‘And there’s another thing I’ll say in his favour: he never complains.’
That was certainly true; and it sounded all the more creditable when said by one who herself complained often and proudly.
‘I’ve never heard him grumble once!’ said Mrs Storrocks, astounded. ‘Not once!’
No, thought Mary, he’s much too sleekit for that.
‘And it’s not just that he’s being polite with strangers. It’s his nature not to grumble.’
Mary was becoming uncomfortable.
‘I wouldn’t mind,’ said her mother, and paused to make a solemn mouth, ‘helping a boy like that. He’s got brains and he’s got natural good manners and he’s got spunk. I hope Charles keeps an eye on him, and sees that he gets all the bursaries he’s entitled to. And,’ here she again paused, to make an even more solemn mouth, ‘if there’s ever anything I could do, within reason, I would be pleased to be consulted. I intend to have a serious talk with him before he goes back; that’s to say, of course, if he keeps behaving as he’s done up to now. Compare him with that oddity in the jockey’s bonnet that’s been following Charles about all afternoon: they’re just not like two members of the same species.’
Mary decided it was now time to speak. ‘I don’t think you’ll be having that serious talk with him, Mother.’
‘Why not? My money’s my own, Mary. I can help whoever I like. Don’t get alarmed. Gillian and Alistair are in a different category altogether; they’re my own flesh and blood. Where he might get ha’pennies, they’ll get pounds.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of money at all,’ said Mary, considerably vexed. ‘It just so happens you’re quite mistaken about him. He’s taken you in just as he took Charlie in.’
Mrs Storrocks laughed: the extravagance of that accusation of credulity rendered it without truth or insult.
‘He’s going home tomorrow,’ said Mary sharply.
‘Tomorrow? As soon as that? I understood he was to be here another week, at least.’
‘So he was to be. He’s being sent home.’
‘May I ask why? I’ve noticed things have been going on, mind you, that you and Charles have been keeping from me.’
‘We didn’t want to spoil your holiday.’
‘That was considerate of you.’
‘He happens to be a thief; that’s why he’s being sent home.’
Mrs Storrocks frowned. ‘A thief? That’s a very serious thing to say.’
‘I know.’
‘Are you aware I’ve had occasion to compliment him on his honesty? Two or three times I’ve deliberately trusted him with my purse and handbag, and I’ve never lost so much as a ha’penny. What has he stolen?’
‘Nothing in the house, so far as I know. He’s too smart for that. When we were in Dunroth last Tuesday he lifted things from the counter in Woolworth’s.’
Mrs Storrocks was as indignant as if this attack was upon her own honesty; it was of course upon her judgment.
‘Did you catch him at it? Has he confessed? Have you had a visit from the police, unknown to me?’
‘Gillian saw him.’
‘Just Gillian?’
‘Yes, just Gillian.’
‘There’s no need to adopt that tone, Mary. It’s the truth I’m after.’
‘I’m telling you the truth.’
‘It’s one child’s word against another child’s.’
‘One of them happens to be your own grandchild.’
‘What did he say when you challenged him?’
‘Nothing, because we didn’t challenge him.’
‘You mean to say he’s being sent home for stealing, and yet he’s not been told it’s for stealing?’
‘That’s right, Mother.’
‘Is this Charles’s doing?’
‘It’s mine, too.’
‘I thought he was all for justice, especially for them who didn’t normally get it? What was it Gillian saw him lift?’
Mary was silent: never had the nature of the theft seemed so absurd; and she wondered if she and Charlie hadn’t really been too anxious to get rid of the boy.
‘Well, Mary?’
‘A tin-opener and a tin of ointment. Before you laugh, Mother, let me tell you this: that oddity in the jockey’s bonnet, as you called him, admitted today, while he was talking to Gillian and Alistair, that he and Tom were members of a gang that lifted things from shops.’
‘That creature would admit he robbed the Bank of England if he thought you’d be interested. A tin-opener and a tin of ointment?’
‘They’re not so silly as you think. His friends are here camping; he was going to camp with them, after he left us; so a tin-opener would be useful.’
‘And the ointment?’
‘Maybe he’s got sores on his body somewhere.’
