Trick or Treat

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘No, I’m helping Mum with the toffee,’ Wolfe says. He goes back into the kitchen. Petra is kneeling on the floor with her head under the sink. She gives a little muffled cry. ‘Here it is! I knew I’d seen it somewhere odd.’ She emerges with the sticky tin, her face red from the effort of searching.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Wolfe asks. ‘Only you look a bit funny.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Petra struggles to her feet. ‘In fact I feel very well today. Let’s get this toffee made, then I’m going to clean out that cupboard – it’s revolting under there, all damp and full of God knows what.’

  ‘What shall I do then?’ Wolfe loves cooking. He loves the pots and pans and wooden spoons and he loves the warm smell you get when the things melt together in the pan, especially sweet things.

  ‘Weigh some brown sugar,’ Petra says. ‘A pound.’

  ‘We do kilograms at school.’

  ‘I don’t. Nor do my scales. A pound.’

  Wolfe spoons the sugar carefully into the shallow dish of the scales, watching the needle wobble and flicker towards the one-pound mark. It is like dark damp sand, stuck together in hard lumps at the bottom of the bag. He pops a lump in his mouth and it melts on his tongue in a sweet sandy pool.

  ‘Teeth,’ warns Petra, and then she laughs and takes a lump herself.

  ‘A pound,’ announces Wolfe when the needle on the scales has arrived at the mark. ‘Now what?’

  ‘Tip it in the pan. Then you want …’ Petra squints at a soft old bit of paper, ‘two ounces of butter – it’ll have to be marge – and four of water. And then two tablespoons of treacle. OK? Just bung it all in the pan. This is my mum’s recipe you know.’

  ‘My granny?’

  ‘Would have been. We always had Bonfire toffee.’

  ‘Why did she die?’ Wolfe prizes the lid off the treacle tin with a knife.

  ‘Careful. She had a bad heart, I told you before. Now try not to dribble it everywhere.’

  ‘I haven’t got a granny or a grandad or a dad,’ Wolfe grumbles, pushing the spoon into the stiff black treacle. It is like tar. It smells a bit like tar on the road on a hot day, and it trails from the spoon in sticky ropes as he tries to tip it into the pan.

  ‘No, but you’ve got me. And Bob and Buff and this …’ She pats her tummy. ‘You’re better off than lots of children. Watch what you’re doing with that.’ Wolfe licks his treacly fingers which taste dark and sweet, like sugary blood. The handle of the spoon is sticky and treacle crawls down the sides of the tin.

  ‘Mum …’ he says, looking at her helplessly, and she sighs and whips the spoon away from him and twists it round and conjures the second spoonful into the pan.

  ‘Right. I’ll put this chair in front of the cooker so that you can stir it yourself. And I’ll grease the tin ready for you.’ Wolfe climbs up and Petra lights the gas under the saucepan. ‘Now, keep stirring until the margarine melts and then the sugar dissolves. It takes ages, but you must keep stirring.’

  ‘Mum!’ cries Buffy suddenly bursting in through the door. ‘That side hasn’t got any wood but look! She’s given us a hat for the guy. Isn’t it great?’

  ‘Except it’s a girl’s hat,’ complains Bobby.

  ‘So? Why can’t it be a girl guy? Sexist,’ retorts Buffy.

  ‘Because it was a man, dickhead.’

  ‘Bobby, please,’ Petra says frowning at him. ‘Let’s see.’ She holds out her hand for the hat. She turns it round in her hands, a greedy expression on her face. It is an old black straw hat with cherries on the brim that look good enough to eat.

  ‘Do you know, I’m sure I’ve seen this before,’ she says. ‘I wonder where. It’s a good hat.’ She puts it on her head, tilted to one side. ‘What do you think?’ she asks Buffy. Buffy shrugs. ‘It seems a terrible shame to burn it.’

  ‘Well you’re not having it,’ says Buffy, snatching it from her head.

  ‘No, let’s have another look,’ Petra fingers the cherries almost as if she is hungry. ‘It’s certainly too good to burn. Where’s Nothing?’

  ‘Dunno. Asleep upstairs I think.’

  ‘I’ll give you a fiver to buy the stuff you need for Nothing, if you give me the hat.’

  ‘Sell you the hat,’ Buffy says with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Oh … if you like.’

  ‘Is this done?’ Wolfe asks.

  Petra glances into the pan. ‘Not yet. It’s got to boil.’

