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 31st, I lit the bonfire planned for the previous year’s fireworks night. It was extremely large and my son and I had to stand far back to avoid the heat.

There’s something exciting and wonderful about bonfires, but they’re also sinister and scary. Without fire, there is no cooking, there is no warmth in winter, there is no metal, there is no civilization, but as we all know, this creative power has a sinister, evil, destructive shadow.

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

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

I once toured the Cathar towns and castles of the Languedoc in France; here thousands of ‘infidels’ were burned alive by good Christians who were told by their commanders not to care whether the victim was actually an infidel or not. “Kill them all, and God will know his own,” said Simon de Montfort.

I stood in tears in the square of Rouen where poor, naive Joan of Arc was murdered. Anyone with a strong imagination becomes terrified, ill, and depressed at the thought of death by fire, especially if it is done deliberately. I often think that such an action reveals the human race as too despicable to be worth protecting.

Once my bonfire was lit, I started shoveling the ash. Suddenly my foot sank to the ground and I didn’t think about anything for a second or two. Maybe there was a rabbit hole there. Then suddenly I felt the teeth of the most intense pain biting me and I realized my boots were filled with ash.

There are different types of pain, and it would be difficult to compile them into any list in order of severity. Women know the extreme pain of childbirth; My sister once described it to me as ‘like throwing a cannonball’.

In my case, I once completely broke a bone in my leg in a motorcycle accident, and when I tried to stand up it was like I had been hit with a sledgehammer and I screamed and fell back to the ground. At the hospital I begged them to cut off my precious motorcycle boot because removing it was unbearable.

Another time, I woke up in the morning and wondered how I managed to break all the bones in my foot while I was sleeping. The pain was so intense that even the cat passing by scared me; My ex took me to A&E and I was mortified to find out it was just a gout attack.

When I realized I was wrong, I screamed loudly and tried to untie my laces, but it had turned into a granny knot and I was in too much pain to focus. I ran to the rain barrel in my tool shed and filled my boot with water from the spigot.

I am thankful that I wear bamboo socks. Any artificial fibers would melt into my flesh. In the kitchen, I took off my boots and socks and sat with my foot in a washing up bowl filled with cold water for an eternity. I watched with some interest as the bubbles swelled and came together. Finally my girlfriend came and found me.

I knew I needed to go to A&E but I wasn’t in the mood to drive all the way to Lowestoft in Suffolk and wait for the usual three or four hours to be attended to, so I decided to fix the problem myself.

I found a large piece of gauze, dipped it in aloe vera gel and glued it on. It was delicious. The next day I replaced it with gauze soaked in antiseptic cream. That evening I went to my book club feeling pretty good.

On the third day I decided to leave the dressing on overnight to let the wound dry out a bit and the next day I found my foot and lower leg were red and swollen and I started feeling a little weird.

My three worst burns were ‘debrided’; This is a nice way of saying that all dead and infected flesh has been removed. My own leather pieces were then both stapled and sewn into place.

So I spent three hours in A&E and underwent the first of many painful interventions where a young doctor attempted to cut away dead skin. The photographs were sent to Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, the burns center for my part of England, and I was duly summoned.

Luckily I have some old, dirty NHS crutches from a pile of scrap I once found in a field while walking someone else’s dog, and the next morning I took the train to Chelmsford with my son.

I was immediately admitted to the hospital and put on an antibiotic drip because they couldn’t do a skin graft on infected flesh. A few days later I was taken to the theater in a wheelchair. A rectangular piece of skin was removed from my thigh and my three worst burns were ‘debrided’, which is a nice way of saying all the dead and infected flesh was removed. My own leather pieces were then both stapled and sewn into place.

After a few days I was out and returning to the hospital by train every few days. I have experienced many forms of pain; Pains and spasms all day long, a burning sensation that lasted for days, strange stinging and stabbing sensations, a feeling like a golf ball was embedded in the sole of my foot.

Each time I go, my unbandaged foot looks a little less disgusting, but to me it still resembles the flesh of a rotting corpse.

At the time of writing this article, my visits are decreasing. I am allowed to change the dressing at home half the time. I can almost walk without crutches, but the donor site heals quite slowly and no one knows why.

The weirdest thing about all of this is that I enjoyed almost all of it. Hospitals are noisy and busy places, even at night, and I would hate it if I wasn’t too sick to be bothered, but it was like being a working part of a giant healing machine.

I can confirm that the hospital doctors and surgeons are of a superior, highly intelligent, alien breed with interesting and sensitive souls.

As Joan of Arc begins to burn, there is a heartbreaking and endless cry of ‘Jesus!’ I read that you screamed.

Nurses have their own strong opinions about the best way to clean and dress wounds. Despite the exhaustion of long working hours and unsocial shifts, they are all charming, efficient, energetic and positive.

Cleaners, people bringing food carts, people taking your blood pressure in the middle of the night for no reason can be interesting and entertaining.

There is constant banter between patients. I was around an explosives expert whose hand was inexplicably torn apart by his own search dog. Our paths would never cross in outside life. The dog was being sent to Iraq as if he were to be sentenced to hard labor in exile.

Here was a man who had become a sound expert on his own diabetes, holding his toeless feet up for public display as if they were a trophy. I said, ‘Oh, they’re not there.’

The most striking thing about an NHS hospital is that staff come from all over the world and all come with their own stories 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 employees speak little English; One day I listened to an African talking to an Asian and noticed that they had developed a simple dialect in which they spoke to each other. It made me rethink multiculturalism.

I think we all know that multiculturalism doesn’t work very well in civil society, because people naturally tend to mix only with their own kind. But in an NHS hospital the system works well because everyone there has a common goal: to heal and comfort patients.

There is no common purpose among the isolated parallel worlds of civil society outside, and in some cities society with a capital S barely exists at all.

When I became a father, I discovered that taking care of others made me happier. My girlfriend, Bridget, who takes such good care of me, says it gives her deep satisfaction and relieves her nausea.

My ordeal showed me one thing very clearly; That is, many people take the opportunity to be kind.

When I was halfway up the stairs at Chelmsford station a young woman ran up and told me there was a lift I could use. Once on the train, the tram woman told the people sitting in the disabled seats to move forward and brought me a free glass of water and a cup of coffee.

When I got on the bus, someone offered me a seat by the door and walked away to find another seat. People open the door for me, offer to carry something, tell me to go sit and say, ‘I’ll bring your coffee.’

The others seem a little surprised, look at my crutches and bandages and say, ‘What happened to you?’ he says.

They really want to hear the story, and I seem to go everywhere with the sympathy and comfort of strangers.

I would even go so far as to say that most people view the unexpected opportunity to be kind as a gift, a privilege, something to be grateful for, especially when it is not asked of them.

I am grateful for all the compassion and kindness that has come my way this past month, especially those from the burn department at Broomfield Hospital.

It may seem perverse, but I also appreciate the tiny insight into what it’s like to experience martyrdom by fire. It was an agony that couldn’t be described or understood. As Joan of Arc begins to burn, there is a heartbreaking and endless cry of ‘Jesus!’ I read that you screamed.

My burns only account for a confusing 2 percent, but now I know why you’re screaming like that.