Secret Heart Page 8

She laughed.

  “Kids, eh? Dreams and games and heads that turn little gardens into whole new worlds. And what about your mam and dad, Corinna?”

  “Mum's in Russia. Dad…Well, nobody knows about my dad.”

  “Ah, well, that's the way for many these days. No brothers, no sisters?”

  “No brothers, no sisters.”

  “But a tent full of friends.”

  “Yes. And a new friend. Joe Maloney.”

  “That's right. Here, Corinna. You seen his pictures?”

  She pointed to Joe's pictures on the walls. Faded paper, dried out and curled. Faded paints. Pictures from the days he used to crawl away from her through the weeds, pictures from when he came running back from outside the village with tales of visions and wonders. Clumsy crayon pictures of creatures with wings and horns.

  “They're good, eh?” said his mum.

  “Brilliant,” said Corinna.

  She touched Joe's hand.

  “They're brilliant,” she said.

  Joe shrugged.

  “From l—”

  “From long ago. They're brilliant.”

  Joe's mum looked at her watch.

  “Got to go soon,” she said. “Be selling booze in half an hour. So what's the plan for the rest of the day? You going to turn into a trapeze artist, Joe Maloney?” She smiled at his painted face. “Or are they putting you in a cage?”

  “Tiger tamer.” He laughed.

  “Starting at the top, eh? I thought you told me there was no tigers.”

  “Oh, there's d-dozens.”

  “Well, no putting your head in their mouths, at least for the first day.”

  “OK, Mum.”

  She stroked his head.

  “You look after yourself over there. And no getting in anybody's way.”

  “OK, Mum.” He licked his lips. “Mum…”

  “Yes, love?”

  “Could I st-stay all night?”

  “So this is what you're plotting, Joe Maloney? This is why you brought your new pal?”

  Joe shrugged.

  “We've been showing him it all,” said Corinna. “The trapeze and the dogs and everything. It'd be great. Everybody likes him.”

  Mum pondered.

  “We're all right, you know,” said Corinna. “We're not what some folk say.”

  “Oh, don't worry. I know that, pet. Not like some round here.”

  She touched Joe's hair.

  “It's what you want, eh?”

  Joe nodded. She looked through the window toward the wall of the tent, the blue slope against the blue sky.

  “I can see it's your kind of thing.” She smiled. “Should've heard some of the notions he had as a bairn. And still has.” She sighed and pondered and assessed Corinna. “You're a good lass,” she said. “Listen, Joseph Maloney. You listen to Corinna. OK?”

  “OK.”

  She picked up her keys from the table.

  “Mum,” said Joe. “Eh?”

  He wanted to tell her about the tiger, about Hackenschmidt and Nanty Solo. He wanted to tell her that he'd already changed and that by the time she saw him again he'd have changed again. But he stammered and sighed and just looked at her.

  She smiled, so gentle. “Come here,” she said. She held him tight beside the kitchen table. “What a great boy I've brought into this world.”

  Joe laughed softly.

  “You be careful,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “And I want you reporting back first thing in the morning, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Don't want you getting eaten by them tigers, do we?”

  “No,” said Joe. “No, Mum.”

  Eleven

  Joe and Corinna stood by the tent and looked across the motorway toward the Black Bone Crags. Inside, the afternoon performance was already going on. By now new posters had been hung on the tent and plastered on the billboards: LAST DAY, LAST DAY, LAST DAY. Already the audience was laughing at Wilfred and his dogs. The sun had passed its center, and was heading slowly down toward the western edge of the earth again. Joe imagined Stanny and Joff out there, invisible beings in the great landscape that swept away from Helmouth. Tonight a tiny spark of flame, a tiny wisp of smoke, would mark their place out there. Moths would be drawn to it, and greater creatures, dark shadows blooming from the dark of night. He shuddered. He saw Joff's thumb stroke the hatchet blade, saw the tiny bulbs of blood rising on the skin. He raised his eyes toward the sky above the crags.

  “You… s-see them?”

  He stretched his arm out, stretched his index finger.

  “See what, Joe?”

  “They fly.”

  He moved his finger, following their flight. Tiny things, so far away. Tiny things that even his mother had never admitted seeing.

  “Birds?” said Corinna. “Eagles or something?”

  Joe slowly shook his head and pointed and watched.

