Authors: Jonathan Gash
Bray heard her voice with such relief he almost weakened. The public call box stood in the cinema entrance. He cupped the receiver.
“Thank God you’re there. Are you all right?”
“Wotcher on about? Got the fourth?”
“Yes.” He was at a loss for words but badly needed to know. “What happened? Geoff found you in the house. He’s taken Buster. Your father’s phoned the probationary services.”
“Like, the bastards locked me up when I was a kid so they should keep on doing it? Yeah, right. I was in an out of prisonages like a fucking fiddler’s elbow.”
“Where are you staying?”
“Think I’d tell you? Give over. Same as I sez first, wack.”
“No changes?”
“Send Number Four at the proper time. Don’t be late, ’kay?”
“Very well.”
A pause. “Ending’s hard, innit?”
“No.” During the previous night he’d come to a point
of resolve. “We just go on, whatever.”
“On yer own, or with that cow Lottie?”
“Anybody who’ll help, love. With you.”
And it would be so. Americans had a knack of assonance. He’d coined the phrase lifetime-schmifetime, and felt foolish saying it in the bath.
“There’s trub, wack. Some little cunts send spreads.”
“Who?” he asked blankly. “What are spreads?”
“Every fucking word yer ever heard of, that’s what a spread is. I’ll murder the little bastards. The answer’s a naming word, yeah? They’re sending every frigging word in the book. I hope they get bankrupt, little turds.”
“Can they be picked out?”
“Course. The little shits. My pal says it’s di-plo-ra-bull. He means they’re a fucking pest.”
“Thank you, love. Tell, erm, your pal thanks also, will you?”
“Will I fuck. Some send multiple addresses, like for more chances.”
“What do we do?”
“We treat them like they was separate. I progged it right off.”
He was desperate to ask how close was it coming, when the numbers would decline and reach a mere handful, named towns he could go to.
“Are we on, er, course?” was all he could say.
“Yih. Too good, if yer ask me.”
Too good? What did that mean? “Thank you, Kylee. I’ll send Four off. Night, God bless.”
“Tomorrer’s the day, wack. Steh cool, yeah?”
“Please look after yourself.”
Struggling to speak, he realised he was hearing the dialing tone. She’d gone.
“When can I go back to school?”
Clint had the idea it was wrong to ask, but two weeks had almost gone by. He was supposed to be getting letters about the competition from Carlson and Leeta and Consuela. Mom and Pop let him go in the computer stores, but Mom was scared of them.
His walks were always with Mom and Pop now. Stef and Laura never took him out much. They saw shows, but they were like for grown-ups. He had to ask before he could watch television, which wasn’t fair.
And in the new house there was no Manuela and no little falling boy who made Clint laugh. Here was neat but not much to do. Mom and Pop talked about it. They phoned Doctor. He heard them when he was doing the math sent by somebody. And there was an athletics meeting with Laura and Stef the guard, but he had a kid’s string on his wrist and that electronic beeper.
He’d rather go without Mom and Pop and just have Stef and Laura because they laughed a bit. Mom and Pop always acted like scared. And Pop always looked round, checking the other two.
They always were, standing looking. Pop must have paid a lot of dough, Clint knew.
There was a swimming championship, Stef said, like a show. He would take Clint with Laura, who used to be a good swimmer. She pulled a face at Stef when he said this, and they laughed. Clint asked if he could go swimming.
“Sure you can, honey. Real soon.”
“My own school, Mom?”
“Why on earth would we choose a different place?”
“Are we going to stay here?”
“No. We’re going on a special holiday! Will you like that?”
“Where to?”
“That’s a secret. We’ll go back home and all your friends will be real pleased, won’t they, Pop?”
“Next week,” Pop promised. “Back to normal.”
It was his last lecture.
Bray saw the audience arriving. It seemed disappointingly small. He wondered whether his rueful feeling came from the generosity of these engaging people. Maybe he was secretly changed now, and craved popularity? The same suspicion recurred.
