Moon Pie Read online

  A DAVID FICKLING BOOK

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Simon Mason

  Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Lee Wildish

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of the Random House Group Ltd., London, in 2011.

  David Fickling Books and the colophon are trademarks of David Fickling.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools,

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mason, Simon.

  Moon pie / Simon Mason. — 1st American ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Eleven-year-old Martha tries to keep her family together after her

  mother’s death as her father struggles with alcoholism.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89909-6

  [1. Alcoholism—Fiction. 2. Fathers—Fiction. 3. Family life—England—

  Fiction. 4. England—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.M4232Mo 2001

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010051354

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  This book is in memory of Gary Conway (1961–2009)

  and Philip Atkins (1950–2009).

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Acknowledgements

  1

  ‘Come down at once!’ Martha called. ‘You’ll fall and hurt yourself.’

  Dad took no notice. He went further up the drainpipe, grunting noisily, and grabbed the guttering of the bay window roof. With a sudden, wild effort he hoicked a leg over, and hung there like a gibbon, grinning fiercely down at them over his shoulder.

  He panted something.

  ‘What did he say, Martha?’ Tug said.

  ‘Pardon?’ Martha called up.

  ‘Piece of,’ Dad said. ‘Cake.’

  He spoke like that, in short gasps. ‘Done this. Before. No need. To worry.’

  He took his hand off the guttering and began to wave, and quickly put it back again.

  ‘Dad’s strange, isn’t he, Martha?’ Tug said.

  ‘He’s very badly behaved. Dad, I want you to come down now. I’m going to go and get the spare key from Mrs Wilkinson.’

  But Dad was already crouching on the steeply sloping bay window roof.

  ‘Be careful!’ Martha called.

  He rose slowly to his feet, skittered suddenly on the tiles, waved his arms wildly once, and clung to the brickwork in front of him, laughing.

  ‘Easy does it,’ he said.

  He shuffled sideways, face squashed against the brick, and blindly reached up an arm until he could feel the window sill of Martha’s bedroom above him.

  ‘Watch this, Tug,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘Any second now you’re going to see me give a little jump. And grab hold of that sill. Pull myself up. Jimmy the sash. Ease open the window. And hey presto.’

  Tug let go of Martha’s hand. ‘Do it, Dad!’ he shouted. He began to dance with excitement.

  Martha took back Tug’s hand. ‘Dad! You’re to come down now. This minute!’ She used her strictest voice.

  ‘First, a little jump,’ Dad said. He gave a little jump and missed the sill.

  ‘Oh!’ he said, as he fell.

  He fell, crumpling onto the bay window roof, slithered crossways, scrabbling at the tiles, and skidded over the edge. He fell with a crunch into the hawthorn, which he had been promising to prune for months, and fell out of the hawthorn onto the wheelie bin which at once tipped over and flung him sideways along the gravel to where Martha and Tug stood holding hands and shouting.

  Dad groaned, and there was a sudden silence, as if all the noise had been sucked out of the air. He lay there quietly on his back, eyes shut, bleeding from the nose. ‘Well,’ he said without opening his eyes. ‘I think my cat-burglar days are over.’

  Tug fell on him with a sob.

  Lights came on in the windows of neighbours’ houses and Martha took charge.

  ‘Yes, a slight accident,’ she was saying. ‘No thank you, Mrs Wilkinson, I think he’s OK. But may we use our spare key for a minute?’

  Dad sat in the kitchen in his boxer shorts, with his left hand in a bowl of warm water and a large sticking plaster on his forehead. Martha was putting an ice pack round his right knee. The kitchen was small and square, with terracotta floor tiles, cracked here and there, and pine cupboards, a little shabby, and a much-repaired wooden table. There wasn’t quite enough room for things, but it didn’t matter because they could always be left on the counter or piled up in the corners or pushed behind the door.

  ‘You’ll need to see the doctor in the morning,’ Martha said.

  ‘I’m OK. Surface wounds. Nothing compared to the damage done to my pride. What do you think, Tug? Am I OK?’

  ‘You bashed the tree,’ Tug said. ‘You broke the bin. The bin won’t work now. Why did you break the bin?’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to break that bin for weeks. I don’t like that bin.’

  ‘Why don’t you like that bin?’

  ‘It’s rude and unhelpful. Ow!’

  ‘Hold still,’ Martha said. ‘Don’t listen to him, Tug. He knows he’s been silly.’

  ‘She’s right, Tug. I’ve been very silly. And now look at me.’

