by Julia Green
He wants to throw up.
He lets the pages drop back under the cover. He’d like to kick the easel over, stamp the drawings into the dust. But Ellie is standing at the doorway, watching him.
‘What are you doing?’ she asks, so innocently that he can’t speak. Absurdly, tears spring into his eyes and he has to turn away to blink them back.
‘Mum says, are you coming for pudding and do you want coffee?’
He’s spinning, dizzy. The air in the studio is suffocating, full of stone dust. He hadn’t noticed it before, but now it seems to fill his lungs and his eyes and he can hardly breathe. He stumbles past Ellie into the garden. That’s when he sees the stone sculpture. It’s the one Matt Davies was working on before. Emerging from the block of stone are the head and torso of a woman, only she’s changing. Where her legs would have been before, he can now see the curve and slope of a fleshy fish tail, the stone surface scalloped into scales.
The head is wrapped in a soft cloth, so Simon can’t see the actual features. The hands, what he can see of them, are the small, fine hands of a young woman.
He might actually be sick. Any minute.
‘Si?’
He feels Ellie’s small hand touching his. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes,’ he croaks. ‘It was too stuffy in there.’
She sits next to him on the low wall without speaking. Eventually he leans down and picks up a handful of small stones from the path. ‘Want to play? See if we can hit the flower pot next to the wall. The one with the red flowers in it.’
Ellie crouches down to gather her own pile of stones. She looks happy again. It doesn’t take much. He lets her stand closer to the pot, to make it more fair. She’s still hopeless; all her stones go wide.
He hits every time. Each throw’s a little harder. Eventually, he cracks the pot.
Ellie gasps and giggles. ‘You’ll be in trouble.’
‘Who cares?’
She giggles again, but nervously. ‘Shall we go and have pudding?’ she asks.
‘You can. I’m staying out here. Find out when we’re going home and come and tell me.’
There’s no way he’s going back in there. Or speaking to that man, ever. He’d like to smash that stupid statue thing into tiny pieces.
To think of Matt Davies, watching Leah like that, drooling over her as he draws and sculpts. And what about Nina? How’s she supposed to feel?
Simon can’t bear it, the muddle of it all. How it makes him feel. Sick and angry, and wretched. A horrible, messy, confusing feeling he can’t explain even to himself.
He imagines blasting the stupid thing with his air rifle. Splatting it with lead shot. It’s just fantasy to begin with and then it dawns on him: he could do actually do it, for real. No one would know it was him. No one even knows he’s got the gun.
Every time he thinks of Leah with Mr Davies, he gets this awful ache deep in his guts, so bad it’s like he’s going to throw up.
He hears footsteps behind him, but doesn’t turn round.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Nina hisses at him. ‘How rude can you be? Get back inside and make an effort. Now.’
‘No.’
She grabs his arm, but he shakes her off. He’s stronger than her now.
‘Simon, I’m warning you. Now. I mean it.’
‘Warning me of what?’
‘How dare you speak to me like that! All I’m asking for is a few decent manners. We haven’t even finished the meal. He’s gone to a lot of trouble, cooking special things. The least you can do is come and make some sort of conversation. We’re not going until you do.’
‘You can’t make me.’
She looks as if she’s about to explode, but Mart’s shadow appears, and Nina turns to face him instead.
Simon listens to the low voices.
‘What’s up?’
‘I’m sorry, Matt. He’s being — difficult. Pig-headed. I don’t know why.’
Matt laughs. ‘It doesn’t matter. Leave him there for a bit.’
‘It does matter. I hate it. It’s spoiled your lovely meal.’
‘No it hasn’t! And I understand. It’s bound to be hardest for him. That age. Don’t worry about it.’
‘I do worry. I hate him being so rude. Not speaking.’
‘That’s fourteen-year-old boys for you.’
‘Is it? Is it really? And why? They’re not all like that. He used to talk all the time when he was little. I just don’t understand.’
‘No. You wouldn’t. But I remember it only too vividly.’
