Finding Davey

by Jonathan Gash

  “You all right, Bray?” Bill asked.

  “Just a bit squiffy.”

  Mrs Edgeworth took Bray’s arm. “Night air, Bray. Deep breaths.”

  They made the garish lighting of Romsey Street.

  “Are you going home, Bray?” Lottie asked, suddenly there. “The firm’s booked everybody into the Piccadilly.”

  “Home, Lottie.”

  She went off with the others, not far to walk. Bray caught a bus in Shaftesbury Avenue. The moment he was seated he checked the messages on his cell phone. None. He dialled Kylee.

  She wasn’t home, but he spoke haltingly to her recording device.

  “Things are coming to a head, Kylee.” He made certain no other passenger could overhear. “I think maybe I’ve talked myself into a stupor, not wanting to face it now it’s here. I want you to formulate the scheme now, please. The one we talked of. You did the test run, remember? Can you do it now, and run it for me while I’m away?” He forced out the final words, “In America.”

  He reached home soon after midnight to find a voice message from her. It was characteristically slurred of speech.

  “Wotcher, Bray. I’m with these boring old farts. Tomorrer, ’kay?”

  Relieved, Bray got Buster back from Christine and Hal, walked over the fields, and settled him down for the night. Buster kept looking up while Bray wrote under the porch. For once Bray left the porch light on when he went to bed.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Gratitude could be an emotional flux, welding convictions into place. A convert before the city, so to speak. Bray waited for Kylee at the station. An hour after he’d got there, he was still waiting.

  So many passengers alighted, football fans joshing two busking girls playing violins. He sat owl-eyed on the platform. Mr Winsarls had said, “Bray. After all these years, why ask if you can have a day off?” And for once the owner had been don’t-bother-me testy, even dismissive. Youngsters saw every handout as entitlement. Maybe, Bray wondered uneasily, I’m a born serf. Disgusting.

  He had no idea what Kylee did at Mr Maddy’s firm. His early worries about Kylee had resurfaced. She had grown away even in so short a time. Bray recognised it in Mr Walsingham’s behaviour – he’d phoned Bray twice since his visit – as a sad attempt to encounter his erring daughter. Each time, Bray carefully let Kylee know that her dad had rung in, because she was Bray’s ally, and he was on her side.

  He still saw her as the soiled girl snarling curses in that echoing laboratory. Her visits to his hunting shed were now infrequent, always unannounced, and marked by print-outs on his calendar. She tended to hurtle in, bully him into tackling some shortcut, tell him off for not checking the e-mail, then play with the dog.

  Some of her visits took place when he was at work. Then, late evening, he’d find notes blinking on his computer, with a barrage of loud addenda, and usually some terse Churchillian imperative to phone her, often gone midnight. She cursed him when his cell phone wasn’t charged. He thought she was unfair.

  “Penny for ’em, Bray.”

  “Oh, I was just…”

  He reddened, caught out, Kylee standing there. To his astonishment she was more than presentable.

  “I got wheels.” She bullied her way through the platform mob. “What you carry that fucking bag for? Got a tent in it?”

  “No,” he said earnestly. “It’s a book, bottled water, and a brolly —”

  She turned to him, laughing, elbowing to make a path.

  “I don’t wanter fucking know, gettit?”

  He was off kilter. Only one minute, and already she had him stuttering.

  A motor stood at the kerb, a portly driver opening the door. “Found him.”

  She flung herself in, beckoned Bray, and was instantly on a cellular phone saying no, where the fuck was Del at eleven o’clock. Bray anxiously tried to tell her the correct time. She pushed to silence.

  The journey took half an hour. (“Doze, because you’re old!” she ordered rudely.) Old times’ sake, Bray thought wryly, and spent the journey looking at the scenery. The buildings managed to appear temporary despite the array of flags and the stencilled lawns.

  “They say fucking office, not work.” She walked into the front entrance. “Biggest load of shit.”

  A stylish receptionist invited Bray to sign in, please.

