Clay

by Melissa Harrison

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Yes you can, course you can. Let’s climb a tree. Bet I can do it better than you!’

  ‘I can’t, I’m busy.’

  ‘What is it, is it a secret, can I come?’

  ‘No!’ he said, rounding on her. ‘I already said!’

  Daisy took a step back. ‘What is it you’ve got in your pocket?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Show me!’ She made a grab for his arm and TC wrenched it away, seeing Daisy’s father stand up out of the corner of his eye.

  ‘Just . . . leave me alone!’ he shouted, and ran.

  ‘He is at his new work,’ said Musa. ‘What you want, you want food?’

  TC shook his head. ‘I got something for him. D’you know where he lives?’

  ‘He got a new place, on the high road. But he won’t be there now. He’ll be here tonight – late shift. From ten. You still be awake?’

  TC nodded. ‘I’ll come back.’

  ‘Eh, my kids they are in bed by nine,’ Musa said, wiping the counter. ‘You should do the same, kid. You got a growing brain, you need your sleep.’

  But he was talking to an empty shop.

  Jozef was on the common, litter picking. There was only another half-hour until the end of the shift, and he wanted to finish the section he’d been given. There were lots of beer cans on the grass, and plastic bags tangled in the brambles along the fence.

  He looked at his watch. It didn’t do to look too keen – he had worked that out quite quickly. There were six in his team, and none of them would be doing it if they had another way of making money. Except me, he thought. I would do it, I want to do it.

  They worked in pairs. Today he was with Chima, the blackest man he had ever seen. There was a Ukrainian, Nazariy, who the others all seemed to assume Jozef should have some kind of kinship with; in fact, they had very little in common, and it was Chima he preferred to work with. Nazariy was always joking around, but there was an edge to it, a challenge. Chima kept himself to himself; he had his earphones in most of the time. But when Jozef had hauled the cross out of the pond it was Chima who had come and looked at it, turning it over carefully in his hands. ‘This is a bad business,’ he had said softly. Jozef had wondered what it was that Chima was picturing.

  Now they approached each other slowly along the fence, each with a bag and grabber. Jozef’s right hand inside the work glove ached a little; hours of squeezing the handle took their toll, especially if you tried to get the fiddly things like cigarette butts, which he did.

  ‘Jozef. Jozef!’ He looked up. Chima had taken his earphones out and was beckoning him urgently. ‘Come see.’

  Jozef hoped it wasn’t anything awful. The men exchanged stories of the things they had found, and Jozef did not want to have a story of his own.

  Chima was pointing at a tree. It was a black locust, a grochodrzew; it had finished flowering but was still hung with browning pennants. At first Jozef couldn’t make out what he was supposed to be looking at, but then he saw it: among the leaves, at about head height, a huge, humming knot of bees.

  The swarm was in perpetual motion, but the noise coming from it was only a low murmur, and few bees flew around it; most simply clung to their fellows, moving slightly. The body of the swarm was bigger than a football.

  ‘Kurwa,’ said Jozef under his breath. He still found it hard to swear in English; the words came out wrong, for some reason – either too forceful, or not enough.

  Seeing that Jozef had seen the swarm, Chima backed away. ‘What do we do?’ he asked.

  Jozef shrugged. ‘Tell Frank.’

  ‘You stay here, then. Keep people away.’ Chima jogged off to find the foreman.

  Jozef remembered the time Stefan Gruszka’s bees had swarmed in the walnut tree near the farmhouse. His father fetched Stefan in the jeep while his sisters hid inside the house. When Stefan came he explained that the bees weren’t angry, they were just seeking a new home; they wouldn’t sting anyone unless they tried to hurt them. Even so, the women would not come out of the house. Stefan made a fire in a jerrycan and smoked the bees; after a few moments they fell out of the tree into a canvas bag, and he took them home. ‘Won’t they just leave again?’ Jozef had asked, and his father had explained that Stefan had a new hive ready for them, so that they could be nearby to pollinate the orchard and they could all have cider.

