‘Told you you’d regret keeping it,’ Petra adds.
‘Her, and I don’t.’
‘Where is it anyway?’
‘There.’ Buffy points to Tom’s tennis shoe which lies in the middle of the floor. It is filled with a black shape, soft as a shadow.
‘That’s the last place I’d choose to sleep!’ Petra smiles wearily at them. ‘Oh all right then, but be sensible. And I expect you to spend any money you make on buying what you need for Nothing. Understand? And don’t go hassling people.’
‘Come on Buff, let’s get on with the guy,’ Bobby says. ‘Got anything else we can dress it in, Mum?
‘Not really. Nothing I don’t want. Haven’t you got anything you don’t want?’
‘We’ll have a look.’ Bobby and Buffy go off upstairs and Wolfe helps himself to some Weetabix.
‘Last day of the holiday,’ he says miserably. ‘Only Saturday and Sunday and then school. I hate that school, Mum.’
‘Oh dear …’
‘I wish we could go home.’
‘This is …’
‘It’s not, not to me. The Longhouse is home to me.’
Petra sighs. She puts her hand on the top of her belly. ‘Oooh,’ she says. Wolfe looks and sees a little knobbly shape rising and falling, right through Petra’s nightdress. It makes him feel funny. Fascinated and queasy at the same time.
‘Want to feel?’ Petra asks. Wolfe doesn’t really, but he puts out his hand and waits and almost takes his hand away for he can’t feel anything, and then suddenly there is a slithery jab and he jumps back surprised.
‘What was that?’
‘A knee, I think,’ she says. There is something horrible about it, a wet fishy baby thing crammed in there, something rude and scary. Petra puts her arm round him. ‘Don’t look like that! What are you planning to do today?’
Wolfe shrugs. He looks over Petra’s shoulder and he sees the top of a cloth cap outside the window. ‘It’s Arthur!’ he cries, as Arthur knocks on the door. Wolfe rushes to open it. ‘Hello Arthur,’ he says. ‘Come in.’
‘I don’t know …’ says Arthur, putting his head round the door. He catches sight of Petra in her nightdress. ‘Sorry,’ he says, retreating hastily.
‘It’s all right,’ calls Petra. ‘I’m quite decent, I think. Anyway I’m past caring.’
‘I’m just asking if lad wants to walk up allotment with me and dog.’ Potkins yaps, and tries to pull Arthur in.
‘Yes please,’ breathes Wolfe.
‘Fine. He’s at a bit of a loose end, aren’t you love?’ Petra sips her tea. Wolfe wishes she was dressed. Her belly looks disgusting with her nightdress stretched so tight across it that her belly button shows, sticking out like a little knob. However, Arthur remains discreetly out of sight.
‘I’ll just get my shoes on,’ Wolfe says. Arthur beams at him. ‘Wait there.’
‘Better put your wellies on,’ advises Petra.
‘I’ll just shut door or dog’ll be in,’ Arthur says. He reaches his hand in and shuts himself out.
‘That’s good, isn’t it Wolfie?’ Petra says. ‘I think I might take my cup of tea up to bed for half an hour. Don’t be a nuisance, will you?’ Wolfe, struggling into his boots, wobbles on one foot and frowns at her.
‘Course not,’ he says.
Nell wakes with a start. It is light, and therefore late. She suspects she’s been snoring, and she has certainly been dreaming. She tries to grasp the shreds of the dream but they will not be grasped. They dissolve into the light, and perhaps it is just as well. She does not think that it was a cheerful dream. She runs through her plans for the day: it’s Friday so the paintwork wants doing. It’s hard on her knees, Friday, for she has to go round all the skirtings with disinfectant and then there are the door- and window-frames. A hard day, but she likes to be spick and span for the weekend. Then there is the shopping, that must wait till after lunch. She’s lucky if she gets her nap on Fridays. The filthy hat still sits on top of the wardrobe. Whatever was she thinking of, bringing it home? She’ll get shot of it today, sling it across the gardens for them to find – that will puzzle them – or else bin it.
She smiles and stretches, prepares to get up – and then she hears a crash downstairs. She gasps, feels cold fear sweep over her like a wave. And then she remembers: Rodney is here. The bright prospect of a clean and busy day dims, and she groans. She notices Jim lying on his face and remembers the quarrel. You’d think death would put a stop to all that. She sits up and does a few of her breaths to steady her nerves and then she stands him up.
