Secret Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

it.
    “That's you, Joe?”
    “Yeah.”
    She came and stood in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall.
    “The Wag Man came, Joe.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Yeah.”
    They both hung their heads and sighed.
    “Oh, Joe,” she said. “What we going to do with you?”
    He lifted his shoulders, sighed again.
    “He said if you keep on playing hooky they'll start proceedings.”
    He glanced from the window to the pale blue tent, paler than the darkening sky.
    “He said if they start proceedings it'll lead to fines for me.”
    He chewed and stared.
    “He said if they fine me and you keep on playing hooky they could even end up taking you away.”
    She watched him.
    “Do you understand, Joe?”
    He nodded.
    “Is that what you want?”
    “No, Mum.”
    “Joe, you have got to go to school.”
    “Yes, Mum.”
    He stepped toward her and she held him close and whispered his name. It had gone on so long. Psychiatrists had pried into his brain. Social workers had pried into his home. Teachers had been gentle with him, stern with him, furious with him. The Wag Man had trailed him back and forth across the waste-land. Policemen had come calling. Nothing had tamed him. The choice was easy. The eerie wasteland or the gates and walls of school? In school, Joe didn't know the things he was supposed to know. He couldn't think the thoughts he was supposed to think. He chose the wilderness, the larks, the rats and rabbits and stoats. And he accepted the loneliness that went with this choice. He accepted the pangs of fear and shame.
    His mum reached into a cupboard and took out a big jar of raspberry jam and put it on a bench.
    “Spread some of that on it.”
    He spun off the top, plunged in his knife, wiped it across the buttered bread.
    She shook her head sadly.
    “It's not easy. We need to make a new start somehow, Joe. But how do we do that? How do we change?”
    “Dunno, Mum.”
    “Some folk say you need a man at home, son. You think that?”
    He caught his breath.
    “Not… Joff!” he spat.
    “No, love. Never Joff.”
    She looked out into Helmouth while Joe dreamed of the tiger's jaws closing on Joff again.
    “Mebbe we should move away,” she said, and laughed. “There's a thought, eh? Get out of Helmouth. How many manage that?”
    She licked her fingers and smoothed his hair.
    “You,” she said. “Like you been dragged through a hedge backwards. What you been doing out there, eh?”
    “Walking. Looking at the circus. I made a f-friend.”
    “A friend?”
    “She's Corinna.”
    “That's great, Joe. She's from the circus?”
    “Yeah. She works on the trap—”
    “The trapeze! Joe, that's great.” She laughed. “I can see how the circus'd be your kind of thing. Tigers and—”
    “There's no t-tigers.”
    “No?”
    “No. All gone.”
    “But great all the same, eh?”
    “Yeah.”
    She held him at arm's length.
    “You're such a funny'n, Mr. Joseph Maloney. Always were, right from the start. Something different in your blood or something. But you know what I think?”
    “No.”
    “I think there's something very special about you. I think one day you'll amaze us all.”
    She laughed.
    “But mebbe that's nowt but a mother's love talking.”

Twelve
    He sat in his room and watched the twilight come on. Soon she'd go out again for her evening shift in the awful Booze Bin. He smelt the food she was cooking for him.
A funny'n. Always been a funny'n
. She'd said that all through his short life. She used to say how beautiful he was when he was born. She used to say that on the night that he was born the sky was filled with shooting stars, as if the universe was celebrating. She said the midwife told her he was the bonniest bairn she'd ever brought into the world. She said that his one green eye and his one brown eye were a sign of great good fortune. She said big brains and muscles didn't matter. It didn't matter that his dad was just some daft lad that ran the Tilt-a-Whirl in a fair. What mattered was Joe's gentleness,