The Fire Child (8 page)

What do these letters tell me? They tell me that Jamie is deeply confused, on a level I had not suspected. They tell me that I am possibly not helping, even though he seems to like me, or tolerate me, at the same time. They tell me that his grief is pure and ceaseless, that he is suffering deeply; they tell me it is my duty to help this poor boy in any way I can.

They also tell me one final thing. There were arguments that night Nina died. Arguments that were bad enough for Jamie to remember them.

Yet there were no arguments mentioned in the inquest.

What do I do with this information? Approach David? That would mean revealing that I have been sleuthing around his study. Sifting through his private papers.

My thoughts are brought to a stop by a piercing scream.

Evening

David stood at the window, sipping from his tumbler of Macallan, listening to the undergrads laughing on their way home from university, through the ghosts of evening mist. Usually, he liked this time of year, the sense of quickening intellect, under yellowing leaves. But tonight the youth of these students reminded him merely of his advance into middle age, and their happiness emphasized his regret.

Jamie.

Back at his desk, he set down his Scotch, opened his laptop screen and dialled the number, checking the time as he did.

Six o’clock: their regular slot.

His son’s face came online.

‘Hold the phone up, Jamie. I can’t see you.’

‘Sorry, Dad. Is that better now?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s better.’

David scanned the screen, looking at his son’s bedroom. Football posters. Neat bookshelves. A black microscope, hunched like Nosferatu, sitting on a desk. To the right was the window, overlooking the lawns, where you could look down the long slope, all the way to the mines and cliffs. The sky in Cornwall looked brighter than the brooding London clouds here in Bloomsbury.

‘Nice evening down there?’

Jamie shrugged, his expression blank. Then he looked away from the screen as if hearing something, in the house.

‘Jamie?’

‘Sorry. Yes, Daddy. It was really sunny today. Me and Rollo played three and in.’

‘Good. That’s good.’

‘Then we went down to the zawn and played skimming and stuff. It was nice and there was a seal.’

‘Ah. I wish I’d been there.’

‘Hmm, yeah.’

‘I do, Jamie. I really do.’

David stared into his son’s expressive eyes and felt the flowering despair. It should be him, the father, skimming stones with his son, not Rollo all the time; it should be him playing football on the lawn, laughing in the cool, mild air of a fine October twilight. But he wasn’t there. He was seldom
there
. He was missing far too much of Jamie’s childhood. The sensation of this – missing his son’s ascent to adulthood – made David feel queasy at the grievous waste. Liquid silver was running into a drain. The boy was growing up and David was missing the last precious years of childhood, as he had missed the years before.

‘Are you all right, Daddy?’

‘Yes, yes. I was thinking.’ He forced a smile. ‘So how are things with Rachel? Have you said sorry?’

‘Sorry for what, Daddy?’

‘For playing that trick, that joke, with the fires, and the lighter fuel.’

David waited, inwardly praying that this time Jamie would confess: that if he casually asked him, like this, the boy would finally yield.

‘I didn’t do any joke, Daddy. I told you. I didn’t! Maybe it was Cassie, or Granny, not me. Maybe it was Rachel, she does funny things, she acts funny sometimes. She can be weird.’

‘Jamie – please.’

‘Daddy, I didn’t do it!’

The boy looked sincere enough. Face eager, pained, truthful; but David was wholly convinced that Jamie had done it. Because Jamie was surely reliving in his turbulent mind an incident from his childhood. When Jamie’s sixth birthday had come around, Nina had done this: written Jamie’s name in fire on the floor of the Old Hall, as a surprise, like the entire floor was a massive birthday cake and he could make eight hundred wishes. His mother always loved open flames: bonfires, hearth-fires, candles.

David remembered Jamie’s cry of delight when the trick was pulled, when his son was ushered, blindfold, into the Old Hall, then the blindfold was whipped away, revealing the flaming words,
Happy Birthday Jamie
, written in fire on flagstone – and then Jamie turned and found all his friends hiding in the darkness, and giggling, and then behind them trestle tables of saffron cakes, and fresh lemonade, and sticks of celery and apple.
That was the best birthday party ever, thank you, Mummy, thank you, Daddy.

That kind of precious memory would stick with a child. It had stuck with David. The happiness that could never return, the last real happiness they’d known as a family. It was perhaps not surprising Jamie had re-enacted this scene, trying to summon his mother back, by doing a kind of childish fire-magic. Write my name in light and I will reappear.

Yet still the boy wouldn’t admit it.

