‘Want to have a shot? We’ve got time, you know?’
‘That bloke’s there,’ he said, squinting at the sun which was now high in the sky.
‘That’s just Billy Harper. Billy’ll not bother you. He loves them swings. Always has. He’s all right. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Around here, pet, everyone knows everyone else. It’s the worst thing about the place, you’ll find out. But the good thing is once you have everyone’s measure you’ve nothing to fear. There’s no secrets in Brampton.’
Daniel thought about that: no secrets and everyone knowing your measure. He knew small places. He’d been put in a few of them, when his mam was sick. He didn’t like small places. He liked Newcastle. He wanted to live in London. He didn’t like people knowing his measure.
As if she had heard his thoughts, she said, ‘So you like Newcastle then?’
‘Aye,’ he said.
‘Would you like to live there again?’
‘I want to live in London.’
‘My, really? London, I think that’s a fine idea. I loved it there. If you grow up and move to London, what do you think you’ll be?’
‘I’ll be a pickpocket.’
Daniel thought she might tell him off then, but she turned and gave him a little push with her elbow. ‘Like Fagin, you mean?’
‘What’s that?’
‘Haven’t you seen Oliver Twist?’
‘Maybe. Aye, I think so.’
‘There’s an old man in that – pickpocket – comes to bad end.’
Daniel kicked at some stones. A cow turned in her path and moved towards him. Daniel jumped a little and skipped behind Minnie.
She laughed. ‘Och, lad, cows’ll not ’arm you. It’s the bulls you got to watch for. You’ll learn.’
‘How can you tell if it’s a cow or a bull?’
‘Well, lucky you. You’re here in Brampton. A town full of farmers – you can find out the answer.’
‘But that’s a cow, is it?’
‘It is.’
‘An old cow like you.’
She turned to him on the path, stopped walking and looked at him. She was out of breath a little and her cheeks were red. The light in her eyes had gone again. Daniel’s heart began to beat very fast, the way it did when he used to come home to his mam’s after being away. His heart would thump as he touched the door handle, not knowing what he would find behind the door.
‘Have I insulted you since you’ve been here?’
He looked at her, with his lips just parted.
‘Have I?’
He shook his head.
‘Speak up.’
‘You haven’t.’
‘All I ask is a similar courtesy. Do you understand?’
He nodded.
‘And while we’re at it, you know your time is soon up with that butterfly.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I said you could have it for a few days, but now I need it back. This evening, when you wash your face and brush your teeth, I want you to return it, do you understand?’
He nodded again, but her back was turned.
‘I said do you understand?’
‘Yes,’ he said, louder than he had meant.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’m glad we understand each other. Now let’s forget it.’
He followed her along the path, watching her boots in the grass and noticing that the back of her skirt was splashed with mud. His arms felt funny and he shook them to get the bad feeling out of them.
‘Look!’ she said to him, stopping and pointing at the sky. ‘Do you see it?’
‘What?’
‘A kestrel! See it with the pointed wings and long tail?’
The bird sculpted a wide arc in the sky and then perched on a high tree top. Daniel saw it, and raised his hand to see more clearly.
‘They’re beauties. We have to watch them from getting the chickens when they’re small, but I think they’re elegant, don’t you?’
Daniel shrugged.
When they got there, the school was an old building surrounded by run-down huts. He didn’t like the look of it, but followed Minnie up the steps. She hadn’t made an appointment and so they had to sit and wait. He didn’t like schools and he felt the ceiling of the place pressing down on him. Again, she seemed aware of how he felt.
‘It’s all right, pet,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to start here today. We just need to get you enrolled. After you’re all booked in, we’ll get you some new togs. You can choose them yourself. Within reason, mind you, I’m not made of money, like,’ she said, leaning into him.
She smelled almost floral. The definite ming of last night’s gin, but then the lemon and the damp smell of her wool, the chickens, and somehow the whiff of the summer grass they had brushed through as they walked to the school. For a moment, smelling her, he felt close to her.
