Firewatching

by Russ Thomas

  And there’s something so incredibly sad about the smile that he decides to change the subject. “So you studied art but somehow ended up . . . ?”

  “Working in a glorified call center? Doesn’t everybody?” She laughs. “I realized art was going to be pretty much useless to me, so I went back to college and studied IT. Computers are the future. Art is history. Besides, you went to Oxford, didn’t you? What did you read?”

  “Mathematics and philosophy.”

  “Exactly. I imagine that’s the ideal combo for joining the police force.”

  He grants it’s a fair point, but he isn’t going to get drawn into his own reasons for joining the force. If he’s honest, he’s not that sure about them himself. He tries to steer the conversation away from him. A thought occurs to him. “What can you tell me about Lowry?”

  Sally-Ann frowns. “Lowry?”

  “It’s work related,” he says.

  “This is supposed to be a night out. We’re not at work.”

  “Humor me. After this, I promise, no more work.”

  She sighs but answers him. “Fine. Not a great deal. Laurence Stephen Lowry, mostly famous for his paintings of industrial scenes. Sometimes considered a naïve artist because of his characteristic matchstick figures. How am I doing?”

  “Did he paint portraits as well?”

  “I’m sure he painted hundreds of them.”

  Tyler pulls out his mobile and shows her the photo he took of the painting at the crime scene. “Do you know it?”

  Sally-Ann squints at the photo; her brow furrows and she shakes her head. “I’m hardly an expert, but yeah, it could be a Lowry, I guess. What’s all this about?”

  Even if he could tell her he’s not sure he knows. “Never mind,” he says, slipping his mobile back into his pocket. “Come on then, drink up.” He drains the rest of his pint.

  Sally-Ann assumes he means to leave. She looks crestfallen.

  “I guess I did promise you dancing.”

  Her face lights up.

  * * *

  —

  The club is packed.

  Sally-Ann leaves him at the bar and immediately heads off onto the dance floor. He watches her throw herself round the room, totally out of time with the music yet wholly relaxed. She soon catches the eye of a brunette girl wrapped in plastic who gyrates and wiggles ever closer. The girl is squeezed into a PVC dress that’s too small for her and that ends just past her hips. She’s tall but hunched over, struggling to stand in four-inch heels. It gives her the look of a newborn foal learning the use of its legs.

  Tyler drains his pint and orders another. The rest of the SYPLGBTSN are here and before long he’s once again dodging the advances of the Family Liaison guy. The only thing left to do is get pissed.

  “Drink?” says Sally-Ann, squeezing his arm.

  “I was just wondering how you managed to browbeat me into coming to this place.” He has to lean in close and shout over the music. She pulls away from him slightly.

  “What happened to Bambi?” he asks.

  “Who?”

  “Never mind. What are you having?”

  “Bourbon,” she says, and this time he finishes her sentence for a change: “On the rocks with a twist.” They both laugh, and he orders the drinks.

  Her face is red with exertion; a bead of sweat runs along her jawline and drips from her chin. She tugs absently at the choker round her neck. She notices him looking at her and correctly intuits what he’s thinking. She pinches the fleshy fold of her underarm through her sleeve and jiggles it. “Arms like saggy tree trunks,” she says. “I don’t like getting them out in case someone faints.” She reaches out and squeezes his bicep. “We don’t all have muscles to show off.” She picks up her drink. “Speaking of which, are you aware you have an admirer?” She uses her head to point rather unsubtly along the bar.

  He turns to follow her gaze and sees Paul Enfield. The fire officer raises a glass in his direction.

  “I’ll leave you to it.” She upends her glass and drains the contents in one, then disappears back into the crowd on the dance floor.

  Enfield moves round the bar to join him. “Can I buy you a drink?” he shouts.

  He’s about to decline since he still has half a pint in his hands, and then changes his mind. “Fuck it! Why not? Dark rum and Coke. Cheers.”

  They wait while Enfield catches the eye of the young guy behind the bar and places his order. Then he turns and says, “Small world.”

