‘Present? What present? Not Christmas is it?’
‘No, I just thought you’d like it …’
‘I love presents. Always loved presents, yes I’ll like it I dare say …’ Olive stretches out her hand and Wolfe gives her the bag. She grabs it and rustles inside, greedy and urgent as a child – and pulls out the hat. ‘Artie!’ she screams, and Mao wakes and shoots off the bed like a bullet. Wolfe is quite startled himself, and jumps up. Arthur comes hurrying creakily upstairs with the sweet tin. ‘Look Artie! It’s my hat! It’s my cherry hat!’
‘Well I’ll be blowed,’ Arthur says, standing in the doorway.
‘Give him a sweet!’ cries Olive cramming the hat onto her head, ‘Oh there there, it’s all right now …’
‘Quieten down, Ollie,’ smiles Arthur, ‘you’re scaring lad, and look at Mao.’ The cat is flattened against the wall in a fierce arch.
‘Where’d you get it?’ Arthur asks.
‘Chocolate,’ Olive says. ‘Give the lad some chocolate, Artie.’ He opens the tin and Wolfe breaks himself off a square of fruit and nut. Olive fills her mouth too, and for a moment she is quiet.
‘My mum had it,’ Wolfe explains, ‘but it wasn’t really hers. I don’t think it’s yours either.’ He looks at Olive.
‘Rubbish,’ she mumbles through her mouthful.
‘Well it came from the other lady – Nell. She gave it to us for Bonfire Night.’
‘Buggering bitch!’ Olive exclaims, chocolate dribble escaping from her mouth.
‘Language …’ warns Arthur. ‘I don’t understand how …’
‘Buggering thieving bitch,’ Ollie says. ‘Sod her. Fetch me a mirror, lad.’
‘On dresser,’ Arthur says.
On the dressing table, Wolfe finds a small hand-mirror with a pattern of pansies on the back. It is dusty so he wipes it on his sleeve before he hands it to Olive. She peers at her reflection for several moments, the cherry hat askew, a brown chocolate-ringed smile upon her face.
Arthur winks at Wolfe, or perhaps it is just a twitch, and Wolfe looks around the room at all the pictures on the walls, pictures of people waving banners and marching, lots of pictures of a pretty woman like a film star, a painting of a volcano.
‘We’re moving,’ Wolfe announces, suddenly. ‘Part of why I’ve come is to say goodbye.’
‘Moving?’
‘Going back home, to the Longhouse where we came from.’
‘Didn’t realise it was fixed up. Your mum never said,’ Arthur says.
‘We only decided yesterday …’
‘And when are you off?’
‘Tonight if we’re ready. Tom’s borrowing a van.’
‘That’s quick isn’t it?’ says Olive.
‘It’s because Mum’s baby is coming soon. She wants to have it there. It’s a commune and I was born there,’ he finishes proudly.
‘That’s what Artie wanted, to live in a, whatsit, in a community.’
‘Why didn’t you then?’ Wolfe asks.
Arthur shrugs.
‘He lost heart after lad,’ Olive says.
Arthur looks at her so sadly that it brings a lump to Wolfe’s throat. He does not know what to say, but he clears his throat and tries. ‘I’m sorry about the lad,’ he says, ‘but maybe you could come and visit us at the Longhouse. People do visit.’ Arthur tries to smile, but this only makes him look sadder.
‘Well, I’d better go,’ Wolfe says. ‘I didn’t tell Mum I was coming round, and I’ve got to pack the books.’
‘Have another sweet before you go,’ Olive says. Wolfe is beginning to feel sick, but he takes a toffee and puts it in his pocket.
He smiles at Olive. ‘Well, bye-bye then. You look very nice in the hat,’ he adds, truthfully.
Arthur opens the door for Wolfe and he steps outside. ‘Just a minute,’ Arthur says. ‘Here,’ he reaches in his pocket for a pound coin, and pulls out the godstone too. He opens his palm to Wolfe. Wolfe almost picks up the coin, but then hesitates, his fingers poised over the stone.
‘That’s a nice stone,’ he says. ‘Can I look at it?’
‘Take it,’ Arthur says.
Wolfe holds it in his palm. It feels warm and special and friendly. It is like a little piece of Arthur, broken off and clean and white and warm. ‘It feels like … magic …’ he breathes.
