk upon and Nell thanks Heaven for her rubber boots. The window-sill is crammed with dying plants, mugs, matches, pens, a bottle of cough medicine all sticky and dark, some lego bricks, a jar of something with a label so stained it is impossible to read, a hairbrush clogged with hair. Nell tut-tuts, but she does feel a flicker of glee. If only Jim was here to see. It does show, the trouble she takes to keep her house nice. It is not a thankless task when you see the pigsties other people live in. It’s only surprising they’re not always coming down with something. There must be plenty of things to come down with on the draining board alone.
And on the table near the food there is actually an ashtray containing a couple of skinny brown-stained cigarette ends! Really! If only Jim was here to say something nice about her own housekeeping. She looks closely at the food, all exposed to the open air. Anyone would think cling-film had never been invented. There’s a plate of something brown and oozing, a salad, a bowl of grated cheese, some pickles still in their jars and a tub of margarine with crumbs in it. The oven is on and there’s a not unpleasant smell of potatoes baked in their (no doubt grubby) jackets. Nell’s own Tupperware box is there too, the parkin cut into neat squares, a most suitable contribution. There is a big bottle of red wine opened and a glass beside it, but she will not risk it. Besides, she must keep her wits about her. Rodney accepted a glass of wine rather too readily, and she must keep tabs on him.
They stagger into the garden like some kind of comedy double-act. Fatty and Skinny. Laurel and Hardy. Little and Large. Only they are for real, and far from funny. The thought of them together – it makes Nell squirm. Geriatric sex, surely not? Though she wouldn’t put it past Olive. Fat tart; never a one to stick within decent limits. And they’ve come empty-handed. She thinks smugly of her parkin.
Unaccountably, the little boy runs to Arthur and takes his hand; Nell grasps Rodney again. Petra fetches Olive and Arthur glasses of wine, brimming black in the poor light. Nell has had enough of the chilliness and the smokiness and the griminess. Now that the hat is burnt there seems little point in the fire. A silliness in the little back garden, along with all the other sillinesses blazing down the hill. If only they’d get on with the fireworks, then they could decently get off home and wash their hands and have a proper cup of tea.
‘Grand fire,’ Arthur says, and Olive, buttoned into a bulging coat, says nothing at all, but stares rudely at Nell until she is made to feel uncomfortable and to fiddle and twitch with her hair.
Arthur squints into the flames. ‘Did you burn your guy?’ he asks.
‘Yep. He’s all gone now,’ Wolfe says.
‘Hat and all,’ chips in Nell in a spiteful, needling voice. Arthur wishes Nell no good at all. He looks at Olive, but she does not appear to have heard. And it may not have been the hat, after all. And if it was? Mentioning it would only make trouble, only stir Olive up. And if by chance it was these children that found the cherry hat on the street and burnt it on their guy – well then it’s good and gone and there’s an end of it. At least Olive didn’t see, at least she was spared that.
Wolfe’s hand is sticky and rough in his own, like a little paw.
‘We can start the fireworks now!’ he says, looking up at Arthur from inside his hood.
‘Now that we’re all here,’ says Nell.
‘I thought …’ begins Wolfe and then flounders for words.
‘Go on, lad.’
‘I thought it would be a shame to set the fireworks off and spoil them and not have them any more.’
‘But that’s what they’re for!’ Arthur chuckles.
‘Yeah! And the guy, that was what he was for wasn’t it? For burning.’
‘That’s it, me duck.’ Arthur smiles down at him. A funny lad, a thinker – deep.
‘I’m going to help,’ Wolfe says, disengaging his hand. ‘I want to choose what first.’ He goes off to join in the argument already brewing between the others.
Olive is a heavy presence at Arthur’s side. Her eyes are sparks in the firelight. There is a brightness in them that reminds him, almost, of how they used to flash; how they used to tease; how they used to lead him on and how good it was when he got there. He feels a stir of nostalgic excitement, unexpected, out of place here at a bonfire party; but still, a little hardening, remembering Ollie and the way she used to move. And the darkness of the cleft between her buttocks as she knelt before him. She was no ordinary lover, Olive, no wifey lover, not cold like that poor bitch Nell. Oh and the soft looseness of Olive’s big breasts cupped in his hands, the gentle prodding of her nipples. He can just imagine what Nell would have been like in bed. Cold. A cold pair of scissors – stainless steel – open for a moment, out of duty, and then snap shut and God help you if you’re not finished. It’s a wonder they ever conceived Rodney. Poor bugger Jim. No wonder he turned to Olive. Arthur watches her sipping her wine. Her chin trembles. She is all looseness now, all softness – though inside she has grown hard with her resistance to what must be. And the fire lights her eyes like a breeze fanning slumbering coal. There is a tension growing in the air between Olive on his one side and Nell on the other. He almosts vibrates between them.