  ‘Half each,’ Bobby says. ‘She gave it to both of us.’

  ‘We’ll sell you the hat after we’ve done penny for the guy,’ decides Buffy. ‘And we want six quid, that’s three each.’

  ‘No,’ says Petra.

  ‘All right, we’ll burn it then.’

  ‘Oh all right.’ Petra smiles ruefully and hands the hat back to Buffy, and she and Bobby thunder triumphantly upstairs to renovate the guy. ‘That sister of yours …’ she grumbles, but her voice is admiring.

  Black bubbles begin to rise in the pan, as if there are creatures in there trying to heave themselves out of the stickiness. ‘Look Mum,’ Wolfe says.

  ‘Boiling point. Now we’ll leave it for a minute and then test it,’ Petra says. ‘That’s the difficult bit.’ She stops for a moment, her hand on her side, a surprised look on her face. ‘Ooooh,’ she breathes.

  ‘Are you all right?’ says Wolfe, worried. ‘You’re not having the baby now are you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘Come on then, let’s test it,’ he says, relieved. They don’t want the baby arriving right in the middle of the toffee-making, after all. Petra fills an old marmalade jar with water. ‘What you have to do,’ she says, ‘is this.’ She lifts the wooden spoon from the pan and lets a few drops of the toffee mixture fall into the water. It dissolves in a dirty cloud. She tips it out into the sink and fills the jar with clean water. ‘Not ready. When you do that and it goes into a firm lump, it’s done. All right? I’m going to make a start on the cupboard. Call me when it’s ready and I’ll help you tip it into the tin.’

  ‘Look!’ say Bobby and Buffy proudly. ‘Good innit?’ They carry the guy into the kitchen, holding an arm each, and it does look better – and much more real. It wears the hat at a cheeky angle, pulled down over one eye, and under the hat it has black woollen hair hanging down. They have given it red lips, open lips. It looks as if it is about to speak. It looks as if it wants to speak to Wolfe and, say, ‘Help me.’ Wolfe looks away.

  ‘Amazing!’ says Petra, coming out from under the sink. ‘Where did the wool come from?’

  ‘Come on then,’ Bobby says. ‘See you.’

  ‘Found it,’ Buffy says, pulling on her coat. ‘See you later.’

  ‘’Bye,’ say Petra and Wolfe together.

  ‘Poor guy,’ Wolfe says when they’ve gone.

  ‘Silly!’ Petra pulls herself to her feet, ‘I bet that’s the wool from that jumper I’ve never finished. Never will now.’

  ‘This still isn’t ready,’ Wolfe complains. ‘I’ve been standing on this chair stirring for ages and ages.’ Petra drops some toffee into the water. It hangs in wobbly strings. ‘It’s been doing that for ages,’ Wolfe says.

  ‘Oh well, perhaps it’ll do,’ Petra says. ‘I’ve never got the hang of toffee. You really need a thermometer. I’ll tip it into the tin.’ She tips the pan and the black liquid hisses and the tin creaks and cracks with the sudden heat. ‘We’ll leave it now till it begins to set and then mark it into squares. When I was little we used to have a toffee hammer,’ she says, her eyes far away. ‘A little silver hammer specially made for breaking toffee into lumps.’

  ‘A toffee hammer,’ repeats Wolfe dreamily. ‘It must have been good in those days.’

  Olive kneels in the front bay windows, resting her elbows on the sill, watching the people passing by. Arthur is out the back tidying the garden and she can hear the sharp sporadic snap of his secateurs as he cuts back some shrub or other. She is waiting for him to come in because she is bored today and there is no
thing for her. She tried with the book, she really did, but the doings of Mellstock choir among the creaking trees defeated her. There is nothing to do but wander from room to room, wander outside, struggle down, struggle up. She fingers a fleshy leaf belonging to one of Arthur’s plants, the sort of thing that flowers at Christmas, she presses her nail against it and it goes through the thick skin leaving a moon-shaped slit, and green on the edge of her nail. She sighs. Stares out a passing woman who has the nerve to peer in. And then she sees something, something that makes her start, and then cry out. ‘Artie! Artie!’ Her voice comes out in a weak bleat, so that Arthur doesn’t hear at first, so that by the time he has heard her and hurried in, her hat has gone again. For she has seen her hat. It was her hat but it was no human being that wore it. It had a mad, scribbled face, an evil face. The face of a witch’s doll. And it had long black hair like her hair used to be, and red lips. ‘It was me!’ she cries out as Artie comes through the door.

