Clay (17 page)

six

Clay’s remnants still lie there in our garden. Dad can’t bring himself to dig him in. Slowly, slowly, he is being washed into the sandy border, and earth returns to earth. The sycamore seeds and the hawthorn berries and ash keys have hatched and a little forest of saplings grows from him. Now the rose rises from his heart, the tiny conker tree seedling cracks open his skull. Time goes by. The seasons turn.

There’s still no sign of Stephen Rose. Sometimes I think of him hiding out, practicing his arts in Plessey Woods, or in Kielder Forest or the Cheviots, or in some distant empty wild place that has no name. I can’t believe that he’s gone forever, that he won’t return. I watch for reports of maiming and murder. A man is stabbed in North Shields. A girl is half strangled in Whitley Bay. A teenager falls to his death on Marsden cliffs. There’s no reference to Stephen Rose or a boy like Stephen Rose or to a monster, but I keep on watching, waiting, and at times I’m filled with dread.

Here in Felling, the memory of him is fading. There are whispers that he must be dead, of course, that he must have been abducted, that he’ll be discovered in a shallow grave somewhere. When I find myself wishing that those things are true, I have to curb my thoughts.

Whatever happens, Crazy Mary still loves him and will always love him. A few weeks after Stephen went away, I walked through Felling to her door. It was a brilliant cloudless day. She took me in and made me tea and jam and bread. We sat on chairs at her back door and the sun poured down on us. She spoke so shyly, so sadly.

“The house is empty now,” she whispered.

I murmured something stupid about things getting better.

“The whole world is filled with nowt,” she said.

Her voice got even lower. Her hands trembled.

“I’m forgetting how to pray, son.”

I had the locket with me. I took it out and showed it to her.

“I didn’t know what to do with this,” I said. “I thought of you.”

I passed it to her. I showed her how to open it. She fiddled at the catch with her scrawny fingers. She gasped as it clicked open.

“Oh, altar boy!” she said.

She dropped to her knees. She lifted them out, the stained cloth fragments, the dusty Sellotape. She held them up high. She closed her eyes and put the cloth and Sellotape onto her tongue and swallowed them. She clenched her hands tight and bobbed back and forward. Then she opened her eyes, knelt up, and gazed into the sky.

“Oh, yes!” she said. “Oh, look!”

I looked where she looked.

“Heaven has opened!” she said.

She tugged me to my knees.

“Do you see?” she gasped. “Do you see them, son?”

I knelt there with Crazy Mary. She put her arm around me. She held me close. I looked with her into the sky.

“Look!” she said. “See how the sky is filled with angels!”

Did she really see these things? Was this a holy woman? Was she some kind of saint entranced by visions here in Felling, in a little back garden on Watermill Lane? Or was she nothing, just Crazy Mary being crazy?

“Do you see, son? There and there and there and there!”

Whatever she was, she saw something that I couldn’t share. I saw her trembling pointing finger. I saw rooftops, branches, twigtips, leaves. I saw the silhouettes of passing birds. And then the dazzling blue void, the gaping emptiness that stretched forever and forever.

“Yes,” I told her. “Yes, I see.”

And I lowered my head, and closed my eyes, and gazed into the shifting shadows and the darkness of my mind.

“God’s good!” she gasped. “He will return! He will come home to us again.”

Ever since, her eyes have shone with hope.

This is the first time I’ve told the tale. I’ve tried to speak it, like Maria said—to speak it from the start and to keep on speaking it until everything is said, but each time I start, the craziness in it just brings me to a halt. So now I’ve written it down, all of it. I don’t care if there’s craziness in it. I’ve learned that crazy things might be the truest things of all. You don’t believe me? Doesn’t matter. Tell yourself it’s just a story, nothing more.

about the author

David Almond grew up in a large family in northeastern England and says, “The people and the place have given me lots of my stories.” He has worked as a postman, a brush salesman, an editor, and a teacher. His first novel for children,
Skellig,
was a Michael L. Printz Honor Book and an ALA Notable Book and appeared on many best book of the year lists. His second novel,
Kit’s Wilderness,
won the Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults. His most recent novel,
The Fire-Eaters,
won the
Boston Globe–Horn Book
Award. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. David Almond lives in England with his partner and their daughter.

questions for discussion

1. The book begins, “He arrived in Felling on a bright and icy February morning. Not so long ago, but it was a different age.” What do you think Davie means by “a different age”? Is it just the period in which the book takes place, or is it also a state of mind?

