The Gift Shop

by Charlotte Armstrong

  “Oh, they’ve gone. They listened to the radio. They’ve gone, but now we can’t find the children.”

  Then Dorinda waved and called across to Vance. “Go ahead. These men will help me. Thanks for stopping.”

  So Vance nodded and the Continental began to slip away.

  “You’ve searched the yard, have you, Miss Cunliffe?” said one of the agents.

  “Of course. Of course. I was going down, that way. Could you go up the hill?”

  “Not in the house, eh?”

  “Nobody’s in the house,” cried Dorinda. “Their mother’s gone up the alley. She’s just about crazy. Oh, please help us. I’m so scared. We’ve got to find the children.”

  One of the agents ran back toward the intersection. He waved and ran into the alley. The car, driven by a third agent, came along and picked up the other. Then it moved; it passed the house, it went slowly around the curve toward the steep winding into the hills.

  Seven pairs of eyes watched, from under the acacias.

  Dorinda tripped to the corner. She turned down; the blue car was waiting. She got in. The car moved. It picked up speed.

  “It’ll blow,” said Varney morosely.

  “What will blow?” said Vance.

  “Drive,” said Dorinda and picked up the telephone.

  In the cellar, Harry had carefully tested all his chances of getting loose. None existed. Meanwhile, according to his lights, he kept on talking nonsense, because that was what one did. It will be interesting, he thought, to see who is going to get us out of this. But he didn’t say so.

  He had enticed Jean into an animated defense of her remark in Ireland. Very well, she was saying, she admitted that she had used the wrong verb. But the image had been clear, hadn’t it? And it was a pity if one couldn’t use a little poetic license. To complain that it was not feasible to handcuff a chicken was pretty stuffy of him. She did feel that the epitome of helplessness was a chicken, trussed for the roasting.

  So nonsense came to a sudden and unfortunate end.

  And Callie said, “My poor sister—”

  Because she knew, as they all did, that it might blow.

  “Listen.”

  The candlelight fell wickedly upon their upturned listening faces.

  There were sounds now, above the floor. Tiny creakings. Small tappings.

  Then the voices, the little voices, were calling softly on the other side of the door, up there.

  “Mama?” “They’ve gone, Mama.” “The door’s locked, Mama.” “There’s a car out back.” “The key’s not here.” “They’ve all gone, Mama.” “Papa didn’t come.” “Mama?”

  “Go” away,” roared Harry, realizing what had happened. The children had sneaked back into the empty rooms upstairs.

  But it might blow!

  “Go. Go. Get out of the house,” screamed Jean.

  But Callie said, “Say, would you two keep quiet?”

  “Yes, yes, keep quiet.” Jean’s shoulder throbbed against Harry’s.

  So Callie spoke to her children. “Listen, kids. You can’t open the door, huh?”

  “It’s locked, Mama.” “Mama, Papa didn’t come, so we …”

  “All right, listen,” Callie said. “You must all go out of the house and all the way to the end of the yard. Or else all the way up the hill. Far away.”

  “Mama, we don’t want …”

  “See, policemen are coming and they’ll know what to do. But there’s gas leaking out, down here and she put some burning candles on the steps. We can’t put them out. So it might blow up. And I don’t want to worry about you being hurt.”

  “Mama?”

  “I-do-not-want-you-to-be-hurt,” she said with wide-spaced emphasis. “I would rather anything else in the whole world! Do you hear me? All of you? Do you hear your Mama?”

  “Yes, Mama.” “O.K., Mama.”

  “Then, hurry. Hurry-scurry. Go. Quick.”

  “Mama, can I …?”

  “All of you.”

  “All right, Mama.”

  Then they could hear the feet tapping, hurry-scurry away. Seven pair? Oh, let it be all seven!

  Silence above. The candles burned. The smell of gas was very strong. But all three prisoners breathed in deeply and puffed out sighs.

  “Chow-ee,” breathed Harry softly.

  “Well, that’s better,” Jean said flatly.

  Callie leaned her untidy head on the washtub and closed her eyes.

  On the street, the police car went slowly by. It would turn and drive by again, assessing the situation with due caution. No car parked at this curb. No signs of life in the old house. Everything seemed very quiet. But they would go easy, as they had been enjoined to do.

