Hunter's Heart

by Julia Green

  Simon swears under his breath.

  ‘You what? Come again?’ Rick Singleton threatens.

  He’s wearing baggy shorts, T-shirt. Hasn’t been to school, then. Or maybe the posh school’s already broken up for the summer?

  They’re all crouched round a seagull, Simon can see now. A young one, still with its mottled brown plumage, its huge ugly beak squawking for food, too stupid to realize that these boys aren’t going to help it. One of its wings trails broken and useless. Simon starts walking again. But he’s yanked back suddenly as Rick catches the strap on his backpack.

  ‘Where you going?’

  ‘Just walking.’

  ‘Bit early, aren’t you? Not bunking off, are we? What you got in that bag?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Rick yanks it again, as if to pull it off, but Simon anticipates it and holds on tight. Rick catches hold of one trailing sleeve of the school sweatshirt instead and pulls it out, runs off with it, laughing, rolls it into a tight ball and flings it out over the water. The green jumper unravels in its flight through the air, makes a flat splash in the shallow water, joins the other flotsam and jetsam bobbing between the mooring ropes at the edge of the harbour.

  Simon could retrieve it easily, a sodden stinking bundle of cloth. But he doesn’t. He runs. He keeps on running till he’s quite sure there are no footsteps pounding after him. No sign of Rick. He must have rejoined the group clustered round the damaged seagull. Simon hates himself for running like that. But what else could he do?

  That’s twice he’s seen him in less than a week. The thought that Rick Singleton and his new mates might be hanging round town all summer weighs in his guts like stone along with everything else. His heart’s still hammering. He runs on until he’s slipped past the end of the harbour wall and round on to the next bit of beach. The wind hits him. Salt, stinging.

  A small crab scuttles sideways along the ridges of sand left by the retreating tide. Simon watches it for a minute. It hasn’t anywhere to go. He picks it up, his fingers positioned expertly round its shell so the pincers can’t reach him, and carries it to the edge of the water. It flounders for a moment, then starts to bury itself in the wet sand.

  He turns back, climbs up the sloping sea wall on to the road, cuts back home the long way up the hill.

  ‘Si? Phone,’ Nina yells up the stairs.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Johnny, I think. Hurry up. You been sleeping up there or what?’ She passes him the phone. It’s dusted white where her flour-covered hands have been holding it.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Simon? It’s Johnny. Coming out later?’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Meet you usual place, yes? Bring your catapult.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What happened this afternoon? Where did you go?’

  ‘Tell you later. What time?’

  ‘Seven thirty?’

  ‘OK. See you.’

  Simon goes into the kitchen. Nina’s spreading tomato purée on rolled-out pizza dough. She looks up. ‘So you are going out, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What time? So I can tell Leah when to come round.’

  ‘Leah? What!’

  ‘She’s babysitting tonight.’

  ‘Mum! Why did you have to ask her?’

  ‘Well, who else am I supposed to ask? Anyway, Ellie’s thrilled. And Leah’s happy to earn a bit of extra money. Don’t look like that. You did have the option, remember?’

  ‘But, Mum! Her!’

  ‘You don’t have to have anything to do with her. You can be out before she arrives. And as soon as you get back, she can go. I’ll pay her till ten. You’re not to stay out any later than that. OK?’

  ‘So I do have to see her, then, don’t I?’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Simon! Give us a break. Now I’m going to put these pizzas in the oven and then I’ll get changed ready to go out. And don’t you dare go all moody on me now. It’ll spoil my whole evening.’

  Simon slumps in front of the telly. He flicks channels: adverts, a nanosecond of some soap, Robot Wars.

  ‘Get the pizza out, Si,’ Nina calls down the stairs, ‘and serve it out?’

  He burns his hand on the oven tray, swears. Ellie watches him with round eyes. They both eat in silence at the kitchen table.

  Ellie pushes her plate to one side. ‘Finished.’

  Simon reaches out and picks up her remaining slices, puts them on his own plate. Ellie watches.

  ‘What are you staring at?’ Simon asks her.

  ‘You’re not babysitting me. Leah is.’

