Secret Heart (2 page)

“Aye?”

“You've never been there, have you?”

“No.”

It was true. He'd never been. But he often walked as far as the motorway and gazed through the noise and the traffic to the enticing land beyond. And he often walked there in his dreams. Sometimes he walked in his dreams with Stanny through the Silver Forest. Sometimes he walked with his mum. More and more often, he walked with a stranger, a girl. He could never see her clearly, but she walked quickly and eagerly at his side.

“And you've never even been away from home for a whole night,” said Stanny. “Have you?”

Joe shook his head. Never.

“Well, then. 'Bout time you started. You've got to start toughening up, Joe. You've got to…”

Stanny spat and cursed. Joe was staring toward the distant densely packed trees, to the tracks like pencil lines heading for the hilltops, to the purple heather and the black rocks and the streams like threads of silver. He tilted his head, narrowed his
eyes, gazed into the sky. And there they were, the creatures he'd known since he was small, the beasts that wheeled in the empty air above the Black Bone Crags. He turned to his friend, saw that Stanny saw nothing. He kicked the earth. The words he spoke stumbled on his tongue.

“Wh-why d'you want to go there with J-Joff?” he said.

“Joff? You come and you'll see.”

“Once we s-said we'd go out there together. Just you and—”

“That was ages back. We were kids. We did nowt about it.” He glared. “And some of us grew up, Joe.”

He picked up two fist-sized stones and started lifting them up and down toward his shoulders. He shoved them into Joe's hands.

“Look, you do it. Get your muscles working.”

They flopped from Joe's hands back to the ground.

“What you like?” said Stanny.

He turned away. He spat.

“Come with me and Joff. He'll make a man of you.”

Joe stared at the horizon again. Even though he couldn't name them, he saw what flew there in the day. He knew what prowled on the earth there in his dreams. He walked on, and shivered at the thought of going there with Joff.

Joff. Redness in the whites of his eyes, snakeskin tattoo around his throat, two gold teeth, shaved head, muscles. Once at Stanny's house, Joe saw him stick a safety pin through the flesh on his forearm and close the clasp. He grinned. Then he got another pin and stuck it in his other arm and grinned again. Stanny said there were other things he did, other ways of showing that pain was nothing. He knew how to spit kerosene out of his mouth and breathe fire. He knew how to hold his breath underwater till you were sure he must die. He was tough. He knew how to survive. If Joe spent some time with him he'd see it all, he'd learn it all.

One afternoon Joe had come home and Joff was at the kitchen door, leaning on the frame, one foot on the step. He caught Joe in his arms as he came around the corner of the house and lifted him to his chest.

“Hello, son,” he said, and Joe caught his fiery smoky breath. “Nice time at school, then?”

Joff let him go. Joe hurried in to his mum, who stood against the kitchen table. She put her arm around him.

Joff grinned at them. His gold teeth flashed.

“You got a lovely mum, son,” he said. He winked. “You know that, don't you, lucky lad?”

Joe felt his mum's heavy breathing, the thudding of her heart.

“Go on, Joff,” she said. “Go away now, please. Please. Don't come again.”

Joff just stood with his arms folded and a sweet smile on his face as he cast his eyes across her. Then he licked his lips.

“Put a word in for me, son,” he said, as he went away. “ 'Cos you got a lovely tasty mum.”

That night Joe's head was filled with Joff. Son, he kept on saying. Son. Joe dreamed of being a baby. He saw Joff inside the house with his arm around his mum. Joff leaned over him and grinned and simpered and reached down to tickle him. Joe woke gasping in the darkness. Was this a memory or just a dream? He went across the landing to his mum and climbed into bed beside her.

“Mum,” he whispered. “Mum.”

She moved to make space for him and slept on.

“M-Mum.”

“Shhhhhhh.”

“Mum. Was J-Joff my d-da—”

She came slowly out of sleep.

“Your dad?”

“I dreamed…”

“Oh, Joe, it's just a dream. You know who your dad was. A daft bonny lad that ran the Tilt-a-Whirl in the fair and your mother was a daft young lass. And you know I'm sorry about how you came but I'll never be sorry about you.”

