Raven Summer (13 page)

She keeps on scraping with the knife. She makes two joined curved shapes, like wings. She carves them deeper.

“My mark,” she says. “The phoenix.” She scrapes again, below the wings. “And look, these are the flames.”

“And did you go back to the time before the fire?” I say.

“In the end I did. I remember going through the flames themselves and it was terrifying. But Clarrie guided me back, back. And I saw them, my mam and dad and the ones that were lost and I felt their touch on me and their breath on me. And I believed it, too, and when I came back to the bed I remembered it so clear, and I was so pleased.”

She holds the knife up. She presses her thumb against the blunt tip.

“I’m ruining it,” she says.

“It’ll sharpen. And look, you’re making proper rock art with it.”

She carves again, going deeper.

“It’ll be here forever,” she says. “Folk in the future’ll say, What on earth could it possibly mean?”

“And did you go further back?” I say.

“To other lives? No. Clarrie said did I want to but I said no. I said I wanted this life to be enough for me. So I went no further than when I was a little one in my family’s arms and only went there two or three times. I was scared of wanting it too much, scared that going back might turn to some kind of drug that stopped me growing up properly in the here and now.”

“And …?”

But she laughs and presses her finger to my lips.

“And in the end,” she says, “good Clarrie was took away from us to another home. And people come and asked about her but we told them she did only good things and she let us talk about the past. And some of us like her moved on again. That’s what it is to be a kid like me. You move from one home to another home and meet many that’s kind. And there’s always those who have gone from our lives, and those people are like ghosts, like scattered bits of memory, like things you miss, like dreams you carry round with you.”

She smiles.

“And anyway,” she says, “all life sometimes seems like dreams. Do you think so, Liam?”

“Yes,” I say.

“Good.”

She puts the knife in my hand.

“Now it’s your turn,” she says. “Show me what your mark looks like.”

I have no idea. I hold the point of the knife to the rock and just doodle. Then I make a spiral and that feels right, so I go round and round with the knife, spinning it to the center of the
spiral and then out to the edge again. And we work like that as the day wears on, as explosions thud in the north, as distant rifles rattle, as Oliver sometimes gasps in frustration in the valley below. We pass the knife back and forward, we make our weird and beautiful marks in the stone.

We go back down.
Oliver’s still hunched up, writing. He looks at us like he’s looking into a different world.

“Time for food,” says Crystal. “Not midget gems and hot dogs, though.”

He doesn’t smile.

I light a fire. I put the sausages I brought from home into an aluminum pan. They start to sizzle and spit.

“How did the writing go?” I say to Oliver.

He rips out a page and drops it onto the fire.

“Words are too easy,” he says. He opens his book. “What looks like truth and sounds like truth might be nothing but a dream, nothing but a story I wish had happened.”

I stab the sausages with my knife. Fat and juice ooze out. Crystal tries to take Oliver’s hand but he pulls away. He rips
another page out of his book, crushes it in his fist, throws it on the flames.

“Lies,” he says.

“I know how hard it is,” I say.

“Do you?” says Oliver.

“Yes.”

“How can you know, you with your family, here safe in Northumberland?”

“My dad,” I say. “He’s a writer.”

“Your dad! Huh.”

He turns over the pages on the fire.

“Never mind. It is best that you do not know. You’re young. What’s the good of knowing?”

“Knowing what?”

He turns his face to the sky and groans.

“I should go on by myself,” he says. “What’s further north, Liam?”

“A few villages, a few castles, some ruins, lots of empty space, then Scotland, and more empty space.”

“So I could wander in the emptiness until I die. A true refugee, all alone, left over from a distant war.”

“Yes.”

“No!” whispers Crystal.

He shows us a knife is in his hand.

“See how it sits there so naturally,” he says.

He spins it, catches it. He stabs the earth with it.

“See?” he says again.

“Yes.”

“Yes. It is at home in my hand, wherever I might be.”

He spins it again. He raises it high, as if he’s about to kill.
Then he leans forward towards me. He presses his thumb against the knife blade.

