Clay (25 page)

He took the knife from his pocket and unsheathed it. Behind the benches, deep in the ivy, Daisy watched as the pitiless sun caught the blade.

Fourteen years since the row of limes had first been brutally pollarded, and yet still the shade they cast was very slight. Before long it had inched away from the benches where TC and Jozef sat; then the sun bore down on them and drove them to move.

‘What if I show you it?’ said TC, as they walked towards the road. ‘Then you’ll know it’s safe.’

‘Really? Your camp?’

‘Yeah. You can see the owls, too. If you want.’

It was something; it was definitely something. And maybe later he could ask the old lady what to do. ‘OK,’ he said.

At the exit to the little park, Daisy, following fifty paces or so behind, paused. She looked back, but with the sun in her eyes it was impossible to tell whether or not her grandmother was at the kitchen window.

TC and the man were walking side by side, the dog at the man’s heel. She followed them into Curtilage Street, where they turned into a narrow alley. She waited on the pavement for a slow count of ten, then looked carefully round the corner.

The alley was almost choked with weeds and litter. At the end were some bins – and the dog, which lay in the shade and regarded her with level eyes. There was no sign of the man with the knife, or the boy.

She turned and ran.

‘I’m going to call your grandmother. This is outrageous.
Outrageous!
’ Linda paced about the kitchen, one hand on the back of her neck, while Steven leaned in the doorway, his arms folded. ‘I knew it. I bloody knew it! She’s irresponsible! She’s not to be trusted!’

Daisy sat at the kitchen table. She had stopped crying, though she was still flushed, and now wore a mulish expression. ‘You ask her,’ she said. ‘I don’t care. She let me – she always lets me.’

Linda stared at her daughter for a moment. ‘I will. But you’d better be telling the truth, young lady.’ She picked up the phone and dialled, turning her back on them both while she waited for Sophia to pick up. Behind her the kitchen hung, airless and silent, for a long moment.

‘No answer.’ Linda turned back and put the phone on the table. ‘She’s probably gone out to look for Daisy. Steven, go out and find her, will you, let her know Daisy’s OK? I can’t face it.’

‘In a second, love,’ he said. ‘Daisy, what was the other thing you said? About the man?’

‘I told you, a bad man, I saw him with my friend. That’s why I went outside.’

‘What friend?’ asked Linda.

‘TC. You know,’ Daisy said, appealing to her dad, ‘you saw him that time. In the park.’

‘Hold on,’ said Linda. ‘
Who?
’

‘A little boy Daisy knows,’ said Steven. ‘About her age, I think.’

‘Where from? Which school?’

‘No – he lives around here. Look – what were you saying, Daisy? What man?’

‘A bad man, with one of those horrible dogs. He took TC away, that’s why I followed them.’

Steven crouched down in front of her. ‘Daisy. This is really, really important. You’re not in any trouble, but you have to tell me the truth, OK? Now, what happened to the little boy?’

‘He – he –’ She looked from one parent to the other. It wasn’t about Granny any more, and that was a relief, because it wasn’t really Granny’s fault, she knew that. They had just been cross with each other, which happened sometimes. But they loved each other really.

Her mummy and daddy were still staring at her; they
wanted
her to say it, there was no going back. And anyway, it was true.

‘I saw a man with one of those horrible dogs, and a knife,’ she said. ‘He had blood on his clothes. He took TC down an alley and they disappeared.’

Steven picked up the phone and called the police.

21

ST BARTHOLOMEW’S DAY

The interview with social services was nearly over. It was the last in a long series – three weeks it had been, on and off. First the police, again and again; now the social. TC had been seen twice before this, by different case workers; they didn’t seem to be able to decide whose responsibility he was. He had answered the same questions over and over, talked about it all so many times, sometimes with his mum there in the room, sometimes just with a copper and the social. He wondered, when they had finished asking questions, what they would do with him. He wondered what they had done with Jozef.

