by Julia Green
It gives him enormous pleasure to devour the lot, so that even if Matt Davies does happen to return when Nina gets back from the hospital, there’ll be absolutely nothing left. Serves them right.
How could she? With Mr Davies? And secretly, when I was away, and she thought I wouldn’t find out. Because she knew how much I’d mind.
Once Johnny’s gone home, Simon goes upstairs for a shower and then crashes on his bed. It’s deliciously soft. His head still aches. He can feel a sort of egg on the top. I must have bashed it on the stones at the burial chamber when I was coming out. Mustn’t I? What happened, really? He might find out something about those chambers sometime. How old they are. Who they were for. Go back for another look, with a torch next time. Might ask Leah. Might not.
She’s singing along to the radio over at her house; she must know he can hear. They’ve both got their windows open. He lies there for a while, listening, then he can’t help himself. He goes and stands at the window. She’s already there, waiting for him.
She mouths something at him, but he can’t make out what. She indicates to him to go downstairs, and by the time he’s got to the bottom she’s standing at the open back door.
‘Everyone out? You all alone?’ she asks.
He nods, speechless.
‘Can I come in, then?’
He nods again. Like a bloody puppet.
‘What for?’ he blurts out.
‘Oh, Simon,’ she says in her syrupy voice. ‘To see you, of course. Find out what’s been going on this morning. Like Piccadilly Circus at your house, all the comings and goings!’
Another stupid nod. What’s wrong with him?
‘Shall we go up to your room?’ she asks, her eyes all round and innocent.
‘O-O-OK,’ he splutters. He’s never had a girl in his room before. Apart from Ellie, of course.
His hands feel too big and he trips over his own feet. There’s nowhere proper to sit, so when she plumps herself down on the bed he backs himself up against the table.
She pats the bed next to her. ‘I won’t bite, promise!’
He’s so intent on not touching her that he doesn’t hear anything she says. Then he hears a car engine slowing outside, and he shoots up from the bed.
‘You’ll have to go,’ he says. ‘Quick.’
‘What’s the matter with you? Why are you so jumpy?’
‘Mum’s back from the hospital. Hurry up!’
‘So? I’ll tell Nina I came to see Ellie, if you’re so worried. Where is Ellie anyway?’
‘Sleeping over. Rita’s.’
Leah gets up, tantalizingly slowly, and slouches downstairs. It’s unbearable. Simon stands in his room, head in his hands. He can hear everything, nonetheless.
‘Hi, Nina. I just called to see Ellie, but Simon says she’s not here. How are you? Enjoy your meal last night?’
‘Yes thanks, Leah. Ellie’ll be back later this morning. Will you be free to babysit again sometime soon?’
‘Any time! Just say when. Say hi to Ellie for me. Byee.’
Once she’s gone, Simon cranes down from the top of the stairs. ‘What happened?’ he asks Nina.
‘Let me make coffee and then I’ll tell you. Come down and sit with me, Si.’
He walks slowly downstairs, trying to guess her mood. He watches her pour water into the cafetière. He likes to push the plunger down. If you do it really quickly, it bubbles up and splurges all over the table. But not today. Not such a good idea.
‘I don’t know why Dan was going on like that about his mother,’ she says. ‘She seemed very nice when I took him back just now. Not at all cross.’
‘That’s because you were there, of course,’ Simon says. ‘Anyway, what did the hospital say?’
‘We didn’t have to wait long. There was only one other person. They cleaned him up, and it didn’t look so bad then. There’s always loads of blood with a head wound apparently. Then they glued it together. That’s what they do these days, not stitches. And he has to be a bit careful not to get it wet, and they gave him a tetanus jab, but basically he’s fine. Very lucky. You too.’
He shifts uneasily as she peers at him over her coffee cup. ‘So now tell me what really happened.’
‘I don’t know. Honest.’
Nina sighs.
He stares at the table. ‘We were messing about. I let the catapult go without meaning to, and it was loaded with a small stone, and I think it must have bounced off one of those drystone walls and hit Dan. It could’ve happened to anyone.’
