Clay (16 page)

two

I went to Mouldy’s funeral. I stood under the graveyard trees and watched from a distance. A few other Felling folk were scattered around. The mourners came in a Ford Zephyr and a Transit van. His mam stood weeping into her hands. There were a few bulky relatives in black, and a vicar droning just about the same words as Father O’Mahoney would say. Mouldy’s coffin was lowered into the grave that I’d stood beside with Clay. It disappeared from sight; then flowers and soil and water were thrown in after it. I tried to say a prayer for Mouldy; then I found Geordie at my side.

“D’you think he’s watching us?” he said.

“Who?”

“Mouldy, man. From the afterlife.”

I shook my head, looked around, half expecting to see Stephen Rose watching from the shadows or from beyond the graveyard gate.

“Even if he is,” I said, “he couldn’t do nowt now.”

“Except haunt us,” Geordie said.

We watched the mourners. We were silent and scared for a while.

“Mebbe Mouldy’s ghost’ll start to walk,” said Geordie. “Mebbe kids’ll start to see a great big bliddy monster by the light of the moon in Braddock’s garden.” He tried to laugh. “I’m going to scare my kids with that one once they’re here.”

The mourners dispersed. The vicar helped Mrs. Mould back to the car. I shuddered. I imagined myself lying silent and still in the earth while my family walked away from me.

“Still no sign of Stephen Rose, then?” said Geordie.

I shook my head.

“Good riddance, eh?” he said. “Bliddy loony.”

“Aye,” I said.

We saw Skinner and Poke coming through the trees towards us.

“Aye, aye, lads,” said Geordie.

“How do,” said Poke.

“Poor bugger, eh?” said Skinner, nodding towards the grave.

“Aye,” we all said.

We avoided each other’s eyes. We didn’t dare speak our fright.

“He did have a good side to him,” said Skinner.

“Aye,” we said.

“In fact,” said Geordie, “you could say he was a very nice young man.”

We stifled our laughs.

“He’ll be sorely missed,” said Poke.

And we relaxed.

“Do you want to make peace?” said Skinner.

“Aye,” said Geordie.

“OK,” said Poke.

They all shook hands. I shook hands as well.

“That’s done, then,” said Skinner. “No more battling.”

“That’s right, you Pelaw Proddy gits,” said Geordie.

“You Felling Catholic prats,” said Poke.

We all pretended to face up to each other, like we were going to start to fight, but we just started giggling.

“I’m going up to see my Windy Nook mates,” said Geordie. “Mebbe we’ll ploat some Springwellers. You want to come?”

“Aye,” said Skinner and Poke.

They all looked at me.

“No,” I said. I shrugged. “I cannot,” I said.

They looked at the grave a last time; then they walked away. I soon followed them. I couldn’t stop thinking of the dead laid out beneath my feet, until I found Maria waiting at the graveyard gate. We walked together. She told me again that I could tell her anything, but I said I didn’t know where to start, I didn’t know how to make her believe. We walked all afternoon. We kissed beneath the trees in Holly Hill park, and as we kissed I began to forget Stephen Rose and Mouldy. It was like I almost started to disappear, until the parkie Mr. Pew was yelling at us: “Hoy! You two! Sling your blinking hook!” And we walked on hand in hand, and it was like Maria was some kind of guardian, sent to stop me sinking even further into gloom.

three

At dusk, I said I should go to confession. We went into St. Patrick’s. I knelt in the dark confessional. I could see Father O’Mahoney’s face through the grille. I didn’t try to disguise my voice.

“Bless me, Father,” I said, “for I have sinned.”

He waited. I was silent.

“Go on, my son,” he said. “What must you confess?”

I imagined the words coming out of my mouth:
I stole the body and blood of Christ, I half killed a dog, I created a creature, the creature helped to murder Martin Mould, I helped to kill the creature, I lied to my parents and held back evidence from the police
.
I…

“Well?” he murmured, but still I couldn’t speak. We looked at each other through the grille.

“It’s you, Davie,” he said.

“Yes, Father.”

“It is more than calling people Fishface, I suspect.”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t believe me, Father.”

“I’ve heard everything in here. You can tell me anything. I’m just a channel for your words. It is between you and God.”

“I don’t know if there is a God, Father.”

“Ha!”

