by Julia Green
But maybe he and Leah could go swimming again, next time the tide’s right. There’s no harm in that, is there? As long as Dan and Johnny and Pike are away, and no one can find out.
His nerves are on edge now. Everything makes him jump, even the tiniest rustling of grass as a mouse or shrew scurries through. No one’s around for miles, as far as he can see in any direction. The walkers have all stopped for ice creams in the town, or zigzagged inland to one of the farms that do teas.
He walks along the perimeter fence slicing off the tops of thistles with his knife. It’s so sharp it cuts right through the thick stalks with one swipe. The same with nettles, and even heather and gorse. He likes the sound it makes, like a whip. He examines the blade, wipes the green sap off on his T-shirt, runs his finger along the edge. By mistake, he cuts his own skin. He feels nothing for a second, and then as he squeezes the flesh, blood begins to bead along the cut and drip down his hand and he feels the sharp stabbing pain. His hand begins to throb. He imagines Leah bending over his hand, holding it in hers. An image comes of her face, her mouth, her tongue licking the cut clean, sucking his fingers. He gives in and lets the images come, like a film sequence. X-rated.
He hears something, jerks round. Was it footsteps? A dragging sound, moving away. Someone was there, watching him. For how long? The hairs along the back of his neck bristle. It’s as if he’s being stalked. He’s not the hunter, he’s the prey.
He starts the long walk home.
Instead of going straight back, Simon finds himself taking the rutted track down to the shabby farmhouse where Mad Ed lives. He remembers the house. There was a woman – a housekeeper or cleaner or someone, he presumes now – standing in the yard that hot July afternoon when he first got scared by Mad Ed. He asked her the way.
I’ll ask him. Right out. What he’s doing. Following, watching…
Never mind that he hasn’t formed the exact words yet. There is a feeling of inevitability about it. It’s almost a relief to think about confronting Mad Ed. Why pretend any longer that he doesn’t know who it is stalking him, even if he has no idea why?
He slows down as he reaches the farmhouse. What now? There’s no car in the yard this time. No sign of anyone. Just a few chickens scratching around in the dust. No dog barking either. It occurs to him for the first time that it’s odd Mad Ed doesn’t ever have one with him. But a dog would give the game away. He wouldn’t be able to creep around unobserved like he does, would he?
The farmhouse windows have a blank look. There’s a feeling about the place of something missing. Something lonely about it, although the chickens look happy enough, healthy and bright-eyed. They’re not scared of Simon: one comes right up. He kneels down, puts out his hand, and it jumps up on to his arm and then his shoulder. It feels weird, having a great feathery hen perched on his shoulder, warm and smelly. He tries to shake it off but it won’t go. It clings obstinately to him with its scaly feet even when he stands up.
Footsteps.
Simon wheels round.
The hen makes a soft crooning sound in its throat.
Mad Ed’s only a couple of metres away, coming closer. Simon feels the blood rush to his face. He’s been caught out.
But Mad Ed’s no longer the hunter. He’s making a face that might be a sort of smile. ‘She knows you, see.’ Mad Ed nods towards the hen. ‘They’ve a way of knowing, birds have.’
Simon feels the hair on his neck prickling. What’s he on about? He talks rubbish. Pay no attention, he tells himself.
‘Thought I’d see you here sooner or later. Once I’d worked you out. Knew you’d come, eventually.’ Mad Ed’s voice is gravelly, like it was before. The voice of someone who hardly ever speaks. He puts his hand in his pocket and scrabbles around, as if he’s searching for something. He draws out a palmful of bits and pieces of things: nylon twine, nails, a door key, an oyster shell.
Simon winces at the memory of the three shells left on his camping stuff.
Mad Ed unlocks the farmhouse door and shuffles inside. ‘I’ll make the tea.’ His muffled voice just reaches Simon.
It’s extraordinary. It’s as if Mad Ed’s been expecting him. It completely throws him. He’s rooted to the spot, the stupid hen still nestled down on his shoulder. He’s like some ridiculous pantomime version of a pirate – hen instead of parrot. He shakes the hen off and it starts pecking around the door. Then it goes right over the threshold into the kitchen. He can’t help himself looking in after it.
