The Blooming Fire

The Fire by RDQ

Aged ten, I used to make my own way to school; a fifteen-minute stroll that took me from my quiet, tree lined street and into the shadows of the three giant tower blocks that stood sentinel over the busy Birchfield Road. Those concrete goliaths are now long demolished. Brought low, presumably, by Birmingham City Council rather than by Jack and any Beanstalks.

On a late June morning in 1984, I was passing through the piss-scented underpass of Birchfield Road, when I suddenly chanced upon a bright orange cigarette lighter that winked up at me from the concrete floor. It was one of those clear, plastic disposable affairs and, as it was filled to the brim with fluid, was likely to have been recently purchased but subsequently lost by its unlucky owner. Picking it up for inspection, I remember the lighter having one of those tiny horizontal sliders that adjusted the height and strength of the flame. I struck it with my thumb a few times and gazed at the writhing blade of flame before stuffing it into the zip pocket of my wind cheater.

Maths had always been my weakest school subject and I was weary of the daily self-flagellation of working through the Peak Mathematics textbooks, with very little support, encouragement, or actual teaching from Mr Loach, my class five teacher. If I became stuck – which was often – I joined the queue of at least half a dozen similarly muddled pupils at Mr Loach’s desk; all stood meekly like cows waiting to be milked by the maid. Impatiently, Loach would demonstrate how to complete the particular maths concept that had been giving us trouble and then brusquely send us packing back to our designated tables.

Loach was a prematurely grey man in his mid-thirties yet, while not obvious to me at the time, it is clear now that he was bored and jaded by his profession. His foul breath always smelled like the inside of a teapot, and he always wore a formidable cologne that simultaneously reminded myself of pear drops, leather and my mom’s old paraffin lamp. Following any mathematical consultation with Mr Loach, I would frequently return to my designated seat at the ‘Saxon’ table scratching the top of my head like Stan Laurel; none the wiser and often even more confused.

Over on the ‘Spartan’ table, the mathematically proficient powered through each of the textbooks, much to my disdain and envious resentment. Although, I took small comfort from the fact that I was not sitting at the ‘Roman’ table, who toiled through books that I had completed a year earlier.

During a maths lesson before lunch, on the day that I found the cigarette lighter, I was busily staring dumbly at a page of ‘missing number’ calculations when someone at the ‘Saxon’ table suddenly farted, loudly. It would not be amiss to state that bored primary-aged children often find loud farts amusing; particularly when they require an amusing distraction from the longstanding teaching pedagogy of simply allowing children to work independently through tedious textbooks. So, true to form, I laughed. As did my Saxon neighbours. The reddening pallor of Inderjit Singh’s cheeks told us of his guilt. Mr Loach told us firmly to stop laughing. I immediately complied but moments later I caught a strong whiff of the sulphurous and mildly curry spiced odour and let out another half disgusted splutter of laughter. Mr Loach slammed down his red ball point, startling the bovine-eyed ‘Roman’ table pupils, all queued up at his desk, as though he had jabbed each of them with a cattle prod.

“Russell, get out” he snapped, “I can’t have you in here if you’re going to behave like a two-year-old!”

Having already become quite familiar with being banished for even minor infractions, I simply got up, left the room, crossed the corridor into the cloakroom, and sat on the bench beneath my windcheater. I was now at least safe to let out the deep sigh that Mr Loach had once described as “huffing and puffing”.

At the start of that school year, Mr Loach had taken a palpable dislike to me. I had always been a giggly, chatty and enthusiastic child - which I now understand, for a 1980s educationalist perspective, translates as immature, insolent and competitive - yet my initial offence was to contradict my new teacher about a matter that was close to both of our hearts; World War 2.

One morning, on the playground, back at the start of the new school year, I had asked Mr Loach if he had seen the classic war film ‘A Bridge Too Far’. The movie was shown on television that previous night and I had been allowed to stay up to watch it. Loach told me that he had already seen it at the Gaumont Theatre, not long after its cinematic release. We spoke enthusiastically about the film, and I genuinely believed that my new teacher and I were building some rapport. That was until he mentioned that he enjoyed the German language scene in which Generalfeldmarschall Manstein suspected that the allied paratroopers were attempting to capture him and not necessarily the bridge at Arnhem. I knew immediately that it was not in fact Manstein but Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model. I pointed this out to Mr Loach but he dismissed this fact out of hand.

