Moon Pie (13 page)

He stopped, and slowly turned to face her. A muscle moved in his jaw.

She took a deep breath and looked him in the eye, and said, ‘You’re an alcoholic, aren’t you?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘I know you are,’ she went on. ‘I’ve been reading about you. Grandma and Grandpa know you are too, and Olivia knows, and now the Social Services know as well.’

He glared at her with stranger’s eyes, and her skin crawled, but she made herself go on: ‘If you don’t stop drinking, Dad, Tug and me will have to go and live with other people. You’ll be on your own then. You won’t like it on your own,’ she added. ‘And Tug won’t. And,’ she said, quietly now, ‘I won’t either.’

‘All right,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll stop.’

‘Good. How will you stop?’

‘I’ll keep my mouth closed so the drink can’t get in.’

Her heart sank. ‘Dad, it’s serious. You’ve seen the letters. You’ve got to do something.’

He stood looking at her, and his eyes were so hard and small she started to get upset, she couldn’t help it. ‘You’ve got to do something because I can’t do it any more.’

‘Do what?’ he said.

Her voice was cracking now, and her words came out in a teary rush as she tried to think of all the things he had to do: ‘You have to talk to Dr Woodley.

‘And you have to say sorry to Olivia.

‘And you have to see an Alcohol Counsellor.

‘And you have to explain things to the Social Services.

‘And be nice to Tug.

‘And you have to make friends with Grandma and Grandpa.’

She paused, panting.

‘Anything else?’ Dad sneered.

She thought wildly in case she’d forgotten something. ‘Yes. You have to tidy your room.’

Lurching sideways, he snatched a mug from the draining board and hurled it against the wall, where it exploded into bits with a crash.

Everything came to a sudden stop. She stood with her mouth open, staring at Dad, who stood there glaring back at her, and there was no sound at all in the room, not even the sound of breathing.

Then they heard feet drumming on the stairs, and Tug appeared in the doorway in his pyjamas, holding on to his hair. ‘Martha!’ he cried. ‘I heard banging, Martha!’

He ran past Dad, and she caught him up and held him, and Dad turned away from them with a groan and lurched out of the room. They heard his clumsy steps on the stairs, and the slam of his bedroom door.

Tug was whimpering. ‘I didn’t like the banging, Martha.’

She comforted him.

‘I don’t like Dad banging.’

‘It’s OK, Tug. He’s stopped banging. It’s over now.’

For ten minutes they stayed in the kitchen holding each other and listening for sounds from Dad’s room. It was silent. At last they went together out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Tug shrank against her as they went past Dad’s door, and Martha felt herself shrink too.

‘I don’t like him being strange,’ he whispered.

‘I know you don’t,’ she whispered back. ‘I don’t like it either. But don’t cry any more. We’re going to be all right now.’

‘Are we?’

‘Yes, we are.’

‘Martha?’

‘What?’

‘Are we going to be tremendous, Martha?’

But she didn’t say anything to that, and they went quietly into his room together.

F
riday was the last day of term before the summer holidays. Lessons ended at lunchtime, and the children came out of school and ran into the streets, to the bus stops and shops. In the park there were children everywhere, standing in gangs round the benches, chasing each other across the tennis courts, playing football on the lawns marked N
O
B
ALL
G
AMES
, hanging round the café talking. Their laughter echoed in the tennis courts and across the lake.

Martha and Tug walked together towards the library.

‘Why did it make the noise?’ Tug asked again.

‘Because it smashed.’

‘Why did it smash?’

‘Because he threw it.’

‘Why did he throw it at you?’

‘He didn’t throw it at me, Tug. He threw it against the wall.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’d been drinking. You know what that does to him. I explained it to you, didn’t I?’

‘It makes him strange.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And it makes him throw mugs at people.’

Martha put her hand to her head, and closed her eyes, and breathed slowly.

At the library she exchanged her old books for three new ones –
What Social Workers Do, What is Social Work: Context and Perspectives
and
The Social Services Inspectorate: Who We Are and What We Do
– and Tug took out
Munch!

The librarian gave her a funny look.