  ‘Lucky Leah. I don’t think. Anyway, you’ll be in bed.’

  Ellie sticks her tongue out.

  ‘Stop it, you two.’ Framed in the kitchen doorway, Nina looks like someone else. Her hair’s different; she’s got make-up on. She smiles.

  ‘Mummy!’ Ellie gets down from her chair and goes to hug her.

  ‘Careful, Ellie. Your ringers are all tomatoey.’

  ‘You look lovely.’ Ellie strokes Nina’s arm, twists the silver bangle round her wrist. ‘And you smell nice.’

  Simon turns away in disgust. He shoves his chair back so that it scrapes across the tiled floor, and pushes past them into the scullery.

  He picks up his bag from the floor, pulls out the school books and leaves them in a messy heap, collects his catapult from the high shelf.

  ‘Have a good time, then, Si. And take care. Where will you be? The field? Johnny’s house?’

  ‘Field.’

  ‘Back by ten at the absolute latest, Simon. Yes? Before it gets dark.’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’

  It’s way too early. Johnny won’t be there for another half-hour at least, so Simon walks slowly along the lane and across the path to the field. He can get some practice shots in before the others turn up. If they do.

  The catapult makes a thwacking sound. He fires small pebbles at the drystone wall at the end of the field. Some get embedded in the soft soil caught between the herringbone layers of stones. He picks them out. Each of these stones has been chosen and laid by hand, the real hand of someone who lived and worked here. Dead now. This land is full of signs of the dead. There are ancient crosses and the burial mounds of Neolithic people. Standing stones. Ancient paths.

  Footsteps. Simon swings round. Johnny’s crossing the field, an air-rifle bag slung over one shoulder.

  ‘OK?’

  ‘OK. Your dad let you borrow it?’ He points at the air rifle.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where are the others?’

  ‘Busy. So, what happened? Did you bunk off school?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dunno. Just did. Just walked out.’

  ‘No one noticed.’

  ‘Great, thanks. So no one gives a shit.’

  ‘Stress-y! I meant teachers. We covered for you. We’re mates, remember?’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re still mad with us about the holidays.’

  Simon shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter —’ He stops mid-sentence; ahead of them, two rabbits have hopped out of the hedgerow and are grazing the short grass at the edge of the field. Simon takes aim.

  Johnny unzips the air-rifle slip at just the wrong moment and the rabbits scarper. The stone goes wide.

  ‘Sorry,’ Johnny says. ‘My fault.’

  ‘Loser!’ Simon shoves him against the hedge and Johnny swears.

  ‘Bloody nettles.’

  Simon feels better. At least Johnny came out. He’s OK, Johnny is.

  ‘The other day,’ Simon says, ‘there was this bloke. Not here, another field, further along. With a gun. A really strange bloke, a sort of tramp, but not old.’

  ‘Mad Ed,’ Johnny says, nodding. ‘Everyone knows him. He’s weird as hell. You want to stay away from him. He’s been in trouble with the police. He’s a sad loner. Head case.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  ‘Something happened. I
raq or somewhere. The first Gulf War, in the nineties. His brother got killed. There’s stories. His dad was a nutter too, but that was to do with the Second World War. Shell shock or nerve gas or something. He’s dead now too.’

  ‘He shouldn’t be allowed a gun licence,’ Simon says.

  ‘He works on a farm, doesn’t he?’ Johnny replies, as if that explains everything.

  They start collecting dead branches and armfuls of bracken to make a sort of camouflaged hide. They lean the branches against the trunk of an oak tree, and weave the bracken in and out and then pile it on all over. It looks good. Crouched inside, they take potshots at a wizened hawthorn tree. There’s a knot in the bark halfway up, perfect for target practice. Simon gets it six times out of seven with the catapult. Johnny’s not so good with the air rifle. But he gets better with practice. He lets Simon have a go.

  It’s beginning to get dark. The birds start flying home to roost. The sky over to the edge of the land pales to lilac. There’s a distant chug chug of a fishing trawler coming round the bay into the harbour.

  A magpie alights on a branch of their hawthorn tree.

  ‘Mine,’ Johnny whispers.