2. On Part One: One, Davie chides Geordie for stealing the altar wine: “You’ll burn in Hell, Geordie Craggs.” Geordie disagrees: “You go to Hell for proper sins. Like nicking a million quid.” “Or killing somebody,” Davie adds. Do you agree with Geordie that only “proper sins” are punished? Do you think Davie still agrees with him by the end of the book?

3. On Part One: Eight, Geordie chides Davie, “You’re too innocent, Davie. That’s your problem. You think everything’s nice and everybody’s nice. You’re naive, man…. One of these days, somebody’ll start taking advantage of you.” Do you agree with Geordie’s assessment? Do you believe this is the only reason Stephen selects Davie to help him?

4. On Part Two: Two, Davie has a nightmare in which Stephen is shaping him out of clay. Reread this section, and consider it in the light of the rest of the story. Do you think that Davie is only dreaming here after all? If not, what do you think is happening?

5. Do you believe that Davie is a reliable narrator? Does he actually see the fantastical things he claims to see while helping Stephen? Is there any other explanation? Use examples from the text to support your argument.

6. What do you think is the truth about Stephen’s parents? Is it the story he tells Davie on Part Three: Five through Part Three: Six? Or is it the story he tells Davie on Part Three: Twenty-three?

7. On the night of Clay’s creation, Davie prays, “Let me believe in nowt…. Let God be gone. Let the soul be nowt but anillusion…. Let nowt matter” (Part Three: One). Why do you think Davie wishes for this? Do you think this prayer has permanent effects on him?

8. On Part Three: Twelve, Prat tells his class, “Our passion to create goes hand in hand with our passion to destroy.” How do you think the story of Clay’s creation illustrates this paradox?

9. What is Stephen? Is he a misunderstood boy, or something darker and more dangerous? What moments in the story make you believe this? Which option do you think is more frightening?

10. At the end of the novel, on Part Four: Six, Crazy Mary has a vision of angels. When she asks whether Davie can see them, he considers:

Whatever she was, she saw something that I couldn’t share. I saw her trembling pointing finger. I saw rooftops, branches, twigtips, leaves. I saw the silhouettes of passing birds. And then the dazzling blue void, the gaping emptiness that stretched forever and ever.

“Yes,” I told her. “Yes, I see.”

And I lowered my head, and closed my eyes, and gazed into the shifting shadows and the darkness of my mind.

What do you think Davie is feeling here? What has he lost? Has he been permanently changed by his experience with Stephen?

—in his own words—

a conversation with

DAVID ALMOND

a conversation with david almond

Q. What made you want to write a novel that deals with the themes Clay addresses: good and evil, faith and disbelief, the dual nature of man?

A.
I didn’t really decide to write about those things. I wanted to write about ordinary kids in an ordinary place doing extraordinary things. The deeper implications of what they were up to emerged as I wrote the book. In many ways, a writer doesn’t really decide what he writes about. His subjects and themes come and get him.

Q. You’ve said before that the people and places you encountered during your childhood have inspired many of your stories. Is your background similar to Davie’s?

A.
Yes, very similar. I am not Davie, though I enjoyed playing with the notion that I might be. I grew up in the same town, Felling-on-Tyne. Many of the places named in the book, especially during Davie’s walk with Clay, are real places. I was an altar boy at a church called St. Patrick’s. I had friends like Geordie and Maria. I knew a couple of women who were a bit like Crazy Mary. But many of the places and people are imaginary. I love working with a blend of the real and the imagined.

Q. Have your feelings about faith and religion changed as you’ve gotten older, or do you think you retain the same ideas you had at Davie’s age?

