Trick or Treat (2 page)

‘Trickortreat,' say Bobby and Buffy. Buffy kicks Wolfe's ankle.

‘Miaow!' he cries.

‘Delightful,' the man says, rubbing his hands together. ‘Trick or treat, now what shall it be?'

‘Trickortreat,' they all repeat together.

‘Would you like to come inside?' says the man, ‘and we'll see what we can find?'

‘No thanks,' says Buffy, reaching for Wolfe's hand. ‘It doesn't matter. Sorry to have disturbed you.' They start to back away.

‘Oh shame,' calls the man after them. ‘Won't you reconsider? I've got such a lovely treat for you…' They turn away, but not before he has flicked his dressing-gown aside.

‘Dirty old bugger!' shouts Bobby. ‘Pervert!' And they pelt away, laughing fearfully. They run all the way to their own street, Buffy dragging Wolfe who keeps on treading on his tail.

‘Told you we shouldn't …' pants Wolfe eventually, when they've stopped and are leaning against their own front wall, catching their breath.

‘Shut your face,' says Bobby.

‘I've lost my crisps!' wails Wolfe.

‘Shall we tell Mum about the man?' asks Buffy.

‘No,' Bobby says, ‘She'd only worry. She'd probably call the police or something stupid. That would be
really
embarrassing.'

‘We'd better go down the chippie then,' says Buffy. ‘My lantern's gone out, has yours? I'm leaving it here.' They all leave their pumpkins on the wall and trail off dispiritedly down the hill to the chip shop. Wolfe's tights sag at the back so that a little semicircle of bottom shows above the droop of his tail.

‘Oh, switch it off,' says Olive. It is a load of rubbish these days, a load of drivel. Arthur switches off the television and the room is loud with silence. ‘That's better,' Olive says. ‘Can't bear it sometimes, Artie, the way it goes on and on, one thing after another, no time to think. Is it my age, Artie? Or is it my nerves?'

Arthur bends over and brushes her hair with his lips. ‘It's discrimination,' he decides. ‘You're a discriminating woman. You're the lass I met fifty-odd years back. A lass with a mind of her own.'

Olive snorts. ‘A mind of my own. Don't know about that. Don't know what's up with me, lately. Getting dull. Can't string two thoughts together any more. And I never was stupid, was I?'

‘You never were. Maybe you're tired.'

‘But I never do anything! What shall I do? What did I ever do?'

‘Come on, now …'

‘Remember the games, Artie, how we used to play games? Silly games, word games?'

‘Aye, I remember. What were that daft one? Word associations or somat.'

‘That's it! Let's play. Let me see if I can still play.'

Arthur hesitates. ‘I don't know …'

‘Oh go on Artie, you start.' Olive looks expectantly at him and he grins.

‘Oh all right. Er … let me think. Earth.'

‘Sun.'

‘Sky.'

‘That's it!'

‘Go on then. Sky.'

‘Cloud.'

‘Good. Rain.'

‘Spain.'

Arthur looks perplexed.

‘You know, Artie. What is it? The rain in Spain rains mainly on the–'

‘Plain.'

‘Plane. Er … sky.'

‘Had it.'

‘Have we, Artie? All right. Tree?'

‘Green.'

‘Leaves.'

‘Cabbage.'

‘Food.'

‘Drink.' Olive's eyes slide vaguely away.

‘Good,' says Arthur. ‘See, you can do it. You can still play.'

‘Drink,' insists Olive. ‘Go on Artie, pour me a drink.'

‘You know what the doctor said.'

‘Oh bugger the doctor.'

‘All right. Just a drop then.' Arthur is incapable of denying Olive anything. He takes two misty gold-ringed glasses from the cupboard and pours a drop of brandy into each.

‘I
was
beautiful once, wasn't I Artie? In those days I was,' Olive pleads suddenly. She fills the floor in front of the gas fire. Her colourless hair is an orange cloud, stained by its glow. One of her cheeks is baked pink in its heat. Her breasts are massive under her woollen jumper. On her feet are big man's slippers and baggy socks.

‘You were, me duck.'

‘More beautiful than
her
.'

‘Who?'

‘The new woman next door. I saw you looking, Artie. The one with all the children.'

‘Olive! And you
were
beautiful.'

