August 1. 2.30pm
A sound of thunder cracked way over at Drumbeck Hill and the noise of the explosion at the quarry face came rolling over the fields and up the valley. Doug stopped on the brow of the hill where the drystone wall angled back towards the barwoods.
"Houston, we have lift off," he bawled in a dreadful American accent.
"Bombs away," Billy hooted and the rolling grumble in the air passed them by in a shockwave they could actually feel. Doug clambered up on top of the wall and helped Danny heft the tent over.
"Look there," Doug said, pointing south and east towards where the tall spruce trees crowded on the other side of the valley, marking the edge of the Overbuck estates. He shaded his eyes and the others followed the direction of his outstretched finger. "I saw something."
"Yeah. The wild larch tree," Corky said. "Very rare. That's the last million larch trees in the whole world."
"No, you daft baskit. I saw somebody. Over there at the edge."
The boys all made visors of their hands and peered under the shadow towards the edge of the plantation. The high trees straggling close to the edge were all in silhouette against the heat haze of the summer. Nothing moved.
"I saw somebody watching us," Doug insisted.
"It was the cow again," Billy said. "It's supercow oh-oh-seven. Trained to search and destroy. Fitted with exploding tits. It won't give up until it's molocated us all." Everybody laughed, even Doug. Nothing moved in the plantation. They all climbed the wall and lugged the tent along the bare path worn by the sheep as they moved up onto the moor. The peaty ground was dotted with thick clumps of gorse, wickedly spiked but in the warm updraughts and eddies, wafting an exquisite scent of coconut and delicate oils into the air. They ambled slowly up the track towards where the line of electricity pylons marched west, trailing black cables under the sky. The quarry blast rumbled again.
"That's what it was like all the time during the war," Billy said. "Must have been great."
"Must have been murder," Corky said. "You'd go to bed and never know if you'd wake up again." He swung his stick and lopped the head off a thistle, watching it go tumbling through the air.
"Wonder if there's any more bodies in the river," Doug said. "They'll all come floating up."
"Jeez Dougs, give it a break," Tom snapped.
"I was just thinking about Paulie. Just when I heard the quarry blast."
"He was covered in all sorts of crap," Billy said. "The current took him almost across to the other side of the river and he must have been stuck under the ribs of one of the sunk boats down in the mud. Al Crombie said he was all grey and stuck like this." Billy hunched his shoulders and stuck his hands out, mimicking a twisted corpse. "But the crabs and fish had got his fingers and the toes on one of his feet where his boot had come off. Chewed them all away. His lovin' mother wouldn't have recognised him."
"Jeez Billy, give it a rest." Tom pleaded again. Billy ignored him.
"And they think Mole Hopkirk got his the same day. That's when he went missing."
"Everybody knows that," Doug said. They were ambling along, in a ragged line, weaving between the jagged thorns of the gorse, listening to the drying seed-pods crackle and pop open in the heat of the sun. "That was really creepy. Like old Twitchy fixed it so nobody was looking."
"No. Mole was off his head anyway. Remember we saw him down at Rope Vennel?" Tom asked Billy. "When he was cadging smokes? He was always swinging those keys, trying to swipe them down people's faces. He could have put somebody's eye out with them."
"And then somebody put his eye out. What a horrible way to go." Billy turned to Doug who was just behind him. "You said with any luck he'd fallen in the river. You wished it on him."
"No I didn't," Doug protested. "And anyway, you said you wished he'd taken on somebody bigger than himself, and that's what happened, so you wished it on him too."
"Listen to yourselves," Corky said. He was ahead of them on the pathway, just behind Danny, both of them lacquered with sweat and panting. Corky had taken off his frayed shirt and tied the arms around his waist, leaving a tail hanging like an apron. The marks of cleg-fly bites stood out on his shoulders. "You two would start a fight in an empty house."
"But he said..." Billy started.
"So what? He's a goner isn't he? He was dead before any of us knew about it, and he was as crazy as a cat with a poker up its arse and all. It wasn't our fault he met up with some loony. He shouldn't have been breaking in to houses anyway."
"Like we broke into Overbuck's kitchen," Billy asked mischievously.
