He hasn’t really planned it out. He’s not thinking at all. He’s just got to see with his own eyes. Got to do something, to stop the muddle going round and round in his head.
It takes ages, cycling up the hill and all the way along by the moor. He’s forgotten his lights, but it doesn’t really matter because there are no cars and there’s a golden moon rising, so bright it casts shadows.
He leaves the bike half hidden in the hedge at the top of the track leading down to the house and the studio. He takes the air rifle with him, still slung on his back and banging against his legs as he walks. The air feels damp: dew, or a sea mist moving in over the cliff, the way it does sometimes after a really hot day. He walks down the middle of the track on the scrap of scruffy grass and weeds which deaden his footsteps. No one must know he’s here.
If he lived way out like this he’d have a dog. But it’s just as well Matt Davies doesn’t have one. It would be barking by now. They have amazing hearing, hundreds of times better than humans.
The lights are on in the house, the windows wide open. He can hear music: jazz or blues. Grown-up music.
Simon shivers. His scalp prickles. His limbs feel heavy. He creeps forward more slowly now, ducks down as he reaches the garden wall. He stays low, edging along and round the end wall that encloses the garden, so that he ends up off the track, on the rough land that runs between the garden and the cliff. No-man’s-land. His senses are on full alert.
At this end of the garden the wall is much higher. He can stand up without being seen from the house. There’s a ditch along the bottom of the wall, which must fill with water in the winter. The grass is longer here.
The air stinks of rotting grass clippings. The compost heap must be just the other side of the wall, behind the greenhouse. He detects another, ranker smell: fox. Every so often other smells waft over the wall: honeysuckle, sweet peas. And the chalky, dusty smell of the studio.
He’s holding his breath.
Clink clink. What’s that? The chinking, chipping sound of metal against stone. A light’s on in the studio. Matt Davies is working, then. Simon can’t hear any voices, just the music from the house. Perhaps Leah has already gone home.
Simon’s heart is beating fast, like a bird’s when you hold it in your hand. They rescued a sparrow once from a cat, when Simon was little. His dad showed him; you could actually see the heart beating through its feathers, it was that terrified. He put out his hand and felt the tiny, speeding flutter. They put the bird in a box and gave it food and water, but it died anyway.
Simon clambers up the rough wall, feeling for footholds in the stone, just until he can see over the top. Matt Davies is silhouetted against the studio light, working just outside on the covered area, chipping away at the stone figure. The cloth has been removed, but it’s too far away for Simon to make out the details of the face, if it has one.
There, further into the garden, is Leah, sitting silently on a chair, turned to one side. Her hair is loose now, twisted roughly over one shoulder to leave the other bare. And in the blend of artificial light from the studio and the moonlight, Simon can see perfectly well that down to the waist she is naked. She sits so still she might be made of marble or stone herself. He watches her, entranced. How extraordinarily beautiful she is. How perfect her body, its curves and hollows.
A low voice says something. Leah laughs and shifts slightly. The spell is broken. She is flesh and blood after all.
Simon watches on, hidden in the deep shadow at the edge of the garden, heart fluttering like the injured bird.
Matt puts down his chisel. He stretches, as if he’s tired after concentrating for a long time. He turns, picks something up, chucks it towards Leah. It’s her black top. Simon watches her slowly button it up. Leah stands up and yawns, says something, moves towards the open kitchen door. Matt clears away his tools, turns off the studio light and follows her into the house.
Simon is shaking all over. He sits back on the damp grass.
How can she? Matt Davies is more than twice her age.
That night meant nothing. I’m just a kid. That’s what she said, didn’t she? ‘Grow up, Simon!’
And what about Nina? How can Leah be so mean? She’s just used her to get what she wants. Stealing her boyfriend… The word makes him wince.
As for Mr Davies: what does he think he’s playing at? I used to like him. As a teacher, at least. Respected him. Thought him interesting, fair, a good bloke.
Simon feels hollow with disappointment. And each single disappointment is tucked inside another. His mates. Nina. Mr Davies. Leah. Like that Russian doll Ellie has which you undo to find another inside, and then another, down to the tiny one in the middle of it all. In the middle of him it feels as if there’s just a cold hollow space.
This is how it happens, he thinks. This is how you stop yourself feeling so much. You go cold, colder still with each small disappointment, each betrayal, until you find you’ve frozen over at the core of you, and you stop feeling anything any more.
He watched this film on television not long ago, about what they do to harden you up for the army. A systematic, brutal stripping-away of your individuality, of everything that’s warm, and feeling, and human. One humiliation after another. He knew even while he was watching it, fascinated, that it was crap. And yet even when his mother had stormed out of the room in disgust he’d watched on, unable to tear himself away, knowing that this was what happened for real. There was a truth he was witnessing. And it isn’t just in the army. It’s everywhere. Making a man of you. That ‘women and children first’ crap which only means that men’s lives matter less. That’s what you have to believe if you’re going to send armies of them into wars.
Blinding rage at the injustice of it all begins to unwind from where it’s been coiled in the pit of his belly for ages now. Rage and bitterness and hate, unravelling like a spring.
It’s easier then to unzip the air-rifle slip, take out the gun, load it. He smooths his hand along the wooden stock. Cool, comforting: it’s on his side, a friend.
There’s only the moonlight now to illuminate the garden. He stands up, rests the barrel on top of the stone wall, lines up the sights to bring the stone figure into focus, the girl-woman turning into fish.
