Easy Peasy

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘I’m giving you a chance,’ I say. I feel very detached as if I’m not speaking or even thinking these words, but these are the words that come. ‘I’m giving you a chance to finish it now if you want to. I can drive myself to Norfolk. You can pack up and leave before I get back.’

  ‘But I don’t want to leave.’ She knits her fingers together as if she is quite upset. ‘I want to go through this with you. I want to … well support you, I suppose.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then I might get struck by lightning, hit by a bus. You might fall madly in love with a Sumo wrestler.’ Unwillingly I smile. ‘Who the hell knows?’

  ‘I s’pose.’ I pick up a slice of toast, it looks enormous. I nibble a corner. The marmalade is warm and sticky.

  ‘I’ll go and check the car and run your bath.’ She straightens herself up, smooths her hair, replaces her glasses. The moment has gone. She never said the word ‘love’. She touches me on the hair with her lips before she goes out. Along with the marmalade I taste a bitter edge of resentment. I am not begging her to stay. I would not beg her.

  I have left all my lovers. I have never been left. Guy was devastated when I ended it. He sent letters, cards, tapes of songs that he considered significant, great stiff Cellophaned sprays of Interflora roses that had no scent. I had felt sad and powerful. I wouldn’t let him see me. I thought I was being cruel to be kind, a clean break heals quickest, all that. And I’m sure he healed. If Foxy wants to finish it I want it to be quick and clean, I don’t want her drawing it out, deceiving me about her wishes. I don’t want her lying beside me dreaming about the time when I’ll be gone.

  12

  Daddy heard me refer to Vassily as Puddle-duck. It was at Sunday lunchtime. I was talking to Hazel, not to him. I thought he was listening to my mother.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said,’ I looked at Hazel for support but she was busy cutting up her meat, ‘I said I hope Vassily isn’t coming round.’ In each of the lenses of my father’s glasses I could see a reflection of the spiky cactus between the curtains on the window-sill. But I could not see his eyes.

  He drew in a deep breath. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘that poor child is very welcome in this house. And secondly, what did I hear you call him?’

  ‘Vassily.’ He tapped his index finger briskly on the table and waited.

  ‘Puddle-duck,’ I mumbled after a long moment. ‘Everyone calls him that. It’s his nickname.’

  ‘Well you don’t,’ he said. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘He doesn’t mind.’

  ‘Understand?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He turned his attention to Hazel. ‘Nor you.’

  ‘No, Daddy.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s any harm …’ Mummy began, but his look stopped her.

  ‘Cut up,’ cried Huw. He was two now and no longer fitted his high-chair so he sat at the table, balanced precariously on cushions. He clattered his fork on his plate.

  I shushed him before Daddy could get any more annoyed, and cut his Yorkshire pudding into tiny gravy-soaked squares.

  When we’d finished lunch, Daddy said, ‘Now I’m going to call round and see if Vassily would like to come and play. Objections, Astrid?’

  She shook her head but pressed her lips together till they went white. Hazel gave me a filthy look as if this was my doing. After we’d helped with the washing-up we climbed up into the tree-house.

  ‘It’s not my fault,’ I said, before she could start. She sat down on the branch-seat and gave a long theatrical sigh.

  ‘I won’t call him Puddle-duck then,’ I said. ‘I’ll call him Dog-belly.’

  She giggled. ‘Grizzle!’

  ‘Well that’s what he’s got. All those teats, like a dog. Disgusting.’

  ‘They can’t really be teats, not like ours.’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘They’re probably chicken-pox scars.’

  ‘You didn’t see them.’

  She pulled up her blouse and twisted round to see the little cluster of hollow pink scars on her side where she’d scratched her chicken-pox, much worse than mine, the year before.

  ‘You know ages ago …’ I began, taking advantage of her reasonable mood, ‘when you got in trouble – the first time Dog-belly …,’ I luxuriated in the word, enjoying the prickle of spite it gave me.

  The first time Dog-belly what?’

  ‘Came round.’

  She didn’t answer.

  ‘What did Daddy do? When he punished you I mean?’ I waited. I didn’t expect her to answer. But she gave a puzzled frown that made her look more like Mummy than ever. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘He didn’t really do anything. He didn’t touch me. He just made me feel awful, like … rubbish … like nothing.’

