The Fire Starters

by Jan Carson

  ‘Anything else?’ I write.

  ‘Did you see they got the Fire Starter?’ Christine writes. ‘It was on the news at lunchtime.’

  ‘No,’ I write. I’ve been so preoccupied with Sophie I haven’t listened to the news today, haven’t even let myself eavesdrop on the usual staffroom discussion of it.

  ‘Who was it?’

  I’m all of a sudden right back inside myself, sharply present, recalling Sammy, in his mismatched tracksuit, slouched against my desk, incapable of holding his sadness in.

  ‘Some young lad called Mark something or other.’

  ‘Agnew?’

  ‘Aye, Agnew! That’s his name. How did you know?’

  I think quickly. Lying comes so easily to me, these days. ‘I must have heard it on the radio and not realized.’

  ‘That’s always happening to me,’ writes Christine. ‘But with watching TV …’ and she starts scribbling down some anecdote about how she always has the subtitled news running in the background, how she knows stuff without knowing she knows it, like the fact that Angela Merkel is the chancellor of Germany, all the different palaces the Queen owns and other irrelevant stuff. The way she only realizes she knows this stuff when she’s out with her friends at the pub quiz and, hey presto, all the answers come to her. ‘It’s like I’m getting smart by osmosis,’ she finishes.

  I’m only half reading what she’s written. I’m miles away, wondering if Sammy slept easy last night. If the weight lifts once the worst has happened. I wonder if he still feels responsible now the damage has been taken out of his son.

  ‘You have to go now,’ I write.

  It’s hard not to be blunt when you’re scribbling everything on a notepad. I know Christine won’t take offence at this. Our conversations are often reduced to the barest bones of meaning. I add another smiley face just to be sure, and to let her know I’ve enjoyed her anecdote. She gives me a thumbs-up and kisses Sophie on the forehead. I wonder if this kind of ordinary kitchen moment will ever happen again. I start moving round the room quickly, tidying away the groceries, placing my bag on the counter, rinsing out Sophie’s bottle in preparation for the sterilizer. I’m keeping myself occupied so the sadness has less chance of sinking its teeth in. I return to the notepad. ‘I’m off next week,’ I write, ‘so we won’t need you.’

  Sad-face emoticon from Christine.

  ‘I’ll still pay you.’

  She smiles: a real-life smile, with her actual face. ‘It’s not the money. I’ll miss Sophie.’

  Our conversation has reached the end of the paper. There’s a brief pause while I rip off the sheet, bin it and begin again at the top of the notepad. If I was speaking this conversation I’d say something along the lines of ‘Listen, Christine, I don’t know how to explain this, it’s very complicated, but the chances are Sophie’s going to be sick for quite a while, and I’ll need to look after her myself. Thank goodness I’m a doctor. It’s nothing to worry about, and of course I’ll make sure you’re reimbursed fully while we don’t need your services, but I can’t tell you much more than that. You’ve been an amazing help … No, more than a help, a great friend to Sophie and me, and we really appreciate all your support. I wish I could give you a more definite idea of the time frame, but I don’t know myself. It could be a week. It could be six months. It all depends on Sophie. I hope you understand and that you’ll come back and look after her as soon as she’s recovered, but I’ll understand if you want to find something else.’

  If Christine was crying then, or even looking like tears might be imminent, I’d probably hug her in a fatherly kind of way, carefully avoiding too much contact with her breasts, making sure to break the embrace first so I could not afterwards be accused of enjoying it too much. But I can’t talk to Christine. I am, at the basest level, a snivelling coward. So, I don’t mention any illness, any deviation from the usual plan. Instead I write, ‘See you Monday week,’ all the time knowing this is highly unlikely.

  ‘No probs,’ writes Christine. Then she grabs her coat from the banister, lifts her books and bag, and flies out of the door before I can make any sort of occasion of it. I feel as if I have, in some unspecified way, robbed her.

