Simon watches Leah cross the garden to where they’re sitting out. He’s still cross from having to be polite to Matt Davies, who sat around for much too long.
‘Coffee, Leah?’ Nina asks. ‘We’ve just had one, but there’s enough left in the pot. Simon, get another cup out, please.’
‘Get it yourself.’
Nina flushes, but he knows she won’t make a scene in front of Leah.
‘It’s OK,’ Leah says. ‘I don’t drink coffee. It’s bad for the skin.’
Nina smiles. ‘I like it too much to care!’
‘It’s an addiction,’ Simon says. ‘Caffeine’s a drug.’
‘Just listen to him! Mr Purity. Why so virtuous suddenly? Simon, who only drinks water —’ Nina teases.
Leah joins in. ‘And who never touches any evil substance unless it’s a can or ten of cider with a mate called Johnny.’
Simon stares at her. She’s really gone too far now. Thinking she can join in the family banter. Who does she think she is? Nina looks shocked. She didn’t know about the cider.
‘Time I got on,’ Nina says. ‘Did you want something in particular, Leah?’
Leah looks puzzled. She hasn’t a clue what she’s just done, alienating everyone.
‘I was going to ask you about the job, the one at the studio? Whether you’ve talked to him?’
‘No, but I could take you up there later, if you like. We can ask him then. This afternoon all right? And I was wondering if you’d babysit tomorrow?’
Simon’s head feels like it’s about to burst. Everything is running out of control — Mum, Leah, Mr Davies. They’re all getting mixed up together and he doesn’t like any of it.
‘I can babysit tomorrow,’ he says. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You don’t need Leah.’
‘Well, we’ll see.’ Nina purses her lips. ‘Can you be ready about three to go to Matt’s studio, Leah? We’ll take Ellie and her friend too. And stop off at the cream tea farm on the way back. It is the holidays, after all.’
Simon leaves them to it. They’re all ganging up. He doesn’t want to eat some poxy cream tea anyway. He stomps up to his room and sits on the floor, back against the wall. The knife that was once his dad’s is lying on the floor. The leather sheath is coming unstitched along one side, but he still loves it, the way it smells authentic. You can’t buy a knife like this, not even in an army surplus place. The metal handle is made up of different coloured strands, red and gold and black. The blade is smooth and sharp. Dad bought it abroad somewhere on his travels. That’s what Simon’s going to do, as soon as he’s old enough: travel. Get out of this place and find some real wilderness.
He’s sick of this house already. There’s nothing to do. He’s going to get that air rifle anyway, whatever Mum thinks. He’ll go down the post office this afternoon to get the money while they’re all having cream teas.
Ellie appears in the doorway. Her friend hovers behind, scared. She’s seen the knife. He strokes the blade.
‘Mum says, do you want lunch?’
‘What is it?’
‘Tuna mayo sandwiches. Or cheese.’
‘Nah. I’ll get something later.’
He goes out without saying goodbye, down to the town. After he’s sent off the order for the air rifle, he wanders along Fore Street and checks out who’s down the arcade. No one he knows. He walks along the beach wall. The tide’s still high, so there’s not much room for all the holidaymakers to spread out their shelters and chairs and towels and other junk. What’s the point in carting all that stuff down on the beach every day anyway? People are weird. He walks up the hill to the coast path to get away from all the crowds. Sometimes he hates people. He pretends he’s got his new gun and takes imaginary potshots at seagulls. He wonders what his mates are doing right now.
There’s a wind today. Better for walking. He passes several people coming the other way along the path; they nod at him, or say hello in that cheery way walkers have, as if they know you. He keeps one hand on his pocket, lightly resting on the catapult. He’s not far now from the place where he first saw Mad Ed, when he asked him the way. He remembers his watery eyes and the way his hands shook, and how his feet shifted about all the time. Something strange about him, certainly. But did he seem mad? How would you know? It was more like he was afraid.
It’s weird the way fear gets you in the guts. Or the bowels. A foul, hot sensation like you’re about to shit yourself. People do sometimes, when they’re really frightened. Like, about-to-die sort of frightened. Just before a plane crashes, for example. Or on the front line.
