Daniel was thirteen years old and in the first year at the William Howard Secondary School on the Longtown Road. He was captain of the football team and had won two gold medals for long-distance running, but he was still smaller and thinner than the other boys in his class. He would start his GCSEs next year. He was good at English, history and chemistry. There was a girl called Carol-Ann who was a year older than he was and she sometimes came to his house after school. She was a tomboy and he taught her how to do keepy-uppies with the football and how to look after the animals. Minnie would have her for tea if her mum was working late. Carol-Ann wasn’t his girlfriend or anything, although he had seen her breasts when her bra came off while they were swimming in the Irving River last summer.
Daniel was popular at school. He had friends because of football and he hardly got into any fights any more. But apart from Carol-Ann, no one came often to the farm. Danny was asked to birthday parties and went along to all the school dos. He had a group of friends he hung about with at school, mainly from the football, but there was no one he played with regularly after school and no friend’s home he visited more than a few times a year. After school, if there wasn’t a game or a party, he would be home with Minnie, working with the animals, picking herbs for dinner, scrubbing potatoes or kicking cans for Blitz in the back yard. And then there would be dinner and games and gin and music. Year in, year out. It was the symmetry of the days, the thankful realisation of expectation, the structure of it all. It made Daniel feel safe.
He learned how to hope. His desires had to be clipped to fit the confines of her home, like the chickens’ wings she snipped in order that they didn’t flee, but anything he could wish for in that house, Minnie gave to him.
It was Saturday and Daniel woke up before his alarm. He stretched out like a starfish, feeling the stretch all the way to his fingertips. Outside the thin pane of his window he could hear the cluck and fuss of the chickens and the irritated bleats of the goats. He lay in bed with his hands behind his head, thinking, remembering.
Daniel tossed and yawned and then reached into his bedside table drawer. He took out his mother’s necklace and stroked the gold ‘S’. It felt smoother than he remembered it being and he wondered if he had made it so, in the same way that the sea rubbed smooth the sharp edges of glass. Almost a year the necklace had been in the drawer wrapped in a tissue but he hadn’t touched it. He had almost forgotten about it.
He lay back down, looking at the necklace. The memories that he chose when he stroked it were not real memories, but rather photographs his mind had taken and then drenched in hope so that they could be strung in the dark, dripping with his own expectation. One of the photographs was of his mother laughing in Minnie’s kitchen, laughing so hard that you could see her two missing teeth, her eyes so tight shut with mirth that the laugh lines cut into her bones. Another was his mother feeding the chickens as Minnie waved from the window. In his mind, his mother’s hands were always bony and slow: they let go of the feed in slow motion, as if her joints were stuck. In another photo they were playing cards together and his mother won; she rocked back on the sofa with her knees in the air and a screech of disbelief.
Daniel placed the necklace back in the drawer. He wondered what Minnie would think of his mother, were they to meet face to face. His mother would be so fragile: a sparrow before her stomping bear. Minnie would feed her and love her and set her to work, as she had done with Daniel. Faced with Minnie, Daniel’s mother would be just another child. When he thought about it, it was that which made his heart break. His mother was a child to him and every year he felt himself age beside her, while in his mind she stayed the same: young, thin, needing him.
Since Daniel had been adopted, the way he thought about his mother had changed. Before, he had felt the panic of her loss, the rip and tear and sting of it. Now he wanted to comfort her. He remembered stroking her brow and pulling a cardigan over her as she slept on the sofa: black eyes and blue lips both smiling at him. He no longer wanted to run to her. He wanted the calm of his new life more than he wanted her chaos, but now he fantasised about bringing her into this new life. Minnie could adopt her too; she could sleep on the sofa listening to Ray Charles as Daniel plucked umbrellas of rhubarb from the garden and pushed vegetables into the nimble lips of the goats.
*
Downstairs, Minnie had the porridge on. She was in her dressing gown, bare feet hacky-dirty on the kitchen floor. The soles of her feet were hard as leather. At night, she would watch television with her feet on a stool and Daniel would sometimes tap the quarter-inch-thick yellowed skin of her feet with his finger. She could stand on a drawing pin and realise a full week later, not because of the pain but because she heard the tap-tack of her foot on the floorboards. Then she would throw her ankle over her knee and remove the offending pin – but there would not be a drop of blood.
When she heard him she walked to the bottom of the stairs with the wooden spoon in her hand. She squeezed his cheeks and turned his face to the side to plant a kiss on his forehead.
‘Good morning, gorgeous.’
It was summer and although it was before seven, the day was bright, the sky a spotless blue. Daniel slipped his feet into his boots and went outside to feed the animals. His hands were cold and Barbara kicked and stamped when he placed them on her udders, so he warmed them in his armpits before trying again.
Together once more, the goats nuzzled and sniffed each other and Daniel carried the milk in to Minnie.
‘You’re a good lad,’ she said, placing his porridge in front of him with a hot cup of tea, which Daniel knew she would have already milked and sugared for him. ‘I’m going to get dressed.’
When she came back, Danny was making toast. He asked her if she wanted some.
‘Just half a slice, love. I’m fine with my tea.’