  When Chima came back he had the rest of the crew with him. Frank had already radioed it in, and had received instructions to tape the area off until environmental health could get there.

  ‘Environmental health?’ asked Jozef.

  ‘Yeah, they’ll come and get rid of it. It’s a pisser, really; we can’t go off-shift until they come, in case some silly bugger gets stung.’

  ‘The bees are not owned by anybody?’

  ‘No, mate, not in a swarm, not if they’ve gone wild.’

  ‘So they kill them?’

  ‘ ’Fraid so. Right, Chima, Stevo: back to the van for some warning tape and some posts. Six, I’d say. See if there’s any Footpath Diversion signs while you’re at it. Christ, I hope they don’t fly off, it’ll be a bugger to keep up.’

  ‘How long until the health people come, boss?’ That was Nazariy.

  ‘Let’s get it taped off, then we’ll have a think about who needs to stay late, OK? Anyway, it’s overtime, it’s not like you won’t get paid.’

  Nazariy sat on the grass with Mo, the Bengali, and began to roll a cigarette. There were scorch marks from barbecues on the grass nearby, and Mo brushed at one critically. Jozef stood and considered the peaceable bees.

  Frank’s radio let out a crackle, and he unhitched it from his belt, turning as he did so to scan the park behind them.

  Jozef moved forward. Stepping quietly through the long grass and nettles, he reached the swarm in a few paces. Behind him he heard Nazariy. ‘Hey, Joe, what you doing? Boss! Boss!’

  The bees were moving slowly. A few flew lazily around the dense swarm. Jozef took his right glove off and dropped it at his side.

  ‘Oi, Jozef?!’ That was Frank. ‘What in fuck d’you think you’re doing?’

  Jozef made his fingers into a kind of beak. He tried to hold his hand steady, but he could see that it shook slightly. Then he pushed it slowly into the mass of bees.

  It was surprisingly warm inside the swarm. He felt the minute oscillation of thousands of wings and thousands of chitinous bodies against his scarred and calloused hand. He saw, vertiginously, that his hand had disappeared up to the wrist.

  Inside the swarm he felt for the branch they were attached to. He moved his fingers slowly, slowly; the worst thing would be to crush one. One sting, he felt instinctively, would mean dozens.

  He could hear the men’s voices behind him, but they weren’t important. What was important was to manoeuvre his fingers around the branch so as to gain enough purchase to snap it – and to snap it with as little movement or disturbance as possible. He realised he was holding his breath, and let it out slowly.

  He looked at the twigs protruding from the swarm to see if the branch was bowing. If he could judge the weight of the swarm he could anticipate any recoil. There was a bee flying around his eyes, and his eyebrows were gathering sweat.

  Inside the swarm his fingers felt a fork in the twig and he used it to brace his thumb as he snapped. Immediately the hum of the bees increased in pitch; Jozef froze, holding the branch in the same place, willing the bees to settle.

  After a moment he began to take slow steps back, the swarm a dark mass clenched around his fist. The men were shouting and swearing, but Jozef kept his eyes fixed on the bees.

  Once he was out of the long grass he looked briefly left, to the oak woods. Few people went there, and it would be much easier to tape off. He wondered what would happen if, when he let go of the branch, the bees did not go with it.

  He began to walk slowly across the common, the men keeping their distance behind.

  ‘Chima,’ he said quietly.r />
  ‘Here.’ Chima jogged up beside him, looking warily at the bees.

  ‘Tell Frank I will put it down under the trees, far from the path. It will be better there. And can he send somebody ahead, clear a place, OK?’

  ‘OK – but why are you doing this?’

  ‘I know this kind of tree,’ Jozef replied. ‘The branches, they break easily. Very easily. It’s better I break it myself, take the bees away.’

  Chima fell back, and the men watched as Jozef advanced carefully across the grass. But when he was a hundred yards or so away the bees lifted, as one, from his outstretched fist and funnelled up into the empty sky.

  It was as Jozef had hoped. He stood and watched them fade into the blue, a lone figure holding a forked branch as though he would call down lightning from the summer sky.