They kept on asking him, asking him. How had Jozef ‘first approached’ him, why he had let him buy him chips. Whether he had given TC any money or any presents. They’d taken the wooden owl away, and TC didn’t know if he was allowed to ask for it back.

They wanted to know all about his bag. The coppers had found it when they searched Jozef’s place and they wanted to know why it was there, they kept going on about it. TC knew he wasn’t giving them the right answers; they kept looking at each other, and even though he could tell they were trying not to be nasty or frightening, because of him being a kid, even then he’d still cried, his mum looking at him in a way he didn’t understand. He hadn’t known – he still didn’t know – what the right answers were.

It was the worst thing ever, when the coppers came for them. He’d been in the camp with Jozef, under the old pollard oak. Just sitting, quietly, the shade cool and quiet, the owls somewhere invisible above. They weren’t saying much, just looking and drinking in the old garden and each thinking their separate thoughts.

It felt OK; Jozef was nice to have with him in the garden. When they dropped down from the fence he’d just stood still for a bit, he hadn’t asked, ‘Is this it?’ or anything. He’d let TC lead the way along a little trail he’d made through the undergrowth, slowly, quietly, looking carefully around him. When they reached the camp he’d stopped, and TC, cross-legged on the bricks, had grinned up at him and said he could come in.

Jozef had asked him quietly about the owls, and TC showed him, pointing carefully up to the hole in the larch where the chicks were nearly ready to fledge. And there, on a branch against the trunk, was one of the parents, its stippled feathers nearly invisible against the bark. Jozef smiled at him then, his eyes shining, and TC had felt, at that moment, that it was brilliant having him there, that nothing had been lost by sharing the garden, nothing taken away. It was lovely.

Then the coppers had crashed in, shouting. They smashed the fence down, breaking and splintering it, crushing the vetch and the honesty and the morning glory under their big black boots. The light poured in through the terrible gap, the policemen poured in, they trampled the blackberries, nearly ripe, and the herb robert and nettles and everything that lived beneath, everything that scurried or crept and hadn’t meant any harm. Jozef had stood up when the fence came down; he stepped forward while TC cowered back. He stood and sheltered TC, and the coppers shouted and shouted at him,
Drop the knife! Drop the knife!
like he was a maniac or something. They grabbed Jozef and twisted his arms back, and TC couldn’t help it, he turned and hid his face.

Then one of the coppers came and crouched over him and said his name, his proper name, and he looked past the copper and saw Jozef struggling, struggling, craning back over his shoulder as they dragged him away through the ivy and the long grass. And Jozef had smiled at him then, he’d tried to smile, and his eyes as they took him away said:
Don’t worry, I’ll be OK
. But TC didn’t think that it was true.

The swifts had gone, and the skies above the city were blank and empty once more. No more wheeling sickles, no more rooftop dogfights, no more screams. Above the Children and Young Persons’ Unit equinoctial clouds were gathering; it was still muggy, still summer, but the holidays were nearly over and Year Six, for TC, would start in just over a week.

‘OK, TC, I think we’ve finished here.’ The social worker lady began putting her bits of paper back in the folder and looking for her briefcase. ‘Is there anything you’d like to ask before you go?’

TC looked down. Was he allowed? He wasn’t sure. He felt the blood rush to his face.

‘Is – is – do you know what happened to Jozef?’

‘Mr Lopata has been released.’

‘Because he didn’t do anything?’

‘That’s all I can tell you, TC. He is no longer in police custody.’

There was so much TC wanted to tell them about Jozef, but they didn’t want to hear it, not the police, and not the social either. That they were friends, that they cared about each other. That they were the same, somehow: lost. At least TC still had his wild places, though, at least the owls would still be there; Jozef had nothing, not his farm, not TC, not even Znajda any more.

TC’s eyes pricked at the thought, and he decided to be brave. Not much else could happen to him, he felt, and he owed it to Jozef to try. ‘Can I go and see him?’ he asked.

