The Finding

by Nina Bawden

  “Now don’t make things up, Miss. Alex is very fond of her. I often think it’s quite charming to see them together. People say old and young don’t mix but I think that’s nonsense.”

  No good arguing with Gran, Laura thought. She said, “Why is Mrs Angel so lonely? Doesn’t she have any other friends?”

  “She’s a sad woman, that’s why. No one likes sad people. Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you weep alone. I try to get her to talk about happier days when her husband was still alive and her daughter lived with her.”

  “Did the daughter die too?”

  “No one knows. She disappeared. Walked out one morning twelve years ago to go to the hospital where she worked, on the children’s ward, and never came back. Not a word from her since. Poor Angel’s still grieving. That’s why I take Alex to see her.” She smiled, a happy, sly smile, and her eyes gleamed with mischief. “There’s a reason why she should take an interest in him, but it’s all a bit delicate, so it’s no good you asking questions.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” Laura said.

  Her grandmother sniffed. “Oh, I know you, Miss Nosey Parker. Just like your mother at your age, why, why, why, all the time.”

  Offended, Laura jutted out her chin and said nothing.

  “Not that I blame you,” her grandmother said. “It’s the only way to find out. Have a chocolate.”

  “No thank you,” Laura said coldly. “It might spoil my supper. If there’s nothing you want me to do, I’ll go now. I expect Mum will be over later to see you’re all right.”

  “There’s no need, dear. I’ve got a friend coming as a matter of fact. We’ve spoken once or twice on the Fields and he rang up this morning, and I thought, well, why not, two lonely old people. Of course, that was before I had my silly fall…”

  Laura knew what she was expected to say. No, Gran, you’re not old. How old is he? What’s he like? What’s his name? Where does he live?

  Well, she wouldn’t ask. Not one, single question!

  She said, “I hope you have a nice time.”

  As she left the house, she remembered Mrs Angel’s drawn curtains and wondered if she ought to have told her grandmother. Should she go back? Gran had called her nosey already!

  She went down the steps to take another look at the window; then saw that there was a woman standing outside Mrs Angel’s front door. She had her purse open and a key in her hand. She looked down at Laura with round eyes like small, angry buttons. She said, “What are you staring at? I saw you come out of next door. Has she sent you spying?”

  Laura gasped. Oh, it wasn’t fair! She stuck her tongue out, made a rude noise with her lips, and ran, boiling with rage and with shame.

  As she ran past the tent she could hear the singing. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the bible tells me so. She ran straight into Alex and almost sent him flying. He said, “D’you want to go in the tent? Anyone can go, there’s a huge lot of people.”

  She didn’t want to go home yet; she felt far too miserable. Perhaps she was nosey. Perhaps Mum would find out that she had been rude to that foul, beastly woman. If she went into the tent and sang with the congregation, she could forget all about it, pretend that she’d been there, singing and praising the Lord all the time. She took Alex’s hand and they went into the tent and stood at the back.

  The hymn had finished. The man who had given her the pamphlet was standing on the platform, arms spread out, eyes lifted to the roof of the tent. “Dear Lord,” he was saying, “Hear our prayers and our singing, enter us with Thy spirit so we may speak with tongues, guide us into Thy glory.”

  Alex nudged her and giggled. She whispered fiercely, “Don’t laugh, this is the same thing as being in church.”

  It was nicer, she thought, than the church she sometimes went to with Gran. Everyone seemed much more cheerful; smiling happily and clasping each other’s hands.

  “Help us, Lord,” the tall preacher said, “with our special prayers for our brothers and sisters who are stricken with illness and pain.”

  “Rose Simmons needs Thy help, Lord,” a woman cried out. She was standing in the aisle, rocking backwards and forwards. “Rose needs Thy strength to sustain her in her last hours in Saint Emmanuel’s Hospice.”

  “Rose, Rose Simmons,” several voices repeated, half groaning, half singing, and then the preacher silenced them with his uplifted hands. “We thank Thee, Lord, for Rose’s life, and if it is Thy will, her peaceful end.”

