The Chinese Egg (16 page)

“I only wondered if he was like you. Thinking too much instead of doing whatever it is.”

“No he isn't,” Vicky said shortly.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean. . . .”

There was an uncomfortable pause.

“I'm sorry,” Stephen said again.

“It's all right,” Vicky said.

“I honestly didn't mean. . . .”

“I said, it's all right.”

There was a pause. Then Vicky said, “He isn't my father really.”

Stephen stared.

“I'm adopted,” Vicky said, with a tremendous effort.

“You mean. . . you're not really Chris's sister?”

“Not by rights.” Vicky hated to have to say it.

“But I thought. . . . You said you weren't like your father. . . .”

Vicky said, “How do I know who I'm like?”

Stephen felt Vicky's need to stick to the facts. He realized it wasn't any good trying to get by with only good feeling and sympathy. He said, “Do you know anything about your real parents?”

“My mum died. Two days after she'd had me.” She said it as if it had been a betrayal.

“What happened to you then?”

“Mum—this Mum, that belongs to me and Chris—she was in the bed next to my own Mum and she knew there wasn't anyone else wanted me. And the doctors had told her she couldn't have any more babies. She didn't want to have just the one, so when she went back home from the hospital, she took me too.”

Stephen looked at her, sitting aslant him at the table, hunched against the world. “Why do you mind so much?”

“Wouldn't you?”

He thought. Difficult to imagine. He had a longing fancy of how wonderful it would be to be free. Not to feel he must do credit to his analytical father, all intelligence, or become like his frightened mother, browbeaten by that intelligence. But at least he knew what he had to cope with. This girl didn't. He said, “I suppose it could be difficult.”

“You don't know who you really are.”

“Why can't you just be yourself? That's what's important. Not what your parents were like.”

Vicky said impatiently, “That's what everyone says. It's all right for them. They know what sort of family they've come from and what their fathers did and all that. It's all very well to say it doesn't matter. It does when you haven't got it, what other people have. That's all.”

Stephen saw what she meant. He found he wanted to say something that wouldn't hurt, that might even help. He said, “I see that. When you do know who your parents are, you sometimes
wish you didn't. You feel you'd be freer to be whatever you really wanted instead of having it all mapped out for you beforehand.”

“But you do know where you are. And you could be different from what people expect.”

“It probably looks easy to you because that's not your problem. For instance, I've got an uncle called Lou.”

Vicky suddenly dissolved into giggles. “He can't be! That's what some people call the toilet!”

“His proper name is Louis, you see.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Yes, you have. All the French kings were called Louis. Well, a lot of them were.”

“Oh! French! Go on anyway.”

“The family wasn't French. I don't know why he was called that. What I was going to tell you was that I was always supposed to look exactly like him. When he'd been young, I mean. When I knew him he was bald and a bit fat. He was a great-uncle, you see. And he was really a horrible old man. He was the youngest of a lot of sisters, and they all adored him and sort of hung around saying wasn't he marvellous, and then they used to do the same to me, only not saying I was marvellous, but how like Lou I was, and wasn't it wonderful. And I didn't want to be like Lou. He'd been quite successful in business or something and he'd made a lot of money, but he was the meanest man I've ever met. He never allowed his wife enough money for the housekeeping or her clothes, and when he had to give anyone a present for Christmas or birthdays, he used to look out for something he'd had for ages and pretend he'd got it specially for them. Once he gave my mother an old teapot that hadn't got a spout or a handle and he told her it would look pretty in the garden with a climbing plant growing out of it. And when he died it turned out he'd got masses of money. He was just fantastically mean.”

Vicky sat and looked at him. She didn't speak.

“So you see. When everyone said I was just like Lou, I felt sort of doomed to be like that. Not just mean, but bald and fat too.”

“You aren't yet,” Vicky said.

“I'm not bald, but how do you know I'm not mean?”

“Are you?”

Stephen couldn't answer this. He said, “I do see it could be hellish not knowing about your family, too.”

“It's not exactly family. It's not knowing about my father,” Vicky said.

“Didn't he come to see your mother while she was in the hospital?”

“Mum reckons he probably didn't know anything about me being born.”

Stephen wasn't quick enough to conceal the surprise he felt, and Vicky said, “They probably weren't married, Mum thinks.”

“Do you mind that too?”

Vicky said, “Not that much. I might have if my real Mum had had me without being married and had given me away. I'd have felt bad about it, then. I used to think only girls who didn't like their babies let them go for adoption, but now. . . . There was this girl in our class last year, had a baby, and everyone told her she ought to have it adopted. . . .”

She stopped.

“What happened?” Stephen asked.

“She did what they said. But she cried. She went on crying. I. . . . I didn't know it was like that. I wouldn't have wanted my own Mum. . . .”

“But your mother. . . I mean. . . well, your and Chris's Mum. She's terribly nice, I thought.”

“She's fabulous,” Vicky said.

“And you get on with Chris. Don't you?”

Vicky couldn't imagine life without Chris. She nodded.

“You don't know how lucky you are having a sister. I wish to god I'd got brothers or sisters. Or someone.”

Vicky, faintly interested, asked, “Why?”

“If you're an only, you're sort of a target. Everything your parents think or feel has to be worked out on you.”

“Why does that matter?”

“My mother worries, for instance. If I'm five minutes late home, she's sure I've had an accident. When I was a kid and had the usual sort of illnesses, she always thought I was going to die. And now I'm older, she worries about my exams and about
smoking and drugs and sex. All the usual things. If there were more of us, we'd only get a share. As it is, I get the lot.”