‘TC –’ The social worker’s eyes flicked over to TC’s mum for a moment. ‘TC, I don’t think that would be a good idea. Anyway, you won’t be here for long, it might be best to put it all behind you, OK, love?’

‘What do you mean? Why won’t I be here?’

His mum got up from the sofa, fiddled in her pockets for her fags. ‘Your dad’s taking you,’ she said. ‘They got in touch with him. I meant to say before.’

‘I’m going to live with my dad?’

‘That’s right. Ain’t you pleased?’

‘TC –’ that was the social worker, butting in with a stern look over TC’s head at his mum – ‘TC,
I am
sorry; I had thought this had already been discussed. Your mum thought –
we
thought you might like to stay with your father for a while, maybe forever, if you want. It’s a way away, of course, but he’s got a room ready for you, and there’s a school nearby. You’ll be assigned a case worker in his district who’ll help you settle in, of course, but he says he’s happy to have you, and we do always feel that if we can keep a family together – or partly together – then that’s the best thing for yourself. What do you think, TC, do you want to go and live with your dad?’

TC looked over at Kelly, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes. ‘OK,’ he whispered.

That evening dusk drew slowly down, lilac and blue, over the little park with its lone ash tree, over the secret garden and the Plestor Estate and the rows of terraced houses winking with yellow lights, as the city’s gradual tilt on the earth’s grand axis bore it slowly towards the outer dark. The hedges were populous with sparrows, fat with sleep but vaguely quarrelsome still, while above the common, starlings massed and wheeled and bore down on their ancient roosts.

Linda, at the villa on Leasow Road, was closing the curtains, shutting out the city with its noise and its dirt and its dangers. She moved from room to room, pulling the good drapes gently, moving them carefully into place. ‘Glass of wine, love?’ called Steven from the bright kitchen, as Daisy and Susannah giggled and squealed upstairs. ‘That would be lovely,’ she replied, turning her back on the darkening sky and taking her place at the computer, where, lit by its harsh blue glare, she typed in ‘gardening services’, then her postcode, and hit return. ‘Wine is exactly what I need.’

Sophia watched the light fade from her hospital bed. She was wired up to machines, surrounded by them, and all she could see of the sky was a blank square, bereft even of a star this early in the night. She watched it slowly darken, and wondered at how far away the world felt, and how small she was, and frail. The table by her bed was covered in cards, and Linda came every day, but she knew that really, now, she was on her own.

At last the sky was black. The hospital was like a ship, she imagined, blazing with light, sailing away with her on board and leaving the teeming city behind.

Jozef was at the bus stop, a battered holdall in his hand and a wooden chess piece shaped like a dog in his jacket pocket. Where was Znajda now? he wondered. Where was his lovely girl, his sweet girl? It was almost too much to bear.

They had said she was a dangerous breed, they’d snared her around the neck with a catchpole and dragged her, choking, to the van. They’d pushed her into a cramped cage in the back and he had heard her crying, desperately, as he tried to explain about her, how she was a good girl, how they had rescued each other, how she was only protecting him. But they didn’t want to know.

He’d asked around, after his release, about what would happen to Znajda – if she turned out to be the breed they’d said she was, if her head was a certain shape and size. It was obscene. He held the little carving tight and swung the holdall onto his shoulder as the bus drew up. How many buses would it take to forget the dog? he wondered, how many more for the boy? How far would he have to go to leave all this behind?

At last, it was fully dark. A car sped north on the motorway, one among many, dancehall on the radio and the stink of fags seeping from the upholstery. From the front seat a small boy watched as the landscape around him faded into featureless dark, until he could see nothing ahead of him at all, only night. On the back seat a PlayStation, nearly new, shifted and slid, shifted and slid.

Above the road hung an invisible legion of thunderheads, massed and angry in the night sky and heavy with a whole summer’s rain. A drop pelted the windscreen, a dozen, a hundred; and then, from the vast and desolate darkness above, the weather broke.