  Other names were called out, and taken up by the preacher; the congregation swaying like a forest of blown trees as they prayed for recovery for sick friends and relations, for comfort for families who had just lost a loved one. Laura began to feel immensely excited. Longing to join in, she wondered if she should pray for her grandmother, but perhaps a twisted ankle wasn’t serious enough to mention.

  Then a man moved into the aisle, and called out in a strong voice, “Lord, help me to find my son, Winston, who vanished from home fifteen months ago, fill him with Thy spirit and send him home to his sorrowing mother.”

  A woman nearby began to weep noisily. “Winston, ah, my boy Winston, let the Lord enter you,” and a kind of deep, hushed, reverent sigh rose in the tent as an accompaniment to her sobbing.

  Laura looked at Alex and saw he had gone as white as his Judo suit. She whispered, “Do you really think they can find people this way?” and he shivered and pressed close against her.

  Then, as if in answer, a girl began to moan, “Lord Jesus, find our brother Winston as You found me last year, deep in my wickedness, and brought me home in Thy Glory.” She stumbled into the aisle and fell. She lay, jerking and kicking on the ground, her skirt caught between her knees, showing her underwear. A woman bent to pull her skirt down and the preacher thundered, “Leave her be, let her lie where Jesus flung her,” and the people lifted their arms and cried, “Praise the Lord.”

  “I want to go,” Alex said. He was clutching himself. “I want to go to the bathroom.”

  “You would,” Laura said. “Just when it’s getting interesting.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind. Come on, you can’t help it.”

  They were singing again now, a rousing, rollicking tune unlike any hymn Laura knew; as they slipped out of the tent into the evening sunlight the tent seemed to heave, straining at the guy ropes, as if the singing was billowing it up, like a wind. Alex blinked, his colour returning. He said, “It’s going off, I don’t think I need to pee any more, I was just frightened.”

  “What of?”

  “I don’t know. It was so…”

  He shook his head, unable to think of the word that he wanted. Laura said, “It’s just like any church, really, people asking for things. I mean, in the Catholic Church there are special saints mat you pray to when you want to find something. My friend, Carla, she’s Catholic, she lost her best biro pen, and she prayed to Saint Anthony and found it in her desk at school the next morning.”

  “I expect it was there all the time,” Alex said. “I don’t believe it. Do you believe it, Laura?”

  “I’m not sure. You couldn’t be sure unless you’d asked for something yourself and you found it. Some thing, or someone. If someone you knew disappeared.”

  He gave a little sigh. She looked at his face and saw it closed and secret as if a curtain had been drawn across it. She thought of Mrs Angel and her closed curtains and looked across the Fields. An ambulance was parked outside the terrace, blue lights flashing. She couldn’t see Mrs Angel’s front door because the ambulance hid it, but she could see her grandmother’s. And Gran was there, leaning on a stick, slowly hobbling down the steps. Laura grabbed Alex’s arm and said, “We’ve got to get Mum. I think something awful has happened.”

  Chapter 3

  Alex stood at the window of his room. The big tent, empty now, was ghost pale in the darkness; the tall trees round the edge of the Upper Field, black against the pink, night sky of London. Their leafless branches were like twisted
, skinny arms, Alex thought. He had turned the light off in his room so that no one could see him standing there, watching the houses on the other side of the Fields. Watching, and waiting.

  Mrs Angel’s house was dark. They had taken her away in the ambulance and Dad had driven his grandmother to see her in hospital. Mrs Angel was very ill, his mother had told him. When he had asked what had happened her face had been grave. No one knew. Mrs Fowles had found her unconscious, on the floor by her chair. She must have lain there a long time, helpless, alone. “Poor soul,” his mother had said.

  But she hadn’t been alone last night, Alex knew. Mr Fowles had been there; he had drawn the curtains, and Alex had seen him. But he hadn’t told anyone. He had gone downstairs to have supper with his mother and father and Laura; a special late supper for his Finding Day after the little ones were in bed, with candles on the table and everyone laughing and happy.

