Easy Peasy (7 page)

‘Up you go then, Vassily.' Daddy held the ladder still for him. I watched. Daddy never did this, took any notice of our friends, took any part in our activities. I'd hardly ever seen him so much as looking at Huw, even though he was so utterly sweet, and yet here he was helping Puddle-duck up the ladder, pulling it taut so it didn't swing about too much while the skinny yellowish legs in their long grey shorts climbed up. When Puddle-duck had disappeared through the trap-door, Daddy nodded to me to go up. He didn't hold the ladder still for
me
. But it didn't matter, I was used to it.

‘Your mother will send up some cake,' he said. From the window I watched him go back into the kitchen. He would go up the stairs to our bedroom where Hazel would be waiting, her head held very high. She would not be crying, even if her face was very pink, she was much better at not crying than me. I looked at the bedroom window and thought I saw the oval of her face between the curtains, then it was gone. I could not imagine what Daddy would do or say to her. I liked television programmes, especially American programmes, where the mother says to her naughty children ‘Just wait till your father gets home.' I thought there was something thrilling about that. Not that I wanted to have it said to me. Daddy was not like one of those television fathers. His anger was too deep and unknown.

Puddle-duck was hauling up the rope ladder, the way Hazel and I did. We'd haul it right up and put a sheet of wood over the trap-door so that we were unassailable. I was annoyed at the way he did it: the eager familiarity, as if he had been
just waiting
to do it. How does he know what to do? I thought. But looking out of the other window I knew. It was because he watched us, spied on us.

‘Spy.' I accused, pointing to the window. He nodded vigorously. I don't know what he thought I'd said. When he'd settled the piece of wood over the trap-door, he sat down on the branch and gave me an expectant smile. What was I supposed to do with him? In the enclosed space I could smell Wanda's horrible clinging perfume.

I had an idea. I might as well get something out of this. ‘The alphabet,' I said, stretching my mouth enormously round the separate syllables. ‘A.B.C.'

He had such a narrow face that his grin was somehow shocking. But I also saw in it an impishness, the sort of thing that might be likeable, even lovable – if you were his mother.

With one index finger he pressed the ball of his other thumb. ‘A,' he said in his tuneless way. He made finger and thumb circles and pressed them together to look like a pair of glasses. ‘B,' he said. He made a cusp of his thumb and forefinger and held it up to me. ‘C.' It was logical and absorbing. For a few minutes I forgot that I hated him. If I could learn to speak in deaf language I might teach it to Elaine and then we could talk in front of Hazel without her understanding. It would drive her mad. That reminded me of Hazel and I looked out to see that the bedroom curtains had been drawn.

The back door opened and Huwie crawled out followed by Mummy with a plate. She walked down the garden to the foot of the tree.

‘Grizzle, Vassily, provisions,' she called, ‘you'll have to come down Griz.'

I moved the wood and swung down the ladder. ‘It's no good calling
Vassily
like that, he's stone deaf,' I said, taking the plate of cakes.

‘I know,' she said, ‘but it seems only polite.'

‘Is Hazel having any?'

‘Later.'

‘What's Daddy doing to her?'

‘Really! Nothing.' She pretended to laugh, ‘Just having a word.' She looked away and I knew that she had no more idea than I had. We both watched Huwie who had pulled himself to his feet and stood wobbling, looking at the ground as if daring himself to take a step. Then he plumped down on to his nappied bottom and sucked his big toe instead. I laughed.

‘He'll be walking soon,' Mummy said, ‘then just wait!' She spoke with a sort of proud exasperation. She picked Huwie up. ‘Come in when you want a drink.' She closed the back door behind her.

I climbed up the ladder one-handed, balancing the plate on my other hand. There were four slices of strawberry jam Swiss roll and two butterfly cakes with little jelly lemons stuck in the buttercream. I didn't bother to pull the ladder back up.

Puddle-duck took a butterfly cake. He pulled off the lemon and ate that first, then the crumbly sponge butterfly wings, then he scooped the buttercream out and sucked it noisily off his finger. I ate mine properly to show him how. But he was looking past me at my formicary.

‘Ants,' I said, and wiggled my fingers about. ‘Want to look?'

