Trick or Treat (16 page)

‘Oh yes, Artie, that is what you do with me, that's it,' and together they rock in a familiar pleasure, a tender crumpled pleasure that ends not in fierce spurts of passion, not in ecstatic cries, but in a gentle dribble of content, a mutual slowing to a stop.

‘There, there, my bad lass, my wicked lass,' murmurs Arthur, but Olive is already slipping through into the deep of her sleep. ‘Sweet dreams.'

Olive, softly, snores.

‘A
good
wash, mind,' says Nell. ‘Fires spread dirt right through the air, and it was none too clean inside, though
you
wouldn't have noticed I
don't
suppose.
And
the state of that cup! How she expected me to drink out of
that! And
her in the family way.' Rodney looks vacantly at Nell.

‘And Olive made a proper fool of herself tonight, didn't she, Rodney? Didn't she? Pitiful really. Talking such stuff and nonsense about your father. Mad. Senile, that's what she is, spouting those filthy lies. Fantasies I'd call them. Such filthy fantasies about your father! Oh she really went too far. Whatever must they think? It almost makes me feel sorry for her. And in front of the children too!'

Nell is light-hearted, excited, almost happy. She smiles at Rodney. ‘Get a move on then. Shoes off and have a wash and then I'll get the kettle on for a decent cuppa.' She washes her hands under the kitchen tap. ‘Praise where praise due though, Rodney, I must say I was proud … well not ashamed of you tonight, Rodney, with your hair cut and all. He made a tidy job of it, that barber.'

Rodney bends to untie his shoes.

‘Put them on a bit of newspaper by the door, that's it. And what was it you were saying to that little lad in the kitchen?'

‘Nothing much,' Rodney moves towards the teapot.

‘No, leave that. I'd as soon do it myself. I'll have a biscuit, I think. You? A proper wash now, the soap's there.' She watches the water flowing over Rodney's hands. ‘I didn't fancy those potatoes – I've never seen the point of leaving the dirty old skins on – but now we're back I'm not sure I'm not a bit peckish. I'm not saying you're not to be trusted, Rodney, I'm not saying that, but you just stay away from the lad next door, from all of them. Understand?'

‘Yes.'

‘What did you think of them, next door?'

‘Not bothered.'

‘Well, that's all right then.' Nell reaches down the biscuit tin. ‘There's no call to be getting what your father would have called over-friendly, always best to keep a distance.'

‘Lead us not into temptation,' Rodney mutters.

‘What's that?'

‘Part of a prayer. The Lord's Prayer. Deliver us from evil.'

‘Oh yes, well, no harm in a prayer I dare say, but just you …'

‘He knows.' Rodney's face is flushing. His hands are dripping on the floor and he never used the soap after all that, but Nell holds her tongue. She pours the boiling water into the pot and scratches a little spot off the sink with her thumbnail as she waits for it to brew.

‘Where they think they're going to put another child, I don't know,' she says. ‘It'll be like sardines in there by the time they've finished. I don't know what your father would have said …'

‘Leave them be, Nell.'

‘What?' asks Nell, startled.

‘That's what Dad would have said – if he'd said anything at all.'

Nell stalks round the bedroom in her long nightdress. Her hair is still damp from her bath and trapped to her head in a tight mesh cap. Her long bony feet are cold from pacing the floor, but she cannot be still. She is recounting to Jim every detail, every word, every speck of dust, and his eyes follow her around the dim bedroom from his sunny frame.

‘And that Arthur, such a dried-up old fogey he is. How he still copes with his allotment I
don't
know. He's not up to it, Jim, never has been if you ask my opinion, not like you were.'

‘Why not get into bed, my love?' suggests Jim mildly. ‘Hop in now. You must be frozen.'

‘And her next door in the family way. Did I say, Jim? And did I see a wedding ring? Did I heck. And that Olive … oh that precious Olive … well I don't know where to start. It's all lies. Of course, I don't need to ask because it's all lies, isn't it, Jim? I know you thought she was a looker with her lips all red like I don't know what – but she was obvious, wasn't she? You always said she was obvious. And it's all lies. Of course, it's all lies. And the precious hat, well that's all ashes now. Those children burnt it. I wasn't to know they'd burn it, was I. And it was all lies, wasn't it? Wasn't it?' Nell's voice has risen to an anxious bray but Jim is silent. He does that, could always do that, go silent all of a sudden, shut off. It enrages Nell that he can do that, withdraw like a snail into its shell just when her anger is rising. Of course, he is right. It is never a good thing to display anger, or any passion for that matter. Especially not in public, but not in private either, for one must always be in control. Not like Olive. All that loud laughter, shouting, crying even, in public, and look at her now, not even in control of her teeth let alone her emotions.

