Finding Davey

by Jonathan Gash

  There were purple ones he had to swallow, after the Rose Bowl talk-ins started on kids’ TV. They talked of numbers and players’ names that even Pop didn’t know and Pop was a clever man who made a lot of money so they could have a lovely home with Manuela downstairs to cook.

  There was a joke.

  The joke was the boy who’d fallen over, slid really, with the pole near the pool on the grass below the apartment windows when Clint was watching. He’d only pretended to tumble but really hadn’t. He did it to make Clint laugh at the window but Mom didn’t know that. Mom didn’t understand, not like…

  Manuela, funny this, was noisy. Clint knew that because Mom told her off, saying it sharp so Manuela had to shut up but Manuela gave Clint a look that showed she wasn’t scared of Mom.

  Manuela had a bag made of leather that smelled nice so Clint always wanted to look at it but Manuela wouldn’t let him. And the one time – say “once” and Mom got so worried it made her sick – the one time Clint said it right out in Manuela’s kitchen Manuela put the bag, not satchel, under a kitchen chair.

  Manuela’s bottom was so fat she bumped into chairs so her frock (except Mom reminded Clint that frock wasn’t a word Manuela understood) so her dress swung from side to side when she mixed things in bowls fixing dinner.

  Manuela was the jokey falling boy’s Mummy, Clint knew, but it was secret.

  Manuela didn’t mind when Clint asked if she was the boy’s Mom. She laughed so much she almost crumpled and then told him he was a smart cookie but not to say if he saw the jokey boy because that had been a mistake, okay? And Clint said okay.

  Manuela made him say okay again and link little fingers with his other fingers pointed and she said, “You don even know that? My, you got some learnin to do!” Mom came and made him go upstairs because it was time for counting lessons on TV. Clint found some easy but some hard. Mrs Saston was his own teacher and soon he could go back to school with other children like usual.

  Manuela stopped him asking why she never brought the little boy inside while she fixed meals. Manuela’s tellings off weren’t bad. Clint liked Manuela.

  Manuela got scared when he asked was Hessoo the jokey boy’s daddy. She made him promise never to say that to Mom, or Manuela would have to go a long way away and never come back again. He promised hard because Manuela was scared.

  He made his very best promise. Manuela stared and stared, then went quiet and never said anything for a long time after.

  Manuela had been scared, Clint guessed, because he’d said Daddy instead of Pop when asking after Hessoo. Or maybe he’d promised in a wrong way? He said his best promise with his fingers as usual and Manuela’s eyes went wide, looking and looking. Then Mom called him and he’d gone upstairs and seen Manuela looking and not smiling.

  Manuela let him make patterns in dough when she was baking.

  Then Roz Saston came to do teaching and though Clint knew Mom’s friend was sitting listening in the next room where Pop sometimes copied numbers from CNN Clint didn’t mind.

  He wished the jokey boy could be let inside so he could maybe play. Soon he would be going back to school if Mrs Saston was a good teacher like Mom said.

  Kylee’s smoking was an embarrassment. Bray asked her not to use her small charring cigarettes. She didn’t reply for an hour, then erupted.

  “Don’t pull such a miserable fucking face.”

  “They can’t be healthy.” He’d made some fish paste sandwiches. “The scent lingers.”

  “You’ll be telling me they’re illegal next.”

  “Since you mention it,” he said drily. She began a tirade before she realised the joke. “Buster hates them.”

  The golden retriever lay snoring under the porch.

  “Tell him to stop smoking.”

  “Did you manage,” Bray caught himself, remembering she couldn’t write, and quickly amended, “to work it out? I can’t see how we cut down all America to a few places.”

  She shook her head in disbelief.

  “Thicko. Suppose we get a hundred answers, ’kay? We ignore the common answers, ’kay? Cos we only want the weird answers, ’kay? They’re, let’s say, three out of a hundred.”

  “Won’t there be more than a hundred?”

  “Of course there fucking will,” she said, stone of face. She blew smoke down her nostrils. Even when Bray had smoked a pipe, he’d not been able to do that. “You’re thick, so I’m making it easy. Three per cent, ’kay? That’s to Question One. Then three per cent to Question Two. Same for Three and Four, ’kay?”