  ‘Whatever’s up?’ he says, kneeling down beside her. ‘Calm down, me duck.’

  ‘I’m telling you Artie, it was me. It was my hat. I saw it with some nasty children. It was my cherry hat, Artie, on some doll. Some doll they’d made to look like me!’ She is breathless and trembling.

  ‘Sit down on floor,’ Arthur says. ‘Lie down. I’ll get cushion. I’ll get kettle on and mash us a cup …’

  ‘Artie! Aren’t you listening?’

  ‘Aye, I’m listening duck. You’ve had a shock.’

  ‘Go and get them! Quick Artie, go out and look!’

  Woodenly, Arthur gets up and goes out onto the street and looks up and down. As he expected there is no one about, only a woman with a pram, a cat stalking. He doesn’t know, he just doesn’t know any more what to believe. Olive could have seen her hat, someone wearing her hat. Or it could have been a different hat. Or maybe not a hat at all. Maybe nothing at all. He takes a long shuddery breath and goes back indoors.

  ‘Nowt,’ he says. ‘They’ve gone. Were it a lad or a lass wearing hat?’

  ‘It was me Artie, don’t you understand. Me.’

  ‘Oh …’ Arthur’s heart is a stone in his chest.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that Artie, as if I’m off my rocker. I saw it I tell you. They’d made it up to look like me, the buggers. And if you won’t go out and search, I will!’ She pulls herself to her feet and stands massive before Arthur, red-faced and trembling. Arthur steps back.

  ‘All right, all right.’ He will not be afraid of Olive, just because she is so heavy and cantankerous, just because reason doesn’t come into it when she’s in one of her rages. But he steps back. ‘I’ll fetch your coat,’ he says. ‘And then we’ll take Potkins and go out together and look. Eh?’ He goes to fetch Olive’s coat and her outdoor shoes. ‘Someone at door,’ he calls, hearing a timid knocking.

  He opens the door to Wolfe. ‘I’ve just come to make sure you’re coming to our bonfire party tonight,’ Wolfe says all in one breath, ‘only Mum wants to know how many potatoes to do and we’ve already made some toffee.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Arthur chuckles at the dark sticky ring round Wolfe’s mouth. ‘I’ll just ask Olive. Ollie,’ he calls. ‘Lad next door’s asking if we’re going to firework party tonight.’

  ‘You’ll do what you want to do,’ she says.

  ‘We’ll come,’ he promises Wolfe, quietly.

  ‘Great! Seven o’clock, Mum says. We’re having a bonfire and a guy and everything.’ Wolfe goes off, and Arthur helps Olive into her coat.

  In the baker’s, Nell buys a slab of parkin. She is excited and her fingers quiver in her purse. An invitation! It is the first for years. She’s not so bad really, her next door, a bit slap-happy perhaps but properly neighbourly. And those children were quite charming this morning. They may be scruffy little urchins but she’s taught them manners and that’s what counts. It’s as well to be broadminded – and after all, a party! Rodney is at the barber’s now, and then she’ll send him to see about some decent shoes. It’s a long time since she’s socialised. Well, Jim was never bothered, they were happy as they were. They were all the company they needed, and there was the shared shame of Rodney, no need to go spreading that about. And times change, you don’t know who you can trust nowadays, but still … content as she is, she is pleased at the idea of a little party with the kiddies next door. If only Rodney will not disgrace her. If only he will behave properly. Still, she’ll be there to keep an eye. Nothing untoward can happen under her very eyes.

  The parkin is a heavy moist square in its paper bag. She’s not had parkin for years. Her mouth waters at the thought. Although she’s not sure whether she can touch the baker’s parkin, loose parkin, you can never be sure who’s had their hands on it. Still, her mouth waters at the memory. Pity Mr Kipling doesn’t do a slab of parkin, hygienic, sealed in a box.

  Since Rodney grew up Bonfire Night has always been a trial, all that banging and popping starting weeks before, hooligans and vandals in the street with their bangers trying to frighten the wits out of decent folk. But it will be controlled tonight, the bonfire and the fireworks. Jim used to see to all that when Rodney was a lad. She remembers it as if it was yesterday. The rockets in their milk-bottles, the Catherine wheels nailed to the gate post, herself and little Rodney holding woolly hands while Jim in his rubber boots conducted the show.

