Trick or Treat

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘Tea at the Sphere,’ she says suddenly, and Arthur blinks at her. ‘Cress sandwiches. China tea. Blackcurrant tart and cream.’

  Arthur chuckles. ‘So that’s it. I was wondering where you’d got to.’

  ‘And didn’t I think you were flush!’

  ‘I lived on bread and dripping for a week! Over fifty bally years ago that were Ollie. Over half a century. Can you believe it?’

  ‘I can believe it.’ The memory is clear, like a straight path through a wood, and the trees move back from the path and Olive can remember the song now. Her voice rises in a croaking song. The words slide from her head, easy now, sensible now. It is her grandmother’s song:

  What care I now for my goosefeather bed,

  With the sheets turned down so bravely oh?

  Tonight I will sleep in a cold open field.

  Along with the raggle-taggle gypsies oh.

  Olive closes her eyes, relieved at this feat of memory, stretching it back now, as far back as there is: the black dress of her grandmother and her blue-veined hands stroking, stroking Olive’s hair in time with her song. And now Olive is as old, at least as old, as her grandmother was then.

  ‘And they’ve been grand years,’ says Arthur.

  ‘And I was beautiful.’

  ‘As beautiful as any that’s lived.’

  ‘And now I’m old.’ Olive opens her eyes and glares at him, suddenly fierce. It is all right remembering scraps, being grateful for scraps, but she is angry, angry that she can’t live for ever, that gradually it’s fading away. ‘Not beautiful now. An old burden now. A fat old bugger of a burden who pees herself and …’

  ‘No! I won’t have you talking like that.’

  Olive flings the sweet tin away from her and it crashes against the gas fire, causing Mao to leap up and dart behind Arthur’s chair.

  ‘Now, now,’ Arthur says.

  ‘And I want my hat!’ Olive shouts. ‘Want it back, my cherry hat!’ For it is not fair. Yes all right she will die, just like her grandmother, just like … she will not think of him now. All right, she knows it must be so. She will follow them into death – but why can’t it be sudden? Why must it all peel away so terribly gradually: beauty, memory, dignity? Why could she not even keep the hat?

  ‘It’s gone, me duck, you know it’s gone. We can always get you another,’ soothes Arthur, but Olive will not be soothed. How can Arthur accept it so easily? For he is grown old too. His face is shrunken like a little brown monkey’s and his brows hang down over his watery eyes. He is a meek old man, grown tame with the years, driving Olive mad with his patience.

  ‘There’s chocolate from next door,’ Arthur tries. ‘They said you asked for it.’

  ‘Oh bugger the chocolate. Think you can shut me up. Stuff me full of sweets.’

  ‘Ollie …’

  ‘I’m off to bed.’ She struggles on to all fours and pulls herself up, shrugging off Arthur’s attempts to help. ‘Think I need you. Think I can’t cope,’ she mutters. She stands up and the pain in her back is fierce and Arthur is there, just too close and she cannot stand it and she hits out. Her arm is heavy and she hurts him, she can feel from the thud, the way it catches his shoulder, the way he gasps. And he leaves the room, for he would never hit Olive, not in a million years, and though she meant to hurt him and is partly satisfied by the solidity of the blow, she is also sorry. He’s a poor old bugger. They are poor old buggers together. She hears the back door bang and supposes that he has gone to Potkins for solace. Mao puts his head round the corner of the chair, regards her with his cold blue blink. She shuffles to the bottom of the stairs and begins her slow ascent. When Arthur comes back she will apologise. She is not proud. And then, perhaps, she will have a bit of that chocolate.

  Nell sits on a chair in the cold kitchen. Her legs are stiff, knees clamped tight together, and she picks at one fingernail with another. The only sound is the dry clicking she makes – like a clock counting off the seconds.

