by Nina Bawden
“Not quite right yet,” Major Bumpus said. “No more fancy heels for a bit. Good thing, too. You know what they say? Most ladies shoes are made by fellers who have heard of a foot but never seen one. Not like those fine boots you’ve got there. Lucky feller. Lucky in more ways than one, so I’m told.”
Gran said, rather quickly, “Now, Monty!”
“Ah,” Major Bumpus said, “Harrumph. Shooting my mouth off. Sorry, Amy.” His eyes twinkled at Alex. “Well, young feller-me-lad. What are you going to do with yourself when you grow up? Train for the Olympics? Quite a nifty skater already. Apart from that, what’s your game? Rugger?”
“I don’t like football,” Alex said. “Dad says it’s because I’m small for my age and always getting knocked over, but I think I just like things I can do on my own, like swimming and skating and judo.” He added, “I’m sorry,” because most people seemed to think this was odd.
“Why sorry?” Major Bumpus said. “No point in running about after balls if you don’t enjoy it. You stick to your guns. Tell the truth and shame the devil.”
“Oh, he’s always been an honest boy,” Gran said proudly.
They both smiled at him. Alex decided he liked Major Bumpus. But he felt suddenly shy. He said, “I better go home now.”
He skated off extra fast because he knew they were watching him. The roller boots made a lovely, gritty sound on the tarmac path and the wind lifted his hair, making his cheeks burn. When he got to the slip road in front of his house he went straight across, without looking, and a motor-bike swerved hooting and screeching behind him. The rider shouted, “Bloody young half-wit.”
Safe indoors, unfastening his roller boots in the hall, his ears were on fire, like his cheeks. He heard his mother typing in the small room at the back that she used as a study and felt weak with relief. If she’d been in the front living room, she would have heard the bike and looked through the window. He opened the study door and said, in an innocent voice, “Hallo, Mum.”
She looked at him vaguely. “What is it, Alex? I’m terribly busy.”
“Can I help, Mum?”
She shook her head. “It’s just letters and bills. Half-an-hour, darling. Close the door, will you?”
He closed the door. He went upstairs. Bob and Ellie were in the room that they shared; Bob on his back on the floor with his sweater pulled up, Ellie holding a toy stethoscope to his bare stomach. She was saying, “You’re having a baby, Bob, I can hear its heart beating.” As Alex came in they both screwed their heads round and looked at him crossly. Ellie said, “Go away, Alex, we’re playing doctors.”
“All right,” Alex said. “I’m not interfering.”
Sometimes they played doctors for hours. Last week it had been chicken pox; they had had a packet of joke scabs that they stuck all over their faces. This week it was babies. A teacher at their school was having a baby and Alex guessed, because the same thing had happened to his teacher when he had been young, that she had been drawing pictures on the blackboard, showing her class how babies grew. Alex remembered coming home and looking at his stomach in the mirror, sticking it out and pretending. Laura had laughed at him and made him angry. It still seemed unfair to him that boys couldn’t have babies. He wondered if Bob knew that he couldn’t, and if he ought to have told him in case someone should laugh at him for not knowing.
Ask Laura, he thought. She was too old and sensible, now, to laugh at a little boy, and would know how to explain to Bob better than he would.
But when he pushed her door open, she wasn’t alone. Carla was there. They were sitting on the bed, red-faced and giggling.
Laura said crossly, “Alex, why don’t you knock?”
“Boys ought to knock before they come into a girl’s room,” Carla said, and giggled again. She was a fat girl with a puffy, white face, and when she giggled, spit flew. “They might see something they shouldn’t.”
Laura wiped her cheek where the spit had landed and rolled her eyes at Alex. Although Carla was supposed to be her best friend, Laura often found her embarrassing. In fact, she only put up with her because Carla’s parents allowed her to give parties in their house when they were out, and Laura was afraid of not being invited. Alex, who knew this because Laura had told him, was not surprised when she said, “Go away, Alex, we’re talking in private.”
Carla wriggled her plump shoulders and laughed. More spit sprayed the air round her. She said, “Don’t send him off, Laura. You know I like Alex. You like me, Alex, don’t you?”
