Finding Davey

by Jonathan Gash

  On the ceiling and the wall shadows cast by the fading sun became diverse shapes with blurred outlines. The boy’s eyes opened. For a moment he glimpsed the shadows, then he dozed, his mind slipping away. Doctor and nurses were nice.

  Doctor sat at his desk across from his framed diplomas, reviewing the listed staff of his Special Care Rehabilitation Unit. He had a star system – four stars for maximum reliability, down to one star. Such was his scheme of profit sharing, and so expert was he in employment pre-selection, that only three ancillary staff had ever merited only one star.

  One star meant deletion, death by accident.

  The first had been a medical technician, now twenty years deceased. A road accident was always the most reliable, and least investigated, means of elimination. The second had been a nurse whose man, a loutish beachblower, persuaded her to attempt to blackmail Doctor, so amateurish as to be laughable. Both had oh-so-accidentally drowned, drugged up, under the breakwaters by Old Bayonne Beach. He didn’t regret the cost. Their insolence deserved an ugly death.

  The third member of staff had been a secretary. Her jealousy had become intolerable and her imperious demands on him ridiculous. He regarded hysteria as forgivable. But to insist that he decline sex with willing nurses in her favour was effrontery. From a mere clerk, to the prime mover of the enterprise that put bread in her mouth? Yet, he thought with satisfaction, her shrieked ultimatum that he marry her had been a compliment. She was found dead, victim of an unsolved assault in her apartment on Congreve and Vane. Expensive again, but requisite.

  None of these deaths was Doctor’s fault, for the Clinic had to remain sacrosanct. Every employee received a heavy bonus for each child abducted from its parents and satisfactorily processed before being sold on with its new identity. Staff either believed, or were removed. Simple as that. And only three among so many was a superb track record.

  Starkly, the truth was this: The original parents of the children he acquired didn’t deserve them. Society needed somebody to rescue the children, and simply transfer them to decent strangers. If biological parents couldn’t be bothered, then he, the Doctor, had a medical duty to pass their children to better parents.

  That’s all it was: duty fulfilled. Richer people, sure, who could pay well. But so?

  There were fees, naturally. Had to be. He set the fees at whatever he judged they could afford. They were glad to pay.

  After all, look at the product! Every child guaranteed ready-made, with all of its first memories blanked out. He felt inexpressibly moved whenever he entered up the details of a new child in his copperplate handwriting. He had created the perfect system. The fuss over the new boy had already died down.

  Nothing could go wrong.

  Two in the morning, Bray roused and went downstairs. Buster woke, stared, came with him while he made some cocoa. He sat in his armchair. The dog lay on the rug to listen.

  “See, Buster,” he explained, “people who steal a child don’t do it just once. They steal one child after another. It’s money.”

  Buster’s ears moved, but he was already into a doze.

  “They’re rich enough to bribe anybody.” He tried the cocoa but it scalded, too hot. “Like police.” He never got the hang of cocoa.

  “Two questions, Buzzie. Can I trust that Officer Stazio? Or is he really one of them, keeping an eye on this sad Limey grampa?”

  Buster gave a trial snore. Bray didn’t mind. The past weeks had been hard. He wanted eyes and ears, anybody’s, to test his suggestions. Even pretence would do.

  “I can trust nobody, Buzzie,” he said. “I shall tell Geoffrey and Shirley nothing. I’m not trying to do my son’s job, or take anybody’s place. God knows I’m nothing special. But Geoff’s up to his neck, everything falling apart, Shirley broken.”

  Buster fell sound asleep.

  “I’m only the grandfather, no more, no less. So it’s down to me. I must remember. Trust might be a trick.”

  He tried the cocoa. Stone cold. He told Buster goodnight and went back to bed and stared at the blackness.

  Chapter Ten

  “Departments are closed,” the porter said.

  Bray was buffeted by milling youngsters. The technical college hall seemed wide as a football field. The pupils – all “students” nowadays – were attired in various team strips. Everybody seemed to be shouting.

  Bray kept his anger down. Normally he would have accepted the porter’s rejection and gone. Now, he had resolve.

