The Stories of Jane Gardam

by Jane Gardam

  How stupid. How stupid of his mother. Why hadn’t she sewed the Union Jack on his raincoat in the first place? She loved sewing. She was always mending and sewing, not even listening to his father and Miss Pym scrapping away about politics, just looking across at them now and then, or looking over, smiling, at him. His socks were more darns than socks because she so loved darning. Loved making things perfect. Loved making everything seem all right.

  So then she sends him away with a rotten little Woolworth’s Union Jack out of a cheap packet of them, loose in a tin. And not waving either when she’d said goodbye. Not crying at all. He knew about that crying-and-laughing-together she did. He’d never thought anything of it. He wondered if it had been the laughing-and-crying and all the darning and soupy Miss Pym and her French that had killed his father.

  After all, she hadn’t really seemed to mind his father dying. Gone off to bed for the funeral. Perhaps she’d really wanted him to die. Wanted to be free of him so that she could have long, cosy chats with Miss Pym. Horrible Miss Pym speaking her mind all the time. Not liking his father and showing it. Not liking boys. Not liking him. Goopy-goo about his mother. Organising these Fosters. Very glad he was going away. Making no secret of that.

  Perhaps his mother also was glad that he was going away.

  Philip when this thought arrived concentrated upon the colourless, hedgeless, straight-edged French fields. Rattle-crash the train went over the level-crossings that sliced the roads in half. Long poles hung with metal aprons. Funny people. Lots of them on bicycles, clustered round, waiting to cross. Very dangerous. Very daring. People full of—what? Different from home. Full of energy. No, not energy—what? Fireworks. Explosives. Confidence. That was it. Not as if they needed to keep private their secret thoughts.

  If they suddenly discovered for instance that their mothers did not love them they would not sit dumb and numb in a corner.

  People in the carriage were now getting out packets of food. One of the hand-shaking men offered Philip a slanted slice of bread, orange and white. Somebody else offered him wine. He shook his head at all of it and looked out of the window. When the talk in the carriage began to get lively he got up and took down the raincoat and took from the pocket the packet of lunch his mother had made up for him herself, with her own fair hands, ha-ha. He sat with it on his knee. He was too sad, too shy to open it.

  Also he didn’t really want it. His mother had packed it up so carefully. Like a work of art. Greaseproof corners turned into triangles, like a beautifully-made bed. The package was fastened with two elastic bands, criss-cross, making four neat squares. And even his name on it in clear black pencil, PHILIP. How silly could you get? Who else would it be for? Madly careful, that’s what she was. And then she goes and leaves the Union Jack loose in the box.

  And she knew how flimsy it was. She must have expected it to blow away. She expected everything. She’d expected a wind. She’d gone on at breakfast-time about him getting seasick. And she knew he’d be more than likely to open the box.

  Oh, she’d known what would happen all right. She’d gone off without even waving, her yellow fur arm on the yellow fur arm of Pym. She did not love him, want him, know him and she never had. It was all just darning and being perfect.

  She wanted him lost.

  All that about flags was just a blind. She wanted him to miss the Major. Wanted rid of the bother of him. Wanted him to disappear. She was a wicked woman who had killed her husband. All that laughing as she cried.

  One night when he was young Philip had come downstairs after being put to bed, to get a book from the morning room and through the dining room door had heard his father singing at table:

  Oh me and oh my

  Oh dear and oh dear

  I ain’t gonna drink

  No more damned beer

  and Miss Pym had come sailing out of the room with her lips pressed together. ‘Coarse,’ he had heard her say. ‘Coarse,’ and then, seeing him standing in his pyjamas at the foot of the stairs in the summer evening light, ‘Go to bed, Philip. Don’t look so stricken. There is a point when every child sees through his parents.’

  But his father’s singing hadn’t made Philip think any less of him. He’d always rather liked his father, or what he saw of him. He’d not been able to talk to children, just looked awkward and done card-tricks. Once in the town, seeing his son walking on the other side of the road, his father had raised his hat to him. What did she mean ‘see through’?