“Not J—”

“Oh, Joe.” She sat up and stroked his hair and the moonlight shone in her eyes. “Not Joff. Never Joff, no matter how many times he sniffs around.” She smiled. “You and your dreams. Come on. Calm down.”

She sang a song from his early days.

“You were the loveliest thing I ever saw, tiny bonny baby lying at my side. I knew from your very first cry that you'd feel things more than any other, be scared more than any other, be overjoyed more than any other. I knew you wouldn't have an easy ride.” She smiled and shook her head and drew him closer. “But your heart is filled with strength and goodness, Joe Maloney. You'll find your way.”

He lay against her. She sang again.

“It isn't easy, this life,” she breathed. “But we have each other, Joe, and nothing can change that. Good night, love.”

“Good night.”

He went back to bed. He wanted to see himself driving Joff from the garden. But he felt so small, so young, so uncertain, and all that night and for many nights after he was filled with the image of Joff with his mum and the fear that Joff was his dad.

“One day,” said Stanny, “we're gonna stay out there for weeks. Real surviving. We'll live on what we can catch and kill. Back to nature. Mebbe we'll even do some raiding. Farms and things. Mebbe we'll end up going further and further out. Robbing and raiding and running from the law.”

Joe kept seeing the girl's face, the way she looked at him so easy from the doorway of the tent, the way she seemed so familiar, the way she seemed to know him, too. He recalled the tiger's sour scent, its vicious tongue, its teeth. It all seemed so familiar. Like a memory, not a dream. Joe turned and saw the summit of the tent against the sky.

“Used to be always like that,” said Stanny. “Man against nature. Survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. But today…You've never killed nothing, have you?”

“No.”

“You strike hard. You do it fast and clean. Joff'd show you. He likes you, you know.”

“L-likes?”

“Says there's something about you the other kids round here haven't got. Says he wants to help you to get tougher. He likes your mum and all. He says…”

Joe's head reeled. He didn't listen. He saw the teeth of the tiger sinking into Joff's throat, heard the tiger's growl of pleasure. He sighed.

“There was bears and wolves round here once,” said Stanny.

“Ages back.”

“Aye, ages back, but there's tales of panthers and things still living out there.” He lowered his voice, as if in secret. “And we've heard them, Joe. Me and Joff. We've heard them things.”

“Heard?”

“We're lying in the heather in the dead of the night and we hear the breathing. ‘What's that?’ I go. ‘Keep still,’ goes Joff. Dead dead still. Think me heart'll explode. The heather's rattling and trembling. There's something in the dark, something blacker than the night, something moving, creeping to us across the heather. There's something shining there, a pair of eyes. Joff's got his knife out and it's shining too. He hisses like a snake. He holds the knife up. ‘Be off!’ he goes. ‘Be off!’ And it stops, it just stops dead still and watches us. Then it turns and we see it like the blackest shadow moving off again.”

“A panther?”

“I was little then. I said it was a devil. But we've talked about it since and said it must have been a panther, like they say is out there in those places.”

“Or a d-dream.”

“No dream. I saw its eyes. And its teeth. I know it would've killed me if Joff hadn't been there….You've got to come, Joe. If you come, you'll hear, and you'll mebbe even see.”

Joe narrowed his eyes, saw the winged creatures wheeling in the air. He imagined stepping through the Silver Forest, climbing through it to the Black Bone Crags. He felt the undergrowth beneath his feet, smelt the forest flowers. He lived in a dream, his mother said, and she was right. It was so hard to separate what existed in his head from what existed in the world. He blinked, shook his head, came back to Stanny Mole.

“We're going to kill it,” whispered Stanny.

“Eh?”

“Kill it. If we come across it again. We're going to cut its bloody head off and bring it home.”

Joe stared at him. He knew they would kill. Stanny already had skulls in his bedroom, boiled and bleached: sheep skulls, rat skulls, badger skulls. They stood in a row on his windowsill.

“Why k-kill?” said Joe.

Stanny screwed his face up, like he was thinking.

“What kind of question's that?” he said. He
thought again, then he laughed. “How else'll we get the bloody head off it?”

