Clay

by David Almond

  “You’re joking.”

  “No. I saw Skinner. We sorted it out. Tuesday night. There’ll be a truce.”

  “A meeting? With that—”

  “I told him Stephen Rose is a bliddy lunatic. I told him about his mother in the nuthouse and all his crazy family. I told him even if he is a Catholic and he lives in Felling he’s nowt to do with us.”

  “Is he not?”

  “Course he’s not. I said I’d ploat him myself if wasn’t for the priest.”

  “And a meeting with bliddy—”

  “I know, but Skinner says he’s not that bad, really. He says there’s a soft side to him.”

  I just looked at Geordie. He grinned.

  “There’s a good side to everybody, man,” he said. “I’ve heard you say it yourself.”

  I couldn’t say anything.

  “And he’s had a really tough life,” Geordie said.

  “Who has?”

  “Mouldy, man.”

  “I feel really sorry for him, then.”

  Geordie laughed.

  “Aye,” he said. “The poor troubled soul.”

  I grunted, and fiddled with my clay. I rolled it between my palms and the bench top and made a stupid wormy shape. I thought of the baby squirming in Stephen’s hands. I thought of the way he whispered to it to move and live.

  Geordie held his monster up.

  “Hello, Davieboy,” it growled. “Me is hungry.”

  I shook my head and sighed.

  “Worry not,” it said. “Me will protect you from horrible Mouldy. Ugh. Ugh.”

  Prat urged us on.

  “Don’t stop, my artists! Astounding things might lie in wait!”

  seven

  We served at a wedding that Saturday. It was a lass from Leam Lane called Vera that’d left school just a couple of years back and a scrawny little bloke called Billy White. Geordie reckoned Vera must be up the stick to marry an ugly bloke like him but I couldn’t see a bump. There was thunder during the service. You could see all the aunties and neighbors in the congregation staring up at the roof and worrying about their hats. By the time they went out for the photographs, though, the storm had gone and everything was drying.

  They all stood in the sun beside the statue of St. Patrick in his animal skins and with his wild long hair and with snakes squirming under his feet. The blokes loosened their ties and smoked and joked and laughed. The women talked about each other’s hats and kept screaming at something hilarious. Kids belted up and down the church steps. Father O’Mahoney chatted and smiled. Geordie and I eyed the guests up and wondered where the tip might come from. I saw Maria there, standing with the women, looking bored. Then Billy called us over.

  He said Vera wanted a picture of us beside them in our cassocks and cottas. A memento, he said. So they could remember everything about their perfect day. Would we mind? We shrugged. All right, we said. I said Geordie’d probably bust the camera, though. We stood there with the bride and groom between us. We joined our hands together and raised our eyes to Heaven. There were great fluffy white clouds in the icy blue sky and I felt like I was toppling over as my eyes followed them. There was a click and a flash; then Billy shook our hands. He said he and Vera would be honored if we accepted a little token and he held out a ten-bob note to us. Geordie shoved it in his pocket.

  “Ten bob!” we whispered.

  “I told you that Billy was a good bloke,” said Geordie.

  Then they took a photo with Father O’Mahoney standing at their side with his hand raised in blessing.

  We were just going back up the steps into church to take our altar gear off when Maria came over.

  “She looks lovely, doesn’t she?” she said.

  I stopped on the second step. Geordie kept climbing. I gulped. I looked past Maria to Vera.

  “Aye,” I said.

  “She’s my cousin. She must be daft, though, eh?”

  “Eh?”

  “Getting married, at her age. You won’t find me doing that.”

  “Won’t you?”

  “No. You won’t find me getting trapped. I’ll be off into the wild blue yonder!”

  I looked at Billy cuddling and kissing Vera beside the statue. Maria grinned at me. She shrugged.

  “That’s all,” she said. “Just thought I’d come and say hello.”

  “Hello,” I said. Her eyes were lovely, bluer than the sky. “I liked your horse,” I said as she turned away.

