13
Thursday, 28 April 1966
‘Hurry up, Michael. We’ll be late and it won’t be you in trouble.’ Mary used her mother’s imperatives.
‘Are we going to the park?’ Michael wrestled his arm from her grasp. ‘Let go, you are hurt-ing me. I’m com-ing any-way.’ His Lost in Space robot voice.
‘No. We are going home.’ Mary snatched at Michael but he broke free and hopped and skipped about in front of her.
‘All-firm-ative’, he croaked, in hazy imitation.
Mary snatched his flapping shirt-tail. There was the sound of ripping fabric and both children were brought up short.
‘You’ve torn it,’ Michael wailed.
‘It was your fault, you should have behaved.’ Mary could not see Clifford Hunt; if he was not at the swings she had lost him. She pinched Michael’s arm. ‘Keep up.’
‘This isn’t the way home.’ Michael pointed back towards the first railway arch. ‘It’s that way.’ Then, ‘I’ll have to tell Mummy about my shirt. She’ll see.’
‘You did it playing football.’
‘Then I’ll be in trouble.’
‘Carry on like this and we’ll be late and Br’er Fox will get you.’
This silenced Michael. Mary’s truncated telling of Tar-Baby, an Uncle Remus story read to her class at her old school, had instilled in Michael the vivid possibility that like Br’er Rabbit he would be stuck to his teddy bear coated in strawberry jam and be gobbled up by the fox. Mary knew to use the threat sparingly to maintain potency.
There was no one at the swings. She yanked Michael past the paddling pool and the sandpit where some younger children were playing: all girls, no Clifford. One of them shouted out Michael’s name and he waved enthusiastically at them. Mary pushed him on and veered down the dark path beneath the railway arches.
‘You said we weren’t going to the slide.’ Michael spoke more to himself than his sister.
Clifford Hunt wasn’t at the slide or on the roundabout. He was too old for roundabouts, but Mary had seen him there with older boys in black blazers, smoking cigarettes. The last arch was closed off with a gate. A ring of plastic barriers was in the middle of the path. It surrounded a patch of drying concrete on which was engraved a heart pierced with an arrow. Mary’s own heart was thumping. Letters had been carved into the heart: ‘M. T.’ Clifford had done it. The letters looked new, so he must be hiding in the bushes. She felt the fizzing in her stomach that happened on Christmas Eve or every leap year on her real birthday.
Clifford loved her as much as she loved him.
Michael broke her reverie. ‘Those spell my name.’
‘What?’
‘M. T. means Michael Thornton. That’s me.’ He squeezed between the barriers and before Mary could stop him was scrabbling at the ‘M’ with his fingers. The concrete had hardened so he made little impact. He grabbed a twig and managed to dig at the ‘M’.
‘Leave it.’
The little boy jumped when Mary shook him. ‘You’ve ruined it.’
Michael stared up at her in astonishment. ‘Did… you… write… it?’ He got the words out between shakes.
‘It’s for me.’
‘Who would do that?’ Michael asked the question without malice.
‘They will be very angry when I say what you did.’ Mary stalked back up the path, sure Clifford Hunt was watching. She did not turn at the sound of footsteps or when she felt his hand on her bare arm, but to her horror she felt herself blushing.
Michael put his hand on his sister’s arm. He felt sad, but did not know why. He knew that the girls in his class had drawn the heart; it was like the one they did on the classroom window. He had not known that Mary’s name were the same letters as his; he had hazily supposed that he had his own name and his own letters. He wished that the heart did belong to Mary.
Mary stared at her brother with hatred, then as quickly as it had come the feeling went. Clifford had put a heart in concrete for her. The heart would be there forever and ever.