  But now he was seeing through his mother. He was seeing through her all right. He knew her now. The stupid woman. All that fuss trailing about for flags in Canterbury and then she gets one that blows away. Accidentally-on-purpose-ha-ha. She’d be free now. Free for life. Free to be with Stinkerpym. They’d got rid of him together, making sure the flag was really flimsy. Brilliantly they had evaded the law and there would be no evidence of their plot. Philip the only son would simply disappear.

  Well, he wouldn’t. At least he would, because he’d never go back. Not to Canterbury, never. Thirteen was all right. He’d manage. Look at Kidnapped. Look at Treasure Island. You can get on without your mother. When he’d got to Paris he’d— He had some money. He’d just put up in a hotel for a few nights. Get work. He could probably get work somewhere as a kitchen boy or—well, somewhere where there was food.

  He was very hungry now. Probably Major Foster and his sisters would have got a good dinner ready for him. This dinner he would never eat, never see, as he would never see the beautiful house they all said would be like a little palace near the Bois de Boulogne. Too bad. He’d go to the Paris stews. At least they sounded as if you didn’t go hungry.

  And since he was so hungry at the moment he would eat his mother’s sandwiches. She could hardly have poisoned them.

  Could she?

  As he opened the greaseproof paper he considered the enigma of his mother, how she flitted in and out of his life, always waving him away on trains. Sending him to boarding school at six.

  ‘And even now I could fox her,’ he thought. ‘Even now I could tear a bit off this greaseproof and draw a union-jack on it and pin it on the lapel with the pin in the box. I could write my name on it too. I could borrow a pencil.’

  He looked round the carriage wondering which of them he might ask. It would be an easy sentence to say. He’d even done it at school. And he had begun to like the look of the French faces.

  But no. He’d go to the stews.

  He opened the sandwiches and there was an envelope on top and inside it a piece of paper and his mother’s huge handwriting saying ‘Oh Philip, my darling, don’t hate me for fussing, but I do so love you.’

  Pinned to the paper was a spare Union Jack.

  SWAN

  Two boys walked over the bridge.

  They were big boys from the private school on the rich side of the river. One afternoon each week they had to spend helping people. They helped old people with no one to love them and younger children who were finding school difficult. It was a rule.

  ‘I find school difficult myself,’ said Jackson. ‘Exams for a start.’

  ‘I have plenty of people at home who think no one loves them,’ said Pratt. ‘Two grandparents, two parents, one sister.’

  ‘And all called Pratt, poor things,’ said Jackson, and he and Pratt began to fight in a friendly way, bumping up against each other until Jackson fell against a lady with a shopping-trolley on a stick and all her cornflakes fell out and a packet of flour, which burst.

  ‘I’m going straight to your school,’ she said. ‘I know that uniform. It’s supposed to be a good school. I’m going to lay a complaint,’ and she wagged her arms up and down at the elbows like a hen. Pratt, who often found words coming out of his mouth without warning, said, ‘Lay an egg. Cluck.’

  ‘That’s done it. That’s finished it,’ said the woman. ‘I’m going right round now. And I’ll
say you were slopping down the York Road Battersea at two o’clock in the afternoon, three miles from where you ought to be.’

  ‘We are doing our Social Work,’ said Pratt. ‘Helping people.’

  ‘Helping people!’ said the woman, pointing at the pavement.

  ‘We’re being interviewed about caring for unfortunate children,’ said Jackson.

  ‘They’re unfortunate all right if all they can get is you.’ And she steamed off, leaving the flour spread about like snow, and passers-by walked over it giving dark looks and taking ghostly footprints away into the distance. Pratt eased as much of it as he could into the gutter with his feet.

  ‘She’s right,’ he said. ‘I don’t know much about unfortunate children. Or any children.’

  ‘They may not let us care for any when they see us,’ said Jackson. ‘Come on. We’d better turn up. They can look at us and form an opinion.’

