The Moon King (9 page)

Tea was a silent meal in the Kelly household that evening. By now, everyone knew that Ricky had disappeared. Not everyone realised how serious that was, but everyone got the message that the grown-ups were worried.

Everyone except little Billy, who sat in his high-chair and banged his spoon loudly. People were supposed to take notice when he did that. Sometimes they cheered him on; sometimes they told him to hush up and give them a bit of peace. Tonight they just ignored him. He couldn’t understand why. He tried banging a bit harder, but still he got no reaction. Then he banged very loudly and very rapidly, but the only reaction was that Mammy Kelly leant over and prised the spoon out of his fingers.

Billy started to cry. Not very loudly. Not to get attention. Just because everyone was acting so strangely and it frightened him.

‘He never misses his tea,’ said Mammy Kelly, to the table at large, to no one in particular, to anyone who would listen.

‘He’ll be back when he gets hungry,’ said Lauren,
trying to comfort her. ‘Boys always do.’ She pulled Billy out of the high chair and put him on her knee and fed him small pieces of bread and butter off her plate. He chewed them slowly, tears still glistening in his eyes.

Rosheen said nothing, but she glared over her teacup at Helen. Helen said nothing either.

‘Maybe you’re right,’ said Mammy Kelly, but without much conviction. ‘Maybe so.’

Thomas and Seamus and Fergal looked sagely at their plates and thought they wouldn’t miss their tea for anything. But then, they weren’t Ricky. Ricky was different.

The small ones ate quickly and quietly, using both hands efficiently and taking advantage of Mammy Kelly’s absentmindedness to stuff too much food into their mouths at once, but for some reason they didn’t really enjoy it, not even the brack with thick white icing on top with cherries in it. They didn’t even squabble about the jam or anything, just passed each other things silently, sensing that something was going on.

Tomo wasn’t at tea. He’d taken the van and gone to search around the town for Ricky. After they’d found the attic empty, Mammy Kelly and Tomo had decided that Ricky was really missing. They were going to have to ring Mrs O’Loughlin, they’d decided. Then Rosheen came in from the pigeon shed and told them he’d been there ten minutes earlier, but he was gone now.

To Rosheen’s surprise, that cheered them up. ‘He
can’t have got far in ten minutes,’ reasoned Tomo.

‘Well, maybe fifteen minutes,’ said Rosheen, trying to be accurate. ‘Or even twenty.’ But they weren’t really listening to her.

‘No need to ring Mrs O’ just yet, in that case,’ Tomo said.

Instead, he rang his friend Terry and the two of them sped off down the town in the van.

‘We’ll give it half an hour,’ Tomo said over his shoulder as he left the house. ‘If you don’t hear from us within half an hour, you can ring her, Mary.’

Mammy Kelly nodded, holding on to the front door as if for support, and waving Tomo goodbye as he went down the garden steps, as if he were going on his holidays.

Tomo and Terry kept their eyes peeled as they drove into town, stopping occasionally and shining the headlights
deliberately
onto the verge and into the ditch, but they didn’t see Ricky on the road. When they got to town, they did the round of the cafés and fish-and-chip shops, the snooker hall, the youth club, the amusement arcade (though Ricky was far too young to be let in there), the scout den, the petrol stations and the open-till-late
mini-markets
. It was a Thursday night, so some of the bigger shops were also open late. They wondered if Ricky might have dipped into a shop to avoid being seen. They had a look in the main ones, and they asked the security men and shop assistants, but they were big places where a boy might easily hide. Nothing.

Then they tried all the churches, because some of them were open in the evenings, and they thought a youngster might feel safe in a place like that, but there was no sign of Ricky.

When they’d exhausted all the indoor possibilities, they started looking on the streets, peering into parked
cars and vans and lorries, down alleyways, in doorways, behind the hoardings on vacant sites. They even looked in a skip, pushing aside a roll of damp carpet and a couple of lengths of metal piping. Terry knew of a few derelict houses, some of which were used as squats, and they did the rounds of those too. They met a few people in the squats, some of whom were friendly, though they looked pretty battered, but nobody admitted to seeing a kid as young as Ricky. They tried under the railway bridge, where a gang of teenagers was gathering early for a cider party and in the public toilets in the square, where an old man washing his feet in the washbasin gave them a sour look. They walked along the riverbank and poked in the long grass and the bedraggled hedgerows, but there was no sign of Ricky.

They went back towards the busier end of town then and looked in another skip and on the backs of lorries. They even did a round of the pubs, though neither of them could imagine Ricky being let into any of them. The pubs were quite full, because people had come in for a drink on their way home from work and there was music in some of them. They tried the loos and cloakrooms too.

