The Moon King (6 page)

Indoors was cool and dark after the bright warmth of the garden. Ricky’s limbs felt heavy from exertion and the sun, and coloured shapes, after-images of the sun, swam in front of his eyes as he entered the hall. Even after blinking he could hardly see, and he staggered forward to the kitchen, flailing his rubbery arms in front of him.

He was still having trouble adjusting his vision when he reached the light-filled kitchen. Shapes floated in the air like oily blobs on water and he had to blink hard several times. Gradually the room assembled itself in front of him, and he could make out the table, as he had left it, covered in newspapers and his painting things. But what had happened to his picture? He’d left it drying on the table, but it wasn’t there now, just a … Oh no! It was there, but not opened out flat to dry. Somebody had folded it over. Now it was going to be all stuck together, if the paint hadn’t been allowed to dry first.

Gingerly, Ricky picked up the folded sheet and started to prise it open, very gently and carefully. It had stuck, quite badly, but he managed to open it without
tearing it at least. The two halves eased themselves apart with sticky resistance.

But this … no … oh!

It wasn’t just that somebody had thoughtlessly folded over the page. This wasn’t thoughtlessness. It was – vandalism! His lovely dandelion-yellow-haired Rosheen had been smeared and slashed with ugly tattered ribbons of paint – dense black gashes, inter- sected and smeared by screaming red and murky mustard stripes. Somebody had deliberately destroyed his picture. His paintbrush, which he had carefully propped in the jamjar, was thrown on the table, and the brownish mess of mixed paints had dried on its bristles in dirty, sticky clumps.

Hot tears sneaked down by the side of Ricky’s nose, and he wiped them impatiently away with the back of his hand.

Ricky crumpled the devastated picture into a ball and squeezed all the life out of it in his fist. Then he hurled it across the kitchen, and ran out of the room and up the stairs, up and up, up and up again, right up to the attic at the top of the house. He didn’t go into his bedroom. Instead he pulled open the door of the moon-chair room.

There it was, the moon chair, standing serenely among the jumble and debris of Kelly family life, all the dead old things no-one ever used any more, the tailor’s dummy standing like an old and silent friend, the old manual typewriter, half of whose keys stuck if you tried to depress them, an abandoned and rather beautiful crystal chandelier spilling out of a box like solidified raindrops. The crocheted blanket was still there, hanging on the back of the moon chair. Ricky pulled it aside and gazed at the chair, its graceful, tapering back pointing up to the attic ceiling, as if straining to reach out through the roof and to the sky, and topped by the amazing moon-shaped image. He looked at the friendly, bottom-shaped wooden seat, the gleaming, curvaceous arms and he sat down carefully in the moon chair and pulled the rug over him.

Then he remembered Froggo. He reached into the
inside pocket of his jacket and pulled him out by the back leg. He draped Froggo carefully on the arm of the chair, and then he waited, stroking Froggo’s velvety back, for the moon king feeling to start.

The attic room began slowly to revolve about him as he sat. The tailor’s dummy leant towards him, the lampshade swaying drunkenly, its fringes brushing his cheek, as if it was about to kiss him. Just in time, it lurched backwards again and stood up straight, but then the old typewriter started to slide down the desk, as if it was going to land in his lap, and the disused chandelier shook its rainy hair out of its box and tinkled a little silvery laugh, so that sparkles flew from it and danced around the room, bouncing off the walls like shooting stars. Enchanted, Ricky watched the twinklings flying and falling, whirling and swirling, whizzing now in a mad, twirling rainbow, and he was riding the rainbow, the dusty, sticky-keyed old typewriter now on his knee, its old keys suddenly alive and fluent, clacking merrily as if the typewriter was trying to type something. Ricky’s fingers found the keys, and now he was typing. TEH MOOON kiNG he typed. He was the moon king, he was, he was, he was!

Ricky really was the moon king now. Here in this room, in this chair, he was in charge. Whoever had spoilt his picture, whoever hated him, couldn’t touch him here. Here it was just him and Froggo and the moon chair and all the abandoned things in the moon-chair room, and he was flying.

This was where the junk was put, cast aside, the things other people didn’t want. Ricky was king of the junk, king of all the abandoned things, and he was flying. Here he ruled. Nobody could bully him here, nobody could beat him or tell him he was good for nothing, and he was flying.