‘I had my chances, you know. Could've had anyone.
Anyone
. My waist was twenty-two inches, you know, Arthur, and the men used to look at me. They all wanted me, like that, they all wanted me. I used to tease them, you know Artie, on the ward.'

‘I bet they didn't know what'd hit them, a nurse like you!'

‘But I was a good nurse. I'd give them the eye though … speed up recovery, or just cheer the poor buggers up. I could've had any one of them.'

‘I know that, Ollie. I know how lucky I was.'

Olive swallows her brandy and subsides. Arthur fetches her tin of sweets. ‘Here we are,' he says, and places them beside her on the floor. The room fills with the crackling of paper and the sound of her chewing and sucking the sticky caramels against her teeth.

She drifts back to the years before the war. Amongst those years are days that are as glossy in her memory as the photographs in an expensive book. Half her time then was taken up with work and the rest with cycling across the city to attend meetings, so that there was hardly the time left to sleep. Those were the days when sleep seemed a nuisance, a waste of crucial time, for that was the time before the danger of Hitler was widely realised, when Arthur and his kind laboured to make people wake up to the threat of another world war. Those were the days when she was the most alive, when she was the most engaged with the world: the days of her life that mattered.

‘Allotment tomorrow if weather's right,' Arthur says. ‘Might get broad beans in. Might lift first parsnips. Best if they're frosted but we could have some with our Sunday dinner.'

‘And what will I do?' asks Olive in a caramel splutter.

‘You can rest, Ollie, or go for walk. Doctor said you should make effort. Get out in air.'

‘Maybe I'll take Potty,' Olive says. ‘Yes, I will. I'll wear my cherry hat and I'll take Potkins for a walk.'

The house is warm when the children get back and they sit at the kitchen table eating their chips with greasy fingers. Petra leans over Bobby's shoulder and takes one. ‘Mum!' he complains.

Petra's face is white. Wolfe holds out his biggest chip to her. She looks tired and fat with the new baby stretching her jumper out of shape.

‘Well?' she says. ‘Tell me how you got on. Was it good? Did you have fun? Did anyone actually give you anything?'

‘It was all right,' says Buffy with her mouth full.

Petra takes Wolfe's chip and smiles at him. ‘Did you get anything Wolfie?' Wolfe shakes his head. ‘What's the matter?' She can always tell. She can see inside him and always tell when he is sad. ‘It was all right, wasn't it? No one was horrible to you? Oh I
knew
I shouldn't have let you go.'

‘It was all right,' says Bobby. Buffy looks warningly at Wolfe, but he won't say anything anyway. He tries not to say things to Petra that will worry her more.

‘It was all right, Mum,' he says. Poor Petra. She was all right when they were at the Longhouse. They were quite happy then, all of them. Wolfe aches with homesickness when he remembers the warm crowdedness of it and he thinks that Petra does too. They were all settled until she had to go and fall in love with Tom and start another baby, and move them all up North to be with him. But Tom hasn't been around much lately, and Petra has always got red eyes and she is always sniffling.

In the Longhouse there was always someone to talk to when you were worried, but here there is no one.

‘It will be good living in a little house,' Petra had told them. ‘Just think, our own kitchen, our own decisions – no more meetings! No more rotas!' But even then, even before they left, Wolfe thought that her voice sounded wavery, as if she wasn't really sure.

At first it
had
been fun. Wolfe loves his own room where he can shut the door and no one steals his socks or borrows his books without asking him. But that is the only thing that is better. He misses the huge garden and the chickens and the big black stove where you can dry your gloves and warm your bum. He misses his friends. And when the baby comes, when it is big enough to sleep away from Petra it will sleep with him. So it won't be just his room any more.

Petra doesn't look like the other children's mothers at Wolfe's new school. She wears the wrong sort of clothes. She looks older than them, and she looks younger. She looks younger because she doesn't wear lipstick or stuff round her eyes, and she doesn't wear high heels to make her walk like a mother; and she looks older because she looks so sad. There are grooves ready for tears on her cheeks, and very long grey bits in her trailing hair.

Wolfe misses his friends at the Longhouse. They never made fun of his name. Nobody likes Wolfe at his new school because he talks funny, but that is all right because he doesn't like them either. They think he's scruffy and his hair is too long. And they look at his skin in a funny way. And in country dancing nobody will hold his hand because of his eczema.
And
they make fun of his name.

