by Julia Green
‘You didn’t come.’
‘I’m sorry, Si. I came over to explain, but you weren’t there. It just got too late. I’ve got to work this evening. Mart’s coming round to collect me at seven. I bumped into him in town.’ She smiles. It’s supposed to make him feel better. It doesn’t.
‘What sort of work?’ he asks.
‘Modelling. For the new sculpture? You know?’
He does.
He turns abruptly away. He feels sick.
‘Simon?’
He starts walking back.
‘Don’t be like that.’
He doesn’t reply.
‘Don’t go all moody on me. I said I was sorry about the swim. I’ll come tomorrow?’
He swings round. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m busy.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Stuff.’ He bangs the gate shut behind him.
‘What, playing soldiers? Firing guns? Grow up, Simon.’
The words echo round in his head.
Grow up. Grow up. Grow up.
Nina looks up from her book. ‘What did she want?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Si?’ Nina’s voice is hesitant. ‘With Leah — just be a bit careful. It’s nice that you’re friends… she’s on her own too much… but she’s a bit of a mixed-up kid… problems —’
Simon stomps upstairs before she’s even finished her warning speech. He shuts the door firmly, pulls the bed in front of it so no one can get in.
He turns on the computer, selects a game, turns up the volume so he won’t be able to hear when Matt Davies’s car pulls up to collect Leah at seven. ‘Stealth Squad Combat’. ‘War Zone II’. ‘Death Ray’.
When everyone’s gone to bed, he gets the air rifle out again, strokes it. He holds it up to his shoulder, aims it at the window and imagines what it would be like, blasting Matt Davies’s stupid stone sculpture into a million fragments. Into dust.
25
It’s late again when he wakes up. Each day of the holidays it seems to get later. He never used to sleep in like this, but he feels exhausted, weighed down by the stone in his guts.
Ellie has already gone out with her friend. Nina’s getting ready to go downtown.
‘Will you be all right?’
‘Of course,’ he snaps.
‘Only a week or so and Johnny’ll be back, won’t he? And then Dan. I’m sorry we haven’t had a holiday, Si. You understand why, don’t you? What with moving and everything.’
‘Yes. Stop going on about it.’
‘We ought to talk, Simon. About what happened the other night. About me and Matt. Your behaviour —’
He groans out loud. He didn’t mean to, it just came out spontaneously.
Nina does her tight-lipped face all the time she’s getting ready and slams the door when she goes.
Once she’s safely out of the way, he gets the air rifle out from under the bed again. She’ll be gone for ages; she’s meeting her friend Tessa for lunch. Tessa used to live next door to them. She used to babysit Simon when he was little. She helped Nina through the really dark days after Dad died. She’s nice. Maybe she’ll talk some sense into her about Mr Davies.
He reads the instruction book again. Then he makes some more cardboard targets.
This time, instead of the usual concentric circles with a bullseye, he draws animal shapes on the card: a wild boar, a deer, a rabbit with a stupid expression. Feeling suddenly inspired, he draws Matt Davies’s head and torso on one of the pieces of card.
He takes the targets out into the garden and arranges them against the wall at the back, out of sight of the road. He takes potshots. It makes a hell of a noise. Perhaps it’s not such a good idea. He doesn’t want the neighbours complaining to Nina and her finding out. He collects up the targets. Mr Davies has a hole in his mouth and another in the centre of his forehead. Simon’s getting better at aiming the shot.
It’s incredibly hot again. He lies in the shade under the plum tree and dozes. He tries not to think about Leah. There’s no sign of her at her house. The afternoon drags. He watches a load of crap on television. When Nina gets back she makes them both iced lemonade with real lemons. She’s obviously trying to be nice. Tessa must have talked some sense into her.
The air feels sticky, thick. Flies buzz round him: stupid, irritating ones that he can’t seem to swat. He read somewhere that flies have so many lenses in their eyes they can see you coming a mile off.
