Clay Read online

  “Aye. Just imagine.”

  We tried to imagine; then Geordie said,

  “The story is that Stephen’s mam and dad were trying to get a bit more civilized, living in a proper house like proper people do and having proper jobs and that, but…”

  “They couldn’t do it.”

  “No.”

  “Just imagine. If there’s all that in your family…”

  “Like your granda…”

  “And your mother…”

  “And your only bliddy aunty…”

  We lurched about a bit and grunted like we we’d both gone daft. Then we burst out laughing.

  “Bliddy Hell,” I said. “He’s doomed! Doomed!”

  We were at the cave. We both had knives. We were sharpening sticks. We were going to set them up at the quarry entrance, stick them in the mud, pointing upwards, like a trap.

  “My dad says he just needs some mates,” I said.

  “Does he?”

  “Aye. And my mother.”

  I whipped the knife across the stick. I pressed the point to my palm. Needle sharp. I imagined Mouldy stepping on it. I imagined it going straight through the sole of his foot. I thought of blood poisoning, thought of Mouldy up in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and the doctor saying to Mouldy’s mother, “There’s no way we can save it, Mrs. Mould. The foot has to come off.” I thought of Mouldy hobbling around Pelaw for the rest of his life. I bent the point over, blunted it, but I didn’t let Geordie see.

  “She said we should call on him,” I said.

  “She’s joking.”

  “She said put yourself in his shoes.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said nowt. I said we would if we had the time. She said we had all the time in the world.”

  “Huh.”

  Geordie picked another stick up.

  “We should set up nooses as well,” he said. “Hang them down from them hawthorns so they run straight into them and get strangled. And we should definitely set trip wires to send them into the pond.”

  We had a laugh, thinking about them hanging in the trees and flopping in the pond.

  Then I leaned back on the stone. It was all stupid. Mouldy was the only really evil one. His mates were ordinary kids just like us. They were playing, just like us, they were scared and excited, just like us. The only reason we battled with them was because they came from Pelaw and we came from Felling. We pretended we hated them because they were Proddies and they pretended they hated us because we were Catholics but that was really nothing to do with it. It was just the Felling-Pelaw thing. It had gone on forever, even in my dad’s day. He used to laugh when he heard about it, still going on, and when my mam tried to get worried he told her it was nowt, it was just a game. But Mouldy. He was different. When he’d had his hands around my throat that day, his own mates’d had to help Geordie pull him off. When he’d kicked me in the face he hadn’t held back. When he’d snarled in my face it had seemed full of real hatred, real evil. “Catholic bastard,” he’d snarled. “Felling Catholic bastard.” And I’d carried the bruises and the fright for days.

  “Do you think he’s scary?” said Geordie.

  “Mouldy?”

  “Of course Mouldy’s scary. But I mean Stephen Rose. Do you think he’s scary?”

  “Dunno. He’s just a kid, just like us.”

  “Just like us? Bliddy Hell, man. Howling in the shed, carrying lumps of muck in the bliddy graveyard…”

  “Clay.”

  “Whatever. Living with Crazy Mary. Mother crackers, father dead, granddad wild.”

  “Suppose he might be scary if you put it like that.”

  “Might be? He might be bliddy terrifying, man.”

  He laughed.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he said.

  “Dunno,” I said.

  “Well, you should be,” he said. “A lad like Stephen Rose might be just what we need.”

  He stabbed his stick hard into the ground.

  “Howay,” he said. “Let’s go and rattle Crazy’s door.”

  five

  Crazy’s door was green and the paint was peeling off. The knocker was rusty and it squealed when Geordie lifted it. He had to shove it down to make it knock. There was no answer. I breathed a sigh of relief and turned around to leave.

  “Howay,” I said. “They must be out.”

  But Geordie knocked again, and then again.

  “Geordie, man,” I said.

  Then there were footsteps at the other side of the door and Crazy peeped out through the skinny letter box.

  “Who’s there?” she said.

  “We’ve come to see Stephen Rose,” said Geordie.

  He leaned close to the door. He pulled me close as well.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s just us, Missus—”

  “Miss Doonan,” I whispered to him.

  “Just us, Miss Doonan. You’ve seen us on the altar. We thought Stephen might want to come out for a bit.”

  Her eyes rolled. She blinked. The door creaked open a few inches and her waxy face appeared.

  “On the altar?” she said.

  “Aye,” I said.

  “So you’re good boys?” she said.

  “Aye,” said Geordie.

  “You know our mams and dads, Miss Doonan,” I said.

  Her eyes were still for a moment while she regarded me.

  “I can see your mother’s face in you,” she said to me.

  She opened the door a bit wider and stuck her skinny arm out. She pulled back the flowery sleeve with her other hand and pointed to a place under the elbow.

  “Your mother touched me there once,” she said. “She said, ‘There now, Mary. There now. Don’t trouble yourself.’ I can feel her fingers now.”

  She stroked her skin at the memory.

  “Is he in?” said Geordie.

  She narrowed her eyes. She stared past us into the empty sky. She said, “And I can hear her voice. ‘There now, Mary.’ She said that. Like a mother would.”