  “What horse?”

  “The one you made in Prat’s class.”

  She put her hands on her hips.

  “That horse, Davie, was a lion.”

  She grinned. The women in the hats started howling their heads off again.

  “I’m not going to the reception,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “It’ll be all ham sandwiches and squealing brats and blokes puking up around the back.”

  She looked at the sky.

  “It’s a lovely day for a walk,” she said.

  “Is it?” I said.

  “D’you want to go for one?”

  I could feel Geordie urging me to get away from her. She looked up at him, rolled her eyes, looked back at me.

  “Do you?” she said.

  “Aye.”

  “I’ll wait for you out here, then,” she said.

  “Aye,” I said.

  I tried to stay cool. I went up the steps, and the clouds over the church roof were just like angels’ wings.

  eight

  “You’re gonna do what with who?” said Geordie.

  “It’s just a walk, man, Geordie.”

  “Just a walk? What about what we were going to do?”

  “What were we going to do?”

  “What we always do.”

  “What’s that, then?”

  “How do I know? Hang about and that.”

  “Geordie, man. We’re not joined at the bliddy hip.”

  “You can say that again.” He yanked his cotta off. “For a walk?”

  We were in the sacristy, the room in the church where we got changed. There was a massive crucifix, a cabinet for the altar wine and communion hosts, massive drawers and wardrobes for the priests’ vestments, racks of candles, boxes of incense, heaps of prayer books, hymnbooks, pictures of saints with gammy legs and with arrows in them, portraits of dead priests and bishops. There was an altar boys’ rota pinned to the wall.

  I pulled my white cotta over my head. I undid the buttons on my red cassock and took it off.

  “You could come as well,” I said.

  “Oh, aye? And play little goosegog Geordie?”

  I scratched at the grass stains on my pants and the dried mud on my shoes. I hung the cassock and cotta in my place on the altar boys’ rail. Geordie did the same. He wouldn’t look at me.

  “There’s her mate,” I said.

  “The gargoyle, you mean?”

  “Geordie, man.”

  “I’ll go and see the lads up Windy Nook. Mebbes we’ll go and ploat some Springwellers.” He pursed his lips and made his voice go girly. “You go for your nice little walk with your nice little lass.” He headed out of the sacristy. “Just don’t go out walking on Tuesday,” he said. And he went into the church and out of the church and the massive door thudded shut behind him.

  I followed him out. I passed Father O’Mahoney coming back in.

  “Thank you, Davie,” he said. “You and your pal did very well.”

  He winked.

  “Ten bob!” he said.

  I went out of the shadowy church into the brilliant light. I hesitated at the top of the church steps. I looked down across Felling to the river. It glistened in the light. It snaked eastwards towards the horizon, the dead flat sea.

  I breathed deep and calmed myself and went down to Maria. We were shy with each other. When we started walking, we hardly swung our arms in case we knocked against each other. We didn’t know what to say. We headed along Sunderland Road and up into Holly Hill park. I
t was neat like always: flowers in neat clumps and rows, the lawns and hedges all trimmed, the shrubs pruned, the soil all raked. We passed close to the bowling green. We saw people dressed all in white through gaps in the hedges, saw the rectangle of perfect green, heard little clacks as the bowls struck each other, little bursts of laughter and applause. There was a storm of birdsong from the shrubs and tall trees all around. The parkie saw us. His leg brace clicked as he limped towards us. He said nowt, but he narrowed his eyes and raised a finger at us in warning.

  “It’s all right,” I said to him. “We’ll cause no bother, Mr. Pew.”

  He showed us a little black book and mimed writing in it. He made a fist and shook it at us. Then he turned and limped away.

  “Does he ever talk?” said Maria.

  “Just when he yells,” I said. And I imitated him. “I’ve got my beady eye on you, boyo! Sling your hook, kidder!”

