Clay (14 page)

‘School OK?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You know, when I was a boy I often did not go to school.’

‘Why not?’

‘My father was a farmer. He needed me.’

‘What, so he let you stay off school?’

‘Yes, sometimes. But for work. Not for fun. And it was hard work, believe me.’

‘Is your dad dead now?’

Jozef looked out of the window at the row of backs leaning up against the Perspex bus shelter outside. ‘Yes. But what I am telling you is he shouldn’t have taken me out of school. Because if I’d had more lessons, maybe I would still have the farm today. Who knows.’

‘Why, what happened to your farm?’

‘The future came. And I was not ready for it.’

‘What do you mean? Because you hadn’t done your exams?’

‘We had to make big changes, for the EU. You know the EU? Well – don’t worry. But I didn’t want to learn the new ways. I wanted to do the same ways as my father, and his father. So. And when I had to change, I made mistakes, I get it wrong. I lost my farm.’

TC looked down at his lap. ‘But I don’t like school.’

‘I can see.’

‘I do go, more than I used to. I nearly always go.’

‘And other times?’

TC shrugged. ‘I got stuff to do.’

Jozef looked at the boy for a long moment. He was far from the only child missing lessons in the area, but the kids who hung around the park benches and the newsagent in the afternoon were loud and streetwise, and couldn’t have been more different from TC’s fathomless reticence and shy regard. It was as though he lived in a different world altogether from the one inhabited by his peers.

‘This stuff – it is more important than school?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Does your mother know?’

‘She doesn’t care.’

‘But does she know?’

‘I don’t know, all right?
Fuck
.’

Jozef could see the boy was near tears. ‘OK,
moje dziecko
, OK. It is not my business. I would like it if you would go to school, that is all.’

‘Why?’

Jozef shrugged. ‘I think you are a smart kid. Other kids around here, some of them –’ he made a gesture like throwing something away – ‘they will do nothing all their lives. But you . . . you are different, I think. School is hard – OK. And even harder if you are . . . different. But the things you learn now, they help you learn other things in the future. And some of
those
things, I promise you, you will like. Then you can choose your life, because of what you do now. OK?’

TC looked down and said nothing. Jozef took out the king and queen and stood them carefully next to each other on the table, then leaned back and folded his arms. The boy picked them up slowly and examined them, turning the shapes carefully in his hands.

‘This one’s Znajda,’ he said, his voice soft.

‘Yes.’

‘And this one’s a wolf.’

‘Yes. The king. He is howling, you see. Do you like him?’

‘He’s brilliant.’ The boy’s eyes shone. ‘Can I set the board up?’

‘In a moment,’ Jozef replied. ‘Food is coming, look.’

After they had eaten TC got up to go to the toilet and Agata came and sat in his chair.

‘I didn’t know you had a son,’ she said, in Polish.

‘He’s not my son,’ Jozef replied. ‘He’s – a friend.’

‘A friend? What is he, seven, eight? You were here with him once before, right?’

‘He’s nine. Nearly ten.’

‘Somebody you know’s child?’

‘We just . . . I met him in the park, one night –’ She raised one eyebrow. ‘Don’t be silly, Agata. He doesn’t really have anyone, and he’s a good kid. I like him.’

‘His mother knows where he is?’

‘Of course.’

‘Good. Because you’re not in the village now, Jozef. A single man, in his forties – people can be suspicious here.’

TC returned and stood uncertainly by the table. As she left with their plates Agata shot Jozef a look over his head. ‘Be careful,’ it said. Jozef looked away.

12

Hock Tide

The girls racketed out of the coach and into the car park, Miss Carter counting straw hats while Mr Baker waved them into a rough assembly. The coach’s engine wheezed and shuddered and was quiet, the driver climbing out of the opposite side and making for the facilities. Miss Carter began handing out pencils and paper; the girls were already in pairs from the coach, sticky hands held and only a little bickering.