  TC took a cigarette packet from his pocket and put it on the takeaway counter. ‘Go on,’ he said, and grinned up at Jozef.

  ‘You are sure?’

  TC nodded, and Jozef flipped back the lid, shook something out into his palm. The back of his right hand was red and shiny, the knuckles almost lost in the swollen flesh.

  ‘Owl pellets,’ said TC. ‘You know.’

  Jozef nodded gravely. ‘So this is what you have found. Can I know where?’

  TC grinned again, glowed. ‘The secret garden. It’s a tawny; two. Do you believe me?’

  Jozef nodded again. ‘Of course. You know, this is very special. Very special. You are going to keep lookout?’

  TC nodded.

  ‘Have you told anyone?’

  TC shook his head. ‘D’you think I should?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Jozef paused for a moment. ‘This is perhaps important, you know. It could be nobody knows there are these birds in the city. People will want to see where these birds are.’

  He read the boy’s open face. ‘But perhaps . . . perhaps you can find out more first, like where is the nest, how many for sure. And holidays are coming, yes? So why don’t you watch them for . . . say . . . one month, then we decide.’

  He cupped the little agglomerations of bone and hair in his big hand and examined them closely, then held his palm out to the boy, but TC picked out only one to return to the cigarette packet.

  ‘You can borrow the other,’ he said, ‘if you want.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Jozef, closing his hand around it carefully. ‘I would like that very much.’

  19

  DOG DAYS

  Across the country the sun was ripening the wheat, pouring down, drawing the ears up and turning them golden, like bread. In East Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire the pea harvest was coming in, destined for the Birds Eye plant.

  As the sun climbed each day skylarks ascended from the fields and moors and hung above them, singing: thousands upon thousands of them, each alone, inviolate, but together a host, a choir. The nights were humid, and Sirius flickered like fire in the south-west.

  At the start of the summer holidays all roads west were busy. Car after car thundered past the hazel and hawthorn scrub, loaded with luggage, bikes and dinghies. The traffic was a hot roar, the tarmac a mirage, but the motorway verges teemed with life: butterflies and beetles, mice, voles and rabbits; and the long grass between the low thickets and the lay-bys zithered with emerald grasshoppers.

  In the city the day had dawned clear before resolving itself once more into heat. Sophia had found it difficult to sleep and was up early, watching the starlings through her kitchen window as they hunted the dry grass in packs, heads down. The nettles were spent and limp, the white trumpets of convolvulus like crumpled tissues in between; early blackberries were green knots among the brambles. Where the sun hit the desire paths the ground had hardened and fissured, dun-coloured. Dog walkers’ and joggers’ feet kicked up a dry mud as fine as dust which settled slowly behind them.

  She sat at the kitchen table in her old cotton housecoat, the local paper before her, and waited for the palpitations to subside. It was like having a wild bird inside her chest, fluttering, fluttering. She sat perfectly still so that she would not tax it further. After a few moments it gave a twist, then a shudder, and seemed to stop altogether. Anxiously she held her wrist between thumb and finger; there, beneath the papery skin, twitched a faint but regular pulse, the motion of her heart in her chest as imperceptible as usual now its normal rhythm had returned.

  She did not feel faint or sick, but she had started to feel frightened. Each time it happened it seemed to go on a little longer, although when she was hooked up to the monitor in the hospital her heart had refused to turn tricks, and so, it seemed, they would not treat it yet.

  The paper was full of the usual horrors: the borough’s women and children variously outraged, a little boy drowned while swimming in a canal, muggings, a rape. And the heat: the usual mixture of glee and complaint. The photos were of city types picnicking in the parched confines of urban squares, as though that was what summer meant.

  She put it aside and thought about Daisy. She still saw her granddaughter, of course, but she missed the letters, and more than that she missed the secrets between them. Last time Daisy had visited she had insisted on doing her homework, and when Sophia had suggested she go and play outside Daisy had reminded her, archly, that she was not allowed.

