Mad Dog Moonlight (3 page)

‘Stop teasing me,' he said. ‘Where did this come from? You must know. Did someone drop it off? And did they leave me a message?'

Aunty looked confused. ‘I don't know what you're on about,' she said. ‘Nobody dropped anything off, certainly not that stick. You had it with you when you came.'

Anger rose inside Mad Dog. He banged the
ffon
on the floor, knowing that he hadn't brought it with him, no way. But was it possible that his parents had brought it? Were they here somewhere, waiting to leap out, crying, ‘Surprise, surprise'?

Mad Dog leapt down from the table, sent his
breakfast flying and started tearing round the house, searching everywhere for his parents. Aunty came after him, crying at him to calm down, but he started swinging the
ffon
at her, sending ornaments flying.

‘Dear God, Ryan!' Aunty cried. ‘What's up with you? Give me that stick!'

‘It's not a stick – it's a
ffon
!' yelled Mad Dog.

‘I don't care what it is!' Aunty yelled back.

She grabbed Mad Dog and tried to wrench the
ffon
out of his grasp. For a moment there was a tussle, but he was just a little boy and she was a strong woman, and it didn't take much for her to get the
ffon
and kick it out of the way. Mad Dog tried to get it back, but Aunty held him off.

‘I want my mother!' he screamed into her face. ‘I want my dad! I want to go home!
Get out of my way, you stupid old cow!
'

Aunty flinched at that. Her cheeks burned red and she held on to Mad Dog until he'd calmed down. Then she gave him such a telling-off that he was certain she'd phone the police and get them to take him away.

Mad Dog tried to say sorry, but couldn't help following it up with, ‘Give me back my
ffon
.'

In the end Aunty relented and gave it to him. ‘I promise you that no one brought it here,' she said. ‘You had it with you when you came.'

‘I didn't have
anything
,' Mad Dog said.

Aunty shrugged. ‘Suit yourself,' she said, ‘but, the way I saw it, you had your brother and you had this stick.'

Mad Dog spent the rest of the day trying to work it all out. He'd absolutely no memory of arriving with
the cane. But then, if he thought about it, he'd precious little memory of anything else about that day, apart from a journey in a police car and then standing on the doorstep with a policewoman by his side holding Elvis in her arms.

He could have brought the
ffon
with him, like Aunty said. But his dad's words
over my dead body
kept ringing in his head. And what if his dad was dead? Ever since arriving at No. 3, Mad Dog had been waiting for his parents to come and get him. But what if they didn't? What if the
ffon
was all he had left?

Mad Dog put the walking cane in the back of the wardrobe in his bedroom, where he wouldn't have to look at it all the time, or feel his past every time he touched it or imagine his parents stooping over it. Better that way, he told himself. Better let them go. Better shut them up. Better close the door on them. Better lock the door, and lose the key and forget the streams he'd played in once, the roads he'd travelled on, the place names, family names, and everything else.

Better be the boy that Aunty wanted, or else she just might send him away.

And then where would he go?

Mad Dog calmed down after that. Aunty told herself that he was settling in, but perhaps she knew in her heart that he wasn't really because, when the social worker started talking about school, she insisted on keeping him at home. No one knew how old he was, she said, and he certainly wasn't as ready for school as Little Luke next door – her sister's son who'd recently started in Mrs Heligan's class.

So Mad Dog stayed at home, playing in the garden or on the barge den stuck on the grass at the top of the Gap. He loved the barge den from the first time he ever climbed on board. Even with old scraps of moth-eaten carpet and crates for chairs and tables, it felt far more like home than No. 3. He loved the way the barge den rattled when he ran about on it. It almost made him feel as if he was on the open road. Even having to share it with the other Gap children was bearable. But, when he had it to himself and could sit watching the sun on the Rheidol as it flowed through the harbour, he was at his happiest.

The harbour felt new, with its yachts and pontoons and modern flats on St David's Quay, but the Rheidol felt old. It came from somewhere in the past, and it was on a journey. Mad Dog would rock for hours in the hammock that Uncle had strung up for him, watching it flowing past and wondering where its journey took it after it reached the sea.

