Chapter 14

“Comin’ out tonight, Si?” John asked his friend.

“Yeah, sure,” Simon answered, not really paying attention. “Yeah… what? Oh, sorry, John. Um, yes, I can go out tonight. Nothing keeping me in…”

They were leaving the station, coming off-shift. John Tierney pulled his friend to one side.

“Simon, this has got to stop. You’re hardly paying attention to anything outside work, and I’m worried that your attitude will spill over there as well. That would get dangerous for you, and for your colleagues who depend on you.”

“I’ve not –”

“No, you haven’t, yet. But I warn you, if I see it, I’ll call it, Simon. There’s no room for it. Now, pull yourself together and cheer up, and come for a bloody drink!”

Mute, Simon simply did as he was told. Well, he made some effort, anyway.

John and his girlfriend Patty persuaded Simon to come out with them after the pub. They went to ‘Sundowners’, and while John and Patty had fun on the dance floor Simon found himself chatting to a very young blonde. He took her home that evening, but though she gave him her phone number, he didn’t bother to call her again. He promptly forgot the girl’s name.

A week later, he did the same thing, this time with a curvy brunette in her mid-twenties. Jeannie said she wasn’t expecting anything more than a fun night, and he took her at her word. This time, he hooked up with her again the following week, but still there was no real intimacy, each was knowingly using the other to scratch a physical itch, no more.

A week after that, Jeannie was with another guy, and Simon was shrugging his shoulders and climbing into another drink.

He missed out for a while, then hooked up with a petite redhead. Camille and he stayed together for three weeks and it looked as though they were getting on well – then Simon pulled the plug on the relationship. He told John that she was, “getting far too heavy too quickly.”

Through all of this, John was being the best friend he knew how to be. He told Simon, “Look, mate, it’s not really my business, but when you’ve broken up with a girl you got close to like you obviously did, you need to get over it. All right, I grant you that you’ve got your head back on at work, but afterwards – you’re still going to hurt someone. Not physically, but some of the girls you’ve been out with since then have been really nice, and you’ve been acting like a bad’un.”

Simon shrugged. “I just don’t want to get involved again, John. I just want to have fun.”

“Yeah, well if you call it that, how come you go around with a face like a sack of spuds? A regular mister potato head you are, these days. Put it behind you please, Simon?”

With a sigh, Simon acquiesced. “I’ll try, John. It’s not easy, though.”

John play-punched him on the arm, like young men do. “That’s the spirit. Now, you go and do whatever it is you do when you’re not coming out with me and leave me to look after Patty!”

- - - - - - - - - -

John wasn’t the only one to notice that all was not well with Simon. Both his mother and his father did too.

One evening, on a day when Simon wasn’t on duty, he was fiddling with his hair in an unsuccessful attempt to bring order to chaos when his mother came into the hall from the kitchen.

“Off out tonight again, Simon?” she asked.

“Yup.” Simon answered. Monosyllables had become his stock in trade.

But his mother wasn’t going to let him get away with it this time. She pursued him, asking, “Why do you find it necessary to find a different girl every time you go out, Simon? What are you running away from?”

“Nothin’,” he answered, turning to go out of the door.

“Not so fast, Simon!” his mother called, but he was already moving away.

“Can’t stop!” he called over his shoulder, walking quickly away.

Simon knew he wouldn’t get away with that, however. His mother wouldn’t be so easily put off once she’d decided to ‘talk about’ something.

- - - - - - - - - -

Sure enough, the following morning he was nursing a hangover over a breakfast of a slice of toast and a cup of coffee when, as if called by magic, it happened. But it wasn’t his mother.

“Morning Simon!” came a bright, masculine voice from the kitchen doorway. Simon looked up and saw his father and wondered where he’d learned to be such a sadist.

“Morning.” he grunted.

His father sat down next to him. Simon kept his head down and concentrated on his toast and coffee. After a somewhat painful silence, the older man cleared his throat. Simon looked up, and his father held his gaze.

