The Fire-Eaters Read Free

and fire. There was them that said he was a proper magic man. There was some that humored him or tried to care for him. It was clear he was going toneed looking after. But some of the blokes … There's no end to cruelty, is there? One morning I found him in a heap on the stairs with his clothes all ripped and his skull cracked and blood all over him. What's happened? I says to him. Nowt, he says. Nowt. But he's crying like a bairn. He flinches. When I touch him his eyes is like a little desperate dog's. And the whimpering he made …I found a nurse and he never flinched while she stitched him. He just stroked my arm and said I was a bonny bonny lad. Poor soul.”
    “Wonder what brings him here now,” said Mam.
    “God knows,” said Dad.
    The lighthouse light turned. It became more brilliant as the daylight faded. We stood and breathed the sea air. We watched a late tern diving at the sea. Further along the beach, the sea coalers and their ponies dragged carts filled with coal from the sea. There was a girl's laughter and I peered toward it through the dusk. The air calmed. The sea calmed. It stretched like burnished metal to the dark dead-flat horizon. The lighthouse light became a beam that swept the sea, the land and then the sea again. We were silent and still. We hardly breathed, as if we didn't dare disturb such peace. Then Mam sighed at last. Dad lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it.
    “Such a world we live in,” said Mam.
    She smiled. She nudged Dad.
    “So, Mister Chef,” she said. “What wonders have you prepared to welcome us home?”
    “A banquet,” he said. “Come and see.”
    We headed to our house above the beach. A light burned in the window. Pale smoke rose from the chimney.
    “McNulty,” said Dad. “You'll have to take me, Bobby, show me where he was. Mebbe he'll be back in the same place again. Who'd believe it, after all these years.” He opened the little gate into our garden. He squeezed my arm. “He was always harmless, son. Don't be hexed by him.”

W e had his little pasties hot from the oven, with carrots and potatoes whipped into a cream. He gave me half a glassful of his beer. There was rice pudding, sweet and rich beneath its scorched skin. We mixed jam into it and sighed at such deliciousness. The lights were low, the curtains open. Every minute the window filled with light. Dad's thoughts kept turning to the war, to his voyage home, to McNulty.
    “Skin!” he said. “He said loads of stuff about skin. He said he'd seen men who dressed in the skin of a beast and became the beast. Men in lion skins snarling like lions. Men in antelope skins leaping like antelopes. Tiger skin, ape skin, snake skin. Put them on, he said, say the proper words, and you can turn to anything.”
    I rubbed my hand. A mark was left where McNulty's tiny drops of blood had fallen. Or was it a mark I'd alwayshad? I fingered the coin he'd given me in payment. I recalled his breath, his skin, his deep dark driven eyes.
    Dad lit a cigarette. His breath rasped as he inhaled. I cleared the table with Mam. In the kitchen, she crossed off yet another day from the calendar.
    “Just another week till that new school,” she said, and she beamed at me.
    The air grew cold. Dad threw more sea coal and lumps of driftwood onto the fire. I sat with him and watched TV. There'd been more nuclear bomb tests in Russia and the USA. President Kennedy stood at a lectern, whispered to a general, shuffled some papers and spoke of his resolution, our growing strength. He said there were no limits to the steps we'd take if we were pushed. Khrushchev made a fist, thumped a table and glared. Then came the pictures that accompanied such reports: the missiles that would be launched, the planes that would take off, the mushroom clouds, the howling winds, the devastated cities.
    Dad spat into the fire. He cursed and lit another cigarette.
    “This isn't enough for them,” he said. “This quiet, this beauty, this peace. Listen to them.