  In the cellar, were those candles any lower? Was it possible that those flames would gutter out? But in how many minutes? And how heavy was the invisible cloud, up there? So when it blew, would it blow suddenly?

  Jean had shifted as close to Harry as she could.

  “Oh, Tom’s a talker,” he was babbling. “Dick is the handy man, I guess you could say. I’m just a quiet fella.” His shoulder was tight to Jean’s. He said, because he was absolutely running down, “I wonder—should we join in song? I believe that is what’s done.”

  “They had an orchestra,” Jean said sleepily.

  (He knew who had had an orchestra, where and when.)

  “Hell of an acey-deucy game,” he murmured.

  (She knew who had had this game and where and when.)

  Callie said, “Why didn’t Rex come?”

  And Harry could follow her train of thought, too. He felt himself as a bright nervous knot, with many long and sensitive antennae reaching out, way out. Understanding everything.

  He said, “Listen.”

  Mice? Scratches. Scuffles and scrapes.

  “Go back,” said Callie. “No, no, loves. No, no, loves.”

  “It’s just me, Mama.”

  High up there, behind the furnaces, through an opening that looked to be no more than six inches deep, but must have been, behind the masking of a beam, deeper, now there came rolling and slithering, the body of a little girl.

  She was wearing shorts. Her bare legs were long and beautiful, although skinned in spots. She had flaxen hair, cut very short. She didn’t look at them. She had her small feet on some toehold and she was hauling and pulling. Behind her, above, there were children’s voices.

  “Come on, pull harder, Nancy.”

  “Don’t let it kink up! Hey, Joe!”

  “Wait. O.K.”

  Bobby Fairchild was guiding the business-end of the green garden hose down behind the furnaces, threading it through the pipes.

  “I need more,” she shouted.

  “O.K., Bobby.”

  Jean said in a voice that couldn’t help ringing with some pleasure. “Harry, this is your little sister.”

  Callie said, “No. It’s too dangerous. Go back.”

  But Harry said, “No, no. Let her. Just let her. Don’t stop her.”

  His whole being understood. It would kill her, to stop her. You mustn’t do that.

  Now, Bobby was on the floor, and she had the end of the hose in her hands, and she sighted at the burning candles.

  “Just a minute, Mama,” she said and then called, “O.K., mob.”

  The children, outside at the house wall, turned on the water with enormous enthusiasm. The water burst forth from the hose end and, as it did, the nozzle, not in good repair, fell off.

  Bobby, braced on her good little legs, saw the water cascading in a heavy round stream to her feet, but nowhere near the high place where the candles burned.

  She whipped one leg over the hose; she squeezed her knees together; she bent and scrabbled for the nozzle; she got it in her hand.

  Harry was breathless and fascinated. Jean wasn’t breathing, either. They non-breathed together, in perfect rhythm. Callie said, “Oh God …”

  The child was trying to get the nozzle back on the hose end against
the heavy stream of water, but it wasn’t easy. She struggled for ten seconds. Then she looked up at the flames. Her little face was calm, her gray eyes were very clear; they narrowed shrewdly. Bobby cut her losses. She dropped the nozzle on the floor.

  She took a good grip on the hose with her strong little legs. She then put both hands over the streaming water and, pressing with all her might, she began to narrow the opening. She made the water into a hard fan. She shifted slightly. She tested and she gauged, and by, trial and error, swiftly correcting error, slowly she brought the water fanning higher, higher. It rained upon them all.

  It spattered drops. One flame went out. The child persisted. Another. Then, all fire was dead. But Bobby, calm and wise, kept the water playing to make sure.

  Now, outside, arose screams and shouts from the children and the water was abruptly cut off. A man’s loud voice said, “What are you kids trying to do?”

  The children screamed, in anguish.

  Callie called out. Her voice could carry marvelously. “It’s O.K., mob. It’s O.K. now.”

  Then she said to her fellow prisoners, gaily, “Unless we’re going to get gassed to death, anyhow. Bobby, come here and lie down low, you little monkey.”

