by Nina Bawden
“I’m not jealous,” Laura said, growling like thunder.
Her grandmother pursed her lips. “Then why make all this fuss and old taradiddle? You’re as bad as your mother. I really don’t know what she’s on about half the time. Except that it’s all my fault, apparently.”
“Well, it is, isn’t it? You took Alex to see Mrs Angel, making him suck up to her, making up lies, pretending he might be her grandson…”
“I did no such thing. You watch your tongue, Miss!”
Laura said, “I don’t mean you said it straight out. Only hinted.”
“You’re too young to understand,” her grandmother said. She made the tea, warming the pot, measuring out the tea leaves, pouring on boiling water, concentrating on this simple task to avoid looking at Laura.
“I’M NOT TOO YOUNG,” Laura shouted. “That’s what grown-ups always say. As if being young makes you blind and deaf too. I heard you, I heard you and Mum. If it wasn’t for you Mrs Angel would never have left any money to Alex, so it’s your fault, making everything horrible, all the trouble is your fault.”
“It isn’t. It’s mine,” Alex said. “If I wasn’t here, if I’d never been found, everyone would be happy.”
They saw his face, shocked and pale. Then he ran from the room. They looked at each other. “I forgot he was here,” Laura said. All her anger had left her.
Her grandmother sighed. “Go after him, chick. We don’t want your mother to come back and find him upset.”
She was more worried about that than she was about Alex, Laura thought. But she didn’t say so. Gran was looking so weary suddenly, sitting down at the table, shoulders hunched, her face crumpled. “He’ll be all right,” Laura said. “Have a nice cup of tea. It’ll make you feel better.”
She went slowly upstairs. Guilt made her reluctant. What could she say to him? She thought, Give him time to cool off.
She stood at the landing window. She could see Bob and Ellie and the three kids from next door on the far side of the Field. They were playing What’s the time, Mr Wolf. Bob was the Wolf; the others were creeping up behind his turned back. Ellie was almost upon him and, watching her, Laura knew what she was feeling, remembering herself playing this game when she had been little, sneaking slowly forward, step by step, excited and fearful. When Bob whirled round suddenly, Laura felt her own stomach lurch as if, by some magic, she was inside Ellie’s skin, running on shaky legs, the Wolf chasing after her. Then she saw Ellie fall flat on her face and lie still. She didn’t move, even when Bob bent over her and tried to lift her. He crouched down; the other children stood round. Foxing, Laura thought. All the same, she was frightened. She flew down the stairs and out of the house, her heart pounding.
Ellie wasn’t hurt. By the time Laura reached her, she was bored with pretending. When Laura knelt beside her, she rolled over, scarlet and sulky. “They won’t let me be Wolf,” she complained. “It’s not fair.”
“She doesn’t play properly,” Bob said. “She doesn’t wait long enough, she’s just silly.”
Ellie scrambled up and flew at him. Laura caught hold of her, laughing. “If you don’t give her a turn, she’ll never learn, will she? Come on, Ellie, I’ll be Wolf with you and show you.”
She played with them, teaching Ellie to count at least up to twelve before she turned to shout “Dinner Time”, and then went on playing for the fun of it, slipping back into being small again, five or six, feeling happy and free. She forgot about Alex, or half forgot, pushing him to the back of her mind, until she saw Bob, standing still, staring. She looked where he was looking and saw Mr Fowles on the edge of the Field. “That man’s watching us,” Bob said. “He’s been watching us all the time, I don’t like him.”
“Don’t watch him back,” Laura said. “Just don’t pay any attention.”
Alarm rang in her mind. She wondered if Alex had looked out of his window and seen him. And, at once, she knew she shouldn’t have left him. She said, to Bob, “I’ve got to go, it’s time you came home too. Look after Ellie,” and ran back to the house as if a real wolf, sharp fangs and snapping jaws, ran behind her.
Chapter 9
Everyone had always loved Alex. He was used to being loved. He had never worried, as Laura did, about the horrible things people might say about him, behind his back.
