Finding Davey

by Jonathan Gash

  He called Bray, grimaced with chagrin at the phone bill. He had a cold beer immediately after. Strange, but he wanted to ask Bray if it was true they drank their beer warm, did he go bowling and was his bowling on grass he’d heard some guy say in the Army Air Force, and did they bowl to nine pins in them old English pubs, was that right?

  Days after his retirement pension finally came through he took down his photocopied file, C for Charleston. The guy was a carpenter, made furniture. Seemed the sort who’d keep coming. He phoned on the dot, kept saying sorry if the time was inconvenient. Jim thought, how long can he keep this up?

  The day before he left, Jim had gone to see his replacement in the missing kids section. She was pleased with herself. No, she hadn’t checked through the list, give her a moment to settle in. He offered to tell her what he could about the cases. She said sharply she didn’t want patronising, meaning piss off out the building.

  He’d wished her luck, gave her his trailer-home number. Over and out.

  The map he’d brought with him, he didn’t want to put up – Charmianne might peer in and wonder what the hell. He kept a police badge, a farewell replica. Originals had to be handed in. He marked the medical clinics on the map, some hundreds, and compiled a key for addresses.

  Nine o’clock he felt a whole lot better, decided to walk to the leisure bar for some live company. Tomorrow he’d start an alphabetic list of the people running those clinics. Maybe no use, just keeping going like Bray. Must be catching.

  Balance was everything to a hunter, a realisation that took Bray by surprise. Some progress seemed founded on daft premises. Some came at breakneck speed.

  Think of it, though. Like Hereward the Wake, mediaeval hero of the English fen country, stealing through the wetlands while wicked Normans scoured the terrain. Some nights, mustn’t he have wilted, fagged out, against some damp alder? Perhaps the lulling of distant bells for vespers, cattle lowing homeward – surely, just for one fleeting moment, mustn’t the great outlaw have thought, sod it, rest a while, dream of a cottage fireside and a loving woman? Weakness must have fragged Hereward’s resolve.

  But history knows that he didn’t. He kept the balance of the hunter. How do we know? Because after a thousand years he’s still legendary Hereward the Wake, not Hereward the Dozer who took time off and got caught. Hereward remained at liberty.

  So it was that, sternly correcting his balance of time, commitment, Bray gave Lottie Vinson the sequel by the Barbican restaurant fountains, astonishing her.

  “She’s finished it?” Lottie marvelled.

  Balance, Bray remembered, his lies even better this time. “Sharlene plans her days.”

  “I suppose she has to.” Lottie looked at the folder. “These drawings! D and A want to re-do them.” She saw his puzzlement. “Design and Art do graphics.”

  “No,” Bray said gently. It was unthinkable. He would have to fight this.

  “They’re worried about tints, densities.” Lottie too had the bit between her teeth. She kept going, leafing away, taken aback at the colour. “Can Sharlene do a conference call? Georgina’s a brilliant pictorial girl. She says that in nine months it’d be really something.”

  “Lottie.” In a way, rejection would make things easier. Costlier, but he and Mr Corkhill could race ahead. “Sharlene says no delay.”

  “Can’t we ask her?” They strolled along the waterside. Ducks came to pester. “It takes only a second to phone.”

  Bray stared at the noisy mallards. Maybe publishers were a mistake. Maybe he should have gone on alone, him and Corkhill’s printing firm, his phoney orders from nonexistent buyers, Kylee’s flurry of attention-seeking on the Internet thing. But might he run out of money within reach of Davey?

  The mallards also lost balance. One drake, desperate, rushed at Bray’s shoe. Bray carefully didn’t move, so as not to hurt the foolish creature. Yet wasn’t the poor thing also striving for balance? Pestering could become begging, begging turn into demand, a demand into war. Ducks, and Bray, were each in conflict zones.

  “Her answer must do, Lottie,” he said, realising he hadn’t spoken for a long time. “Shall I get some food for these creatures?”

  “Talking couldn’t do any harm.”