‘I’ve seen him almost naked, and there were no sores, Mary.’
‘Almost naked; there are places you haven’t seen.’
Mrs Storrocks was silent, save for two or three little reflective grunts. ‘What about the brooch? Did he steal that?’
‘No, he bought it.’
‘I’ve been wondering why you weren’t wearing it.’
‘Now you know.’
‘Stealing to me, Mary, is stealing, even if it’s just a pin that’s stolen. Make no mistake about that. I’d help a thief only as far as the jail. I wonder where he is?’
Mary was alarmed. ‘I’d rather you didn’t say anything to him, Mother, especially here on the boat.’
‘You forget, Mary, it was me he deceived.’
‘He’s deceived us all.’
Her mother rose. ‘I’m just going to take a walk about the boat to stretch my legs.’
‘We’re nearly at Towellan, Mother.’
Mrs Storrocks looked out of the window. ‘We’ll be five minutes yet. A lot of truth can be found out in five minutes.’
Mary too had risen. ‘For heaven’s sake, don’t make a scene.’
‘There are times, Mary, when you seem to forget that I was in the world before you.’
She found Tom standing in the coldest, and therefore the loneliest, part of the steamer, at the very front, on deck. She had to hold on to her hat as she approached him. To deceive anybody who had no business to be watching she put her hand on the boy’s shoulder as she stooped and spoke into his ear.
‘Is this true what I’ve just been told, that you lifted things from Woolworth’s last Tuesday, without paying for them?’
His nod might have been a shiver of cold.
‘A horse will nod,’ she said, ‘for it can’t speak. You can speak. Did you steal?’
He spoke, and she heard, but it was not clear enough to satisfy her.
‘I can hear the gulls,’ she said, ‘and the wind, but I can’t hear you. Did you steal?’
‘Yes.’
She took her hand from his shoulder and rubbed it against her dress. ‘That’s all I wanted to hear,’ she said, and went away.
She hadn’t been his first visitor there in the bows. Gillian had been before her. She had come up silently and stood beside him for two or three minutes before speaking. Then she had just said: ‘I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry.’ He had said nothing in reply, but had gone on biting at his fists on the rail. After another minute or two she had left, cold in body, but colder in mind. He seemed to her under some kind of doom, and though she felt she would have risked her life to help him his danger was such that no sacrifice on her part would be of any use.
When she was gone he had kept gnawing at his fists; but there was no way really by which the turmoil of despair within him could be stilled. Feeling his hands wet from his tears, he wished he could have been a crab at the dark bottom of the Firth. In his imagination he saw that crab entangled in strange submarine vegetation, and it was he.
Chapter Twenty
At Towellan Pier there was no bus to meet the steamer; there were a taxi and Willie’s landau, but these were engaged.
Charlie was blamed.
‘Now, Mrs Storrocks,’ he said reasonably, ‘you know we weren’t sure what steamer we’d get back.’
Though he didn’t know it yet, he was really being blamed for Tom’s deception of her.
‘Well, go and see if the taxi will come back for us,’ said Mary.
‘Can’t we walk, my dear? It’s a glorious evening.’
‘We’ve been walking all afternoon.’
Making for a seat above the beach, Mary sat down. Her mother followed her.
Charlie passed Willie up on his perch, with whip ready. ‘I don’t suppose you could come back for us, Willie?’
The old man shook his head. ‘Sorry, Mr Forbes,’ he said. ‘Sid Brown’s just going a mile or so alang the road; he’ll come back for you.’
‘Thanks, Willie.’ Though he knew he ought to be rushing over to catch Brown before he left, Charlie wasted seconds in patting the horses.
Willie grinned down at him oddly. ‘I see you’ve got visitors,’ he said.
‘Visitors?’ Charlie glanced round.
‘At the cottage. Weel, I take it they’re visitors. They were making themselves at hame on your front lawn as I passed by.’
‘Did they have a tent?’
Willie laughed. ‘I didnae notice it, but I wouldnae be surprised.’
‘Why?’
But Willie was away, with his horses trotting smartly, and his passengers looking down like usurpers.
