The Fire Fighter Read online

  After his gym work and a massage, with the burn of embrocation deep in his muscles, Finlay went to a pub called The Lemon Tree close to the gym, off Bedfordbury. It must have been a place popular with the theatre crowd, because posed pictures of actors with their signatures and dedications faded to bronze on the prints lined the pub walls in little wooden frames. There were pictures of Gielgud and Olivier and Redgrave in heavily made-up faces and clumsy wigs. The wig Olivier wore in his picture was the same coarse-textured, dead, blonde colour he kept seeing on women in the streets. Only Olivier wore his in bangs that fingered his pained, chiselled face. Finlay recognized Leslie Howard, wearing his own hair under brilliantine. There were some ballet dancers in even heavier make-up than the stage actors, but he couldn’t have put a name to them. There were heavily busted women and jowly men with exaggerated expressions and double chins whom he assumed sang opera. There were actresses, too: Flora Robson, Anna Neagle, a couple of ballerinas with long legs and eyebrows plucked disdainfully. Jessie Matthews looked ripe, Greer Garson wistful. There was a picture of Greta Garbo with the light searching out her features from below, giving her lips a voluptuous darkness and her eyes a cold, commanding glitter. This picture reminded him of Rebecca Lange. There was no resemblance, feature by feature, to effect the recollection. It was the beauty and the glamour and the hint of disdain. Finlay realized that he was thinking a lot about Rebecca in her absence. And it was an absence, something a part of him persistently and genuinely felt. He was missing her. His eyes alighted on a photograph of Errol Flynn, blandly handsome, absurdly barbered, grinning through his eyelash-sized moustache. Finlay didn’t have any feelings one way or the other about Flynn. Errol Flynn was an Aussie movie star who got paid a lot of money for making films dressed up as a pirate, or as Robin Hood. Good luck to the bloke. Finlay just hated Nevin’s leaden jokes comparing him with the actor.

  There seemed to be a lull in the coming of winter, as well as in the coming of aircraft bearing bombs. Sunlight dappled the street when Finlay left The Lemon Tree and the warmth of it spread across his shoulders through the serge of his tunic. He looked up, blinking, but even the sky was not bereft of the symbolism of war. Barrage balloons, snagged clumsily by mooring ropes, sat large in the sky amid the occasional spit and snarl of patrolling fighter planes. The blue beyond them, though, was pure and blameless. The vacancy of the sunlit sky seen from the streets, its unsullied vastness, made the war seem momentarily to Finlay something small and shifting in the scheme of things; a stain that would fade and vanish from the world the vaunting sky looked down on, without trace.

  The West End streets were crowded and eventful in the autumn sunshine. Cordoned-off buildings in danger of collapse, piled sandbags protecting buildings still intact and bomb craters narrowed the once expansive thoroughfares and, alert to the siren, almost everyone walked. So the motor traffic was thin, but the pavements thick with people. Finlay passed men in uniform and bawling street vendors and spivs and tarts and the odd toff and policemen, magisterial and middle-aged in blue gabardine. Sometimes he would search faces for clues as to how they were taking their war. But most had mastered the look of slight preoccupation people seemed to prefer to the look of anxiety or naked fear. Finlay was coming to the belief that fear was finite. He didn’t think that men and women were naturally brave. He had seen too much ungovernable terror to be convinced of that. But fear was so enervating, so exhausting an emotion, he felt that eventually it simply ran out, and when you’d had your ration of fear you had to replace it with something that could pass for apathy, or resignation, something more manageable and less wearing on the visage, less corrosive to the soul.

  On Charing Cross Road, for no reason he could have explained, he stopped abruptly in the middle of the street and turned around. Thirty feet back along the pavement, facing him, Grey’s silent prize-fighter stood staring into Finlay’s eyes. He was wearing a sand-coloured overcoat with braided leather buttons and epaulettes. He rocked on his heels and continued to stare. His hands were thrust like bulging clubs into his pockets. And then he smiled. And the smile was the most dismal, empty-eyed mockery of a smile that Finlay had ever seen. And dismayed, confused by just how crestfallen that smile made him feel in the bright day, in the populous sunshine, he crossed the road and entered a ramshackle lane full of shops selling antique books and old jewellery, intent on twisting this way and that through London’s labyrinth, to get away from whatever it was that was signified, or sanctioned, by that ghastly, death’s-head grin.