  “Somebody in computer technology, please.”

  “They’ve all left.”

  “Where’s the dean’s office?” Bray looked at him.

  Agitation finally stirred the man. “Got an appointment?”

  Bray saw a sign, Office of the Dean, and walked. Down the corridor the hubbub diminished. Carpets began, administrators awarding themselves status symbols. Doors were darker here, but still modern shoddy. The corridor ended at stairs.

  He climbed to the floor above, got help from two giggling girls, their arms full of folders.

  “Computers? Next floor. Mr Walsingham’s still in.” One rolled her eyes at some unknowable joke.

  “Thank you, miss.”

  That set them off again. He heard their laughter all the way to the next level. It was quiet except for a radio. The doors here were plastic veneer monstrosities pinned to warping pine. He felt disgusted. Who on earth?

  A door marked with Walsingham’s name stood ajar. He knocked. A man was on the phone. Bray could see the reflection.

  “Look, Gordon,” the speaker was expostulating, swinging in his chair. “I know it’s class ratios. We’d be deluged in a week.”

  An academic row? Bray hesitated.

  “It isn’t a question of delegation, Gordon,” Walsingham went on with bitterness. “It’s teaching time.”

  Confidential. Bray moved down the corridor to wait. Somebody was tapping a keyboard. Courageously he peered in. A scruffy girl sat at a console, chuckling, smoking a cigarette, utterly absorbed.

  Bray was shocked to see a couple on her screen making love. Both were naked, something jerky and Cubist about them. The screen’s periphery was rimmed with symbols. The girl heard him and tapped a key. The screen blanked.

  She docked her cigarette, squeezing it slickly.

  “You stupid cunt! I thought you were my dad.” She snarled with such savagery Bray recoiled.

  “I’m sorry to startle you, miss,” Bray stammered.

  “What the fuck you creeping about for? Piss off!”

  She looked unwashed, unbelievably unkempt, her shoes caked with mud, her jeans tatty. He wondered why a pupil would still be working, the college closing.

  “I’m for Mr Walsingham,” he apologised. “A computer course.”

  She sneered. “They don’t start for three months. Dad’s rowing with that fucking Registration pansy.”

  Angrily the girl swivelled back, clacked the keys and produced a scene of a blonde performing fellatio on a naked male in what appeared to be a church nave.

  “How do you make it show pictures?” And, as she turned to stare, “I’d like to learn.”

  “You a dirty old fucker or what?”

  He pondered the words. She was manipulating the crudest images he’d ever seen, yet she suspected him? Of what, exactly?

  “I must learn to use a computer. I can pay.”

  She lit a cigarette, looking quickly round. The room was larger than Bray had realised. Sixteen consoles stood on benches, a blackboard and white screens occupied the end. For a class?

  “What sort you got?”

  “Computer? I haven’t got one. I don’t know what to buy.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. You real or what?”

  “I hoped someone might advise me.”

  “I’ll get you one cheap. Not nicked.” She sounded hopeful.

  “I’m no good with electrics. I’d want it set up.”

  “Any fucker can plug it in. They never go wrong, except for hackers and viru
s wankers.” A sullen interest kindled. “What you want it for?”

  “I don’t know. What can it do?”

  “Any fucking thing.” And now she really did weigh him up. He was conscious of the age gap, the gender gap, every wretched gap. Except she knew these gadgets and he didn’t. “You don’t know even what fucking for? You’re loony.”

  Her dreadful language was exhausting him.

  “If it turns out to be useless, that’s my…” Bad luck? Luck mustn’t come into it. “Misfortune,” he ended lamely.

  “You’re off your fucking trolley.”

  “Do they stay on all the time?” Several other screens seemed to have been left on, glowing. It was wasting electricity.

  “Best never to switch off.”

  “How far can they reach?” He explained at her puzzlement, “I heard they can write between different countries.”

  She laughed, shaking her matted hair. Did she ever comb it? “Jesus, you really are thick.” She looked at him. “Got wad?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t smoke.”

  “Money, you prat. Pay me and I’ll show you. Got a modem?”

