The Baby and Fly Pie

by Melvin Burgess

  I shook my head. ‘He’s gone,’ I mouthed. I didn’t blame Sham. It was all up. The whole country was looking for us. Our faces were in the papers, on TV. The only thing was to get rid of the baby – fast. I stared at Jane trying to make her see, because we were surrounded by people and I couldn’t say.

  Jane stared back. Then she got up.

  ‘Come on …’ She was pulling the pushchair down from the rack.

  ‘Jane …!’ It was terrible. Why couldn’t I make her do anything? Why wouldn’t she trust me just this once?

  ‘We’re getting off. We can’t leave Sham,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Jane, please … please, Jane,’ I begged, but I despaired of ever making her see anything. The man with the paper was helping her down with the pushchair.

  ‘Lost your friend?’ he asked sympathetically. ‘He’s probably gone to the toilet – he’ll be here.’ But the train was about to start. Someone was shouting on the station. ‘Perhaps not,’ he murmured, frowning. ‘But you can catch another in an hour,’ he added.

  I shuffled out past him, trying to hide my face. Jane brazened it out, smiling and laughing.

  ‘He’s always like that – no sense in him,’ she laughed. ‘We have to do this all the time!’ We had to push out past people piling into the train at the last minute. Sy woke up and started to whimper. I was getting to hate that. She was crying by the time we got off. The man put the pushchair down.

  ‘Poor little thing,’ he said. ‘That lad wants telling what for.’ He smiled and shrugged and closed the door.

  We were on the platform just metres from the pictures. I watched while Jane strapped Sy in and stuck a dummy in her mouth. Sy spat it out and started to wail.

  I grabbed her arm and started pulling at her, getting her away from the paper man, away from the lights of the station. It was almost dark now and we had to get on the streets and away from the lights.

  ‘What is it? What’s the matter, Davey?’ she asked irritably.

  ‘Just come on,’ I said. At last she let me lead her. We got past the barriers. It was bright in the ticket hall. There was another news-seller.

  Her face – her face, staring out at all those hundreds of people with the word ‘Kidnap’ over it. Jane stopped suddenly, stared. She glanced at me, put her head down and we hurried out.

  *

  In the air outside, the smell of car exhausts and burgers. People were begging at the entrance – outstretched hands waiting for coins, for crusts, for half-eaten sandwiches or unfinished cans of lemonade or Coke that travellers kept for them. We pushed past onto the brightly lit tarmac outside.

  On our left was a man leaning against the wall reading a newspaper; our faces watched us. We turned right and walked past a row of taxis, the drivers in the lit interiors watching us with expressionless faces as we trotted too fast past them and into the wonderful darkness under a poster on the wall. We followed the main road round, stuck on the pavement under a high grey stone wall. On the other side was the town, bright and gaudy with lights and people. There were no side roads, no quiet streets with poor lights to escape into; we felt trapped under that tall wall. Sy was talking to herself and crying in between, but she shut up when Jane shook the pushchair angrily.

  There was a roundabout and at last a little road leading off it under a railway bridge. We followed it for a while but it ended at a factory gate. We found a footpath leading away into the dark fields and we followed it, pushing the pushchair over the damp mud, splashing through puddles, fearing to meet someone in this suspicious place.

  After a couple of miles we were walking by a broad river. The path petered out and we were in the dark fields, stumbling in mud and muck and tripping over the rough grass. The going got rough and we had to carry the pushchair between us.

  It was cold and we had nothing to cover us. We’d done this over and over but every night we had nothing to cover us. After a very long time we saw some lights and we walked towards them, only for a direction. The river got in our way, though. We carried on along the bank until it curved round again – then we came to an old barn. Most of it was mud trodden deep by the cows, but in one corner was a heap of straw.

  Sy didn’t wake up when we lifted her out of her chair and covered her with straw. Then we made our nest and crept in.

  As soon as we sat down Jane was off.

  ‘I should have just gone out with her and given her to her and shown her,’ she wept. She was trying to wipe her nose with the hay. ‘Or we should have left her, like you said, or given her to the police or the soup people or the church, or something.’ She was really crying now. ‘It didn’t work, none of it worked and I mucked up our chance, didn’t I, Davey?’ I couldn’t say anything because it was true. I just hugged her.