Then Terry remembered that the local dramatic society was holding a dress rehearsal of their annual play in the town hall, which meant that that building would be open, so they drove around to there and interrupted the rehearsal to ask the actors if they’d seen a small, thin, scared boy, but nobody had. They tried the store-rooms
and dressing rooms backstage, and the producer even let them into a cavernous space under the stage, which was full of orchestral instruments and trunks of theatrical costumes, but to no avail. Disconsolately, the two men drove back along the dark streets, peering at every figure they spotted on the pavement. The early show at the cinema had started by then, but Tomo parked the van opposite so they could have a good view of anyone sneaking in late. No Ricky.

They pulled in at a phone box, to ring home and report no progress. ‘I think it’s time to go ahead and raise the alarm,’ Tomo said to his wife. ‘Ring Mrs O’. And the guards, I suppose.’

With a heavy heart, Tomo returned to the van.

‘What about the hospital?’ Terry asked.

‘You mean he might have had an accident?’ said Tomo. ‘I never thought of that.’

‘Well, yes, that’s a possibility, but did somebody say his mother was in hospital? Maybe he went looking for her.’

‘You could be on to something,’ said Tomo, changing gear and heading for the hospital, on the outskirts of town.

But there was no sign of Ricky there, either prowling the wards or in the small casualty unit, and the only small boy who’d been treated all day was somebody called Gary who’d been in with a dislocated shoulder. The staff all knew him, because he was always dislocating his shoulder.

‘What about his home?’ Terry asked as they got back into the van.

‘The social worker will have somebody out there looking for him as soon as she hears,’ said Tomo. ‘There’s no point in our going there too and complicating matters. It’s miles away, anyway. I can’t imagine him getting there, unless he got a lift. I hope to God he hasn’t been hitching, though.’

Terry nodded grimly. They both knew the dangers there were for kids on their own.

After some more fruitless searching, Terry went home. It was getting late, and he hadn’t eaten yet. But Tomo kept on doggedly looking, looking.

The evening wore on and started to turn to night, and there was no sign of Ricky anywhere in the town. As the early show at the cinema ended, Tomo examined the streams of people coming out of it. No sign of a small lad creeping out among the grown-ups. He stood on a corner for a while, watching the queue forming for the later show, but there were no children to be seen. They were all at home doing their homework or getting ready for bed by now.

Tomo paced the main streets again and again, his hands thrust into his pockets and his collar turned up against the cold. He met a garda patrol car and hailed it, to tell them, but they knew already.

‘We’re going to do a circle of the town and try the barns and byres in the outlying farms, Mr Kelly,’ said Guard Lynch. ‘There’s a few of our lads on foot already on the lookout. If we don’t find him by morning, we’ll
have to mount a formal search.’

If we don’t find him by morning! Tomo shuddered at the thought, but he just nodded to the guard and said ‘Right, Guard, good night now,’ and the patrol car purred off down the street, its blue light flashing occasionally.

Rosheen was truly worried by now. She sat in a tiny
darkened
room at the back of the house, supposedly watching television. Mammy Kelly deliberately put the TV in the pokiest and most uncomfortable room, because she thought TV viewing should be confined to programmes you wanted to see so desperately you were prepared to put up with any discomfort to watch them.

The children had all crowded into the TV room this evening, but Rosheen couldn't follow the programme: it was just a succession of meaningless images and booming sounds to her. She sat in the gloom, her eyes prickling with unshed tears, imagining the things that might have happened to Ricky. He'd been gone a good three hours, and his disappearance was officially a crisis by now. Mrs O'Loughlin was discussing the situation with Mammy Kelly, and Guard Lynch had called in to take a description.

Ricky might have gone home, Rosheen thought. The guard had asked something about that when he was here. She didn't know where Ricky's home was. All she knew
was that his mother was in hospital. Maybe she was home now, and maybe she was glad to see him. That would be nice, a happy ending. But somehow, that didn't really seem to fit. It was like doing a jigsaw and having a piece that is almost the perfect shape for an awkward gap, but no matter how you turn it around and try to ease it in, it just doesn't quite slip into place. She didn't know much about how these things worked, but she knew Ricky couldn't just run home and it would all be OK.

She hardly dared to think of the other things that might be happening to him. He might have run off into town and be hanging around the streets, cold and hungry, looking for a doorway to sleep in, terrified in case the police might find him, or that drug-pushers or bad people might get hold of him. He might have been kidnapped by a gang of criminals and be all tied up with tape over his mouth in the boot of a car. He might have dashed out on the road in a panic and been run over by a hit-and-run driver and be lying bleeding to death in a ditch. He might have been abducted by aliens and taken to another galaxy and be being debriefed right at this very moment by the alien chieftain – not that they would get much out of Ricky. Anything might have happened to him!