  She reached out and touched my cheek and I flinched.

  “Did you know that a boy has been sent to me?” she said.

  “Aye,” said Geordie. “We’ve come to see him, missus.”

  “To see him?”

  “Aye, missus.”

  She crossed herself.

  “You have been drawn to this place,” she said.

  “We could be his mates,” said Geordie.

  She opened the door wider.

  “Mebbe he has need of you,” she said.

  Geordie nudged me with his elbow and stepped inside.

  “There’s holy water there,” she said. “Cross yourselves and come inside.”

  We dipped our fingers into the bowl on the table inside the door. She watched us make the sign of the cross on ourselves. We rolled our eyes at each other and followed her through the narrow hall. There were dusty plaster angels flying on the wall. There was a great big ancient picture of Jesus with the crown of thorns stabbing his skull and his chest opened up to show his massive sacred heart. There was the scent of piss and the air was cold and the floor was just bare boards.

  “He was to have been a priest,” she said.

  “We know,” I said.

  “Right from the very start he had a holy heart,” she said.

  Geordie trembled as he held his laughter in.

  “This is my great-great-great-aunt Annie,” she said.

  She pointed to the wall, to an ancient photo of a tiny blurry woman smoking a pipe and standing outside a tiny filthy cottage.

  “That’s Connemara,” she said. “Annie spent every day of her life on that blessed bog.”

  “Aye?” snorted Geordie.

  “Aye.” She turned her eyes towards the ceiling. “And she’s in Heaven now if anybody is.”

  In the kitchen there was a battered aluminium teapot and two mugs on a table. There was bread and a lump of margarine and a pot of jam with a knife stuck in. A prayer
book was open. A statue of Our Lady was silhouetted against the back window. Outside in the little garden the grass and weeds were knee-high, with a channel worn through towards the door of the black shed out there.

  “Is he in?” I said.

  “No,” she said. “He’s out. He’s at his sacred work.”

  She opened the door. A huge crow croaked, then flapped away into another garden. There was a baby crying its eyes out somewhere.

  “Wait here,” she said.

  She went to the shed. Geordie and I snorted.

  “Bliddy Hell,” I said. “Let’s get out before we’re trapped.”

  We snorted again.

  She opened the shed door. A shaft of sunlight was shining down inside. We saw Stephen in there, turning to Crazy Mary, then peering out at us. Then Crazy came back out. She raised her hands towards us.

  “Aye!” she called. “Aye! He says come to him!”

  We didn’t move.

  “Come!” she called.

  “Hell’s teeth,” I whispered.

  “Howay, man,” said Geordie.

  six

  He was sitting at a bench with a knife in his hand. He was carving a piece of wood, a snapped branch. It had an arm, a leg, the start of a face. There were shavings on his arms and on the bench and floor. Dust poured through the shaft of light that fell through a little window in the pitched roof. The corners of the shed were deep in shadow.

  “I’m doing this for the priest,” he said.

  “Father O’Mahoney,” I said.

  “Aye. Him. He says the devil makes work for idle hands so I got to keep busy. Look,” he said, and he pointed to another bench. There were more figures on it, carved out of curved and twisted wood so they seemed to be staggering or leaning or stunted. “They’re no good,” he said. “And neither’s that.” He pointed at a crude clay figure. Its body was crumbling away. An arm and a leg had fallen off. He poked it and another leg fell off.

  “See?” he said. “Clay’s the stuff I need. But there’s nowt decent here.”

  He reached out and quickly touched my cheek. I flinched.

  “This is what clay should turn out like,” he said. “Like living flesh. Like a living body. But look.”

  He punched the figure and it burst into fragments and dust.

  “See?” he said.

  He lifted one of the wooden figures and snapped it fast and easy between his hands.

  “See?” he said.

  He turned and stared at Crazy.

  “See?” he said to her. “I told you, Aunty Mary. There’s nowt that’s no good.”

  She walked back to the house and watched us through the kitchen window. He kicked the shed door shut.

  “She’s crackers,” he said. “They’re the apostles. He wants them for the school or something. They’re crap.”

  He stabbed the knife into the bench. He blew up into the falling dust and it danced and sparkled in the shaft of light all around him.

  “That’s what we’re made of,” he said. “Dust. That’s why clay’s best. Wood’s been alive already so it’s dead. And how can you get something that’s dead to turn into something that’s alive again?”

  “Dunno,” I said.

  “You can’t. You got to start from the start again, from something that’s never been nowt.”

  Geordie and I looked at each other.

  “Like God did,” said Stephen.

  He watched me. I tried to flick away the dust he’d left on my cheek.

  “You got a match?” he said.

  Geordie took a box out of his pocket and rattled it. Stephen took it. He kicked the door open again. He got a handful of shavings and put them on the ground outside. He struck a match and lit the shavings and put the apostles on top. Geordie and I stayed close together and we watched the fire burn. Stephen crouched down beside it and warmed his hands at the flames.

  “See,” he said. “You do it just like that.”

  “Bliddy Hell,” murmured Geordie.

