The Chinese Egg

by Catherine Storr

  He couldn’t speak. He saw Vicky, the other side of the table, give a shiver and come back to the present as he had. He didn’t need to speak to her, they simply looked at each other and understood. It was Chris who was saying, “What’s the matter?” And then, quickly perceiving, “Oh! Another flash?”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  Stephen said, “I saw the girl.”

  “What’s she like then?”

  Why did he feel this intolerable disinclination to talk about it? He said, “Sort of fuzzy.”

  “Fuzzy?”

  Vicky said, “It’s her hair. It’s crinkly. Like Bert Sanders.”

  “Oh, that What else?”

  Neither Vicky nor Stephen answered. Chris looked from one to the other, impatient.

  “Why don’t you say? There must have been something.”

  Stephen said to Vicky, ignoring Chris, “You saw her too?”

  “I only saw the back of her head.”

  “I saw the back of his head. Did you see him properly? What’s he like?”

  “Not properly, I didn’t. Her head got in the way. I think he’s got. . . . Wait a minute. There was something funny about him.”

  Stephen waited.

  “He’s got funny hair.”

  “How d’you mean, funny? You mean fuzzy, like hers?”

  “No.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember properly. All I know is when I saw him I thought his hair looked funny.”

  Chris cut in. “It was about the baby, wasn’t it?”

  Stephen and Vicky looked at each other again, as if each needed confirmation from the other.

  “I suppose so,” Stephen said.

  “Was it, Vicky?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then!” Chris said triumphantly.

  “What?”

  “Now you’ll go to the police.”

  Vicky looked at Stephen and Stephen looked at Vicky.

  “Well? Why not? You said. If you got another flash.”

  Stephen glared at Chris and Chris glared back.

  “Why not?”

  Stephen said, “It’s having to go and tell people something so stupid.”

  “You mean you’re going to let whoever it is get away with stealing a baby, because you’re frightened what people’ll say about you if you tell them?”

  “It’s not only that. . . .”

  “Vicky! You’ll do something?” Chris said urgently.

  Vicky understood Stephen’s feeling of not wanting to tell people. Who wanted to make themselves look like some sort of freak? But she saw, too, that he minded the idea much more than she did. Was it something to do with his being a boy, she wondered. Or the difference of class? As she thought this, Chris burst out again. “I never saw what Dad meant before, when he talks about being middle class. You’re too frightened of looking silly to mind about what happens to a baby! A little baby!” Her face was red and there were tears in her voice.

  “I do mind. If only I was sure.”

  “Vicky!” Chris appealed.

  “I think we’ll have to tell someone. Try, anyhow. Even if they don’t take any notice. We can’t not, Stephen. Think what you’d feel like if they did hurt the baby and we’d just kept quiet,” Vicky said.

  “Are they going to hurt it?” Chris demanded.

  “She said something about how they’d said they wouldn’t. Only the way she said it, I think they might. Did you hear that?” she asked Stephen.

  “Yes.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I didn’t hear anything else.”

  “Let’s go now. They may be doing something terrible,” Chris said, standing up and looking as if she were going to rush out of the room immediately.

  “Wait a tick. We’ve got to decide who to try to tell.”

  “But think what’s happening. . . .”

  “You’ve forgotten, Chris. It hasn’t happened yet. I mean, if it’s like the other times we’ve seen what’s going to happen.”

  “But it could happen any minute now!”

  “Who d’you think we ought to go and see?” Vicky asked Stephen.

  “If we went to the police they’d think we were crazy.”

  “What shall we do, then?”

  Stephen said, slowly, “I think we’d better go to see the parents. They might listen, I should think.”

  Chris said fervently, “I know I’d listen to anyone, if it was me.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “It said in the paper. Did you keep it, Vicky?”

  Vicky said, “It’s upstairs. I’ll fetch it,” and left the room.

  When she’d gone the hostility between Stephen and Chris was somehow more apparent. She said, “I just don’t see how you can be like that!”

  “It’s not just finding it embarrassing. . . .”

  “. . . as if it mattered whether you’re embarrassed. . .”

  “. . . it’s knowing no one’s going to believe us.”

  “I do! Why shouldn’t other people?”

  “It’s different for you. You know Vicky. . . . You know she isn’t the sort of person who’d make up a story like this. . . .”

  “. . . so bloody careful! When it’s something like this. . . a baby. . . . If it was me I wouldn’t care what anyone thought, I’d go ahead and anyhow try to do something.”

  Chris roused was even prettier than Chris composed. Stephen, even at what was a very uncomfortable minute, saw this. He saw also the enormous gap that existed between people like Chris and her mother, and the sort of person he was, and he suspected Vicky was too. Chris, when she saw a wrong that should be righted, would weigh in and do her best to do something about it, without stopping to wonder whether she had the weapons or the right. She lived in direct contact with events. He, Stephen, would never be able to act straight off the cuff like that. For him there would always be other considerations holding him back, making any choice of action infinitely complicated. He admired Chris’s singleness of view and wished he had it; at the same time he found it irritating that she couldn’t understand his hesitations.

