Trick or Treat

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘Can I take bit of chocolate?’

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  ‘And a chocolate lime?’

  Olive nods. Her mouth is full of toffee now, and she strokes Mao who has jumped on the chair and stretches up his head to her, purring loudly. For a moment Olive and Wolfe chew companionably, concentrating, passing the tin between them, listening to Mao’s content and the occasional ping of the old gas fire. Olive screws her face up with the effort of swallowing a lump. ‘And you found my Mao. In your garden you say?’

  ‘Sitting in the bonfire ash.’

  ‘He will have been scared.’

  ‘Of the fireworks.’

  ‘That’s right, lad. A good lad. We had a lad once … but we never talk …’ she drifts off. Wolfe helps himself to another chocolate lime.

  ‘Is Arthur in?’ he asks. ‘Only I’d like to see Arthur.’

  ‘He’s out searching for Mao.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Wolfe. ‘Shall I go out and find him? Shall I tell him that we’ve found him?’

  ‘No, lad, you stay put. He’ll be back in a bit. Have another sweet. Try a bit of toffee. He’ll be back in a bit. It’ll be a nice surprise.’

  ‘All right.’ Wolfe swallows his half-chewed chocolate lime and takes a piece of the toffee. ‘Why is he a bald cat?’ he asks.

  ‘Don’t you think he’s nice?’

  ‘Yes,’ Wolfe says. ‘Only I like them better with fur.’

  Olive laughs and when she opens her mouth wide Wolfe can see a gap between her teeth and her gums. ‘It’s nice to have a lad in the house,’ she says. ‘Come here, help me get down.’ She grasps Wolfe’s arm but he can’t hold her weight and she overbalances on the floor with him on top of her. He jumps up, terrified.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Oooh,’ she groans. ‘It’s just my back, my blessed back.’

  ‘Shall I go and get my mum?’

  ‘No, no … it’ll pass. Artie will be home in a bit.’ The cat jumps onto her chest and nestles itself down. ‘There we are, Mao,’ Olive murmurs.

  ‘That’s an unusual name for a cat,’ says Wolfe politely. ‘Miaow.’

  ‘Chairman Mao.’

  ‘Chairman Miaow.’

  ‘And what’s your name again?’

  ‘Wolfe.’

  Olive begins to laugh, but it turns into a groan. ‘Oh my blessed back. Fetch a cushion, Wolfe, and put it under my shoulder.’ Wolfe looks around and finds a lumpy flowered cushion. He bends over Olive to ease it underneath her and is enveloped in a choking smell of toffee and something powdery and old. He straightens up and stands awkwardly, shifting from one leg to the other. He would like to go now, but doesn’t feel that he can leave her like this. He will wait for Arthur. Besides, he wants to see Arthur.

  ‘I’ve got my cat back then,’ Olive says, ‘but there’s still my hat. I lost my hat, a grand hat it was, black straw, with cherries. Oh yes, a grand hat all right.’ Wolfe frowns. ‘A grand hat and they’ve stolen it, the thieving buggers. I’ll never see that hat again.’

  Wolfe is confused. He opens and then closes his mouth. He thinks of the hat in Petra’s wardrobe. That is a black straw hat with cherries on it. But that came from Nell and not from Olive. Perhaps all old women have hats like that. Olive looks as if she is going to cry. It is very odd to be in a room with a fat old woman flat on her back and a bald cat curled on her chest. He wonders what he should do if she does cry, but it is all right. She suddenly lets out a long sigh like a lilo going down and smiles at him. All the little hairs around her mouth glisten with toffee juice, and her chin trembles.

  ‘Our little lad was a lovely lad,’ she says. Wolfe is grateful that the subject has been changed. He will have to think about the hat. Olive stares up at him until he feels uncomfortable, but her eyes are not focused on him. ‘Not like that lad up road,’ she says, ‘Nell’s son. Not like him. Do you know about him?’

  ‘Rodney?’

  ‘That’s the one, you want to keep out of the way of him … yes, keep right out of the road of him …’

  ‘But …’ Wolfe begins, but the door bangs and Arthur comes in. Olive’s voice drops to a whisper: ‘They had to put him away for years and years.’

  ‘Ollie!’ says Arthur sharply, coming into the room. ‘What are you saying? Don’t go frightening lad.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Olive’s voice is plaintive now. ‘He’s fetched our Mao back to us.’