And now the children are ready with the fireworks.
‘Golden Rain,’ announces Wolfe. ‘Light the blue touch-paper, Tom, and stand well back.’
Tom strikes a match and sets the thing aflame and then there is a wait, and then a sigh as if it has gone out, and then a gradual drizzle and spray of gold rising like a fountain and splashing onto the grass.
‘Aaaah,’ they say together. And Olive clutches Arthur’s arm.
‘Of course, my Jim was the one to talk to about fireworks,’ Nell’s voice rises as the firework dies. Tom bends to light the Traffic Lights.
‘Her Jim,’ mutters Olive.
‘Hush,’ says Arthur.
‘Green!’ cries Wolfe as the first soft pompon of light rises in the air.
‘Always the best for Rodney, the best that money could buy,’ continues Nell, but nobody pays her any attention. She has hold of Rodney, weird Rodney, middle-aged now. And how did the sweet bright boy who used to sear Arthur’s heart with his very aliveness turn into this queer figure? Nell’s stamp is on him again. He has a scoured look. His hair is fiercely short, his neck pale and naked where the razor has scraped. Nell had always been a one for cleanliness, even before the trouble with Rodney. But that had sent her funny, Jim had said. He’d told Arthur how it played on his mind. Always cleaning she was, always scrubbing, as if she was trying to scrub the shame away. Poor Nell. But whatever must it be to have a son who did such evil? Whatever must it be to have a son at all? Which, he wonders, is worse: the absence or the terrible presence? Again the memory of the tender fluffy head and the tiny fingers curled around his thumb.
‘Orange!’ Wolfe cries.
‘Amber, dick – Stupid,’ says his brother.
‘Red next!’
And then again, to have a lad like Wolfe, a funny lad, fat and serious, innocent and wise. A special lad. He sighs.
‘
Oh the times we had! The parties! The fun when Rodney was a child!’ crows Nell, and Arthur feels for Rodney who flinches against the lies, against the pincers of his mother’s fingers on his arm. But there is no expression on his face, just a straight black line for a mouth and the flames of his glasses.
‘Wolfe, why don’t you hand around your toffee?’ calls Petra who looks dangerously pregnant to Arthur, her belly jutting from between the edges of her coat.
‘All right, but wait for me. Don’t light any more till I’m ready.’
‘Another drink anyone?’ Petra offers.
‘Me,’ says Olive quickly. ‘I’ll have another.’ Nell’s eyes rise to Heaven.
‘Go easy, duck,’ Arthur murmurs to Olive, but he takes her glass and goes to Petra for a refill.
‘We’ll eat after the fireworks,’ Petra says. ‘Only don’t get excited, it’s only spuds.
Arthur hands Olive her drink. ‘All right?’ he says. She has her dangerous look. Wolfe thrusts forth the plate of toffee.
‘Olive’ll have a bit,’ Arthur says. The toffee has melted upon the plate, trying to revert from separate lumps into one mass, and Arthur prizes a piece free with difficulty. ‘Looks like a good old jaw-sticker,’ he says.
Olive hangs on to Arthur. The sense has gone again, the meaning of all this. All these people, oh yes, some of them are known, some of them, and children too all lit with flames, all blinking with the smoke in their eyes. Arthur is here, at least, and there is a form on the fire like a human form, only faint, only a waver of smoke against the flame, perhaps it is nothing at all. And in her hand is a drink and her teeth are stuck together with toffee. And beside Arthur is Nell and her long face is a face of stone, a face of stone carved on a church porch somewhere and beaten away with the rain. It is an old face but the spite in it is young and green. The spite is there in the flickering of the flames lighting her face from beneath so that her nostrils are cavernous and the lines dragging down from her nose to the corners of her mouth are etched deep and black and her mouth opens and shuts like a trap and she talks of Jim. Her Jim.
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