Clay (4 page)

eleven

Stephen paused and breathed slowly, like he was gathering the tale into himself before he told it to us. He worked his clay with his fingers. He carved its features with the point of a knife. It grew more lifelike as he spoke.

“It was a Tuesday morning. I was down on the beach at Whitley Bay. I was walking all alone like always. It was boiling hot. There were people all around me. People lying flat out in the sun. Screaming kids and yapping dogs splashing in the water. The smell of chips and hot dogs and coffee. Just ordinary, dead ordinary. Then there was a hush. Dead silence, nowt moving, like everything was stopped in time. Then a blast came from the sky and it was like a bolt of lightning went right through me. I found myself crawling on the sand. I was weak as a baby. I could hardly breathe. And there she was.”

“Bliddy Hell,” said Geordie.

“Aye,” said Stephen. “She was in the sky over the cliffs with massive wings and a sword in her hand and she was that bright, bright as the sun, bright and burning, and I turned my face away from her. ‘Stephen Rose!’ she yelled. ‘Stephen Rose! You cannot hide!’ And it was like her voice was everywhere, outside me and inside me. I couldn’t do nowt. I had to turn. She came down towards me. She pointed the sword at me. ‘Who is thy lord, Stephen Rose?’ she said. ‘Answer! For you cannot hide. Who is thy lord?’ And I knew what I had to say. ‘My lord is God most high,’ I answered. And everything went dead still again, and dark as night, and I thought I must’ve died, and then the angel was at my side, and was helping me up, and the sword was hanging on its own in the sky, pointing down at us. ‘You have answered well,’ she whispered. And she took my hands in hers and hers were that tender and so strong. And she said, ‘With these hands, you must be about the Lord’s work, Stephen Rose.’ And I felt the power growing in them. ‘Remember that thou art dust and dirt,’ she said, ‘and remember that thou art also holy.’ And she pulled me up till I stood on the sand and the sea started to move again and the folk and the dogs started to stir again. ‘I will watch thee, Stephen Rose,’ she whispered, ‘even unto the end of thy days. Remember to use thy talents well.’ And she was gone.”

I looked at Geordie. Geordie looked at me.

“Did anybody else see her?” Geordie whispered.

“I was the only privileged one,” said Stephen. “The sunbathers went on frying, the kids went on screaming, the dogs went on yapping, but for me, in an instant, everything had changed.”

“Bliddy Hell,” I said.

“Aye,” said Stephen. “And she’s been back a couple of times since.”

“Bliddy Hell,” said Geordie.

“Do you believe me?” said Stephen.

“Dunno,” I said.

“Dunno,” he echoed. He leaned close to me, looked into me. “Some people find it hard to believe anything, Davie. They want proof. What if the angel came to you, Davie? Would you believe me then? Or would you still just say ‘Dunno’? And what if you saw the power of the Lord himself at work here in Felling?”

He inspected the finished apostle.

“No need to be scared,” he said. “Not yet.”

He held the apostle up in front of my eyes, and its face looked into my face. He smiled.

“But one day,” he said, “I’ll mebbe show you something that’ll scare you stiff. It’ll scatter all your doubts. There’ll be no more maybes or dunnos.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You’ll be bliddy petrified, Davie. Your soul’ll bliddy crack.”

He smiled. He winked at Geordie.

“Just joking,” he said, and he finished his tale. “Soon after I was struck down and raised up again, a priest came to the school looking for vocations. I stood up. ‘Me,’ I said. ‘I’ll be a priest.’ And pretty soon, off I went to Bennett.”

He laid the apostle at the center of the fire. He heaped embers up around it. He placed more sticks to quicken the fire. I watched them burn.

Then we flinched and were dead still. There were footsteps above us, in Braddock’s garden.

Two silhouettes of boys appeared at the quarry’s edge.

“Skinner,” I whispered.

“Aye,” said Geordie. “And looks like Poke as well.”

“But not Mouldy, thank God.”

“These are your enemies?” said Stephen.

“Aye,” said Geordie.

We watched the boys crouch above us. They peered down. We heard them whispering. They moved around the quarry’s rim. We heard them coming down towards the quarry’s entrance. I hunched with Geordie in the shadows under the rock as they crept closer.

“See?” he whispered. “If we had trip wires they’d be straight in the bliddy pond.”

“Get ready to jump and yell,” I said. “We’ll scare the living daylights out of them.”

We tried to hold our giggles in. We waited, but Stephen was the first to move. He slipped out of the cave and ran fast and low. There was a commotion under the hawthorn trees; then the Pelaw lads started squealing. We heard them crashing away. Then Skinner’s voice, weeping with fright.