"That's different," Corky said. "They're as rich as sin. And there was no crazy about to grab us."
"That gardener looked pretty crazy to me. If he'd have caught us we'd have been in real stook. I nearly crapped my pants."
"I thought you had, from the smell of it," Corky said and everybody laughed again.
They got to the brow of the hill and dropped the tent. Doug had taken off his faded tee-shirt, revealing a tattered string vest which more holes in it now that when it was new. Billy said it looked like a lot of spaces joined together and Doug admitted without rancour that most of the holes weren't joined at all.
"I want to get a tan," he said. "All criss-crossed."
"You'll look like a chain-link fence," somebody said and they laughed some more. They were all in a circle, Corky standing astride the green bulk of the tent, rapping his knuckles on the polished-wood of the support poles jutting from the roll. Billy was leaning against the creosoted trunk of an electricity pole which bore three parallel cables down the side of the hill and across the valley. He lit a cigarette and offered them around. Tom took one and Billy lit for both, before flipping the match to the side. Immediately a clump of grass started to shrivel and crackle as a flame, made invisible by the bright sunlight, caught the tinder-dry brush. Billy casually stamped his foot and put it out. He lifted the long ash stave he'd cut in the valley and started peeling the bark back in strips. Danny got his slingshot from his pack and shot some small stones at the glass insulating plates high overhead, missing with every shot. He was better at throwing. Doug switched on the radio, made it whinge and whine as he spun the little dial searching for a station. For a brief moment, the Righteous Brothers cranked up to losing that lovin' feeling then they were gone, gone, gone in a crackle of static.
"You're too near the power lines," Corky said. Doug looked up, switching the little radio off.
"There's a nest up there," he said. They looked up and saw the little tangle of grass and moss out on the arm where the black cables snaked in their loop from one set of insulators to the other. He got up and reached towards the overhead spar joining the two poles. Beyond them barbed wire set round the uprights offered resistance to temptation, and as an added deterrent, a tin plate bearing a lightning-bolt motif blared in red letters: Warning: 130,000 volts. Danger of Death. Overhead, even though the air was dry, they could hear the low, somehow animal, growling vibration of power.
"Not worth it," Danny said. "You go near those wires and they'll burn you to a crisp." He was sitting furthest away from the pole and the trickling buzz of the voltage made him nervous. "And you can't let go either. It makes you hold on tight and burns you up until there's nothing left."
Doug moved back from the strut and ran a hand through his straight fair hair.
"That can't be true," Billy said. "Look. There's a crow up on the wire. It's just sitting there no bother at all and it's not getting zapped."
"That's because it isn't earthed," Corky said. "Don't you ever listen in science?"
"I don't believe it," Billy retorted. He jammed the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and hauled himself up, using his stave as a climbing pole. His weight drove the point deep into the earth and he had to pull hard to get it out again. He hefted the straight stick, holding it like a spear as he walked backwards up the hill. They all watched him.
"What's he up to?" Tom asked.
"Damned if I know," Doug said mildly. Billy got about thirty yards, right on to the shoulder of the slope. Behind him, two lapwings flopped into the still air, beating jerkily while they bleated their distress at the intrusion into their territory and the danger to their nest.
Billy stopped, looked up and then came running back the way he had come. He took ten steps and swung his arm back.
"Geronimo!" The stave soared like a javelin, heavy-end foremost, curving through the air. It arrowed above the wires, seen from where the rest of the boys were sitting and for a moment they assumed it would fly straight over, to land in the gorse beyond. It landed right on top of the wires, fifty feet from the pylon. It made a pinging sound as it slapped across all three of the thick cables.
A red flame flashed across its length.
There was absolutely no warning, no hesitation. It simply flared with a sound of ripping canvas.
"Bloody hell," Tom mouthed.
"Yee-hah," Billy crowed triumphantly. The others watched in amazement. The flames crackled across the ash stave, making it jitter on the wires, twisting like a snake. An explosion of blue sparks erupted where it lost contact with the centre-cable and a sound like a road-drill came rattling down.
The five of them stood simply mesmerised.
