Clay

by David Almond

  “That’s why you were thrown out?”

  “No, that time they threw Joseph Wilson out, and told us he was a bad influence on us. Then another kid. Danny Keegan. He drew a thing out of the night.”

  I just look at him.

  “A little stumpy thing with horns. We were messing about in the night again and we were praying and conjuring and Danny found it running under his feet. We tried to catch it but it ran; then we saw it in the corridor, flapping wings, flying away. Danny said he’d been praying, ‘Send me a sign, Lord.’”

  “You did all sorts at Bennett?”

  “Seems that long ago. We were little kids, took from home. Aye, we did all sorts till they trapped us.”

  “How did they do that?”

  “They sent a viper. Logan. Smooth and smarmy. He was one of the older ones, nearly ready to be a proper priest. He’s working in a parish in Jarrow now. He tricked us. He said he could give us secrets, the secrets that were supposed to be kept from us till we were old. Secrets of life and death and when Christ would come again and what the saints knew and what the Pope keeps hidden from the rest of the world. So we let him come to us in the night and we did things with him like levitating tables and doing Ouija boards and doing trances and hypnosis, and we told him about Joseph and Francis and about a kid called Plummer that could hold his breath for half an hour and talk to ghosts. We should’ve known. He was a spy. He told the priests. They said it was me that led the others to the sinners’ path. And so they sent me home.”

  He leans down, runs his fingers across the lovely body.

  “They told me I was evil, Davie. They told me I was an agent of the devil.”

  His eyes are glittering in the candlelight.

  “Do you think I’m evil?”

  I shake my head. I pray. I touch the body. I look up at the moon. It hasn’t moved.

  “Live,” I whisper. “Live and move.”

  And our voices rise again, and begin a weird wordless song again, and the body between us stays dead still.

  five

  And we sprinkle ashes on the man, for Stephen says he might rise like new life from the old, and we sprinkle water from the clay pond on him, for we think he might grow like seed, and I lean right over him and breathe into his nostrils like the Lord God did when he formed man from the dust of the earth, and we whisper weirdly and we stand and sway and we start dancing and we beg him and implore and I begin to think that nowt will happen this night, that nowt will ever happen, and then Stephen starts talking about the night that he went home again.

  “I was sent back home in a car again. No time to think, to pray, to confess or say goodbye. Can you believe it? One day I was in, the next I was cast out. And I left the heavy doors and all the boys and all the priests and all the prayers and the smell of piss and all the jam and bread and the trees and we went out past the pond through the ancient gates and headed back to Whitley Bay. The priest that was with me was pointy-nosed, sloppy-lipped, miserable and old. He never once looked at me but whispered prayers all the way to Whitley Bay. And Mam and Dad didn’t know what was coming to them. Mam was boiling bacon in the kitchen, Dad was planting cabbages in the garden. I left the car with the priest and with my ancient suitcase in my hand. He gave them a letter with my sins in it. ‘Here is a devil, come back home again,’ he said. ‘Protect yourselves.’ And he was gone.”

  And Stephen points down at the man and raises his voice: “Move! Live!” And his voice echoes in the cave and out into the quarry and the night, but nowt happens to the man of clay.

  “And your mam and dad,” I start, “how did they…?”

  “Cried their hearts out. Floods of tears. They said they had tried to live right. They had tried to bring me up right. And I said that mebbe all that trying to do right was what was wrong. Mebbe we should have lived crazy like all the Roses, mebbe we should go now and live in a tent in Plessey Woods like Rocky did and get hairy and wild and scary and scared. And Dad shook me and said, ‘You cannot mean that!’ And I said I did and they wept more floods and Mam held me and told me to confess to her the things I’d done.”

  “And did you?”

  “I told her some things, aye. I told her that loads of the things in the letter were lies. I told her a few of my own truths and a few of my own lies. In the end I started to forget myself which parts of it were truth and which parts were lies. Pretty soon, looking back at the days and nights at Bennett was like looking back into a time of dreams and it was like there was no way of knowing where the truth was, and certainly no way of knowing what was right and what was wrong.