Sid Brown was willing to come back; he promised not to be long.
Charlie strolled over to his family.
‘Just five minutes to wait,’ he said, ‘and the finest of sunshine to wait in.’
‘And the biggest midges to bite us,’ said Mary.
Scratching himself, he noticed Tom Curdie down on the beach, seated on a rock. Such public segregation struck him as indiscreet, unnecessary, and vindictive.
‘Was it the midges drove Tom down to the beach?’ he asked.
‘Likely enough,’ said Mary.
‘No,’ remarked her mother coolly, ‘it was me. I let him understand I had no wish to associate with thieves.’
‘Mother!’
Charlie gazed in impotent anger from his wife to his mother-in- law.
‘Yes, Charles,’ said the latter, ‘I’m in the secret; so it’s not a secret any longer; and it should not be a secret.’
‘Who’s a thief?’ asked Alistair.
‘You see, Mother, what you’ve started,’ said Mary.
‘I have started nothing, Mary; in fact, I’ve ended something. The thief, Alistair, is that boy down on the beach.’
There were several boys on the beach.
‘The one sitting on the rock there, with his chin on his hands.’
‘But that’s Tom, Grannie.’
‘So it is.’
‘But what did he steal?’
‘For one thing,’ said his grandmother sternly, ‘he stole my trust; and I’ll tell you this, if you steal my trust you’ll be like the dirt under my feet for as long as you live.’
That speech, which displeased Mary and horrified Charlie, also mystified Alistair into temporarily losing interest in Tom the thief.
‘It may interest you all to know,’ said Charlie, with a bitterness not belonging to his words, ‘that we have visitors.’
Mary glanced round and saw only some gulls on a dyke.
‘I mean, at the cottage, waiting for us. So Willie told me.’
‘Was it that old fool?’ asked Mrs Storrocks in scorn. ‘His wits are wandered. It comes of talking too much to his horses.’
‘I hope to heaven he was havering,’ said Mary. ‘I’m in no mood for visitors.’ Suddenly she put her hand to her mouth in horror. ‘Don’t tell me they’re Tom’s pals?’
‘No. Willie said they had no tent.’
‘They wouldn’t be carrying it about with them, would they? Surely he said who they were? I mean, are they adults or children.’
‘He didn’t say.’
‘But didn’t you ask him?’
‘I hadn’t time.’
‘You had time to clap the horses, Charles,’ said Mrs Storrocks. ‘It might be Bess McCormick and her husband, very good friends of mine. I believe they’re in a hotel at Hunter’s Quay this fortnight. He’s very keen on yachting. Did that old fool say if there was a car at the gate? They’ve got a new one, that cost well over a thousand pounds.’
‘He said nothing about a car,’ replied Charlie, wondering if Willie’s peculiar grin might be explained by the gleaming opulence of the car at the gate. Willie had a contempt for cars and their owners.
‘If it is Bess and Ronald,’ said Mrs Storrocks, ‘I’d be obliged if a certain somebody’s kept safely locked away until they go away.’
‘He’s not a leper,’ protested Charlie.
‘He’s worse; he’s a thief.’
‘Well,’ said Mary, rising, ‘we’ll soon find out, for here’s the taxi.’
Tom Curdie offered to walk.
‘Why not?’ said Mrs Storrocks. ‘Apart from anything else, it’s ridiculous that a boy of your age should be carried about in taxis.’
‘I’ll walk, too,’ said Gillian.
‘Nobody will walk,’ said her mother. ‘There’s room for us all.’
They climbed in. Alistair sat on his father’s knee, huffed because he had wanted to sit beside the driver; that place of honour had been given to Tom. It was, Alistair thought and even muttered, an act of theft. Thus was his grandmother’s seed germinating. His father breathed violent threats into his ear.
The journey took four minutes. As they drew up at the gate the driver grinned at Tom. From behind came shocked noises. Jumping down, he opened the door. ‘I see you’ve got visitors,’ he said.
‘For God’s sake,’ muttered Charlie, trying to smile, ‘they’re no visitors of ours.’
‘They’ll be tinks in cadging.’
‘Yes, that’s who they’ll be.’
