Secret Heart (4 page)

He strode toward Joe with his arm stretched out as if to shake his hand. Some of the kids followed, nudged each other, giggled, as lots of kids around Winters did. Others hung back, turned away, bored
by his booming voice, his showing off. Winters stretched out and took Joe's hand.

“Let me introduce our Mr. Maloney,” he told them. “And, Mr. Maloney, let me introduce some of your fellow pupils from Hangar's High. Hangar's High. You may not remember it. A redbrick educational establishment. Your school, Mr. Maloney. Yes, your school!” He turned to the others and lowered his voice. “You may not yet have come across our Joseph Maloney, for he is an elusive little chap. Something of a star at the disappearing act.”

They carried computer-printed banners:
BAN THE CIRCUS; CIRCUS MEANS CRUELTY: LET THE ANIMALS GO; TAKE YOUR TENT SOMEWHERE ELSE.

“Come and join us, Mr. Maloney. This is our lesson for today, a bit of philosophy, history, political action. What right have we to use animals for our entertainment?”

He put his arm around Joe's shoulder.

“Come and join us, Joseph. If you are not with us then you are against us.” He snorted. “Or are you already enlisted as the new tiger tamer?”

“There's no t-tigers,” said Joe.

Winters gasped. He raised a finger.

“Let us listen to the words of an expert! Let us listen to the words of one who has already been inside the charnel house.”

“There's no t-tigers!” Joe said. “There's no w-wild animals! They're gone.”

He wriggled free of Winters.

“That's not the point, Joe,” said Francesca Placido, a skinny girl with a Tibetan hat on. “What about the dogs? What about the pigs? It's not just tigers, it's the whole animal world we have to think of.”

“Well said, Francesca,” said Winters. “Mr. Maloney?”

Joe felt the lark singing inside him and the tiger prowling inside him. He looked at the teacher, and knew that Bleak Winters was never anything else except Bleak Winters. He looked at the children. He knew that they, like him, might have larks and tigers inside them, but they kept them hidden, and one day their larks and tigers might disappear, just as Bleak Winters' had. He wanted to tell them this, he wanted to draw them away from Winters and toward the tent and the wasteland, but he didn't have the words.

He hunched his back, moved on.

“Get back to school!” Winters snapped. “Get back to school or you'll be lost in your own stupidity.”

Joe listened to his larks.

“Tomasso! Tomasso! Tomasso!” called the old man's voice, fading to almost nothing.

Cody's crew were gone. Joe walked to the Cut. He crawled on the ground there: rubble, litter, dried-out mud, dog prints, cat prints, boot prints. He ran his fingers across the dried-out mud. No tiger prints. He sniffed the air. No tiger smell. Turned back again, circled the village, clambered over piles of heaped-up earth, over the ruins of old cottages, through the spaces where the swimming pools were supposed to come, the supermarkets, the car parks. Circled the great tent, avoided Bleak and his hangers-on. Saw Stanny miles away moving through the ruins of Broomstick Farm, more smoke streaming across him. Imagined having been a tiger, having been a trapeze artist. Watched the Silver Forest and the Golden Hills and the Black Bone Crags as he walked. “Tomasso, Tomasso” came faintly through the air. Clambered through the ruins of old terraced houses. Came to the Blessed Chapel. Fragments of gravestones lay embedded
in the earth around it. Fragments of words were written on what was left of the walls. Eroded by wind and rain, odd and ancient bits of prayers could still be deciphered:

He knelt in the dirt and breathed the words passed down from children to children.

“Spirits of earth and air, listen to my words this day.”

He spat on his hands and wiped them slowly across the name of God.

“Protect my mum this day.”

He breathed deeply.

“Let her heart be refreshed and let her life be lightened and let all harm and evil be lifted from her.”

He took a five-pence coin from his pocket and dropped it through a narrow slot between the stones. It chinked into the space behind.

He closed his eyes, searching for another prayer.

“Protect the larks. Protect the tigers.”

He touched the name of God again.

“Our men,” he breathed. “Our men, our men.”