Coming out of the library, they walked back across the park towards home, going in a roundabout way across the grass to avoid the geese by the pond.

They walked slowly. Even Tug noticed how ill Martha was looking. Her pale face was paler than ever, almost white against her copper-coloured hair, her eyes were sore and her nose looked small and pinched. Twice in the morning – in English and Maths – she’d felt dizzy, and had left her lessons to lie down in the Medical Room until the dizziness passed.

‘Martha?’

‘Yes, Tug?’

‘Will Dad throw a mug at me?’

‘No, Tug. He doesn’t throw mugs at people.’

‘Will he throw one at my wall?’

They walked past the ornamental flowerbeds, Tug asking questions about Dad and Martha trying to ignore her headache, and when they came to the park gates they were surprised by Grandma and Grandpa, who were waiting there for them.

‘Hello, Martha. Hello, Christopher. Are you well, Martha? You look pale.’

Martha forced herself to smile. ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

‘Grandpa and I hoped we might see you here. It’s the first day of the holidays, isn’t it? We’ve brought you some holiday spending money.’

Grandpa’s smile was short and cheery, and Grandma’s smile was long and white.

‘We’re not going on holiday,’ Tug said. As he said this he moved behind Martha.

‘But you can have a little spending money, anyway,’ Grandma said. ‘Surely?’

Tug thought about this. ‘All right,’ he said, and sidled out again.

Grandma kept smiling. ‘It’s such a beautiful day. Shall we have an ice cream together? Would you like an ice cream, Christopher?’

Tug thought he would.

Martha was doubtful.

‘Please, Martha,’ Tug said. ‘If you don’t want yours,’ he added considerately, ‘I don’t mind having it for you.’

So they went to the café in the park. It was an old-fashioned café, with coffee machines that steamed and hissed, and trays of sweets and cakes, and tubs of different flavoured ice cream in a long glass case.

Sitting at a table in the window, away from the steam, Grandma began to talk.

She said that although they hadn’t seen much of Martha and Tug recently, they thought about them a lot. They were worried about them, Grandma said. And they were worried about Dad, in a different way.

‘I’m afraid you must be worried too,’ she said.

‘We’re very bored of him,’ Tug said. He would have said more, but he had just finished his Strawberry Ripple and was starting on Martha’s Mint Choc Chip.

Martha didn’t say anything. Despite her headache, she was thinking hard about what Grandma was saying. She knew that Grandma was angry with Dad – so angry she had written to the Social Services and told them things about him. It made her wonder what
Grandma would tell them now if she found out that Dad was getting worse.

Grandma was saying how sorry she was for Dad with all his problems which he seemed unable to solve, and how difficult it must be for him to get a new job in his current state of health, and how hard it is, in any case, to bring up children on your own, though somehow she had always known, almost from the beginning, that he would find it impossible, when the time came, to meet his responsibilities.

‘No, we’re not worried,’ Martha said suddenly.

Grandma stopped talking and looked at her through narrowed eyes.

Martha went on, ‘Tug and I were just saying how wonderful he is.’

Mint Choc Chip slid off Tug’s spoon as he stared at her open-mouthed.

‘He’s just had a new haircut,’ she said. ‘And he goes swimming. And he’s about to get a new job. You see,’ she added, ‘he doesn’t neglect or endanger us. Does he, Tug?’ She kicked him under the table.

‘Ow, Martha.’

‘Now we have to go,’ she said, ‘or Dad will be very worried, because he worries about us. Thank you for the ice cream. Thank you for the spending money.’

And taking hold of Tug’s hand she walked quickly out of the café and into the park.

‘Martha,’ he said, in short gasps as he struggled to keep up, ‘you kicked me.’

She didn’t reply.

‘And I hadn’t finished your ice cream.’

But she just carried on going, pulling Tug behind her, and didn’t stop until they had reached the corner of their street.

She was panting. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘This is very important. We mustn’t tell Grandma and Grandpa anything bad about Dad.’

‘Not about the mug?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘I can’t explain, Tug. You’re too small. You have to trust me.’

‘All right, Martha,’ he said at last. ‘But you needn’t have kicked me.’

