The Fire Starters Page 4

  At night I watched television as if it were another person in the room. I sometimes talked back to the screen. I paid my bills before they were due and went every day to a job I neither liked nor particularly disliked. Every week I ate the same meals on the same days and never drank more than two glasses straight, for fear of becoming a man who drinks alone. For exercise I ran three miles each morning on a treadmill in the spare room. It would have been pleasant to run outside with the cyclists and the early-day dog-walkers but I couldn’t bear the thought of being looked at and judged ridiculous. I didn’t allow myself room for self-pity. This, once admitted, would be the end. The end did not always sound like the most terrible thing. Sometimes it sounded like a very sensible option.

  Two years previously, while navigating the no man’s land between Christmas and New Year, I’d brought home from work a small brown cylinder of a prescription drug. It sat on my bedside table for a week, glowing beer-bottle brown in the lamplight. It demanded my attention and eventually I’d given in. I took the container in my left fist and held it there all night, quite definitely. It left the imprint of a rectangle in my palm. I slept with it close to my face, but not touching. Before falling asleep I’d entertained thoughts such as No one would find me for weeks, and What if someone finds me in time? I thought the despair would give me loud dreams, but I’d only dreamt of being asleep. The container lid slipped loose in the night, and in the morning white tablets were dotted all through my bedclothes. At first, because I’d been almost still dreaming, I thought they were teeth. I scooped up the tablets in my hands, as many as I could find, and flushed them down the en-suite toilet. It took three flushes and the time between for the water to gather.

  I was glad I hadn’t done it, whatever it was, with the tablets. I couldn’t say it in words. I had the dropped-belly feeling of a fall only narrowly avoided.

  ‘Things must change,’ I’d decided that morning, and said this, out loud, to the reflection of myself, ghost-faced, in the bathroom mirror.

  ‘You are still young,’ I told myself, ‘and you are reasonably good-looking. And it is not too late to make changes.’

  That same morning the article had appeared in the Belfast Telegraph. It took some swallowing, coming as it did directly after the night before. I read it very many times and underlined sections. Eventually I was able to call it a kind of sign but I could not attribute it to God.

  Belfast Is For Lovers, ran the headline. This initially caught my eye as a joke. It was not intended as a joke. I read on. The Northern Ireland Tourism Board wished to see the city pitched against the other great romantics: Paris, Venice, Berlin (before the Wall came down). Understanding that Belfast did not naturally scream passion (guns and drums aside), they’d decided to engineer their own romance. Singles were to be recruited and coupled off in believable pairs. Tall girls with tall boys. Bookish-looking souls together, all the better for seeing each other through their prescription lenses. Only girl on boy: nothing too modern. This was still Belfast, after all.

  For a hundred and fifty pounds per day, these fabricated couples would spend a weekend hand in hand or kissing in the Botanic Gardens and by the Peace Walls, at thirty different locations frequented by tourists. The tourists, seeing lovers everywhere they turned, would soon believe Belfast to be a truly European city. They would forgive the rain and the shops for not opening till lunchtime on a Sunday. They might even take photographs for the purpose of convincing the sceptics back home. ‘Look,’ they would say, arranging their Kodak prints across rustic kitchen tables in France or Spain, ‘Belfast is a very safe place to visit. It is a place of hope and love. Lots of love, like San Francisco in the sixties.’ The Tourism Board was certain this would happen. They needed only a little help from the young, for they were mostly middle-aged men in suits and thin-striped shirts, too old for kissing in public.

  I immediately knew this was for me. I drew a wide red circle around the entire article. The idea of it scared me immensely. I was fine as I was. I glanced at the empty pill container, waiting on the sideboard with the rest of the recycling. I was not fine as I was. Some large thing had to change and this would need to happen almost immediately. But surely I did not have to consider something so drastic. There were a hundred thousand safer options that could be tried first: dating agencies, walking groups, church or social drinking. I’d never seriously considered any of these before and I knew I would not consider them in the future. That morning a desperate kind of action was possible. Here was a bold chance presenting itself. If it was not taken there would be no such future chance. Ten years from now I would still be here in this quiet house, sleeping.

