The Chinese Egg (6 page)

“Anyone can what, Mum?”

“Take away a baby.”

Vicky just had time to say, “No!” when she heard the front door open and Chris came in, followed by Stephen.

“I thought you'd gone to the pictures,” Mrs. Stanford said.

“So did I.” Chris, for once, was angry.

“What's up, then?”

“Ask Stephen.”

Stephen, horribly embarrassed, said, “I'm really sorry. I just had to come back.”

“Feeling bad?” Mrs. Stanford asked, ready to sympathize if there was really something wrong.

“Not like that. It was something I read in the paper.” He had an Evening Standard in his hand. He glanced at Vicky, but she wouldn't meet his eyes.

“Why were you reading the paper at the pictures?”

“We were in the queue. It looked as if we were going to have to wait to get in, so I bought a paper.”

“Something about someone you know?” Mrs. Stanford asked.

“Not exactly. Only something I ought to do something about, so I asked Chris if she'd mind skipping the film. I had to get back, you see.” It was clear to Mrs. Stanford that Stephen was appealing to Chris as much as to herself. She waited for him to excuse himself and go, but he didn't. Instead he said to Vicky, “Could I talk to you for a minute?” Mrs. Stanford couldn't understand this at all. Nor could she understand why Vicky looked so much disturbed by the suggestion and glanced at Chris. But Chris did seem to know what was going on. She said to Vicky, “Was it. . .?” and when Vicky nodded, Chris said to Stephen, “You ought to have told me what it was about. I wouldn't have minded if I'd known.”

“What's all this about?” Mrs. Stanford demanded.

Stephen said carefully, “I'm sorry. It must sound crazy. It's just that there's a story in the paper that might be something to do with something that happened to us.”

“Let's go round to the coffee bar,” Chris said.

“You'll come?” Stephen said directly to Vicky.

“I was just getting supper ready.”

“That'll wait. You aren't in a hurry, are you, Mum?” Chris said.

“Anyway I can be getting on with it,” Mrs. Stanford said.

“You said you were tired,” Vicky said.

“I'll do whatever it is when we get back. You've got to come,
Vicky. It's to do with you,” Chris said. Mrs. Stanford found the whole situation more and more puzzling. Vicky had as good as said she didn't like this boy much, and yet here she was, clearly not wanting to, agreeing with Chris that she'd got to go. She washed her hands slowly under the cold tap of the sink and went to get her coat. Chris and Stephen stood around silent, waiting for her. When she reappeared they all three went out, Chris saying, “Don't do anything about supper, Mum, we shan't be more than half an hour. I'll help Vicky with it when we get back,” Vicky saying nothing, and the boy saying, “Good-bye. I'm sorry to upset everything like this.” Polite. In spite of what Vicky had said, her Mum rather liked the look of the boy.

Sitting in the coffee bar, Stephen, Vicky and Chris looked at each other. Then Chris said, “Well?”

Stephen said to Vicky, “You saw about the baby?”

Vicky, very pale, nodded.

Chris said, “What about a baby?”

Vicky said, “You know when I thought I saw in the paper about a baby being stolen? And we went looking down the High Street and there wasn't anything?”

“I'm not likely to forget. It was me told a woman her baby wasn't safe, and boy, was she furious!” Chris said with feeling.

“It's happened. It's happened, Chris,” Vicky said.

“It hasn't! It can't have! Who said?” Chris demanded.

“On the news on the telly. I saw it,” Vicky said.

“And it was in the paper I had this evening.”

“But how d'you know it's the same? It could have happened anywhere,” Chris said.

“No. It's the same. I know it is,” Vicky said.

“You said it was only your imagination. . . .”

“That's what I wanted to think.”

“I think she's right, Chris. The thing is, I saw it too,” Stephen said.

“When?”

“Last week. When you and she were in the café.”

“So it was you outside the window?” Chris said, momentarily distracted.

“You saw it?” Vicky asked.

“Sort of. And then you came out and wandered down the High Street.”

