Danny swung his stick at the clump of nettles growing in the shade beside the narrow forest path. He aimed for the tallest one, its straggly neck poking up above the rest, listing to one side under the weight of its hazy, serrated leaves.
"Fuck you Mister Richards!" he shouted, as the head of the nettle tumbled into the green mass, as neatly as if snipped with shears. "Fuck you and your fucking sums!"
Danny's friend Liam was a few paces behind him on the path. He laughed and said, "What about Mrs Jamieson? Don't forget her." Then, in a high, nasal voice, "Well I think William Shakespeare's job is safe, don't you Danny?"
"Fucking Jamieson!" Danny bellowed. His voice misfired a little, revved too hard in a low gear. He swung at the nettles again, indiscriminately this time, bending more than breaking them. His stick lost momentum and caught in the middle of the stems. He thrashed it around a little, grunting with the effort, then dragged it out.
The damaged nettles gave off a green, buzzing smell.
It was a warm summer afternoon and a few beads of sweat had trickled down from Danny's hairline. He wiped his forehead with his hand. A green smudge was left behind, transferred there from the stick, which had still been attached to a tree when he found it.
"You know what I think is cool as fuck," he said, "is the way the way the light comes through the trees and you can see all the shadows of leaves and branches and stuff. Like someone's come round with a stencil and sprayed them on."
"It's beautiful here isn't it?" said Liam, turning to Danny as he spoke. Caught in the beam of his full face, Danny found himself nodding and agreeing more enthusiastically than he meant to.
"Yeah, it's really nice here. It's — beautiful. Wish my parents had a holiday home."
Liam smirked to himself as they followed the bumps and dips of the path.
At some point the trees and undergrowth began to thin out, and the soil became mixed with sand and bits of shell. Soon Danny could taste salt on the air: it reminded him of home, of the seaside town on the other coast of Scotland where he and Liam lived. The path led to open sand with tufts of seagrass growing through it. The grass continued up the side of a high dune. There were clumps of gorse there too, bright yellow flowers ringing over sombre green and brown thorns. Over the dune the boys could see the open sky, sunny and cloudy at once, and hear the crash and hiss of the Atlantic.
"Out of the jungle, into the desert," said Danny, spinning round on the sand.
They climbed up the dune, scrambling a little, sand sifting into their shoes below their ankles.
On top of the dune the true smell of the sea hit them: fresh salt water mixed with something rotting, seaweed or fish. They could see a long way up and down the beach. In one direction it curved out of sight into an estuary. In the other it led to an outcrop of rocks that rose up in a steep crag with a grassy slope above it. At first Danny thought the beach was empty, but then he noticed a couple out walking their dog. His eyesight was slightly weak; he had glasses but resisted his mother's efforts to get him to wear them. The couple reached him without detail, just the straight dark bands of their bodies, dense in the centre and glassy and vague at the fringes. If he squinted he could see that they were holding hands. The angular join of the arms made them into a blurred letter M, printed on the sand, blurred by the tide.
Danny threw his stick from the top of the dune, coiling and uncoiling like a baseball pitcher. It landed about halfway to the sea.
"Good throw," said Liam.
Danny beamed. "Imagine if someone had been walking past," he said. "Some guy walking down the beach and suddenly this stick comes out of nowhere and smacks him in the face!"
Liam said nothing.
"And he's walking around with this stick pointing out of his eye, going, excuse me sir, could you tell me, have I got something in my eye…"
When Danny was finished they walked down the dune to the beach. Only it wasn't so much a matter of walking as sliding, grabbing at the few blades of grass, trying not to slip down with the loose sheets of sand.
By unspoken consensus, they set off in the direction of the rocks. The sand was heaped up at the back of the beach, and it was slow going there. Their feet sank too far in and they stumbled on buried stones and bits of wood. So they changed tack and crossed the smelly line of seaweed to continue on the wet sand. Liam walked on for a while, feeling the firm pack of the sand beneath him, looking at its waterlogged, elephant skin texture. He turned to say something and realised he was alone. Danny had stopped to pick something up from the tideline. Liam couldn't see what it was, only that Danny was holding it very close to his face, turning it over and over. Liam smirked as he watched Danny rotate the object in front of him, never quite finding the right angle to examine it from. It was the same mania of incompletion that had him chewing the side of his tongue when he was trying to say something, his twitch growing more acute, and more comical, the more eager he was to express himself.