  “Yes.” He wrote it in tabular form, four questions, three correct for each.

  “Davey gives weird answers, yeah? Nobody else does. Or else you chosed wrong questions.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s the odds?” She waited. “C’mon!”

  “I don’t know. I’m —”

  “Don’t say sorry. I can’t fucking stand it. It’s three per cent of three per cent over and over, innit?”

  Laboriously she repeated it. “Jesus, you’re bone. It’s 81 in hundred million, innit? So’f we gets forty thousand answers and five per cent weirds, then Question One scores 2,000, yeah?”

  Bray felt stricken. “Search two thousand towns?”

  She almost hopped with fury. “You don’t have to. It goes down wiv every answer.”

  Grumbling, she dictated the working step by step, her feet up on the table.

  “See? The answer’s less than one, ’kay?” While she smoked another roll-up he went over the calculations. Her smokes burned with inordinate speed. “Got there, have yer? Nought-point-two-five?”

  He stared at the arithmetic. It couldn’t be so simple, so clear.

  “I’ll have to search less than one place?”

  “You want fucking jam on it. Want a drag?” And when he shook his head said, “Welcome to Planet Earth, Grampa. Davey has to be in the last fraction.”

  “I see.” He couldn’t, but nearly could. There seemed to be a definite sum with an answer that was Davey.

  He could hardly make her out for a sudden blurring of his sight. He went to the standard lamp as if to read in a better light.

  “When we’re in a right fucking mess,” she said, admonishing him like a child, “read them numbers through, yeah? Get your balls back.”

  “Kylee.” He plotted phraseology, not wanting her in another berserk rage. “Can your numbers lie?”

  “No,” she said evenly. “Only words do that.”

  Recovering, he said, “Thank you.”

  She was so certain. “No matter how big, they reduce by the weirdo fraction.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve taken so long.”

  She shrugged. “It’s fucking chancy, depends on your questions, yeah? Choose ones only Davey knows, we’re in. Choose wrong, the last fraction’ll be so fucking big we’ll still be hunting him when we’re ninety.”

  “Thank you, Kylee,” he said. We, he thought; she said we.

  “Time you learnt to fucking count, Thicko. Want a calculator cheap? It’ll be clean, not nicked.”

  “Thank you, no,” he said politely. “I shall depend on you.”

  “Remember your numbers for once, yeah?”

  “Yeah.” His mimicked pronunciation almost made her smile.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Disturbances at Gilson Mather never bothered Bray much. The firm had its moments of course, but they were beyond control. Destruction in Indonesia, wars halting hardwood shipments, strikes on distant waterfronts, all wore patience down. Worst of all was the slowness of supplies, especially when forest fires seemed pandemic.

  These things the young did not understand. They listened but never took them in. Suzanne, reorientating into her new career, couldn’t comprehend. She caught half a conversation between himself and Mr Winsarls about having to abandon a pair of serpentine fronted knifecases because of delayed delivery.

  “Why don’t you order from somewhere else?” she asked.

  Bra
y looked at the floor. Pleasant to see wood shavings about, but this time of day it should have been swept. Mr Winsarls began a convoluted explanation about matching orders to shipping.

  “Calamander’s not in the book,” Suzanne accused Bray.

  “Look it up under Coramandel.” Embarrassment came too easily, Bray always found. “And under Diospyros quaesita. Many joiners mean any sort of variegated ebony, and assume the wrong wood.”

  Suzanne went to grumble at Harry Diggins about the loss of her corner clamps. Bray mentioned that chain moulding was an error in something so compact as a knife urn.

  “It’s what’s been ordered, Mr Charleston,” Mr Winsarls said.

  The owner’s exasperation had lately been on daily show. He invited Bray to come up to the office and closed the door.

  “I’m beginning to think we’re understaffed, Mr Charleston,” Mr Winsarls began. “Nobody ever seems to finish a job. I’m not,” he interposed hastily, “saying the whole workshop floor’s gone to pot.”

