Moon Pie (2 page)

She looked out of the window, but the moon was gone. She was too sleepy to worry any more, and she finally closed her eyes. The last thing she heard before she fell asleep was Dad coming up the stairs whistling.

T
he doctors’ surgery was across the park, by a little lake. There were coots on the lake, and swans and geese. The geese were noisy: sometimes they screamed like babies.

‘I don’t like gooses,’ Tug said.

‘Geese,’ Martha said.

‘Don’t like gooses myself,’ Dad said. ‘Dirty birds. Perhaps,’ he added, ‘I shall tell the doctor that one of his gooses attacked me.’

He limped along the gravel path, wincing and occasionally stumbling. One of his eyes had closed up, and he wore dark glasses to hide the bruising.

As they walked along, Martha looked at him. It wasn’t just the bruising that made him look odd. He didn’t look well. His sandy hair, which used to be so thick and springy, was flat and shiny, and his face was pale and shadowy, and in general he looked sort of diluted.

Martha frowned. ‘They’re not his geese, Dad.’

‘No, but he’s their friend. I’ve seen him feeding them.’

It was a sunny Saturday morning. The park was full of people: members of the rowing club plying their skiffs on the water; old men in cardigans standing around the boating pond where they raced their model boats; joggers going round and round the paths. All the tennis courts were busy. There were people walking their dogs and pushing their bikes along and standing talking; some were even sunbathing on the lawns.

‘Don’t expect him to do anything for me, by the way,’ Dad said. ‘Doctors don’t like to do much if they can help it.’

Dr Woodley was a grey-haired man with a large, pale face held together by a pair of thin steel spectacles, and he didn’t like to do much, as he often told them.

‘You’re ill,’ he would say. ‘But you’ll get better. It’s dull being ill, Lord knows, but it won’t last long. Come back if you start coughing up blood.’

They went into Dr Woodley’s surgery, and Dad sat gingerly on a chair, and Martha sat on the bed, and Tug lay on the floor making noises and moving earth with his best JCB. It was real earth which he had
picked up in the park, but Dr Woodley didn’t seem to mind.

He peered at Dad. ‘Cats?’ he asked. ‘Or did your children beat you up?’

‘Fell off a roof.’

‘Looks painful.’ He began to examine Dad’s face. ‘Minor abrasions. Some contusion. Nice black eye. Really, very nice. Won’t last long though. Let’s have a look at your leg.’

Dad took off his trousers and lay on the bed.

‘Not as bad as I feared when I saw you limp in. Did you ice it?’

‘I iced it,’ Martha said.

Dr Woodley peered at her. ‘Clever girl.’

‘Someone has to keep their head,’ she said, with a glance at Dad.

Dr Woodley looked thoughtful. He wrote out a prescription for antiseptic ointment, and then he said, ‘We’ve seen quite a lot of you recently, Mr Luna.’

Dad shrugged.

‘Let’s have a look at the records. Psoriasis flaring up. That was in February. Blurred vision at the beginning of March. Migraine and gastric upset in April. What’s this? Last month you had what you thought was a hernia.’

‘Turned out to be indigestion,’ Dad said.

‘And now you’ve fallen off a roof. You’ve been in the wars. Hardly saw you at all for years, then suddenly every month.’

‘Just a run of bad luck. I’m pretty fit in general.’

Dr Woodley peered at him silently. ‘I think what I’ll do,’ he said at last, ‘is take a quick sample for a blood test. Just to make sure you haven’t picked up an infection from those cuts.’

‘All right.’

A few moments later they were ready to leave. Dr Woodley shook hands with them all, even Tug, whose hand contained quite a lot of earth.

‘Look after yourself,’ he said to Dad. ‘Or perhaps,’ he said to Martha, ‘I should ask
you
to look after him.’

They walked back across the park.

‘What an old crock I am,’ Dad said. ‘I can’t go on like this. Things will have to change. Tell you what, how would you like us to live on a boat? I think things would be better if we lived on the water. Fresher, cleaner, more exciting.’

Tug stopped making JCB noises. ‘What sort of boat?’

‘A canal boat. One of those long, thin ones we see
at the lock. It’d be like camping. When we get bored with one place, we just move somewhere else. We could move right out of the city. Imagine waking up among the fields. No traffic, just the birds and the cows and the early-morning mist. And walking into the nearest village for breakfast.’

‘Let’s do it!’ Tug shouted.