I knelt down and lifted the lid from the tank. There weren't many ants out and you couldn't see much. I prodded the nest with my finger and at once it was crawling with them. The longer you looked, the more you saw. ‘Watch,' I said. I dropped a jammy corner of Swiss roll on to the ramp. At first nothing happened and Puddle-duck started to fidget; then news spread and first one or two and then many ants scurried towards the cake, swarming over it until it made your eyes go funny. Puddle-duck gave a loud excited laugh.

I looked out of the window to see if Hazel was out yet, but could see nothing. The bedroom curtains were still closed and Mummy had shut the door to keep Huwie in.

‘Look!' Puddle-duck shouted.

The ants had started dismantling the cake, lugging ragged boulders of crumbs down to the nest. Puddle-duck was jumping around so excitedly I thought he'd knock the tank over. He shrieked and a warm bit of his spit landed on my cheek, I scrubbed it off with my fist. It was only spit but it felt like acid. I put the lid back on the formicary.

‘Down,' I said. I climbed down first and waited at the bottom for Puddle-duck who clung weedily to the rungs of the swaying ladder, cake crumbs stuck in the corners of his mouth.

We went into the kitchen. Mummy was washing up and Huwie was sitting in his high-chair cramming fistfuls of cake into his mouth. He looked like a little chick with his fluffy hair standing on end. His cheeks were rough and scarlet from teething. Puddle-duck went to stand by Huwie, gently stroking his hair.

‘What's his name?' he asked, pointing at Huwie and brushing his forehead.

‘Huw,' Mummy wiped her hands on a tea-towel and put her face close to Puddle-duck's. ‘Huw,' she said closing her lips around the word as if she was going to kiss him.

‘Who,' Puddle-duck tried.

Mummy smiled and shook her head. She said it again, this time emphasising the two sounds, ‘He-oo,' and this time Puddle-duck got it right and Huwie crowed and waggled his cakey fingers.

‘Would you like to hold him?' Mummy asked, gesturing first to Huw and then to Puddle-duck. Puddle-duck did his face-splitting grin and sat down in readiness. Mummy pulled Huw out of his high-chair and put him on Puddle-duck's lap. He held Huwie very stiffly round the middle as if he was a parcel. Huwie looked so much brighter than Puddle-duck and his head seemed almost as big with its fat red cheeks. Mummy poured two mugs of milk. I took another piece of the Swiss roll. It was filled with home-made strawberry jam that looked disgusting, brown and lumpy and nothing like shop jam – but tasted good. I didn't want to look at Huwie on Puddle-duck's lap. It made me go all squirmy inside. I'd had more than enough of Puddle-duck for one day – or for ever. I wanted him to go home now. I'd been nice to him and now I wanted to be alone to read, or to do anything. I wanted to go back into the tree-house by myself and pull up the ladder and read my comic or watch the ants.

Daddy came into the kitchen then. ‘Tea?' he said.

‘Kettle's there,' Mummy said, keeping her eyes averted. This is how they argued, not in shouts but by hardly speaking, by not looking at each other, by the grate of frost in every interaction.

‘What happened?' I asked Hazel later. Puddle-duck had finally gone home and we were watching ‘Doctor Who'. She was lying full length on the leather sofa and I didn't dare ask her to move up which left me with the scratchy armchair or the floor. I'd chosen the floor.

‘About what?' she said.

‘You know, Daddy.'

‘Nothing.'

‘Something must have.'

‘He just told me off.'

‘Is that
all
.'

She glared at me. I saw that she was flushed and her eyes looked puffy, as if she'd been crying. Although she drove me so mad with her smug friends and her smug hair I didn't like to think that she'd been crying. But Daddy never told us off. He never got involved.

‘It wasn't my fault,' I said.

‘Don't have Puddle-duck round again.'

‘It wasn't me. It was Mummy. She asked him, not me.'

‘Don't have him round here again.'

‘Who says?'

‘Just don't.' Hazel could make her voice go very quiet and cold like pebbles dropping down a well.

‘How can I stop him?'

Hazel frowned at the television. ‘Make him not want to come,' she said.

‘Oh
yes
. How am I supposed to do that?'

‘
I
don't know. Hurt him. Or frighten him.'

‘Hurt him. But how?'

‘Easy peasy Japanesy,' she said, looking away.

‘If it's so easy peasy tell me how.'

‘Don't be pathetic,' she said. ‘Just do it.'