  The floor is damp for it has just been mopped and there is a clean smell, a germ-killing smell in the air. The dish-mop and the J Cloths are soaking in bleach. The head of the floor-mop is wrung into a tight white wisp and stands upright, airing. The bucket is upside-down on a page from the Mail to ensure that it is bone-dry inside. For Nell has seen, in her Sunday supplement, the things that will live and breed in a dirty house. She has seen them magnified many thousand times into monsters with scales and claws, with a look of blank malevolence in their bulging eyes. Every crevice offers a home to living, crawling filth. A teaspoonful of dirt collected from around the house may contain hundreds of millions of miniscule monsters, more than there are people in the world. Nell must try not to think of that fact. Ever since Rodney’s disgrace she has waged war on the filth, but there will always be more. Even on herself, on her skin, within her mouth, her nose, under her fingernails and in her gut they breed, the creatures. When she bathes, she bathes in Dettol. She breathes in and screws shut her mouth and her eyes, and pinches her nostrils together and she immerses herself in the hot disinfectant. It bubbles fiercely against her ear-drums, it stings her in the most tender places but at least it helps. At least it floats away the surface dirt.

  Now she sits in her kitchen and at least the floor is clean. Nell shivers. The colder it is in a house, the less chance that the pests will thrive, will mate, will squirt out their disgusting eggs and spawn. Nell shivers again. She is tired. It is well past bedtime. Jim will be wondering where she’s got to. But how can she go to bed now? Upstairs there is a man in her little boy’s bed, a man who might as well be a stranger. He has crumpled the candlewick and rumpled the sheets. Lice are most likely crawling from his hair, tumbling onto the pillow where her boy’s head used to rest in innocent sleep.

  The claws around Nell’s head tighten. She has taken tablets and she has mopped the floor to try and work away the tension, to keep control, but still the claws tighten. She sees the headache as a beast with a face, a sticky crab or spider with the vacuous eyes of a magnified flea. It clings tighter and she scrubs frantically at her head, but what can she do? How can she ever sleep with that creature in the house?

  Arthur stands out the back looking at the city lights. Car lamps flow along a distant road like bright beads on a string. Kropotkin snuffles round his feet. Arthur sighs and turns his back on the endless busyness of the city. He looks up at the backs of the houses. Their own is in darkness except for the kitchen light which he will soon switch off before bed. But he cannot go to bed until he is calm. Arthur is gentle, peaceful. He has never hit a person in his life, apart from the odd playground scuffle as a lad. He has never hurt a person. He would not fight in the war because of his conviction that physical force is wrong, and he is damned if he is going to go against all his principles now and slap Olive hard round the face, which is what he itches to do. Not that he doesn’t love her, oh no, not that he doesn’t adore her. But she drives him crazy sometimes with the way she changes, the way she blows hot and cold, the way she remembers and the way she forgets.

  All the lights are on next door by the look of it. Feckless – but all the same it does look warm like that, all the bright rectangles, not even a curtain drawn. And even in Nell’s house there is an upstairs light on. The back-bedroom light. Odd. That is, surely that is, the boy’s bedroom. Rodney’s. Perhaps Nell is in there, remembering. Jim told him how she kept his room like a shrine, everything in place so neat, so clean. A child’s bedroom complete with everything but a flesh-and-blood child. Whatever must it be like to have a child, a living child? Arthur remembers the unbearable softness of a newborn head. He remembers the tiny hands, pink daisies of hands, opening and closing on his calloused thumb. He remembers Olive with her creamy breasts spilling from her scarlet nightdress, with her face and her hair glowing in the lamp-light. He blinks and sniffs. There was never the time to get used to it, used to having a child in the house. The lad never even had a room of his own, he slept beside their bed so that Olive could reach out
to him, easy in the night. They never mention him. Of course, they both remember, but they never mention his name. Does she dream, Arthur wonders, as he frequently does, of the lad – grown-up as he now would be – when she’s lost in the blessed deepness of her sleep?

  He shakes the scales of sadness from him. Kropotkin turns eagerly towards the gate, turns back to Arthur and looks up at him, his head cocked comically in a question. Arthur chuckles. ‘All right, old lad,’ he says and reaches down to attach the lead to the dog’s collar.

  Nell holds her breath. She pushes open the door of Rodney’s room, and peers in. He is curled on his side with his face to the wall. He is on top of the covers still, but at least he has taken off his shoes. She cannot see his face, but she can hear a suckling sound. He is sucking his thumb. The measures she went to to stop that dirty habit! Mustard on his thumb, a glove, even his hands tied together, and now he lies there, middle-aged man that he is, curled up like some grotesque infant, and still he sucks his thumb.

