Gift Shop

by Charlotte Armstrong

  The child took air and bawled, “See what you did!” The mother, clinging to her instinctive purpose, staggered backward and the two of them fell in a heap on the bed.

  The father took protective strides and thrust Harry aside. “Okay, what’s in it?” he barked, and crouched to see.

  Jean, who was looking down at the eight American pennies, the two American dimes, and the one American twenty-five-cent piece that lay at her feet, said over Mr. Edwards’ bald spot to Harry Fairchild, sadly, “Nothing.”

  All this, then, for nothing?

  The mother was writhing on the bed, trying to hang on to the child and also reach the telephone. The child was squirming and threshing, feeling, quite intelligently, that there was no particular safety in this heap of limbs. The father rose, red-faced and furious. “Now that’s about enough. Now what is this? Some gag? Now, you two better get out of here.”

  He went defiantly past Harry. Harry was younger. Harry was bigger. But Harry was not a desperado.

  Harry was rich. He let the hundred-dollar bill flutter from his fingers and said, “That’s for the damages. Thanks very much. Come on, Jean.”

  “You keep your—” Mr. Edwards, to prove his manhood, called the money a dirtier name than he ought in the presence of his family.

  Harry got the doorknob first.

  And just there, right in position to be framed by the doorway, stood Dorinda, with not a hair of her head ruffled. “Why, Harry Fairchild!”

  “Oh, hi, Dorinda,” said Harry wearily, not bothering to pretend a happy surprise.

  “Oh, so you know this bird?” fumed Mr. Edwards. “Well!”

  “But what is the matter?” Dorinda was inspecting the inside of the room with bright interest. Mrs. Edwards babbling into the phone; Sally Jo only half-disentangled from her mother, snuffling and whimpering. “Is something wrong with the little girl?” said Dorinda brightly. “Can I help, at all?”

  Okay, thought Harry, there it goes. Whole thing blows up in our faces. Of all the inept, the stupid, the feeble, the worse-than-futile performances. He cursed the day he was born.

  But Jean, still standing in the middle of the room, drew in her breath and cried, “But you just have to realize—why, the poor little thing. She’s on an awful spot.”

  To Harry it was a miracle that in her voice there was no note of sarcasm. “Poor Sally Jo,” cried Jean. “Oh, I tell you, it’s rough.” She seemed to mean it. The child hushed to listen to this. “It’s just awfully hard on her,” cried Jean, “don’t you see? To have to run the whole world? When she isn’t even seven years old?”

  The parents were completely bewildered. Dorinda frowned slightly. Harry didn’t get it either; then he got it.

  Because Sally Jo turned bright pink and shouted, “I am, too. I’m eight and a half, you dumb nut! I don’t like you. I am so eight and a half. Mommy! Mommy!”

  “Of course you are,” said Mrs. Edwards in the voice of one too exhausted to be alarmed much longer. “Will you please hand me my other shoe? The man is coming. What her age has to do … I don’t know. I think you people … Daddy?”

  “I said you people better get out of here,” Mr. Edwards sputtered, but the edge was off his righteous indignation somehow.

  “Very sorry for the misunderstanding,” said Harry pompously. “Come on, Jean.”

  It was Dorinda who stirred, as if from a spell. She turned as if to take Harry’s arm, as if she expected to be escorted. Jean was moving toward the door and not looking forward to the immediate future or any other, when Sally Jo shouted behind her in tones of utter condemnation:

  “Yeah! She doesn’t even have our address. And she promised! She said she’d mail me a new pig. She promised.” Sally Jo had a feud on.

  Jean turned quickly. “Oh, yes, I’m sorry.” But it was too late. Dorinda said, “Pig?” and turned, too, all bright and interested.

  Behind her Harry caught Jean’s eye. He moved both arms in a curious way. “See you in church, Jean,” he called out loudly, and then he vanished.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jean stood, drooping, just within the room. Maybe this child was no longer suspected of being the child, but Dorinda was on to pigs, all right. That is, if Dorinda had followed them and had wanted to know what they were after.

  Sally Jo was watching Jean, like a wrestler hunting advantage. Jean winked at her. She didn’t know why. Neither did Sally Jo, and it shut her up.