‘Could be the South of France,’ Nina says for the millionth time from her deckchair under the tree. ‘Tessa’s going on holiday there in September. With her new boyfriend. Manfriend. Lover. Whatever you call him. There isn’t a right word, is there, once you’re over a certain age!’
As if he was the slightest bit interested.
‘We’ll eat later, yes? When it’s cooled down a bit?’
‘I’m not hungry.’
Just after seven, a car draws up. Simon watches from his bedroom window. It’s Matt Davies’s car, but he doesn’t come to their house to see Nina. Leah comes out of her house, all dolled up in some black low-cut thing, and jeans that barely cover her bum. Her hair’s tied up differently.
Simon’s limbs feel weak. He watches the way she smiles at Mr Davies, the way he holds the door open for her. She gets in the front seat next to him… He drives off.
Inside him there’s a hard knot pulling tighter.
He’s about to go downstairs when he sees his mother standing at the front-room window, very still. He feels guilty, as if he’s witnessed something private, something he shouldn’t. He creeps quietly back into his room and closes the door.
From a prone position on his bed he blasts Matt Davies and Leah Sweet with automatic rifle fire, like in all the best movies. He plays with the scenario in his mind, trying different versions. A car chase and then a shoot-up. A car chase and then a dramatic cliff-top plummet on to rocks below, a fireball. Miraculously, Leah walks out alive.
In most of the scenes, everyone dies.
Another car draws up: he goes to look. But it’s just Amy’s mum bringing Ellie home. When he goes downstairs to find something to eat he finds Nina and Ellie snuggled up in front of the telly watching some tedious house-makeover programme. Ellie’s not interested, obviously, but it’s a good excuse to cuddle up with Nina and stay up later than usual. He knows; he used to do it himself.
The house has absorbed heat from the sun all day. Even though the windows are wide open, there’s no air. Moths beat their soft wings against the lampshades, fatally drawn by the light. They can’t help themselves, it’s what they’re programmed for. To follow the light of the moon. They don’t know it’s just a forty-watt light bulb that will scorch their wings and burn them up if they get too close.
Simon doesn’t tell anyone he’s going out. They’re so absorbed in the television, nestled up close and cosy, it’s easy to smuggle the air rifle downstairs and out to the shed. He gets himself sorted: the air-rifle slip has a strap so he can wear it on his back and keep his hands free for the bike, though it will be harder to balance. He feels it there, heavy and protective, like a shield. Like a crab’s shell. He pushes the bike through the garden, out into the road and gets on.
No one sees him go.
26
He hasn’t really planned it out. He’s not thinking at all. He’s just got to see with his own eyes. Got to do something, to stop the muddle going round and round in his head.
It takes ages, cycling up the hill and all the way along by the moor. He’s forgotten his lights, but it doesn’t really matter because there are no cars and there’s a golden moon rising, so bright it casts shadows.
He leaves the bike half hidden in the hedge at the top of the track leading down to the house and the studio. He takes the air rifle with him, still slung on his back and banging against his legs as he walks. The air feels damp: dew, or a sea mist moving in over the cliff, the way it does sometimes after a really hot day. He walks d
own the middle of the track on the scrap of scruffy grass and weeds which deaden his footsteps. No one must know he’s here.
If he lived way out like this he’d have a dog. But it’s just as well Matt Davies doesn’t have one. It would be barking by now. They have amazing hearing, hundreds of times better than humans.
The lights are on in the house, the windows wide open. He can hear music: jazz or blues. Grown-up music.
Simon shivers. His scalp prickles. His limbs feel heavy. He creeps forward more slowly now, ducks down as he reaches the garden wall. He stays low, edging along and round the end wall that encloses the garden, so that he ends up off the track, on the rough land that runs between the garden and the cliff. No-man’s-land. His senses are on full alert.
At this end of the garden the wall is much higher. He can stand up without being seen from the house. There’s a ditch along the bottom of the wall, which must fill with water in the winter. The grass is longer here.