  “Not birds?” she said.

  They spiraled upward from the crags.

  “What are they, Joe?”

  Joe shrugged. One day he'd seen Bleak Winters with binoculars in the yard at Hangar's High. A seventh grader jumped beside him, pointed insistently toward the sky. “Please, sir. Please, sir. Look properly. They're there! They're really there!” Bleak laughed. He lowered the binoculars and grinned. Crows, buzzards, eagles, nothing, empty air. He snorted, cuffed the boy's shoulder. “Silly boy. Dreamer.”

  Corinna leaned against Joe, pressed her head close to his, as if to see through his eyes.

  “I see them, but…”

  “You s-see them?”

  They had flown all through his infancy, beating their wings against the distant blue, beating their wings through his dreams. As a baby in his stroller, as Mum pushed him by the Blood Pond or alongside the Lostleg Railway, he used to raise his podgy finger. “What d'you see?” she used to murmur, crouching and looking into his excited yearning eyes. “What do you see out there? Ah, if only you had the words to tell me, Joe.”

  “You see them?” he said again to his new friend.

  “Yes, but… Not birds,” said Corinna. “What are they, Joe?”

  Joe gripped her hand, stared, stammered, shook his head. He didn't know what they were, just knew that they existed there, at the furthest highest fringes of his mind, that they flew between the edge of earth and the edge of sky. He shivered with the sudden joy of them, the sudden joy he'd known ever since his infancy every time they showed themselves to him. He tilted his head upward, closed his eyes, and knew the extra joy of standing there with another who saw them too.

  “Cor-inna,” he whispered. “Corinna. You s-see.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And h-hear?”

  He tilted his head to the side, caught the weird whisperings and murmurings, like sweet noises from creatures so close, so close.

  “Hear?” she said.

  And she too tilted her head as Joe did. She looked into his eyes, leaned close to him, tried to hear with his ears.

  “Noises,” she whispered.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes. Like… like animals. But not like animals. Like…”

  “Y—”

  “Birds?”

  “Yes. Sk-skylarks.”

  She gasped and her eyes suddenly widened, and Joe knew that the larks screamed inside her as they did in him, that they raged inside her heart, that they raised her spirit from the battered earth of Helmouth.

  “Cor-inna,” he said. “Corinna!”

  Then came a great roar, a howl of hate and anguish.

  “Hackenschmidt,” said Corinna. “They're putting him in the cage already. Come on, I have to be quick.”

  Twelve

  Joe sat on a stool inside the entrance to the performers' tunnel. Corinna sat by him tying on new span-gled slippers.

  Charley Caruso came. He gazed into Joe's tiger's face and breathed,

  “Tomasso! Tomasso!”

  Joe shook his head and Charley rais
ed his hands in apology and sorrow.

  Then Wilfred, with a tiny dog in his arms. “You're Joe, aren't you?” he said, in his sweet shy voice.

  Joe nodded.

  “Brave boy,” said Wilfred. “Beautiful brave boy.”

  Then he hugged Corinna.

  “The last day,” he said. “What will come to us afterwards?”

  She shrugged and sighed.

  “We have each other,” said Wilfred. “Maybe we'll find a little world for funny folk like us and we'll picnic there together the rest of our lives.”

  He smiled and kissed the little dog.

  “Oh, it's a cruel world we live in, Nellie, a cruel cruel world.”

  Further back, Hackenschmidt sat on the floor of his cage in silence.

  Inside the ring, a clown dressed in a yellow Stetson pretended to ride Little Fatty like a wild horse. Another poured buckets of water into his trousers, then threw a bucket of shredded paper into the crowd.

  The sparse crowd lounged on the benches and was bored.

  Older kids from the neighborhood flexed their muscles and slapped and punched each other.

  “Get the wild man on!” they yelled. “Bring the bloody beast out!”

  There were others who'd come for the fight, silent men who stared into the ring and dreamed the moves they'd make to catch out Hackenschmidt and make a thousand pounds.

  After the clowns, Corinna caught her breath, stood on tiptoe, then skipped past Joe into the ring. She climbed toward the summit. She danced on ropes and swings. She stretched her arms out wide and crossed the high wire to a drumroll from below. She held out her arms like the wings of a bird. She smiled at Joe. She waved.