The room started to slow down now and gradually came to a standstill. Ricky himself came slowly to land in the moon chair. The wild tinkling of the chandelier slowed to a ripple and finally stopped, the flying glitters settling into a still but scattered rainbow pattern cast here and there over the walls and floors and objects in the room.

As Ricky touched down, balancing the old typewriter on his knees, the lampshade-headed dummy bent towards him again, bowing towards her king. King Ricky raised his hand graciously to show her he was listening, ready to consider her request, but she was too shy to speak. Never mind, said Ricky to her. You don’t have to speak if you don’t want to. Some other time perhaps, and the lampshade nodded its fringes, coyly hiding the shy dummy-lady’s face. Not at all, waved Ricky. Think nothing of it.

The crystal chandelier gave a final wavering clink from its box on the floor and settled its sugar-stick tresses. Everything was calming down, getting ready to rest at Ricky’s royal feet.

Ricky! Ri-ii-icky! Ricky! Ricky!

The voice came to him from very far away, but it was
getting nearer. A clear, bell-like voice. He didn’t answer. He wanted to hear the voice again.

Ricky! Are you up there? Come on down. Ri-ii-icky!

The voice was getting nearer. Ricky shook himself and sighed. What was that weight on his knees? He looked down at the typewriter. It was battered and bashed-looking, and a funny smell came off it, like mildew. His finger was on the letter G. Gingerly he removed the finger, but the key stayed down. Ricky heaved the typewriter back onto the desk, and as it hit the desk, the G key bounced back up. A little puff of dust rose up from the keyboard as it did so, and Ricky sneezed. He gathered Froggo off the arm of the chair, where he had managed to maintain his balance all this time, and stood up, as a shadow appeared in the doorway.

‘Ricky!’ said Rosheen now in an ordinary voice, no longer having to shout because she was almost beside him. ‘Was it you who left that mess on the kitchen table? Did you know you’d spilt the water? It was all brown, like mud, only more liquidy, and there’s a pool of it on the kitchen floor. And the paintbox is open and some of the paints have the lids left off and there isn’t even a picture! What have you been doing? It’s lucky it was you. If any of the rest of us did that, Mammy Kelly would have our lives. Come on down now and help me to clean it up before teatime. Didn’t you paint a picture after all? How could you have made such a mess without painting anything?’

Rosheen prattled on, not pausing for Ricky to answer
her, even if he had wanted to. But that didn’t matter. He didn’t want to. He just wanted her to go on and on, chattering and warbling, like the pigeons. He wasn’t listening to what she was saying any more, just following her down the stairs and listening to the sound her voice made, like chiming in the wind.

‘And then when we get it all cleared up,’ Rosheen was saying, ‘we’ll just have time to feed the pigeons. Would you like that? We can do it together if you like, but we’ll have to hurry because we must get that mess out of the way first, or there’ll be blue murder, I’m telling you, absolutely blue blooming murder!’

‘I told you I’d tell your social worker about how you have been bullying me,’ Helen hissed.

It was some time after the destroyed picture episode. Helen and Ricky and Rosheen and Fergal were in the front room, the one full of hatstands, where Ricky had slept on his first night in the Kellys’ house. Fergal was having a go on the exercise bike and the others were sitting looking out the window at the rain. The children often sat here, especially on rainy days, or when they were expecting a visitor, because there were deep windowseats and once you cleared the junk off them you could get a good view of the weather or of anyone struggling up the front garden. You didn’t walk up that front path, you climbed up it. It was always a struggle, because the garden was on such a steep slope.

And sure enough, as Helen spoke, the nondescript bundle of clothes that was waddling up the steps towards the house came suddenly into focus. Several raindrops converged in a particular spot on the window, swimming together to form a temporary lens of rainwater, just level
with Ricky’s vision. As he peered through the little lens of water, the figure clarified as that of the Lipstick Woman. Ricky sat stock still, his throat dry, his skin crawling, as the little knot of raindrops suddenly dispersed and ran in separate rivulets down the window.

‘How do you know that’s his social worker?’ Fergal gasped, still pedalling, and peering over the others’ shoulders.

‘I’m telling you. I asked her to come. I thought she ought to know about how badly he’s been behaving,’ said Helen smugly, kicking with her runners against the panelling of the windowseat.

‘Badly? Ricky behaving badly? What are you talking about?’ This was Fergal again. ‘And don’t kick the panelling, Helen. It’s all scuffed already from people doing that. You know Ma hates it.’

Rosheen said nothing. She had seen the look of horror on Ricky’s face.