  “But we settled. We stayed on in the little terraced house in Whitley Bay and didn’t head out to the woods. I went to school and I was like any of them kids that’s come back from a place like Bennett—a little bit distracted, a little bit wild. They went on with their jobs. She was a waitress in a Tilly’s Tea Shack next the sea. He cleaned the machines in a factory that made tires in Blyth. Everything went on like everything was normal and we were normal people living normal lives. But there was too much bubbling inside.

  “Mam started swigging bottles of sherry and smashing cups and plates on the kitchen floor. She shaved all her hair off and started talking about slashing her wrists. I was scribbling spells on my bedroom walls and calling spirits out the night. I got expelled from school for calling a curse down on the headmaster and saying God had died in 1945. Dad just couldn’t stand it all. He said we should all go to Australia and start again; then one night we were eating a steak and kidney pudding and watching Look North and he had a stroke and died.”

  He pauses and gazes through the flickering light at me, like he’s checking if I’m following him, if I’m keeping up with him.

  “You were there?” I ask.

  “Sitting across the table from him, Davie. Close to him as I am to you now. I thought he was choking on his pudding, but he wasn’t. He fell off his chair and died.”

  We’re silent for a time. We sit on the cave floor beside the man.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  “It’s OK,” says Stephen.

  But I look across, and see that Stephen Rose has started to cry.

  six

  “Did you ever see anybody die?” whispers Stephen.

  I shake my head.

  “Me neither till that night. It was like there was a sudden storm inside him, then the look of terror in his eyes, then the gasping of his breath, then the drop, then nothing more. By the time me and Mam was kneeling at him, everything had stopped. No breath, no pulse, no heart, no nowt at all. He was dead and still as this lovely man is now. And already turning cold, already turning back to clay.”

  He lets his tears fall again and we’re silent.

  “I could have saved him, Davie,” he says. “If only Mam hadn’t gone mental on me.”

  “What?” I say.

  “She was howling. She was all for running straight out into the night, straight out to the phone box across the street. ‘We got to get an ambulance,’ she said. ‘Wait,’ I told her. ‘I can bring him back again.’ I grabbed her arm. But she was far gone. She walloped me with her open hand. She ran out into the street. I saw her through the window, in the phone box, jabbering stupidly down the phone. I locked the front door on her. I lay down with Dad. I talked into his ear. I called on his spirit. ‘Come back to us. Come back into the world, Dad.’ I held his head between my hands. I called on the powers of the moon and the stars and the sun and the whole universe. I called on the power of God himself. ‘Send my father back to us!’”

  He looks down at his hands, like he can still see his dad’s head between them. He looks across at me and his eyes are weird and wild.

  “This is true, Davie. This is as true as we’re together in this cave in this quarry in this night. Tell me you believe me.”

  “What happened?”

  “Tell me you believe me and you’ll know.”

  I stare back at him. He waits for me. And I say the true and craz
y words.

  “Yes. I believe you.”

  “Yes!” he gasps. “I hold my dad and I call him back, and it starts happening, Davie. I feel the life coming back into him. I feel his spirit move. I feel a tiny breath. I feel a faint faint beating of his heart. And oh, Davie, he’s coming back to me and it’s so so wonderful…. Then the door’s broke down and the ambulance men is shoving me away and thumping my dad’s chest and he’s dead again.”

  He sighs.

  “And my mam’s hands is clamped across her face and she’s jabbering and mental and she’s looking at me like the mental one is me.”

  And we look at each other, and there’s dead silence in the cave, and there’s no more shifting, no more shimmering. Stephen Rose, and I, are definitely there, in the cave, in the quarry, in Braddock’s ancient garden. And I watch Stephen Rose lean forward and whisper into the ear of the clay man lying on the floor.

  “Now. Come into the world. Come to me, to Stephen Rose. I call on you. Live, my creature. Move.”

