Mad Dog Moonlight (5 page)

‘We've had a great day too,' they said. ‘Just like a proper family. In fact, after all this time we
are
a proper family, don't you think? It's nearly a year now
since you came to stay, and that's long enough to want to put things on a legal footing. We couldn't love you more if you were our flesh and blood, and we couldn't love your brother more either, and we've no children of our own so what we are proposing is that we start proceedings to adopt you. That way, this could be your proper home, all signed and sealed and legal, and we could be your mum and dad.
What d'you think?
'

They beamed at him. Mad Dog tried to beam back, but inside he was stunned. It was impossible to put into words what he thought. No sooner had Aunty said those words ‘mum and dad' than a spark of rage had flared up in him. How dared these people – no matter how long he'd lived with them or how many parties or presents they'd given him – think that they could ever be his parents?

‘Of course you'll want to think it over,' Uncle said, recognising that a struggle was going on, but not understanding its true nature. ‘We wouldn't want to rush you or anything like that.'

That night, Mad Dog ran away again. He did it properly this time, taking spare clothes, food and drink with him, and even the duvet off his bed. And he took his
ffon
as well. It was the first thing that he took, there in his hand without him even having to think about it, as if even the
ffon
knew that this wasn't his home and the time had come to get away.

Mad Dog held it tight, feeling its secret message beneath his palm, wondering what it meant and if it could be trusted to lead him home. He set off down the Gap, hoping for the best. His determination to find his parents, or at least unravel the mystery of what had happened to them, was renewed. He was determined
too, to put as much distance as possible between himself and Aunty and Uncle. They were child-thieves. That's what they were. People who stole children from their parents, and Mad Dog had to get away from them even if he didn't know where he was going.

He followed the Rheidol, feeling safe because it was his river – the one he watched every day from his bedroom window, knowing everything on it from the swans under the bridge to the darting kingfishers and great swooping herons that glided over its surface looking for fish. It led him around the town, walking between roads and railway lines, offices, a retail development park and a big out-of-town supermarket. Eventually it brought him to the far side of Aberystwyth, where there were still houses around and street lights and cars, but a long silent road stretched off, into the night.

Mad Dog felt as if he'd walked for hours by now, and yet he hadn't even left Aberystwyth behind him yet. He shivered. Even with the duvet thrown over his shoulders, he couldn't help but feel cold.

I'm getting soft, he thought, remembering the old days when he'd played out in all weathers. Once a little bit of cold night wouldn't have bothered me. But then, that's what comes of being Ryan Lewis and not Mad Dog Moonlight.

It was a long time since Mad Dog had thought about his old name. Perhaps he could be that old self again. Be wolfish, wild and fearless. Perhaps that old person lay inside of him still, waiting to come out.

Telling himself that trying was better than not trying and going better than staying, Mad Dog pressed on. What was it his mother had always said about
trusting in the power of the open road? Finally the last few houses fell behind him and nothing lay ahead but one single dark road. Mad Dog started down it. Every time a car swept past, he flung himself into the ditch in case it turned out to be Aunty and Uncle out looking for him. Soon he was covered in mud and soaking wet. Worse still, by now he'd lost the Rheidol.

Mad Dog clutched his
ffon
, determined not to lose that too.

Eventually, the lights of a village appeared somewhere on the road ahead, and he hurried towards it. At one end of the village, he found a cluster of allotments behind a tall fence. Climbing over the fence, he broke into the first shed he came to. Here he flung himself down among forks, spades, wheelbarrows, flower pots and sacks of potatoes, grateful for a place of shelter and trying to ignore how cold he was.

When day broke, Mad Dog was still awake, freezing cold and as stiff as a board. He was awake when Aunty opened her eyes on the new day and found him gone, but asleep by the time Uncle went out checking under the pier. He was still asleep when Uncle came back without him and phoned the police, and still asleep when Aunty phoned school and his social worker to let them know what was happening.

He slept on through the morning, and only when an old man in a quilted jerkin wanted to get to his wheelbarrow did he finally awake.

