Moon Pie (19 page)

Afterwards, she did most of the acting in Marcus’s speed films. She was superb. She could make herself cry, do accents, sing, fall without hurting herself, pretend to die and a hundred other life-like things. Sometimes she seemed a little reserved, as if not quite emotionally engaged, but her technical skill always pulled her through. Above all, she had what Marcus called ‘star quality’, an expression, a sort of stillness, which made everyone want to look at her.

‘How did you learn it all?’ Laura asked.

Marcus answered for her. ‘She didn’t. It’s a gift. It comes from her mother. I could tell. I spotted her. I shall make it all clear in my memoirs.’

So a new phase of speed films began. Like all Marcus’s films, they were golden classics. When they finished
Gone with the Wind
in November, they filmed
The Blue Angel
, with Martha playing a nightclub singer called Lola Lola, wearing a (fur-lined) black-and-white cabaret costume with tassels and a top hat. That took them until Christmas. After that, they did
Notorious
, in which she was the daughter of a Nazi spy, wearing a classic black skirt suit and (fur-lined) 1940s mesh hat. Then
It’s a Wonderful Life
, with Martha doubling as Mrs Bailey, dressed in a simple shirt-waist dress of cotton (and fur), and Clarence Odbody, Angel Second Class, appearing in an ankle-length white (fur-edged) nightdress.

Finally, at the beginning of April, they started work on
Brief Encounter
, in which Martha, playing a wartime suburban housewife, is parted for ever from her secret lover.

She was always marvellous, and as time went by even her costumes got better. She was happy. And at some point between the making of
Notorious
and
It’s a Wonderful Life
she realized that she had succeeded
in not remembering Dad. She hadn’t forgotten him, but she rarely thought about him any more. It was as if she had finally said goodbye to him in her mind, and it was – as she had always known it would be – for the best.

A
fter Easter the weather brightened. In the park the flowerbeds were full of pansies and marigolds, and fresh green leaves started to appear on the trees. The café re-opened, the boats were put back on the lake and the lawns were given their first mowing of the year.

Martha went through the park to fetch Tug from his school. Generally he was waiting for her at the school gates, though sometimes he was waiting in the head teacher’s office.

Today, unfortunately for him, he was in the office. Martha went in and, after a short, one-sided conversation with the head teacher, collected Tug and also a letter to give to Grandma and Grandpa, and they went out together into the spring sunshine.

‘What’s the letter about, Tug?’

‘Rudeness.’

‘Who were you rude to?’

‘Miss Savonarola.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t remember. But the letter will say.’

They crossed the road and went down the street, into the park. They went past the tennis courts and the café, and walked in a roundabout way across the grass to avoid the geese by the pond. They didn’t talk. They were lost in their own thoughts. Martha was wondering how many times she had crossed the park in her life, and how many more times she would cross it. Every time she crossed it, she thought, she was a little bit different. And when she had crossed it enough times she would be grown up.

They went past the ornamental flowerbeds towards the park gates.

‘Do you remember, Tug, that time when Grandma and Grandpa were waiting for us?’

‘No.’

‘Last summer. They bought us ice creams.’

‘No.’

‘And I kicked you under the table.’

Tug turned to her. ‘Yes, you did. And it hurt.’

‘Doesn’t it seem like a long time ago now?’

‘Will they be waiting for us today?’ he asked uneasily. ‘No.’

They turned the corner to the gates and Grandma and Grandpa were nowhere to be seen. A man was waiting there. A tall, thin man with a beard, wearing a smart grey suit.

At once Tug stopped and squeezed Martha’s hand.

‘What is it, Tug?’

Tug was staring at the man. ‘Martha,’ he said in a small voice.

‘Don’t be frightened, it’s just a man in a suit.’

‘But, Martha.’

The man with the beard came towards them, and Martha stared at him too, and the closer he came the more he looked like Dad.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ Dad said. He stopped several paces away and stood there quietly. ‘How are you?’

They were speechless.

‘You don’t have to talk to me,’ Dad said. ‘I just wanted to see you. It’s been such a long time.’ He smiled, and they could only just see the smile through the beard.

