Clay (21 page)

They stood back. When the fire reached the fuel there was a low
whump
, and the tank began to blaze. The plastic on the seat bubbled and melted, the foam inside it burning easily. One of them made a call, the phone disappearing inside his hood. They left unhurriedly.

The scooter burned slowly. At one point it looked like going out, but then one of the tyres caught fire and the flames sprung high again. As the sky lightened the flames seemed almost to disappear, though the air still wavered above them and the plume of black smoke became more distinct.

Then a soft rain began to fall, and by the time Sophia got up it was out. All that was left was a charred skeleton in the centre of a black and ashy pile, the buttercups and daisies curled and dead for feet around it, the ash tree’s overhanging leaves reduced to grey cinders on blackened twigs.

18

St Swithin’s Day

All morning the old Jamaican man worked the traffic at the lights, a can of Red Stripe in one hand, the other knocking cheerfully at each window. He moved between the cars as though they could not touch him, and perhaps it was true. Every so often he retired to the pavement and sat in the hedge, talking unhurriedly to himself. The depression where he sat was permanent, and shaped like a throne. At around noon he ambled away up Glebe Road, his shadow short on the hot July pavement.

The weather was set fair, and every day Denny dared more soft furnishings outside the shop. On Dartmoor and Exmoor the close, springy turf was starred with yellow tormentil, while in Kent pink mallow dressed every roadside and the apples swelled like green knots in the orchards. From the cockpit of a Typhoon, tearing the wide skies of East Anglia on a training run from RAF Coningsby, the country which pitched and yawed below looked impossibly green.

Little seemed to be expected of TC at school, by anyone, and if it wasn’t for the register he felt as though he could disappear and nobody would even notice. Mostly he just tried to come through each school day unchallenged and intact. In a week it would be the summer holidays, anyway; just a few more days, that was all, and then he would be free.

Now that the weather was warm and the days long he found he could stay out in the evenings until it was quite late. The common was often busy with people drinking or having barbecues, though, and the woods didn’t really feel like his any more, not since the dog fight. Usually he just went to the secret garden instead.

Sleeping there that night had changed something, he didn’t know what. When he had woken in a half-light full of dew and birdsong he’d felt somehow like an animal. Not in a bad way, not like when people called other people animals, which was stupid, considering how much worse people were; it was more that he’d felt . . . simpler, somehow; properly part of things, at last. All the other stuff didn’t matter. It belonged to a different life.

He’d stayed there most of the next day; he hadn’t wanted to leave. He knew there’d be hell to pay when he got home anyway, so he stayed away. It was that afternoon that he’d found something; something that made it all worth it – the dog fight, everything. Now he glowed with the secret. It made him feel invincible.

As soon as the holidays came he’d decided he was going to stay there every night. Then, he’d really be part of it: properly, like an animal. He’d invented a friend whose house he could be staying over at, if his mum were ever to ask. ‘I’m going out to play with David,’ he’d taken to saying. Mostly she didn’t even look up from the telly.

He had started building a camp – a proper one, not just a hide. It wouldn’t be fair to keep sleeping in the fox’s den. He’d trampled the nettles in one corner of the garden and hauled bricks from under the ivy to make a floor. Then he’d broken some branches off the trees – not the oak, just the sycamores and some holly – and propped them up to make a shelter. The corner between the high wall and a fence protected the back of the camp, and he was hoping ivy would wend its way through the branches to make a roof, maybe even by next year. It wouldn’t survive a really big downpour, but it was summer and the weather was nice anyway.

Sitting in it after school one day, his arms wrapped around his knees, he thought about what else he needed. He’d already brought some stuff from home – a jumper, a sheet, a fork, a loo roll, some tins of beans – the ones with the ring pulls – and cans of Coke, but he needed more things. He tried to think what his dad would have taken. What did they have in the army?