She winked at him. He was astonished. Carla, who had no brothers and sisters, usually behaved as if he were invisible, barging straight past if they met on the stairs, only saying “Hi, there,” in a bored voice if he spoke to her first.
“Shut up,” Laura said. “Leave him alone, Carla.”
Carla pouted. “Don’t be mean. I’m your best friend, aren’t I?” She was only playing at being offended. Her eyes, the pale green of gooseberries, were laughing and sly.
“Don’t be silly.” Laura’s face had turned scarlet. She said, “He’s too young for you, anyway.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Carla said. “Girls often marry younger men, don’t they? I know Alex and I are both too young at the moment, but we could have a secret engagement.” She batted her eyelids, thick, fair lashes fluttering. “I’d like a rich husband.”
Laura put her hands over her ears. She bent over, bent double, forehead almost touching her knees. “Stop it. Stop it. I’ll never tell you anything again, ever…”
Carla sniggered. The snigger turned into a giggle and then into a kind of fit. She giggled and snorted and yelped as if she couldn’t help it, as if something so extraordinarily funny had happened that she had lost all control. She collapsed on her back on the bed, waving her legs about. Her thighs and her bottom were tight as drums in her jeans. She gasped, through her snorts and her yelps and her giggles, “We c-could have a yacht, and a p-private aeroplane, and a Rolls Royce c-car, and we could live at the Ritz.”
Mad, Alex thought. Raving. Bonkers. He saw that Laura had lifted her head and was looking at him in despair. Serve her right for making a best friend of such an idiot. All the same, Alex was sorry for Laura. He pulled a comical face to cheer her up, spreading his mouth wide with his thumbs and pulling his eyes down at the corners with his fore-fingers. When she didn’t laugh, he said, “What’s she on about?”
Laura shook her head from side to side, very slowly and miserably. She whispered, “Nothing. Really, it’s nothing, just a silly joke. Please go away, Alex, I’m sorry…”
“Doesn’t he know?” In spite of her noisy giggling and leg waving act, Carla had heard what Laura had said. She sat up at once and said, speaking quite normally, “Pardon me! If he doesn’t know, then it’s me that ought to say sorry! I didn’t know it was such a huge secret, you didn’t say, did you, Laura?”
“I was going to, I just didn’t have time.” Laura caught her breath, suddenly glaring at Alex. “It was all your fault, bursting in. Now I shall get into terrible trouble, Mum will just hate me.” She started to cry. “I won’t ever forgive you.”
“Why? What for? What don’t I know?”
Carla was off the bed, coming towards him. A strong, big girl towering over him. She put her hands on his shoulders, twisted him round and marched him out of the room. She hissed, “See what you’ve done, little beast,” and slammed the door in his face.
Alex ran to his own room, slammed his door, and threw himself down on his bed. He stuck his fingers in his ears, hearing the blood boom in his head like sea in a cave.
He stayed like that for some time. He didn’t move when the door opened; not even when someone sat down beside him. A hand touched his hair and he shook his head, burrowing his face deeper into the pillow.
His mother said, “Come on, Alex love, don’t be sulky.”
“I’m not sulking,” he said indignantly, rolling over.
She laughed. “I thought that would budge you.”
“I thought you were Laura. I’m angry with Laura.”
“Mmm. I was angry as well to begin with. But it was too much to expect, I’m afraid, that she wouldn’t tell someone. A pity it had to be that frightful girl for a number of reasons. Still, she was honest enough to come and tell me what happened, and she’s very sorry.”
Alex didn’t understand a word of this. “She said she’d never forgive me. Just for going into her silly old room without knocking.”
His mother said, with gentle reproof, “I think it was more than that, wasn’t it?”
“No, it wasn’t. I didn’t do anything else, not a thing. I haven’t been horrible. It’s Laura mat’s horrible, and her fat pig friend, Carla, laughing at me and pushing me out, it’s so mean.”
He was trying not to cry, struggling with a tight feeling in his chest. He said, with a rasp in his throat, “I really and truly didn’t do anything beastly.”
“No one has said you did, darling.”