  The rifle shot echoes out over the darkening field and seems to hang in the cool air. A few feathers float down from the branch.

  Simon blinks. It’s that easy, killing something.

  Johnny runs forward to find the still-warm body. Simon watches him searching through the patch of thistles and nettles at the foot of the tree. ‘Where did it fall?’ he yells back to Simon. ‘Did you see? I definitely hit it.’

  From his distant position, Simon scans the tree. The dead bird is somehow plastered to the branch, a mass of black and white feathers stuck there.

  ‘Weird, that,’ Johnny says when Simon points it out. ‘How come it just stays there?’

  The killing seems less fun without the body.

  Johnny pulls out a bottle of cider from his backpack. They drink it sitting in the lee of the drystone wall and it’s well after dark before they stagger back home across the fields bathed in silver moonlight.

  7

  Leah lies on her bed, carefully positioned so that the moonlight shines directly on to the open diary she’s been writing for the last half-hour. Her parents have long since gone to bed, but she doesn’t want to put the light on. The silvery light through the open window is so much more romantic. The bedroom, with its plain walls and cheap furniture, is softened and smoothed by the deep shadows. She reads back what she’s written so far.

  Just got back from the Pipers’ place. Read Ellie (sweet!) loads of stories. Her room has shelves full of books! And this really cute night light, with a moon and stars that glow. When she was asleep (took ages) had a good look round. Went in Simon’s room. Weird, looking at this house from over there. Nothing much to see in S’s room. Boys’ stuff like old models and junk. Air-gun magazines. A horrible smelly old sheep skull and lots of smaller ones. Birds or mice? And lots of drawings of dead things. Mrs P’s was more interesting. Photo of a man by her bed looks like Simon: maybe his dad? Lots of rings and bracelets and earrings in the chest of drawers, but no letters. The room looks tidy and a bit bare, but inside the drawers it is a real mess!!! Tried on some of her shoes but they were too small.

  Mrs P says call her ‘Nina’. Nina came back before Simon, who was supposed to be in by ten but wasn’t. Where was he? I think she is too soft on him. A man drove Nina home, but I didn’t see whether they kissed or not. She said she was over the limit but she didn’t seem pissed to me. She gave me extra on account of being later than we said. I have made almost twenty quid and all for just having a nice time snooping about and reading a few stories!!!

  While she was there she’d pretended it was her house, and she’d planned how she would decorate it. Simply, with just a few colours, like terracotta in the living room, and a sort of lilacy lavender for the main bedroom. White sheets and white duvet cover, and fine white gauzy curtains to blow in the breeze.

  Leah sits up; she can hear a woman’s voice shouting. She creeps to the open window to look out. In the house opposite, Simon’s window is also open. Nina’s raised voice echoes through the still night air. She’s yelling something at Simon. He must have just got home. Nina sounds furious, although Leah can’t hear the actual words. She glances at the clock. Twenty past eleven. Where has he been all this time?

  He seems quite nice really. Pity he’s so young. He’s good-looking in a shy sort of way. Tongue-tied. He needs drawing out of himself.

  Leah considers making him her summer project. She’s so bored. It will fill in the time while she waits for the real man to come into her life. Yes, a project will be fun. Look out, Simon Piper!!!

  Briefly, just before she goes to sleep, she wonders about the man who drove Nina home. She’s seen him somewhere before, not just around the town like you do, but somewhere else. The telly? On a poster?

  It’s as if she has some special power, as if by thinking about him she has conjured him up. Leah’s shopping for her mother, who’s ‘ill’ again. The town is crowded; it’s Saturday morning. Local people doing ordinary shopping for food rub shoulders with holidaymakers looking for something to do on a damp morning. It starts to drizzle more heavily.

  Leah wants to get out of the rain, but she hasn’t enough money to spare for the cafe. And then, ahead of her in the street, she sees him. At least, she’s almost certain it’s him: a man with dark hair, short-sleeved linen shirt, blue shorts, leather boots. He pushes the door open into the bookshop on the high street and Leah just follows.