  ‘Oh.’ I didn’t probe. I didn’t think that sounded too bad as a punishment, though there was a deep hurt scrape in her voice as she said it.

  ‘Anyway, I’m not playing with him,’ she said, flipping back into her usual self. ‘And he’s not coming near me. I’ve got homework.’

  Hazel had just started at grammar school. She had her own bedroom now and I was still not used to it. Sometimes I slept in the bottom bunk though I didn’t like that empty bed above me; sometimes I slept in the top bunk but then I missed Hazel below. I asked Mummy if I could have an ordinary bed instead but she said it was useful to keep the bunk-beds for when I had a friend to stay. What about Elaine? Why didn’t I invite Elaine to sleep the night?

  Because I was afraid that Daddy would have a dream, that’s why. I didn’t want Elaine to hear him cry out or see him running wildly down the landing. I didn’t want her to know that about my family. I couldn’t understand how Mummy could not mind.

  We watched Daddy come through the side gate, hand in hand with Puddle-duck. ‘Have fun with Dog-belly.’ Hazel slipped elegantly through the trap-door and down the ladder. Now that she was at grammar school she always had the excuse of homework and could get out of anything. She left the house half-an-hour before me each morning to catch the bus, leaving me to dodge Puddle-duck alone. I watched her swing down the garden towards the house. She was wearing a kilt and green knee-socks.

  ‘Hello Vassily,’ she said loud enough for me to hear. ‘Grizzle’s in the tree-house, Daddy.’

  ‘Griselda!’

  I hugged my knees to my chest and groaned.

  ‘Griselda, your friend is here.’

  ‘OK.’

  I watched my ants as I waited to feel the tug on the ladder that would signal Puddle-duck’s approach. One ant, at the bottom of the ramp by a crystallising drop of sugar solution, was damaged. It looked as if it had been trodden on, one side of its body all squashed. But how could that have happened in the safe little plastic world? As I watched, another ant came up the ramp, examined the wounded creature, fed from the sugar and then began to drag its fellow along. The squashed ant struggled, its legs waving feebly. I wonder if ants have voices? I wonder if there were minute wiry cries of pain too fine for me to hear? The second ant dragged the invalid half-way up the ramp. I was touched. I thought that maybe there was an ant hospital somewhere in the labyrinth of flaking tunnels. But instead the injured ant was lugged to the edge of the ramp and pushed over. It clung for a moment and then dropped lightly to the bottom of the tank. And I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. A litter of dead and brittle ants on the bottom, amongst the scattered dirt.

  Puddle-duck still had not arrived. I looked out of the window to see Daddy pushing him on the swing, pushing from the front, showing him how to bend and straighten his legs to work the swing himself.

  ‘I do think it’s the pleasantest thing, ever a child can do,’ I muttered. I felt like calling out: I thought Dog-belly had come to play with me, not you, but that was stupid because I didn’t want to play with him, and the longer Daddy did the less I would have to. But I still didn’t like to see Daddy playing with him. I put the trap-door down to shut them out.

&nb
sp; It started happening nearly every Sunday afternoon after that. As soon as lunch was over, Daddy would go out. Sometimes he’d be gone an hour or more and then return with Puddle-duck, sometimes he’d leave him to me to play with when I was there – I tried to be at Elaine’s on Sundays whenever I could but they were always going off for outings in their bubble-car and all my other friends lived too far away. I began to dread Sundays. One Sunday when I did manage to escape, Hazel got stuck with him. When I returned she was very quiet. ‘You must not let this happen,’ she said.

  ‘I know, but …’

  ‘Remember what I said you must do?’

  I remembered.

  We always called him Dog-belly between ourselves, nobody else knew that name. It was our secret. At school he was still Puddle-duck and at home, to Mummy or Daddy or Wanda, Vassily.

  ‘It’s a funny name, Vassily,’ I said to Mummy. She was blowing eggs for us to paint for Christmas tree decorations. She paused. A long trail of clear slime dangled from the tiny hole.

  ‘Polish,’ she said, ‘like Pudilchuck.’ She gave another blow, her face growing pink, and the slime turned yellow. ‘We’ll have omelette tonight.’