  The decision was made.

  There were contact details attached to the article. I wrote down the phone number on a Post-it note. Beneath this, I wrote the email address. Email would be easier. It would not require speaking. At first I didn’t believe myself capable of contacting the Tourist Board and then, after I’d applied, was sure I would not go to the information session, and even then, in a room with dozens of other twenty- and thirty-somethings balanced on stackable chairs, could not picture myself in the Palm House, embracing Stephanie beneath the banana plants.

  Then I was there, with her lips on my lips and her eyes staring into mine. I looked up and noticed the wide green leaves, like umbrellas, hanging over our heads. This is easy, I thought. Why have I never been in this situation before? The taste of Stephanie was like thin saline, swirling round my mouth. I was warm all over and melting. I couldn’t remember how I’d arrived in that place, with the tourists taking photos and the menstrual stench of warm greenhouse, sweating into my pullover.

  I began to think of spending Christmases and bank holidays with another human being, not necessarily Stephanie but someone similar, or Stephanie would also do. This was no longer a ridiculous thing to imagine. I grew bold on the idea of it, pushing my tongue into her mouth, though she’d not given me permission to do so. I held her hand before she reached for mine and was relieved to feel her fingers curling into mine. When we were scheduled to have short conversations while continuing to look lovestruck, we leant against the wall and talked. I discovered this was not such a difficult thing to do with a girl. Stephanie asked me questions and I answered and, in answering, thought of questions I might like to ask her, and did.

  The weekend went like a downhill sprint and suddenly it was Sunday afternoon. I hadn’t seen this coming. I had an ache in my jaw from kissing but was otherwise inclined to continue for the rest of the week. At five o’clock on the dot a man from the Tourist Board arrived at the Palm House. He took an official picture of Stephanie and me for publicity purposes, and gave us three hundred pounds each in white envelopes.

  ‘That’s you, then,’ said the man. ‘Thanks for helping us out.’

  ‘What about next weekend?’ I asked. But Belfast Is For Lovers was a pilot scheme, funded for a single session and stagnant till further funding could be sourced.

  The man left. He had the Ulster Museum to get to, the Tropical Ravine, then the quad at Queen’s, and it was almost closing time.

  ‘It was nice meeting you,’ said Stephanie.

  ‘You too,’ I replied, ‘thanks for everything,’ and then, because I was still a little fluid from all that kissing, added, ‘Would you like to go for dinner?’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Now’s great, or any time that suits, really.’

  ‘I have a boyfriend, Jonathan. I don’t think he’d like me going out for dinner with another fella.’

  ‘You’ve been kissing another fella for the last two days. How does your boyfriend feel about that?’

  ‘It was just acting, for the money. We’re saving up for a holiday. He knows all about it.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I felt like a person who’d leant too far and couldn’t stop himself falling. I would say the wrong thing to Stephanie now. The wrong thing was already in my mouth, preening itself for flight: ‘It didn’t feel like you were acting all weekend.’

/>   ‘I was acting, Jonathan. For the money.’ Her voice was knives.

  ‘Did you not like it?’ My voice was just as tight.

  ‘It was OK.’

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’

  ‘No, you did nothing wrong, but this isn’t a dating service. It’s an acting job. It’s only pretending.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, and later I would replay the conversation and cringe at my own desperation, which was like a small child’s, wheedling for sweets, ‘couldn’t we just pretend a little more?’

  ‘I have a boyfriend, Jonathan.’

  ‘We wouldn’t have to tell him. We could do this in secret or you could tell him that we got another job with the Tourism Board, in Bangor or some other town, doing the same thing.’

  ‘Why would I do that? I don’t even fancy you.’

  ‘You don’t have to. You can just pretend. That would be enough.’