The head teacher was ready to see them. Daniel expected Minnie to ask him to sit outside, but she pulled him up by the elbow and together they stepped inside the head teacher’s office. He was a middle-aged man, with thick glasses. Daniel hated him before he had even sat down.
Minnie took ages to get into the chair beside Daniel, in front of the head’s desk. She unwound her scarf and took off her coat and then spent time rearranging her cardigan and skirt. Daniel noticed that she had left muddy footprints which trailed from the waiting room into the office.
‘Minnie,’ said the head teacher. ‘Always a pleasure.’
Daniel could see from a triangular nameplate on his desk that his name was Mr F. V. Hart.
Minnie coughed and turned towards Daniel.
‘Yes,’ said Hart. ‘And whom do you have for us today?’
‘This is Daniel,’ said Minnie, ‘Daniel Hunter.’
‘I see, and how old are you, Daniel?’
‘Eleven,’ he said. His voice sounded strange in the room, like a girl’s. Daniel looked again at the carpet and Minnie’s muddy boots.
Mr Hart’s eyes narrowed as he regarded Daniel. Minnie opened her bag and put a piece of paper in front of Mr Hart. It was paperwork from Social Services. Mr Hart took it and lit his pipe at the same time, biting hard on to the stem and sucking until the dirty, heavy smoke drifted over Minnie and Daniel.
‘It seems we don’t have his papers in from the last school he was at. What was the last school he was at?’
‘Maybe you could ask him? He’s sitting right there.’
‘Well, Daniel?’
‘Graves School in Newcastle, sir.’
‘I see. We’ll request it. What kind of pupil were you there, Daniel, would you say?’
‘Dunno,’ he said. He heard Minnie breathe, and thought she might be smiling at him but when he turned she wasn’t looking at him. Hart raised his eyebrows and so Daniel added, ‘Not the best.’
‘Why do I sense that to be an understatement?’ said Hart, relighting his pipe and sucking until smoke blew down his nose.
‘This is your new start,’ said Minnie, looking at Daniel. ‘Isn’t it? You plan on being proper exemplary from here on in.’
He turned to her and smiled, then turned to Hart and nodded.
The next morning, Daniel awoke with the thought of the new school pressing on him, heavier than the blankets of his bed. So many new schools. He listened to the chickens in the yard outside and the pigeons cooing in the gutters. He had dreamed about his mother again. She was lying on the couch in the old flat and he couldn’t wake her up. He called an ambulance but the ambulance wasn’t there yet and so he was trying to wake her, trying to give her the kiss of life as he had seen on television.
The dream was close to something which Daniel had actually experienced. Gary, his mum’s boyfriend, had beaten up Daniel and his mum and then left, taking most of the money and a bottle of vodka with him. Daniel’s mother had spent what was left of her dole money on a hit because she said she wanted to feel better. When Daniel woke in the middle of the night she was hanging off the couch with her eyes half open. Daniel had be
en unable to wake her and had called an ambulance. In real life the ambulance came quickly and they revived his mother. Daniel had been five.
Again and again he dreamed of her. Each time he could not save her.
Daniel lay on his side and reached into the bedside drawer. His hands closed on the egg, which was cold as a stone now. He warmed it in the palm of his hand. Again he reached into the drawer, his fingers searching for the cheap gold necklace that she had worn around her neck and given to him one day when he was good. When he was good.
It was gone.
Daniel sat up and took the drawer out. He placed the egg on his pillow and searched through the drawer for the necklace. He upturned the drawer, and shook out the sock and the children’s books, the biros and old stamps torn from envelopes which had been left in the drawer by her other children. The necklace was not there.
‘I can’t go to school,’ he told her. He was dressed in the clothes she had laid out for him: white vest and pants, grey trousers and a white shirt. He had done the shirt up in a hurry and the buttons were mismatched. He stood before her frowning, with his hair sticking up.
Minnie was spooning out porridge for him and dropping aspirin into a glass for herself.
