Hunter's Heart

by Julia Green

  He swings his rucksack over one shoulder and picks up the list.

  ‘Have some breakfast first,’ Nina says.

  ‘Not hungry. Still full of rabbit stew.’

  Ellie looks up; should she cry or not? Not.

  He studies the list. Nothing too embarrassing. But he’s not taking Ellie.

  ‘Please, Si. Then I can get on with things.’

  ‘No way. She can’t walk fast enough. It takes too long. She moans all the way back up the hill.’

  Nina sighs.

  He almost relents, but then he imagines what it will be like if he bumps into someone from school, and that does it.

  ‘I’m going on my bike, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t forget your helmet!’ Nina yells after him as he disappears out to the shed.

  Simon grins to himself. It’s not that he deliberately winds her up, pretending he’s reckless and foolhardy, but she does go on.

  The girl from the house opposite watches him get on to his bike, fasten his helmet, freewheel down the hill.

  The town’s packed with shoppers, cars bumper to bumper in the narrow streets. Simon weaves in and out, bumps up on to the pavement for a bit, but it’s even more congested. People stop suddenly and unexpectedly to look at things in windows, or to talk to someone. It’s as if I’m invisible, he thinks. They just don’t see me. He ends up pushing the last bit down the cobbled street that leads to the small supermarket where he can get most of the stuff. There’s a girl he recognizes from school at one till, so he goes to the other.

  He might as well go all the way down to the sea, since he’s here. He swings the rucksack back over one shoulder, heavy and lumpy with shopping now, and scoots through the series of narrow alleyways and cobbled streets that lead down to the town beach. Already, families are parked with windbreaks and picnics all along the dry sand at the top near the wall; an ice-cream van is dealing out cheap whipped white stuff in cones. There’s a queue at the chippy, and a crowd of boys hanging round the front of the amusement arcade, hands in pockets, hair slicked up. One of them looks a bit like Rick Singleton. Simon gives them a wide berth, scoots further along next to the sea wall, finds a place to lean the bike.

  The sea’s sparkling. No big surfing waves, just small ripples lapping on to the sand. Two dogs race in circles through puddles left by the retreating tide, even though this is a No-Dogs-May-to-October beach. They’re chasing seagulls and barking, though the sound is whipped away by the wind. Offshore today. You have to be careful with an offshore wind. That’s the one that whisks you out in your small inflatable: the child’s dolphin boat or the small boy on a bodyboard, and before you know it you’re way out of the bay. Every year there are drownings.

  ‘Six people last season,’ the fish-shop man said as he wrapped their chips the first weekend after they moved. ‘And mostly strangers, tourists. They don’t respect the sea. They think you can come here and do what you like, but she’s a terrible one, she is. No mercy in her. There was a lad and his father down on the rocks, fishing, and the first wave came and washed the lad off, and the next one got the father. They didn’t think, see.’ Simon wanted to hear the whole story in detail. Nina hustled him out before he could ask about the other four deaths. ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re obsessed,’ she hissed at him.

  You’d never imagine it, looking at that tame sea out there now. It’s easier to believe if you walk up along the cliff path for a bit, the way it crashes in on the rocks at high tide. It’s way below, but the spray gets you even in summer. They arrived in May; it’s July now. There haven’t been any big storms yet. He can’t wait!

  ‘Still soft in the head, eggbrain?’ The words whisper into his skull from close range. A long shiver rattles his backbone.

  ‘Thought you’d escaped, didn’t you, Simple Simon?’

  Simon doesn’t need to turn round to see whose shadow it is that’s fallen over his propped-up bike. He puts one hand on the handlebars to steady himself, waiting for what’s coming next. But Rick’s moving on, hands in pockets, swaggering after the bunch of lads sauntering down the pavement towards the boy who collects money for the deckchairs. Simon doesn’t hang around. He shifts the rucksack on to both shoulders ready for the steep ride home. Sweat trickles down his neck.

  He’s red as a beetroot by the time he reaches his house. The girl opposite is still hanging out at the front of her house. She straightens up when she sees him, watches him dismount and wheel the bike to the shed. I’m hot because of the bike ride, he wants to explain. But he doesn’t say a word, of course.