  He was grateful when Vicky returned.

  “It’s twelve, Kensington Walk.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Somewhere in Kensington,” Stephen said stupidly.

  “Great brain! How big is Kensington?”

  “Dunno. We’ve got an A to Z at home—no. It’s in the car, and Dad’s out in it somewhere.”

  “How shall we find it, then?”

  “We could go to somewhere like the High Street station and ask. It’s on the Circle Line.”

  “Might be South Kensington, that’s on the Piccadilly.”

  “Look them up in the telephone book.”

  “While we’re at the Post Office we might as well ask where Kensington Walk is.”

  “Haven’t you got. . .?” Stephen asked without thinking, and then could have kicked himself.

  “You’ve forgotten. People like us don’t have telephones,” Chris said.

  “Paul has,” Vicky said at once.

  “Well. That’s because his father runs his own business.”

  “Anyway, let’s go to the Post Office. It’s only just round the corner.”

  “What are we going to say when we get to the house?” Stephen asked.

  “For goodness’ sake! Don’t start all that over again! Come on! We can think what to say while we’re getting there. It’ll take hours,” Chris said. She picked up her coat and marched out of the kitchen. Stephen and Vicky followed. They knew they had to do as she said.

  Thirteen

  They arrived at number twelve Kensington Walk, after a certain amount of misdirection, at about three o’clock that Saturday afternoon.

  “Gosh, it’s huge!” Chris exclaimed. It wasn’t a terrace house, it stood discreetly separated from its neighbours by high brick walls, and from the road by a closely planted line of dark evergreens.


  “They must have pots of money,” Vicky said.

  “That’s probably why their baby was stolen. Ransom,” Stephen said.

  “Come on” Chris said, stimulated by this thought. She led the way up to the front door and rang the elegant worked-iron hanging bell. Stephen and Vicky had just about reached the doorstep when Paolo opened the door. Chris was taken aback by his darkness. She hadn’t expected posh Mr. Wilmington to look like this.

  Paolo stood there unsmiling. It seemed to him that he’d answered the door five hundred times already in the last two days and the news was always bad, never anything good. He was frightened for the Wilmingtons and for Caroline Ann and he was also frightened for himself. In Spain the police didn’t necessarily wait till they could prove you guilty, they sometimes took you away on suspicion and kept you shut up and then you were lucky or had very good friends indeed if you ever got out again. Mrs. Wilmington had tried to explain that that was not going to happen to him in England, but Paolo was wary and every new person who came to the house might well be a threat. In the ordinary way he would have smiled at Chris because she was a girl and because she was very pretty, but now he simply stared at her and wondered if the police had sent her to trap him.

  “Are you Mr. Wilmington?” Chris asked, sounding a good deal braver than she felt.

  “Mr. Wilmington won’t see anyone,” Paolo said, according to his instructions.

  “Oh, then you’re not Could we see Mrs. Wilmington, then, please?”

  “Mrs. Wilmington she doesn’t see anyone too.”

  “Please! Please! It’s very important.”

  By this time Vicky and Stephen were standing beside Chris.

  “No. Sorry, They don’t see anyone.” He started to shut the door.

  “Oh, don’t! Don’t go away. It’s about the baby”

  “So is everyone coming about the bébé.” He went on shutting the door. Stephen pushed forward suddenly and got his foot in the remaining crack. Paolo stepped smartly on the foot. Stephen yelped, but kept it there. Paolo promptly put on the chain inside the door, which meant that it couldn’t be opened any further, but at the same time he couldn’t shut it owing to the foot.

  “You go away. I don’t let you in,” Paolo said, still trying to kick the foot out of the crack.

  “We’re not going. Not until we’ve told someone in authority what we’ve come for,” Stephen said, surprising himself by the way he seemed to have taken charge. He was also surprised when Paolo stopped attacking the foot and said in a much more reasonable voice, “Mr. Wilmington say not to let anyone in.”

  “All right; don’t let us in. Just go and tell someone that we’re here because we think we might be able to help.”

  “Mr. Wilmington won’t like. He get very angry,” Paolo said.

  “I should think he’d be even angrier if he finds us sitting outside his front door all night,” Stephen said. Vicky took the hint and immediately sat down. Chris, a moment later, did the same.

  “You can’t stay,” Paolo said.

  “We’re not going. Not until you’ve told someone we’re here.”

  Paolo said, “Okay. You take your foot back, I tell Mr. Wilmington.”

  “Oh no. You can perfectly well go and tell Mr. Wilmington while I keep my foot there.”

  Silence from inside the house.

  Suddenly Paolo said urgently, “Look! Someone with a bébé just there behind you. . . .” Stephen wasn’t quick enough. He’d turned to look, and at that moment a well directed kick on his ankle made him withdraw his foot. Instantly the door shut with a heavy bang. The letter-box flap lifted and Paolo’s voice from inside said, “Now you goes away, all of you.”

