Easy Peasy (16 page)

I thought it might collapse with the weight of Daddy, that the branches might break and the whole structure come crashing to the ground with a splintering of wood, smashing Daddy and Dog-belly's bones among the broken branches. My ants would be all right, they would survive the fall and be set free. I wished the tree-house
would
collapse then that would be an end of it. But Daddy only put his head through the trap-door and did not climb right in. He stood there on the ladder, wobbling a bit, like a headless man.

I heard Mummy's voice. She had gone outside and was laughing at something. My thumb went in my mouth, my teeth finding the comforting ridge of my knuckle. I watched as first Daddy, then Dog-belly came down the ladder. I was terrified that Daddy might have seen my ants.

‘Daddy would never agree,' Mummy had warned when I asked if I could bring the formicary home from school. ‘You know how he is about creepy-crawlies. You couldn't have it in the house.' I brought the ants home and kept them in the tree-house where he never went. I had been jubilant to have that teeming little world for my own. I admired the industrious creatures, their minute bulbousness and sheen. Although they were all separate they acted like one creature, many bodies with a single intention. Dropping a chicken's wish-bone in one day had resulted in an extraordinary tumult of activity – but not in chaos. The ants stripped the bones and stowed the meat as if they had been in training for that very event for all of their lives.

Hazel didn't mind having the ants in the tree-house as long as the tank stayed on my side, on my shelf. ‘As long as you promise never to let them out,' she said.

‘Course not.'

‘They're like prisoners,' she mused, prodding with a lolly-stick and watching the creatures boiling over the surface of their nest.

‘They're not prisoners,' I said, ‘not at all. This is their whole world.'

She pulled a face as if I was mad.

At least they were safe in their tank, that's what I thought, safe from predators or the stamping feet of human beings.

Daddy didn't mention the ants. From the angle his head would have been at as he stood on the ladder, I realised with a rush of relief, the tank would have been behind him. He could not have seen it.

I'm going to stay a few more days. The funeral was all right. I'm glad it's over. I'm glad you didn't come
–
but thanks for offering. Colin is being his usual obnoxious self but he and Hazel are leaving tomorrow, and Huw too. I'll stay with Mummy for a few days because she might need me
.

Also because I've done something I'm ashamed of, something that has upset me – my own fault. I read your diary. I didn't intend to, I was looking for some tampons, we'd run out in the bathroom, I thought you might have some, I looked in your bag. I saw your diary in there and I should not have looked. No excuse. So I know about Kris. I wish I didn't, I wish I hadn't read it. No, that's not quite true, I'm glad I know but I wish it wasn't true. Of course I was livid, that's why I left before you got home, I couldn't face you. Thinking back I realise you never lied, you just never told me quite the truth but I think that is as bad as lying. Driving down here I realised that if there was Kris there will have been others, because you don't make it sound that much of a big deal. I realise that if I hadn't shut the diary quickly, shoved it straight back in your bag and fled, if I'd read right back through the year I'd have found other names: Sally perhaps? You spent a lot of time with Sally, or Dana, or Jez?

To think how stupidly I trusted you. To think I missed you so much whenever you were away, the welcome I gave you on your returns, my mouth full of you when maybe the night before
…
oh I can't bear to think about it. I feel so stupid. At the moment I hate you
.

I've put this to the back of my mind today, tried to think of Mummy first. An old family friend came, Wanda, I think I've told you about Wanda. And now I think … oh never mind. When I get back perhaps we could talk
.

Yours, (yours? I don't think so)

Zelda
.

Daddy and Dog-belly finished the pond. It was Easter Sunday. I thought that because it was Easter, Daddy might not ask him round, or that maybe Wanda would have taken him away for the weekend. But no, as soon as the table was cleared after lunch, there was his yellow face peering round the door. Hazel had gone out with some friends. I slunk outside and sat up in the tree-house with my Easter egg. I unwrapped the spotty blue-and-silver foil and wedged my thumb-nail in the crack to split the egg into halves. I held the two halves of egg over my mouth and nose to inhale the trapped breath of chocolate before it floated away. Then I broke off a fraction of shell, thicker at the edge, patterned like crazy-paving, and closed my eyes as I put it between my lips. My teeth sank into it. Nothing else has the texture of chocolate, soft and brittle at the same time. My mouth was filled with its sudden melting velvet.