  Dorinda was busy being charming to Mr. Edwards. “My name is Dorinda Bowie. I’m from Chicago.”

  “Is that so?” said Mr. Edwards reverently. “I’m Ken Edwards.”

  “Daddy,” said his wife, a trifle brittlely.

  “Now you say you know that crazy character? That what’s-his-name?” Mr. Edwards became more or less businesslike. He leaned out the door to peer this way and that after Harry—which brought him very close to Dorinda. “Where’d he go?”

  “I do know him—casually,” Dorinda said, “but whatever was he up to, Mr. Edwards?”

  “Wanted to buy a pig.”

  “Really?” said Dorinda. “Oh …” She had managed to step gracefully out of Mr. Edwards’ way and therefore a half-step into the room, and now she spotted the remains. “Was that a pig? But how very, very strange.”

  “I figured he must have thought there was something valuable inside the thing.” Mr. Edwards had himself an anecdote, at least.

  “And was there?” Dorinda was absolutely fascinated.

  “There was what? Look? Twenty-eight—twenty-five—fifty-three cents! Now you tell me …”

  “But why in the world? Where did the pig come from?”

  “We bought it in a gift shop in Los Angeles,” said Mr. Edwards chummily. “Now, if this isn’t the darndest …”

  “Daddy,” his wife said, with ominous patience.

  “Now, Miss,” said Mr. Edwards, speaking to Jean, “if that man is crazy you better say so.”

  “He’s harmless,” Jean said.

  “Oh well, now,” said Dorinda, allying herself with Jean, in a way, “he is a very rich young man. Possibly a bit eccentric. Wouldn’t you say, Jean?”

  “Possibly, Dorinda,” said Jean stoically.

  “Spoiled. Right?” said Mr. Edwards, viewing with alarm. “Probably always got given whatever he took it into his head to want. Well, if you ask me, he ought to have his head examined.”

  “Ken …” His wife spoke with deadlier sweetness than before.

  “How come you were going along with the gag?” said Mr. Edwards, turning on Jean again. He seemed to think that it took the lightning off, if he included her.

  “I have been employed,” said Jean stiffly.

  “Well, you better watch it, young lady. That’s all I say. Don’t you agree, Miss … uh … Bowie?”

  “Oh, I think he is probably harmless enough,” said Dorinda with her dainty smile. “But whatever do you suppose he imagined could be in a pig?”

  “He didn’t say. What about that, Miss?”

  And Jean smiled upon him. “You were awfully smart, Mr. Edwards.” She could purr, too, if she liked. “You guessed it.”

  “I did?”

  “Well, there were no diamonds, were there?” said Mrs. Edwards with a curling lip. “That hotel man should be here. Now we’ll miss the tour, I suppose. Such a fuss! Would you mind closing the door, Ken?”

  “Surely. Surely.”

  “I would like some privacy,” said his wife. ERROR.

  “Say, let me ask the guide if he can hold up the tour a couple of minutes, Mother. Shame to miss it. I mean, the fellow is gone. Maybe I can head off the hotel man. No use of a fuss.” Beaming with kindness, Mr. Edwards closed the door, leaving Jean on the inside, and himself on the outside with Dorinda.

  “I never,” fumed Mrs. Edwards, “heard of such a thing in my life!”

  Stoically Jean took a small pad of paper and a pencil out of her handbag and wrote down what Mrs. Edwards dictated spasmodically while she bustled. “All this way and
to miss Volendam. We live at 1541 … Now Sally Jo, stand still, dear. You want to see the people in their wooden shoes, don’t you? Park Way, that’s two words.”

  “I want some wooden shoes,” said Sally Jo, whom her mother had by hair and hairbrush. “I want wooden shoes.”

  “Now, dear, we’ll see. Park Way, Petaluma, California. Now you will mail it to Mrs. Kenneth Edwards. I think that’s fair. It was your fault that the pig broke.”

  “Of course,” said Jean. “Thank you. I’ll mail it to Sally Jo.” She bent to pick up the hundred-dollar bill and she put it on the dresser.

  “Oh no, really,” said Mrs. Edwards after a startled glance. “You take that.”