‘You’ve grown,’ he said.

‘You’ve got a beard,’ Tug said.

‘Yes, I have.’

‘It’s an old beard.’

They all smiled at the grey hairs in Dad’s beard.
The beard made him look different. It was hard to know what he was thinking as he stood there, looking at them.

‘Now I have to go,’ he said.

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m not allowed to see you. And because you don’t trust me. Quite right too. But I’ll see you again. Look for me by the park gates after school.’

‘Dad?’

‘Yes, Martha?’

He stopped and turned back to face her. It wasn’t just the beard that made him look different. His eyes and nose looked different too. His voice sounded softer. And the way he stood, angular in his loose suit, and the way he looked at her, with a frowning, peering look – these things were different as well. In fact, there was nothing about him Martha recognized. And it was so shocking that for a moment she just stared at him.

‘Yes?’ he said again.

She saw him smile, hesitantly, through his beard.

‘Where did you go?’

‘Away. But just for a couple of months. Then I came back.’

‘Where do you live now?’

‘In our house, of course.’

‘But there’s another family living there.’

‘Gone now. I rented the house to them until Christmas. After that, I moved back in.’

‘So you’ve been there all this time, and we didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell us?’

Dad glanced at her sharply. ‘Don’t you get my letters?’

‘What letters?’

He looked as if he was going to say something, then he didn’t. ‘Never mind,’ he said.

He stepped forward and held their hands, and kissed them on the tops of their heads. His beard scraped their hair. Then he walked away.

‘Look for me by the gates,’ he called back, as he went.

During that evening’s extended reading (seven thirty to eight thirty), Martha didn’t read her library book. She didn’t even open it. For the first time in months she was thinking about Dad again.

Now that he had reappeared her mind was filled with questions about him. She wanted to know if he had a new job, or a new family, what he spent his time doing, if he thought of them, what sort of person he
was now. Above all, she wanted to know if he had stopped drinking.

She hadn’t been able to tell anything about him from the way he looked in the park.

Although she wasn’t supposed to, she left her room and tiptoed down the landing into Tug’s.

‘Tug?’

She switched on the light and Tug sat up, rubbing his eyes.

‘You have to help me.’

‘Help you how?’

‘Do you remember what Dad said, about the letters?’

‘He said he’d written us letters. But he hadn’t.’

‘I think he had.’

Tug finished rubbing his eyes and thought about it.

‘I think Grandma’s kept them from us,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘To stop us thinking about Dad.’

Tug thought about that.

‘That’s very naughty of her,’ he said at last.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Good,’ he said with feeling. ‘I’m glad. Usually it’s me who’s naughty,’ he added.

‘Where did she put them?’ he asked after a while.

‘I don’t know. She might have thrown them away, I suppose. But perhaps she kept them somewhere.’ Martha frowned. ‘It’s important, Tug. I think we should try to find them. They might tell us things about him, like if he has a new job.’

‘Or a new family.’

‘Yes.’

‘All right.’ Tug got out of bed. ‘We’re good at finding things, aren’t we?’

‘But not now, Tug. We have to wait until they go out.’

‘But they never go out. Not without us.’

‘Then we’ll have to think of a plan.’

‘What plan?’

‘I don’t know yet. You have to help me.’

N
ext day was Saturday. At 10.30 a.m., according to his schedule, Tug was supposed to be tidying his room. But he wasn’t.

There was a sudden loud cry from somewhere outside.

Grandma, who was reading a letter at the kitchen table, got up and went to the window. ‘Whatever is happening?’ she said. She took off her reading glasses.

There was more noise: hoarse shouting and desperate yelling.

‘Martha?’ she called.

But Martha did not appear. Grandma tutted.

The noise grew louder. Oddly, it sounded now like singing – wild singing, badly out-of-tune. Grandma thought she detected the words ‘bear’ and ‘mountain’. Collecting Grandpa from his study, she went out into the garden, and there they found Tug stuck at the top of the tallest fir tree, clinging to a slender branch overhanging the very breakable greenhouse.