  It was dark, as dark as anywhere I’ve ever been. After a while, I could make out one or two little stars shining through holes in the roof. They were the brightest stars I’d ever seen. They kept coming and going under the clouds.

  14

  SY KEPT WAKING up in the night coughing. In the end Jane gave her a bottle of milk which she’d tucked down her blouse to keep warm.

  ‘Poor little thing,’ she whispered as she crept back in the dark beside me. I kept waking up after that watching the darkness pale and then get lighter.

  It was quite light when something came in through the door – something enormous squelching in through the mud. I was scared for a second, but it was just a cow, a big black and white one. I’d never seen cows close up. It was huge. It almost jumped when it saw us. It sort of shuffled backwards and watched us from halfway through the door. Then it backed up and went outside again.

  Jane and the baby were still asleep. My sister was lying on her side with the light from the holed roof on her face. Her make-up was all over the place, smudged by tears. She had hay in her hair and she was a right mess. I thought how she’d helped me and brought me up when I was small, and how she was still trying to help me now, even though it had all gone so horribly wrong. I felt sorry for her then and I wanted to tell her – I wish I had, but I didn’t want to wake her up. She couldn’t have done more for me, no one could. She was a good person, she made things happen, but you can’t change the whole world.

  I wanted to do something for her and I remembered the cows. Cows meant milk. I could get some milk for her and the baby.

  Outside it was a misty, cool morning. It smelled wonderful – of hay and wet grass and cows and the air was sweet. There was a film of wet spiders’ webs over the whole field. The mist hung in blankets over the fields and hedges and the cows were walking through the wet grass, or pulling mouthfuls of it and puffing cloudy breath into the air. There was one standing nearby watching me. I held out my hand and walked slowly towards her, saying, ‘Come on, girl, come on,’ as if she were a dog.

  The cow watched me and started backing off when I got close. I speeded up and so did she, and then she turned and ran off. I tried another one, and then another but I couldn’t get near them. I don’t suppose I’d have known how to get the milk out even if I had.

  I walked around for a bit, wondering what to do. There were some mushrooms growing in the grass, but I didn’t know if you could eat them or not. Then I found some blackberries growing on a hedge. I was so pleased. There were loads – I ate handfuls of them and then filled my pockets for Jane. I was still picking them when I heard Sy cry and I headed back to the barn.

  Jane was lying in the hay with her eyes open, ignoring Sy, gazing at the wall of the barn. I came in quietly in case she was praying again but her lips were still. Then she heard me and sat up.

  ‘She wants a drink,’ she said. There was a bit of milk in the bottle left over from the night before, but Sy was just as keen on my blackberries as she was on milk. She loved them! She was opening her mouth wide and leaning forward going, ‘Ah, ah, ah!’ and she couldn’t take her eyes off them. She made us laugh. Jane ate some too.

  ‘I’m sorry, Davey,’ she said.

  I shrugge
d. It didn’t matter now. I just wanted to get her out alive.

  We finished the berries. ‘Do you want some more?’ I asked. ‘There’s loads more.’

  ‘Go on then, please,’ she said. So I went out and got some more, and that, with some of the doughnuts Luke gave us, was our breakfast.

  A little while later we heard a tractor droning away in the fields outside. I ran out to have a look. I could see it, two or three fields away. It was coming in our direction.

  Quickly we packed Sy up in the pushchair, gave her a chunk of doughnut to keep her quiet and hurried out. We crouched low behind a brick wall and hurried out of sight.

  We walked across the wet fields. We were walking nowhere. We had to dump the pushchair because it wouldn’t go over fields. There was a wood ahead and we made for that. Inside it felt safer and we sat down on some logs for a while, feeding Sy the last of the doughnuts. She sounded bad – coughing and rattling inside and crying all the time.

  ‘We’d better get her some milk,’ said Jane. ‘And something for us. Then we can make another phone call.’