“I’ve seen the film twice” he sighed, “and I’ve read a couple of military history books about that battle. It was Manstein”.

Although I was certain, my next big mistake was dragging other boys, who had also watched the film, into the conversation and attempting to coax the detail from them. None of them could really remember or even cared and wandered away to join a game of football. Consequently, my relationship with Mr Loach never recovered. He spent much of that whole school year, sarcastically asking me to fact check any number of random things about which he claimed I was the expert.

“So, Professor Queensborough sir, in which year did Ethelred the Unready agree to give the Vikings Danegeld? You don’t know sir. Well, I’m surprised sir. I thought you were the quite the authority on matters relating to history.”

So, there I was, sitting once more in the cloakroom staring dully at the rows of light summer jackets and school bags that hung like overripe fruit from the coat pegs. The bag of the grimly unkempt and social leper, Tracey Cooper, stank greasily of chip fat, cats and, curiously, of digestive biscuits. The bag belonging to my friend Carl Gregory - who had a head full of waist length dreadlocks - smelled of jerked fish and ganja. Growing up in Handsworth in the 1980s, amidst the Caribbean and South Asian diaspora, most kids my age knew the scent of ganja fumes. No matter how many times I shoved my nose into the fabric of my own school bag, I could never detect any specific odour. However, given the home that I was raised in, to someone else, my bag probably smelled of cigarettes, tins of spaghetti bolognaise and Custard Creams.

On all those occasions that I served time in this solitude, I would listen out for the muffled sounds of daily school life; one or more teacher barking at a class, chairs being scraped across floors or piano led songs drifting to me through the breeze block interior walls.  Sometimes, the headmaster, Mr Havelock, would stalk by the cloakroom and catch sight of me slumped conspicuously on the bench.

“Sit up boy!” he would rumble militarily from under his moustache, “And what are you doing out here again?”

I would dolefully reply and then he would give me stern orders to stand to attention outside his office at break or lunchtime.

It never ceased to amaze me how each of those twenty minute detentions felt like two hours, particularly when you could hear the hue and cry of children at play and the ping and thud of a plastic Wembley Trophy football against the tarmacked playground.

Whilst banished to the cloakroom, if I was lucky, Mr Havelock would simply not appear or, if he did, sometimes he’d fail to notice me. I would then breathe a sigh of relief as the sharp sound of his footsteps faded away along the corridor.

But on this portentous day, following a brusque command from Mr Havelock to stand yet again outside his office, I suddenly remembered the cigarette lighter. I turned and retrieved it from my jacket and stared at it. Nonchalantly, I struck it and watched the flame burn, yellow, black, purple and orange. I then leant towards my left side in order to stuff the lighter into the right pocket of my trousers but then I felt something tickle my forehead. At first, I thought it was a spider’s web but hanging loose above me was a long, black thread emanating from the inside of my cheap windcheater. Curiously, I gave it a tug and felt something alarmingly unravel within the jacket.

It then occurred to me of a time when I had observed my mom using a lighted match to burn away a loose thread from the inside cuff of a tracksuit top. I retrieved the lighter and struck it again. Slowly, I held the trembling flame against the black thread. My memory of the next moment is clear; the flame rapidly travelled the length of the thread like the fuse of a firework. The jacket suddenly began to fold in on itself as though invisible hands were crumpling it into a ball. Then a sudden eruption of blue flame like the time-lapsed blooming of a spring flower.

I started back from the bench and stared in horror and panic at the immolation of my fake Nike windcheater. My first immediate thought was that Mom was going to kill me; for destroying the jacket that she had so skilfully haggled the price down at the Bullring Market.

Terrifyingly, another jacket also became engulfed in flames, soon followed by my friend Carl’s. The spreading fire swiftly produced a noxious smoke that clutched chemically at my throat. My bowls and bladder felt as though they had turned to water. What happened next is a blur. I have no memory of descending the stairwell to the ground floor or even exiting the school grounds. I simply remember sprinting along Winfield Road, sobbing and furiously rubbing my face with the palms of my hands.