Daniel gave her a whole slice, knowing that she would eat it anyway. She chattered to him about the garden and the leak in the roof and how she might get someone out to fix it next week. She had been saying that for months. She asked what he wanted to do today, since it was Saturday. If it stayed nice they might go for a walk, or if it rained they would watch afternoon films and eat packets of crisps. Sometimes Minnie would cook or bake inside, while Danny kicked a ball about in the yard.
Daniel shrugged. ‘You know what I was thinking,’ he said, taking a tiny bite of his toast and watching her face.
She smiled – all blue eyes and red cheeks. ‘I’m sure you’re going to tell me.’
‘Do you think the social worker would find out where me mam is now?’
The light in her eyes faded.
‘Darlin’, you know what they said. Eighteen and then you can have contact if you still want to. I know it’s hard but that’s the law and we have to obey it. You need to try and move past it.’
‘I can, I am, I just … I wanted to maybe show her the new goats, and my room now it’s done. She’d like it. I just wanted to talk to her, like.’
Minnie sighed. Her breasts rose up from the table and then fell again. ‘Danny, look at me.’
‘What?’ he said, looking up at her, his mouth full of toast. She was frowning at him.
‘You’ve not to run away again, you hear me?’ She put a hand on her heart. ‘I just can’t take it again, love.’
‘I’m not going to run away. I just wanted to tell her about the new goats, like.’ He looked away and finished his toast, putting too much into his mouth, daring a glance at her. She was sitting watching him, with her hands in her lap.
Daniel too looked away. ‘I thought it might be good if she came and lived with us,’ he said. Saying that out loud, it now seemed impossible, stupid, but still he turned to watch her response.
‘You know that can’t happen, Danny,’ she said, very quietly.
He nodded, feeling a pain at the back of his throat. ‘I just know she’d like it here. She needs looking after and I could look after her here.’
Daniel felt her heavy hand in his.
‘You have to realise that it’s not your job to look after your mother. It’s my job to look after you.’
Daniel nodded. His nose was stinging and he knew he would cry if he spoke again. He didn’t want to hurt Minnie. He loved her and he wanted to stay. He only wanted to make her understand that his mum should come and live with them too. Then everything would be perfect.
‘I’m not going to run away, like,’ he managed. ‘I just want to talk to her. I want to tell her about the farm ’n’ stuff.’ He wiped his fingers over his left eye. ‘I just want to talk to her, like.’
‘I understand, my love,’ she said. ‘Let me talk to them. I’ll see if they’ll give me a telephone number or something.’
‘D’you mean it?’ He leaned forward, smiling with relief, but she was frowning at him.
She nodded.
‘D’you promise?’
‘I said I would.’
‘Do you think they’ll tell you?’
‘I can only ask.’
Daniel smiled and sat back in his chair. Minnie was cleaning up: putting away the butter and the jam and wiping the half of the kitchen table that they ate off – the other half was piled with books and dog biscuits and old newspapers. Daniel felt a warmness spread inside him, up from his stomach to his ribs. It lifted him and he sat up straight and raised his shoulders.
Later in the week, Daniel jogged home across the Dandy. He found a tin can and dribbled it for a quarter of a mile or so, his school tie loose and his shirt hanging out and his school bag off his shoulders. The air was threaded with the smell of freshly cut grass. Daniel could hear his breath and feel the sweat forming at his hairline as he tacked the can forward with his mud-specked school shoes. He enjoyed the bounce and spring in his muscles and his joints and the warm sunshine on his forearms and his face. He was happy, he decided, happy to be here and running home to Minnie.
Home. He smacked the can hard and it rose in a glinting, sun-captured arc for at least ten metres before falling soundlessly into the long grass. Home. Daniel found it and kicked it again. It flew upwards and he waited for it to fall before catching it on the side of his foot and then sending it flying again, down the hill towards Flynn Farm and Minnie, who would have mashed banana sandwiches waiting for him.
It was her predictability that he loved first. She had a gift of showing him her world and then repeating it day after day. Things happened when she said they would happen. She said that she would adopt him and she did. The judge’s face had twisted in disbelief at the papers before him and Daniel’s stomach had sunk, but sure enough he had decided in their favour and he had been made Minnie’s son, just as she had promised.
Daniel looked at her differently now. He already loved her heavy body and the soft masses of her, but now he regarded her as having a new power. He trusted her. She was able to achieve the things she desired; they were within her reach. Even Daniel’s fate she held in her grasp. When he thought of her, he would think of Blitz’s ruff in her fist, as she held him back, opening the door to strangers while he barked.
Daniel slowed to a walk. His breath was uneven. He took a deep breath and enjoyed the smell of warm summer grass. The sky was blue and so cloudless that he felt dizzied by its infinity.
He was aware of voices and then footsteps behind. He glanced over his shoulder and saw it was the three older boys who had chinned him before. He knew their names now: Liam, Peter and Matt. They were in the year above him at school.
He felt tension creep into his muscles. He walked as if he was unaware of the boys, but exaggerated his stride and the swing of his shoulders. He could hear their conversation, although he guessed they were twenty feet behind him. They were talking about the football, but then they fell silent and Daniel felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He tried to listen for their movements.