It’s not what he expected. Mad Ed’s kitchen is surprisingly neat and tidy. A row of old-fashioned china cups hang on hooks along a shelf above one of those old white enamel sinks with a wooden draining board. There’s a green and cream painted cupboard. The table is scrubbed wood – not new pine, but something greyer and older, like oak. The four chairs have been tucked in neatly. It’s a room trapped in the past, a 1950s film set.
In the centre of the table lies Mad Ed’s shotgun, a cloth and a small tin next to it. Simon can’t stop staring, even when Mad Ed starts filling up the kettle and turning on the electric cooker.
His eye goes to the window sill, to the line of things Mad Ed must have collected from the beach: pebbles, shells, a piece of blue glass. There’s a row of small skulls too: mouse, bird, squirrel and a piece of stone with the edge of a fossil. One arrowhead flint.
Goosebumps creep over Simon’s skin. It’s all too familiar. Too much like the shelf in his own room. And still he stands there, taking it all in, mesmerized.
On the mantelpiece a photograph in a silver frame is propped against a candlestick. He can just about make out the figures of two young men in desert khaki, leaning against a tank. Mad Ed and his brother? Before he got shot?
‘Keep away, I told you,’ Mad Ed mutters, ‘but you didn’t. How could you? It’s where you belong, and you never meant to leave me behind, did you?’
Mad Ed’s talking crazy stuff. He’s mixing him up with someone else. Simon suddenly understands.
He clears his throat. It feels dry, tight. ‘I’m Simon,’ he says. ‘You’ve seen me with friends from my school, Pike and John and Dan. Pike’s dad knows you.’
Mad Ed turns round and stares at him, blank as anything. Then he crumples a bit, and pulls out a chair and sits down. ‘What do you want?’ he says, his voice a rusty whisper this time.
Simon tries again. ‘I don’t want anything,’ he says simply. ‘I’m sorry. I was just walking back this way…’
It’s not the truth, though, is it? He does want something. He wants to know, to understand what it is that Mad Ed’s up to, following him, tracking him down along the cliffs, watching him with Leah… He wants to know what’s in his strange, crazy mind… and how he got to be like that, and how you stop it happening… and about the war, and what it’s really like, shooting to kill…
But this is a crazy man. A headcase. There’s no way of asking him any of this. Mad Ed’s locked in his own mad mind. How can he possibly have answers for Simon?
Simon glances at the gun, harmless enough on the table, waiting to be cleaned.
‘I’d best be going back now.’ Simon’s voice shakes. He feels slightly sick.
There’s a sudden flapping, squawking sound from a box under the table that Simon hasn’t noticed before. He jumps.
Mad Ed laughs, a surprisingly normal-sounding laugh. The tension in the air shifts slightly. ‘He’s getting better, he is.’
Simon remembers the gull on the harbour wall that time with Pike.
‘Is it a gull?’
‘Kittiwake.’
For a moment Simon and Mad Ed both watch the bird struggling in the box. Mad Ed goes over to it, lifts it out on to the floor. One wing trails.
‘They’ve got no heart,’ Ed says, ‘to do that to an innocent bird. It’s not like they wanted him for food.’
Simon doesn’t ask who ‘they’ are.
The bird is flapping round the kitchen floor now, leaving white splashes of birdshit on the lino.
Mad
Ed looks directly at Simon. His eyes look suddenly darker, sharp. ‘If you are going to take life,’ he says, ‘you have to learn to respect it too. Not killing for killing’s sake.’
Simon feels admonished. I already know that, he wants to say, but his throat’s seized up, his heart beating too fast. You don’t need to tell me. I’m not like them…
‘So, you’ve come back to me,’ Mad Ed mumbles. His eyes have that blank, haunted look again. Simon can’t make out what he’s saying any longer. The blood’s rushing in his ears. He knows he should just run. Now. Before something terrible happens.
