Trick or Treat

by Lesley Glaister

  Nell shakes her head. It seems such a terrible waste. He spends all his days like that since he’s been out: sitting in the reference library reading the papers; sitting in the pub; sitting in her kitchen drinking tea; sitting anywhere where he can soak up a bit of warmth for free. And he was such a bright lad, such an adorable boy. Now his face is dull and whiskery. His eyes, once so big and blue that women cooed into his pram and swore he’d be a stealer of hearts, are bloodshot now and shifty, hidden behind the thick and smeary lenses of his black-rimmed spectacles. He has a sour, unhealthy smell. He makes her kitchen reek of his filthy hostel. Hard to remember the milky sweetness of his baby self, and how she used to bury her nose in the soft skin at the back of his neck when he was warm and fragrant from his bath.

  ‘Well it’s all right for some,’ she says. ‘I only wish I had time to sit around pleasing myself. Some of us have more … more purpose.’

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ Rodney says. ‘He could do with a top-up.’

  Nell tips a fierce stream of tea into his cup. ‘However you manage on your own, I don’t know,’ she grumbles.

  ‘Funny you should say that,’ he grins at her through scummy teeth, ‘only it’s getting near time he moved out of the hostel. It’s only temporary accommodation, you know, just till he gets himself back on his feet.’

  ‘And you haven’t shown much sign of that, have you? Oh no, I’ve bailed you out often enough. I’m not as soft as your poor father, God bless his soul.’

  ‘Not money, you old bag.’

  ‘Rodney!’

  ‘He wants to move back here.’

  Nell frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He means what he says. He wants to move back home. Wouldn’t you like that?’

  ‘No I b— well wouldn’t!’

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘I’ve got my own life to live now, Rodney. Independence.’

  ‘Well he doesn’t know what he’ll do then.’ Rodney looks nonplussed. His big bad man’s hands lie limp upon her nice clean table. He looks pleadingly at Nell and she gets up, wipes her hands on her apron, busies herself. ‘He’ll get off then,’ he says. His voice is flat. He is upset. He goes. She hears the clatter and clank of him moving the bins and then his heavy footsteps thudding away. Her heart is heavy. He is her son, when all’s said and done. She wipes the table, very thoroughly, with a J Cloth. There is a drop of tea. There are the invisible prints of his none-too-clean hands.

  She rinses the cloth and stands at the sink, gazing sightlessly out of the window. She thinks about Miles, her brother Edwin’s son. Miles is an architect with a wife and two children of his own. He is a credit to Edwin, a credit to the whole family. The thought of him sticks like a burr in Nell’s throat. She hasn’t seen him for years, not Miles, not even Edwin. Last time the families had been together it had been Christmas. Nell gazes at her tiny distorted reflection in the gleaming tap as it comes back to her. It had been an awkward occasion. Jim and Edwin had put on a good show, filling the house with cigar smoke and toasting the Queen, but Daphne, Edwin’s wife, and Nell had never hit it off. During a cold Boxing Day tea of wet lettuce and sliced tongue, Rodney had disgraced himself at the table. Quite suddenly, in the middle of a polite silence, he’d said, ‘Buggeration,’ belched resoundingly and slithered down under the table. Edwin and Jim had hauled him out and Edwin had pronounced him dead drunk, and Nell had caught the smirk on Daphne’s face, and no, Nell couldn’t see the funny side, and that was that, Christmas over, the feeble attempt at a festive spirit quenched.

  And that was the last they’d seen of Edwin’s family. Rodney had left home shortly after that, and then there was the disgrace, and Nell could never stand the thought of the condescension, the pity, the smugness of Daphne and the perfect, polite and brainy Miles, and so she’d rejected Edwin’s attempts to help. For what help was there? All that is left now between Nell and her brother are Christmas cards: perishing glitter-encrusted landscapes with muffled coachmen and frozen lakes.

  Nell sighs, almost regretfully, and then she goes upstairs to Jim.

  Tom is sitting at the kitchen table. He is rolling a cigarette. Wolfe watches the way he conjures the strings of brown tobacco into a neat white paper sausage, puts it in his mouth and, squinting down at it, flicks it alight with his lighter.

  ‘Hello, mate,’ Tom says, when he’s breathed out his first mouthful of smoke. He stretches out his arm and Wolfe allows himself to be drawn close.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ Wolfe asks. Tom smells of tobacco and hair and other grown-up things.

