Moon Pie (17 page)

Martha wiped Tug’s face.

‘Has Dad gone for good?’ he asked Grandma.

‘Your father has departed,’ she said, ‘for the time being. So now we can get back to normal.’

They went into the bathroom separately, as Grandma instructed. The bathroom was large and clean, with a soft carpet and neat racks of fresh towels. There was a bath and a shower. There was no stool for Tug to stand on at the wash basin, but they both had a new electric toothbrush, bought for them by Grandma and Grandpa.

After she had been to the bathroom, Martha went to read Tug a story, but Grandpa was reading to him already and Grandma asked her to go straight to her room.

‘But I always read to Tug.’

‘There is no need. Grandpa is a very good reader.’

So Martha went to bed and tried not to feel lonely. Her bed was cool and clean, and she lay there quietly until exactly eight o’clock, when Grandma came in to switch off the light.

‘This has been a difficult day, Martha. I hope tomorrow will be better.’

‘Yes, Grandma.’

There was a pause, and Grandma stood there looking down at her.

‘I feel sorry for you, Martha,’ she said. ‘You have been badly let down. It makes me angry. My ideas are very different from your father’s and sometimes, perhaps, you may not appreciate them, but I want you to know that I am always doing what I think is best.’

They looked at each other.

‘I think a new beginning is what you need, Martha,’ she said, and she patted her once on the head. ‘Good night.’

‘Good night, Grandma.’

Left alone, she lay there in the darkness with her eyes open, looking round her room. The darkness here felt different from the darkness in the old house: smooth and quiet.
Grandma’s right
, she thought.
It’s all for the best
. Her new room and new bed were for the best. Being firm and clear and plain were for the best. Order was for the best. Grandma herself – and all her rules – was for the best. With these things, she could make a new beginning.

But she frowned as she remembered Dad at the door, his face white, his arms jerking. There would be no new beginning unless she was able to stop
thinking about Dad. And how could she not think about him if he came round creating scenes all the time?

For more than an hour she lay there, staring up at the ceiling, until at last, worn out with thinking, she fell asleep.

D
uring the following week – the last week of the summer holidays – Grandma and Grandpa organized plenty of things for Martha and Tug to do, to keep them busy. They visited places together: parks, museums, garden centres, sites of historical interest. One afternoon they all went to an interesting flower show.

This did not stop Dad from coming to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Plainness and firmness had not had the desired effect. He came every evening, and almost always caused a scene. Grandma, or sometimes Grandpa, dealt with him, but Martha and Tug heard him, and often saw him, as he shouted and wept at the front door, and as the days passed Martha grew paler. Several times she had the dizzy feeling. Twice she couldn’t finish her tea and asked to be excused so she could go and lie down.

Late one night Dad turned up in the car, saying that he was going to drive the children home, and
Grandma called the police. A few days after that, at dinner, she spoke to Martha and Tug.

‘As you know, your father has been very difficult. Several times Grandpa and I have had to alert the authorities, who have been frankly less than effective. But they have at last issued a court order prohibiting him from coming here. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a relief.’

‘What’s a court order?’ Martha asked.

Grandpa had a copy of it, and he unfolded it and searched his pockets for his glasses.

‘They’re on your head,’ Grandma said. ‘But nobody wants to hear you read it. Just tell the children what it is.’

‘It’s like a law. It says that he can’t come here or he’ll be prosecuted.’

‘What’s prosecuted?’ Tug asked.

‘Punished,’ Grandma said. ‘Put into prison.’

‘Prison!’ Martha cried.

Grandma looked stern. ‘I don’t wish it, Martha. But I don’t see why we should put up with his nonsense any more, do you?’

Martha hung her head. ‘No, Grandma.’

Then she asked if she could be excused, and went upstairs to lie down.

*

On the day before the new school year began, Martha and Tug were kept even busier than usual. They went into town with Grandma and Grandpa to buy things they needed for school, like pens and rulers and set squares, and picked up their new uniforms which had been ordered for them, and had haircuts. Back at the house they put everything on their beds and sorted it all out. They packed their new bags and put them in the vestibule, and made sandwiches and put their lunch boxes in the fridge. After that, Grandma decided that they should both have an early night.

