Moon Pie (7 page)

They sat there in silence while he ate them.

‘Martha?’ he said at last.

‘What now?’

‘I’m still hungry.’

She sighed. ‘Let’s play a game.’

‘All right. What game?’

‘Hide-and-seek.’

‘All right. I’ll hide.’

First he hid in the greenhouse, and then in the rockery, and finally up a tree. Then it was Martha’s turn.

Leaving him crouched on the grass counting erratically in a loud, determined voice, she went up the garden to find somewhere to hide. She thought there might be a good place among the patio furniture, or along the path that went round to the front drive. But when she reached the back of the house, she suddenly heard shouting from the dining room and she stopped in alarm.

She heard Dad shout, ‘No!’, and the tone of his
voice took her breath away, it was so strange and loud.

She stood there very still, head cocked on one side, listening. Grandpa said something she couldn’t hear. Then Grandma said, ‘Everybody knows. I don’t know why you don’t admit it.’

Feeling afraid, Martha crept quietly along the house wall until she came to the dining room window, and peeped through a corner of it into the room.

Dad was standing up at the end of the table, and Grandma and Grandpa were sitting facing him.

‘Anyone can see it, just looking at you,’ Grandma said scornfully, and Martha looked at him.

She had never seen Dad like this. His face was pale, even paler than usual, and shiny, and he was glaring all round the room (though not, Martha noticed, at Grandma and Grandpa). His voice was different too, harsh and strangled.

‘You’re wrong,’ he said with difficulty. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Anyway,’ he added, ‘it’s nothing to do with you.’

Martha noticed how he ran his fingers through his hair, something she had never seen him do before.

‘It’s everything to do with our grandchildren,’ Grandma said.

Now she was talking about them! Martha pressed her face against the window, not wanting to miss anything.

Dad glared. ‘Leave my children out of it.’

‘You’re neglecting them. Endangering them, even.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘You leave them unattended late at night. You’re not in when they arrive home from school. Your house is dirty and hazardous. Do you even feed them properly, I wonder. Do you think we’ll stand by and do nothing? We’ve told you before. We’ve tried and tried to help you. We want to help you. But if you won’t let us, I warn you, we will contact the Social Services.’

‘My children stay with me,’ Dad said, breathing heavily. Then they all began to talk angrily, and at that moment Martha was jumped on from behind by Tug shouting, ‘Found you!’ into her ear. Caught offbalance, she staggered forwards with him round her waist and they tottered together past the window, fell over the edge of the patio onto the grass, and lay there in a heap.

In the dining room there was sudden silence.

‘That was rubbish hiding, Martha,’ Tug said happily. ‘I saw you straight away.’

She pushed him off.

‘What’s the matter, Martha?’

‘Shut up!’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Quiet!’

Dad came hurrying round the side of the house, followed by Grandma and Grandpa, who stood together at the edge of the lawn with their arms folded, watching him.

‘Get up,’ Dad said, ‘and come with me.’

‘Will you play hide-and-seek with us, Dad?’ Tug asked.

‘We’re going home,’ Dad said.

‘Just one game.’

‘Now!’ Dad shouted.

Tug stared, and Martha got him up and held his hand, and they followed Dad past Grandma and Grandpa and round the house to the front drive.

Tug began to sniff.

‘Quiet!’ Dad said without looking round. ‘Keep up.’ And they went down the road as fast as they could.

‘Martha?’ Tug sniffed, as they went.

‘What?’

‘Did he break something?’

‘I don’t know, Tug. I don’t think so.’

After a while Tug said sadly, ‘I think he broke something.’

Martha didn’t say anything. Holding hands, they went out of Grandma and Grandpa’s road towards the park, trying to keep up with Dad, who strode ahead, muttering to himself.

T
he clock with the luminous face showed 11.00 p.m.

Martha sat on her bed with
Little Women
lying unread in her lap. She ought to be asleep, but she didn’t feel like sleeping. She was too busy thinking about Dad.

Dad was sitting in the shed in the garden. She knew he was there because every half an hour she went onto the landing and stood on tiptoe at the high window overlooking the garden, to check.

She didn’t know what
he
was thinking about.

