The Finding

by Nina Bawden

  “It may not find a little boy, though,” Laura’s mother said, with a return of her usual tartness. Then she looked at Major Bumpus and added, politely, “But as you say, no stone left unturned.” The phrase seemed to amuse her. She glanced at Laura’s father and Laura saw a private smile pass between them.

  Major Bumpus said, “I’ve a lot of time for prayer, if not quite as Amy means it. But there are more things in heaven and earth. Come to that in a minute. Now. The boy wasn’t taken from home, seduced away by some stranger, we’ve established that, haven’t we? Whatever has happened since, he left of his own accord. Took his things with him. Upset. You ever wanted to run away, Laura?”

  “Sometimes.” She looked at her mother and father; a cold, threatening look, daring them to smile at each other.

  “Right,” Major Bumpus said. “No need to go into reasons. Always reasons in families. Where would you run to?”

  “I don’t know. I might go to Carla’s house. She’s my best friend. But that wouldn’t be serious. I mean, it’s the first place they’d look for me.”

  “Ah! So young Alex was serious, then, in your opinion?”

  Gran said, “Monty, dear, do you think… I mean, how can she know? She’s only a child.”

  “That’s why I’m asking her, Amy. More likely to know certain things than the rest of us. Closer to the boy. But that isn’t all. A young girl may have powers. Instincts, if you prefer the word. Sort of thing most of us lose as we get older. The spirit gets stiff, like the joints. Not in all cultures, of course. I’ve known quite old men in India…”

  Gran said, gently, “Is that relevant, Monty?”

  “I think so. Give me time, dear. Don’t mind a few questions, young Laura?”

  She shook her head. The Major was watching her closely, as if what she might say was important. She felt pleased, if a little embarrassed. She said, “I think Alex was serious. He was really unhappy. Some of it was my fault. Some of it wasn’t. He ran away because he thought he’d upset everyone. Because he was being a nuisance.”

  “Would that make you run away?”

  “No. Only if I was angry. To make them upset. If I’d been adopted, like Alex, and Mum and Dad had been foul to me, I might want to run away to find my real mother and father. But Alex is, I don’t know, different.”

  Major Bumpus nodded. “Right, then. You know that. The next bit is harder. Can you jump over that difference? Bridge the gap? Think how Alex would think, not how you’d think, in his place. Put yourself in his skin?”

  She thought, I can do that sometimes with Ellie. She said, “I could try.”

  “Good girl. Tell me, now. What did you feel in that tent, at the Meeting?”

  “Sort of excited. It’s hard to explain. A fierce kind of feeling.”

  “Prayer concentrates the mind,” the Major said. “That’s what I want you to do. Not pray, necessarily, unless you find that it helps. Think of Alex. All that you know about him. Fix your mind on him. Think of him on his own. Where he’d go, what he’d do. Any ideas come, even if they seem silly, don’t fight them. Let them come, let them go, accept what they leave behind. Understand, do you?”

  They were all looking at her. Dad cleared his throat. He was frowning, uncertain. Mum said, “Really, Major Bumpus, this is a bit mystical, isn’t it?” She gave a little, tight laugh. “Laura’s not a clairvoyant.”

  “You don’t know what I am,” Laura said. She turned her back on her mother. She said, to Major Bumpus, “I can’t do it here.”

  He nodded gravely, dismissing her. Lingering outside the room she heard him say, “Now. This feller, Fowles. Bit of a turn around, what? D’you trust him? How does it strike you, this tale about his cousin and the Indian doctor? Pinch of salt department, in my view. Makes you wonder if he’s got someone up his sleeve! Some woman he thinks might fool the lawyers. That’s not our concern at the moment, though you may like to think about it. What we’ve got to consider is the boy’s state of mind about Dorothy Angel. His grandmother had a fanciful notion. Sorry to embarrass you, Amy, but we need all the cards on the table in this situation. Did Alex cotton on? If he did, how did it affect him? Boys can be romantic about their mothers. Especially if there’s a mystery.”

  Laura felt laughter gurgle inside her. She thought, Keeping them busy! Taking over. Taking over Gran would be a good thing. And making Mum and Dad think about Alex. She’d have to think, too. Did Major Bumpus really believe all that stuff? Half religious, half magic. Or was he just keeping her busy? Though she’d started it, hadn’t she? So she’d better try. Even if it made her feel silly.

