Moon Pie (3 page)

‘When will the biscuits get here?’ Tug said.

Marcus told the story of
My Fair Lady
. It involved a bad-tempered gentleman teaching a poor girl how to talk in a posh voice. There were songs, apparently funny, and some dancing.

‘I will play the posh old gentleman,’ Marcus said. ‘His name is Henry Higgins, and he wears a jacket of brown velvet which may or may not be trimmed with blue fur. I will also play the poor girl, who is called Eliza Doolittle. She wears a variety of dresses.’

He looked at Martha.

‘In the bag,’ she said. ‘I haven’t made the petticoat yet.’

Marcus turned back to Tug. ‘I am going to let you appear in the very first scene. You will play the part of a street urchin. You will be dirty and badly-behaved. There is no need to act. You will sing a song. The song is called “Wouldn’t it be Loverly”.’

‘Wouldn’t it be what?’

Stepping backwards into the area enclosed by the white screen, Marcus began to sing. As he sang, he pranced to and fro. The song was full of words like ‘abso-bloomin’-lutely’, which made no sense, and
noises like the sound of someone having his nose tweaked, and the whole thing was terrible.

Marcus came to an end. ‘Do you think you can sing that?’

Tug shook his head firmly.

‘Well, what can you sing?’

Tug thought for a moment. ‘ “The Bear Went Over the Mountain”.’

‘How does that go?’

Tug sang in a shy, gruff monotone: ‘The bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain, the bear went over the mountain.’

Marcus nodded. ‘All right, that’ll do. Shall we start?’

‘Martha?’ Tug said.

‘Yes, Tug.’

‘Why aren’t you playing?’

‘I don’t much like playing, Tug.’

Then they started.

When tea and biscuits arrived, Marcus told them to ‘take five’, and Tug took five biscuits, and they sat on the bed listening to Marcus talk about becoming a celebrity.

‘But I will remember you,’ he said. ‘I will write about you in my memoirs.’

His memoirs were already in their third volume. He wrote them mainly in Maths on Wednesday and Friday afternoons, and sometimes passed the pages to Martha – who sat next to him – for safekeeping.

After a while he told Tug to move away from the camcorder again.

‘But I like cameras,’ Tug said. ‘My dad used to work in a television studio, and they had lots of cameras there. And a canteen,’ he said.

Marcus nodded. ‘I know. I was hoping your dad might be able to help me get on in the movie industry. Has he got himself a new job yet?’

Martha shook her head.

‘Why? Aren’t there any?’

‘He doesn’t seem to want one at the moment.’

‘Is he all right?’

For a moment Martha didn’t know how to answer. ‘Yes,’ she said at last. She frowned.

‘We’re going to live on a boat,’ Tug put in. ‘In the fields.’

‘Your brother’s quite a fantasist, isn’t he? Quite a little dreamer of dreams, aren’t you?’

‘I like to sleep,’ Tug said.

‘I was impressed with the way he handled himself
in scene one,’ Marcus said to Martha. ‘Despite the risk to the equipment.’

‘I like equipment,’ Tug said stubbornly.

‘I know you do, little Tug. But does it like you?’

‘You’re strange,’ Tug said.

‘Of course I am. Do you think you can be a celebrity without making a spectacle of yourself? Now I must change for the next scene. Martha, tell me honestly: do you think the tea gown will work without the petticoat?’

M
artha and Tug walked past their schools, first Martha’s, then Tug’s, both empty now at the weekend. Martha’s school was large and grey, and she liked it. She was in Year Seven. She wore a blue uniform, and was good at Maths and famous for red hair and neatness. Marcus was her best friend, but she got on well with everyone. Tug’s school was small and grey, and he was bored of it. He was in Year One and looking forward to finishing schooling as soon as possible. He was famous for eating and a trick he did with spit.

Beyond their schools was the park again. It was still busy. Some families were having picnics on the grass between the flowerbeds.

They went by the doctors’ surgery and along the outer path until they came to the library. Every Saturday they came here to exchange their books.

‘What are you going to get out, Tug?’

He took a book out of the book-bin.

‘
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
? Again?’

‘It makes me feel happy.’

‘All right. Choose some others too. I’m going to choose mine over here.’