Nina sighs more heavily. ‘The whole story, Simon.’
‘Well, we got a bit spooked. There was this man deliberately scaring us, shooting his gun very early this morning —’
‘What sort of man? What do you mean, shooting?’
‘That mad bloke everyone knows round here. Mad Ed. He’s got a gun.’
‘For rabbits, rats. Not that I approve, of course. He’s not mad, Simon. And it’s not a very nice way of talking about someone either. Calling him that.’
‘It’s what everyone calls him!’
‘Well, I don’t like it. Just call him Ed. He’s a bit strange, maybe, but he’s hardly dangerous!’
‘How do you know? He was doing it on purpose, scaring us. He doesn’t like people on his land and he thinks the war’s still on and we had to fire in self-defence.’
‘You did what? I don’t believe I’m hearing this! Silly stories about the war… Honestly, Simon!’
‘You said you wanted to know!’
‘I did.’
Simon fiddles with the cutlery left lying on the table. The knife spins round beautifully if you set it going just right.
Nina’s going off at some tangent now about people who are a bit different and not branding them with labels like ‘mad’. He half listens to her story about a man with shell shock who lived in her village when she was little and the children made up stories about him and of course none of it was true. ‘He was harmless,’ she says, ‘and very lonely. People used to run away from him.’
She’s gone way off the subject now. The big lecture about weapons and accidents hasn’t happened. He drifts off. He hardly got any sleep last night.
He jolts awake again and catches the tail end of a sentence.’… And you could’ve left me a croissant at least. You’re so selfish sometimes.’
‘Sorry.’ He puts on his little boy voice. ‘Sorry, Mummy!’ It usually makes her laugh. Not today.
‘Wash up the breakfast things, please, and then clear up the camping gear.’
‘We left most of it in the field. I’ll have to go back for it. I’m really tired. Can’t I sleep first?’
‘As long as you don’t forget later. And you can fetch Ellie for me from Rita’s. Since you’ve completely wrecked my morning.’ She pauses on the threshold, on her way out into the garden.
‘I’m sorry if you were a bit taken aback to find Matt here. I hadn’t planned it like that.’
Obviously.
‘It’s just — well, I do like him, but it’s early days, OK? So I don’t want to get all heavy about it. It’s new for me too, having a manfriend… You can cope with that, can’t you? You’re old enough to understand. Now I’m going to do some gardening.’
Simon lies on his bed, trying not to think about what Nina has just said. He leafs through Air Gun Weekly. He skip-reads an article on roost-shooting crows, then scans the swap shop section for bargains. He could get himself an air rifle for less than £200. Where could he keep it, so Nina doesn’t find out? She’ll never agree to him having one, especially now this has happened with the catapult. She always overreacts. Sees the dangers in everything. She doesn’t understand about taking risks and living on the edge a bit. She wants everything too safe. He doesn’t want to live like that. He wishes he were older. And that Dad… But what’s the point in that?
He dozes on the bed. Sun floods in through the open window. He can hear blunt shears tearing long grass as Nina works her way round between the plum trees in the garde
n. She’s got the radio on in the kitchen.
Mum and Matt Davies. Together. In her bed. Doing it. No. Don’t think of it.
He flips through the magazine pages again, examines the millions of advertisements for different weapons. There’s an article about gamekeeping.
He must have been about six or seven. Dad and he were playing a game in the woods. It must have been autumn: the bracken was all red, with black stalks. Trees golden. Leaves falling. He was running, sliding in the mud, his senses alert, looking out for a place to hide so he could jump out on Dad and make him squeal and then Simon would laugh and laugh. That was the game they always played.
He was way ahead. The path forked. Which way? He chose the right fork, and ran on. Suddenly the trees were spaced out more, there was more grey sky and long wet grass underfoot, and everything felt different. Odd. He stopped. Instead of birdsong and the rustling of leaves there was a weird silence. And a smell. Not the normal earthy, damp-leaves smell, but a foul stink.