"Look at it burn," Billy yelled. He was jumping up and down, his tee-shirt flopping, waving both hands in the air. A sheet of flame flew off the burning branch, coiled into a sphere and rolled upwards, roaring like an angry beast. Even from where the four nearest boys stood, open mouthed, they could feel the heat. Another shower of sparks fountained outwards, sparkling like sapphires. The drill noise came rapping across, shuddering through the wires. Then the stave just exploded.
It was a real blast, not merely a disintegration. The white peeled sapling had turned to black in the space of mere seconds. The flames were reaching up towards a blue sky and then a crack like a shotgun blast punched the air. The stick was there and then it was gone. Burning cinders catapulted into the air, trailing smoke in grey streamers. A piece of charred wood came whirling past, making a whoop-whoop sound as itspun, and hit Billy on the cheek making him yell, though none of the others heard him. They were running to get out from under the falling debris. Doug and Corky reached the tent first and heaved it up. Danny and Tom grabbed the rucksacks and Billy's army bag.
The crack of the explosion faded away, though it still crackled in their ears.
"Did you see that?" Billy bawled, racing down towards them.
"You're a crazy baskit," Doug asserted.
Just then, the first crackle of flames became audible. Doug stopped, almost pulling Corky off his feet. "Listen," he said holding himself still, head cocked.
"Nearly put my eye out," Billy was saying, still rubbing his cheek where the piece of charred wood had left a sooty smear.
"Wheesht," Corky hushed him to silence. For a moment, they were still. Billy was standing with his mouth open and his brows drawn down angrily, about to argue with Doug. Corky had his hand up, telling everyone to hush.
The crackle of fire came from beyond the pylon. They all turned. A gorse bush burst into flame. It was as if burning petrol had been thrown over it and it just blossomed fire. It growled madly like the flame-throwers of war movies. One second it was thick and green and festooned with golden blossom; the next it was shrivelling under a ten-foot flame. The heat came rolling on the dry air, slapping them like a hot hand. Behind them, another bush roared into flame, like a fiery lion rising from a thicket.
"Christ man," Corky bawled. "The whole place is going..."
Ten feet away, a second bush erupted. The fine hairs on Danny's arms twisted and shrivelled in the sudden flare of heat. To the right, two smaller bushes crackled into life.
"....out of here," Doug was yelling, the first words lost in the roar of the flames, but the meaning perfectly clear. He and Corky ran between two reaching hedges, bent with the heavy weight of the tent. Danny followed. Tom and Billy were somewhere behind them.
"Yee-hah," Billy hooted again. "Bombs away." Beyond them, a towering forest of flame reached for the sky, a great red animal clawing at the sky. The air all around them danced as if it had been turned liquid in the scorch. It tasted of pollen and charcoal and instantly seared their throats dry.
Something flew round the corner of one flowering hedge and missed Corky by a hair's breadth in a flurry of whirring wings. The panicked woodcock jinked and headed for the stand of pines further down the slope of the hill. Overhead, two skylarks warbled their distress while somewhere in the bushes their almost fully fledged nestlings huddled in fear, their instinctive compulsion to freeze now acting against them as the flames licked around them.
A pillar of fire exploded into life to Doug's left and he jinked right, holding a hand up to protect his face. Corky followed, dragged by the tent, stumbling as he went. A gust of wind, sucked in by the powerful updraught, dragged with it a wall of grey smoke. Danny stumbled into it, felt the incredible blast of heat and backed away. Corky and Doug kept on moving. They got twenty yards and came scooting out of the gorse bushes and onto the flat of the sphagnum damplands.
Danny reeled away to the right, smoke in his eyes and searing down his throat. Somewhere close by, Tom yelled something and Danny stumbled backwards, knuckling under his brows to clear the dust and smoke-induced tears. By this time, the heat was unbelievable. A roaring noise thundered close by and he shied away from it, falling over one small bush which stabbed him in what felt like a thousand places. A gorse spine went right up under his nail and a needle of pain drilled into his finger. Danny rolled and found himself in a small clearing. A chance eddy of wind sucked the smoke away. Ahead of him, up the slope, he could see a line of flames, twenty feet high. Behind him, hardly fifteen yards away, a stand of scrub hazel was well alight. He turned, panic beginning to bubble up. A minute before, Danny could have outrun anything except Doug who could run like a greyhound. Danny was fast and agile and he'd been able to show Phil Corcoran an easy clean pair of heels. But this fire, it moved. It ran like a red tiger, chasing and hounding. It had leapt in front of him to bar his way, catching him no matter how fast he could run, no matter how he jinked and dived.