  “Gerroff!” they yelled. “Bring the wild man on!”

  She dived into the sighing net to a scatter of applause and hurried back to Joe.

  “You were br—” he said.

  “I wasn't. And even if I was, they wouldn't know.”

  She glared into the tent. The crowd yelled and chanted for Hackenschmidt.

  “Don't want to see this,” she said. “Let's go out, Joe.”

  She reached into the cage as Hackenschmidt was wheeled past them. He took her hand and reached out for Joe's.

  “Not long till dusk,” he said. “Run about. Be children. Enjoy yourselves.”

  Corinna touched his face tenderly. She kissed his hand.

  “Don't worry,” he told her.

  “Oh, Hackenschmidt. Let them be careful with you.”

  He nodded sadly, dipped his fingers into a bowl of bloody liquid and striped it on his face. As Joe and Corinna left him, he was already howling; the crowd was baying for his blood.

  Thirteen

  Sky was darkening. The sun a massive orange ball. Orange wisps of clouds above the crags. Shadows lengthening on the Golden Hills, darkness deepening in the Silver Forest. They moved quickly, past the posters:

  HACKENSCHMIDT'S CIRCUS.

  THE FINAL TOUR.

  YOUR FINAL CHANCE.

  NEVER TO BE SEEN AGAIN.

  LAST DAY, LAST DAY, LAST DAY,

  LAST DAY

  They passed the billboards: Hackenschmidt in his astounding youth; savage animals in a pretty English glade. She took his hand and led him between the desolate caravans. They passed Nanty Solo's place and saw her there, inside the window, sitting up in her bed. She turned her sightless eyes and smiled as they passed by.

  “Where do we go?” asked Corinna.

  Joe stared.

  “You're the one that knows this place, Joe.”

  Joe laughed. He gripped her hand and pulled her forward. Their feet quickened on the slope. They stumbled on the tussocky grass, fell headlong over stones and fallen walls, tumbled into potholes left by ancient cellars. They laughed at each other, picked themselves up and ran again. Joe tried to talk, tried to name these places he knew so well, but his voice in its excitement leaped into wordless gabbles and whoops. He took her down through the Blessed Chapel, where he knelt with her by the broken stones. Joe breathed,

  “Sp-spirits of the ear-earth and air, pro-protect my mum.”

  Corinna knelt beside him.

  “S-say the words,” said Joe.

  “Spirits of the earth and air…”

  “That's right,” said Joe.

  “Look after Hackenschmidt and Joe Maloney and me tonight.”

  She bobbed her head urgently a few times.

  “Now this,” he said.

  He showed her how to spit on her hands and wipe them slowly across the name of God. He showed her how to pick dirt and sprinkle it on her tongue, how to lick the moisture of moss.

  He snapped a button from his shirt and dropped it through the narrow slot between the stones.

  Howls of anger echoed from the tent.

  Corinna bobbed her head and bobbed her head and begged protection. Then she, too, snapped off a button and dropped it through the slot.

  They stood again and ran again, down Adder Lane, across the Ratty Paddocks, past the Blood Pond, which deepened in its redness as the sun went down. The motorway grumbled and flashed. Above the distant Black Bone Crags, the creatures flapped again. He led her to the Hag's Kitchen, fed her clover and mushrooms and thistle nuts, and he danced for her, free as never before in his satin and his slippers and the stripes of tiger on his face. And Corinna laughed and danced with him and howled a noise to drown the howls that still caught up with them, even at this distance from the tent.

  Then they lay on the turf in silence, and there was silence all around. The sun's last fiery edge peeped above the crags, then was gone. She was a shadow at his side, here in the wasteland. He turned his head to her.

  “It's tr-true,” he said. “I knew you from l—”

  “Long ago.”

  They trembled and sighed together as the first stars began to show themselves.

  “We must go back,” whispered Corinna at last.

  They began to retrace their steps uphill. They were dazed, stunned, stupefied.

  From far behind them came the roar, the high-pitched yell of fear, anger, pain. The scream of an animal. It echoed across the slopes, across the motor-way, across the ruined fringes of Helmouth. It echoed into their hearts and beyond their hearts.

  They stopped, stared across toward the Golden Hills.

  “Cruel cruel world,” whispered Corinna.