He sat in the anteroom. Lottie was checking on the tape recording unit that would have unedited tapes for sale. Sets of transparency slides were now being shipped by Gilson Mather – Lottie’s doing. Boxes were being set out on display.
Am I merely a promoter now, he wondered? The image dismayed him. How seductive the process was. It was as if a latent valency had existed within all these years. Inside each craftsman is an exhibitionist waiting to get out, like that?
Except it was temporary. The fearsome word, temporary, meant it would soon be gone. Like his ex-wife Emma, now junketing on cruise liners with her wealthy husband. He had loved her. He supposed he felt a residual fondness, only a fraction. One of Kylee’s disappearing decimals.
Early in marriage, he believed Emma loved him. Then years turned, and belief dwindled into a hope that she might love him. Then, again those gliding years, he came to hope that she didn’t quite dislike him. Finally – the here and now of it – he knew that really she had felt nothing but hatred. Scintillating Emma, tied by marital bonds to a dullard who cut wood. The description was hers, as she’d left.
Poor Geoffrey, who’d also assumed permanence. He’d been lucky to find Shirley, luckier still to bless the world with Davey.
The shifting sands of this American tour. He felt as if in a doctor’s waiting room, staring at impenetrable diplomas. Everything was determined by chance. It was all out of his hands.
“Bray?” Lottie put her head round the door. “It’s time. There’s only thirty or so. Can you imagine, all Los Angeles?”
He smiled, more at ease than he’d felt for weeks, and went to listen offstage as the gallery owner made the introduction. It could have been his very first day, when he’d waited so nervously in the wings while he met America.
“Co-author of the history of a great furniture house in London, a man whose working life has been in restoring and even recreating the art of the past, whose brilliant expertise…”
Et temporary cetera, Bray thought sadly. He stepped into the applause, smiling. He had twenty slides to show, talk and questions.
He looked at the faces.
“This is my last talk in your lovely country,” he began, against all his plans. He was usually straight into the
subject. “I’ve been quite overwhelmed by your kindness and interest, especially as the USA has such splendid furniture makers of its own.”
He spoke, moved, of the so-called “writing table” that was actually a mahogany, ebony and laminated wood inlaid with fruitwood, inlaid with silver and copper, that he had seen in New York.
“It was a simple exquisite example,” he told them. “As beautiful and intricate as anything ever made. Yet who here remembers the craftsman – surnamed Green – who in 1907 made that wondrous piece, so plain, so skilled, for the Peter Hall Company of Pasadena? The makers live on in their creations. The works I’ve seen on my way across America will stay in my mind for ever.
“I will find it hard to express my gratitude when I come to the end, so please accept it now.”
He cleared his throat and went straight in to his subject:
Re-creation or Restoration?
It was a success. For once he accepted the invitation to supper. Twenty joined the organisers in the restaurant. Everyone was keen to get in anecdotes about antiques bought and sold, the risks taken. It was the gentlest evening. Bray occasionally caught Lottie’s gaze through the amber glow, and felt something vanishing before his eyes.
Next day would be the test. He would feel stripped bare. All deception, all subterfuge, would be gone. He would have to go back into himself and simply be Bray Charleston, grandfather, standing in some foreign street looking up at addresses, checking places against a crumpled list.
He shook hands repeatedly, and promised to accept invitations if ever, if ever.
The travelling was done, his itinerary over.
“LA is hell, Lottie.”
“Morning, Jim. Start as you mean to go on?”
He seated himself opposite. They were the first two in the hotel breakfast room.
“You’re secretly proud.”
Lottie actually believed Jim Stazio spoke with the bitter pride Americans always used when criticising their country. Was there pollution in Korea, Istanbul? A morning in Los Angeles, you’d really see pollution! And so on.
“Take driving, f ’instance. Worst on earth!” And he was off into data. “We going to need cars, right?”