"Danny," Tom's voice came wavering from somewhere to the right. "Help me!" Danny whirled, truing to gulp down the rising terror. He spun again and stopped. Right in front of him, a roe-deer fawn stood shivering, a tiny, spindly thing, no bigger than a mountain hare, balanced on four stick legs. Its eyes were huge and black. The deer and Danny looked at each other. The animal was shivering so violently it looked as if it might have been connected to the voltage in the black cables overhead. Then it turned. Danny couldn't tell how it had done it. There was no visible movement at all. It stared at him and then its back was toward him and it flicked, as if my magic , between two bushes. To his left another wall of flame burst into life. To his right, Tom squealed, high and clear and there was real fear in the sound. Danny blundered through the small gap, brushing past the spines which dug through his jeans and drove into his knees. His lungs were hurting and the skin on the back of his neck felt as if it was turning crisp and a dread horror came rippling through him.
He was stuck here. He was trapped in the fire.
The Bad Fire
Sister Julia's face came wavering on the heat-tortured air. The Good Lord can look down on you at any time and decide to take you
Like he had taken Paul Degman.
You must always try to be in a state of grace.
The fire was all around and the heat was searing his throat and he was stuck in it. Real fear almost froze him to stone.
"Danny. Jesus Danny I'm stuck," Tom's cry came from just beyond the next bush. It punched him through the membrane of paralysis.
He fell over the hedge, almost blown over by the force of the heat. Tom was snagged on a hazel branch. He'd been crawling under a natural canopy and a dead branch had fingered down the neck of his shirt and out the tail. Under any other circumstances, it would have looked completely ludicrous. Tom's feet were scrabbling and slipping on dried mud.
"Oh God don't let it get me," he babbled. In a flash of reality, he saw the very real possibility that he could die. Panic soared. The awesome finality of death had been with him since long before Paulie Degman had fallen into the river, since little Maureen had slipped away while his mother had been out at the corner shop getting chicken soup. She'd gone and they'd taken her away and put her in the ground, little Mo, his baby sister, and they'd all had to pray while his parents stood frozen by a deadly graveside, too poor to put up a headstone. Tom had held on to his other kid sister Marie, held on so tight his fingers bruised her shoulder and as he looked down at that hole in the ground, in the old graveyard behind St Rowan's Church, it was like looking into a black well that went down forever. Nobody who went down there ever came back.
"Danny," he screeched. "Help."
He pushed forward, the way a snared rabbit will, and felt the branch strain against the cotton. He pushed again, felt the fabric rip, pushed some more and was stopped dead. He could not go forward; he could not go backward.
"Danny," he screeched again, voice high, just like a girl's. "Help me Danny I'm stuck!"
He squirmed in a sudden desperate frenzy. He was stuck and the flames were all around him and in that instant he clearly saw the maw of infinity approaching fast. His feet shoved at the dusty hardpack of the ground, gouging out two grooves but gaining no purchase strong enough to break the branch that snagged him or rip the shirt on which it hooked. The heat of the flames pressed in from the side. A billow of smoke rolled over him and he coughed violently, rasping his throat. Just then something hit him from behind. At first he thought it was Danny pushing him through. Then a soft body squeezed beside him, wriggled past in a shiver of muscle and fur. The little roe deer, in its panic, hadn't even seen him. It made it through the gap and flashed away. Tom was left stuck.
Out on the far side, Corky and Doug watched the wall of flames. Further up the hill, beyond the line of power-cable, Billy was whooping with unfettered glee, completely unaware of the danger Danny and Tom were in down the slope among the massed tangle of burning gorse. It just hadn't occurred to him that they would still be in there.
