The Gift Shop

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “What makes you think …?” She began to sputter.

  “Oh, come on,” he said pityingly, “you’d spill. No offense. So would I. Didn’t I explain that ‘they’ are ruthless?”

  “Whee!” said Jean. “Less ruth than you, even?”

  “Oh, shut up,” he said. “I hate this kind of nonsense, believe me. At my age it’s bad enough that I have to go tooting around the world after a piggy bank. I purely resent having to be the misunderstood hero, on the top of it.” Then he was impelling her out of the building and, suddenly tickled and ready to whoop with laughter, she went.

  At the ticket counter the little man who had stood inconspicuously behind them sidled up to make a purchase.

  When they came out into the non-air-conditioned air, Jean flared into speech. “You mean to say you are really going to Am …?”

  “Shush!”

  There were people disembarking from an airport limousine. Jean lowered her voice. “How can you be sure he ever did put …?”

  “Shush!”

  “I told you,” she stormed, “I did not see him do it.”

  “Oh, he wouldn’t have let you see,” said Harry, who was scanning the sidewalks and the pavements. He looked across to the peaceful parking lot, where the docile machines stood in their ranks. It was a bright day. He tugged at the girl gently. She wouldn’t move. He looked down and said impatiently, “He told me he did, on the phone.”

  “Now that,” said Jean immediately, “is ridiculous!”

  She had her heels dug in. He was looking down at her. His eyes were greener than ever. The weather was bright. There was a breeze. His dark hair was stirring. Jean put up her hands to hold her blonde tresses. A jet screamed off into the sky.

  As the noise died, Harry bent and said close to her startled ear, “They got Bernie in a parking lot. Did you know that? Better wait for me here.” Then he was gone, across the pavement. Then she could see him running down an aisle between the automobiles.

  When he pulled up and leaned to open the door, beaming at her cheerfully, Jean got in. She really didn’t know what she was getting into. (It was Harry’s Mercedes-Benz 300 S E convertible roadster, off-white with black leather inside.) But Jean was furious. She could have nipped off and hidden from him in half a dozen ways. And hadn’t. She said, as this astonishing car whipped away, “Hah! Hah! Tell me this. If your Bernie took the trouble to call you up on the telephone and tell you that he had put a message in a pig …”

  Harry was slipping from lane to lane, watching behind.

  “… then,” cried Jean, “why didn’t he tell you, right there on the telephone, what the message was?” She thought she would have died if she hadn’t got to say this.

  “Oh,” said Harry. “I see what’s bothering you.” But he went right on. “Now, if you don’t want to fly off, that’s perfectly understandable. I’m thinking the best idea is for me to give you some hiding money and let you hide yourself. That way,” be glanced at her, “I wouldn’t even know where you were. Okay?”

  Jean said, “I don’t want money. I want the answer to my question.”

  “Yes, but where shall I … Look, if you have a car I would suggest that you leave it …”

  “I came in a car pool,” she said. “Would you mind driving me home? I live at 28479 Painter.”

  Harry said nothing.

  “As you could find out, in five seconds on the telephone, the way you operate,” she sputtered.

  He said, “How do I go, please?”

  So she told him. This surprising automobile—surprising because it was not long-snouted, rip-snorting, or bright red, either—began to follow her instructions. Jean Cunliffe happened to hold the theory that drivers reveal their inner selves. She had plenty of time to observe that Harry Fairchild was a fast, a safe, and a very shrewd driver, because he didn’t say another word and, stubbornly, neither did she.

  He pulled up in front of her modest apartment house, handed her out of the car, and went with her into the lobby in what seemed to be automatic courtesy. But when she had used her key on her first-floor private door, he stepped into her one-room-kitchen-bath, right behind her.

  “I won’t ask you to come in,” she said sweetly. “You must have so much to do. Please, try not to worry about me, Mr. Fairchild.” She pitied him, kindly.

  Harry sat down in her one upholstered chair. “To answer your question …”

  Jean sat down on the edge of her daybed. She was dying to hear this.

