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Pooky Night
“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…” Tabbie sings this line over and over, unsure of the rest of the words. She first heard it on the radio last week when she was down the street at Mona’s house. Mum always tells her to call her Mrs. Brown, but Mona just likes to be called Mona. She isn’t like the other grownups Tabbie knows. She talks to kids like they are just as clever as adults, even though she doesn’t have any children. She would be a cool mum, Tabbie reckons.
“Oh Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz…” When Mona had heard this first line, her face had lit up and she’d turned the volume on the radio right up, grinning wildly at Tabbie and explaining how she hadn’t heard this song in years. Usually Tabbie thinks that the old music grownups listen to is boring, but this was different. Mona dragged her out of her seat at the table where she’d been colouring in, and they spent the entire short song dancing around the kitchen, even though the tune was quite slow and they looked a bit silly.
“Do you know who that was, Tabs?” Mona had asked afterwards, as she poured them both a glass of juice. Tabbie shook her head. “That was the reason I learned to play the guitar. I sang in a choir at school when I was a bit older than you, but I really wanted to be a rock star.” Tabbie giggles at the image of silver-haired Mona Brown on stage, biting the heads off small animals… her cousin told her that’s what you have to do if you want to be a rock star. He’s thirteen and knows everything.
“Tabitha?” Mum's voice scares away the daydream, and Tabbie remembers that she came up to her bedroom to put on her Halloween costume. She'd seen it in the shops the week before her birthday and had begged Mum to get it for her. She quickly and expertly puts it on, then admires herself in the small vanity mirror on her bedside table. She grins widely. Seven! All of those promises Mum had made, all of those times she had said “when you're older”... well, she's older now.
“Tabs? Come downstairs sweetheart, I'll help you put on a bit of makeup.” Tabbie nearly trips over in her rush to get through the bedroom door and downstairs.
“Of course!” Mona gives Louise a reassuring look then bends down to better examine Tabbie. She is decked out in a million different colours, and Mona's old eyes take a moment to realise it's a dress sort of designed to look like a rainbow. Tabbie's cheeks sparkle with special makeup and tiny plastic flowers sit in her long hair.
“I have no idea what you're supposed to be,” she teases.
“I'm a fairy!” Tabbie spins around to show off the delicate wings strapped to her back.
“Oh, now I see!” Mona looks back up to Louise and adds; “think nothing of it, love. I know you need this.”
Louise gives her a grateful smile, touches her arm gently, then kisses Tabitha on the cheek and turns back towards Number Eleven. Mona knows that it's been a long time since Tabbie's parents had any time alone together, and she is glad to help when it comes to young love. Alright, so the Parkers are in their thirties probably, but they're still younger than her. Louise has a romantic meal planned, and she needs the afternoon to prepare everything. So Tabbie is spending Saturday afternoon here, and then Mona is taking her out to show the world her fantastic Halloween costume. She remembers all too well the excitement she had felt at that age, getting dressed up as a witch or a princess and going round her small neighbourhood. Eyre's Crescent is one of the only places she knows these days that is still safe for youngsters to knock about – her hometown certainly isn't anymore.
“You know, Tabbie...” She says, leading her into the living room, “where I'm from, we have a special name for Halloween.”
“Where are you from?” Mona once again marvels at this little girl. Never one to miss the chance to ask a question.
“Just outside of Derry, in Ireland.”
“My teacher is from Ireland!” Tabbie's eyes widen and Mona imagines that in her young mind, her schoolteacher and Mrs. Brown from down the road must know each other, because the world is still so small.
“What do you call Halloween?”
“We call it Pooky Night.”
“Spooky night?”
“Nope, not spooky. Pooky. After the púca, the magical creatures that come out at this special time.”
“Are they like fairies?”
“A bit. They're the sprites who live in the woods and meadows. When the farmers bring their crops in at harvest time, they do well to leave some out in the field, as an offering to the púca.”
“Do they grant wishes?”
“No, but sometimes they might give you advice. Tell you what your future holds, or lead you away from danger. Very often, in Old Ireland, if you saw a black horse, you would follow it, and it would take you where you needed to be.”
“I'm not sure I understand. Mona, are you alright?”
Mona looks down at Tabitha and it isn't until she sees the girl through a mist that she realises she is on the verge of crying. She came here when she married Ivan, and she hasn't been back to Derry for more than a fleeting visit in over twenty years. The act of retelling her favourite stories from when she herself was a child, it must have brought it all back. The sense of family, of home, that she had never quite managed to acquire here. Still, she treasures these little moments between Tabbie and herself, whether it be telling her about the púca, or dancing around the kitchen to a song that made her feel young and beautiful again, the way she had been when she first fell for Ivan. Oh, Ivan... the love of her life. But what was she supposed to do with the rest of her life, when he had already gone on ahead?
