Clay

by Melissa Harrison

TC couldn’t stop looking, he couldn’t stop. He didn’t see the other kids come until they were right in the clearing. They had a dog too, a bit smaller and darker; it began baying and lunging at the yellow dog, and had to be dragged back, half choking, by its chain. They were all smoking weed, and the sweet, familiar smell drifted up to TC where he sat. The embers glowed red when each spliff was inhaled, then the spark arced downwards with each arm. The yellow dog kicked and growled where it hung from the branch; they kept the darker one a bit away and held his head and looked at its teeth. They were all talking, excited. TC felt sick.

  They turned back to the yellow dog. The kid with the stick got it out again and landed it a blow on the back of the neck; it let go of the branch with a yelp – but when it hit the ground the other dog went for it, dragging the chain out of its owner’s hand, the two animals locked together in a sudden and terrifying frenzy. Then it was all yelping and shouting, all of them trying to pull the dogs apart, trying to grab the chain, the kid with the stick wielding it over and over, the dull, sickening thumps as it fell and all the fine young grass of the clearing torn up in a wide circle as the dogs’ dark blood flicked out to spatter the surrounding trees.

  When TC came down from the tree it was proper night. Before leaving he snapped off the twig he had tied in a knot all those months ago. It had been a stupid idea; there was no point in it.

  He didn’t think about anything as he left the wood. He didn’t look at the torn-up earth, or the wounded trees. He tried not to think about the dogs. Their faces, when they were finally separated, had been ruined: swollen, bloody, torn. They didn’t look scary any more, they looked pitiful. One had to be carried; both of them looked sad, and somehow ashamed. It all felt familiar to TC, as though it had all happened before.

  He made for the secret garden. Such things could not exist in there.

  He crawled under the rhododendron, where the fox sometimes slept. He imagined it would not begrudge him a night there. Ivy had crawled up and over much of it, making a kind of bower. He breathed the fox smell in, curled into it, and closed his eyes.

  Around the sleeping boy the garden slowly resettled itself, but beyond that the vast city winked and glittered, the grass pollen, unchanged for millennia, settling invisibly over everything like a cloud.

  17

  Midsummer

  Warm and humid air moved in from France, then dry air slid above it from the plateaus of Spain. The June skies turned low and grey; the upper atmosphere cooled, and the weather became unpredictable.

  Jozef was scouring the high road for Flat 131A, fat raindrops splashing on the warm pavement and down his neck. It didn’t make sense; there were big gaps in the numbers, and it didn’t help that most of the shops didn’t display a number at all. He checked the plastic key ring again and decided to retrace his steps.

  Finally he found a puddled alley that led off the high road and turned at right angles to run behind the shops for several hundred yards. Metal staircases led up from it to the flat roofs that formed the rear elevation of the shops, and a row of front doors – back doors, really – gave access to the flats above at first-floor level.

  The alley housed the shops’ huge metal bins. Most had flattened boxes stacked around them, and there was quite a lot of litter and old fruit. Jozef thought of rats, and hurried up the clanging stairs.

  Number 131 had a faded pink door that had probably once been red; two long-dead tiger palms in plastic pots stood outside. He tried the key, and pushed the door open cautiously.

  The little hall was dark, and the light didn’t work. Jozef left the front door open so he could see which of the three inner doors was Flat A, pizza flyers slipping and whispering under his trainers.

  The bedsit smelled a little stale, but it was better than he had expected. The main room had a divan base, but no mattress, a low table and a storage heater, and there was a little kitchen to one side and a bathroom with a shower curtain decorated with fish.

  The main room looked out onto the high road; the kitchen and bathroom were windowless. Jozef tried to picture the shape of the original flat before it had been subdivided, but you’d have to have a look at the other two bedsits if you wanted to be sure.

  He wondered what the neighbours were like; maybe Agata could tell him. It was she who had found him the place, really; she’d overheard one of the customers at the cafe complaining about a tenant and had introduced them. The landlord was a big man from Lódz´ with one eye, whom Jozef had instinctively liked. Znajda had too, struggling up into a lopsided sit from her place under Jozef’s table to nose at the man’s broad hand. Jozef left the cafe in the small hours with the man’s phone number in his wallet, and a week later he had the key.