From Tug’s room came the soft rasp of snoring, and she felt lonely. Getting off the bed, she went to her bedroom window and looked out at the moon in the sky.

Like a stain
, she thought sadly.
Like something someone’s spilled and has to clean up
.

She felt the beginnings of a headache. But she gave herself a shake. ‘I won’t be sick,’ she said to herself. ‘Because I have to look after Tug. And I won’t mope
because Mum always told me that moping gets nothing done.’ She sighed. ‘But what shall I do?’

Standing in front of the mirror on her wardrobe door, she pointed her small nose at herself. ‘What would Mum do?’ she asked her reflection.

Her reflection didn’t say. It gave her a narrow look, then turned on itself and disappeared.

Barefoot and dressed only in her pyjamas, Martha went down the stairs in the silence and darkness, through the kitchen and out of the back door, into the garden.

On the patio she hesitated. She was going to do something. She just didn’t quite know what. She looked down the garden towards the shed, where Dad was. It was dark in the garden; the bushes down the edge were flat and black, and everything seemed nearer than it did in the daytime. Nothing stirred, and the silence was as thick as the darkness. Fear of the dark crept over her, she felt it tickling her skin like the spiders’ webs that grew across the bushes, but she took a deep breath, stepped into the shadow and let it cover her completely. Feeling her way across the broken patio, she tiptoed quietly down the overgrown lawn, the grass cold on her feet.

Dad was sitting on a chair inside the shed, she
could see the shape of him through the doorway, and when she was nearly there she whispered, ‘Dad?’

There was a bang, and something fell and smashed.

‘Dad?’

‘Martha?’ he said thickly. He sounded as if he had just woken up. ‘Martha?’

He made a scrabbling noise as if he were hurriedly looking for something, or tidying something away, then suddenly fell silent as she went in.

There was a smell of something, like paint.

Hunched on the broken chair, surrounded by a mess of tools and boxes and shopping bags, he lifted his face and gave her a sullen look. He was so dishevelled, with dirt in his hair and a wet streak across his chin, that for a second she couldn’t speak for shock, and there was silence.

‘What’s the matter?’ she said at last, and it sounded odd hearing herself speak to him in the darkness of the shed. It was an odd thing to say too, she realized at once, the sort of question she often asked Tug, and which Mum had asked her when she was small. Even her voice sounded strange, reminding her of Mum’s, sympathetic but practical.

She didn’t feel practical though. Her mouth was dry, and her skin crawled again.

Dad didn’t reply.

‘What are you doing out here?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Thinking.’

‘What are you thinking about?’

‘Nothing.’

With his head bowed and his arms round his knees, he looked almost square. She didn’t like him looking like that. She wanted him to get up and put his arms round her, and tell her that everything was OK. But he stayed where he was, square and sulky, like a big Tug.

‘Are you angry with us?’ she asked timidly.

‘No!’ he said. ‘Not with you,’ he added.

‘Are you angry with Grandma and Grandpa?’

He didn’t say anything to that, but muttered to himself, and suddenly she felt so sorry for him that although she was nervous and confused she went forward and hugged him.

‘I’m sorry they upset you.’

At last she felt him relax.

‘We had an argument,’ he said gruffly.

‘I know. I heard a bit of it.’

He stiffened again. ‘Did you hear what they said? About me not looking after you properly?’

‘Yes.’

‘I hate them dragging you into it. They’ve never liked me. They never thought I was good enough for her.’

He began to talk fast and his voice was oddly stretchy.

‘Don’t, Dad,’ she said, stroking his hair, ‘Please, don’t,’ but he went on talking, so fast and stretchy that sometimes he got his words muddled up and it was hard to understand him.

‘They blamed me,’ he said suddenly, ‘when she died.’

There was a moment’s silence, then he was talking again. ‘Dragging you into it,’ he said. ‘Upsetting you. They’ve no right. They’re getting old,’ he said. ‘They get these strange ideas into their heads.’

Eventually he fell silent.

‘I still don’t understand,’ Martha said.

Dad ignored her. He gave her a funny look. ‘Did you hear anything else they said?’

‘No.’ She hesitated. ‘Except.’

‘What?’

‘Something else I don’t understand. What are the Social Services?’