  ‘Oh … that’s a right relief! I’ve been everywhere. Where was he?’

  ‘In our garden, just sitting in our garden,’ Wolfe says.

  ‘Daft bugger,’ Olive says. ‘But he’s home now.’

  ‘Language,’ says Arthur.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Wolfe says, ‘everyone swears in our house too, except Mum. She fell down,’ he explains, indicating Olive, ‘but she says she’s all right and we’ve eaten loads of sweets.’

  Arthur laughs. ‘Just as well I’ve got more supplies in then.’ He puts his hand in his pocket and brings out some wine gums and some peanut brittle. ‘You take a few home with you, here …’ He opens the packet and fills Wolfe’s hands with them. ‘And here, a reward,’ he puts a fifty-pence piece in Wolfe’s coat-pocket.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ says Wolfe. ‘But it was nothing, he was only in the garden.’

  ‘All same, lad, you brought him back safe and sound, and I’m right grateful.’

  ‘Well, I’d better be going,’ Wolfe says, awkward again. ‘Bye-bye Olive, bye-bye Miaow.’ Arthur follows him to the door and opens it for him.

  ‘Er … you know what Olive was saying about Rodney …’ Wolfe begins.

  ‘Oh you don’t want to go taking any notice of her,’ Arthur says cheerfully. ‘You take it with a pinch of salt, lad.’

  ‘All right, then,’ says Wolfe. He is relieved, because Arthur must know.

  He waits in the passage between his front door and Rodney’s. He supposes that is where Rodney will look for him. It is cold and he has peanut brittle stuck between his teeth. He will wait for a little while, just a little while, for the afternoon is creeping past and it gets dark early these days, since the clocks went back. He can smell the sweet warmth of Petra’s cake drifting down the passage. He wants to be in the house with Petra and Tom and all the happiness and all the excitement, eating cake and keeping warm, waiting for Petra’s news. If he dares, when Rodney comes, he will say, ‘No, not today.’ If Rodney comes soon, for he won’t wait long. It is cold in the passage and the wind blows leaves and a crackly crisp bag about his feet.

  The shouting has stopped so maybe Rodney will be out in a minute. The shouting was terrible. It is terrible to hear grownup voices raised like that. Petra never shouts like that, nor does Tom. Nell’s voice was like a wild screeching, rising and rising, though he could not make out the words; and he could hear Rodney too, shouting and bellowing, and even sobbing. And there were thumping and crashing sounds, as if furniture was being moved about, knocked over, and the sound of breaking glass. Wolfe listened to that and he was frightened. At least they are quiet now. He will not wait much longer for Rodney. Surely Rodney will understand that he could not wait now that it is getting cold and dusky? But then he might be angry with Wolfe and Wolfe could not bear it if Rodney shouted at him like that, in that bellowing voice, loud enough to rattle the glass in the door.

  It is very quiet now that the shouting has stopped. It is very quiet but for the scratching sound of the leaves and the crisp bag blowing about, and the faint murmur of the radio from his own house. They are listening to Afternoon Theatre, and the cosy smell of the cake is seeping out, calling to him. He keeps his eyes on the door, but there is no movement. He can’t wait much longer. He will not. He shivers.

  Bobby and Buffy arrive suddenly, their voices loud and familiar and quarrelsome, their school-bags slung over their shoulders.

  ‘What are you hanging about there for?’ Bobby asks.

  ‘No reason,’ says Wolfe.

  ‘Come on in then,’
Buffy says and opens the door. ‘It’s freezing.’ Wolfe follows them into the warmth and the light, glad to have his mind made up for him, glad not to be walking with Rodney through the blowing leaves and into the nearly dark. Rodney might not be a proper stranger, but he is strange for a grown-up. Not like a proper grown-up at all in some ways. And his eyes without glasses are pale and frightened eyes, curled-up eyes, like woodlice when you lift a stone.

  Petra smiles at Wolfe. ‘There you are at last,’ she says. ‘I was wondering where you’d got to. We were just about to send a search party out, weren’t we, Tom?’

  ‘Were you?’ Wolfe asks, comforted.

  The cake sits on a plate in the middle of the table, a round cake dappled with fruit and nuts and sprinkled with brown sugar.