  “It’s not mine,” said Jean. “It’s Sally Jo’s. Why, she can buy enough wooden shoes for all her little friends, can’t she?” Revenge, however small, was sweet.

  Mrs. Edwards’ eyes glazed. The phone rang. The poor woman sighed, harassed on all sides, and went to answer. The child was eyeing Jean thoughtfully. Then, holding her half-braided top hair in one hand, Sally Jo began to kick a piece of the pig around on the carpet.

  Jean didn’t want to go out into the corridor and encounter Dorinda or the little man or anybody. Harry was off, doing something about flying away. She knew that because he had flapped his wings. She didn’t particularly want to encounter him, either, until she felt more … Well, she wasn’t ready.

  She said, “Shall I pick up the pieces? Or may I finish doing her hair?”

  Mrs. Edwards was saying, “Yes, Ken. Yes, I suppose …” She was nodding.

  Jean took this for permission, and put her hands on the child’s hair.

  “Don’t pull,” said Sally Jo.

  “Well, I won’t,” said Jean, sorting the strands in competent fingers, “but I’d sure like to,” she added honestly.

  The child’s eyes met hers in the mirror. (Oh, you little pig, thought Jean. What you’re in for, someday! You poor little pink pig.)

  Mrs. Edwards, on the phone, was promising to try. She hadn’t had a bit of rest, but she would try. She would, in fact, be right down and Ken had better be ready to go.

  Dorinda must be somewhere in the picture still, Jean guessed.

  The mother hung up and, seeing her daughter placid and Jean skillfully arranging the hair, she sighed. “They do say to change your shoes.” The harassed woman rummaged. “They do say it is wise.

  The child said, “How come you’d like to pull my hair?” This child could read emotional states? Had read Jean’s pity?

  “Because you didn’t care about the pig. You never did. You only wanted somebody else not to have it.” (So preach, thought Jean. That’ll help, that will.)

  “Well, but she was so dumb,” said Sally Jo. “Her and her old caw-sill.”

  “I’m such a mess,” cried Mrs. Edwards, hands to her head, “but there’s no time.” She put hairpins into her mouth.

  “What,” said Jean softly, “is a caw-sill?”

  “A castle, silly! Castle,” Sally Jo translated by using the American flat a. “She talked dumb, like that, all the time. She didn’t fool me. Nobody lives in any old caw-sill anymore, do they?”

  Jean couldn’t speak.

  “Boppy-goo. Bobby-goo. That’s the silliest name I ever heard in my life.

  “Petaluma,” murmured Jean. “Now, there’s a sensible name for a place to live.”

  “Of course, stupid.”

  “And Sally Jo. There’s a sensible name for a girl,” said Jean, concealing hope, fear and astonishment as she struggled with a hair clasp. “Not like Deirdre.”

  “That’s the silliest name I ever heard in my life!” cackled Sally Jo. “She didn’t fool me.”

  Jean sighed. “No, I guess not. I guess nobody can fool you, now that you are—thank God—eight and a half years old.” She took her hands away. “Okay?”

  But the child had been startled by her vehemence. Mrs. Edwards said, “Oh, thanks very much. That looks very nice. Sorry we are so rushed, but they’ll only wait ten minutes. Oh—” She caught herself being automatically social. “My dear,” Mrs. Edwards had to be wise, “ought you to be traveling with that … that person?”

  “He isn’t interested in me,” said Jean.

  Mrs. Edwards’ eyes rolled, contemplating horrors of abnormality. “But how could you have taken on …? You are so young. Did you say employment?”

  “The salary,” Jean said, “is a thousand dollars a week.”

  “Ah, but you must remember,” said Mrs. Edwards, when she had come out of shock, “that money is not everything. But I thought …” This woman was about to remember that Jean had been working in a gift shop.

  Jean said vaguely, “I’m sure you are right.” And started for the door.

  Sally Jo said, “Hey, aren’t you going to Volendam?”

  Jean shook her head.

  “I want you to go, too. I want—”

  “But I,” said Jean gently, “don’t want. Goodbye. Good luck, little pig.”

  Mrs. Edwards was mumbling around her lipstick, but Jean let herself quietly out of the room.

