by Nina Bawden
PUFFIN BOOKS
The Finding
Nina Bawden grew up in different parts of Britain; in London, Norfolk, Shropshire, and South Wales where she was evacuated during the war. She worked on farms in the holidays and, when she graduated from Somerville College, Oxford, she began to write. She has written numerous novels for children and adults, most of which are still in print. She has four children and nine grandchildren and moves between London in the winter and Greece in the summer. She likes friends and parties and swimming and travelling, often in quite dangerous parts of the world. In 1995 she went to Buckingham Palace where she was given a CBE by the Queen.
Books by Nina Bawden
CARRIE’S WAR
THE FINDING
GRANNY THE PAG
A HANDFUL OF THIEVES
HUMBUG
KEEPING HENRY
OFF THE ROAD
THE OUTSIDE CHILD
THE PEPPERMINT PIG
REBEL ON A ROCK
THE ROBBERS
THE RUNAWAY SUMMER
THE SECRET PASSAGE
THE WITCH’S DAUGHTER
NINA BAWDEN
THE FINDING
PUFFIN
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published by Victor Gollancz 1985
Published in Puffin Books 1987
Reissued in Puffin Books 2003
11
Text copyright © Nina Bawden, 1985
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall
not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without
the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser
978-0-14-193717-5
For Jo Guthrie
in memory of Niki
Chapter 1
No one knew where Alex came from. Only where he was found.
On the day of his Finding, the mist lay on the river; a soft, white vapour drifting on the brown Thames, lazily stirred by the slow tide of the water into smoky tendrils and curls. There was no wind that March Sunday morning and for a few seconds, just before six o’clock, no sound from the City, no traffic, no hooters, no sirens, no bells. Even the seagulls were silent; sleepy and chilled in the dawn. Either side of Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment, the two huge Sphinx lay, lion arms outstretched on the parapet, bronze guardians of an Egyptian obelisk of stone.
The left hand Sphinx, this particular morning, was guarding something else, too. In its arms, when Big Ben struck the hour, a bundle began to struggle and cry. A small fist struck out, hit unfamiliar, cold stone, and the cries became loud with outrage, startling a gull roosting on the head of the Sphinx. The gull peered down with one yellow eye and flew off down river, mewing a warning.
Most people know when and where they were born. “A fine boy,” the doctor has said. Or, “A beautiful daughter.” Later, their father and mother will say, “You were such a funny little scrap, all red and bawling.”
“A Finding is more exciting than a Birth,” Alex’s mother told him. “A Finding is something you should be proud of, something to remember that makes you quite different. Special. Extraordinary.”
Alex believed this. “I was Found,” he said to his teacher when he first went to school. “I was Found in the arms of the Sphinx in the City of London.”
For a while, before he was old enough to know better, Alex thought that the Sphinx must be his real mother. When he was five years old, he was taken to look at it, and he touched the stone arm and said, “Hallo, Mum.” His parents, his adopted mother and father, looked at each other and smiled, but his sister, Laura, who was two years older than he was, turned scarlet with anger. She said, “Don’t be stupid, Alex, it’s only a statue.” And, to the smiling grown-ups looking down at them, “You’re stupid, too. It’s not fair to tell him such stupid stories.”
“Tell me again,” Alex said at bedtime that day when Laura was still being bathed by their mother and their father was tucking him up, saying goodnight. “Tell me about my Finding.”
Part of the story his father told was made up to amuse him; how he had cried in the arms of the Sphinx for more than an hour, frightening the birds that perched on its head, and attracting the attention of an old tramp who had stopped and peered and shuffled off quickly. Then (this part was true), a taxi driver, on his way home after working a night shift, saw the agitated flutter of a pale shawl, a baby where no baby should have been, and got out of his cab to investigate.
From then on, Alex’s history is known and well-documented; written down in Police and Social Service Reports and in the files of newspapers. The taxi driver, who had seven children of his own, picked up the cold, angry baby and drove to the nearest police station where a bottle of warm milk was produced and a doctor called. Then (just as at a Birth) the baby was pronounced well and healthy, about five months old, a fine boy with a couple of teeth breaking pinkly through his sore gums and a furious appetite. He was wearing a knitted suit, a very wet napkin, and a woollen shawl that was rather old and matted as if it had belonged to someone else, or had been carelessly washed in a machine at too hot a temperature. There was nothing valuable on his small person as there would have been in a story; no gold rings or lockets with photographs in them; no embroidered monograms on his garments; no little note fastened to the matted shawl saying, Please care for this baby, his name is Nathaniel, or Demetrio, or, even, plain John. Nothing at all to give what is called “a lead”. Someone had left him there, placed him in the arms of a bronze copy of a mythical creature from Ancient Egypt, and vanished for ever.