‘What, you? You weren’t like that, I bet.’
‘I was fourteen, wasn’t I? You don’t ever forget how hard it is. Finding a way through. Survival, anyway you can.’
Simon puts his hands over his ears. It’s even worse, listening to him being understanding. Better to have him and Nina angry, and then he can just hate them.
They go back inside. He hears music coming through the open windows. It’s getting dark in the garden. Moths circle closer to the lit windows. Some insect with small quivery wings brushes against his arm. A fox barks.
Nina stands at the back door, Ellie in her arms. She calls to him.
‘Can you unlock the car? Ellie’s asleep. Time to go.’
He stands up awkwardly, stiff from sitting in one place for so long. He takes the key from her and goes ahead out of the gate. The grass is wet with dew. Matt does not come out to see them off. Nina drives home in silence. Neither of them speaks when they get back either, except for the strictest of functional purposes.
‘Key.’
‘Carry this.’
‘Lock the back door.’
Nina doesn’t even say goodnight.
24
Simon wakes late. His room’s too hot. The sun’s been shining through the uncurtained window for hours. The house is quiet. He listens for evidence of what Nina and Ellie are up to, but there’s nothing except a tap dripping in the bathroom. He dozes a bit longer. Images from last night bubble up to the surface. The drawings. The mermaid woman emerging from the stone.
In daylight, it all takes on a slightly different shape. It’s what artists do, isn’t it? Drawings from life. It doesn’t mean anything significant. Leah just happens to be around while he’s working. It’s not surprising he’s used her as a model. Same with his mother.
He thinks of himself as an artist sometimes. It’s his best subject at school. But he hasn’t drawn anything since this Matt Davies thing with Mum; how can he do GCSE Art now?
What he used to like about drawing was the feeling of intense absorption in something; how you get into a different state, almost like a trance. But he’s discovered that you can get almost exactly the same feeling when you’re hunting. You’re so focused on your prey you forget everything else, even pain. He and Johnny, Pike and Dan talked about it once when they were stalking pheasants near Pike’s house. They could’ve gone on for hours. They crawled through brambles and stinging nettles and gorse and didn’t even notice they were being scratched and stung and bruised until afterwards.
It must be some sort of adrenalin rush. Same as people who do sport. It’s addictive. Afterwards, when you come back down, you feel wiped out.
There’s a note propped against the butter dish on the kitchen table: Ellie and I gone to Rita’s for coffee.
Sounds as if she’s still mad at him.
He pours himself a bowl of cereal and spoons golden syrup on top. He can get the air rifle out in a minute, set it up, go over the fields and practise shooting for real while Nina and Ellie are out.
There’s a tap at the back door. It opens. Leah stands there.
She’s so… so golden and vibrant and alive! Nothing like the stone carving. It’s the first time he’s seen her, on her own since they… they did that stuff. He doesn’t know what to say.
She smiles. ‘Do you want to go out?’
His heart gives a little jolt. ‘Where?’
‘You can choose. I’ve made a
picnic’
He thinks of the air rifle, the smooth wood, heavy against his shoulder. Lets it go. Leah is wearing her short denim skirt and the skimpiest of T-shirts. How can he possibly resist?
His stomach flips.
‘It’s so hotl’ Leah says, leaning against the door. ‘We could go to that swimming place, the one we never made the other night?’ She giggles.
She’s flirting with him!
‘Get a towel,’ she says, ‘and I’ll go and get the picnic. Is Nina there?’
‘No.’
‘Leave her a note, then, so she doesn’t worry.’
‘Bossy,’ Simon says. But he does write a note. He doesn’t mention Leah.
‘It’s too hot to walk far,’ Leah announces when they’re only a short distance down the road. She hasn’t touched him, or mentioned the other night. He wonders whether she remembers anything. Should he say something?
He doesn’t.
‘Let’s go up on the cliffs instead,’ Leah suggests.
He follows her. His head feels muzzy, as if he can’t think straight about anything.