In front of him stretched a line of barbed-wire fence and a gate, and a tall wooden stand with black fire-beaters stacked against it. He’d seen them before: the ‘In case of Fire’ notices and the beaters for bashing out flames. But next to them was something he’d never seen. A row of dead bird and animal bodies nailed up by their tails and wings. He stared, fascinated and appalled at the same time.
Rain began to patter on the leaves, on the grass, on the wooden board with the dead things hanging there, and on him.
He heard Dad behind him, singing as he squelched along the path. Dad stopped too.
‘What is it?’ Simon asked. ‘What’s it for?’
‘It’s a gamekeeper’s board,’ Dad said. ‘It’s a warning.’
‘Why? Who for?’
‘Well, the gamekeeper has to protect the pheasants — see, over there, behind the wire? And these are vermin. He’s shot them because they are pests. Magpies and crows, and weasels. Or is it a stoat?’
Dad had laughed then. ‘Meanwhile, the gamekeeper is fattening up the pheasants so that rich bastards can shoot them!’
Simon puzzled over it all the way home. He couldn’t get it. Did the other birds look at the dead ones and think, Oh, better keep off, or did they smell death, or what? What was the point of looking after the pheasants so someone else could shoot them? What did rich bastards mean?
None of it made any sense.
Simon wonders what Dad would say about him having an air rifle now. He sort of knows that he’d understand. He wishes he could remember the song Dad was singing, back there in the woods. There weren’t any woods close to where they lived. They must have driven there from the old house. What was Nina doing? Why wasn’t she there too?
He hears voices. Real ones, not just the radio. Someone is talking to Nina. He strains to hear what they’re saying.
Now he recognizes Leah’s voice. ‘I’ll collect her if you want, if he’s still sleeping. Then you can carry on gardening.’
‘Thanks, Leah. That’s thoughtful of you. And Ellie will be pleased. Simon’s so… so grumpy with her these days.’
‘Well, I think she’s cute.’
Nina laughs. ‘You might not if you had to live with her. You haven’t got any sisters or brothers, have you?’
There’s silence. Simon imagines Leah shaking her head. He knows the way her hair will swish sideways, shiny in the sunlight.
‘Was that your new boyfriend who was here?’ Leah asks.
Simon’s ears are on full alert now.
Nina laughs again.
He waits to hear what she’ll say, but Leah speaks again.
‘He’s good-looking, isn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ Nina says, and laughs again.
Simon frowns. Something tight squeezes in his chest. He chucks the magazine on to the floor. He feels for the catapult still stuffed in his pocket, loads it with a scrunched-up ball of paper, and practises shooting. He uses one of Ellie’s toys as a target, a small bear she’s left lying around. He gets it each time. Straight between the ears. He gets back on the bed and shoots from there. He’s pretty accurate; he aims and gets the centre of the window frame, the light-shade, the pile of books on the desk. After a while it gets boring and he just lies on the bed, staring into space.
He remembers the art homework he still hasn’t done. He gets out his sketchbook, starts to draw his knife, just because it’s there in front of him. He shades in the blade, to show the way the light catches it. He draws every detail of the rings of metal round the handle. It looks like crap. It’s his dad’s knife. He’s not giving that to Mr bloody Davies. He screws the paper up and chucks it at the door. Then he lies back on the bed.
He must have slept, because the next thing he knows, Ellie’s bouncing excitedly on the end of his bed, and Leah is standing at the open bedroom door, a half-smile curling her mouth.
‘Hi,’ she says. ‘We came to check you were OK. You’ve been sleeping for ages. Your mum’s gone out. I’m looking after Ellie.’
His headache suddenly comes back with a vengeance. His temples throb, both sides, in addition to the bump on the top of his skull. The light’s too bright. He closes his eyes. How long have they been there watching me? Go away. Get out of my room.
‘We’ll leave you to get up,’ Leah says. ‘Come on, Ellie.’
Simon listens to their voices. Ellie’s showing Leah everything in her room, chattering all the time, and Leah sounds all bright and interested. It’s put on, Simon can tell.
‘Going to get the rest of the camping stuff,’ he grunts at them a short while later on his way out through the garden.
Ellie sticks her head out of the bramble den. ‘Can we come?’