A knife was the best thing, a proper one, a sharp one. He thought of Jozef, and the wooden animals he made. He decided to ask the other man at the chicken shop, Musa, where Jozef lived; he wanted to talk to him properly, in private. There was another reason, too: he had something to give him, something in return for all the chess games, and the chips.

Fine new blades of grass were pushing up through the ash, but TC still didn’t like looking at the burnt patch in the little park; it made him think of violence, and the circle of bloody grass under the oaks. Going past it he looked the other way. A song thrush insisted on the same four phrases from somewhere above him, again, then again.

Daisy was coming out of the estate with a man he didn’t recognise. She looked sulky, but when she saw TC she tugged urgently at the man’s hand, turned to ask him something and ran over.

‘Hello! My daddy says I can play with you for five minutes. What d’you want to play?’ she said. The man was going towards the benches, but TC could see that he was watching them closely.

‘I can’t.’

‘Yes you can, course you can. Let’s climb a tree. Bet I can do it better than you!’

‘I can’t, I’m busy.’

‘What is it, is it a secret, can I come?’

‘No!’ he said, rounding on her. ‘I already
said
!’

Daisy took a step back. ‘What is it you’ve got in your pocket?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Show me!’ She made a grab for his arm and TC wrenched it away, seeing Daisy’s father stand up out of the corner of his eye.

‘Just . . . leave me alone!’ he shouted, and ran.

‘He is at his new work,’ said Musa. ‘What you want, you want food?’

TC shook his head. ‘I got something for him. D’you know where he lives?’

‘He got a new place, on the high road. But he won’t be there now. He’ll be here tonight – late shift. From ten. You still be awake?’

TC nodded. ‘I’ll come back.’

‘Eh, my kids they are in bed by nine,’ Musa said, wiping the counter. ‘You should do the same, kid. You got a growing brain, you need your sleep.’

But he was talking to an empty shop.

Jozef was on the common, litter picking. There was only another half-hour until the end of the shift, and he wanted to finish the section he’d been given. There were lots of beer cans on the grass, and plastic bags tangled in the brambles along the fence.

He looked at his watch. It didn’t do to look too keen – he had worked that out quite quickly. There were six in his team, and none of them would be doing it if they had another way of making money. Except me, he thought. I would do it, I want to do it.

They worked in pairs. Today he was with Chima, the blackest man he had ever seen. There was a Ukrainian, Nazariy, who the others all seemed to assume Jozef should have some kind of kinship with; in fact, they had very little in common, and it was Chima he preferred to work with. Nazariy was always joking around, but there was an edge to it, a challenge. Chima kept himself to himself; he had his earphones in most of the time. But when Jozef had hauled the cross out of the pond it was Chima who had come and looked at it, turning it over carefully in his hands. ‘This is a bad business,’ he had said softly. Jozef had wondered what it was that Chima was picturing.

Now they approached each other slowly along the fence, each with a bag and grabber. Jozef’s right hand inside the work glove ached a little; hours of squeezing the handle took their toll, especially if you tried to get the fiddly things like cigarette butts, which he did.

‘Jozef. Jozef!’ He looked up. Chima had taken his earphones out and was beckoning him urgently. ‘Come see.’

Jozef hoped it wasn’t anything awful. The men exchanged stories of the things they had found, and Jozef did not want to have a story of his own.

Chima was pointing at a tree. It was a black locust, a
grochodrze
w
; it had finished flowering but was still hung with browning pennants. At first Jozef couldn’t make out what he was supposed to be looking at, but then he saw it: among the leaves, at about head height, a huge, humming knot of bees.

The swarm was in perpetual motion, but the noise coming from it was only a low murmur, and few bees flew around it; most simply clung to their fellows, moving slightly. The body of the swarm was bigger than a football.

‘
Kurwa,
’ said Jozef under his breath. He still found it hard to swear in English; the words came out wrong, for some reason – either too forceful, or not enough.

Seeing that Jozef had seen the swarm, Chima backed away. ‘What do we do?’ he asked.