‘What about school?’ Martha said.

‘Take a year off,’ Dad said. ‘Nothing easier.’

‘But how will you get a new job if we keep moving?’

‘We’ll be runaways. Fugitives. Always one step ahead. Popping up here, popping up there.’

‘And what will we do about money?’

Dad sighed.

They came to the street and walked along swinging Tug between them until they reached their house.

‘You know your problem?’ Dad said to Martha. ‘You’re too serious.’ He began to look through his pockets. ‘Where’s that key?’

‘In my purse.’ She gave it to him. ‘I think I should look after the key from now on.’ She gave Dad a firm look.

Dad patted her head. ‘I expect you’re right.’ He yawned. ‘You know, I’m still tired after our adventures last night. Will you wake me up for lunch?’

He limped upstairs.

Tug followed Martha into the kitchen. ‘Martha?’

‘Yes, Tug.’

‘What shall we call it?’

‘What shall we call what?’

‘What shall we call our boat?’

‘We’re not going to get a boat.’

‘But Dad said.’

‘Dad didn’t mean it.’

‘Why didn’t Dad mean it?’

Martha didn’t reply. She didn’t know the answer. In any case, she was already getting out the dustpan and brush. Over the last few months – ever since Dad started to be strange – she had taken charge of the housework.

‘You have to help me now, Tug,’ she said. ‘First tidying, then cleaning, then lunch. What do you want for lunch?’

‘Lots.’

‘Lots of what?’

‘Lots of lunch.’ Tug was always hungry.

‘OK. Think about it while you sweep.’

As usual, Martha made a timetable in her head:

Do housework
.

Make lunch
.

Sew
.

Go to Marcus’s
.

Help Dad with tea
.

Bath Tug
.

Read to Tug
.

Go to bed
.

‘Come on,’ she said to Tug. ‘We haven’t got all day.’

Together they swept the kitchen floor, and emptied the bin, and cleaned the sink, and afterwards they tidied the front room. They drew back the curtains and opened windows, and sunlight came in and glittered in the dust of the air. The street outside was quiet, and as they worked they heard birdsong from the gardens around, high-pitched sparrows and broken-voiced pigeons. It was a small house, with a front room, a back room and a kitchen downstairs, two and a half bedrooms upstairs, and a strip of garden at the back divided equally into broken patio, rank undergrowth and collapsing shed. They had only lived there a few months, and it didn’t feel like home yet. There was ‘work to be done’, mainly to the plumbing, which squeaked and roared, and to the kitchen, which was damp. Dad hadn’t got round to doing the work yet.

‘Pie,’ Tug said at last.

‘We haven’t got pie. How about fish fingers?’

‘All right. How many?’

‘Four.’

‘All right. Is there ketchup?’

‘Lots of ketchup. Go and wake Dad, and I’ll start cooking.’

Martha liked cooking. For Tug she cooked simple food like fish fingers, but she preferred to do more complicated things, like macaroni cheese or shepherd’s pie or hotpot. She was very good at
Spaghetti alla Carbonara
, which was one of Dad’s favourites. At Cookery Club she was learning to make quite sophisticated dishes. For her, cooking was a sort of game – a slow, patient game you played on your own. And the nicest thing about it was that while you played it you didn’t have to think about anything else.

Sometimes – she thought – it was a relief not to have to think about things.

Tug came back down with the news that Dad would not be woken.

‘I bashed his foot a bit,’ he said. ‘But he didn’t stop sleeping.’

So Martha and Tug had lunch on their own, and Tug ate seven fish fingers with a quarter of a pint of ketchup. Afterwards he played in the garden, keeping
away from the undergrowth where the broken glass was, while Martha sewed up the hole in Dad’s trousers.

At three o’clock she put away the sewing box and said briskly, ‘Now it’s time to play with Marcus. You have to come with me, Tug.’

‘Why?’ Tug was suspicious of Marcus.

‘Because Dad’s still asleep, and I can’t leave you here because you’ll get into mischief.’

Tug looked interested. ‘What mischief?’

Martha sighed. ‘If you come to Marcus’s with me I’ll buy you a lolly at the shop on the way.’

‘Do they sell pies?’

‘No. Lollies. You like lollies.’

‘All right.’

They left a note for Dad written by both of them. It said:
Hope you had a NIS SLEEEEEP. Gone to MarKISS KISS KISS. Back for tea. Love Martha AND TUG XXXX
. Then they set off down the street.