“I think there may once have been a God, but he got sick of us and he left us.”

“I see that adolescence is truly upon you. This is not a place for discussion. Just confess, do your penance, be done with it. Other penitents are waiting outside.”

“I hated a person and wished for his death,” I murmured.

“Ah. That is indeed a sin. And are you sorry for it?”

“Yes. But the death happened.”

“Ah. So it weighs on your heart.”

“Yes. The person was Martin Mould, Father.”

“The boy who fell.”

“Yes, the boy who fell.”

“You must not blame yourself.”

I was silent.

“You must not,” he said again. “Each of us has intentions and desires that we must curb. Your wish was indeed a sin. But there is a gap between sinful wishes and sinful deeds.”

Our eyes met through the grille.

“You understand, Davie,” he said. “Had you pushed him, it would be different. I take it you did not push him.”

“No, Father.”

“That’s grand. What else must you confess?”

I searched for words.

“Do you believe in evil, Father?”

“Davie, I’ve told you, this is not the place.”

“Do you, Father?”

“I believe in weakness, Davie. I believe we can be led astray. I have spent many hours in this box. I have heard of a million awful thoughts, a million awful acts. We can be petty little creatures with petty little wickednesses. We gain strength and goodness by turning our hearts to God.”

“But if you believe in God and goodness, should you not believe in the devil and evil?”

“Yes, but I am an optimist, Davie. I believe that God and goodness have the upper hand.”

“But there
is
evil?”

“You tell me that you doubt the existence of God, but you want me to tell you to believe in evil?”

“Please, Father.”

He sighed in exasperation.

“Yes,” he said. “I do think there is evil. But it is very rare. It is as rare as true goodness. And just as true goodness produces rare saints, true evil produces rare monsters. The rest of us are semigood, semibad, and we live our lives in a kind of half-happy, half-sad daze. We might hope that one sunny morning we find ourselves in the presence of a saint. And we must pray very hard that we do not encounter the monster. Now, we’ve discussed enough. Tell me another sin. There are others waiting.”

I said nothing.

“Davie! Speak now. Or I’ll throw you out.”

“Stephen Rose,” I whispered.

“Stephen Rose?”

“You were supposed to look out for him, Father.”

I saw the frown cross his face.

“Yes,” he said. He looked sternly through the grille; then he sighed, and spoke softly, as if in confession himself. “I’m troubled by what has occurred, Davie. I did look out for him. But my flock is large. And I thought that the influence of lads like yourself and George…” His voice trailed off. “They’ll find him,” he said. “They’ll bring him home again. We’ll make a better job of it next time.”

“What was he, Father?”

“Ha. Just a boy, a little older than yourself. A boy with problems. There but for the grace of God. But just an ordinary boy. And now, another sin.”

I searched my thoughts.

I imagined:
I stole the body and blood of Christ. I…

“I stole a cigarette from my dad,” I said.

“Oh, Davie. Yet again? And smoked it?”

“Yes, Father. And the cigarettes of somebody else’s dad.”

“Oh, Davie.”

And so I told him the banal old stuff and he blessed me and dismissed me.

When I went out, Maria was still waiting.

“Well,” she said. “Do you feel holy and free now?”

I shook my head.

“I told him next to nowt.”

We walked up past the Half Way House and into Felling Square, where we’d have to part.

She said, “The way to say something is just to start saying the start of it; then everything will come out. Or you can just choose bits of it, and say them in any order. Or…”

She threw up her hands and laughed.

“And of course you don’t have to say nowt at all.”

We looked around the square: the shadowy drinkers behind the frosted glass of the Blue Bell, people queuing to see
The Curse of Dracula
at the Corona, people climbing aboard the 82 to go to Newcastle. All so ordinary, all so tame.

“Or you could write it,” she said. “Like a story. Then you could put the craziest things in and they wouldn’t seem so crazy cos it’d just be a story.”

“I made a creature with Stephen Rose,” I muttered.

“Eh?”

“We made a man out of clay. We made him move, Maria. We made him walk. He came alive.”

I looked into her eyes.

“Do you believe me?” I said.

“Yes. It’s crazy, but yes. What else?”

“Stephen Rose. He isn’t a boy like…”

I couldn’t go on.

“I’ll tell you it bit by bit,” I said. “It might take a long time.”

