No, I say.
No, Midge says.
Well, I will then. Will I? our grandfather says.
Yes, I say.
Okay, Midge says.
Are you sure? he says.
Yes! we say together.
Burning Lily, he says, was famous. She was famous for lots of things. She was a dancer, and she was very very beautiful.
Always the eye for the lasses, our grandmother says with her own eyes on the television.
And one day, our grandfather says, on her twenty-first birthday, the day that the beautiful (though not near as beautiful as your grandmother, obviously) the day that the beautiful Burning Lily became a fully fledged grown-up — which is what’s supposed to happen on the day you’re twenty-one — she looked in the mirror and said to herself, I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to change things. So she went straight out and broke a window as a birthday present to herself.
Ridiculous present, Midge says. I’m asking for a Mini Cooper for mine.
But soon she decided that breaking windows, though it was a good start, wasn’t quite enough. So she started setting fire to buildings — buildings that didn’t have any people in them. That worked. That got their attention. She was always being carted off to jail then. And in there, in jail, in her cell, you know what she did?
What? Midge says.
She just stopped eating, he says.
Why? I say and as I say it I taste the toast taste again all through the inside of me.
Because she was like anorexic, Midge says, and had seen too many pictures of herself in magazines.
Because there wasn’t anything else for her to do, our grandfather says to me over the top of Midge’s head. They all did it, to protest, then. We’d all have done it. I’d have done it too. So would you.
Well I wouldn’t, Midge says.
Yes you would. You’d do it too, if it was the only thing you could do. So then they made Burning Lily eat.
How? I said. You can’t make someone eat.
By putting a tube down her throat and by putting food down the tube. Except, they put it down the wrong part of her throat, into her windpipe, by mistake, and they pumped food right into her lungs.
Why? I say.
Uch, Midge says.
Rob, our grandmother says.
They have to know, our grandfather says. It’s true. It happened. And that thing with putting the tube into her windpipe had made her very very ill, so they had to let her out of the jail because she nearly died. And that would have been very bad publicity for the police and the jail and the government. But by the time Burning Lily got better they’d passed a new law which said: As soon as one of those girls has made herself better out there, and isn’t going to die here in jail, on our hands, as if it was us who killed her, we can go straight back out and arrest her again.
But you know what?
What? I say.
What? Midge says.
Burning Lily kept on slipping through their fingers. She kept on getting away with it. She kept on setting fire to the empty buildings.
She was like a lunatic, Midge says.
Only empty buildings, mind, our grandfather says. I will never endanger any human life except my own, she said. I always call out when I go into the building to make sure no one is in it. But I will carry on doing it for as long as it takes to change things for the better. That’s what she said in court. She used lots of different names in court. Lilian. Ida. May. It was before they knew what everyone looked like, like they do today, so she could slip through their fingers like water does if you clench your fist round it. It was before they used film and photos like they do now, to know who everyone is.
I hold up my hand, in a fist. I open it, then close it.
And she kept on doing it, he says. And the police were always after her. And next time, we knew, she’d surely die, she would die if they got her again, because she was too weak to do that starving thing many more times. And one day, now, are you listening?
Yes, we say.
One day, our grandfather says, one of our friends came round to my house and told me: Tomorrow you’ve got to dress up as a message boy.
What’s a message boy? I say.
Shh, Midge says.
I was small, our grandfather says, I was nineteen, but I could pass for twelve or thirteen. And I looked a bit like a boy.
Yeah, Midge says, cause you were one.
Shh, I say.
And I checked through the clothes she’d brought me in the bag, our grandfather says, they were pretty clean, they didn’t smell too bad, they smelt a bit leathery, a bit of the smell of boys.
Uch, Midge says.
What’s the smell of boys? I say.
And it looked likely that they’d fit me. And lo and behold, they did. So I put them on the next morning, and I got into the grocer’s van that stopped for me outside the door. And the girl driving the truck got out, and a boy took over the wheel, and she gave the boy a kiss as she got out. And before she got into the back of the van in under the canvas the girl gave me a rolled-up comic and an apple, and a basket of things, tea, sugar, a cabbage, some carrots. And she said, pull your cap down low and put your head inside the comic now, and start eating at that apple when you get out of the van. So I did those things, I did what she said, I opened the comic at random and held it up in front of me, and the pictures juggled up and down in front of my eyes all the way there, and when we got to the right house the boy driving stopped the van, and the front door of the house opened, and a woman shouted, All right! It’s here! And I went round the back, that’s where message boys were supposed to go, I was down behind the comic, and I took two bites out of the apple, which was a big one, apples were a lot bigger then, back in the days when I was a girl.
This time Midge doesn’t say anything. She is completely listening, like I am.
And in the corridor of the big old house I saw myself in a mirror, except it wasn’t a mirror, and it wasn’t me. It was someone else dressed exactly the same, it was a fine-looking boy wearing the exact same clothes. But he was very very handsome, and that was how I knew he wasn’t me and I wasn’t him.
Rob, our grandmother says.
He was handsome, though he was very thin and pale, and he gave me a great big smile. And the woman who’d taken me through the house, she upended the basket so the groceries fell out all over her floor, like she couldn’t care less about groceries, and then she handed the empty basket to the handsome boy and she told me to give him the comic and the apple. He slung the basket lightly on his arm and let the comic fall open in his hand, then he took a bite himself out of the apple in his other hand, and as he went out the door he turned and winked at me. And I saw. It wasn’t a boy at all. It was a beautiful girl. It was beautiful Burning Lily herself, dressed just like I was, who’d turned and winked at me then.
Our grandfather winks over at our grandmother. Eh, Helen? he says.
Way back in the Celtic tribes, our grandmother says, women had the franchise. You always have to fight to get the thing you’ve lost. Even though you maybe don’t know you ever had it in the first place. She turns back to the television. Christ. Six nil, she says. She shakes her head.
I want the French eyes, I say.
You’ve got all the eyes you need, our grandfather says, thanks to girls like Burning Lily. And you know what, you know what? She got as far as the coast that day, miles and miles all the way to a waiting boat, without the police who were watching the house even knowing she’d been and she’d gone.
Grandad, you’re like insane, Midge says. Because if you work it out, even if you were a girl, that story would make you born right at the beginning of the century, and yeah, I mean, you’re old and everything, but you’re not that old.