His eyes shone, then he swiveled, with a knife clutched in his fist. There was a squealing from behind them, a high-pitched squeal of pain. But it was only a rabbit, attacked by a stoat. The rabbit was three times bigger than the stoat, but it lay there useless and jerked and squealed and let the killer do its work. Soon there was silence. Slick and bendy as a snake, the stoat ripped the flesh, lapped the blood and quivered in excitement. Maybe it caught the boys' scent. It turned its bloodied head and eyes and stared at them for a second, then darted off.

Stanny laughed. “See? Nature in the raw, Joe. Cruel, cold.”

Joe knelt up, tried to see the stoat again.

“Back in its hole,” said Stanny. “It'll be licking its fur, tasting the rabbit again, living the thrill again.” He thumbed the shining blade of his knife. “That's what it's like out there. Back here, we're soft and getting softer. Just like Joff says.”

They walked down past the Blood Pond to the ruins of Broomstick Farm. Stanny lit a fire on an ancient hearth in the Hag's Kitchen. He crawled through the weeds and the tussocky grass, cutting with his knife. He filled a bent aluminum pot with water from a slow stream and put the pot on the flames. He started to throw in what he'd found: clover, dandelion leaves, mushrooms. He cut thistle heads open and picked the nuts from inside, threw them in as well. The smoke swirled around them. The soup boiled and bubbled.

“Nature Stew,” said Stanny. “The world's full of food for them that knows. Springwater, things that other folk think is just weeds.”

The fire died down, the soup went off the boil. Stanny wrapped his hands in his cuffs and lifted the pot onto a stone. He grinned and showed Joe four little speckled eggs.

“A speckled surprise,” he said. “Skylarks' eggs. The final touch.”

He dropped them gently into the soup and they sank, then slowly rose again and floated.

“Done to a turn. Go on, Joe.” He passed a twisted spoon to Joe. “You're the guest. You go first.” Joe wrinkled his face. Stanny took the spoon back, dipped it in, drank, closed his eyes, chewed the bits. “Absolutely delicious. Even if I say so myself.” He lifted an egg with his fingers and put it in his mouth, shell and all, and chewed and swallowed and smacked his lips.

“Yum-yum. This is what it's like, surviving. But imagine the stew with a wood pigeon in it, or the leg of a hare.”

He suddenly stabbed his knife into the earth and laughed.

“Die, pigeon!”

Joe took the spoon again, dipped it in, sipped. A weird sour taste. Silt on his tongue.

“Lovely, eh?” said Stanny. “Go on, again, get some of the good bits this time, Joe.”

Joe sipped again. Bitter mushroom on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed. Stanny grinned, took the spoon and drank again. Then lifted an egg and held it to Joe's mouth.

“Go on,” he said. “Shell and all. Yum-yum.”

He held it closer and Joe let him drop it between his teeth. Held it a moment on the floor of his
mouth, then bit. A taste like an egg, but saltier, sourer. The shell brittle and sharp. He licked it from the hollows of his mouth, from the cracks between his teeth.

“Wash it down,” Stanny said, and Joe sipped again. They each ate another egg. They spooned up the last of the soup. They sat against the broken wall and looked across the motorway toward the Black Bone Crags.

Soon Joe's body began to twitch. He rolled from side to side. The distant tiny skylarks yelled. He opened his eyes and the sky was filled with them. They darkened the sky from horizon to horizon, a storm of trembling black specks that sang in the vast blue space between the village and the sun. Above the crags, the peculiar winged beasts wheeled across the sky. He closed his eyes again, heard a single skylark singing at the center of his brain, a sweet and frantic noise. Tasted its egg on his tongue, felt it trembling with life inside him. He stood up and crouched forward and gently stamped his feet on the earth. He turned slow circles. He let the skylark sing and fly. He gently stamped the earth. He groaned and let the noises in his throat become sweeter, sweeter, lighter, lighter. He spread his arms behind his back. He gently stamped his feet upon the earth. He sang. He trembled. He felt himself begin to disappear.

“Joe! Joe, man!”

Stanny rubbed his eyes, crouched low in the
ruins, snorted. “What you doing, Joe, man? You do the craziest things sometimes.”

Joe hesitated, mid-dance.

“What you doing?” said Stanny again.

Joe turned to him. What
was
he doing? He had no words for it, for the way his spirit sometimes soared inside him and blended with the earth and the sky. He had no words for the way his body trembled and seethed with such excitement.