“I don't think Mum worries like that about anything. I don't think she would even if she had only got the one,” Vicky said.

“I still wish there'd been more of us,” Stephen said.

Vicky was used, by now, to having boys tell her how lucky she was to have pretty Chris as a sister. She was waiting for Stephen to say, “Chris is really pretty, isn't she?” Instead of which, Stephen said, “I suppose that's why you're so different from Chris.”

“You mean why she's pretty and I'm not?” Vicky said, sharply.

“No, I didn't. I meant, you've got different sorts of minds.” “We get the same sort of marks at school.”

“I wasn't thinking about that sort of mind. I meant what we were saying before. About thinking about things too much before you do them.”

“That's just being stupid,” Vicky said.

“No, it isn't. It means you see things Chris wouldn't. No. I didn't mean that—not like we see things in flashes. I meant—damn! I don't know how to say it. You're more considering. That's more like it.”

Vicky was pleased but not sure what he meant. “I don't see how that helps.”

“It's more interesting.”

He was embarrassed directly he'd said it. It seemed too personal. He guessed that Vicky was embarrassed too, from the speed with which she followed this remark by saying, “Anyhow, what are we going to do?”

Stephen said slowly, “I think we've got to go to the police.”

“But you said all along. . . .”

“I know. And I still don't think they're going to take any notice.”

“Then why. . .?”

“Because it's the only thing we can do. We haven't a thing to go on, so we can't go looking all over the country by ourselves. And I don't want to go back to the parents.”

“If only we'd seen where they were.”

“I didn't see anything except those two who were talking.”

“I didn't either. . . . Wait a minute!”

“What?”

“I did. I did see something. Only I can't remember what.”

“That's not much help, then.”

“Wait a tick, I almost got it then.”

Stephen waited.

“It was behind his head. On the wall.”

She shut her eyes.

“A picture. It's a place. Only I don't know it. It's coloured. There's a sort of mountain. It's got a flat sort of top, with fire coming out of it.”

“A volcano,” Stephen said.

“That's right. And it's night. There's some country round the bottom, only I can't see that properly. The frame's black and gold.”

She opened her eyes.

“That's all.”

“Fantastic. How did you manage to remember that, when you said you couldn't?”

“It was like remembering a dream. You know. You say to yourself you've forgotten it completely, and then something reminds you, and you know you've sort of got a clue, and then suddenly you get it. Little bits at first and then the whole thing. You sort of see it and know that's it.”

“I know.”

“It's a bit like what we get. You know. The flashes. D'you think they could be like that? Only working backwards?”

“Sorry, I don't get it.”

“Well. You know how you remember things. They sort of come into your mind when you're not expecting anything?”

“Mm.”

“Why shouldn't it work the other way round? Sometimes. So you remember things that are going to happen, instead of what did?”

There was a silence.

“You think it's all stupid,” Vicky said, disappointed.

“No I don't. I think it's brilliant.”

“Do you really?”

“Because we don't really know about time. I mean, my father says we just think of it moving one way. You know. Forwards. But it could just as well go both ways. Backwards sometimes. It's something to do with causality.”

“What's that?”

“I don't understand it really. Something like, if you do something today, something different happens tomorrow, because of what you did. So if you don't believe in time moving the way we think it does, you don't really know whether there was a cause or not.”

Vicky thought about this. “If time didn't work like we think, it wouldn't matter whether we went to the police or not. I mean, nothing we did would matter. Would it?”

She surprised Stephen again by her quickness. “I suppose not.” “Do you think that might be how we see things?”

“Could be. Gosh, I wish it was. If it was really just that, I wouldn't feel so——”

“So what?”

“So peculiar.”

“You're not the only one,” Vicky said.

They looked at each other.

Stephen said, “That picture of the volcano.”

“I'm afraid it doesn't help much.”

“At any rate it's something we could tell the police.”

“We have got to tell them?” Vicky asked.

“We've got to, Vicky. Even if it isn't any good. We'd feel awful if we didn't. I would, anyway.”

“You said they wouldn't believe us.”

“They won't.”

“And you said we hadn't got anything. . . what was it?”

“Positive.”

“Positive, then. To tell them.”

“I've thought of one thing. They've probably got heaps of pictures of people who've been had up for something or other. If we could see them we might recognize one of those two.”

“I wish I could remember what it is that's funny about his hair,” Vicky said.

“It'll suddenly hit you when you see his photograph. You'll say, ‘That's him, with the rabbit's ears sticking up through his hair.'”

“You're crazy!” Vicky said, laughing.

“Come on. For one thing, Chris is never going to let up till we've done it.”

“We won't say anything about flashes. We just say we've seen a couple with a baby,” Stephen said, meeting Vicky that same afternoon by pre-arrangement.

“How would we have known it was that baby? There's heaps of men and girls with babies.”

“Didn't you hear the news this morning? They're asking anyone who's noticed anyone behaving peculiarly with a baby to tell them.”

“What'll we have for this peculiar behaviour?” Vicky asked.

“Suppose we said we'd been there when that girl took the baby?”

“Wouldn't they want to know why we didn't say so before? It's three days.”

“It's going to be very complicated,” Stephen said gloomily.

“We could tell them what we heard. About not hurting it. That's peculiar enough.”

“That's right! We could.”

“But it wouldn't have to be in that room, because we don't know where it is.”

“It could have been in a café like the one you and Chris go to.”

“Sitting at the next table and quarrelling.”

“Only we'd have to make up which café it was.”

“What about a park? We could make it Kensington Gardens the day it happened.”

“But they wouldn't. Would they? Just go and sit on a park bench just near where they'd taken the baby from?”