The Fire-Eaters Read Free Page A

They're animals, howling for blood.”
    He inhaled.
    “Maybe we should go far away,” he said. “Where none of their nonsense can ever reach us.”
    “Australia!” called Mam.
    She came through the door with my school uniform in her hands.
    “Australia! That's what it was going to be. I'll take you away to where it's hot and clean and new. That's what he said. Australia, my love! A new life! Come on. Put this on, bonny boy. Let me make those changes.”
    She drew me to her, put the blazer on me and giggled. She knelt beside me with pins gripped in her teeth. She snapped down my sleeves, turned up the cuffs to the level of my wrists, and tacked them with pins.
    “Keep straight,” she kept saying. “You'll finish no quicker by jiggling about.
    “Anybody'd think you'd be proud,” she said.
    I sighed and rolled my eyes at Dad and watched the window and let her have her way. The heat of the fire scorched my legs.
    “There,” she said. “Now let me look at you.”
    She pushed me away and sat back on her heels.
    “Fasten it up properly, then. That's right.”
    I saw the tears in their eyes as they smiled at each other.
    “Bobby,” she said. “Put it all on. Go on, love, with the new shirt. Go on. It won't take long.”
    I stood there.
    “Go on, eh?” said Dad.
    In my room I stripped off my jeans and sweater and put on everything: the socks and flannel shorts, thewhite shirt, the dark tie. I tied on the heavy black shiny shoes. And I replaced the blazer, the too-long, too-wide covering of black with golden battlements shining from its pocket.
    “Oh, Bobby,” she whispered when I went back down. “Oh, Bobby. What a man.”
    Then there came a knocking at the door. A deep voice called in from the dark.
    “Bobby! You in, Bobby? You coming out?”
    Mam's face darkened.
    “Joseph Connor,” she said.
    She looked at her watch.
    “It's too late,” she said.
    “Bobby!” Joseph called.
    “He's too old,” said Mam.
    She looked at Dad, and he smiled.
    “Come on, love,” he said. “It's still holiday. Give him half an hour, eh?”
    She clicked her tongue.
    “Not a moment more.”

I yelled that I'd be just a minute. I went upstairs and changed again. I ran into the dark. He was nowhere to be seen. I crossed the lane toward the beach. When the lighthouse light came round I saw a body draped across a heap of seaweed. It rose and leapt at me and wrestled me to the sand.
    “That was a pretty uniform I seen you in,” he whispered. “What a lovely little schoolboy you're gonna make!”
    I twisted and kneed him in the crotch. I rolled him over and sat on him and pressed his shoulders to the earth.
    “A pity that some of us is just too bloody thick to make the grade,” I said.
    He roared and shoved me off. I ran full pelt from him toward the sea.
    “Come and catch me, Dumbo!” I yelled.
    “I'll get you, nancy boy!” he answered.
    We ran a quarter mile or so. I waited for him at the water's edge. We leaned forward, grasped our knees, gasped for breath, roared with laughter. The water soaked the sand around our feet. He put his arm around me.
    “What'll we do?” I said.
    He took ten Players from his pocket. I shook my head when he offered me one. He lit up and breathed out a plume of smoke. I turned my face away. I saw flashing airplane lights move across the stars.
    “Let's go down the new kid's way,” he said.
    We walked on. We were bathed in light, then plunged into the dark.
    “I saw an escapologist today,” I said.
    “Aye? I seen Ailsa. She was asking where you were.”
    “I saw him stick a skewer right through his cheeks.”
    “I seen her again with her dad in the water getting coal. Not a stitch on her legs, Bobby.”
    “He had this … dunno. Power in him.”
    “Should've seen her. She says she's not gonna go to your school, you know.”
    “I know. She's daft.”
    “She says she doesn't see why she should just ‘cos she's proved she can.”
    “So she'll go to your place?”
    “Doubt she'll