The Unexpected Find

by Toby Ibbotson

  “I think so,” he said, and he opened his eyes in time to see the lower half of a pair of legs in jeans and trainers step over him and stand between him and the boys.

  “Well, that’s lucky for you two,” said the voice.

  “It was you, was it? You’re gonna get it.” Tyler stood up from where he had been kneeling beside the injured Josh and advanced towards the new arrival, clenching his fists and looking murderous.

  Now William sat up and paid attention. It was too interesting not to. He saw that the new arrival was a girl, with long, dark hair and a very determined look on her face. He watched as she moved off right to the edge of the towpath. She didn’t seem to care about Tyler at all, just turned her back on him and walked away, saying over her shoulder,

  “Run off home to mummy, you useless lump.”

  That really got Tyler going. He yelled at her and charged like a rhinoceros, and William wanted to close his eyes again but he didn’t, and he was glad he didn’t because Tyler thundered up at full speed and at the last second the girl sort of twisted round, stuck out her foot and pushed all at the same time. It really was very neat and quick, and Tyler seemed to propel himself, almost without any help at all, over the edge of the towpath and into the canal. He was pretty big and heavy, and so was the splash. William looked at Josh. He was still moaning and crying with his hands on his forehead, and you could see that he was just making a fuss. The blood was already dry and caked on his fingers. He wanted to make it seem worse than it was. William had seen people do that before, but they were usually small children. Tyler was invisible below the canal bank, but William could hear him shouting and splashing about.

  The girl had walked back and was standing next to William. He looked up at her.

  “Will he drown?” he asked.

  “Not a chance. It’s only waist deep. Muddy bottom though, and the nearest steps are a hundred yards away. He won’t get out in a hurry.”

  She paused. “Can you get up? We should be off before that other twerp decides he’s not actually dying.”

  William stood up and looked at her more carefully. She was wearing a grey woollen jumper that was about ten sizes too big and almost came down to her knees and she was breathing quite hard. He could tell by her eyes, which were a nice dark brown colour, and the way her mouth was sort of thinned out at the edges, that she was not only angry but also worried, almost a bit scared. He couldn’t understand why someone like her should be scared. She had just polished off Josh and Tyler with no bother at all.

  “Are you OK to walk?” she said.

  William got to his feet. His shoulder and left knee were a bit sore, but otherwise there was nothing much wrong with him.

  The girl reached out a hand and brushed off his sleeve. William flinched a bit, but he let her do it. Then she asked, “Why did they start on you?”

  William remembered. His hand flew to his pocket, and felt the hard shape there.

  “They wanted … something.”

  The girl’s sharp eyes had followed his hand to his pocket. She shrugged.

  “They would have used any excuse,” she said.

  And because she really didn’t seem to care whether he told her or not, William told her.

  “I found something interesting under the fallen tree. I don’t know what it is. But it’s special, I’m sure.” He took a deep breath. “I can show you if you want.”

  The girl looked at him very seriously, as though she knew he had said something difficult.

  “Thank you, but I wouldn’t show it to anybody if I were you,” she said after a moment. “That’ll make it less special.”

  They set off along the towpath. Tyler was still spluttering and yelling, and Josh was trying to pull him up the side of the canal. They walked on in silence for a while.

  “My name is William Parkinson.”

  “I’m Judy.”

  She walked fast, almost angrily, and William almost had to trot to keep up with her.

  “I got into a temper, and I shouldn’t have,” she said quietly.

  “But if you hadn’t, then I wouldn’t have my interesting find any more.”

  She stopped abruptly, and turned towards him.

  “You’re not the kind of person who looks ahead very much, are you?”

  “Yes I am, or I’d be bumping into things all the time.”

  She laughed, which made William feel a lot better.

  “Exactly what I meant. You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

  “What are you talking about then?”

  “When people lose their temper, it has consequences. Cause and effect. Karma. Whatever. I don’t need that right now.”

