Clay

by Melissa Harrison

  She tried to imagine what Miss Carter would say. She would be very pleased, of course, and would probably ask her to show the beetle to the whole class and describe how she found it. Afterwards Daisy would show it its new home. It would love it and would go straight in and it would probably live there forever.

  It didn’t take long for Daisy to be missed. Susannah looked around for her and she wasn’t there. She didn’t say anything straight away, as Daisy would be very cross if she got her in trouble when she was really quite nearby. But she wasn’t anywhere. Susannah felt her eyes go hot and her throat tight. She went to find Miss Carter.

  In the city the day was warming up. In the past week spring had fallen like a benediction, the sun warming the grimy pavements, charming weed shoots through the cracks and drawing blind thistles up under the tarmac in unlikely bulges. The grass had begun to grow, re-greening the gardens, the parks and the verges with their cargos of litter and cuckoo spit and grime. Even the waste ground between the old bingo hall and the railway line, strewn with faded estate agents’ boards, rotting sleepers and huge wooden drums once wound with cable, even these abandoned corners were warmed by the spring sunshine and had become rank and dizzy with life.

  On Leasow Road the cherries blushed cornelian or dappled the pavement below with palest pink. Outside some lucky houses magnolias were opening their miraculous, waxy blooms, their fallen petals like slivers of soap on the pavements beneath, bruising to brown with time, and feet. On earthy islets in crazy-paved front gardens specimen roses unfurled new, red leaves, while from verge, bed and central reservation nodded the municipal daffs.

  Now the Somali postman found himself shadowed on his rounds by wood pigeons’ dozy coos, while on sunny afternoons starlings clicked and chattered from the aerials like avian telegraph operators sending news about each street’s coming and goings on the wires. And along the long, unlovely high road the estates were once again jubilant with birds. Robins sang riotously from street lamp, sill and gutter; blackbirds spilled their song down into the tangled yards behind the high-rise blocks. Pigeons jostled the windowsills above grimy shopfronts, and at sunset their assemblies were hosted by the sun-warmed roofs.

  The spring sunshine brought a new mood of optimism everywhere it fell. Workmen left doors and windows open, causing all but the most stubbornly unmusical to fall into step with their radios as they passed. Women, bound by the same circadian rhythm, swapped gloves for sunglasses in their everyday handbags. And at the end of each school day the kids streamed screaming out of the gates, eager not for home and TV, but just to be out, free, in the burgeoning world.

  TC, his school sweatshirt stuffed into his backpack, was sidling along an alley off Curtilage Street. It smelled of urine and was full of wind-blown litter, but the fence on one side was starred with ivy leaves pushing through the slats from the other side, evidence of a press of vegetation beyond. He was exploring: looking for tangly areas, odd corners of waste ground, places where foxes might be bringing up cubs. Along the railway track was a good place; the line was a highway for animals in and out of the city, as well as people.

  Scaling the fence with the help of a wheelie bin, he dropped down on the other side, almost disappearing into the long grass and vetch beneath. A hen blackbird took off into the trees, clucking and bubbling into a loud ‘ack-ack-ack!’ of alarm.

  It was a forgotten half-acre, fenced off, overgrown and utterly abandoned. The large, detached house that had once stood there had fallen victim to a V-1 over half a century before and had been demolished. Its foundations had been colonised first by the rosebay willowherb that wreathed the mourning city in the wake of war, then by the pragmatic buddleia, and were now so blanketed in brambles and ivy that it was hard to see where the house had ever stood. After the war the land had been willed to a relative, an Australian who had little interest in a city plot half a world away, and whose daughter, who now owned the deeds, even less so. And so instead of being buried underneath a new block of flats, or paved for parking, the garden persisted: kingcups marked the boggy place where once there was a pond; there were three stunted rhododendrons amid the brambles; and almost lost among the lime and sycamore saplings were two rusty sequoias and a larch, nearly 120 foot high, survivors of the garden’s Victorian apogee.