  “No,” Kylee told him. “This way, mate.”

  “It’s the rule!” the receptionist bleated. “Miss Walsingham —”

  “Piss off, Ca-ssand-dra.” Kylee didn’t even pause, did some magic with a card and they rose in a lift to a corridor floored in thick fawn. “See? Crappy.”

  She talked a few minutes with a man of about twenty-five at a console in an office. He was dishevelled, muttering, switching screen numbers and sets. Bray found his admiration for Kylee returning. She focused instantly and gave undivided attention. Three other screens glowed on the wall. Bray felt proud. She had her own desk, her name on it and everything. A suited man of Bray’s age nodded off in an adjacent office. There was quite a vista from the window, parkland and a distant river. A man and woman walked their dog, as he and Lottie had walked Buster at Maldon.

  Kylee pressed a button and a partition moved, settling into a groove with a hiss. Without getting up, Kylee’s desk and Bray’s chair were isolated.

  “They think it’s natty,” Kylee said contemptuously. “I tellt them it’s pathetic. I want to fuck off out of here.”

  “Leave?” he asked in alarm.

  “Stay whaffor?”

  “Please think before —”

  She burst out laughing. “Fucking dodo. There’s your tea.” A small pillar rose from the desk bearing a tray with tea, milk, sugar. “Cola makes me piss all day.”

  He’d forgotten quite the impact she had. Everywhere looked sterile. Kylee hadn’t sat down. He felt an intruder. It must have showed in his face because she flopped to the carpet and hunched her knees.

  “Not leave before we finish.”

  She still had the unnerving knack of speaking words directly into him, as if actual sounds didn’t quite matter while her thoughts did. She was right. He was a dodo.

  “Who finish?”

  “Scared I’ll leave you, arncher?”

  Careful, he warned himself, and stammered, “Yes. I worry things’ll go bad.”

  “Me getting in trouble.”

  “No…” He felt his face colour at her sideways look. “Yes.”

  “Why d’you not talk straight? You’re scared some fucking words might get out. You say yes so it’ll come out no.”

  He was distressed. “My conversation’s not good.”

  “Like me.” Amused, casual now. “You drove me fucking mad till I saw we’re the same. Old Stone next door does sod all except he comes to and invents summert. Usually it’s no use, like summat makes your eyes easier. Or a fluid switch that thinks faster. He’s old like you. He farts all afternoon.”

  She went sober, for once not vicious. “Me and Porky did your shed over.”

  He looked away. She meant burgle. “Yes. I knew.”

  “We wondered what you got behind them painted panels. We did the whole frigging wall. I felt a right cunt. Bare wood. Porky give me a black eye.”

  Bray remembered the black eye, but had never asked. “I moved it all. A precaution.”

  “You guessed we’d do it. See? We’re same. You made replica panels.”

  “It’s not that I didn’t trust you, Kylee.”

  “It was.” To his alarm tears showed in her eyes, first ever time. “I never seed it before. So I stay on.”

  He was lost. “Seen what?”

  “I’m allers trouble. No good Dad and his tart trying. I’m not a kid. You’d gone out walking Buster. We took the shed wall to bits and found nothing.”

  “I took Davey’s wall away.”

  “Made a fake wall, shutters and all, you cunning bastard.” Tears were dripping off her chin. He didn’t know what to do. She wiped her nose on her sleeve. �
�I’d never seen devotion before. I had to get Del to look it up. Dee-vo-shun.”

  “You’re making me out something I’m not.”

  “Unconditional love. That’s it, innit? Everything else come second. See? I know what it means.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve, rubbed her sleeve on the wall leaving a damp smear.

  “Don’t talk like this, Kylee.”

  “Porky’s flashlight showed us a blank wall, hearing him cuss me. You’d even copied the scratches, pencil marks. Fucking work of art.”

  “You didn’t —”

  “Say anything. Nar. I started helping. I’d never known it existed, this love thing. Your old cow got the push, has she?”

  He tried to follow. “Lottie? She feels it’s hopeless. She still works at Gilson Mather’s.”