  Joe groaned. He saw sharpened steel, bulbs of blood, streams of blood. He felt steel on skin, on flesh, on bone. He heard harsh laughter. The deep dark caverns inside him began to open.

  Joe and Corinna walked uphill again. The stars above intensified. The first lights of Helmouth began to sparkle, like a sky upon the earth. They walked in silence toward the blue tent, two slender creatures, twins.

  Fourteen

  There were small fires being lit around the tent, in the spaces between the caravans. The scent of burning wood, of meat held on forks close to the crackling flames. Faces glowed like lanterns. They turned to Joe and Corinna as they passed. Murmured greetings and blessings accompanied them. Somewhere children sang songs passed down from early days: laments for lost loves, lullabies, songs to pacify the fairies and ghosts that inhabit the night. From the neighborhood came a noise of celebration: mocking cries and chants, yells of triumph. Joe's heart trembled in its secret place. He looked across the wasteland to the bright red sign, BOOZE BIN, and saw his mum in there wrapping cans and bottles. Felt the urge to run to her, to hold her again, but didn't run. Kept walking with Corinna at his side.

  A simple notice hung across the entrance to the tent:

  FINISHED. NO MORE.

  Corinna held the flap aside. She took deep breaths.

  “Come back in,” she said.

  Candles burned, as they must have in the first days. They were sparsely scattered about the benches. The clowns climbed among the benches, lighting more in distant areas of dark. High above, the galaxy softly glowed. The canvas was dead still and blue as dusk. Hackenschmidt lay at the center of the ring. Wilfred an
d Charley Caruso knelt at his side. They had bowls of water and cloths that they cleaned and soothed him with. Nanty Solo sat cross-legged at their side, whispering, murmuring, singing.

  Corinna clicked her tongue and sighed.

  “Come on,” she said, tugging Joe forward. “See what they've done, these people you live with?”

  She glared into his eyes.

  “He never harmed a soul, and look what they've bloody done to him!”

  “Leave him alone,” whispered Hackenschmidt. He smiled through his pain. “It is what they were supposed to do, after all.”

  He winced and groaned. There were cuts and bruises all across his face. The savage marks of boot soles and fists. A ring of bitter red around his throat.

  “They'd have killed him,” said Wilfred. “We had to drag them off. Had to say if they killed him there'd be no cash. Swine.”

  Nanty muttered strings of words:

  “The last day, on the last of all days…”

  Hackenschmidt reached out to Joe.

  “Was easy for them in the end, boy. Easy to beat Hackenschmidt. Just wait for the day he says he's had enough, then get kicking.”

  “Seven of them in the end,” said Wilfred. “Others at the fringes waiting to jump in. And the crowd baying and laughing. ‘Go for it!’ Even while they were going out, already fighting over how to split the thousand quid. Bloody swine.”

  Charley put his arm around Joe's shoulder.

  “Ah, Tomasso,” he whispered. “What are we come to, my Tomasso?”

  Hackenschmidt licked the blood that trickled from his lips.

  He smiled.

  “Help me up, Joe.”

  He stretched out his great hand. Joe took it, felt the great weight of Hackenschmidt as he raised himself painfully from the floor.

  “Good lad,” whispered Hackenschmidt. “Aren't we lucky to have found a boy like you in a place like this?”

  “It was meant to be,” said Corinna.

  “Yes,” said Hackenschmidt. “Not luck. It was always meant to be.”

  They all sat together on the sawdust floor beneath the twinkling candles, and they leaned close to Nanty Solo as she began to speak.

  Fifteen

  “In the deepest of the deep, in the darkest of the dark,” she said, “there lived a tiger. Ah, it was a thing of tale and rumor. An impossible thing of stripes and cruel cold eyes and great curved teeth and claws and a tongue that could lick flesh and skin from bone. It was longer than the length of a man and higher than the height of a boy. Such a creature, a creature of the foulest terror and the finest beauty, could surely not exist. It padded only through the tales brought back into this world by ancient travelers. It lived alongside their dragons, their sea monsters and unicorns. It prowled only in our dreams, only in the hidden corners of our minds. It roared deep inside our secret hearts. We did not expect to see this thing, even though we had come to love it, even though we were terrified by it. Paltry souls, we could not imagine the power of the earth and the air and the seas and the sun to bring such a creature into being.”