by Peter Benson
Frank stood half-way up the stairs. He crouched, screamed, ‘Bob!’ again, and took another couple of steps. As he did, one of the fire-engines began hosing water. The jet slammed into the upstairs room, hissed on to the flames, and flooded under the door. The smoke thickened. Frank looked over his shoulder. The fireman was rubbing his face and licking blood from his mouth. ‘Bastard,’ he said. Frank shook his head, and climbed to the landing.
The smoke cleared for a moment, and Frank saw a picture on the wall. It was of a bowl of cherries. The bowl was blue, and it sat on a window-sill. There was a view of a summer meadow from the window, and green, spreading trees. The smoke thickened again, another hose was played on to the house. Glass splintered, and sheets of wallpaper blew alight. Frank tore at his jacket and left it lying on the floor; he waved his arms at the smoke, and kicked at the bedroom door.
It flew open. The heat blew Frank back. Flames filled the room, licked towards him, a river of water washed across the floor and on to the landing. The blue lights revolved, the noise of sirens mixed with splits and cracks and little popping explosions that went off all around him. He put his hand out and touched the wall. It scorched him. He wailed, ‘Bob! Bob!’ into the room, but no one called back. The sauna was a box of flames ten-foot wide, twelve-foot deep and tall. As he watched, the bedroom ceiling cracked from side to side, the tank in the loft split, and water poured down. The top of a ladder slammed against the window-sill, and a masked fireman appeared. He yelled, ‘Let it go!’ twisted the nozzle of a hose, and more water shot into the flames. A flaming plank of wood toppled towards Frank; he leapt to one side and shouted, ‘Bob!’ again, as the fireman on the stairs reached the landing. He screamed, ‘Get out! There’s nothing you can do!’ A sweet smell cut through the burning and clotted the smoke. The fireman at the window saw Frank, he waved him away, the other fireman ran into the bedroom and tackled Frank around the waist, Frank struggled but then he stopped and allowed himself to be pulled back. The seat of the fire sizzled, a frying and a popping. ‘What are you doing?’ The fireman held his belt and dragged him out of the room, along the landing and on to the stairs. Streams of water were falling all around. Another fireman was standing in the hall. He yelled, ‘Bernie!’
‘Yeah!’
‘You got him!’
‘Yeah!’
‘Any more inside?’
‘Dunno!’
‘Bob!’ Frank shouted. ‘He’s up there!’
‘Maybe one!’
‘In the bedroom…’
‘In the bedroom!’
The fireman in the hall ran out of the house and came back with two more men, who rushed the stairs. Frank was pulled down and outside, down the path and on to the street. A paramedic grabbed him, and shouldered him to an ambulance. He shook the man off, yelled, ‘I’m okay! Okay!’ and leaned against a car. He spat, wiped his face and his eyes pricked.
The three fire-engines were joined by a fourth, hoses covered the road and pavement, a crowd of sightseers had gathered, the flames melted a hole in the falling snow, and the sky began to glow. The sky looked like a disease. Radios crackled and the sirens did not stop. The jets of water arced and fell, a low rumble started to build in the air, and then a crack cut it, and the roof of Bob’s house yawned. The slates moved away, the felt crumbled, the joists splintered, flames blew out. The fireman at the window turned and waved his colleagues back. He twisted his hose off, dropped it, grabbed the side of the ladder and slid down. As he did, a length of guttering dropped off the side of the house and slammed into the ladder. He landed on his feet, the ladder toppled, the guttering flopped on to the lawn, he ran to the front door and yelled, ‘Out!’ as the other fireman rushed from the house. ‘MOVE!’ screamed a megaphoned voice. ‘NOW!’ as the roof blew open, hung suspended for a moment and then collapsed. The chimney went with it, the firemen ran, the scene misted, and flames blurred, the snow thickened, the blue lights revolved slowly, the walls of the house glowed, people’s voices slurred and Frank realised that he was watching through tears. He put his hands to his face, he put his knees to the ground, he spread his hands, he beat his forehead, he beat the ground and screamed. He tipped his head, snow settled on his face, and soot, and the tears swum, and a fireman put his hand on his shoulder. The touch burned, the human touch, the no point of anything, the no point of anything at all.
25
Brighton’s houses stood like stones in fields of snow. Its streets were deserted, its lights played games in the night, and the sea washed its lonely shore. The Palace Pier creaked. The Pavilion froze. Gardens dreamed. Clocks stopped. An aeroplane droned overhead, and a ship hooted through a distant fog-bank.
Women slept on their sides, men lay on their backs and children dropped in and out of their dreams. Cats lay curled beneath radiators, and dogs chased deaf rabbits across flat and windless fields. A Christmas tree with flashing lights and a pink fairy decorated an ironmonger’s window; a policeman stopped to look, then moved on.
A taxi-driver snoozed in his cab, the bus station was cast with deep shadows, and the railway tracks slid into the night. A milkman yawned and fumbled for a set of keys. The sky was clear, the snow was crisp and the moon shone brightly.
Footprints filled with fresh snow, and manhole covers steamed at their edges. Trees shivered in the freezing air, pigeons blew out their feathers and huddled together, and window-sills grew icicles that grinned in the night. A phone box shone on a street corner, and traffic lights blinked in time, hour after hour after hour.