“He stabbed me! He bliddy stabbed me!”

Then Poke, yelling down from the quarry’s rim:

“Wait till we tell Mouldy!”

twelve

Stephen came back, wiping his knife blade on a handful of grass. We were trembling. We were speechless. We started backing away.

“What’s
wrong
?” said Stephen. “It’s just a scratch. A little warning.”

He grinned at us.

“I thought you hated them. And who’s this Mouldy?”

We just looked at him.

“Who’s
Mouldy
?” he repeated.

He shrugged.

“Don’t tell me, then,” he said.

He knelt in front of the fire. He spat and the spit hissed. Geordie cursed under his breath, then found his voice.

“Mouldy,” he said, “is Martin Mould. He’s just the hardest bugger for miles around.”

“Is that right, Davie?” said Stephen.

“Aye,” I said.

“And Mouldy,” said Geordie, “is their mate. He is hard as nails. He is massive. He is a bliddy monster. And he’ll kill you now. And us as well.”

“Is that right, Davie?” said Stephen again.

“Aye.”

“Oh, dear,” he said. “What have I done?”

He goggled and pretended to scream and tremble.

“A monster!” he said. “I’m so scared!”

“Stupid git,” muttered Geordie.

Stephen knelt with his face glowing above the fire. The embers round the apostle flickered in the dusk. Stephen stirred them with a stick. He scratched the embers away from the figure.

“Howay,” I whispered to Geordie.

But I looked down, and I was caught by the face staring out from the fire.

“Are you done yet, my apostle?” said Stephen. He poked it with his stick. “Are you ready to come and rescue us?”

He stood up and his head was silhouetted against the brightening moon. He spread his arms. He held the stick high above his head. He lowered it quickly and pointed to the fire.

“Stand up,” he said. “Stand up, my apostle. Walk the earth. Save us from our tormentors. I command you. Walk!”

Geordie and I kept backing away. Stephen laughed.

“No,” he said. “He’s not done yet. Needs a bit more cooking.”

He shoved the embers back. He threw more sticks on and he laughed.

“Take no notice,” he said. “It’s just me being daft. So this Martin Mould’s a monster, then?”

We said nothing.

“And you’re scared of him and you hate his guts?”

We said nothing. Stephen smiled through the dusk and the firelight.

“You know,” he said, “the world’d be a much better place without a thing like Mouldy. Do you think so?”

We said nothing.

“Aye?” he said.

“Aye,” said Geordie.

Stephen turned his eyes to me.

“Aye, Davie?” he said.

I paused as he watched me. Then I shrugged and nodded.

“Aye.”

And we heard a voice echoing towards us, a thin hesitant wavery voice.

“Stephen! Stephen Rose! Where are you, Stephen Rose?”

“It’s Crazy,” I said.

“The loony woman,” said Stephen. “Better go or they’ll be sending me away somewhere. And I don’t want that, do I?” He looked into my eyes. “Not when there’s so much to do here.”

Then he slipped away.

“
He
’s the loony,” said Geordie. “We got to let Mouldy know he’s nowt to do with us.”

“He’ll take no notice of that,” I said.

I felt Mouldy’s hands on my throat, his boot on my face.

“Let’s go,” I said, and we hurried out.

Next morning I woke dead early. I left the house early. I went into the quarry. There’d been a frost. The clay pond had a fringe of ice. I crouched over the embers. I pulled away the ash and cinders. He was lying there, filthy, black with ash, hard as stone. The last heat of the fire was still in him, but very soon he’d be bitter cold. I cleaned his face with spit: a calm and ordinary face, a Felling face. He could be any passerby. Then my heart stood still. The clay figure was me. It was my face that looked up at me from between my own hands.

I trembled. I crossed myself. I closed my eyes.

“Deliver us from evil,” I prayed. “Look after us.”

TWO

one

“So which one is it?” said Dad. “Her on the left or her on the right? Her that keeps looking in or her that keeps not looking in? Her that…”

I sighed. We were sitting at the table eating eggy bread and drinking tea. The lasses must have walked past the window half a dozen times. Frances kept looking in and pretending she wasn’t looking in. Maria kept pretending there was something fascinating high up in the sky. The pair of them were linked arm in arm. They were giggling and grinning.

“The brunette or the blonde?” said Dad.

“Frances or Maria?” said Mam.

Dad laughed.

“And which one’s got the eye for Geordie?”

