Hunter's Heart

by Julia Green

  ‘Did you know,’ Simon says, ‘that there is no known antidote to eating a deadly fungus? The most deadly are the Amanita genus.’

  ‘Mmm.’ She’s obviously not really listening. She turns the page of her book.

  Simon carries on regardless. He reads aloud about the Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) through Destroying Angel (Amanita virosa) to Death Cap (Amanita phalloides), the most deadly fungus known.

  Nina stops reading and looks at him. He’s got her attention now, but she evidently hasn’t heard a word he’s said.

  ‘You look lovely,’ she tells him. ‘Your hair like that. With the sun on it.’

  He rolls his eyes, but there’s no stopping her in mid-flow. ‘When you were a little boy, people used to stop me in the street to say how lovely you were! “He’ll break a few hearts, won’t he, with eyes like those, ” they’d go, and I’d smile and nod, and say, “He’s got his father’s eyes, actually. ” You do, Si. You’re even more like Jason now.’

  Simon doesn’t want to think about all that again. He carries on reading out bits from his book instead. ‘Many fungi are useful for medicine, food, or other purposes, such as dyeing and firelighting. Edible fungi often have very similar poisonous cousins,’ he reads aloud, ‘so care in identification is essential.’

  She’s listening properly now.

  ‘I don’t want you picking fungi, Simon,’ she says. ‘It’s too risky.’

  ‘It’s not, if you know what you’re doing,’ Simon says with relish. ‘That’s why I’m reading this. For when we go camping. We’re going to hunt and collect all our food and cook it. You can live off the land completely, you know.’ He looks at her defiantly, waiting for her to react.

  ‘I absolutely forbid it, Simon! No fungi. You know how dangerous they can be! And that’s my last word on the matter. Subject closed.’

  Simon smiles. It’s so easy to get her going.

  He gets his knife out of his pocket and starts carving his initials in the bark of the plum tree. She hates that. She picks up her book again and settles herself back in the deckchair without speaking.

  Simon kicks the tree trunk and an unripe plum plops on to the grass. Nina frowns.

  He walks down the garden away from the house to the bit they still haven’t cleared. It’s full of brambles and bindweed with huge white flowers like trumpets. Tight red berries are already forming on the brambles. He started making a den in there when they first arrived, but Ellie wanted to join in and turn it into a playhouse, so he gave up. If only he had a brother. He could have asked Johnny, maybe, but he’s pretty sure it’s not OK to make bramble dens when you’re fourteen (almost definitely not) and he can’t risk it. For some reason that makes him think about Rick Singleton again, and he shivers. What was Rick doing there in the town? Supposing he’s around all summer? Finds out where Simon lives?

  His mother’s voice drifts over. ‘Going to fetch Ellie. Won’t be long.’

  He doesn’t reply. When she’s gone, he fetches his catapult from the bag he left in the old scullery, fishes a handful of stones from his pocket, does target practice on the fence at the bottom of the garden. He’s getting better: almost 100 per cent accuracy now. As soon as he’s saved up enough he’s going to get an air rifle. He’s chosen the model: seen it in the magazine he borrowed from Pike. He’s looked up on the Internet about the law too. And trespass, and poaching and the Wildlife and Countryside Act. He’s thorough like that. Then he can hunt properly. Rabbits, pheasants, that sort of thing.

  That girl’s still watching him. She’s always there. She’s standing a bit further along the pavement, next to the hedge, trying to see what the noise is: small stones hitting wood at close range. Simon flushes. He puts the catapult away again before his mother gets back. She doesn’t like him to use it with Ellie around.

  He goes back inside to wait for something, anything, to happen. On his table there’s a jumble of school books and old PE kit, untouched. The thought of having to do homework fills him with despair. Perhaps he won’t bother. It’s nearly the end of term, isn’t it? It’s not as if it does any good. He hates school, everything except art and sometimes geography, when it’s about interesting places, like the Skeleton Coast. Or Canada. He likes to read about how people used to live too. Like hunter-gatherers, tribal people, people who knew about the land. But you don’t do that in school.