For a while they walked quietly, holding hands. Martha was carrying a large bag and Tug was carrying his JCB, which he talked to from time to time.

‘Why didn’t Dad wake up?’ he asked again.

‘He’s very tired after falling off the roof last night.’

Tug yawned.

They walked down the street into the park and across the grass, avoiding the geese.

‘He
is
strange, isn’t he, Martha?’

She admitted it.

‘But he’s not as strange as Marcus. Is he, Martha?’

‘No one is as strange as Marcus, Tug.’

M
arcus’s house was small and ordinary, which was odd because Marcus was neither.

He opened the door, and stood there looking down at them. He was a large, solid boy with dark hair, and he was dressed in a pair of tights and a lime-green beret. He seemed to be wearing make-up.

‘Have you got them?’ he asked Martha. He spoke in a breathless, theatrical voice.

She held up the bag, and he took it and smiled. Then he noticed Tug.

‘Is your brother on his way somewhere?’

Martha explained.

For a moment Marcus looked disappointed. But he recovered. ‘There are some parts for small, grubby children,’ he said. ‘I’d forgotten. We can use him. We can use you,’ he added, loudly, to Tug. He always spoke to Tug as if he was deaf.

‘Come up to the studio,’ he said.

‘He
is
stranger than Dad, isn’t he?’ Tug whispered to Martha. He sounded impressed.

‘Much stranger,’ Martha whispered back.

On the way they passed Marcus’s mum and dad, and said hello. Marcus’s mum worked at Tesco and his dad was a postman, and they were both quiet, nervous people. They seemed especially nervous of Marcus.

‘You know Martha already,’ he told them, waving a hand. ‘The costume designer. Her brother, an urchin. By the way,’ he went on, ‘we’ll be recording, so keep the noise down please. And can we have tea and biscuits at four?’

They left his parents nodding silently and smiling in a bewildered way at the bottom of the stairs, and went up after Marcus to the studio, which was his bedroom.

It did not look like a bedroom. The curtains were drawn very tightly to exclude all light and in a space cleared round the bed were a large white screen, several spotlights on tripods and a camcorder on an aluminium cradle. Everywhere else there were clothes and stage props and theatrical make-up.

‘Martha?’ Tug said quietly.

‘Yes, Tug.’

‘Why does he move his arms round like that?’

‘He only does it when he talks. Don’t stand too close.’

Martha sat on the edge of the bed. Tug found the camcorder.

Marcus said loudly, ‘Back away from the equipment please.’

From the bed Tug watched Marcus try on the clothes that Martha had brought in front of a full-length mirror on the back of the door. He put on a pair of grey trousers, then a brown velvet-look jacket and then a cravat. He smiled at himself.

‘This is very good, Martha,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Very nice, very Henry Higgins. I only wish …’

‘Wish what?’ Martha said.

‘I only wish you could have used something a bit more colourful. Just a bit more adventurous. This brown.’

‘What about the brown?’

‘It’s a good brown. But it doesn’t hit you. Doesn’t knock your eye out.’

‘You wanted it to look old,’ Martha said, a little crossly.

‘And I like it,’ Marcus said. ‘I like it very much. I particularly like the stitching,’ he said soothingly.
‘But I wonder if we could make it a teensy bit livelier. What about some fur round the collar? You can get some good artificial fur in electric blue, I’ve seen it.’

While Marcus and Martha talked, Tug sidled over to the camcorder again. It was very shiny, with lots of inviting buttons, and although it was quite big it didn’t look very heavy, and Tug was just testing how heavy it really was when he felt himself being picked up and put back on the bed.

‘Now I know why you’re called Tug,’ Marcus said. ‘I’m afraid I cannot allow the urchins to handle the equipment,’ he said to Martha.

‘But I like equipment,’ Tug said.

‘I have another use for him,’ Marcus said. ‘I have another use for you,’ he said loudly to Tug, who was watching his hands and managed to dodge them. ‘Have you heard of a thing called
My Fair Lady
?’

Tug shook his head.

Marcus spoke loudly and slowly. ‘
My Fair Lady
is a film. A movie from days long ago. A great classic. Nod if you understand me.’

Tug nodded doubtfully.

‘Your sister and I are remaking it. Here, in my studio. A speed version. If you listen carefully I will
tell you the story. Then you will help us remake it. Do you have any questions?’