  ‘Out and about, mate. Missed me?’

  ‘Don’t know. Mum has,’ Wolfe says. ‘I thought you’d gone and left us.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ Tom puffs on his cigarette. He has sleep in the corners of his eyes, and a crumpled-sheet print on his cheek, and stubble on his chin like that on the iron-filings man Wolfe got in his stocking at Christmas. There are shiny red hollows on either side of his nose where his glasses usually sit.

  ‘Are you staying then?’ Wolfe persists. ‘Did you sleep with my mum last night?’ Tom does not answer immediately, and will not meet Wolfe’s eyes, and Wolfe pulls away from him. ‘Did you?’

  ‘I slept here last night,’ Tom says.

  ‘Are you still living here then?’

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ Tom says. ‘I don’t know. Neither of us knows. OK? How are you anyway? How’s school?’

  ‘Terrible.’ Wolfe finds a clean dish and fills it with three Weetabix and a heap of brown sugar. He gets himself a spoon, splashes in milk, and stands at the end of the table eating.

  Tom watches him. ‘No school today?’

  ‘Half-term.’

  ‘Ah…’ Tom grinds out his cigarette on a saucer, gets up and puts the kettle on. ‘It’s the Ist of November,’ he says. ‘Christ, how the time passes.’

  ‘A pinch and a punch for the first of the month,’ says Wolfe gloomily.

  ‘Cheer up, old mate.’ Tom turns and ruffles Wolfe’s hair. ‘Tell you what, have you got anything fixed for Bonfire Night?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I’ll come round then, shall I, and bring a box of fireworks? And could you and Buffy and Bobby get a bonfire together? Could you do that?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Wolfe solemnly. ‘I expect so. But if you’re coming round on Bonfire Night, that means you won’t be here already. That means you don’t live here any more.’

  ‘Clever little bugger aren’t you?’ Tom says, grinning and picking a shred of tobacco from between his teeth. ‘I told you. I don’t know. It’s all in a state of flux.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Change. In other words I’m not sure. Not right now. Your mum and I need a bit of space.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Wolfe nods, wisely. People were always saying that at the Longhouse, that they needed space. ‘Flux,’ Wolfe says. It is a good word. ‘Flux.’ There was always a state of flux at the Longhouse, always people coming and going.

  ‘Mum’s been crying,’ says Wolfe.

  ‘Oh Christ.’ Tom picks up his glasses from the table, rubs them on his shirt and puts them on.

  ‘What about the baby?’

  Tom doesn’t answer. He pours boiling water into the teapot and stirs the teabags round with a spoon. He doesn’t let it brew, not like Petra. He doesn’t even put the lid on, let alone the tea-cosy. ‘I’m taking her up some tea,’ Tom says, pouring it into a mug.

  ‘It’ll be too weak,’ Wolfe says, ‘she doesn’t like it weak. She calls it gnat’s piss.’

  Tom shrugs. ‘Think about the bonfire, won’t you?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘By the way, you haven’t seen my shaving foam have you?’ Tom asks.

  ‘No,’ Wolfe says. He waits till Tom’s gone upstairs, then he brushes the shreds of tobacco off the table and sits down to read about Desperate Dan in his comic. And as he reads, he scratches.

  Olive wakes because her bladder is full. She lifts Chairman Mao away from her
and begins the long heave out of bed. It takes her a good few minutes of grunting and huffing and puffing before she manages to swing her legs over the edge. She sits for a moment on the edge, shivering in her nylon nightgown, before lowering her feet to the cold lino floor. It is old brown-and-orange-patterned lino, worn through in places to its stringy backing. They never bothered much about homey things, Olive and Arthur, when they were young. They were always looking outwards at the world. Home was merely a place to eat and sleep, to catch their breath, and so they never got round to carpets in the bedrooms, and now they never will. There is a small rag rug, and Olive stands on it while she pulls her candlewick dressing-gown around her. Mao hunches in the warm place she’s left, regarding her balefully.

  ‘Can’t stay in bed all day,’ she says, and he yawns and turns his back on her. Clearly, he doesn’t agree.

  She goes to the bathroom and notices that the house is very quiet. ‘Artie…’ she calls, but her voice hangs cold in the air.

  It takes her a long time to dress. Her clothes wait for her in an ordered pile, underwear on top. Everything is clean and ironed, for Arthur likes things immaculate. It used to drive Olive mad, slapdash Olive, when they were young. Finicky, she used to call him, pernickety, but now she can see the sense. She appreciates the order he imposes, for the rest of the world makes no sense at all.