"Like a fuckin' bomb," Billy yelled. He had a bird's eye view of the whole thing, but he couldn't see Tom or Danny were stuck in the middle of it all. The flames absolutely gobsmacking fantastic. They rumbled and roared, snarled and fought, leaping from bush to thicket, a contagion of instant fire. The bushes just splurged into flame. The heat warped the air so much the power-cables seemed to shimmy and dance. Little birds spiralled up through the smoke. Only fifty feet away he saw a yellowhammer come flitting up in its bouncing, undulating flight and then suddenly fall like a stone into the mass of flame below. Two hares came scooting from cover, brown blurs that raced up the slope and swerved just before they reached him, their eyes rolling.
"Christ on a bloody bike," he bawled to himself.
He trotted down the hill a little distance, getting to within twenty feet of the nearest bush which had crumpled in on itself, thin grey ash tumbling down in a stream where the spikes of gorse powdered to threatless dust. The fire had eaten and moved on, leaving a bare skeleton. Billy bent and grabbed at a tussock of couch grass, rocking his weight from side to free the roots. It finally came ripping up from the ground and without any hesitation, he jammed it in against the smouldering roots of the burned bush. The grass crackled and caught. He spun, whirling the turf and grass around his head, then aimed for a clear patch down the hill where the fire hadn't reached.
His grenade tumbled in the air, trailing smoke. He watched it level out then curve down. It landed off to the right, almost due south. Over the screaming of the flames he didn't hear the thud. There was a pause and then, with a startling whoosh the bush and its neighbour were ablaze.
Billy howled in delight. He saw himself in uniform, just like his father, tossing grenades or hosing liquid fire from the flame-throwers he'd seen in the films. The wavering air and the heat, the smell of burning and the sudden violence of it all was incredible. Billy just couldn't believe he'd done all that, all with just one thrown piece of wood.
Out on the damplands where the sphagnum moss had sopped up the moisture of the pre-summer rains and held it in the seeps and depressions of the moor, Corky and Doug stood side by side.
"Can you see them?" Corky asked. Doug shook his head. His light blue eyes were ringed with smudges and he used a finger to wipe a trickle of dusty snot from his lip. A twig of gorse had snagged in his hair like a miniature crown of thorns."
"Can't see a thing."
"I heard somebody. Sounded like Tom."
"What, in there?" Doug jerked his thumb towards the wall of flames. His face went suddenly pale.
The flames rampaged along. Something came soaring over the smoke and hit beyond them and another growl of flame started eating at the gorse. The fire made strange sounds. It roared and rasped and underneath that sound, it screamed and screeched as the branches and roots twisted and gave off their gasses. It sounded as if lost souls were writhing in agony in there, buckling and shrivelling in the heat of the flames.
Corky remembered what Danny had said, his own vision of hell. That's what it would sound like. Just screaming and shrieking and it would go on and on. He shook his head. It was just fire. It was just bushes. He'd seen the gorse go up before. It wouldn't last long.
But what if...
It rustled and whispered, it crackled and it laughed as if it could read his mind.
"No," Corky said, more in hope than in certainty. "They must have gone down the other side. And Billy went up the hill."
Just as he said that, Billy let out a triumphant holler. They saw a shadow move and he came lumbering through a pall of smoke. He had a dry tussock in his hand and he set it alight before tossing it down the slope, leading the fire on.
"Where's Dan?" Corky bawled, making himself heard above the commotion. Billy shrugged. His face was aglow behind the smudges.
"And Tom," Doug bawled. "You seen them?" Billy shook his head. His mind was elsewhere.
Just then a flight of partridges came bulleting out of the smoke on whirring wings, fat little propeller-driven birds. They arrowed straight towards the boys, seemed to notice them at the last possible second and veered up and over their heads. Right behind them, the tiny roe fawn came springing out. It stopped on its spindly legs, its tongue lolling. It didn't even see them. The gorse crackled behind it and it was gone, a brown little blur, spider fast, gone and away.
Corky looked at Billy. His eyes were alight and his face was red with excitement. Doug followed Corky's look. Billy was prancing around, throwing the sods of peat and grass into the flames, spreading it further as if it needed stoking.