"Hey fuckface," Liam called, in a movie gangster voice, "I got somethin' for ya."
Danny pocketed his iridescent shell. He ran over to Liam, saying, "what's dat, fuckface?" His impressions weren't as good as Liam's; his normal voice, mumbly and excitable at the same time, always showed through them.
Liam reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of earphones. He pressed a button in the same pocket and music began to hiss out of them. Enough of it reached Danny over the surf noise for him to identify the song.
Danny snatched the earphones from Liam's hand and plugged them into his ears. In his head the thin ghost of music became a powerful roar, powerchords and drums. He nodded in time, waiting for the beat when the singer came in. He missed it and started singing anyway — out of tune and much louder than he realised. He turned to Liam for approval of his performance, and immediately his voice faltered. The look of hurt and anger on Liam's face was so strong that Danny wondered if, while singing, he had accidentally spat on him. Danny felt his throat dry and constrict, his palms prickle with sweat. Under Liam's continuing glare, he pulled the earphones out and handed them back.
Of course, he thought, it's Liam's stereo and he wants to listen to it himself.
Liam took the earphones and put one of them in his ear. He held the other out to Danny. It took a moment for Danny to understand. Then, linked ear to ear by the split black chord, they continued along the sand.
Danny found it uncomfortable to walk like this. The enforced closeness felt claustrophobic to him, stifled his natural tendency to meander. It disturbed him too, the way the blare of the heavy metal was concentrated in only one ear, with the other open to the crash of the waves and the shrill, repetitive cries of the gulls.
Liam seemed perfectly content though.
It took a while to reach the rocks — more than three songs. Up close the stone was deep grey, where it could be seen though the yellowish stubble of barnacles and the slick hair of bubble-wrap seaweed. They began to walk across one of the rocks — a flat, slanting shelf — and almost immediately Danny slipped. He recovered his balance with a wild lurch, body for a moment more horizontal than vertical, but his earphone fell out and swung against Liam's side.
There was an awkward pause while Danny wondered if he was supposed to put the earphone back in his ear. Then Liam wadded up the cord and stuffed it in his pocket.
Relieved, Danny ran up to the highest part of one of the rocks and bounded across the sand to the next one. He left two shallow, waterfilled footprints behind him.
The rocks were treacherous where there weren't any barnacles; and it was hard to tell, through all the seaweed, where the barnacles stopped. It wasn't long before Danny slipped again. This time he fell and landed on his hip. He made a high, whimpering sound at the point of impact, like a dog when its tail is stepped on.
Liam watched him scurry to his feet.
"You look like your little brother," said Liam, twisting his face into a grotesque, round mouthed mask. He did the voice too, riding a retarded see-saw up and down. "Thtop it Danny, thtop hitting me or I'm telling mum!"
Danny said nothing, just turned to look at the crag behind them. It was steep, but far from vertical; and it wasn't that high. At the end of the beach it jutted out to sea and became a cliff — sheer, layered rock rising from the water with a dark tideline undulating along it. Without looking back, he scrambled to where the rocks steepened and began to climb.
The stone was warm and rough under his hands. It was easy to grip, and he felt safe reaching his fingers into the deep cracks and finding ledges with his feet. Safer than he had on the sand with Liam. Orange lichen grew in some places; the grain of the rock was different above and below the fissures that slanted down in parallel lines. Danny focused on details like these, telling himself not to look up or down. It wasn't long before he dragged himself over the top to the turf above. He lay face down for a moment, catching his breath and getting a weird close up of rabbit droppings and faded grass and tiny clothlike flowers. Then he rolled over and sat with his arms locked behind him, looking out to sea. The blue was broken by a few white crests and the shadows of the scattered clouds. Mountainous islands rose up towards the horizon. He could feel the mountains behind him too, the bulk and swell of the land, the smallness of his body perched above the rocks.
After a while the breeze picked up and a slight chill crept through his clothes. He wondered how long he had been sitting there.
"Liam?" he called.
