Clay Read online

  It wasn’t much of a park, really, more a strip of land between the noisy high road and the flats. The council had laid tarmac paths across it here and there, but narrow tracks of beaten earth – what the planners called ‘desire paths’ – had been made by feet, and better reflected where people actually wanted to go: from the estate to the bus stop, for instance, and from the benches to the pedestrian crossing.

  Despite its size and situation the strip of grass was beautiful – if you had the eyes to see. The Victorians had bequeathed it an imaginative collection of trees; not just the ubiquitous planes and sycamores, and not the easy-care lollipops of cherries either, but hornbeams, service trees, acacias and Turkey oaks with bristly acorn cups like little sea anemones. It was alive with squirrels, jays and wood mice, while in spring thrushes let off football rattles from the treetops, and every few summers stag beetles emerged to rear and fence and mate, and begin another perilous generation among the logs that were left to decay here and there by governmental decree.

  It was a big city, but it was a small park, and it had its own citizens and supplicants, of which Sophia supposed she was one. Today there was no sign of the little boy she often saw, the one who seemed to miss so much school, but rounding the back of the flats, ah yes, there was the Turkish chap from the fried chicken parlour having his morning cigarette on the benches.

  At the other end of the park an elderly Jamaican man in tracksuit bottoms and a grubby vest was limbering up for another day’s work. He spent the mornings and early evenings energetically petitioning the traffic for change and cigarettes, dancing about on the pavement as he waited for the lights to bring the cars to a halt, and sometimes in the road, too. Goodness only knows what he got up to in the afternoons; cards, perhaps. How ever does he know my name? thought Sophia whenever she found herself at the thinner end of the wedge-shaped park. It was a mystery. She always smiled and waved back at him nonetheless, poor man. Good manners cost nothing, after all.

  This morning, though, Sophia headed in the opposite direction, towards the shops. A light rain had begun to fall, but she stopped under the rowan and craned her head back as far as she dared to see if she could spot whoever had been singing in it. The branches were empty of birds, but, ‘Quite right, too,’ she said aloud. ‘I could be anyone.’ She pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her coat, finding a shape that could be either a pebble or a Minto. Did she dare suck it and see? she wondered, snorting to think what her daughter would say if she caught her eating stones. ‘She’d pack me off!’ Sophia exclaimed, aloud. The Turkish man looked down and smiled a little to himself as the old lady passed by.

  By mid-afternoon the drizzle had cleared, a high breeze sending the weather east where it would dampen the decking in countless suburban gardens and form shallow, dirty puddles on the sky-blue covers of backyard trampolines, most of which would remain covered up now until spring. Over the park the sky was a flat, high white, the autumn sun not quite strong enough to break through or fully dry the rain-darkened tarmac paths.

  The tea tray at four was a daily ritual: on it a clean tea cloth, the deep brown teapot, the striped jug, a mug and spoon and two biscuits on a side plate. Sophia took it carefully to her kitchen table and sat down, Basildon Bond and a biro before her. She was trying to write a letter to her pen pal, who also happened to be her granddaughter, but it wasn’t always easy to think of things to say to someone of only eight. They had begun the letters, despite living just round the corner from each other, after the correspondent assigned to Daisy by her school failed to reply to Daisy’s email. At first their letters had been something of a novelty, but now she rather suspected that Daisy’s brief and increasingly dilatory replies were composed rather under duress.

  ‘Dear Daisy,’ she began. While her cramped handwriting came only haltingly, in her mind the lines ran clear and true as thought.