Jozef shrugged. ‘Tell Frank.’

‘You stay here, then. Keep people away.’ Chima jogged off to find the foreman.

Jozef remembered the time Stefan Gruszka’s bees had swarmed in the walnut tree near the farmhouse. His father fetched Stefan in the jeep while his sisters hid inside the house. When Stefan came he explained that the bees weren’t angry, they were just seeking a new home; they wouldn’t sting anyone unless they tried to hurt them. Even so, the women would not come out of the house. Stefan made a fire in a jerrycan and smoked the bees; after a few moments they fell out of the tree into a canvas bag, and he took them home. ‘Won’t they just leave again?’ Jozef had asked, and his father had explained that Stefan had a new hive ready for them, so that they could be nearby to pollinate the orchard and they could all have cider.

When Chima came back he had the rest of the crew with him. Frank had already radioed it in, and had received instructions to tape the area off until environmental health could get there.

‘Environmental health?’ asked Jozef.

‘Yeah, they’ll come and get rid of it. It’s a pisser, really; we can’t go off-shift until they come, in case some silly bugger gets stung.’

‘The bees are not owned by anybody?’

‘No, mate, not in a swarm, not if they’ve gone wild.’

‘So they kill them?’

‘ ’Fraid so. Right, Chima, Stevo: back to the van for some warning tape and some posts. Six, I’d say. See if there’s any Footpath Diversion signs while you’re at it. Christ, I hope they don’t fly off, it’ll be a bugger to keep up.’

‘How long until the health people come, boss?’ That was Nazariy.

‘Let’s get it taped off, then we’ll have a think about who needs to stay late, OK? Anyway, it’s overtime, it’s not like you won’t get paid.’

Nazariy sat on the grass with Mo, the Bengali, and began to roll a cigarette. There were scorch marks from barbecues on the grass nearby, and Mo brushed at one critically. Jozef stood and considered the peaceable bees.

Frank’s radio let out a crackle, and he unhitched it from his belt, turning as he did so to scan the park behind them.

Jozef moved forward. Stepping quietly through the long grass and nettles, he reached the swarm in a few paces. Behind him he heard Nazariy. ‘Hey, Joe, what you doing? Boss! Boss!’

The bees were moving slowly. A few flew lazily around the dense swarm. Jozef took his right glove off and dropped it at his side.

‘Oi, Jozef?!’ That was Frank. ‘What in fuck d’you think you’re doing?’

Jozef made his fingers into a kind of beak. He tried to hold his hand steady, but he could see that it shook slightly. Then he pushed it slowly into the mass of bees.

It was surprisingly warm inside the swarm. He felt the minute oscillation of thousands of wings and thousands of chitinous bodies against his scarred and calloused hand. He saw, vertiginously, that his hand had disappeared up to the wrist.

Inside the swarm he felt for the branch they were attached to. He moved his fingers slowly, slowly; the worst thing would be to crush one. One sting, he felt instinctively, would mean dozens.

He could hear the men’s voices behind him, but they weren’t important. What was important was to manoeuvre his fingers around the branch so as to gain enough purchase to snap it – and to snap it with as little movement or disturbance as possible. He realised he was holding his breath, and let it out slowly.

He looked at the twigs protruding from the swarm to see if the branch was bowing. If he could judge the weight of the swarm he could anticipate any recoil. There was a bee flying around his eyes, and his eyebrows were gathering sweat.

Inside the swarm his fingers felt a fork in the twig and he used it to brace his thumb as he snapped. Immediately the hum of the bees increased in pitch; Jozef froze, holding the branch in the same place, willing the bees to settle.

After a moment he began to take slow steps back, the swarm a dark mass clenched around his fist. The men were shouting and swearing, but Jozef kept his eyes fixed on the bees.

Once he was out of the long grass he looked briefly left, to the oak woods. Few people went there, and it would be much easier to tape off. He wondered what would happen if, when he let go of the branch, the bees did not go with it.