"He's off his bloody head," Doug said. The fire squealed as it tortured a briar root into impossible torques.
Inside the burning swathe, Danny found Tom snagged on the hazel branch. His old scuffed shoes were digging into the soft earth, ploughing up their furrows as he frantically tried to free himself. Danny could hear his panicked whimper. The heat was incredible now, searing his cheeks, and there seemed to be no air to breathe. He stumbled forward and tried to break the thin stick with his hands. Tom's hand grabbed his ankle and pulled desperately, almost throwing Danny off balance.
The branch wouldn't break. Without thinking it through, Danny simply bent down and got his weight against Tom's skinny backside, dug his own feet into the ground and pushed with all his weight. There was a sharp crack as the branch snapped. Tom went flopping forward and Danny fell on top of him, knocking the wind out of the smaller boy's lungs.
"Oof..." Tom gasped and that was a whole lot better than the fearful whimpering. Danny rolled, slipped and fell flat. Tom was up, his canvas bag still slung over one shoulder. He grabbed for the back of Danny's shirt and hauled first him to his knees, then up to his feet. Without a word they stumbled forwards. Ahead of them the flames danced in orange spires. But then a gust of wind thinned them momentarily. They had reached the edge. Both of them realised there was no turning back. They both closed their eyes and ran for it. Charred twigs and branches crunched under their feet and the dust rose up to clog their nostrils. They barged through and for a second the heat soared up to an incredible scorch. The whole world seemed to be on fire. Danny hit hard ground first but the smoke was in his eyes. Tom reached for him, got a hand to the strap of the rucksack and both boys came out of the burning gorse like the two hares, running blind, cheeks tear-streaked. Danny went crashing over the ridge of hummock-grass and down the far side, lungs hauling for cool air, down the lee side, missed his footing and started to fall. Tom was right behind him, flipping over, bouncing on the moss, then tumbling in pursuit.
They rolled for fifteen feet past the ridge and then both of them hit the water of the shallow pool at exactly the same moment. The surface was covered in duckweed and the pond was less than two feet deep, a low, circular depression on a flat shoulder below the ridge of the hill. They tumbled into it and immediately the tepid water sucked the heat from their skins.
Tom came up spluttering, coughing water out. It dribbled from his nose in muddy streaks. Danny turned over, trying to push himself to his feet and at first only succeeded in driving his hand a foot into the mud. Finally he managed to get to his knees then pushed himself up to a shaky stance. His tough jeans, cut-down versions of workmen's denims complete with the long ruler pocket down the leg, sagged with the weight of water. Tom was hauling in great breaths, and still coughing violently, trying to expel the slimy water that had splashed down his throat.
"Jeez, Tom, I thought we were goners there," he finally blurted.
Tom nodded, still unable to speak. He opened his eyes and he and Danny shared a look that expressed the words they couldn't say. It had been a close thing.
Corky and Doug came running down the hill. "You all right?"
Both boys nodded breathlessly, chests hitching.
"Flaming hell," Corky said. "We thought you were in there."
"We were in there. Nearly singed all my hair off." Danny held up his arm to show where the fine white hairs on the side were twisted and curled. He peered closer and saw where the ends were shrivelled. Each had a little dot of melted hair on the end. He closed his eyes, remembering the heat on his face and the back of his neck and felt the panic try to weasel in again. He shook it away.
Billy came loping down the slope. Behind him the air was thick with smoke. Pieces of grey ash were twirling skywards in the updraught. The fire had crept down for more than fifty yards until it reached a boggy patch where the gorse gave way to a dark patch of low reeds. Beyond the marsh the land rose up again, golden with furze and broom blossom, but the flames could not cross over the reed bed to get to it.. Almost as quickly as it began, the fire died, leaving little smouldering patches of charred briar root and the twisted stems of the bushes blackened and skeletal.
"Pure brilliant," Billy said. "Fan-bloody-tastic."
Tom rounded on him. "You nearly killed us, you stupid fast shite. Me an' Danny, we nearly copped it in there."