“Simon, a long time ago, when you first started showing an interest in girls, your Mum and I decided we wouldn’t interfere with you. We felt it was important for us to be here if you wanted to talk, but that you had to make your own mistakes – that there was little point in us telling you what to do or more importantly what not to do. You’d resent that and pay no attention. So, beyond the obvious stuff like ‘Don’t get her pregnant!’ we let you get on with it.

“That hasn’t changed. But the sullen, miserable little s.o.b. act you’re pulling recently isn’t very nice for us to live with.”

Unable to meet his eyes Simon looked away.

“This all started when you broke up with Marianne. You feel guilty, don’t you?” he asked him. He looked back at him in surprise, then slowly nodded.

“No surprise. But you don’t have to. She broke up with you, after all. But I don’t think that’s the main source of the guilt, either. Something happened between you and her sister, your mother and I think. I don’t know what, your mother doesn’t know what, and frankly I think it’s better that way. But if you’re going to have a career where other people’s lives are in your hands, I think a little maturity would be a good thing.

“If you made a mistake over Marianne, you need to stop moping about it and either fix it or, if it’s not fixable, move on. Acting like you are, is making the atmosphere in this house unbearable.” He fixed him with a stern, steady gaze, ensuring Simon’s full attention. “No matter how old you are, or what you do, you’re my son and I love you. But this sullenness stops.” 

With that, William Cook stood up and looked down at his son, who was now staring at him.

“I’m proud of you, son. I’m proud of the way you’ve turned out, dedicating yourself to helping others in the way that you have. But you’re not quite a finished product yet, after all. Fix it, or move on. Now, did you see that goal that Billy Bonds scored the other night? Brilliant, it was!”

Simon scrambled to let his brain catch up with his father’s abrupt change of subject. He filed away his father’s speech and tried to be enthusiastic about his father’s beloved West Ham United. But afterwards he thought about what his father had said.

It was obviously something the older man had rehearsed, probably line-by-line with his mother. Simon felt guilty once more, realising that he’d upset his mother by his boorish behaviour at home, and resolved not to let his mood darken that way so much.

- - - - - - - - - -

Of course, it wasn’t that easy. Over the next weeks he’d still sometimes turn bad-tempered or morose, particularly after a night out on the booze, or after what he heard John calling a ‘bad day at the office’. This would be especially true if lives were lost. He knew that he and his colleagues were doing everything they could possibly do, but still he was always depressed at such times, sure that there was something he’d missed, something that could have been done to prevent injury and worse.

One night at the ‘Cross Keys’ John and Patty introduced him to another friend of theirs, a girl two years his junior named Michelle.

“She’s just back from a trip around Europe,” Patty told him, leaning close to his ear. “She’ll be going back to Liverpool soon – she’s studying there.”

Michelle was a tall, slim, raven haired girl with a button nose and a ready smile. Simon soon found out that she had a good sense of humour and a razor-sharp mind.

“What are you studying?” he asked her, trying to make conversation.

“Journalism,” she replied, “I want to go into radio, work for the BBC. What do you do?”

“I’m a fireman,” he replied. He couldn’t help letting a little prideful defiance creep into his voice.

“Oh! Interesting. Where do you stand on the pay and conditions issue – do you think there’ll be a strike?”

Simon recalled Phil, the hard-bitten, experienced fireman who was the representative for the Fire Brigade’s Union at the station, telling everyone that some sort of industrial action might be necessary to “bring about a successful conclusion to their dispute,” as he’d put it. Simon had paid little attention. Being single and living at home meant he had few immediate money worries.

“Er – to be honest, I haven’t a clue,” he told Michelle after a short pause while he thought about it. “There’s some talk, but then there often is, isn’t there?”

“So you’re not really involved in the Union, I guess? There goes my hope of an in-depth interview for the university radio!” she laughed. ‘That laugh is so contagious,’ he thought.

He laughed with her. “No, but I know someone you could talk to, if you’re serious,” he replied. He gave her Phil’s name and told her he’d ask if he wanted to give an interview to a young up-and-coming journalist. She smiled at him.