He stayed there in the Blessed Chapel. Thick soft turf had grown on the ruined floor. He lay there, out of sight of Helmouth. He watched the sun sliding
slowly through the sky, watched the summit of the blue tent shifting in the breeze. The gentle breeze flowed over him. He curled his knees up to his chest and slept, leaning on the blurred fragments of ancient prayers. In his dream he walked with Mum across the motorway and strode through the Silver Forest beneath a storm of larks. There were deer watching from the dappled shadows, owls from low branches, rabbits from dark entrances in the earth. She held his hand and they skipped toward the Black Bone Crags and their laughter echoed through the trees. Then his mum was replaced by another who walked lightly at his side. He was about to turn to her, to see her.

He woke. Kids from Hangar's High were nearby. A bunch of boys kicked a ball and wrestled with each other. A couple of couples walked hand in hand. Dejected stragglers trailed knapsacks from their hands. Some cast their eyes across him, then turned away. He saw faces of a few who had been almost friends an age ago. A group of kids from Joe's year, from his class, approached. He crouched in the chapel, kept his head down, focused his mind on making them go away.

“Alone, Maloney?”

A girl's voice, laughing, mocking. Boys' voices joined in.

“Alone, Maloney?”

He crouched there, didn't move, like the rabbit that the weasel took.

A rock bounced into the chapel, rolled to his ankle.

Another came, accompanied by much laughter.

“Let earth eat them,” he muttered to the earth. “Let fire take them.”

“Only Maloney, lalalalalaaaaa!”

Two boys prowled like tigers coming through grass to take their prey.

“Where was you today, Only Maloney?” they hissed.

“Swallow them, burn them, blow them all away,” he whispered.

He fingered the name of God. Nothing happened to them. They came closer, closer. He rolled his fists, clenched them.

“What you bloody doing?”

A new voice. It echoed across the ruins.

“What you bloody doing to him?”

The prowlers lifted their heads. They searched the landscape with their eyes. They stood, began to back away, back to their pack.

It was Joff, standing on a heap of stones.

They scuttled away from him, like crabs, like beetles. They kept turning their heads to him, muttering, but they moved away. He came to Joe, stood by the Blessed Chapel. He swiped his hand across his face and watched. He shook his head.

“Boy,” he said.

Joe raised his eyes.

“Boy!”

“Y—”

“You got to harden up, boy.”

Joff stroked the snakeskin tattoo at his throat. He chewed his lips with his golden teeth. He beckoned Joe from the chapel.

“You think this is how you should be, boy?”

“N-no.”

“A father wouldn't've let you get like this,” he said.

Joe hung his head.

“Hiding in holes,” Joff said. “Scared of your own shadow. He'd have done something about it.”

He reached down, took Joe's arm, drew him out.

“You need a man, boy. You know that?”

Joe saw the snake scales tattooed on the backs of his hands.

“And that mother needs a man, boy,” Joff said. “You know that?”

“Y—”

Joe chewed his lips. Joff slid his hand around the back of Joe's neck and held him. He cupped Joe's chin in his palm.

“The lad says you want to come out with us. Surviving. That's true?”

“Y-yes,” he said. No, he said inside.

“It'd be the making of you. You've seen the change I've wrought in Stanny Mole?”

“Y-yes.”

“Aye. I am not an easy master, boy. And I'll lead you into deepest danger. But lads that walk with me become survivors.”

He stroked Joe's cheek.

“I'll ring changes in you, boy.”

Joe watched Joff stride away, past the blue tent as if it wasn't there, out of sight across the slope. He picked earth, licked it.

“Spirits of the earth,” he breathed. He swiped his hand across the name of God. “Give Joe Maloney the strength he needs today. Our men. Our men.”

He knelt there in the Blessed Chapel. He closed his eyes. The images of his life in Helmouth swirled within him. Then the image of the tiger came. It stared from the shadows, as if it waited for him.

As he left, a rat moved through the Blessed Chapel, low to the earth, and took no notice of him. A skylark dropped onto a gravestone three yards away and held its crested head high for a second, then went up again. Hung high over him singing, then went further to a higher plane and hung there too to sing. Then higher and higher till there was nothing but its song, so sweet, so ardent, and so far far far away. He thought of Corinna's mother spinning through the blue light, spinning so fast she went out of sight. Where did she go during those moments?

He stepped across the stones.

He walked through Cody's crew to the Cut. They hardly noticed him. Their eyes were blinded by hate and they were yelling at the tent.

“Gyppo scum! Filth! Get back where you come from!”

They stamped their feet, thrust their chins forward, jabbed their fingers, shook their fists.

Beyond them, a couple of girls sat at the curbside, holding dolls in the air as if they were flying.

