The Collected Short Fiction

The Guy (1973)

You can't hide from Guy Fawkes Night. This year as usual I played Beethoven's Fifth to blot out sound and memory, turned it loud and tried to read, fought back faces from the past as they appeared. In September and October the echoes of lone fireworks, the protests of distant startled dogs, the flopping faceless figures propped at bus-stops or wheeled in prams by children, had jarred into focus scenes I'd thought I had erased. Finally, as always, I stood up and succumbed. Walking, I saw memories, fading like the exploding molten claws upon the sky. On waste ground at the edge of Lower Brichester a gutted bonfire smouldered. Children stood about it, shaking sparklers as a dog shakes a rat. Then wood spat fire and flared; a man dragged off his boy to bed. Defined by flame, the child's face fell in upon itself like a pumpkin wizening from last week's Hallowe'en. He sobbed and gasped, but no words came. And I remembered.

A papier-mache hand, a burning fuse, a scream that never came-- But the memory was framed by the day's events; the houses of the past, my own and Joe Turner's, were overlaid by the picture I'd built up from behind my desk that morning, the imagined home of the boy who'd stood before me accused of setting fireworks in a car's exhaust pipe: drunken father, weak wife, backgarden lavatory, all the trimmings--I could see it clearly without having seen it. My parents hadn't liked my change of ambition from banker to probation officer; faced with the choice, I'd left them. "Don't you know they all carry razors these days?" my father had protested round his pipe. "Get yourself a little security. Then you can help them if you must. Look at your mother--don't you think the clothes she gives away mean anything?" Referred to, my mother had joined in. "If you deal with such people all day, Denis, you'll become like them." The same prejudices at which I'd squirmed when I was at school: when the Turners moved into our road.

Joe Turner was in the class next door to me; he'd started there that term when the Turners had come up from Lower Brichester. Sometimes, walking past their house, I'd heard arguments, the crash of china, a man's voice shouting "Just because we've moved in with the toffs, don't go turning my house into Buckingham Palace!" That was Mr Turner. One night I'd seen him staggering home, leaning on our gate and swearing; my father had been ready to go out to him, but my mother had restrained him. "Stay in, don't lower yourself." She was disgusted because Mr Turner was drunk; I'd realised that but couldn't see how this was different from the parties at our house, the Martini bottles, the man who'd fallen into my bedroom one night and apologised, then been loudly sick on the landing. I was sorry for Mr Turner because my parents had instantly disliked him. "I don't object to them as people. I don't know them, not that I want to," my father had said. "It's simply that they'll bring down the property values for the entire street if they're not watched." "Have you seen their back garden?" my mother responded. "Already they've dumped an old dresser out there." "Perhaps they're getting ready for a bonfire," I suggested. "Well, remember you're to stay away," my mother warned. "You're not to mix with such people." I was fourteen, ready to resent such prohibitions. And of course I was to have no bonfire; it might dull the house's paint or raze the garden. Instead, a Beethoven symphony for the collection I didn't then appreciate. "Why not?" I complained. "I go to school with him." "You may," my father agreed, "but just because the school sees fit to lower its standards doesn't mean we have to fall in with the crowd." "I don't see what's wrong with Joe," I said. A look spoke between my parents. "Someday," said my mother, "when you're older--was

There was always something about Joe they wouldn't specify. I thought I knew what they found objectionable; the acts schoolboys admire are usually deplored by their parents. Joe Turner's exploits had taken on the stature of legend for us. For example, the day he'd sworn at a teacher who'd caned him, paying interest on his words. "Some night I'll get him," Joe told me walking home, spitting further than I ever could. Or the magazines he showed us, stolen from his father as he said: he told terrifying stories of his father's buckled belt. "I Kept the U.S. Army Going," by a Fraulein; my vocabulary grew enormously in two months, until the only time my father ever hit me. I felt enriched by Joe; soon it was him and me against the teachers, running from the lavatories, hiding sticks of chalk. Joe knew things; the tales of Lower Brichester he told me as we walked home were real, not like the jokes the others told, sniggering in corners; Joe didn't have to creep into a corner to talk. In the two months since he'd run after me and parodied my suburban accent until we'd fought and become inseparable, he showed me sides of life I never knew existed. All of which helped me to understand the people who appear before my desk. Even the seat behind my desk belongs to Joe as much as to me; it was Joe who showed me injustice.

It was late October, two weeks before the bonfire, that fragments of the picture began to fit together. From my window, writing homework, I'd watched early rockets spit a last star and fall far off; once I'd found a cardboard cylinder trodden into the pavement. That was magic: not the Beethoven. So that when Joe said "I bet you won't be coming to my bonfire," I flared up readily. "Why shouldn't I?" I attacked him, throwing a stone into someone's garden.

