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The Fire Baby

Outside, with her secret in her arms, she felt him kicking, and nudging with the jerky half-conscious movements only a child can make.

Even here, in what had been the kitchen garden, she felt the heat prickling her skin. She smelt her hair singe, as the black hanging threads turned to ash-white corkscrews. A lock ignited, and burnt into her cheek. She had a lifetime to feel the pain, but even now it terrified her with the slow, insidious intimation that the worst was yet to come.

A fire in her blood. And the baby’s.

A silent fire. The only sound a flapping inside her ear, like a pigeon’s wings.

She took a limping step towards the coolness of the night. These ashes weren’t cold like the ones in the grate at Black Bank. These were white with heat, an ivory crust beneath which breathed the cherry embers. She smelt flesh burn and knew, with the clarity of shock, that it was hers.

And then she saw him. A hundred yards from the house, shielding his face from the heat with an out-turned palm.

He’d been waiting to join the celebration. Her father had been confident Maggie would change her mind that night ‘Come at eleven. She’ll come round for Matty’s sake. It’s the baby. She’ll come round.’

And with the intuition of a lover Maggie knew where he’d been, knew where he’d been waiting in the night. The old pillbox. Their pillbox; the concrete hexagonal space that she had once dreamed of in the damp and guilty night, the place where they’d made Matty come to life.

She heard a siren then. The first. From the base. They’d be at Black Bank soon, but not soon enough to save him. Not soon enough to save him from the life she planned for him in those few seconds. It was the best decision of her life. And the quickest. Taken in the time it takes to light a match.

And then they were together. So she smiled as she trembled. The yellow-blue light of the kerosene was in his eyes and briefly she remembered why she’d loved him once. But she saw that he looked only down, at the baby. His finger turned back the fold in the blanket. He saw the face for the first time, the tiny red wandering tongue. And the fool smiled too.

‘Our boy,’ he said, wishing it was so. ‘He’s safe. Our boy.’

She let him believe it for another second.

‘Dead,’ she said, and pulled the blanket back to let him see the stencilled blue capital letters on the soft linen: USAF: AIR CONVOY.

He looked at the ruined farmhouse then: ‘Dead? You can’t be sure.’