  What was immediately clear to TC was that nobody went there – nobody at all. No dogs, no teenagers, no wastermen with their beer cans and ganja. It was a lost world, and it belonged to him. He closed his eyes for a moment to take it in.

  The next thing he did was walk the bounds of his new kingdom, just to understand its dimensions. For much of the way he had to fight through nettles and sticky goosegrass and whippy bramble stolons. That meant blackberries later in the year, which was good.

  He decided to find out every single thing that lived there, so he could take care of it all. Already he’d seen blackbirds and robins and squirrels skittering crabwise up the trunks of trees, and he could hear a woodpecker drumming.

  At the back of the garden there was a pollard oak that predated even the garden, all tortuous elbows above a short trunk. Its shape was proof that the land had once been grazed, the tree pruned so that it would produce new branches at a height safe from the reach of inquisitive livestock. But the grazing land had been swallowed up by the expanding city, and the oak became part of a grand garden, for a while. Now, unobserved and long unpollarded, it was abandoned to time.

  The brambles gave way to ivy and nettles beneath the oak’s canopy, and around the trunk itself the ground was clear. TC leaned against it and rested his cheek on the rough, cool bark. A leaf-green caterpillar dangled on an invisible thread, its gently twisting body lit by the sundazzle filtering through the tessellating leaves above. TC knew about oak trees: more things lived in them than any other kind of tree. Here, against its protective trunk, was where he would have his hide.

  On TV hides were things like sheds with slits to look through, or tents covered in camouflage netting. His would be better, because it would be made of sticks, which were natural. There were lots of branches around, but he had to tear most of them free from the ivy, and some were rotten and crumbled away in his hands. Under them worms eased away into the loam and woodlice and pale orange centipedes slipped quickly into the leaf litter. The exposed earth smelled richly of decay.

  TC began to see that there were things hidden in the ivy: roof slates, a coil of rusted wire, a grey, flattened bucket, the footing for a wall. It wasn’t litter or fly-tipping; he could tell it had all been here for ages, and was part of the place, somehow. It made him have a quiet feeling that he didn’t completely understand. In fact, although he could not have known it, as he explored the uneven ground he was moving through the ghostly rooms of the long-gone house: kitchen, scullery, drawing room, hall. How strange the house’s last inhabitants would have found the little boy; or, perhaps, not so very strange at all.

  He found a lumpen accretion of bricks and concrete half hidden by a clump of honesty in full bloom, a little path snaking between the stems and leading deep beneath the stony mass. Carefully, he put his eye to it. No cobwebs, no leaves. It must be in use. Did snakes live in holes? Probably, but TC decided it was more likely to belong to a mouse. He wished he had some bread; he could have made tiny dough balls and rolled them into the hole for it to eat. Next time.

  He wondered how far the tunnel went, and what was at the end of it. He imagined a cosy burrow packed with happy, well-fed baby mice and snug with warm fur and breath. If only he could have lifted the concrete mass to see, and replaced it gently without waking them; if only he could prove he meant no harm.

  It was a warm afternoon, but the secret garden was sun-dappled and cool. Between the shafts of sunlight hoverflies hung, moved and hung still again, piloted like tiny futuristic airships.

  Time slowed, and the task at hand filled TC’s mind. Simply to apprehend the sticks and the ivy and the simple truths of the living things around him was enough, and he let his mind go out to it in qui
etness. His mother’s silences and sharp eye, and the empty flat that he would later go home to, these things all left him, and, as precise and intent as a blackbird turning leaf litter, he became a part of the garden. He had no way of knowing that the world he longed to secede from would one day run him to ground there; for now, he only knew himself to be ten years old and beyond the ken of any living human being.

  That day the sycamores on the common unfurled their acid-green leaves all at once. Along with the oaks and the lone ash they were slow each year to come into leaf. The big horse chestnut beside the church was not only fully clothed, but in flower.