  He should have told someone, Alex thought now. But what could he have said? That Mrs Angel’s nephew had come to see her? Nothing in that. He had drawn the curtains, but people often did that in the evening. Mr Fowles had been rude to his grandmother, a “dreadful man” Gran had called him, but that didn’t mean he was wicked, that he would harm an old woman. All the same, Alex was frightened. He wished Dad would come home. That is, half of him wished it. The other half was scared, not wanting to know.

  He thought—if he had known she was ill, he could have asked God to help her when he and Laura had been in the tent. It wasn’t his fault that he hadn’t known, but it felt like his fault. He wished Laura would come, or his mother. He leaned his forehead against the cold glass of the window and sighed. He was beginning to feel very sleepy.

  Lights flashed in his eyes as a car turned off the road between the Upper and Lower Fields, into the slip road outside the house. The car stopped and his father got out. Alex looked at his grandmother’s house and saw the lights on. Dad must have taken her home already and Alex had been too sleepy to notice. Wide awake suddenly, he shot across the room to his bed and dived under the covers. The feeling of half wanting to know what had happened and half not wanting was making him feel cold and sick. He heard his father’s voice, then his steps climbing the stairs. The bathroom door closed. Alex heard the lavatory flush, the bathroom door open. He called softly, “Dad…” Half hoping that Dad wouldn’t hear him.

  Light came in from the landing. Dad said, “Alex?”

  “Mmm…” Alex sat up, yawning, rubbing his eyes, pretending he had just woken up.

  Dad said, “All right, love? Do you want something?”

  “Glass of water. I’m thirsty.”

  His father went to the bathroom and came back. He sat on the edge of the bed while Alex drank. He took the empty glass. Alex said slowly, fearfully, “Is she all right, Dad? Mrs Angel?”

  “Well. Not all right, really, but she’s tucked up in bed and quite comfortable. She woke up while we were there and was able to talk to your grandmother.”

  “Is she going to die?”

  “She’s very ill, Alex.”

  “Did she fall off her chair? Did she hurt herself?”

  “There’s a bruise on her forehead. But that’s nothing, really. Her heart’s very weak. She shouldn’t have been living alone.”

  “He was there,” Alex said. “Her nephew, that man, Mr Fowles. Gran and I met him yesterday evening, he was going to see her. When I got home, I could see them both, in the room.”

  “Yes?” Dad waited. “What happened, Alex?”

  “Nothing, really. He just drew the curtains.”

  His father smiled. “If that’s all, why are you worried? Because you didn’t tell someone? Not much to tell, was there? Just that her nephew was visiting.”

  “I don’t know,” Alex said.

  His father was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “Was it something your grandmother said?”

  “She doesn’t like Mr Fowles.”

  “That was apparent this evening.” Dad cleared his throat, the way he did when he had something awkward to say. “He was there at the hospital. He said his Aunt was all right when he left her. He had offered to help her to bed but she wouldn’t let him. Then there was a bit of a shouting match between him and your Gran. You came in to it, Alex, which is why I am telling you.” He stopped and frowned, as if wondering how to go on. He said, uncertainly, “You’re a bit young for this. But things have been said, and I have to ask you. Gran has taken you to see Mrs Angel quite a lot, hasn’t she? Has she ever said, well, that there was a particular reason? That you ought to be especially nice to the old lady? Anything like that?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No. Of course you don’t. Well.”

  “Gran did say, it was my Finding Day, Mrs Angel might give me a present.”

  “That’s all?”

  Alex burst out, “I just tried to be nice because Gran said she was lonely. I didn’t like going.” He wished he could explain how he’d felt, that it was as if he were a present, a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates that Gran was taking to cheer up her sick friend, but it sounded silly. Vain, too, as if he thought he was such a nice boy that any old lady would be delighted to see him.

  That’s what Laura would say if he told her.

  His father laughed and put his arms round him. “Poor Alex. Never mind, you’re a kind boy. Extra kind, if you didn’t want to go, really.”

