Easy Peasy (11 page)

We walked past a closed door. I got the sense that Wanda was there, behind that door having a rest probably. Puddle-duck led me into the sitting-room. It seemed strange to have a sitting-room upstairs with the tops of trees outside the window and the telephone wires wobbling with birds, so close. The room was messy but not dirty. There were ornamental frogs everywhere, funny ones and life-like ones in every shade of green – wood and china, plastic and stone. There was a long-haired white cat asleep on a cushion on the white plastic sofa. I stroked it and it opened one gooseberry green eye and purred. In front of the fire was an orange sheepskin rug. It was a surprisingly nice room because of the light and the waving leaves outside, and because everything was new. I don't know why I was surprised. I must have expected squalor. On the walls were some of Vassily's drawings, trees and swings, horses in a field, lots of pictures of houses – our tree-house. None of the pictures had any figures in them and I was relieved that at least he couldn't draw
people
. I could hear a bit of noise from Wanda's bedroom. She must be getting up. I thought we should go.

‘Will she be cross?' I asked Puddle-duck pointing to the door of Wanda's room as we stepped out of the sitting-room. I felt quite scared, like a burglar or a snoop – although I don't know
why
, it was Puddle-duck's home, after all.

He didn't answer. He led me into his room instead and stood looking proudly around. It was a tiny room, a room cut in half, with a very big window. It was like a toy-shop. The shelves were piled high with toys, new things still in their boxes: an Etcha-Sketch which is something I wanted, a Spirograph, puzzles and painting-by-numbers sets, carpentry tools, a chemistry set, board-games, Meccano, binoculars, racing cars, Dinky toys and hundreds of soft toys: teddy-bears, lions, seals, bunny-rabbits and a gigantic white polar bear that slumped in a corner, big as an arm-chair.

I couldn't believe Puddle-duck had all these things. I had thought of him as poor, with his scruffy clothes and plimsolls. Hazel and I had
nothing
compared with all this; But I noticed there were no books, that's another thing that made this flat so different from our house where there were shelves of books everywhere. Except that on the floor by his bed was a baby's board book, the sort of thing that Huw chewed on. It was very old, the corners all soft, bits of the paper pictures worn off the grey board. It was open at the picture of a swing in a tree, very different from ours. I went and looked out of the window, straight down through the branches and into the tree-house. Twigs from our tree scrabbled against his window. I could see the branch on which we sat, the glint from the glass of my formicary, even one of Hazel's ballet pictures on the wall. And I could see the whole of our garden too, the tree with the swing that looked, from here, exactly like Puddle-duck's drawing, the kitchen door, and Mummy standing outside. As I watched she reached her hands up over her head and bent down to touch her toes. I turned away. It wasn't right that he should be able to see down on our garden so well, to see even into our tree-house. A private place.

He pulled at my sleeve and picked up the book. He started again making the noises he'd been making on the swing and now I recognised them as the words of the poem in the book. It was Robert Louis Stevenson's poem, ‘The Swing'.
How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it's the pleasantest thing, ever a child can do!
He said it quite well. If you knew what he was saying you could recognise it. I had
A Child's Garden of Verses
at home. Once it was my favourite book. I felt a tiny sensation inside, like a finger nudging my heart. I made my lips curve into a smile.

Then I heard a man's voice and jumped. For a moment I'd forgotten we were sneaking and should have been quiet. I flinched and put my finger to my lips. Puddle-duck pushed his door to just as Wanda and the man who belonged to the voice came out into the hall. They were laughing in a silly way. The man called her Hotpants and then he left. I was glad Puddle-duck couldn't hear, or couldn't know I heard. I'd have died if anyone heard anyone call my mother
that
. I stood still, my hands screwed into fists, flinching, waiting for her to come and discover us – but she did not come in. Instead she went into the bathroom – that was made out of the other half of Puddle-duck's room – and started running a bath. She couldn't have heard us then, she couldn't know we were there, even though Puddle-duck had said his poem quite loudly. I wondered if she was a bit deaf too. She went out and back into her bedroom and then the bathroom door shut and I relaxed. Through the heavy fall of water I could hear her singing as she took of her clothes. She had a sweet little-girly voice. I looked at Puddle-duck but his face was bland. So strange that he couldn't hear what I was hearing. I wanted to go.

