Clay Read Online Free PDF Page A

are living things. Clay. Stone. Things of the earth. But alive!”
    Then he put them away. He lifted a heavy bag of clay to his table.
    “Now let us all,” he said, “in our clumsy human way, begin to seek that inner light.”

ten
    That evening when we went to the cave we found Stephen sitting there. He was making a clay figure on his lap. A little fire was burning at his side. He looked up and saw us but he just looked down again and didn’t speak.
    “We saw your two apostles,” said Geordie.
    “The art teacher showed us,” I said. “He’s called Prat. He said they were bliddy brilliant.”
    Stephen worked on.
    Geordie pointed down at the clay figure.
    “Who’s that one, then?” he said. “St. Fishface?”
    “No,” said Stephen. “It’s St. Peter, actually.”
    “There’s tons more clay where that come from,” said Geordie. “The clay in that pond goes right to the middle of the world.”
    Stephen looked at him.
    “No, it doesn’t,” he said. “A boy came here earlier.”
    “A boy?” I said. “Here?”
    “Aye.”
    “How big was he?”
    “Small. A bit like me. But a thin and pointy thing.”
    Geordie and I looked at each other.
    “Skinner,” I said. “What did he say?”
    “Nowt. He said he’d heard there were more of us. He said I should be careful who I joined up with.”
    “What did you say?” said Geordie.
    “Nowt. I told him to be gone. I showed him my knife. He went away.”
    He picked up a beetle that was crawling across his foot. He looked at it, then crushed it with his thumb, then lifted it up like he was waiting for it to do something.
    “Where’s it gone?” he said.
    “Eh?” said Geordie.
    “Nowt,” said Stephen.
    He dropped the beetle into the fire and there was a quick little fizz as it burned.
    “You do it just like that,” he said.
    He looked around him.
    “Saints used to live in caves like this,” he said. “In the desert. In the wilderness. They tested themselves.”
    “That’s right,” said Geordie. “Like that skinny bloke that ate all the locusts and that. And the one that never wore no clothes.”
    “Aye,” said Stephen.
    He smoothed the soft wet figure with his palm.
    “At Bennett,” he said, “a priest once said that mebbe I was more suited to the wilderness than to the civilized world.”
    “Felling’s the right place for you, then,” said Geordie.
    “What happened there?” I said. “At Bennett?”
    Stephen shrugged.
    “We learned the catechism,” he said. “We said prayers. We went to Mass. We ate loads of jam and bread. We did the ordinary school stuff—sums and English and geography and stuff. Then we learned about God and miracles and how to be a good priest. There was football, and cross-countries through the woods. Lots of lads seemed happy there.”
    “It looked good when we went,” said Geordie. “Loads of mates. No mothers and sisters getting on your back.”
    “It didn’t suit all of us,” said Stephen. “Some of us couldn’t fit in.”
    Geordie and I sat on stones near him. We smoked and looked at each other and said nowt and there was just the birds singing and the breeze rustling the leaves in Braddock’s garden and the scratching somewhere of tiny beasts. Far away, traffic droned on the bypass. I dropped more sticks onto the flames. Stephen’s fingers slipped across the clay. He kept looking up at me, like he was inspecting me. Between his hands, another lovely figure formed.
    “It was winter when I went away,” he said. “A taxi came for me. There were three other lads in it and a priest. I left my mam and dad at the front door. My mam was crying. It didn’t seem far. Not even an hour away. The college was ancient. Bare trees and empty fields all around it. We went in the gate and passed a pond and one of the kids said that’s where we’d practice walking on water and the priest said aye, that was right. It was already dark when he took us in through the door.”
    He looked up. It was darkening here