‘You take it then, keep it safe.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I’ll tell you story of stone,’ Arthur says. ‘It were in war, I didn’t fight in war, refused … conscientious objectors they called us, and those of us that weren’t locked up did different kinds of work. Well I worked on land. Best years of my life if only I’d known … one of my mates there were an old fella, Bill his name were. He give me the stone one day, told me it were his father’s and maybe his father’s before him, but Bill hadn’t had no kids and so he gave it me. I’ve had it in my pocket ever since and that were … nearly fifty year back.’ Arthur’s voice is wavery, his pale eyes watery and far away.
‘You can’t give it to me! Not if you’ve had it all that time,’ Wolfe says, but his fist has closed round the stone all the same, and he doesn’t want to let it go. He wants to take it with him to the Longhouse, because holding it in his hand will be like holding Arthur’s hand.
‘Take it, please,’ Arthur says. ‘It’s a gardener’s godstone. A talisman. You hold it in your hand after you’ve set seeds and wish them strength – and just see how they grow.’
Wolfe pauses. ‘Well, I am going to plant an apple tree at the Longhouse,’ he says.
‘There you are then, you’d best take stone.’ Arthur clasps Wolfe’s fist in his hand and gives it a squeeze.
‘Thank you,’ Wolfe says. He pauses. He’d like to ask about the lad, but doesn’t dare. It is something terrible. It must be something terrible to make Arthur look so sad. ‘If there’s a war when I’m grown-up,’ he says, ‘I’ll be a conscientious objector too, like you.’
‘You get off now,’ Arthur says, quite brusquely, and closes the door. Wolfe stands outside for a moment, disappointed by the farewell, puzzled by Arthur’s sudden change of tone. He has not even promised to visit. But the godstone is warm in his hand, and he has work to do. He goes back home, his brow wrinkled in a frown. Grown-ups can be so odd. But at least Olive is happy about the hat.
The taxi drops Nell off on the road at the top of the allotments. She is bright with good intentions. The first part of her plan might have gone puzzlingly wrong but she will carry on regardless. She went next door this morning to ask for the hat back, and was surprised to find them packing up ready to leave. It seems a funny way to go on. Only been there a few months and flitting already, a fly-by-night job by the look of it and her looking fit to drop that baby any minute. And she couldn’t find the hat, or said she couldn’t. She did admit to having it, and even wearing it, just once, ‘Just trying it for size,’ she had said, having the grace to look a bit embarrassed. She looked for it, or pretended to look, but there was no sign – no wonder in all that mess and muddle. So that is that as far as the hat is concerned. And that is all right because if they are moving and if they take it away to Suffolk or wherever it is they’re going then at least there’s no danger of Arthur or Olive seeing it about. So that is all right. But the second part of her plan she is determined to carry out.
It is awkward lumping Jim’s fork and spade along, with her handbag bumping against her side and all, but Nell is not complaining. She has work to do. It was the dreams that nudged her this way, her dreams and Jim. He is in her handbag now, jolting against her thigh, and he will have a nice surprise when she gets him out on the allotment. And she will dig with his spade, she knows the place. She remembers Jim setting the turf over the place where, after the war, after he’d discovered it in the back of the sideboard drawer, he’d buried the cup for her.
‘OLIVE OWENS,’ he’d read, ‘EXCELLENCE. What are you doing with it, Nellie?’ And she’d had to explain, shamefaced, red-faced, that it was onl
y to keep it safe that she’d picked the cup up, and only out of kindness that she’d polished it – for Olive had never bothered and it was dull and tarnished – and it was only forgetfulness that kept her from giving it back. ‘It’s gone for good now as far as she’s concerned,’ she begged Jim. ‘She doesn’t care. She’s more than likely forgotten all about it. It never mattered to her, not really. And I can’t give it back now, it would look … it would look as if …’
‘Hmmm,’ he’d said and given her a very sideways look. ‘Well you can’t keep it either,’ he’d said. And when he’d gone up to the allotment to sort out the bomb damage he’d taken it and buried it, with some other rubbish. He hadn’t even had to dig a hole. The bomb had fallen between the two allotments and Jim had simply put the things in the hole and turfed over the lot so that it would never be disturbed.
And now Olive will have it back. A peace offering. Of course, Nell doesn’t expect a civil word from the poor creature, but that is not the point. The point is the thing that niggles, pity or conscience or whatever it really is. The return of the cup should still it.