After half an hour they left the library and went back into the park on their way home.

‘Will we have a picnic today?’ Tug asked.

‘I don’t know. Dad’s making tea.’

‘I like picnics.’

‘I know you do.’

‘I like sausages for my picnics. And pies. And crisps. And scotch eggs. And sausage rolls. And chicken.’ He thought hard for a while. ‘Oh, and pies,’ he added.

‘We’ll have to see what Dad has got ready for us.’

‘What do you like for your picnics, Martha?’

‘I don’t really mind.’

‘Do you like pies?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘What sort of pies?’

‘I don’t know, Tug. Let’s talk about something else.’

‘Like what?’

‘I don’t know.’

They walked round the edge of the lake, avoiding the geese.

‘Do you like our new house, Tug?’ she said at last.

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

He stared at her in surprise. ‘It’s small, Martha, and it’s always broken. I liked our old house,’ he added in a low voice.

Martha was cross. ‘You’re not to say that. I’ve told you before. It doesn’t do any good.’

‘All right. But I did,’ he added. Tug could be very stubborn. ‘I liked my old room,’ he said quietly.

Martha ignored him.

‘I liked the play den,’ he said. ‘I liked the tennis court.’

‘Shh, Tug.’

They walked on in silence. But Martha couldn’t help thinking about their old house too. It was a big stone house up on a hill above the city, with its own orchard and an acre of woodland, and they had been very happy there. Dad hadn’t been strange then. In fact – now she thought about it – Dad wasn’t a bit strange until they moved into their new house – as if he had somehow left himself behind at the old house with the old carpets and curtains, and become someone else. But that didn’t make sense.

She frowned.

They reached the park gates and went out into the streets.

‘I liked the TV room,’ Tug was whispering to himself. ‘I liked the orchard.’

When they got home, they found the front door wide open and Dad gone. There was a note on the kitchen table. It said:
Had to go out. Sorry! Back soon – with a surprise! Love Dad
.

‘What surprise, Martha? Will it be pies?’

‘We’ll have to see.’ She looked at her watch, and thought about her timetable. ‘I think we’d better have bath time while we wait.’

Tug gave her a dangerous look. ‘But we haven’t had tea. We never have baths before tea.’ He was tired and cross and hungry. He looked as if he might be getting into one of his moods.

Martha felt the beginning of a headache coming on. ‘Tonight it’s bath first, then tea. When Dad gets back with his surprise.’

‘I don’t like it when there’s no Dad,’ Tug said.

‘Don’t worry. I’m here to look after you.’

‘I don’t like it when there’s no
tea.
’

‘There will be tea, Tug. You don’t understand.’

‘No, Martha.
You
don’t understand. I’m hungry.’

‘I know you are. You just have to wait a little while.’

Tug sat down on the floor. It was a bad sign.

‘Tug!’

He sat cross-legged with his arms folded, his head bent and his shoulders hunched, scowling violently. He began to grumble to himself. This was another bad sign. Martha’s headache got worse, and she put her hand on her forehead and counted to ten.

‘Please, Tug.’

He scowled and grumbled and didn’t move.

Martha lost her temper. ‘You look like a block of old wood,’ she said angrily. ‘You’re almost square. I’ve never noticed before how square you are. You ought to be careful someone doesn’t come along and put you in a skip.’

He didn’t stop scowling, but he began to sniff, and Martha felt sorry for him, he was so small and square, and his hair was so hot and messy. So she sat down next to him, and crossed her own legs and hunched her own shoulders and scowled to herself, and found that it felt quite nice. Then she sighed. ‘What’s your favourite sort of pie, Tug?’

After a while of not answering, he sniffed and muttered, ‘Steak and kidney.’

Martha made a shocked noise. ‘But I thought it was mince and onion.’

He turned to her at once. ‘No, Martha, that’s wrong. I like mince and onion. But I like steak and kidney better.’

‘OK. I’m sorry, I made a mistake. If Dad’s surprise isn’t a steak and kidney pie, I’ll make you one next week. How about that?’

Tug considered this. ‘All right.’

‘But you have to have a bath now. Is it a deal?’

‘All right.’

‘Come on then.’

