The Chinese Egg (8 page)

“Gosh. It's fabulous! You don't have this every day?” Stephen said, his mouth full of delicious sticky fruit and only just enough spicy dough to keep it from falling apart.

“Mum makes them every year. But we don't eat them every day. Just when we have visitors.”

“Your mother must be a marvellous cook.”

“She makes good cakes. Mostly for dinner she does ordinary things. Sausages. Fish fingers. Baked beans. Bubble and squeak. You know,” Vicky said.

Stephen was just beginning to say, “I wish my mother did ordinary things,” when the flash hit him. It wasn't as bright, as dark round the edges and as bright in the middle, as the former two, and it was very quick. He saw Chris in her white skirt and pink top, coming towards him. Just behind her was a boy. A boy he'd never seen before. He had time to get the impression of dark hair, an expression on the face which he knew he ought to recognize but didn't, and of there being something unusual about the boy's way of holding himself. He heard, quite distinctly, Chris's voice say, “Paul's got a place at York!” and then it was over. He was in the kitchen with Vicky, looking stupidly towards the door as if the real Chris had come in that moment.

He wanted to cover up. He looked at Vicky and saw her looking intently and frightened at him.

“Did you have it too?” she asked.

He said. “Who's Paul?”

“Oh! You did. He's. . .” the door bell rang. She went out and Stephen heard her open the door and other voices in the hall. The next moment Chris appeared in the doorway. She wore the white skirt and pink top. She was speaking to Vicky over her shoulder and over the shoulder of the boy immediately behind her. She said, “Paul's got a place at York! Isn't it astronomic? Hullo, Stephen! This is Paul.”

Paul was dark. He had a clever face, with lines of humour round his eyes and mouth. The expression, Stephen saw now, was one he'd often noticed on the faces of people whose childhood
had been affected by illness; people with deformed hips, people partly paralysed, people who have been kept much in bed; a look of being older than their contemporaries, of having learned to live with pain. Paul's shoulders were not quite straight, and he walked into the kitchen with a slight but definite limp.

Vicky and Stephen did not look at each other. Chris, finding chairs for herself and Paul, and talking, made it unnecessary for them to do anything but sit.

“Isn't it super? I knew he would. I always said they'd take him once they'd seen him. It's his first choice too, that's what's so fabulous. None of the other boys got their first choice straight off like that.”

“It isn't all that certain. Depends on my ‘A' levels,” Paul said. He had an attractive, quiet voice and very bright dark eyes.

“We all know you're going to get nothing but A's.”

“For goodness' sake, touch wood when you say things like that,” Paul urged.

Chris touched the kitchen table. “But I don't need to. I just know. You're not the only ones to know what's going to happen,” she said teasing, to Vicky. It was an unfortunate remark. She saw Vicky's face change, and Stephen was looking cross, which meant embarrassed. She said quickly, “Any tea in the pot, Vicky? I'll get the cups if there is.”

Vicky said, gratefully, “I'll fill it up,” and went back to the kettle.

“Only it ought to be champagne,” Chris said, clattering the china and the spoons more than usual to mask the awkwardness. She put plates in front of Paul and herself and said, “Mum's Christmas cake! You are showing off!”

“She won't mind. We often have it when people come in,” Vicky said.

“If you hadn't got it out for Steve, I'd have for Paul,” Chris said comfortably, cutting generously.

“If that's for me I'll only have half,” Paul said.

“Mm. It's come out bigger than I meant. Never mind. Let's share it,” Chris said, giving him rather more than half.

“It's the best cake I've ever had,” Stephen said.

“Paul knows. He's had it before,” Chris said.

Stephen, feeling suddenly out of place, a stranger among people who knew each other better than he knew any of them, coming from a different background, without the signals which they could pick up from each other to tell them what was going on, said to Paul, in what he heard miserably was what Chris would call his “posh” voice, “Sorry, I haven't congratulated you yet.”

Paul looked at him without answering for a moment and then said, “Thanks. But I'm not there yet. I'll wait for the champagne till I've finished with my ‘A's'.” He didn't sound unfriendly, but Stephen thought he remained on his guard.

