Trick or Treat

by Lesley Glaister

  Her head is heavy on the cool pillow and she arranges her arms outside the bedspread to keep herself from overheating. Her head throbs, the soft coldness blotting the pain like lint. In the mirror she has seen the bruise on her cheek. She will look a proper sight tomorrow.

  It takes her a long time to get off to sleep. The thought of the cherry hat will not go away. She meant to go next door and ask Petra for it back, but how could she in all the kerfuffle? It is only a stupid hat, a thing, anyway. What does it matter what becomes of it? She knows all that but the thought of it will not leave her alone. When she closes her eyes she sees Olive in the hat, her lips as red as the cherries, her eyes blacker than the straw. Her eyes are bright and dancing, looking into Jim’s. Oh yes, Nell is not so naïve that she didn’t notice the fancy Olive took to Jim. Not content with one man, the alley cat. Lucky that Jim was the faithful type – not that he wasn’t flattered. Perhaps he was even tempted momentarily by Olive’s flashy charms, she can accept that. And to look at Olive now … if only Father could see how his little Gyspy had turned out.

  Nell’s face, blank in the dark, eyelids closed like lids of stone, tries to smile, but there is something niggling, something else other than the hat, other than Rodney, something wriggling almost like a worm in her mind, something she cannot identify. She cannot put her finger on it, but it is to do with Olive, something to do with Olive.

  Eventually she drifts into a troubled sleep, and in her sleep she dreams. In her dream she holds the cherry hat and Olive, the young Olive, beautiful in a white dress with a blood-stain down the front, tries to take it but she cannot. Somehow she cannot, her hand goes right through it and Nell holds tight and she feels a power, shocking, like a blast of warmth, that wakes her. In another snatch of dream, Olive is old and she is wearing something on her head, something mad, but Nell cannot quite see what it is. She has to get closer to look, walk across stepping stones, walk across stepping stones to Jim’s allotment, and there is Olive sitting outside his shed. And even though she knows in the dream that he is dead, he is still there, inside the shed, making something. She can hear him hammering and sawing. And when Nell gets close to Olive she can see that she is laughing, and her hair is thick and black again, and on her head is balanced the silver cup, the school prize.

  Nell wakes suddenly and sits up in bed, suffering with her head, feeling sick. The cup. She stole Olive’s cup and she stole Olive’s hat and now Olive is poor and fat and ridiculous. And oh how things seem different in the dark of night. She climbs out of bed and she has to use the lavatory and there are the coloured fragments bobbing in the water, the fragments that will not flush away. Nell goes back into her room and switches on the light. She stands Jim up.

  ‘All right, love?’ he says.

  ‘The hat isn’t burnt. I thought the children next door would have burnt it but they didn’t.’

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Jim says, squinting at her through the old sunshine.

  ‘I was thinking, dreaming about the cup. I didn’t steal it, not really, Jim, you know I didn’t. I found it, on the night of the Blitz when their house was hit. Things were thrown everywhere and in the morning I found the cup in our garden. It was filthy and I picked it up and polished it and I meant to give it back. I did. I always meant to give it back … but it was a difficult time, Jim, with you away and Rodney just a baby. I put it away in the sideboard, well you know, you found it there and I never got round, well I forgot all about it. After all it was a silly gimcrack really, wasn’t it, Jim? Wasn’t it? Not worth worrying about.’

  ‘Important enough for me to bury.’

  ‘Well I couldn’t give it back then, could I? Not all that time later. She didn’t need it. I don’t suppose she gave it a thought. I don’t suppose she missed it. She has everything. Olive. Wonderful Olive … deserved what she got, her poor bastard…’

  ‘Her baby, Nell, her infant.’

  ‘And she …’ but Nell cannot think now where her bitterness has gone. She is shivering. ‘No,’ she says, and there is a tremor in her throat, an odd fluttering, ‘she did not, after all, deserve that.’ She switches off the light and climbs heavily back into bed and the slight warmth she’s left there.

  ‘Sleep now, my love,’ says Jim.

  ‘Yes,’ Nell says. She lies flat on her back as usual, but unusually, tears trickle down the sides of her face. Olive is not to be envied. Perhaps she never was. Olive has not got everything, never had everything. She has not got a child. She has old Arthur, of course, but he is no man, not like Jim, he is more a lap-dog, foolish and devoted. She does not sleep again until the milky dawn seeps round the edges of the curtains.

