Space Race

by Sylvia Waugh

  The double doors opened just wide enough to admit one small boy.

  Mickey, having run the length of the corridor and left Mrs. Dalrymple standing startled, was astute enough to make a quiet entry into the ward. He stood unobserved with his back to the door as he let it close it behind him. He took a quick but thorough look around.

  Thick curtains, patterned with brightly colored cars, trains, and airplanes, were drawn round three of the beds: younger children having their afternoon nap. At two other beds, visitors in outdoor clothes were sitting talking quietly to their children. A male nurse was sitting at the desk working, his eyes on the papers in front of him. Another nurse with her back to him had a young child on her knee. And in the far corner, propped up on pillows and lying very still, was Thomas Derwent. Mickey was pleased to note that he was fully dressed. It would have been much more difficult to do what he planned if Thomas had been in pajamas.

  Mickey quickly figured out a way to the bed without passing the man at the desk. He would just tiptoe behind his chair and keep close to the wall till he reached the window. Then down by the window to the bed. He hoped Thomas would have the sense not to cry out. Traveling very cautiously, he kept his eyes riveted on the bed where his friend was lying.

  Just as he reached the foot of the bed, unbeknownst to him, several things happened at once. Ernie looked up from his papers and glimpsed a boy who looked as if he shouldn't be there. The doors opened again, this time quite wide, and Dr. Ramsay and Mrs. Dalrymple came hurrying in together. Ernie was about to call out to the intruder when Dr. Ramsay waved his arms to signal silence.

  The damage was done, the boy was at the bed, and the doctor decided in that split second that they had better wait and see what would happen when the two children came face-to-face. A less cautious man might already have engineered this; now that it had happened, the careful, cautious doctor thought it might not be such a bad idea after all.

  Mickey was totally unaware of what was happening behind him. He crept right up to the bed and whispered urgently to Thomas, “I've come to take you home. We can just sneak out. Nobody will notice. There are visitors in the ward, people are busy.”

  Thomas looked straight at him, but it was a look of desperation.

  “Close the curtain,” he whispered. “Quickly.”

  Mickey put one hand behind him and flicked the curtain so that it covered his back. A more elaborate action might, he thought, be too easily noticed. He sat down on the chair by Thomas's bed and leaned forward to talk to him.

  Neither boy knew that they were being very discreetly observed.

  Thomas reached out a hand, grabbed Mickey's sleeve, and drew him closer toward him.

  “I can't leave here,” he whispered. “I have to wait for my father.”

  Mickey looked at him, worried. He knew now just how far Thomas had been shamming, and why. It was the why that was so worrying.

  “Your father might not know you are here,” he said.

  “You know I'm here,” said Thomas, his eyes a deeper brown than ever. “Stella knows I am here.”

  “We saw you on the telly,” said Mickey. “Everybody did.”

  “So my father must have too,” said Thomas. “That's why I have to stay here. This is where I spoke from and said the special words. So this is where he'll come to find me. Then we'll go to the spaceship like we're meant to, and we'll travel back to where we belong. Because we don't belong here, you know, Mickey. I wish we did, but we don't. I've always really known that we didn't.”

  His face was tense but his tone was adamant.

  Mickey didn't know what to say, but something had to be said. It wasn't fair to let Thomas think his dad would come for him just like that. As of old, he did not question the spaceship story. But neither did he believe it.

  “Nobody knows where your dad is, Thomas,” he said. “He might not be able to come for you. Something might have happened to him. I'm not saying it has, but it might have.”

  “Nothing has happened to my father,” said Thomas sharply. “Nothing could ever happen to him.”

  “Things do happen to people,” said Mickey, trying desperately not to say what he really thought. He wondered how much Thomas knew about the crash and the strange disappearance of the man in the sheepskin coat.

  “Nothing has happened to my father,” said Thomas with a catch in his voice. “You're trying to say my father's dead and he's not. He can't be.”

  Mickey blushed bright red.

