LOUIS DE BERNIERES: The truly bizarre bonfire accident that made me understand Joan of Arc’s agony as she was burned at the stake

On May 31, I set alight a bonfire that had been intended for the previous year’s firework night. It was extremely large, and my son and I had to stand a long way back to avoid the heat.

There is something exciting and wonderful about bonfires, but they are also sinister and dreadful. Without fire there is no cooking, no warmth in winter, no metal, no civilisation, but, as we all know, this creative power has a sinister, diabolical, destructive shadow. 

Whenever I stand by a bonfire, I find it impossible not to think of the countless thousands who were burned at the stake by righteous fanatics who sincerely believed (perhaps) that they were thereby saving a soul from burning forever in Hell.

In Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur one unexpectedly discovers that burning was the medieval punishment for unfaithful wives; Queen Guinevere has to be rescued at least twice.

I once did a tour of the Cathar towns and castles of the Languedoc in France, where thousands of ‘heretics’ were burned alive by good Christians who had been told by their commander not to be bothered by whether or not a victim was really a heretic. ‘Kill them all, God will know His own,’ declared Simon de Montfort.

I have stood tearfully in the square in Rouen where poor, naïve Joan of Arc was killed. Anyone with a strong imagination finds themselves appalled, sickened and overwhelmed by the thought of death by fire, especially if it is inflicted on purpose. I often think that such an act exposes the human race as so despicable that it scarcely seems worth preserving.

When my bonfire had burned down, I began to shovel the ash. Suddenly my foot sank into the ground, and for a second or two I thought nothing of it. Perhaps there had been a rabbit hole there. Then I felt the teeth of the most intense pain suddenly bite into me, and realised that my boot had filled with cinders.

There are different kinds of pain, and it would be hard to compile them into any kind of list in order of severity. Women know the extreme agonies of childbirth; my older sister once described it to me as ‘like s****ing a cannonball’.

In my own case, I once completely snapped a bone in my leg in a motorcycle accident, and when I tried to stand up it was like being struck with a sledgehammer, and I cried out and fell back down. In the hospital I begged them to cut my precious motorcycling boot off me, because having it pulled off was unendurable.

Another time I woke up in the morning and wondered how I had managed to break every bone in my foot while I was asleep. It was a pain so intense that even the cat brushing past made me wince; my ex took me to A&E and I was embarrassed to discover that it was only an attack of gout.

When I realised I was being burned, I shouted at the top of my voice and struggled to undo my lace, but it had turned into a granny knot, and I was in too much pain to focus. I ran to the rain barrel on my tool shed and filled my boot with water from its tap.

I am thankful that I was wearing bamboo socks. Any artificial fibre would have melted into my flesh. In the kitchen I removed the boot and the sock and sat for an eternity with my foot in a washing up bowl of cold water. With some interest, I watched the blisters bubble up and join together. Eventually my girlfriend came in and found me.

I know I should have gone to A&E, but I was in no mood to go all the way to Lowestoft in Suffolk and wait the usual three or four hours to be attended to, so I decided that I would deal with the problem myself.

I found a large gauze pad, soaked it in aloe vera gel, and bound it on. It was deliciously cooling. The next day I replaced it with a gauze soaked in antiseptic cream. That evening I actually drove to my book club, feeling perfectly well.

On the third day I decided to leave the dressing off overnight to let the wound dry out a bit, and the following day I saw that my foot and lower leg had reddened and swollen, and I began to feel a little weird.

My three worst burns were ‘debrided’, which is a nice way of saying that all the dead and infected flesh was removed. Then my own offcuts of skin were both stapled and sewn in place

So I spent my three hours in A&E anyway, and experienced the first of many agonising interventions as a young doctor tried to snip away the dead skin. Photographs were sent to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, the burns centre for my area of England, and I was duly summoned.

Fortunately I have some grubby old NHS crutches from a heap of scrap that I once found in a field when I was walking somebody else’s dog, so the next morning I went by train to Chelmsford, accompanied by my son.