  Linda had downloaded an app for her phone about trees. A few she remembered from childhood; some she was half familiar with, like people you see at work but don’t know, so that putting a name to them was like being introduced. Yet her dad must have taught her all of them, and she wondered when it was she had stopped taking an interest, and why. Being curious about plants and trees and things seemed more or less unthinking for Daisy, and her mother was like that even now, looking at things, wondering about them. Why, then, had she stopped?

  It was good to be the one to tell Daisy things, too, although you had to pick your moment. There were times when all she was interested in talking about was Olivia’s hair, or Jack’s party, or whichever cartoon series she was currently obsessed with. Get the timing right, though, and she felt as her father must have felt, teaching her. True, his knowledge wasn’t from an app, it was a lot more deep-rooted than that, but still, she was trying. The other day, for instance, she had spotted a plane tree on the way in to school, and had pointed out the way its bark flaked off in patches. When Daisy had asked why, she had been able to tell her: the bark fell off when it got pollution on it, so that the tree could breathe. The leaves trapped pollution too, which was why people planted plane trees in cities: they helped keep the air clean. Telling her had been a little triumph. Steven had laughed when Linda had told him about it later, but kindly.

  Steven was working on site and couldn’t get away, so Linda had come back from work a little early so as to be home when Daisy returned from her school trip. Perhaps Daisy could help her make supper, if she could think of something fun to make; she probably wouldn’t have homework after a field trip.

  At that age, she and Michael would have gone out on their bikes until their tea was ready, their empire the little park, the common, the sweet shop and all their friends’ houses and back gardens; but the only time you saw children on Leasow Road was as they got into, or out of, cars for the school run. There were children on their road the same age as Daisy whom Daisy had never met.

  When Linda answered the doorbell, Miss Carter was there with Daisy, whose cheeks were pink and bore a suspicion of dried tears but who also wore an obdurate expression Linda knew well. Raising her eyebrows, she ushered them both in.

  ‘I can’t stop, Mrs Collis,’ said the teacher.

  Linda caught hold of Daisy as she tried to march past, turning her round and holding her shoulders.

  ‘We had a bit of an . . . incident on the field trip today. Daisy wandered off on her own. It wasn’t for long, and she came when she heard us calling, but it’s very important she understands that she can’t just go off and play by herself.’

  ‘No, of course. I’m so sorry she worried you. Daisy, what on earth were you doing?’

  ‘Nothing! I didn’t even go anywhere!’ Daisy folded her arms, but her cheeks grew red.

  ‘Daisy. What do you say?’

  ‘I already have.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, young lady?’

  ‘Sorry, Miss Carter.’ Daisy twisted in her mother’s grip. ‘Can I go upstairs now?’

  ‘Yes. Off you go. And wash your hands.’

  As Daisy disappeared to her room with a clatter, Linda’s brow furrowed.

  ‘Bryony – Miss Carter. Can I ask how long it was before my daughter’s absence was noticed?’

  Miss Carter coloured a little. ‘Just minutes, Mrs Collis. Susannah raised the alarm. We’ll have to put in a report, unfortunately. We have to keep records of this sort of thing now.’

  ‘Good. I’d like to see a copy. Thank you for bringing her back.’ And with that, the two women smiled briefly at each other, and the heavy door swung closed.

  ‘Dear Grandma, today I am very cross,’ Daisy wrote. She was using a red felt tip and pressing hard, and had not yet washed her hands. ‘Susie ran away and got lost and nobody knew where she was. It was on a school trip. I told her not to but she went to play by herself like at your house but without asking. Now she is in trouble but it isn’t fair because she didn’t do anything.’ The felt tip’s nib had got a bit spread out, so she changed it for a biro.

  ‘I haven’t started our flower bed project yet because I am very busy but I will on Saturday. I am sending you a flower. I don’t know what it is because I forgot to look it up and then we had to give in our charts. I hope you like it. Love, Daisy.’