‘Don’t start,’ she warns.
‘No,’ he says, ‘only remember, Nell. Our son. Be fair to him, for my sake.’
‘Saint Jim,’ she scoffs. She goes to the bathroom to dress, uses the lavatory furtively. She likes privacy, does Nell. Downstairs, the kettle is whistling, and so is Rodney.
‘Morning,’ he says. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Do I ever?’ she answers, although in fact it is the best night’s sleep she’s had in years.
‘What’s for breakfast? He’s mashing tea.’
‘I always have All-Bran and a spot of toast,’ says Nell. ‘I suppose I could do you an egg.’
‘With Marmite soldiers? He always loved Marmite soldiers.’
‘He – you – can cut your own soldiers, though really at your age … but a soft-boiled egg, yes. Perhaps I’ll join you.’ Nell fills a pan and puts it on to boil. The kitchen smells of Rodney. ‘You get your hands washed and get sat down,’ she says.
‘He’s sorry,’ Rodney says, ‘about last night.’
Nell takes two stainless-steel egg-cups from the kitchen cupboard and gives them a wipe-round. ‘We’ll say no more for now,’ she replies. ‘But I want you to stop this “he” business. I find it unnerving. You are you.’
Rodney looks down. ‘You mean his language.’
‘No, I mean …’ but Rodney looks at her blankly, stupidly, and she breaks off. The greasy sheen of his glasses reminds her for a split second of the eyes of the beast, germ eyes, and she looks away, swallows. ‘Never mind.’
She lowers two eggs carefully into the gently bubbling water and tips up the egg timer. It was a present from Jim, brought back from a business trip somewhere or other. Fine white sand flows through glass held between porcelain hands. Peculiar really. She feels a nervous creeping in her diaphragm. ‘We’ll not go into details about your behaviour,’ she says, watching the steam rise from the water; tiny bubbles appear on the shells, the eggs stir with the water’s movement. ‘Suffice it to say that it will not do. If you want to stay here, Rodney, if you want to live here, you must behave. As you very well know. Behave.’
‘He will.’
‘Well make sure he does.’ Nell flinches. ‘You do.’
Nell lays the table: plates, knives, spoons, cups and saucers, and as she arranges them she is whisked back to breakfast-times long ago, before the trouble, before the filth, when Rodney was her sweet schoolboy, important in his uniform. All his life ahead of him, and what hopes didn’t she have for him? She struggles to think positive, as they recommend these days, in the magazines. He is not perfect, even the most doting mother in the world couldn’t pretend that. He is very far from perfect. But he is here, and he isn’t a bad son as sons go. He visits her, and that is fine, that is in her control. It is the thought of him living here that worries her.
She puts Rodney’s egg in front of him and sits down opposite. He slices the top off his egg and dips a bread finger deep into the yolk and she watches the stream of sticky yellow overflow and run down the side of the shell and the egg-cup.
‘Perfect,’ Rodney says. He chews for a moment and then smiles across at Nell. ‘You always gave him an egg for his breakfast, a proper start, you used to say. And here he is, back home again. Like the old days.’
‘Behaviour includes not speaking with your mouth full,’ Nell snaps, and then feels sorry. ‘But we’ll say no more for now. I don’t expect they go in
for proper behaviour, the sort of company you’ve been keeping. Just do your best.’
‘He’ll fetch his stuff this morning.’
‘Hold your horses, Rodney. We can give it a week or two …’
‘But he’s here now. He’s slept here.’
Nell pours out the tea. ‘Yes, but,’ but quick as she is she cannot think of a reason to put him off. Not a reason she can admit to Rodney.
Rodney slurps. ‘He can stay then?’
‘Behaviour includes these things, Rodney: no foul language, no elbows on the table, no talking with your mouth full or eating with your mouth open. It means no sitting on the bedspread. It means leaving the lavatory as you would wish to find it …’
‘All right –’
‘And no interrupting.’
‘I’ll fetch my things this morning.’
Nell hesitates. Perhaps it is as well to jump in at the deep end. She taps the top of her egg delicately with her teaspoon, as if politely requesting admittance. She thinks of Jim upstairs, big-hearted Jim, powerless in his frame. ‘Oh all right,’ she says. ‘Why I’m so soft I don’t know. You can scarcely claim to deserve it. But come back via the barber’s, understand. Short back and sides before you re-enter this house.’
