The Buried Circle - Jenni Mills [112]
There was a glow. Flames on the skyline.
‘Davey!’ I could hear the panic in my own voice. ‘Davey, looks like Swindon…’
His voice was a way off. ‘What was that?’
‘Swindon’s getting it.’
‘Don’t be soft. We’d have heard the bombers go over. You’re confused, must be Bristol getting it again…’
Bristol was to the west. I was looking north. Or–
The chalk fell away to the north, down to the plain. I must be facing eastwards then. Not Swindon. Not Bristol. So what was burning?
The night was still silent, apart from us. Faintly, at some distance, I heard a telephone ring.
‘FRAN! Move it. Get out, get away from the fire baskets…’
Where was Davey? I couldn’t see him. All around me, a vast grid of troughs and pipes and tanks. The telephone still ringing. Then it stopped.
Paralysed, didn’t know which way to go.
‘Those fires are Liddington, Fran. It’s the next Starfish along. Bombers must be coming from the east.’ Davey was somewhere a long way off to my right, a shadow among shadows. ‘MOVE. They’ll be igniting the fires any minute.’
I started running, hoping it was back the way I’d come, hoping that was the quickest way out of this maze, trying to dodge away from the fire baskets, though if they lit them and flushed the oil and water so the flames exploded I’d be incinerated anyway, a black charred thing like I’d once seen an airman’s hand when they brought him in, with deep pink oozing cracks in it. They couldn’t give those boys enough morphine. They screamed themselves to sleep, the nurses said.
Had to get a grip. If I thought about burning I’d have to give up, sink down where I stood…MOVE it, I told my feet in them silly shoes. Take them off? No time. Had to run. It was no good, the place was a maze, if I tried running round the fire baskets it’d take all night–I had to jump over them…
Couldn’t do it. Came to a halt, teetering. What if I jumped just as the detonator went off? All I could think was what Davey’d said when I first set off into the Starfish–That’ll warm your knickers. I could feel a long, tight scream building up inside me. Had to do it, had to jump. Couldn’t, couldn’t.
Then RUN. I ran along the length of the fire basket, round the end of it, down the length of another one looking for the next gap. My ankle went over, I was on hands and knees with my nose an inch from the ironwork. I could smell the sawdust, the creosote and the oil on top. If it went up now I’d be a candle, a flaming head on a melting body, my eyes running down my cheeks as they seared and split…
I screamed, screamed again, and it was such a tiny sound in the immensity of the darkness. Had to get up. Had to get AWAY…I was clawing myself backwards away from the trough like an upended spider, legs tangling, and oh, God, the pain in my ankle, a deep sick-making pain but nothing, nothing like the pain of burning up would be.
There were arms under my arms, lifting me up. God, lift me up so I could float away, a flake of ash on the smoky wind spiralling upwards.
A red light flashed about fifty feet away.
‘Sweet Jesus, what’s that?’
‘Railway signal light.’ Davey’s voice, close by my ear.
‘Where did you come from?’ Oh, the relief. Not to be alone.
‘Never you mind. Can you put your weight on your ankle?’
‘What’s a railway signal light doing up here? Don’t tell me I’m going to be made mincemeat by a train next?’ I tried a step forward. Still sick-making, but possible, at a lurch. One shoe had come off, the strap torn on a piece of flint when I’d tried to crawl away from the trough. My leg was scraped and bleeding.
‘Don’t joke.’ He knelt down, and his fingers fumbled with the ankle strap on my other