She hugged him tightly until he complained, and then they walked up the street together until they came to their house.

She began to search in her school bag for the key.

‘Martha?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you scared of Grandma and Grandpa?’

‘No,’ she said. It was true: she was cross with them, and anxious about what they might say to the Social Services, but she wasn’t scared of them.

‘I am,’ he said.

He thought for a while.

‘Martha?’

‘What?’

‘Are you scared of Dad?’

She hesitated. She remembered what Dad had looked like the last time she’d seen him with his surly face, furious voice and staggering-about movements – like a different man, not just strange, but The Stranger. But she turned to Tug and said: ‘Of course not. And you shouldn’t be either.’

‘I don’t want Dad to throw the mug,’ he said in a small voice. ‘It makes me unhappy.’

He looked very small and square.

‘I won’t let him throw the mug,’ Martha said as briskly as she could.

And at last she found the key, and they went into the house together.

T
hey called for Dad, but there was no answer. Tug said he was glad.

‘He must be out,’ Martha said. ‘He’ll have left a note.’

But there was no note.

They went into the garden, to sit in the afternoon sun. Tug had a glass of orange squash and felt better. Martha went to look in the shed, just in case Dad was there, but he wasn’t. After half an hour or so they went back inside.

‘What’s that smell, Martha?’ Tug said.

‘Drains, I think. Dad keeps saying he’s going to fix them but he never gets round to it.’

Following the smell, they went down the hall to the front room, and there they found Dad.

He was sprawled face-down on the carpet in his dressing gown. There was sick on the dressing gown, and on the carpet and up one of the walls. His arms were round his head, his hair was wet and one of his
hands was covered in blood. He was very still. As they stood there staring at him, he suddenly made a noise like a snore, and was quiet again.

Martha took Tug into the hall, sat him on the bottom step and held him until he calmed down.

‘You have to stay here, Tug, while I help Dad. And you have to try to be quiet, so I can think.’

When he was quiet, she went back into the front room, and stood there, with no idea what to do.

For a minute or more she stood there staring, her mind a blank. Then she started to feel dizzy. Suddenly she was falling, plummeting in darkness, falling so fast she couldn’t breathe, and the darkness was squeezing and squeezing her tummy. She put her hands out and leaned against the wall.

‘I won’t be sick,’ she said aloud in a fierce voice. ‘I won’t be sick. I won’t!’

Slowly the light came back into the room, and she found herself slumped at the foot of the wall. She hadn’t been sick, but she must have fainted.

Dad was still lying in his dressing gown on the carpet, and she got to her feet, trembling. From the hallway she heard Tug whimpering to himself. She took a deep breath.

I mustn’t be sick, and I mustn’t faint again
, she
thought,
because now I really have to do something
.

She made a list in her head:

Try to wake him up
.

Check to see how badly he has hurt himself
.

Get help
.

When she touched it, Dad’s face was wet and sticky.

‘Dad?’ she said. ‘Dad?’

He didn’t move, but he made the snoring noise again.

She began to examine him. He had cut his right hand on broken glass, bits of which lay scattered about the carpet, and there was a bruise on his forehead as if he had fallen and hit it against something. His legs were twisted under him. Martha cleared pieces of glass from around his hand, moved his arms to his sides and untangled his legs, to make him more comfortable. His dressing gown was wet and it smelled of sick and something else, and when she tried to roll him onto his side she discovered that the carpet underneath him was wet too. Looking around, she found the jagged remains of a tumbler against the foot of the wall and an empty bottle of BestValue Triple Distilled under the easy chair.

She wondered if she should call an ambulance. But
she didn’t know if ambulances came out to drunk people. She thought of phoning Dr Woodley, but she thought that he would tell the Social Services what had happened. She certainly couldn’t phone Grandma and Grandpa.

In the end she called Laura.

‘Unconscious?’ Laura asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Has he vomited?’

‘Yes. And …’

‘Wet himself?’

‘Yes. And he keeps making these funny snoring noises.’

Laura said, ‘He’s passed out.’

‘Did your dad ever do that?’

‘Lots.’