  She switches off the light and closes the door quietly. If only there was a bolt. If only she could lock him in … She uses the lavatory and scrubs it and pours bleach down it and then she washes. She listens outside Rodney’s door on her way back to her bedroom – but it is all quiet. She goes into her own room and closes the door firmly. She pushes the chair across the floor and jams it under the door-handle.

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ asks Jim.

  ‘You didn’t hear what he said to me. Talk about language!’

  ‘I did hear, Nell. He was upset.’

  ‘He was upset!’ She pulls her nightdress on over the top of her clothes and then turns away from him and fumbles her clothes off underneath.

  ‘He’s been ill, remember, Nell. Make allowances. Perhaps he is still … suffering in his mind.’

  ‘Well he’s never got it from my side. There was never any madness on my side.’

  ‘You know he’d never hurt you. He loves you. He loves you too much. He wouldn’t harm a hair on your head. All he ever wanted was to please you.’

  ‘Funny way he had of showing it!’

  ‘You made it too hard for him. He could never match up … little wonder he gave up trying … If you’d only let the boy grow up, Nell, but you had to try and hold him back …’

  ‘Oh! So that’s the way the land lies. My fault. All my fault. I see!’

  ‘No I didn’t mean …’ begins Jim, but it is too late. She knocks him smartly down onto his front, before getting into bed. The sheets are cool and smooth and tight as she eases herself between them, causing as little disturbance as possible. It is good to lie down, and the cold pillow absorbs some of the throbbing of her head as she lies stiffly, her ears tuned to Rodney’s room.

  It is not easy to be a mother, she thinks, and it occurs to her that she never thinks of her own mother. It’s funny how she never remembers her, for she must have been there. If there was a family outing there would be Mother and Father and Eleanor and Edwin, and sometimes Olive or one of Edwin’s friends. She remembers a Sunday outing, a warm day, May or June. They had gone out, just the four of them, grand and swanky in Father’s new motor car, sweeping proudly through the streets. Nell can still recall the rush of the warm polleny air against her face, the way it played with her wonderful sausagey ringlets. They had picnicked in a hollow near the shallow plashy river, in a place where the rocks were huge and warm and flat. Father had been back from the war only a few months and still seemed strange and distant, tall and handsome and still rather brown from the Turkish sun. And Nell so wanted to impress him. How she tried! After the sandwiches and the cold chicken and the cake, Edwin had taken off his shoes and stockings and Father had cheered as he leapt from rock to rock. ‘Bravo!’ he shouted and clapped his hands. And to Nell it seemed an awful fuss to make for it was not far to jump and the stones were so flat and safe. Nell picked Father some flowers, but there was nothing much to pick, only tiny insipid things, and it was a miserable spiky little posy she presented him with, and he hardly even looked. He kept his eyes on Edwin’s antics. Edwin had wet feet now, and sprang from rock to rock leaving the neat prints of his feet behind him, and Nell couldn’t bear it. It wasn’t as if he was doing anything clever; she could do just as well.

  She crept down behind a crease in the ground and unlaced her tight black boots and peeled off her stockings and then she jumped out. ‘Look at me!’ she cried. ‘Look, Father, watch me, watch me!’ and she leapt from one rock to another and another, getting faster and faster, and dazzling Father, she expected, with her agility, until she tripped and fell face-downwards into the water. She thought for a moment that she was dead, the silence that followed her splash was so complete. And then she thought that Father would scoop her up in his great soldier’s arms and save her. But no. There was just Edwin prancing about and laughing and calling her a nincompoop. She had to struggle up herself to face a very cold look from Father and some talk of ladylike behaviour. And then there was the drive home with the wind, cold now, blowing in her face and her teeth chattering and the sopping muslin of her dress clinging to her and her ringlets all dropped out, and no one taking a bit of notice, except Edwin pulling faces and folding his lip up over his nose in a way that she could never manage. She was put to bed with a hot-water bottle when they got home, and the incident was never mentioned again.

  Six

  Wolfe stands beside Buffy at the kitchen table. They have the fireworks spread out before them. ‘This is my rocket,’ says Wolfe.