  Eleven

  She had lit only two of the gas lanterns illuminating her sitting-room. They hissed and whispered on the wall behind them, throwing light over the sofa on which they sat. She had turned the flame of each down so low that the room did not seem to extend much beyond the sofa. Music reached them from somewhere in this contrived darkness. To Finlay it sounded mournful; a Sunday plod along the paths of a park in the rain, trees leaf-soaked, bowed under their burden of water, dripping.

  Rebecca smoked steadily, as she had since their arrival at her flat.

  ‘Do you object to listening to this?’

  Finlay shrugged. He did not want to sound unintelligent. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘A bit melancholy.’

  ‘Melancholy?’

  ‘I don’t think I’d like to have been the person who composed it.’

  ‘Claude Debussy,’ she said.

  ‘Sounds French.’

  ‘Very,’ Rebecca said. ‘I don’t think he could have been anything else.’

  ‘Not with a name like that, he couldn’t,’ Finlay said.

  It was a question of momentum. He wanted to take her in his arms and occupy that crimson mouth with his; peel off her blouse, haul her skirt up the length of her thighs. In this light her skin would have the yellowy colour of cream. But his first and last attempt had taught him that Rebecca did not welcome clumsiness. So instead, he sipped from his glass of wine as she ground out another cigarette. And he listened to Debussy. A man entirely unaccustomed to doing so, he waited and hoped that the mood might alter and develop of its own accord. He didn’t think it would. The only thing he knew with any certainty was that, with Rebecca, he was out of his depth. Her lighter flame flared and he became aware of being studied, scrutinized, in deep shadow and inadequate light.

  ‘You are such a beautiful man,’ she said. ‘Of course, you must have been told so many times.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘I’m not a liar,’ Finlay said. ‘Beautiful is not a word used in English to describe men.’

  ‘Not even by women?’

  He thought about this. ‘My mother said I was a beautiful baby. My Aunt Cath agreed. I think there was some bias there, though.’

  ‘And your father?’

  Finlay smiled.

  ‘Dad used to hold me high, throw me in the air and catch me. He used to call me bonny; his bonny, bonny boy. I think bonny is a Scottish word.’

  ‘Meaning beautiful?’

  ‘Meaning plump.’

  She reached over and punched his bicep and her hand slipped along his arm to the elbow and she paused, perhaps aware of his density in the dark, his musculature, his defining weight and stillness. The tip of her cigarette, in her other hand, burned comet-bright above them both.

  They kissed, a long kiss, until Rebecca broke it.

  Finlay groaned.

  ‘It’s trust,’ she said. ‘I have to know that I can trust you. You cannot imagine how alone I am, Jack.’

  Finlay thought that he could.

  ‘What can I say? How can I justify your trust?

  She was silent for a moment.

  ‘Tell me about your father.’

  ‘On condition that you tell me about yours.’

  He could almost hear her thinking. Then she nodded.

  ‘Go on,’ she said.

  ‘He was a war hero,’ Finlay said. ‘He killed Germans. And then one summer afternoon in ’nineteen-sixteen the Germans killed him
.’

  Finlay almost heard the click of calculation in her brain.

  ‘Do you remember him?’

  ‘Barely. He was big and kind. He always smelled of coal-tar soap under the smell of whatever it was he had unloaded that day on the docks. He used to bring home an orange every night for me and Tommy. Exotic fruit. Tangerines, Mandarins, Jaffas, blood oranges. Sometimes a melon. One time, a big bunch of Jamaican bananas. He laughed and sang a lot, it seemed a lot to me, anyway. And he used to put his arms around my mum and nuzzle her neck at the sink and tickle her with the bristles on his chin.’

  ‘Who is Tommy?’

  ‘My younger brother.’

  ‘A hero, you say. Was your father decorated in the war?’

  ‘Twice.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘He wouldn’t talk about it.’

  ‘But there must have been a citation?’