The air stinks of rotting grass clippings. The compost heap must be just the other side of the wall, behind the greenhouse. He detects another, ranker smell: fox. Every so often other smells waft over the wall: honeysuckle, sweet peas. And the chalky, dusty smell of the studio.
He’s holding his breath.
Clink clink. What’s that? The chinking, chipping sound of metal against stone. A light’s on in the studio. Matt Davies is working, then. Simon can’t hear any voices, just the music from the house. Perhaps Leah has already gone home.
Simon’s heart is beating fast, like a bird’s when you hold it in your hand. They rescued a sparrow once from a cat, when Simon was little. His dad showed him; you could actually see the heart beating through its feathers, it was that terrified. He put out his hand and felt the tiny, speeding flutter. They put the bird in a box and gave it food and water, but it died anyway.
Simon clambers up the rough wall, feeling for footholds in the stone, just until he can see over the top. Matt Davies is silhouetted against the studio light, working just outside on the covered area, chipping away at the stone figure. The cloth has been removed, but it’s too far away for Simon to make out the details of the face, if it has one.
There, further into the garden, is Leah, sitting silently on a chair, turned to one side. Her hair is loose now, twisted roughly over one shoulder to leave the other bare. And in the blend of artificial light from the studio and the moonlight, Simon can see perfectly well that down to the waist she is naked. She sits so still she might be made of marble or stone herself. He watches her, entranced. How extraordinarily beautiful she is. How perfect her body, its curves and hollows.
A low voice says something. Leah laughs and shifts slightly. The spell is broken. She is flesh and blood after all.
Simon watches on, hidden in the deep shadow at the edge of the garden, heart fluttering like the injured bird.
Matt puts down his chisel. He stretches, as if he’s tired after concentrating for a long time. He turns, picks something up, chucks it towards Leah. It’s her black top. Simon watches her slowly button it up. Leah stands up and yawns, says something, moves towards the open kitchen door. Matt clears away his tools, turns off the studio light and follows her into the house.
Simon is shaking all over. He sits back on the damp grass.
How can she? Matt Davies is more than twice her age.
I mean nothing to her.
That night meant nothing. I’m just a kid. That’s what she said, didn’t she? ‘Grow up, Simon!’
And what about Nina? How can Leah be so mean? She’s just used her to get what she wants. Stealing her boyfriend… The word makes him wince.
As for Mr Davies: what does he think he’s playing at? I used to like him. As a teacher, at least. Respected him. Thought him interesting, fair, a good bloke.
Simon feels hollow with disappointment. And each single disappointment is tucked inside another. His mates. Nina. Mr Davies. Leah. Like that Russian doll Ellie has which you undo to find another inside, and then another, down to the tiny one in the middle of it all. In the middle of him it feels as if there’s just a cold hollow space.
This is how it happens, he thinks. This is how you stop yourself feeling so much. You go cold, colder still with each small disappointment, each betrayal, until you find you’ve frozen over at the core of you, and you stop feeling anything any more.
He watched this film on television not long ago, about what they do to harden you up for the army. A systematic, brutal stripping-away of your individuality, of everything that’s warm, and feeling, and human. One humiliation after another. He knew even while he was watching it, fascinated, that it was crap. And yet even when his mother had stormed out of the room in disgust he’d watched on, unable to tear himself away, knowing that this was what happened for real. There was a truth he was witnessing. And it isn’t just in the army. It’s everywhere. Making a man of you. That ‘women and children first’ crap which only means that men’s lives matter less. That’s what you have to believe if you’re going to send armies of them into wars.
Blinding rage at the injustice of it all begins to unwind from where it’s been coiled in the pit of his belly for ages now. Rage and bitterness and hate, unravelling like a spring.
It’s easier then to unzip the air-rifle slip, take out the gun, load it. He smooths his hand along the wooden stock. Cool, comforting: it’s on his side, a friend.
There’s only the moonlight now to illuminate the garden. He stands up, rests the barrel on top of the stone wall, lines up the sights to bring the stone figure into focus, the girl-woman turning into fish.
He’s got total concentration. That adrenalin hit. His mind’s going blank.