Leah’s watching him. She stretches out her long tanned legs. She’s wearing a really short skirt. In one hand she’s holding a pink plastic teacup.
Simon feels sweat prickling his back. ‘No,’ he tells Ellie. He doesn’t look at Leah’s face. He leaves them to get on with their stupid game in the bramble den.
They left the tarpaulin and two rucksacks in a hollow at the base of a stone hedge, a field boundary, just off the footpath. He’s almost there when he hears voices. Laughter. Instinctively he stops, takes cover at the edge of the wall, waits to see who it is. Why didn’t I get Johnny to come with me? His hand goes to his pocket, but the catapult isn’t there. Neither is his knife. Stupid.
He knows that sneering voice. His heart thuds against his ribs. Surely not here, this far out from the town? But it is. It’s Rick Singleton and a mate, a big bloke, older than Rick, and it seems they’ve found the camping stuff and are now kicking it around, having a laugh. He hears something metal clanking against stone. Fury wells up inside, but fear too, curls round Simon’s belly. There are two of them. They’re bigger than him. But it’s his stuff. His and Dan’s and Johnny’s. He can’t just let them get away with it. The big bloke has wrapped the tarpaulin over his head now, and he’s whooping and flapping about with his arms outstretched like a demented superhero. They think they are such a laugh. Rick Singleton has set up a line of bottles on a rock and is chucking stones. Simon hears the crack of splintering glass. They’ve got their backs to him at the moment. He could creep away unnoticed, coward that he is. But something keeps him rooted to the spot. The way they kick the stuff around. He remembers the seagull with the broken wing; Rick and his mates in a circle around it. He ran away that time, didn’t he? What does that make him?
Blood pounds in his ears. Something rustles in the wall close to his shoulder. A shrew or something, rushing to and fro in the ivy and moss, hunting out insects. There’s that smell of hot earth, roots. Two buzzards circle high above the cliff. He’s rooted to the spot, paralysed. His muscles ache. What do I do?
Someone else is walking across the field. Simon hears the footsteps. His head spins. Surely they’ll have seen him, will drag him out and it’ll be his head against the rock; he can see it, the way he’ll be crouched in a ball, his hands over his face, while each one takes a turn a
t kicking his skull in.
Flap flap. Like a sail, or a kite.
But it’s not the tarpaulin any more: it’s a coat, flapping in the wind that’s blowing strong off the sea, over the cliff and on to the fields. Simon looks up.
Mad Ed! It’s that mad bloke, climbing over the next stile and flapping his way over the field towards Rick Singleton. Simon should have guessed he’d be somewhere around, spooking everyone out with his gun and his blank eyes. Nina wouldn’t listen this morning when he tried to tell her.
Rick and his mate stop, look at each other, shuffle closer. One of them says something: Simon can’t hear what. But he’s not hanging around to see what happens next. Now he’s unfrozen, he’s legging it back across the field, over the stile, back to the lane. All that matters for now is to get back home. Alive.
Ellie and Leah are still sitting in the bramble den, playing houses.
Simon goes into the dark kitchen and stands there, heart still thumping, wondering what to do next.
It feels as if danger is closing in, pressing him in on all sides. Coming closer.
14
21 July
We’re going to meet one evening this week, if Simon’s allowed out after what happened, and we might go back to that swimming place. He says there’s somewhere else he wants to show me, some old burial place he’s found. We were sitting in the bramble den with Ellie, and she was making us pretend cups of tea, with dolly cups and a plastic teapot and rose-petal water. He’s quite sweet with her really. Most of the time. (Though Ellie found her bear in his room with holes in!!!) He looked in a bit of a state after he got back from the fields. But he joined in Ellie’s game. Ahh!
When Nina came back we heard her talking on the phone to her new boyfriend. She was laughing all the time. I guess she’s in love. She doesn’t seem like a mother when she’s like that. I said I’d babysit Ellie so she can go out with him next Wednesday. That’s the day Si breaks up from school. I can’t believe school’s been going on all this time. It seems like another world. The GCSE results will be out in just over one month. Not that I care.