As I continued running, I tripped over and upset the soapy contents of a bucket belonging to an elderly Asian man who had been washing his car. The man shot curses at me in Urdu, but I fled without offering any apology or mitigation. Luckily, the elderly man was not inclined to give chase but more disconcertingly, the sound of the school’s fire alarm pursued me for at least another mile.

Out of breath and lightly jogging, I decided that, as I was now officially a criminal arsonist and likely the murderer of approximately one hundred and fifty primary aged children, I would seek my fortune in London, like Dick Wittington. Mom was bound to disown me and send me to an orphanage or worse, send me to live with my errant father in his high rise flat. I just needed to get my head down for one night whilst I sourced a red spotty handkerchief and a stick to carry over my shoulder, Dick Wittington style, before I hopped and skipped down south along the M6.

During the previous Whitsun holidays, at Perry Barr Park, my friends Marlon, Curtis, Carl and I, had constructed a den out of the frame and single mattress of a cabin bed that we found illegally dumped in the car park. I decided that this would be a good place to lay low before my relocation to London. The plan was foolproof; the park had plenty of fruit trees (so I wouldn’t starve) and the den itself was hidden deep in shrubbery and was waterproof, more or less. Not long after the den’s construction, we covered it over with a tatty piece of kitchen lino, dragged out of a skip.

As I entered my new temporary billet, school shirt bulging with underripe crab apples and rock solid pears, I suddenly froze, certain that I could hear the distant sound of fire engines. This further confirmation of my crime caused my stomach to heave, and my mind spun wildly like fairground Waltzer’s. I quickly hauled myself out into the shrubbery before throwing up. Much of the fruit spilled out from my shirt, a few of which rolled through the steaming vomit before further coating themselves in an unappetising layer of soil and leaf litter.

Re-entering the den, I huddled myself away into the furthest corner from the entrance and silently screamed into my fist.

The den was the exact width of the single mattress, which we used as a comfortable base. The sides and roof were crafted from a jigsaw mishmash of the cabin beds original panelling, random pieces of cardboard and bed slats.

Despite my despair, I soon noticed that the interior walls were now liberally decorated with a Jackson Pollock style rendering of snail and slug trails. I’ll also never forget the fusty smell, a humid blend of pet shop, urine and unwashed shin pads.

I sat and sobbed, cradling my knees. I had killed all of my best friends. They were all dead. Marlon, Curtis and Carl - they had all been burned alive. Even the reception kids and all the teachers because I had been a fool with a fag lighter. In my very furtive imagination, I saw all the mothers wailing at the charred school gates and saw local television news footage of tiny body bags being carried out of the blackened, smoking shell of the school building. The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, would be on television, languidly droning about how the perpetrator must be apprehended and brought to justice.

Maybe running away to London was not such a good idea after all. Perhaps I could steal aboard one of those slow moving freight trains like rugged fugitives in Hollywood movies or perhaps stowaway on a container ship until it reached mainland China. I was in serious trouble.

Not like the time I broke a window, or accidentally spilled nail polish remover on my mom’s newly painted dresser. Nor when I was caught pocketing a few loose plastic toy soldiers that I ‘found’ on the floor of a toy shop. Probably worse trouble than the occasion when my mom found a ragged copy of Fiesta magazine stuffed under my mattress – she hadn’t swallowed my sincere assertion that I was not remotely interested in the photographs of naked ladies but the lengthy article about Austin Allegros.

During those long hours huddled in the den, my ears discerned the time of the day by the telltale park sounds that filtered in through the shrubbery and cardboard. Sometime after midday, I could hear elderly people chatting and playing bowls on the green and the only children visiting the park were evidently preschoolers or babies being carried along in rattling prams. Gradually though, as the shadows outside the den began to lengthen, school aged children started to turn up at the park to play. Footballs were being kicked, bicycles ridden and teenagers swore and showed off at the playground. A south Asian family passed close by to the den, talking quietly in Gujarati and all quite oblivious to my renegade presence.

My thoughts then turned to my mom who by now should have learned the terrible news. She would be frantic with worry and yet apoplectic with rage. I’d be receiving a beating with her leather belt for sure. A belt beating was a very rare event however she threatened me with it almost every day. 

“I’m gunna batter yow, if yow don’t stop antagonising yer sister!”