Up the track was a chalk hillside prospected by children from six local schools for generations, barely a stem unmapped, yet each class pioneering it anew. The children had transects measuring a foot square, magnifying glasses and a laminated sheet showing all the plant species each pair was likely to find, and their job was to count the different kinds. The really sensitive habitat was further away, fenced off to protect it from trampling by hordes of children’s feet.

From the very top of the hill only a smudge on the horizon bore witness to the distant city fomenting beneath it. Occasionally the slopes gave up little whorled shells, impossibly old, that were lost in the grass or crushed to fragments of sand under walkers’ feet, while deep in its wooded lower slopes dank pillboxes and crumbling gun emplacements spoke of a less bucolic past.

Once at the site the children sat down cross-legged while Miss Carter ran through their task for the last time. Settling down beside Daisy, Susannah’s eyes grew wide.

‘Daisy!’ she hissed, nudging her furiously. ‘Daisy!’

‘What?’

‘You picked a flower!’ And it was true; tucked behind Daisy’s ear was a pink betony spire in full bloom.

‘So?’

‘We’re not supposed to! Miss Carter said! It might be rare!’

‘It’s not,’ replied Daisy. ‘I can see hundreds.’

‘Throw it away! Throw it away!’

‘But I’ve picked it now. I might as well keep it, hadn’t I?’

‘Oh . . .’ In her agitation, Susannah was as close to wringing her hands as an eight-year-old can be. ‘Please, Daisy! Daisy!
Pleeease!
’

‘Oh, all right. But I’m not throwing it away.’ Daisy took the flower from her hair and slipped it into the pocket of her school dress.

‘Daisy! Susannah! No talking please!’ called Mr Baker. The rest of the class looked over. Daisy grinned back, while Susannah looked down at their illustrated card, her hair falling around her face. After a long moment, Miss Carter continued, holding up the card and pointing out the different flowers and grasses on it.

‘I’m hungry,’ whispered Daisy, nudging Susannah in the ribs. ‘What have you got for lunch?’

Susannah didn’t answer.

‘Susie!’ Daisy’s whisper threatened to grow louder, and Susannah threw her a desperate sidelong glance. Their lunches were in the coach; it wasn’t as though they could have them now anyway.

‘I bet you’ve got cheese strings,’ muttered Daisy accusingly, kicking a little at Susannah’s foot just in case. She was not – would never be – allowed anything as garish or convenient as cheese strings, and as a result found them impossibly alluring. Their households were quite different, in ways that both of them understood, could not have described and attached no value to. Daisy no more questioned the fact that Susie didn’t go to Little Thesps or La Jolie Ronde French or Art Attack than she wondered why her own mother did not collect china animals. It was just the way the world was, and was no more mysterious than anything else.

During lunch break Daisy and Susannah made daisy chains, Daisy’s longer but Susannah’s more neatly strung. They gave them to Miss Carter, who smiled and draped them carefully around her wrist. Despite the profusion of flowers they looked somehow limp and defeated.

The afternoon’s activities were all about invertebrates. Mr Baker spread a white sheet under a tree and reached up to shake the branches. Some of the girls squealed to see the earwigs and crab spiders and other insects drop down, but Daisy and Susannah knelt on the edge of the sheet and brushed them carefully into little pots with paint brushes. The pots had special lids that let you see them up close, and Mr Baker had a laptop with a plug-in microscope for anything really tiny or really interesting. Some of them looked quite fearsome until you remembered how small they really were.

Daisy had decided she was going to find a stag beetle. There was a picture of one on their insect sheet, and it was the biggest thing by miles. It obviously wasn’t going to fall out of an oak tree, so she headed away from the group to poke around the tree boles. She hummed slightly to herself, and thought about building a house for a stag beetle. What would it need? Would it be underground? She decided on more of a cabin-style arrangement, partly because the handout said they liked wood and partly because it would be more fun to make. All it would take was some good bits of bark, and maybe some stones to make a front garden. And a stag beetle, of course; though if she couldn’t find one she could always make the house anyway, and one might move in after they had gone. Perhaps Susie could help. But no, Susie would want to follow the instructions, and anyway if she did find a stag beetle it would be nicer to have done it all by herself.