‘Course you can, love. I’ve made your lunch.’ She pushed a bag of sandwiches towards him.
He stood before her trembling, the egg in his right hand. His clean socks were getting all hacky mucky from her kitchen floor.
‘Did you steal my necklace?’ He could only whisper it.
Minnie raised an eyebrow at him.
‘It was in a drawer with the egg and now it’s gone. Give it back, now.’
Daniel threw the egg on to the kitchen floor and it smashed with a splat that sent Blitz skipping back to his basket.
Minnie bent and put the sandwiches into his school bag. He ripped the bag from her and threw it across the floor after the egg. She stood up very straight and clasped her hands in front of her.
‘You have to go to school. If you replace the butterfly, I’ll replace the necklace.’
‘I’ll smash yer fuckin’ bu’erfly if you don’t gimme my necklace, you thieving old cow.’
She turned her back on him. He thought about getting the knife out of his pocket but the knife hadn’t worried her before. He turned and ran upstairs. He had hidden the butterfly under his mattress.
‘Here,’ he said, putting it on to the work surface. ‘Here’s your stupid bu’erfly, now give me the necklace.’
She was wearing his necklace. He couldn’t believe it. She took it off and handed it to Daniel, then put the butterfly in her pocket.
‘So, what have we learned from that, Danny?’ she said as he got his breath back.
‘That you’re a fat thieving slag.’
‘I think we’ve learned that the both of us have precious things. If you respect mine, I’ll respect yours. Do you remember the way to school?’
‘Fuck off.’
He slipped on his shoes and slammed the door, dragging his school bag behind him. On the way he kicked at the nettles and dandelions that grew. He picked up stones as he went and threw them at the cows, but they were too far away. Billy Harper wasn’t on the swings, so Daniel stopped and swung them right round so that none of the other children could play on them. He was late for school but he didn’t care.
He didn’t care about last chances or new starts. He just wanted everyone to fuck off and leave him alone.
He got lines on his first day for being late.
His teacher was called Miss Pringle and she reminded him of the butterfly. She wore a pale blue jumper and had blonde hair that hung below her shoulder blades. Her tight jeans had a rose embroidered on the pocket. She was the youngest teacher he had ever had.
‘Would you like to sit at the blue table, Daniel?’ Miss Pringle said, bending over a little to talk to him with her palms pressed together between her knees.
He nodded and sat down at the table which was beside her desk. There were two other boys and two girls on the table. There was a piece of blue paper taped to the middle of the table. Daniel sat with his hands under the table, looking at a space on the floor beside Miss Pringle’s desk.
‘Girls and boys, we’re happy to welcome Daniel to the class. Would you like to say welcome to our class?’
Welcome to our class, Daniel.
He felt his shoulders hunch, feeling their eyes on him.
‘Daniel moved here from Newcastle. We all like Newcastle, don’t we?’
There was a sputter of comment and a scraping of chairs. Daniel glanced up at his teacher. She seemed about to ask him a question, but then decided against it. He was grateful.
All through the morning, Miss Pringle kept rubbing his back then hunkering down beside him to find out if everything was all right. He wasn’t doing the work that she had asked them to do, and she thought he didn’t understand.
The lads on his table were called Gordon and Brian. Gordon said that he liked Daniel’s motorbike pencil case, which Minnie had bought for him. Daniel leaned across the table and whispered to Gordon that if he touched it, he would stab him. Daniel told him he had a knife. The girls at the table laughed and he promised to show them.
The girls were Sylvia and Beth.
‘Me mam told me you’re the new Flynn foster kid,’ said Sylvia.
Daniel slumped down into the desk, over the jotter which he had covered in pictures of guns, although Miss Pringle had asked them to write about their favourite hobby.
Beth leaned over and pulled Daniel’s jotter away from him.
‘Give it back,’ he told her.
‘How long have you lived here then?’ Beth asked, her eyes wide with glee, holding his jotter beyond his grasp.
‘Four days. Give me back my jotter or I’ll pull your hair.’