I pointed to the door. He nodded. The taps were turned off and I heard Wanda climbing into the bath, a shifting of water, a luxurious sigh, the squeak of her bottom on the bottom of the bath. She resumed her singing as we crept through the hall and out. Puddle-duck locked the door and then tried it, like an adult, to make sure it was locked. Why Wanda would want to be locked inside her own flat, I couldn't imagine. We never locked
our
house if anyone was in.

After tea, which was spoiled for me by the sight of Puddle-duck's hearing-aids on the side-board and all the tortuous attempts at conversation, we played Cluedo. It was not like Daddy to play games. He usually went off into his study and smoked, or sat in front of the television glowering at anyone who spoke. He liked watching news programmes and anything with Nana Mouskouri in it – also Morecambe and Wise at which he laughed and thumped the arms of his chair. Mummy preferred natural history programmes, but Daddy left the room or retreated behind a shuddering newspaper at the first sign of any mating.

Mummy and Daddy sat on the sofa and Puddle-duck and I on cushions on the floor, the Cluedo board on the coffee table between us. Everything looked shabby after the brightness of Wanda's flat. It would have been cosy if the fourth person had been anyone but Puddle-duck. He didn't know how to play it, of course, although he had a set in his room. Why have it since he'd obviously never played it? I didn't feel like playing. Normally when I play a game I couldn't care less who wins – but I wanted to be sure Puddle-duck didn't. My heart was actually thudding with anticipation when I thought I knew the identity of the murderer. But I was wrong. Mummy won, so that was all right. Miss Brown did it with the candlestick in the library. When he left the room to go to the toilet, I told Mummy that Wanda had been at home all afternoon.

‘How do you know?'

‘Pud – Vassily said, and anyway, I just know.'

‘It's no concern of yours, Griselda,' Daddy said. I folded the board and slid all the pieces, the cards, dice and all the deadly little weapons into the box. My bottom lip fattened and tried to curl out like it did when I wanted to cry. I hated the way Daddy's voice went all thin and tinny when he was cross with me, his mouth crinkling as if someone had pulled tight a drawstring in his lips. He looked at me as if I was stupid, or as if I'd done something really wrong when all I was doing was telling the truth.

The only good thing about having Puddle-duck to stay rather than anyone else was that he wouldn't hear if Daddy had a dream. I never had a friend to stay because of that, because I couldn't bear the thought that anyone else might hear his scream or know about the dark paddings about, the water running, the horrible soothingness of my mother's voice in the night. Secret noises that nobody else should have to hear.

Hazel risked it. Bridget had slept on a camp-bed in our room more than once – or she supposedly slept on the camp-bed. Actually she and Hazel squeezed into Hazel's bed together. I hated it when Bridget stayed the night because they didn't want me there. ‘You have to include Griselda,' Mummy told them but naturally they didn't. They snuggled under the covers, giggling and whispering, ignoring every single word I said.

‘She's like a baby,' Hazel told Bridget. ‘She has to get up for a wee-wee twice a night.'

‘Jeez,' Bridget said. ‘You have to learn to control your bladder.'

‘It's for your own good,' Hazel explained once, as, after a flurry of whispering, they unhooked the ladder and slid it under Hazel's bunk. So I lay awake, even until after their scuffling and giggling had stopped, too embarrassed to jump down, afraid that I would wet the bed and that my pee would drip through the mattress on to Hazel and Bridget below.

In the morning I walked Puddle-duck home. It was Mummy's idea. She put his pyjamas and toothbrush in a carrier bag and helped him strap his hearing-aids on. She even combed his hair that was so greasy the comb-marks stayed in. It was half-past ten when we went round. We had had bacon and scrambled eggs and I had looked at the Giles cartoon in the
Sunday Express
like I did every Sunday. It was mid-morning in our house but in Wanda's flat it was the crack of dawn. Puddle-duck shouted ‘Hello' very loudly as we came in, but it was all dark and quiet. Eventually I heard a moan from behind Wanda's door. ‘Hello,' I called brightly, ‘I've just walked back with Vassily.'