They got up together and went upstairs, and Martha ran the bath while Tug sat on the toilet singing ‘The Bear Went Over the Mountain’ to himself.

‘Marcus is strange, isn’t he?’ he said, and yawned.

After Tug’s bath, Dad still wasn’t back. Martha opened a can of beans and they had baked beans on toast together at the kitchen table. Then they played games, and finally they watched television. Night fell and it got dark. They put the lights on and drew the curtains, and Martha locked the back door.

‘Why’s Dad late, Martha?’ Tug asked.

‘I don’t know. The surprise must take a long time to get ready.’

In the end she put Tug to bed herself. She read
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
with him, and tucked him in and put the nightlight on, and went along the landing to her own room.

For a while she stood at the window, peering out and listening. It was odd without Dad in the house. He left a silence in it. The silence was thin and fragile, like a silence about to be broken, and Martha listened to it, holding her breath and waiting for a noise, like the sound of Dad coming back. But there was no noise.

I’m eleven
, she thought.
I shouldn’t be frightened of the silence, or the dark. I have to keep my head, and not be silly
.

Settling herself on the carpet in a corner of her room, she read
Little Women
, which was one of the books she had borrowed from the library, occasionally lifting her head to listen out for Dad. Eventually she grew sleepy, and got into bed and lay there with her eyes closed. But the silence kept her awake. In the end she got up again and stood at the window in her dressing gown, looking at the moon.

Like a white pebble
, she thought.
Like a bit of bone
.
She wished she could make it look more interesting, but she tried, and she couldn’t.

Her bedside clock with the luminous face said 10.05 p.m., and she wondered where Dad was, and what he was doing. Several times recently he had come home late. One evening she had asked him where he had been, but he hadn’t answered. He made a joke, as he often did when she asked him a question, and looked the other way and was silent.

Dad was like the moon. Hard to think about.

Suddenly the thought came to her that he might have been in the garden all this time, or in the shed at the bottom of the garden where he sometimes liked to potter, and although it was a silly idea she thought she should go and see.

The stairwell was dark, and the light wasn’t working. At the top she hesitated, peering down, pointing her small nose all the way to the bottom. She couldn’t see anything. Taking a deep breath, she tiptoed quietly down, listening out for anything that sounded like Dad, and at the bottom of the stairs she was startled by the telephone suddenly ringing, very loudly, down the hallway. She pulled herself off the wall, and ran towards it.
That must be him now
, she thought, and without knowing why she felt afraid of what he was going to say to her.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello? Who’s that? Is it you, Martha?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s Grandma, Martha. What are you doing up so late? You sound as if you’ve been running. Are you watching a film?’

‘No.’

‘What are you doing?’

‘Nothing. I was … I was just sitting here thinking.’

After she said this, Grandma was silent for a moment.

‘May I talk to your father?’

Martha said, ‘He’s not here.’

There was another pause.

‘Do you have a babysitter with you, Martha?’

‘No.’

Grandma made a noise, and Martha said quickly, ‘He’ll be back any minute. He’s just popped out. To see a friend down the road.’

This time she heard muffled noises, as if Grandma was holding her hand over the phone and talking to someone else.

‘Will you ask him to telephone me as soon as possible?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell him it’s important. I’m anxious that he doesn’t forget lunch next Sunday.’

‘All right.’

When she put down the phone the house was quiet again, and she could almost hear her heart beating high up in her chest. Grandma was scary in a well-spoken sort of way, and Martha didn’t like talking to her on the phone. Tug didn’t like talking to her at all, and sometimes hid when she came round. She lived with Grandpa in a big house quite near.

But the phone call had broken the spell of the empty house. On her way to bed, Martha checked on Tug again, and found him in a purring heap under his duvet, flushed and damp-haired and deeply asleep. Then she went to bed herself, and to her surprise fell asleep almost straight away.

S
he woke in the dark with a gulp, and Dad said, ‘Surprise!’

He was standing at the edge of the bed, shining a torch on himself and laughing, and she sat up with a cry. In the torchlight he didn’t look like Dad at all, his face was criss-crossed with white stripes and black shadow, like warpaint.

‘Dad?’ she cried again.

Dad just laughed. ‘And his torch,’ he said.