The autumn sun vanishes behind a cloud, and the afternoon is suddenly bitterly cold. Scott retreats into the house, huddling up on the sofa and staring at the wall. This last month or so, he's done nothing but read and watch old films. He goes for walks sometimes, but the longer he spends outside, the longer he has to think about where he can go to score. It's like a tiny little creature living inside him all of the time, flaring up whenever he's tired or upset. You know what would make it all better, you know what can make it all right again. At times like this, he buries himself in black-and-white celluloid or one of the many unread classics that litter his parents' house. The house that he grew up in and then left in a cold, empty rage at eighteen. Four years on and he can't relate to the person he had been, that hard and selfish boy.
Scott picks up the dog-eared copy of Northanger Abbey that he's been working his way through for the last few days. He had struggled with it when it was the set text at school, meaning that truthfully he had barely made it past the title page. Who cares about Jane Austen when Abigail Sykes from the year above is offering all sorts? Scott remembers hearing about Abi's tragic death last year on the radio – news of a beautiful dead girl travels far and wide, and made it all the way down from this secluded corner of nowhere to London, where he'd been living it up with his good friends crack and smack.
He doesn't remember a great deal about his first few weeks back home. He knows that he had been incredibly angry, violent even, as the poisons slowly left him. He has flashes of a locked door and an empty room, one that might have once been plastered with posters and pages from magazines. His mother doesn't like to talk about that early time, but did let slip a few days ago that in the beginning, he had made such terrible noises during the night that the little girl next door had started saying Number Thirteen had a banshee. At first he had been taken aback that a seven year old knew what a banshee was, then he remembered that Mona Brown still lived on Eyre's Crescent. She had been his child minder for a while, way back when, and he had loved hearing her stories of strange magic and faerie folk in her homeland. Of course, looking back it was all nonsense, but it makes him smile, that Mona still has a young audience.
She has just stepped into a pair of black Mary Janes and put on her long black raincoat when the mirror swings forward and her father is standing in the doorway.
“You could knock,” Lara says, her face a still mask. “I might have been naked or something.”
“Well, you weren't.” Her dad goes the tiniest bit red, and Lara figures it hadn't even occurred to him – he lives in a world where she is still a toddler and he can go into her room whenever. “Anyway, I'm here to offer you a lift to the party. Do you want one or not?”
Lara smiles and hopes it is convincing.
“Thanks, Dad. But I'd really like to walk – it's such a nice evening, and all the kids will be out trick-or-treating. I bet it's lovely.”
Dad's expression softens a bit, and Lara wonders if she should feel the slightest bit guilty for lying to him like this, playing the part of the perfect daughter. Probably. But it's a tried and tested technique, she's always been able to get around Dad this way. She smiles widely, and says something that evokes sweetness and light. He accepts these lies far too easily.
Lara kisses her father on the cheek, then goes downstairs and straight out the front door. Outside, Eyre's Crescent is as orange as a jack-o'-lantern. The sun is setting, lending a warm glow to the gold and bronze of the autumn leaves.
The party isn't far. Half a mile, tops – less than fifteen minutes walk when you have long legs like Lara. She takes off her hat and twirls around in the piles of dry, crisp foliage. In front of her is a house with its front door open, and the sinful beat of young people's music echoes in the dusk air. Inside, Lara will find her friends. Ollie, Tess, Samantha. With her true smile twitching at the edges of her lips, harder to detect than the grin she uses to dazzle her father, Lara enters the house and calls out to the mass of already-drunk teenagers; “Trick or treat?”
Tonight, Lara plans to have the time of her life.
“Tabitha? What's wrong, it's late.”
“I know, but look! It's a pooka!”
Tabbie is stood up on the bed in her pyjamas, her nose pressed up against the windowpane. Mona sighs and says;
“It's probably just somebody in a costume, sweetheart...” But even she is taken in for a moment by the ethereal girl who is wandering aimlessly down Eyre's Crescent, her arms dangling loose down by her sides, hair almost glowing in the moonlight. But then a second later the spell is broken, and Mona recognises the teenager who lives further up the Crescent.
“That's just the Fife girl, Tabs. Go back to sleep.”
“Lara?” A voice behind her, more solid, a person. She turns around and sees an older version of herself; the fair hair is shot through with white, her eyes are wiser.
“Hi, Mum.” Lara doesn't think it's strange, that she is here. In a different state of mind, she might. “You went away?” Why did she say that as a question? She knows that her mother left.
“Yes. I'm sorry.”
Lara shrugs.
“Are you sad?” Her mother asks.
“I'm not much of anything,” Lara says. That has been true for quite a while. Maybe true since the day that her mother walked out of the house and never came back.
“That's not a good way to be.”