  Simon humps the heavy bag on to the kitchen table. A sack of onions rolls out on to the floor, but he leaves them there. Ellie and Nina are nowhere to be seen. He thumps upstairs to the bathroom and pours cold water over his head. Most of it drips over the floor. The sun has moved round; his room is in shadow now. He lies on the unmade bed for a while, waiting for his heart to stop pounding. He imagines himself swimming out into the bay, the feel of the waves slapping over his head.

  Then he thinks of Rick, sauntering along the top of the town beach. He can’t swim there, can he? But there’s another place. If he can remember how to get there. Some bloke from one of the farms told Nina about it, when they were out walking: ‘I’ve swum there since I was a boy. You have to watch the tide. It’s only safe at a low spring tide. You know, the extra low ones at full moon. We don’t tell many people about it.’ He winked at Simon and his mother.

  Simon checks his catapult’s safe in his pocket. He retrieves his knife from the kitchen window sill. The blade’s clean and shiny and sharp. He leaves the back door on the latch, like they do these days. Back at the old house, they always kept doors locked. Even windows. Since they’ve been here they’ve let all that go. No one locks doors round here.

  The girl opposite has disappeared.

  It’s so hot the tarmac is melting. It sticks to his boots. The road’s gone quiet, like it often does in the early afternoon on a summer Saturday. He turns left along a small shady lane towards the fields. From there he can cut across to the coast path.

  The grass is stubbly and scratchy from where it’s been cut. He watched them last week, cutting the hay and then binding it into rolls and trailering them behind the tractor, back to the farm. The field was covered in crows. He liked the feeling, as he watched, that it all belonged to him now. Not literally, but just because this is where he hangs out, now they live so close. He’s left behind the built-up town where they used to live. The traffic and the concrete, and all the crap: shops and car parks and people crowded like rats into shopping malls and pedestrian precincts. He hates all that. Even the words are ugly.

  When he’s older, he’s going to live somewhere really wild. Alone. He’ll build himself a house in the middle of a forest or a wilderness of some kind, and live off the land. Hunting, fishing. That sort of thing. He doesn’t tell anyone this. Not even Dan or Johnny or Pike.

  He can see the sea now, a wide blue expanse of the bay, as far as the lighthouse one way, and thinning to nothing the other. It feels like the edge of the world. The air changes as you get closer to the cliff. There are hundreds of gulls. He climbs over a gate on to the footpath and starts walking westwards.

  3

  It feels as if he’s going to walk off the cliff edge into thin blue air. He can’t see the narrow rough path zigzagging down the cliff until the very last minute. Someone’s tied a rope to a wooden fence post and placed some old sacking over the barbed wire. You’d crack your head open on the rocks below if you fell.

  But he’s so hot, and the sea below is a beautiful turquoise. The tide’s so far out he can see there’ll be sand in the cove soon. It’s perfect timing. He starts to climb down, one hand grasping the coarse fibre of the rope, the other steadying himself on the rock. He feels for footholds without looking down. Already there’s more wind, the air’s cooler.

  The path takes him on to a platform of layered rock, with rock pools in the gaps. Simon can’t resist; he lies down nex
t to one of the pools so as not to cast a shadow and cups his hand round a small speckled fish, lets it squirm and tickle his palm before he releases it. The fish darts under a rock. The edges of the pool are studded with sea anemones.

  This was as far as he came, that time before with Nina, but it’s too hot today on the rocks; he’s determined to swim. He lowers himself down the other side of the spine of rock sticking out into the sea, dangles precariously, drops the last few feet on to another flatter rock. He strips off his clothes; no one can see him. Then he jumps.

  Ahhh! Simon gasps at the shock. The water’s freezing! It’s nothing like its Mediterranean colour. He gulps air, ducks his head under, shakes his hair as he surfaces again, then swims fast, overarm strokes into the cove. He turns on to his back, floats, rests his head back into the water. The sun shines full on his face; he has to screw his eyes up against the brightness. Where the water’s shallow enough he puts a foot down on to wave-ridged sand. The water comes up to his armpits. If the tide goes down a bit further there might eventually be a sandy beach. But it’s much too cold to keep still for long. He kicks out again, right across the cove and back to the rock. It’s hard to get enough grip to pull himself out. The rock is slippery, sharp with barnacles. He hauls himself up and over, and stands up, water streaming off his body.