  Tyler laughs. “Small scene.”

  “True.” Enfield hands a twenty to the barman. “You know, I got the feeling earlier on you suspected me of something.” It’s an odd conversation to be having when both of them have to shout to be heard over the music.

  Tyler smiles to take the sting out of his words. “I understand that, in the past, a number of arsonists have turned out to be fire officers.”

  The crowd parts, and he spots Sally-Ann again. She’s standing alone at the edge of the dance floor. The brunette foal from earlier has moved on and is all over a pretty blond woman now, their hands moving frantically across each other’s backs while they attempt to suck each other’s faces off.

  “You seem to know a lot about arsonists all of a sudden.”

  “I’ve been doing some research.” Tyler turns back to see Enfield eyeing him closely, the frown back on his forehead. “You suspect me.”

  Enfield cocks his head to one side, perhaps embarrassed to have been found out. “It’s the authority pyromaniacs fixate on, not firefighting. Just as many turn out to be coppers.”

  “It seems we both fit the profile.”

  “Are you an arsonist?”

  “No, are you?”

  “No.” Enfield grins widely. “Now that’s sorted, maybe I can take you for a proper drink.” He’s interrupted as somebody careers into the back of him, pitching him forward.

  The man who sent Enfield flying is a big bear of a guy. Beyond him stands Oscar, swaying slightly. The bear starts toward him and Tyler moves quickly, stepping between the two of them. “That’s enough.”

  The bear squares up to him. “What the fuck’s it got to do with you, princess?”

  Tyler pulls out his wallet and flashes his warrant card in the man’s face.

  The bear’s attitude crumbles. “Look, sorry, luv, all right? I’m not looking for trouble.” A hand strays subconsciously to his back pocket. He’s carrying. Pills or dope, most likely.

  “Walk away then.”

  The bear nods and melts into the throng of clubbers.

  “I could’ve handled it,” Oscar says. His words are slurred.

  “Sit down for a minute.” Tyler orders a glass of water, and the barman thanks him for interceding. He glances at Paul Enfield, who nods his understanding. Then he has to half-carry Oscar to the sofa in the chill-out corner. The barman brings over the water.

  “Doggett thinks the woman they’ve found is Cynthia.” Not Mum, or Mother. Cynthia. Oscar upends the glass and downs the water in one. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Getting your face smashed in isn’t going to help.”

  Oscar puts down the glass and cradles his head in his hands. “I’ll be all right.” He looks up at the door. “Sorry I ruined your evening.”

  Tyler glances back to the bar in time to see Paul Enfield heading out the door. He doubts the man is just going out for a smoke.

  Oscar touches his arm, drawing back his attention. “Let me buy you a drink. Just to say thank you, for everything.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Please. Just one drink. I don’t want to be on my own right now.” He smiles, and the innocent little boy is back. The water seems to have sobered him greatly, but his eyes are still red and haunted. His fingers brush lightly across Tyler’s wrist.

  �
��One drink,” he says. And he knows, even as he says it, that it’s never just one drink.

  * * *

  —

  The journey home seems much shorter.

  Once they had met up with the others down by the wharf, everyone was a lot less inclined to any further walking. Someone suggested they retire to a local pub until the coach could pick them up. It was shortly after the third sherry that Lily noticed the man in the corner staring at her. A grizzly fisherman with a nicotine-stained beard that collected the foam from his ale with every mouthful. His eyes never left hers, and though she tried to avoid his gaze, there was something about him that kept drawing her back. She was so relieved when someone announced the arrival of the coach, she determined to look him straight in the eye as she passed him on the way out. But when she turned to do so, he was gone.

  On the coach, the seat belt cuts across Lily’s bust, causing her brassiere to dig into her bony chest. Her feet don’t quite touch the floor. The seat next to her is empty, and she keeps glancing up the aisle to make sure the reverend doesn’t suddenly decide to sit with her and continue their conversation. She squirms in her seat trying to adjust her undergarments and then lurches forward as the coach brakes and swerves. Someone calls loudly down the bus, “Missed ’em!” There’s a smattering of laughter.