  She thinks of the blaze the silly hat will make, and her lips twitch into a smile. That will be an end of it. Nell feels triumphant. If only Father was alive. If only Father could see the wreck his little Gyspy has become. If only Jim could see her staggering down the street in her shabby coat, her hair a colourless fuzz. Oh yes, it’s taken years to feel it, practically a lifetime, but Nell feels better. And she even has her son back with her now. She has a child, a living child, unlike some.

  ‘Remember remember the 5th of November, gunpowder, treason and plot,’ Olive recites.

  ‘And something and something and something and something, will never be forgot,’ murmurs Arthur. A realisation is growing in his mind. Guy Fawkes, of course! It was a guy Olive must have seen, some kids carrying a guy. And it could have been her hat on the guy, or some other hat, but at least that makes sense of what Olive saw. He opens his mouth to say, but then thinks better of it. If the hat is on a guy somewhere, then that’s that. It will be burnt. And to tell Olive that would only be to set her off again, as surely as holding a match to a rocket. He grimaces at the thought. Potkins will not give over pulling, and what with Olive’s weight holding him back and the dog straining forward, he feels he will snap in two.

  ‘See, Artie,’ says Olive. ‘See how he pulls.’

  ‘I know Ollie. It’s a wonder you managed at all.’ They have reached the corner and stand looking down the hill.

  ‘That’s where I fell, just down there.’ Olive points to a spot a little way down.

  ‘Poor Ollie,’ Arthur says. ‘And you did come down a smack. It’s a wonder there’s no bones broken.’

  ‘No sign of my hat,’ Olive sighs.

  ‘Look at them there chrysanths,’ Arthur says. He gazes through a window at a vase of the great fat globes, rust and white and yellow, each bloom an ordered mass of frail tongues, big as a grapefruit.

  ‘Never mind chrysanths,’ Olive grumbles, but Arthur does mind. He’s given them up lately, but there was a time when his were the best blooms on the allotment, and Jim’s not far behind. Friendly competition it was, no spite in it, but they each had their own secrets. It was a sort of game between them. And every autumn on each of the window-sills, in the very centre of each of the bays, there would be a great boastful display of them, huge glowing rusty suns, fat and heavy as fruits. Oh yes, they had their own secrets. Arthur squeezes Olive’s arm. There was one year, only one, when his were undoubtedly the finest. Indisputably. Most years there wasn’t much in it, but this particular year … His cheeks pinch into a smile. He had the secret that year – Olive’s pee. It was the year she was expecting. He doesn’t know where h
e heard it, whether he picked it up in Norfolk, or what, but he’d heard that the water of a pregnant woman was like a magic elixir to chrysanthemums, and so when Olive was expecting he’d taken the golden stuff nightly from the china po under the bed, and he’d fed it to the plants and didn’t it do the trick! Strong stems and blooms like lions’ heads, proud and tawny.

  ‘We’ll go to the party tonight, you and me,’ he decides, tugging both Kropotkin and Olive in the direction of home. ‘It’ll do you good, take you out of yourself for a bit.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do say so. And we don’t want to go letting lad down.’

  ‘But what about Potkins, Artie? What about Mao? What will they make of all the banging and the crashing? All the flames and the whatsits.’

  ‘Fireworks. We’ll shut them up safe. We’ll let Potkins in kitchen for tonight.’ Kropotkin turns around and looks at him and grins through his grizzled lips.

  Eight

  Wolfe stands outside ready and waiting. He wears his boots and has his duffel-coat hood up against the damp air. It is a cloudy night, but there has been no rain. The fire is also ready and waiting, the guy on top, tied to the central pole. He is slumped, his head down on his chest, and Wolfe cannot meet his eye. He wears an old hat now. A squashed holiday hat, and he looks scruffy and poor. His lips are black in the little light coming from the kitchen window.

  All down the hill in the small, fenced-off gardens, there are small fires, small groups of people having small parties. The air is already smoky and there is the occasional bang, the odd pale trail of a rocket in the sky. Wolfe thinks of how it would be at the Longhouse: a giant fire, someone playing the fiddle, people dancing perhaps, and shouting and laughing and drinking elderberry wine, warmed on the stove and spiced so that just breathing in the smell could make you feel drunk. But here all the fires are separate and private and everyone has a different guy to burn.

  Tom comes out and stands beside him. ‘All right, mate?’

  ‘Course.’

  ‘Can’t wait to get started, eh?’