That night, Daddy had one of his dreams. The scream ripped my sleep open and left me trembling. Hazel burrowed her head under the pillow and pretended to be asleep. I lay wide awake, my thumb in my mouth, my heart hammering so hard it hurt. I could hear more sounds, something like a man crying. But it could have been wind and rain moaning round the roof. I could hear Mummy padding about, a sigh as she went past our door, her feet on the stairs, the bathroom taps running, the toilet flushing, doors clicking, and, finally, quiet again. I lay at the edge of my bunk, leaning out a bit so I could see the red glow of the night-light in the corner, all patchy where Hazel had stuck bubble-gum stickers over the spots, and thought about what she'd said. Hurt him or frighten him. How could I? I couldn't. Hurt Puddle-duck? I could not do it. But although I never could, the thought stirred inside me. Deep down in my stomach I felt a sort of tightness, a sort of excitement but very dull and muffled. Because you don't deliberately hurt or frighten people, that is what I'd been brought up to believe and the belief had soaked right through me. Was part of me. Hurt Puddle-duck? I could not do it.

8

The bridge is blown up. I knew, of course, that it would be, because I've seen it before. Good. Is that the right response? What a bloody stupid film. Anything to do with my father? It is only a story. But did he help build a bridge like that? Not like Alec Guinness at all, don't know where I got that idea from, more like Jack Hawkins, black hair when he was young, a widow's peak, thick-set. But not much like Jack Hawkins either. Why should he look like anyone?

I switch the television off and rewind the video, listening to the whirring that grows in volume like an aircraft preparing for take-off, then a click and quiet. The quiet is a relief.

I could take it that Daddy wants me to look at the papers. That's why he appeared, that's why he rested his hand in the place where they are. I could take that as my excuse to pry. Pry! How Foxy would scoff. It wouldn't be prying. If Daddy was really here that
could
have been what he was indicating. If he really was here. The idea makes me go cold again. I don't believe in ghosts. But there was
something
and it did not come from me. I did not summon Daddy up. I wasn't even thinking about him. I never would have thought to summon up that smell, his spicy, pipe smoke smell. Not a ghost because I do
not
believe in ghosts. But maybe a good-bye visit.

I could have said
I love you
.

It was my chance.

I could ring my mother and tell her I'm going to open the envelope. But it's half-past two. I cannot ring her now. What if she is sleeping? And she'd only say, ‘Whatever you like.' Or pretend not to know what I mean,
what envelope?
She doesn't want anything to do with waking the sleeping dogs. If I took the envelope, unopened, with me tomorrow and suggested that we look inside together, she would not want to. What's inside might upset her and then she would blame me. It might make her angry, it might cause a rift between us just when we should be drawing close.

I open the Atlas again. South-East Asia. Burma. On the map it looks quite innocuous. Area: 261,789 square miles; Population: 20,500,000; Capital: Rangoon. Geographical facts. The shape of it, a frill at the bottom that is the Mouths of the Irrawaddy. I strain my eyes to find the River Kwai, I cannot find it in Burma or in Thailand. It is not there, or if it is, it's too insignificant to mark. Scale: 1 inch to 158 miles. Think what life is taking place within each flat square inch – the loving and the fighting; the birthing and the dying; the screams of birds. All those beating hearts. Staring at the grid of fine black squares that mesh the page I feel quite dizzy at the concentration of life they represent.

The tape on the flap of the envelope has gone brittle with age. It is hardly stuck down, easy to remove. But the flap is stuck fast, old glue, old spit, it will not come up. I slit it with the cheese knife, stupidly, in a rush now, and cut my thumb.

He does not want me to open it. Funny if it was nothing but bills or … old love letters … or money? I stop. Money? Some sort of crime, hence the secrecy?

Blood is running down my thumb, not a bad cut, a little flap beside my nail. My imagination is running away with me. What do I think he is, was? A great train robber? The sort of cut that stings and catches. I lick away the blood and suck my thumb. The memory of comfort conjured up by the sensation is acute, the ball of my thumb, nestling in the ridged hollow behind my upper teeth. The rhythmic suck comes automatically back though I haven't done it for – twenty years? My mother never minded me sucking my thumb. My father wouldn't have noticed, but my Swedish grandfather would scold, tell my mother to smother it in mustard, warn that I'd ruin my teeth. But my teeth are perfectly fine. Nice teeth. Straight. Nicer than Hazel's actually. Oh get to the point, Zelda. The taste of blood. Get on with it.