“OK,” she said.

Sergeant Fox and PC Ground drove past, stuffed into a little blue police car.

“Got to go,” I said.

We parted with a kiss. I ran uphill, and started to feel free at last. My sleep that night was dreamless and deep.

Next morning I looked out of my window. Dad was kneeling in the garden in the sunlight. Clay was stretched out on the earth beside him.

four

Dad turned to me as I stepped out from the house. His eyes were wide with wonder.

“Davie, come and see!”

I shuffled across the grass.

“What is it, Dad?”

“Found it this morning in Braddock’s garden. All the blokes are getting stuff out—soil and plants and rocks—before they fill the quarry in.”

Clay’s legs and an arm had fallen off and had been put back in place. A crevice had opened up between his head and shoulders. Clods of him had crumbled away.

“What do you think it is?” I said.

“God knows. Something ancient, I thought; then I saw it wasn’t. He fell to bits when I put him into the barrow. I been putting him back together again.”

He was pockmarked by the rain. There were channels where the water had trickled over him. There were dried-out puddle holes in him. The whole bulk of him had slumped and softened. He was ungainly and twisted. Where he’d lain on the earth, he’d started to merge with it, turning back to the stuff called clay and not the creature Clay. But the sycamore seeds were still in him, and the hawthorn berries, and the ash keys. And he was so beautiful, and I looked at how he was now and I thought of how he had been, when he had walked beside me, when we had looked at each other in a window in the night and had seen each other standing together, so powerful and so lifelike and so strange. Dad reached down, and tried to smooth the clefts and cracks and creases. I touched him too, and I waited for Clay’s voice inside me, but there was just silence.

“Must’ve been some kids, eh?” said Dad. “Must’ve been some game or something.”

“Aye,” I said.

“Nowt to do with you and your mates?”

“No.”

“Or mebbe Stephen Rose?” he said.

“Dunno, Dad.”

“Anyway,” he said. “A bit of clay’ll come in useful in them sandy borders.”

“Not yet, though,” I said.

“No. He’s too lovely right now. We’ll wait till he’s just a pile of muck. It’ll be a while before I dig him in.”

five

I brought Maria to him.

“He lived and walked,” I told her. “I heard his voice inside my head.”

She gazed at him and said he was beautiful. She narrowed her eyes as she tried to see him as he had been, a living thing instead of lifeless clay. Behind us Dad kept coming into and out of the garden, bringing heaps of soil, rocks and plants for a rockery, yelling how brilliant our garden would be.

“How did you do it?” asked Maria.

“It seemed so easy. It was just like this.”

I scooped a handful of clay out of Clay. I shaped it quickly into the shape of a man. “Live,” I whispered. “Move.” And of course nothing happened. I shrugged and laid the figure on the ground. I thought of Stephen, and wondered where he was now, what he was making now.

She picked up the figure. She walked it like a puppet on the grass. Then she squashed it into a ball.

“You couldn’t have been wrong?” she said. “Stephen couldn’t have deceived you?”

I shook my head. I told her how Clay and I had walked alone together through the streets. How could that have been an illusion?

“Stephen was all lies and tricks,” I said. “He told me lots of things that I don’t believe. But there’s some force in him, some power that the rest of us don’t have.”

I said no more, but I knew that one day I’d have to say more, about devilry and madness and death.

“Do you think I’m mad?” I asked her.

She laughed.

“You? Mad?”

“Yes. What I’ve just told you—surely that’s mad.”

“But isn’t it the truth?”

“Yes. But sometimes I think I’ve caught something from Stephen. Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.”

“You’re not mad, Davie,” she told me.

She worked the ball of clay again. She made another figure from it and stood it on the grass.

“This is you,” she said. “Sane and slightly barmy like all of us.” She took another piece of Clay and made another figure. “And here is me, slightly barmy too.”

So we went on making clay figures out of the body of Clay, each one better and more lifelike than the one before. We named them as we worked: Geordie Craggs, Frances Malone, Crazy Mary, Prat Parker, Skinner and Poke, Father O’Mahoney, my mam and dad, Maria’s mam and dad, and many more. Soon there was a little crowd before us.

Dad came up behind us, looked down and laughed.

“Haha!” he said. “It’s a congregation of the saints!”