  ‘But he’s not Polish. And Wanda’s not Polish, is she? She talks funny though doesn’t she?’

  ‘That’s just her accent – Ipswich I think. And his father was Polish. He went off before Vassily was born. Not a word since.’

  ‘Why did Wanda call him Vassily, then?’ I asked. ‘Why not a proper name like John?’

  ‘It is a proper name. Don’t be so small minded.’ She gave a final blow and emptied the shell. ‘There.’ She handed the shell to me. I cupped it in my hand, so light and white as the moon. Then she mused, ‘Maybe that was the father’s name. Maybe she loved him.’

  ‘She’s got another boyfriend now,’ I said.

  ‘Has she? Yes, well …’ She picked up another egg and a long pearl-headed hat-pin to pierce it. The hat-pin had been her mother’s. It made me wince to imagine pinning a hat to your head with such a thing.

  ‘Why does Daddy like him so much?’

  She forced the pin through the shell too hard and cracked it. ‘Damn. Oh I don’t know, Grizzle, questions, questions, questions. Maybe it’s because he’s got no father of his own.’

  ‘What about us?’ I said.

  ‘What about you?’ She picked up another egg and frowned. ‘You’re all right.’

  In the spring, my father and Dog-belly started to make a pond. It was halfway down the garden in a corner of the lawn under the flowering cherry. They dug the hole together. Dog-belly was pathetic, no help at all. Daddy even had to show him how to use the spade. Sometimes I sat in the tree-house hugging my knees and watching them. I hadn’t been invited to help, and nor had Hazel. She said she didn’t care. She didn’t want to be grubbing out in the dirt. She was always out with Bridget or her new grammar-school friends, or doing homework. I hardly saw her properly any more now that I was alone at night.

  ‘I’m not sure about a pond,’ Mummy said one night. We were watching a programme about penguins. Hazel and I giggled as a whole smart-suited bevy of them waddled and slithered down an icy slope and belly-flopped into the sea. ‘Adult male Emperor penguins can be more than a metre high,’ the narrator said. We couldn’t believe it, bigger than Huw, up to my chest. They looked so tiny on the television, as if you could sit one on your hand.

  ‘Half dug now,’ Daddy said. Only half, I thought. Already it was enormous.

  ‘I’m worried that Huw will tumble in.’ Mummy glared at him. ‘Really Ralph, I do think we might have discussed it.’

  Hazel and I exchanged glances. There was a rare steely edge in Mummy’s voice.

  ‘It’ll be an asset,’ he said.

  ‘But dangerous. My idea is, since you’ve started it, that we fill it with sand. It can be Huwie’s sand-pit till he’s older. Then you can have your pond.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘Well, I want a fence round it then, a barrier of some sort. Otherwise I’ll never be able to let Huw out of my sight.’

  ‘Astrid. It’s an ornamental garden pond. It’s not Lake Windermere for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘You can drown in an inch.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this.’ He got up and slammed out of the room. Mummy sat very still staring at the screen. The newspaper that had slid off his lap rustled on the floor. The penguins launched themselves up out of the water, landing on their bellies on the ice but we didn’t laugh. The front door banged.

  ‘What’s up with him?’ Hazel said. Mummy didn’t answer, she was staring at the carpet, twisting a strand of hair tightly round her finger. Huw began to fret from his bedroom and she went upstairs to see to him. ‘Steptoe and Son’ came on and we watched that. Mummy cheered up and made us some popcorn that exploded in the kitchen like a volley of machine-gun fire and filled the house with a golden smell.

  That night Hazel was friendly. She came into my room and sat on the bottom bunk. ‘I like my new room,’ she said, ‘but I do sometimes feel lonely at night.’ ‘So do I,’ I said. I could never have admitted that if she hadn’t said it first. ‘Good-night old bean,’ she said as she went out. ‘Good-night old bean,’ I replied. That was what we always said when we were friends. We hadn’t said it for a long time. Sometimes I thought I’d do anything to be Hazel’s friend. ‘Make him not want to come,’ she’d said. ‘Frighten him, or hurt him.’ That was a year ago and I had done nothing. There was nothing I could do.