“What would you know?” She can't see her mum anymore, she keeps moving around. Stupid drugs, Lara thinks. Stupid whatever it is that she actually took. She spins around, looking for her mother, loses her balance, and topples over. It occurs to her that she probably just imagined the conversation. Her mum won't be coming back to Eyre's Crescent anytime soon.
Lara lies with her face in the grass, thinking, until she is hoisted over onto her back.
“Are you alright?” A man is hovering over her, his sandy hair falling into his eyes clumsily and delicately and it's moving in the invisible wind.
“Can you hear me? Can you sit up..?”
“Lara,” she whispers, rasps, grunts. Wait, what was the question?
“Okay, Laura...”
“Lara!” She exclaims. “Lara Lara Lara.” She keeps repeating her own name until it becomes nothing but noise, and Cilla Black is suddenly telling the audience in her head that there's gonna be a lorra lorra laughs.
He has misty grey eyes, a bit like a cat. Lara is willing that he is kind.
“Marry me,” she smiles up at him.
“Ok, Lara,” he smiles back. “I'll marry you if you just sit up.”
She reaches up and wraps her arms around his neck. He attempts to lift her, but instead she pulls his face down, closer to hers. She leans up and presses her lips to his.
He tastes acid in her mouth, and for a second too long he hesitates before pulling back. This girl is as high as a kite, but there is something about her nonetheless. Scott imagines that if her eyes could focus, they would be beautiful. A sort of pale, icy blue, like the sky in winter. Putting that thought as far out of his mind as he can manage, Scott gets Lara to her feet. She is still awake, talking, so he doubts she needs to go to hospital. He makes a split second decision, and five minutes later Lara is lying on the sofa in his parents' living room, running her fingers over the front over of Northanger Abbey, her eyes fixated on some point beyond the ceiling. His mum and dad are nowhere to be found, and he is silently thankful. Scott sits on the arm of the sofa and follows Lara's gaze upward, thinking grimly of the box room directly above them that had been his cell for the summer.
“Sometimes,” Lara says, her voice breaking the silence, “I think that I was born wrong. Do you know what I mean? Like I had the wrong parents, or I was meant to grow up somewhere else... You know?”
“I felt like that for most of my teens,” Scott replies honestly. “The lady who lives down the road, she used to tell me all kinds of stories. Changeling babies, left on doorsteps by creatures of Faerie... Maybe you and me are like that. We came from a different place.”
“And our parents?”
“We grew up in their homes, and we love them, just like they love us.”
He remembers the special lamp that his mother bought when he was little, to scare away the things that go bump in the night. And the light that she left on in the hallway much more recently, when he was going through hell upstairs.
“We were left on the right doorsteps,” he finishes. “Somebody knew that this is where we needed to be... even if we don't think so a lot of the time.”
Lara's eyes are no longer glazed. She's staring right at him, and for a second Scott thinks she is going to cry. The room is quiet for a while, and they just look at each other. Then, Scott finds himself talking again. He tells Lara about the first time he tried to read Northanger Abbey, and what happened to poor Abigail. He tells her about the first time he took heroin, and how his life changed so quickly after. He describes waking up in the bedroom that he'd slept in as a kid, and realising that he was clean and sober. He tells her just how much his parents mean to him, even though he can't quite say it to them.
Through it all, Lara is quiet. Silent. When the words stop coming, and he finally has nothing left to say, she takes his hand in hers.
“My mother died a little while ago,” she whispers. “She went out to the shops and never came back. Then the oddest darn thing happened... she came to me tonight.”
“It's Halloween,” Scott squeezes her hand. “These things happen.” He shifts closer to her, and she gives him a tiny, knowing smile. Like they share a secret now.
“You don't fancy me, do you?” Lara asks, out of the blue.
“You're sort of magic,” he says. “You're the kind of girl who leads poor mortal boys off the beaten track. But...”
“You don't fancy me.”
“No.”
“Good. If you fancied me, I'd have to sleep with you. It's this stupid thing I do. But because you don't fancy me, we can be friends. Which is good.”
“You're pretty flawed.”
“So are you. That's why it'll be good to be friends.”
Scott nods slowly, examines the bottom of his cup, then says;
“Isn't it time you went home.”
“Isn't it time you spoke to your mum and dad?”
“I will if you will.”
“Okay.”
They shake hands, quite formal considering how they met, then stand up. Lara walks around the side of the house and onto the street, heading towards her place and feeling a bit exposed in her tiny dress. She lost her coat sometime last night. Scott goes inside, sees his parents eating breakfast, and sits down with them. He doesn't do or say anything while they eat, but he can feel their eyes on him even as he stares out at the garden. When they're done, he smiles, and makes a start.
“How was your Halloween?”
The End
