Moon Pie (12 page)

‘It’s nice to spend time together.’

She made him short lists too, to keep him occupied:

Sweep the hallway
.

Do the laundry
.

Repair the broken kitchen cupboard
.

He ignored them. Sometimes, he ignored her. And although she watched him as closely as she could, at some point in the day she would find him gone, with just a brief note left for her on the kitchen table:

Gone to town
.

Or:

Back soon
.

And once:

Dear Warden, Please stop spying on me
.

In general he was touchy. When he received letters from Tumble Tots Entertainment and Church Property Management Ltd., telling him his job applications had been unsuccessful, he tore them up and threw the pieces across the kitchen. And he was
morose when an interview with the Pooch Smooch Social Club and Boutique ended in failure.

‘It was going to bite me,’ he said. ‘Of course I had to give it a clip.’

Every day Martha went round the house checking his hiding places. She never found any bottles. And she never once saw him have a drink. But he looked dazed nearly all the time.

Still no phone call came. Every day when she came back from collecting Tug from school she asked him, ‘Did anyone call from the surgery while I was out?’

And he always shook his head.

Then, on the Thursday evening of the second week, the phone finally rang.

A woman’s voice asked for Dad. It was a quiet, professional sort of voice.

Martha said, ‘He’s not here at the moment, I’m afraid. Can I help?’

‘Are you Martha?’

‘Yes.’ Her heart began to beat fast.

‘I’m phoning to arrange an appointment with your father, Martha. I think he knows what it’s about.’

‘Yes he does!’ she said, and relief made her almost shout. ‘Thank you! I was starting to think something
had gone wrong. It seemed like such a long time to wait.’

There was a pause. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ the woman said. ‘We were waiting for Mr Luna to phone us, in fact. He’s had our letter quite a while.’

Now Martha was confused. ‘Letter? I didn’t know you were going to write. Dr Woodley said you’d phone.’

‘Dr who?’

‘Dr Woodley. Aren’t you from his surgery?’

‘No.’

She didn’t know what to say. Flustered, she tried to remember what Dr Woodley had said to her. ‘Are you an Alcohol Counsellor then?’

‘No, I’m not.’

Then suddenly she was afraid, and she held the phone very tightly, and when she spoke it was in a whisper: ‘Who are you?’

There was a slight pause. ‘I’m from the Social Services,’ the woman said.

T
ug found Martha on the floor near the kitchen door. She was sitting cross-legged with her arms folded, her head bent and shoulders hunched, and she was muttering to herself.

She looked square.

‘What’s the matter, Martha? Are you in a mood? Are you hungry?’

His voice was kind and puzzled, and Martha stopped muttering and squeezed her eyes shut. Tug didn’t know what was happening, and wouldn’t understand if she told him. He had never heard of the Social Services. He had no idea that anyone could take him away to live with a different family. Only she knew. And she had to keep it from him. She had to keep her head. More importantly, she had to
do
something before it was too late.

She got up. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t get into moods, you know that. I was thinking. I’ve decided I’m not going to do nothing any more. Dr Woodley was wrong.’

‘I like Dr Woodley. He doesn’t mind earth.’

‘I don’t like him at all. He broke his promise.’ She wiped her face briskly. ‘Never mind. You have to help me find something.’

‘All right. Why?’

‘It’s important.’

‘Is it a game?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Is it another bottle?’

‘No, it’s a letter.’

They emptied the kitchen bin and looked through the rubbish of peelings and tins and tea bags. They sorted through the balls of paper and glued shoelaces and crayoned-on cardboard in the waste-paper baskets in the front room and the back room, and delved into the pedal bin in the bathroom with its old tubes of toothpaste and toilet-roll innards. They searched in kitchen drawers, on the tops of cupboards and behind doors. Finally, they searched in Dad’s room. It was hard to search there because it was so untidy.

‘Dad’s room is messy,’ Tug said happily. Tug liked messy rooms.

‘He should clean it,’ Martha said. ‘I’ll tell him.’

At last, under Dad’s bed, they found a large pile of letters, all unopened.

As soon as she saw them Martha’s heart began to race.

But she controlled herself.

‘Here they are,’ she said calmly.

‘Why does Dad collect letters, Martha?’

‘Because he’s strange, Tug. Bring them into my room now. We have to sort them out.’

There were many letters which were uninteresting, from companies offering credit cards or other special deals, and some that were only moderately interesting, such as those from their schools, which requested information about Martha’s recent absences or asked Dad to go in to discuss Tug’s behaviour. These they took downstairs and put in the dustbin. But there were three letters that Martha kept.

The first was a handwritten note from Dr Woodley, dated a week earlier. It said:

The second was a long, typewritten letter on paper headed ‘Social Services Department’ and dated two weeks earlier. It was not easy to understand. It asked Dad to contact a member of the ‘Children in Need’ team to arrange an appointment to see them, and drew his attention to an enclosed brochure headed
What is an Assessment?
which began ‘Either you, or someone else on your behalf, has asked the social services departments for help with some difficulty you are having which affects your child (or children)’.

The third was another handwritten letter, from Grandma, and was also dated a fortnight earlier. It was short:

Martha arranged these three letters on the carpet and thought about them, while Tug watched her gravely.

‘Dad gets a lot of letters, doesn’t he, Martha?’ he said.

She didn’t reply; she was thinking. She’d got it wrong again. Dr Woodley hadn’t contacted the Social Services; Grandma and Grandpa had. Dr Woodley’s receptionist had phoned and phoned, but Dad hadn’t answered her calls.

‘Tug,’ she said, ‘There are things in these letters that I can’t talk to you about. You’re too small. I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right,’ Tug said humbly. He knew he was small.