Rodney grins. Nell dips her teaspoon in the egg-yolk. It is a bright splashy yellow, and it is not just right, Jim’s timer has failed her, there are clinging traces of clear gelatinous white. Eggs have been in the news lately, she remembers, featured as unclean. Nell, up to now, has taken no notice. An egg is an egg as far as she’s concerned, perfectly sealed into its shell, untouched by human hand. If you can’t trust an egg what can you trust? Propaganda, she took it for. Trying to blame the government for the centre of an egg! You might as well blame it for the stars. But all the same, she puts down her spoon. She’d have done better to stick with her All-Bran after all.
‘There,’ breathes Arthur proudly. Arthur and Wolfe stand at the top of the allotments looking down towards the river and the park.
‘It’s beautiful,’ says Wolfe but that is not what he means, he means more than that but doesn’t have the words. It is more than beautiful. The morning is mild and a pale sun shines across the plots of land, glinting on the bare twigs of the fruit bushes and the roofs of the little sheds. Everything is still. Leaves hang damply or flop crumpled on the ground, onion flowers glow like little planets. Nothing moves. Even the one figure on the allotment, an old man bent over his spade, is motionless, like a man in a painting. The smell is green and brown and cool and rich. In a rush of homesickness Wolfe thinks of the Longhouse garden.
‘Yes,’ agrees Arthur. ‘It’s grand. Can you guess which is mine?’
Wolfe stands on tiptoe to see better and looks critically at the plots. Arthur’s will be the best, he knows that much. He screws his nose up in concentration and feels Arthur smile down at him.
‘I’ll give you a clue, it’s lower down,’ he says.
‘That one,’ decides Wolfe suddenly, pointing at a newly dug patch, neatly marked out with twigs.
‘I’ll be blowed!’ laughs Arthur. ‘Got it in one! How did you know?’
Wolfe is relieved. ‘Not sure, it just sort of … looks like you, I s’pose.’
Arthur’s shoulders rise as he chuckles. He takes Wolfe’s hand and squeezes it in his own, which feels as hard as leather. ‘Want to take a closer look?’
‘Course I do.’
‘Over here then,’ Arthur points to a low stile. Wolfe scrambles over, and Arthur struggles with Potkins who tangles round his legs in his eagerness to follow. They walk down a steep narrow path, slippery with stones and damp grass. Birds rustle in the thorn hedges. Just for a moment Wolfe forgets the town, feels that he’s back in the country again.
‘Here we are.’ The path opens out onto the lower allotments where the sudden sound of the river tumbling over its stones is a surprise. ‘All right, Fred?’ Arthur calls to the old man, who has come alive and is pulling things out of the ground.
‘Considering,’ the man replies.
Arthur walks across one allotment that looks as if it’s just been left to go wild, and across a grass boundary to his own. He shows Wolfe all his plants and his gooseberry bushes; he shows him his seedbed and his cold-frame and his water-butt. He unlocks his shed and Wolfe steps inside, breathing in the delicious smell of dry earth and string. He looks at Arthur’s tools, spades and forks and rakes and hoes. They are so old that the wooden handles are pitted and worn like things in a museum. There is a very old lawn-mower and piles of flowerpots, and panes of glass leaning against the wall, there are old tins full of bits and bobs on the shelf, and bundles of green netting hanging from hooks. There is a rickety folding chair. It is clean and neat and orderly and Wolfe loves it.
‘When I’m grown-up I’m going to have an allotment,’ he declares. ‘And I’m going to have a shed just like yours. ’Zactly the same.’
‘I don’t doubt it, lad,’ says Arthur.
‘And if we go back I’m going to help in the proper garden. They usually give kids little gardens of their own but they’re too small to grow much in. There was only really room for radishes.’
‘Go back?’
‘I want to go back to our old house. Like I told you, the Longhouse it’s called and it’s a commune and it had a great garden.’
‘A commune eh?’
‘Yes, lots of people and all that.’ Wolfe strokes the handle of Arthur’s fork covetously.
‘And what made you move away?’
‘Love,’ says Wolfe wearily. ‘Mum fell in love but I think it was a bit of a mistake really.’ Arthur’s lips twitch.
‘Oh?’