  Bobby said, “Well, we turned the gas off, Mama. ’Cause we’d watched the meterman, and he explained.”

  The man above was shouting, “Police Department. Who’s down there?”

  “Listen to the children,” howled Harry, out of his mind with delight.

  Bobby scarcely glanced, out of her long gray intelligent eyes, at him, or at Jean. She came to squat before Callie and touch Caillie’s cheek with her wet little hand. “Are you O.K., Mama? Don’t be mad. We didn’t want Papa to be so sorry,” said Harry’s little sister.

  The blue Continental had made it to the Hollywood Freeway. Vance driving, it was headed toward the Valley. Varney was in the back seat, a nerveless lump. Dorinda, in the front seat, was twisting and twisting, with both hands, at the purse in her lap. Then she would stretch those claws to grope the air for power, and then she was back at that twisting. She had punched all four channel buttons. All the mobile operators had told her the same thing. Paul Fairchild’s line was busy. Long distance circuits were busy.

  They were through the pass. Vance said, “I’m taking the next exit.”

  “You can take the Ventura and turn on the San Diego,” Dorinda said. “Fast way to Fairchild’s. I want to see their darling daddy.”

  Vance said, “Varney can drive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not making too much sense, anymore,” said Vance, “is why. It don’t matter to Vic, so much, I guess.”

  “You’ll drive me to Fairchild’s house. Right now. Do as I tell you.”

  “Max has had it, Dorie.”

  “Then I’ll get all the Fairchilds.”

  “Try, if you want,” Vance said. “But I didn’t set to blow up all my bargaining power. Just if the phones happened to be busy. So here’s where I get off.”

  He pulled on his right-turn indicator.

  She lifted her purse and whammed it into the side of his face. The car missed the exit lane. It hit the abutment of an overpass. It reared up, turned over, and burst into flames.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Nine-thirty in the evening, and still Monday.

  Paul Fairchild sat high against his pillows, looking passably healthy. Mei was watching him. Dick, the doctor, was watching her, thinking that he had done well to suggest that she take over here, and run his father’s well-staffed house, and be nurse-companion to his father. (Elaine was elsewhere, heavily sedated, and what would become of her remained to be seen.)

  Callie was watching Dr. Fairchild. Jean Cunliffe, nursing the lingering pain in her face, was watching everybody. Nobody was watching Jean.

  Harry Fairchild was watching his little sister. She was a revelation to him; he couldn’t get over it. Tony Mizer had been a good little guy. Deirdre had had her moments. Even Sally Jo had her potential. But this one!

  The old man had been playing a little game with the seven children, who were attired in a wild miscellany of raggedy night apparel, rescued from their own house by Bonzer, when he had gone there with the extra keys to fetch Harry’s car.

  The old man had been trying to match a name to each child, making wild errors and ludicrous suggestions, with a streak of nonsense in him. (Like Harry’s, thought Jean.) But now, as he sighed, the giggling died down, Mei stirred, Dick nodded.

  But Paul Fairchild said to Callie, “What pleasure! Fine children.”

  “There’s one fine child of yours,” said Callie, “I’m taking a lot of pleasure in, believe me.” She beamed on Dick, the doctor, who had, two hours ago, performed an operation with his usual skill. Rex Julian was doing very well at St. Bart’s.

  (Where Miss Emaline, at the moment, was lying in a drugged slumber. And what would become of her remained to be seen.)

  Dick said, “Shucks, ma’am. A little chore of classic simplicity, to such as I. But I am the doctor. So I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Daddy’s bedtime. The … er … mob can whoop it up somewhere else? O.K.?”

  “I’ll show them,” Mei said.

  “Just one more minute “ said the old man. “Callie, may I talk to Barbara, for a minute?”

  “Why, sure,” said Callie. But a shadow crossed her face.

  Jean saw it. Jean had been feeling a shadow on her own heart, but not the same shadow as this one.

  Now, one little girl went closer to the man in the big bed. She was wearing a pink flannel nightgown that was too short for her, and ragged at the neck and hem. Her flaxen hair was rumpled all over her head, all of her having been washed just a little while ago. She stood there, quietly regarding him. He did not touch her.

