The Moon King (4 page)

The back garden of the tall house sloped away up from the back door. Outside the back door was a small yard, for the bins and bikes, with the remains of a herb garden Mammy Kelly had once tried to grow in a big pot, the kind with pockets for trailing things to grow out of. All that was left was a very straggly lavender bush with a few greyish leaves near the tips. All the other herbs had died.

Then there were steps, very steep ones, like the ones at the front of the house going up from the gate, only steeper still. The steps were carved out of a brambly waste that never had had much chance to be a garden. The grain bucket banged against Ricky’s knees every time he took a step up. He was following Rosheen, who was carrying a jug of water with a long spout.

And at the top of the steps was a long low shed. This was where the pigeons lived. They were supposed to be Tomo’s pigeons, Rosheen had explained. He used to race pigeons at one stage, but now they were just pets, and Rosheen was in charge of feeding them.

It was darkish inside the shed, because the windows
were small and grimy, and it smelt warm and bitter at the same time. The pigeons made soft throaty sounds to each other and rustled their wings and fussed when the door opened. Flap-flap, they fussed, who’s this, now, friend or foe? Only Rosheen, but oh-oh-oh, boh-boh-botheration, she has a boy with her, su-uu-ure to be trouble, flap-flap. They turned their heads away and looked over their shoulders as if there was someone behind them, but there wasn’t.

‘You feed them,’ whispered Rosheen to Ricky. ‘That way they’ll know you’re a friend.’

Ricky looked around, blinking in the grey light of the pigeon shed. Rosheen nudged him in the direction of the feeding troughs, pointing them out to him. The ground was soft and soundless beneath his feet, all sawdust and feathers. He lifted the bucket and gently spilt the grain into the containers with a soughing sound like dry rain, moving the bucket along as each container filled.

The pigeons watched him, burbling questioningly to each other as he worked, but they kept to their perches until he had finished. Then one came fluttering down to investigate. Then another, and another, and soon the whole flock had descended and was flustering and flittering about the feeding dishes, making little dashes with their beaks and nabbing grains.

‘Watch this,’ said Rosheen softly, and she dug into the almost empty bucket. She gathered the remaining few grains from the bottom and then held out her hand,
slightly cupped, with the grains in the shallow dent she had made of her palm. One of the smallest birds, a creamy white pigeon with brownish-streaked wings, who had been flapping anxiously about the edge of the flock trying to get a beak in, saw what she was doing and took off with a flurry from the feeding-frenzied crowd. It landed perkily on Rosheen’s wrist. It stopped for a moment to get a good grip with its longest claw and then bent its head into Rosheen’s hand and picked a grain. It swallowed quickly and took a beady-eyed look around, before dipping its head once again and taking another grain. When it had finished dipping and swallowing, it turned to look Rosheen in the eye, and then flew back up to its perch and sat there watching its companions and occasionally investigating its feathery chest.

‘His name is Fudge,’ Rosheen whispered. ‘You can do that next time. You just have to learn to keep still, even when it tickles.’

Ricky nodded vigorously, his eyes shining. He had never experienced anything like those birds – the soft, sudden whickering of their wings as they took off on short, impetuous, feathery flights and the querying warbling of their voices as they jostled and nudged each other on their perches, all in the warm and muffled air of their low, dry, padded house.

‘I have to go now,’ said Rosheen. ‘Homework to finish. Will you just fill up their water dishes, and make sure you bolt the door after you.’

Ricky started to fill the water dishes from the long-spouted jug. He hardly noticed Rosheen leaving the pigeon shed. Then he stood still for a long time and just watched the birds, listening to their murmelings. He didn’t know how long he stayed there in the warm, pigeony gloom. Presently he heard a sound outside. Perhaps it was Rosheen coming back, to call him in for his tea maybe. He thought he’d been about ten minutes with the birds, but it might have been much longer. He’d better go.

He reached out his hand, not daring to touch a bird, but wanting to make a gesture to them, to tell them how wonderful he thought them. The birds huddled together and settled themselves, smoothing their fronts with their beaks, butting their shoulders with their cheeks, folding themselves into themselves and puffing and ruffling their feathery duvet-coats. As Ricky raised his hand, a ripple went through the burbling, billowing, shuffling company, as if the whole colony was acknowledging Ricky’s salute. Good night, goo-ooo-ood night. Ahhh! Good night.

