Cath Staincliffe - Stone Cold Red Hot

I took the first door again, just inside I stumbled over legs. Jeans. Johnny. So hard to see. No air to speak. Heard him choking, vomiting. Pulled at his legs. He shuffled my way. Another sound, a child’s cough. In his arms, the toddler. Out the door, we wriggled, slow, painful. Flames nibbled along the carpet, caught at the bottom of my leg, the nylon melting and sticking fast. Johnny yelped. Hurt too. Had to get out, get out fast. Felt for the first stair, yanked us closer, no air. Buzz of darkness at the back of my skull, swimming closer. Pushing Johnny, tumbling down, bump, bump, bump. The child cries. Can’t find the door. Where’s the door gone?

“Bennie?”

“Take them out.”

Voices, hands lifting me up.

Outside, gulping for air and there is none. Then a mask on my face and my panic subsides. An ambulance. The people calm and steady. Johnny on a stretcher. The child, on the paramedics knee, pulling at her oxygen mask, her face streaked black, her clothes thick with soot.

A fireman approaches us, huge in his gear.

“There are others inside?”

I nod. Remove the mask to speak, my voice is pathetic, and I can’t say more than a couple of words without coughing. “There’s a baby and a little boy, their mother, and a policeman.”

He thanks me and runs off.

The ambulance was parked beside the police cars, in the middle of the road. I sat just inside, the back doors were open. The crowd had melted away. Neighbours remained, worried faces, sharing cigarettes and quiet conversations, coats pulled tight. I could see Darren, his face upset and wobbly standing beside his mother.

The moon was glorious, high, bright as neon.

Someone touched my arm. Mr Poole.

“You OK?” His eyes glistened.

I nodded. Clamped my mouth tight to hold the tears.

One of the engines was running foam into the upstairs window. A second ambulance arrived. The crew began to get out stretchers and blankets.

“We’ll be off in a minute,” the paramedic said. “Take you for a check at the A&E, get those burns dressed.” The child on her lap whimpered. I reached across and stroked her back. Apart from the filth of the fire she appeared unhurt.

“Is he OK?” I croaked, meaning Johnny.

“Yes, he’ll be fine. There’s burns to his arm and his side, we keep him lying down so there’s less stress on the injuries.”

“The bastards,” I whispered.

“You know, when the fire brigade arrived they stoned them. Want shooting, whole bloody lot of them,” she said.

More police had arrived and a few of them clustered round the patrol cars. I could see PC Doyle, hands on hip looking this way and that as though he was lost and Carl Benson’s partner talking to a colleague and gesturing angrily.

Johnny turned and raised himself up on one elbow. I saw his jaw tighten but he disguised the pain pretty well. What made him so brave? There he was, under arrest by a bigoted cop, surrounded by a mob of racists and rather than sneak off and drive away he’d dived into a burning house. “They got them?” he asked.

The paramedic climbed out the van, the child in her arms. “There’s someone coming out now.”

I strained to see. A cluster of firemen emerged from the side of the house carrying a stretcher chair bearing Mrs Ahmed with an oxygen mask over her face. She was wrapped in a blanket, she had nothing on her feet, the scarf on her head was blackened. They brought her to the ambulance beside ours. She was completely dazed. I could see now that she clutched her baby to her chest.

“We need to look at the baby, see if he’s alright,” one of the ambulance crew knelt crouched down to try and get to the infant. I stared. There was no movement. The baby’s dead, I thought. She knew it and she didn’t want to admit it yet. A ball of emotion clogged my throat. Then the baby stirred, its head shifted to the side and it gave a harsh cough. The paramedic sat back on his heels and released the breath he’d been holding.

“We’ll just give him some oxygen too, that’s it, lift his head.” Mrs Ahmed didn’t respond. She sat passively while they set up the baby’s mask. The toddler spotted her mother and wriggled in the paramedics arms. She talked gently to the child who only cried louder.

The toddler cried again, holding her hands out for her mother. The woman took her over. The little girl stood to the side of the chair, put her head in her mother’s lap. Mrs Ahmed moved one hand from the baby to rest on her daughter’s head but she continued to gaze into the distance.

“The baby’s doing remarkably well,” said one of the paramedics to his colleague, “but I don’t like the look of the mother.”

“We can take all these in now,” said the woman, including the Ibrahims along with Johnny and I.

“What about the little boy?” I asked. “And Carl, the policeman.”

“We don’t know,” she said.

“Please, can you find out?”

She walked over to one of the firemen and they talked for a couple of moments. I exchanged glances with Mr Poole who waited beside me. I saw the stretchers being taken round to the house.

She came back, her face solemn. “I’m sorry,” she said, “the lads did all they could.”

In the silence that followed I heard the roar of denial deafening in my ears, felt the swell of despair surge up from my guts, my scalp grow taut, my head swim. I moved the mask aside, covered my eyes with my good hand and let the tears leak out. That little boy. No. Oh god, no. And Carl, who’d given his life trying to save him. A good lad, Mr Poole had called him. A good lad. Not the sort you came across often enough in the police force. Johnny lay back on the stretcher and closed his eyes tight. Mr Poole placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

“I’m sorry,” I spoke to Mrs Ahmed a little later, “your boy.” She was oblivious, in deep shock. She must have known already. She sat still as stone, one hand stroking the little girl’s hair, the other still enfolding her baby.

I turned to Mr Poole, “And Carl…”

He shook his head, his soft jowls trembling with the motion, he rubbed at his face with his hands.

“We couldn’t see anything, it was so confusing, the smoke and the noise. I didn’t know where any of them were. If I’d known which room…”

“You did everything you could,” said Mr Poole. “Just like Carl. He didn’t have to go in there, none of you did. People will remember him for that.”

“A hero?” My voice wobbled dangerously. “I’d rather he was alive.”

“Of course, so would I. ‘Happy the land that has no heroes’,” he quoted. “But if Carl had made it maybe they wouldn’t have,” he gestured towards the woman and her children. “He did his job, more than his job. When I talk to his mother that’s what I’ll tell her, that he was the best, his humanity took him in there, into that fire. He cared. It’s right to be proud of that.”

I was glad that Mr Poole knew Carl’s mother and would be able to describe to her all the events of that night, tell the story over and over, answer her questions. And Mrs Ahmed, who would talk with her? With a jolt I remembered her husband.

“Mr Ibrahim! They must get him, tell him. He’s at work.”

Someone called a policeman over and I told him about Mr Ibrahim, my words punctuated by coughing. “It’s in Chorlton somewhere.”

“Heaven’s Bridge,” supplied Mr Poole, “High Lane.”

“Thanks, we’ll get someone round there.”

Gradually we were seated in the ambulance, Mr Poole retrieved my bag for me and several different people made notes of our names and addresses.

Then they closed up the doors and as we drove away I could see the house through the small window, door charred, the blackened window frames gaping in the dark. The fresh graffiti on the wall still visible: ‘Nigger bastards go home’.