The Moon King (11 page)

Ricky had managed to give the man the slip. While he was eating his burger and chips the man had gone off to pay the bill. It was as easy as that. Ricky just slipped down off the high plastic stool in the burger place and sauntered off out the door, still clutching a half-eaten burger wrapped in a paper tissue, not looking left or right or back over his shoulder. Nobody stopped him.

It was cold outside the burger place, colder than Ricky remembered it being when they went in, and it was starting to rain. Ricky pulled his thin, slithery jacket miserably around himself and tried to concentrate on the rest of his burger, but it didn’t seem to make him feel much better. He started walking quickly away from the burger place. He turned the first corner he came to and the next and the next, and then he started to slow down, thinking the big man would never find him now.

The rain was coming down harder. It was cold rain, like melting chips of ice beating on his head and face and making his nose run with cold and wet. Raindrops were starting to work their way down the back of his neck now.
He tried to pull his collar more closely around his neck, but still the wet seemed to find its way in.

He had to get in out of the cold and the rain, but where could he go? He didn’t know anyone. He didn’t even know for sure where he was. He couldn’t go back to the burger joint, or he might meet the tall man. It would have to be a shop. The shops were still open and they looked all warm and welcoming, with their yellow lights glowing in the dark street.

Hunching his shoulders, Ricky sidled into a shop. The warm air hit him as soon as he crossed the threshold. It smelt good in here, clean and sweet and fresh, like a very warm, carpeted fairy bathroom, with lots of mirrors and goldy things all piled up like Christmas presents. A soft tune was playing, and every now and then the tune was interrupted by a doorbell sound, and a voice came with a mysterious message that Ricky couldn’t make out. When he blinked, the raindrops on his eyelashes made tiny kaleidoscopes, and he could see the warm, yellowy shop glowing and turning in front of his eyes, like so many bright dandelion flowers.

The sudden warmth and sweetness made Ricky feel heavy. His eyelids were too heavy for his eyes. He wanted to sit down, but there were no seats, and anyway, he didn’t want to sit somewhere where he might be noticed. He
took an escalator up to the next floor and looked around. Still no seats, but there were lots of racks of coats up here.

Maybe, maybe, yes, yes, he could just crawl under one of the racks, yes, that one over by the wall, and then he could curl up and he would be hidden by the long coats, and nobody would be able to see him. He could be warm and dry and hidden in there, and he could have a rest, just a little rest, on this nice thick carpet. His feet were warm now, his hands were warm, even his nose was warm. He was like a little furry mouse all wrapped up in warmth.

Rosheen and Helen had slipped out of the tall house and half-walked, half-run into the town centre. Now they were walking the streets, looking in doorways and down
alleyways
and calling Ricky’s name. It was late shopping
evening
, so even though it was dark and long past the usual rush hour, the streets and shops were still full of people. They walked and walked and called until they were hoarse.

They stopped on a street corner. They didn’t know it, but it was precisely the corner where Ricky had met the large man.

Rosheen checked her watch. ‘It’s almost half-past eight. The shops will be shutting soon.’

‘I’m cold,’ said Helen, pulling her jacket more closely around her. ‘And I hate this sort of rain. It’s even colder than it is wet!’

‘Yes, it is,’ agreed Rosheen, blowing on her fingers. ‘We’re wasting our time on the streets. It’s too cold and wet here. He must have slipped into a building to get out of this wind.’

‘But what sort of building?’ asked Helen, shivering and looking hopelessly at the town around them, full of buildings, any one of which could be harbouring Ricky.

‘Well,’ said Rosheen, ‘the offices are mostly closed, and anyway, he wouldn’t get past security. I don’t think he has any money, so he can’t have gone to the cinema or a coffee-shop or anywhere you have to pay. And I don’t think he has any friends in town, so he can’t have gone to anybody’s house.’

‘Maybe he’s in a shop, then,’ said Helen.

‘Yes, he must be,’ Rosheen agreed. ‘But which shop? There’s millions – Maguire’s and Casey’s and O’Donovan’s and Reed’s and … We’re just going to have to make a start right here and keep going till we find him.’

‘We probably haven’t a hope,’ said Helen dismally, ‘but I suppose all we can do is try and trawl through as many shops as we can manage.’

‘OK,’ said Rosheen. ‘I think we’d better split up. That way we can cover more shops before they close. Let’s meet here, at Reilly’s corner, at ten past nine, with or without Ricky. You take High Street and Abbey Street. I’ll do John’s Parade and the shopping centre.’

‘Right,’ said Helen. ‘See you soon!’ And she and Rosheen turned their backs on each other and walked off in opposite directions.