  But then, from outside her window came a sudden, clanking roar and a medley of indistinct male shouts. Sophia switched off Radio 4 and craned forward to see. It was a small yellow JCB, and it was being driven into the park followed by two men in council overalls carrying sacks. ‘Goodness me,’ she said, standing up. It stopped under the big plane tree, about a hundred yards away, and the men in overalls threw down their sacks, sat down on them and began to smoke. The driver reversed up a little and raised the JCB’s mechanical arm, before bringing it down and tearing up the grass in a long strip. Before long it had rucked up the turf like an unmade bed, which the two workmen heaved and rolled to one side. The soil beneath was black and startling, like a wound immodestly revealed. Then the machine went to work again, piling the earth to the other side of the wide, shallow trench. Finally the driver switched off the engine. The other two men tore open the tops of the sacks and stepped down into the hole. Bulbs, she thought, picturing the local squirrels and how the smell of disturbed earth was an irresistible challenge to them. She wondered what sort of bulbs they were. Daffs, probably.

  The men were rather a long time in the hole, and eventually Sophia went back to her letter. After a while she heard the JCB roar into life, and looked out of the window again. The arm was swinging down to scoop up the black earth from the pile in its claw, before letting it drop again into the hole. Then the men kicked it roughly into place before pushing and rolling the muddy turf back over the top. Once the driver had run over it with his caterpillar tracks you would hardly have known that anything had happened there.

  Over the next hour or so the three-man crew repeated the procedure over near the benches and in a long, thin strip by the road. At about five, just as she was considering a walk to the shops and a look at what they had been up to, she heard the JCB’s engine roar closer and closer, until she could almost make out what the men were shouting at each other over it. It drew right up to the chain-link fence, sending Sophia back from her window to the kitchen door, from where she watched as it tore up the grass and the daisies, the stubborn buttercups and next year’s dandelions, revealing the naked soil beneath with its secret cargo of red worms, ants and fat white grubs.

  Finally the driver backed off a few feet, switched off the engine and began to roll a cigarette. The men with the sacks stepped into the hole and began to set out the golden bulbs. Sophia craned forward to see: they were placing them in neat rows to make a grid, each one the same distance from its neighbour. How extraordinary, she thought. They must have been told to plant them six inches apart.

  ‘Half five!’ came a shout, just as she was filling the kettle for more tea. The men were kicking soil roughly over the bulbs and locking up the JCB, which crouched by the strips of torn-up turf, the ends of its tines glinting dully. By the time the kettle had boiled, they were gone. Sophia drank her tea at the kitchen table and considered the regiment of bulbs half buried beneath her window.

  It was after midnight when she left the flat, having stayed up late through a combination of television, tea and pacing about. As she grasped her ash stick and pulled the door to behind her, she was aware of several things: that wandering about in the park at night might be considered foolhardy by some; that she was a silly and quite possibly mad old woman; and that this level of subterfuge – including the fact that she was wearing an old black coat of Henry’s – was probably unnecessary. But you can’t always be sensible, she thought, and anyway, some things are too important. They had both always loved the park and had taken a keen interest in its upkeep, but it was after Henry’s death that she had really felt it to be her responsibility. Henry would have had something to say about the grids of bulbs, she felt. And besides, she didn’t want to have to look at them like that next spring.

  When she rounded the corner of her building, Sophia was relieved to find the park empty. There were no rowdy youngsters occupying the benches, no late-night dog walkers either. On the other side of the grass, cars and buses rumbled by, and some distance off in the direction of the shops a siren wailed and then cut out. The moon was out and nearly full, reefed in cloud; it wasn’t raining,
although the air felt damp, and for the most part the park was still.

  Sophia realised she was holding her breath. She let it out with a puff and went to sit on the benches for a moment. Behind them, generations of rotting leaves and council indifference had allowed brambles and nettles to run riot, while ivy had swarmed up the chain-link fence, black and glossy-looking in the moonlight. Now the tangled thicket harboured beer cans, mice and, doubtless, rats, given the chicken bones and takeaway boxes in the bin. Michaelmas, she thought; the final day for eating blackberries. Yesterday, rather. Not that anyone did, here. It was a shame, but that meant all the more for the mice, and they were far more deserving.

  Here and there among the brambles pale circles shook and gleamed in the moonlight. Sophia had planted the first honesty seeds there – how many years ago? She no longer knew. Their purple flowers came up in spring, when she would come with secateurs and surreptitiously cut the bramble stems to give them a fighting chance, but it was in autumn that she loved them best, when the flowers gave way to flat, round seed pods like little moons. Now she sat down and reached carefully over the back of the bench to strip the silvery discs from the stems, and put them in her pocket.