Jamie’s face was set firmly in the negative, now. A stubborn, faintly arrogant tilt of the chin. That Kerthen expression.

David sighed.

‘OK, we’ll talk about it another time.’

Jamie nodded, uncaringly – then offered a tight little frown. ‘Can I ask you a question, Dad?’

‘Sure. Of course you can. Shoot.’

‘Do you love Rachel?’

David had been expecting this question for a while, so he had an answer ready to go.

‘Yes. Naturally. That’s why I married her. That’s why she is here. Or there. In Carnhallow.’

‘OK. And, Dad,’ Jamie hesitated. ‘Do you love Rachel as much as you loved Mummy?’

‘No, it’s different, Jamie – quite different to that. I will never love someone the way I loved your mother.’

‘And do you miss Mummy?’

‘Absolutely, Jamie. Every day. We all do. But daddies can get lonely too.’

Jamie nodded, but looked rather melancholy at the same time. David yearned to reach his arm around his son’s slender shoulders, give the boy a reassuring hug. But they were at either end of the country. So he reached out by talking.

‘Just because Rachel has moved in with us, that doesn’t mean anything about the way I loved your mother. It doesn’t take anything away from the past.’

‘All right, Dad. I understand.’ Jamie did a teenagerish sigh, then glanced to the side. ‘I’m going to tell Cassie I’ll be down soon, she’s calling, for supper—’

The boy rested his phone on the desk, so that it was staring at a blank ceiling, a rectangle of pinked whiteness, lit by the setting sun. David could imagine the scene, the view from the house over Zawn Hanna, a dazzle of dying sunlight turning Morvellan black, against the faded gold of the twilit sea.

David checked the clock. He had another file to go through: he had to go back to work shortly. He was too busy even to have a proper phone call with his own child, his grieving son, wrestling with traumas and confusions, and his father’s terrible mistakes.

The guilt returned, triumphant. For all his efforts, David was doing what he had once vowed never to do. Reiterating his own father’s cruelties.

David’s father had deliberately excluded him from their non-existent family life, by sending him to boarding school. Now David’s job excluded him from Jamie’s life, as he slaved in London, trying to repair the damage his own father had done. The only son was left alone. Again.

It was as if they were destined, as a family, to recycle the same cruelty in every generation. As if Jamie’s fate was revenge taken by all those boys sent down the mines.
This is what you made us do, decade after decade, now you Kerthens must suffer the same
.

How had it come to this? It wasn’t for lack of paternal love. Sitting here in the calm, orderly silence of his London flat, David recalled his own ferocious happiness when he first held Jamie as a baby: a happiness so great it encompassed a significant element of sadness, within. He remembered a striking phrase his mother had used for parents of newborns, of firstborns, their conflicting sensibilities:
Your heart is cut by a thousand shards of happy glass.

It was painfully true. The happy glass entered your heart when you had a kid and it never went away: needling anxiety, pinpricks of worry and, occasionally, a lancing, inexpressible joy, a happiness so intense you knew that, when you died, this was how you would judge and remember your life: this was what you would think about on your deathbed. Not your career or your accomplishments, not your partners, not sex, not how many cars or wives or holidays or millions you had, but how you had done with your kids. Was I a good father? And were there enough of those diamond-hard, dazzling moments of paternal and filial happiness?

‘Daddy.’

Jamie was back.

‘Yes. Hi there.’

‘Sorry, Cassie wanted something and I had to fetch it.’

‘That’s fine. But, well, I’ve got to go myself, soon. Work.’

The boy flinched. Was that a flash of anger, or disgust?

‘You’re busy?’

‘I am. I’m sorry. I am busy, but if I get it all done now, then I promise not to work at the weekend.’

‘You said that last weekend, when you came down. But you looked at your phone the whole time.’

David inwardly blushed at the truth of this. Then he remembered his concerns, what he’d wanted to ask, during this phone call. ‘Jamie?’

‘Yeah?’

‘You said something about Rachel. You said Rachel can be weird.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Why did you say that?’

‘’Cause, Daddy. ’Cause she can, she can, she asks me things. And she looks for things, in the house.’

David scowled, but tried to hide it. ‘Things?’

‘Things, and stuff. Things that have happened, are happening.’

David calmed himself. He had to do this firmly, but without alarming his son.

‘Jamie, she is trying her best to fit. You have to cut her some slack. She’s the one who has to adopt our lifestyle, become part of
our
family, and she’s trying very hard, getting to know Carnhallow, that’s why she asks questions, or maybe seems uneasy. But’ – he leaned closer to the screen – ‘you do remember our promise, about the past? What we agreed.’