  ‘A citation. Of course. Christ, your English is good.’

  ‘The citation?’

  ‘He led a small party charged with taking a trench. They took the trench. My father was armed with a light machine-gun. He got into the trench undiscovered, through a shell crater that went under their wire where our side knew from aerial reconnaissance there was a fire break. So he was able to slither into the trench, round the fire break, and come at the men defending the trench from their unprotected flank. The second medal was for bringing a wounded officer back to our lines after a failed assault. He volunteered for that job.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he talk about it?’

  Jack coughed to clear his throat.

  ‘He said he saw men do braver things practically every day. Said medals, gongs he called them, were awarded pretty much at random. My mum says none of the men who were there talked much about what went on at the front.’

  Rebecca twisted towards the ashtray balanced on her arm of the sofa in the dark. Her movement was urgent. Finlay knew from that and from her tone of voice that this part of his personal history was interesting her.

  ‘What happened, after he died?’

  ‘I went to the bad. And then the bullies came for Tom.’ Finlay lapsed into silence, remembering this.

  ‘Continue, please,’ Rebecca said. Along an arm he could barely see, her bracelets clattered. Finlay resolved then, should he ever see her naked, it would be utterly naked. He would take the clips and horned combs from her hair, tease the rings from her fingers and slip the amulets over her wrists. All she would wear for their coupling would be her scent.

  ‘Tell me what happened after the death of your father.’

  ‘On every last Friday of the month, there was a fight on the docks. Sometimes it would involve a seaman from one of the visiting ships. More often it would be two dockers. Sometimes a Catholic might fight a Prod. A Mosleyite might be matched against a Red. But no pretext was needed, really.’

  ‘This with bare knuckles?’

  ‘Never. A docker’s hands are the tools of his trade,’ Finlay said. ‘They’d bind their knuckles in rags secured with tape for protection. Biting and gouging weren’t allowed. In summer they’d fight on the quay and in winter in a warehouse with braziers supplying the light, because in the winter months they’d not finish the shift until after dusk. Anyone wanting to watch was charged a threepenny bit. There was plenty of betting, obviously.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Bouts were refereed and rounds timed. The referee was there to see that none of the losers got kicked to death by a vindictive winner.’

  ‘And to stop the biting. And the gouging,’ Rebecca said. ‘Your father fought?’

  In darkness, Finlay nodded. ‘Often. It was winner take all and all those threepences added up. I think he may have bet on himself as well. It meant we could go on a holiday to Ireland every year and see Mam’s family at Christmas.’

  ‘So he was successful,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘He only got beaten once. A Thai stoker fractured his jaw with a roundhouse kick. My dad beat the stoker so badly in the rematch they had to stretcher him back aboard his ship.’

  Finlay thought about his father’s hands, gently chucking his chin, taking his own hand to safely cross a road, fastening the stiff toggles of his Sunday coat. Patrick Finlay had never laid a finger on his son. His mother had done whatever smacking had been deemed necessary in their household. When it came to disciplining Jack, a frown of disapproval was as close as his father was able to come to physical chastisement. It had been enough. Young Jack had an abiding dread of disappointing his dad.

  ‘The sons of local men my father fought and beat fair and square on the docks would chance their arm with me,’ Finlay said, ‘egged on by men who should have known better than to single out the children of a widow. It was all right. I could hold my own. I didn’t always come out on top against lads older than me, but I made bloody sure I was no fun to fight. Then, like a wanker, I started setting fires and I got locked up for a couple of years and so of course they began to pick on Tom.’

  ‘What’s a wanker?’

  A beat of time passed. And then Finlay laughed out loud.

  ‘How crucial is it for you to know?’

  She tapped his side with her knuckles. ‘I’m pulling your leg, Finlay.’ And then sober and serious: ‘tell me about the bullying.’

  Finlay sighed. Even to himself the sigh sounded painful, the soughing of abject sorrow through unseen shapes, through the fabric of the room.

  ‘Tom was the best athlete I’ve ever seen. Even as a toddler, you could see it in him. He would run as a toddler, I never once remember seeing him content to walk, and he’d move so fast and so lightly that you’d swear his little feet glided weightless across the ground. By the time he was eleven, he’d broken every under-sixteen record in the north of England from the hundred-yard dash to the mile.’