  ‘Whatever’s that mess on your shoes?’ asked the Head Teacher at the school on the rough side of the river, coming towards them across the hall. ‘Dear me, snow. It is a nasty day. How do you do? Your children are ready for you, I think. Maybe today you might like just to talk to them indoors and start taking them out next week?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Jackson.

  ‘Taking them out?’ said Pratt.

  ‘Yes. The idea is that—with the parents’ consent—you take them out and widen their lives. Most of them on this side of the river never go anywhere. It’s a depressed area. Their lives are simply school (or truanting), television, bed and school, though we have children from every country in the world.’

  ‘It’s about the same for us,’ said Pratt. ‘Just cross out television and insert homework.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ said the pretty Head Teacher, ‘you do lots of things. Over the river, there’s the Zoo and all the museums and the Tower of London and all the lovely shops. All the good things happen over the bridge. Most of our children here have scarcely seen a blade of grass. Now—you are two very reliable boys, I gather?’ (She looked a bit doubtful.) ‘Just wipe your feet and follow me.’

  She opened a door of a classroom, but there was silence inside and only one small Chinese boy looking closely into the side of a fish-tank.

  ‘Oh dear. Whatever . ⁠. ⁠. ⁠? Oh, of course. They’re all in the gym. This is Henry. Henry Wu. He doesn’t do any team-games. Or anything, really. He is one of the children you are to try to help. Now which of you would like Henry? He’s nearly seven.’

  ‘I would,’ said Pratt, wondering again why words kept emerging from his mouth.

  ‘Good. I’ll leave you here then. Your friend and I will go and find the other child. Come here Henry and meet—what’s your name?’

  ‘Pratt.’

  ‘Pratt, HERE’S PRATT, HENRY. Henry’s not deaf, Pratt. Or dumb. He’s been tested. It is just that he won’t speak or listen. He shuts himself away, PRATT, HENRY,’ she said, and vanished with an ushering arm behind Jackson, then closing the door.

  Henry Wu watched the fish.

  ‘Hello,’ said Pratt after a while. ‘Fish.’

  He thought, that is a very silly remark. He made it again, ‘Fish.’

  The head of Henry Wu did not move. It was a small round head with thick hair, black and shiny as the feathers on the diving-ducks in the park across the river.

  Or it might have been the head of a doll. A very fragile Chinese-china doll. Pratt walked round it to try and get a look at the face, the front of which was creamy-coloured with a nose so small it hardly made a bump, and leaf-shaped eyes with no eye-lashes. No, not leaf-shaped, pod-shaped, thought Pratt, and in each pod the blackest and most glossy berry which looked at the fish. The fish opened their mouths at the face in an anxious manner and waved their floaty tails about.

  ‘What they telling you?’ asked Pratt. ‘Friends of yours are they?’

  Henry Wu said nothing.

  ‘D’you want to go and see the diving-ducks in our park?’

  Henry Wu said nothing.

  ‘Think about it,’ said Pratt. ‘Next week. It’s a good offer.’

  Henry Wu said nothing.

  ‘Take it or leave it.’

  Pratt wondered for a moment if the Chinese boy was real. Maybe he was a sort of waxwork. If you gave him a push maybe he’d just tip over and fall on the floor. ‘Come on, Henry Wu,’ he said. ‘Let’s hear what you think,’ and he gave the boy’s shoulder a little shove.

  And found himself lying on the floor with no memory of being put there. He was not at all hurt—just lying. And the Chinese boy was still sitting on his high stool looking at the fish.

  Pandemonium was approaching along the passage and children of all kinds began to hurtle in. They all stopped in a huddle when they saw large Pratt spread out over the floor, and a teacher rushed forward. The Head Teacher and Jackson were there, too, at the back, and Jackson was looking surprised.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said the teacher, ‘his mother taught him to fight in case he was bullied. She’s a Black Belt in judo. She told us he was very good at it. Oh Henry—not again. This big boy wants to be kind to you.’

  ‘All I said,’ said Pratt, picking himself up, ‘was that I’d take him to the diving-ducks in the park. What’s more, I shall,’ he added, glaring at Henry Wu.