  Ten

  Rodney is dead. Nell stands looking at him for a few minutes, puts out her finger, and touches his cheek. It is perfectly cold. His eyes, fortunately, are closed. ‘That’s that then,’ she says. In death, she can see a trace of the boy Rodney, a trace even of Jim in the set of his lips, or perhaps it is her father. ‘Good,’ she says, and shocks herself. But it is true. It is good. It will save a lot of trouble.

  Downstairs, she sits at the kitchen table and eats her All-Bran and sips her cup of tea. She feels that a weight has been lifted from her shoulders, they feel as light and fluttery as if she is sprouting wings. The beast-claws have loosened from her head and she feels clear and light. Almost light-hearted. But, of course, there is the problem of the body. Corpses are far from hygienic. Bodies are full of bacteria, live bodies that is, that are there from the moment of birth, from before birth even, lying dormant, like time bombs, waiting only for the moment of death to begin their repulsive life cycle, devouring the body from within as they spawn, making it fizz, ferment, explode. Nell read this somewhere and it has been with her ever since, just like the bacteria in her own body. And here she is with a corpse on her hands, in her Rodney’s bed. All she knows for certain is that the eyes should be closed with coins. After breakfast she visits the corpse and places a shiny ten-pence piece on each of its eyelids. She does not undress and wash it yet; that must wait until she has the time to be thorough. She does tuck a white sheet neatly around it, but she does not cover its face like they do in the films.

  If she called an undertaker, questions would be asked, would be sure to be asked. Doctors might be consulted, even the police dragged in about the gash on its head. But she has done nothing wrong. It was self-defence was the iron, and anyway, Rodney was her son. She gave him life, and she took it away. What could be fairer than that?

  In the weeks before Rodney was born, she had knitted a shawl. It was a huge complicated affair in fine white wool, a great insubstantial cobweb of a thing, but warm. A most excellent shawl. The first time she had held Rodney swathed in the shawl he had seemed to weigh almost nothing in her arms. He was such a tiny boy, but strong, and he would wave his hands about and catch the little shrimps of his fingers in the net of the shawl and wail until she freed them, and smoothed and wrapped him again into a neat soft parcel. She flinches against the remembered tenderness rising like a forgotten taste in her throat. For a moment she is almost lost. She darts her eyes around the bare bright room as if for the first time. She remembers the warm shadowy folds of the shawl and the woolly tenderness. She stands on the chilly floorboards and for a second she is caught between the two things: the warm shadows and the bare brightness; the one too far distant, too long lost, and the other too terrible to contemplate. She wavers between them for an awful elastic second and then she snaps out of it, back into the present.

  ‘Don’t go having a turn, now,’ she scolds herself. ‘You’ve things to do.’

  It is as well that it is not May or June, but November with a hint of frost in the air. She can see her breath, a clean white cloud in front of her. She opens the window wide. At this time of year, the back of the house gets no sun at all. The corpse will keep till later, at least until she has dealt with her more pressing business this morning. Nell frowns as she folds away the woollen blankets. They will have to be laund
ered before they can be used again. And the precious blue candlewick will need a wash too, and then, when the bed is vacated once more, it can lie flat again upon the empty bed, smooth and perfectly flat.

  She washes her hands, scrubs them with a brush dipped in Dettol. She scrubs till her fingertips are sore and withered. What’s done is done and she won’t start dithering now. She will think positive. She will be able to regain control. No one else will ever set foot inside the house again while she has a say in it, and she will get it clean. If she has to work night and day, she will make it safe. It’s a long time, too long, since she’s pulled out the oven or the refrigerator, to clean behind. A heavy job. Pity she didn’t get Rodney to do that. In the bathroom mirror she sees her face, an awful sight, the bruise on her cheek an angry swelling. Once that has faded, she will make an appointment for a perm. Her curls are getting loose and wild.