  ‘Now that we’re all here, I’ve got some news,’ Petra says. Her eyes are sparkly and excited. ‘Sit down, and I’ll cut the cake.’

  Tom is sitting at the table with a cigarette dangling from his smile. He winks at Wolfe, and Wolfe sits down beside him.

  Petra begins to slice the cake, and a sweet steam rises from it into the air. Petra gives the first slice to Wolfe, and as he sinks his teeth into the warm and spicy sweetness, all the cold and worrisome thoughts of Rodney float right out of his head.

  Nell sits bolt-upright on the edge of the sofa. The room is cold. She will switch the gas fire on soon. It is nearly six o’clock. She can switch the gas fire on when it is six o’clock. Her eyes are on the clock. Her vision bores a tunnel through the room, outside which all is blurred. She keeps the tunnel focused on the clock. Jim used to wind that clock before he went upstairs to bed every night, and Nell has kept up the tradition. It is a reliable clock and when it says six o’clock she will switch on the fire. In order to switch on the fire she will have to step over Rodney.

  In the corner is the telephone. It has hardly been used since Jim passed over. Some bills have only the rental charge on them. She means to have it disconnected. It is only another thing to dust. But now she could use it to ring for an ambulance. She could dial 999 – but that seems an awful fuss to make. It is best to keep this sort of thing within the walls of the house, no call to go making a performance of it. And the carpet will be a devil to clean. But no, she will not look down, not until six o’clock. Her own head is numb where Rodney grabbed her hair, and her face throbs where he struck her. And Rodney lies sprawled on the floor. It’s a mercy Jim is upstairs. It would have upset him to see Rodney go for Nell like that. Insane. Like a wild beast, not her son, not a cherub of a baby with eyelashes long enough to make women sigh. A wild beast. And what was his reason? That she had cleaned his room! That she had taken the trouble to clear out all that old rubbish, all that old rubbish that meant nothing any more.

  Now Rodney groans. ‘Mum …’ he says. But Nell will not look at him, not yet, great big baby, making such a fuss. Rodney groans again and is quiet. There is his breathing; there is the ticking of the clock; sometimes a car goes past; sometimes there is a voice or footsteps outside. Otherwise it is quiet.

  She should scrub the carpet now, while the blood is still wet. Then she might get away without a stain. That is the only solution, otherwise it will be ruined and she’ll never afford another of this quality. Jim always insisted on the best – one hundred per cent pure virgin wool, none of your poly-propelene for them. She must do it. It would be plain wicked to sit there and let the blood dry and ruin her carpet for ever, a wicked waste. And anyway it is six o’clock, time to move.

  She focuses her eyes on Rodney and it looks as if the blood is thickening on his head. That is good – no use cleaning while it’s still flowing. She stands up and her own head hurts as she moves and she knows she must look a fright, and there is blood on her apron too, and on her cardigan. She dithers for a minute, unsure where to start. She goes to the airing cupboard and finds an old sheet which she folds into a pad, and then, to be quite sure, backs with a polythene bag. She tries to roll Rodney over with her foot. It is difficult, for he is heavy and struggles clumsily against her, and she has to kneel down eventually and use both hands and all her strength to roll him away from the sticky patch on the carpet. She puts the padded sheet under his head to prevent any more damage.

  In the bathroom she takes off her blood-stained clothes and puts them to soak in a bath of cold water. Cold water is quite sufficient to lift blood out of clothes, so long as it isn’t allowed to dry. She puts on her housecoat and her rubber gloves. She fills a bucket with water and detergent. She takes a scrubbing brush and a sponge, and then she sets to work. Once she is scrubbing it is all right. The important thing is to save the carpet. It keeps her warm, working so hard, and there is not even any need to switch on the fire after all that, and that will save on the bill. But the important thing is to save the carpet. Never mind about tea, tea can come later. Rodney will probably turn his nose up at it anyway. Poached eggs she’d thought. But no, eggs are not safe any more. Welsh rabbit then, with a splash of Lea and Perrins. Two slices, for this is hard and hungry work. Her stomach rumbles at the thought, a cold mechanical sound. She has a good technique: first she scrubs a patch of the carpet with detergent until there is a vivid pink foam and then she sponges it up and squeezes the sponge into the bucket. It is coming up a treat. She’ll scrub the whole stain and then fetch clean water and go over it again and again until eventually the foam remains white, and the carpet is clean.

