A Story for Monday...

Good morning!

National Novel Writing Month began on Friday and I'm already 5000 words in. At this stage, however, I'm not liking what I've written; it seems self-indulgent and as yet I can't see how it's going to add to the plot.  It's early days, though, and I've discarded NaNo beginnings in the past and started again.

However, I do have other things on my list of Writing to Do.  I have three poems written for 100 Poets on Friday, and two more to write.  Tonight is the rehearsal, so the more I have ready for then, the better.

And tomorrow is Guy Fawkes' night, when we celebrate the fact that a terrorist act failed; that we celebrate with fire and explosions has a certain irony, perhaps.

So with a nod towards tomorrow's celebrations, today's story is a largely autobiographical account of Bonfire Night when I was a very small child.  Some names have been changed, some events have had the order slightly realigned, but mostly it's factual, a memory from long ago...


BONFIREWORKS

You’re four, or you might be five; it’s hard to remember everything.  But you’re little, and it’s getting dark and you’re getting excited. It’s Bonfireworks tonight.

In the kitchen it’s bright and warm and full of Mum. Mum is very, very big, twice as tall as you.  But then, all the other grownups are big, too; Dad, his long bony legs crossed one over the other as he reads his newspaper in the sitting room; AlananJohn, your two very big big brothers (they are sixteen and fourteen and so almost proper grownups now), who are presently trying to get in the kitchen with Mum asking for when tea is ready.  You go and stand by the door to the yard, where there’s a bit of room. There’s also gusts of creepy cold air because the door doesn’t fit properly and you can almost feel the dark coming at you with the draught.

‘Gilly, you go in now,’ Mum says. ‘Tell Daddy it’s tea time soon.’

After tea, which is chips and sausages, AlananJohn get their coats,

‘Tarra, Mam,’ they say. ‘Tarra.’

‘You be careful! Watch out for them boys from Landsdowne Road, you know what they’re like.  No fighting!’

‘Ar, hey, Mam!’ John grumbles.  They don’t really do fighting, you know that, it’s just playing, but Mum tells always them off for it, just in case.

And they go, out of the back door and it clunks against its frame, pushing a huff of cold, dark air into the house.

Time goes slowly and slowly. You’re waiting for Dad, but Dad is reading the paper again.  You look at Mum, who has folded her hands across her tummy as she sits, smoking a sigret in the chair. After another forever, Mum finishes the smoke and heaves herself up out of her seat.

‘Go and find your welly boots,’ she tells you.  ‘It might be muddy.’

You’re glad to be getting ready to go out, so you’re not as scared of the big, dark hall as you normally are; you’re too little to reach the lights and, anyway, ‘Lectrics are not for little fingers,’ Mum always says. You find your wellies and stuff your feet into them to save time.

Mum has your coat waiting and your mittens-on-a-string threaded through the arms for you.

‘This one tonight,’ she says.  ‘Someone might put a firework in the hood of your duffle coat. So you’ll need your hat instead.’

Mum thinks of things like this all the time.  You wonder why someone would want to put a firework in your hood, but Mum never says.  Sometimes it feels like everyone would be wanting to take you off to feed sweets to puppies (or something like that) or put fireworks in your hood or… it’s no wonder you feel so scared of things.

She is buttoning and tucking in and tying your scarf; she smothers your hair with the knitted hat she made for you.  It itches. By the time you are finally ready, Dad has got his cap and his scarf on and is fidgeting with a torch.

‘Batteries are going,’ he says, glum.  ‘Well, come on, Gilly.’

He reaches down his big, bony hand and you reach your mittened fingers up to him, stretching your arm.  The back door sticks.

‘Jack, that door’s getting worse; you really need to sort it out…’

But you’re out of the house now, going down the dark, sloping yard towards the back gate. Dad lets go of you and gives you the torch to hold.

‘Shine it on the bolt for me,’ he says, and you try to. The torch wobbles a bit, but Dad isn’t cross about it.  The back door opens and you both step out onto the cobbles of the entry.  Over the little, narrow street and there’s another entry; behind it is the long concrete lane that runs along beside the railings of the Top Rec where the swings are, to the end of the railings and the start of the Bottom Rec, which is where the boys from school come to do football and which is now full of fire and smells.

It’s an incredible sight.  You don’t have words to express your sense of wonder, but you look and look, and look, filling your eyes up with the colours while your ears explode with the sounds and your nose wrinkles at the taste of smoke and burned-up chemicals from the spent fireworks that hangs thickly in the air.