“Bray insists on paying, Jim.” She determined to have the war over by the time Bray came down. “And some sort of fee.” She grasped the nettle. “He’s at Kylee’s list, doing it half the night.”
“Can’t accept, Lottie.” He glared around for a waitress. “I’d accept some coffee, though.” And as one strolled over, “Working this search has kept me going. I was bored. Now look at this fine figure of a man! I got a career!”
Lottie smiled, shaking her head.
“He fears catastrophe, Jim. I watched him days ago at his last engagement. Some buyers asked Bray to accept retainers to appraise their stock. A fortune for a week’s work.”
“What’s your point?” Jim saw Lottie sip her Engish tea with disbelief, and closed his eyes in rapture at the taste of American coffee.
“The horror’s back. He’s frightened it’ll be a re-run of that ghastly moment. This hunt has been his lifeline. Now it’s finished. It’ll either be a delusion, or will expose horrors as bad as anything before.”
“Too terrible to contemplate, right?” Jim waved a fork.
“Three decades a cop, you learn to eat when you can. You go ahead with your lettuce leaves.”
He pointed, all aggression. “You civilians forget.
What if the boy’s alive and well?
Then it’s whoopee time.”
“That scares
me
,” Lottie admitted. “The child stealers might have armed guards, lawyers. We can’t just walk up and say that child’s ours, can we?”
Jim noted the possessive, poured sauce on his hash browns.
“You got me. We ever make it here, I got friends.”
Bray joined them. He looked drawn, and carried two heavy folders and a sheaf of papers. He ordered, went through the pages in silence.
“That it, Bray?” Jim’s eyes pinned the folders. “Coloured rectangles?”
“The girl does it by colours. And her computer works by talking.”
“She got answers?”
“Yes.” Bray stared at his meal unseeing. “There are eight possibles.” He looked up. “She’s graded them in order of probability.”
“Lemme see.”
“They’re only colours.” Bray passed a sheet. It showed a column of printed squares in different hues. “Top is the favourite. Bottom is least likely.”
“Each square is a place, right? Eight? What’s this hatching?”
“Degrees of probability. Her translation for me.” He rummaged in a pocket. “I’ve got actual numbers here.”
“No good showing me that.” Jim’s voice was harsh, intent now. “The top one’s densest. Means she’s sure, right?”
“Yes. I spoke with her in the early hours. The bottom
five are false, she says children spreading every available answer.”
“Backing every horse in the race, huh?”
“Leaving just the top one?” Lottie asked.
“Precise. All four questions, answered accurately.”
Stazio examined one thick folder. It held only closely-printed addresses.
“Jesus. This is all USA!”
“No, Jim. Two hundred thousand.”
The Florida man pushed his plate aside.
“
How
accurate?” He shrugged at Lottie, sensing her bridling. “It’s gotta be asked, Lottie. Here, we can talk it over. In some hallway, people shrieking we’re abducting some kid, it’ll be hell.”
Bray winced. “I thought that. The first two questions everybody could get right by repeated guesses. What’s this made of, what’s that made of. The third? Well, maybe, like the second and third pairs might. But not the last.”
“What was it?” Jim stared Lottie down. “We can ask now it’s over, right?”
“What was the winning score?” Bray cited. “That was the question. The opponents were Prussia, but what was the score? It’s the way I taught Davey to count. We invented a game. It always came out the same score.”
“What was it?” Lottie and Jim spoke together.
“Mind if I don’t say?” Bray felt awkward. “Kylee said there’ll be stragglers.”
“On the nail, huh? One place?”
“Exact. It confirms the leader.”
Jim replaced the folder. “Eat, Bray. Gimme the address. I’ll go call my people.”
“No, Jim.” Bray was quite pale. “I’m sorry. I can’t take chances. Jim, would you mind if Lottie and I go on alone?
I’ll call you from there when…”
“You saying you don’t trust me?” Jim rose.
“I’m so sorry. It’ll only be a day. I’ll send airline tickets for you.”
Jim stared, his face almost puce in outrage, then abruptly sat.