“Thank you, Simon. Much appreciated.”

Simon found her easy to talk to, and before he knew it, it was getting on for eleven o’clock.

“Michelle,” he asked, “Do you fancy meeting up again tomorrow night?” Then he mentally kicked himself. “Sorry, that would have to be the night after, I’m on duty tomorrow night.”

“That’d be great, Simon. I look forward to it – I’ve enjoyed myself tonight.”

“I’ll walk you home,” he offered, and with a nod of her head she agreed.

On the way to her parent’s home nearby, Simon found himself once more studying the girl beside him. She was almost as tall as he was. Her neck was hidden by the sleek, black hair, and she had a small, button nose that he'd noted before. When she turned and asked him a casual question he was fascinated by her smile, even though he couldn’t see her face perfectly in the dark.

They reached the house and she said, “Thanks, Simon. I had a good time,” before giving him a fleeting touch of her lips on his cheek and dancing out of reach.

On the walk home, it came to Simon that he’d relaxed with Michelle, enjoying himself in the here-and-now rather than worrying about the past, and what he could have done differently. It was a very pleasant feeling.

- - - - - - - - - -

For the next several weeks Simon and Michelle were almost inseparable, going out most evenings when he was off-duty and spending many of the nights together.

Simon did introduce Michelle to Phil, and she came away from the meeting full of zest. “Phil thinks there'll be trouble, maybe not now, but soon. He thinks there'll be enough from the Government to stop there being a strike, though, but there'll be lots of posturing first. What do you think, Simon?”

“I told you, I don't know, I haven't a clue about that sort of stuff. I just get on with the job.”

“Yes, Simon, but if you just follow blindly you could come unstuck in a big way one day. You ought to keep yourself informed.”

“Yeah, I suppose,”, Simon replied, but in truth it wasn't something he was likely to pay much attention to. His job, as he saw it, was to go out and fight the fires he was directed to, not to worry about top-level policy. Except, he could always do with more money. Maybe he ought to pay attention after all?

With nudges like this, Michelle encouraged Simon to lift up his head and look at what was happening around him. Her company lifted his soul, too. His family and friends found Simon much easier to live with, something they all appreciated.

But Simon, despite feeling much better about himself and his life, knew that it wasn’t a long-term relationship. Michelle would be returning to university in Liverpool in September. As the month of August drew to a close, he began to feel the time rushing on, a sense not of doom, but of an ending coming towards him.

One night, about a week before she was due to leave, she turned to him as they lay together, satiated and happily recovering their breath.

“Simon, you know I’ll be leaving soon?”

“Yeah,” he replied, suddenly feeling his mood deflate.

“I’m going to miss you.”

Simon turned to look at her. Her pale face was in stark contrast to her hair. She was serious.

“I am, I’m going to miss you. Promise you won’t forget me?”

“As if I could, Mi. As if I could.”

- - - - - - - - - -

A week later, Simon was at the station in Havelocke Road, kissing Michelle goodbye. She stepped back from him, stepped onto the train and closed the door behind her. Quickly finding a window seat on the near deserted train she waved to him. She blew a kiss as the carriage began to move on it’s journey to London, from where she would continue north to join her friends and fellow students. Simon waved until the train curved it’s way out of sight before he sighed and walked slowly away.

They'd agreed to part as friends. Simon knew he would see Michelle again, one day, and that by that time she'd have had another boyfriend, maybe many more than one. Heck, she may even be married. But he knew that neither of them would forget the other.

He felt better, in himself. A sense of loss, yes. Michelle had been fun in both the emotional and physical senses. Mostly, though, he felt healed. Why, he couldn't say, but he thought of Caroline and Marianne for the first time in many days, and found that he could now remember them both with fondness.

He sighed, then turned and began to make his way home. He was on-shift soon. Duty called. It always did.

- - - - - - - - - -

October came, accompanied by the riot of colours as the trees changed before shedding their leaves. The temperatures began to drop, people began to hurry from one place to another to get out of the chillier weather.