She tried to imagine what Miss Carter would say. She would be very pleased, of course, and would probably ask her to show the beetle to the whole class and describe how she found it. Afterwards Daisy would show it its new home. It would love it and would go straight in and it would probably live there forever.

It didn’t take long for Daisy to be missed. Susannah looked around for her and she wasn’t there. She didn’t say anything straight away, as Daisy would be very cross if she got her in trouble when she was really quite nearby. But she wasn’t anywhere. Susannah felt her eyes go hot and her throat tight. She went to find Miss Carter.

In the city the day was warming up. In the past week spring had fallen like a benediction, the sun warming the grimy pavements, charming weed shoots through the cracks and drawing blind thistles up under the tarmac in unlikely bulges. The grass had begun to grow, re-greening the gardens, the parks and the verges with their cargos of litter and cuckoo spit and grime. Even the waste ground between the old bingo hall and the railway line, strewn with faded estate agents’ boards, rotting sleepers and huge wooden drums once wound with cable, even these abandoned corners were warmed by the spring sunshine and had become rank and dizzy with life.

On Leasow Road the cherries blushed cornelian or dappled the pavement below with palest pink. Outside some lucky houses magnolias were opening their miraculous, waxy blooms, their fallen petals like slivers of soap on the pavements beneath, bruising to brown with time, and feet. On earthy islets in crazy-paved front gardens specimen roses unfurled new, red leaves, while from verge, bed and central reservation nodded the municipal daffs.

Now the Somali postman found himself shadowed on his rounds by wood pigeons’ dozy coos, while on sunny afternoons starlings clicked and chattered from the aerials like avian telegraph operators sending news about each street’s coming and goings on the wires. And along the long, unlovely high road the estates were once again jubilant with birds. Robins sang riotously from street lamp, sill and gutter; blackbirds spilled their song down into the tangled yards behind the high-rise blocks. Pigeons jostled the windowsills above grimy shopfronts, and at sunset their assemblies were hosted by the sun-warmed roofs.

The spring sunshine brought a new mood of optimism everywhere it fell. Workmen left doors and windows open, causing all but the most stubbornly unmusical to fall into step with their radios as they passed. Women, bound by the same circadian rhythm, swapped gloves for sunglasses in their everyday handbags. And at the end of each school day the kids streamed screaming out of the gates, eager not for home and TV, but just to be out, free, in the burgeoning world.

TC, his school sweatshirt stuffed into his backpack, was sidling along an alley off Curtilage Street. It smelled of urine and was full of wind-blown litter, but the fence on one side was starred with ivy leaves pushing through the slats from the other side, evidence of a press of vegetation beyond. He was exploring: looking for tangly areas, odd corners of waste ground, places where foxes might be bringing up cubs. Along the railway track was a good place; the line was a highway for animals in and out of the city, as well as people.

Scaling the fence with the help of a wheelie bin, he dropped down on the other side, almost disappearing into the long grass and vetch beneath. A hen blackbird took off into the trees, clucking and bubbling into a loud ‘
ack-ack-ack!
’ of alarm.

It was a forgotten half-acre, fenced off, overgrown and utterly abandoned. The large, detached house that had once stood there had fallen victim to a V-1 over half a century before and had been demolished. Its foundations had been colonised first by the rosebay willowherb that wreathed the mourning city in the wake of war, then by the pragmatic buddleia, and were now so blanketed in brambles and ivy that it was hard to see where the house had ever stood. After the war the land had been willed to a relative, an Australian who had little interest in a city plot half a world away, and whose daughter, who now owned the deeds, even less so. And so instead of being buried underneath a new block of flats, or paved for parking, the garden persisted: kingcups marked the boggy place where once there was a pond; there were three stunted rhododendrons amid the brambles; and almost lost among the lime and sycamore saplings were two rusty sequoias and a larch, nearly 120 foot high, survivors of the garden’s Victorian apogee.