  ‘That’s tragic. Why would you want to be with someone who doesn’t really like you? Haven’t you ever been in love with anyone, Jonathan?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if I can.’ That was the most honest I’d ever been with another human being. Just saying it made my nose pinch. A tear started coming out of my left eye. Stephanie reached up and dabbed it with the cuff of her sleeve. She was a nice person. I could tell that from the way she was deliberately looking at me and not laughing. She slipped her arms round my middle like a belt and pulled me into her. I could feel her breasts, like soft fists, angled against my ribcage. It was very good to be me right then. I was not accustomed to being happy and began to cry in heaves.

  ‘Oh, Jonathan,’ she said, and let out a damp sigh, ‘that’s just about the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. You must be so lonely. Why don’t you come round for dinner with us some night next week?’

  ‘I don’t want to have dinner with you and your boyfriend,’ I mumbled into the top of her hair. From such a height I could see it was blonde with brown streaks at the top. It smelt like fresh Christmas tree. ‘I want you to be in love with me.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Stephanie replied, drawing back. ‘I told you, I have a boyfriend.’

  ‘I could pay you,’ I said, ‘same rate as today.’

  This was when she slapped me. As her hand came towards my face I noticed that she no longer looked like a sympathetic person. Her mouth was a line and her eyebrows were angles and I could tell she was absolutely furious.

  3

  Burning Cars

  Sammy has been walking round East Belfast for almost three hours. He keeps his head down and his hands in his pockets, following the laddered lines of the smaller streets, up one avenue and down the next. He zigzags his weary way towards the Castlereagh Hills, to his semi-detached house and his son, who lives in the attic, orchestrating Armageddon without ever leaving his room. It doesn’t feel like home now he’s seen the Fire Starter video. Now he’s begun to see something familiar about the figure staring into the camera, spouting dark and dreadful sentiments. If Sammy’s honest, it hasn’t felt like home for years. The house seems smaller every time he walks through the door, as if the walls are inching inwards and the ceiling will soon be brushing against his head. He has no desire to go home today. He’s letting the street take him where it wishes, like a river tide or a person falling from a decent height.

  Commercial aeroplanes leaving and landing at the City Airport continue to pass overhead. They’re unaware of Sammy and the shape he’s spelling out as he walks. He’s too small to be seen from the sky. He’s a grain of sand, a dot, a pin, a misplaced punctuation mark. Even God would have to squint. However, if he could be seen from such a height, if, for example, you were peering through binoculars or some other magnifying lens, your eye would be drawn to him, dragging his heels from one street to the next, kicking an empty Coke bottle as he goes. You would know that Sammy did not belong on these streets, drifting.

  Miles below the flight path Sammy’s feet are firmly planted on the ground and he does not look up. His legs keep lifting and falling, right after left after right after left, like pistons nodding in an old-fashioned engine. He pauses for a moment on the corner of a larger street and searches his pockets for a cigarette. It’s years since he last smoked but today he’s bought himself a packet. Needs must. As the cigarette flares in his cupped hands he notices the trail of summer jets smoking away from Belfast to the mainland and those destinations beyond. He envies them their wings, their ability to up and leave. This requires a lightness he has long since lost. He keeps walking, dragging on his cigarette as he goes. Where the cars have mounted the pavement and there is no room to pass, he walks a midline down the road. No one stops him. No one smiles or lifts their chin to say, ‘Nice day,’ or ‘Morning.’ He has a face on him like a weekend funeral. Even the pigeons give him a wide berth.

  Every couple of blocks the pavement rises in cupped craters, curling at the edges, like the burnt black crusts of an overdone pancake. These are the remains of old fires. Some are fresh and still steaming. Some have solidified and, in solidifying, formed tiny cities, lumps, lows and charred logs rising from the ash, like Hiroshima or Nagasaki in miniature. They are a very specific kind of beautiful. Some are as wide as the street is wide and cannot be avoided, only waded through. Strands of molten tar attach themselves to the soles of Sammy’s shoes, stretching as he steps away, then letting go to snap silently back into themselves. He’ll have to be careful not to tramp it into the hall carpet. He wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of his wife.