Then Helen remembered something. She stopped and looked over her shoulder and called to Rosheen’s retreating figure: ‘Good luck!’

Rosheen looked back and waved.

‘If you see Tomo,
hide
,’ she called. ‘We’ll be murdered if we’re caught out at this time of night.’

‘OK,’ Helen nodded. ‘Will do.’

There were cars parked everywhere, at all sorts of rakish angles, outside the Kellys’ house, even up on the footpath, when Rosheen and Helen got home from town that night. The house must be full of people, they thought. As they got to the gate, the front door opened and somebody came rushing down the garden path and hurtled out the gate past them without even seeing them. She jumped into one of the badly parked cars and revved off down the road without a backward glance.

‘Was that Mrs What’s-it from the corner shop?’ Rosheen asked.

‘Heffernan,’ said Helen, ‘Mrs Heffernan.’

The front door opened again, and another figure came out and down the path, not at quite the same speed.

‘Mr Ryan,’ said Rosheen, ‘you know, with the small black dog, from two doors up.’

The girls stood back from the garden path in the dark of the lawn, and Mr Ryan passed them by, calling back to a figure at the door: ‘Don’t worry, Mary, we’ll find him. Every car in the parish will be out till we do.’

Mr Ryan got into his car, put on his lights, signalled carefully, and pulled away from the kerb in the opposite direction from Mrs Heffernan.

The girls needn’t have worried about getting into trouble for leaving the house so late. There was such a to-do about Ricky, nobody had had time even to notice they were missing. They waited for the front door to close after Mr Ryan, and then crept in, using Rosheen’s house key, but even so, Mammy Kelly met them in the hall.

She saw two cold and bedraggled girls, their hair in rats’ tails on their shoulders, their faces red and wet and streaked with dirt, their stockings spattered, their expressions dejected.

‘Where were ye?’ she asked, her voice puzzled rather than cross. ‘Come in the pair of ye, in here to the warm, ye’re frozen.’ And she gathered a girl under either arm and ushered them into the front room.

The living room, normally full of things, was now full also of people, sitting and standing and milling about and all talking at a great rate, conferring and making suggestions and drawing maps for each other and waving their arms about giving each other directions. The search-party for Ricky was swinging into action. Mrs O’Loughlin was there, speaking rapidly into her mobile phone, her finger in her other ear, and Guard Lynch from the local garda station was leafing through a notebook and shaking his head.

In between the adults were all the children, making
themselves very small and keeping very quiet, because they knew something serious was going on. The smallest children, all except Billy, were huddled under a round table, which had a long tablecloth that reached down to the ground so that it was like being in a tent. They were in their pyjamas and their hair was streaked with damp from having their faces washed. The older ones sat in odd corners on the floor, leaving what chair space there was for the grownups. Somebody sat on a logbox that Rosheen had forgotten was there, because it was usually so covered with things, and one person who had managed to find herself a chair sat on top of such a pile of magazines that her feet didn’t reach the floor. She had Billy on her lap, and was playing Round and Round the Garden with him to distract him from the tense atmosphere of the room and keep him from under Mammy Kelly’s feet. Billy chuckled out loud every time it got to ‘And tickly under there!’ ‘More!’ he cried every time, ‘more!’

Mammy Kelly picked a towel off a clothes horse that stood near the fire and threw it to Helen. ‘Now,’ she said. ‘Where were ye? Down the town? Did you see Tomo? No sign of Ricky?’

Helen was towelling her hair, so Rosheen answered. ‘No, no sign,’ she said. ‘I saw Tomo, he’s still searching the streets. We looked in Casey’s and Reed’s and O’Donovan’s, and I think Helen was in Maguire’s too, but then it was getting late, so we thought we’d better come home. Sorry, Mammy Kelly.’

Mammy Kelly took the towel from Helen and passed it to Rosheen.

‘Tea, Lauren?’ she called out. ‘Any tea for the girls?’

Lauren appeared from nowhere with two mugs of tea.

‘Thanks,’ Rosheen whispered, afraid to speak up in case she burst into tears.

‘Yeh, thanks,’ echoed Helen, her cold fingers closing over the warm mug.

The soft background music in the department store was interrupted by a chime like a doorbell; the lights flickered on and off, on and off, and a voice that sounded as if its owner had a peg on her nose announced: ‘Store closing in
five
minutes.
Five
minutes, ladies and gentlemen. Please com
plete
your purchases and pro
ceed
to the
exit
-doors. And thank you for shopping with us this
eve
ning. Four and a half
minutes
now, ladies and
gentlemen
.’