‘Well anyway, she's properly senile now, the old tart,' she hisses. ‘How could you ever have looked at her … and that nincompoop Arthur stuck with her. Stuck with a fat old geriatric trollop. Twenty stone she must be, no exaggeration Jim, and me still only nine. And you should have seen the performance she put on tonight! The filth that came out of that mouth! And it's not true, is it Jim, no I needn't ask. Of course it isn't true. Is it? Is it? Why can't you just …' And the anger wells like a balloon expanding in her chest. But she will be calm, she must be, must be calm. She breathes in deeply, counts the seconds, breathes deeply of the cold, reassuringly Dettol-scented air.

‘Hop into bed, love,' Jim advises again from the heaven of his frame.

Nell sits down before her dressing table and gazes at her bony face in the mirror. She will be calm. In the mirror her face is calm. She thinks calming thoughts. ‘Now if Olive had had children, had children that lived …' That thought calms her. ‘Oh you really should see her, Jim, you should see her now. You wouldn't look twice now, you'd look away. And I'm not so bad for my age, not so bad, not an ounce more than on our wedding day.'

Nell's mind drifts back to her wedding day. Her face softens at the memory. She had married young, the first man to propose, a man some few years older, not a boy, a proper man. A man her father approved of: Jim. She had been a tall willow of a girl and her dress had been of creamy crêpe de Chine. Like a fragile blossom she'd been, and she'd held her father's arm as they'd walked outside the church, and he had squeezed her hand and smiled complicitly, smiled his approval, and she'd trembled then in perfect happiness, perfect fulfilment. That was probably the best moment of her life, she realises, surprised, that tiny moment alone with her father, waiting for the organ to strike up. Poised between the two men in her life, on the boundary between daughter and wife, trembling on the brink.

The day had been perfect, long shafts of sunshine penetrating the dim church interior, seeming to bless their union. And afterwards wine and cold meats and cake, and then the speeches and the toasts; and Edwin seeming suddenly young and gauche and Nell smiling generously upon him from her exalted position. Olive had been there too, dressed in something tawdry and rayon, with a smudge upon her cheek no doubt, but for once all eyes had been on Nell.

It was only afterwards, towards the evening when the air was growing chill, that she had overheard her father say to someone, ‘Well that's her off my hands for good and all,' as if she was not so much a fragile blossom as a troublesome puppy. She had turned away then, pretending not to have heard. And it was her own fault: after all, eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves, and he probably hadn't meant it. It was just the sort of thing fathers-of-the-bride say at weddings, and so she had smiled bravely and gone to look for Jim, husband Jim. In her memory sometimes now, the faces of her father and of Jim become curiously confused, the one superimposed upon the other. It strikes her how alike they were.

She turns to Jim, and brushes her fingers against her lips and then against his frame. ‘Good-night, my dear,' she says.

Nine

‘Mum, there's a frozen chicken in the garden!' shrieks Wolfe. Tom is in bed with Petra, and both raise their heads slightly and peer at him over the quilt.

‘Don't be daft,' Petra mutters and flops back. Tom moans, turns over and buries his face in the pillow.

‘There is, honest, you look if you don't believe me.'

‘Eight o'clock, Mum,' calls Buffy. ‘Aren't you getting up? It's school. Bobby's gone.'

‘Oh Christ,' Tom murmurs.

‘What's the matter?' Wolfe sits on the side of the bed, looking at the little he can see of Petra. Her eyes are closed again and her hair is streaked stickily across her forehead.

‘We were up half the night,' she whispers through dry lips. ‘False alarm.'

‘Alarm?'

‘False … nothing doing?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Oh nothing, never mind. Are you ready for school? Ask Buffy to bring us a cup of tea, will you?'

‘I'm not going to school. My skin's bad, look.' Wolfe holds his poor scaly hands in front of her face. The skin is thick and red and cracked and weeping. ‘I'm sorry. I've been trying not to scratch.'