In spite of that darling she sounded exasperated. But then she sighed and smiled sadly. “Poor Alex, you really don’t know what it was all about, do you? Laura thought you must have guessed, but I suppose that was only because she felt guilty. Never mind. It was stupid of me to try and keep it a secret. You were bound to find out sooner or later.”
It seemed, from her sighs and sad smiles that she had something unpleasant to tell him. When she had finished explaining she was still frowning and solemn and Alex was mystified. If old Mrs Angel had left him some money, that was something to be pleased about, surely? But his mother’s expression made him uneasy.
“It was nice of her, wasn’t it?” he ventured at last. Something Mr Fowles had said rose up in his mind. Her own flesh and blood. He said, “I mean, I’m not one of her family.”
“She had grown fond of you, I expect,” his mother said absently. She gave another of those small, worried sighs as if this answer didn’t quite satisfy her. Then she got up from the bed and said, rather more briskly, “Why not, after all? Better you than a Cats’ Home. We must all try not to let it make any difference.”
He didn’t know what she meant. He felt too shy, for some reason, to ask. What had a Cats’ Home to do with it? A lot of thoughts seemed to be chasing through his head. It was exciting to think he might have some money. He would be able to buy a new bicycle. Laura had had a new one for her birthday last year but there must be something else she would like. Perhaps there would be enough money to buy everyone in the family a special present. He wished he had liked Mrs Angel more. His grandmother had wanted them to be friends, she had kept on, telling him that Mrs Angel liked him; it was one of the things that had always made him uncomfortable.
He began to wish that his mother would go away and leave him alone to think quietly. But she was moving round the room, tidying, straightening his books on the shelf, putting his clothes away. She picked up his football jersey from a chair and sniffed at it. He said, “It isn’t smelly, I’ve only worn it once,” and she opened the bottom drawer of the chest to put it away.
She was bent over, her back to him. He couldn’t see what she was doing. She said, “What’s this, Alex? Who is it?”
She turned. She was holding the photograph Mrs Angel had given him. He had forgotten he had put it there, in the drawer. She rubbed the glass with her sleeve and held it up to the light.
He said, “It’s Mrs Angel’s daughter. Mrs Angel gave it to me. It was a present for my Finding Day.”
He remembered that his grandmother hadn’t wanted his mother to see it. But Gran had told Major Bumpus that he was an honest boy. He felt hot and guilty. He said, “Gran said I looked like her, that’s why Mrs Angel gave me the picture. I think that’s why, anyway.”
His mother looked from the picture to Alex. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I see.” She gave a little laugh, as if something embarrassed her. She said, “Trust my old mother! Though I wouldn’t have thought she’d have gone quite so far!” In spite of her laugh, she was angry. Alex could hear it in her voice, see it in her flushed cheeks, her bright eyes. She said, “What did your dear grandmother say to you? Can you remember?”
Alex shook his head.
“Oh, come on! Even you must have seen what she was up to!” Then she seemed to check herself. She smiled at Alex. “No, I don’t suppose you did. Why on earth should you?”
But she was still angry. Too angry for Alex to ask what it was he ought to have seen. He said, “Don’t be angry, Mum.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Yes you are.” Misery broke over him. “Laura’s angry with me, now you’re angry, and I haven’t done anything. It’s not fair.”
The tears that he’d held back before came flooding now, drowning his eyes so that his mother’s face trembled in front of him. She sat on the bed and put her arms tightly around him. “Hush,” she said, “Don’t cry, no one’s angry with you, my poor baby.”
And because it was pleasant to be cuddled and loved by his mother who wasn’t, in the ordinary way, much of a cuddler, Alex tried to believe her.
Chapter 7
In the next few days, Alex’s mother smiled a lot, very brightly. But behind the smiles, she was angry. She snapped at Bob for leaving his scooter on its side in the hall although no one had fallen over it. She sent Ellie to bed in the middle of supper one evening because she spat in her milk. When Laura came home half an hour late from a party at Carla’s house, she took her front door key away as a punishment. His turn next, Alex thought philosophically.
At least, when it came, he had warning. His friend, Willy Tucker, had shown him the newspaper. He had telephoned Alex the moment he got in from school, before he had spoken to anyone. “Meet me at the shelter, back of the playground,” Willy had said. “I’ve got something to show you. Be quick, it’s fantastic.”