“Look, Joe. Fairies!” They laughed.

He paused.

“See them fly!” they said.

He laughed with them.

“Yeah!” he said. He crouched and saw how ordinary dolls were transfigured by the children's vision. “Yeah!”

He walked on. His mum would be back from the Booze Bin by now, her afternoon shift finished. He walked through the broken gate, along the path beside the house. He slipped in at the back door, into the kitchen. Cut himself a slab of bread, started to butter it.

“That's you, Joe?”

“Yeah.”

She came and stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall.

“The Wag Man came, Joe.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

They both hung their heads and sighed.

“Oh, Joe,” she said. “What we going to do with you?”

He lifted his shoulders, sighed again.

“He said if you keep on playing hooky they'll start proceedings.”

He glanced from the window to the pale blue tent, paler than the darkening sky.

“He said if they start proceedings it'll lead to fines for me.”

He chewed and stared.

“He said if they fine me and you keep on playing hooky they could even end up taking you away.”

She watched him.

“Do you understand, Joe?”

He nodded.

“Is that what you want?”

“No, Mum.”

“Joe, you have got to go to school.”

“Yes, Mum.”

He stepped toward her and she held him close and whispered his name. It had gone on so long. Psychiatrists had pried into his brain. Social workers had pried into his home. Teachers had been gentle with him, stern with him, furious with him. The Wag Man had trailed him back and forth across the waste-land. Policemen had come calling. Nothing had tamed him. The choice was easy. The eerie wasteland or the gates and walls of school? In school, Joe didn't know the things he was supposed to know. He couldn't think the thoughts he was supposed to think. He chose the wilderness, the larks, the rats and rabbits and stoats. And he accepted the loneliness that went with this choice. He accepted the pangs of fear and shame.

His mum reached into a cupboard and took out a big jar of raspberry jam and put it on a bench.

“Spread some of that on it.”

He spun off the top, plunged in his knife, wiped it across the buttered bread.

She shook her head sadly.

“It's not easy. We need to make a new start somehow, Joe. But how do we do that? How do we change?”

“Dunno, Mum.”

“Some folk say you need a man at home, son. You think that?”

He caught his breath.

“Not… Joff!” he spat.

“No, love. Never Joff.”

She looked out into Helmouth while Joe dreamed of the tiger's jaws closing on Joff again.

“Mebbe we should move away,” she said, and laughed. “There's a thought, eh? Get out of Helmouth. How many manage that?”

She licked her fingers and smoothed his hair.

“You,” she said. “Like you been dragged through a hedge backwards. What you been doing out there, eh?”

“Walking. Looking at the circus. I made a f-friend.”

“A friend?”

“She's Corinna.”

“That's great, Joe. She's from the circus?”

“Yeah. She works on the trap—”

“The trapeze! Joe, that's great.” She laughed. “I can see how the circus'd be your kind of thing. Tigers and—”

“There's no t-tigers.”

“No?”

“No. All gone.”

“But great all the same, eh?”

“Yeah.”

She held him at arm's length.

“You're such a funny'n, Mr. Joseph Maloney. Always were, right from the start. Something different in your blood or something. But you know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think there's something very special about you. I think one day you'll amaze us all.”

She laughed.

“But mebbe that's nowt but a mother's love talking.”

He sat in his room and watched the twilight come on. Soon she'd go out again for her evening shift in the awful Booze Bin. He smelt the food she was cooking for him.
A funny'n. Always been a funny'n
. She'd said that all through his short life. She used to say how beautiful he was when he was born. She used to say that on the night that he was born the sky was filled with shooting stars, as if the universe was celebrating. She said the midwife told her he was the bonniest bairn she'd ever brought into the world. She said that his one green eye and his one brown eye were a sign of great good fortune. She said big brains and muscles didn't matter. It didn't matter that his dad was just some daft lad that ran the Tilt-a-Whirl in a fair. What mattered was Joe's gentleness, his bravery, his great big joyous heart. What mattered was that she loved Joe and Joe loved her. And all through his life there had been hugs, and gentle
words and laughter. But it was so hard for her. A young mother, a troubled son, little money, a home in Helmouth on the fringes of the world. He knew she needed him to grow and change and Joe didn't know how to do those things, and he hated hurting her, just hated hurting her. And hated those times the days ended as they sometimes did, when they cried together as evening fell on Helmouth and there seemed no way of getting back the light.