  There was no one lurking. She found the stairs again and toiled up to her room. Her coat and her bag were gone, as she had more than half expected them to be. Jean turned away and decided against the elevator. She went slowly down all the stairs and there she found a door to a narrow hall and, at the end of the hall, the light of day. So Jean crept out of the hotel. Here she was, all alone by herself, on the streets of Amsterdam.

  She knew she ought to ask, but not in the hotel where the watchers and the listeners were. She came around the corner and saw the Americans milling around their bus. No use asking them, they wouldn’t know. It would be the nearest one, naturally. She’d find it by herself. Or else she’d never find it.

  She walked on. It occurred to her that she had not seen this lovely old city; she had heard hardly a word in the language of its people. Maybe she would. Maybe she was stranded here and she would simply stay. She might get a job. Who was to say that she might not try? She was all alone in the world. She had her Aunt Jessie in Denver, Colorado, who didn’t really care very much.

  Then she saw the steeple. So Jean walked slowly over the bridge. She saw a boat below, in the canal. She saw the row of tiny cars along the embankment. She saw the tall and mellow old façades. Then she saw Harry Fairchild.

  She ran and he grabbed her. “About to come after you. Cab’s waiting. We’re on a flight to Dublin. Barely going to make it.”

  They tumbled in and the driver took off.

  Harry was busy looking behind. “Anybody follow you?”

  “It doesn’t matter much.” Jean was quivering like a rabbit in its burrow. Safe, at last? Oh, nonsense!

  “I’m calling home as soon as I can do it with any peace and quiet,” he went on. “Meantime, we’re off. May as well be. And no hot pursuit, that I can see.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “They know where we’re going next.”

  “Huh?”

  “They’ll guess,” she said turning on him fiercely. “Do you think that little man missed me poring over the map of Ireland for hours and hours? Stupid that I am!”

  Harry put his hand around her wrist. She was throbbing.

  “Hey, soldier,” he said.

  “It makes me nervous. Excuse, please, but this isn’t my métier. I don’t think I’m devious enough, for one thing.” Jean was afraid she might start to cry, and this made her sound very cross.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he drawled. “Duck to water, I’d have said. You sure got that miserable brat off the hook. How did you know she was eight and a half?”

  “Because she might not have been seven.”

  “Again, please?”

  “There was a chance, wasn’t there?” She bit his head off, figuratively speaking.

  “Good thinking.”

  “Oh, stop trying to cheer me up. Please. We blew it and you know it.” She looked at, but couldn’t see, the city of Amsterdam and env
irons.

  Harry leaned back. “Always look on the dark side. Okay. So Dorinda now knows it’s … alligators. That is, if she cares.”

  “She seemed to know that somebody ought to be seven years old,” said Jean grimly.

  “She did, at that. She did, at that. Well. Well. We’ll just have to look out for Dorinda-baby, and the man in the hat, and whatever other assorted parties there may be. Still—why should we worry too much, when we don’t even know ourselves, once we hit the ould sod, where to begin to fight? Answer me that.”

  “I will,” said Jean, “but not now.”

  “Huh?”

  “Not in a cab. Not here. I don’t trust anybody.” She fought tears.

  “All right,” said Harry gently.

  “I do know where to begin,” Jean said in a low voice. “I got … a word.”

  “The green—”

  “Shush!”

  He said in a moment, “Honey, did you think I’d run out on you? If you had a bad minute there …”

  “You were waiting at the church, weren’t you? Oh, be quiet.” By a tremendous effort she did not cry.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Harry. “No use moaning and groaning and carrying-on, that’s true. Still, to while away the journey why don’t I change the subject? Did I ever tell you about the decipherment of Linear B? It’s one of the most fascinating—”

  Jean said coolly, “I’ve read the book. If you think it’s so darned fascinating, why don’t you go to work and de cipher Linear A?”

  Harry was stunned where he sat.

  “Well?” She turned her head and smiled. (She was okay now.) “You’re rich,” she argued. “You’re not too stupid. Maybe you need a hobby.”

  Harry sat very still. Chow-ee! This one was different.

  At that moment, in the city, Dorinda was on the telephone to London.

  “Pig,” she said. “Can you hear me? P for Polly, I for Irving, G for George.”