  He’s trembling with cold, with the effort of swimming and pulling himself out. A thin trickle of blood seeps down one leg where he’s snagged it. He struggles back into his clothes, the fabric sticking to his wet legs and torso, then he sits back for a minute. His whole body feels glowing now, truly alive, even though his teeth are chattering. He glances up at the cliff to check that no one has witnessed his naked swim, but of course there’s no one there. Probably no one for miles.

  Barefoot, he climbs back up to the flat platform and stretches out to warm himself in the sun. He dozes. His ears are full of the sound of hundreds of seabirds, swooping and diving and squabbling over the cliff face. There’s the chug of a boat engine, and then a small ferry boat comes into view, taking trippers round the coast to see the seals. They might have thought he was one, had they been there only minutes earlier, his wet head sleek like the dark shape of a seal’s.

  Gradually he warms up. Several times he hears small showers of soil and stones trickling down the cliff-side. He frowns slightly. Must have loosened the rock with my feet when I was climbing down. Or perhaps it’s a small animal, or a bird. He watches for a while, slightly uneasy, but there’s nothing there as far as he can see. Unless there’s someone right at the top of the path, out of view…

  After a while he stops thinking about it. He dozes in the sun and studies creatures in the rock pools, and wonders which of the shellfish are edible. He’ll have to look it up later. He starts overheating again, so he clambers down a level and dangles his feet in the sea, but he doesn’t swim. The tide seems to be coming back up. No sandy beach ever appears. When he finally clambers back up the cliff and along the coast path for home his face is burning from too much sun and wind, but he feels amazing. He’s thirsty. He finds a clump of wild strawberries at the edge of the footpath. Each tiny fruit bursts on his tongue with sweetness.

  The girl is sitting on the front wall. She watches Simon as he trudges up the hill and when he’s almost level with her she speaks.

  ‘Hi.’

  Her voice jolts him out of a daze.

  ‘Hi,’ he mumbles. It comes out wrong, a sort of grunt. He bows his head lower, crosses the road and dives into his own front garden.

  ‘What the hell’ve you been doing, Simon?’ Nina stands at the back door, hands on hips like a cartoon mother.

  ‘Nothing. Just been for a walk.’

  ‘Where?’ she asks, suspicious. ‘And couldn’t you have left us a note?’

  ‘You didn’t. You weren’t here when I got back from town.’

  ‘I was gone for a few minutes, that’s all. I took Ellie down to her friend’s. Anyway, what am I doing, justifying myself to you?’

  ‘You don’t usually mind. I only went over the fields.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘No one. Just me.’

  She scrutinizes his face. She always used to know when he was lying, when he was little. Not any more.

  ‘Anything could happen, Simon.’

  ‘Like what?’

  She glares at him. ‘ I need to know where you are. You know I don’t like you going off by yourself. It’s different with friends. There’s all sorts of dangers. Different ones, here. The sea, cliffs, mineshafts… you know.’

  Yes. You go on about it enough, he thinks. She even has the statistics. ‘ By the age of fifteen boys are three times more likely than girls to die, from accidents, violence, suicide…’

  ‘Go and have a shower. Your face is red as anything. Didn’t you take a hat? Sunscreen?’

  Here we go. Doesn’t she realize no one his age wears hats, or sunscreen for that matter? Get real, Nina. But he doesn’t say anything. Just dumps his bag in the scullery and runs himself a glass of cold water.

  His mother follows him. In the darkness inside he can’t see her properly. He shrinks back as he feels her reach out to touch his face.

  ‘We were so close once, Si. You never used to mind telling me things.’

  Simon turns away, closes his eyes. ‘Leave it out, Mum.’

  He can feel her watching him as he tramps upstairs. He goes into the bathroom, locks the door, sits on the closed lid of the loo seat, head in his hands. If she’d guessed he’d been swimming in the sea by himself at that cliff place, she’d have gone mental. She lives in terror of something happening to him or Ellie, as if his father’s awful accident has somehow made it more likely that something will happen again.