  Outside there was a distant rumble, and a downpour beat a tattoo on the glass. Jozef looked out; he was above the halal butcher’s, he worked out, the minimarket to the left. If he put his forehead to the glass and craned to the right he could see the old lady, Sophia, making her slow way through the little park towards her flat.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. It wasn’t the farm; it wasn’t even his. But it was something.

  An hour later Sophia was still sitting in the kitchen and looking out of her window at the rain. Saturday: she was due at Linda and Steven’s for lunch, but at this rate she’d be wet through by the time she got there.

  Eventually it eased, although the sky remained grey and low overhead. She put on a coat – not Henry’s, her own – and the shoes Linda had bought her, and went back out.

  In the little park blackbirds ran, paused and ran, and wrens shouted alarums from the undergrowth. The water on the high road fizzed under the buses’ tyres. Sophia hunched her shoulders and tried to pick up her pace.

  On Leasow Road she rang the doorbell and heard it chime sonorously deep inside the house. The front door was dove grey; at first she’d thought it an undercoat, and had been surprised to discover it was staying like that. Now she had got used to it, though, she had to admit it looked rather smart.

  Linda answered the door just as the rain began to ease and embraced her gently, as though she were a bird – or perhaps it was just that she was wet. ‘Hello, Mum,’ she said. ‘Here, let me take your coat.’

  Sophia handed over a bread bag, tied at the top with string. ‘For you.’

  ‘What on earth is it?’

  ‘Seeds,’ she replied, taking off her coat with some difficulty. ‘And a cutting. Honeysuckle. I did it just now, coming up your road. Do you have a pot and some compost? Only we don’t want it to dry out.’

  ‘You took it from someone’s front garden? You stole it?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so.’

  After a moment, Linda laughed. ‘OK then, why not. I think the rain’s stopped. Shall we?’

  They went into the back garden. ‘Here it is,’ said Linda, dragging a plastic sack to the teak garden table. ‘Is here all right? I don’t have a potting bench.’

  ‘Oh, fine. Got a pot?’

  Linda fetched one from the shed, and Sophia showed her how to cut the woody stem diagonally, just below a bud, and push it gently into the half-filled pot. Some cling film and a rubber band finished the job.

  ‘Lovely. Leave it in the shade and keep an eye on it. Don’t let it dry out, or get mouldy. It should root within a fortnight.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Well, then you’ve got yourself a new plant, free.’

  ‘You mean – that’s it?’

  ‘I do. And your neighbour’s is none the worse for it, so it’s all . . . hunky-dory. Or whatever.’

  Linda made tea and they took a tour of the garden, Linda pointing out plants whose names she didn’t know, or that she had questions about. Sophia found it was lovely to be asked, lovely to be useful, and if she sometimes sounded more certain than she felt it was only because she was so enjoying her daughter’s attention. She made a mental note to look up one or two things in her plant encyclopedia when she got home, just to be sure. Though it would be awful to hav
e to admit she’d got it wrong.

  Daisy was at Susannah’s house, so lunch was just the three of them. Linda made salmon fishcakes with a rocket salad, and Steven emerged from the study to make a vinaigrette.

  ‘People think of rocket as being exotic,’ said Sophia, between mouthfuls, ‘but it’s been grown in this country for centuries. The medievals had it. Did you know that?’

  Linda shook her head.

  ‘Not that there’s anything wrong with a nice gem lettuce, in my opinion. Do you remember your father’s little gems? He grew a good lettuce, your father.’

  ‘I remember his radishes,’ said Linda. ‘Oh, how I used to hate them.’

  ‘No you didn’t, you loved them! You’re thinking of . . . of . . .’

  ‘I’m not, Mum, I’m thinking of radishes. They always looked so wonderful – the pretty leaves with their red veins, and then the little radish like a ruby in the dust. But it was like eating a raw onion. I used to pick them out.’