“I am not what you think I am,” he says.

Then he’s silent. I turn the sausages with the knife. The sun is lower in the sky. It’ll soon be dusk. I lift out the sausages. I put them on bread. I pass a sandwich to Crystal and one to Oliver. He takes it. He eats. He rips more pages from his book. He throws them into the flames. He rips more pages, burns them, too.

“Lies,” he mutters. “Lies, lies.”

He stirs the fire. His eyes gleam as he stares into the gathering dark.

Crystal reaches out to him.

“Oliver!” she says.

He draws away. He laughs.

“Oliver? Who is Oliver?”

He sighs.

“Listen closely, children. I will tell you about the darkness at the heart of the world. My name is Henry Meadows. I am seventeen years old.”

He waits a moment.
He laughs again.

“Yes. I am Henry Meadows. I am seventeen years old. You will ask, But why should I believe this thing and not the other thing? I don’t know why, except that this is true. So do not doubt these things. Look, I burn the lies so that what is left behind is truth. There are the ashes lying at our feet. Let me tell you about my childhood. Shall I do that? Yes? Then I remember being a boy, a pretty little ordinary boy named Henry. It was a different world, a different age. I remember my mother and my father and my sister and my brother a million miles and a million million years ago. What did we have? Nothing. A field. A hut. But I remember playing in the dust and being happy. I remember piling stones at the edge of the field while the hot sun beat down upon my back and my father sang in the field a hundred
meters away. I remember my mother singing in the hut in the hot nights. I remember the skin of my young brother as we lay together sleeping. I remember the way he would kick and kick as he played football in his sleep. I remember my young sister clapping and chanting. I remember the way she would call my name. Hin-er-eee! Hin-er-eee! Hin-er-eee!”

He pauses. He repeats the words:
Hin-er-ee! Hin-er-ee!

“I am Henry Meadows,” he repeats. “I have told nobody these things since I began my journey.”

He places the whole book on the fire and watches as it burns.

“My father, Joseph, was a good man. He was an optimistic man. All through his life there had been war after war after war, but he said that the world would surely change. He said that in some parts of the world all war was over and would never come again. In such places, man had seen the foolishness of his ways. He said that boys like me would find a place in this world. He said that I must see myself as a person in the world, not just a person in this village, in this country, Liberia. He said that when I had grown, I must travel. I must go to Europe, to America. Then perhaps I could come back to my homeland as an educated man, and help to make my homeland a great land. He used to laugh as he said these things to me.
Listen to me, Joseph Meadows, a man with nothing, saying these words in this poor little place, to this poor little half-naked boy. But I am right, Henry. You must learn, you must grow, you must dream, and you must leave.
And he would kiss me, and say that one day there would be a kiss to send me off for a long time.
In the meantime, you must work, you must pick stones, and you must go to school.”

He looks across the flames at me.

“Perhaps it will always be so,” he says. “That fathers wish their children to live their lives for them. Is it so, Liam?”

I think of Dad:
Live like you’re in a story, Liam. Live an adventure.

“Yes,” I say. “It is true.”

“School was a row of benches, a blue cotton canopy, children sitting in rows a few hours each week. We scratched words on slates with sticks. Those of us without slates and sticks leaned over and wrote with our fingers in the dust. We chanted numbers and alphabets and patriotic songs. We listened to stories about our people and about the strange animals that lived around us. The teacher held up a picture of a cow and we called out ‘Cow’ and we wrote
cow.
A picture of a snake and we said ‘Snake’ and wrote down
snake.
He told us that Liberia meant ‘the land of the free.’ He told us it was our duty to work hard and to build a great nation of the free. He had a box in which there were faded books from long ago. When we worked hard he showed them to us. I remember how they crackled as he opened them. And I remember the pictures: New York, Californian beaches, London, Buckingham Palace, the fields of Kent, Salisbury Cathedral. These were my pictures of a world without war, and it was a world that was very beautiful to me.”

The distant explosions continue. There are flashes and flares. Then pinpoints of light moving through the darkness to the north.