  She has never been in here before. There are two rooms, full of bookcases. Her shoes squeak on the wooden floorboards. There are comfortable chairs and a patterned rug in one corner, as if it’s someone’s sitting room. A bowl of sweetpeas stands next to the till. A carousel of postcards, art cards, to one side. Leah absorbs it all as if it’s in a magazine.

  The young woman behind the till looks up and smiles a greeting. ‘Hello, Matt.’

  She smiles at Leah too.

  Matt. That’s his name, then. It’s definitely him, the man who brought Nina home last night. She follows him through the arch into the second room, to shelves labelled ‘Art and Architecture’.

  This room is smaller. Standing so close (she’s at ‘Fiction by Author A-H’), Leah can detect a faint delicious smell, not aftershave or soap, something more unusual, like earth. Clay, perhaps, or charcoal. Something arty.

  Leah picks up a novel at random and pretends to read the blurb on the back.

  His dark hair curls over his collar at the back. Not trendily short, but still attractive. His hands, holding a large hardback book with a shiny black cover, are tanned. Strong, capable hands, with thin fingers. Artist’s hands, sensitive to the shape of things, used to carving out figures from stone or clay or wood. Leah feels a sudden tingle run right down her spine. Her heart pounds. She tips her head slightly, so that a curtain of hair sweeps down over one side of her face and covers up the spreading flush.

  She moves further away, takes the book over to one of the chairs near the window. Rain beats against the glass. Self-consciously she opens the book and reads the beginning. Words swim in front of her eyes, dance, blur. Nothing makes sense. She’s aware of the man really close, flipping pages of the book in his hands. Every so often he seems to glance in her direction.

  She gets up abruptly, pushes her book back into its space on the shelf and rushes out of the shop into the wet street. The woman at the till says something as she leaves, but she doesn’t stop to listen.

  Rain trickles down her neck, beads her eyelashes. The cool air feels delicious. She glances back through the bookshop window as she passes and there he is, watching her. She goes hot again. It’s a new feeling, a mix of confusion, excitement and curiosity. What does it mean?

  She forgets the shopping and makes her way instead down the high street and through the alley into the lower street and then down the stone steps on to the road that runs along next t
o the main beach.

  Leah finds an empty bench in one of the shelters. A seagull lands right by her, squawks for food. Above the sea, the clouds are thinning. The rain will stop soon. Already there are more figures down on the beach. A dog races round and round after gulls, and two small children chase after the dog.

  The seagull has perched itself on one arm of the bench. It watches her with its beady eye. Leah flaps her arms at it. ‘Shoo!’

  It flaps back, moves off for a moment and then returns. There are notices all along the seafront admonishing tourists: ‘Do NOT feed the seagulls’. People tell stories about the things they do. ‘They’ll take your sandwich right out of your hand.’ ‘A mob of seagulls pecked a baby and killed it.’ Leah watches the gull back. Its beak is huge when you see it close up. Hooked, vicious.

  She could do with a drink. Something to eat. The kiosks along the front sell ice creams, chips, greasy burgers that make your stomach turn. She could get something from the town, but she can’t be bothered. What will Matt be doing now? Bought that flashy art book, perhaps, and then gone to a cafe for an expresso.

  Simon scuffs along the town beach. His jeans are soaked; the legs act like a sort of wick, sucking up water from the puddles he makes no effort to avoid. He’s seen her, the girl. Leah. In one of the shelters. He keeps his head down, but she’s already spotted him. She’s waving. She does that flick thing with her hair.

  ‘Hi, Simon!’

  He grunts. Keeps walking, head down.

  She slides off the bench and picks her way over the wet sand towards him. Heat prickles along his neck. What does she want now?

  ‘All right?’ Leah asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were late last night. Where were you?’

  Simon can’t trust his voice to come out right. It might be a squeak, it might be unnaturally deep. Or both at the same time. So he says nothing.

  ‘Where is there to go round here?’ Leah persists.

  Simon shrugs.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Just out.’

  ‘Where are you going now?’

  Why does she want to know? What’s she playing at? Simon can’t imagine why she’s speaking to him like this. She’s so close up he can smell her hair: a clean, sweet smell. Apples. He’s expecting her to laugh at him at any minute.