Sometimes he'd even dream about it, falling asleep in the hammock, lulled by its gentle swaying motion. Back in his bedroom at No. 3, his dreams were often dark and heavy and he'd wake up in a panic. There'd be flames in them, and falling shadows and the sound of howling out there in the night.

But the dreams Mad Dog had on the barge den were sunshine dreams, full of light and colour. He'd awaken feeling good. There were rivers in his dreams, and breaking blue waves on golden shorelines. One day there was even a mermaid and the dream was so real that Mad Dog was sure it had once happened.

In the dream, Mad Dog was on a great expanse of beach with a shelf of sand dunes running across the top of it and his parents' van parked against them, half-buried in long grass. It wasn't one of those nice, clean beaches that holidaymakers like to sunbathe on, but strewn with pebbles, rock pools and slippery seaweed. Even so, Mad Dog played for hours, trawling through the pools and making towers of shells and stones.

Finally it got dark and a little wind came up from the ocean and blew into the bay, sending rows of white-topped waves running up the shingle. Mad Dog's mother called from the van that food was on the table and, on any other occasion, he'd have gone tearing home to eat.

But, on this occasion, he didn't go anywhere because his attention was caught by – a mermaid.

Mad Dog had never seen a mermaid before, but he had no doubt what he was looking at. He was his mother's son after all, and had heard her stories. He knew that there were elves living in the mountains,
tree spirits in the forests and mermaids in Cardigan Bay where their secret kingdom lay beneath deep waters.

But Mad Dog had never thought to see a mermaid in the flesh. And one thing was certain about that mermaid – she was definitely in the flesh! Her shoulders were bare, her breasts were pink, her fishy mermaid's tail was as shiny as a piece of living seaweed, her hair was wet and golden and she had the brightest eyes Mad Dog had ever seen.

He stopped and stared in amazement, and the mermaid stared back at him, fearlessly meeting his gaze. Out on the horizon, a ship winked. Off around the headland, a lighthouse blinked its steady pulse. Somewhere among the sand dunes, Mad Dog's mother called again. But none of them were as real as the mermaid in front of him, her look steady and amused as if to say, ‘
Well, little boy, what do you think?
'

Mad Dog would have answered, if he could only think what to say. Instead he found himself dashing up the shingle, yelling, ‘You've got to see this! Come on! Quickly!!
Come and see!! THERE'S A MERMAID ON THE BEACH!!
'

By the time Mad Dog returned, however, the mermaid had gone. ‘Where is she, then?' his dad had said, running up and down the shoreline as if he thought the whole thing was a joke.

But Mad Dog's mother didn't think it was a joke. She stood before the ocean with eyes as black as pearls, savouring how rare and wonderful the world could be. Mad Dog watched her, fascinated by her expression. And, later on the barge den, awakening from dreaming, he could still see that expression, and
it was so real in his mind that he knew it was a memory and not just a dream.

After that Mad Dog couldn't stop thinking about mermaids. They could be out there, he kept telling himself, even now, waiting to surprise him, bringing back an old life when his parents hadn't been angry with him and hadn't been dead, and weren't just a distant dream, but were still real.

In the end, unable to stop thinking about what he'd lost and just might be able to find again, Mad Dog took himself off on a mermaid hunt. He did it one night when everyone else was asleep, reckoning that mermaids could be out there somewhere on the seashore, even as he lay there in his bed.

It was a thrilling prospect imagining them bathing in calm waters in the shallows of the beach or combing out their hair in the shadows under the pier. Mad Dog got up, dressed quietly so as not to wake Elvis, and set off, telling himself that they could be
anywhere
.

The front door was unlocked, as were all the doors along the Gap, and easy to open. Mad Dog crossed the road outside No. 3 and went to look over the harbour wall. When he didn't see anything, he went along to the end of the Gap and looked at the River Rheidol as it cut a path through the harbour. It winked at him in the darkness, as black as ebony, with the coloured harbour lights reflected in it.

