Oi!
The sound of Danny’s voice made me jump, but it took all my effort not to skip toward it. He was sitting on the other side of the wall, his back leaning up against the stone.
What you doin down there?
He looked up at me then and I cringed. One side of his jaw was swollen and violet, an angry welt where my fist had landed. Shit, I said. Were that me?
Danny shrugged. I deserved it. But me nan’s on one. Reckons I been fightin. Best I stay out her way today.
I glanced in the direction of the kitchen, then slid down the other side of the wall, landing beside him on the damp earth.
He looked at me nervously. Are you pissed off with me still?
I shrugged, non-committal, but my insides fizzed with the thought that he cared. My face must have given me away, though, because he smiled shyly.
I’ve got summat to show yer, he said.
What you on about?
Come on. You’ll like it. He stood as if to go but I stayed put, too stubborn to relent so easily. Please, he said, crouching to take both my hands in his. Please please please?
I couldn’t say no to him, even then, and so I let him pull me to my feet. We ran down the bank together, turning up toward the main square, past the supermarket, the town hall. At the crossroads almost at the other side of town Danny led me through a narrow laneway that opened onto a housing estate. We passed through the houses until we came to a wide dirt track, the earthy ground dappled by leafy trees that Danny told me were horse chestnuts.
The old railway line, he said. Used to go all the way to Leeds, years ago. Up near where you’re from, I think. And if you keep goin that way, he pointed in the direction we were looking, you get to a castle. Or the ruins of one, any rate.
Is that where you’re takin me?
Nah, he shook his head. Somewhere better’n that.
We walked in silence and I tipped my chin up to gaze at the canopy of leaves shading our path, the calmness belonging to a world that wasn’t mine. I like how it smells, I said, breathing it in. Like the Sunday dinner yer nana makes.
Danny raised his eyebrows knowingly, walking over to the side of the path where clusters of tiny white flowers grew. Carefully he plucked a bunch of the heart-shaped leaves from their stems, crushed their ragged edges between his fingers, then held them up to my nose. Smell this, he said. Is this it?
I nodded.
Garlic mustard. He smiled, letting the leaves fall to the ground. The roots taste like horseradish, sort of. That’s why it reminds you of a Sunday dinner, I bet.
We carried on a while longer until Danny paused at the side of a grassy bank.
Up here.
A path of sorts wound up through the shrubbery and gnarled tree roots and I followed as he climbed upward, his feet finding familiar footholds, glancing over his shoulder every so often to check on me. When he reached the top he turned, stretching his arm down to take hold of my wrist, helping me up the last few feet.
I stood, gazing at the little clearing in the trees where two railway lines once split, the sound of my breath dimmed by birdsong. Gingerly I stepped forward, spun in a slow circle, taking in the wildness, the way every inch of the space stood thick with life. Plants and flowers, grasses and thistles, hidden all around by the treetops, reaching up and over us from the bank below.
It’s good, innit?
Yeah, I breathed.
I’ve never taken anyone else up here.
We looked at each other and grinned.
It was a spot that time forgot; no one else knew about that place but Danny. He’d found it a few years before, on an old map of the town in the library. They used to call it Devil’s Claw, he told me, but he didn’t like that name.
Nah, me neither. It sounds like the sort of place bad things would happen. I can’t imagine owt bad ever happenin here.
He smiled at me. Exactly, he said. That’s exactly what I think.
We stayed up there for hours, looking at the plants, mucking around. Doing whatever we could to make each other laugh. It started to get dark, but still the bruise around Danny’s jaw was visible, the sight of it making me wince. Why didn’t you tell yer nan? That it were me that did that t’yer?
He tugged at a handful of grass, the blades snapping in his palm. I dunno. She’d’ve jumped to the wrong idea, knowin her. Probably thought I’d tried to rip the knickers off you or summat—been on t’blower to the cop shop before I could blink.
What?
