The Chinese Egg (23 page)

Skinner said, “Where'd you get that?”

“Radio this evening.”

Skinner said, “We got different gear.”

Jakey said, “Don't know how much that goes for.”

“What does Smithy say?”

“Says you've got to get out of here by Friday. Keep on the move, he says and don't let that fat slob anywhere where she can talk, see?”

“Can't you grow a beard or something?” Bus asked Skinner.

“In two days? Who d'you think I am? Tarzan?”

“Pad yourself out a bit, then. Look as if you'd got some weight about you. Tell you what. Bus can get you a wig.”

Even in the state she was in, Maureen knew this was the wrong thing to say to Skinner. He minded people noticing the way his hair was. She heard him grunt, then Fred said, “What're you going to do about that cow?” and she knew he meant her.

“Get rid of her,” Jakey said.

“We can't let her go now, she'd gab.”

“I didn't say let her go, I said, Get rid of her.”

“Smithy wouldn't like that. You know how he is.” That was Bus.

“Anyway, I got to have someone to see to the kid.”

“You said she wasn't any good at that either.”

“She's better than Skinner'd be,” Fred said, giggling.

“She's useless, but I got to have someone.”

“I reckon you're stuck with her then, Skinner man.”

“Rather you than me.”

“Once we got the cash we shan't need her any more.”

“Or if we don't.”

“Either way, she'd be better out of the way. And from what she says, no one isn't going looking for her. That's why I took her, see? Had to be a bird who hadn't got no one.”

Maureen, lying on the floor and hurting, heard this talk but didn't take it all in. She knew they were talking about her and she knew it wasn't nice. Their voices were unkind. She wasn't sure what exactly they meant to do, but like an animal she understood the smell of danger. They were frightened, and frightened people are cruel. She did hear the last thing Skinner said and the words rang in her ears. A bird that hadn't got no one. That was her.

She heard Skinner say something else. He asked Fred, “Your old woman got any scissors?”

“What d'you want scissors for?”

“Just bring them. You'll see.”

Then there was more talk she didn't listen to. She didn't think it was about her. She wondered whether she could get up and go downstairs and lie on the bed. Her head hurt badly. She moved, but someone kicked her in the side and she fell back on the floor and groaned.

“Stay put, I haven't finished with you,” Skinner said. Someone was holding her chin and turning her head sideways, and pulling at her hair. He pulled it roughly and she cried out, partly because it hurt and partly because she realized what he was doing. Skinner was cutting it off. Cutting off her hair, the only thing she really liked about herself. She tried to stop him, but Fred caught both her hands and held them, and she was frightened to move her head too much with those scissor blades so near. Skinner wouldn't bother if he cut her neck or her ear, so she lay still, tears trickling down on to the floor. He was cutting off her hair close to her head, shorter than it had been since Maureen could remember. She could feel the blade of the scissors grazing her scalp, and she called out, “No, Skinner! Don't take it all off! Please, Skinner, no!”

No answer. Only the cutting went on. She could hear him sort of gasping, he was cutting in a sort of fury, as if he couldn't do it enough. Bus said, “Here, steady on, man. You don't want to make her look like a skinhead, do you?” Skinner didn't answer, but Jakey said, “Stop it, you! She looks like a scarecrow. No one couldn't forget what she looks like, now.”

Skinner said, “She looks different, anyway.” And to Maureen he said, “Get up and go downstairs.”

She had difficulty getting up. Her stomach still hurt where Fred had punched her, and her mouth felt huge and awful and her head felt cold. She looked at the floor where she'd been lying and saw it covered with hair. Her hair, fair and curly, masses and masses of it. She started to cry again, she really couldn't help it. Skinner said, “Stop that, unless you want another lesson,” and she tried to swallow her sobs. Bus, looking at her critically, said, “Why don't you put her into pants and pass her off as a fellow?”

“Who's ever seen a fellow with cheeks like that?” Fred said, sneering at her behind.