When she was sure that Grandma and Grandpa were fully occupied, Martha crept out from the downstairs toilet and went quietly into Grandpa’s study.

She didn’t know if Dad’s letters would be in the study, but she knew that Grandpa kept some box files on a high shelf, and she thought she would look there first. She climbed onto his desk to reach them. There were about ten files, all different colours, labelled
Bank, House, Car
and so on. But it was soon clear that none of them contained Dad’s letters. Next she tried the desk drawers, where she found a box of pencils, a ball of rubber bands, a packet of paperclips, a pad of writing paper with matching envelopes and several back issues of the
Church Gazette
. Under the gazettes were some cigarette papers and a very creased copy of a newspaper called
The Racing Post
. There was nothing else. Finally she looked along the bookshelves. Propped against the books were a number of postcards, birthday cards and invitations, but although she examined them all carefully, none was from Dad.

She frowned. Her plan had failed.

Hearing Grandma and Grandpa coming back up the garden, she was just leaving when something on the top shelf caught her eye. She stopped still, and stared. It was a photograph of Mum when she was
young, dressed in an old-fashioned gown. Something about it gave Martha a funny feeling, and she took the picture down and examined it. On the back someone had written
My Fair Lady, Christmas 1980
. Her heart began to beat fast. Mum had been twelve years old – the same age as Martha now. In the picture Mum was pale and smiling, her small nose pointed determinedly at the camera, and her hair was braided in two long plaits, just like Martha’s. Martha stared. It was like looking at herself. And at the same time it was like being someone else. It gave her such a strange feeling. Though she felt like bursting into tears she could feel herself smiling as well.

But she had no time to think about it. She heard voices very near in the kitchen and, jamming the picture back on the shelf, she made a dash for the door.

‘No, Christopher,’ Grandma was saying, ‘I don’t understand why you threw your best JCB into the tree. Nor do I understand how it got wedged in a bird’s nest. And I certainly don’t know why you felt it necessary to “rescue” it yourself instead of informing us. Grandpa has a perfectly good ladder. Martha!’ she called. ‘There you are at last. Will you please help me make Christopher understand that our trees are
not there to be climbed?’

It was some time before Martha and Tug could meet in private. But after Tug had spent an hour alone in his room, in order to reflect on Trees and What They Are There For, Martha was allowed to take him a glass of water.

He was sitting happily on his bed playing with his toes.

‘I nearly fell into the greenhouse,’ he said proudly. ‘And Grandma was
very
cross.’ He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘I don’t think she’s ever been crosser,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘Did you get the letters?’

Martha confessed that she didn’t. ‘I’m sorry, Tug.’

‘That’s all right, Martha. I got one.’

He retrieved a very creased piece of paper from his underpants and handed it to her.

‘What’s this?’

‘Grandma dropped it in the garden, and I found it.’

Martha looked at it. It was part of a letter.

‘I found it,’ Tug repeated. ‘I didn’t steal it. Is it from Dad?’

Incredibly, it was.

‘She must have just got it this morning,’ Martha said. ‘I expect that’s what she was reading at the kitchen table when you started to sing.’

‘We’re good at finding things, aren’t we, Martha?’ Tug said happily.

‘There’s only one page of it,’ Martha said. ‘It must have been longer. But it’s definitely from Dad. Listen.’

She read the letter to Tug:

gets warmer it starts to itch. I worry that it makes me look old and simple, but then I am old and simple, so that’s OK
.

I had my last session with my Alcohol Counsellor today. I thought of the first time I went to see him, and how I couldn’t bring myself to tell him the truth. Now I feel I could tell him anything. I’ve changed that much at least
.

I’ve been swimming twice this week. Crikey, it’s boring. And there’s bloody water everywhere, as Laura once very truthfully said
.

I’ve also tidied my room (again). And soon I hope to hear about my interview
.

What are you doing, I wonder. I will try to guess. I think that you, Tug, have persuaded Grandma to build you a JCB scrambler track across her lawn. And you, Martha, have just

‘Just what?’ Tug asked.

‘I don’t know. That’s where the page ends.’

They were silent for a while, listening to Dad’s voice in their heads.