Read Online Dear Nobody by Berlie Doherty - Free Book Online

mugs from a shelf. ‘Look at that,’ he said, pleased. ‘Aren’t they grand! Just right.’
    He handled his cups lovingly, holding them up to the light so I could see the oyster-shell pattern on the base. I’d never thought of cups as works of art. They’re just useful containers.
    â€˜It’s lovely stuff, clay,’ he told me. I think he’s a bit obsessed with the stuff. I think you’d have to be, to mess about with it all day. Perhaps that’s where the word “potty” comes from. ‘Have you never worked it? It’s like breadmaking, only faster. It’s slippery as fishes when you get it going, and you’ve got to get it just right or it sinks in your hands into a wet mess. Have a go. Here, while you’re waiting. Have a go.’
    He sat me on a stool in front of some clay, and set a pail of water by me. ‘Just play with it,’ he said. ‘Get used to the texture, that’s the thing.’
    He set his wheel going and dumped a lump of clay on to the centre of it. He hollowed it out with his thumbs and then kept slipping water over it while he bulged the sides up fast with the crooks of his fingers. ‘Got a memory, clay has,’ he told me. ‘Once you’ve got it going one way, it’ll always go that way. Bit like me!’ he laughed. ‘Stubborn.’ The stuff was fluid under his big fingers, solid and liquid at the same time. It was like living water. I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
    â€˜Don’t be scared of it, that’s the thing,’ he said. ‘Try it.’
    There was a kind of chanting going on in my head. I tried to close it out. I rolled my piece of clay; I loved the way it slithered in my fingers. I tried to shape it into a ball, then dug in my thumbs to make a hole, and at the same time I was pinching the base to make it bell out. I was totally absorbed in this. It hollowed out like a cave. I put it down on the ledge. The chanting wouldn’t go away. I picked up a small blob of clay and began to shape it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I made a tiny doll, without even thinking about it. It was like the little plasticine models I used to make at infant school. It had a tiny head and a little round fat body. It was so small I could hold it in my palm and curl my hand over it. I dropped the little round body into the hollow cave I’d made, then swiftly, swiftly in case Mr Marshall had seen me, I dipped and wet the top so that the lips of the cave met like a mermaid’s purse. I nursed it in my hands, shaping it and smoothing it.
    â€˜What’s that you’re making?’ Mr Marshall laughed. ‘An Easter egg, is it?’
    â€˜Something like that,’ I said. It was as if he’d woken me up from a deep sleep. I put the egg down and let it roll on the table. I felt myself growing hot all over. Pins of heat like scratches prickled my skin. The air was black around me. Somewhere under a black sea a voiceboomed. I was in a hot ocean, and my arms and my legs were lumbering things, sliding out and down, and my head was an enormous cave, and still the voice boomed, and then turned silver-thin and went out.
    When I came round I was sitting by the open door of the cellar, with the night air cold on me and Chris’s dad kneeling by me. He was holding my hand.
    â€˜I forget how stuffy it gets down here sometimes,’ he said. ‘You frightened the life out of me, the way you keeled over then. You sit there till you’re better. I’ll bring a rug down to put round you.’
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ I said. I was cold all over.
    â€˜Don’t be soft. Sorry! I’ve seen big strong men faint in my time, soldiers even, in the heat. Passing-out parade they call it, and they’re all passing out, dropping like flies in the heat. You’ll be fine in a jiffy. I’ll ring your dad to come and pick you up in a bit.’
    â€˜No. Don’t do