She branches off away from the coast path once they get there, and finds them a grassy patch big enough to lie down on, hidden in the tall bracken fronds. It’s sheltered on one side by the remains of an old stone field boundary. Simon wonders fleetingly whether she’s been here before. With someone else. Matt Davies? But he’s not going to think about that now.
They lie side by side, him on his back and Leah on her stomach. She studies the old stones in the wall as if she’s never looked at them close-up before.
‘Look at these plants,’ she tells Simon. ‘They’re like the seaweedy stuff growing in those rock pools we saw. All different colour fronds.’
‘Lichens,’ Simon says. ‘Only grow where the air’s unpolluted. Depending where they are, you can tell which direction is north…’
‘You! All your facts!’ Leah pounces on him, play-fights. They end up face to face, so close that she has to kiss him, and this time he kisses her back. He’s beginning to get the hang of it. Like it, even. No one can see them here.
They don’t do anything else, just lie and soak up the heat, and occasionally Leah makes observations about things she sees, like the way the grass isn’t just one kind of plant, but hundreds of different kinds. Some have tiny flowers like stars. Simon’s about to tell her which ones are edible in a survival situation, but stops himself just in time. He’s learning that too: what you say, what you don’t.
‘Hungry?’ Leah doles out sandwiches. The chocolate biscuits are so melted they suck the chocolate off each other’s fingers.
Simon watches a flock of small brown birds alight, peck at the grass, then all fly off together and land a bit further on. He doesn’t recognize them. He can see kittiwakes wheeling off the cliff if he sits up. And there are the usual gulls. Voices drifting from the town beach sound almost the same as the gulls: shrieks and cries, carried on the breeze. He lies on his back, resting his head on his hands. Leah’s still on her tummy, close to him. He can feel the warmth of her leg next to his. She tickles his face with a grass stem until he laughs. ‘Stop it!’
‘It’s a test,’ she says. ‘See how long you can stay still.’
She tickles his eyelids, his cheek, the tip of his nose. She runs the fine grass along his top lip. He splutters, sits up, pushes her off.
‘You lost!’ She pushes him back down and leans over him, her hair tickling him now, and runs her finger along his lips.
He sighs. ‘Don’t,’ he begs. ‘Please. It’s too much.’
‘Too much what? Pleasure or pain?’
‘Both.’
He’d like to ask her what she remembers about the other night in the burial chamber. He doesn’t quite dare, in case she remembers nothing. He’s beginning to doubt himself. Perhaps he made the whole thing up, just by wanting it.
‘I might take the air rifle out later,’ he says.
‘I heard you out in your garden yesterday,’ Leah says. ‘What do you want it for, anyway?’
‘It’s fun,’ Simon says. ‘And it’s a skill, hunting. People have always done it. It’s natural.’
Leah screws up her nose. ‘Not any more. And it’s men, not people.’
‘And the women just ate nuts and berries, I suppose? You eat meat, don’t you?’
Leah yawns.
He can’t be bothered to argue with her.
He listens to the murmuring sound of the sea. It’s dead calm today; there’s just the tiniest of swells. And so blue. Above them, the sky is blue too, endless. The sun’s hot, but up here on the cliffs there’s just enough breeze. It’s almost perfect. Leah’s body lies close to his, companiably. There’s no need to speak.
‘We could go along to the rope cove,’ Simon suggests when it’s too hot to lie in the sun much longer.
He’s imagining them both stripped off, swimming in the cove, larking about. Drying out on the rock ledges side by side, kissing, touching each other.
Leah sits up, stretches, looks in the direction of the town beach. ‘I’ll meet you there later,’ she says. ‘There’s something I need to get in town. I forgot, earlier.’
‘Do you have to? Now?’
‘The shops will shut at five. It won’t take long. An hour, maybe? You could come too?’
He hates shops.
‘I’ll go along and wait for you there,’ he says. ‘Which way will you come?’
‘The quicker one. Field path? Then I can drop stuff off home first.’
Don’t let it spoil the day, he thinks. Sometimes things are better if you wait for them.