Soon enough October was followed by November, and then as the Christmas lights began to shine in some of the shops, December. The trees were now mostly empty of leaves and the sky was a nearly constant grey, a colour which matched Simon’s mood as he drove the appliance back to the station after a shout.

It had been a rough one. A house fire, which had apparently started in the living room and swiftly cut off escape via the staircase. The husband had got his young family out; but soon after helping his wife out of a bedroom window onto the roof of the garage had succumbed to the heat and smoke inhalation. Sadly, the wife was now a widow.

Simon knew, in his head, that there was nothing he or his colleagues could have done to save the poor guy. They’d responded as quickly as possible after receiving the call, and set up quickly for a rescue from the bedroom the wife was frantically pointing to. Simon and John had been first in again, they’d been able to recover him from the building, but by then it was too late – and they knew it even while going through the professional motions.

Mechanically he manoeuvred the big vehicle back into the station. Most of the crew were affected – it was a natural reaction. But inwardly, Simon was beginning to wonder if he could take much more of the strain. He was dreading the next call out, and already felt the anxiety that would only grow as he waited.

- - - - - - - - - -

Just over two weeks before Christmas, Marianne looked down at her belly. “Chris?” she called.

She heard his footsteps along the landing as Chris walked from the bathroom and poked his head back into the bedroom. “Yeah?”

“I’m only going to do these sort of assignments from now on. I’m showing too much for modelling really, aren’t I?”

“You’re as sexy as you’ve ever been, babe,” Chris replied. “You look smashing. But I guess realistically there’s less call for bulging tummies in modelling than we might have hoped.”

“You really think I’m sexy like this?” Marianne asked doubtfully, twisting from side to side and looking at herself in the mirror.

She felt his breath on the back of her neck as Chris came up behind her, putting his arms around her, feeling her bulge – his child – against his warm hands.

“Never more so, Mari. You look wonderful, a picture of health and beauty,” she heard him say, softly, almost whispering it.

“Have I told you I love you today, Chris?” she asked him, placing her hand over his and holding it against her abdomen.

“Yes, first thing when we woke up. Just like you always do. I love you too, just like I always tell you in reply,” he told her.

“But getting back to the point, Mari, I guess you’re right. The next few months, for you as a model, are going to be spent modelling maternity wear, or other stuff linked to young children. Hence today’s gig at the school.”

Marianne sighed before replying, “Yes, I know. I’m going to spend the day cooped up in an infant school classroom with a bunch of kids, a photographer, and a whiny, fussy client. And I’m supposed to look relaxed and happy while I play with them, demonstrating the ‘educational’ toys he’s pushing. Meanwhile you’re going to be in the studio with your latest find, Christina, the lucky, skinny so-and-so. I’m just glad your mother’s going to be there.”

She looked up to see Chris looking at her oddly in the mirror. “What?” she asked.

“You don’t like kids?”

“Oh, I like ’em fine, it’s just that these little darlings aren’t mine.”

“And?” he prodded.

“Well… I don’t like being all fat and off-balance like this. And I know, before you remind me, that the last three months are when it’ll really happen, but I already feel wrong, even though I know I’m really okay. Oh, hell, just chalk it up to maternal hormones or something. Just a silly mummy thing.”

Chris pulled in close to her. “Not silly. Never silly. If it’s what you feel, it’s not silly, though in this case it’s irrational. You’re a rounder, fuller figure, your tits are fuller, heavier and your shape is different – but you glow from inside, love. All women do when they’re pregnant and healthy and happy, you’re no exception.”

Marianne swivelled within his arms and kissed him. He kissed her back before pulling back a little.

Chris went on, “Plus, look at it this way – you may not make so much doing this kind of shoot, and it’s less glamorous – but you can model in this sort of shoot for years and years. As a glamour model, even one of the top ones, you can’t expect to remain at the top of the tree for more than a couple or three years. So it’s good experience for after that.”

