Trick or Treat (15 page)

And now the children are ready with the fireworks.

‘Golden Rain,' announces Wolfe. ‘Light the blue touch-paper, Tom, and stand well back.'

Tom strikes a match and sets the thing aflame and then there is a wait, and then a sigh as if it has gone out, and then a gradual drizzle and spray of gold rising like a fountain and splashing onto the grass.

‘Aaaah,' they say together. And Olive clutches Arthur's arm.

‘Of course, my Jim was the one to talk to about fireworks,' Nell's voice rises as the firework dies. Tom bends to light the Traffic Lights.

‘
Her
Jim,' mutters Olive.

‘Hush,' says Arthur.

‘Green!' cries Wolfe as the first soft pompon of light rises in the air.

‘Always the best for Rodney, the best that money could buy,' continues Nell, but nobody pays her any attention. She has hold of Rodney, weird Rodney, middle-aged now. And how did the sweet bright boy who used to sear Arthur's heart with his very aliveness turn into this queer figure? Nell's stamp is on him again. He has a scoured look. His hair is fiercely short, his neck pale and naked where the razor has scraped. Nell had always been a one for cleanliness, even before the trouble with Rodney. But that had sent her funny, Jim had said. He'd told Arthur how it played on his mind. Always cleaning she was, always scrubbing, as if she was trying to scrub the shame away. Poor Nell. But whatever must it be to have a son who did such evil? Whatever must it be to have a son at all? Which, he wonders, is worse: the absence or the terrible presence? Again the memory of the tender fluffy head and the tiny fingers curled around his thumb.

‘Orange!' Wolfe cries.

‘Amber, dick – Stupid,' says his brother.

‘Red next!'

And then again, to have a lad like Wolfe, a funny lad, fat and serious, innocent and wise. A special lad. He sighs.

‘Oh the times we had! The parties! The fun when Rodney was a child!' crows Nell, and Arthur feels for Rodney who flinches against the lies, against the pincers of his mother's fingers on his arm. But there is no expression on his face, just a straight black line for a mouth and the flames of his glasses.

‘Wolfe, why don't you hand around your toffee?' calls Petra who looks dangerously pregnant to Arthur, her belly jutting from between the edges of her coat.

‘All right, but wait for me. Don't light any more till I'm ready.'

‘Another drink anyone?' Petra offers.

‘Me,' says Olive quickly. ‘I'll have another.' Nell's eyes rise to Heaven.

‘Go easy, duck,' Arthur murmurs to Olive, but he takes her glass and goes to Petra for a refill.

‘We'll eat after the fireworks,' Petra says. ‘Only don't get excited, it's only spuds.

Arthur hands Olive her drink. ‘All right?' he says. She has her dangerous look. Wolfe thrusts forth the plate of toffee.

‘Olive'll have a bit,' Arthur says. The toffee has melted upon the plate, trying to revert from separate lumps into one mass, and Arthur prizes a piece free with difficulty. ‘Looks like a good old jaw-sticker,' he says.

Olive hangs on to Arthur. The sense has gone again, the meaning of all this. All these people, oh yes, some of them are known, some of them, and children too all lit with flames, all blinking with the smoke in their eyes. Arthur is here, at least, and there is a form on the fire like a human form, only faint, only a waver of smoke against the flame, perhaps it is nothing at all. And in her hand is a drink and her teeth are stuck together with toffee. And beside Arthur is Nell and her long face is a face of stone, a face of stone carved on a church porch somewhere and beaten away with the rain. It is an old face but the spite in it is young and green. The spite is there in the flickering of the flames lighting her face from beneath so that her nostrils are cavernous and the lines dragging down from her nose to the corners of her mouth are etched deep and black and her mouth opens and shuts like a trap and she talks of Jim.
Her
Jim.