  Alex mumbled, against his father’s broad chest, “She did give me things sometimes. A pear, or a sweet. Once she gave me a pound.” He wondered if he should tell Dad about the photograph. But Gran hadn’t wanted his mother to know. Perhaps she had thought Mum would say it was a silly present. And he had already been mean enough to old Mrs Angel, telling his father he hadn’t wanted to visit her. And there was something else, too; something creepy about the way Gran had gone on about the girl in the photograph, about her looking like Alex, or Alex looking like her, that had made him hot and uncomfortable. He felt hot now, remembering. He said, “I never asked her for anything. Honest.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.” Dad drew the bedclothes up round his shoulders and kissed him. “Forget all about it now. Go to sleep.”

  “I can’t,” Alex said. “My mind’s buzzing.”

  “Count sheep jumping over a gate. That’s supposed to help.”

  “It wouldn’t help if you were a farmer. You might think you’d lost one.”

  “I never thought of that. Smart boy! Talk if you want to.”

  Alex said, “Gran says, Mr Fowles is only after one thing. I asked her what she meant but she didn’t explain.”

  “I expect… I expect she just meant that he didn’t care for Mrs Angel as she does. That may be true. Your grandmother is a warm, loving woman, if a bit fanciful. She likes making up stories.”

  “You tell me a story,” Alex said. “Then I might go to sleep.”

  “That’s not very flattering,” his father said. But there was a smile in his voice. “What kind of story?”

  “About when I was born,” Alex said. “My Birth Day. I know you don’t know, but you could make something up.”

  “I wish I could, Alex. Does it matter so much?”

  “No. It was just something Gran said at my party.”

  His father muttered something. It sounded like Damn the woman and Alex was surprised because his father never swore. Then he said, “You’re a nice boy, so whoever your real parents were, they must have been nice people, too. Only for some reason they couldn’t look after you. That was sad for them but lucky for us.”

  It didn’t make much of a story, Alex thought. He said, “It would be more interesting if my real Dad was a pirate, and my mother was a princess that the pirates had captured. It would be unlucky to keep a baby on a pirate ship, so they sailed up the Thames and left me with the Sphinx.”

  “It must be a long time since there has been a pirate ship on the Thames, “his father said, gravely. “Still, anything’s possible!”

  Alex said, “They wo
n’t ever come back for me, will they?” This frightened him suddenly. “You wouldn’t let them take me away.”

  “No. You’re not scared of that, are you?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s just something I thought of.” But it did scare him a little, thinking of pirates with cutlasses in their teeth climbing in through his window. He said, “It’s all right, I’m quite sleepy now.” He closed his eyes and tried to count sheep and it seemed to work after all because when he had counted to twenty-four he felt himself drifting. The twenty-fifth sheep pulled a face at him as Laura did sometimes; a white, woolly sheep, jumping a gate, changing, becoming Laura; and the next sheep had a human face too, a girl’s face with dark eyes that grew larger and larger, like black pools of water. “You could drown in them,” he said, the words too smudgy and blurred for his father to hear, and turned on his side, cuddling into his pillow.

  He slept soundly the rest of that night. He was asleep when Mrs Angel died in the hospital. He slept through the sound of the telephone ringing in the early morning and would have slept on, missing breakfast, if his mother had not come to wake him.

  And when he did wake, the world had changed for him.

  Chapter 4

  Laura knew what had happened before Alex did. She was more interested in what grown-ups were talking about, partly because she was older, and partly because she was afraid that they might be saying unpleasant things about her.

  So she kept her ears open. If she pretended to be watching television, or reading a book, no one ever seemed to suspect she was listening. Even if what she heard seemed a bit dull to start with, there was always a chance that it might turn out to be useful later. It wasn’t like spying, she thought, more like doing a jigsaw. You plodded on, fitting bits of blue sky or green grass together and then found a foot or an arm or the nose that belonged to the face that made the important part of the picture.

  She knew, early on, that her grandmother had wanted to take Alex with her to Mrs Angel’s funeral and that her mother had refused to allow it. Alex was “too young”. It was “unnecessary”. It would “only cause trouble”.