  Ellie bounces upstairs.

  ‘Hello, Simon. Look what I’ve got —’

  ‘Go away.’

  Her face crumples.

  He knows he’s being mean, but he can’t help it. Something about how joyful she is, how unencumbered, brings out the worst in him.

  In her hand she’s holding four little figures. She lets her hand droop.

  ‘What are they?’

  Immediately she brightens again, oblivious to the sneer in his voice.

  ‘They’re for my doll’s house. A new family. They’re the same as Amy’s. Her mummy got them for me.’

  Nina calls up the stairs. ‘Get your school work done tonight, Si, and then we can have a day out all together tomorrow. I’m cooking supper now.’

  Simon lies on his bed, legs crossed, head resting on his interlaced hands, eyes shut. Ellie’s still chatting away to her miniature family, putting them in the doll’s house, making them do things. She counts them out: Mummy, Daddy, big girl, baby. She’s written him out, then. No room in the doll’s house for a mean older brother.

  It’s half past eight. In the house opposite, Leah sits at the dressing table in her room, peering at herself in the dusty mirror as she strokes black eyeliner along her lids. Her eyes look huge. She pulls down her top slightly to see the white line of flesh which shows her how brown she is now. She wishes there was a place she could sunbathe with nothing on. Then she could be that colour all over. The light is on the boy’s room opposite. She goes and stands at the window. After only a few minutes, the boy comes over to his, as if he knows she is there, as if he’s been pulled by some mysterious, invisible thread. It is this same irresistible magnetism which will pull her true lover to her, Leah believes. She only has to wait. For now, she’s just practising her powers. She lifts her hand and beckons to the boy to come down, outside. She walks downstairs and out to the path to meet him. Now she just has to decide what she’s going to say.

  Did he imagine it? She sort of waved, didn’t she? And made out that she wanted to speak to him. Simon’s heart thuds.

  He must have imagined it. Why would she want to speak to him? He knows his face is red again: part sunburn, part – mostly – embarrassment. He runs his hands through his hair. Finds himself walking downstairs and out into the garden.

  She’s leaning over her gate, her hair falling softly on to her tanned, smooth shoulders. She smiles.

  ‘Come here a minute, you,’ she says in this confusing way. ‘What’s your name?’

  She talks as if he’s a small child. But, then, that’s exactly what he feels like at this precise minute.

  ‘Si-Simon,’ he stammers.

  ‘I thought you should know, Simon, that when the light’s on people can see right into your room.’ She still smiles.

  ‘So?’ He shrugs, as if he doesn’t care. Inside, he’s curling up with something he can’t name.

  ‘So get some curtains, Simon!’

  He turns away, walks back across the road.

  She calls softly after him, ‘Just some friendly advice, that’s all.’

  He’s hot round his neck and up to his ears. Burning.

  ‘Don’t you want to know my name, then? Since we’re neighbours?’

  He hesitates.

  That soft voice at his back, almost a whisper.

  ‘It’s Leah. Leah Sweet.’

  Is she having him on or what? Sweet? Can that be a surname?

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Simon Piper.’

  How does she know that? Simon makes a run for the back door and almost collides with his mother, who is carrying a colander of vegetable peelings out to the
compost heap.

  ‘Whoops! Careful! Where’ve you been? I thought you were upstairs working.’

  He pushes roughly past her, hears her greet Leah. ‘Didn’t realize you two know each other!’

  He runs up the stairs two at a time. Throws himself back on the bed. Turns off the light. His heart’s still pounding.

  His head feels like it will burst.

  Don’t think. Hold your breath. Count. Imagine you’re in a cave. The tide’s rising. Only way out is by swimming underwater into the next cave. There’s a narrow tunnel through rock. No air. Count. Getting better. Over a minute now.

  His pulse begins to slow down. Better. Back in control now. Just count.

  4

  Monday morning; the bus is late. Simon’s missed registration. He signs the late list at the school office, and shoves and pushes his way through the seething corridors along with the other thousand people till he gets to A2.