  He walks past a burnt-out corner shop, several cars still smouldering and a postbox that has caught only on the inside, like a cast-iron stove. Its shell is still a bullet but its red paint has peeled in the heat, forming blisters, making a mockery of the royal crest. Clearly the young ones haven’t been listening to the rules. None of these fires are on the second storey. They’re starting to lose the run of themselves already, burning anything they can get their hands on. The burnt trees sadden Sammy most so he doesn’t look at them. He hopes that his son has seen these trees and the ugly way they’re holding up their charred branches. They remind him of burns victims running from a fire, their arms held aloft, their faces open-mouthed and melting, like that Edvard Munch painting students still pin to their bedroom walls. Sammy hopes Mark’s noticed the damage he’s causing. He hopes the boy feels dreadful, but something in him suspects Mark incapable of regret of any kind. Sammy keeps his eyes on his feet falling and rising. He’s all up in his head with the worry. He does not see the old man until he is almost standing on his toes.

  The old man is sitting directly in front of his house on an upturned bucket. He has a dog beside him, a Jack Russell so elderly it has developed the same loose belly and whiskery beard as its owner. It is both fat-looking and simultaneously frail, as is the old man. Age has taken the dog’s bark. When it opens its mouth to snap at Sammy, the noise that comes out is like the last arthritic gasp of a fish-tank pump. It is not the kind of dog you’d want to touch without gloves, but the old man is holding it as if it were a firstborn son.

  ‘Jesus,’ Sammy exclaims, bringing his feet to an abrupt halt. ‘What are you doing down there? I nearly landed on top of you.’

  ‘I’m just watching my wee house,’ says the old man.

  He keeps his seat so Sammy is towering over him, two foot taller at least. He can see the constellation of brown liver stains haloed round the old man’s bald patch. He can smell his old-man smell. It’s like burnt toast and paper, catching at the back of his nose. The dog lifts its head as if to snap. The effort is too much to sustain. It is a very elderly dog. The old man lays a hand on its head and it is almost instantly asleep.

  Sammy looks at the house in front of them. It’s a bog standard two-up, two-down with a hankie-sized lawn out front. There are thirty identical houses stuck end to end in this street alone. The only thing marking it out for attention is the fire. It’s burning from the inside out. Through the downstairs windows Sammy can see the flames climbing up th
e curtains in long red licks. The chesterfield suite – a brown and orange polyester affair – is already engulfed, the fire complementing its lurid, seventies print. Even from the pavement Sammy can feel the heat flushing against his cheeks and arms.

  ‘Your house is on fire, mate,’ he says. ‘Have you called the fire brigade?’

  ‘Not yet,’ the old man replies. ‘I’m for giving it a few minutes, just to make sure it’s properly caught.’

  ‘Did you do this?’

  ‘Course not. Some young lads done it.’

  ‘Wee bastards. They don’t know what to be at these days, starting fires all over the place. Are you all right yourself? You could have been killed. Them wee houses go up like petrol.’

  ‘Uch, I’m grand. I was out here with Towsie when it started.’

  ‘You could have been inside sleeping. They’ve no sense, these young ones, running around setting people’s houses on fire.’

  ‘Oh, no, son. You’ve the wrong end of the stick. I asked them to do it. I paid them a hundred quid to burn the place down.’

  Sammy looks hard at the old man. There’s a soft look off him, the sort of calmness you might catch on the surface of a puddle when there’s no wind and the sky is beaming back up at the sky. He doesn’t look at all upset about his house.

  ‘Is it the insurance you’re after?’ he asks, though he’s never heard of anyone going for the insurance on a two-up, two-down. It’d hardly be worth the bother.