‘Tried to protect you… to keep you safe… Danger…’
Odd words and phrases percolate through. Simon closes his eyes. He might be sick any minute.
Two thoughts have hit him like gunshot: first, that when Mad Ed’s looking at him like that, he isn’t seeing Simon at all. He’s seeing his brother, the one in the photograph. The one who died. He’s seeing his past. And second, that what he, Simon, is seeing in Mad Ed is some terrible, distorted image of what he could become himself.
It’s like looking into the future; hearing an echo of a life that could be his. The loner, the wild man, the one on the edge of things. The man with the gun. The hunter and the soldier…
No. No…!
Shut it out. Forget that he’s seen any of this. Forget he came here, that he ever met Mad Ed… Shut it away and never think any of this again…
He starts to run, stumbling and tripping over his own feet, across the yard and back to the path, back to the fields and the way home.
Mad Ed’s voice echoes after him.
‘You stay away from the guns and the killing,’ he calls, ‘and the girl who’s no good…’
Simon puts his hands over his ears as he runs.
21
I’ve got a job at Mart’s house. It’s all falling into place. Perhaps my luck is changing at last. I have to clean the house (kitchen and bathroom, mainly) and the studio, and once I’ve got used to it I might help when people come to buy stuff. It’s only a few hours a week, but that’s not the point. He is so cool and amazing!!!!
Babysat Ellie on Wednesday night. It turned out I needn’t have, cos Simon was there, but Nina said she would still pay me as she’d promised. I didn’t tell her I’d much rather be sitting in her house in any case, never mind the money! We watched a crap Second World War movie that Simon wanted to see and I read Ellie’s story and we ate crisps and salsa dip that Nina left out. Nothing else happened. Simon was in a mood about something.
8 August
Today while I was cleaning the kitchen (his food cupboard is amazing; he has stuff I have never heard of, and the fridge is full of delicious things. I can help myself!). Matt asked me if he could do some sketches of me. It’s for his new project which is this stone figure, really big. I wasn’t a proper model or anything, he just wanted to do quick drawings while I got on with stuff like washing up and sweeping the floor. Next time he might do my head while I’m sitting down. He will pay extra because you have to pay a life model.
I don’t think he pays Nina though. There are drawings of her all round the studio. They are very good and lifelike. Mostly back views but you can tell it’s her. There are other ones which are hidden away, but I found them when I was having a snoop about when he was busy. She has let herself go! They won’t be much help for his sculpture, will they?
If he asks me to take my clothes off, what will I say?????
It is for art I suppose.
Nina has her hair tied up in all the drawings of her head and shoulders.
Nina is almost the same age as my mother! She is much older than Matt Davies.
Simon is still in a mood. In a funny way I am missing him. (What does this mean?)
Leah lifts her hair and twists it and holds it up behind her head. She rummages in a drawer for a hairclip. She turns to one side at the mirror, to admire the way it shows off her neck and shoulders. She can almost hear what Matt would say. Something about shape and line, the pool of shadow against bone.
It makes her look older. She leaves it pinned up.
She checks her stash of money saved from babysitting and the cleaning job. Almost enough for the new clothes. She’s seen this top in the window of a new shop at the top end of town. Black, with a real silk trim, and tiny buttons down the front. She imagines Mart’s fingers unbuttoning them one by one, the feel of silk slipping over her shoulders.
‘Leah?’
It’s Dad. They’ve hardly spoken for days.
She stands at the bedroom door looking down at him through the banisters, holding her breath.
‘I’ve got a place for your mother at the rehab unit at last. We can’t go on like this.’
Leah doesn’t even want to think about it.
‘So I need your help to pack up some of her things. Clothes, nighties, sponge bag, that sort of thing. Has she got a dressing gown?’
Leah shrugs. If he doesn’t know, why should she tell him?
‘By three this afternoon? OK?’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll come back from work, then, and drive her over. You can come too if you want.’
‘No.’
‘Sorry it’s like this. It’s hard for everyone.’