“I was not in the long grass when the soldiers came,” he says. “I was in school. I was eight years old. It was hot. It was late afternoon. We were chanting numbers. Two add two is
four, four add four is eight, eight add eight is sixteen. Just as you must have done in your school, Liam. Am I correct?”

“Yes,” I say, and for a moment the chanting from my infant class comes back to me.

“We heard the guns,” he says.
“The pop-pop-pop
of guns, as if from far away. Somehow they seemed not loud enough, not savage enough for guns. But there they were, and very close. We stared at each other, and at the teacher. What is it, Teacher? What is happening? What is that screaming? We said the words in innocence, but each of us knew that we had always waited for this day, when the guns and death would come to visit our little ordinary village. The popping came again, much more of it. Smoke began to rise above the far side of the village. The teacher told us to run, to hide, but too late. The soldiers were already here, in the school itself, with their guns and hatchets raised, telling us to keep silent, to sit on our benches and keep still. And there they were walking through the spaces between our homes. They fired into open doorways, they set fire to our homes with blazing torches. They looked so calm. It appeared to be so ordinary. How can I tell you about what they did to those whose lives I had shared? You would only ask, But how could they do such things, Henry? Or Oliver. Or whatever your name is.”

He reaches forward and prods the burning book with a stick, making sure that each of its pages burns.

“They took your family?” I say.

“Yes, they did. As I told you. But I was not in the long grass. I was in school. And they were slaughtered, simply and calmly, like so many others were that day.”

“But why?”

“Why? There should be a reason, yes? And it is disgusting, no? It is beyond belief. But it is not beyond belief. It happens every hour, every day. It happens as we sit here together by our fire tonight. How could people
do
such things? Oh, I would learn how they could do it, soon enough. I would soon learn how simple it is.”

He pauses again. He narrows his eyes and looks towards the head of the valley. I turn to look where he looks. I listen.

“What is it?” I ask him.

“I don’t know. Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

We all watch and listen together. Then Oliver continues.

“Then all of them gathered at the school, and they laughed to see us there, so young, so innocent, so terrified. And our teacher told them they must go away
now!
He told them we were only
children
! And we sat on our benches and watched as they took him with a single shot.”

He pauses. He looks down and waits. A voice comes from the darkness.

“Spotlight!”

And a beam of powerful light shines upon us.

They come through the trees.
The torchlight glares on us. Nattrass holds the camera to his eye. Eddie and Ned walk at his side.

“Spotlight!” Nattrass calls again. “Spotlight spotted you in the night! You’re out!”

He giggles.

“Oh, you do like your fireside chats, don’t you?” he says.

“Go away, Nattrass,” I sigh.

“But we’re making a documentary, brother.
Everyday Life in a Northumbrian Village.
And who’d expect
this
to be going on?”

Eddie’s carrying a jagged stone in his hand. A claw hammer hangs from Ned’s belt.

“Here we are in the realm of the reivers and the raiders
and ancient wars,” says Nattrass. “Ghosts all around us. Blood in the soil. Out here, the savage past is with us still.” He laughs. “I’m good, aren’t I, brother? And I’m getting better. All this art stuff’s great. And you know, it’s all thanks to you. I’d never have seen the possibilities if you and your family weren’t in town.”

He points the camera into Oliver’s face.

“A few words for the viewers?” he says softly. “Don’t be shy. What do you think of English country life so far, Mr. Whatdeyecallit?”

“My name is Henry,” says Henry. “English country life is very good.”

“Wonderful! Beautifully put! That’s so good to know. And you, miss. You look like—how shall I put it?” He sniggers. “Let’s say like you’ve seen a bit of life. So how does being in this lovely place compare with where you’ve been?”

“Piss off,” she says.

“Oh no. Another one for the editing, lads. Never mind. The pictures are great. Here they are at home around the fire. Our fugitives: the writer’s son, the black boy and the tart.”

Eddie snorts with laughter.

“That’s great!” he says. “The writer’s son, the black boy and the tart.”