  I carry Sophie to the front window and flail my free arm wildly until I catch Christine’s attention. Then I make the sign for goodbye and the sign for each of the nine letters in her name. This is something I’ve learnt off the internet. I was saving it for a special occasion: a birthday or some sort of argument. I use it now like a kind of compensation. Christine might never see either of us again but, hey-ho, isn’t it lovely that I’ve learnt how to sign her name properly? She smiles through the windscreen of her car, through the front window and right into my living room. She signs ‘Goodbye, Sophie, goodbye, Jonathan.’ I feel the need to sit down quickly. It isn’t dizziness that has overcome me so much as sadness, the weight of everything being finally wonderful and probably ruined.

  I prop Sophie at the far end of the sofa and wedge her in with a rolled-up blanket. She looks directly at me, then turns her fat little head to look over my shoulder, her eye catching on something just behind the lamp. I turn. There isn’t anything obvious there. Only a framed IKEA print. I hump my shoulders and raise my hands, making my face say, ‘What are you looking at?’ without using any words. Sophie says nothing. She never does.

  This isn’t the first time I’ve caught her staring at something I can’t see. I wonder if this is normal for babies. Perhaps their not-quite-focused eyes are more sensitive to light waves and shadows. Or perhaps she isn’t built like other babies. Maybe she’ll always be susceptible to the unseen side of things. Ghosts. Visions. Holy Spirit prophecies. It’s the not knowing I can’t bear, the will-she-won’t-she side of Sophie, which has me watching every inch of her progress for clues.

  Today she cries in the bath. She won’t tolerate water on her head for washing the shampoo out. Surely this is a good thing. A point on the side of humanity.

  Today her hair seems twice as long as yesterday and swirls down her back in a long, dark river, more like a tail than hair. More like something you’d see in a fairytale book. Not good. Not good at all.

  Today she has an appetite for liquids unrivalled in any child I’ve ever doctored. This seems problematic. It’s milk she goes for rather than water, and even the youngest school child knows mammals drink milk, not sea creatures. Unless of course you count whales. I choose not to.

  Today she looks exactly like my mother when my mother is perturbed. A victory for the human case, but a somewhat Pyrrhic one.

  I can’t hold out any longer. It’s not the waiting that’s wearing me thin. I’ve spent my entire life waiting for some unspecified thing to happen. Another year or two won’t kill me. It’s the watching I can no longer bear.

  I carry Sophie into the kitchen and hold her up in front of the calendar. I point out the little star in the box marked Friday, 29 August, and, though I know she can’t possibly understand what it means, the whole plan feels definite now, like a show we are already holding tickets for. Not till later. Not till it’s dark outside. This isn’t procrastination so much as shame. I can’t picture myself hurting her in the full light of day. In the shadows, with the curtains pulled, the cutting and sewing and bloody mess of it all seem much more believable, like a thing you might actually do to another person in the dark.

  I want whiskey. To steady my head. To sweat out the fear. I can’t have whiskey. My hand must be iron tonight. My muscles must be perfectly tight. I put the kettle on instead, make myself tea in the stolen Garfield mug and wait for the darkness to descend. The fear is particularly loud now. Old fears and brand-new versions of the same tight pain. The breath rush. The sweats. The sheer stomach-turning sickness of it. The fear of failing and the fear of succeeding. The fear of ruining a good, true thing. The fear of people and the fear of lacking people. The fear of cutting too soon, too deep, not deep enough. Loudest of all, the fear of losing my little girl.

  Last night I dreamt ab
out Sophie’s mother. I haven’t had this dream in months. I thought I was shot of it. I’m still not sure it was a dream but the idea of her here in our house again is a hideous thing to consider. If she’s capable of coming and going as she likes, through locked doors and double-glazed windows, up the water pipes for all I know, she is also capable of snatching Sophie. I haven’t the hope left to deal with this possibility tonight. All my will is presently focused on the cut and afterwards the cleaning up. I choose to call it a dream and press on. After the operation, Sophie will be one hundred per cent mine. Her mother and her mother’s shrill kind won’t want anything to do with a tongueless child. It’s for her own good, I tell myself, another excuse to add to my slim list.

  I try to drag my thoughts away from the dream but the memory of it won’t leave me be. It started with a phone call to work. The familiar voice saying, ‘I’m dying, you’ll have to come and save me.’

  The urge in me rising up, incapable of doing the sensible thing. Hearing myself say, ‘I’m on my way. Where are you?’