  Bray was not as prepared as he’d thought. “It would serve no purpose.” He started inside the building. A bread roll would do it. Did they eat cheese? “She’s determined.”

  “I understand that, Bray. They can do draft proposals. She could fax us back directly.”

  He faced her. “Sorry, Lottie. I’ve had it all out with her.”

  She glanced at the folder in her hand. “It might be turned down.”

  He thought, better to hear it now. “I’m sorry.” Sorrier than he’d thought he could ever be. “Sharlene is adamant. Nothing added, nothing cut.”

  “A tough lady.”

  He felt rueful, holding the restaurant door for her. “I want it printed and out.”

  “The ink wet?” She laughed, shaking her head. “Lindsay’ll really know I’ve lost it!”

  “I’ll feed the ducks, then would you like a bite?” This was as smooth as he could get. “I’ve got time owing.”

  She said that would be lovely, and sat by the window to watch him give the importuning drake some bread. When he returned she was well into the second KV tale. She kept wondering about this stepsister, so close at such an impossible distance.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The child was abnormal, Bray thought, guiltily but with qualification. He looked up terms: autistic, autism, dyslexia, dyslectics. Then borrowed McKeith’s Numbers, and two computer paperbacks.

  “Normality” was in the eye of the beholder. He realised that here he was, mostly self-educated but still a so-say respected craftsman, unable to tackle even elementary computers. This, note, when the whole world used them. And when a strange youngster blithely overcame her atrocious handicap, making the damned things the easiest gadgets imaginable.

  Grim for Kylee, poor child, unable to read. Yet she ruled a whole mess of hieroglyphics with her mad keyboard colours. She made the computer speak aloud. She had a phenomenal memory, could make her scanning device absorb anything and hear it read back. She was brighter with her disability than he was without.

  Who then was “normal”?

  Her black moments disturbed him. She would go mute, stand unmoving then slowly shift, sometimes after twenty minutes. And then repetitive movements would begin. Tapping, rocking slowly for maybe a full hour before she’d speak, then blurt out a gross incongruity. If he was too baffled to reply, she would erupt with snarled abuse. Astonishingly, Buster tolerated these moods of hers with a casual eye.

  On occasion, she revealed a compassion that moved him.

  He was examining a sample of Kauri Pine in the shed when she walked in. She asked what it was. He started to explain. She sat to listen.

  “It’s Agathis australis,” he explained. “From New Zealand. A sample, hoping we’ll place an order. See its lustre? I’ve always liked it. It has few defects, but it’s a devil. Patchy as anything, with its absorption. Good in joinery, but don’t let the straight grain deceive. It can warp…”

  He noticed she was asleep, lolling on the stool.

  Wryly he smiled. She must be worn out, or he was being boring again. He edged round her, sat at the computer, and switched a tutorial on. After an hour she roused, instantly pushed him aside and brought up e-mails as if nothing had happened, nodding as the computer spoke them out.

  “Sorry I sent you to sleep.”

  “I didn’ wanter know about your fucking plank,” she told him casually. “I felt sorry coz you’ve nobody to tell about it.”

  She paused for so long he began to wonder. Then she said, “It’s Dad.”

  “Mr Walsingham? Is he still angry that you come here?”

  “Wants me to go to a special school. I’ve had them up to my tits. It’s that probation fucker. Doing the world a favour.”

  “He must think
he’s doing the best for you.”

  “Don’t talk like I’m as thick, Owd Un. He wants to get rid.”

  “Look, Kylee.” Her pale eyes were rock hard. “Can I do anything? Get you a job somewhere? There’s computer firms. Look how clever you are. Good heavens, you invent things!”

  “Whaffor?” She leaned away, vixenish, ready to run.

  “Frankly,” he admitted, “to keep you here. I need your help. I’ll try to find a firm.”

  And pay them to keep you on, he thought but did not say.

  She gazed at him. “Honest?”

  “I’d be lost without you, Kylee.” Into the silence he said, “You know it’s true.” He almost thought she’d slipped into one of her trances when she came to.

  “That’d be one up their pipe, eh?”

  “Try to behave, if I get us an interview.”