  “I went to school with Bernie,” he began. “We had a fraternity brother and patron. We called him old Doc McGee. Fellow had a house that was our hangout. So old Doc got sick and tired of paying the phone bills all us undergraduates kept running up on him. So he put a big piggy bank next to his phone and nobody got to make a call until he’d put his contribution in the pig. That’s background. Now. Bernie said to me on the phone last night that ‘one swine’ was right there, eavesdropping. The point being”—Harry was being very patient and too slow, thought Jean, trying not to fidget—“that Bernie thought he had to be cryptic. That’s why he didn’t tell me what the message was. He told me he was giving me a word that was going to clue me. Let’s see if you can guess. He said ‘some swine’ had roughed him up. ‘One swine’ was listening. (Maybe in the next booth, hm?) Bernie said he was “bleeding like a stuck pig.’” Jean shivered. “Then he talked about old Doc McGee and phone calls, which brought into my mind what he knew it would bring into my mind. After that, he even said he wasn’t going to make it ‘all the way home?’ Can you tell me what the word was?”

  “All right,” she said meekly.

  But Harry was suddenly dumb—just sitting there with his dark head tipped a little, his hands together. It had occurred to him that he had been talking again. And why should he have been?

  “I’m sorry I goofed,” she said, in a moment.

  “Oh, that’s all right.” He was pressing his ten fingertips, the left against the right.

  “I hope you’ll be able to find the one pig you wanted, Mr. Fabchild.”

  “I’ll move fast,” he said listlessly. Now she believed that there was something in a pig, and why the devil had he gone to work and convinced her? He didn’t know what he was going to do about her. Nothing, probably.

  “What’s in that pig?” she wanted to know now.

  He groaned within. The trouble with talking was that one thing led to another. “Oh, I’m only guessing,” he shrugged.

  “Why do they want whatever it is?”

  “That I can’t even guess,” he said bluntly.

  “But who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jean had begun to bristle. He could almost see her brain going around. “Did you make that up about the baggage check and the missing baggage? Did you?” She was pouncing on the point of suspicion.

  Harry saw no point in lying. “No, I didn’t make that up,” he said monotonously. “The police told me.”

  Jean rose and went to look out of her window. “Then why didn’t the man in the brown suit follow us here?” she demanded.

  “Maybe he did.”

  “Oh, he did not.”

  “Then I don’t know why not,” said Harry. “Listen, I am a quiet fella. This isn’t my forte. I don’t know that I’ve got a forte, when you come right down …”

  “Now see here,” Jean blazed at him. “You lost me a job and threatened me with villains and I don’t know what-all, and you’re not chickening out now—or are you? Do you intend to take that plane?”

  “Well, Bernie gave me the word,” Harry said helplessly.

  “All right. And I sold the pig.” Jean hauled her suitcase out of the closet and put it on her bed.

  She wasn’t going to kid herself any longer. She could not sit this one out. She’d never forgive herself. She saw herself a grandmother, mourning, in her shawl, the missed merriments of her youth. The fact was—supposing the worst came to the so-called worst? Some people might still think that there wa
s a fate worse than death. But there wasn’t. And she wasn’t afraid that she was going to die.

  She was a brilliant packer, swift and decisive. Fast, eh? she was thinking. She knew how to pack for travel. Very little.

  With increasing uneasiness Harry watched the performance, as graceful as a dance, not one wasted motion. She didn’t change her dark blue linen working costume. She didn’t even primp. At last, she whipped her suitcase shut, dumped away the milk and cream from her small refrigerator, yanked on a travel-wise knitted hat, tweaked it to a becoming shape, opened her top dresser drawer, took out a clump of beads and baubles in one hand and her passport in the other—all this in one fast sweep around—and then she bowed to her audience.

  Harry rose and said, “I appreciate this, Miss Cunliffe, very much. I am trying to think where you’ll be perfectly safe and comfortable.”

  She bounced her passport on her palm. “You’d better not risk it, had you?”