  “No we don’t, we’re staying,” Vicky called back.

  Stephen sat down beside her rubbing his ankle. “I was an idiot. I ought to have known.”

  “How could you? I don’t think he meant to tell them or let us in or anything even if you’d kept your foot in the door all night.”

  “Anyway, if we sit here long enough someone’s sure to notice,” Chris said.

  They sat in a row on the top step but one, leaning back against the top step, with their feet on the one below. Kensington Walk was a very secluded, very select little backwater. So far there were no passers by.

  “I do feel a fool,” Chris said. She had recovered her usual good humour during the journey from her home.

  “You really think someone will see us here? From the house?” Vicky asked Stephen.

  “They’ve only got to look put of one of those windows and they can’t help it.”

  “But people don’t much, do they? Go right up to the window and look out, I mean. Mostly when you’re in a room you just go on doing whatever there is to do, and when you look out you see things opposite. Or sky.”

  “Someone might look out if we made a noise,” Chris said.

  “What sort of noise?”

  “Well, if we were singing or something. I know we can’t. Not sing.”

  Vicky absolutely saw this. You can’t sit and sing outside a house that has lost a baby.

  “We could talk,” Stephen said.

  “Loudly enough? Go on, then. You start,” Chris said.

  Silence.

  “You can’t just talk when there’s nothing to say,” Vicky said.

  “You could say rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb, like we did when we were in the crowd in Julius Caesar”

  No one said anything. Presently Stephen said, “We can’t really stay here all night.”

  “We could stay for another two hours, though,” Vicky said.

  “One of us’d have to let Mum know we’re going to be late if it takes longer than that,” Chris said.

  There was a sound of footsteps on the pavement. A young woman came along the street; she must, Stephen noticed, have been quite pretty in the ordinary way, with light, curling hair and a neat-featured face, but just now any pretence to good looks the girl might have had were ruined by her distress. She had obviously been crying and, from the look of her red-rimmed eyes, crying for quite a long time. She walked quickly but uncertainly, stumbling a little on the smooth paved surface. She turned in at the entrance to the house, then hesitated when she saw Stephen and the two girls sitting on the steps.

  “Are you Mrs. Wilmington?” Chris asked.

  “What are you doing here?” the young woman said, and her voice, too, indicated how recently she’d been in tears; it came out choked and rough. She swallowed, and said, “You ought to go away.”

  “We’ve got something we want to tell them, but the man, the foreign one, won’t let us in. He won’t even tell them we’re here.”

  “You ought to go away. They’re in terrible trouble, they aren’t seeing anyone.”

  “We might be able to help,” Stephen said.

  The young woman shook her head and went up the last steps to the front door, taking out a latchkey from her handbag.

  “Won’t you please tell them we’re here? Please!” Chris said.

  She said, “I’m sorry. . .” and choked. She let herself into the house and shut the door after her quickly. Perhaps she was afraid they might try to rush in behind her. Stephen did think of it, but dismissed the idea as impossible, a bad beginning to any meeting they might have with the Wilmingtons.

  “If she isn’t Mrs. Wilmington, who is she?” Chris said.

  “She isn’t. I saw Mrs. Wilmington when I had the first flash about the baby. She’s quite different.”

  “Who then? She looked really upset.”

  “Perhaps she’s the nurse,” Vicky said.

  “She looked awful. As if she’d been crying all day.”

  “Do you think she will tell them about us?” Chris asked.

  “No, I don’t.”

  There was another longish pause. Although it was mid-April and the sun was still well up in the sky, it was chilly. Vicky shivered. Stephen said, “I think this is silly. Vicky’s right, we might never be noticed.” He got up.

  �
�What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to keep on ringing that bell until one of the Wilmingtons comes out.” He gave the bell a violent pull which made the bell clatter wildly. He heard steps inside and the letter-box opened again and Paolo’s dark eyes looked through it.

  “Is no good. No open the door.”

  “I’m going to go on ringing until you do. Or tell them about us.”

  He pulled the bell again.

  “Don’t do that.”

  “Tell Mr. Wilmington then. . . .”

  “He say no tell. . . .”

  Stephen rang the bell again, if anything harder.

  He could hear a new voice behind the letter-box. Steps in the hall. A voice said, “Paolo? What the hell are you doing there? What’s the matter with the bell? Who’s there?”

  Stephen bent down to the letter-box level and shouted. “Mr. Wilmington! Please. It’s important. I’ve got something to tell you.”

  There was a confused noise inside the house, then the door was quickly opened, and Stephen saw a youngish man, obviously very angry.

  “Get out or I’ll call the police!”

  “Please listen. . .” Stephen began desperately.

  “I have nothing to say, and there’s nothing I want to hear from you. Now, will you go or do I have to use force?”

  “I’m not going,” Stephen said, again surprising himself.

  “Haven’t you any decent feelings at all? What can you possibly hope to get out of this. . . this battening on other people’s misery?”

  “I’m not. . .” Stephen began, when Vicky called out from the step, “We’re not. We know something.”