When he came out into the evening light after the
shadowy
shed, Ricky was blinded. He could hear Rosheen and just make out her shape coming fuzzily up the steps, but he couldn’t really see her with his eyes crinkled up against the sun. He blinked a few times and concentrated on
seeing
her.

It wasn’t Rosheen after all. It was that other one, the one with shiny, putty-coloured skin stretched over her nose. Helen.

Helen was quite close now, close enough to touch. She stood stock still and stared at Ricky. She had a bunched-up plastic bag in her hand, which she carried at an awkward angle. It creaked and rustled a lot, as if it was alive.

Ricky smiled and transferred the jug to the same hand as the bucket. That gave him a free hand to put over his eyes to create a sun shade so he could see Helen better, but still all he could really see was the shape of her body and the flossy outline of her hair against the sunlight. Her face was a mess of shadows.

He stepped forward, sidling to edge past Helen, but Helen didn’t sidle to the opposite side of the step. She stood her ground. In fact she moved her feet so that Ricky couldn’t get past her without stepping on her toes. There was nothing for it but to shuffle off the step and onto the steeply sloping bramble-covered earth, so Ricky did that, sidling again to keep as close as possible to the steps and not get snarled in the brambles. Helen moved her feet again, stomping one shoe right in front of Ricky’s, crushing a scraggy bramble bush. Ricky moved edgeways, farther from the steps and into the brambly wilderness, feeling his ankles being scratched, but Helen was ahead of him, her foot again blocking his way. Reddening slightly, Ricky tried going back towards the steps, but Helen’s other foot stomped down in front of him again. They were like two people meeting in a narrow doorway and bobbing about politely, each trying to let the other through, only it wasn’t politeness – Helen was deliberately blocking Ricky’s way.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to Ricky then.

Ricky put up his hand to acknowledge her words and to accept her apology.

But Helen wasn’t apologising.

‘Excuse me,’ she repeated. ‘It’s what you say when you want to get past somebody on a narrow path.’

Ricky nodded frantically, desperate to humour her.

‘Well then, say it,’ said Helen, firmly setting her foot right in front of Ricky’s feet.

Ricky nodded again and waved.

‘Say it!’ hissed Helen, her face pressed very close to Ricky’s now, their noses almost touching.

Ricky opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

‘Excuse me,’ said Helen, her breath on his face. ‘It’s not so difficult. Just two little words. Come on. You have to learn your manners, you know.’

If!

Suddenly Ricky let fly with the bucket and jug and hit Helen a clattering wallop on the hip. She gasped, more in surprise than pain, and stepped back, holding her side. ‘You hit me!’ she shouted in outrage. ‘You hit me! I never touched you and you hit me!’

The back door opened with a wham and Mammy Kelly came rushing up the steep steps.

‘What’s wrong now?’ she asked, looking from Ricky to Helen and back to Ricky.

Helen was crying. Ricky was dry-eyed, but his chest was heaving.

‘He hit me, Ma, that new boy. With the bucket! I think he’s broken my hip-bone.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Mammy Kelly, but she
peered all the same at the reddened skin that Helen was exposing by turning down the waistband of her jeans. She gave Helen’s hip a soothing little pat and tucked her shirt in. ‘You’ll be better before you’re twice married,’ she said.

‘Huh!’ said Helen. She was still holding the lumpy plastic bag in her other hand. Ricky wondered vaguely what was in it. It crackled as if something inside it was moving.

‘Did you hit her, Ricky?’ Mammy Kelly asked then.

Ricky nodded miserably, the bucket still swinging from his hand.

‘I never touched him, Ma,’ snivelled Helen. ‘I swear I didn’t.’

Mammy Kelly cupped Ricky’s chin in her hand and asked quietly, ‘Did she touch you?’

Ricky shook his head.

‘Well, what did you say to him then?’ asked Mammy Kelly, turning to Helen in exasperation.

‘I only told him to say excuse me if he wanted to pass me on the steps,’ said Helen self-righteously.

‘Oh Helen! You can be so mean-minded, sometimes,’ said Mammy Kelly, not looking at Helen, but at Ricky. She said it almost as if Helen wasn’t there. Poor Helen, she was thinking. Can’t cope with the least threat. Not even a poor little scrap like Ricky.

‘Well,’ whined Helen, ‘he started it.’

‘I have no doubt in the wide world that he didn’t,’ said Mammy Kelly.

‘You can’t prove that!’ said Helen indignantly. ‘How can you possibly prove it?’

‘It isn’t a question of proof,’ said Mammy Kelly. ‘Go on inside, the pair of you, and no muffins for either of you, just bread-and-butter with your tea.’