“Isn't it a good sign they've offered you a place even if it's provisional?”

“Better than if they'd said they wouldn't have me at any price,” Paul agreed.

“What subjects are you taking?” Stephen asked. He didn't want Vicky to start talking about what had just happened. At the same moment Chris said to Vicky, “Where did you get to this afternoon? You went off without saying.”

“Library. I had to take a book back.” She didn't add that she'd wanted to take one out as well, Stephen noticed with relief, only half attending to Paul's answer to his own question. “Two lots of maths and French.”

Stephen was just saying in astonishment, “What a fantastic combination!” when Chris said quickly, “There's Dad! Isn't it, Vicky? He hasn't gone out yet?”

“Not yet.” Gosh, she thought miserably, it only needed this on top of everything else, to have Dad coming down and asking questions. She just hoped he'd be in a hurry and go almost straight off. But she was unlucky and it was worse than she'd expected. Mr. Stanford came heavily down the stairs, still not more than half awake after an afternoon sleep which never really quite made up for being up most of the night. He came into the kitchen and was not best pleased to find his daughters entertaining. He was even less pleased when he saw that one of the visitors was Stephen.

“Hullo, Paul. Got any tea for me, Chris? Hullo!” He said this last hullo in Stephen's direction but not actually to him. He
sat down on the opposite side of the table and looked at Stephen suspiciously.

“Paul's got a place at York. AH right, a provisional place, then. Isn't it super?” Chris said into the silence.

“Don't know what good you think college is going to do him,” her father said, stirring his tea.

“Well, if he wants to do maths. . .?”

“What'll he do with it then?”

Paul said, “I'd be interested working with computers. Programming them and that. Or I might teach.”

“You want a white collar job?” Mr. Stanford said, making it quite clear from his voice what he thought of white collar jobs.

“Now, Dad! You can't say anything against computer programming. I'm sure they have Trades Unions too, don't they, Paul?” Chris said.

“It's not just a question of Unions, girl. It's this trying to live a bourgeois way of life, that's what I'm against. Always looking for a safe middle-class job so you can buy a car and a dish-washer and colour telly, and no real sense of direction. No responsibility to society. That's what I can't take.”

“But there's got to be teachers. S'pose he gets to be a teacher?” Chris said.

“If he's a good teacher and stays in State schools. . .” Mr. Stanford allowed. He fixed Stephen with a challenging stare and asked him, “What about you? What sort of job are you going for?”

“I don't know,” Stephen said inadequately.

“Don't need to, I suppose. Your Dad's got enough money so you can afford to wait and see?” He made it sound like an accusation rather than a question.

“He's not all that well off,” Stephen said.

“He's a psychologist, isn't he?”

“Sort of.”

“Sees someone every day for five years and tells them what they were thinking about before they were born? Or what their dreams are about? Takes money for it?”

“Something like that.”

“What's he want to do that for when there are plenty of people
with proper illnesses and not enough doctors to look after them? Rich people, I suppose his patients are?”

“Some of them. He works in hospital too,” Stephen said, surprised that he should be the one to be defending his father.

“I reckon he sees it as charity, his hospital work. Thinks his patients there ought to be grateful for him seeing them.”

“Some of them get better,” Stephen said uncomfortably.

“They're paying for it, aren't they? Every week they're paying out for their stamps. They're entitled to the best doctors going. That's what the Health Service is all about, isn't it? Does your father ever think of that?”

Stephen looked ostentatiously at his watch and said, “I'm terribly sorry, I'll have to rush. I said I'd be home by half-past five.” It was quite untrue, but the only way he could think of to stop this horrible conversation. He said good-bye hurriedly round the table and made for the door. Paul gave him a polite smile, Chris hardly looked at him. Vicky came out into the passage with him and half whispered, “Sorry about that,” overcome with shame. He felt for her, as much as he could feel for anyone but himself at that moment. He knew what it was to have to blush for a father. He said, “Bye. See you,” and left.