He watches Leah pick her way through the bracken back on to the coast path and towards the town. He can hear her feet for a long time, click-clacking along the path. He props himself up on his elbows to see better.
Not that far away, a small group of blokes in wetsuits are clambering up one of the stacks that juts up out of the sea. They climb right to the top, nearly to the edge. Simon’s heart hammers just watching. One steps forward, yells, and jumps. Simon has to close his eyes. A huge splash echoes out. He opens them. The boy’s head surfaces, he swims back, starts climbing the stack again. A second boy takes his turn on the high ledge. Even from this distance, Simon’s pretty sure it’s Rick Singleton. He doesn’t jump, he does a near-perfect dive, slicing into the water. The other boys cheer. A third steps forward.
They must be mad, Simon thinks, jumping from there, with such a narrow channel of sea, and so many rocks. They could kill themselves so easily. One false move.
Simon lies back on the warm grass. Should he have gone with Leah? But he loathes shopping.
When she arrives at the rope cove, when they’ve swum, he’ll ask her about the other night. He will.
In a minute he’ll start walking along the cliff.
As soon as he gets there he realizes the tide’s going to be too high for swimming. He swings down the rope anyway. He’s a commando soldier, one of the free-climbing unit. He’s seen the plaque on the cliff in memory of the Commando Cliff Assault Unit who trained along here in the Second World War. They came in special boats called dories.
Once he’s down he pokes about in the rock pools. Every so often a wave hits the ledges and sends spray shooting over the edge. He remembers the father and son swept off rocks while they were fishing.
He’s thirsty. Perhaps Leah will bring something to drink. Alcohol’s no good though, it just dehydrates you more. She drinks too much. He remembers what she said about her mother: She’s an alcoholic. It must be really hard on Leah. And that must be what Rita and Nina were going on about way back, when they called her poor Leah.
There’s a way you can turn saltwater into fresh by making a solar still, but you need plastic, or a tarpaulin.
Leah’s taking ages. It must be more than an hour.
He catches a shrimp with his hands. Fish dart under rocks. He feeds the shrimp to a sea anemone at the edge of the rock pool. Anemones look like flowers, but they’r
e not. They are carnivorous.
She’s not going to come, is she? She’s changed her mind. It was just an excuse, the shopping thing. She was bored with him. He’s too young for her.
Eventually he has to give up. He goes home the long way, along the cliff, and swims off Gull Rock at the edge of the town beach. The sea’s a deep turquoise green. Freezing. It never warms up here. He stays in as long as he can, till his teeth are chattering and his fingers blue.
When he’s back on the beach, towelling himself dry, the gang of boys in wetsuits swagger past. Simon braces himself. But Rick just nods. ‘All right?’
Simon nods back. ‘All right.’
Something’s changed. His heart’s not thumping any more. He watches Rick’s retreating back. He wonders fleetingly what happened between Rick and Mad Ed that time out on the cliff.
In any case, Rick’s moved on. New interests. Diving. New girlfriend.
That’s what happens. Nothing ever really stays the same. Back home, Nina’s putting supper on the table. She’s made enough for him.
‘Good swim?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Water’s still cold, isn’t it? In spite of all the sun.’
‘You need a wetsuit, really. Everyone has them.’
‘We could get you one, if you like.’
Her peace offering.
‘Thanks.’
‘What about the surfing school? Keep you busy till your mates get back?’
‘Nah.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s school, isn’t it? And this is the holidays.’
‘Si! Don’t be daft. It’s completely different from school!’
‘I wouldn’t know anyone.’
Nina sighs.
‘Oh yes,’ she adds after a while. ‘Nearly forgot. Leah was round here looking for you.’
He keeps his eyes on his plate. ‘When?’
‘Half an hour ago, maybe?’
He finishes eating, pushes his chair back. ‘I’ll see what she wanted.’
‘Can I come?’ Ellie asks.
‘No.’
Leah is out in her garden, trying to cut the grass with blunt shears. She looks up as he crosses the road.