The books are all packed in the boxes and neatly stacked. Wolfe stands at the window, his breath misting a little circle in front of his face. The godstone is warm in his hand. He has shown it to no one. It will be his secret and he will use it on the Longhouse garden and they will be amazed at the greenness of his fingers, and one day when he is as old and craggy as Arthur he will pass it on to some other boy or girl.
The house is quiet. Petra and Buffy are upstairs finishing off the bedrooms and Tom and Bobby have gone to collect the moving van and fill it with petrol and oil. Wolfe can hardly believe the speed at which things are happening. Important things, grown-up things like moving house, usually take for ever, weeks and weeks at the very least. But they are going already, in just a few hours they will be gone. And tonight they will sleep at the Longhouse. Tom will come back and finish off. They cannot pack everything in one day, but Petra doesn’t want to risk another night, she says, because she has had something called a show. It couldn’t have been much of one for Wolfe didn’t notice a thing, but it means that the baby is certainly coming soon. And that means Wolfe will be a big brother.
As he gazes out of the window, he sees Arthur go off, his cap pulled down over his eyes, his baggy trousers flapping round his thin legs. Wolfe bangs on the window and Arthur removes his hand from his pocket and raises it in greeting: no smile, just a grown-up nod of the head. Wolfe, with the warm stone in his hand, does the same.
He is about to wander off, go upstairs and see if he can help Petra, when he notices Kropotkin running out into the road. Wolfe watches him dart stupidly about, and stop right in the middle of the road wagging his stumpy tail. ‘Mum!’ he calls, ‘Arthur’s dog is out.’
‘Never mind,’ calls Petra.
‘But he shouldn’t be!’
‘He’ll be all right.’
‘Mind your own business,’ calls Buffy from the attic.
Kropotkin looks at Wolfe through the glass. He puts his head on one side and barks. Wolfe goes outside. Petra and Buffy are wrong. He knows that the dog is never allowed outside like that. He’ll get run over scampering about in the road. Arthur would never allow him out like that. He goes out the front.
‘Potkins!’ he calls. Kropotkin looks at him and barks. ‘Come on, Potkins.’ The dog charges towards him, and Wolfe tries to catch his collar and misses. He goes half-way down the passage between his house and Nell’s – so that at least the dog will be off the road – and calls again. Kropotkin, his mouth frothing with excitement, dives down the passage, almost bowling Wolfe from his feet. He plunges straight through the open gate and into the house. Wolfe hurries in after him. Luckily Petra and Buffy are still upstairs. But Nothing has jumped onto the table in terror, her fur standing out like electrified soot, spitting ferociously. Potkins jumps around the table yapping, his claws scrabbling on the lino.
‘Shhh,’ says Wolfe, helplessly. Nothing chooses that moment of new-born panic to jump from the table and out of the open back door. ‘Oh no …’ Wolfe dives after her. Nothing is not allowed outside yet, not until she’s had her injections, and now the dog is after her, looks as if he will eat her if Wolfe is not quick.
Nothing slips under the hedge and into Nell’s garden. Kropotkin scratches at the earth under the hedge, trying to force himself through a little gap, his fat body wagging deliriously. Wolfe struggles to unlatch Nell’s gate in order to get in and rescue the kitten before Kropotkin reaches her. But Nothing has already clambered up a bulging rubbish sack and onto Nell’s kitchen window-sill, where Wolfe cannot quite reach her. There is a pane of glass missing from the window and Wolfe watches aghast as the kitten pushes herself through the sheet of plastic that has been Sellotaped over it. Her tail vanishes like a fluffy caterpillar, just as Kropotkin, with bits of stick stuck in his curly hair and his collar, bursts through the hedge.
‘Oh no,’ Wolfe mouths, staring at the window. He will have to get Nothing out or Buffy will go berserk. He does not want to see Nell, and he certainly doesn’t want to see Rodney – not after letting him down yesterday – but there is nothing else he can do. He knocks at the door, timidly at first and then more loudly. He hears the kitten mewing in the kitchen, but apart from that the house is quiet. He waits a bit longer and then he goes to the funny curved shed and opens the door. Inside are a wheelbarrow, a rake, a pair of old boots and what he had hoped to find – a pair of step-ladders. He drags them out. They are old and heavy and the hinges creak when he opens them and he notices that the string is very frayed. He is terrified but he will be brave. The ladder wobbles with the stupid dog jumping round it and barking so loudly. ‘Shhh,’ he pleads again, and reaches over and gets his knee on the window-sill just as Kropotkin hurls his whole weight against the ladder, snapping the string and sending it crashing to the ground. Luckily, Wolfe is already half-way through the window. He pushes the sheet of polythene aside and the Sellotape tears from the frame and he is in, perched in the sink, his dirty shoes fizzing in some horrible bleachy stuff. He pulls out the plug and jumps down.