  Judy stopped on the pathway, lost in thought. It’s like she’s not really here, William thought. But then her eyes snapped back into focus.

  “Look, William, you can get to school from here, can’t you? Those two will have gone the other way.”

  So William walked on towards school by himself. It had been a very interesting morning already.

  In maths, William sat quite far back, with lots of desks and pupils in front of him. Next to him sat Mr Gordon the assistant. Mr Gordon was quite a nice person, and William didn’t mind being assisted. But today William had noticed that Mr Gordon seemed a bit tired. It was Monday and Mr Gordon was often a bit tired on Mondays. Once he had actually nodded off, which was a very good description, because his head had suddenly dropped forward and then bounced back again as though it was on a spring. He had looked at William and said, “Sorry about that, I had a night on the tiles,” so William had wondered if he’d been climbing roofs. Mr Gordon had said, “No, not exactly, but you aren’t far off,” and they had gone back to the maths book, with Mr Gordon pointing at stuff, and William looking at it.

  On this Monday Mr Gordon managed to stay awake, but there was quite a lot happening in the classroom, as usual. The two girls in front of him were giggling about something, and a boy kept asking Mrs Dench silly questions, and she was trying to keep her temper. But William didn’t really have time for school, and certainly not for maths. He always had more important things to do, like writing in his notebook, and now that he had cleaned up the thing he had found under the fallen tree, he very much wanted to look at it some more and work out what it was. Then the classroom door opened, and Miss Jameson who sat in the office put her head round the door.

  “Excuse me,” she said, “but Mr Greaves would like to see William Parkinson.”

  William didn’t mind; he liked Mr Greaves the headmaster. He knew about almost everything, and he had told William about Roman glass and said that there were certainly Romans around here a long time ago, and that he would look out a book for William to borrow. Another time William had been examining a fire extinguisher and it had gone off and sprayed white powder all over the corridor, and Mr Greaves had gathered everybody in the assembly hall and said, “Who is responsible?” and William had said, “It was me.” Then Mr Greaves had said, “I hope you all heard that. That is what is known as a straight answer to a straight question, and there are plenty of people in this room who should take a leaf from William Parkinson’s book.” William had been worried about that, because he didn’t want anybody to take leaves out of his book, but nobody actually had. William and Mr Greaves had cleaned up the mess in the corridor together, and they had talked a lot. He had told William that taking a leaf out of someone’s book was a metaphor, and meant following someone’s example.

  William walked down that same corridor now and went straight in to Mr Greaves’ room. There were already quite a lot of people there, sitting on chairs arranged in a ring. Josh and Tyler were there, and so was Judy. Josh had a huge plaster on his forehead. Next to Tyler was a lady with very blonde hair all piled up on her head and very red lipstick, wearing shoes with very high pointy heels. Next to Josh was another lady, who had a tracksuit on. She was wearing shoes that William thought must have hurt her feet a lot. They were so small, and the rest of her was so big.

>   “Come in, William,” said Mr Greaves. “These ladies are Josh and Tyler’s mothers. I talked to your mother, but she let me know that she’s not very well and so couldn’t come in.”

  William took a seat next to Mr Greaves. Judy was sitting opposite him, but he didn’t say anything to her because he could immediately see that she was completely closed and didn’t want to talk to anybody. Her dark eyes were directed straight at him, but she wasn’t looking at him at all. Mr Greaves looked at Judy and said,

  “And of course your father really should be here, Judy. We can leave this whole matter until he can get away.”

  “No,” said Judy. “It’s fine, I don’t mind.”

  “Well, you are old enough to make that decision. But we may have to talk to him later.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Mr Greaves gave a slight pause and cleared his throat.

  “Right then,” he said. “We have a situation here that we need to discuss.”

  William looked up at Mr Greaves. He had a long nose with a sort of dent at the top, almost a little shelf that was just right for holding his glasses in place and stopping them from sliding down to the tip and falling off. On the top of his head was some thin brown hair, and on his brow were quite a lot of wrinkles. Once when William was in class two he had asked Mr Greaves why he had so many, and he had answered, “The question is, rather, why there aren’t more, William.”