  ‘Why bother?’ said Jackson. They were on their way home. ‘He looks a wimp. He looks a rat. I don’t call him unfortunate. I call him unpleasant.’

  ‘What was yours like?’

  ‘Mine wasn’t. She’d left. She was a fairground child. They’re always moving on. The school seems a bit short of peculiar ones at the moment. I’ll share Henry Wu the Great Kung Fu with you if you like. You’re going to need a bit of protection by the look of it.’

  But in the end Jackson didn’t, for he was given an old lady’s kitchen to paint and was soon spending his Wednesdays and all his free time in it, eating her cooking. Pratt set out the following week to the school alone and found Henry Wu waiting for him, muffled to just below the eyebrows in a fat grasshopper cocoon of bright red nylon padding.

  ‘Come on,’ said Pratt and without looking to see if Henry followed, set out along the grim York Road to a bus-stop. Henry climbed on the bus behind him and sat some distance away, glaring at space.

  ‘One and a half to the park,’ said Pratt, taking out a French grammar. They made an odd pair. Pratt put on dark glasses in case he met friends.

  It was January. The park was cold and dead. The grass was thin and muddy and full of puddly places and nobody in the world could feel the better for seeing a blade of it. Plants were sticks. There were no birds yet about the trees, and the water in the lake and all round the little island was heavy and dark and still, like forgotten soup.

  The kiosk café was shut up. The metal tables and chairs of summer were stacked inside and the Coke machine was empty. Pigeons walked near the kiosk, round and round on the cracked tarmac. They were as dirty and colourless as everything else but Henry looked at them closely as they clustered round his feet. One bounced off the ground and landed on his head.

  Henry did not laugh or cry out or jump, but stood.

  ‘Hey, knock that off. It’s filthy,’ shouted Pratt. ‘They’re full of diseases. London pigeons. Look at their knuckles—all bleeding and rotten.’

  A large black-and-white magpie came strutting by and regarded Henry Wu with the pigeon on his head. The pigeon flew away. Henry Wu began to follow the magpie along the path.

  ‘It’s bad luck, one magpie,’ said Pratt. ‘One for sorrow, two for joy,’ and at once a second magpie appeared, walking behind. The Chinese boy walked in procession between the two magpies under the bare trees.

  ‘Come on. It’s time to go,’ said Pratt, feeling jealous. The magpies flew away, and they went to catch the bus.

  Every Wednesday of that cold winter term, Pratt took Henry Wu to th
e park, walking up and down with his French book or his Science book open before him while Henry watched the birds and said nothing.

  ‘Has he never said anything?’ he asked the Head Teacher. ‘I suppose he talks Chinese at home?’

  ‘No. He doesn’t say a thing. There’s someone keeping an eye on him of course. A Social Worker. But the parents don’t seem to be unduly worried. His home is very Chinese, I believe. The doctors say that one day he should begin to speak, but maybe not for years. We have to be patient.’

  ‘Has he had some bad experiences? Is he a Boat Person?’

  ‘No. He is just private. He is a village boy from China. Do you want to meet his family? You ought to. They ought to meet you, too. It will be interesting for you. Meeting Chinese.’

  ‘There are Chinese at our school.’

  ‘Millionaires’ sons from Hong Kong I expect, with English as their first language. This will be more exciting. These people have chosen to come and live in England. They are immigrants.’

  ‘I’m going to meet some immigrants,’ said Pratt to Jackson. ‘D’you want to come?’

  ‘No,’ said Jackson to Pratt, ‘I’m cleaning under Nellie’s bed where she can’t reach. And I’m teaching her to use a calculator.’

  ‘Isn’t she a bit old for a calculator?’

  ‘She likes it. Isn’t it emigrants?’

  ‘No, immigrants. Immigrants come in to a country.’

  ‘Why isn’t it innigrants then?’

  ‘I don’t know. Latin I expect if you look it up. Emigrants are people who go out of a country.’

  ‘Well, haven’t these Chinese come out of a country? As well as come in to a country? They’re emigrants and immigrants. They don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Perhaps that’s what’s the matter with Henry Wu.’