  She got up and approached the hole, which was bigger than it had looked from the kitchen. The pile of earth beside it retained the inner dimensions of the digger’s claw here and there, she saw, in brief angles and surfaces. Leaning heavily on her stick, she managed to lower herself into a kneeling position. It wasn’t elegant, but then so little was these days. Had she ever been elegant? she wondered. Probably not.

  Some of the bulbs hadn’t been covered up at all, and so were easy to spot in the faint light falling from her kitchen window on the other side of the fence. She picked one up and brushed the soil from it; its papery skin was not unlike her own. Yet underneath it wasn’t pulpy, but firm and waxy, waiting to push up through the cold soil with all the coiled energy of spring. It smelled of earth and rain.

  Painstakingly, Sophia fished the rest of the bulbs from their rows and piled them up on the grass beside the hole. There were fifty-seven. She could feel her knees stiffening, and knew there’d be hell to pay tomorrow. With her bare hands she scooped as much of the soil to one side as she could, feeling the good dirt working its way up under her fingernails, and every so often the cold, wet softness of a worm.

  She sat on the edge of the hole for a moment, thinking through what to do next. Then, she began to fill her pockets with bulbs until Henry’s greatcoat was bulging with them, as were her cardigan pockets underneath. Using her stick and the metal fence, she slowly stood up, her moon shadow faint and ghostly on the grass.

  In the dark, the hole looked as deep as a grave. Sophia began to throw the bulbs in one by one, letting them land wherever they would.

  Finally, the bulbs were all in the ground. Sophia cast into the pit the honesty pods, and the flat seeds which had made their way out of them into the crevices of Henry’s pockets. Finally, and laboriously, she kicked the earth back in from the sides to cover the bulbs. Perhaps it didn’t look exactly as it had when the men from the council had clocked off, but she was willing to bet that tomorrow morning they would simply roll back the turf and move on to the next job.

  Back at home, Sophia’s face was a pale blur in the black glass of her kitchen window. Before going to bed she scrubbed her old hands with Fairy and a nail brush, but it would be days before they were entirely clean again.

  3

  Dog Whipping Day

  TC typed the name in again and hit return. There were lots of hits – some of them nothing like his dad, even some from abroad. Some of them were kids on Facebook, or people who had won things or done crimes. He clicked through to the next page, and the next. There must be a way you did it – find people. Like detectives, or police. How did you do it, if you didn’t even know what city to look in, if the person had been gone for months now? He didn’t know.

  ‘Do you need any help?’ It was the librarian, nosying up behind him.

  TC hit the ‘x’, slung his bag on his back and headed for maths. His dad had probably written to him or something, and she’d chucked it. There was no way he’d just have left TC behind. Her, maybe; but not him. He’d have to start checking the post, find a way to be around when it came. Or just go through the bins.

  In the corridor he was careful about eye contact, timing too. It was best not to be noticed. Sometimes you got put on the spot, asked questions and there wasn’t a right answer. Or there was something wrong about you, what you were wearing or doing. It wasn’t bullying – that was being punched and kicked – it was just that he was weird, and it was obvious. He couldn’t even blame them for noticing; he could see it himself. It leaked out of him, he couldn’t help it. Like you weren’t allowed to say certain jokes, because it came out wrong in your voice somehow, and then you’d get called a try-hard. It was just how things were, and trying to change it only made it worse.

  It had been different with his dad. With his dad he’d felt like he was popular or something; interesting. He could say stuff and his dad didn’t laugh, unless he meant him to. Not that his dad was perfect or anything, not that everything had been like a film or whatever before he had gone, but he did actually like TC. Or love him or whatever.

  His mum could see what the other kids thought of him, TC knew, but his dad thought everything was fine. That was good, because if he’d seen it he’d have thought it too. So it all had to be kept separate; inside. The fact that he was used to it didn’t mean it was easy.