  They looked at him, where he sat, looking back at them glassily. There were cuts down his cheek where the hawthorn had scratched him and grazes on the backs of his hands and knees. Dust and dirt in his hair made him look suddenly older. But he was still Dad. Limping to the sink, he poured himself a glass of water, gingerly sipped it and pulled a funny face.

  ‘What time is it?’ he said.

  ‘Midnight.’

  ‘Come on then, or you’ll be tired tomorrow. I’m going up now. Tug?’

  ‘Yes, Dad?’

  ‘You weren’t frightened, were you? When I fell.’

  ‘No.’

/>   ‘Good boy.’

  ‘I didn’t like the noise.’

  ‘No. I must remember to be silent when I fall off roofs.’

  ‘But I wasn’t frightened.’

  ‘Good.’

  Tug began to sniff.

  ‘Come on, Tug,’ Martha said. ‘Upstairs.’

  They all went up together, into the darkness of the unlit landing, and Dad said good night and limped into his room. In the bathroom Martha made sure Tug cleaned his teeth. He was so floppy with sleepiness she had to hold him upright at the wash basin on his plastic step. Then she helped him to his room, the smallest bedroom, tucked away at the end of the landing, and read him one page of a story, and settled him down.

  ‘Good night, Tug.’

  ‘Good night, Martha. Is the light on?’

  She switched on the nightlight. ‘Yes, the light’s on.’

  ‘Martha?’

  ‘Yes, Tug?’

  ‘Why’s Dad strange?’

  Before she answered she drew her eyebrows together into a little frown, which was something she did when she was puzzled or upset. Then she said, ‘He’s not really strange, Tug. He’s just a bit excitable tonight. Go to sleep now.’

  Going along the hall to her own room, she got into bed and lay there in the dark. A little while later she heard Dad get up and limp slowly back downstairs to the kitchen. She turned over and tried to get to sleep.

  2

  It was a warm summer’s night, and it was hard to sleep. Throwing off the duvet, Martha got out of bed and went to stand at the window. She was a slender girl, not very tall for her age, with long straight hair the colour of copper, grey eyes and a small pointed nose that she seemed to be pointing at people when she looked at them. Standing there in her pyjamas, her chin level with the window sill, she lifted her head and pointed her nose at the moon, and its light fell over her in a silvery veil and made her pale face paler.

  The roundish moon was bruised with shadow. Like an old piece of china, she thought. Like a cracked bowl.

  After a while she went to see if Tug was OK, but even before she reached his room she heard him growling softly in his sleep. He was lying on his back with his fists up by the side of his head like a baby, smiling to himself. She wiped his hot hair off his face. He was only five, and he liked sleeping.

  But I’m eleven, Martha thought. So that’s OK.

  On the way back to her room, she listened at the top of the stairs to check if Dad was still in the kitchen, and heard him, and went back to bed and lay there again, looking at the old bowl of the moon, thinking.

  Tug was right. Dad was behaving strangely – clowning around, making fun of everything, having accidents. And it was odd, because he hadn’t always been like that. He used to be calmer and quieter. Safer.

  She lay there remembering what Dad had been like before he was strange.

  She remembered him teaching her to play tennis when she was small. He wrapped his arm round her, and his big, sensible hand held her little hand holding the racket and swung it for her, and when she turned she felt his face against hers, warm and raspy, smelling of the pear drops he was always sucking. She remembered how safe it made her feel. In the past Dad had always been quietly there – in the house or the garden where they could find him. Now he was nowhere in particular, and at the same time, unexpectedly, all over the place. He wasn’t very quiet or sensible either. He sang songs at the top of his voice, and played boisterous games, and climbed up the front of the house when he locked himself out. Sometimes he got angry for no reason. Over the last few months he had become loud and risky and forgetful. Just that evening he had forgotten to talk to Tug’s teacher after school, and had forgotten to make tea, and had forgotten to pick Martha up from Costumes Club, and when, in the end, she called to remind him, he had been in such a mad rush to leave the house he had forgotten his key.

  Sometimes he seemed to be rushing everywhere, yet at other times he had no energy at all. Although he was full of great plans for things to do, he generally stayed in his dressing gown until lunch time. It was very odd.

  Perhaps it’s because he doesn’t have a job any more, Martha thought. And it makes him strange.

  She frowned. She was going to have to make sure things didn’t get out of hand. After all, you can’t have everyone acting strange. Someone has to keep their head, and if it wasn’t going to be Dad, it would have to be her.

  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.

  3

  The 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 pee
red 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?’