Oh oh oh Olive knows Jim, knew Jim,
knew
Jim. And he loved Olive, oh yes he did, he loved her in every way, every way. He was such a big man, big body, bigger and hotter and clumsier than Arthur. He stuffed her so full she used to cry out with a sort of startled joy and she cries out now through the toffee so that they look at her, all of them, and Nell doesn't know what that sound means, and Arthur begins to fret. Big fingers he had too, gentle. But he never understood the rules, if they were rules – for was it a game or was it serious? Oh don't ask that, that is one too many for now. He could never understand that Arthur was Olive's and Olive was Arthur's and the physical thing was all that she wanted, the sensation of him, and it wasn't supposed to be a secret, that Arthur
knew
and that Arthur had other lovers too. He couldn't understand all that so it had to be kept secret from Nell, and that made it furtive. And although she loved – more than that, respected – Arthur, although he was her comrade, they stood back to back against the world, although she
loved
Arthur, part of her melted towards Jim, who talked of their running away together until Olive had to set herself against him, and force herself to laugh and tell him to run back to Nell if he wanted to run anywhere. And he did. And so she turned back to Arthur and all that he meant to her. And although she was quite certain that Jim was the father of her child, Arthur thought
he
was. He
was
in all the ways that matter. No one knew any better. It was kinder that way. She had thought it was kinder, all for the best. But all these years Arthur has mourned a son who was not his own and there is pain inside her that tells her she was wrong. But she cannot tell him now. She cannot take away that six-week trace of fatherhood. She cannot bereave him afresh.

The Catherine wheel will not spin properly. Tom prods it with a broom-handle and the children scream, ‘Don't, don't!' and despite Tom's efforts it will only flip over in a bright little arc and then stick again, squirting its sparks onto the ground.

‘They always do that,' grumbles Petra. ‘I've never known a Catherine wheel to spin right yet. Never mind, Tom, let's have the rockets.'

‘Of course,' begins Nell, ‘my Jim had the secret of Catherine wheels. A loose nail through the centre …'

‘
My
Jim,' scoffs Olive, loudly.

‘Hush Ollie,' pleads Arthur, but his heart sinks. He knows the signs, the look in her eyes, the heaviness of her stance. She has gathered her wits and her temper is up.

‘
My
Jim … oh if only you knew. There's things I know about
your
Jim would wipe that look off your face.'

Nell looks away sharply. ‘Well then, perhaps the rockets,' she says to Petra in a stifled voice.

‘Yes. Tom,' says Petra hastily.

‘Mine first,' begs Wolfe.

‘I had him,' Olive boasts. ‘Oh yes, I had him and he was a bugger for it, wasn't he Nell? Did he give it to you like he gave it to me? A big bugger, wasn't he?'

There is a silence broken only by Bobby sniggering.

‘I'm sorry,' says Arthur. ‘She's not herself … perhaps we ought to …'

‘Not myself!' cries Olive, ‘not myself! What sort of rubbish is that? I'm more my —' but the toffee has done for her teeth and they fly out with the force of her passion to click to the ground.

‘Wheee!' exclaims Petra desperately as Wolfe's rocket whizzes into the sky and feathers down its sparks of green and silver and blue. Arthur lets go of Olive's arm and bends to retrieve the glistening dentures.

‘Talk about stretch,' continues Olive, unbashed, in a flabby voice. Now that she is free of Arthur she moves threateningly towards Nell.

‘Really!' she says, superior in her fright. Arthur tries to grab Olive's arm but she shakes him off.

‘Buffy's rocket,' announces Tom, but everyone is watching the lumbering form of Olive, massive in her bulging coat, advancing towards Nell who clings to a wilting Rodney.

‘She's not herself,' pleads Arthur in her defence. ‘Come on, Ollie, home now, come on, duck.'

Olive stumbles and drops her glass. It shatters and the wine bleeds away into the black ground. She hesitates and looks round for Arthur. It has gone now, the temper, and she is confused. ‘Artie?' she says. Relieved, he goes to her and takes her arm.

‘There now,' he says. ‘Home now, I think … Sorry about glass,' he adds to Petra.

‘Don't worry. Sure you don't want to stay for a potato?'

‘I think we'd best get back.'

‘Bye-bye,' calls Wolfe, sadly. Arthur leads Olive out of the gate and down the passage and as they leave he hears the voices drifting after them.

‘Brilliant!' says Bobby, ‘I thought she was going to land …'

‘Shhh.'

‘Poor old dear,' Nell's voice is tremulous but loud and carrying. ‘All too much for her I suppose. What nonsense she does speak … delusions you know …'

‘I'm sure,' says Petra, comforting, relieved. ‘Now, what about Buffy's rocket?'

The fireworks are finished, the fire relaxing into its embers, the potatoes eaten. Wolfe wanders into the kitchen. He licks his finger and presses it into the corners of the Tupperware box to collect the crumbs. He sucks his fingers. They taste of ginger and smoke.

‘Still hungry?' asks Rodney, who is suddenly there behind him.

‘Me? No,' Wolfe replies. He turns round, his back to the table.

‘Boys are always hungry,' Rodney says as if he hasn't heard. ‘Boys like to eat.'