  Some days he has to steel himself just to survive at school. It’s like shutting down all the hatches one by one, battening down until you’re just a hard shell. Nothing soft or vulnerable can be left showing or it will be mercilessly hunted down and slaughtered by someone. Kid or grown-up. There’s not much difference, it seems. The science teacher is one of the worst. And this is a decent school by most standards.

  It’s different for the girls, you can see. They talk to each other, and go around arm in arm, and make this ridiculous fuss if they’re apart for a lesson; way over the top. It’s not that he wants to do anything like that, of course, but he would at least like to feel safe. Still, he’s got the rabbit to tell Johnny and Pike and Dan about today.

  He joins the end of the Year Nine crush outside the double doors of the two art rooms. He can’t see Johnny or anyone, so he hangs back. Adam Skinner is sticking chewing gum into the back of Rachel Lintell’s long hair. The Year Sevens at the front of their queue into A1 are squashed against the doors. Adam Skinner has turned his attention to a small group of Year Seven boys who are playing catch with some girl’s pencil case. There’s always someone like Adam Skinner in your tutor group, whichever school you go to. Sometimes a lot more than one.

  ‘In a line! No pushing!’ Miss Jarvis arrives and takes her class in. You can still hear her shouting when the door’s shut. She’s leaving at the end of the term. Having a baby.

  The Year Nine queue straightens itself and quietens down for no apparent reason. Mr Davies strides down the corridor and they file into their places in the art room. Almost everyone likes Mr Davies. He doesn’t shout. Doesn’t need to. How? It’s invisible, what he does, but he does something.

  Johnny’s saved Simon a place on the tables near the window. Simon slips into the chair, dumps his bag under the table. He keeps his coat on.

  ‘I got a rabbit at the weekend,’ Simon tells Johnny.

  ‘You never! What with?’

  ‘Catapult. Perfect aim. Middle of the head.’

  It sounds better that way. He doesn’t go into the neck-breaking business.

  ‘What did you do with it?’

  ‘Skinned it, cooked it, ate it.’ Simon grins, triumphant.

  Dan’s leaning forward now. ‘What did you do with the skin?’

  ‘Kept it. I’ll show you later.’

  Mr Davies is giving them that look. They shut up while he explains their task. They’ve been doing Surrealism this term. Salvador Dali. Simon’s favourite is the painting of a horse skeleton. It’s called The Happy Horse. They’ve each worked on four different surreal designs, one of which will be painted full-scale. That’s what they’re doing today. It’s a double lesson.

  Mr Davies holds up some of the designs to show the rest of the class. He doesn’t mention names; that’s another good thing about him. He doesn’t pick on people, doesn’t humiliate. Isn’t sarcastic.

  He holds up Simon’s design of a fish finger on top of an iceberg for the class to discuss. Simon’s good at drawing: an appreciative murmur goes round the art room and Johnny digs him in the ribs.

  Once everyone’s busy with sketching out their pictures it’s easy to drift off. Simon goes back to the field, the dead rabbit, then the cliff, and his secret swim off the rocks. He’s in the sort of dream-state the surrealists talk about; he lets his hand doodle over the paper in front of him; finds himself drawing the images in his mind. Gets quite carried away.

  ‘I thought we’d decided on the iceberg?’ Mr Davies’s voice pierces the shell he’s surrounded himself with for the last half-hour. ‘But never mind: this is good. Very good. Fine draughtsmanship.’

  The rabbit looks real: each hair, the lie of the ears, its terrified eyes. Mr Davies looks at Simon as if to take him in more closely. ‘The child and the savage…’ he mutters under his breath. He moves on to the next table.

  ‘What’s he on about?’ Johnny asks Simon.

  Simon shrugs. ‘No idea,’ he says, although in fact he does. It’s what Dali thought painters should do: suspend the rational part of the mind, let the unconscious inform the painting. The primitive part of you. But it doesn’t do to let on too much. It’s OK to be good at art, as long as you’re crap at other things like maths, or English. Since he can’t spell, he’s OK. And now he can kill rabbits and stuff too.