  “She’s an iggorant tosser. You never said anyfink.” And to his silence, “Catchpole. The probation hearing. Catchpole. How you’d adopt me.”

  He cleared his throat. How terrible females were, speaking when silence was so safe.

  “Well, Geoffrey and Shirley, me being on my own, Mr Catchpole said it wouldn’t be proper.”

  She said bluntly, “Don’t fuck about. For Davey?”

  Bray knew what she meant, for Davey alone or not. This honesty thing was now with the pair of them. “For all your brightness you seemed just another Davey, and just as far from home. I thought it unfair of everybody.”

  “Then you sponsored me.” She spat, missed the waste basket. “Catchpole’s a wanker. You meant it.”

  “One has to,” was the best he could do.

  “One has to,” she mimicked, falsetto. “Let’s get going.” She watched him replace his cup and rise. “You don’t have to wash up, Bray.”

  “Oh. Sorry.” He sat down.

  She swivelled out a laptop. “Palmtop and laptop security’s pathetic. Watch screen.”

  She showed him charts, converting them to graphs and sets, making extrapolations. The sound babbled so fast he couldn’t tell the meaning.

  “The basis. We run our competition, papers, telly, bookshops, anywhere. We ask a zillion schools – mail direct, anyhow – questions. We do it e-mail, internet, everywhere. I’ve got Maddy to fund the competition as a project survey. It’s only fucking peanuts. Many won’t answer. The answers graph out like we ask, what colour is sky, and 99 per cent say blue. One per cent says red, yellow, and some nutters saying red-blue-white stripes. But we secretly know we’re looking for the one that says green.”

  He got it. “Green is rare.”

  “Call them shed answers, the ones we’re looking for. I tell the computer to keep only the shed answers. It’ll pick out the nutters or mistakers, plus Davey. Nobody’ll know except you.”

  “Then the other questions.”

  “The other three questions,” she corrected.

  She gave verbal orders to the computer. It showed a screen of sets. With a word it magnified them to show one final overlap marked D. It talked in Kylee’s voice.

  “I blank all the non-shed answers.”

  “Er, probability?”

  “Forget your head. You got me.” She shut her computer down, took out a disc and a battery pack. “Weighs a fucking ton. All I need now’s your questions. But.”

  “But what?”

  “Tell me the questions to ask. Not the answers.”

  “One thing, love. Who sorts out the replies we get? I mean, all those e-mails and letters? One of them can’t get lost, because —”

  “You learnt fuck all. I’ll show you.” With a word she had the partitions rolling back. “Have a jam butty, then piss off. I’ll knock off and come. I can’t stand this frigging place. The Design-and-Décor cunt’s office is a shithouse.”

  She led into the corridor, ignoring the man at the console and the dozing genius, and bawled down the vacant door, “I asked for a fucking air conditioner!” She shook her head as they left. “Talk to the fucking wall. Know what?”

  “No.” He felt stricken, expecting some terrible last-minute revelation. “What is it, Kylee?”

  “Here,” she said with contempt, “they’re fucking thicker than you. Bone. There’s jam butties in the car. Tarra.”

  And she was gone.

  He had to ask a reception girl to let him out of the building.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Snow seemed odd stuff to Clint. It went on and on. Pop kept talking about it.

  “Isn’t it great, Clint?”

  They drove in Pop’s big automobile through the falling snow among trees to a big house. There was a party for kids. There was a Santa Claus who had a big beard said “Ho ho ho” and rang a bell and everybody was real happy.

  There was a Christmas tree with presents on the branches. It was bigger than usual and coloured lights kept flashing on and off. Clint liked the colours of the flashing lights but best of all he liked the shapes of the presents that were wrapped up in different colours.

  They played games, kids running round chairs till the music stopped. The kids were all given lanterns with a flashing light inside. They turned off the room lights so the only light came from the Christmas tree, bigger than ever, and the lanterns. They paraded round the room singing Christmas carols. The kids clapped because they sang really well and Clint really liked it and he sang with the rest.