  ‘They would not have bullied such a boy in Germany,’ Rebecca said. ‘Is your little brother dark or is he blond?’

  ‘He can run like the wind, our Tommy. He can do pretty much anything with a football. Any kind of ball. But he couldn’t fight a cold.’

  ‘He couldn’t what?’

  ‘I got enough of my father’s strength and belligerence to be able to fight. The honest truth is that I enjoy fighting, especially when the bloke on the receiving end deserves what he’s getting.’

  ‘Like my Irishman.’

  ‘Exactly like your fucking Irishman. But Tommy couldn’t fight. And his pride wouldn’t allow him to tell my mum. And so every single schoolday for the two years I did in Borstal, a sadistic fourteen-year-old bastard called Hangy Todd made my brother hand over the money my mum used to give him for his school dinner. And if Tommy didn’t have it, Hangy would hawk and spit in Tommy’s mouth. And sometimes when he did get the money, he’d spit in Tommy’s mouth just for fun. For two years. Until Tommy started skiving—’

  ‘Sk—’

  ‘Playing truant. And my mum confronted him and he broke down and it all came out.’

  Rebecca was silent.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘That Hangy is a strange name for a boy.’

  ‘A nickname he got from wearing handed-down jumpers. His big brothers were really big. So was his dad.’

  ‘But not big enough to best your father,’ Rebecca said. ‘When you were released from reform school, did you confront Hangy Todd?’

  ‘That isn’t the point,’ Finlay said. ‘The point is that my brother had the joy taken out of his childhood. And it was my fault.’

  Rebecca was silent. Finlay could hardly hear her breath. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘How passionate you sound. What did you do to Hangy Todd?’

  ‘You don’t want to know,’ Finlay said. ‘Blond, by the way. Our Tommy is blond.’

  She was silent for a long time. Debussy had stopped his maundering on the gramophone. From darkness there came the sibilant hiss of the gramophone needle. There was a clock, too, ticking at either end of a pendulum swing.

  ‘Did
you never think, Finlay, that you, too, had a right to joy?’

  He thought about this.

  ‘No,’ he said, truthfully.

  He had met her with flowers from the train at King’s Cross. The late afternoon was bright with autumn sunshine. Columns of men in greatcoats, wearing packs, obstructed the concourse with resignation on grey faces and cigarettes crimped between their fingers. Steam rose aromatic from tea wagons and belched and billowed from locomotives on the platforms. Bomb blast had taken many of the panes from the great glassed arches that formed the station roof. Golden light shafted through them, thick with tremulous motes.

  ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,’ a soldier said, bathed suddenly in one of these pillars of lambent light, and his mates laughed. The soldier had said the words in a broad West Country accent. Easing through their column and looking at their faces, Finlay wondered which of these pals would not survive the war.

  He saw her before she saw him because he was looking and she was not. She walked slowly towards him along the platform with one hand in the pocket of her unbuttoned raincoat and the other carrying an overnight bag. She had on a grey waisted pullover and her thighs moved, alternate and slender, under the tight fabric of a long skirt in a darker shade of grey. Her narrow waist was emphasized by a broad belt that was shiny, like patent leather. Other passengers disembarked around her, spectral in the platform steam. But to Finlay, watching, it seemed as though Rebecca approached him singled out by the light, her lips red and her hair tawny, falling around her shoulders like a shawl threaded from gold. Her face was pale and he knew that what he had said to her on their first meeting was true. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. The stems of the flowers were damp in his fist with his tightening grip and he was forced to breathe deeply to counter his quickening pulse. A steam whistle shrilled and she looked up and now, no more than fifteen feet away, she saw him, looked into his eyes, her own registering recognition quickly and surprise, and then the ripple of a grin broke across her face. She dropped her bag to the ground and ran to him and he hugged her tight, and when he looked into her face, he saw only delight. Until he died, Finlay would be able to close his eyes and remember the perfect pleasure registered at that precise moment by the features composing that achingly lovely face.