Before their baths, they managed to sit together for a few minutes in Martha’s room.

‘Do you like living here, Martha?’

‘I think it’s for the best, Tug. What about you?’

‘It’s a bit tiring.’ He was thoughtful. ‘And they don’t really understand me yet,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m hungry all the time.’

Martha sighed. ‘But it’s very neat and tidy. And since the court order Dad hasn’t come round.’

‘It’s a bit too clean. And I don’t like Grandma. But,’ he added brightly, ‘I haven’t broken anything yet.’

They had baths, and separate reading, and then it was time to turn out their lights.

Grandma stood in Martha’s doorway. ‘Now, at last,’ she said, ‘we have a chance to make a new beginning. Good night, Martha.’

‘Good night, Grandma.’

For a moment, as she lay there, she thought about Dad. She was sorry for him: she didn’t want him to go to jail. But she was glad he wasn’t coming round any more. She didn’t want to see him, or think about him either.

Very carefully, she made herself stop thinking about him. Instead, she thought of herself lying in her new bed, in her new room, in the dark. As she had said to Tug, everything was neat and tidy, even the shadows, though there weren’t many of those because she had closed the curtains tightly so she wouldn’t be able to see the moon. It was a safe darkness, smooth and still, and she allowed herself to lie there in the quiet and the darkness and the stillness, not thinking about anything else.

This is it
, she said to herself,
this feeling now. A new beginning. At last
.

She woke suddenly, and lay there listening hard. She had a feeling that something had made a noise.

Everything was quiet. She looked at her bedside
clock. The luminous face said 02.30. She sat up to listen better and the whole house was as still and peaceful as before. There was only the faint noise of rain against the window.

Perhaps it was thunder
, she thought. But as she lay back down, she heard it again, a sharp, scrappy noise somewhere close.

‘Tug?’ she said.

She put on the lamp and got out of bed. She tiptoed to the door and opened it. The landing was dark and empty. Then the noise came again, from behind her, and she realized it was coming from the window. Going across the room, she drew back the curtains and moonlight flooded in through the rain-streaked pane. Dimly, she could see something moving in the garden below, a long dark shape swaying from side to side. It swung through the air towards her and thumped against the window, and she saw that it was a ladder.

Oh no
, she thought.
Please no
.

Dad’s face appeared at the window, very wet and white. ‘Martha!’ he said, slapping the glass with his hand. ‘Martha! Shh! Quietly! Open the window.’ He laughed. ‘Quick, Martha, before I fall onto the wheelie bin!’

She opened the window and the rain came in and wet her face.

‘What are you doing? You can’t stay here or they’ll catch you and put you in prison. There isn’t a wheelie bin,’ she added.

‘Never mind that. Come with me now. Climb onto my shoulders, and put Tug under my arm and let’s be off.’ He was giggling.

‘You’re drunk,’ she said.

‘We’ll be runaways!’ he shouted. ‘Shh!’ he added. ‘Quietly does it.’

She stared at him. It was too much. She felt herself begin to tremble. ‘Stop it, Dad. Please stop. You’re being silly.’

‘What’s wrong with being silly if we love each other? I love you more than … damn, I can’t think of anything.’ He began to laugh again. ‘There’s too much rain to think.’ He took both hands off the ladder and reached them out towards her. ‘Everything’s my fault,’ he said. ‘Even the rain. I just wanted to see you. I miss you so much. Don’t you miss me?’

Martha stepped backwards into her room. She was trembling so badly now she could hardly stand. Something was happening to her. She couldn’t control herself any more. She felt a great shuddering
inside her, and a choking pain and her eyes were suddenly blind with tears.

‘Leave me alone!’ she screamed at the top of her voice.

Dad looked startled. ‘Shh!’ he said. ‘Bit noisy.’

She ran forward and slammed the window shut. ‘I don’t want to see you any more!’ she yelled.

Dad had stopped laughing. He pressed his face against the wet window pane, looking very surprised. ‘Martha?’ he mouthed.