‘You can finish my chips, I'm full,' he says to Petra.

‘Lovely,' says Petra, ‘I'm quite hungry now.' She squeezes herself onto the edge of his chair.

‘Why did you have to go and call me Wolfe?' he asks suddenly. Petra looks at him, surprised.

‘Because you're so ugly,' Buffy says, pulling a face at him. ‘
We
got named after singers, Bobby and me, didn't we Mum? Because we're stars.'

Petra ignores her. ‘When you were born you were covered in long hairs,' she explains. Wolfe grimaces. ‘And it was very strange because just before you were born I'd had an amazing dream about a wolf, a very kind and wise wolf that walked about on two legs like a man. I didn't mean to call you Wolfe, it just sort of happened. I was going to call you that until I thought of something else … and it just stuck. Anyway, I think it's quite distinguished. It suits you.'

‘It's a bit embarrassing for him,' says Buffy.

‘No it's not,' says Petra.

‘It is, isn't it?' Buffy arches her eyebrows at Wolfe.

‘Sort of,' he agrees. ‘I do like it, Mum, honest. It's just that the kids here tease me about it.'

‘Oh dear.' Petra presses her lips together until they go white at the edges, and the dark wriggly lines that Wolfe hates appear on her forehead.

‘But it doesn't matter,' he insists. ‘Don't worry.'

‘Well,' Petra sighs and gets up and collects together the greasy chip papers. She screws them into a big ball. ‘I'm afraid if they want to tease you they'll find something. If it's not your name it's your teeth or your ears, or something.'

‘Or my skin,' Wolfe whispers.

‘Where's Tom?' asks Bobby suddenly.

‘Out,' Petra says in her quick voice, the voice that means No more questions. But from the way Bobby and Buffy exchange glances it is clear that they have planned this. Planned to find out what's happening.

‘Out where?' Buffy dares. ‘He's always out.'

‘I haven't even seen him for days,' adds Bobby.

‘You haven't split up, have you?'

Petra throws the paper in the bin and the lid snaps down sharply. ‘Of course not,' she says, but she does not turn round to look at them. Wolfe can see from the way her back is scrunched up that they might have done. That Petra is not sure. ‘I want all that black plastic and all those pumpkin seeds cleared up from the front-room carpet before you go to bed,' she says, and she sounds as if she might be going to cry again and Wolfe is cross with Bobby and Buffy. And cross with Tom.

He sits on his hands to stop himself scratching, pressing them with his legs against the hard chair-edge until they hurt, because the pain is more bearable than the itching. His skin has been worse since they've been here. It is always worse when he's unhappy. The backs of his knees and his hands are worst. First the blisters come, terribly itchy like little tight seed-pearls, and he has to watch himself all the time to stop scratching, but even if he manages all day he will scratch at night and wake up to find himself bleeding where his nails have raked his skin. Bobby and Buffy won't have his sheets on their beds because of the blood-stains all over them. Poor Petra has tried everything. First he couldn't have milk or eggs, then everything had to be washed in special stuff, and he's had so many different creams to rub on and none of them very much good … He tries to hide it from Petra mostly because it makes her so unhappy. It makes her worry. And so he tries not to make a fuss. But it is like a terrible burning, a terrible, teasing, itching burn. And it is ugly. It makes him ugly. No wonder nobody likes him here, with his ugly skin and his stupid name.

Olive is dozing on the floor now. She always dozes in the evenings, and Arthur chances switching the television back on with the volume turned right down. There is a comedy on about some people who are divorced and their stepchildren. He chuckles obediently along with the studio audience, and is sorry when it's finished. Evenings are long now that the clocks have gone back. He gets restless in the evenings, always restless with nothing much to do.

At the allotment it will be quiet now, silent, except for the rushing over stones of the dark river below. The earth will be soft and moist on this mild night, fine clean earth, earth that Arthur has created over fifty years. The turnips and the parsnips are huddled in the ground, their pale shoulders just showing above the blanket of the earth. Tomorrow he'll ease some of them up, the fat and tapering bodies, cloaked in his earth. And it's all there, waiting for him. In two days' time the moon will be full and that means it is the time to sow seeds. He might get in a first sowing of broad beans, even peas perhaps for an early crop. He rubs his hands together pleasurably. That's the beauty of working on the allotment – there's always something to do, something to draw you through the seasons, through the years.