‘Oh no,' Petra squints at his hands. ‘Oh no … that's all we need. Poor Wolfie, I wonder what brought that on?'

‘And what about the chicken?'

‘What chicken?'

‘The one on the lawn, I told you.'

Buffy comes in. ‘It's gone eight,' she complains. ‘Aren't you getting up?'

‘Bring us a cup of tea, love,' pleads Petra.

‘Have you seen the frozen chicken on the lawn?' asks Wolfe.

‘Don't be daft,' says Buffy, admiring herself in the mirror, ‘we're vegetarian.'

‘We're not. We eat fish and chips.'

‘But not chicken.'

‘Anyway look out of the window.' Buffy pulls a face at him before she draws back the curtain and looks out. ‘I can't see … oh wait a minute, there is something … and it does look a bit like a chicken. Plucked.'

‘See, told you so!'

‘Tea,' Petra begs weakly.

‘Coming up, the kettle's boiled.' Buffy clatters downstairs.

Tom sits up, yawns and stretches to reveal wads of thick damp black hair in his armpits. Wolfe looks away.

‘And the backs of my knees are bad, too,' he says. ‘I must have been scratching in my sleep … look …'

‘OK, OK, you'd better stay off today,' Petra says, opening her eyes properly at last.

‘Come into town with me, mate,' Tom says. ‘I'm going to do a picture.'

‘And you can pick Wolfie up some more cream from the chemist's while you're at it.'

‘But what if someone sees me in town when I'm meant to be ill?' asks Wolfe. It is bad enough with none of the kids at school liking him without getting into trouble with the teachers too.

‘Don't worry,' says Petra, ‘I'll write you a note. Anyway …'

‘Anyway what?' But Tom has silenced her with a look. ‘What? insists Wolfe. Tom raises an eyebrow at him.

‘Pass me my glasses, mate,' he says.

‘State of flux again?' Wolfe asks grumpily.

‘That's about the size of it. Clever little bleeder aren't you?' Tom smiles at him in a warm way, quite a friendly way, and Wolfe half forgives him for letting him down.

‘Can I come into town with you then?'

‘Sure you can.'

‘Here you are.' Buffy pushes through the door with two slopping mugs of tea. ‘And get this …' she dashes downstairs again and returns with a bald cat. ‘Here's your chicken, Wolfe.' She drops it on the bed. ‘I'm off.' She bends over and kisses Petra. ‘Look after Nothing, Mum.'

Wolfe looks at the creature with a mixture of wonder and pity. It is a bluish colour, smudged with grey ash, and its skin is smooth as a baby's. Its sharp ribs, knobby spine and the points of its leg bones show yellow through the stretched skin. Its face is weird like a space creature's, half human, half cat, grey-white and stretched and wrinkled at the same time. It blinks blue eyes at Wolfe, clever eyes, not frightened at all, and then it creeps towards him, its skin cold against his own.

‘It's frozen, poor thing,' Petra observes, sipping her tea.

‘It's bloody disgusting,' Tom says. ‘What is it do you think, a freak, or bred like that?'

‘No idea.'

‘Well it gives me the willies,' Tom says, and Wolfe giggles.

The cat begins to purr, a high-pitched clockwork sound.

‘And before you start,' Petra says, ‘we're not keeping it. We're already landed with Buffy's kitten.'

‘First my hat and then my cat,' moans Olive. ‘What's happening, Artie?'

‘Nowt, Ollie. We'll find him.' Arthur stands at the back door looking out, hoping that the half-witted creature hasn't gone and frozen to death somewhere. He wears his corduroys and holds the godstone in his hand. ‘I'll go out and look in a bit.' Today, somehow, he must get up to the allotment, just for an hour, just to see whether the bean seedlings are showing yet. He must get up there to breathe, and to think. ‘I'll fetch a few parsnip back today,' he says, ‘and I'll make a stew for your tea. Fetch some scrag-end from butcher. Eh Ollie?'

‘All right, Artie, as long as you find Mao. Poor little blighter. He'll be crying. He'll be wanting his breakfast.' She tucks greedily into her own bread and lime marmalade. ‘He'll have been frightened by the, by the, by the …'

‘Fireworks,' supplies Arthur. ‘Maybe, maybe not. He'll be back. Don't fret, Ollie, he'll be back, you wait and see. And it weren't cold last night. No frost.'