She took a deep, deep breath, and shouted at him so furiously she hurt her throat: ‘Can’t you see?
I’m only a little girl!
’

Finally he was quiet.

Through the wet window he stared at her in horror.

Then there were footsteps in the hall, and Grandma and Grandpa burst into the room, closely followed by Tug. From outside came a tilting, scraping, sliding noise. Then a thump and a muffled cry. Martha ran forward and looked down into the garden, just in time to see Dad, covered in mud, limping and slithering across the wet grass, round the side of the house and out of her life.

T
he seasons changed. Summer ended, autumn began. In the park the trees shed their leaves, the yellow and blue boats were taken off the lake and put into storage, and the tennis courts were locked up. At the end of October the café closed. The days grew short. Down by the canal where the fun fair used to come, work began on two new apartment blocks, and by the end of the year the walls were built up to the eaves. Christmas came and went, and then, very slowly, the dreary, colourless days of January and February, with their chilly mornings and gloomy afternoons, when Martha caught a cold and Tug had a verruca, and Grandpa developed bronchitis and had to stay in bed for nearly a week. In March the corner shop where they bought their lollies was replaced by a coffee shop, and road works went up all along the main road and kept the traffic at a crawl until the end of April.

During these months everything was strange and
new for Martha and Tug. As the seasons changed, they changed too. Martha stopped going to Cookery Club and Costumes Club; she took more interest in her school work and excelled, particularly in Science and Maths. She started playing hockey and did well enough to get into the school team, though the games teacher was apt to comment that she looked a little thin. She kept her long hair braided, and her friends at school told her she looked like Heidi or some other girl heroine in a foreign story. They all knew what had happened at home, and were sorry for her, and kind to her, though Martha never spoke about Dad to them. At the beginning of December she turned twelve, and Grandma and Grandpa took her for high tea at the Dorchester hotel in town. She was becoming a quiet, serious girl.

Tug, on the other hand, was neither quiet nor serious. He was growing fast. He wasn’t neat and square any more, but dirty-faced and wiry, with big clumsy feet. He didn’t like school. His behaviour in class had never been good; now he got into trouble regularly. His teachers reported that he was ‘difficult and stubborn’. Once in the winter term, and twice in the spring term, Grandma and Grandpa were summoned to discuss his naughtiness with the head
teacher. He had his sixth birthday in February, but Grandma and Grandpa didn’t take him anywhere.

After that chaotic night at the end of August, Dad never came back. Grandma told the children that he had gone away to ‘get better’. One autumn afternoon Martha and Tug secretly went to their old house to check, and saw another family living there, and knew then that Grandma was telling the truth. Martha asked Grandma where Dad had gone, but she said she didn’t know. The number of Dad’s phone had been cancelled, so they couldn’t phone him, and Martha and Tug had new phones with new numbers, so he couldn’t phone them. They received no messages or letters either, or even postcards. He had gone.

It was a relief. Almost immediately Martha began to feel better. She stopped getting the dizzy feeling. For a while she still got upset whenever she thought about Dad, but she made a conscious effort not to think about him, and as the months went by it got easier.

Her new life with Grandma and Grandpa was completely different, not at all confused, but very quiet and orderly. She didn’t have to get breakfast for everyone, or find something to make for Tug’s tea, or put herself to bed, or worry about what was going to
happen. She didn’t have to make lists any more. Everything was done for her. There were set times for getting up and having meals and going to bed, and scheduled activities to keep her and Tug busy, like visiting museums and going to Sunday school, and dozens of little things to remember such as looking at people when talking to them or closing doors quietly. At meal times they were encouraged to ‘make conversation’ about what they had just been doing. All their time was accounted for, even the minutes and seconds. It was highly organized. It was also, as Tug had said, tiring.

Curiously, though, Martha sometimes felt as if she wasn’t properly busy. There were many things she was not allowed to do. Grandma didn’t let her help with cooking (‘It’s a safety issue,’) or look after Tug (‘I shall monitor Christopher myself, thank you,’) or sew in the house (‘Grandpa and I can afford to buy you new clothes, should you need them.’). From the beginning Grandma made her views about children plain. She told them frequently – angrily – that Dad had given them far too much freedom.