  We walked on, out of the park and onto Holly Hill. We passed the Columba Club. Blurry people were drinking beyond the frosted glass. We laughed again about the horse that was a lion. She said that sometimes she felt closer to animals than she did to people. To grown-up people, anyway.

  “I don’t want to grow up,” she said. “Not to be like most people here, anyway. You know what I mean?”

  I shrugged.

  “They’re so tame,” she said. “They’ve got such pathetic little lives. I want to do something special, don’t you?”

  “Aye,” I said.

  “I used to want to be a nun. Thought it might be a way of getting out of here. Then I found out about poverty, chastity, obedience, and silence and I thought mebbe it’s not for me.”

  “I wanted to be a monk for a while. When that White Father came and talked to us.”

  “Him! He was gorgeous! And what about now?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Me neither. But something special. Not the common boring run of things.”

  We walked on. Sometimes our hands brushed gently against each other. We headed up Split Crow Road towards Watermill Lane where the wide verges were and young trees lined the street. We kept passing neighbors and relatives. They kept calling to us and we waved and called back. They nudged each other, laughed and smiled.

  “Look to them all,” Maria said. “It’s like there’s never anywhere to get away. Hello, Aunty Claire!” she yelled as some woman hurried past with a bag full of shopping.

  We walked on.

  “You know that Stephen Rose, don’t you?” she said.

  “Aye.”

  “He went away, didn’t he?”

  “Aye.”

  “There’s tales about him, aren’t there? Are they true?”

  “Dunno.”

  “People are full of blather, aren’t they?”

  “Aye,” I said.

  “Is he friendly?”

  “No.”

  “Is he weird?”

  “Aye.”

  “Nice weird or creepy weird?”

  I thought about it.

  “Both,” I said.

  We walked on. We approached Braddock’s garden. We looked across at Crazy Mary’s house. I looked into the sky. So blue. The clouds so dazzling white. I tipped my head back and narrowed my eyes.

  “What you doing?” said Maria.

  “Do you think you could think that clouds were angels?” I said.

  “You could think anything was anything,” she said. “It’s how your mind works. Prat’s a prat but he’s right. We could imagine just about anything.”

  We walked on. We came to the ancient iron gate. It was rusted, twisted. The lock on it had been ruined years ago.

  Maria narrowed her eyes and stared into the sky like me.

  “Just look at them all!” she gasped.

  nine

  “This is where you go with that Geordie Craggs,” she said. She laughed. “It’s your secret place.”

  “How d’you know that?”

  She widened her eyes and wobbled her hands.

  “Frances Malone and I know everything! Let’s go in.”

  I didn’t move. I hadn’t been in since Stephen and the knife. But now the truce was on, and anyway, Maria was already through the gate and on her way. She ducked through the hawthorn, was disentangling her hair.

  “Howay, Davie,” she said.

  Going in with a girl was different. I smelt the rot and the piss and the oniony smell in the undergrowth. I felt the mud under my feet and the thorns of the wild roses and brambles on my legs. It felt warm and humid after the breezy street, like the year was further on in here. Sluggish flies buzzed around us. There was years of graffiti on the quarry walls. She said her dad used to come here for soil and daffodil bulbs. Like everybody’s dad, I said. Maybe all the gardens in Felling had bits of this garden in them, I said. Everything was coming into leaf. Blossom was breaking out. There were primroses and fading daffodils and fancier flowers that must have grown from ancient Braddock’s seeds. We came through to the clay pond and stood beside it and looked around and I knew what Maria meant when she said it was beautiful.

  “There’s talk they’re going to fill it in,” she said. “They’re going to bulldoze the gardens and knock the last of the old house down and fill the quarry in and build a new estate.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “They’re cretins,” she said. “They’ll call the new streets Pretty Place and Lovely Lane but they’ll not see how they’ve smashed a bit of Paradise.”

  She looked into the sky.

  “Stop them doing it!” she called.