Rodney's ears stick out and they are very pink with the light shining through them, like fatty bits of bacon. There are bristles in his ears and his nose, and on the end of his nose is a drip. ‘Didn't you like the fireworks? Were you scared of the bangs?' Rodney is drinking wine from the glass and his lips have left smeary marks on it. He fingers are funny at the ends, thin and flat like spades.

‘I'm not scared at all,' Wolfe says. ‘Course I'm not.'

‘A brave boy then,' Rodney smiles. ‘How old are you?'

‘Me? I'm eight.'

‘Only a little boy, for eight,' Rodney says.

‘Well I am eight,' Wolfe says, and then because he likes to be polite, ‘only I do look younger, everyone says.'

‘And you've got poor sore hands …' Rodney puts down his glass and reaches out his hands to Wolfe but Wolfe puts his behind his back. Rodney lets his hands drop sadly to his sides, and Wolfe is sorry. ‘Have you been to see the Cutlers' Wheel?' Rodney asks.

Wolfe shakes his head. Rodney's head looks too small for his tall body, tiny, almost pointed, with its huge ears, and he leans it now towards Wolfe and his lips are very wet and his eyes flicker behind his glasses.

‘No. What is it?'

‘Through the park, through the woods, over the bridge to the Cutlers' Wheel. Where they used to grind cultery. Water power. It's a grand sight. Grand sound. Water rushing and the great wheel – all rust and moss now but still working – and the belts all rattling away inside.'

‘Oh … no, I've never heard of it.'

‘You must see it. Would you like to see it? Rodney could take you to see it.'

Wolfe hesitates. The drip on the end of Rodney's nose drops.

‘It's all right, thanks, I'll ask my mum to take me.'

‘No … if you go first, then you can surprise your mum, tell her all about it, show her the way, take her to see it.' He is nervous, Wolfe sees, his eyes jumping, his fingers fiddling with his glass. Perhaps he is lonely, like Wolfe. Perhaps he wants to make friends. Wolfe knows how horrible it is to have no friends, and Rodney looks the type of person people might make fun of. Big Ears, they might call him, or Blubber Lugs, or Four Eyes.

‘All right then,' says Wolfe. After all, although he is strange, Rodney is not a stranger but a neighbour. It is strangers that you must say no to.

‘When?' asks Rodney. His mother comes into the kitchen. Wolfe sees the way she stares at Rodney, her face sharp as a beak.

‘When what?' she demands.

‘Nothing,' says Rodney.

Nell looks at Wolfe. ‘Nothing,' he agrees.

‘Yes,' Nell looks from Rodney to Wolfe and then takes Rodney's arm. ‘Well anyway, you can come outside with me where I can keep an eye on you.'

Wolfe, left alone in the kitchen, grimaces, and goes back to licking the last crumbs from Nell's box. He'd die if his mother spoke to him like that in front of someone else. Especially if he was grown up.

‘Mao,' Olive calls from her bed. ‘Artie, where's Mao?' Arthur swallows. He'd hoped that Olive hadn't noticed the absence of the cat.

‘He's all right,' he evades, stepping out of his trousers.

‘But where?'

‘He went out.'

‘Out? Artie, out? On a night like this!' Olive struggles to a half-sitting position.

‘He'll be all right. Don't fuss.'

‘But the bombs Arthur! The bombs and the blazes …'

‘Fireworks is all they are. He'll be all right. He'll be holed up somewhere and back in morning, you see.'

‘But Arthur he'll freeze! You must go out and search …'

‘No, Olive,' says Arthur sharply, and he never speaks sharply to her and she stops, about to speak, with her mouth open. ‘And you were bad this evening,' Arthur continues. ‘Didn't know where to put myself when you went off like that. Language like that! And with the kids there too.'

‘Bloody old buggering bitch,' says Olive reflectively.

‘No excuse … I don't know what got into you.'

‘The way she talks about him as if he was some sort of apostle. He liked a good …'

‘Ollie!' Arthur climbs into bed beside her and unwillingly rolls down into her warmth. She snuggles and murmurs. ‘What am I going to do with you?' he sighs. She is dreadful, a dreadful woman with a filthy tongue and he is angry with her, and he is excited by her. She will never give up. She gets worse. He rolls on top of her. She smells of bonfires and sweet toffee and there is a faint taste of wine on her lips. She is endlessly big and soft and he burrows himself down into her, kissing and squeezing and kneading her. She moans luxuriously.