Ricky uncurled himself and blinked. The message registered. They were closing up. What was he going to do now? Should he stay still as a mouse and wait for them to shut up the shop? But then he’d be locked in all night. What if he got hungry? He
would
get hungry – he was hungry already. What if he got scared? He
would
get scared in the dark with strange shapes all around him. What if there was a guard dog that they let loose in the department store at night?

No, he’d better get out of here now, while the going was good.

He stood up and brushed himself down.

But where was he going to go now? He thought about going home, but he knew in his heart he couldn’t go there. Anyway, if he did go home, they’d only find him there. He thought about hanging around on the cold streets, but he’d had enough of that. It was cold, cold, cold and wet and windy, and it was scary, with strange people offering you hamburgers. They might be mean or cruel or dangerous. So what was he going to do? Maybe he should never have left the tall house. That was the only place where most people were nice to him, where they let him do his stuff and they didn’t shout or make a fuss or tell him he was bad. He was still worried about the Lipstick Woman coming to take him away, but maybe Mammy Kelly wouldn’t let her. Maybe Tomo would tell her to leave him be. Tomo was dead on.

Ricky sailed off down the escalator, as the lights flickered on and off again and the peg-nose voice said something indecipherable, and came out onto the cold, wet street. He wasn’t sure how to get back to the Kellys’ house, but he had a rough idea how he’d got here, so he
thought he’d just retrace his footsteps and keep going. With a bit of luck, he’d recognise landmarks along the way, and they would guide him home. Well, not home exactly, but the nearest place he could think of to home.

With a defeated feeling, Ricky drew the back of his hand across his face, which was still warm from the department store. Then he pulled his thin jacket closer to his body and set off.

His sense of direction must have been better than he realised, because after a long walk, he made it to the tall iron gate. He stood outside it and looked between the bars at the tall house, perched above him, over the sloping garden, a light showing in the front room, and people moving inside. It was like a picture. He was outside, looking in at people in a warm, dry, well-lit place, a place where they belonged.

With a shrug, he pushed against the gate and opened it. Then he trudged up the garden steps, slipped around the back of the house, in the back door, into the darkened kitchen, with its night-time carrotty smell, and up the stairs, up, up, up, up to the place where he belonged.

It was getting very late. The visitors had all gone home.

Suddenly Tomo, who'd given up searching in town and come home for a short rest, noticed the time. ‘Bed!' he bellowed, sticking his big hairy head under the tablecloth, where the smallest children were huddled. At the sound of that word, they all came tumbling out, giggling because they'd managed to stay up so late, but secretly pleased that they could go to bed now, because they were getting sleepy.

‘Tomo?' said Lauren, standing up. ‘Ricky's social worker wasn't really coming to take him away, was she?'

Tomo gathered up Billy, who was already nodding, into his arms. He looked over the tiny boy's head at Mammy Kelly, and raised his eyebrows. She looked back at him, her mouth dropping open.

‘What ever gave you that idea?' Tomo asked Lauren.

‘Oh, I didn't really think that,' Lauren said, looking at Helen. ‘I just thought maybe some people had got a confused idea.'

‘Confused! Is that what you call it?' Mammy Kelly
said, looking straight at Helen also.

‘Yes,' said Rosheen quickly. ‘Just a misunderstanding, that's all, just a misunderstanding.'

‘Hmm,' said Tomo, ‘well, look, we'll talk about this in the morning. But I don't want anybody being confused. There is no question of Mrs O'Loughlin taking Ricky away, as long as he's happy here.'

‘OK,' said Lauren, still looking at Helen. ‘I was only asking.'

Tomo bent his knees and picked up the next smallest child also and tucked her under his other arm, while Lauren herded the rest into a bobbing little group, and off they trooped up the stairs, the ones on foot dancing along in front of Tomo and Lauren like little flowerheads.

‘You too,' said Mammy Kelly to Helen and Rosheen, ‘it's way past everyone's bed time,' so they stood up, said good night and followed the smaller ones up the stairs. Trip, trip, trip, went the small ones, stomp, stomp, stomp went Tomo, trudge, trudge, trudge went Helen and Rosheen, weary and disappointed after their failed search of the town.

When they got to their room, Helen turned to Rosheen: ‘Let's just go up to the junkroom one last time before we go to bed.'

‘It's not a junkroom,' said Rosheen. ‘It's the moon-chair room.'

‘Yes, well, whatever,' said Helen agreeably. ‘Let's go up there anyway.'

‘What for?' said Rosheen. ‘I'm tired.' She didn't add that there was an awful sadness weighing on her heart, and she just wasn't in the mood for pranking around in the attic tonight.