  We stepped around the pond. The pale mud squirmed under our feet. She slipped and I grabbed her hand till she was steady. The fire smoldered outside the cave. We went to the entrance and I caught my breath at what we saw in there.

  There were clay figures everywhere. Little goblins sat in niches in the rock. There were little pigs and dragons. There were lumpy unfinished things leaning on the walls. They were all blackened, covered in ash. Maria knelt down and touched a twisted little man.

  “He makes them in the fire,” I said.

  “Who does?”

  “Stephen Rose.”

  I kicked at the embers. A curled-up clay body lay in there.

  “I saw his apostles,” she said. “They were beautiful. These are all ugly, but they’re still beautiful.”

  I scanned the cave again. Geordie would be furious. Mouldy and Skinner and Poke would just smash up everything. Then I saw the sign painted in white on the cave roof. The silly warnings from Mouldy’s lot and from us had been painted out. There was just a single message.

  Anything that is destroyed will be avenged. S.R.

  “Really weird,” said Maria.

  “He’s had a weird life.”

  “There but for the grace of God,” she said, like everyone in Felling seemed to say. She crossed herself. We sat close to each other on a pair of stones. I held her hand. The quarry was filled with noises, clicks and buzzings and breezes. There were noises that must have been animals moving in the undergrowth. Birds sang. Something snorted not too far away. It came closer, stopped, moved away again.

  “Do you believe in power?” I said.

  “What do you mean, power?”

  “Dunno. Power. Like the power to do things nobody else could do.”

  “Magic, you mean?”

  “Something like that. Do you believe somebody could make something and make it live?”

  She looked into the sky. She narrowed her eyes.

  “That’s what women do,” she said. “Make living babies that come out of them and crawl and cry.”

  “Aye, there’s that,” I said. “Flesh and blood. But could you make something that isn’t flesh and blood? Could you make something out of clay, and make that live?”

  We looked down at the fire. A hip was visible among the fading embers, a foot, the angle of an elbow.

  “They say all kinds of things can happen in the world,” she said. “You hear all kinds of stories.”


  “Aye.”

  “Like that baby.”

  “What baby?”

  “The one that was born at the Queen Elizabeth. It was all hairy. It had paws where the hands should be. Did you not hear?”

  I shook my head.

  “Frances’ mam knows somebody that used to be a nurse there. She saw it. She said it was half dog, half human.”

  “Half dog?”

  “Aye. It stayed alive for a bit, then it died.”

  “How could that happen?”

  We shook our heads at each other.

  “They say it came out of a Stoneygate lass,” she whispered.

  “No.”

  “Aye. And they say that the lass has been out of her senses ever since. And they say there’s been stranger things than that. Things that’s never known except to the doctors. Deformities. Freaks of nature. Things there seems no reason for. Things that seem impossible.”

  She stroked the backs of her hands, her shoulders, her cheeks.

  “We should be glad to be just as we are,” she said. “There but—”

  “They say that one day we’ll be able to make life in test tubes,” I said. “We’ll be able to create living creatures with chemicals and electricity and nuclear power.”

  “Trouble with that is,” she said, “mebbe we won’t know where to stop.”

  “And we’ll make monsters.”

  “Aye. And mebbe the monsters’ll turn on us, and threaten us, and be the end of us.”

  I looked down at the creature in the embers.

  “All this is what you asked Prat about, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Aye.”

  She leaned forwards and turned her face so she could look right at me.

  “Is it because you’ve got some kind of power?” she said.

  “Me? Don’t be daft.”

  We were silent then. The snorting thing moved away from us. A dog, I thought. A hedgehog. Maria heard it. She looked at me.

  “A hedgehog,” I said.

  She nodded.

  Hundreds of tadpoles were swimming in the pale water. Already lots of them had lost their tails and were growing legs. Maria stirred the water with a stick and giggled at the way the tadpoles twisted and turned and flickered around it.

  “There’s dead dogs in here,” she said.

  “So they say. And dead cats.”