‘Well Tom’s un … un something or other. He never does what he says.’
‘Unreliable?’
‘Yes. Like he said he’d take me out today and then he went away. That’s another thing, he’s always going away.’
‘Well,’ says Arthur cautiously. ‘Sometimes folk can’t help going away – but you’re always welcome to come here with me. Potkins!’ The dog makes a sudden lunge at a thrush, which is busy battering a snail upon a stone. Wolfe suddenly notices how small Arthur is for a grown-up man, how tiny he is inside his clothes. His legs inside his baggy brown trousers seem no thicker than the bean-sticks neatly bundled in the corner of the shed. He looks down at his own stout legs in their too-small jeans.
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘Do you want to come to our bonfire party?’
‘Oh I don’t think …’
‘Mum said. She’s going to ask. And I’ve got to ask you if you’ve got any wood for our fire.’
Arthur gathers together a pile of stuff to be burnt, including some good thick wood from an old window-frame. ‘That lot’ll burn like the clappers,’ he says. ‘But we’ll never fetch it back.’
‘That’s OK,’ Wolfe says. ‘Tom can come and collect it in the car.’
‘That’s all right then.’
‘And you will come to our party,’ begs Wolfe. ‘Please. It won’t be much of a party if no one comes.’
Arthur laughs. ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he promises. ‘We’d better get off now.’ Wolfe looks regretfully around. It is so lovely here, a bit like the Longhouse garden, but different because it’s all broken up into separate bits. And Arthur is his first new friend, even if he is old.
‘Next time I’ll help you dig shall I?’ he says.
‘There’s nowt like a bit of help,’ Arthur says agreeably. Wolfe stands on the grass boundary waiting for Arthur to lock his shed.
‘Did you plant this grass?’ he asks.
‘No,’ Arthur replies. He puts his keys in his pocket. ‘Come on Potty.’ He tugs Kropotkin to his feet. ‘No, my mate Jim turfed that over. There were a bomb in war. God only knows the point of bombing allotments! Anyhow, it landed just there, where you’re stood now, and wrecked the lot. I was away at time and Jim sorted out mess. This here were his allotment. He’s passed on now but he’d turn in his grave if he could see
the state it’s in now.’
Arthur turns round and smiles at Wolfe. ‘Now let’s be off.’
Seven
Wolfe looks uneasily at the guy, who lolls in the corner of Bobby and Buffy’s room. He is a clumsy guy, hasty, his face scrawled on a paper bag, his body lumpy. A pair of Petra’s tights knobbly as Christmas stockings tail off into limply trailing feet. He is a guy with a funny lopsided face, an almost-smile. A nice guy. Wolfe feels sorry already that he has to burn.
‘It won’t hurt,’ he whispers. He reaches out his hand and dares to touch the guy lightly on the corner of his paper head. ‘You’re not real, so it can’t.’ And then he flees downstairs as the screwed-up paper stuffing shifts and crackles.
‘Aren’t you going to help me with this toffee?’ asks Petra. She is searching in the kitchen cupboard. ‘I’m sure I’ve got some black treacle somewhere.’
‘Course,’ says Wolfe. ‘What shall I do first?’
‘I’ll call you when I’m ready.’ Petra frowns at him. ‘Have you seen it? I know we’ve got a tin. Otherwise someone will have to run down to the shop.’ She looks out of the window at Bobby and Buffy who are building the fire. ‘Why don’t you help Bob and Buff for now. I’ll call you when I’m ready.’
Bobby and Buffy are arranging the wood into a wigwam shape. ‘This is brilliant,’ Buffy says, ‘this wood from next door.’
‘I got that,’ Wolfe reminds them. They ignore him.
‘We need more though, little sticks and stuff, kindling,’ Bobby says.
‘Where shall we get that from?’
‘The park?’
‘We haven’t got time to go faffing about picking up twigs,’ Bobby says. ‘We’ve got to get some more money. We might get more today since it’s actually the day.’
‘We need to make the guy a bit better,’ Buffy says. ‘I think that was the trouble before. It doesn’t look as if we’ve taken much time over it.’
‘We could ask that side if she’s got anything to burn.’ Bobby nods at Nell’s house. ‘Then we could do the guy up a bit and get going.’
‘You ask.’
‘Will you ask, Wolfe?’ Buffy asks him, giving him her brilliant smile.
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