A.
I guess I’m forever working out my feelings about many things, including faith and religion. When I was a boy, I suppose I thought that adults arrived at settled ideas about the world, about human existence, about religion. It’s not true, of course. There are no final answers, and we keep on searching and questioning and being amazed and mystified. Maybe writing fiction is my way of doing this.

Q. Geordie tells Davie on Part One: Eight, “You’re a simpleton…. You do not see the wickedness that’sin the world!” Do you think Davie should be less trusting of Stephen?

A.
It’s tempting to say yes, Davie should have been more suspicious. But in the process of arriving at his new knowledge about the world, Davie has been on a major journey of emotional, intellectual, spiritual exploration. What Stephen describes as being a “simpleton” is really the description of a boy who is uncertain, who is growing quickly, and who is simply fascinated by the world and its possibility.

Q. Prat’s lectures on art run throughout the novel. What is the connection between art and what happens to Davie?

A.
There are so many connections, and I enjoyed writing about Prat, and allowing him to explore the nature of human creativity. Davie and Stephen’s creation of Clay is maybe the ultimate artistic act—they create something that is not only beautiful but that comes to life. In doing this they challenge the idea that there can be only one creator. The artist becomes a kind of God.

Q. And Maria? She’s the only character Davie tells the whole story to, and she believes him without hesitation. Why did you include Maria in the story?

A.
Maria is outside of the Stephen/Davie/Mouldy/Clay axis, and so has a kind of objectivity. Davie tells her the tale to test out its validity, also to get the tale out into the “real” world. He’s also learning a lot about the nature of love and friendship. He has a closeness to Maria that is of course very different from his closeness to Geordie. He’s falling for her, and he’s also found a friend with whom he can discuss deeper, more interesting subjects than he can with Geordie and his old boy mates.

Q. What is Stephen Rose, in your mind? Is he just a misunderstood child, as Father O’Mahoney claims: “A boy with problems. There but for the grace of God” (Part Four: Three). Or is he true evil?

A.
When I began the book, and as I wrote the early chapters, I think I did share Father O’Mahoney’s view of Stephen. I thought he’d be “tamed,” that he’d find a way to be included in the community. I thought that Davie, Geordie, Maria, Father O’Mahoney, would find the goodness in him and draw it out. And I thought that part of my job as the writer would be to discover his hidden goodness too. Well, he evaded all of us. As I wrote on, I had to take many deep breaths and recognize that he was in many ways beyond salvation. He goes off at the end, unredeemed, maybe to create havoc elsewhere. Evil? It’s not really a word I like, but he’s certainly not a force for good.

Q. Why do you think Stephen needs Davie to create Clay? He seems fairly powerful on his own.

A.
I don’t think that he really does need Davie to create Clay. But he wants to tempt and to disillusion and to corrupt Davie. And he wants to test out and to demonstrate his own wicked powers.

Q. To what extent do you think Davie willingly helps Stephen? And to what extent is he being manipulated? Does Davie have any control over his fate?

A.
At any moment, Davie could in theory withdraw from it all and tell Stephen to get lost, but I think he is just too fascinated by the possibilities that are presented by Stephen. Yes, he is manipulated and at times maybe hypnotized, and at times he is terrified by what’s going on, but he’s an independent human being. He wants to explore the darkness.

Q. At the end of the novel, Davie seems to recognize that he has lost something. How do you think the experience has changed him?

A.
Yes, I think he’s changed massively. He is less secure in his faith. He has moved beyond his old mates with their banter and their feuds. He has been closely involved in the killing of another boy. He has helped to create a living creature, which he has also helped to destroy. He has a deeper knowledge of himself and the world, but that knowledge is accompanied by lots of disillusion. He is maybe lonelier. But he’s ready to move on. He’s growing up fast, and he’s falling in love with Maria.

Q. Do you think Davie will ever recover completely?

A.
We go through lots of crises and recoveries all through life. It’s amazing what we can go through, and what we can survive. Yes, he’ll recover, he’ll keep on growing up, and he has a strong mind and a good heart so he’ll be fine. But the effects of his involvement with Stephen and Clay will be with him for the rest of his life.