Clay (10 page)

In the city it was simply another miserable winter day. Home time:  TC decided against going to the common because of the cold. Craning up from the street he could see the lounge light was off; that meant his mum was out and it was OK to watch TV and mess around.

The flat was dark and cold when he let himself in, but he switched the fire on and soon the lounge was warm enough. He made himself toast and found a Coke in the fridge, and sprawled on the settee. It would be brilliant to live all by yourself, he thought. You could do anything you wanted. You could watch TV all night or never, ever wash, and nobody could say anything.

You’d smell, though. He hoped he didn’t smell. Did he smell? It was one of those things other kids said, but that didn’t mean it was true. How often did people wash their clothes? he wondered. It would be easier if they had a washing machine. Or if he had more clothes. Who cared, anyway. He did wash, every day. And did his teeth. He’d even bought the toothpaste. Well, he’d stolen it, but it was the same thing.

In olden times nobody brushed their teeth or washed every day. Yeah, but they got plague and all their teeth fell out. It would be awful to have false teeth. Or bad breath. He hoped he didn’t have bad breath. If he were to breathe on someone – if someone came close enough. What happened if you lived in the wilderness, like doing survival? You didn’t get to wash all the time then. You must just stink. Or maybe you stopped after a bit, like if you don’t wash your hair it starts cleaning itself. His dad would’ve been able to tell him; his dad had been out on manoeuvres. You didn’t care about washing in the army.

Or maybe after a while you just stopped being able to smell yourself. That would be awful – if you stank and you didn’t know it. Did he stink? He sniffed his armpits; they smelled warm and close. It wasn’t horrible – was it? – but it was something.

Maybe he should go to the launderette. But that cost money. He could save up his lunch money, if maybe that man would give him lunch. Jozef. But the other kids went to the takeaway at lunch; he couldn’t. And anyway, he’d been getting too much free food off him recently; it was probably a bit weird. His dad would’ve put a stop to it, TC was sure. ‘What’s in it for him?’ he’d’ve asked, and told TC to wise up, not to be so trusting. But then, he wasn’t here.

That evening it began to snow. It drifted down all night, and in the morning the schools were closed. Steven was freelance and worked from home, but the road outside was ungritted and treacherous, and so Linda had a rare day off.

The garden had looked so perfect when she first woke up. Everything seemed hushed, for one thing; the world holding its breath. The lawn was perfectly level, even the tallest grass blades covered, the fence posts each topped with a white loaf, the shrubs sugary and hunched.

Before long the silence was broken by shrieks and squeals as the neighbourhood children tumbled out into the snow. Daisy pleaded strenuously to be allowed to play in the street, but you couldn’t be too careful, said Linda, not with the estates all around. They watched her play in the garden instead; Steven showed her how to squeeze a snowball so that it stuck, and they built the obligatory snowman, and it quickly began to look churned up and messy.

There were no buses all day and few trains. With no official word on what to do the city awarded itself a holiday, although the recriminations – the lost revenue, the lack of snowploughs, the inevitable safety issues – would come thick and fast later on. So the short winter’s day had no rhythm; no rush hour topped or tailed it, and it was only as the light failed and the cold regripped the air that the grimy, misshapen snowmen were abandoned, and the snowballers, feet cold, hands numb, retreated indoors from the treacherous and darkening streets.

At five o’clock the winter afternoon reached that brief fulcrum when the sky outside takes on a deep, almost luminous blue, lasting for just a few minutes before shading into dark; Linda, gazing out of the living-room window, hesitated to turn on the lights lest they drive out the last remaining light from the sky. Candles were what a day like today called for, but the only ones in the house were perfumed, and ruinously expensive. To hell with it, she thought, and fetched the Cook’s matches from the kitchen. It wasn’t as though they couldn’t afford more. Daisy was upstairs on her computer, her gloves and hat steaming gently on the radiator, and it was time for Linda to start thinking about supper. Drawing the curtains and turning away from the window, she thought about the day before.