  The buzz of the sherry in Lily’s blood makes her nauseous. She looks out of the window and watches the scrubby gray verge at the side of the motorway as it whizzes past them, her reflection merging with the panning background. It makes her head spin, and she feels like she’s melting into ash. She thinks about Edna all alone back at the cottage, and suddenly she wants to be home. Whatever was she thinking? What a fool she’s been! Edna was right.

  Edna is always right.

  Lily closes her eyes and then, before she knows it, they’re pulling up at the end of Oliver Road.

  “I’ll walk you up,” Mrs. Thorogood offers.

  “Really, there’s no need.”

  Mrs. Thorogood doesn’t argue for long. “Well, if you’re sure.” She gives Lily a tight hug, which Lily finds a little overfamiliar, but then, that is what it’s like these days, isn’t it? All kissing both cheeks and public displays of affection. The reverend hangs back, thankfully.

  “We must do something soon. Coffee or something?”

  “Yes, that would be lovely,” says Lily, though she’s never liked the taste of coffee and the thought of it now makes her feel sick again.

  Mrs. Thorogood gets back onto the coach to a stern word from her husband and Lily watches it pull away, listening to the pistons firing as it negotiates the bend past the Old Vicarage. She decides to cut across the churchyard, and as she turns to do so a chill breeze ripples along the hedgerow. The weather has turned. It is as though they left in summer and have returned in autumn. The wind whistles between the headstones, eddying small whirlwinds of leaves. It’s late, almost midnight, but she can still see well enough, the dark shadow of the church picked out against the industrial glow of the city in the distance. Lily’s eyes dart, as always, toward the grave where her parents are buried. Sometimes she sees her mother here, as she was when they came to visit Dad, moaning and weeping like the women you see on the news after an earthquake. Auntie Vi used to say Mam was very Mediterranean in her grief.

  A sudden gust of wind tears open her cardigan, and one of the church bells tolls faintly, as though it’s a little embarrassed. The shadows slide and merge along the churchyard walls. Ahead of her and a little to the left there is a darker, thicker patch. Is there someone crouched there? She hears the echo of her footsteps and resists the urge to turn and look behind. She tries to shake off morbid thoughts. Daydreaming. Unproductive, her mother would call it. Self-indulgent, Edna would add.

  She negotiates her way past the kissing gate, using the opportunity to look back through the churchyard. She sees no one, but she can’t shake the feeling there’s someone there. Someone watching. She crosses the road and makes her way up the path to the cottage. As she steps through the gate she suddenly feels blissfully, inexplicably happy. Everything seems distant and fuzzy, as though the events of the day happened to someone else. She is home. She is safe.

  She pushes down on the handle of the front door and finds it locked. It’s nighttime; of course it’s locked. But something is wrong. She can feel it. She reaches into her purse for her keys but can’t find them. Her mother has joined her now. Hurry up, Lillian, what will the neighbors think? They’re hardly likely to be watching at this hour. Why is she here? What use is she in a crisis? Edna is the one who always knows what to do. It’s Edna she needs. It always has been. Edna!

  Lily drops the purse and runs down the path to the back door, a snail cracking underfoot as she turns into the garden. The back door is unlocked, and this alarms her even more than the locked front door. She steps into the trapped heat of the conservatory, clambering past all the folded-up garden furniture. A wasp batters drowsily at the plastic roof. She steps into the living room.

  Here is Edna. Facedown on the carpet. She has fallen forward into the fireplace, and the coals form a reddish halo around her head. The room smells of burned hair and makes Lily think of freshly chopped fingernails. She falls forward onto her knees and lets out the oddest noise—a sort of strangled, keening note. Edna’s lumpy body is heavy and stubborn but she pushes on one arm, gets her up, turns her over. The coals shift and spill, the fire flaring back to life until Edna’s head comes to rest once more in the embers. The orange glow of the firelight pulses in its charcoal prison. The heat licks at Edna’s hair, causing it to blacken and curl, the smoke launching heavenward in a sweet, sickly incense.