There were no mermaids to be seen, so Mad Dog turned his back on the harbour and set off for the seafront. Aunty and Uncle would be furious if they found out what he was up to. But, promising to be back before they awoke, he climbed down the first set
of steps he came to and started walking along the beach.

All the way, Mad Dog's eyes were fixed on the shoreline. But, by the time he reached the pier, he hadn't seen a single mermaid. Not that he allowed that to put him off. Hoping for more luck under the pier, Mad Dog crept into its shadows, telling himself that the mermaids around Aberystwyth were probably less bold than the ones you found on lonely beaches where there weren't so many people to look at them.

He picked his way between the massive girders holding up the pier, tripping over empty beer cans and broken wine bottles. Eventually, he found somewhere to sit that gave him the widest possible view yet enabled him to remain hidden. Here he curled up against the chill of the night, reckoning he had at least an hour of uninterrupted mermaid-spotting ahead of him before he'd have to return home.

It was here that Uncle found him hours later, fast asleep. Night had turned to day, bringing with it clouds and driving rain. Mad Dog awoke to find himself so cold that he could scarcely move. He'd no idea how Uncle had known where to look for him but was glad to be discovered.

They walked home together, awkward and uncomfortable. Mad Dog had no answer to Uncle's question, ‘What have you got to say for yourself?' How could he even begin to explain? Maybe things like mermaids had happened in his old life, but here on this grey winter's morning in Aberystwyth, no one would believe how fabulous and extraordinary the world could be.

When Aunty discovered that Mad Dog had spent the night under the pier where the drunks hung out, she was angrier than the first time he'd run away.

‘Ryan,
Ryan
– there of all places!' she cried out. ‘All sorts of things go on under the pier! You never know who you'll find there. Anything could happen in the darkness where nobody can see. A little boy like you, out on your own. It doesn't bear thinking about! And what were you doing anyway, running off like that?'

Mad Dog tried explaining that he hadn't been running off. But Aunty wouldn't let him get a word in edgeways. ‘That's the second time you've done it,' she said, scarcely pausing for breath, ‘and it's got to be the last. The world's not safe for a child out on his own. There are some dangerous people around – and I'm not just talking about the pier. You mustn't ever go near strangers, or answer if they speak to you, or even look at people you don't know, not if you can help it.
Do you understand what I'm saying?
'

Mad Dog reckoned that he did, but it never occurred to him that he'd have to put Aunty's warning into practice quite so soon. A couple of days after the mermaid hunt, he awoke to find long grey trousers made of itchy material waiting for him at the end of his bed, along with a grey sweater that was too big for him and a brand new, horribly white-looking shirt.

‘What are these for?' he said.

‘You're off to school,' Aunty said.

Mad Dog's first thought was that he was being punished for running away. But it was a funny sort of punishment, he reckoned when he got there, because the place was full of exactly the sort of strangers that Aunty had warned him about. In fact, Mad Dog had never met so many strangers all together in one place in his life. Remembering Aunty's words of warning, he refused to go too close to them, answer if they spoke or even look at them if he could help it.

Little Luke was in his class, but that didn't make Mad Dog feel any better. So were some of the other children who came to play on the barge den or were dropped off by their mothers at Aunty's house. Her nephew Hippie – a friendly, gangling boy whose mother did yoga and had crystals hanging at her windows in long strings – was one of them, and another nephew Rhys – whose father was a footballer and trained the family ‘team' – was another.

Mad Dog knew them both but wouldn't play with them, eat lunch with them, share books or paints with them, or even speak to them if he could help it. And he was especially careful not to have anything to do with the stranger in charge of them all, who said she was his teacher.

Aunty would have been proud of him, Mad Dog reckoned. From the moment he encountered Mrs Heligan in registration, he reckoned her to be the most dangerous stranger of all.

‘Good morning, Mrs Heligan,' all the other children said when she called out their names. But when she called out
Ryan Lewis
, remembering what Aunty had told him, Mad Dog wouldn't say a thing. He wouldn't
even look at Mrs Heligan and, when she tried to come near him, he backed away.