‘But he started it, Ma, and he hit me!’ Helen started whining again.

‘If I hear another word about it, Helen,’ said Mammy Kelly with sudden briskness, ‘there’ll be no tea at all for you.’

‘You can’t do that,’ said Helen. ‘I have to get my tea. That’s child abuse.’

‘Child abuse!’ snorted Mammy Kelly. ‘Oh, Helen, you haven’t the first clue about child abuse, you lucky, lucky girl.’

She raised her arms, as if she was going to hug Helen, but Helen stepped back, so instead, Mammy Kelly just gave her a little nudge with her elbow.

‘Now you’re pushing me,’ said Helen. ‘It’s not fair. That really is child abuse.’

‘Give over, Helen, please,’ said Mammy Kelly wearily. She reached out and took the bucket from Ricky, and as she did so, she laid a hand on his shoulder and gave it a friendly squeeze. She had a big warm buttery smile. Ricky tried to give a little smile back, but it was all he could do to keep his mouth from going crooked. Then she took the jug from Ricky as well, and said softly to him, ‘Go on inside, now, Ricky, like a good boy. And don’t hit
anyone again, no matter how badly you want to. That doesn’t solve anything, OK?’

Ricky nodded. Then, slowly, dragging his feet, he followed Helen, who was holding her rustling plastic bag awkwardly in front of her, into the house.

‘I’m going to tell your social worker you hit me,’ Helen whispered in Ricky’s ear as they jostled into the house
together
. ‘You’re not allowed to hit people, you know. She’ll take you away from here. Probably put you in a home, or one of those places for juvenile delinquents. That’s what you are, you know, a juvenile delinquent. We’ve had them here before, but we don’t keep them if they’re violent. Mammy Kelly is dead set against violence.’

Ricky put his hands over his ears. He didn’t want to hear any more of what Helen had to say. He closed his eyes as well, and so he didn’t notice that Helen had slipped away and was tearing up the stairs, giggling softly to herself, her plastic bag crackling and squirming in her hand. He sat for a while on a chair in the hall and listened to the sounds of the tall, tall house. The grandfather clock made a whirring sound, getting ready to chime, but then it changed its mind and just gave a polite little cough instead. It was a very old grandfather clock, which only chimed erratically and always gave the wrong time anyway. Ricky could hear the voices of children
squabbling in the kitchen and the sounds of a radio playing somewhere.

Suddenly a door flew open, and the pleasant babble of children squabbling and laughing grew suddenly to a roar. Not waiting to find out whether anyone was going to come out of the opened door, Ricky fled up the stairs, two at a time. He couldn’t face them all just now. He would just go up to his room for a while.

After he got to the first half-landing, the one with the rocking-chair on it, he slowed down, and for the rest of the climb he went a step at a time, his limbs suddenly weary. Up the next flight he went, past Rosheen’s room, up to the second half-landing, where the big birds whooshed and spun overhead, up another flight again, past more bedrooms, and then up the final flight to the attic storey, where Ricky lived alone. He was looking forward to getting to his own room, where it was cool and quiet, where there was no clutter of books and things, where there was no Helen to tease and bully him.

He would lie on his bed for a little while and maybe have a nap. He wasn’t very hungry. He’d skip tea and go back down again later, maybe watch some television. He liked watching television, because he could sit in the dark with the others and nobody put any pressure on him to make conversation. Mealtimes were more difficult.

Ricky’s hand closed over the brass doorknob of his bedroom door. He turned it carefully, but the door didn’t give. He pushed with his shoulder against it. Still it didn’t
give. It must be stuck, he thought. He pushed again. This time he brought all his strength to bear on the task, but still the door didn’t move. Ricky panicked. What was wrong with his door? He flung his body at it, he kicked it, kicked it again, pushed and heaved with his shoulder, but the door stood solid against him. It must be locked.

Ricky leaned against the door, huddled up against it. He could feel tears starting in his eyes. Helen was right. There was no place for him here. Nobody wanted him. They were trying to push him out. Somebody had locked him out of his own bedroom. Ricky slithered to the floor, and sat huddled miserably against the door, every now and then listlessly banging his head against the solid wood.

Inside Ricky’s room, behind the locked door, Helen stuffed her head into Ricky’s pillow, trying to keep from laughing. She mustn’t laugh. She mustn’t make a sound or he would know she was there. She was pleased with herself that she had been clever enough to lock the door. Otherwise he’d have come bursting in and found her and then the trick would have flopped. Every time she thought about the trick, a fresh wave of giggles came surging up from her stomach and shook her body, but she didn’t let a sound escape, just shook silently with laughter. Him and his stupid frog toy!