  And I see the man move. His limbs twitch, he turns his head and looks straight into Stephen Rose’s eyes.

  seven

  What would you do? Kneel there while a slab of the dead earth starts coming to life before your eyes? Kneel there and just watch while a man of clay shifts his shoulders and rolls his neck like he’s stretching himself awake after a long sleep? Kneel there and say, “Haven’t we done a brilliant thing, Stephen Rose? Haven’t we got amazing powers?” Stephen’s transfigured. He’s filled with dreadful joy. One hand points to Heaven, the other points down to our creature. He whimpers and howls and prays and sings. Me? I’m off.

  I jump across the two of them. I slither through the clay-pond, struggle through the quarry, through the hawthorn, through the fallen gates, and stand on Watermill Lane beneath the moon, surrounded by silvery rooftops, pitch-black windows, dead still gardens, and over everything is Felling’s deep dark silence. I expect to be struck down there, to die. I expect the earth to open up and grisly clawing hands to reach up and drag me down to Hell. But there’s nowt.

  I rip the shift off and use it to wipe the muck off myself. I throw it through the gates, back into the garden; then I run on all alone, my footsteps falling on the solid earth, echoing from the sleeping houses. I creep back into my house, back into my bed.

  I tell myself to tell myself it’s all a vision or a dream. I tell myself that none of it’s happened really but that I’ve been in bed all this time, that I saw an imaginary boy called Davie doing imaginary things with an imaginary creature out in an imaginary night. I tell myself not to scream, to stop whimpering, to stop trembling. I tell myself that come the morning everything will be all right. And then it’s morning and Mam’s yelling upstairs at me and telling me it’s time for church, time for me to get ready for the altar. And I wash and dress myself and go downstairs and stand stupid and pale as they ask if I’m all right.

  “Aye!” I snap. “I am all right.”

  And they roll their eyes and shake their heads and turn from me and start talking about some dog.

  “Dog?” I say.

  “Aye,” says Dad. “Miss O’Malley’s poor dog.”

  “Boris,” says Mam. “Her lovely Labrador.”

  “Seems some bugger bludgeoned it in the night,” says Dad.

  “Poor Boris,” says Mam. “Poor Miss O’Malley.”

  “Who’d believe it?” says dad.

  “Here in Felling,” says Mam. “Who’d believe it?”

  I leave the house, head for church. A brilliant morning. No wind. Bright terrifying penetrating light. People hurrying through the streets, filled with friendliness and goodness. “Morning, Davie,” they call as they pass by. “Hello, son,” as they touch me kindly on the shoulder.

  Geordie and I don’t look at each other, don’t speak, as we put our cassocks and cottas on.

  “You two all right?” says Father O’Mahoney.

  “Aye, Father,” says Geordie.

  “That’s grand,” says the priest, and he turns from us and lowers his head and murmurs his prayers.

  All through Mass, I think I’m keeling over, falling, passing out. When communion comes, I lower my head and won’t take it. Father O’Mahoney whispers, “Davie?” but I squeeze my eyes shut and keep my head down and won’t take it. I hold the silver dish beneath the faces of friends and family and neighbors that I know so well, and my hand trembles as I gaze at all those faces lifted so innocently up to us.

  After Mass I try to rush away, but Father O’Mahoney stands in front of me.

  “Now then, Davie,” he says, and his voice is tender, gentle.

  “Yes, Father,” I whisper.

  “Are you all right, Davie?”

  “Aye, Father.”

  “Are you happy, Davie?”

  “Don’t know, Father.”

  He rests his hand on my head.

  “It’s a grand life,” he says.

  “Aye, Father.”

  “But it was never designed to be easy.”

  “No, Father.”

  “That’s grand, then.” He sighs and stares at the ceiling and ponders. “I think you were not at confession last night, Davie?”

  “No, Father.”

  “Maybe you should come soon.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Yes, Father. That’s grand, then. Now, go on, catch up with your pal.”

  I go out of the vestry, through the church, out of the front door. Dozens of people stand about in the courtyard, talking and laughing. I try to move through without being seen. I hear Frances and Maria laughing. I hear Mam calling out to me. I try to ignore her. Then there’s an intake of breath nearby, a burst of low concerned chattering.