“Get out,” Skinner said to Maureen and she went off and down the stairs to the beetly bedroom. She went over and looked at herself in the mirror by the dim yellow electric light, and what she saw made her cry more than ever. Skinner had cut her hair right off, jaggedly, close to the scalp which showed through in places. It looked terrible, and it being cut so close made her face look fatter. It was all swollen up anyway because of being hit and crying, her eyelids were red and there was dirt all over her where she'd lain on the floor and the tears had brought dust off on her. Jakey had been right when he said she looked like a scarecrow. And then Maureen heard Skinner's voice again. “A bird who hasn't got no one.” Nor, like this, who ever would have anyone. Maureen sat in front of the speckled mirror and howled.

Her howls woke Linda, and Linda cried too, so presently Maureen wiped her sore eyes and got out the tin of babyfood and lit the gas fire and went out to the horrid toilet in the basement area for water and made up the next feed. She didn't care whether it was time for it or not, she was going to give Linda something that would keep her quiet. She got it all ready, and she went over to pick the whimpering baby up. She picked her out of the carrycot and felt that she was wet, so she changed her first and then sat on the floor with her back against the bed, the baby in her lap and the bottle ready to give her. This way she could rest her back and have a proper lap the baby didn't slide off all the time.

This was when the miracle happened. The baby, not really ravenous because it wasn't all that time since her last feed, took the bottle's teat in her mouth and took a few sucks and then she stopped. She pushed the teat out of her mouth and she looked at
Maureen. Whether she saw the puffy, red-rimmed eyes, the ragged hair, the swollen mouth, didn't matter. She looked at Maureen for a moment and before she started feeling for the bottle and sucking again, she smiled. At Maureen. Pleased that Maureen was there. Wanting her.

During the rest of the baby's feed, great gentle drops fell over her face from Maureen's already overworked eyes. But they made her feel better, this time, not worse.

Coming back with Chris from the swimming-baths that Thursday afternoon, Vicky was caught by Mrs. Stanford and called into the kitchen, while Chris went upstairs to dry her dripping hair.

“Vicky! Come in here a minute.”

Vicky came and her mother shut the kitchen door behind her. Something serious, then.

“There's been a policeman round here to see you,” Mrs. Stanford said.

“What did he say?”

“You don't sound very surprised.”

“No.”

“You know what he came about, then? He didn't say.”

“Yes, I know.”

Mrs. Stanford waited a minute. Then she said, “If they say you've done anything wrong I don't believe it. But if you've been a bit silly, you'd better tell me. I'll have to know sooner or later, won't I?”

“I would have told you, Mum, only it's all so complicated.”

“Is it something you've done?”

“Nothing like that. We. . . Stephen and me—we went to the police first.”

Mrs. Stanford was struck by another idea. “Vicky! It isn't what we were talking about the other day? You didn't go to ask them to find out about that?”

“Yes, I did. No, wait a minute, Mum. What were we talking about? I don't remember you saying anything about it.”

“About not knowing who your father was. I thought you
might have gone to the police to ask how to find out. Only—stupid of me. You'd have gone on your own. You wouldn't have told that Stephen boy too.” She caught sight of Vicky's face. “You have! Then it was that you went to them for!”

“No, it wasn't. Honestly, it wasn't, Mum. It's something quite different.”

“But you have told Stephen about. . . about you?”

“Yes.” She knew that her Mum wouldn't miss the implications of this, but she also knew that she wouldn't make a song and dance about it. Mrs. Stanford said, “I see. Well. What was it then, you and he went to the police about?”

“About the baby. The one that got stolen last week. You remember?”

“That poor woman! I keep on thinking about her. Wondering how she keeps going. It's all of a week now, isn't it? Fancy not knowing where your baby can be for a week! What's it got to do with you, anyway?”

“You know there was that appeal on the radio? For anyone who'd noticed anything funny, to tell them. Stephen and me did hear something we thought was a bit funny, so we told them.”

“I don't see why you couldn't have told me too. Then I wouldn't have nearly jumped out of my skin when that policeman came here asking for you.”

“I'm sorry, Mum.” She really couldn't begin to explain.

“Did Chris know about this?”