  Bray helped. “The anniversary volume, Mr Winsarls?”

  “That’s it.” Winsarls was relieved. “I wonder if we should postpone it.”

  “I’m sorry to have —”

  “No, no, my decision, your advocacy. How long is it, nearly three months? Perfectly proper.” Winsarls sighed, tipped back his chair. “I mean, how many London firms with our history haven’t had commemorative publications?”

  “None, sir. We are the only one without.”

  “Right! But just look!”

  A separate, tiresomely modern, table had been set up in the corner of the owner’s office. It was stacked with letters, faxes, papers.

  “Sorry, Mr Charleston, but every one of those asks for information, or has historical news about our pieces. There are three messages from one Arkansas lady who has a Loudon style kitchen dresser made by my great-grandfather. Christ Almighty, Bray. She wants a bloody pen pal back in 1833.”

  “It could be fairly —”

  “No.” Winsarls seemed broken. Bray carefully showed compassion. He’d known this was coming, and was ready. “A fortnight ago I counted. That stack represents seven hundred items, plus descriptions of four hundred others. That’s eleven hundred pieces of restored antiques, or our own repros. Auction houses alone fax us a hundred a month.”

  Bray’s lie was ready. “I’d no idea it would grow like this.”

  “Danny’s all right.” Mr Winsarls waved Bray to silence and swung his chair, a sure sign of testiness. “But he hasn’t a clue what the hell we’re talking about. He misclassifies every damned thing. I’m coming unstitched, and that’s a fact. It’s not his fault. The lad can’t even copy right. The girls are just typists. Not like old Mrs Elton.”

  “Is Mrs Elton…?” Bray began with seeming hopefulness.

  “Afraid not. She’s gone to live in Carlisle.”

  “I rather feel it’s my fault, Mr Winsarls. Can we back out?”

  “No. We’ve gone too far, sowed the dragon’s teeth.” He gave Bray a wry smile. “I’m in the classical dilemma. Stop or go on, either’s catastrophe. The problem’s reaching the work floor. Just listen.” They made a show of listening. Raised voices about the loading bay not being cleared, the outer doors still ajar, and Harry Diggins having to ask Bill Edgeworth and Dick Whitehouse, master joiners no less, to spare him Loggo. “Hear that? There’s been such a response. It’s mushrooming. In fact, a real bastard.”

  Mr Winsarls lowered his feet.

  “Apologies, Mr Charleston. I’m not quite a ruined man.”

  It was a poor attempt at humour, but they were back on the rails. Anyone looking in would see a boss quietly talking things over with his head craftsman, nothing amiss.

  “The youngsters on part-time day-release never contribute,” Bray said. “I think we must exclude them.”

  “My opinion too,” Mr Winsarls said, guardedly waiting for more.

  “They’re a falsehood, sir, with respect. How many will ever have the knowledge Loggo will acquire? And he’s the last near-apprentice we will ever see. New starters like Suzanne are sometimes good, but truculent because they want to skip learning, seeing only status.”

  “Go on.” Mr Winsarls began to look hopeful, knowing his man.

  “Gilson Mather is either marsupialised or extinct. The former means we’ll survive as a curiosity, slowly continue to get new orders, go on the way we are now. The latter means we must close or get taken over. Extinction will come about by misjudgements,” and Bray paused for effect, “of management.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “We must go ahead with the commemorative volume, Mr Winsarls. Develop it, not cut it down, make a real show, a splendid effort, two volumes if need be. Go for gold. We’ve done what banks, manufacturers, purveyors of brand goods, would give their thumbs for. We’ve accidentally got the world interested. You say the queries —”

  “A deluge, Mr Charleston. We’ve not had this week’s yet. I’ll bet that bloody pile’s from overseas.”

  “Then we get somebody experienced who’ll know how to sift the records of a firm like Gilson Mather. Send the two girls back to routine.”

  “I had rather hoped you would have been that person,” Mr Winsarls said wistfully. “You’ve already got too much on.”

  “Antiques are becoming priceless. You know that, Mr Winsarls. Now the rest of the world has learned it. It simply means our volumes are overdue!”