‘Wolfe!’ comes Petra’s voice from outside. ‘Whatever is going on?’ He does not answer at once. He is in real trouble now, he knows it. He tiptoes out of the kitchen and into the dining-room searching for Nothing. The place is clean and cold and smells of swimming-pools.
‘Wolfe! Are you all right? For goodness sake answer me!’ He hears her trying the door.
‘What are you doing?’ cries Buffy. ‘Where’s Nothing? You left the door wide open and the gate … you just wait …’
Wolfe catches sight of Nothing hiding under the sideboard. He squats down and reaches for her and grasps her slight body and is so relieved to feel her cool live fur that he doesn’t even care when her pinpoint teeth nip his thumb, and her claws catch in his skin. He carries Nothing to the door and tries it from the inside but it is locked with a key and the key is not there.
‘Mum!’ he shouts. ‘I’m in here. I can’t get out.’ His voice sounds very small and high-pitched in the lonely house.
‘What on earth are you doing in there? Is anyone with you?’
‘I came to rescue Nothing. Potkins was after her.’ Buffy gives a little scream. ‘She’s all right, Buff. I’ve got her, but I can’t get out. No one else is here. I got in through the window.’
‘Can’t you get back out of the window?’ Petra asks. ‘We’ll catch you if you can get back onto the sill.’
‘No I can’t … if I climb up I’ll have to let go of Nothing. Mum…’ Wolfe begins to prickle with fear. The house is so very quiet and so very cold. ‘Get me out, Mum.’
‘Have you tried the front door?’ Petra asks. Wolfe tries it, but as well as two separate locks and not a key to be seen, there is a great big bolt right at the top.
‘I’m looking for a key,’ Petra calls. ‘There must be a spare key hidden somewhere …’ her voice fades away a bit. ‘I’m looking in the shed,’ she call
s. ‘It’s an air-raid shelter,’ she explains to Buffy. ‘I bet there’s a key here somewhere … ah! here we are. It’s all right, Wolfe, I’ve found a key.’
Wolfe waits behind the door and listens to the key scrabbling in the lock. He is scared to look behind him now. What if Rodney is in the house, quietly listening to them? What if he is behind him watching with cold and angry eyes?
‘Quick, Mum,’ he says. The kitten wriggles in his hands. ‘Quick, Mum,’ he says again, squirming with anxiety. He needs a pee. The door opens suddenly inwards and Wolfe is nearly knocked off his feet by an explosion of dog, as Potkins bounds in and rushes around dementedly, knocking over chairs, knocking over a tin bucket and a mop and then charging up the stairs yapping furiously.
‘Oh my God,’ gasps Petra.
‘Give me my cat,’ Buffy demands. She snatches Nothing from Wolfe’s hands and stomps off back to their house.
‘Are you all right, Wolfe?’ Petra asks, hugging him briefly. ‘Then go upstairs and chase the dog down again. I’ll catch him. Hurry up. We’d better get out of here before anyone comes back. She’d go bonkers if she caught us in here.’
Wolfe clutches himself between his legs. He breathes in. And then he does what he’s told, he follows Kropotkin up the stairs. The dog is barking and scratching at the door of a bedroom and he will not give up no matter how much Wolfe calls or pulls him by his collar. The only thing he can think of is to open the door and let the dog in so that he can chase him out and downstairs. The room is as cold as a fridge. The window is open to a rectangle of brilliant blue sky. The room is empty. Expect for a bed. Except for a bed with a man in it. A man with his head smashed in. Wolfe is frozen to the spot. The man’s face is blue and there is money on his eyes. It is Rodney. Wolfe backs out of the room. Potkins skitters round the bare splintery floorboards, his breath leaving great doggy clouds in the clean air.
‘Potkins!’ calls Petra from the bottom of the stairs, ‘here boy!’ and the dog gives a yelp of excitement and hurls himself out past Wolfe and back down the stairs.
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