Clay

by Melissa Harrison

‘Goodness me, Linda,’ said Sophia, ‘I shouldn’t worry. I don’t.’

  Linda smiled and took off her coat. ‘No, you’re right. Sorry.’

  ‘Come on, sweet pea,’ Sophia called to Daisy, ‘come and sit with us. I’ve got biscuits!’

  Linda sat down at the kitchen table with its checked cloth, and Sophia brought the tray over.

  ‘Goodness,’ she said, picking up one of the mugs with its faded design, ‘I remember these. I can’t believe you’ve still got them! Well, I know what we’ll be getting you for Christmas.’

  Sophia smiled and looked away.

  ‘So, how are you, Mum?’ Linda asked. There wasn’t really any other way to begin.

  ‘I’m well, thank you,’ Sophia replied, wondering if they were going to have A Talk. ‘Shall I be mother?’

  Daisy was swinging her legs under the table and grinning up at both of them. ‘Can I have a juice box?’ she said.

  ‘Can I have a juice box . . . ?’ said Linda.

  ‘. . . please.’

  ‘Yes, darling – there’s one in your backpack,’ she replied. ‘Go and fetch it. And there are pens and pencils, too.’

  Daisy took two biscuits and scrambled down from the table. ‘I’m going in the nice room,’ she called out. ‘I won’t spill anything, I promise.’

  Linda wrapped her hands around her mug and stared down at it. ‘The park’s looking nice,’ she said. Sophia raised her eyebrows. ‘I mean it!’ Linda continued. ‘Those trees are out – what are they?’

  ‘Ah, Prunus padus. Pretty, aren’t they?’

  ‘The white ones. They’re lovely. And the herb robert’s flowering.’

  ‘Goodness me, you have been doing your homework.’ The remark came out tarter than Sophia had meant, and she smiled, to soften it.

  ‘I have, I’ve been looking things up.’

  ‘Have you indeed? What’s brought this on?’

  ‘And I got rid of the gardener; I’m doing it myself now. I thought maybe you could give me some advice about things, when you’re next over. Or just come over. If you wanted.’

  ‘I’d be happy to, love. Just name the day – I’m sure I’ll be free.’

  Linda paused, looked out of the window. ‘Mum, are you . . . are you happy?’

  ‘Happy? Of course,’ replied Sophia, looking at her daughter with concern. ‘I’m fine. I miss your dad, of course, and your brother doesn’t phone often enough, but you know that.’

  ‘Yes, of course . . .’ but she didn’t sound too sure. ‘Of course. Are you . . . lonely?’

  ‘Lonely? No, I don’t think so. I don’t have time to be lonely. I think lonely means bored, doesn’t it? Or nearly. You’re all round the corner, which is lovely, and in between times I’m certainly never bored.’

  Linda looked at her as though she found that hard to believe; Sophia reminded herself that, to those who need their days to be full of tasks and commitments, the lives of those without such things often seems barren, when in fact it can be rich and full. There seemed so much they didn’t understand about each other, but no easy way to bridge the gap. Yet she could see that her daughter was trying.

  ‘I’m fine, love, you mustn’t worry,’ she said, putting her hand over Linda’s on the table. ‘But it’s nice that you asked. And how about you – how is work? And Steven?’

  ‘Yes, all fine,’ Linda replied. That clearly wasn’t what had brought her here. ‘But I’ve been thinking about . . . about when we were little, and Dad, and you of course. That’s all.’

  That meant everything, a lifetime of love and misunderstandings. Sophia wondered where her daughter would begin, and whether she really wanted her to.

  ‘I remembered Dad saying something,’ Linda said haltingly. ‘Well, lots of things, obviously. But this one thing: “We are the clay that grew tall.” Do you remember that, do you remember him saying that, at all?’

  ‘Did he now?’ said Sophia. ‘It doesn’t ring a bell. I think it must be a poem, or the Bible. Have you tried looking it up?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve been on the Internet and everything, but I can’t find it,’ replied Linda. ‘What do you think it means?’