  It looks real. More real than real,’ Pike says. ‘You could sell that.’

  ‘It’s sick, your drawing,’ Rachel Lintell says as she goes past their table on her way to the sink. ‘Cruel.’

  ‘You’ve got gum in your hair,’ Johnny says innocently, to wind her up. ‘Did you know?’

  She flushes, bites her lip, pulls her long plait round to see the disgusting pink mess clogging the strands. It won’t come out. They laugh. Simon thinks of the knife deep in his bag. You’re not supposed to bring knives to school, but he never goes anywhere without his. He lets himself imagine cutting through the thick pleat of hair. The knife blade is sharpened on a steel. It could cut through hair easy as butter. That slit up the rabbit’s belly: the thin red line and the way the flesh opened out.

  ‘OK, everyone. Time to clear up before the bell. Don’t forget to note down the homework for next lesson, please.’

  There’s a sound like stampeding rhinos from the adjoining art room as the bell rings for the end of the lesson. Through the open door, Simon can see the Year Seven teacher in the corridor, looking as if she’s about to cry. Simon notices the way Mr Davies goes and stands next to her; he puts his hand on her arm.

  ‘Simon? Got a moment at the end of school today?’ Mr Davies asks as he’s shuffling out of the art room. ‘For a very quick word. Nothing to worry about.’

  Simon shrugs. ‘OK.’ He runs to catch up the others who are already disappearing down the corridor.

  ‘Oi! No running!’ a voice shouts above the din. He takes no notice.

  ‘What does Davies want?’ Johnny asks him.

  ‘Don’t know. I’ve got to see him after school.’

  ‘Keener!’ Pike teases. ‘Expect he wants you to go into business with him. Make a fortune.’

  ‘Get off!’

  ‘He makes a mint, you know. As an artist. Got his own studio and everything. He’s probably going to invite you there.’

  Dan joins in the laugh and Simon hangs back, suddenly uncomfortable. He loathes the way you never really know how you stand, not even with your mates. Not when you’re in school. Never know where the next insult’s coming from. He can’t seem to get tough enough not to mind.

  In tutor group that afternoon the topic is ‘Safety Issues in the Holidays’. They have to watch a video produced by the government or someone, which has these stupid teenagers acting out. It’s an adult version of how young people behave, and so obviously phony. The teenagers are riding bikes by a canal, and one falls in and another nearly drowns because he wades in to save the first one even though he can’t swim. The girls just panic on the bank, doing nothing and squealing a lot. It’s supposed to teach them that you shouldn’t try to save your mates when they fall in water. But what k
ind of mate would you be to stand on the side and say you were going to find a large log – maybe – that they could hang on to? Or, that you were running off to phone the fire brigade, so please hang on and don’t drown in the meantime?

  ‘Be serious!’ Mrs Fielding keeps saying. She tries to get them to discuss the issues, which starts everyone off on telling their worst-ever accident stories. They all love that. Adam Skinner tells a wonderful story about his brother playing on the railway line which may well be true, knowing Adam Skinner’s brother, but Mrs Fielding thinks he’s making it up. Then Skinner tells the bit about where his brother’s mate falls off a railway bridge and gets decapitated by an intercity train, and the class goes quiet and a bit twitchy, and the stories change to people they know who’ve died. Simon keeps quiet.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re all so interested in death,’ Mrs Fielding says at the end of tutor time. ‘Too many horror movies, no doubt.’ Luke Butler makes his usual profound comments, like, ‘Well, it’s what life’s all about isn’t it, miss, death?’

  She doesn’t reply, but sums up her main lesson points: ‘So, don’t hang out near water, railway lines, roads, building sites, cliffs, old quarries or mineshafts. Not that many of you will ever move beyond the computer screen in your bedroom. So you’ll be perfectly safe.’ She smiles to soften the dig. She has a personal vendetta against screens.

  At the end of the day, Simon trails back along to the art department.

  Mr Davies is stacking cartridge paper away in the cupboard. He looks up and smiles.

  ‘Thanks for coming. Won’t keep you long. Got a bus to catch?’