Where There's Smoke

He smiled, pleased with her reaction. “That’s the point of bonfire night. We can pretend we’re kids again without anyone thinking we need locking up.”

They left the pub and made their way through the park towards the fire. The night was hazy with woodsmoke and sulphur. Exploding rockets peppered the sky with sounds like tearing cloth. As they drew nearer, the pungent smells of the hot dog and burger stalls threw their weight into the atmospheric stew. They bought jacket potatoes and mulled wine, and made their way through the crowd towards the bonfire. It towered behind a cordon of ropes, throwing a stream of sparks into the sky. A lifelike guy was slumped in a chair balanced at the top, smouldering but not yet alight. One gloved hand, buffeted by the heat, moved disturbingly up and down, as though trying to beat down the flames.

Kate grimaced. “It’s a bit gruesome, when you think about it, isn’t it,” she said. “Pretending to burn someone. Even if he did try to blow up Parliament. Not much reason to call it a ‘good’ fire, is it?”

Alex was watching the guy. It seemed to take a second for what she said to register. He looked at her with a quizzical expression.

“Bonfire,” she explained, feeling stupid, “At school they said it meant ‘good fire’. You know, as in bon, French for ‘good’.”

A smile touched his face. “That isn’t where it gets its name from. It’s derived from ‘bone fire’. Because they used to burn bones.”

Kate gave a horrified laugh. “God, it gets worse! I thought it was bad enough celebrating someone being executed!”

Alex shook his head, turning back to the flames. “That wasn’t what it was about originally. To start with it was a Celtic fire festival called Samhain, when people used to build fires to mark the beginning of winter. It wasn’t even on November the fifth, it was on the first. But after the Gunpowder Plot people were encouraged to burn effigies of Guy Fawkes on the fires, and the whole idea was hijacked.”

“You sound like you don’t approve.”

He didn’t answer at first. His face was jaundiced with reflected flame. “It was something pure to start with,” he said. “People celebrating fire as a counter to winter. Then it was turned into a political sham, a warning from the government to any other malcontents. Fawkes was a scapegoat. He was just a mercenary, an explosives expert hired to handle the gunpowder. Robert Catesby was the real leader, but no one hears about him. He was killed when they arrested the actual plotters, so they played up Fawkes’s role instead. And the real reason for lighting the bonfires became lost.”

He stopped, giving her a chagrined grin. “Sorry. Lecture over.”

“You sound like you’ve read a lot about it,” Kate said. It was rare to hear him speak at such length.

Alex seemed about to say something else when a detonation above them lit the sky with a stuttering crack! Kate looked up and felt the pressure of the rocket’s percussion on her face as the display began.

They were forced closer together as people pushed forward for a better view. Kate was conscious of him standing slightly behind and to one side as the firebursts boomed and flowered overhead. She swayed back, involuntarily, but in the moment before her shoulders brushed against him, a sudden waft of hot smoke stung her eyes. She turned away, blinking, and as she wiped them there was a commotion at the opposite side of the fire.

Through streaming eyes she saw a man duck under the rope cordon. A steward made a grab for him, but the man jinked around his outstretched hands like a rugby forward. He ran straight at the blazing stack of wood, and as Kate watched, still not believing what he was going to do, the man launched himself into it.

The steward’s cry was drowned in the bang of another explosion overhead. He dodged back, throwing up his arm to shield himself as the bonfire collapsed in a frenzy of sparks.

Behind him, the horrified, pale faces of the people standing by the ropes began to turn away, like lights blinking out. She heard one or two screams above the clatter of the fireworks, but most of the crowd were unaware of what had happened.

A cooing ahh went up at another extravagant rocket-burst as stewards ran towards the fire.

Kate quickly turned away as two of them pawed with long poles at a smouldering shape in the edge of the flames. She clutched hold of Alex’s arm. “Let’s go.”

Now more people were turning to look. A low murmur, almost a moan, went up from the crowd at some further movement from around the bonfire.

“Alex...”

He was still staring at the cluster of stewards. She tugged at him. He didn’t move.

“Come on, Alex.”

His face was blank with shock as he let her lead him away. They pushed against the flow of a crowd that was now moving towards the fire to see what had happened.

She almost lost her grip on Alex’s arm, but then the crush thinned and they could move freely.