He’s got total concentration. That adrenalin hit. His mind’s going blank.
The first shot he fires almost deafens him. He feels the whoosh of air, hears a muffled crack as the pellet hits stone. A trickle of dust. The pellet seems merely to have lodged itself in the stone. He loads again, fires, hits the hand. And again. He must be pitting the stone with holes, but nothing’s breaking. There’s no shattering into pieces like he’d hoped. The catapult would have done a better job than this.
Leah and Matt Davies must have the music turned up loud enough to drown out the shots. Or they’re busy with something else… with each other. The door’s still firmly shut.
He loads again, aims, shoots. The head this time.
Shoosh shoosh. The sound pushes through the blankness in his head.
He tenses up, listens. Something else is moving out there in the mist and the dark. Brushing through the wet grass. A fox, perhaps, going about its own business.
He’d never shoot a fox. Something about the way they are: the sharp, intelligent eyes, their wildness. Hunters and scavengers. Survivors.
He freezes. Listens. He can’t see anything, it’s too dark and the sea mist has moved in closer over the field. It’s much thicker now. He keeps one hand on the air rifle. The hair along his neck bristles like a hunted animal’s.
He loads the air rifle again. Fires.
Light suddenly floods the garden as the back door swings open. Matt Davies swears loudly, stumbles towards the sculpture. ‘What the—?’
‘What’s going on? What’s that noise?’ Leah’s voice.
But it’s as if something’s jammed in Simon’s brain. He can’t process the new information. His hand keeps loading, lining up, firing. He can’t seem to see that it’s not the stone figure that he’s firing at any more, but the real thing, a person.
Leah shrieks out with pain. Matt Davies yells. There’s the smash of splintering glass on stone.
The new sounds shatter something in Simon’s brain. They drag him back from wherever he went, from that dark terrifying place where there are no thoughts and no feelings.
The garden is full of Leah’s screams. Simon shrinks back in horror. What have I done?
He crumples down into the ditch at the base of the wall, shaking in sudden terror. He must have hit her. Matt Davies is swearing, calling out into the darkness. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Who is it out there? I’m calling the police –’
How bad is it?
He can’t see a thing. He can hear Matt’s footsteps on the path, the crunch of glass. I must have hit the greenhouse too.
‘Who is it out there?’
Any minute now and Mr Davies will look over the wall and find him, flush him out from his hiding place, and Simon’s world will blow apart. He cowers, waiting, trembling all over, stifling sobs that rise and stick in his throat until he’s almost retching into the ditch.
Leah’s moaning. ‘My leg. Matt, my leg!’
All that noise means nobody is dead. Nobody dead. He repeats it like a mantra.
Matt’s footsteps retreat from the wall. The voices go quieter. Leah is crying softly, Matt seems to be checking her out, calming her down. ‘Where? Show me. You’ll be OK. It’s OK. Let’s get you inside – I must see who’s out there – and get my phone –’
‘What if they shoot again? You’ll be killed! Don’t leave me by myself!’ Leah’s sobbing more quietly, but she’s obviously terrified. Who does she imagine is out there?
Should he come out, own up? Explain it was all a stupid mistake, he never meant any of it…
But he can’t. Can’t move. Can hardly breathe.
He hears the brushing noise again, the footsteps in wet grass. They come closer and closer, until they stop right behind the place where he’s half hidden in the long grass of the ditch. It’s not a fox going about its own business. It’s a man. And now he’s so close, Simon could touch his foot. The battered leather of an old army boot. Next to the boot is the barrel of a shotgun, pointing downwards.
Of course.
Now it seems almost inevitable. Stupid not to have thought of it before.
Mad Ed.
Mad Ed’s tall enough for Mr Davies to be able to see him over the garden wall, even in the dark. Simon holds his breath, heart thudding. The barrel of the shotgun is horribly close to his head.
Matt Davies’s voice rings out over the garden, clear and deadly calm. ‘So it’s you. Shooting into my garden, hell-bent on ruining my work. And nearly killing a young woman while you’re about it.’
Simon hears his footsteps come closer to the wall.
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Are you crazy? You could’ve killed her with that bloody gun. Or me. Is that what you wanted?’
‘It’s that mad bloke!’ Leah sobs. ‘He’s a bloody nutter! Call the police! He’s going to kill you!’ She’s getting hysterical again, crying so much Simon can hardly make out what she’s saying. He hears the words ‘pervert’ and ‘stalker’.
‘Get away from here!’ Matt says. ‘Don’t let me ever see you anywhere near here again. And lock that bloody gun up. You haven’t heard the end of this. I’m calling the police right now.’
The door bangs shut. The garden goes dark, then almost immediately the door opens again and light floods the garden. Simon hears footsteps, the slam of two car doors, the engine stuttering into life. The car moves slowly away up the track.
He must be driving her home. Or to the hospital. How badly is she hurt?
The cold and damp have seeped right through Simon’s clothes to his skin. He’s stiff and cold from lying cramped up, his arms round his body, in the narrow ditch. He lies there, straining after sounds.
Silence.
Now what? He is lying in a ditch in the dark, and just beside him is a mad man. A mad man with a gun, who for his own twisted, muddled reasons, has just taken the blame for the terrible thing Simon’s done, without saying a single word in his own defence. What the hell’s he going to do now?
What’s even worse, absolutely no one else knows that Simon is here.