Jamie’s eyes widened, though he surely knew what David was talking about.

‘C’mon, Jamie. You remember. You have to remember.’

‘Yes, Daddy, I know. Don’t like talking about it.’

‘I know, it’s difficult and sad. But I need to stress this again. You mustn’t
ever
talk about what happened, that night, anything anyone said, what you saw. You mustn’t talk about it, about that night. Agreed? It’s like the therapist, exactly the same. Even if someone questions you, if
anyone
questions you, say nothing. Even to Rachel.’

‘Nnn.’ Jamie shrugged, as if this was nothing at all, or something he was about to ignore.

‘Jamie!’

‘OK, Daddy, yes!’

Jamie sipped at a can of drink. San Pellegrino. His blue-violet eyes were beautiful, even when seen through a laptop screen. The boy spoke:

‘Daddy I have my own question, before you go.’

David smiled, in a fake way, as if everything was made good.

‘Of course. Ask anything you like. I know I’m not there much – but I’m always here for you, on the phone, on the screen, always, always.’

‘OK, Dad.’

A long pause. Jamie looked nervous.

The light was beginning to fade.

‘Jamie? What was your question?’

The boy sighed. And shrugged. He seemed to be wrestling with some dilemma. Finally, he spoke: ‘Daddy, is Mummy still alive?’

David gazed, wordless, at his son. He hoped he was mishearing.

But Jamie was now looking directly at his father. Expecting an answer.

Groping for words, David did his best. ‘Jamie, mate, she’s dead. Your mummy is dead. You know that.’

Jamie was unmoved. The boy shook his head. ‘But, Daddy, aren’t we meant to see things some people don’t see? Because we’re fire people? Aren’t we meant to be more special, the Kerthens? Because of the legend?’

‘No, Jamie. No. That’s just a joke, a childish story. Something to amuse people down from London.’

The irony was complex, and bitter. How many times had David told the story to laughing guests, in Carnhallow House? All too many. Because of his Kerthen pride. Because it was another subtle way of parading his lineage, of saying,
This is how noble and ancient we are: we have myths and legends
. Now that vainglory had come back to hurt.

Jamie’s eyes were glistening. ‘I know it sounds like a story, but it’s true, Daddy. True. Sometimes I know she’s close again, near me, talking to me, in my sleep, or in the day, in the rooms. It’s frightening sometimes. But she is here, she’s coming back.’

‘Jamie. This is silly. This is nonsense.’

‘It’s not. I don’t think so, Daddy. She is still alive. Everyone says she’s dead, but they never found her body, did they? So she must be still here, that’s why I can feel her. That’s why you made me write to her.’

David closed his eyes, for a second. Quelling his anger. The stupid therapist at Treliske Hospital, with his idiotic questions, his stupid idea of writing letters to a dead mother. What had he done to his son? Letters were disturbing and blurring. Questions were worse.

‘Hey.’ David sought his son’s unhappy gaze. ‘Jamie. Mate. Come on. We have to deal with it. Mummy fell down the mine and she isn’t coming back. I know it is very sad and confusing, but just because they didn’t find the body doesn’t mean she can return to life. OK? OK? And the Kerthens aren’t special in any creepy or superstitious sense, we’re just old. An old family. That’s all.’

Jamie was still, evidently, trying not to cry. David gazed on, helpless.
Please let my son be sane.
Why had all this fresh confusion emerged
now
? It came and went, but this was worse than ever. Much worse.

‘Jamie. You know I love you. If there’s anything you want to tell me, you know you can do that, you can say anything. But Mummy is gone and you have a new stepmother now. We have a new life, a new chance. We have to move on.’

Jamie nodded miserably and reached for his drink. David checked the clock again; if he didn’t get to work soon he’d be stuck at the meeting tomorrow. He’d have to deal with this at the weekend, when he went down.

‘Jamie, mate, I do have to go. I’m really sorry. But I’ll see you guys at the weekend and we can talk then.’

‘Mmnnn.’

‘Jamie, say goodbye properly.’

But the screen died: Jamie had turned it off first, without saying goodbye. Like a reproach. Like a punishment that David deserved. The bad father. The absent father. Most of all, the lying father.

David picked up his whisky and regarded the depths of tawny liquid, glowing in the glass. Now that he thought about it, now that he focused on the facts, like a good lawyer, Jamie’s distance, his odd behaviour, had distinctly returned since the summer. Specifically since Rachel had moved in.