The moon hazed blue light through Frank’s curtains. settled on his bed, and spread to the floor. He was sitting in a chair by the window, lost in a daze of disbelief. He leant forward and picked up a packet of cigarettes, lit one and sat back. His fluids pulsed through the organs of his body, and listened to their songs. He was a prisoner in himself, but he had been this prisoner before, on a bad day as his boots pinched and Janet Black told him she was leaving for Bristol. His dreams of a flat on the top floor of an old house collapsed, the view of the sea dissolved. He knew Ray Butts wanted to live in Bristol, he wanted to plead with Janet, he needed a voice, but as he spoke, the words clogged in his head and everything he wanted to say locked itself away, and would not come out.
He wanted to ask what she wanted, what he had to do to have her. Were the boots not enough? Did she want him to buy a motor bike? What sort of motor bike? He didn’t know, and as she carried on talking, and her mouth opened and shut like a bird’s, he realised that nothing he did or ever did would win her. He would never see her naked, she would never put her hands to his face and scream with delight at something he had done. Maybe money would attract her, give him a chance to show her what he was capable of, but he wasn’t interested in money, never and not at all. Ray Butts liked money, Bristol was money and Minehead where the sea sweeps in over the mud-flats and the wind picks up along the front and steals children’s smiles, Minehead was not money.
Janet Black left and Frank did not follow. His love drained away and left him with a cup of tea in a café and the boots of gorgeous leather in a carrier bag. He was numb for a week, angry for a month, regretful for another month and then he left for the south coast. The wind was warmer there, and he could start again.
A pipe gurgled above him, and a car door slammed in the street below. Frank was alert enough to hear, but the noises passed over him. He smoked slowly, and watched the fumes curl through the light and cloud across the ceiling. He looked at a lampshade. It hung above him like a moon, a private moon, and it moved in orbit around him. It threw a shadow that bled down the wall and touched the floor.
The phone rang.
Frank started, sat up and ran his fingers through his hair. He answered it; ‘Hello?’
‘Frank?’
‘Lisa?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Maidstone.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ She hesitated, and caught her breath. It w
as cold in Maidstone. She missed the sea already. ‘You?’
Frank sighed and shook his head. ‘There was a fire… I don’t know…’ He stared at the end of his cigarette, closed his eyes and whispered, ‘Bob died.’
‘Oh God.’
‘I can’t believe it…’
Now there was silence. The static on the line faded away, the snow stopped in Brighton, and no cars moved on the streets. The last train pulled out of Maidstone station, and Lisa stood at the telephone by the ticket office. Pigeons huddled on window-sills, and bottles of milk froze on doorsteps. She looked down at her bag. It was blue, and one of the handles was broken. ‘I was on the train,’ she said, ‘and I was thinking. Who needs me? Who really needs me? I wrote you a letter, but I threw it away.’
‘Maidstone?’
‘I came to see my father, I wanted to talk to him, but I realise now…’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got nothing to say.’ She waited a moment, she listened to Frank as he breathed and took a drag on his cigarette. ‘He never needed me,’ she said. ‘I like to feel needed.’
‘So do I.’
‘Sometimes I feel that I’m the only person in the world,’ She shivered. ‘I’m afraid.’
‘Fear,’ said Frank, ‘is a germ. You catch it off other people.’
‘I don’t know what to do.’ Lisa fumbled for a handkerchief, found one and held it to her nose. ‘I feel lost.’
Maidstone is fifty miles from Brighton, but the distance dissolved into the seconds that followed, so Frank could have been standing next to Lisa, or sitting opposite her while they ate seafood in a tiny back-street restaurant. It started to snow again, and Frank stood up, carried the telephone to the window and looked down at the street. An old woman in a warm coat walked by, and a policeman with a torch stopped to look at a dustbin. A seagull fluoresced across the sky, and Frank allowed himself a smile. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Lisa?’
‘Yes?’
‘Have you ever worked in a sandwich bar?’
‘Yes,’ she said, and Frank caught the word like a ball, and threw it high into the sky, so high that it touched the height of orbit and hung for a second like another moon, and this moon shone on Brighton, and all the houses in the streets of that antic town.
Also available by Peter Benson
Peter Benson’s new novel
OUT IN AUGUST 2012
David Morris lives the quiet life of a book-valuer for a London auction house, travelling every day by omnibus to his office in the Strand. When he is asked to make a trip to rural Somerset to value the library of the recently deceased Lord Buff-Orpington, the sense of trepidation he feels as he heads into the country is confirmed the moment he reaches his destination, the dark and impoverished village of Ashbrittle. These feelings turn to dread when he meets the enigmatic Professor Richard Hunt and catches a glimpse of a screaming woman he keeps prisoner in his house.
Peter Benson’s new novel is a slick gothic tale in the English tradition, a murder mystery, a reflection on the works of the masters of the French Enlightenment and a tour of Edwardian England. More than this, it is a work of atmosphere and unease which creates a world of inhuman anxiety and suspense.
978-1-84688-206-7 • 250 pp. • £14.99
Winner of the Encore Award, a trenchant critique of modern civilization, describing how one family’s tropical heaven becomes hell.
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Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize, a lyrical portrait of the landscape of the Somerset Levels and a touching evocation of first love.
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A beguiling and poignant novel about the fulfilment of dreams, the affirmation of life and finding love in unexpected places.
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A compelling tale of surfing and coming of age, and an intense examination of a young man’s struggle to establish his identity.
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Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, a novel exploring the evolution of an unlikely relationship, in a beautiful countryside setting.
978-1-84688-193-0
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Weaving in the dramatic events portrayed by the Bayeux Tapestry, an absorbing novel which brings to life a fascinating period of English history.
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240 pp. • £8.99