  “If you want,” she said offhandedly, turning to the screen.

  Next day, he phoned around.

  The school they passed was clean. Pop’s automobile was smooth. You could hardly feel bumps in the road, like a ship.

  “Pop,” he asked, so many children playing. “Have I been on a ship?”

  “Not yet, son!” Pop grinned at the boy. He liked to drive these educational trips round Tain. “Want to go on one? Ask Mom.”

  Pop notched the question into his mind. He’d give Doctor a call, ask the significance of that. Clint’s queries were down to two or three a day. This familiarisation was all expected, Doctor had explained. Next, a ball game, select a decent diner, show the boy culture.

  “Thank you, Pop.”

  Thanks was the proper response, Clodie decided, listening. One more mention when Hyme spoke to Doctor, that wonderful but expensive expert. Doctor ruled that there was no such thing as a small variation. Conformity must be hundred per cent. Doctor had been in child provision for years, every one a winner. No evidence, no police trails.

  Doctor’s words set the rule: “Those original parents failed the boy, let him get abducted by my finders, right? The parents didn’t lose the boy. They abandoned him. Follow my rules and you can’t go wrong.”

  And here Clint was, perfectly adjusted to his Mom and Pop, driving about their new home town.

  “Like the ride, son?” Pop asked.

  Clint said, “Can we stop at the corner by the shop?”

  “By the store?” Pop asked, notes for Doctor. “Sure, son.”

  At Concorde and Vine, Tain’s main superstore boasted a CD place. Youths congregated on the sidewalk. It didn’t appear very edifying.

  “You want anything, son?”

  Sound spilled out, some heavy metal. Youngsters moved in desultory synchrony. Two garish displays acclaimed new videos, discs, tracks. Window posters had fanciful cartoons in outlandish colour. Pop thought the scene decadent.

  “No, thank you, Pop.”

  Pop felt an irritation. Chrissakes, Clodie’d got what she wanted. Couldn’t she make the boy talk right yet? Thanks, not thank you. How much longer? Pop itched to return east, put the block on the sister company, goddam regulations crippling entrepreneurs every fucking where.

  The auto moved serenely off.

  “We’ll take in the school again, Clint, see how you like it, okay?”

  “Okay, Pop.”

  There! Pop thought. That sounded better. Headway!

  Chapter Thirty

  Things came to a head with Kylee.

  Bray tended to think more in sayings. His old Gran came to mind. “Can’t,” she’d say, “means won’t.” She had a catalogue of expressions. Occasionally as a child Bray had tried to give them back to her. Each time she’d cap him. “Rome,” he told her once, unknowing, aged five, “Rome wasn’t built in a day!” He’d heard two nuns say it in the playground. Gran returned, “Who said it was?” which stumped him.

  So things “came to a head”, first with Kylee who suddenly turned on him one evening while culling e-mail.

  “We’re flogging some crappy books, is that it?”

  “Er, I hope to. They’re for children.”

  “Whaffor?”

  “Well, I’ve had them printed. It seems a waste not to.”

  “How much?”

  This worried Bray. He sat behind her as she “bled” – her term – messages.

  “Listen.” She’d been out for a smoke in the garden, where Porky was watching some football on a hand television. Porky too smoked odd cigarettes and sometimes seemed hardly able to stand. “Not knowing what you’re fucking doing’s a frigging waste. How much is this costing you?”

  He had some idea.

  She grinned at him, elfin but wicked. “It’s naff, innit?” And translated, “Illegal. Snuff? Drugs?”

  “Certainly not!” He continued grandly, “They contain nothing hidden, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Porn?”

  He hitched closer, not wanting Porky to hear.

  “No. Look. I wrote this children’s book. And a second one. I had it printed. I’m trying to sell it. A London publisher’s gone quiet on me. I’m hoping your computer net thing —”

  “How many we got?”

  “A thousand.” A real thousand, he thought ruefully.

  “Fuck them. I’ll do it.” She shoved him. “Where d’you want it sold?”

  “Where?” He blinked. “American schools, maybe. Little children.”