He kissed her again before she shooed him away to let her get ready. A few hours later she was wishing the fussy little prick – er, sorry, client – would let the photographer and her get on with it. He really wasn’t helping.

- - - - - - - - - -

It was half past four when the alarm went off at the Station. Simon looked up and the paperback he was reading snapped closed. John woke abruptly from his light doze. They were rolling very quickly afterwards. Simon wasn’t driving this time, he was seated next to John with the rest of the crew. He’d just heard the call that they were headed to St. James’ school in Antler Road.

“That’s just a mile away. We should be there in no time,” Simon told his friend.

“Yup,” replied his friend, monosyllabic under the tension. 

“Least it’s not a school day.”

“Uh-huh.”

It being close to Christmas, Bohemia Road was busy taking cars to (and from) the local shops. The big vehicle was slow as it weaved it’s way through, but close proximity meant that they were at the school in only a few minutes.

St. James’, like many of the schools in the local area, had originally been built for a smaller population than it now had to serve. As a result some additional, ‘temporary’ classrooms had been added, each single story, rectangular prefabricated structures about thirty feet by twenty feet in size. Two of these had been joined together and the fire was in this building. The flames could be seen licking out of some of the windows, casting eerie shadows onto the small asphalt yard outside.

There were a number of children looking on, and as Simon disembarked from the appliance he could see that some of them were shocked, others frantic. He saw Station Officer Billings talking to an adult, a thin, grey haired bespectacled man who was gesturing frantically at the classroom.

Simon swiftly approached his superior officer. “Kids inside?” he shouted over the din of the fire, the cries of the children and the shouts of the adults that had come out to see what was happening. The reply was a curt nod, followed by instructions: he and John were to enter the demountable classroom via the nearest door once the rest of the crew had rigged up a covering hose.

Simon grew increasingly impatient as he watched the crew set up. He could hear the screams of the children inside, but discipline held him until given the order to move in. Finally, finally, he heard the order to “Go!”

Simon leapt forward, John close in his wake. He smashed at the door, breaking it down, and immediately felt the full heat of the flames. As he plunged in through the opening he looked about quickly. He saw a woman clutching two small children closely to her, her body between them and the flames. Flames which were between him and them, them and safety.

He shoved aside a burning desk, ducked under a sagging ceiling panel and went to the three people. He grabbed one of the children, while John picked up the other when the woman held him out. John indicated that the woman should leave. Now. Simon thought she seemed familiar…

It was either Marianne or Caroline, he realised with a start. John leaned in to her and indicated the way out, and she nodded. She began to move, crouched over, to the doorway when there was a loud crack, followed by a roar and a burst of heat and light. Part of the ceiling fell on top of them all. Simon fell, covering the little one – a girl, he realised – with his body. He felt pain in his left leg, felt the burst of heat and cried out. As he did so he heard screams from in front.

Still covering the little girl with his body, Simon struggled to push up onto hands and knees. For an uncertain time he couldn’t move, just managing to keep his weight and that of the ceiling off the young child he was protecting. He felt a sickening pain in his left leg but forced himself up, disregarding it. Suddenly he felt the weight lifted and was hauled up; he shrugged off the help to make sure that the girl was with him and unhurt. Picking her up one handed he began to move to the doorway only to find that his leg wouldn’t support his weight; once more he felt a helping arm under his shoulder.

With sick horror Simon saw two children who’d been hidden earlier by smoke and were now cut off by flames. He reached out towards them, forcing his body to move, but then training took over and he moved towards the exit.

He felt rather than saw the girl being taken from him, at first he struggled to keep her with him before a small spark of higher consciousness made him let her go. He felt himself being hauled out of the building into the open.

“More kids in there!” he yelled to John. He tried to make his leg work, but fell over again. He limped towards the building and had almost reached the door when it collapsed. He tried to spring out of the way but his injured leg defeated him, and he cried out as the weight settled on his already injured leg. He was aware of the weight being lifted again, of being pulled away from the heat, before the cold and darkness took him.

- - - - - - - - - -