  ‘I expect he meant that we are made of the same stuff as the earth, knowing Henry,’ said Sophia, her expression soft. ‘You know – we’re not any different, not separate from it. It’s in our blood and our bones. You’d say he was a hippie or something, nowadays, but it wasn’t that. He just felt people were better off noticing the world around them, and the seasons, than not noticing – that it made their lives richer. We tried to set an example to you two, but you can’t force it; that’s the thing with children.’

  ‘But sometimes it’s just about having the time,’ said Linda. ‘There’s a lot more going on these days than when Dad was a boy, you know? The world’s full of stuff all shouting for your attention. You can’t watch over every last sparrow.’

  ‘I know, love. But the things you really bother with in life loom large, you see, so you do well to choose them wisely. Oh, I know everything’s supposed to be equally good these days and nobody’s in the wrong. But that’s rot. Some things help you grow, and some are just – just empty, like too many sweets. You have to choose what to notice, or your life will get filled up with the wrong things – Daisy’s, too.’

  ‘You’re saying I should be bringing her up differently? You’re saying I should be like you were, with us?’

  Linda’s eyes were on her mug, but there was an edge in her voice that Sophia knew well. She wondered, as she often did, why her daughter resented her; what it was that she had got so wrong. Perhaps they should have it out; perhaps, but not today, not when things had been going so well. ‘No, love,’ she said, reaching out for her daughter’s arm, ‘I’m not saying that at all; at least, I don’t mean to. I suppose I’m just trying to explain to you what your dad and I wanted for you; what we were trying to do.’

  Daisy was bored with drawing, and in two minds about having her mum there. Usually she had her granny to herself and they played pretend, or she told her granny about things and her granny asked her questions. Not about school, or homework, but what she liked doing and what she thought about things. She wasn’t ignored, usually.

  She took her drawing into the kitchen and stood at Sophia’s elbow. Sophia put her arm around her, absent-mindedly, but they kept on talking. ‘I’ve drawn a bee house,’ she announced, and Sophia took the drawing from her, but she didn’t look at it, not properly.

  ‘Look,’ Daisy said, and began to stab at it with the orange pencil.

  ‘In a moment, sweet pea,’ said her granny, which was new.

  ‘Daisy, darling, why don’t you go and draw me another one?’ said Linda, which was silly because it wasn’t even for her. ‘Mummy and Gran are talking.’

  ‘Make it a picture of something really horrible,’ said Sophia, giving her a wink. ‘The worst thing you can think of.’ And she patted Daisy’s bottom, and that, Daisy knew, meant go away.

  The orange pencil had got blunt and there wasn’t a sharpener, so she couldn’t even draw an explosion. Daisy sat cross-legged in her grandmother’s chair and scowled. It wasn’t fair. They were still talking, now about the olden days: something about games and her uncle Mike, who she couldn’t properly remember. ‘I wish I was at home,’ she said, out loud.

  She got up and went to the window and breathed on it so she could write a rude word backwards. But then she saw him: TC. He had his head down and was hugging the back boundary of the park, behind the oaks; he seemed to be trying to slip through unobserved. ‘I can see you,’ she whispered. Where was he going so secretly?

  She did hesitate, for a moment, in the kitchen doorway, but neither woman looked over. And she was only going to be a minute or two; she was only going to say hello.

  It was the sound of the latch that gave her away. ‘Daisy?’ called her mother. Sophia had her hand to her chest; for a moment, just for a moment, she had thought it was Henry, letting himself in.

  ‘Daisy!
’ Linda was up and in the hall, her face like thunder. ‘Get back in here this instant! What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

  Daisy’s face was flushed. ‘I was just . . . I was just . . .’

  Linda held her by the arm and shook her. ‘By yourself?!’ she shouted. ‘Where?’

  ‘To the park, I was going to come straight back,’ Daisy said, and began to cry.

  Sophia got up and laid a hand on Linda’s arm. ‘Perhaps –’

  ‘No perhaps! She was going to go off, by herself, without telling us. She’s nine! Nine!’