  She went upstairs, into Alex’s room. It was tidy, and empty. She stood on the rug by the bed and closed her eyes to think better. Alex was somewhere. How could she find him by thinking? The Major had said, let ideas come, let them go. She heard Alex’s voice in her mind. You’re not me. That wasn’t much help! She said—crossly, as if he were there, in the room with her, “Trust you to be awkward.”

  She squeezed her eyes tighter, remembering something else suddenly. Alex’s face when they left the Meeting had been shuttered and secret. What had he been feeling? He hadn’t liked all that moaning and crying. He didn’t believe you could find people that way. Or didn’t want to believe it. Had he been afraid they might be able to find his real mother?

  She said in a low voice, feeling foolish, “Listen, God, we’re looking for Alex. Oh, that’s silly. I mean, if You’re there, You know that already. But if You don’t mind, if You’ve got a bit of spare time at the moment, perhaps You could help us to find him. Help me concentrate. Give me a clue. Something like that.”

  That didn’t sound right. She thought of the people in the tent, swaying and shouting. Perhaps you had to talk in that kind of church language, the words He was used to, speaking loudly as if He were deaf. She rocked a little, backwards and forwards, experimentally. She said, in a groaning sing-song, “Dear Lord, help me to find my lost brother, Alex, and bring him home to comfort his family.” That was more like it. “Oh, Lord, enter me with Thy spirit.” She rocked her body more violently.

  Nothing happened. She only felt giddy. She opened her eyes and sat down on the bed. Her mind felt quite blank. An empty balloon with nothing inside it. She shut her eyes again and doubled her hands into fists and pressed them against her closed lids. Lights flashed, white and red. She thought hard about Alex. He had very dark eyes and pale hair and a gap between his front teeth. He liked Judo, and roller skating, and computer games. He didn’t like football or cricket, though Dad said he had a good eye for a ball. He had got First Prize on the shooting range at the Easter Fair. He liked animals. At school, he was best at Nature Study and maths. He was eleven years old. He was small for a boy of eleven. Last year he had measured himself every morning, standing with his back to the door and a ruler pressed on his head, to see if he had grown in the night. Dad had told him to stop. He had said watched pots never boiled. Dad had been quite short until he was fourteen, when he had shot up like a bean. Of course that didn’t mean Alex would grow like that since he was adopted and his real parents might have been midgets but he had believed Dad all the same. Alex always believed what you told him. And he had got a bit fatter lately. He had once been so thin, with little, thin legs! Froggie, Dad had called him, lifting him out of the bath—oh, years ago, now, leaving Laura in the water and sitting on the toilet seat with Alex wrapped in a warm towel on his lap, cuddling him, and Laura, watching, had remembered Dad holding her like that when she had been smaller, warm, rough towel under damp bottom, and known exactly how Alex was feeling, cuddled and close and safe on Dad’s lap. Inside Alex. She pressed her fists tighter against her hot eyeballs and felt something coming. Froggie. Frogs. Alex and frogs. No, not frogs, toads. The feeling was very fierce now. Alex with a toad in his hand.

  She opened her eyes. She said, hearing herself sound like her mother. “Oh, how ridiculous!” It really was crazy. The Major was crazy! She should never have been taken in! She had done what he
said, concentrated, fixed her mind, and all that came in was a toad!

  She laughed out loud. She had half a mind to march straight down and confront him. Tell him how stupid he was, tell him the dumb thing that had come into her head. Tell Mum and Dad to stop listening to him. All this time they were sitting about, listening and talking and doing this foolish thinking to please the old Major, something terrible might be happening to Alex. Something must have happened already, or he’d have come back by now. Unless he were too scared they’d be angry.

  No. He wouldn’t be scared of that. But he might be scared no one wanted him. Once you’d run away, it could be hard to come back for all sorts of reasons. It would be hard for her, anyway. Alex was different, not so stubborn and proud, but she couldn’t be Alex, she couldn’t think herself into him. She had tried and it hadn’t worked. So what would she do? Ring up Carla and say where she was. Or wait somewhere sensible. Sit in a park where there were lots of people to see her and wonder why she looked so lonely and lost. Hang about near a police station. Wait until she was found…

  The fierce feeling was back, squeezing her chest, almost stopping her breathing. Of course she knew where Alex would go! She wasn’t guessing, she knew. She waited for her breath to come back and then went downstairs to tell them.