"Because your parents don't like us." He threw a stone and cracked mine open.

"We're us," I said loyally. "I'll be coming. What's the matter, don't you like it up here in Brichester?"

"It's all right. My father didn't want to move. I couldn't care less, really. It was my mother. She was scared."

I imagined I knew what he meant: stones through the front windows, boys backing girls into alleys, knives and bottles outside the pubs; I'd probably have been as scared. But he continued "She didn't want to live where my brother was."

We ran from a stretched rain and stood beneath an inscribed bus-shelter; two housewives disapproved of us and brought umbrellas down like shields. "Where's your brother now? In the Army?" In those days that was my idea of heroism.

"He was younger than me. He's dead." The umbrellas lifted a little, then determinedly came down.

"Hell." I wasn't equipped to deal with such things. "What happened?" I asked, curiosity intermixed with sympathy.

"Of course only ill-brought-up boys try to impress with made-up stories," came from beneath the umbrellas.

Joe made a sign at them in which I hurriedly joined. We went out into the thinning lines of drizzle. I didn't like to ask again; I waited for Joe to take me into his trust. But he was silent until he reached our road, suburban villas pronged with TV aerials, curtains drawn back to display front-room riches. "You won't really come to my bonfire," he repeated suddenly: his eyes gleamed like the murderer's in the film we'd surreptitiously seen last Saturday, luring the girl towards his camera with its built-in spike.

"See if I don't."

"Well, I'd better say good-bye now. You won't want to be seen near your house with me."

"You watch this!" I shouted angrily, and strode with him arm in arm to his door. Joe beat on the knocker, which hung by a screw. "You're not coming in, are you?" he asked.

"If you've no objection." The door opened and Joe's mother appeared, patched jumper, encircled eyes and curlers: she saw me and frowned. "I'm Joe's friend," I tried to ingratiate myself.

"I didn't know he had any up this end." But she closed the door behind us. "Your father's not feeling well," she told Joe.

"Who's that?" a man's voice roared beyond the hall, the ancient coatstand where an overcoat hung by a ragged tag, the banister wrenched dangerously by some unsteady passage. "Is that Joe just come in? Have you been spilling paraffin round the house, you little bastard?"

Joe's mother glanced at him and winced, then hurried with Joe towards the voice. Left alone, I followed. Vests hung in the kitchen; Mr Turner sat in vest and braces at the table with his feet up, spitting into the sink, a Guinness at his side. "Of course he hasn't, Fred," she intervened unevenly.

"Then it's you," her husband shouted at her. "You've got that trunk hidden somewhere. I'll find it and fix it for good, my girl, don't you worry. I heard them moving round in there last night."

"Oh, my God," Mrs Turner muttered. "Shut up, will you, shut up, shut up..."

Her husband snarled at her, tried to stand up, raised a foot and thumped it on the table. "You watch out, my girl," he threatened. Then he noticed me in the doorway. "Who the bloody hell's that?" he yelled.

"A friend of Joe's. I'll make some tea," she told me, trying to ignore her husband's mumbling.

"I'll do it," Joe said; he seemed anxious to please.

"No, it's all right. You go and talk to your friend."

"I'll help you carry it in."

"Don't bother. I can manage." She looked at Joe strangely, I couldn't tell why: I know now she was scared.

"How much bloody tea do you think we've got in this house?" Mr Turner bawled. "Every little bastard Joe brings home gets a free meal, is that what you think?" I'd become the victim and I didn't like it; I looked at Joe and his mother in turn, attempting to convey my regret for having been a witness, for my incomprehension, for fleeing, for everything. Then I escaped from the misshapen house.

In the next week our walks home were jagged with silence, the unspoken. I said no more about Joe's brother; nor did he. The bonfire approached, and I waited to be invited again; I felt that my experience in Joe's house had rendered our friendship unstable. Meanwhile, each night as I worked in my bedroom, hissing trails of sparks explored the sky; distant shots resounded like warfare. One night, a week before Guy Fawkes, I abandoned my history homework in the middle of a sentence, stared round my room, at my father's inherited Children'so Encyclopaedia beneath my Army posters, and stood up to gaze from the window. Three gardens from mine I could see the Turners'; during the day they had built their bonfire. The moon was up; it gleamed in a greenhouse like eyes. On top of the bonfire, above a toilet seat and piled planks like a gutted roof, stood the guy. Its arms were crucified across its wooden body; it swayed in a breeze. Its head turned back and forth beneath the moon; its paper face lifted to me. There was something horrible about that featureless grey expanse, as if eyes which should have been watching me were not. I drew back from the window and opened my door, for downstairs I'd heard my father say ?--paraffin."