‘Well, Tomo broke the lock earlier,' Helen said. ‘Let's see what the damage is.' For some reason, she badly wanted to see the moon-chair room before she slept.

‘What
for
?' Rosheen asked again. ‘I want to go to bed.' Not that she really expected to get much sleep.

‘Ah, come on, Rosheen, let's just go up. It might…it might inspire us!'

‘About what?'

‘About where Ricky is, of course,' said Helen.

‘I don't see how it could,' said Rosheen. ‘But if you really want to, OK then. Lead on, Macduff.'

The two girls climbed to the very highest floor in the house, way up under the roof. It was dark, dark up there, and the broken door creaked over and back on its hinges.

‘Put the light on,' Helen hissed to Rosheen.

‘The bulb's gone,' said Rosheen.

Through the open door of the moon-chair room, Rosheen could see out the attic window. There was a streak of pale light in the night sky, reflected from the streetlights on the road. It wasn't much, but it was enough to reveal shapes in the room.

Together, the two girls moved to the door and stood looking in at the mysterious grey, huddled shapes. They could make out the tall, pointy shape of the moon chair in
the grey light. Rosheen squeezed up her eyes. She could have sworn there was something stuck on top of the moon on top of the chair, something small and clumpy.

Then the crocheted blanket bundled on the chair stirred.

‘It's him,' whispered Rosheen excitedly. ‘Oh, you were right, Helen.'

Helen smiled in the darkness. She hadn't really been right. She hadn't expected they would actually
find
Ricky. But she had been sort of right. It
had
been her idea to come up here.

‘He came
home
,' Rosheen said then. ‘He came home to
us
. Oh, Helen!'

Helen grabbed Rosheen's elbow. She didn't want her collapsing up here in the dark. At her sister's touch, Rosheen turned, in the pale light, and squeezed Helen's arm. They held onto one another delightedly for a moment, searching in the half-light for each other's faces, each other's expressions.

‘Remember, now,' Rosheen whispered, her mouth close to Helen's ear. ‘Remember what we said earlier this evening. Don't blow it, Helen, OK, just don't blow it.'

Helen nodded. ‘Ricky?' she called gently, turning to the shape on the chair, raising her voice a little so he could hear her from the landing. ‘Are you awake, Rick? It's only us, me and Rosheen.'

The blanket unfurled and the silhouette of Ricky's spiky hairstyle emerged from it.

Rosheen said nothing at all. This was Helen's chance.

‘Ricky?' said Helen again. ‘I'm sorry I teased you. I didn't mean it.'

Rosheen nudged her in the ribs.

‘I mean, no, sorry, I did mean it. But I'm sorry now, OK?'

Ricky blinked and yawned.

Then Rosheen spoke.

‘Hey, Ricky,' she said softly. ‘You gave us all a terrible fright. But we're glad you came back, Ricky. We're really glad you're home, me and Helen, both of us.'

An arm shot up from the moon chair, the fingers all akimbo against the flat grey surface of the window, like a black handprint etched on a piece of paper. Ricky was stretching.

‘Ricky, it was all lies about Mrs O' coming to get you,' Helen went on. ‘I just made it up. She wouldn't take you away from here. Mam and Tomo are the best foster-parents in the county. Everyone knows that. They never take people away from here, unless they're ready to go home. Honest to God, Ricky, cross my heart and hope to die.'

Then there came an unexpected sound, a whickering of wings, and the shape on top of the moon on Ricky's moonchair flapped into the air. A pale streak whirred across the room, did a quick circuit, and arrived back on its perch, over Ricky's head.

Ricky's upstretched hand did a twirl in the air, reaching up towards the bird, and Rosheen thought she could hear the sound of a soft laugh. Fudge rose into the air again, flew excitedly around the moon a few times and then settled back on the top of it and started to investigate the depths of his feathery armpit.

‘You are the moon king, Ricky,' Rosheen said softly then, still standing in the doorway. ‘Welcome home, moon king.'

There was a rustling and a creaking from the moon chair.

‘You are the moon king, Ricky,' Rosheen repeated, a little more loudly.

The shape that was Ricky sat straight up in the chair. And then, out of the dark silhouette came the answering words in Ricky's small, piping voice: ‘I – am – the moon king.'

Rosheen nudged Helen delightedly. ‘Did you hear that?' she whispered. ‘He's
talking
. And he's talking
right
.'

Then Ricky spoke a little more loudly, as if he was practising with his voice: ‘I am the
moon
king.'

And at last, with great conviction, he flung both his arms in the air and cried: ‘I
am
the moon king.'