  The betony was limp from being in her pocket all day and some of its petals had come off. She folded the sheet of paper in half, the betony inside, and pressed it all down very flat.

  Clouds of midges danced about TC’s head as he scaled the fence and headed back up Curtilage Street. Half past seven: the sky was still light but the rays of the sun had gone, and with them the day’s warmth.

  A faint tseeping filtered down to him from high in the house eaves, evidence of baby sparrows in the guttering. There would be nests in the secret garden, too; there had to be. Maybe he could sit in a tree and watch the eggs hatch.

  The signs on the high road were bright and indecipherable: Billa’s Foneshop, Ca$h Money Transfer, Top Joe, International Nails. He passed them with his head down, feeling in his pocket for some money. Nuggets maybe. If he had two pounds.

  On Leasow Road the verges were crowded with daisies shut fast against the dusk. Bins night: the pavements were an obstacle course of recycling crates and sacks. TC dribbled an imaginary football past Daisy’s house, scoring with a silent cheer between the two bottle banks at the end of the street.

  13

  May Day

  In the little park the spring mornings did not come dramatically, with birds that proclaimed the new day from the rooftops. Rather, a robin let loose a low undersong, as it had from time to time throughout the night; but this time it kept singing, half to itself, half to anyone else who cared to listen. High and sweet and plaintive, the notes trickled down from the lone ash to the darkened pavements and the hushed grass. The orange street lights hummed obliviously, and a rat hugged the shadow of the wall beside the road. Then, from one of the horse chestnuts, threshed in green, came an answering note. The robin cocked its head to one side, summoned its voice, and replied.

  As the sky began slowly to lighten the birds who roosted in the park began to give song. Most strident were the wrens, more numerous than nearly anybody knew, their tiny nut-brown bodies haunting the undergrowth up to a man’s height. The blackbird’s song was a tumble, a roundy well-made torrent that proclaimed through its variety the extent of its author’s travels, and so his fitness as a suitor and as a rival.

  As the sky grew pale the sparrows began to gossip and quarrel in the ivy behind the benches, their insistent chirruping giving them away, and from his favourite perch high in the little rowan came the mistle thrush’s fluting song. He had survived his second winter largely due to a firethorn planted by the council against the wall of one of the blocks in the estate, feasting on its berries for nearly a month in late autumn and defending it against all comers. As spring wore on his rattling alarm call announced the arrival of each pedestrian and dog walker in the little park.

  The sky slowly became blue, the piercing ‘Teacher! Teacher!’ of the great tits and the ‘tseep, tseep’ of the blue tits cutting through the rumble of the early buses. In the brambles which carpeted the furthest corner of the park a chiffchaff sang his own name over and over. A diffidently dressed harbinger of summer, he was not long in from S
pain and scouting for territory. Country-dwelling nature columnists noted their arrival in the broadsheets, but few people, Sophia excepted, would have guessed that the small city park had its own pair.

  And so the day began with birds, and with the night-time creatures going to bed. A dog fox trotted silently out of the park onto Leasow Road to kennel under a shed for the day, just as the first early shift workers crossed the grass to the bus stop. His belly was full of chicken bones and baby rats and squabs, for it had been a good night’s work. The rats whose nest he had robbed had run from him into a drain in the road, but it would only be a month before they would have another litter. The baby pigeons were nestfall, already cold.

  TC had been up and about since dawn. He’d found his mum asleep on the sofa when he got up, the room close and stale, the ashtray on the carpet full of spliff butts, and had crept out without waking her.

  He had done the rounds of the common and now cut through the little park, making for Curtilage Street and the secret garden. He had half an hour before he had to be at school. He crossed the grass in front of Sophia’s kitchen window, giving the Jamaican man a wide berth where he stood shouting at the cars. Poor lost, lonely boy, Sophia thought, as she watched him pass. Why don’t his parents do something?