  The redness reminds her of the cochineal she used to use to make pink icing for birthday cakes. She remembers a birthday party when she was a child, her own party. In the centre of the table there had been a pink and silver cake, a great glamorous mountain of a cake, and everyone had sung to her and raised their glasses. And she made cakes like that for Rodney every year, wanting him to have happy memories, beating the cochineal into the butter icing until it was the most delicate shade of pink. Perhaps it would have been better if she’d had a girl. Perhaps she could have managed a girl. She always iced birthday cakes with pink, until she learnt that cochineal was made of crushed-up beetles’ wings. And anyway, there’s been no call for birthday cakes, not for donkey’s years.

  ‘Mum,’ says Rodney suddenly, bringing her back to the moment with a start. She’d almost forgotten he was there.

  ‘Don’t fuss,’ gasps Nell. The scrubbing is hard, it makes her breathless. ‘I’ll just get this done and then I’ll see to tea.’ Her head is beginning to throb in earnest now. The claws are tightening again. And maybe it was wrong of her to throw the iron at Rodney like that when he came at her like a wild beast. Maybe it was wrong, but she didn’t mean any harm. She didn’t mean such harm.

  ‘I think it’s time you went to bed.’ Nell leans over Rodney and pokes him with her toe. ‘You can’t lie about there all night like a spare part. And you’ve let your tea get cold. Come on.’ She kneels beside him and lugs him up into a sitting position. The cut on his head has stopped bleeding although it gapes still and his hair is clotted with big blobs of blood, shiny as black currants.

  ‘Can’t,’ murmurs Rodney.

  ‘No such word,’ Nell says. ‘Now come on, set your mind to it. Turn over onto your hands and knees …’ She half shoves, half helps him over. ‘Good,’ she encourages. ‘That’s very good, see, you can do it if you try.’ She picks up his glasses and rubs them with her apron. ‘Now, crawl to the stairs.’ She stands behind him, her arms folded, watching him inch precariously forward. ‘A bit further,’ she says. It feels all right with him down on his hands and knees, a harmless baby. She feels better about him as she follows him along, urges him up the stairs and into his cold clean room.

  ‘I had to do it,’ she says, closing the window. ‘There was so much rubbish, so much old junk. Mites can live on anything, you know, and worms eat through the pages of books. Don’t know what I was thinking of, harbouring such rubbish.’ She refrains from thinking about the rubbish still floating in the toilet. ‘Dustbin day tomorrow,’ she says. ‘First thing I’ll get out and get that lot bagged up.’ S
he looks out into the dark garden where the page of a book flaps feebly to and fro in the light from the window.

  The bed is in the middle of the floor and there is nothing else. The curtains have gone and the rug, and the bookshelves are bare. One cupboard stands empty, its door open. The room smells of bleach. ‘It’s all right now,’ Nell says comfortingly, looking round. She helps Rodney heave himself onto the bed. He is the only unclean thing in the room. His jacket and shirt are bloody. He must be washed, she realises, looking unhappily at his trousers, undressed and washed – but that can wait till morning. Her head will stand no more tonight. She puts the pad of sheet under his head to stop him soiling the pillow, takes off his shoes, covers him with a blanket and tucks his glasses under the pillow.

  ‘God bless,’ she says and the words dislodge a memory. There was a lullaby she used to sing. She hums feebly for a moment until the words come back, and her voice vibrates through the coldness, a high mosquito whine:

  ‘Wink and Blink and a Nod, one night,

  Sailed off in a wooden shoe,

  Over a river of crystal light

  And into a sea of blue.

  ‘“Where are you going and what do you wish?”

  The old man asked the three.

  “We’re going to fish for the herring fish,

  That live in the beautiful sea.”’

  Rodney’s face twitches once, as if he is puzzled, and then he is still. ‘God Bless, my cherub,’ she whispers and she goes out, closing the door silently behind her, for her baby is sleeping, as peacefully as ever.

  ‘What’s been going off?’ asks Jim the moment she enters the bedroom, ‘all that banging and shouting.’

  ‘Nothing, love,’ Nell says, undressing beneath her nightdress, ‘nothing to worry yourself over.’ She touches his frame with her fingertips. ‘God bless,’ she says and then, without warning, flips him onto his face, for she is in no mood for his fretting tonight.