‘If you touch me, I’ll kick you in the balls. Me dad showed me how. You know Old Flynn’s an Irish witch, don’t you? Have you seen her broomstick yet?’
Daniel pulled Beth’s hair, but not so hard that she would cry out. He reached across the table and snatched back his jotter.
‘You should be careful. She makes all the kids into stew. She ate her own daughter and then she killed her husband with a poker from the fire. Left him bleeding in the back garden, with the blood pouring all over the grass …’
‘What’s going on here?’ Miss Pringle was standing with her hands on her hips.
‘Daniel pulled my hair, miss.’
‘We don’t tell tales, Beth.’
Outside in the playground at lunchtime, Daniel ate the cheese and pickle sandwiches that Minnie had prepared, watching the lads play football. He sat on the wall to watch, sniffing in the wind, trying to catch someone’s eye. When he’d finished his lunch he tossed the bag on to the ground. The wind caught it and swept it to the gutters of the pitch, near the wire fence. He put his hands in his pockets and hunched over. It was cold, but he had nowhere else to go until it was time to go back. He liked watching them play.
‘Wanna game, man? One down, like.’
The lad who asked him was short, like Daniel, with red hair and mud splattered down his grey trousers. He wiped his nose with his sleeve as he waited for Daniel to reply.
Daniel jumped off the wall and walked towards him, hands in his pockets.
‘Wae’aye, man.’
‘Can you play, like?’
‘Aye.’
The game made him feel good. He had had a dark, heavy feeling in his stomach since the fight with Minnie over the necklace and he felt it lift for a moment as he ran the length of the muddy pitch. He wanted to score, to prove himself, but there wasn’t achance. He played hard and was out of breath when the bell rang.
The boy who had asked him to play came up at the end. He walked beside Daniel, with the ball hooked under his arm.
‘You play all right. You can play again tomorrow, if Kev isn’t back.’
‘Aye.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Danny.’
‘I’m Derek. Are you the new lad?’
‘Aye.’
A boy with black hair tried to punch the ball out of Derek’s hands.
‘Give over. It’s mine. This is Danny.’
‘I know,’ said the boy with the black hair. ‘You’re the new foster kid at Flynn Farm, aren’t you? We’re the next farm down. Me mam told me that Minnie the Witch had a new one, like.’
‘Why d’you call her a witch?’
‘ ’Cause she is one,’ said Derek. ‘You better watch, like. She killed her daughter and then killed her husband on the grass outside the house. Everybody knows.’
No secrets, Daniel remembered. Everyone knows your measure.
‘Me mam saw her husband dying and called the ambulance, but it was too late,’ said the boy with the black hair. He was grinning at Daniel and showing the gaps between his teeth.
‘Why’s she ’ave to be a witch? She might just be a murderer?’
‘Why she never get charged then? Me dad says you only ’ave to look at her to see she’s not right. You could end up like her last one.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘She was only at Minnie’s for about a month. Nob’dy at school even knew her name. Right quiet lass. She went into this mad fit in the playground and died.’
The boy with the black hair dropped to the ground in imitation of the fitting child. He lay with his legs open and sent his arms flailing, palsied and electrified.
Daniel watched. He felt an urge to kick him suddenly, but did not. He shrugged his shoulders and followed them back to the school.
5
Daniel felt cold after his run. He appreciated the rare chill, knowing that the Tube would be stifling on a day like this. Fixing his tie, he viewed the room behind him in the mirror, early sun streaming through the bedroom window. He had to be at the police station by eight thirty so that questioning could begin again, but took time, as he always did, to get the knot just right. He bit down on a yawn.
Last night, with a beer after midnight, he had checked the number for City General Hospital in Carlisle. He had decided not to call, but had taken note of the number anyway. If Minnie really was sick, he knew she would have been taken there. Just the thought of her being ill and dying brought a pain to his breastbone, causing him to take a deep breath. Then it would be replaced with the burn of his anger for her, dry in his gullet – still there after all this time. He would not call her. She had been dead to him for years anyway.
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