“I was looking to see if there were any prams with no one looking after them.”

“So I didn't like it. I went away.”

“But you really did see it. A baby being stolen?” Vicky asked.

“I saw a girl looking into an empty pram and saying, ‘It was only a minute.' Terribly upset,” Stephen said.

“Where?” Chris asked.

“I don't know. Nowhere I knew. Outside a supermarket. But that's no help, there are hundreds.”

“What I don't understand is how you and Vicky see the same things. You both saw the accident,” Chris said.

“I saw a car come up behind a blue van and I thought it was going to hit the old lady. Then it wasn't there, there wasn't anyone on the crossing.”

“And then it happened. Just like you'd both seen it. Right?”

“I suppose so.”

“And now it's happened again. Well, you say it has. How d'you know it's the one you saw? How do you know?”

Stephen said slowly, “I don't know about Vicky, but both times I've seen what happened like in a picture. With. . .”

Vicky cut in. “Like in a frame? Funny-shaped pieces round it, dark?”

“Yes. Dark. Like—like battlements.”

“That's right. Like the top of a castle. And the picture's very bright in the middle.”

They looked at each other with the relief of shared experience. But the relief didn't last. Stephen said, “I don't understand. Why do we see something that hasn't happened yet? I can't see how we can.”

“Mum says people think they can. In crystal balls and that. Or the stars,” Chris said.

“The stars! They're always wrong,” Vicky said.

“Did you see it too?” Stephen asked Chris.

“Me? No. Thank goodness. I'd be scared out of my wits,” Chris said.

“It's horrible,” Vicky said.

“I wish I understood,” Stephen said.

“Should we tell the police? Or something?”

“Who'd believe us?”

“Suppose it happens again? Suppose you and Vicky see something else? How will you prevent it happening?” Chris asked.

“I don't know. It's all so vague. If we don't know where it's happening or when, what can we do?”

“Perhaps you could see some more about the baby. Why couldn't you and Vicky see where it is? Then we could tell someone. Rescue it. Why don't you do that?” Chris said enthusiastically. She was disappointed that neither Stephen nor Vicky seemed eager to agree.

“I wish we understood how it works. What's so maddening is that we're wasting it. We know, but we don't do anything,” Stephen said.

“Let's try everything we can think of to get you and Vicky. seeing a picture again.”

Stephen said, “Wait a minute. I've got an idea.”

The girls waited.

“It was something you said. An idea sort of began to come into my head and then went away again.”

“I said let's try everything.”

“Not that bit. I know! You said—don't you see? Vicky and I have always seen the things at the same time.”

“That's right! And when you've been together.”

“Not that time in the caff, when I saw it in the paper. Stephen wasn't there then,” Vicky said.

“No more he was.”

“But I was quite close. I was just outside the café,” Stephen said.

“And we were all of us there the first time, the time with the blue van.”

“Perhaps it's only here it works,” Chris said.

“Seems a funny place,” Vicky objected.

“Funny? Why funny?”

“Not mysterious enough. You know. Daytime, and lots of people about.”

“It's worth trying, though, isn't it? Isn't it?” Chris said to Stephen.

“I suppose so. Though I agree with Vicky. I don't think it's only that.”

“What d'you mean? That there's something else we don't know about?”

“I just think there must be. If that's all, why doesn't it happen to other people too? Why Vicky and me?”

“I dunno. P'raps it's like dog whistles,” Vicky said.

“What about dog whistles?”

“You know. You can buy whistles that only dogs can hear, humans can't. The note's too high or something. Perhaps we're hearing something other people can't. Seeing, I mean. It just could be something like that.”

“Vicky! You're brilliant! Isn't she, Steve?”

Although he wished he'd thought of it himself, Stephen looked at Vicky with a new respect. He had to admit it was a good idea, and it immediately made him feel better about the whole thing. He hated the thought that they'd got mixed up in something spooky; and as for magic, the whole idea was ridiculously babyish. But Vicky had suggested something with a perfectly good scientific background. He could even imagine his father saying, “Yes, not beyond the bounds of possibility.” Only then his father would go on and start analysing dogs. Or whistles. In spite of himself Stephen half smiled.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Only, Vicky,” it was the first time he'd called her by her name, “why do you think it might happen in one special place?”