  Chapter 16

  “That’s better,” Samson’s voice said. He thumped Alex down on a chair and tugged at his hair, forcing his head back. He said, “He’ll listen now, Poll.”

  Alex opened his eyes. Poll’s red, shiny face was so close he could smell her warm, oniony breath. She said, “Soft little mutt! What a carry on! Let me go, let me go, what d’you think we’re goin’ to do? Keep you here? D’you think I ain’t got enough on my plate?”

  “Jake,” he moaned. “Jake said…”

  “Just a bit o’ fun.” Jake’s sullen voice came from somewhere behind him. “Silly tyke can’t take a joke, Poll. ’Sides, you told us…”

  “I said, keep ’im here till I’d thought what to do. Not scare the kid witless. You clear out, Jake. Clear out the lot of you. I’m warning you now, I’m not cooking in that mucky kitchen, so if you fancy your dinner you’d better get started.”

  They had gone. Poll sat on the sofa, knees spread, gently massaging her stomach. She belched comfortably and said, “Heard you right down the street. Anyone ’ud think you was being murdered.”

  He said, “Jake’s got a knife.”

  “Jake’s a bad lad. Only a lad, though. Someone’s got to give him a chance. That’s why I got to be careful. Couldn’t just let you run home, could I, lovey? Not with half London out looking for you. I’ve got to think of my boys, see? I can’t have the police round here, asking questions.”

  He wondered what Poll’s “boys” had done. Perhaps Jake had knifed someone and the police were trying to find him. He longed to know, but it seemed rude to ask. And, possibly, dangerous. Poll was a thief. Perhaps they all were. Perhaps there were a whole lot of stolen things hidden here. Nothing in this room looked particularly new or valuable except the huge colour telly, but there might be another room, a locked room, full of treasures.

  Poll was bending over, grunting as she pushed off her slippers. Her bare feet looked painful; swollen, pink toes and lumpy blue veins round her ankles. He said, “My Gran’s feet get sore sometimes. She soaks them in a bath of salt water.”

  “D’you live with your Gran?”

  “No. I live with my Mum and Dad and my brother and sisters. Bob and Ellie and Laura. But our Gran’s house is opposite, on the other side of the Fields. Thinking of the Fields, of the lights that would be coming on in the houses at this time of the evening, beaming out yellow and friendly, made his throat ache. He said, “Please, Poll, if you let me go home, I won’t say where I’ve been. I won’t say about Jake, or Samson, or anyone. Even if they asked me, I couldn’t. I mean, I don’t know where I am. When we came last night, I was sleepy. I didn’t even notice the name of the station.”

  But he would see it on the way home, of course. And he hadn’t been sleepy in the supermarket! He saw with horror the fix he was in. How could Poll trust him to keep his mouth shut? If the police found out she’d taken him stealing, she might go to prison. He said, miserably, “I won’t tell, I promise.”

  To his surprise, she started to laugh. Her body shook and rippled with laughter. “I thought you was just a poor little cocker, nowhere to go, needing a bed. Not likely the police will swallow that, is it? They’ll want to know what old Poll’s bin up to this time, and I can’t say as I blame them. Kidnapping a young millionaire! My Lord, when I read it all in the papers you could’ve knocked me down with a feather.”

  He said, hope springing suddenly, “I expect there might be a reward. Jake made me start a letter, asking for ransom money. That was a game. But I expect if I told my Mum and my Dad you’d been kind to me…”

  Her laughter broke out again, making her wheeze. “Bless you, lover boy,” she said, when she was able to speak, “I don’t want your money. All I want is to keep out of trouble. Enough of that in this sad old life without looking for more. And it ain’t just the boys I’ve got to watch out for. There’s Petal. She’s dead scared her Dad will find out where she is and lug her off home. She’s only fifteen. Under age, see?”