  I couldn’t believe it when she said that. She was still trying but it was stupid now. I didn’t say anything, though.

  ‘Have you got any money left?’ she asked me. I’d forgotten about that. I dug in my pocket and there was the fifteen pounds I had left over from the eighty she’d given me when we left Santy. I handed it over. Jane put it in her bag.

  ‘We’re still going, Davey,’ she said.

  We stayed under the trees listening to the raindrops on the leaves a long way above our heads. When the weather cleared up, Jane said we had to get going.

  Although it felt safer in the fields than the roads, it was such hard work stumbling over the clumps of wet grass that when we found a little country lane, we stayed on it. There were plenty of thick hedges so we could usually get out of the way when a car came past. We walked on. The sun came through the clouds and warmed us. After a long time we passed a house; then another house. We were on the edges of a village or town.

  The houses were very big, with large gardens. They stood back from the road, hidden away among the trees and hedges. I saw some trees with apples growing on them in one garden and I crept in and picked some while Jane watched out. They were sour, but crisp and juicy. After that I thought I might be able to get into a house and steal some milk and food, but Jane wanted to go on to a shop. We argued about it on and off. We came to a house with a garden thick with overgrown shrubs and trees that was just right to raid, and we stood on the pavement outside peering in. Jane was chewing her lips and trying to convince herself.

  ‘It’s an emergency,’ she said, peering through the bushes. She thought it wasn’t so bad stealing if it was an emergency. We walked up nearer the drive to get a better look.

  Someone called behind us.

  It was a woman. She had a couple of brown and white dogs on leads. We froze, but she was smiling, bustling up to us.

  ‘You poor things, how on earth did you get into such a mess? You’re both wet through! What on earth have you been doing?’ she said. She was scolding us but she wasn’t cross. We stood uncertainly as the dogs sniffed our legs. Sy cooed and waved her hand at them.

  ‘And the baby – dear little thing. Did you get caught in the rain? But you’re miles from anywhere!’

  ‘We were looking for the bus …’ began Jane, but the woman rattled on over her.

  ‘You’ll have to come in and get warm, I live just up there – no, no, no. I’d like a bit of company. My husband died, you see, I’m all alone – just me and Hip and Hop.’ She bent down and patted the two dogs. ‘They look after me,’ she said, smiling. Jane and I glanced at each other. But the woman was already hurrying us along down the road. We turned into a Tarmac drive that curved round past bushes with shiny green leaves up to a big house with plants growing up the walls. There was a big blue car parked outside.

  ‘Such weather we’re having – wind and rain and sun and then all over again – it just can’t seem to make up its mind, can it?’ said the woman. She led us down the side of the house and opened a door with a key. We entered a long room with wooden cupboards all over the walls. There was a long dark table at one end and a sort of wide shelf with cupboards underneath along one wall. There was a cooker and a kettle and all that sort of thing. On the wide shelf a radio was singing low.

  ‘We can’t stay long,’ said Jane. But she was perking up. The woman was friendly; everything seemed easy. ‘Me and my cousin were just out for a walk with my baby when the rain came,’ said Jane. ‘We’re a bit lost. We went for a walk, see …’

  ‘Now you sit down while I get a heater to warm you up and I’ll put the kettle on. Do you drink tea? But I expect the young man will want chocolate and the baby will want milk – and some biscuits of course – let me see …’

  She was digging in a cupboard now, not waiting for an answer. ‘You should have known better than to go for a walk with no coats in this weather, but that’s young people all over,’ she said, her voice muffled by the cupboard. Jane and I sat nervously down at the table. Jane took Sy on her lap. Sy cooed, looked anxiously at us. She found a shiny mat in front of her and she started to chew it and bang it. She began to shout at it. She coughed and rattled and looked at us and broke into a smile – the first smile in ages.

  The woman came out and stood smiling at Sy. She was dressed in a loose grey coat and had grey hair and she looked plump and pink and very, very clean. She had an electric heater in her hand which she put on under the table so that a warm draught blew up around our legs.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind keeping me company for an hour or so,’ she said. She smiled again and went to the wide shelf and began cutting bread.