  Mr Greaves continued. “William, could you tell us all what happened in Canal Park this morning?”

  William was silent. He thought about the fallen tree, and the great big hole it had left in the ground, and now … now he would have to tell Josh and Tyler and the mothers everything. He tried to open his mouth, but it wouldn’t open.

  “You were walking to school along the towpath, weren’t you?” said Mr Greaves in a kind voice. “What happened then?”

  “Oh then,” said William, “Then…” And he started to talk. He had only got to the bit where he had fallen down when Josh started in.

  “He’s lying, he’s making it all up. He’s daft in the head, everybody knows that.”

  Josh’s mother put a chubby arm round her son’s shoulder. “There, there, pet,” she said. “We know you’re upset, what with your injury and everything.”

  Mr Greaves spoke. He never spoke loudly, and now his voice was very quiet and very clear. The staff at the school called it his scary voice. Looking at him, William saw that he had taken off his spectacles.

  “Josh, if you call William daft again, I shall exclude you from school for a week and my report on the matter will go to the Local Education Authority.”

  Josh’s mother looked shocked. She tried to talk but Mr Greaves held up his hand to silence her.

  “Your contribution will be welcome later, Mrs Bilker. Go on please, William.”

  So William did. He told them everything. And when he was finished, Mr Greaves gave Josh and Tyler time to talk.

  “We never did anything,” said Tyler. “We were just mucking about. Joking a bit. Then she went and chucked a stone right at Josh. It could ’ave killed him, or put out an eye or something.”

  Tyler pointed his finger at Judy. She didn’t even look at him.

  “But William was on the ground,” said Mr Greaves. “How is that just joking?” Tyler’s mother pursed her red lips, pressed her legs even tighter together and sucked in air, expanding her pink cashmere sweater.

  “He just fell,” said Josh.

  “Surely you must take into account that the boy may be … fantasizing,” Tyler’s mother squawked. “I mean, he’s obviously a bit … imaginative, if you see what I mean.”

  “I certainly do see what you mean,” said Mr Greaves, in his quietest voice yet, “and so, I assure you, does William, who is neither deaf nor stupid. And who never lies,” he added.

  William saw Mrs Louch’s sweater deflate, and heard air hissing out from between her squashed-up lips. After that William stopped listening. There was a picture hanging on the wall of Mr Greaves’ room that hadn’t been there last time. It was of mountains, and there were some sheep and a shepherd in the foreground, and a bit of a lake. William thought that it might be a picture from a story, and he tried to think what story it would be.

  Then he heard Mr Greaves say, “You can go now, William, thank you,” and he saw that everybody was getting up to leave. “I shall inform you all of my decision before the weekend,” Mr Greaves went on. “Judy, stay behind, please.”

  When everybody else had gone, Mr Greaves got up from his chair and stood looking out of the window. He spoke without turning around.

  “This is pretty serious, you know. Throwing stones is aggressive behaviour. I could see that it wasn’t much of an injury and I know Josh well enough, but he wasn’t completely wrong. You could have blinded him.”

  Judy was still in her chair, leaning forward with her hands stuffed under her thighs, staring at the floor. She muttered something.

  “I didn’t hear you,” said Mr Greaves as he turned back from the window and returned to his desk.

  “Very unlikely,” said Judy a little louder. She was still staring at the floor. “Velocity, mass, trajectory. His head was at an angle, so one eye wasn’t visible at all… The other one had the potential area of impact reduced by at least fifty per cent. And I’m a good shot. I would say my chances of damaging his eye permanently were less than nought point nought three … under three percent,” she added helpfully.

  Mr Greaves sighed. Jock Henderson the maths teacher had warned him about this. Only last week over tea in the staffroom he had said, “She needs more challenge, you know. She’s bored to death.”