There were units stationed all along this coast in the Second World War. And prisoner of war camps just up the road. Secret training operations. A man at the museum told Simon that when he was a boy he and his mates used to hang over the edge of the pier, begging chocolate off US marines practising in the bay. There are no photos of the landing craft; it was all top secret. Most of the men billeted in the town got killed in the D-Day landings.
If he keeps walking far enough, he might get to that Ministry of Defence place where Johnny says they did secret nerve gas research. It takes him a long time. He has to go near where Matt Davies lives; he can see the roof of the studio and the house. He keeps on going.
The landscape changes. There are remnants of old mineworkings, chimneys, rusting winding gear. Every so often there are traces of metal rails, grown over with grass and moss, where they must have taken the ore out on trucks. He’ll explore the mineshafts sometime with Johnny and Pike and Dan. You’d need safety helmets and ropes and headlamps. It’s illegal, of course.
At last he comes across signs of Ministry of Defence land. It’s creepy; strangely still. Simon tries to work out what’s different. That’s it, there’s no birds. Not even seagulls. The concrete buildings are fenced off behind rolls of barbed wire. Rusting signs say ‘DANGER! KEEP OUT!’ The grass looks thin and barren. There are patches of thistles and nettles, and ghostly spikes of rose-bay willowherb gone to seed. The wind carries the grey thistledown in drifts.
Simon lies down on the parched earth, contemplating the scene. He lies so still, two rabbits hop out across the grass just the other side of the fence. He watches them; there’s something odd about them too. They’ve got some sort of disease. Their eyes are swollen and too large in their heads.
Most of the windows in the main building have already been smashed. Simon picks up a stone and lobs it over the fence at the nearest window. Broken glass tinkles on to the concrete floor inside. The rabbits don’t even twitch their ears. Deaf. Blind. He gets his catapult out, loads it up with a stone. Putting them out of their misery, that’s all.
But he knows that’s a rubbish way to think really. Like saying you’re putting an animal to sleep. It’s just killing. It’s a sort of selfishness. Because you can’t stand to see illness or pain, and what it makes you feel. Why pretend?
And him, now? He wants the thrill of shooting something. It gives him a rush of adrenalin. The feel of focused intent, absolute concentration. Power.
The first one keels over without a sound. The second one keeps nibbling the grass as if it hasn’t even noticed. Simon selects a second stone, loads it, pulls back the rubber, aims, releases. The rabbit spins, twitching and jerking, and flops over on to its side.
Easy.
It would be much the same killing something bigger, wouldn’t it? And with the air rifle even easier, once he’s got the hang of it. Even something much bigger, say.
A split-second scene flashes up before he can stop it. Motorbike. Tree. A man convulsing at the side of the road.
He turns away from the rabbit corpses. He won’t be taking them home to eat.
It’s hard to believe this was really a research centre for nerve gas. The buildings look too basic with their brick walls and regulation MOD metal window frames. Hardly the place for a laboratory. Perhaps Johnny made the whole story up. Simon climbs up a few rungs of the wire-mesh fence, just to see how easy it would be to climb over. There’s barbed wire along the top, but you could cut it. Probably alarmed back then, but not any more.
Something flashes.
Simon jumps off the fence. What was it? A piece of broken glass catching the sun? A signal? A warning?
This place is beginning to get to him.
He looks around. There’s nothing but grass and heather and tumbledown stone walls. And the restless sound of the sea, invisible from here. He sits back on the scruffy grass, one hand on the catapult just in case.
Right now, Nina and Ellie and her friend Amy and Leah will be chatting together, stroking the Border collie dog up at the farm, ordering scones and cream and jam. None of them will be thinking about him. No one cares.
He tries to think about Leah in a sensible way. She’s pretty, she’s too old for him, he doesn’t really know her, she can’t really be interested in him. But there was that kiss. He can’t imagine now how it could possibly have happened. Might it happen again? The only place he can begin to imagine it is there, in that deep dark chamber, where everything is different. Like being suspended in a time and sense warp. A sort of black hole.
But maybe he and Leah could go swimming again, next time the tide’s right. There’s no harm in that, is there? As long as Dan and Johnny and Pike are away, and no one can find out.
His nerves are on edge now. Everything makes him jump, even the tiniest rustling of grass as a mouse or shrew scurries through. No one’s around for miles, as far as he can see in any direction. The walkers have all stopped for ice creams in the town, or zigzagged inland to one of the farms that do teas.