The first few flakes had drifted down while she was in Bristol. Driving back the sky had been a dull orange either side of the bypass, the flakes whirling dizzily in her headlamps, and for one brief stretch of road the street lights flickered on pair by pair on either side, keeping pace with her car as though to light her way and her way alone.

She had been so tired when she got home that she hadn’t even mentioned her walk, and now it seemed too late to bring it up. Besides, what was there to tell? She had walked into a wood for no reason at all, and afterwards she had not wanted to get back into the car. It was hardly much of an anecdote, although an image, detailed and finely drawn, of a secret carpet of bluebells had remained at the back of her mind all day.

Sophia sat at her kitchen table with a whisky soda and watched the snow in the little park turn briefly pink as the last light drained from the sky. On the paths it was becoming compacted into ice, and she knew that if it froze tonight they would be impassable for her tomorrow, stick or no stick. Still, she had a cupboard full of tins and a bottle of excellent Scotch, and doubtless Linda would call to check she wasn’t doing anything daring or ill-advised.

She wondered if Daisy was enjoying the snow – if Linda was letting her. There was no after-school club for playing in the snow, no educational aspect either. That was part of its magic: that for once the streets would be full of children released briefly from the strictures of their daily routines, outside with no purpose at all but to kick about and have fun together, as children should. Tough city kids were rendered giggling and silly; protected middle-class children were gifted with brief freedom by the temporary saturnalia of snow.

Yes, a spell of real winter was a good thing. Another generation would be able to remember proper snow, inches deep, and in a while it might come to seem to them as though every winter had been like this one. Anyway, a good freeze was just what the bulbs needed, and it would help kill off the pests so that things would grow well next spring.

Jozef waited by the benches, his arms folded against the cold, the chess set inside his jacket pressing hard against his chest. He needed to get some warmer clothes, that was for sure. It was almost as cold as Poland. His father had always seemed to know when the first big snowfall was coming and would get the herd in just in time, but after he died Jozef found he hadn’t the knack. He lost a heifer that first winter; the melting snow revealed it in March, huddled against a wall like a hide stretched over a frame. Its eyes had been neatly picked out by crows.

What with the snow and the schools shut it had been a quiet shift: chicken boxes, as usual, the mad old Jamaican man and his hot wings. The boy had turned up again, slinking in sometime after lunch. He’d bought nuggets and had insisted on giving Jozef two pounds, which Jozef had ostentatiously rung up. TC had grinned and demanded the receipt; Jozef was pleased by the grin, and how it transformed the boy’s solemn little face. He was going to be good-looking in a few years, with his dark eyes and long lashes. He already was.

Jozef had taken a room in Musa’s cousin’s flat, and had put it about among the people he knew that he was looking for a place of his own. Emir drove a cab and was out most of the time, but when he was in he tolerated Znajda well enough. She would follow him from room to room when he got up in the morning, the stump of her tail wagging. He would make her sit for his toast crusts.

After his shift he had taken Znajda for a quick run around on the common, so she would be OK for the evening in the flat by herself. Now he was waiting for the boy to come. He was going to take him to the Polish cafe, see if he could get a good meal into him – something wholesome, something that wasn’t fried.
Bigos
, maybe; it was the right weather for stew. But the boy was already more than half an hour late; perhaps he wouldn’t come at all. Jozef looked at his watch and decided to give it another ten minutes. Fifteen at most.

The street lights flickered on, turning the churned-up snow sodium orange. With so little moving either by road or rail, the night-time city grew eerily quiet, while high above the blanketed roofs and black branches hung the deadening sky where cargo upon cargo of flakes pressed and were held and awaited their silent release.

9

Shrovetide

The snow lasted a week and was chased away by cold February drizzle. The snowmelt sang secretly in the gutters, and before long all that remained was the odd dirty hillock to mark where a snowman had been.