  The kids were each allowed to chose a Christmas carol to sing and they argued and sang “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly” that everybody knew best then they sang “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” like as usual and then Clint went straight on with “See Amid the Winter Snow” but somebody said no not that, something different. Clint thought maybe he’d done wrong so he started up “Adam Lay Y-Bounden” but stopped real soon because nobody else sang. Mom came and hugged him and said no not that either because it was too sad. Then they brought in the Christmas cake and Mrs McCallion who you had to call Angie because she was Zoe’s Mom and a Democrat lit the candles. The kids blew the candles out. It was real neat. Clint blew most of the candles out with one puff and Mom said he deserved a special clap for that.

  Clint liked the snow. When they turned the lights out for the candle cake, shadows were on the snow like in the hospital room at Doctor’s clinic.

  The shadow time was the time he felt happiest, when the shadows went across the wall. Like the shadows on the snow in Angie’s garden. The shapes were even better than the parcel colours.

  He told Mom and Pop when they were driving home. Everybody waved on Zoe’s doorstep and called bye bye and come again y’hear. Mom and Pop said what a great Christmas party and what great neighbours.

  Mom said the snow was real nice but so cold and she hated winter. Clint said he liked the Father Christmas and the colours and the shape shadows on the snow. Mom said say Santa Claus because it was his real name so Clint said Santa Claus.

  He asked could he draw some pictures of the patterns on the garden snow at Zoe’s house and Mom said you mean yard Clint don’t you and Clint said yes. Mom said sure. Clint got a present from Zoe’s Christmas tree, a box of crayons with special paper for drawing on and a wooden board. Clint saw the wooden board wasn’t much good because it was four-ply. Somebody hadn’t used glasspaper, but he didn’t say anything. Any case, Zoe and Angie’d made a great party and Clint had a great time. The shadows made him feel warm even though Mom said brrrr she wanted this cold weather to go away.

  Clint liked the crayons. One was purple. Another was nearly purple.

  Two days later Pop and Mom took him to see the decorations in the shopping mall and they met some of the kids from the party at Zoe’s. Clint kept looking for the right shapes but there was none. He didn’t really mind because he’d drawn some with his crayons. Two of them looked just right and were his favourite. He got Mom to give him some kind of sticky and put the drawings up in his room. Mom said they were real pretty. He liked them best because they were like, well, like best.

  And guess what Zoe’s present was when she unwrapped it. It was a little fluffy dog not a real
one but still a little dog that yapped when you put the battery inside. Clint liked it and said to Mom and Pop could he get a real one. They said we’ll see. Clint knew they’d call Doctor and he’d say no.

  In the shopping mall he looked for a dog but didn’t see one. Clint drew one with his crayons. He drew a brown dog with a long tail.

  It was a great Christmas.

  “Notice something odd with the folio?”

  They were on Donna Curme’s patio, trying to ignore next door’s thunderous lawnmower. Rye, her partner, was indoors working a prosecution file. By the time Donna carried the tray out Judy Trabasco had arranged the papers on the cane table.

  “This the TV competition?”

  “See anything strange?”

  Two sets of children’s drawings, eight in each, showed the now familiar little figures complete with weird angular hats. The backgrounds showed rectangular clouds and kites galore and odd stones.

  Donna looked over her friend’s shoulder. “Say what you see.”

  “Crappy kids’ drawings,” Judy said, gauging the other’s tense mood. “Am I missing something here?”

  “You’ve arranged them in sequence, Judy. That kite propeller thing, third along? It’s the fourth in the top row.”

  She looked again. “Okay, there’s one missing in the bottom row.”

  Donna cupped her elbows.

  “Move them along. Now do you see?”

  “They’re the same, allowing for normal variation.”

  “The top row are the kids’ drawings after the TV programme.”

  Judy examined the bottom row of sketches. Crude, the figures lacking in perspective, the usual messes. “So they show the same scenes.”

  “The top row were drawn after the TV show, the bottom row before.”