  I had worked out how to spell Dog-belly with my fingers. If the subject of the boy or the pond came up at table during breakfast or dinner I would spell that name under the table over and over until I felt better. He wasn’t in my class any more. We were in the top class at junior school and had been streamed. I was in the top stream, and he, to my surprise, was not in the bottom. He had learned to read and was climbing. He was in the middle.

  I’d made up a rhyme that I would say to myself when I was skipping, or when I was running along in the morning, trying to avoid him on the way to school: Dog-belly, Puddle-duck, Puddle-belly, Dog’s muck. I ignored him at school and he stopped smiling at me which should have been better. But it irritated me. It was as if we had made an agreement to keep our friendship secret, when there was no friendship. Only the awkward Sunday afternoons.

  They lined the deep oval kidney-shaped hole with white sand, patting it into the sides, throwing out any sharp stones. I watched them from the tree-house, Daddy’s big hands showing Dog-belly’s small ones how to smooth the sand. I wanted to help. It looked like fun making the raw ugly hole look so pure and pretty, like the inside of a shell. When I’d said to Mummy before that I wanted to help she just said, ‘Help then.’ I objected that he’d never asked me. She said that he didn’t need to ask me and, naturally, he’d be delighted if I helped. I thought she was wrong. For some reason he didn’t want me to help, or Hazel – not that she cared. He only wanted Dog-belly. But sitting up there in the tree, one sunny spring afternoon watching them with the silvery sand, I decided to see if Mummy was right. I climbed down the ladder. I didn’t say anything. I just picked a handful of sand from the plastic sack and started patting it against the earthy side of the hole. It felt cool and made a solid noise as if I was patting the flank of a horse. Dog-belly smiled at me. He, at least, seemed pleased that I was helping. Daddy ignored me at first and then looked up and said, ‘No, not like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Look, you’re knocking earth from the top on to the sand.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’re breaking up the edge with your shoe. Move.’

  ‘There’s not room over that side for me.’

  ‘Careful, you’ll ruin it.’

  I stood back and watched them. There were grains of sand under my nails. I stood there for a few moments waiting for Daddy to say something else. Dog-belly kept looking up, grinning his yellow grin, but Daddy kept his head down.

  ‘That’s right,
’ he said to Dog-belly, his voice a hundred times more gentle than when he spoke to me. I went into the kitchen to wash the sand off my hands. Mummy was sitting at the table picking bits off the joint to chew and reading the newspaper while Huw took all the pots and pans out of the cupboard under the sink.

  ‘What’s up?’ she said.

  ‘Why does Daddy like Vassily better than me?’ I asked.

  ‘You dope.’ She laughed. ‘Course he doesn’t.’

  ‘He acts like he does.’

  ‘Well …’ She shrugged. ‘Daddy is … complicated. I don’t know. He’s not harming you, is he Grizzle? And he’s happy.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘Well …’

  Huw started crashing saucepan lids together and I went back out to the tree-house and shut myself in.

  When Daddy finally took Dog-belly home, he didn’t come back for ages. We’d had our Sunday night baths and washed our hair and were sitting by the fire while it dried and still he wasn’t back.

  ‘Where is Daddy?’ Hazel asked.

  ‘Gone for a walk, I expect,’ Mummy said, ‘bending over that blasted pond all day, he’ll need to stretch his legs.’

  Dog-belly had left his cardigan at our house. On Monday evening Mummy sent me round to Wanda’s with it.

  ‘Oh Mum …’ I objected.

  ‘Or you could take it round in the morning, walk to school with him.’

  ‘I’ll do it now.’

  Wanda seemed delighted to see me. ‘Come on in and have a drink,’ she said. ‘Daft little spook, he’ll forget his head next.’

  She led me into the sitting-room. The curtains were drawn, the lamps were lit, the television was on with no sound and a record was playing. ‘Pink Floyd,’ she said. ‘Like it?’

  Vassily, wearing a dressing-gown, was curled up in the arm-chair with the cat, watching a film and sipping Coca-Cola. The television, unlike ours, was colour. An incense stick stuck in a plant pot had left a worm of ash on the table. There were magazines strewn everywhere, recipes, knitting patterns, beauty tips. Wanda was dressed in a long red crushed-velvet dressing-gown, tatty but luxurious looking. Her eyes were smoky and huge.