Back in the kitchen Mr. Stanford was orating. Vicky recognized a familiar piece about the aristocracy and the complacent middle class, the wrongs of the consumer society, the fight that was still necessary before the workers could claim their rights. Paul seemed to be listening, Chris was busy washing up the tea things at the sink. Vicky went over to dry and would have let her Dad run himself down as she usually did, if she hadn't heard, “. . . take this boy that's just gone out. What use is he going to be to society? Brought up with all his father's money behind him, doesn't even know what he's going to do and doesn't care so long as he's doing nicely, thank you. Going to be another like his Dad, I'll be bound, getting money out of a lot of rich women who want to talk about themselves and are willing to pay for it. . . .”

To her own surprise, Vicky interrupted. “He's not like that!” She came back to the table and saw her father's astonished face. She said passionately, “You're not being fair! You don't know anything about him! How do you know what he's going to do?”

Mr. Stanford was taken aback, as he often was when someone he knew and was fond of got between him and his ideas. He said, “Look here, whose friend is he, this boy?”

Chris, you could always rely on her, said, “He's both of ours friend.” It wasn't grammar but it carried weight.

“He's all right,” Vicky said.

“He's middle-class bourgeois,” Mr. Stanford said with distaste.

“If he is it isn't his fault,” Vicky said at the same moment that Chris said, “Dad, don't be silly. If Steve's bourgeois and all that he can't help it. He's ever so funny about his father, too. He doesn't hold with what he does any more than you do.”

Mr. Stanford looked from his pretty Chris to his angry foster-daughter Vicky, and said, “Here, what's going on? Whose boyfriend is he, anyway?”

No one answered.

“You went out with him yesterday,” he accused Chris.

“Dad! I went out for ten minutes. Then we came back home. You're talking as if I'd been going out with him for years.”

“All I want to know is, are you or aren't you?”

“He's just a friend. Vicky and I met him one day. We're neither of us stuck on him. He's just a boy we got to know.”

“What's all the fuss about, then?”

Vicky repeated, stupidly, “You weren't being fair.”

“Don't you tell me I'm not being fair! What's there to be fair about when it's a boy with money and opportunity and everything he wants?”

“You're still unfair. You're saying he's no good because his father's got more money than we have. You don't know.”

Mr. Stanford wasn't stupid. He stopped now and thought and then said, “You're right, Vicky.”

She was so much surprised that she didn't understand. She repeated after him, “I'm right? What about?”

“I'm showing class prejudice. I don't know about this boy. All the same I don't want you to go about with him.”

“Why?” Vicky burst out.

“Because you'll get hurt, that's why. Anyway if he's not your boy-friend, nor Chris's, what's the fuss about? Why can't you go
about with a boy from your own background? Isn't that good enough for you? It is for Chris, isn't it?”

Chris said, “Dad, you do go on. Neither of us is going out with Steve the way you mean.” She looked at Paul again, as if she were telling him something as well as her father. And Vicky knew from Chris's voice that she knew that underneath this discussion about Stephen, Vicky and Mr. Stanford were both thinking of the same thing, that Vicky wasn't his own daughter as Chris was; that he was, in a way, telling her that if pretty Chris was satisfied with a working-class boy so ought she to be who hadn't any claim to be any class at all. And Vicky, feeling this, would want to reassure him that she wasn't any different from him, and at the same time must wonder just where she did come from. And on top of all this wanted quite straightforwardly to defend Stephen on grounds of justice, not because she was gone on him—Chris didn't think she was—but because she couldn't bear for things to be unfair, even to people she didn't like.

Mr. Stanford said, “Hm,” and drank his tea. Vicky recognized gratefully that the worst of the row was over; as long as neither she nor Chris did something to stir it up again, he'd let it ride for the moment. She'd meant, at the beginning, to say defiantly that she and Stephen had to go on seeing each other because they were mixed up in what might turn out to be a crime, but now she decided to keep quiet about it. She was going to see Stephen again, but she needn't tell Dad. For the moment she'd have to keep their companionship a secret.