“Well I’ll be fucked – sorry ma’am.” He laughed aloud. “Y’know what riles me, Bray? It’s what I’d do! Keep it close until the cards go down.”
“He won’t even tell me, Jim,” Lottie said.
Jim waved for a waitress. “You’re right, Bray. You sure you don’t want coffee instead of that tea stuff? Travelling to do!”
To Tain, Bray thought.
The airport was served by tributary flights from major cities. Bray paid untraceable cash for the second flight. Lottie spent the journey imagining Jim Stazio cramming his bulk into the small seats.
“He’ll say, ‘You sure about this?’ and, ‘What the hell we do with the legs?’, I’ll bet!”
Lottie liked the ex-policeman, Bray knew, but he had no emotion now, nothing left to think with.
At Tain Airport’s miniature facility he hired a car for cash. They lodged at a motel.
“I rather felt it when you admitted you didn’t trust Jim,” Lottie told him. “He’s been on our side from the start.”
The motel was by a trunk road, lorries and saloon cars swishing by. Bray wanted to see hills beyond the advertising hoardings.
“Jim Stazio has been in our search, Lottie.” He turned. “Not quite the same.”
“You don’t mean —?”
“No. I don’t think he’s one of them. It’s still possible.”
She went to him, the suitcases unpacked. “Just accept
help. Jim Stazio is a good man.”
“You’re right, Lottie.” Gently he disengaged. “It’s a small chance, but why take it?”
Because of humanity, she could have answered. Later there might be time to go into these differences, she thought. Maybe.
It was two-thirty by the time they reached Tain’s shopping mall. Bray acquired tourist maps and town guides. They sat in the bookshop’s cafeteria to pore over them. He concentrated on schools.
“You back with me?”
She felt disordered, seeing him peruse the pages in silence. Oblivious, he overturned his drink and hardly noticed while she mopped the table with tissues.
A group of youngsters entered, throwing bags on the tables before wandering into the bookshop. Always so free, and such bravado, that young assumption of infinity. And what was always? She’d learned a great deal being with Bray. Lie with a spouse, osmosis happens during sleep, those hours feeling someone breathing, stirring, assimilating the other’s dreams never uttered in the day.
Sometimes during her work at Gilson Mather she caught glimpses of Bray in the workshop, concentrating on examining wood just arrived. His deliberate movements, his pauses to tap the surface, listening, were done with such quiet grace that she was captivated. Once, waiting so they might travel together, he’d been alone, a cone of light above his bench the only illumination. He was standing over some dark timber, rubbing it with his thick leather glove. He stooped and inhaled – she heard the breath – deeply, straightening to hold the aroma as if it was the most heady perfume.
It had been a revelation, a display of what was almost
love. Bray looked up at her, glanced round the cafeteria.
“It’s eight blocks from here,” he said.
He was shaking, found it hard to lift his replacement drink. She poured him half of hers and gave it for him to drink.
“What now?”
“You do it,” he told her. “Go to the school.”
Her chest squeezed. “I go to the —?”
“Please. It’s vital to identify the class.”
Her cheeks prickled at the responsibility. “I can’t. What if —?”
“You have to.”
She felt her mind cast about wildly for excuses, solid reasons, anything to escape the terrible duty.
“Think how it would be for Davey, if he’s really there.”
She felt frantic. “If? Bray, we’re banking on certainty, aren’t we?”
“On Kylee’s probability,” he corrected. Sweat appeared.
Her mind screamed
Fuck your probability! And you can stuff your precious Kylee’s bizarre brain as well.
“Bray,” she said carefully, “I’ve never seen Davey.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
She’d gone weak. “It doesn’t
matter
? Bray, what have we been doing, this effort, these plans?”
“Not for what I want you to do.”
“Darling.” She reached across and took his hand. “Listen. If Davey’s there, to me he’ll simply be one face in a sea of faces. If you go, you’ll see one. His face will jump out, and be the one.”