  He doesn’t really remember much about it. His clearest memory is of Ellie, a tiny baby then, crying in the night, on and on, sounding more and more desperate, and Mum still not coming. He knew then that something was up. He had to get out of bed and go into his parents’ room, and there the baby was, bawling its eyes out, but his parents’ bed was empty, the covers half pushed back. He stroked Ellie’s little back and said things, and when she quietened down a bit and started sucking her fist he could hear noises from downstairs. Low voices, and a weird sobbing noise like an animal.

  His dad died in a motorbike accident. Came off the road; no one could work out why or how. ‘I never wanted him to have the bloody bike in the first place,’ Nina tried to explain much later, ‘but he clung on to it. It reminded him of being younger and freer. That’s what I think, anyway. He liked the risk. But then…’ She had started to cry, even though it was years later.

  Simon doesn’t often think about it, but lately he’s started up again, for some reason. Maybe because of what Nina has started saying. ‘You’re getting so like him, you know. Sometimes it gives me such a shock. I think it’s him standing in the shadows.’

  He can’t help what he looks like. Can’t stop himself growing up, can he?

  Leah has spent all afternoon in her garden, turning herself round as the sun moves across the sky, like a spit-roast pig. She’s turning a beautiful shade of golden brown all over. She started in the run-up to the GCSEs; all that extra study leave, and the weather was gorgeous. Her hair’s gone lighter too; gold highlights for free: you’d pay thirty pounds at the salon (‘Naughty ’n’ Nice’ – stupid name. What’s naughty about having a haircut?). Two girls from her old tutor group have Saturday jobs there, sweeping up and doing shampoos, but the money’s terrible. You won’t catch Leah working her socks off for that sort of rubbish. She’s got more sense. She’s been looking about for something interesting to do, something that pays more than the minimum wage. She hasn’t found it yet, but in the meantime it’s just fine lying in the garden all day, perfecting her tan, with the radio on to drown out the rows from indoors. Her mother’s ‘not well’ again, and getting worse. They never talk about it. Dad’s mostly out. They won’t be going on holiday like everyone else from school. It’s been so long s
ince they did anything together that she hardly notices any more. And she can’t invite anyone round, not with her mother in such a state. The girls in her class stopped bothering about her years ago. It’s easier like that really. Not having to think up excuses all the time.

  The new boy across the road looks cute. Too young for her, of course, but it’s fun to make him squirm. His mother’s called Mrs Piper but there doesn’t seem to be a Mr Piper around. She’s probably a single mum, one of those women who have children on their own and think men are redundant these days. Leah knows differently.

  Since the Piper family moved in (21 May: she wrote it in her diary) they have painted the front door, and had the old carpets taken away, and tidied up the garden. They still haven’t put up curtains in the front bedroom. You can see right in when the light’s on at night. It’s the boy’s room. It’s got blue walls and stuff hanging from the ceiling – like model aeroplanes and other kids’ things. There’s a wooden boat propped up on the window frame, its sail filling one half of the glass. Perhaps he thinks it stops her seeing in.

  They’ve all got bikes, even the little girl. It’s too hilly for bikes round here, they’ll soon find out. The boy goes off on his own a lot. Doesn’t hang out with the football gang down the park, or the surfing crowd at the town beach.

  Where does he go?

  Leah opens her eyes. The late afternoon sun is still hot enough to burn. She carefully oils her shoulders, tucks in the straps of her top so she won’t get white lines. Sometimes she wonders why she bothers: who’s to see? Who cares? But there’s somebody out there who’s just about to. She can sense it: he’s out there, somewhere, and moving closer. It won’t be long now. She closes her eyes. He’ll have dark hair and blue eyes, and hands with sensitive fingers. She’ll know him when she sees him. The warm sun on her arms spreads through her body. That’s what it will be like when he touches her for the first time.

  For the last half-hour Simon has been lying upstairs on his bed reading the survival guide. ‘Chapter Four: Living from the Land’. It’s made him hungry. He picks up the book, takes it with him down to the kitchen, opens the fridge and scans the contents. He takes three slices of salami, a hunk of Cheddar cheese and a slab of fruit and nut chocolate. He leans against the back door frame. Nina is sitting in a deckchair under the tree, reading a book. He watches her for a while. It’s unusually quiet without Ellie around.