Now, suddenly, it seemed he was surrounded by enemies. Laura was jealous of him; his grandmother had said so. His mother was angry. Even if she wasn’t angry with him, she was angry because of him, and she had quarrelled with his grandmother about him. And Mr Fowles, standing on the edge of the Field, watchful and menacing, hated him. He might come to the house and do something dreadful. Worse than that, his real mother and father might come. Since everyone was so angry, Mum and Dad might let them take him away.
He packed his school bag with a clean pair of socks, his Adidas running shoes, a thick jersey, his solar calculator and his Post Office Savings Book that had twenty-seven pounds in it. He had one pound and sixty-five pence in cash in his pocket. He left his front door key on the chest where Laura would find it and slipped out of the house the back way, through the gate at the end of the garden and into the narrow alley where the dustbins were kept.
No one saw him go. He went by the back streets, avoiding the Fields, and saw no one he knew. When he reached the main road, he caught the first bus that stopped and sat in the front, behind the driver’s cab, and kept his head down.
The bus took him to the City. He got off the bus and walked with the crowd on the pavements. Everyone seemed busy and purposeful, hurrying home at the end of the day. The thought of them all going home made him feel lonely and miserable. Hungry, too. He bought a hot dog full of spicy sausage and mustard, and felt better, though the mustard had made his mouth dry.
Thirsty, he wandered through a maze of little lanes, past public houses that were so full this warm evening that people were spilling out on to the pavements. He wished he could buy a bottle of lemonade, or ask for a glass of water, but it was against the law for children to go into pubs, and someone might ask him what he was doing, a boy on his own in the city.
He walked on, turning corners at random, until he came to a small cemetery at the side of a church. It looked quiet and peaceful and he decided to rest for a little and plan what to do. There was a tramp sleeping on one of the tombstones, his old coat pulled over his head. Alex settled on another stone, at a discreet distance, watching the tramp turning and muttering in his sleep, and wondered if it was against the law to sleep in a churchyard. The stone was surprisingly comfortable, but he was still thirsty and beginning to be hungry again. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearly nine o’clock. At home, they would have had supper by now. Perhaps they thought he had gone out for the evening, gone to see Willy. Although he always told Mum when he was going out, she hadn’t been there to tell. She might think that he had told Gran, and that Gran had forgotten. If Laura hadn’t found his front door key, there was no reason why they should worry. Perhaps they didn’t care anyway. Perhaps they were all sitting round the big kitchen table, happy and laughing. Happy without him. Happy because he wasn’t there, making trouble.
A lump came into his throat and his eyes smarted. “Well, that’s why you ran away, wasn’t it, so you wouldn’t be such a horrible nuisance to everyone,” he said in a cross, scolding voice, and this made him feel worse. Of course he was a horrible nuisance, a horrible person! They must all be glad to be rid of him! As Laura had said, he wasn’t one of the family. Even if she hadn’t meant it altogether, she must have meant it with part of her mind or she wouldn’t have said it. Oh, she had pretended to like him but she couldn’t, really, or she would have stopped him running away. He’d waited and waited in his room and then he’d looked out of the window and seen her playing with Bob and Ellie, running and laughing, not caring about him at all. She wasn’t his friend; she was a traitor. She’d promised to hide him but that was how traitors behaved. They said they were on your side, made you trust th
em, then they gave you away.
A painful sob shook him. He choked it back and knuckled his fists in his eyes. A voice said, above him, “You all right, sonny?”
Alex looked up at a bearded face under a helmet. The policeman said, “Not lost or anything, are you?”
Alex shook his head. He couldn’t speak. The word “lost” seemed to close up his throat.
“Time you were at home, isn’t it? Little chap like you?”
Alex found his voice then. “I’m not little. I’m eleven. I’m just a bit small for my age.”
“All the same. Not a healthy place to be hanging about this time of night.” He glanced at the sleeping tramp and smiled kindly at Alex. “Unsuitable company. What are you up to?”
“Just sitting,” Alex said. “Thinking.” He added, boldly, “No law against thinking, is there?”
“Not that I know of.” The policeman hesitated, then said, quite sharply, “Where do you live?”
“Finsbury Fields.”