‘Who are you?' the old man said, staring down at the small boy lying on his shed floor.

‘I'm Mad Dog Moonlight,' Mad Dog said.

‘And I'm Elvis Presley,' the old man said.

‘No, that's my brother,' Mad Dog said.

The old man made Mad Dog a cup of tea on his camping stove, then tried again to get some sense out of him. Finally he gave up and, pretending to go for biscuits, phoned the police on his new fangled mobile. In no time at all Mad Dog found himself back at No. 3.

Here Aunty was beside herself with worry and Uncle as angry as a mountain in a thunderstorm. It wasn't so much the running away that did it, or even the timing of the thing, coming as it did straight after the party and his and Aunty's offer to give Mad Dog a proper home. It was the word
child-thief
that Mad Dog somehow managed to let slip. When he discovered what Mad Dog thought of him, Uncle's eyes flashed bolts of fury and words like
selfish
,
thoughtless
and
ungrateful
started hurtling about like thunderclaps.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself! After all we've done for you! What we've been through, taking care of you! And all the good things we've tried to do for you! Well, if this is what you think of us, you can clear off somewhere else. We've had enough. Phone social services! Get your bloody social worker to sort you out! Or simply disappear – see if we care!'

He stomped off in a rage, slamming doors behind him. Aunty said he hadn't meant it. Her eyes were red with crying. Mad Dog only had to look at her to realise what a terrible thing he'd done. He hung his head and felt ashamed. He was a wicked boy. Aunty and Uncle had every reason to be upset. Of course they never, ever, would have tried to steal him. How could he possibly have thought otherwise? Whatever they'd meant when they'd talked about adopting him, it hadn't been that. People stole sweets and money and things like toys. They didn't steal children.

Finally Mad Dog went up to Aunty and tried to say sorry by standing next to her, wrapping his fingers round the soft material of her skirt and tugging it. She looked down at him.

‘I don't mean to be bad,' he said. ‘I don't like it like this. I want everything to be good, but it never is.'

Aunty smiled at that, and picked him up and hugged him. ‘Oh, Ryan,' she said. ‘What are we going to do with you?'

She must have given it some thought, because later she came in with the Lewis family Bible tucked under her arm – an enormous leather thing with covers falling off it and lists of names inside that went back for generations.

‘Now then,' she said, setting it down before them both on the kitchen table. ‘If you really mean it about wanting things to be good, this is what we're going to do. You're going to put your hand on this book – which is full of family history, and names and dates and people just like you and me, who probably wanted that as well – and you'll swear on your word of honour never to run away again. Then I'll swear never to talk to you about adoption again, not unless you invite me to, and that'll be the last we mention on the subject. You'll keep your word, so help you God, and so will I. And we'll start afresh. The both of us. We'll try to make a go of this.
What do you think?
'

That same year, the worst storm in living memory hit Aberystwyth. It arrived one day without warning in a full-frontal attack. Nobody expected it, not even Mad Dog whose mother had once taught him how to read the colours of a storm before they hit. Without a single warning sign, it simply roared in.

Great white waves crashed between the stone pier and wooden jetty that marked the harbour's entrance, and the waters beyond them started seething. Pontoons smashed against each other and boats were crushed between them, their guy ropes flying about like whips, their prows smacking into each other like duelling swords.

A massive wind got up and the River Rheidol found itself forced back, its waves standing up in ridges like a dog's coat being stroked the wrong way. Usually the Rheidol was the king of the harbour, forcing everything out of its way as it flowed into the sea, but today the sea was king.

It came up over the grass where, until only half an hour ago, the boys had been playing football, lifted the barge den off the mud and threw it against the Gap wall. The boys tore home while they still could. The harbour in front of them was heaving like a washing machine full of sudsy water. Everywhere they looked, people were clinging to lamp posts and running for cover.

‘Upstairs,' Aunty yelled when Mad Dog came hurrying up the path. ‘Stay up there with Eric. I don't want either of you coming down. Unless I'm mistaken, we're in for a flood.'