“I’m gunna take that belt to yow, if yow keep pulling that face every time I ask yow to do something!”

Back then, there was no ‘naughty step’ or modern style gentle parenting in my house. Mom seldom gave us a measure of leather as corporal punishment was administered freely with an open palm that clapped buttocks and thighs with stinging accuracy. However, for burning down the entire school and killing half the kids in Handsworth, I would be deservedly receiving the whole length of her leather belt and possibly its buckle too.

By early evening, it had become dank and uncomfortably cool. The light was failing, and the sounds of the park and voices began to fade. I chewed miserably on one of the pears; it was tough, tasteless and oddly dry. I’d missed my free school lunch that day and had begun to feel quite sorry for myself. But then I remembered all the tiny body bags and wailing mothers. Margaret Thatcher was probably being given a tour of the disaster area and Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, would be consoling Reggie Gregory, the Rastafarian father of my friend Carl.

By nightfall, the interior of the den was black as pitch and as cold as a coffin. Miserably, I sat wrapped in my arms. My stomach growled incessantly and I pondered, salivating, on what my family might be having for dinner. Yet, the thought of that leather belt put the brakes on any idea of slinking home in disgrace.

That evening, the police turned up at about nine-thirty. I heard a vehicle arrive in the nearby car park and listened warily to the rolling crunch of tyres on gravel. Car doors were opened and closed. Then footsteps. I froze. My heart skipped a beat when multiple torchlights began sliding across the shrubbery in the vicinity of the den.

The female voice, soft and brummy, “It’s over here, where he’d said it be”.

He? Someone had snitched. Marlon, Curtis or Carl? But at least one of my friends had avoided having their carbonated body identified by any dental records.

The male voice, very brummy and deep, “Bloody hell, I’d never have seen it”

The female voice, “Am I going in or you”?

“You goo,” sighed the male voice.

My instinct was to run but I was cold, exhausted, and half starved. Inside, I felt utterly defeated. Being on the lam had been no fun. I had no money, no proper food, no spare clothes and no spare anything and, by that hour, the prospect of being fed a plate of Heinz spaghetti bolognaise on toast very much outweighed any fear of Mom's belt.

Dazzling torchlight began to probe the entrance and the bright flashes illuminated the gaps in the den’s construction. As the torchlight washed over the den, I saw the snail and slug trails shimmer like gold. 

The female voice, “Is anyone in there?”

I crawled out of the den and shoved my way through the shrubbery which snagged and snatched at my clothing. Exposed out in the open, I was at once forced to shield my eyes from the glaring torchlight.

The male voice “Well, well, well. Yow must be Russell!”

I was immediately taken home.

On the way, as the police car drove through the orange, streetlamp haze of Birmingham, I was duly informed and much relieved to learn that no one had died in the fire. Heroically, Mr Loach had quickly put out the flames with an extinguisher. The school secretary, Mrs Brown, reported that she had seen me running through the school gates at a speed close to Mach 10.

Sitting in the rear of the police car and crunching on a biscuit bar, I learned that a dozen or so school bags and coats had been destroyed and the cloakroom likely needed redecorating, but the school building itself would suffer no lasting damage. I explained what I was attempting to do with the lighter and the loose thread and was called a “silly sod” by the female voice.

As the police car pulled up outside my home, I saw Mom standing in the downstairs front window, hugging herself. She soon flung open the front door. I gingerly walked towards her up the garden path, half expecting her to be clutching the looped leather belt, ready to rock n roll, but she silently wiped away a tear with a knuckle and muttered, “Get in you”.

As I slunk cautiously past her into the hallway, the female police officer began to explain to Mom where I’d been found. She also told her my story about the lighter and the loose thread. Mom stared down at me, lightly shaking her head in both wonderment and scorn.

“Is this true?”

“Yes mom, I swear”

“Mr Loach reckons you did it deliberately”.

“No mom, I didn’t. I only ran away coz I thought I’d started a proper fire that would burn down the whole school”

“Where did yow thinking yow were running to? China?”

Dumbfounded at her accuracy, I was about to confirm that this had actually been one of my plans, but she cut me off.

“Doesn’t matter anyway” she clipped, “yow could have runaway to the moon but I’d still have bloody come after ya with that blooming belt”.