  Thomas looked at him wildly and knew that this was what his friend was thinking. He lay back and cried.

  “My father is not dead,” he said between sobs, and then, in an even lower voice, he murmured feverishly, “Vateelin, Vateelin, Vateelin, Vateelin mesht.”

  Mickey heard him and began to sneeze violently.

  Dr. Ramsay and Mrs. Dalrymple were standing by the table where Ernie was still seated. All three were anxiously watching the curtain that hid the two boys. The murmur of voices seemed promising and they glanced at one another hopefully.

  Then came what sounded like scuffling and a very loud sneeze.

  Both boys heard the footsteps coming toward the curtain.

  Thomas started forward from his pillow and rubbed his eyes vigorously to get rid of the tears.

  “Tell no one what I've told you, no one,” he said, briefly grasping Mickey's hand. “Promise.”

  “I promise,” said Mickey. “I do promise.”

  At that moment the curtain was drawn back and Dr. Ramsay was standing there looking down at them. Behind him were Ernie and Mrs. Dalrymple.

  Thomas closed his eyes tightly and shut them all out. Dr. Ramsay looked at him, was about to say something, and then thought better of it. He turned toward Mickey instead.

  “Well now, what did your chum have to say to you, young Mickey?” he said in the voice he kept for talking to children.

  “Nothing,” said Mickey sulkily in the voice he kept for talking to grown-ups he did not much like.

  “You were talking to each other,” said Mrs. Dalrymple in her usual direct way. “We heard you. We couldn't hear what you were saying, but you were certainly saying something.”

  “I was talking to him, Mrs. Dalrymple,” said Mickey. “All he did was make funny noises, a bit like on the telly.”

  Stella would have gone closer to the bed but Dr. Ramsay ushered her away. The boy on the bed seemed to be in a deep sleep.

  Dr. Ramsay had tea brought to the office and he talked quite gently to Mrs. Dalrymple, as if she were one of his patients. He explained again the need for caution.

  “I am sure you believe every word you say,” said Stella. “But I am more than ever convinced that this is the wrong place for Thomas. If he were at home with me, sitting by the fire, surrounded by familiar things, I feel sure I could help him get over what you yourself have said is no more than some form of shock.”

  “You didn't get far with him today,” the doctor pointed out.

  “I was nervous,” said Stella. “A hospital's not a relaxed sort of place. I'm wishing even now that I had had the sense and courage just to cuddle him.”

  She looked down at her watch, stood up abruptly, and said, “We'll have to be going now. My appointment with Inspector Galway. Come along, Mickey. We'll be back. Have no fear of that.”

  It was an odd phrase to use. Dr. Ramsay had every fear that this visitor would indeed be back, back and making difficulties.

  Inspector Galway politely examined all the proofs that Stella set before him—from photographs of Thomas taken at his last birthday party, blowing out eleven candles on his cake, to the receipt for the Scrabble game she had bought at Hamley's in Casselton.

  In a chair by the door, Mickey sat apart and bemused. It was all much more complicated than he had anticipated.

  The inspector looked up from his survey of the “evidence.” On the other side of the large desk Stella was waiting, expecting anything except the words that Inspector Galway uttered next.

  “We
have no doubt at all, Mrs. Dalrymple,” he said, “that the child in the hospital is the boy known as Thomas Derwent from the village of Belthorp. But who is Thomas Derwent? Who is Patrick Derwent?”

  Stella gave him a look of total incomprehension.

  “What do you mean?” she said. “I don't understand you.”

  The inspector leaned forward with his elbows on the desk, covering the pictures and the other pieces of paper, which included two swimming certificates and a school report.

  “We have followed up all the information you gave us on the telephone—we are anxious to talk to Patrick Derwent, obviously. But the information leads nowhere. Patrick Derwent is not employed in any capacity by the Chemicals Complex. Never has been. They have never heard of him.”

  “I could have been wrong about that,” said Stella anxiously. “One assumes things sometimes, without question. Patrick never talked about his work.”