Mad Dog wanted to help get ready for the flood, but Aunty wouldn't hear of it. ‘I want to know you're safe,' she said. ‘And I want to know your brother's safe as well. Do what I ask for once, and don't argue about it.'

She went out to the shed to collect the sandbags that were always kept down there for ‘just in case'. Then Uncle came in from the harbour office, and he and Aunty piled them up against the front and back doors. They checked that all the downstairs windows were not only shut but bolted, put chairs on tables, took up rugs and electrical appliances and came upstairs to, as Uncle put it grimly, ‘watch the fun'.

All along the Gap, Mad Dog could see the rest of the Lewis-Williams clan doing the same. They could have left their houses and headed inland, but they'd all decided to stay. They were harbour people, those Lewises and Williamses. Gap people. They'd seen storms before, and reckoned they could handle them.

But never a storm quite like this!

By now, a major battle was under way between the weather and the land – and the weather was winning hands down. It was only three o'clock in the afternoon, but the sky was black and the harbour had become as empty as midnight. Mad Dog watched the tide getting higher all the time, riding in on waves that looked as hard as iron. Right down the Gap, windows shook and roofs rattled. Even the brand new apartments on St David's Quay were shaken, slates
blowing off their roofs and crashing on to the ground, and wheelie bins flying around, along with kiddies' bikes and skateboards.

Beyond the quay, the wind whipped its way round the bowl of the harbour in a low, furious hiss. Dinghies piled up against each other and even a couple of old iron fishing boats, weighing countless tons, strained their moorings and crashed against each other.

The storm raged for the rest of the day and on into the night. When Mad Dog went to bed it was still raging, and it was still going in the morning when he awoke. Uncle was out at the harbour office, where he'd spent the night helping coordinate rescue efforts, and, when he finally came in, he said that if any one was still out there at sea, they didn't stand a chance.

‘I've never seen anything like it,' he said. ‘It's as if the storm's a person. As if it's got a life all of its own and there's something in it, beyond the power of an ordinary storm. I don't know how else to explain it. It feels different to any other storm.'

The storm felt different to Mad Dog too. He sat up in his bedroom with Elvis, wrapped in duvets because the electricity was off, praying for it to blow itself out. Uncle had gone again, called back to the harbour office already because a new emergency had arisen. Mad Dog watched him fight his way back along the Gap. He was a big man, but he could hardly stand.

Behind him, Mad Dog saw waves roll in off the Atlantic like Neptune's cavalry charging the town's defences. Rain fell from the sky like sheets of deadly arrows and great white plumes of spray spewed everywhere like sea blood. Mad Dog thought of what
Uncle had said, and wondered if he was right. Did this storm really have a life all of its own?

Suddenly a small boat came limping into harbour through the gap between the wooden jetty and stone pier. Mad Dog stared at it in horrified fascination. The boat moved across his vision against a backdrop of seething waters and sheet rain. For a moment it disappeared, then against all hope Mad Dog saw it again – a ragged excuse of a boat, its mast at an angle, its sails in ribbons, keeling dangerously to one side.

Elvis stared as well. He pointed with his finger and said, ‘
Look, boat.
' But it took Aunty, standing behind them both, to draw in her breath and say, ‘Oh, my God – there are
people
on that boat!'

The boat made it up the harbour, corkscrewing back and forth across the swollen waters of the Rheidol until it hovered directly opposite the entrance to the Gap. Here the wind picked it up and almost threw it into the Gap like an old toy being discarded. It crashed against the inner wall, right opposite No. 3. Elvis cried out and Mad Dog flinched and stepped back as if he thought the boat was going to end up flying through their window.

But, instead, it tipped over and started sinking. Mad Dog returned to the window just in time to see its mast disappearing behind the quay wall. Aunty saw it too, and leapt into action. She tore downstairs to phone for help and, when she couldn't get through, yelled, ‘You stay here. Don't you dare move! I'm going over to the harbour office to get a rescue team!'