  And that unearthly laugh of hers, like crystal chandeliers, shivering. ‘Oh, you don’t need directions,’ she says. ‘Just follow the river.’

  Then I’m in my car, or is it some kind of boat? The sides of it blur in and out of focus, as if it is made of clouds or a sort of cloudy material. I am driving/swimming/flying up the Lagan towards her.

  I can’t separate her voice from the sound of the city clamouring round me: the sirens, the chatter, the engines thundering up and down the ring road. It all bleeds into one diaphanous melody, and I wonder if this is the sound of her finally raising her voice to sing. Up the Lagan I go. And all around, on either side of its filthy banks, Belfast is burning. Tall flames lick the night sky. People, silhouetted against the red, hurl themselves off the Albert Bridge, their arms and legs forming crosses as they drop into the river below. The heat is unbearable, and the sound of people crying. It is a very particular kind of hell and she is at the centre of it all, sitting pale-skin-naked on the riverbank. Bold Siren of a woman, with her hair come loose, snaking down her back.

  ‘I did all this,’ she says, with not a note of shame. ‘I raised my voice and ruined everything.’ Dream me knows she isn’t lying. In the pit of my belly I feel the same tight knot of lust and fear coil and uncoil, like clenching fists. I remember this feeling from every second I have ever spent in her presence. The darkness of it; the unspeakable lightness. I hate her as I have never hated a person or creature in my entire life, yet still lie down beside her, right there in the mud. The taste of her mouth is saltwater brine and beneath it something sour, like the smell that rises off a corpse on the third or fourth day.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ I ask. I hope she will not answer for I won’t be able to hold myself back. I will do vile and terrible things if she asks me to. I don’t know myself every time she opens her mouth.

  I wake then with the fur of her baulking on my tongue, the vomit already climbing up my throat. I make a mad dash down the corridor to the bathroom, lift the toilet seat and empty myself into it. Chunks of carrot and boiled potato bob around the bowl, swimming jauntily through my unflushed piss. I don’t turn the light on for fear of waking fully, and not being able to get back to sleep. I swill my mouth out with cold water and spit. I towel the sweat off my face and turn to leave the bathroom.

  This is when I notice the bath, full to the brim and dripping down the sides. This is when I see her hair, swimming darkly through the water, her features blurred as if viewed through a wedding veil. I step back sharply, clipping my foot on the radiator’s edge. No blood, but a good chunk of skin comes cleanly away. She sits up suddenly. The water rushes off her head and over her breasts, dripping on to the bathmat and the floor. A whole row of shampoo bottles, upset by her sudden appearance, topple off the bath’s rim and go bobbing drunkenly round the tub.

  ‘What do you want?’ I ask. (It’s hard to stop myself getting into the tub beside her.)

  ‘Not you, that’s for sure,’ she says, and looks me up and down scathingly, as you would a second-hand car. I feel the insult of this run down my spine and into my groin. I wish I didn’t care.

  ‘I wanted a bath,’ she says.

  ‘Mission accomplished. Now get out of my house.’

  ‘I left something behind,’ she says. ‘Did you keep it for me?’

  ‘Your clothes?’ I ask, playing for time. ‘You didn’t have anything but the clothes on your back.’

  ‘Maybe that’s it,’ she says. ‘It’s hard to remember details when you’re constantly dying. But I feel like I left something else here, something much more precious.’

  ‘No,’ I say, ‘you’re mistaken.’ It takes all my head-set strength to lie to her. My blood is already up, rushing to my face. I’m flushed with the effort of holding it all in. I make myself think of Sophie. The way she is mine now for the rest of our living time. For birthdays and Christmases. Beach holidays to come. Also for everyday ordinary being. Tesco trips and homework. Head colds and temper tantrums. The way I can no longer imagine any kind of existence without her. The thought of Sophie is both a shield and a distraction. I feel her dragging at me, tugging me insistently by the hand/arm/hope-thick place, so I’m caught between wrong and right, like a tug of war.

  ‘She’s not yours to keep,’ she says. ‘She’s one of us.’

  ‘No,’ I say, voice wobbling slightly. ‘She’s not like you. She’s just a little girl, no badness in her.’