  So Harry put on a look that was a combination of innocent wonder and deep trouble. “But listen to this. Now, please be serious. I think I’ve had an idea. Supposing they do get after you, to tell them all you know. Okay, I’ll be on my way. So what you do is, you tell them! Hah! Instant safety! So simple, it’s hard to see, isn’t it?” He was beaming on her and also drifting backward toward the door. “Please don’t worry about me, Miss Cunliffe.”

  “It’s not done,” she said severely.

  “What?”

  “That sort of thing. Not by the good guys.”

  Harry winced.

  “Of course, I’m only guessing that we are the good guys.” She dumped the beads and the passport into her handbag and took up her coat. “‘But you need me,’ she said simply,” said Jean. “So we’ll both guess. And there is absolutely no need for me to know what you guess might be in the pig. Is there?”

  He rolled his eyes to heaven, signifying defeat, and then he sat down and told her.

  Chapter Seven

  The sun was lowering; its slanting rays were trapped now against the hill that bounded the raggedy back yard, and the children were scampering in a golden light, making ghostly rainbows with the garden hose.

  Miss Emaline, limp in a garden chair near the house wall, was running a fever; she knew that. She was coming down with something. She hadn’t been able to help Callie all day. She had tried not to complain. She felt guilty and miserable now as her body alternately shivered and burned; her mind was not even as clear as it ought to be. It ran in circles.

  Sometimes she tried to attach their names to the children. The little black boy was Carl. The red-headed lass with the skinny legs, she was Alice. The boy who might be an Indian, wasn’t he Lenny? No, he was Joe. No, Joe must be the boy with the very white skin and the huge black eyes. There was a Rebecca. The little Korean? And a Nancy. Nancy must be the one who seemed to be honey-colored—skin, hair, and eyes, too. There was Bobby, of course, screaming and giggling and scampering as fast or faster than the others—the boys or the girls.

  They were having a water battle and Rex, the grown man, bald head, beard and all, was in the midst of it about as wet as they all were, ducking and dodging over the rough turf, and the noise was making Miss Emaline’s nerve ends wince, and wince again, with that sick feverish running shudder.

  But there sat Callie, rocking and watching, not seeming to care how noisy they were. Or how soaked, either. “It waters the plants,” she had told her sister complacently. “They sure do need it.”

  Miss Emaline had done the best she could … the best she could … all this day. She had had a talk with Bobby this morning. Bobby was an intelligent child, respectful, well-behaved. She had taken everything so well, so quietly. Just as she had taken the death of Mrs. Webb, the Reverend’s wife, who had been the one to raise her. Poor Mrs. Webb, worked herself to death, she had. Well, that was what raising a child could do to you. The Reverend was so lonely and defeated now. Helpless-seeming. Miss Emaline had had such hopes of helping.

  When Mr. Beckenhauer had come to them and said that Bobby was really the child of a very, very rich man, they had all agreed that they had no right to keep the child from her natural opportunities. Mr. Beckenhauer had thought it proper for the little girl to travel with a woman and he had said that the father would be, without a doubt, most grateful to such a woman. They had all agreed that Miss Emaline should be the one to go. She was the most hopeful, the most aggressive, or perhaps the most anxious. She wanted to make her way to the former mother-churches and try what she could do. Miss Emaline had dreamed of saving their mission. Even now, she might make it possible for them to re-form and continue the holy work. Somewhere. Somehow. They were all praying for her.

  When Mr. Beckenhauer had asked Miss Emaline privately, that night, to cut Bobby’s hair and dress her in shorts and shirt and use the male pronoun during the journey because, he said, some things had happened that were making him rather nervous about the child’s safety, Miss Emaline had not permitted herself to be daunted. He had given her money for their fares, and a good deal over. The seats had been taken in the name of Mrs. Webb. He had told Miss Emaline not to appear to be acquainted with him on the plane. He had promised to be on the plane and that he would contact her soon after they arrived in Los Angeles. And he had said that it would be all right for her to write her sister. A good idea, actually, he had said. A good man.

  Oh, she had trusted him, and taken the money, and allowed him to convince her of the need for all such secrecy, for the child’s sake. Because of certain wicked people. So Miss Emaline had not told the others very much at all. Just that she was taking the child where the child belonged and she would, once magically transported to the Mainland, do all she could to plead, to raise funds, to save the holy work. She would be back as soon as possible. She would never desert them.