For a little while he was famous. His photograph was in all the papers. He was filmed for television, peacefully sleeping on one occasion and bawling in another, in the arms of a pretty nurse from St Bartholomew’s Hospital. The police hoped that someone would come forward to claim him, but although the newspaper stories and the television news programmes produced hundreds of letters from people who offered to care for him, none of them were from his real mother or father, and in the end Laura’s mother and father adopted him as their own little boy. And so Alex lived with them until the real beginning of this story which is six years after Laura had told her parents not to be stupid on the Thames Embankment in London, and eleven years after he had been found there.
It begins, to be exact, with his grandmother saying, “It’s a pity we don’t know his real birthday.”
She said this in a low voice, muttering to herself, while Alex was blowing out the candles on his cake. He had twenty children at his party and they were all making a lot of noise, especially his younger brother and sister, Bob and Ellie, who were standing on their chairs and shrieking, but Alex heard his grandmother in spite of it. He blew out his candles in on
e hefty puff and went to stand by her chair. He said, “I don’t have a birthday. I was found. This is my Finding Day.”
He thought that perhaps his grandmother had not understood how important this was, how different it made him. It was something he had been taught to be proud of, and he thought she would be proud as well, once she knew. She said, “Of course, Alex darling, don’t pay me any attention, I’m a silly old woman,” and she laughed as if this were a joke. But he knew by the way that she looked nervously at his mother, her daughter, that he wasn’t supposed to have heard what she said, and that she. was afraid she would get into trouble.
And of course his mother had heard her. She said, “You’re right, Ma, that was frightfully silly!” She laughed, as if this wasn’t a rude thing to say to her mother, and went on, in a loud, cheerful voice, “Alex has blown out his candles. Come on, everyone, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday, dear Alexander, Happy Birthday to you.”
They all sang, and while they were singing, Alex whispered in his grandmother’s ear, “It ought to be Happy Finding, but Mum says most people wouldn’t understand that, so we have to let them sing Happy Birthday,” and was surprised to see tears in his grandmother’s eyes. He said, still whispering, “Don’t worry, I won’t let her be cross with you,” and was more surprised still when she put her arms round him and hugged him, and whispered back, “I only said it because you are the dearest little boy in the world and I wanted things to be perfect.”
Luckily Alex’s mother didn’t hear that. She was too busy cutting the cake and making sure every piece was exactly the same size. Alex knew she would have been angry if she had heard it because she had been working so hard all day preparing the party, icing the cake, making special rolled up sandwiches like little wheels, and the pastry balls with spicy cheese inside that was Alex’s favourite food at the moment. And she and Dad had given Alex the presents he wanted most; a pair of roller boots and a solar calculator. In fact, the only thing that had made his Finding Day not quite perfect had been the cheque for twenty pounds that his grandmother had sent him, tucked inside his birthday card. Laura had said, “I only got ten pounds on my birthday,” and their mother had pursed her lips and frowned at their father across the breakfast table.
He had said, “She means well, love, don’t let it upset you.”
“She shouldn’t give him more than the others. She shouldn’t make a difference between them.”
“It could be the other way,” Alex’s father had said. “That would make it worse, wouldn’t it?” He had put his hand over hers, squeezing it, and smiled at Alex. “Put it in your Post Office Savings Book, lucky fellow. It’ll go a long way towards your new bicycle.”
After breakfast, walking to school, Laura had said, “Gran makes an extra fuss of you because you’re adopted. She thinks, poor little fellow.”
“That’s silly.”
“I know. But it annoys Mum. It’s as if Gran was saying, you don’t look after him properly so I’m making up for it. That’s worse than just not being fair to the rest of us. Gran doesn’t like Mum sometimes. She looks for ways to upset her.”
“But she must like her. Mum’s her own daughter!”
“You don’t have to like your children once they’re grown up. Mum bosses Gran about, you know how she does, and Gran likes to get her own back.”
Alex sighed. Laura was always making things complicated. He said, rather crossly, “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, it isn’t your fault,” Laura said, being kind now that she saw she had worried him. “If it wasn’t you, they’d find something else to quarrel about.”
“I’ll share the money with you,” Alex said. “We needn’t tell Gran, but Mum would be pleased, and so everyone would be happy.”
“That wouldn’t help,” Laura said. “Just get me into trouble. Putting ideas in your head, Mum would say. Alex, you’re such a dummy. Don’t look so miserable.”
“It’s you made me miserable.”
“That won’t hurt,” Laura said. “Everyone else makes a fuss of you. Someone has to tell you things or you’d never learn anything.”
He blinked—no real tears, just a damp gleam in his eyes, and Laura felt both sorry and pleased. Alex was the person she loved best in the world and she enjoyed making him sad because then she could comfort him. She said, “Come on, cheer up, let’s run, I don’t mind if you race me…”
He had cheered up then and been cheerful all day until after the Finding Day party was over, and his mother was clearing up, and his grandmother was trying to help, putting things in the wrong place as she always did, and getting in his mother’s way.
“Oh, Ma, do sit down, I can manage,” his mother said, looking suddenly wild-eyed and frantic.