  “Dead?” someone whispers. “Dead?”

  Then Mam’s at my side.

  “What’s wrong?” I say.

  “A dreadful thing. A boy has been found dead.”

  I close my eyes, don’t breathe, don’t speak.

  “His name,” she says, “is Martin Mould.”

  eight

  Next thing I know I’m on Watermill Lane, part of a scattered crowd that stands beneath the trees, leans against hedges, sits on benches and on low front garden walls. We stand singly and in little gossiping groups. I’m alone, ignored, terrified. There’s two police cars parked in the roadway. There’s a policeman guarding the entrance to Braddock’s garden. The silver on his helmet glitters in the Sunday morning sun. He stands with his legs apart, with his arms crossed. He keeps turning his head to look back into the garden. The other policemen are inside.

  I want to yell, “Get them out! The monster’ll get them and you as well! Run! Run!”

  Somebody pokes me in the ribs. I turn. Geordie. He has the marks on his face from our fight.

  “Dead!” he whispers.

  He keeps his face straight. He makes a fist and widens his eyes. “Dead, Davie!” He allows a grin to cross his face. He lowers his voice further. “A bliddy dream come true!”

  Then Mam and Dad come to us and Geordie’s face is straight again.

  “Seems some lads found him,” says Dad. “Seems he must have gone over the quarry edge.” He lowers his voice. “There was an ambulance earlier. Took his body away.”

  “He went over?” I say. “Fell, you mean?”

  “Must have. Probably sometime in the night. Story is he’d have been full of…”

  “Poor soul,” says Mam.

  “Aye. You two have much to do with him?” says Dad.

  “Not if we could help it,” says Geordie.

  “Troublemaker?” says Dad.

  “Hard as nails,” says Geordie.

  “I’ve heard,” says Dad. “And all that drinking for a lad of his—”

  “He fell?” I say.

  “Aye. I’ve said. What else?”

  “He was dead scary,” I say.

  “Aye?” says Dad.

  “Aye!” I say. “Definitely!”

  “Hush,” says Mam. She puts her arm aro
und me. “Don’t speak ill of the dead, Davie.”

  “It’ll be the end of the garden, anyway,” says Dad. “There’s nowt now that’ll stop them shutting it up and filling it in.”

  We all look towards the gates.

  “It’s always been a place of danger,” Mam says.

  “And adventure,” says Dad.

  “Aye,” she says. “And adventure. All the way back to when we were…Oh, look!”

  Another police car draws up. A little shuffling woman steps out of it. A policewoman helps her towards the gates. The whisper travels through the crowd.

  “It’s Mrs. Mould,” says Mam. “Oh, poor soul.”

  The policewoman leads the woman into the garden.

  “She just wants to see the place,” says Mum. There’s tears in her eyes. “Wouldn’t you just?” She holds me tight, as if protecting me. I hold my breath. I wait for the screams. I wait for them to come running out in terror with the monster coming after them, but nowt happens, and all around, the pity and the gossiping intensify.

  “Poor soul,” says Mam again. She turns to her friends, talks and whispers with them again. “Oh!” she says. “I know. It’s such a sad sad tale.”

  I turn my eyes to her. A sad sad tale? With a brute like Mouldy in it?

  She clicks her tongue, nods, shrugs.

  “It’s common knowledge down in Pelaw. The dad worked as a welder in the yards. He fell into a ship’s tank, broke his back and quickly died. The battle for compensation lasted years, as these things always do. But it came at last, a few hundred pounds, a pittance set against what had been lost. By then, though, Mrs. Mould was frail and drained, the boy was growing wild, she had no control of him. Who’s to know what pain and loss’ll do to any family and to any heart? The boy turned young to drink. Seems she couldn’t refuse him the cash for it. He was big and strong and he looked like a man and there was plenty pity for them, so many looked the other way. And now he’s fallen too, and she’s lost him, too. And what’s she left with now, sad soul?”