The first shot he fires almost deafens him. He feels the whoosh of air, hears a muffled crack as the pellet hits stone. A trickle of dust. The pellet seems merely to have lodged itself in the stone. He loads again, fires, hits the hand. And again. He must be pitting the stone with holes, but nothing’s breaking. There’s no shattering into pieces like he’d hoped. The catapult would have done a better job than this.
Leah and Matt Davies must have the music turned up loud enough to drown out the shots. Or they’re busy with something else… with each other. The door’s still firmly shut.
He loads again, aims, shoots. The head this time.
Shoosh shoosh. The sound pushes through the blankness in his head.
He tenses up, listens. Something else is moving out there in the mist and the dark. Brushing through the wet grass. A fox, perhaps, going about its own business.
He’d never shoot a fox. Something about the way they are: the sharp, intelligent eyes, their wildness. Hunters and scavengers. Survivors.
He freezes. Listens. He can’t see anything, it’s too dark and the sea mist has moved in closer over the field. It’s much thicker now. He keeps one hand on the air rifle. The hair along his neck bristles like a hunted animal’s.
He loads the air rifle again. Fires.
Light suddenly floods the garden as the back door swings open. Matt Davies swears loudly, stumbles towards the sculpture. ‘What the—?’
‘What’s going on? What’s that noise?’ Leah’s voice.
But it’s as if something’s jammed in Simon’s brain. He can’t process the new information. His hand keeps loading, lining up, firing. He can’t seem to see that it’s not the stone figure that he’s firing at any more, but the real thing, a person.
Leah shrieks out with pain. Matt Davies yells. There’s the smash of splintering glass on stone.
The new sounds shatter something in Simon’s brain. They drag him back from wherever he went, from that dark terrifying place where there are no thoughts and no feelings.
The garden is full of Leah’s screams. Simon shrinks back in horror. What have I done?
He crumples down into the ditch at the base of the wall, shaking in sudden terror. He must have hit her. Matt Davies is swearing, calling out into the darkness. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Who is it
out there? I’m calling the police –’
How bad is it?
He can’t see a thing. He can hear Matt’s footsteps on the path, the crunch of glass. I must have hit the greenhouse too.
‘Who is it out there?’
Any minute now and Mr Davies will look over the wall and find him, flush him out from his hiding place, and Simon’s world will blow apart. He cowers, waiting, trembling all over, stifling sobs that rise and stick in his throat until he’s almost retching into the ditch.
Leah’s moaning. ‘My leg. Matt, my leg!’
All that noise means nobody is dead. Nobody dead. He repeats it like a mantra.
Matt’s footsteps retreat from the wall. The voices go quieter. Leah is crying softly, Matt seems to be checking her out, calming her down. ‘Where? Show me. You’ll be OK. It’s OK. Let’s get you inside – I must see who’s out there – and get my phone –’
‘What if they shoot again? You’ll be killed! Don’t leave me by myself!’ Leah’s sobbing more quietly, but she’s obviously terrified. Who does she imagine is out there?
Should he come out, own up? Explain it was all a stupid mistake, he never meant any of it…
But he can’t. Can’t move. Can hardly breathe.
He hears the brushing noise again, the footsteps in wet grass. They come closer and closer, until they stop right behind the place where he’s half hidden in the long grass of the ditch. It’s not a fox going about its own business. It’s a man. And now he’s so close, Simon could touch his foot. The battered leather of an old army boot. Next to the boot is the barrel of a shotgun, pointing downwards.
Of course.
Now it seems almost inevitable. Stupid not to have thought of it before.
Mad Ed.
Mad Ed’s tall enough for Mr Davies to be able to see him over the garden wall, even in the dark. Simon holds his breath, heart thudding. The barrel of the shotgun is horribly close to his head.
Matt Davies’s voice rings out over the garden, clear and deadly calm. ‘So it’s you. Shooting into my garden, hell-bent on ruining my work. And nearly killing a young woman while you’re about it.’