  He was astonished at Kylee’s alacrity. She talked at the computer, worked from a United States map she got from the computer’s innards. Somehow she made that speak, too. In an hour she had an endless list of American schools. She laughed helplessly when he asked her to print it for him. (“Why print any fucking thing?”) They’d not enough paper anyhow, so shut up. He obeyed, and watched his plan unfold.

  She was right. Forget everybody, start selling.

  Late that evening, Kylee having left with Porky on some coughing scooter, he phoned George Corkhill to ask how books were actually sold.

  “I can ship to a bookseller, Bray. The US customs are sticky. Small prints like yours we’d ship to a bookseller, bookshops order from him. He pays you monthly.”

  It was suddenly too fast.

  “Want me to arrange it, Bray? I don’t want to come at you like a salesman.”

  “Please.” The looming vision of thousands of envelopes, and Customs and Excise forms, faded. The printer seemed so matter-of-fact.

  “By tomorrow night?” George paused. “It costs, Bray. Small distributions are notoriously unprofitable.”

  “Hang that.”

  They rang off. Geoffrey was standing in the doorway. He’d heard every word.

  Did mothers and daughters have these turgid moments, just as fathers and sons? The two of them sat like bookends. They no longer had a fire. Bray thought fires a woman’s thing; maybe anciently fires signalled the male?

  “I’m lost, Dad.” Bray knew not to interrupt. “Shirley’s proving unresponsive. Now you’re worrying me sick. This thing you’re up to. It’s not Gilson Mather, is it?”

  “One is. And I’m trying to develop something myself.”

  Geoff looked away. “I came out earlier. That young lout looked drugged. You were telling that slut about selling books in America. Am I in the dark, Dad?”

  How often does a father find he’s kidding himself?

  “Everything is taking me by surprise, Geoff.” No acting now. Bray decided on honesty. “I found myself writing a children’s tale. A printer says he can make it like a real book.” Not complete honesty, but close, the characteristic of sound and trustworthy lies.

  “What for?”

  “To sell, give away. Who knows? I can’t even say it’s sensible.” Bray grimaced. “Maybe it’s primitive, making amends for God-knows-what. Psychiatrists might say it’s an act of reparation.” He tried a frank smile. “Spending my pension!”

  “Compensation.” Geoff spoke dully, notching points of recognition. Bray hoped he’d got away with it. “I do it too, take on something bizarre and not knowing
why. I did a scan of Thailand investments. It’s not my field. I barely made the last train.”

  Bray remembered. He’d assumed Geoff was at the hospital.

  “The psychiatrist wants us to attend as a family.” To his father’s sceptical expression Geoff said quickly, “We never have yet. He wants to give us proper guidance.”

  Expectations of grim tidings? The doctors must simply be going by odds. They were preparing Geoff and Shirley, as they had done bereaved parents before. Jesus, he wondered, how often did this happen?

  “Right, son. I’ll come.”

  “One seemed to know a doctor you saw, Dad. Asking about memory.”

  “Oh, that.” He had this lie ready, thank God. “I thought I was losing my mind.”

  “It might mean we’ll move house, Dad, for Shirley’s sake.”

  “Whatever it takes.”

  For a while they talked quietly of Officer Stazio’s retirement, and came to no conclusion. Geoff had stopped ringing Florida, left it to Bray, insulating himself.

  There, Bray told himself as Geoff went home next door, it had been surprisingly easy. Geoffrey must still be shellshocked or he’d have spotted the mistakes. He sat before the cold grate. No news from Lottie Vinson about the books. And he’d already finished writing – copying really – Davey’s third story. Were they becoming easier, or was he somehow learning to cope with the grief?

  The alarming thought was that he might be making new stories and not replicating Davey’s own imagination, which would never do. He had to keep faith to the images.

  By the time he locked up and took Buster out he’d made up his mind. He would take Kylee on permanently, and simply give the girl her head while he turned the books out one after the other, until his savings ran out.

  Next morning at Gilson Mathers he was summoned to Mr Winsarls’s office and invited to go to the USA.