  She bares her teeth in an ivory smile, for today she has good to do, amends to make. The wriggling worm in her mind is good. It is a clean and golden worm, not a nasty thing, and she is satisfied because she has worked out what it is. It is the larval form of her conscience. Poor old Olive Owens. Poor old bag. Poor fat old geriatric hag. They are in the same boat now – bereft of child – but at least Nell still has her faculties, her faculties and her figure. Olive does have Arthur, of course, but still … Nell had a terrible night, last night, what with the dreams and all, but she has woken up fired with a new resolve. She has heart enough in her thin breast to feel pity for Olive now, not sorrow, quite – for Olive at least partly deserves her condition – but pity certainly. And if she makes peace with Olive then there is always Arthur. He is a man of a sort, at least, and could perhaps be a help. He might, for instance, move the bins; and there’s the kitchen window smashed by Rodney in his tantrum. Perhaps he might see to getting that mended.

  Would Olive mind? she wonders. Would Olive be foolishly jealous? For the shoe is on the other foot now. It is Nell who is the sprightliest. Yes, she’ll have a perm as soon as she can. And perhaps she and Arthur can be a comfort to each other, once she makes her peace. For no one likes to be entirely alone.

  Olive sits up in bed with a shawl around her shoulders. She sips the tea Arthur has brought her.

  ‘I’m stopping here today,’ she mumbles.

  ‘Not feeling poorly, are you?’ Arthur asks. He looks closely at her crumpled face.

  ‘Can’t be arsed to move,’ Olive says, and Arthur winces. Olive’s language gets worse as she gets older. It is as if bad language is easier than any other, that it slips in effortlessly when her brain is only half engaged.

  ‘No need, Ollie,’ he says. ‘Eat your breakfast … here’s your teeth.’ She puts them in, and Arthur is relieved to see her face regain some structure. His own dentures are giving him gyp and he juts them forward in order to run his tongue round his sore gums.

  ‘Pee,’ Olive says plaintively. He helps her swing her heavy legs out of bed and onto the floor. Her feet and ankles are swollen and when she puts her weight on them they are pressed flat and yellow-white around the edges. Arthur follows her into the bathroom. While she sits on the toilet he runs a basin full of water for her to wash in. He looks at himself in the steamy square of mirror above the basin. His eyebrows are crags over his weak eyes. The rest of his face is shrunk to the shape of his skull, the skin brown and wrinkled as leather. He is not sorry to be old, and when he stirs the earth at the allotment with the toe of his boot he knows that he is not afraid to die. He runs his finger through the condensation on the mirror, leaving a trickling trail. It’s just a waste that it didn’t turn out better, his life, that he never did the things he said he’d do. After the war, somehow, they got stuck here, Arthur and Olive, despisers of private property, in the house that Olive had inherited from her parents. And he had worked. He had felt proud to be a worker and he had worked his best years in a steel mill and he and the mill had run down together, so that his retirement was a petering-out rather than an occasion. And it had all gone in a flash. And now he is old, and Olive is old.

  ‘All right?’ he asks. ‘Are you done?’ Olive nods and he helps her up. ‘We’ll just get you freshened up,’ he says, wringing out a flannel in the hot water. ‘How’re your knees?’ He looks at the wide flat scabs. ‘Healing fine. I’ll clip your toenails later.’

  ‘Nails,’ says Olive. ‘Come on then, Arthur, play. Nails.’

  ‘Hammer.’

  ‘Sickle.’

  ‘Hay.’

  ‘Loft.’

  ‘Roof.’

  ‘Bomb.’

  ‘Bomb?’

  ‘Our roof, in war.’

  ‘Sky … fell from.’

  ‘Sunshine.’

  ‘Summer.’

  ‘Wine … Remember that summer, Artie? With the motor bike and the side-car. We went to Devon that summer, and the verges were all lacy with that stuff …’

  ‘Cow-parsley.’

  ‘Oh the awful summery stench of it! And the poppies in the fields. Remember the cream? Strawberry jam and scones and clotted cream.’

  Arthur wipes her face. ‘Let’s get you back to bed,’ he says. ‘You want to drink your tea before it gets cold.’

  He straightens the sheets and pulls down her nightie and arranges her comfortably against her pillows. Mao jumps up and snuggles beside her, purring at full volume. ‘Yes, it were good in Devon,’ he agrees.

  ‘It’s all been good. We’ve been happy, haven’t we, Artie? Haven’t we?’