They walked by again. Dad kept on nudging and asking. I kept on eating, drinking, and pretending not to watch for them. Then they were gone.

“Lost your chance,” said dad.

“I’m not interested,” I said.

“Oh, aye?” he said.

“Well, they’re both nice girls by all accounts,” said Mam.

Dad laughed.

“Your mother knows and sees everything,” he said.

She slapped another slice onto my plate.

“But mind don’t you go running after them,” she said. “Go and kick a ball or something with Geordie.”

When I went out, they were at the end of the street, in the cut between the houses. I slowed down when I got close to them. We all pretended we were invisible but just as I was passing by, Frances said,

“Not speaking?”

“Aye,” I said.

“Go on, then,” she said.

“Go on what?”

“Speak.”

“Hello,” I said.

“Hello,” she said. “And what about Maria?”

I tried to still my heart and calm my breath.

“Hello,” I said.

Maria bit her lips and blushed and looked sideways at me.

“Hello,” she said.

We looked at each other; then we couldn’t do it anymore. Maria walked away. Frances laughed and said, “Well, it’s a start,” and she followed Maria, and I went through another cut to get to Geordie.

He was in his back garden. His old knife-throwing door was leaning on the hedge like always. It had the outline of a body painted on it. He’d been chucking his knife at it like always, trying to just miss the body. There were hundreds of marks on the body and head where he and his dad had missed over the years. He passed the knife to me when I walked in.

“Go on,” he said. “You have a go, Davie. I can’t do nowt today.”

I took the knife. I aimed for the edge of the door. I threw it. It glittered in the sun, then thudded right in where the body’s heart would be.

“Ballocks,” I said.

“Bull’s-eye!” yelled Geordie’s dad from inside. “Get that lad straight into the circus!”

I slumped down into the grass.

“What we going to do?” I said. “Mouldy’ll be out for revenge.”

“God knows,” said Geordie. “I dreamed about him last night.”

“Did you?”

“Aye.”

“He stabbed us both, then cooked us in a big pot down in the quarry.”

“Honest?”

“Honest. He had us with toast and HP sauce.”

“Bliddy Hell.”

“And a big bottle of Tizer.”

We knew there was nothing funny but we couldn’t help laughing.

“Mebbe we should tell our dads,” I said.

“It’s a battle we made for ourselves. That’s what
my
dad would say.”

“I know. But when there’s a knife involved, Geordie…”

“Crazy bliddy Stephen Rose’s knife. Not ours.”

“I know.”

“We’ll sort it out ourselves. We need to fix a meeting.”

“With Mouldy?”

“Aye. Him and the others. We’ll just tell him all about Stephen Rose. We’ll tell him it’ll never happen again.”

“Bliddy Hell. Mouldy cannot hardly even talk, man.”

“He cannot be that thick.”

“Can he not? Remember that story about him biting rats’ heads off down in Jonadab?”

“Aye. I remember. And the one about him biting that kid’s lug off in Jarrow.”

We said nowt else while we thought of that.

“Did you believe it?” said Geordie at last.

“Aye,” I said.

“So did I.”

We sat against the door. Inside the house, Geordie’s dad danced about and yelled out, “The times they are achangin’!”

“What a racket,” I said.

“Do you want to go to the cave?” said Geordie.

I shook my head.

“Me neither,” said Geordie.

There seemed nowt we could do. I closed my eyes and let the sun fall on my face. I felt the grass warm against my fingers. I listened to the birds. I thought of the spring coming on so fast. I found myself drifting, dreaming about the apostle in the fire. He stood up and stretched himself and stepped away from the ashes. Newborn tiny frogs gathered around him from the pond. A grass snake curled up at his side on a stone. The sparrow hawk wheeled high above. Stephen came, creeping beneath the hawthorn. “Where are you?” he whispered. “Are you done yet?” He crept closer. “Where are you? Are you done yet, Davie?”

I shook myself awake. Geordie’s sister, Noreen, was at the back door, leaning on the frame, smiling. She narrowed her eyes. She tapped her cheek.

“So what you two been up to?” she said.

“Nowt for you,” said Geordie.

She shook her head and laughed.

“You’re still just little boys, aren’t you?” she said. “Just silly little—”

Geordie put two fingers up.

“Get lost!” he hissed.

She just laughed again. She ran her fingers through her hair and wiggled her hips as she went back inside.

“Lasses!” said Geordie.

“There’s a lass says she fancies me,” I said.

“Aye?” said Geordie.

“Aye.”

He stared at me; then he slouched back into the grass.

“That’s all we bliddy need.”