You roll up at each destination with a different face, as wrong

as the beech tree in Preston Park hung with trainers

 

John McCullough, 'The Zig Zag Path'

 

 

The first firework cracked against the window. A brilliant flash, fleeting and magnificent. It was the second one that caused the trouble. The Roman Candle, bought for £3.99 from the shelf near the till. Ignited by a shaking hand, it lurched towards a greasy puddle, iridescent with petrol pinks and greens. It took a moment, but once the first spark landed its soft arc, the flames grew tall and urgent. They watched him from their swivel chairs behind the counter - his grinning face, the lighter in his hand, his lopsided silhouette recognisable in an instant. And when that first flame licked over the petrol pump and mushroomed beneath the curving plastic roof, they picked up their handbags and walked for the door.

 

It was quarter to midnight on Christmas Eve. The two sisters, both in their 60s, both mousey, one very slightly smaller than the other, had six hours and forty-five minutes of triple time night shift pay to go. A Bill Murray film was playing on a laptop, they had a Ginsters slice in the microwave and a half tin of Quality Street left. But here they were now, scrambling up a chalk path in the dark to watch the petrol station burn.

 

‘Do you think we should call 999?’ the eldest sister whispered, already fingering the numbers on her phone.

 

It might have been the rising smoke, carried fast on a December easterly. Or it might have been shock. Or it might have been deference to the petrol station where they worked, now orange and fiery below, but their voices were hushed and awed.

 

‘I didn’t mean for that to happen’, panted the man, who had suddenly appeared beside them. ‘I just wanted to say hi.’

 

His hair had grown long and thin since they had last seen him. He still wore the same leather jacket, but it was more ripped now, and hung loose and rounded at his shoulders. He had on a green trucker’s hat and a thin velvet scarf at his throat. He held a tall stick in one hand like a wizard, and in the other was a plastic bag full of fireworks.

 

‘You could have called to say hi,’ said the younger sister, pulling the zip of her fleece up towards her nose and breathing through the plasticky fibres.

 

The first siren was coming over the brow of the hill now, wailing into the eerie quiet.

 

‘What fun would that be?’ he smirked. ‘I wanted a party.’

 

They stood for a moment. They took in the sight of him, saw what he looked like and felt the rising heat warm their bodies. Then he sighed and turned towards the hill and began groping his way through the chalk and flint, moving further up the steep path away from them and the flames below. His shambling gait, caused by childhood polio, was concealed quickly by the darkness. A vanishing act they already knew too well.

 

The winter night that he was taken to hospital, carried from his cot bed by their mother, was a night never talked about by his sisters. They had lain in their beds with their door ajar, still and watching. And in the morning, when he had not yet returned, they poured cornflakes into their bowls, ate quietly, wiped the milk from their chins and went to school. After weeks in hospital, he moved to the seaside for convalescence. He breathed cleaner air, dipped his toes into the ocean, he lived in a world parallel to theirs and the imprint left behind felt like a punishment. When he returned two years later, one twisted leg clamped into callipers, that imprint no longer fit.

 

Polio left him with a way of walking that was full of movement. He flowed like a wave, undulating, as quick to leave as he was to arrive. He learned to avoid the mean kids. To be the funniest and to disappear the fastest. So when they saw him that night, drifting unanticipated along the footpath beside the A27, they braced themselves. He’d stood waving in the forecourt for a while, before heading, eyes fixed on them, into the shop.

 

They weren’t huggers. Never were. Instead he nodded, smiled and picked chocolate bars off the shelves as he walked towards them like an incoming tide. ‘Merry Christmas’, he whispered, holding out a Mars Bar. They asked where he’d been, who he’d been with, but he said he was ‘just passing through’, and that it was ‘good they were still doing everything together’.

 

‘I like these’, he smiled, noticing the shelf with the fireworks. They’d over ordered for bonfire night and were now selling Roman Candles, Catherine Wheels, Peonies and Palms at seventy percent off. ‘I’ll take five’, he said, and they bagged them up and fished through his change.

 

The sisters offered him a Quality Street but he said he didn’t eat chocolate. They suggested a cup of tea, but he said he didn’t like hot drinks. ‘Why are you here then?’ said the elder sister, clamorous, and he said he wanted to see them, to check they were side by side, to see that everything was the same. Then he picked up his bag of fireworks and walked outside.

 

Now stood together on the chalk path, the sisters gripped each other’s hands and watched firefighters spray foam over the dying embers. It dripped thick and heavy.

 

When the flames had been dampened the night was suddenly blacker and more silent. That was until three pink flares rocketed into the sky and exploded, crackling into shimmering rosettes of sparkling reds, greens and golds, erupting one by one, the force reverberating through the ground.

 

Each time he passed through they wondered if it would be the last, this strange brother of theirs with his unfathomable behaviours and his stupid green hat. But there he was, writ in sparks across the inky sky. They watched until every flash had dimmed, unable to look away.