  This was not the moment to remind Linda that she herself had played in the park at nine years old. Sophia could see she would have to talk to her daughter about it, might even have to admit that she had allowed Daisy to play in the park without her once – more than once – and so at least some of the blame, if there was to be any, was hers. Not now, though. Today had been precious, and she didn’t want to spoil it.

  Linda turned back to Daisy. ‘What were you thinking, Daisy? Well?’

  The little girl turned to her grandmother for help, but Sophia could only look away.

  16

  Haymaking

  The grass around the edges of the common had been left unmowed and had grown tall and thronged with seed heads. While the mown part was just grass, where it was left long it was possible to tell what that grass was actually made up of, as lesser timothy, rye, meadow fescue, cocksfoot, sweet vernal and foxtail all put up their differing banners, and sweet white clover brought the bees beneath. Over by the oaks the elegant, sandy feathers of tall oat grass floated above the finer, reddish inflorescence of the common bent below, like the two lengths of pelt on a cat.

  Once, right across the country, the meadows would have been scythed at around this time of year, the hay left to dry in long, fragrant windrows. Turned by hand, it would have been pitched up with forks onto a wagon and towed to the rick by horsepower.

  The heavy horses have gone, most of the hedgerows grubbed up and the fields they encircled lost in the huge swathes demanded by agribusiness – as though the enclosures had never happened, but with no return of the land to common use. Now, mechanical balers leave neat packages of wrapped silage in their wake.

  The old names for each of the fields are more or less forgotten, but so is the hardship which enslaved generations. Here and there in the countryside the old barns survive, made sleek with fixtures and fittings and with sports cars parked outside. In forgotten corners of the more dilapidated sort of going concern, ancient flails and tillers rust and rot down, returning themselves with each season to the earth.

  A day like today could not be spent indoors, and despite his promise to his mum, despite Jozef, TC did not even consider going to school. Everything was alive, everything was happening: flowers, new butterflies, fledging birds. He didn’t want to miss a moment of it.

  He went to the common first. It was bisected by both a railway line and a road, and while he could find his way around its four sections and the surrounding streets without hesitation, if he had been asked to draw the different parts – the oak wood, the sports field, the thickets by the cutting, the avenue of planes – and show how they related to each other, he could not have done it. His knowledge was detailed beyond measure, but inchoate.

  Now he took the path that ran alongside the embankment, where few people went because it wasn’t really a short cut to anywhere. Beside the path the thistles stood four feet high, and the wall barley was turning golden. The brambles were coming into flower, he saw, white and grubby pink, promising a good blackberry season to come.

  He came off the path and walked through the tall grass, dipping his hands into it as though into water and every so often pulling the pale seeds from a stem to make a tight, dry bunch between his fingers. I’m planting it, he thought, as he let the seeds fly. Next year more will grow because of me.

  Out on the pitches Jozef leaned on his elbows and gazed at TC through half-closed eyes. His shift didn’t start until after lunch, and he was taking Znajda for a walk. He watched as TC moved through the long grass, the sun lighting the side of his face and turning his skin golden. Not in school again. He felt hurt, somehow. He wondered where the boy was going, and what it was that he reminded him of, walking away from him like that through the long grass.

  Before work the previous day he had waited on the benches in the little park until the old lady, Sophia, emerged from the estate, as she did most mornings at about the same time. He’d wanted to talk to her about the boy, about what people might think of their friendship; maybe ask her what she thought about teaching him to whittle.

  ‘You see a lot of him, now?’ she had asked, and Jozef had nodded. ‘Well, sometimes. A couple of times a week. I – I worry about him, if he has food, you know.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness there’s somebody looking out for him, then. There’s a mother, I think, though it could be a sister. Or perhaps he’s in foster care, poor boy.’

  ‘You think it’s OK – it’s normal – that we see each other?’

  ‘My granddaughter is nine, I’ll have you know, and she’s my best friend. Age shouldn’t matter, not if you get on.’

  It wasn’t quite what he had meant, but he didn’t know how to be more explicit. And then she had asked him about his uniform, and he had told her about his new job in the parks, and when he got up to go he had quite forgotten to bring up the subject of whittling at all.