“No idea.”

“Anyway, let's try it out. Let's come back here tomorrow and see if you do see anything,” Chris urged.

“All right. When?”

“Not too early. It's bad enough having to get up at quarter-past eight every day for school.”

“Ten too early for you?”

“Make it eleven.”

“I'll order the coffees if I get here first.”

“Fine.”

Stephen said directly to Vicky, “You'll come, won't you?” He knew Chris would, Vicky was more unpredictable.

“Of course she's coming,” Chris said.

“Yes, I'll come,” Vicky said.

But the next day in the café, nothing happened that couldn't be explained in the most ordinary ways. Stephen, Vicky and Chris drank coffee and shared an enormous number of packets of biscuits. To the amazement of the sloppy girl behind the counter, they tried the experiment of being all together inside, two in and one outside, two out and one in, all three outside. No one saw anything that wasn't there, and there all the time. There were no accidents on the dangerous crossing, and every pram that passed them was capably filled by baby. Chris was simply disappointed, Vicky's and Stephen's disappointment was tinged by relief. If they couldn't see anything then they also needn't do anything.

“We'll have to be getting back. It's nearly dinner-time,” Chris said.

“Dinner? It's not lunch-time yet,” Stephen said.

“Goodness! What time do you have lunch then?”

“About one o'clock. Sometimes later. It depends whether my father's there or not.”

“Of course! I forgot. Posh people call dinner lunch, don't they?” Chris said, unembarrassed.

“I'm not posh,” Stephen said, red with shame.

“Yes, you are. Compared to us, anyway. You needn't worry about it, we don't mind, do we, Vicky? It's only Dad who goes on and on about how awful it is to be one of the upper classes. I wonder sometimes what he'd do if he won a lot of money on the pools or something, so that he was rich for a change.”

“I know. He'd give it all to his blinking Party,” Vicky said.

“That's right, so he would. To give everyone guns so they could kill off the aristocrats when the revolution begins.”

“Is he a Communist?” Stephen asked.

“Not like that. Just very keen on workers' rights and Unions and that sort of thing. He'll certainly think you're up to no good when he knows you have lunch instead of dinner,” Chris said, teasing.

“Anyway, Chris is right, we'd better go,” Vicky said.

“Wait a minute. I've just thought of something. When you were in here before, you saw about the baby in a newspaper, didn't you?” Stephen asked.

“Yes. Evening Standard, it was. Same as you saw last night.”

“I'll get one of today's. It might be something to do with the paper,” Stephen said, and was off before they could answer. He was back in a minute with the midday Standard in his hand.

“Vicky. You look at the middle bit and I'll look at the outside.”

Chris craned over Vicky's shoulder to read. Vicky turned the pages slowly and unwillingly and breathed a deep sigh as she finished. “Nothing there. What about you?”

“No flashes like the others. But there's a lot about the baby.”

There certainly was. Almost the whole of the front page was given up to an account of the snatching. It was the nurse's half day off—“There, I told you they were posh,” Chris said—and Mrs. Wilmington had taken the baby out in its pram to do a little shopping in the supermarket in Kensington High Street. She'd spent about ten minutes in the shop and thought she could see the pram all the time—“What, when she was getting fish fingers out of the deep freeze? Tell me another,” Chris said—but when she came out, the pram was empty. Other shoppers hadn't noticed anything unusual. There was a picture of the Wilmingtons' wedding, all grinning faces and ridiculous hats, another of the baby when aged two months, a picture of the house where the Wilmingtons lived in Kensington, and a fourth, photograph of Mrs. Wilmington, her face screwed up with crying, her hair all over the place, quite different from the pretty girl in white satin and roses who smiled out of the wedding picture, leaning on her bridegroom's arm.

“She's really nice,” Chris said.