  “I’m afraid people don’t calculate probabilities in this kind of situation. They are satisfied with, Did she throw a stone or not?”

  “Well, I did,” said Judy, but more quietly this time.

  “Yes, you did. Look, Judy, I really do need to talk to your father – is there no way I can get in touch with him?”

  “He’s on a field trip. There’s no reception up there.”

  “So you say. I can’t decide anything until he has been informed. Please let me know as soon as he’s back.”

  When Judy had gone, Mr Greaves sat down at his desk.

  “Here comes another wrinkle,” he said to himself, and he reached for the telephone.

  2

  Time passed, and it was Halloween. In the early dark of autumn a bright half-moon shone in the sky, spreading its light across the city rooftops. All across Europe millions of candles flickered on millions of graves, asking the dead to leave the living in peace. William didn’t go out on Halloween. He didn’t have anywhere in particular to go, and he knew what the street he lived on would be like that evening, with even more people than usual. Christmas and New Year and Saturday evenings after a home game were the worst times, but Halloween was pretty bad too. William lived with his mum on a street called Sydenham Street. It wasn’t a very nice street, and at night under the orange glow of the streetlamps it was a bit frightening. After the pubs closed at the weekend there was always a lot of shouting and sometimes there were fights. He had got used to hearing police sirens wailing, or the sound of glass breaking. On Friday and Saturday evenings the thudding beat of dance music from the club across the road went on until two or three in the morning. He was used to that too.

  William and his mum had the top flat in a house that had been built for one family but now housed two. You went in through the front door and then straight up the stairs to a door made out of white-painted plywood that had been put in to close off the landing on the upper floor.

  The flat was cramped, and almost every room was small: the kitchen at the back was small, and so was the bathroom, and so was William’s room, which had room for his bed and a cupboard and a small table and chair. It was a tall thin room with a high ceiling, but he had a window that looked out on to the backyard, and he liked that better than looking out into the street.

  William heard his moth
er moving about in the bathroom, and then he heard her call,

  “William, are you in?”

  He came out of his room and found his mother standing at the open door. She had her party clothes on and had done her make-up.

  “I’m going out for a bit. Jerry’s taking me to a Halloween do up in Brinkside, just for a drink and a bit of dancing.”

  “OK.”

  “Aren’t you going to meet some friends, or something?”

  “No, I don’t want to.”

  “Suit yourself. You can watch some telly in my room if you like. I won’t be too long.”

  “OK.”

  William didn’t often go into his mum’s room, even though it was the only non-small room in the house. He thought he might like it better if she didn’t smoke quite a lot; sometimes when she brought home a friend and a few bottles from the pub they both smoked, and it really made him cough.

  The doorbell rang.

  “That’s Jerry. Bye.” And she was gone. He heard a man’s voice say something, and his mother’s voice replying, “Don’t be daft, he’s fine on his own.”

  William went back to his room and took a cardboard box from under the table. This was where he kept his collection of interesting things. He took out the thing he had found in Canal Park, and sat down on his bed to look at it, as he had done a hundred times since he found it, and wondered what it could be. He had gone back to the park a few days after finding it; and the great tree had already been sawn up into huge logs by the parks department. That meant that he could see the tree rings clearly, and he tried counting them but it wasn’t as easy as you might think; sometimes you couldn’t see where one stopped and the next one began. But he had got to more than a hundred and twenty before he gave up. So this thing that he held in his hand – this thing that looked a bit like a rusty spoon, or a fork, or some kind of tool – was at least a hundred and twenty years old and it could be even older. It might be Roman, thought William. He would have to ask Mr Greaves if the Romans had spoons and forks. Anyway, it was long and thin, and one end was flattened out and rounded, and the other end was bent over, and the bent over bit was divided into two parts. It might be a spoon if the round end had been flattened under a heavy stone, and it might be a fork if the other end had got bent somehow. But it also might be a sort of scraper. In fact, it might be just about anything.