  “You know, Barbara, that I am your real true daddy?”

  (Whether he is or not, he ought to be, thought Jean. Oh, he is! He is!)

  “I know it,” said Barbara, gravely.

  “And you know, don’t you, that I never even heard that you had been born, ’til just a few weeks ago.”

  “I know.” She nodded. She didn’t hold it against him.

  “Do you know that you have three big grown-up brothers? That’s Dr. Dick, over there. And that one is your brother George, but we call him Harry. And your brother Tom you’ll have to meet another time.”

  Bobby turned her head and glanced at the Fairchild boys. A grave, assessing, and then dismissing, glance.

  “But I guess,” said the old man, “you have a lot of brothers, already. And sisters, too.”

  She caught her lip in her teeth. The gray eyes were very watchful.

  “And I guess you’d rather stay with those brothers and sisters? And—because your real mother, I’m sorry, isn’t around—you’d like to stay with your mama, here?”

  The child’s lips begin to curve but she did not quite smile. She nodded.

  “And I guess your mama would rather have you stay, than not? And all the mob would, too?”

  “Sure would,” said Callie, softly. The other children stirred and twittered. They were all very respectful. They did not rejoice too much, or too soon.

  “Well, I think it’s a good idea, too,” said Paul Fairchild. “You see, I’m pretty old, and in this old house there’d be nobody to play with. Your mama wouldn’t let me have you all.” (Oh, he was a charmer.) “I hope you have some fun here, for a couple of days, now.” (Until Wednesday, wasn’t said.) “While you are all going to stay with me. And afterwards, you can come, and bring the other kids, whenever you feel like it.”

  “O.K.,” she said and now she smiled. Now she let him see that she was happy.

  “Well, that’s settled. You sure have got a family,” said the old man lying back. “Let me see. You’ve got three sisters.” He counted on his fingers and the little girl nodded and counted on her own.

  “And six brothers, three big ones, three little ones. Whew!”

  Bobby laughed. Her
body bent. Her spine had not seemed to be stiff, but now as she bent toward him, a certain stiffness was betrayed to have been there, until now.

  “And,” said the old man, “you’ve got your mama.”

  “Um hum.” The child stiffened, just a bit, ahead of him on his sequence.

  “And you’ve got your papa,” said Paul Fairchild, fox and charmer, “who can play the guitar, I understand?”

  “Umhum.” Now the child drew back very slightly, relieved, yet still waiting to understand her status, completely.

  “And on top of all that, you’ve got a daddy,” said Bobby’s daddy.

  “I know it!” crowed Bobby. “And I’ve got a daddy,” too. Mr. Webb, you know? I guess I’ve just got everything!”

  She was aglow. It was true. Humanly speaking, she had everything. Bright and beautiful and beloved, and young, besides.

  “So now, let Mei take you all to where you’re going to sleep,” said her daddy, “sooner or later, that is.” He winked. “And goodnight.”

  He didn’t touch his daughter (oh, a fox!), but Bobby gave him just a soft pat on his cheek with her cool little hand. “Goodnight, Daddy,” she said with grave and charming joy, and some graceful foxiness of her own.

  All the kids began to chorus. Callie said, “Scoot, mob. I’m coming, in a minute.” She shooed them, and they all trooped away with Mei.

  Callie said, the shadow gone from her, “I’d like to thank you, Mr. Fairchild. We do love her.”

  “Oh, it’s best,” he said warmly. “That’s obvious. Now, what can I do? For her? For you? For all the rest of them? Money?”

  Callie was standing. Her heels were run-over, her stockings were laddered. She pushed her hands into her untidy mop of dark hair. “Gee,” she said, “I don’t know, Mr. Fairchild. See, Rex makes an awful lot of money, these days. But we just never got the habit of spending it, so much. So there’s this man, he manages for Rex, and there’s been college funds set up, and all.”

  “Ah, ah,” pounced Paul Fairchild. “But you only took in Bobby last Thursday. So I’ll match her fund, up to full strength, tomorrow.”

  “O.K.” said Callie with perfect generosity. “That’s a deal.” She beamed on him, she beamed on everyone, especially on the doctor, and she went off to her children.