I was admitted immediately and put on an antibiotic drip, because they could not perform skin grafts on infected flesh. A few days later I was wheeled to theatre. A rectangle of skin was removed from my thigh, and my three worst burns were ‘debrided’, which is a nice way of saying that all the dead and infected flesh was removed. Then my own offcuts of skin were both stapled and sewn in place.

A few days later I was out, and was returning to the hospital by train every few days. I have experienced many kinds of pain; a whole day of twinges and spasms, days of a burning sensation, strange stingings and stabbings, the feeling of having a golf ball embedded in the sole of my foot.

Every time I go, my unwrapped foot looks a tiny bit less gross, but to me it still resembles the decomposing flesh of a corpse.

My visits are becoming less frequent at the time of writing. Half the time I am allowed to change the dressing at home. I can almost walk without crutches, but the donor site is healing quite slowly, and no one knows why.

The strangest thing about all this is that I have enjoyed almost all of it. Hospitals are noisy and bustling places even at night, and I would have hated it if I had not been too sick to be bothered, but it felt like being a working part in a huge healing machine.

I can certify that hospital doctors and surgeons are from an alien species of superior, highly intelligent, interesting and tender souls.

I have read that when Joan of Arc began to burn, she burst out into one heart-rending and interminable scream of ‘J-e-s-u-s!’

The nurses have their own strong opinions about the best way to clean and dress wounds. They are all charming, efficient, energetic and positive, despite the exhaustion of their long hours and unsociable shifts.

The cleaners, the people who bring the food trolleys, the ones who take your blood pressure for no apparent reason in the middle of the night, can be quirky and entertaining.

Among the patients there is constant banter. I was next to an explosives expert who had had his hand inexplicably shredded by his own sniffer dog. In outside life, our paths would never have crossed. The dog was being sent to Iraq, as if to be punished by hard labour in exile.

Opposite me was a man who had become a vocal expert on his own diabetes, who propped his toeless feet up for general display, as if they were a trophy. ‘Oh, there they aren’t,’ I said.

The most striking thing about an NHS hospital is that the staff come from all over the world, all with their own story of how and why they left home.

One of my doctors was Burmese, my surgeon was Egyptian, and there were nurses from all over Africa and Asia.

Some of the more humble workers speak very little English; one day I listened to an African talking to an Asian, and realised that they had evolved a simple patois that they spoke to each other. It made me reflect anew about multiculturalism.

I think we all know that in civil society, multiculturalism really does not work at all well, because people naturally tend to mix only with their own kind. In an NHS hospital, however, it works perfectly well, because every single person there has a common purpose: to heal and console the sick.

Between the insulated parallel worlds of civil society outside, there is no common purpose whatsoever, and in some cities Society with a capital S hardly exists at all.

When I became a father I discovered that looking after others made me happier. My girlfriend Bridget, who has looked after me so well, says that this has brought her a deep satisfaction, and vanquished her squeamishness.

The experience of my affliction has made one thing quite clear to me, which is that many people seize an opportunity to be kind.

When I was half-way up the stairs at Chelmsford station, a young woman ran up to tell me that there was a lift I could use. On the train once, the trolley lady told the people who were occupying the disabled seats to move on, and then fetched me a glass of water and a cup of coffee, without charge.

I got on the bus and someone offered me their seat by the door, moving away to find another one. People open doors for me, offer to carry things, tell me to go and sit down, ‘I’ll bring your coffee’.

Others stop, as if a little shocked, look at my crutches and bandages, and say, ‘What happened to you?’

They genuinely want to hear the story, and I seem to go everywhere caressed by the sympathy and consolation of complete strangers.

I would go so far as to say that most people think of an unexpected opportunity to be kind as a gift, a privilege, as something for which to be grateful, especially when it has not been demanded of them.

I am grateful for all the mercies and acts of compassion that have come my way in the last month, particularly those received from the burns department at Broomfield Hospital.

It may seem perverse, but I am also grateful for the tiny insight into what it would have been like to have experienced martyrdom by fire. It was an agony beyond description or comprehension. I have read that when Joan of Arc began to burn, she burst out into one heart-rending and interminable scream of ‘J-e-s-u-s!’.

My burns only amount to a piffling 2 per cent, but now I know why she cried out as she did.