  “There is no trace of a Patrick Derwent of Belthorp at the Inland Revenue. He does not appear to be paying National Insurance. He has not applied for a passport and he has not booked a passage to Canada. The only evidence we have been able to find of his existence is the fact that he is on the Belthorp electoral register.”

  Stella hardly knew what to say for the best.

  “I don't know what you think that proves,” she said coldly, “except perhaps that your searches have not been sufficiently exhaustive. I know that Patrick Derwent exists and that he is not the sort of person to live outside the law. You appear to be implying that he is some sort of criminal. Nothing, I do assure you, could be further from the truth.”

  Inspector Galway bit his lip and sighed. He liked Mrs. Dalrymple; his first impression of her was that she was a strong-willed, good-natured woman not given to nonsense. Whatever she said deserved to be taken seriously.

  “You could be right,” he said. “I don't defend the system as infallible. It takes a long time to prove a negative. Had Mr. Derwent a driving license?”

  “I don't know,” said Stella. “He didn't have a car. He relied on trains, buses, and taxis, as most of us do in Belthorp.”

  “There is one other matter,” said the inspector. “You gave Thomas's birthday as November sixteenth.”

  “Yes?” said Stella, wondering where this could be leading.

  “And that he is eleven years old,” said the inspector, “which pinpoints for us the boy's date of birth.”

  “Yes,” said Stella, still not sure what the inspector was driving at.

  “We have checked,” he said. “There is no child of that name registered for that particular date, nor for any of the days within two weeks either side.”

  “I don't know where he was born,” said Stella. “Perhaps he is registered abroad. His father did work for an international company.”

  “But not the Chemicals Complex,” the inspector reminded her. “I know you mean well, Mrs. Dalrymple. That couldn't be clearer. But I'm afraid that, when it comes down to it, you know very little about your neighbors.”

  Mickey had sat listening and trying to follow what was being said, and suddenly a totally incredible thought came to him. For the first time ever he began to wonder if Thomas could possibly be telling the truth. The thought was like a thunderbolt.

  Mickey looked at the grown-ups, heard the policeman almost accuse the Derwents of some sort of crime. Whatever the truth was, it seemed to Mickey that his friend needed to be defended. So he decided to join in the defense.

  “I know Thomas Derwent,” he said. “He is my friend and he has been my friend for five years. His father is a good person and so is he.”

  The inspector turned his full attention on Mickey.

  “There are things you don't understand, son,” he said, “things nobody expects you to understand. Thomas will be all right. Don't you worry about him.”

  He pressed the intercom on his desk and asked for a WPC.

  “Now, Mickey,” he said when the policewoman came in, “you go with WPC Kennedy. Her name's Moira. She'll look after you while Mrs. Dalrymple and I get everything sorted out.”

  “I have nothing more I can tell you,” said Stella after she and the inspector were left alone. “All I need to know now is if you can authorize the hospital to release Thomas Derwent into my care.”

  “I can't do that, Mrs. Dalrymple,” said the inspector. “It's not within my province.”

  At that point Stella's patience gave out.

  “Whose province, then?” she said. “Tell me that. There's a frightened and lonely little boy lying bewildered in a hospital ward and all you can do is check for birth certificates and driving licenses and income tax forms. Do people not matter anymore? Do children not matter?”

  Inspector Galway did not reply in kind. He was quiet and considerate. He rang through on the intercom for a pot of tea.

  “Please,” he said, “try to consider things a bit more objectively, Mrs. Dalrymple. You have had a few shocks yourself these last two days. There are rules and regulations. Sometimes I don't like them any better than you do. But I have to manage to live with them.”

  Stella felt embarrassed at her outburst but still justified in principle.

  “Very well,” she said more calmly. “What I am asking is very simple. I want to take Thomas home with me and try to patch up Christmas for him. It won't be much. His father is a missing person—I hope you realize that—and Thomas is in a state of shock. But I believe I can do more for him than anyone else. He has been family to me for the past five years. That has to count for something.”