"To have a bonfire after that," my mother said; a glass clinked. "It's unfeeling. They're like animals."

"Hold on now, it wasn't ever proved," said my father. "You can't condemn someone without a fair trial."

"I know. You've only got to look at him. I know."

"Well, we'll agree to differ. Remind me tomorrow, I must buy that Beethoven."

Nothing about a trunk. In a far garden a ball of fire leapt up screaming. I picked up my history sentence, and next day, drop-kicking a can to Joe, I said "What was your brother called?"

"Frankie." Savagely he kicked the can against a bus-stop. I wanted to trust him. "You never did tell me what happened," I prompted.

His eyes fastened on the can; they glazed with fear, distrust, the look I've seen before my desk when I've enquired into family backgrounds. He strode exaggeratedly to the can and crumpled it beneath his heel. Suddenly he muttered "We had a bonfire. It was going out. My father got a can of paraffin and we threw it on the fire. It spilled on Frankie. We called an ambulance, but they didn't come in time."

I was silent; it hadn't helped my trust. "I bet they all think we're cruel round here, having a bonfire this year," Joe said.

"They don't know anything about it. Anyway, you're not," I told him. I couldn't repeat what my parents had said: I wasn't ready to oppose them.

"It was my mother's idea to have one this year. I think she wants to make me forget." Or somehow to prove to herself that she was wrong to suspect: not that I made this connection then. "I don't want to have a bonfire all by myself," Joe continued.

"You won't. I'll be there," I said. Some part of me trusted him.

At dinner on Guy Fawkes Night, after my usual taste of table wine, I told my parents "They've let us off homework tonight," which was true. "I'm going to see The Bridge on the River Kwai with some friends from school," which wasn't.

"I don't see why not," my mother said. "Joe Turner won't be there, will he?"

"No, he won't." He wouldn't.

"You won't have time to listen to this, then," my father said, reaching beneath The Times on the coffee table to produce Beethoven's Seventh. For a moment I was ashamed: they trusted me, they bought me presents, and I betrayed them. But they condemned Joe without ever having met him. I knew Joe; I'd seen how withdrawn his parents were from him; tonight he'd be alone if I didn't keep my word. "Thanks very much," I said, and took the record to my room.

Night had fallen; curtains glowed and shadows moved. I glanced back, but my parents weren't watching. Again I felt a twinge of shame. In the sky around me it had started; green stars sparkled blue and fell; the twinkling blue star of an ambulance swept past. I stood before the Turners' door. Mr Turner swearing, drinking; I didn't want to face that. Once more I was ashamed; if Joe could stand him, it was up to me to do so for Joe's sake. I knocked.

Mr Turner pulled the door from my grasp. "Oh, it's you," he said, falling against the door-frame, hooking his braces over his shoulder. I half expected him to close me out, but he seemed triumphant about something. "I'm not the bloody butler," he said. "Come in or don't, it's all the same to me."

I heard voices in the front room; I entered. Joe was on the floor, counting out fireworks: volcanoes, worms, wheels, stiff-tailed rockets. Around him stood boys I'd never seen before; one had a headscarved girl on his arm and was fondling her. I knew they were from Lower Brichester. I looked at Joe, waiting to be greeted. "There you are," he said, glancing up. "These are some of my friends from where I used to live."

I felt out of place, no longer important, in a sense betrayed; I'd thought it would be Joe and me. But it was his home; it wasn't my place to judge-- already I'd determined not to harden prejudice as my parents had. I tried to smile at the girl. She stared back; I suppressed my suburban accent. Ill at ease, I stood near the door, peering into the hall as Mrs Turner came downstairs. Her eyes were red; she'd been crying. She confronted her husband in the kitchen, out of sight. "Well, now you've built your bonfire, aren't you going out to watch?" she demanded.

"It was your idea, not mine, my girl. I'm not getting dressed to go out and play with all his little bastards. I've done my bit for the bonfire," he laughed.

"You're scared," she taunted. "Scared that you might see something."

"Not me, my girl. Not anymore. I'm not going to hear them moving about anymore."

"What are you saying?" she cried, suddenly audibly afraid--and Joe said "Wake up, everyone, time to start." We carried fireworks through the kitchen; Mr Turner's feet were on the table, he lay back with his eyes closed, smiling; his wife turned from him to us with a kind of desperation. A vest dripped on me.