“How are you getting home?”
“Number 4 bus.”
“Got the fare?”
Alex pulled some coins out of his pocket and displayed them on his palm. A sudden hope seized him. Perhaps the policeman would rescue him, call up a police car on his walkie talkie and send him home in it. But he only glanced at the money and said, “Okay, get going. I should look sharpish, too. There’s rain coming by the looks of it. Don’t want your Mum to be worried, do we?”
He gave Alex a keen, level look, as if some doubt still remained. Alex thought, If I cry, he’ll do something. But he was too proud. He said, “No, I’ll go straight home now. Thank you.”
He did his best to smile. But as he walked away, without looking back, he felt lonely and fearful. Telling lies always made him uncomfortable; if they found out he had lied to a policeman, they might put him in prison! Laura would say that was nonsense, he knew, but she wasn’t here. If she was, she would know what to do now, make a good plan, decide where to go. He thought—Laura would make it exciting!
He squared his shoulders and marched on. He would have to manage without her. She was always bossing him about, anyway. Bossy, as well as a traitor! He could look after himself. People in books were always running away, so it couldn’t be all that difficult. He wasn’t far from the river. He could sleep in one of the gardens on the Embankment, or if it did rain—and the sky was beginning to look a menacing purple—he could find shelter. The City was empty at night. He could sleep in a doorway and go to a Post Office tomorrow morning and get out his money. Twenty-seven pounds would last quite a long time. He could take a train and go into the country and find a forest to live in, like Robin Hood. He could buy food in tins and store them in a hollow tree while he taught himself to catch rabbits. He could find out how to do that if he went to a library, and he could look up other things, like which berries and mushrooms were safe to eat…
Thinking of food made saliva come into his mouth. It was beginning to rain now, not much, only spitting, but it made the air colder. He turned into a narrow street and saw people sitting at tables, under an awning outside a coffee shop. He went into the shop, bought a bottle of soda orange and a cheese and tomato sandwich, and sat down at one of the tables. A plump lady with a cheerful, round face shifted her chair to give him more room. She smiled at him and he smiled back as he bit into his sandwich. He ate slowly, to make it last. The lady said, in a friendly voice, “That’s not much of a meal for a growing boy. Have a piece of fruit pie. Go on, old Poll will treat you.” He shook his head but she got up, groaning a bit as if heaving her heavy body off her chair was an effort, went into the shop, and came out with a huge wedge of pie. She said, “There, get stuck into that. Don’t thank me, my pleasure. I don’t like to see kids going hungry.”
The pie crust was thick and dry and the fruit, a soggy mixture of apples and blackberries, so sour that it made his mouth tingle. He persevered because the kind lady was watching him. She wore a shabby coat, pinned together in front with a big safety pin and he had noticed when she had gone into the shop that she was wearing canvas shoes with holes in the toes on her bare feet. He thought she must be very poor, so it had been generous of her to buy him the pie. “It’s very nice,” he said. “Thank you.”
He saw the boys out of the corner of his eye. A group of them, five or six, giggling. One of them was carrying a bucket. He didn’t see what they did, only heard their excited laughter as they raced away, and then a shriek from the next table. A girl jumped up, slapping at her neck. “Something hit me, something horrible, ugh, what is it?”
The man with her laughed. He was crouching under the table; he stood up, his hands cupped together. “Here,” he said, “only a baby frog, that couldn’t hurt you.”
Alex went to look. The tiny creature was trying to crawl up the man’s fingers. “It’s a toad,” Alex said. “Frogs hop.”
“This one fell from the sky,” the man said. “Hey, there’s one by your foot. Talk of raining cats and dogs, it’s frogs today. Or toads, if you say so.” He dropped the toad he was holding beside the other one and pushed them both off the curb with his foot. The rain was heavier now, drumming on the awning and running fast in the gutter, and the baby toads swirled along in the water towards the storm drain.
“They’ll drown,” Alex said, too late to save the first toad but catching the second before it fell through the grating. It scrabbled against his palm, tickling him pleasantly.
“What are you going to do with it, laddie?” The fat woman was watching him with amusement. “Take it home for a pet?”