  Edna.

  The right side of her face remains largely untouched, just a brush of soot like she’s been up the chimney. But the left . . . The left is a half-mask of black and red ruin, her dentures lying half exposed and melted, her hair—that wispy, half-dead hair that she coveted so—is gone, exposing the scarred pink dome of Edna’s skull. The eye is the worst, though. The left eye. Sitting loosely in its socket, a bubbling, hissing mess of milky jelly. There’s no chance this eye can see anything anymore, and yet it looks straight into Lily’s heart.

  She backs away and sits down heavily in the armchair.

  You have to ring for help, says an echo somewhere behind her. Edna always knows what to do.

  Call Oscar, Edna says.

  “Yes,” says Lily. She glances out through the conservatory door and registers the furniture is in, all wrapped up and put away neatly. She wonders how Edna could have managed it all on her own.

  day five

  15006 pageviews—5 posts, last published

  Sunday, 18 September—3412 followers

  The Library at Alexandria, circa 48 BC

  Plutarch tells us of the siege of Alexandria, how Julius Caesar was forced to set fire to his own ships, the fire ultimately spreading to the docks and on through the city to the great library, with its 400,000 scrolls, parchments, and tablets.

  You’re no great historian, but you do like reading. What would you have done without the library? You spent more time there than anywhere. It was warm and dry, and generally the librarians left you alone. Provided they didn’t notice you. But then you were always good at hiding, weren’t you?

  Imagine what it must have been like for those bearded scholars, their togas flapping in the wind fanning the flames ever higher. Think of how much human learning was lost and never recovered. Perhaps one of those scrolls eaten by fire might have led to the early discovery of gravity. Or the invention of penicillin. How different human history, but for a single spark?

  What knowledge was destroyed in the grubby little offices of a solicitor? Less important perhaps, but you don’t want to take the chance. Admit it, though, your heart wasn’t really in it. Especially after your visit to the old woman’s cottage. The scream didn’t even fade this time, just pulsed in syncopated count
erpoint with the crackle and roar of the solicitor’s case files. You didn’t even stay to watch. Outside, the flames dancing behind the windows seemed dull and gray. You knew at once it wouldn’t catch. You don’t even know for sure the solicitor was involved. Did he know?

  The schoolteacher knew. You can still see her, standing in her little cottage, her back arched, her face contorted in pain. She saw you; you know that, don’t you? She saw you peering in through the window, and she knew. And you knew that she knew. Then her eyes rolled up into her head and she dropped, falling in slow motion, head crashing down against the stone hearth.

  That’s exactly how she went. A life extinguished. A snuffing out of all that past. All that knowledge and experience, all those long, long years, gone in an instant.

  Consumed by fire.

  POSTED BY thefirewatcher AT 6:08 AM

  12 COMMENTS

  Firebug69 said . . .

  Ah man! I fucking luv u! Check out this fit blaze from last night #firewatching https://twitter.com/twitter/statuses/725597041213247488

  Bazzameat1 said . . .

  That’s sick @Firebug69 I’ve only done rubbish bins

  Jenna1975 said . . .

  Is she dead then? How does the story end? I don’t get it

  Gigiono@hella said . . .

  This blog is boring af #getalife

  1 Next

  Tyler splashes cold water onto his face and rubs at his temples. He opens the door of the bathroom cabinet in search of help that isn’t there. Not so much as an aspirin. In the shower, he turns the water temperature down until it’s the colder side of lukewarm. The droplets of water evaporate against his overheated skin. He holds that position, face raised to the showerhead in supplication, cheeks radiating heat like the radioactive rods of a power station.

  Oscar is gone. He can’t remember when exactly, just that he was here and now he’s not. He has an image of them dancing in slow time across the laminate flooring to some jazz tune. A favorite of Gerald’s, apparently. Why did that idea not seem creepy last night? There’s not much he can remember about the evening at all. Just the two of them dancing forlornly in the dark. And the fact that Oscar kept buying them drinks.