  “I don’t know what that is, miss.”

  “Stop saying miss like that. You’re doing my frigging head in. Kylee.”

  He’d never met anyone called Kylee before, said the name over to himself in anxious rehearsal. Her coarse language was increasingly tiresome, and her oddly thin cigarette produced a pungent yet cloying smoke. It made him feel queer.

  “How do you do? I’m Mr Charleston.”

  “How de fucking do,” she said. He coloured. “Bread. Packet for ten?” And when he looked blank, translated with exaggerated weariness, “You pay me twenty fags every ten minutes, okay?” As he tried to work out the hourly rate she said belligerently, “Dad’d cost you three times that and be fucking useless.”

  “I’d have to pay you money, I’m afraid. Are you old enough to smoke?” He felt drawn in. He wished Mr Walsingham would get off the phone.

  “I’m fourteen.” She dared him. “Deal? Or are you going to report me?”

  What could he do? Time mattered. Who could wait three months? This girl might be his only ally.

  “Deal,” he said. “What do cigarettes cost?”

  “Where do you want to write to?”

  “America, I think.”

  “Easy peasy. Who to?”

  He said carefully after a protracted pause, “Everyone.”

  She eyed him. “What for?”

  He could see his mood was infecting her. He looked at the screen. How come the young were so enthralled? He knew they played games, saw them on the second floor in Griffins and Empdale, screens bleeping, children clustered round.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Here, you’re not one of them queer paedies, are yer?”

  Her meaning struck him like a blow. His face must have changed because she raised a hand in peace. “Okay, ’kay.”

  “Ah, I think I should ask your father for permission before you give a stranger instruction.”

  Kylee spat venom. “Look, old man. I’m back with Dad for a wasted fucking weekend because Mum’s getting herself shagged brainless by some burke in Marble Arch. I’m your tug-of-love child.” She spoke the term in a bitter falsetto. Bray felt moved. “I do fuck all every happy weekend. See my problem?”

  “I apologise.”

  She cackled a laugh and pointed to the screen. “You talk like them Dickens serials on telly. Listen up. We’ll dig skunk as example, okay?”

  “Very well.”

  A skunk? Many skunks? He supposed she had her reasons. She eyed him as he approached to watch. He noticed then that she had several mini bottles of nail varnish. Her computer keys bore coloured marks. Some keyboard letters were indecipherable under the colours.

  “You haven’t a fucking clue, have you? Skunk is cannabis, weed, hash, grass.” She gave a smile like sleet. “Naughty, but it’ll give you an idea.”

  Bray sat there ashamed. He didn’t feel out of his depth at work. Wood was malleable, its living spirit within reach of a man’s hands. This machinery was an impenetrable metal world where intangible electrons flew in Outer Space. Yet these unknowable machines just might help.

  “Can you explain, please?”

  “This is a slow old heap.” She kicked the bench in anger. “The college is too pigging mean.” Her manner became furtive. “Somebody owffed Dad’s – offed its cards in her knickers. Sold it for illicit herbal substances.” She grinned with surprising gaiety. “I’ll bet that’s what happened!”

  Bray was out of his depth, understanding nothing.

  “This isn’t what I must buy, then?”

  “One fucking candle power? Watch. I’m going to switch it off, start you from scratch, okay?”

  Kylee clicked something, and it resumed its glow. “Time starts now, okay?”

  He agreed. She only meant the start of her instruction fee, in cigarettes. Bray meant something different.

  The computer world seemed to have no beginning and no end. His mind reeled. Kylee, young enough to be his granddaughter, cursed obscenities at his incomprehension. Twice she made him take her place, only to shove him aside to restore the screen’s mad universe of signs and numbers. Stupidly he kept forgetting the punctuation, colon, comma, backslash, whatever, until she exploded, actually striking him and yelling, “You gotter say it, you senile prick! Have you no fucking sense?”

  “I’m sorry,” he’d said, wondering what he’d got himself into.

  She calmed down after a moment. “I don’t know letter. Gerrit?”