The big mower was cutting the Lower Field, throwing up grass and daisies. When Alex got to the shelter, Willy was waiting. He was so pale with excitement that the freckles on his nose stood out dark as brown pips in a white apple.
They sat on the bench in the shelter, the newspaper between them. The picture was on the front page; a baby in a shawl, a nurse holding it, looking down, smiling. The caption said, FOUNDLING COMES INTO A FORTUNE, and beneath it, An abandoned baby, found on the Thames Embankment eleven years ago, is the surprise heir to an elderly widow, Mrs Harriet Ethelberta Angel (81) who died recently of a cerebral haemorrhage. The Will is disputed by a nephew, Mr Eric Fowles, on the grounds that his aunt had been pressurised into making it by a neighbour, who is the boy’s grandmother. In a telephone interview, Mr Fowles said that his Aunt was “too old to know what she was doing.” Mrs Angel’s solicitor has stated, however, that his client was of sound mind when she made this last Will. He would not have drawn it up otherwise. We are withholding the boy’s name at the solicitor’s request, but we understand that he was a frequent visitor to Mrs Angel’s residence on Finsbury Fields and that she was very attached to him.
Alex said, “What’s it mean?”
“You can read, can’t you? That’s you, in the picture. My Mum says she remembers it happening. You being found and all that. There was a lot in the papers and on telly and everything.”
“I can’t remember that, can I?” Alex said. But he knew, all the same. His mother and father had kept a file of newspaper cuttings, stuck into an album along with other pictures of him as a baby and a clipping from The Times announcing his adoption. He said, “Well, it doesn’t look much like me now. No one could tell it was me.”
“Anyone can find out,” Willy said. “They keep old newspapers filed away in the library.”
Alex felt giddy. The printed words danced up and down. He said, “How much is a fortune?”
“A lot of money. I don’t know. My Mum says, if the house wasn’t mortgaged, then it must be worth over a hundred thousand.”
“Pounds?”
They looked at each other. Alex blinked shyly. “I don’t believe it.”
Willy made a fist a
nd punched him lightly. He said, “Lucky swine.”
“I don’t feel very lucky.”
“Why not?”
“It feels funny. Sort of scary. That man, Mr Fowles, being angry.” He looked at the paper. “What does pressurise mean?”
“Making someone do something.”
Alex said, “My Gran used to take me to see Mrs Angel. She didn’t make me go, not exactly, but I couldn’t say no, it felt mean.”
“There’s an old lady down our street, she can’t get out because of her legs. My Mum keeps an eye on her, makes me do her shopping Saturday mornings. It’s not much to ask, my Mum says, if I try to get out of it. That’s the same sort of thing.” Willy punched Alex again, snorting. “Not that we’re after her money, she hasn’t got any. Only her pension.”
Alex said, “My Gran wasn’t after her money, either. She liked Mrs Angel. She said so.”
Willy said thoughtfully, “I wonder how it got in the papers.”
“Someone told them. Laura’s friend, Carla, her Dad’s a reporter, he lives down the road.”
Alex felt his ears singing. Laura had told Carla and she’d told her Dad…
He said, “Oh, my Mum will go mad when she sees the paper.”
“What for? It’s not as if you’d been had up by the police. Stealing, or something.”
“I don’t think she’d mind that so much,” Alex said gloomily.
Willy whistled. “She potty or something?”
“No. She just likes things to be fair. If I get all this money…” He remembered his Finding Day and the cheque his grandmother had sent him. That had been only ten pounds more than she’d given Laura, and his mother had been cross about that! A hundred thousand pounds was ten thousand times worse! His heart sank—he felt it, like a lead ball dropping down from his chest to his stomach. He wondered if his mother had seen the newspaper. They only had morning papers delivered but Dad often bought an evening paper on the way home from work. Perhaps he would leave it in his raincoat pocket. Alex saw the raincoat in his mind’s eye, hanging on a hook in the hall with the rolled-up newspaper sticking out. If he could take it and burn it, Mum wouldn’t see it. He said, “I better go home.”