  ‘Arthur!’ she calls again, and again there is no reply. He must have gone out. Inconsiderate. Not like Arthur. Age creeping up. Olive struggles into her vest, a thermal vest, a present from Arthur last Christmas. She pauses, remembering the time of year. Is Christmas approaching again already? Or has it passed? Alone in the house her memory crumples and she cannot read the date. ‘Artie!’ But all is quiet. Her feet are cold and she bends painfully and puts on some socks. They share socks, Olive and Arthur, for they are easier and warmer for Olive than stockings. Suspenders! How she used to hate suspenders with those fiddly clips, soft, pink, rubbery to slide into place, and how Arthur loved them, unclipping them, just the thing for Arthur, neat and tidy. But then he didn’t have to wear them. She pulls on her frock and her cardigan and then she sees her hat. It is a black straw hat with a bunch of scarlet wax cherries on the brim, and a cherry-coloured ribbon. ‘Arthur?’ she calls again, puzzled, but then the fog clears and she catches a glimpse of the day ahead. ‘Of course, Mao!’ she exclaims. ‘Artie’s up on his bloody allotment, and I must take Potkins for a walk.’

  Downstairs the clock tells her that it is already half-past ten, and the calendar that it is Ist November. That is good. She knows where she is, then. It is a bright day, the sun floods the kitchen. Arthur has left everything ready: teapot empty with the teabags beside it, bread and lime marmalade cut into triangles, a cup and saucer with the milk already in. Olive switches on the kettle and goes out to greet Kropotkin.

  He bounds from the outhouse, delirious with pleasure, and Olive rubs his curly head. Above his grunts and snuffles she can hear voices in next-door’s garden. The new neighbours. They may have been there weeks. Months? But she’s never spoken to them. There’s a woman and several noisy children. She goes to the wall and peers over.

  ‘Morning,’ she says, and the woman looks up and smiles.

  ‘Pleased to meet you.’ She is a short woman with an enormous pregnant belly. Beside her stands a small stout boy. ‘I’m Petra,’ she continues, ‘and this is Wolfe.’

  ‘Wolfe?’ repeats Olive. ‘That’s a fancy name. Is it the fashion?’

  Petra laughs. ‘No, I’m afraid not.’ The small boy scowls. ‘I met your husband the other day, he was telling me about his allotment.’

  ‘Husband?’ says Olive. ‘No.’

  ‘Oh … your brother?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh well, sorry … I just assumed …’

  ‘Mum’s not married neither,’ says Wolfe.

  ‘Wolfe!’

  ‘Well that is all the fashion now isn’t it?’ Olive says. ‘Artie’s my lodger, no relation.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Well he seems very nice whoever he is.’

  ‘He’s a wonder.’

  ‘I’m just thinking about making a start on the garden,’ Petra says. ‘It’s such a mess, depressing, but I don’t know.’

  ‘Well I’d like to plant a tree,’ Wolfe says. ‘We might not live here for long. But I’d still like to plant a tree.’

  Petra shrugs and smiles. She has a very white face and it is hard to tell how old she is. There are lines round her eyes but her smile is girlish. She has long hair, fair streaked with grey, tied back from her face with an Indian scarf. She is pretty, but not a patch on Olive as a lass.

  ‘You ought to ask my Artie about that,’ Olive says to Wolfe. ‘He knows all about growing things.’

  ‘Thanks,’ says Petra. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Wolfe?’ Wolfe scuffs his shoes in the dirt.

  ‘He’s up on allotment today,’ Olive says. ‘Same plot he’s had since 1934.’

  ‘Really! That’s amazing!’

  ‘What’s an allotment?’ asks Wolfe.

  ‘A little plot of land,’ explains Petra, ‘like an extra garden where people grow vegetables.’

  ‘And all sorts else,’ adds Olive.

  Kropotkin begins to bark and Olive looks round. There is steam billowing from the kitchen door. ‘Breakfast-time,’ she says. ‘Kettle boiling.’

  ‘Well, it’s been nice to meet you,’ Petra says.

  ‘Nice little chap, Wolfe.’ Olive looks at him wistfully for a moment, and then gropes her way into the steamy kitchen to find her breakfast.

  ‘What a fat woman,’ says Wolfe. ‘Mum, why is she so fat?’