But I was not happy. Daddy and Dog-belly were stretching a great sheet of green plastic over the hole. I watched from the little round window as they weighted it down with bricks around the edges so that it was pulled quite flat. Then Daddy fixed the hose to the tap in the garage and let Dog-belly direct the water into it. The water pooled on the taut sheet. As Dog-belly stood, a stupid grin on his face, holding the streaming hose out stiffly in front of him, Daddy crawled round on his hands and knees easing the bricks so that the plastic, bulging now with water, stretched to fit the contours of the hole. The water made a fatter, a deeper, a tumbling sound the more of it there was. I could smell the freshness of it, like the smell of rain. Mummy, carrying a struggling Huw on her hip, came out of the kitchen door to watch. She said nothing. ‘Me swim,' Huw shouted, and Mummy glared at the back of Daddy's head.

When the pond was full it made a kidney shape, clean and glinting in the corner of the lawn. It reflected the clouds that moved across the sky. It reflected the frothy pink cherry blossom from the tree above it. A petal fluttered down and floated on its surface. Nature accepted it, this new pond, easy as that.

I had wanted to hold the hose-pipe. I had wanted the thrill of all that water pouring through my hands. I had wanted to help create the pond. But now it was finished and had nothing to do with me.

I realised that without thinking what I was doing I had eaten all of my chocolate egg. My stomach heaved with the queasy bulk of so much sweetness.

‘Are you going to cover it, or build a barrier?' Mummy said. ‘Otherwise how am I supposed to keep
him
out.' She hitched Huw further up her side.

But there was no reply.

You couldn't look out of the tree-house now without seeing, in one direction, the big glinting kidney of the pond, or in the other, Dog-belly's window and sometimes the small cheesy wedge of his face.

I fold my letter to Foxy in half, take out one of Daddy's pale blue envelopes, and slide it in. I lick the gum with the point of my tongue and stick down the flap. On the front I write her name, our address. Imagine it on the mat, the day after tomorrow; Foxy in her dressing-gown, shuffling to the door in her velvet mules. Imagine her putting the letter on the table while she pours her coffee, finds her reading-glasses, then sitting down, pushing her messy red-grey hair back from her face, slitting open the envelope, unfolding the pages of blue Basildon Bond, and reading. Imagine her reaction.
Shit
, she might say, maybe she'll sit with her head in her hands for a bit, then roll herself a skinny fag while she thinks. Maybe she will ring me here, maybe even turn up unexpectedly. Will she be contrite? Will she be angry, somehow deflect the blame all on to me for invading her privacy so that
I
end up apologising?

The pen has left a dark smudge of ink on my middle finger where it has been pressing. I open the envelope, pretending I'm Foxy and read the letter all unaware, as if, as she might, expecting a love letter. Then I tear it in half, in quarters, tear each quarter into tiny squares too small to read, confetti, too small to piece together and make sense of – as if anyone would bother – and throw it in the bin.

3

The morning after the pond was finished, Easter Monday, Daddy invited Hazel and me to go to the golf-course with him. On the golf-course was a big pond, full of weed and at that time of year, he assured us, frog-spawn and tadpoles.

‘Is Vassily coming too?' I asked.

He shook his head. ‘What do you say?'

‘OK. Haze?'

‘S'pose so.'

I felt grudgingly pleased. This was the exciting bit after all, putting life in the pond. Dog-belly might have helped to make the pond but
we
were doing the best bit, fetching the tadpoles,
us
, Daddy's actual children. Mummy smiled at me, as if to say,
There, you see
… I think she was relieved too that for once we were preferred.

‘We'll have to do something to stop Huwie,' Mummy said. ‘I can't open the back door without him making a bee-line …'

‘All right, all right.' Daddy was wearing his green cable golfing sweater. He was pink and newly shaved and his hair glistened with some sort of cream or oil. ‘Ten minutes then,' he said. Hazel and I went to dig out some old fishing-nets and plastic seaside buckets from the garage.

