Clay by David Almond Page B

altar.
    He said the final prayers. He told the congregation to go in peace, the Mass was over. Thanks be to God, they said.

fourteen
    I stole the wine-stained cloth in the sacristy while the priest was taking his vestments off. I swapped it with a clean cloth from a drawer. Father O’Mahoney put this into a little basket of things that would be taken away to be washed by nuns. I stuffed the cloth and the Sellotape into my pants pocket. Geordie saw me. He looked at me. I glared at him.
    Father O’Mahoney stretched and sighed.
    “What a grand morning it is, lads!” he said. “Did you see those great shafts of sunlight blazing through the church?”
    “Aye, Father,” we said.
    He took an imaginary golf club in his hands. He mimed swinging at a golf ball.
    “Oh, to be in Kerry on a day like this!” he said.
    He looked into the far distance, indicated a huge imaginary landscape with his hands.
    “The mountains, the beaches, the ocean, Dingle and the Blasket Islands and the Skellig Rocks, the call of the curlews and the sound of the surf…You should see it, boys! Ireland! The ball flies straighter there, and oh so true, and the greens are truly green and the ball drops down into the hole with a lovely little…plop! It’s God’s own land, that’s what it is.”
    He grinned.
    “But that’s enough of that. The little course at Windy Nook’s a grand substitute.” He rubbed his hands in excitement. “So. What shenanigans have you two planned for today?”
    Geordie shrugged. I said nowt. Father O’Mahoney grinned again.
    “Getting too old to share it now?” he said. He winked. “Specially when the girls might be involved.”
    He put his arms around our shoulders.
    “You’re a good pair. Always were. Good straightforward lads. Now go on. Off to your adventures. And I’ll get looking for those clubs of mine.”
    As we left, he called after us:
    “You know, boys, I often think we’re already living in the borderlands of Paradise! Good day to you now!”
    Outside the church, Geordie said,
    “What you doing with the cloth?”
    “Nowt,” I said.
    I tried to move away from him.
    “What’s up with you?” he said.
    “Nowt,” I said.
    “You’re always nicking off,” he said.
    “No, I’m not,” I said.
    “Yes, you bliddy are. It’ll be that lass again.”
    “Don’t be daft.”
    “Who you calling daft?”
    “Nobody. You.”
    “That’s right.”
    “What do you mean, that’s right? You mean it’s true you’re daft?”
    “I must be, hanging out with you.”
    “Nick off, then.”
    “I will. And you nick off as well.”
    “I will.”
    So we both nicked off. I ran up the High Street, across the square. I came to a halt. I stared at myself in the Blue Bell’s window. There I was, an ordinary kid. This was home, an ordinary town. I’d stolen the body and blood of Christ and I wouldn’t give them back. I’d go further into the darkness with Stephen Rose. I’d make a monster if I could. I closed my eyes, tried to feel the power in myself, but I still just felt like me. I moved closer to the window, I looked at myself more closely. I was just the same as ever, ordinary, just ordinary.
    “Is this what going crazy’s like?” I whispered. “Is this what being under a spell is like?”
    Then I tore myself away and ran again.

fifteen
    I inspected the Sellotape in my bedroom. The dust and fragments of Christ’s body were still stuck to it. I folded it and put it into the locket. I cut out the little wine-stained pieces of the altar cloth. I put them into the locket as well. I looked at what I had. A few shreds. Almost nothing. How could there be a power in things like this? I stared hard at them, willing them to do something marvelous.
    “Do something,” I whispered.
    They did nothing, of course. My heart sank. I snapped the locket shut.
    The sun blazed into my bedroom. A crystal-clear sky, nothing in it but a few small birds nearby and the sparrow hawk that spiraled over Braddock’s garden.