‘How’s the old witch, Danny, eh?’ one called. ‘She taught ye any spells yet, like?’
The voice was close.
Daniel ignored them, feeling the tension run from his shoulders down his spine. He pressed his teeth together and made fists with his hands.
‘Fat witch like her. Like to see her trying to fly, like.’
Daniel glanced over his shoulder again, and saw one of the boys mimicking a broomstick flight before he crashed and tumbled on to the grass. They all laughed then: dirty laughs. The voices were full-throated and deep; newly broken voices oscillating in derision.
Daniel spun to face them. As soon as he turned, the boys squared up, feet spread apart and hands out of their pockets.
There was a pause, so that all Daniel heard was the rush in his ears.
‘You got a problem?’ It was Peter who spoke, jaw askew, eyes narrowed, willing Daniel to start something.
‘Shut up about her, right!’
‘Or you’ll what?’
‘Chin ye, like.’
‘Yeah, you and whose army?’
It was like before. Daniel charged at the boy, and hit him in the stomach with his head. He was bigger than Daniel still. He felt the older boy’s fist pound his ribs and inhaled with the pain. He could hear the other two jeering, calling: Batter him, Pete. Batter him.
Daniel remembered fighting his mother’s boyfriend, the one who had pulled him off the floor by his hair. He felt rage snap, quick and bright and exquisite through his body. The jolt was strengthening, cleansing. He hit Peter and he went down and then he kicked him in the face until he turned away.
The other boys turned on Daniel then, but he was taut from the attack and he did not feel their fists against his arms and chest. He hit Matt on the nose and felt the crack reverberate against his knuckle and then kicked Liam in the balls.
Daniel staggered away from them. His fist was stinging and he looked down and saw the knuckle cut, but when he touched it, he realised it was only Matt’s blood. He spun round on the Dandy to face them one more time.
‘Another word about her, an’ y’re dead.’
The word dead came out of his mouth like a bullet. It echoed across the open Dandy. Birds scattered in its wake.
The boys, felled in the long grass, said nothing. Daniel walked away from them, still canny, but exaggerating his swagger all the same. There was a breeze and all the blades of grass bent towards him, as if in veneration.
Daniel knew that the boys might retaliate, but he felt good about himself as he walked towards the farm. His steps were light. They would think twice before slagging her again. She was his mother now; he would stand up for her.
When Daniel arrived at the farm, it was still. The hens were strutting and pecking, but quiet, and the kids were stealing a lick from the udder that would be denied them at nightfall. The daisies in the grass braced themselves against the wind.
Minnie was defrosting the freezer. Daniel went for a pee as soon as he came home. He washed his hand and looked in the mirror. He held up his T-shirt to look at his ribs. He had not a scratch. She would not guess that he had defended her earlier, fought for her and won.
He could not help squaring his shoulders as he walked into the kitchen.
She was in her wellies, hammering a wooden spatula against the impacted ice in the freezer.
‘Mother of God, is that the time already?’ she said when he walked in. ‘Sure and I thought it was just gone two. You’ll be wanting your sandwiches and I haven’t even got them ready.’
Daniel wiped his nose and his forehead on his sleeve and waited as she pressed banana slices on to fresh white bread and poured him a glass of orange squash. He downed the juice and ate half his sandwich before he spoke to her.
‘What you doin’ that for?’ he asked, pointing at the open, weeping freezer.
‘It’s like all things in life, Danny. Every now and then you need to get out the hammer and start all over again.’
Daniel was not sure what she meant. He started on the other half of his banana sandwich. The windows were open and the manure smell from the adjacent farm crept in. Minnie downed her tea in a gulp and then picke
d up the hammer and the spatula. She hacked against the ice in loud, hard thuds.
‘I got an A in my history test today,’ he shouted at her. She stopped her assault on the freezer long enough to wink at him.
‘Clever you. I told you. You’re far too smart. You try even a little bit and you’ll knock them all into next week … I told you so.’
Blitz slunk into the next room to escape the noise of the battery. Ice slid across the kitchen floor, quiet and watery as repentance.
Daniel finished his sandwich and sat back in his chair, licking his fingers. He was aware of Minnie looking at him, hammer in hand. She wiped her brow with her bared forearm and put her tools to rest in the freezer. She sat down beside Daniel and laid a heavy red hand on his thigh.
‘What?’ said Daniel, wiping his nose with his sleeve.
‘I spoke to Tricia.’
The kitchen, strung with beads of light and toast smells and warmth, was suddenly taut as the strings of a violin. In the hall, the dog rested his nose on his paws. Daniel waited with his spine straight. Minnie still had her heavy hand on his leg. She began to rub his knee. He felt the friction of it, the warmth through his school trousers.
‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Danny. God knows I want to spare you more heartbreak, but you asked me to find out.’
‘What is it? Is she in hospital again?’
‘There’s never a right time, so I’m just going to tell you. I found out today.’
Minnie bit her lip.
‘She is, isn’t she? She’s sick again.’
‘It was worse this time, pet.’ She looked at him without blinking, as if he would know without her having to say.
‘What?’
‘Darlin’, your mum died.’
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