  The inspector poured tea into their cups and established that his guest took milk but no sugar. All the while he was considering ways in which he could help.

  “This is what I will do,” he said at length. “I don't know whether it will be of any use, but we can hope. I will contact the Social Services, I will back your application to foster the boy at least over the holiday period, and I will make sure that Dr. Ramsay knows that you are a fit and proper person. That's the most I can manage. I have no authority over the hospital. Ultimately it will be up to them.”

  Stella sipped her tea abstractedly.

  “With the best will in the world, all this will take time,” said the inspector. “Can I suggest you return to the hospital tomorrow afternoon to find out what has been decided? Or perhaps you could ring first—save you a journey if the answer's negative.”

  “No,” said Stella, smiling wanly. “I will come, even if it is only to see Thomas.”

  She got up from her seat and said, “I do appreciate your understanding. By tomorrow, who knows, we might all have some answers. If only you could find Patrick!”

  When Stella and Mickey left the police station it was damp and dark, city lights gleaming and city people hastening by under their umbrellas.

  Mickey put his hands deep in his pockets and trudged along beside Mrs. Dalrymple, thinking the most astonishing thoughts. Thomas and his father were not on their way to Canada. They had never been on their way to Canada. Perhaps—whew —they really had been going to find that spaceship Thomas talked about! He stole a glance sideways at Mrs. Dalrymple and wondered what he could say to her without breaking his word.

  As they crossed by the traffic lights at the foot of Walgate Hill, they both looked up, curious, toward the site of the crash. There was, of course, no sign of it now. The street was as busy as ever.

  They walked along in silence, each pursuing private thoughts. Stella was racking her brains in an effort to remember things, to recall anything, anything, that might contain a clue. They were nearing the stone portico in front of the railway station when she thought of asking Mickey about Thomas's past. She tried hard to make the question sound casual, conversational.

  “Did Thomas ever tell you anything about where he lived before he came to Belthorp?” she said.

  Mickey reddened but resolved to speak. It really was too difficult an idea to keep entirely to himself.

  “He only ever told me about living in a
spaceship and going round the moon. He told me that his dad and him were going back into outer space because that was where they came from.”

  He hesitated and then added, “Do you think it might be true?”

  “That's just like Thomas!” said Stella with a smile and a catch in her voice. “He has always had a very vivid imagination. In any event, he's not going anywhere just now.”

  “But he was,” said Mickey, growing braver and less fearful of being mocked. “Everybody knows he was going somewhere. And something has happened to stop him.”

  “There I agree with you,” said Stella. “That is why I am going to do all in my power to get him home to Belthorp. Don't you worry about that!”

  Mickey gave up. What was the use? People didn't listen.

  Mickey hardly spoke on the train going home. Stella gave him the window seat and a packet of gum she bought in Casselton station. He'd said no thank you to her offer of a comic or a magazine. It was not that he felt shy, or even too tired. He just had a lot to think about.

  The train lurched to a halt outside Chamfort station and the passengers were promised half an hour's delay. Mickey's concern for his own mother at once took precedence over his thoughts about Thomas. His mother knew, of course, the train they were coming on. Stella had rung from Casselton especially to set her mind at rest, and to tell her what time they would arrive.

  “Will your mother be worried?” said Stella anxiously, seeing how drawn the boy looked.

  “If she is, she'll ring the station to ask why the train's late and what time it's expected. She always did that when …,” said Mickey, starting a sentence he decided not to finish. He was not going to talk about his dad to a stranger. So he shrugged instead and looked out of the window into darkness.

  His mam would be worried, even after she rang the station. His mam always worried. It was no use telling her not to—she couldn't help it. Like thinking he had flu every time he sneezed, though the doctor had told her that it was just some sort of allergy and he would probably grow out of it.

  Mickey was strong and healthy and much more down-to-earth than his mother. But he respected her nervousness. Like the child in the poem, he always “took good care of his mother.” So it was a relief to get home at last and put her mind at rest.