He walks along the perimeter fence slicing off the tops of thistles with his knife. It’s so sharp it cuts right through the thick stalks with one swipe. The same with nettles, and even heather and gorse. He likes the sound it makes, like a whip. He examines the blade, wipes the green sap off on his T-shirt, runs his finger along the edge. By mistake, he cuts his own skin. He feels nothing for a second, and then as he squeezes the flesh, blood begins to bead along the cut and drip down his hand and he feels the sharp stabbing pain. His hand begins to throb. He imagines Leah bending over his hand, holding it in hers. An image comes of her face, her mouth, her tongue licking the cut clean, sucking his fingers. He gives in and lets the images come, like a film sequence. X-rated.
He hears something, jerks round. Was it footsteps? A dragging sound, moving away. Someone was there, watching him. For how long? The hairs along the back of his neck bristle. It’s as if he’s being stalked. He’s not the hunter, he’s the prey.
He starts the long walk home.
Instead of going straight back, Simon finds himself taking the rutted track down to the shabby farmhouse where Mad Ed lives. He remembers the house. There was a woman – a housekeeper or cleaner or someone, he presumes now – standing in the yard that hot July afternoon when he first got scared by Mad Ed. He asked her the way.
I’ll ask him. Right out. What he’s doing. Following, watching…
Never mind that he hasn’t formed the exact words yet. There is a feeling of inevitability about it. It’s almost a relief to think about confronting Mad Ed. Why pretend any longer that he doesn’t know who it is stalking him, even if he has no idea why?
He slows down as he reaches the farmhouse. What now? There’s no car in the yard this time. No sign of anyone. Just a few chickens scratching around in the dust. No dog barking either. It occurs to him for the first time that it’s odd Mad Ed doesn’t ever have one with him. But a dog would give the game away. He wouldn’t be able to creep around unobserved like he does, would he?
The farmhouse windows have a blank look. There’s a feeling about the place of something missing. Something lonely about it, although the chickens look happy enough, healthy and bright-eyed. They’re not scared of Simon: one comes right up. He kneels down, puts out his hand, and it jumps up on to his arm and then his shoulder. It feels weird, having a great feathery hen perched on his shoulder, warm and smelly. He tries to shake it off but it won’t go. It clings obstinately to him with its scaly feet even when he stands up.
Footsteps.
Simon wheels round.
The hen makes a soft crooning sound in its throat.
Mad Ed’s only a couple of metres away, coming closer. Simon feels the blood rush to his face. He’s been caught out.
But Mad Ed’s no longer the hunter. He’s making a face that might be a sort of smile. ‘She knows you, see.’ Mad Ed nods towards the hen. ‘They’ve a way of knowing, birds have.’
Simon feels the hair on his neck prickling. What’s he on about? He talks rubbish. Pay no attention, he tells himself.
‘Thought I’d see you here sooner or later. Once I’d worked you out. Knew you’d come, eventually.’ Mad Ed’s voice is gravelly, like it was before. The voice of someone who hardly ever speaks. He puts his hand in his pocket and scrabbles around, as if he’s searching for something. He draws out a palmful of bits and pieces of things: nylon twine, nails, a door key, an oyster shell.
Simon winces at the memory of the three shells left on his camping stuff.
Mad Ed unlocks the farmhouse door and shuffles inside. ‘I’ll make the tea.’ His muffled voice just reaches Simon.
It’s extraordinary. It’s as if Mad Ed’s been expecting him. It completely throws him. He’s rooted to the spot, the stupid hen still nestled down on his shoulder. He’s like some ridiculous pantomime version of a pirate – hen instead of parrot. He shakes the hen off and it starts pecking around the door. Then it goes right over the threshold into the kitchen. He can’t help himself looking in after it.
It’s not what he expected. Mad Ed’s kitchen is surprisingly neat and tidy. A row of old-fashioned china cups hang on hooks along a shelf above one of those old white enamel sinks with a wooden draining board. There’s a green and cream painted cupboard. The table is scrubbed wood – not new pine, but something greyer and older, like oak. The four chairs have been tucked in neatly. It’s a room trapped in the past, a 1950s film set.
In the centre of the table lies Mad Ed’s shotgun, a cloth and a small tin next to it. Simon can’t stop staring, even when Mad Ed starts filling up the kettle and turning on the electric cooker.