She stays there after he’s slammed out of the front door. Later she’ll go down and help her mother pack. She knows the routine. They’ve been through it all before. It hasn’t worked. But it’s a breathing space. You can’t go on doing nothing for ever. And maybe this time will be different.
Much later, when her father comes back from delivering her mother to the unit, Leah helps him pull back all the curtains, open the windows, let light flood back into the downstairs gloom. She strips the bed and bundles the sheets into the washing machine, vacuums the floor and carries all the empty glasses into the kitchen, stacking them in the sink.
When she goes upstairs her father is standing on the landing, pulling out piles of towels and sheets from the airing cupboard and removing bottle after bottle from the shelves where they’ve been hidden. He tips the contents down the bathroom sink and carries the empties outside in a cardboard box, dumps them next to the dustbin. It looks, Leah thinks, as if they’ve had a huge party. So many bottles! She manages to salvage one full bottle of gin before her father gets to it. It’s a shame to waste it. She and Simon can take it with them to the beach.
Dad’s on the phone to the person called Helen. He keeps saying the name, as if he likes the sound of it. Oh well. It seems more and more unreal to Leah, this life in a non-family. But that’s all right. She’s sixteen, she’s making a new life for herself now. She doesn’t need them any more.
She hears raised voices from over the road. She goes to the window to listen. It’s Nina telling Simon off. Something about some magazine?
‘I just don’t understand you!’ Nina shouts. ‘What is it all about? It’s disgusting! Killing for the sake of it. For pleasure. Barbaric! How can you even think about it?’
She can’t hear what Simon says in his defence, but she hears the door slam. Simon appears. He starts walking down the road.
Leah seizes her opportunity. ‘Simon!’ she calls out from the window. ‘Where are you going? Can I come?’
He hesitates, looks back at her, grim-faced.
Inspiration comes. ‘I’ve got a bottle of gin,’ she calls softly, just loud enough for him to hear. ‘Let’s go to the beach!’
She knows he can’t resist her, even if he wants to. ‘Meet you at the stile in ten minutes?’ she calls.
He nods curtly and walks on.
Leah unpins her hair, drags a comb through it quickly, puts on some lipgloss and sprays perfume on her wrists. She finds a carrier bag for the bottle of gin and takes a towel from the pile on the landing. She clatters downstairs into the kitchen.
‘I’m going out. See you later.’
Her father barely looks up. He’s reading the newspaper at the table. ‘Take your key,’ he says. ‘I’m off later too.
’
His mind is clearly on other things. He doesn’t even ask her where she’s going, or what time she’ll be back. Still, what’s new?
It’s a relief to leave it all behind.
Simon is waiting at the stile. She smiles. He blushes. She knows he’s pleased to see her, even though he can’t tell her. She’d like to hold his hand and tell him everything about her awful family, but she won’t. She decided that a long time ago.
22
Simon tries to blot out the scene at home. Nina calls him obsessive, but it’s her who goes on and on about everything. She doesn’t understand anything. It doesn’t mean he’s evil, wanting an air rifle. It’s nothing to do with the kind of films he watches. Computer games. ‘Macho telly programmes’, or whatever she said. What’s she going on about? His dad would’ve understood. That’s what he should have said. That would have shut her up.
So what will she be like if she finds the actual gun? She’ll go completely nuts. It will be arriving tomorrow, probably. He’ll have to ask Leah if he can hide it at her house, just till Johnny’s back. She’s coming down the lane now. She looks amazing.
‘Hi, Simon. So, where are we going?’ Leah asks brightly.
He shrugs. ‘Anywhere. Where da you want to go?’
‘Our beach? I brought a towel. And this!’ She giggles, shows him the bottle.
Simon blushes at the way she says our. ‘The tide will be too high.’
‘Well, I’m not in a hurry! We can wait! Let’s go there anyway and see.’
‘There’s another cove, much further along,’ Simon says. ‘If you don’t mind walking a long way. What time have you got to be back?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Leah says. ‘You?’
‘I’m already in trouble. It won’t make any difference.’
They climb over the stile into the tunnel of trees.
‘What were you arguing about?’
‘Air rifles.’