She could hear the occasional thud of Ricky’s head against the door. What a stupid boy he was! Didn’t he know he could hurt himself doing that? Oh well, she’d soon teach him how stupid he was. A toy frog indeed! At
his age! She wondered how much longer he’d sit out there. She was starting to get hungry.

After a while, Ricky felt cold. He didn’t have a jumper. His jumper was in his room, on the other side of the door that refused to budge. The more he thought about his jumper inside his bedroom, the colder he felt. He wished he had a blanket. He wished he had a pillow. He wanted to sleep. He was tired. But there was nowhere comfortable to sleep on the cold, dark, attic landing.

He sat a little longer, thinking about jumpers and blankets and pillows, and then it came to him. He thought he had seen things that looked like blankets or cloths in the other attic room, the one that Rosheen had shown him that first day she had brought him up here. Yes, he was sure he had. There’d been a big old wicker basket and it was full of something warm – blankets, quilts, sheets, something like that.

He stood up and tried the other door. It opened easily, letting out a flood of warmth and light. Whoever had locked Ricky’s door hadn’t thought of locking him out of this room too. The window must face the sunshine, he thought, for the room was bathed in pinkish sunset light and it was warm still from the day’s sunshine. Ricky stepped gratefully into the warmth. All the objects piled higgledy-piggledy every which way in the room had been sunbathing all day, and now they basked in the evening light and seemed to give off a heat of their own. The air was stuffy and fusty and full of unspoken promises.

Helen heard Ricky moving away from the door, and she heard the sound of the other door opening and then closing. He must have gone into the room next door. Good! She’d just wait a little longer, to make sure he wasn’t going to come out of that room again, and then she’d make her getaway.

Ricky had remembered right. There was a big old laundry basket with its lid pushed up by its overflowing contents. Piled-up pillows nosed comfortably out of the top and an eiderdown poured out of one corner. He’d definitely be able to make himself comfortable here, if he could just make his way through all the piled-up things to that basket in the corner.

Ricky looked around for somewhere to curl up. There wasn’t much lying-down space. Perhaps he could find a spot under the big table that took up the middle of the floor. He ducked down to look. Boxes were piled up under the table, but if he moved a few maybe he could make himself a space. Hunkering down, Ricky started to push at the heavy boxes. He managed to carve out a small space and raised a cloud of dust in the process. Suddenly he was seized by a sneezing fit and rested back on his heels until it passed. There wasn’t enough room yet, he thought, but he was tired. Maybe if he climbed over the table he could get at some of the boxes from a better angle and make a little more room.

He climbed onto the table and stood up, keeping an unsteady footing between towering piles of books, an old
typewriter and a sewing machine. He was trying to find a place to land on the other side of the table, but there didn’t seem to be much floor space. There was a brightly coloured crocheted rug flung over something tall and spiky that was pressed against the other side of the table. Maybe he could use that to wrap around himself instead of the eiderdown in the laundry basket. From his perch up on the table, Ricky pulled at the rainbow blanket. It was catching on something, so he leaned forward and used both hands to ease the loosely woven fabric over whatever it was draped on.

It was a chair. Under the multicoloured blanket was a beautiful chair with a high pointy back, almost like a chair you might see in a cathedral, a ceremonial chair of some sort. The smooth, honey-coloured back of the chair soared up to a point, and balanced right on top, looking almost as if it was growing out of the chair, was a half-moon with a smiling face in it. Ricky gasped. He had never seen anything so magical as the moon chair. He reached out and touched the moon lightly. It was smooth and warm. He stroked it. The wood was silky, and all the little nobbles and crevices were like butterscotch under his fingers.

Ricky wriggled his way off the table and slithered onto the seat of the chair. It was the most comfortable chair he had ever sat in, seeming to hold his body in its caress. Pulling the crocheted blanket right over him, Ricky lay back in the chair and closed his eyes.

Helen kept still for a long time, until she was sure Ricky wasn’t coming back to try his own door again. Then very carefully she tiptoed to the door, turned the key quietly and eased it out of the lock. Then she opened the door gently, and slipped out. She closed the door carefully and then stood on tiptoe to put the key back in its place on the shelf of the lintel over the door. Then she pattered softly down the stairs.

Nobody saw her. Nobody heard her. She was safe.