  ‘Rot. I wouldn’t have let you.’

  ‘You didn’t, as I remember. Me and Michael used to sneak them into our pockets.’

  ‘Did Linda tell you we’re thinking of growing some vegetables?’ Steven interrupted smoothly. ‘I know it’s a bit late for this year, but we thought there might be time for some chard and some carrots, perhaps some garlic, later.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Here, in the garden.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that. Why don’t you get an allotment? Much better.’

  ‘There are waiting lists these days,’ Steven replied. ‘It’s become rather fashionable.’

  ‘What, vegetables?’

  ‘Growing your own, yes.’

  Sophia was silent a moment. ‘Well, that’s good, I think,’ she said. ‘Gracious, your father’s come back into fashion! How he’d laugh.’

  She got up from the table and began opening the kitchen cupboards, coming back to the table with a bottle of ketchup. ‘Sorry, Steven. The fishcakes were crying out for it,’ she said.

  ‘Not at all.’

  Linda briefly closed her eyes.

  ‘So where do you think we should put our vegetable patch?’ Steven asked.

  ‘Well, which side gets the most sun?’

  ‘The left – but that’s where Daisy’s flower bed is. You know, the one –’

  ‘The one she’s doing with me, the one where we were going to see what germinated naturally. Only she isn’t; I’m not sure she’s really – what is it? on board with the idea. I keep asking her to tell me what’s growing in it, but she seems to have lost interest. Oh, root it up, they’re only weeds. She’s had her chance.’

  ‘But we gave it to her.’

  ‘You’re her parents, aren’t you? You can take it back again. She can help with the veg, if she wants to. Promises get broken, sometimes. That’s life, and she’ll have to get used to it sooner or later.’

  On the way home Sophia reflected on what she had said. ‘Tough love’ they called it these days, and it was true she’d never believed in mollycoddling. But it wasn’t like her to be so callous when it came to Daisy. Surely she wasn’t piqued by the failure of a nine-year-old girl to be interested in her silly flower bed project?

  Or perhaps she was. And behind that was the uncomfortable knowledge that she was guilty of another betrayal, a bigger one. She wondered why Daisy hadn’t told her mother that she sometimes let her play in the park by herself; it would have got her out of trouble that day at the flat, after all.

  Sophia hadn’t seen much of her granddaughter since then, although that could be for any number of reasons. It was silly to worry about it, she knew; Daisy was many things, but she wasn’t a sulker. Yet she had to admit that she felt obscurely in the little girl’s debt.

  When she left the house Linda had given her a letter from Daisy, and now she decided to sit on the bench in the park and read it. Her granddaughter’s childish phrases were just the thing to dissipate the cloud she was imagining had fallen over their friendship.

  ‘Dear Granny,’ the letter began. ‘I do still love you but I don’t want to write to you any more. Yours sincerely, Daisy.’

  It was nearly dawn the next day when they arrived in the little park, three of them, hoods up, pushing a scooter across the grass and under the trees.

  The tallest one unscrewed the petrol cap and then set the scooter down on its side. Squatting down, he took something from his back pocket – a dishcloth? a headscarf? – and pushed it deep into the tank. Then, drawing it out a little way, he took a lighter and lit the end that hung out.

  They stood back. When the fire reached the fuel there was a low whump, and the tank began to blaze. The plastic on the seat bubbled and melted, the foam inside it burning easily. One of them made a call, the phone disappearing inside his hood. They left unhurriedly.

  The scooter burned slowly. At one point it looked like going out, but then one of the tyres caught fire and the flames sprung high again. As the sky lightened the flames seemed almost to disappear, though the air still wavered above them and the plume of black smoke became more distinct.

  Then a soft rain began to fall, and by the time Sophia got up it was out. All that was left was a charred skeleton in the centre of a black and ashy pile, the buttercups and daisies curled and dead for feet around it, the ash tree’s overhanging leaves reduced to grey cinders on blackened twigs.