  Petra winces and puts her finger to her lips: ‘Shhh.’

  ‘Anyway, I do want to grow a tree,’ Wolfe says. ‘And we could grow some other things too, couldn’t we? Like at the Longhouse.’

  ‘I don’t know.’ They look critically at the small rectangular garden. There is a patch of grass, a holly bush, a tangle of old herbs – mint and lemon balm and sage – and lots of weeds. Wolfe thinks longingly of the grounds of their last home, of the orchard with its long rough grass and friendly mossy trees, of the big vegetable garden, of the greenhouse with its warm tomato stink.

  ‘We could dig up the grass and plant potatoes,’ suggests Wolfe.

  ‘Hmmm, I don’t know, love. Once you start growing things it means you’re staying put. Literally putting down roots.’

  ‘Are we moving then?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘You’re in a state of flux,’ says Wolfe proudly and Petra laughs.

  ‘That’s about the size of it.’

  ‘Tom said that, about flux.’

  ‘Oh he did, did he? And what else did he say?’

  Wolfe screws up his nose. ‘Don’t know. Not much. He said he’s coming round on Bonfire Night. He wants me to build him a bonfire.’

  ‘Oh yes, he said.’ Petra picks off a withered mint leaf, crushes it between her fingers and sniffs them.

  ‘Can we make toffee? Bonfire toffee?’

  ‘Yes, all right.’

  ‘Do you want him to come round?’

  ‘Tom? Yes, no … Oh I don’t know.’ Petra turns towards him and bends down, her hands on his shoulders. She looks at him almost fiercely and Wolfe swallows, alarmed. ‘It will be all right,’ she says. ‘We’ll be all right, Tom or no Tom. You’re not to worry.’

  ‘But what about the baby?’

  Petra shrugs and stands straight again. She puts her hand in the small of her back where the baby makes it ache.

  ‘Well anyway, I’ve never had a dad and I’m all right,’ says Wolfe, stoutly.

  Petra sighs, and the skin between her eyebrows furrows into a frown. Wolfe hates it when she frowns like that, she looks old and cross, like a witch in a book. He looks away.

  ‘Can we move back to the Longhouse?’ he asks.

  ‘I only wish …’ begins Petra, then, ‘no, I don’t think so. There was somebody else, a man with a cou
ple of kids moving in. There won’t be room for us now. Anyway, I don’t like the idea of moving back, going back …’

  ‘Oh.’ Wolfe kicks around in the dirt and finds an old toy car, its wheels clogged with earth. ‘I do,’ he says.

  ‘That’s nice,’ says Petra looking at the car. But she doesn’t mean it, she doesn’t even see it, her eyes are focused somewhere far away. She wears a flowered dress this morning and the baby inside her doesn’t look so big, and she wears Wellington boots that still have Longhouse earth in their treads. Wolfe thinks she looks nice. He can see the head of the old woman next door the other side bobbing up and down above the half net curtain at her kitchen windows as if she is working hard, scrubbing something perhaps. A moment later, water gushes from her kitchen drainpipe and froths in the drain, and then the door opens and she comes out carrying a bowl of steamy washing. She ignores Petra and Wolfe at first, but that is silly. It is obvious that she can see them, for there is only a low scrubby hedge between the two gardens.

  ‘Good morning,’ Petra says.

  The old woman nods her head towards them, and gives a stiff smile. She is the opposite of Olive, Wolfe thinks, long and skinny with a pointed nose. She is all sharp in the places where Olive is round.

  ‘Lovely day,’ persists Petra. ‘We’re just thinking about tackling the garden.’

  Nell sniffs. ‘Nice enough so far,’ she says, ‘but the forecast is rain. My Rodney will do mine I expect.’ She looks with satisfaction at her neatly paved garden. ‘Easy to maintain,’ she explains. ‘My Jim did it before he … Just a few little spaces for bedding plants in the spring and the rest just wants a good sweep, a swill-over with bleach to kill the moss now and then.’

  Wolfe sees Petra’s lips twitch. ‘We’re planting a tree,’ he says.

  ‘Oh … Well only a little one I hope.’

  Wolfe looks at Petra. ‘I was talking to the man from next door yesterday,’ she says, changing the subject. ‘Olive’s lodger.’

  ‘Lodger! Is that what she calls it!’

  ‘Oh …’ Petra hesitates. ‘Anyway, he’s a keen gardener, isn’t he? He was telling me all about his allotment.’