The door opened and Wanda came out. She was wearing a green nylon baby-doll nightie, very short and completely transparent and her hair was a massive tangle. ‘What time do you call this?' she said.

I looked at my watch. ‘Twenty to eleven.'

‘Oh. Oh well.' She gave a rueful smile and went into the kitchen. I could see everything, all her bottom, even a little mole in the middle of one buttock. She put the kettle on, stretched and yawned. She smelled like a mouse cage and under her arms were ovals of coarse black stubble.

‘Coffee?' she offered.

‘No thanks.'

‘Has he been good? Come here, little spook, did you miss me?' She pulled him against her so that his face was only a film of green nylon away from her breasts and squeezed him energetically.

‘He's been very good,' I said. I was wondering if she'd heard us the day before, but she showed no sign.

‘I'm no good till I've had my fix,' she said, stumbling over to fill the kettle and unscrew a jar of Nescafé. She licked her finger, dipped it in the jar and licked off the granules. She spooned some more into a jar and yawned again. Vassily wandered off.

‘We played Cluedo,' I said, just for something to say.

‘Yeah?'

‘Well … Bye.' There was too much flesh and human smell in Wanda's kitchen for me. It made me blush, thinking of Puddle-duck so close to an as good as naked woman – even if it was his mother. I'd seen Mummy naked, drying herself after a bath or swimming, she was very open in that way, a way that Daddy frowned upon and called ‘Scandinavian' as if that was a swear word. But Mummy's body was shivery and neat and matter-of-fact. Somehow Wanda's body, the bosoms, the bottom, the dark place under the rounded curve of her belly, made me think of Daddy running through the hall all wild and exposed. The thought of all the hairy, shadowy, purply, secret places, adult pulpiness and smells, made me feel hot and sick. I went home and straight up the ladder to the tree-house where I watched my neat and tidy ants.

11

Past four o'clock. Past the deepest hours of the night. Approaching the time when I will take Foxy her cup of tea. Assam with a drip of milk and one teaspoonful of sugar – to start her up as she says. Like Wanda with her Nescafé fix. And she will stretch and yawn and I will breathe in
her
adorable blend of sleepy and intimate smells.
Approaching
that time. I will wake her at seven – no six-thirty. I will cook breakfast for her, her favourite breakfast: fried mushrooms on toast with lemon juice and black pepper sprinkled on top. I will spoil her because she will be spoiling me, driving me all the way to my parents' house when I could perfectly well drive myself. When we get there she won't stay, not for more than a cup of tea. She will not wish to intrude on our family at such a time. I can just see, just hear, her saying it. How well I know her. And I will want to shout,
But you are my family
. If she was a man she would be, if we were married she would be. She would be my next-of-kin in the eyes of the law. Our eyes don't count in this.

I clear away the glasses and plates. Quarter of a bottle of wine left. I retrieve the cork from under the table and force it back into the neck of the bottle. A sign that it is really morning – I will drink no more wine, my body has crossed the divide between late and early, greets the idea of alcohol with revulsion now, craves coffee instead. The kitchen floor gleams. That's something good I've done tonight.

And I've learned some things about my father. The sitting-room feels too hot and stuffy. I gather up all the scraps of paper, all those tiny words. I carry them into the kitchen where the light is brighter, a horrible fluorescent tube that flickers and stutters for about five minutes when you switch it on so we leave it on all night. We're always saying we'll fix it but we never do. Never have, yet.

4.43 Planes overhead invisible
…
est canopy … big jobs, multi-eng … gue of lice
…
splits
…
ter filth … but … Vin … ch … ter

Oh it is useless. What can I make of it but splintered suffering? Suffering he wanted to forget. Why do it? Maybe my mother is right. Why rake over dying coals? Why waken the sleeping dogs? Why ransack the cupboards for skeletons? But … Vince mentioned again. Obviously a great friend. I think about my father's friends that I met. Those he played golf with; those he played bridge with; people from work; people who came to dinner; people whose loud voices and cigarette smoke drifted up the stairs; people who patted our heads, mine and Hazel's, and said, ‘Aren't they different, Ralph. Chalk and cheese.'