“Toads are getting quite rare,” Alex said. “I read about that in the newspaper. I’ll put it in the grass in the garden on the Embankment. It’ll be nice and wet there and no one will tread on it.” He hoped she wouldn’t notice that he hadn’t finished his pie. He said, “I better go quickly, or it’ll get too hot in my hand.”
He wondered if the little toads had really rained down from the sky. Perhaps a bird had picked them up from the pond where they lived and flown with them over the City and dropped them. “Poor little toad, far from home,” he said, stroking its cool, dry head tenderly. “You must be so lonely.”
He had forgotten about the boys. He came upon them as he turned the corner at the bottom of the street. One of them was smoking and flicking ash into the bucket that he was holding, and the others were standing round, sniggering. The smoker saw Alex. He said, “They got a fright back there, didn’t they? Bet they didn’t know what had happened.”
Alex looked into the bucket which was full of small toads, a heaving, struggling, dark mass. “You shouldn’t throw them about,” he said. “You might hurt them.”
“Aw, come off it,” a boy said. “Just a bit of fun, ain’t it?”
Alex grinned. It had been funny, the silly girl screaming, toads appearing from nowhere. He said, “Where did you get them?”
“From the canal. There’s loads, all over the banks. Just hatched out of tadpoles.”
“Are you going to put them back?” Alex showed them his toad, quiet now in his hand. “I was going to put mine in the garden. But a canal would be better.”
One boy laughed. The smoker said, “Maybe we will at that. Pop it in the bucket with its brothers and sisters.” Alex hesitated. The way they were watching him made him vaguely uneasy. But the boy with the cigarette smiled encouragingly and he dropped his toad in with the others. At once, they all started to laugh. The smoker drew on his cigarette, flaming the tip red, and made as if to stub it out in the bucket. Alex shouted, “No,” and the boy laughed louder, running backwards, holding the bucket high, whirling it round his head. Baby toads flew through the air, landing on heads and necks, wriggling down shirt fronts, crawling away between dancing feet while the boys roared, wild with laughter, or, if they had a toad inside their clothes, squealed hysterically.
“Stop it,” Alex begged. “Oh, please stop, you’ll kill them.” He hopped up and down, trying not to tread on the toads on the groun
d, trying to reach the bucket. Then someone pushed him, hard in the back, and he fell. He staggered up and they surrounded him, laughing; open mouths like dark caves guarded by white teeth, jeering at him. He said, “It’s against the law. Cruelty to animals is against the law, I could call a policeman.”
“‘Ark at him,” one of them said. “Who does ’e think he is? Super grass?”
Somebody laughed, but it was an uglier sound than before. Threatening. Alex stood still. They were all much bigger than he was. He said, pleadingly, “It’s unkind to hurt animals. If you just let them go, I won’t tell a policeman.”
“That’s brilliant, that’s reely fantastic,” the smoker said. He spoke in a high, squeaky voice, mimicking Alex. “Pick ’em up, take ’em safely back to their mummies and daddies and he won’t fetch the fuzz.” He thrust his face close to Alex. “What makes you think we’re going to give you the chance, eh? Comin’ along, interfering. Who asked you, that’s what I’d like to know.”
“I didn’t mean to interfere,” Alex said. He thought that a lot of toads had probably made their escape by now. He said, “Please let me go.”
“Oh, so it’s please let me go now, is it? Never mind the poor little froggies. Goin’ to make it worth our while, are you?”
“Leave him be,” someone said. Alex couldn’t tell who had spoken. Another boy had opened his school bag that he had dropped when he was knocked over, and was peering inside. He held up Alex’s Post Office Savings Book, and then shook out the rest of the things on the ground. They all gathered around. One boy picked up the calculator. “Please,” Alex said, “that’s new. It’s a present.”
“I’ll give you a present.” The smoker lifted the bucket and emptied it over Alex’s head. The last toads showered over him, slithering down his face like small, cold, rubbery balls. One slipped under the neck of his shirt. He grabbed it and threw it away, shivering with a sudden, sickening disgust. He was trying hard not to cry.