"Oh quit bubbling," Billy sneered. He took a step forward and gave Tom a push, not hard, but enough to make the smaller boy take a step backwards. "No kidding, your lip's always trembling. And just watch who you're calling names, Titch."
Tom hit his hand away. "You're off your head. No kidding. You've got screws loose. You nearly killed us. That fire was... it was..." Tom's mouth started opening and closing, but his throat and tongue had ganged up against him and refused to let the words out. His eyes filled with tears. Doug and Corky shuffled their feet, embarrassed for him. Tom turned away and the others could see his shoulders jerking up and down.
"What did I tell you,? Billy started to say. "Always whinging about something."
"Leave off," Danny told him. Billy's eyes opened wide, taking offence again but Corky spoke up. "Yeah Billy, let it rest eh? You could have killed somebody."
This time it was Billy's turn to act like a fish. He looked from one to the other then shook his head in disgust. For a second, Doug thought Billy might have a go at Corky, just because he was all fired up with the excitement. Billy was the biggest of them all, almost a head taller than both Danny and Corky and he towered over Tom who looked as if his wet clothes would make him stagger. Canny said nothing. He just looked at Billy without any expression on his face. The confrontation faded. Billy shrugged and walked up the hill to get his rucksack.
He stood there while the others waited for Tom. He could hear them mumbling and he assumed they were persuading Tom to come along with them rather than turning to go back down the hill and home again. Finally, Tom wiped his eyes and they started to straggle up the hill.
"Come on you lot," he called down. "This ain't a picnic you know."
The fire finally died out. Down at the station near Castlebank Church, and over at the waterworks post up from Cargill Farm, the smoke and flames had been monitored. It was always a hazard at this time of the year and in the high summer, hardly a week went past without a brush fire or a gorse fire. It was what the kids did, part of the tradition. Most of the time, like this time, the fires burned themselves out. When the smoke cleared, the light wind carried the dust high over Langmuir Crags and everybody forgot about it.
The five boys straggled over the brow of the hill and down the lee slope on a slow descent towards the Blackwood Stream. Billy was still in a high state of excitement over the violence, and the sudden destruction, and while Tom and Danny could have cheerfully choked him, his actions that day, while they almost killed two of his friends, had a long-reaching effect.
When he'd tossed the stave onto the wires, shorting out the voltage between the cables, a heavy breaker-gate slammed open and shut off the current in the junction station just west of Barloan Harbour, the next village along, near Old Kildenny. All the power in Barloan Harbour winked off.
Down on Barge Street, where in the old days, the hauliers would unload their goods from the canal bay, Terry Hughes, an engineer with the sewage department was inspecting a blocked duct when the lights went out. He had planned to stay down a half-hour longer before coming up for a break. In the dark, he turned and his cable light cracked against a rock with a pop of glass. Up in the fresh air, he had a flask of strong coffee waiting. Terry made his way along the duct and reached the up-well. He took off his hard hat and hung it on the hook, going by sense of touch. He climbed the fifteen horse-shoe steps set into the brick shaft. Somebody had put the manhole cover down and Terry assumed that one of his colleagues had been playing a practical joke, shutting off the light and then shutting him in. He pushed it up, crawled into the daylight and let it slam down again. He turned to the little canvas shelter where he'd left his flag when the ground shuddered. The manhole cover exploded upwards on a pillar of blue flame, tumbling like a tossed coin. It soared right across the railway line and crashed through the upper deck, the galley and the hull of a neat little ketch down in the harbour basin, taking it straight to the mud at the bottom.
Terry Hughes was knocked off his feet and he suffered a graze to his finger.
Investigators later found it had been caused by a huge build up of gas in a sump, gas which had leaked from a cracked mains pipe. When the power winked back on, the cracked lamp had ignited the gas and let rip an explosion so violent that it ruptured the entire wall of the sewer duct and caved in a section of road fifty yards long. Terry Hughes' protective hat was found, or what was left of it a hundred yards away in the fork of a tree. It was split into four ragged shell-pieces that made it look like a blossoming dog rose. As he told his workmates in the Horseshoe Bar where he got monumentally drunk that afternoon, if the lights hadn't gone off, he'd have been down there when it happened and he'd never have come back up again.