  But now … Oh, that bright blood dropping! The evil that must be in this terrible world! But Mr. Beckenhauer had told her what to do, just the same, and she had done it. She knew that, now. He knew where she was. He would contact her as soon as he, was better, and instruct her. She knew where he was. At St. Bart’s, of course. She’d heard that. She’d taken pains to listen. But Callie had no phone. Miss Emaline hadn’t been able to call. When she felt better …

  At least for now, Bobby was safe. Such an untroublesome child, as children went, taking everything in stride. Miss Emaline had told her, this morning, that she might just begin to call Callie “Mama” as the others did. If Bobby didn’t mind? Bobby had asked if she could call Papa “Papa.” And had promised, with a lighting up of her small face, that she would do so, and had skipped off to join what Callie called the mob. She hadn’t had much chance to play in her little life so far. She was playing now, with great gusto.

  It was Bobby who was guiding the hose at the moment. She was in the fore and sending the stream of water after the big man who was jumping it as if it were a rope. But Bobby was going to “get” him. Her little face was glowing with determination. When the man went looping off in a trot to the side of the house Bobby tugged on the hose and the children, accepting her leadership, all helped her, and they staggered like a many-legged dragon in pursuit. They’d get him—this large child who played as hard as they. They’d drench him. Miss Emaline shuddered at the chilly thought. Her head ached. Her eyes ached. Her chest ached. Then Rex turned on an outdoor faucet, there at the house wall, and he put his big thumb over it and made a great fan of water to catch the children in their laughing faces and they ducked and tumbled, shrieking with delight.

  “Hey, that didn’t get you, did it, Em?” said Callie, beside her.

  “No, no.” Miss Emaline’s very voice ached in her throat. “But Callie, I’m afraid … I’m feeling quite ill.” Miss Emaline’s head rolled. “And how can I ask you to nurse me? I can’t do that.”

  Callie didn’t speak. She rose and put her hand on her sister’s forehead. She looked smilingly into Emaline’s tired, aching eyes.

  “Callie, what if I’m contagious? You
have to think of the children.”

  “Don’t worry. I will.”

  “Do you think … a hospital?” Miss Emaline’s heart fluttered.

  “Well ask the doctor.”

  “The Mission did have insurance,” Emaline rambled on, “long ago. It wasn’t kept up. How could we? I have some money. Would there be a charity ward? At St. Bart’s, Callie? Do you think so?”

  Callie had her fingers on Emaline’s wrist and was frowning a little.

  “Because I’ve heard of St. Bart’s. It’s a good hospital? If I could only … I can’t impose. I can’t impose.”

  “I wish you’d told me you felt so bad” said Callie. “You’re sizzling.”

  But Emaline was trying to think of a name, Bobby’s name. She ought to tell Callie in case she, Emaline, was dying. Mr. Beckenhauer had asked her not to tell anyone either the name or where the wearer of the name was to be found. Not even to write the name down anywhere. So she had not. But she knew it. She’d have it in a minute. “Was it ‘Just?’” she murmured. “Justice? No, no, it was Fair. Fair-child,” she said to Callie, “That’s to remember for Bobby …”

  “Bobby’s okay,” said Callie. “They are all fair children.”

  Miss Emaline burst into weak sobbing.

  “Don’t cry, Em. I’ll nip down the block and call the doctor.”

  “You are a good woman,” wept Miss Emaline. (Oh, she ought not to have risked this dangerous business for the child. Oh, she ought to have been daunted. But now—now!—she must protect the child with her life, if necessary. It was the only way to redeem herself.)

  “Let me get you inside, where it’s higher and dryer than it is out here,” said Callie. The back yard was a tumble of sun and water and children. You couldn’t tell one. from another.

  Miss Emaline said craftily, “Callie, could you drive me to St. Bart’s? Couldn’t I just go there? Wouldn’t they take me in? I don’t want … your doctor. I don’t want … anybody to know where she is. I know it’s an imposition.”