The Fire Baby

‘I’ve never asked before. I won’t again. Once.’

‘Last time,’ said Humph, fingering the retied ends of his beloved fluffy dice.

‘Jesus,’ said Dryden. ‘He slashed the seats. It wasn’t Pearl Harbor. This is important. I need your help.’

Dryden got out of the car, slammed the door and took the steps two at a time into the reception area of the hospital. Humph followed carefully, picking his way up each individual step, and when he got to the top he surveyed the plush carpet-muffled interior of The Tower. ‘Is there a lift?’

They rode up to the third floor in a silence punctuated by the bronchial whistles of Humph’s pulmonary system coping with the shock of physical effort.

Humph had never actually seen Laura. His partnership with Dryden had begun in the desolate weeks after her accident when the reporter needed ferrying from the hospital to his mother’s house on Burnt Fen. Wordless journeys of unshared grief which had somehow forged between them a bond of mutual alienation. Humph was dissolving in a toxic combination of anger and grief after his wife had walked out with the kids. Dryden was coming out of shock after the accident and wishing he wasn’t. They were made for each other.

Humph felt guilty seeing the figure in the bed for the first time, as if he was peeping into a private nightmare. Dryden’s rare excursions into memory had given an impression of his wife characterized by an exuberance of warmth: Latin temperament, Italian colouring, and ample curves. Humph had seen a picture reluctantly withdrawn from the zipped pocket of the wallet: a broad face blessed with perfect skin, brown eyes with a slight cast, and a jumble of auburn hair. The cabbie was not surprised to find the real Laura dramatically different. Her skin was ice- white and lifeless. The eyes open, brown, but blank; the arms laid straight at the sides, and the lips pale and parted by a centimetre. The teeth behind were perfect, linen white, and dry.

‘She’s beautiful,’ said Humph, lying.

Dryden nodded, pleased at the lie, and oddly moved. ‘Tear it off,’ he said, pointing at the tickertape from the COMPASS machine.

‘Why?’ said Humph, tearing off the sheet and sitting down on two bedside chairs.

‘Tell me what it says. It’s beginning to freak me out. She told me to watch Freeman White. I’m pretty sure he’s responsible for the threats, the attempt to sink my boat. How the hell does she know?’

Humph shrugged and studied the tape. There were a few lines of jumbled letters.

SGARTFN FH F F DGFDHFYRND LOPQJFCYOID

SGSH SI I H SHSJOSD SDHFUTKG SHFDGFYTO

GHLL

‘Nothing,’ said Humph.

‘There’s gotta be,’ said Dryden, snatching the paper back.

There was a long silence in which Dryden tried to force meaning from the jumble of letters.

Then the tickertape machine bashed out a single letter: T.

They both jumped, Humph’s return to earth producing a perceptible after-tremor.

The COMPASS machine ticked and printed a second letter: H. They jumped again and Humph began to edge back from the COMPASS machine. Dryden held his ground, holding the paper. ‘Tell me, Laura,’ he said, looking into her vacant brown eyes.

THE. Then she stopped. A minute passed in which they could hear a B-52 overhead droning in towards Mildenhall while the string of letters slowly lengthened.

THE WHISSLES

Dryden tore off the sheet and studied the letters again. ‘Wait in the car,’ he told Humph.

Dryden sat beside Laura’s bed. ‘I need help,’ he said. ‘Not this.’

He waited by the COMPASS machine for an hour in complete silence.

She knew the moment when she’d made the decision: the unilateral decision that she loved him. She’d always loved the idea of him, ever since she’d understood what America was. But that day at the track, she’d gone to get hot dogs and Cokes while he strolled round the cars before the first race. Running his fingers sensuously along the beaten metal, the way he’d run his fingers over her.

When she got back with the food the first race had begun. What she remembered was that he seemed to be the only thing that wasn’t moving. The backdrop was chaotic. The stock cars raising dust even that early in the summer, the metal screeching as two clashed on a bend, then heaved over together as if in a brawl. The crowd, mostly US military from the air bases, had run to the rail to view the wreckage, to cheer the two drivers emerging from the dust

And he’d just stood there, on the grass with his leg up on the running board of the Land Rover, flicking the Zippo. His self-contained stillness made her want to be near him always. It was the antidote to her own life, which had never seemed to have a centre, let alone one which would always hold. Even as she approached with the food and the drinks he didn’t turn.

She touched his arm. ‘Lyndon?’ And that was when he knew he’d fallen in love with her, the point when he knew he wanted to come back to the world he’d lost in Al Rasheid. He’d been lonely ever since, avoiding strangers because they could ask questions, and friends because they couldn’t, because they felt that saying nothing was the kindest cure for what he knew they must call many things – his illness, his injuries, his imprisonment, his lifelessness.

In truth he’d always been lonely. His lifelessness was older than his imprisonment. His childhood had been oddly passionless, an orphan doted on, but never loved, not with the unconditional love of a parent. An orphan placated by money and education. A friendless boy who loved only an heroic image of his father, the Vietnam hero. A figure of intoxicating excitement always just beyond his reach. So he’d been lonely all his life: which is why he’d survived Al Rasheid.

Estelle had ended that loneliness because their shared history made her unique. She’d known him all his life, but he was a stranger. Ever since he could remember they’d sent her presents from Texas, dolls when