His face hardened. ‘Social Services are a part of welfare,’ he said. ‘If they think children are being
neglected or endangered, they take them away from their parents to live elsewhere.’

Now Martha stopped stroking, and caught her breath. ‘Are the Social Services going to come and take us away?’

‘No, Martha.’

‘But might they?’

‘No. Grandma only mentioned them to scare me. You mustn’t worry.’

She had a picture of someone putting her in a car and driving her away, and taking her to a place full of strangers, and she felt her heart beating fast.

‘What about Tug? Will someone take Tug too?’

Dad got to his feet – nearly falling sideways in the cramped and darkened shed – and took hold of her.

‘What will happen to Tug?’ she cried.

Then he was comforting her. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Hush. I love you. I love the little Tug. No one’s going to take either of you away from me. No one. I won’t let them.’ He rocked her. ‘I love you,’ he said. ‘Remember? I love you more than dads love Marthas.’

They stood together for some time, and at last she calmed down.

He cleared his throat. ‘Martha?’

He sounded nervous again.

‘Yes?’

‘Was that all you heard Grandma and Grandpa say?’

She hesitated. There
was
something else. But she said, ‘Yes, that was all,’ and he let out a sigh.

Then, stepping back from her, he stared at her in amazement.

‘You’re not wearing anything but your pyjamas!’

She began to explain.

‘Quick, get back to bed. You’ll catch cold.’

‘Are you coming too?’

‘In a minute. I’ll just tidy this mess up.’

In the doorway of the shed she turned back. ‘Dad?’

‘What?’

She couldn’t think exactly how to say it, and she frowned.

‘What?’ Dad said again.

‘Are we going to be all right?’

A strange look passed across his face.

‘Of course we are. We’re going to be better than all right.’

‘Are we really?’

He put on a funny voice. ‘Sweetheart, we’re going to be tremendous!’

She looked doubtfully at him standing there in his
old T-shirt, ripped at the neck, and dusty jeans, with his hair sticking up and his wet chin, and his dirty hands hanging heavily at his sides.

‘I’ll help,’ she said.

He touched her face. ‘I know you will. You’re a good girl. Go to bed now. Things will be better in the morning. Things are always better in the morning.’

In the garden the darkness didn’t seem so dark any more. She was used to it. Halfway across the shaggy grass she paused to gaze up at the stars flickering faintly through a veil of cloud. Somewhere up there was the moon too, floating across the sky like a lost balloon. But she was too sleepy to look for it. Overwhelmed with tiredness, she went on across the patio, and, going through the back door, the last thing she heard was a clink of glass from the shed in the dimness behind her.

S
he made a list:

Get up for breakfast
.

Swim (twice a week)
.

Apply for jobs
.

Haircut
.

New shirt
.

Remember tea!

Dad looked startled when she gave it to him.

‘It’s a list for you,’ she said. ‘I told you I would help.’

He gazed at it, and sighed.

For several days afterwards he seemed to take his tasks seriously. Three mornings running he managed to get up early enough to give Martha and Tug breakfast before they went to school, and twice he went (unsupervised) to the swimming baths, reporting that each time he had swum twenty full lengths without stopping. Olivia had been there, he said, and had told him she was looking forward to coming round.

That was interesting.
Perhaps
, Martha thought,
Olivia will get to like Dad again, and she can be his girlfriend after all
.

She liked helping Dad. She liked being busy and getting things done, even if they were hard.

The hardest thing was helping Dad apply for jobs. He didn’t seem to want to be helped (‘I’m not really out of work, I’m having a sabbatical’). But she was determined. She used the computer at school to collect a lot of advertisements for him to consider. Many of them were for jobs in the television industry, which she thought he would like.

He gave them back to her. ‘I want a complete change,’ he said.

‘What sort of change?’

He looked sly. ‘I don’t really know.’

She collected more advertisements.

‘Aren’t you being just a bit bossy?’ he said, when she gave them to him.

‘Aren’t you being just a bit lazy?’ she replied. She said other things too, like, ‘You’ll feel better if you have a job’, and ‘You can’t keep on lounging in the house all day’. Now that she was helping him, she was almost enjoying herself.