  When the police brought him home that day it had been awful. That man there, in their flat. First there was the police thing to get through; they wanted to talk to his mum about him, give them both grief. ‘Is this the boy’s father?’ they asked; he’d sworn at them then, got a talking-to.

  The man – Jamal, she said his name was, like anyone cared – got lost fast. Then it was just him and his mum, looking at each other while the coppers went on about whatever. When they left, then it kicked off. He tried to imagine his dad, what he would want him to do. But he couldn’t do anything, not really. He was only a kid.

  He’d been back since: Jamal, his mother’s . . . what? Friend? He cooked them steaks, the first TC had ever had. And when it got cold he brought TC some gloves. Jamal wanted TC to like him, and with a hard-learned sense of playground ruthlessness TC knew that put him beneath regard.

  ‘Is he your boyfriend, then?’ TC asked as they watched telly one night.

  ‘Look, TC –’

  ‘You shouldn’t have a boyfriend.’

  ‘Well, luckily it ain’t up to you.’

  ‘What about Dad?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Are you gonna tell him?’

  ‘Tell him?’

  ‘When he gets back. Because I am.’

  ‘TC – your dad ain’t coming back.’

  ‘Yes he is.’

  ‘He ain’t, OK?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Cos it’s over.’

  ‘You won’t let him come back. He’d come back but you won’t let him.’

  ‘It ain’t like that.’

  ‘What, then?’

  But she turned the telly up and told him to get off her back.

  Maths went on for years. He was good at it, something he made sure none of the other kids knew; as long as you didn’t put your hand up it was OK.

  It was too cold to go to the common, so after school TC went home, climbing the four flights despite the fact that the lift, for once, was working. He hated the lift, though; it was like being eaten by the huge building, going up and down in its throat like an Adam’s apple – and anyway, the stairs were easy.

  His mum was asleep on the settee, the lounge stale and close, so he got some crisps and went to his room. It was big enough only for his bed with its old blue covers, and a little chest of drawers; his clothes and things mostly went in a plastic zip-up hamper under the bed. It was OK, though; it had a door he could shut, and a wi
ndow, level with the tree canopy, that looked down to the waste ground behind the tower blocks. It was almost like a hide.

  He got out all his Lego men from a box under the bed and made them fight with his Luke Skywalker. Even though Luke didn’t have a head he was still much stronger than they were, and they couldn’t beat him. TC had almost a whole shoebox of Lego. Other people took it to school sometimes to show what they’d made, but he didn’t want to. What if you lost some, or someone took it? No, it was better just to keep it and play with it by yourself.

  When he’d finished he put everything back in the box along with a corvid skull, a stone with a hole all the way through, a lapis-blue jay’s feather and a mysterious, verdigris half-pence piece that he’d found on the common, and pushed the box back under the bed.

  That evening the wind shifted direction and began to blow from the north-east. It battered the tower blocks, throwing rain like gravel against the glass only to quieten, take breath, and hurl itself again. TC lay on his bed and felt the windows tremble, and pretended he was out at sea.

  Across the high road from the block where TC lived was a dilapidated Edwardian terrace, shops below, flats above. Over the corner premises, a second-hand furniture shop now for many years, the dim shape of a man moved at a grimy sash window. The room behind him had grown dark while Jozef was working, but he whittled mostly by feel anyway.

  A man’s voice called his name up the bare stairwell with its stark bulb, the two syllables bouncing flatly off the walls. He stood and stretched his big hands, clicked the knuckles. ‘Yes, I am coming,’ he called. The rain had slowed, the wind was dropping, and the sky was pressed velvet blue against the window. Time for work.

  Before leaving his little room, spartan as a monk’s cell, he placed a half-finished carving no bigger than his thumb on the windowsill with its fellows. It was unclear to him what it would become, but it already had the rough lineaments of an animal. He would wait to finish it until its nature declared itself beneath his blunt fingers.