‘But I’ll have to talk to Dad about them when he gets back.’

‘Yes, Martha.’

‘Now it’s time for bed. It’s very late. I shouldn’t have kept you up.’

‘That’s all right.’ He thought for a minute. ‘Did we have tea?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did we have?’

‘Sausages.’

‘How many sausages did I have?’

‘Five. And half of one of mine.’

‘That’s a lot, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘All right then. I’ll go to bed.’

She helped him into his pyjamas, and took him to the bathroom to clean his teeth, and then she read him a few pages from
Gobble, Gobble, Slip, Slop
.

‘Good night, Martha. Is the light on?’

She put the light on. ‘Yes, it’s on. Good night, Tug.’

As she was going out of the door, she heard him say something, and turned back. ‘What is it?’

When he spoke his voice was unusually quiet. ‘Are we all right, Martha?’

Her breath caught in her throat. ‘Yes, Tug. We’re all right.’

‘But are we
really
?’

She looked at him lying in his bed, the blunt shape of his head half-hidden under the duvet, and for a moment her lip quivered. Then she put on a cheerful
voice. ‘Tug,’ she said. ‘We’re better than all right. We’re tremendous.’

She heard him give a peaceful sigh and, almost before she left the room, his breathing deepened and she knew he had fallen asleep already.

S
he waited up for Dad, sitting at the kitchen table in her dressing gown. Through the window overlooking the garden, she could see the moon in the sky.

Like flint
, she thought.
Like a bit of shell. Sharp enough to draw blood
.

She got up and shut the blinds. She didn’t want to see the moon any more. She didn’t like the way it looked.

It was 10.30 p.m., quiet and cool. She had all the lights on, not just in the kitchen, but in the hall and the front room, and upstairs too. It felt safer. On the table in front of her were the three letters she had found under Dad’s bed. She studied them again, first the one from Grandma and Grandpa, then the one from Dr Woodley, then the one from the Social Services, making sure she knew what each of them meant. It was clear enough. Dr Woodley couldn’t help Dad because Dad wouldn’t let him. Grandma and Grandpa were too angry to help him. And the Social
Services were going to take her and Tug away so they didn’t see Dad again.

She pushed away the letters, and sat there with her eyes closed and her heart beating fast.

For weeks things had been getting worse, little problems slowly getting bigger. Now, suddenly, they were too big for her to do anything about. It didn’t matter that she was eleven. Like Tug, she was too small to help. There was only one person who could sort things out now. Dad.

The problem with Dad was that he didn’t realize how bad things had become. Before, whenever Martha tried to explain, he just cracked a joke, or slipped away to the shed, or acted strange. Now she had to make him see how really bad it all was. The letters proved it. If she could just persuade him to read the letters, he would have to take everything much more seriously. He would have to
do
something. After all, however strange he had become, he was still an adult.

She took a deep breath and pointed her nose at the clock on the wall. It was 11.00 p.m. now, and she was sleepy.
All I have to do
, she said to herself,
is make him read the letters. I can do that
.

Then she waited quietly at the table for him to come in.

He was late. Time went by, and she got sleepier and sleepier. The kitchen clock said 11.30 p.m., and then 11.45 p.m. Finally, just before midnight, still sitting at the table, she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer. Her head fell forward, her small nose hid itself in the collar of her dressing gown and at last she fell asleep.

As she slept, she dreamed. She dreamed that she was all alone in the park, having a picnic by herself, feeling lonely. Overhead, the sky turned black and all the stars came out one by one. The moon appeared, weak and trembling like a beam of torchlight, and she was gazing up at it, wondering who had switched it on, when suddenly it turned into a shiny face. Somewhere nearby a goose honked once, very loudly, like a front door slammed shut, and she sat up with a gasp.

The clock said 2.30 a.m., and Dad was standing in the doorway of the kitchen.

He didn’t say, ‘Surprise!’ He didn’t say, ‘Picnic!’ He swayed and clutched the door frame.

She stared at him in terror.

His pullover was inside out, there were leaves in his hair, his face was slack and shiny and he looked at her suspiciously, as if he didn’t know who she was. He
didn’t look like Dad at all. He looked like a stranger: a man from the street.

She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t take her eyes off him either, and they stared at each other in silence.

At last her voice came back, a little quavery, and she said what she had planned to say: ‘I’ve got something to show you.’

Although he showed no sign that he had heard her, he came into the room, very carefully, like a man balancing something on his head, and sat down at the table. He had a startled, wary look, as if he didn’t understand where he was.

She could smell him now. He smelled of paint and perfume and dirt.

‘There,’ she said, and pushed the letters across the table.

Frowning, he began to read them, and Martha watched him.

After a long time he looked up at her. His face was pale, his smile crooked. His eyes were bright and narrow. ‘Bad day for mail,’ he said, in a sticky voice.

‘They were under your bed. You hadn’t opened them.’

He stared at her. ‘I was waiting,’ he said at last.

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Waiting for a good day.’ Running his hands
through his hair, he picked out some leaves and looked at them in surprise. ‘All the days have been bad,’ he added.

‘Everything’s bad. You can see that now, can’t you?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘Dad. You have to do something.’

He slowly rubbed his face. ‘I agree.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Go to bed.’

He got up and pushed the chair away, and it fell on its side.

She got up too and, though she was trembling, she stood up as straight as she could and pointed her nose at him. ‘Don’t go! I have to talk to you.’

Ignoring her, he began to move away, putting his arms out to keep his balance, and again he seemed like a man she didn’t know, a big, shambling man stumbling around in her house. He wasn’t Dad any more, he was The Stranger. Her heart began to race again, and she knew she had to say something quickly before he left. ‘You’re drunk,’ she said.