  ‘Wait till she starts talking. There’s not a man in this city that girl couldn’t destroy if she wanted to.’

  ‘You’re wrong,’ I say. But there’s no certainty in the way I say it. No way of talking her down.

  I turn away from the bathtub. Avert my eyes. Cover my ears. Thing she is. Vile thing. Siren. Beast. I can no longer see her as Sophie’s mother. She is a creature to me, nothing more. Nothing like my little girl. And yet I cannot trust myself in her presence. Not if she rises naked from the bathtub. Not if she stands in front of me, milk white, wet and maybe singing. I’m not strong enough. No man is.

  I force myself to walk away. My feet are dead weights shuffling. The draw of her is all the way into my bone marrow. Tugging. Sucking. Dragging at my goodwill. My whole body is ripping in two but I press on. Out of the bathroom. Down the hall. Past the nursery where Sophie is sleeping quietly on her back. When I turn around the bathroom is empty. She has left me again. My next breath is thin with relief, the breath that follows it something like a howl.

  ‘You’re still dreaming,’ I tell myself, and go back to bed. I don’t sleep until just before daybreak, and wake at five thirty to the sound of Sophie fussing in the next room. The bathmat is still damp, but isn’t that always the case with bathmats, unless you hang them over a radiator? The shampoos are back where they belong, soldiered along the rim of the tub. But she could have done this herself, just to confuse me. I sniff my way round the bathroom, trying to nose out the presence of salt. I smell it on the towels, or maybe it’s just my senses playing tricks. I think about checking my heel for a cut but don’t. It’s easier to believe it all a mind trick. Especially today. With every part of me wanting to run away.

  Now it is dark. I rise and draw the curtains. I am already wearing a clean white T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms lifted straight from the laundry. I smell of detergent and, beneath this, sweat. I unplug the phone at the wall and turn my mobile to silent. I feel as if I’m in a movie, a thriller of some sort with police and gangsters hovering round the edge. This is a good feeling: it drags me outside reality to a place where I can wield a scalpel, cut out my daughter’s tongue and afterwards comfort myself with the knowledge that all this, even the pain, was a kind of fiction.

  I fetch all my medical equipment from the places where I’ve stashed it round the house. Gauze bandages. Anaesthetic. Scalpels. Sterile needles and stitches. One of those little mouth masks that keep the surgeon’s breath off a patient. A surgical bandanna for holding my hair back. I arrange
everything on a card table in the spare room. Slipping each item out of its plastic sheath, I place it in a kidney dish. I’ve bought a brand-new Tupperware box for Sophie’s tongue. It is the smallest of all the Tupperware options on sale at Tesco. According to the packaging, it can be used for storing condiments, small portions of dried fruit or spices. It is perfectly adequate for holding an infant-sized human tongue. Afterwards I plan to toss it into the sea. There’s a certain symmetry to this action.

  Sophie is asleep in her cot. She’s been dopy since Christine left. I’ve dosed her up on Calpol and Nurofen. She’s not yet ill or in any pain but the medicine will keep her docile while I administer the anaesthetic. I lift my daughter out of her sleep and jiggle her gently in my arms until she is fully awake. She is a good baby and wakes happy from even the longest nap. Within seconds she’s grinning and playing with the tips of her fingers, curling her toes up into her mouth, making contented-baby noises. I can’t keep my eyes off her. She is the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen and I’m about to steal this perfection from her. To permanently flaw her and give her a scar she will carry for the rest of her life. She smiles up at me, reaches for my face. It would almost be easier if she screamed.

  I strip her and place her in the baby bath. I keep a hand behind her neck, supporting her head and begin to soap her slowly all over, running a soft flannel over the mound of her belly, round her back and legs. It’s important that she’s clean tonight. Sterile. The operation itself isn’t that dangerous but afterwards there’s a terrible risk from infection and I don’t have the means to deal with this at home. Any outside intervention means losing Sophie. They won’t give her back after they’ve seen what I’ve done. Why would they? There’s no way I could pass this off as an accident: the neatness of the incision, the stitches – practised to perfection on a cold pork joint – the anaesthetic floating round her system, evidence of premeditation. I understand that everything must go perfectly tonight. I don’t have a back-up plan.