  Undermining her mother’s authority wasn’t right, though; Sophia could see that now. For a long while there had been a distance between her and Linda, and she had focused her attention on Daisy instead. The distance between her and her daughter had made it easy for her to pass judgement on Linda’s decisions and priorities, easy to collude with the little girl in whose unconditional love she had so selfishly basked. Yet Linda was only trying to do the best for Daisy, just as she had for Linda and Michael, and things were clearly very different these days. She had no right to think that she knew better.

  She opened the kitchen window for the breeze and went to run a cool bath. In the streets around the estate the buddleia was coming into bloom, and its fragrance rode into the empty room on a breath of monoxide and bins.

  TC barely noticed the stink of the stairwell; like everyone else in the block he was used to it, and besides, he was thinking. Tonight was going to be his first proper night in his camp, and hopefully the first of many. At the back of his mind was a little thought that said maybe this was it: maybe he wouldn’t have to go home again. He knew it probably wasn’t true, but the summer holidays stretched infinitely ahead, far too long to see the end of. So he needed to think carefully about what he could take with him, in case she didn’t come looking for him, in case this was his last ever time at home.

  He wanted to take his duvet, but it was too bulky; there was a big orange towel, though, that would do for now. What else? The tin-opener would be good, and there was a candle in the bathroom. Some lighters. More food.

  When he was there, nobody would be able to make him do anything. Nobody would even know where he was. Although – was that OK? It felt strange to think of that, that he would be alone and not even one grown-up would know where he was in the world. Should he tell someone, tell Jozef? But no, he was used to being by himself, he’d be OK. Wouldn’t he?

  As he let himself in with his key he heard music. His mum must be in. He froze, considered backing out, but it was too late.

  ‘TC?’

  He went in, shut the door behind him. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘In here.’ She was on the couch – not just her – it was Jamal as well. Jamal.

  ‘Eh, kid, how you doing?’

  TC stared at them both. ‘What’s going on, Mum?’

  ‘We – we got something to tell you.’

  ‘You’re back together.’

  ‘Ain’t you pleased?’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter when.’

  ‘Thas all right’ – that was Jamal. He grinned at TC, stuck out his hand. ‘Come on, you must’ve missed my cooking, eh, kid?’

  TC looked at his hand, looked around. The lounge was tidy, the windows op
en; it felt different, somehow. Why?

  ‘Jamal’s moving in, OK?’ his mum said. So that was it. ‘He’s gonna live here.’

  ‘With us?’

  ‘Yeah with us. Who’d you think?’

  TC knew he would say it; he couldn’t help himself. ‘But . . . what about Dad?’

  ‘Your dad ain’t coming back, OK? Jesus fuck, TC, you know that.’

  TC looked at her face, the way it was turned away from him again. He had made that happen; he had done it by asking about his dad. He wanted her to look at him again, he wanted her to ask about him, where he’d been, or if he was hungry. Something.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  She breathed out. ‘Fuck’s sake.’

  He looked at Jamal, wanted to say his name, but it got stuck somewhere. ‘You’re not my dad, though, OK?’ he whispered.

  ‘I know that, kid,’ said Jamal, with a look TC couldn’t interpret, ‘believe me.’

  They had been into his room and tidied it up. Clean sheets on the bed and his clothes all put away, even his socks in pairs. They had found the box he kept under his bed, and now his things were all out on the windowsill: the Lego, the headless Luke Skywalker, the crow’s skull, the stone with the hole and the half-pence piece. And his two books, leaning against the window embrasure: The Paranormal, with its chilling cover, and A Guide to Tracking Wild Animals. Even the jay’s feather was there.

  He sat down on the bed and looked at the wall and wondered what it was he was supposed to do.

  ‘Look, Kel –’

  ‘I know. I know, all right?’

  They were in the kitchen, Jamal leaning on the table, Kelly with her back to him, staring into the open fridge.

  ‘He’s a good kid.’

  She sighed. ‘I’ll speak to him. Later.’

  ‘If this is going to work, Kel –’

  ‘It’s me you’re fucking moving in with, Jamal, not him.’

  ‘He lives here too, Kelly – at least, he should do. Can’t blame him for not being around too much, though.’