  Mr Winsarls polished his spectacles, a decision was coming.

  “Where do we find such a person?”

  “Actually, sir,” Bray said, “I’ve been almost as concerned as yourself lately. An idea came to mind. Nobody’s fault, but that bloodwood caused me lost sleep. And the yellow Limonia – did you see the acidissima last Friday? Nobody seems to realise how small the Indian tree —”

  The owner waved him back to the problem.

  Bray cleared his throat. “I’m sure the person would cooperate with a good printer, given precise instructions.”

  “Sounds a godsend. Would you sound the notion out?”

  “Yes, Mr Winsarls. Could you give me a day?”

  The following week, Lottie Vinson started at Gilson Mather in charge of the historical publication. She was given a free hand.

  “She here, that old bitch?”

  “Mrs Vinson? No. And remember secret.”

  They met in the bus shelter outside the town’s Odeon cinema. Kylee carried an immense carton of cola and a sack of popcorn. Mercifully she offered him none. It was headachingly sunny. They sat on the cinema steps. She was going in with friends.

  “The picture’s crap.”

  He didn’t ask. “Did you think about a system?”

  “Coded thirty questions. Got to graph up.”

  “The four specials?”

  “No, Dumbo. Them all.”

  “There might be tens of thousands.”

  “What’s one and one, Thicko? That’s my Question One.”

  “Two,” he said, startled, glancing about, hoping nobody could hear.

  “So Question One gets forty thousand answers all saying the same thing: two. But we get some nerk who’ll say three, and another moron who’ll say it’s maybe two-point-five, okay?”

  “Possibly.”

  “You’ll secretly know that the storybook answer you want is eighteen – because one person Out There knows that. Got it?”

  “Ye-e-es.”

  “The correct answer doesn’t matter a tinker’s fuck. We only want the one weird answer that matches yours, see?

  “So how do we weed out the immense mass of correct answers?”

  “We don’t. The computer does. Me.”

  Three shabby youngsters were approaching. One waved. Kylee didn’t wave back.

  “Don’t worry.”

  He left before her friends reached the steps. He felt a million years old. If it was simple to her, why wasn’t it to him?

  Her confidence touched him. At home he celebrated with a bottle of
the same beer from which Davey used to smell the bubbles.

  When dawn came, he’d worked out his four questions and the answers he wanted. Needed. Had to have, from some child – how had Kylee put it? – Out There. He wrote nothing down, left no trace, no evidence. He memorised them, for when the time came. He went to work breathless.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Subterfuge was unnatural to him. Now, though, news was policy because that’s where deceits came from. You had to stay sane, so he shunned newspapers and mostly ignored the TV news.

  Across the road from Gilson Mather’s stood a bingo emporium. Once a cinema, wrestling venue, music hall, it now had a bowling alley where youths played obsessionally on machines that clanged and flashed.

  It also had banks of public phones. From a bored girl in a booth he obtained a weight of change, and dialled. It was ten-fifteen. Mr Maddy proved difficult to reach, but Bray stuck it out through layers of doubting receptionists.

  “Charleston?” Mr Maddy questioned. “You say I’m expecting your call?”

  “Well, no.” Bray had notes. In a flurry he abandoned them. “I’m from Gilson Mather. Seven months ago, a Lancashire settle?”

  “I’m in your bloody queue,” Mr Maddy grumbled. “Aye, I remember. A foreigner got in first.”

  “Do you still want it, Mr Maddy?”

  “Course I do. You’re the head maker I spoke to?”

  “Charleston, yes.” He ran on. “I could do it next. At,” he gambled recklessly, “no charge.”

  Silence. Then, “What’s the racket?”

  Youths were brawling good-naturedly nearby.

  “I’m in a bingo place, Mr Maddy,” Bray apologised lamely. “There’s some sort of scuffle.” He couldn’t get started. What did one say when bribing one of the principal collectors?

  “There is no catch, Mr Maddy.”

  “Look. Winsarls shoved me down the list, and charges me a fortune. Now I get it free?” He chuckled. “Spit it out, man. You want something I’ve got.”