Jozef was working the lunchtime shift, the counter crowded with kids in and out of uniform all wanting their Junior Specials, tinny dancehall blaring from their phones.
They were aggressive, loud and quick to take offence; nothing like he had been at that age. They had such confidence, such a sense of entitlement. It was as though the world existed for them and them alone, and nobody else counted; yet also, in their defensiveness, as though they might not count at all, as though everything, every interaction, was a battle to be won. Were all British children like that, he wondered, or just the city ones? Perhaps, one day, he would take a trip, go and see the rest of the island. Parts of it, he’d heard, were beautiful. Little villages, churches, farms. Perhaps one day he would see them. There had to be more to it than this.

The shifts at the takeaway were gruelling and relentless, but he had made up his mind that it would not be for long. Every morning he went through the papers. There were jobs, but nothing any better than the takeaway, and his English could do with being a bit better. Plus he’d probably have to pay tax. Perhaps it was better to stay on, put the money by. For now.

At lunchtime he took Znajda out for a walk. As he cut through the little park the old ash tree made him think of home, and he reached out to touch its rough bark as he passed.

On the other side of the common was a broad, straight road, once a turnpike. It was lined with horse chestnuts which in spring were like thunderheads candled with creamy flowers; now, though, the leaves were still held in tight buds. Znajda trotted ahead of him, ears up. She often saw squirrels there.

Then, from nowhere, there was TC, running and stumbling from a side road, something about his gait stopping Znajda in her tracks. Jozef heard hoots and calls, and a half-empty drinks can spun past TC’s head and landed near Znajda, who gave a low growl. TC saw the dog and froze, but it was not him she was growling at. He backed past her and straight into Jozef, and they both watched as Znajda advanced towards three teenage boys who had rounded the corner, her lips drawn back to show her teeth. One boy, Jozef saw, was picking up a stone.

‘Hey,’ he called out, as the dog unleashed a torrent of barks, ‘I would not do that, my friend.’ He stepped forward to stand beside Znajda. ‘One word from me, she kill you.’ It was not hard to believe; the normally peaceable Znajda was transformed, her low growl even enough to give Jozef pause. The kids slunk off, calling jeers over their shoulders once they judged themselves far enough away.

It was easy to see why TC had drawn the older boys’ attention; he had twigs in his hair and the knees of his trousers were green. To Jozef he looked like a
leszy
, a woodland spirit. He itched to dust down the boy’s hair, but did not want to spook him further.

‘You OK?’ he asked. TC nodded. ‘You sure?’ He nodded again, his eyes drifting to Znajda. ‘Don’t worry about her, she won’t hurt nobody,’ said Jozef, wondering if it was true. Yet she was her phlegmatic self again, sitting in her lopsided fashion and waiting for her walk to continue.

Although TC looked unsure about the dog, he didn’t seem about to leave either. Jozef thought he understood. ‘You are going this way? Good. You mind we walk with you?’ TC shook his head. ‘This is Znajda,’ he explained. ‘It means found one; orphan.’

‘Is it yours?’

Jozef hesitated. ‘Yes, I think so. She was lost, for a while, but she came back – to me.’

‘Is it a pit bull?’

Jozef’s big hands, scarred now from hot fat as well as the awl, were kneading the dog’s ears with infinite gentleness. ‘No. She’s very friendly dog, most of the time. I think she didn’t like those boys, though.’

‘Yeah!’ said TC, breaking into a grin. ‘You see the way she growled at them! She’s fierce. She can do
anything
.’ Hearing herself praised, Znajda put her ears back for a fuss, but TC kept his hands in his pockets.

‘No school today?’ asked Jozef.

TC looked down. ‘Teacher training.’

Jozef considered the boy’s uniform and said nothing.

‘Were you on your way to the chicken shop?’ TC asked, transparently.

They took their chips to the benches in the little park. Jozef put his collar up against the cold.

‘So you think it was my Znajda’s footprints you saw?’ he asked.