The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart

‘Hey you! New boy! What d’you want with the little singer?’

His voice is deep as a talking tombstone.

‘One day, I saw her singing and bumping into things. I’d like to give her a pair of glasses as a present.’

My voice is quavering. I must look at least a hundred and thirty.

‘Nobody’s allowed to talk to me about Miss Acacia and her spectacles! Nobody, you understand, least of all a midget like you. Don’t ever mention her name again. D’you understand, midget?’

I don’t answer. A murmur rises from the crowd: ‘Joe . . .’ Each second weighs heavily. Suddenly, he cocks his ear in my direction and asks:

‘How do you make that strange tick-tock noise?’

I don’t say anything.

He heads calmly over to me, stooping his tall carcass to put his ear next to my heart. My clock is palpitating. Time has stopped for me. His boy’s beard stings like barbed wire across my chest. Cunnilingus points his snout and sniffs the top of Joe’s head. If he starts peeing, things could get complicated.

All of a sudden, Joe tears off my buttons and rips open my jacket to expose the clock hands poking out of my shirt. The crowd of curious onlookers goes ‘Ooooh . . .’ I’m so embarrassed, he might as well have pulled my trousers down. He listens to my heart for a while, then stands up slowly.

‘Is that your heart making all that noise?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re in love with her, aren’t you?’

His deep, conceited voice makes all my bones shiver.

My brain wants to say no, no . . . but my heart has faster access to my lips.

‘Yes, I am.’

The students start whispering ‘Ooohh . . .’ The anger blazing at the back of Joe’s eyes is tinged with sadness, which makes him even more terrifying. Just one look from him and the schoolyard falls silent. Even the wind seems to obey him.

‘The “little singer,” as you call her, is the love of my life and . . . she’s not here any more. Don’t you ever dare talk to me about her again! I don’t even want to hear you thinking about her, or I’ll smash that wooden clock over your head. I’ll break it, do you hear me? I’ll break it so badly, you’ll NEVER be able to love again!’

His long fingers quiver with rage, even when he clenches his fist.

Just a few hours ago, I thought my heart was a ship ready to cut through an ocean of disapproval. I knew it wasn’t the sturdiest heart in the world, but I believed in the strength of my own enthusiasm. I was so fired up by the idea of finding the little singer that nothing could have stopped me. In less than five minutes, Joe has reset my clock to real-time, swapping my colourful galleon for a dilapidated old tub.

‘I’ll break it so badly, you’ll NEVER be able to love again!’ he says one more time.

‘Cuckoo,’ answers my wooden hull.

The sound of my own voice is cut short; you’d think I’d just been punched in the gut.

As I climb back up Arthur’s Seat, I wonder how such a gorgeous bespectacled goldfinch could have fallen into the claws of a vulture like Joe. I try to cheer myself with the thought that perhaps my little singer came to school without her glasses on and that she couldn’t see what she was getting herself into . . . Where could she be now?

A middle-aged woman interrupts my anxious reverie. She’s holding Joe firmly by the hand – unless it’s the other way round, given the vulture’s size. She looks like him, just a more withered version, and with an elephant’s arse.

‘Are you the boy who lives up there with the witch? Did you know she delivers children from prostitutes’ bellies? You probably came out of a prostitute’s belly too, everyone knows the old lady’s been barren for a long time.’

When adults get involved, a new threshold of ugliness is always crossed.

Despite my obstinate silence, Joe and his mother carry on insulting me for a good part of the journey. I struggle to reach the top of the hill. The day weighs so heavily on my clock hands that I’m having to drag myself along like a ball and chain. Bloody clock of dreams! I’d happily hurl you down Arthur’s Seat.

That evening, no matter how much Madeleine sings to help send me off to sleep, it doesn’t work. When I decide to tell her about Joe, she explains that perhaps he treated me like that to look big in other people’s eyes, and that he’s not necessarily all bad. He must be very smitten with the little singer too. The torment of love can transform people into wretched monsters, she tells me. It annoys me that she’s making excuses for him. She kisses me on my clock dial and slows down my cardiac rate by pressing on my gears with her index finger. I close my eyes in the end, but I’m not smiling.

CHAPTER FOUR

A fistful of emotions, a poked-out eye and a hasty departure from Edinburgh

A year goes by, with Joe sticking to me as if magnetised by my clock hands; punching my clock in full view of everybody. Sometimes I want to tear out his crow-black shock of hair; I try not to flinch when he humiliates me,