The Fire-Eaters (4 page)

“It's lovely,” I said, and we grinned.

“Aye,” he said. “It's lovely but you cannot stand it.”

There was still some summer heat in the sun. There were a few families on the beach, sitting on blankets. Kids screamed and played in the shallows. Dogs plunged into the waves. The wooden beach café was open; its tattered flag was flying in the breeze. Somewhere an ice cream van played “Oh, Dear, What Can the Matter Be.”

“But you,” said Joseph. “You'll be something really fancy. And you'll clear off. And we'll never meet again.”

“No, I won't.”

“Yes, you will.” He punched me and we giggled. “We
both know it. But never mind. Who could blame you? And we're still mates for now.” And then he pointed. “Well, I never.”

It was Daniel, all alone. He had his jeans turned up, and he was wading through the sea.

“What brings buggers like that to a place like this?” said Joseph.

“Me mam says they work in Newcastle.”

“Aye, but why come here? Keely Bay! It's nowt but coaly beaches and coaly sea and nowt going on. It's bliddy derelict, man. It's had its day.”

I looked around: the dunes, the beach, the patch of pine trees to the north, the ancient timber holiday shacks, the rooftops of the scruffy village. Further inland, the pitheads with their winding gear, the distant moors.

“Mebbe they think it's beautiful or something.”

“Beautiful!” He elbowed me. “Is that the word? Howay, let's go and introduce ourselves.”

We stood up and shuffled through the sand and crossed the lighthouse headland. Daniel was at the rock pools, lifting stones, inspecting the water, putting the stones back again. He held something for a moment on his hand and we saw him smile before he put it into the water again.

“Ah,” said Joseph. “Doesn't he look sweet?”

He strode across the rocks. I followed, a couple of steps behind.

“Hello, new kid,” he said when he was ten feet away. “I said hello, how d'you do, nice to see you.”

Daniel stood calf-deep in the clear pool, sandals in his hand. He had a loose striped T-shirt on. His skin was tanned. He held his hair back, looked at us through clear blue eyes.

“I said hello,” said Joseph. “Are you deaf or daft?”

“Hello,” said Daniel.

He bent down and tugged at another rock.

“Are you pestering our crabs?” said Joseph. “Poking our starfish?”

He picked up a fist-sized stone and lobbed it into Daniel's pool.

“Joseph, man,” I whispered, but he took no notice.

“Leave them poor little beasts alone,” he said. “What they done to you?”

Daniel didn't look at us. He stepped out of the other side of the pool and started to walk away.

“Are you a nance?” said Joseph. He sniggered. “You must be.” He nudged me. “He must be! Deaf and daft and a nance.”

There was a drone of engines in the sky. Daniel looked up, but it was just a plane banking over the sea before it headed into Newcastle. He looked back.

“I'm Joseph Connor!” said Joseph. “And this is me mate Bobby Burns! Watch your step, bonny lad. You'll never know when we're about.”

Daniel walked on, waded homeward through the sea again.

Joseph laughed.

“What's wrong with you?” he said.

“Nowt,” I answered.

“Good. He's got to learn whose place this is. Hoy!” he yelled. “Nancy boy!”

Daniel just walked on.

Joseph took a sheath knife out of his pocket, took the knife out of the sheath and held it up. He touched the point and laughed through gritted teeth.

“Howay,” he said. “Let's play war.”

W
e went into the pines. The earth was soft, the light was dappled. It was a place where everybody loved to play, and it was a place where lots of kids went to war. Away from the footpaths there were holes and dens and trenches. Ropes dangled from the trees, some of them with nooses at the end. Kids' names were carved into the bark. The names went ages back, back to the time my dad himself was just a kid. Ever since anybody could remember, this was where kids played out battles against the Germans or the Japanese. The pines became the Somme, the Burmese jungle, the coast of Normandy, the streets of Berlin. Kids became cowboys or American Indians and stalked each other with guns and tomahawks. They turned into Christians and Muslims slashing each other apart during the Crusades. Kids were tortured, hanged, drawn and quartered. They had their hearts ripped out by Aztec priests, they were
thrown to the lions by Ancient Romans, they were bludgeoned by cave dwellers wielding clubs. Some days the place rang with cries and screams and laughter: Kill! Get him! String him up! Die, you fiend!

Joseph threw his knife and it thudded into a tree. He laughed.

“Gan on,” he said. “Pull the knife out. Then try and get me.”

I went to the knife, pulled it out, and suddenly he was at me, wrenching it from my hand, holding it to my throat.

“Too slow, little Bobby,” he said. “I'd've had your throat cut before you knew it.”

He laughed again.

“Mebbes I'll be a commando and not a builder,” he said. “Travel. Adventure. War.”

He stabbed the tree.

“Got ya!” he said.

We ran through the trees carrying fallen branches as if they were guns. We dropped into a trench. We peered over the edge. Through the trees we saw the people on the beach. We set up a mortar and cupped our ears as we set it off. We hunkered down and made the sounds of distant explosions. Then we peered over the edge again.

“There's still survivors,” Joseph said, so we set the mortar off again.