“Subterfuge, Lottie.”
“To pretend what?”
“You be a prospective parent. You’re seeking admission for your child, a boy Davey’s age. You’ve come back to
America after some years in Europe. You’re, what, divorced or something. Invent.”
She said faintly, “Wouldn’t it be simpler for us to sit in the motor and look at them in the playground, then let me phone Jim?”
“No. Then it really would be the scene that Jim predicted, a tug-o’-war, shrieks for police to arrest us as child abductors. By the time we’d proved who we are they’d be gone. And they’d be forewarned. This is our one chance.”
“I’m what?” she asked. “Go over it, Bray.”
He stood. No shaking now, she noticed.
“We go there now?” She touched her hair. “Like this?”
“Please, Lottie. As you are. You’ve just arrived from Europe.”
“Can you give me half an hour to smarten up?”
“Twenty minutes,” he said grudgingly.
They were due to leave for Tain. “Clint’ll be glad when we’re home, Hyme,” Clodie said. “Will you be?”
“Sure,” Pop answered, already into the financial pages. Marriage was lying with assurance, same as commerce, and same reasons. “It’s done the boy good.”
“He misses his friends. That competition stuff gave me the creeps.”
“I blame that school.” Deflect conversation, yet more tactics for a sound marriage.
“I thought you approved.”
“I do. School’s great, like math and business. But half the goddam kids can’t even read. Too busy playing cyber games.”
“I’m sorry I panicked, Hyme. It’s just that other kids were talking about sending their addresses in. One mom
said her daughter e-mailed a snapshot of herself.”
She shivered at the thought, such needless risk. She was going through her wedding photographs. Marriage was counting survivors.
Pop’d had four sessions down town, made him a younger man. Business did for him what he did for business. And he’d kept the peace with Clodie.
“It’s over now.” She showed Hyme a picture of their wedding, smiling. “Remember the way they decorated our wedding limo? I was so embarrassed!”
No woman’s ever embarrassed at a wedding, Pop thought.
“Did you let Clint call his friend?”
Three evenings before, Clint had asked could he call Carlson. Mom had demurred. Clint’s name would go up for some team, training due soon on the Link Fields.
“No. That Carlson boy might not be right for Clint. Differences are okay when kids are small, but what when they’re teenagers?”
“Good thinking.” Pop was alarmed by one stock’s fall, but gratified by marginal rises in three others.
“I let him call that Leeta instead. Her family’s devout.”
“Preaching isn’t decent work.” He regarded her. “We’ve nothing to worry about. Clint’s registered.”
Mom beamed. “That’s why I’ve got the albums out, Pop. See?” She showed him a centre page, Clint’s new birth certificate mounted on ornate corners. “Your son. Our boy. All legal, an American citizen. His birthday’s Libra. I must look it up.”
“Doctor really did a job, right? Cost, but signed and sealed.”
“Now, Hyme,” Mom scolded. “I said that right from the beginning. It’s not just money. It’s our boy!” Her eyes filled.
Pop let it go. Clint’s birth certification – some location in Illinois was on the details – was cast iron. Doctor had used special couriers, the money up front. Now Clint was legally registered, good as the next kid and twice as authentic. Nobody, but nobody, could prove otherwise.
Into the family album it went. It wouldn’t matter one bit if people wanted Clint’s details. The birth certificate was, Doctor had assured him, as genuine as the President’s. Perfect documents were pricey. Buy cheap, you buy dear, his sainted father used to say. Doctor delivered, finish.
“No worry now, Clodie.” Let her have her fondness. He’d paid for it.
And there would be definite bonuses to returning to Tain. Mrs Hunger had become Linda to Pop. Okay, she was more than a nurse/friend to Doctor during his goddam medical updates. She was useful, cool and without recriminations. And thank Christ she knew how to set up an arrangement for a fee-paying employer just far enough out of Tain.
One more year and he would settle the mutterings in Boston. Maybe they’d go to California, bring the boy up right.