  He examined the screen, where various emblems were displayed in three lines. He glanced at her, back to the screen, then at her array of coloured nail varnishes. Suddenly it became clear. If he’d had half the sense he was born with, he might have understood. Dyslexia, was it called? Yet if she couldn’t read, how did she manage? Why bother with symbols, letters, numbers on a fluorescing electronic screen if they meant nothing?

  “I apologise, Kylee. You’re right. I’m thick.”

  She barked her manic laugh. “No, you’re ’kay. I hear it, I do it in my head, see? You poor prats need it written down.”

  That had given him his first smile. She had a simple deficiency. Except, he reflected, was it a ‘deficiency’? She’d airily said at one point, “No, Owd Un. Back five screens, yer’d gotter different picture, right?” He’d have needed pages of notes to help him remember what the hell she had made the screen do five clicks before. A brilliant child; just different. Like Davey.

  Mr Walsingham entered the computer lab. He must have heard his wayward daughter spitting invective at a stranger.

  “What’s happening here?” he barked.

  Bray rose and waited to be introduced. Kylee took not the slightest notice, simply kept going.

  “Pillocks like you buy toy computers,” she said, “cos you’re prats. Don’t buy shit sticks like this old heap. Buy RAM to spare. My mate’s daft on old shifters, but what’s the fucking point? Everything’s extinct in half a mo’. You’d know that, if you’d half a brain.”

  “Erm,” Bray said finally, hesitantly offering his hand to the newcomer. “May I introduce myself? I’m Mr Charleston. I wish to register on a computer course.”

  Walsingham glanced from Bray to Kylee, who said, “I told him your college is fucking all use.”

  “Private tuition is not allowed.” Walsingham shook Bray’s hand perfunctorily and switched the computer off. Kylee gave an angry squeal. Her father extinguished her cigarette. “Registration is closed. Introductory courses begin in three months. Leave your name downstairs at Information.”

  “See?” Kylee snorted and took a backhanded swipe at her father. “Told you.”

  “Your daughter has been most considerate, Mr Walsingham,” Bray said helplessly.

  “Kylee?”

  Walsingham made it a command. He brought out a bunch of keys, evidently locking-up time. Bray moved to the door as Walsin
gham went out for his briefcase. Bray took his chance, fumbling three notes to the girl. She pulled a comic grimace of mock terror as Walsingham reappeared.

  “Sorry you’ve missed the boat, Mr Charleston. College procedures must be followed. Courses fill up from industry, business.”

  “Can you suggest somewhere?”

  “I said I’d do it,” Kylee put in. “Except you’re a right frigging tortoise, you.” She cackled one of her laughs, already ahead of them down the stairs.

  “I’m sorry about my daughter,” Walsingham said quietly, locking the IT laboratory. “It’s been a troubled year. I’m divorced. She tell you? She announces it like a leper rings a bell.”

  “My sympathy, Mr Walsingham.” Bray hesitated. “She’s bright. Can you recommend a private home teacher?”

  Walsingham shook his head as they started after Kylee. “Don’t choose from the phone book. Most teach extinct systems.”

  “Only, I need to learn speedily.”

  “Leave your name. Somebody on the staff might free up a slot.”

  Bray’s mind screamed, Future? There is no future unless…painstakingly he wrote out his name and address.

  “Will this do?” He read his print aloud.

  Walsingham and Kylee headed for the car park. Bray caught the bus home.

  The episode was painful. He’d made a fool of himself. Worse, he’d failed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Bray heated his supper, beans on toast, a banana, apple, potato cakes, tea. Buster was dozing listlessly after his feed, bones on Saturday and different biscuits.

  Shirley was visiting a psychiatric support counsellor Dr Feering had arranged. Geoffrey was staring unseeing at football results. It was later than Bray thought.

  Waiting was their sole purpose now, the phone there on the coffee table. Conversation, once incessant, had gone with Davey.

  “Officer Stazio phoned, Dad. No news.”

  Stazio loomed in Bray’s mind: stout was he, perhaps chewing tobacco, belly bulging over his belt?

  Geoff cleared his throat, looking unseeing at the soccer scores scrolling on TV, colours for score draws, plain for others.