  The woman quietened down a bit as we ate our toast. She fed the baby buttery scraps and warmed some milk for her. Jane began to talk – some invention about a few days away from London on the train and getting a place to stay in Reading and going for a walk and getting lost and catching the bus and on and on. The woman smiled and nodded and played with Sy.

  As Jane talked I caught sight of myself in a mirror through an open door in the other room. I was a mess – covered in straw and hay, my face smeared with mud. Jane was sitting sipping her tea with her finger cocked like a little lady but her make-up was smudged all over her face. Her hair-do had collapsed with wet, she was daubed with dirt and mud and she looked nothing more than a little girl dressed up and drenched. The old woman didn’t seem to notice. She seemed to think it was perfectly normal to find two kids with a sick baby out early in the morning, wet with dew and with hay in their hair.

  She must be a bit funny, I thought to myself. I was relaxed in the warmth of that heater, with the toast and hot chocolate inside me.

  On the shiny surface over the cupboards the radio stopped playing music. In between Jane’s words I heard a man say, ‘The news …’

  The grey-haired woman got smoothly up and turned it off. ‘We don’t want to listen to that,’ she said. She smiled and started bustling about, talking rapidly again – talking too much. I buried my nose in my drink and nibbled at my toast, but I wasn’t hungry any more.

  It took the woman a while to calm down and stop talking so much. Then she said, ‘I’ll just take my coat off and give the boys a drink.’ She got up and left the room with her dogs.

  I said to Jane, ‘She knows.’

  Jane put her finger to her lips and shook her head disapprovingly.

  I got up. Jane tried to stop me but I shook her off. The woman had closed the door behind her; I edged it open. She wasn’t there. I went in and went up to another door and put my ear to it. I could hear her voice – low, urgent whispering.

  I ran back. ‘She’s on the phone,’ I said. ‘She’s whispering on the phone …’

  There was a bolt on the door she’d gone out of and we put it to. Jane had Sy on her hip. I hissed: ‘Leave her!’ She stared at me. ‘Please leave her,’ I begged. Jane nodded. She put Sy on the floor,
bent and kissed her and then we ran out into the back garden and across the wet lawn. Sy screamed as we ran in between trees with apples and pears and plums growing on them. Behind us the woman was shouting but I think we ducked behind her shed before she saw which way we’d gone. Her voice was different now – angry, shrill, frightened. Then we were over the fence and running through the wet corn stubble behind her house.

  ‘Down!’ hissed Jane. We flung ourselves onto the hard stubble behind some bales of straw. After a time Jane peered up and she nodded. We quickly ran across the open space towards trees growing at the end of the field.

  We pushed our way through wet green leaves and brambles that snatched at our legs and clothes and soaked us over again. We came to a rutted muddy track and stuck to that. Jane said, ‘Do you think they’ll have dogs?’ but apart from that we didn’t speak. I remember very vividly the pale tree trunks, the green leaves turning yellow and brown and orange, the dark mud, the smell of wet earth and wet wood. A little later there was a siren back there.

  We kept running. It was uphill all the way and we were terribly out of breath but we were doing all right. We’d stopped running, we were feeling safer, on our way. And then out of nowhere Jane sat down on a pile of stones at the side of the track.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked. I looked back. I thought I could hear cars racing on the roads, pulling up somewhere down the hill behind us.

  She sat with her hands neatly folded in her lap. ‘I wish I’d brought her this far, Davey,’ she said. ‘I’d have liked to have given her to someone even if it was only the police.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ I told her. ‘Come on.’ I pulled her arm.

  She looked up at me with her white face. ‘Davey, I’m staying here.’

  There was a shocked second and then I grabbed her. I could have strangled her. I was saying, ‘Get up! Get up,’ and pulling and tugging. Every time it was obvious what to do she just went right the other way!

  She just said, ‘Don’t, Davey, don’t …’ She sounded offended and I let go. ‘I’ll tell them you went some other way,’ she said. ‘We split up, see? It’s a chance. One of us’ll get away. I’m going to stay here and tell them how it was. We’re not what they think we are, see.’