And the worst part of it was, no matter where he was, he probably really believed what Helen had said, that he was going to be sent away, that the Kellys didn't want him. But that wasn't true. Rosheen was sure Mammy Kelly and Tomo wanted him. She'd seen them watching him with
careful, worried looks. She'd seen how they made space for him when the other children crowded round and how they spoke quietly together sometimes when he left the room. She'd watched Mammy Kelly's smile growing when she bent over his shoulder to look at one of his pictures, her hand firmly on his shoulder, and she'd heard Tomo carrying on those cheerful, one-sided conversations, to which Ricky's only contribution was the occasional nod or shy smile.

Fergal liked him too, and Lauren. She knew by the way they picked him for teams when they were playing games. Thomas and Seamus didn't take too much notice of him, but they threw things at him and kicked his ankles when they passed him on the stairs or in the hall, and with them, that counted as affection, and when they played football up and down the garden before tea they shouted at him and passed the ball to him. The younger ones took him totally for granted and asked him to tie up their shoelaces for them or to mind their teddies when they were busy with other things. Billy had taken a special shine to him, crawling around after him sometimes and grabbing the cuffs of his jeans with his plump, sticky fingers, though Ricky didn't seem to notice. Helen was the only one who went out of her way to make things difficult for him.

And Rosheen herself, well she… she supposed she loved him, really, though she hadn't thought of it like that before. She felt her face getting hot thinking those words,
but it was true, she did. If loving somebody is worrying about them when they were unhappy and being glad to see them when you come home from school and them making you smile just thinking about them, well then, yes, she loved Ricky. Oh dear! This time a tear really did trickle down the side of Rosheen's nose and she dabbed at it quietly with the cuff of her shirt.

Her head felt suddenly full and aching and her whole body felt weary, as if she'd been doing very hard work all day, digging the garden or cycling uphill. Her limbs ached and her bones felt heavy. She closed her eyes against the flickering dark of the TV room and rested her head back against the armchair. Maybe if she could just doze off for a few minutes, she would feel better. It felt better already to have her eyes closed and not to have to follow the movements on the screen. The noise of the TV sounded more distant, like underwater burblings.

Lulled by the sounds of the television, Rosheen fell asleep, her mouth dropping open and her chin falling onto her chest. She woke with a start a few times, dreaming that she was falling off trains or into a hole. She closed her mouth when she woke up but it soon dropped open again and eventually she drifted into a deeper sleep.

This time, she had a more elaborate dream. She was searching, searching, searching for Ricky, climbing all the stairs to his room and calling his name. She opened his wardrobe and out jumped a giant frog, as big as a calf, and shouted ‘Tribberr! Tribberr!' right in her ear. She started
to run down the stairs and the giant frog came bounding behind her. She ran and ran, but her legs weren't moving, she was always on the same step of the stairs, no matter how hard she ran, no matter how high she kicked her heels, and all the time the frog was shouting ‘Tribb-err! Tribb-err!' in its deep base voice, so that it seemed to sound in her chest.

Suddenly she was in the garden, running still, running, running, and Ricky was there ahead of her. She could just see his back, his spiky little shoulder blades showing through his thin jacket. ‘Ricky!' she called. ‘Wait, it's me,' but Ricky ran on and on and she couldn't catch up with him, though she kept glimpsing him, always ahead. Then she was in the attic room, sitting on the moon chair. ‘I shouldn't be here,' she thought. ‘This is Ricky's chair. I shouldn't be sitting here. I can't be the moon king. I must get him. I must find him. If I don't, Mrs O'Loughlin will put him in a children's home and Helen will get him and … Oh!!'

The tailor's dummy with the lampshade hat suddenly leant over, took off her hat and leered at Rosheen with the round, shiny face of Helen. Rosheen screamed and screamed. She screamed so loudly she woke herself up and then she screamed some more, because when she opened her eyes, she was looking straight into the round, shiny face of Helen.

‘Rosheen! Rosheen! Wake up!' Helen was hissing at her. ‘Stop screaming. You're dreaming. It's just getting to
the exciting part.'

Rosheen looked wildly around. She was sitting in a chair, but it was a lumpy old armchair that had been relegated to the TV room and the face looming at her out of the semi-darkness was Helen's. She shook herself.

‘What? What exciting part?' she asked.

‘In the movie,' said Helen. ‘And close your mouth. You're dribbling.'

‘Oh!' said Rosheen and wiped her chin with her cuff. It was true. She had dribbled.

Rosheen lay back against the chair, still paralysed with fright, for a few moments, still half-caught in the nightmare. At last she managed to unglue her fingers from each other and bring her hand up to her face. Her hair was damp with sweat, and her clothes were sticking to her body. She combed her shaking fingers through her hair and smoothed it behind her ears. Then she tried to concentrate on the film. But it didn't do any good. No good at all.