Danny laughed then, but the sound of it was all wrong. I just mean…she jumps to conclusions, does me nan. When it comes to me, at least. He cleared his throat uncomfortably. Sorry I said that yesterday, ’bout yer mum and that. It’s proper shite when people say stuff like that, I should know. You pissed me off is all. But…well, yeah. Sorry.
I lay back in the grass, tilted my face up to the sky, could see now a gap in the leaves where the stars shone through. Chrissy reckoned it’d be better here, I said. But it won’t be.
Better how?
She reckons Barry’ll look after us, turn it all into a fuckin fairytale. It’s all bollocks, though. It’ll be just the same.
Danny didn’t say anything, rolled onto his belly beside me.
That’s the thing about me mam, see, I carried on. She used to act smart, but these days it’s like she’s livin in a film or summat. And I get it, sort of. Cos she is special. She’s got summat that other people don’t—that thing that all them Hollywood lasses have, what d’you call it…? Star power or summat. Only problem is she’s never known how to use it. I reckon that’s why all them men are always after tryin to steal a piece of her. They try and smash her up and break her, cos they want a piece of her to keep. They all want to own a little piece of a star.
As soon as the words had escaped from my lips I had the urge to grab hold of them, shove them back into my mouth, swallow them whole. I sat up quickly, pinching my fingernails down into my palms, waiting for Danny to laugh at me, readying myself to take it.
Danny was sitting up now too, although it took me a long time to build up the nerve to look at him. When I did, his face confused me even more. There was no sign of mirth. Of reproach or laughter or mockery. Instead, his eyes were full of something else.
I were worried, yesterday, he said. That I’d got you wrong.
What d’you mean?
After you nicked all that stuff from t’Co-op. I started thinkin mebbe you were just like everyone else, all the other divs round this town that don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves. But you’re not, are yer?
I blinked, bit down on my lip.
I ain’t never heard anyone talk like you, he said quietly.
No, I scoffed. No, I bet you ain’t. I talk a load of old shit, I know I do—
Danny shook his head, cutting me off. Nah, nah. Don’t say that.
He traced the tip of a leaf along the veins on the inside of my wrist and I stayed as still as I could, afraid that if I moved he might stop.
This town, yeah…it’s so full of dickheads, so full of people who think there’s only one way to be and that if you’re not like them, if you don’t think like them, then you’re wrong, that there must be summat wrong with you. But it’s them that are the wrong’uns. It’s people who think differently that can make the world good.
Something sparked inside me again and for a moment the two of us were quiet.
That stuff in the shop. Don’t do it again, all right? It int worth it.
Okay. I nodded. Okay.
Danny said Devil’s Claw made him feel like he could have been in a forest, a jungle even, anywhere in the world. There wasn’t a plant in those woods he didn’t know the name of. Cow parsley and traveler’s joy and sea holly. The difference between a dead-nettle and a stinging nettle. How the buddleia that I loved so much, with its tiny purple flowers and honey-like scent, wasn’t a real Yorkshire plant but instead had been brought over from China almost a hundred years before. He knew when they’d flower, when they’d die; which animals liked them and which ones they would poison. He knew so much. He filled me up.
Within a few weeks he’d taught me the names of every tree and wildflower in that spot, all of them still tattooed on the underlayers of my brain. I’d try and catch him out, pulling up shrubs from the ground and waving them in front of his nose. Bet you don’t know this one, do yer? But he did. He always did.
Often we’d stay there until late and although I loved it too, the walk home made my spine shiver. Danny told me the railway line was haunted and I said I didn’t believe in any of that crap, but he went on and on about it anyway, telling me all them daft stories about the young girl who’d gone missing years ago and how she still wandered the tracks, trying to find her lost love.
People say they still see her sometimes, at night, cryin and searchin. People say they still hear her wailin, he’d say, and I’d tell him to shut it, knowing he was winding me up.
One day a crow came hurtling out of a pine tree toward me, with a look on its face like it was possessed. I almost shit myself then and it wasn’t like me, screaming and running a good twenty yards before I calmed down. Danny killed himself laughing for years after that, just with the memory of it.
Fuck’s sake.
What I’d give to hear that laugh now.