‘We might get fish too,' I said.

‘You have to
buy
fish from the pet shop.' Hazel's voice infused with scorn.

‘We might catch one.'

‘That would be stealing.'

‘Why isn't catching tadpoles stealing then?'

‘You're so thick,' she said.

I smarted. But I was determined not to fall out with Hazel. ‘At least
he's
not coming,' I said.

Hazel and I got into the back of the car. There was a scratchy tartan blanket folded on the back seat. The inside of the car smelt coldly of petrol and sick because Hazel was usually sick in it on long journeys. ‘Watch out for balls!' Mummy shouted as we drove off. We had sandwiches and apples in our pockets. We had to wedge the long bamboo handles of our fishing-nets diagonally across the car. It was a long drive to the golf-course on narrow winding roads and I was afraid Hazel would vomit and ruin everything. But she sat with her eyes fixed on the horizon, breathing deeply of the cold air that buffeted through the open window, sucking on barley sugars – and though she went a greenish white and wouldn't speak, she was not sick.

Daddy parked outside the club-house. We climbed out of the car into a salty whistle of wind.

‘The pond's over there, see?' Daddy pointed away into the distance.

‘Isn't that the sea?' Hazel said, leaning back against the car.

He laughed. ‘Not that far … down by those bushes.' He smiled at us as he lifted his golf-bag out of the boot. I noticed that one of his clubs was wearing the embroidered felt cover I had made him for Christmas. I wanted to kiss him. It was good to be out with Daddy.

‘Do your coat up,' he said. I fastened the wooden toggles of my duffel coat.

The golf-course straddled a road. ‘Stay this side of the road,' Daddy instructed. ‘The pond's by the ninth hole. I'll pick you up as I pass.'

‘OK.'

He swung his golf-bag over his shoulder and set off for the club-house. ‘Be good,' he said.

We ran over the short tussocky grass to the top of a rise. There was a faint wavering silver line in the distance that was the sea. Sea-gulls screeched. The wind blustered and moaned and my eyes streamed. My loose hair whipped about my face, my ears stung. I pulled up my hood and even buttoned the little tab that made my chin itch.

It was the first time that Hazel and I had been to this golf-course. From where we stood we could see it reaching down all around us: the greyish hairy grass; the flashes of violently yellow gorse; the sandy dips of the bunkers; the velvet putting-greens each with a frantic white flag on a rattling pole. We ran down the slope, our fishing-nets catching on the lumpy grass, screaming into the wind. I didn't think I would ever be able to stop running – the slope was steeper than it looked. It was funny, my legs going faster and faster like cartoon legs, my top half holding back, trying to stop. I tripped in the end, rolled on the grass unhurt, breathless. Hazel flopped down beside me. We lay on our backs, panting. The wind was not so fierce when we flattened ourselves down and there was even a faint warmth from the sun. We watched rags of clouds tearing and mending in the blue. I felt madly alive, my heart beating against the ground, my eyes smarting with brightness. It was so good to be out with Daddy for once, good to be with Hazel too, with no Bridget or Harriet or Susan or any of her other million friends.

We got up in the end and walked towards the pond. Hazel told me about a boy she liked at school. She was nearly thirteen and had a little spot beside her nose. She was about to start her periods she said. I asked her how she knew but she just smiled mysteriously. ‘It's so
different
at secondary school.'

‘What is?'

‘Just everything. Your whole outlook changes. Junior school seems so utterly …'

‘Utterly what?'

‘Just utterly. You'll see.'

‘Fore!' came a yell from somewhere and a golf ball zizzed past between our heads. It landed with a thwunk and a rattle in a clump of gorse.

‘It could have killed us!' Indignantly I looked round for the culprit.

‘One
of us,' Hazel corrected.

A man came down the slope, followed by another. The first man was wearing a tweed jacket and his face was red and seamy under a long vertical streamer of white hair.

‘Be off with you,' he said.

I wanted to laugh. ‘You nearly hit us.'

‘This is a golf-course young lady. Not a bally playground.'