  18

  St Swithin’s Day

  All morning the old Jamaican man worked the traffic at the lights, a can of Red Stripe in one hand, the other knocking cheerfully at each window. He moved between the cars as though they could not touch him, and perhaps it was true. Every so often he retired to the pavement and sat in the hedge, talking unhurriedly to himself. The depression where he sat was permanent, and shaped like a throne. At around noon he ambled away up Glebe Road, his shadow short on the hot July pavement.

  The weather was set fair, and every day Denny dared more soft furnishings outside the shop. On Dartmoor and Exmoor the close, springy turf was starred with yellow tormentil, while in Kent pink mallow dressed every roadside and the apples swelled like green knots in the orchards. From the cockpit of a Typhoon, tearing the wide skies of East Anglia on a training run from RAF Coningsby, the country which pitched and yawed below looked impossibly green.

  Little seemed to be expected of TC at school, by anyone, and if it wasn’t for the register he felt as though he could disappear and nobody would even notice. Mostly he just tried to come through each school day unchallenged and intact. In a week it would be the summer holidays, anyway; just a few more days, that was all, and then he would be free.

  Now that the weather was warm and the days long he found he could stay out in the evenings until it was quite late. The common was often busy with people drinking or having barbecues, though, and the woods didn’t really feel like his any more, not since the dog fight. Usually he just went to the secret garden instead.

  Sleeping there that night had changed something, he didn’t know what. When he had woken in a half-light full of dew and birdsong he’d felt somehow like an animal. Not in a bad way, not like when people called other people animals, which was stupid, considering how much worse people were; it was more that he’d felt . . . simpler, somehow; properly part of things, at last. All the other stuff didn’t matter. It belonged to a different life.

  He’d stayed there most of the next day; he hadn’t wanted to leave. He knew there’d be hell to pay when he got home anyway, so he stayed away. It was that afternoon that he’d found something; something that made it all worth it – the dog fight, everything. Now he glowed with the secret. It made him feel invincible.

  As soon as the holidays came he’d decided he was going to stay there every night. Then, he’d really be part of it: properly, like an animal. He’d invented a friend whose house he could be staying over at, if his mum were ever to ask. ‘I’m going out to play with David,’ he’d taken to saying. Mostly she didn’t even look up from the telly.r />
  He had started building a camp – a proper one, not just a hide. It wouldn’t be fair to keep sleeping in the fox’s den. He’d trampled the nettles in one corner of the garden and hauled bricks from under the ivy to make a floor. Then he’d broken some branches off the trees – not the oak, just the sycamores and some holly – and propped them up to make a shelter. The corner between the high wall and a fence protected the back of the camp, and he was hoping ivy would wend its way through the branches to make a roof, maybe even by next year. It wouldn’t survive a really big downpour, but it was summer and the weather was nice anyway.

  Sitting in it after school one day, his arms wrapped around his knees, he thought about what else he needed. He’d already brought some stuff from home – a jumper, a sheet, a fork, a loo roll, some tins of beans – the ones with the ring pulls – and cans of Coke, but he needed more things. He tried to think what his dad would have taken. What did they have in the army?

  A knife was the best thing, a proper one, a sharp one. He thought of Jozef, and the wooden animals he made. He decided to ask the other man at the chicken shop, Musa, where Jozef lived; he wanted to talk to him properly, in private. There was another reason, too: he had something to give him, something in return for all the chess games, and the chips.

  Fine new blades of grass were pushing up through the ash, but TC still didn’t like looking at the burnt patch in the little park; it made him think of violence, and the circle of bloody grass under the oaks. Going past it he looked the other way. A song thrush insisted on the same four phrases from somewhere above him, again, then again.

  Daisy was coming out of the estate with a man he didn’t recognise. She looked sulky, but when she saw TC she tugged urgently at the man’s hand, turned to ask him something and ran over.

  ‘Hello! My daddy says I can play with you for five minutes. What d’you want to play?’ she said. The man was going towards the benches, but TC could see that he was watching them closely.