At least a dozen bonfires punctuate the flat, open landscape.  They are of differing heights, from low, humpy mounds made by other Dads for other children, to the huge, pointy mountain of wood that takes pride of place in the middle of the playing field, the joint effort of the Landsdowne Road boys, the brothers and friends of the Cavanaghs and the Murphys who live, all squashed up, five and six siblings each, in two three-bed corporation terraces opposite each other.  This mountain hasn’t been lit yet, and two of the Murphy boys are on patrol around it, making sure no-one sets it alight before they’re ready, or pinches any of the wood for their own bonfire.

Dad leads you around it, although he stops at one point to kick at something big and flat on the ground, thoughtfully.  Once you’ve gone past, the field opens out and you get a good view of the little family groups everywhere lighting their fireworks; there are reds and blues and vertical rushes of rockets, opening out into bursts of bright stars; there are bangs and flashes of green and the acrid, actinic smell of gunpowder; and near here, not far from the slope up to the top Rec is where AlananJohn have built their bonny, and there they are, waiting for you and Dad. It’s been lit, and is smoking hopefully, the flame catching on one side more than the other, but still, it’s there, orange crackly dancy flames singing to you, it seems, and their brightness is warm on your cold face, even if the smoke makes you cough.

‘Awrice, Dad,’ John says.  Dad nods at him.

‘Watch her a minute, will you? Al, you’re mates with Micky the Bricky’s lad Joey, yeah?’

‘Yeah…’

‘Come with us. He’s gorra door to burn.’

Dad and Alan go off towards the Landsdowne Roaders’ bonfire and John steers me towards our own little bonny, still flickering a bit, but burning better now.  There is a guy on top, he’s made out of one of John’s old jumpers that was too raggy to pull down and knit up into a new one, and he’s stuffed with newspaper. His face is a mask drawn on paper and coloured in by you yesterday, when it was rainy. But it doesn’t look like just paper and old jumpers now, it looks like a real person and he looks at you sadly and you look back at him and feel sorry that you ever made him, just so he could burn. You hope he will forgive you.

John looks up at a shout from Dad and takes you by the hand.

‘Come ‘ead. Cahn’t leave you ‘ere by yourself,  you know.’

‘Joey’s lettin’ us swap their door for ours,’ Dad says.’ Alan and I’ll carry it back, you can mind her a bit?’

John nods. He never seems to mind when he’s left to look after you. You like him, because he’s rude, sometimes, and it’s funny. He makes you laugh a lot.

Dad and Alan are gone ages, and you’re almost bored of bonfires when Dad comes back.  There have been fireworks going off all around, but they belong to other people and you’re scared of trying to see too much in case you get told off, or in case someone tries to put a firework in your hood and when they see you haven’t got a hood, they might try to put it in your pocket instead.  But Dad does come back, eventually, and takes your hand again and you trundle home through the dark, smelly night, and Dad has a cup of tea and it seems to take ages to get your coat and wellies off, and then it’s almost time to put them back on again.  And you have to look at The Door, too.

The Door.  It fills the gap between the kitchen and the yard completely, much better than the old one did.  The old one had a bar that you had to fit across it into holders on the wall both sides.  This door is a dark bluey green colour, it is made of planks that go from top to bottom with diagonal cross pieces and a sturdy middle bit with a place for a lock.  The bolt from the old door has been fitted to the new one at the top.

‘That looks better,’ Mum says approvingly.  ‘All it needs is a lock and it’ll be just like a proper one.’

And then AlanandJohn come back and you all go out to the side of the house to let off your fireworks.  You’re allowed to let fireworks off in the street, John tells you, but only on Bonfirenight or you might get arrested.

And they go up, up into the sky with a Scree! and a Whee! and a Whoosh! and the colours are bright and flashy and not scary at all, not here, under the street light and without the dark of the Rec and all the bonfire flames.  You get a sparkler to hold and you draw in the air with it and it looks like writing as it leaves a trail behind, hanging, in the air. But soon the last one has fizzled out and the firework tin is empty and you go inside for hot milk and it’s bedtime.

And as you lie in your cold bed, snuggling around your hot water bottle and waiting to warm up, you listen to the screech and scream and thunder of the big boys’ fireworks late into the night and you know it’s over for another year.  But that’s all right, because you noticed, tonight, the smell of the night air all cold and now Bonfireworks are over, the next thing on your childhood calendar is only a breath away, it seems, and you go to sleep at last and dream of Christmas.

First written November 2011