Gran looked at her and put the plate she was carrying down on the table. She hunched her shoulders, shuffled to a chair and sat down with a groan. “Useless old woman,” she grumbled. “Why don’t you say it? I thought, when I moved to London, I’d be a help, not a burden. I’ll just sit for a bit and get my breath back, then I’ll be off, out of your way.”
“You’re not a burden, Ma,” Alex’s mother said. “That’s not true and you know it.”
“Seems like the truth to me. You never much cared for plain speaking, did you? Always one for pretence and play-acting. You get to my age, you’ll find there’s no time for that. A spade’s a spade, a burden’s a burden.”
Alex’s mother said nothing. She piled dishes on a tray and carried it out to the kitchen. Gran leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. Laura and Alex looked at each other. Laura sucked in her cheeks and pulled down the skin under her eyes to show the red rims, acting old to make Alex laugh. He spluttered, hand over his mouth, he couldn’t help it, and his grandmother said, “Don’t pull faces at me, Laura, d’you think I don’t know what you’re up to?”
Both children exploded with laughter. Their mother came back with the empty tray. She said, “Laura, will you get Bob and Ellie out of the bath and make sure they have clean pyjamas?”
“Why me? Why not Alex?”
“It’s his Finding Day. He needn’t do jobs on his Finding Day.”
Gran snorted. She said something under her breath. Only Alex, who was close to her, heard it. “Silly nonsense.”
“What’s that?” his mother asked.
“Nothing, dear,” his grandmother said innocently. “I was just wondering, if you have nothing special for Alex to do, if he’d walk back across the Fields with me. Mrs Angel was hoping to see him.” She smiled sweetly at Alex. “She might have a present, my darling.”
Alex said, “Dad will be home soon. He was sorry because he couldn’t get back in time for my party, so I thought I’d go to the bus stop to meet him.”
It was the nearest he could get to saying that he didn’t want to see Mrs Angel without upsetting his grandmother. He knew that if he looked at his mother for help she would come to his rescue, but that would upset his grandmother more. There was enough trouble between them already rumbling in the room like underground thunder. So he looked at the floor and his mother said, briskly, “Of course Alex will go with you, Ma. He’ll have plenty of time with his Dad later on.” And, as her mother got up from her chair, she put her arms round her and kissed her.
It was growing dark as they crossed Finsbury Fields; the windows in the houses around blooming yellow like the daffodils under the tall, bare plane trees. It was the time that Alex liked best; the dusky light made the Fields quiet and secret; a green, secret place in the middle of London. He looked back at his own house, on the edge of the Upper Field, and then ahead to the terrace where his grandmother lived, next door to her friend, Mrs Angel. He said, “Look at the lights, Gran, you can see the people inside the houses and they can’t see us, like at the theatre.”
But she wasn’t listening. She said, “You’re not frightened of poor Angel, are you? When I was a little girl, I used to be frightened of very old people. Though she’s not so old, really.” She si
ghed and shook her head sadly. “It’s sorrow and illness that’s aged her.”
“I’m not frightened,” Alex said. This wasn’t quite true. He wasn’t afraid of Mrs Angel in the way he would have been afraid of a wild bull or a savage dog chasing him, but she made his skin creep. A witch, he thought sometimes, though he was too old to believe in witches.
“That’s a good thing,” his grandmother said. “Poor soul, she can’t get out and no one much comes to see her except that dreadful nephew of hers, and he only comes for one thing, as I tell her.”
“What’s that?” Alex said. “What one thing does he come for?”
His grandmother didn’t answer. She held Alex’s hand as they walked up the steps of Mrs Angel’s house; held it extra firmly as she rang the bell. When Alex heard the scrape of Mrs Angel’s walking frame in the hall, he stepped back, he couldn’t help it. His grandmother squeezed his hand tighter and said, very low, “Just ten minutes, darling, it means so much to her,” and men, when the door slowly opened, speaking loudly and brightly, “Here we are, Angel dear, see what I’ve brought you.” As if Alex were a bunch of flowers or a present.
She pushed him in front of her. He kept his eyes on the ground, saw Mrs Angel’s pink-slippered feet, the frilly edge of her nightgown. “Ah, the boy,” her voice said, and he looked up reluctantly, at the shaky, veined hands on the walking frame, the pink shawl tied across the flat chest, the paper white face, the black eyes, the almost bald skull the same pink as the shawl and the slippers, with just a few strands of pale hair hanging down, tangled and soft as a baby’s.
To Alex she seemed unbelievably old. But it wasn’t her age that made him want to run, nor the sour, kippery smell of the room, that she never left now except to shuffle on her frame down the hall to the cloakroom or to answer the door. He didn’t mind when she kissed him, even though the hairs on her upper lip prickled and her mouth was wet. What he hated and had come to dread more and more each time his grandmother took him to see her, which had been about twice a week lately, was the way that she looked at him, black eyes shining like small lumps of coal. It was a greedy look, as if she were hungry.