“Yes. It was just we weren't sure they'd believe us, so we didn't want to say.” It sounded a bit lame, but Mrs. Stanford appeared to accept it.

“Well. I suppose at your age I shouldn't expect to know everything you do. You have to have some secrets you don't want your parents to know, even if they're nothing bad. I know I used to be like that with my Mum. Silliest things I'd keep from her, just to prove to myself I was grown up. She used to get mad at me for it.”

“We tell you a lot, Chris and me.”

“You're both good girls.”

“Is that all, Mum?”

“I suppose so. Only, Vicky. . . .”

“What?”

“Stephen's a nice boy. I can see that. Only just remember, you're still only young. Plenty of time to look around.”

“Oh, Mum. You talk as if we were going out together. Serious.”

“Sometimes things get serious before you know. Don't be in a hurry, love. It doesn't pay.”

“I'm not in a hurry.”

“Nor for the other thing. Your father, I mean. Later, if you really want it, I daresay there's ways of finding out. We could try. If it really bothers you, I would.”

Vicky knew how much her Mum didn't want it. She must be frightened that if Vicky found her real father, she'd somehow lose her. But she wouldn't, not ever, not however much Vicky found anyone else, nothing would ever measure up better than what this Mum, that she'd known all her life, had given her. She said, “Thanks, Mum,” and knew that her voice said what she meant. Then she asked, “Did that chap from the police say when he'd be coming back?”

“This evening or tomorrow morning. I said I'd tell you, so's to make sure you'd be here.”

“I wonder if he went round to Stephen's place too?” Remembering Stephen's account of how his father explained everything so that it meant something different, she giggled. “I wonder what his father thinks a policeman means?” She had to explain this to Mrs. Stanford too, but there wasn't any difficulty about that.

What Detective Chief Superintendent Price had meant to Dr. Rawlinson, who had opened the door to him under the impression it was one of the patients he saw in his study at home, was made clear to Stephen when he came back later from a visit he'd paid by himself to the Chinese section of the British Museum, to see if he could find anything like, or that would give him a clue to the nature of, the egg. Just as Vicky had been called into the kitchen, Stephen was invited to come into his father's study the moment he let himself into the house. Dr. Rawlinson sat in his usual chair, behind the leather-topped desk and motioned to what Stephen thought of as the patient's chair opposite to him. It
was lucky for him, he thought gloomily, that he wasn't invited to lie on the couch, which stood handy, and to say everything that came into his head.

“Why don't you have a glass of sherry?” Dr. Rawlinson inquired. The sherry decanter and two glasses indeed stood on the desk.

“No thanks.”

“Well, I think I will. I can recommend it. It's not the very driest, but it really isn't bad. For the price. Are you quite sure you won't?”

“Quite. I don't really like sherry.”

Dr. Rawlinson said, “Ah! Perhaps it is an acquired taste.”

“And anyway, why? I mean, you don't generally offer me sherry. Why now?”

“I wanted just to have a quick word with you. Without your mother.”

He was nervous, Stephen could see. He waited.

“You had a rather unexpected visitor this afternoon. Unexpected, that is, by me.”

“Vicky!” Stephen thought, but he still didn't say anything.

“He told me his name was Price. Detective Inspector, I think he said.”

“Detective Chief Superintendent,” Stephen said.

“Yes. I gathered you and he had already met.”

“I've seen him twice. Did Mum see him?”

“That's what I wanted to tell you. Fortunately she was out, so she doesn't know anything about it. I thought you and I could have a little friendly talk about this whole affair now, and decide what is best to be done.”

“Talk about what?”

“About whatever the trouble is you're in. And I want you to remember, Stephen, that as a psychiatrist I've seen a number of people in trouble, and I think I can promise that whatever it is I shan't be angry and I shan't be shocked. The fact that you are my son will make no difference.”

“Who said I was in any trouble? Didn't that Detective chap tell you what it was all about?”

“He used the expression that you ‘were helping the police with
their inquiries'. I've seen enough police procedure to know that that generally means they have suspicions which they can't yet prove. The usual method, I understand, is to go on questioning the person until he gives himself away somehow.”