  He hardly heard her. Something she had said before was too loud in his mind. He said, shyly—wanting very much to know but feeling embarrassed about it—“I don’t know how much money there is. What did it say in the paper?” He felt himself growing hot. He thought, Mum and Dad will be angry if they know I am asking. But he asked, all the same. “I’m not really a millionaire, am I, Poll?”

  “Gettin’ on that way. About eight hundred thousand, it said.” She shrugged her shoulders as if this was nothing much. Or too much, perhaps; more than she could take seriously. She looked at him and chuckled. “It ain’t like being Paul Getty, exactly.”

  “It seems an awful lot to me,” he said, quite severely, wondering how someone so poor that she had to steal food for supper could be quite so casual about such a vast fortune.

  “Depends how you look at it, laddie. If it was all spending money, that’s one thing. But Jake says he expects the lawyers will get their greedy paws on a good chunk of it. And if the old girl’s daughter turns up, you’ll have to split it between you. Time they’ve taken off tax, you’ll have ‘bout enough to buy a house, that’s what Jake reckons. Think of money in terms of houses, is what Jake always says, an’ you cut it down to size. Mind you, a roof over your head ain’t a bad start in life, I’d not have said no, I c’n tell you.”

  She grinned at him and he grinned back. He felt suddenly easier. She was so straight and friendly. Jake had said, Poll doesn’t ask questions. But he felt he could ask her anything. He said, “Do you think that they’ll find her? Mrs Angel’s daughter?” He thought of the dark eyes watching him from the picture. He looked at Poll. He said, “My sister Laura said she might be my real mother. That’s why Mrs Angel left me the money. Do you think she could be?”

  “Can’t tell you that, dearie, can I? Though if she was, then it’s my guess she ain’t around any longer. Leavin’ you where she did, by the river.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you, lovey? Well, mebbe it ain’t my business to tell you. Though I know what it’s like…” She was quiet for a little, watching him with a worried look. Then she said, “I was a foundling, like you. Only I wasn’t so lucky. Grew up in an orphanage. People used to visit sometimes, looking for a kiddie to take home with them, adopt into their family. When that happened, I always hoped, this time they’ll pick me. No one ever did. Can’t blame them, can you? I always was a great, ugly, fat lump. You’d have been all right, though, with your pretty face and nice ways. Not surprising your Mum and Dad took a shine to you.”

  He said, “Laura says, my real mother must worry about me. Wondering if I’m all right and if I think about her. I used not to, but I’ve started now.”

  “Well, that
’s natural, ain’t it? My Mum left me on the church steps. I often think of her, leavin’ me there, when it could have bin anywhere. It was a sin in those days, a kid with no father, it’s as if she was asking God to forgive her. Tellin’ me to be Christian, like. Your Mum left you by the river. I reckon she did that for a reason.”

  Alex said, “Dad says, she couldn’t look after me.” He felt a sudden, sad anger. “If I had a baby, I mean I know I can’t, because I’m not a girl, but if I was a girl, and I did, I’d look after it.”

  Poll said, “Expect she did her best, that’s how you got to think of it. She carried you as long as she could, set you down when her arms couldn’t hold you no longer. Tired of life. Not everyone’s strong enough. So she left you where she knew someone ‘ud find you and know where she’d gone, what she’d done. D’you understand now?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t want to think about it. He felt too numb and afraid.

  Poll said, “Don’t look so sad, cocker. Let the poor soul rest in peace. She wouldn’t want you to fret. You love your Mum and Dad, don’t you?”

  He nodded, speechless. She said, “Then you’re a lucky lad, ain’t you? Good parents, nice home, I daresay. Ought to be ashamed of yourself, runnin’ off like that. They’ll be out of their minds with the worry. Didn’t think of that, did you?”

  He found his voice. “That’s not fair. I mean, I know I didn’t think to begin with, but it isn’t fair now. It was you told the others I couldn’t go home. You’re the one stopping me.”

  He wondered if he should start screaming again. Poll said she had heard him right down the street. If he screamed the neighbours might hear this time, call the police…

  But Poll was laughing again. Wheezing and laughing. “Course you’re going ‘ome. Just a matter of bein’ careful. Jake will think of a way, he’s got brains. Long as you do what you’re told and no nonsense. You wouldn’t want to make trouble for poor old Poll, would you? Come ‘ere a minute.”