  ‘Who said? It’s the biggest and you’re the smallest. You can have this one.’ Buffy shoves an inferior rocket towards him.

  ‘Don’t want that one.’

  ‘You can have the sparklers. Well most of the sparklers. You can have Vesuvius.’

  Wolfe pauses, considering. He likes the cone shape of the volcano, with its blue touchpaper poking from the top, already like a little flame. ‘And Traffic Lights?’ he bargains.

  Petra comes into the kitchen in her nightdress. ‘We’re all going to see all of them,’ she points out, ‘so what does it matter?’ Wolfe scowls at her. Grown-ups can be so stupid sometimes. It is fun to look at the fireworks and to say their names, and to know that some of them are yours. And of course they will all see all of them. That isn’t the point.

  ‘The Catherine wheel’s like an ammonite,’ he says.

  ‘’Snot,’ says Buffy.

  ‘Like that ammonite I used to have, remember Mum? At the Longhouse. I wish I’d brought it with me now.’

  Petra slices bread and switches on the grill. ‘Clear those off the table,’ she says. ‘I’m having breakfast. Anyone else want any toast?’

  ‘Fireworks are dangerous,’ Wolfe says. ‘School says we should go to the park and watch the musical ones.’

  ‘Municipal,’ corrects Buffy. ‘Bloody neurotic if you ask me.’

  ‘They’re quite safe if you’re careful,’ Petra says. ‘Better say now if you want some toast.’

  ‘I’m slimming,’ says Buffy.

  ‘I’m having Weetabix.’ Wolfe packs the fireworks carefully back into their box. His hands feel greasy from the fine leaking of gunpowder. Tomorrow is the day. It almost seems a shame to set them off. Lovely things. But it is exciting. It will be exciting. A party, with Arthur and the old ladies and Tom. ‘I’m going out with Tom today, aren’t I Mum?’

  Petra winces. ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘But he said,’ Wolfe wails.

  ‘I know love, but you know what Tom is. Something came up and he had to go off last night to see someone in Leeds. He might be back but …’ she trails off, dips the tip of her knife in the Marmite jar. Wolfe watches the neat way she spreads so that every speck of toast is covered.

  ‘Bloody liar he is,’ he says.

  ‘Wolfe! Don’t you start! He’s not a liar, he’s just forgetful. But he will take you. Another day. I promise. And what do you mean, you’re slimming?’ Petra switches her attention to Buffy.

  Wolfe sighs. It’s al
ways the same. He doesn’t know why he bothers to believe Tom. They always tell you Don’t lie, don’t make promises you can’t keep, grown-ups do, but they do it themselves, Tom does specially but they all do it sometimes, even Petra.

  Bobby comes down, scowling. ‘Did you hear that effing dog next door? Wants putting down.’ He takes a mug off the draining board and slams it down.

  ‘Make me a cup of tea, love,’ says Petra through a mouthful of toast.

  ‘I was having coffee … oh all right.’

  ‘We’d better go out fetching wood for the bonfire,’ says Buffy.

  ‘There’s more important things than that,’ Bobby says.

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Penny for the bleeding guy!’

  ‘Bobby, really! Do you have to swear every other word?’ mutters Petra.

  ‘Then we can buy more fireworks, proper bangers and stuff, instead of these farty Snowflakes and Starbursts.’

  ‘Spoilt brat,’ complains Petra. ‘When I was thirteen I was grateful for what I was given. I’d have had a clipped ear and been locked in my bedroom for a week if I’d gone on like you.’

  ‘Bring on the violins. Here’s your tea.’ Bobby puts a mug down in front of Petra.

  ‘Thanks. And I don’t know about penny for the guy. Remember trick-or-treating? You all came back scared stiff.’

  ‘Did not. And we won’t have Wolfe with us this time.’ Wolfe sticks out his tongue but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to stand about all day. He’d rather get on with the fire. He’d rather have the box of fireworks all to himself to play with.

  ‘I don’t like you begging,’ Petra insists, but it is obvious that her heart isn’t in it.

  ‘Go on, Mum. I’ve got to buy Nothing a litter tray. She did it all over my homework last night.’

  ‘Told you it was a load of crap,’ says Bobby.