The gravel path was strewn with twigs; what had been a flower-bed was now waste, heaped with wood. The girl tacked Catherine wheels to the fence; the boys staked out the soil with Guinness bottles, thrusting a rocket into each mouth. I glanced up at the bonfire against the arcs of fire among the stars, remembering the wooden figure like a witch's skeleton at the stake. "Where's the guy?" I asked Joe.

"Come on, you lot, who's got the guy?" Joe called. But everyone protested ignorance. We went back into the kitchen. "Has anyone seen our guy?" Joe asked.

"Someone must have stolen it," his mother said uneasily. "You'd think up this way they'd know better."

"After I dressed it up, too," his father mumbled, and turned quickly to his Guinness.

We searched upstairs, though I couldn't see why. Nothing beneath a rumpled double bed but curlers. Joe's room featured a battle of wooden model aeroplanes and a sharp smell of glue like paraffin. One room was an attic: dusty mirrors, footballs, boots, fractured chair-leg. Behind two mirrors I found a trunk whose lock had been forced. I opened it without thinking, but it was empty. "The hell with it," Joe said finally. "It's the fireworks they've all come for, anyway."

The girl had set one wheel whirling, spurting sparks. They lit up Mrs Turner's face staring from the kitchen window before she moved away; her husband's eyes were closed, his mouth open and wheezing. Joe took a match and bent to the bonfire; fire raced up a privet twig. Above us hands of fire dulled against the night. One of the boys sent a rocket whooping into space; its falling sparks left dents of darkness on my eyes. I had no matches; I approached the boy and asked for one. He passed me a handful. Beyond the fire, now angled with planes of flame, the girl was giggling with her escort. I struck a match on my sole and counted: "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six--was when the rocket leapt. I'd forgotten to muffle my accent, but nobody cared. I was happy.

The girl came back with her escort from a region where chimneys were limned on fans of white electric fire. "The bonfire's going out," said Joe. I gave him some of my matches. Red-hot flecks spun through the smoke and vanished; the smoke clogged our nostrils--it would be catarrh in the morning.

Over the houses rose a red star. It hung steady, dazzling, eternal. Our gasps and cheers were silenced. The white house-walls turned red, like cardboard in a fire about to flame. As suddenly, the star sank and was extinguished; in another garden someone clapped. Everything was dimmed; Joe felt his way to the bonfire and struck matches.

Someone stood up from the corner of the house and moved behind me. I looked round, but the face was grey and formless after the star. A hand touched my arm; it seemed light as paper. The figure moved towards Joe. My sleeve was wet. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed; it was stained with paraffin. I might have called out if Joe's mother hadn't screamed.

Everyone but Joe turned startled to the kitchen. Mr Turner stirred and stared at her. "You must be bloody off your nut," he snarled, "waking me like that."

"Frankie's clothes!" she cried, trying to claw at his face. "What have you done with them?"

"I told you I'd find your trunk, my girl," he laughed, beating her off. "I thought I'd do something for the bonfire, like dressing up the guy."

She sat down at the table and sobbed. Everyone was watching aghast, embarrassed. Our eyes were readjusting; we could see each other's red-hot faces. Suddenly, terrified, I looked towards Joe. He was kneeling by the bonfire, thrusting matches deep. My eyes searched the shadows. Near the hedge stood a Guinness bottle which should have held a rocket. Desperately, I searched beyond. A figure was creeping along the hedge towards Joe. As I discovered it, it leapt.

Joe twisted round, still kneeling, as it reached him. The fire caught; fear flared from Joe's face. His mouth gaped; so did mine as I struggled to call the others, still watching the kitchen. The figure wore trousers and a blazer, but its hands-- My tongue trembled in my mouth. I caught at one boy's arm, but he pulled away. Joe's head went back; he overbalanced, clawing at the earth. The rocket plunged into his mouth; the figure's other hand fell on the bonfire. Flames blazed through its arms, down to the rocket's fuse. The brick dug into my face; I'd clapped my hands over my ears and pressed my head against the wall. The girl ran screaming into the house. I couldn't leave the wall until I understood. Which is why each pebble is embedded in my forehead: I never left that wall. Perhaps subconsciously Joe had meant to spill the paraffin; who knows? But why had his father given it to him? Perhaps Joe had wanted it to happen, but what justice demanded that revenge? I reject it, still searching for the truth in each face before my desk while I work to release them from backgrounds like my own and Joe Turner's. The office tomorrow, thank God.

When the strongest of us went unwillingly towards what lay by the bonfire, away from the screams and shouting in the kitchen and the smoking Guinness bottles, we found a papier-mache hand.