  ‘We have that, Ollie.’ Arthur watches her chew her bread and marmalade.

  ‘And I was beautiful, wasn’t I, Artie?’

  ‘You were, Ollie, and I were right lucky.’

  ‘And sexy. I could have had anyone, Artie, you know, anyone, not just her Jim.’

  Arthur sighs and nods.

  ‘Not just him, no, I could have had anyone. Baden Powell, I could have had him, or Winston Churchill … never fancied him, but he wrote to me, you know, begging … Or Omar Sharif …’

  ‘And I was the lucky one,’ says Arthur warily. He is afraid that Olive’s temper will surface now, for that is the pattern. First the memories then the fury – but this morning, so far, she is calm. He will not push his luck yet, he will not say he’s off to the allotment later on, not yet.

  ‘I’ll get pots washed,’ he says, when she’s finished her breakfast, and he takes her cup and plate downstairs and all is quiet. He breathes a heavy sigh of relief.

  Already there are boxes everywhere. In only a morning the house has been transformed from a home to just a building, a shell that they are leaving. The curtains and blinds have all been taken down so that the rooms look unusually bare and bright and scruffy in the frosty sunshine.

  Wolfe’s job is to take the books off the shelves in the front room and pack them into small cardboard boxes. It’s no good packing them into big boxes, Petra explained, because big boxes full of books are impossible to lift. He’s filled two and a half boxes and has got the sneezes from the dust that floats off the books as he pulls them out. His fingers itch too, and he pinches and squeezes the skin between them with his finger and thumb in an effort not to scratch. He wanders to the window to press his knuckles against the cold glass, and gazes out at the road, at the identical terrace of houses opposite. He does feel sad, just a bit sad, to be leaving this house. Not sad enough to cry, or even to mention it, but he has a dull feeling inside him as if something heavy is tied to his ribs, dragging him down. He thinks guiltily of Rodney. They will never have their trip to the Cutlers’ Wheel now. He doesn’t mind that for himself, but there are a few things he does mind leaving, that he will miss. One of them is his own room, with his own door to shut behind him at night. And another is Arthur – and Olive too. He likes Olive and there is something good he can do before he leaves; one thing he can do to make her happy. He goes upstairs to Petra’s room. She is up in the attic sorting Bobby and Buffy out. All her clothes are sprawled on the bed. The floor is covered with coat-hangers and sho
es and tights and socks and knickers. The wardrobe is empty – almost. He pulls up a chair and climbs up to reach the high shelf at the top. The hat is there, and he stretches up and reaches it down.

  Wolfe knocks at the door and this time it is opened almost immediately, and by Arthur.

  ‘Morning,’ Arthur says.

  ‘Hello,’ Wolfe replies. He feels shy, standing there, holding behind his back a carrier bag with the cherry hat inside. Arthur looks at him expectantly.

  ‘Do you want somat in particular, lad?’ Arthur asks.

  ‘I’ve got a present for Olive,’ Wolfe says.

  ‘Grand,’ Arthur says. ‘She’ll be right pleased. She needs somat to buck her up this morning.’ He lets Wolfe into the house. ‘You go up, and I’ll follow in a bit. Front bedroom. Can’t miss it.’

  Wolfe goes up. It is dim and chilly on the stairs and the old brown wallpaper is covered with snarling flowers. There is a fusty smell like jumble sales and old cupboards. The bedroom door is open and he peers round. ‘Hello,’ he says.

  Olive frowns at him for a moment and then her face caves into a smile. ‘It’s little lad!’ she says delightedly. ‘Have you come to visit me? Here sit down on bed. Arthur! Arthur! Bring us sweet tin upstairs …’

  Wolfe smiles and settles himself on the edge of the bed. ‘How are you?’ he asks, in the way Petra would.

  ‘Little lad who brought Mao back to me … There he is, happy as Larry.’ She indicates the sleeping cat, whose skin is quite pink in the warmth. ‘Oh it’s a long time since we had a little lad in house …’ she sighs. ‘We had a little lad once, but we don’t talk … Arthur!’ she calls again. ‘Sweets.’

  Wolfe likes the way she says the same things over and over. ‘He’ll be up in a minute,’ he explains. ‘He told me to come upstairs first because I’ve brought you a present.’