  Now he folded his jacket behind his head and dozed until Znajda’s shadow fell across him. She was sniffing idly at the grass, privy to a whole world of information he could only guess at. He raised himself on his elbows and said her name, but she merely looked at him for a moment before trotting purposefully off towards the path that ran through the oak woods. She clearly wanted to carry on with her walk, and Jozef got up and ambled after her.

  He caught up with her at the fallen tree, its graffiti now faded to near-invisibility. She picked her way through the clitter of sawn-up logs before tucking herself adroitly into a little cave beneath the massive trunk and squinting up into the sundazzle as though she had lain there a hundred times before – and perhaps she had. She put her tongue out and panted at Jozef who stood, one foot on a section of branch, and looked down speculatively at her.

  TC stayed on the common all day. He lay in the long grass and put one eye at ground level, looking for the little channels left by mice and voles. He followed bees from flower to flower, and when he got hungry he thought of Znajda, and looked in the bins. Lots of people were eating their lunch outdoors in the nice weather, and he found a half-finished Oasis and a panini oozing with melted cheese that had hardly even been touched.

  The afternoon smelled of pollen, was accompanied by birdsong and seemed to go on forever and ever. At last a mackerel sky turned pink as dusk fell, and bats began to flicker above the footpaths. They roosted in the cool, damp shadows under the railway bridge and along the embankment, and feasted on moths at night. Hearing them was like looking at a very faint star; not so much seeing – not so much hearing – as something else, as though the knowledge came through a medium other than mere senses.

  TC climbed his favourite tree to wait for all the night-time creatures to appear. Below him came the after-work joggers and evening dog walkers, and then two older estate kids with their dog, speaking a muttered patois he only half understood. It was a fighting dog – a bit like Znajda, maybe, but the colour of sharp sand, bigger and with longer legs. One kid held it back with a chain and a leather harness, letting the dog strain against it as they walked. The dog was amped up, wired, and TC drew his legs up onto the branch, quietly.

  But instead of passing on they veered off the main path and took a little trail through the brambles which led to a clearing beneath the oaks; there one of them rolled a spliff while the one with the dog made a phone call. His jeans were so low; TC wondered how they didn’t fall down, and whether one day he would wear his jeans like that. The kids – they weren’t kids, he co
uld see now, not schoolkids anyway – they had caps on under their hoods, both caps the same. Did that mean something? He wasn’t sure.

  They had a knotted bit of rope and they gave it to the dog to play tug of war with. The dog gripped the rope with its teeth and shook its head from side to side; you could hear it growling and you could see the kid’s arms that were holding the rope getting jerked from side to side. TC didn’t like it; he wanted to get down, but there was no way of doing it, not without them seeing him. He wondered about going further up into the oak, but it was getting darker all the time, and he didn’t know the handholds; and if he fell down the dog would get him.

  The dog wouldn’t let go of the rope and so one of the kids took a stick from the back of his jeans. It looked like the handle of a hammer, but it was flattened at one end. He hit the dog on its shoulders, but it still wouldn’t let go. Then the other one put the dog between his knees and they forced the stick in its mouth and got the rope out. They lifted the stick up and the dog’s forelegs went up too. It kept growling, a low growl, but it wasn’t trying to get away; maybe it thought it was a game, maybe it was all just playing. It didn’t feel like playing, though.

  They kicked the dog and after a bit it let go of the stick and stood there, panting. Then TC saw that they were looking up; he froze, his heart thumping. Had they heard him, somehow? Had he made a noise?

  But it wasn’t his tree they were looking at. They dragged the yellow dog by its chain over to the oak next to his and one of them pulled a branch down; they made the dog bite the branch. Then they let it go. The branch swung up and the dog hung there, kicking, yelping, growling. TC felt sick or like crying. It was horrible to watch, it was like they were hanging it. Why? The dog went limp for a moment, but it wouldn’t let go. Then it struggled and growled again. He thought about Znajda, tried to picture someone doing that to her, but it was too awful so he stopped. She wouldn’t let them, anyway. Jozef wouldn’t either, no way.