Consternation rather than generosity made the tip large.
There were four of them. One was a bloated woman in a mauve coat, almost the same shade as Charlie’s shorts; it was long in tinker fashion, down to the ankles to save the trouble of clean legs. Those legs were covered in loose, laddered, and holey nylons. Where one of the coat buttons was missing a large brass safety-pin took its place. She wore no hat, and her hair, long and lank and rusty with dyes, was arranged in an attempt at fashion and glamour. Since she had teeth missing her leer of welcome seemed menacing and half-witted. Beside her, clinging to her indeed, was a man as small as a dwarf, but at least twenty years her senior. His legs were deformed, so that walking, so simple for chickens even, was for him a heroic labour, harrowing to watch. Perhaps because of his struggles to move from one spot to another no better, his small grey face was almost malevolent. In his hand he held a cap; it looked as frightening as a cudgel as it swung in his contortions.
The two others were children, one a boy smaller than Alistair, with his face blemished by about a dozen sores, all painted with a violet antiseptic; the other a fair-haired toddler of about three, in whose hand was a bunch of flowers evidently plucked from the garden.
‘This is a case for the police,’ said Mrs Storrocks.
‘A shilling will get rid of them,’ muttered Charlie.
‘Then go and give it to them, for heaven’s sake,’ whispered Mary.
Led by him, they advanced through the gate.
The little girl was released by her mother, like a puppy, and came staggering towards them, with inarticulate shrieks.
‘She’s filthy,’ hissed Mrs Storrocks, ‘and she stinks.’
Even the fragrance of the flowers could not subdue that smell.
‘And she could be quite a bonny little thing,’ said Mary.
Then the child was among them. They drew back, so that she went straight to Tom, offering him the flowers. To their amazement, instead of pushing her away as they would have done, he held his hand above her head as if he wished to pat her but could
not. His hand shook.
They realised the shrill noises she was making were his name.
‘She’s Molly,’ he said, ‘my half-sister.’
‘And those?’ whispered Charlie, indicating the trio now upon them.
Tom nodded; his face twitched; his eyes, wishing desperately to achieve their old impassiveness, could not.
Compassionate amusement should have been the reaction, but Charlie couldn’t manage it. On the contrary, he found himself slipping into a panic of anger at these ridiculous intruders, and at this boy who was responsible for bringing them here. When he glanced at his wife’s face he saw that she too was missing the fun of this contretemps.
His mother-in-law gaped like a gargoyle of disgust.
Mrs Curdie, on the contrary, cackled good-naturedly at their astonishment. The stench of beer and whisky from her did not quite overwhelm a whiff of insanitariness.
‘I can see ye’re a’ surprised to see us,’ she cried happily. ‘We’re no’ ones for writing aheid to warn folk. I hope ye’ll pardon us the liberty o’ making oorsel’s at hame.’ She laughed so much she slavered, and wiped it off on her sleeve. ‘We’re no’ exactly strangers, ye ken. I kent it was you, Mr Forbes, as soon as ye stepped oot the caur, for I once had ye pointed oot to me in the street near the school. I’ll no’ say whit name was attached to ye then, for we a’ ken whit like weans are wi’ teachers’ names.’ After a shriek of mirth, she turned to Mary. ‘If ye’ll no’ think me awfu’ cheeky for saying it, Mrs Forbes, ye’re looking the picture o’ health. Aye, and your weans too. I was just saying that to Shoogle here—Mr Kemp, I should say: he’s Tom’s uncle, ye ken. Aye.’ She laughed in happy derision at her own lie. ‘But I’m no’ being mannerly. I should be introducing ye properly to my ain family. This is Alec—ye’re no’ to be feart o’ the scabs, the doctor assured us they’re no smittal. And this is Molly, oor wee pet. I hope ye don’t mind us picking a wee bunch o’ your braw flowers for her? Christ’s truth, it was either that or haeing her demolish the whole gairden. And o’ coorse there’s nae need for me to introduce my clever boy Tom. I hope he’s been behaving himself. Hae you, Tommy?’ But she took care not to let her doting leer dwell on him too long.
The Changeling Page 17