His eye goes to the window sill, to the line of things Mad Ed must have collected from the beach: pebbles, shells, a piece of blue glass. There’s a row of small skulls too: mouse, bird, squirrel and a piece of stone with the edge of a fossil. One arrowhead flint.
Goosebumps creep over Simon’s skin. It’s all too familiar. Too much like the shelf in his own room. And still he stands there, taking it all in, mesmerized.
On the mantelpiece a photograph in a silver frame is propped against a candlestick. He can just about make out the figures of two young men in desert khaki, leaning against a tank. Mad Ed and his brother? Before he got shot?
‘Keep away, I told you,’ Mad Ed mutters, ‘but you didn’t. How could you? It’s where you belong, and you never meant to leave me behind, did you?’
Mad Ed’s talking crazy stuff. He’s mixing him up with someone else. Simon suddenly understands.
He clears his throat. It feels dry, tight. ‘I’m Simon,’ he says. ‘You’ve seen me with friends from my school, Pike and John and Dan. Pike’s dad knows you.’
Mad Ed turns round and stares at him, blank as anything. Then he crumples a bit, and pulls out a chair and sits down. ‘What do you want?’ he says, his voice a rusty whisper this time.
Simon tries again. ‘I don’t want anything,’ he says simply. ‘I’m sorry. I was just walking back this way…’
It’s not the truth, though, is it? He does want something. He wants to know, to understand what it is that Mad Ed’s up to, following him, tracking him down along the cliffs, watching him with Leah… He wants to know what’s in his strange, crazy mind… and how he got to be like that, and how you stop it happening… and about the war, and what it’s really like, shooting to kill…
But this is a crazy man. A headcase. There’s no way of asking him any of this. Mad Ed’s locked in his own mad mind. How can he possibly have answers for Simon?
Simon glances at the gun, harmless enough on the table, waiting to be cleaned.
‘I’d best be going back now.’ Simon’s voice shakes. He feels slightly sick.
There’s a sudden flapping, squawking sound from a box under the table that Simon hasn’t noticed before. He jumps.
Mad Ed laughs, a surprisingly normal-sounding laugh. The tension in the air shifts slightly. ‘He’s getting better, he is.’
Simon remembers the gull on the harbour wall that time with Pike.
‘Is it a gull?’
‘Kittiwake.’
For a moment Simon and Mad Ed both watch the bird struggling in the box. Mad Ed goes over to it, lifts it out on to the floor. One wing trails.
‘They’ve got no heart,’ Ed says, ‘to do that to an innocent bird. It’s not like they wanted him for food.’
Simon doesn’t ask who ‘they’ are.
The bird is flapping round the kitchen floor now, leaving white splashes of birdshit on the lino.
Mad Ed looks directly at Simon. His eyes look suddenly darker, sharp. ‘If you are going to take life,’ he says, ‘you have to learn to respect it too. Not killing for killing’s sake.’
Simon feels admonished. I already know that, he wants to say, but his throat’s seized up, his heart beating too fast. You don’t need to tell me. I’m not like them…
‘So, you’ve come back to me,’ Mad Ed mumbles. His eyes have that blank, haunted look again. Simon can’t make out what he’s saying any longer. The blood’s rushing in his ears. He knows he should just run. Now. Before something terrible happens.
‘Tried to protect you… to keep you safe… Danger…’
Odd words and phrases percolate through. Simon closes his eyes. He might be sick any minute.
Two thoughts have hit him like gunshot: first, that when Mad Ed’s looking at him like that, he isn’t seeing Simon at all. He’s seeing his brother, the one in the photograph. The one who died. He’s seeing his past. And second, that what he, Simon, is seeing in Mad Ed is some terrible, distorted image of what he could become himself.
It’s like looking into the future; hearing an echo of a life that could be his. The loner, the wild man, the one on the edge of things. The man with the gun. The hunter and the soldier…
No. No…!
Shut it out. Forget that he’s seen any of this. Forget he came here, that he ever met Mad Ed… Shut it away and never think any of this again…
He starts to run, stumbling and tripping over his own feet, across the yard and back to the path, back to the fields and the way home.
Mad Ed’s voice echoes after him.
‘You stay away from the guns and the killing,’ he calls, ‘and the girl who’s no good…’
Simon puts his hands over his ears as he runs.