  “Fire hardens clay,” said Stephen. “But wood…huh!”

  Crazy watched us and chewed her nails.

  Stephen shadowed his face from the sun with his hand. He peered at us.

  “What you after, anyway?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Nowt,” I said.

  He grinned at me.

  “Well, that’s easy enough,” he said. He pretended to throw something gently to me. “Here, Davie, have some nowt.” I couldn’t keep myself from cupping my hands to catch it. He smiled, and I clicked my tongue at my stupidity.

  Below us, the apostles spat and hissed and twisted as they burned.

  “We know where there’s some clay for you,” said Geordie. “Loads of it.”

  “Is that right?” said Stephen.

  “Aye,” I said.

  “We can take you to it,” said Geordie.

  “Take me, then,” said Stephen.

  He smiled at me.

  “Take me,” he said. “I’ll come with you.”

  So we walked away from the blazing apostles and back into Crazy Mary’s house. Crazy dithered around Stephen in the kitchen. She tried to put her arm around him, but he just told her, “Let me be. I’ve got things to do with me friends.”

  We went back through the hallway. I dipped my hand into the holy water and crossed myself again. Then we took Stephen out onto Watermill Lane and down to Braddock’s garden and we led him to the clay pond, where he pushed the spawn aside and reached down deep into the milky water and lifted out a dripping handful of pale clay.

  “Brilliant!” he breathed.

  He stood up and held it towards my face. It oozed and splashed down onto the ground between us.

  “This is it,” he said. “This is the real stuff.”

  He moved close to me.

  “Say hello to it,” he said. He laughed. “Just think what we could make with this.”

  seven

  Saturday evening, the same week. I went to St. Patrick’s. I knelt in the dark confessional. I could see Father O’Mahoney’s face through the grille. I wondered if I should try to disguise my voice, but I knew, like always, it would be no good. Of course he’d know who I was. And did it matter? There was nothing unusual about me. There was nothing unusual about my sins. Back in those days, the things I did wrong were tiny, insignificant. It was like I was just making stuff up.

  I started with the words I’d been taught when I was a little kid.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It is two weeks since my last confession.”

  “Yes, my son?” he said.

  He sighed and waited.

  It was always best to get the worst out first.

  “I drank some altar wine, Father.”

  “Did you now? This is both theft and blasphemy.”

  “Yes, Father. I understand. Sorry, Father.”

  “It is not to me that you must apologize in here.”

  “No, Father.”

  “And will you do it again?”

  “No, Father. And I stole some cigarettes from my dad.”

  “And smoked them?”

  “Yes, Father. And the cigarettes of somebody else’s dad.”

  “Not only is that theft, but they will do you dreadful harm.”

  “Yes, Father. I know that, Father. And I have coveted other people’s goods. Their money, Father. And I have called people cruel names. And…”

  “Have you now? What kind of names?”

  “Fishface, Father.”

  “Fishface?”

  I heard his little snort of laughter.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “That is terrible. What else?”

  “I have laughed at people who are in distress.”

  “Which is a lack of charity and which will cause pain.”

  “Yes, Father. It will.”

  “And will you change your ways, my son?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Anything else now?”

  I gritted my t
eeth. I thought of Geordie’s older sister, Noreen. She was sixteen, in the sixth form. She was gorgeous. He waited. He sighed.

  “Anything else now?” he repeated. “Remember that God sees everything.”

  “I have had impure thoughts, Father.”

  “Have you now?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “And did you act on these thoughts?”

  “What, Father? Oh, no, Father.”

  “That’s grand. Anything else now?”

  “No, Father.”

  “And do you feel sorrow for your sins?”

  I paused and pondered. I thought for an instant of the bitter beguiling taste of the cigarettes. I thought of Noreen lying in Geordie’s back garden last summer.

  “Do you?” said the priest again.

  “Yes, Father. Definitely, Father.”

  I saw his hand moving across his face as he absolved me.

  “Your sins are forgiven,” he said. “Say five Hail Marys and one Our Father and resolve that you will be good.”

  “Yes, Father. I will, Father.”

  “And keep away from the altar wine.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “And your dad’s cigarettes.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Now go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”

  I stepped back out of the confessional into the half-lit church. I knelt at the altar rail and said my penance. The murmur of the next penitent echoed gently around the walls.

  “And deliver us from evil,” I said at last, and I hurried out into the evening. I felt as light as air. Geordie was already done. He was waiting outside. He sparked up a couple of Players and we breathed long plumes of smoke into the air.

  “It’s great feeling holy, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Aye,” I said. I held up my hands to the sky. “Glory be!”

  We laughed and walked fast and kept knocking into each other and started wrestling in the street with our cigarettes stuck in our mouths. Some bloke came out of the Half Way House and nearly walked straight into us.

  “Daft kids,” he said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Bugger off,” said Geordie.

  “Aye,” I said. “Bugger off, Fishface.”

  And we ran and he chased us but he couldn’t keep up. We ran across the square; then we stopped and I yelled and yelled.

  “Fishface! Fishface! Ahahahahaha!”

  I clapped my hand across my mouth.