Sugar Puffs and Dolls Hair

"Sugar Puffs and Dolls Hair"

So I'm outside my house and their house is burning down. They're still
a little drunk, I guess and I was asleep only two minutes earlier, when
their shouting woke me up.

I'm the only one in the street who has woken up and come outside to
help, everyone else has just pulled the duvet over their heads, it's
just those bloody students, it isn't a real fire.

But it is.

Their house is burning down, although from what I can see and feel and
hear, it is actually burning up. The flames are climbing, licking,
devouring. The flames are livid; orange as tigers.

Watching it burn, watching the fire consume, makes me think. We don't
control fire, we never did. Fire just lets people use it from time to
time, so that it can live and play. It's so noisy. I hadn't expected
the noise.

I hadn't expected to be out on the street at whatever time it is, half
past two, one o'clock ? I should be asleep, instead I'm here listening
to wood warp and buckle, listening to the frame of their beige student
sofa pop.

I didn't rescue anyone, I didn't go in and pull them out. I'm out here
to help, but there isn't really anything I can do. I haven't done
anything and I can't think of anything there is to do. I'd hoped to be
a hero, or hoped it was nothing. But it was something, just something I
couldn't affect in any way.

For a moment of two, we all just watch. It gets too hot to stand so
close, my face gets hot, so we back across the street, onto my side of
the road. I could be watching this from my bedroom window.

One of the students is excited, another starts to cry.

The smoke smells bad, thick and chemically; it is black and yellow and
grey all at once. It catches in our throats, making us cough and say
'Christ'. I can smell sugar and toffee and sickly all at once. The
smoke smells like sugar puffs, it smells like wet dogs, it smells like
burnt dolls hair.

I tell them to come inside, I don't even know their names. I've seen
one of them in the shop before, while I've been buying milk and a
newspaper, they were checking lager, seeing which cans were coldest and
best value. I don't know their names, but I invite them into my house.
They could be in shock. I would be shocked, if my house were on
fire.

Maybe I am a bit shocked. I don't know.

Once inside, I hand one of them the telephone, "Ring the fire brigade,
then ring your parents, tell them you're okay. "

This gets done, there are more tears. The boy is at the window,
kneeling on my cherrywood chest, hand on the curtains, watching his
house burn. I make coffee, I fetch biscuits. I talk to parents.

The fire brigade know everyone is safe, they will be here when they
can. There is a part of me that wants them not to come at all, so that
I can see what happens finally. I want to see if the fire burns every
inch of the house, leaving a heap of thin gray ash that will blow away
in the wind tomorrow. I know this isn't the way fires work, but it
might, this one might.

"I think we should see it through, " says the boy.

Despite the fire, it is cold outside and they are only half-dressed. I
go into my hallway and fetch coats. I give them my black reefer jacket
that I wear for work, pockets stuffed with bic pens and annotated bank
statements. I give them my light stone-coloured coat, I give them my
leather jacket. I give a girl whose name I don't know my huge winter
coat, filled with duckdown. It is like wearing a duvet, it is far too
big, she drowns in it. Only her fingernails emerge from the sleeves.
She is like the Stay-Puft marshmallow man from Ghostbusters and I
nearly say so, until I realise that Ghostbusters is my era, not
theirs.

We go outside, with these strangers wearing my coats, all looking a
little like me, and we eat bourbons and watch their house as it
burns.