‘“Don’t kick the panelling. It’s all scuffed already,”’ Helen repeated in a silly sing-song copycat voice. ‘You’re so stupid, Fergal. If it’s all scuffed already then it doesn’t matter if I kick it some more, does it, dummy?’

‘Yes it does, fat-head, because it gets worse,’ retorted Fergal. ‘Anyway, Ricky doesn’t know how to behave badly. We all know who’s the specialist in bad behaviour around here. Miss Greeneyed Sourpuss.’

Helen pouted, but she didn’t argue. She didn’t need to. It looked as if she was getting her way.

‘Anyway,’ Fergal puffed on, ‘she wouldn’t come just because you wanted her to come. She’s coming on one of those regular visits they do so that they can go on being paid. She wouldn’t listen to you.’

Helen just grinned. ‘You wait and see, then, Mr Smartypants Fergal. You just wait and see. She’s going to take him away. She knows he isn’t suitable for a decent family like this, a juvenile delinquent like him.’

‘Juvenile delinquent!’ Fergal laughed. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Ricky’s not a juvenile delinquent.’

‘Then what’s he doing living here?’ Helen challenged him. ‘If he’s just an ordinary boy, why doesn’t he live at home with his mother and father like normal people?’

‘He hasn’t got a father, Helen,’ said Fergal. ‘You know that. It was all explained. And his mother’s in hospital. He’s just here until she’s better and can mind him again herself. You know there’s always a reason kids come here, but it’s not because they’re juvenile delinquents. For goodness’ sake, get a grip!’

Ricky looked at him curiously. Was his mother going to get better and mind him? Did that mean he had to go home? And would Ed be there still? If Ed was going to be there, he wasn’t going home, he wasn’t. Even if Ed wasn’t there, even if it was just going to be him and his mother, he wasn’t sure he wanted to go home. He loved his mother, but she hadn’t stopped Ed. She hadn’t been strong enough. She hadn’t had the guts. He half-thought she
believed Ed when he said what a bad boy Ricky was. She must believe him if she went on letting him hit Ricky so often. She must think he needed to be beaten. Maybe he
was
a bad boy. Ed thought so. Helen thought so.

‘Shut up, Helen,’ said Rosheen through clenched teeth.

‘I don’t see why I should shut up. I haven’t done anything wrong. I just asked the nice lady to come and take this nasty little boy away. That’s perfectly reasonable.’

‘You’re nuts,’ said Rosheen. ‘If you think we’re going to believe you did that, you really are nuts. You’re just saying it to frighten Ricky. You hate it when new people come, don’t you? Even Billy, little Billy – you were jealous of him when he came. You think your mother belongs to you, don’t you? I think it’s time you grew up and started to act your age. So just give it a rest, would you, and leave Ricky alone.’

‘“Leave Ricky alone”,’ repeated Helen in her put-on sing-song, high-pitched voice. ‘Poor Ricky, he can’t answer back, so everyone has to talk for him. I don’t see why he can’t speak up for himself anyway. All this no-talking business, it’s pure affectation, that’s what it is, pure affectation. He’s well able to talk if he wants to.’

Affek-tay-shun. Ricky wondered what it meant. Affek-tay-shun.

‘Three miles,’ said Fergal, mysteriously. ‘I’ve just cycled three miles.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Helen, ‘you haven’t moved.’

‘The equivalent of three miles, then,’ said Fergal. ‘Who else wants a go now? You could do with a bit of exercise, Helen. You only ever walk from the fridge to the telly and back.’

Ricky slid down from the windowseat and slipped out of the room while the other three were arguing about the exercise bike. He took the stairs two at a time, his heart thumping against his ribs as he climbed swiftly up and up, staircase by staircase. He was on the half-landing where the bird-mobile swung silently above the rocking- chair when he heard the ding-dong of the doorbell. He didn’t stop to hear if it was answered. On he climbed, up and up to the moon-chair room.

Ricky gave way to tears. He didn’t understand what was happening. All he wanted was to be left alone. He didn’t want to fight with Helen. And he didn’t want to go
home, not if Ed was still there. He wanted to see his mother, but he didn’t ever want to see Ed again, and if Ed was at home, he didn’t want to be there. Ed would beat him again, especially if his mam was still away in the hospital. He beat him even when she was at home, but it would be much worse if she was away. No, he couldn’t go home, he just couldn’t. He had to hide. He had to avoid being sent home. He had to. Somehow. But where could he hide? Where would he be safe?