We played an hour or so like that, dealing imaginary
death and mayhem to Keely Bay; then we sat together against the rough trunk of a pine. Joseph cleaned his knife, stabbing it time and again into the sandy earth until its blade was gleaming.

“Kid got knifed at school last term,” he said. “One of the third-years. It's true,” he said when he saw my amazement. “A little cheeky kid called Billy Fox. Nowt dangerous. He just got it in the arm.” He put his knife back in its sheath. “Makes you think, though, eh.”

We stood up and headed back.

“Slog Porter from Blyth done it. He's a cracker. Really bloody scary. It's the last we'll see of him, I hope.”

Closer to the beach, the smell of chips came from the café. Joseph breathed deep.

“Bliddy lovely,” he said.

He lit a cigarette.

We passed a couple lying close together behind a windbreak. Joseph nudged me. Their tinny transistor played pop, then moved on to the news. The sound faded behind us.

“Do you think there'll be another war?” I said.

“A war?”

“The Third World War. Atom bombs. The end of everything.”

“Why, no,” he answered. “Me dad says we've grown out of all that stuff.”

In the water, some kids were squealing that they'd seen a shark.

“Mind you,” said Joseph, “if there is a war, I'll be there. A commando.” He lifted his knife and dived at a phantom in the sand. “Die, you fiend!”

I
was just wiping the sauce off my mouth after lunch when I heard cart wheels rumbling in the lane outside. Ailsa and her brothers and her dad went past the window. Their ancient pony, Wilberforce, was pulling their cart. Ailsa sat in the back, on top of a heap of coal. She leaned down and peered in and saw me there and waved. Her face was nearly as black as her hair and her eyes were sparkling bright.

Mam laughed.

“Coaly scamp,” she said. “Just like her mother was, God bless her soul.”

Ailsa's face went out of sight, but the voice rang out.

“Bobby! Howay, help us, Bobby, man!”

I grabbed an apple and went after them and Mam yelled I'd better make sure I had a damn good wash before I came back in.

They were just a few yards past the house. Ailsa's dad and her brothers Losh and Yak were walking.

“Bobbeee!” Ailsa yelled when she saw me.

She reached out a hand and I grabbed it and Yak shoved and soon I was up there with her.

“Are you looking for work, lad?” said her dad.

“Aye,” I said.

He spat out a black stream from his black face.

“Then you'll have some tanners in your pocket by teatime.”

We trundled on.

“We're hoying this off,” said Ailsa. “Then we're going in again.”

The lane was all potholes and the wheels kept slipping and we rocked and slithered on the cold damp coal. She lay back like it was a mound of warm soft sand. I sat beside her. There were gannets and larks and gulls above us. A flock of pigeons clattered past.

“Look at this, Bobby,” she said.

She dug in a pocket and brought out one half of a broken metal heart attached to a rusted chain.

She rubbed it with her fingers.

“We're always finding little treasures in the coal,” she said. “Look, there's words on it.”

She scraped them with a little penknife. She showed the words to me. We deciphered them together.

Without my other half I am as nothing.

She laughed.

“What a tragic little tale there could be there,” she said. She put the half-heart in my hand. “Go on, it's yours. Daddy! Tell that silly Wilberforce to stop his rocking.”

“Stop that rocking, horse!” her dad yelled, and we all laughed.

We came to their house, an old redbrick place with rusting lean-tos all around. There was an ancient pickup truck and heaps of coal and scrap metal. Behind the house, an allotment garden ran toward the dunes. Huge flowers were blooming there. There were onions and carrots and potatoes, all in neat straight rows. There was a greenhouse filled with gleaming red tomatoes. There was a bright blue painted pigeon loft with its doors wide open. The flock of pigeons clattered and wheeled above us. Chickens squawked and pecked in the yard.

Ailsa jumped down and ran into the house and put a kettle on the gas. I helped the men to shovel the coal from the cart. We all drank mugs of tea, standing in a group outside the back door.

“Your mam and dad OK?” said her dad.

“Aye,” I said.

“Not seen him down the Rat.”

“He's not been getting out much,” I said.

“No? He's working, though?”

“Aye. But he's on holiday this week.”

“You'll be off to the Riviera, then?”

“Mebbe. Or mebbe we'll just go to Worgate again.”

“Hahaha. That's where we're ganning and all. There or Worgarden.”

He swiped his fist across his lips. He glugged his tea.

“You know,” he said, “there was a time it looked like that dad of yours'd be setting up in competition.”

“Aye. He's told me.”

We grinned. It was the tale of how in his young days Dad got himself an old pram and a shovel and a sieve and started to try to get the coal, and how it led to nothing but jokes and laughter from Ailsa's dad's lot.

“Aye,” said Ailsa's dad. “They were hard days, that's the truth of it. He didn't mean no harm. And he was called up pretty soon so it came to nowt.”

He kicked a chicken from under his feet.

“Tell him I've been asking,” he said, and he looked me in the eye. “He's a good man, that dad of yours. And a good woman is your mam. Now then, lads. And little lass. Let's get splashing. Wilberforce! You got any life left in them bones?”

W
e went to the sea. I rolled my jeans up past my knees but it was useless. In seconds I was soaked. Ailsa's dad and brothers wore ancient chest-high waders. She was bare-legged.