It had been shaped by hand from a single block of wood. The block of hard, close, finely-grained wood had been delicately divided into pieces that interlocked, each fitting close to its neighbours, cheek to cheek, the jutting wedge of this section sliding smoothly into the angle between the two arms of that. As long as the pieces were put together in the right order by sensitive fingers which could feel the balance of the whole, they held together and made up the perfect egg. Polished outside so that it glowed like burnished bronze, the egg, whole and yet divisible, shone among the junk in Mr. McGovern's shop on the corner of Printing House Lane and the High Street.

Stephen saw it on his way home from school. He often chose to go that way and have a look, fascinated, at Mr. McGovern's collection. So many things that you'd think no one would ever want, even new and whole and clean, and that surely no one would ever buy now, tattered, chipped and worn. Looking in the blurry window now he saw draggled feather boas, dirty books lacking spines, cracked plates, cups without handles, sad, meaningless pictures in flamboyant frames, clocks which had stopped years ago and which would never mark any real time again. He saw mirrors, cracked lamps, dingy lace, half-backed chairs; and in the side window, where the small objects were displayed, he saw tarnished paste buckles, dusty velvet, the chipped sheen of imitation pearls, a string of child's coloured beads, gilt brooches, Woolworth jewellery discoloured by age. Among them, different
because it was real and had been made with skill and with love, he saw the egg.

He went in and bought it. Mr. McGovern who was elderly and, in spite of his name not at all British, would have liked to haggle, but Stephen wasn't interested. He was also embarrassed. He wanted the egg and he didn't want to have to pretend that he wasn't going to pay for it. When Mr. McGovern said “Two pounds”, perhaps believing that a boy at school wouldn't have so much, Stephen agreed at once.

“I'll have to go home to fetch it.”

“I can't keep anything for you. The peoples come in and say âKeep, keep', then they don't come back, I lose the money.”

“You still have the thing.”

“Other peoples want and I don't sell because of the first peoples. So I lose.”

“I'll be back in five minutes. It's only round the corner.”

“So everyone tells me, then they don't come back.”

“You could keep it five minutes.”

“Five then, by my watch.” Extraordinarily his watch was going. All those dead clocks in the shop brooded, stopped for ever at different hours anything from one to twelve, but Mr. McGovern's nickel-plated modern wristwatch told the right time. Stephen ran home, let himself in, collected the notes from the purse in his desk, and was back before the nickel-plated five minutes were past. By the grandfather clock just inside the shop door his errand had taken no time at all.

“Is a beautiful piece of workship,” the old man said, now apparently unwilling to part with the egg.

“How many pieces?” Stephen asked. He could just slide a finger-nail between two.

“I haven't counted. Twenty? Twenty-five? Is very difficult puzzle. You separate, maybe you never put her together again.”

“Isn't there a plan? Instructions?” asked Stephen, child of his age, accustomed to explanations and printed instructions, diagrams and the scientific approach to every sort of mystery.

“No plan. Is a secret egg. Is Chinese. You find her out,” Mr. McGovern said, and disappeared into the dark recesses of his
shop. Stephen, holding the egg carefully in one hand, turned and left.

And then outside, it happened. He tripped, as he stepped out, on an uneven paving-stone, stumbled forwards, saved himself, just didn't go right down. But his hand opened and the egg sprang from it in spite of his desperate, just-too-late grip on its slippery surface. It seemed to rise into the air and fall slowly, in a parabola, a curve like water from a fountain. It hit the ground with a dull thud and burst, like a wooden firework, into pieces. Stephen saw odd-shaped bits of wood lying round his feet, many, meaningless, robbed of all significance by being divided. His egg had disappeared. He was left with a lot of spillikins of different shapes, but of no importance.

He began to collect them. He might even have found all of them immediately if it hadn't been that at that moment the trail began back from the local comprehensive school. Boys and girls of all ages and sizes were surging through the street on their way home at the end of their school day. Stephen had to dodge through them, avoid their feet, as he searched for the hooked and angled shapes. “Excuse me,” he said desperately, rescuing a small mallet-shaped fragment from under the heel of a Brunhild in a grey duffle coat. “Hi! Don't step on that!” to a boy in jeans and an Aran-type pullover. He dodged and grabbed and the chattering, uncaring crowd poured past him like a river in flood. When he finally stood up, dishevelled, hot and angry, he'd collected more than twenty pieces; he couldn't be sure of the exact number. He put them loose in his pocket and went moodily home.

Two

Vicky got home that same Friday evening to find her Mum cutting out all over the kitchen table. Bits of tissue paper pattern floated off the back of a chair as she opened the door. The table was bright with dark blue polished cotton scattered with little flowers of shocking pink.

“What's it going to be?”

“Dress,” her mother said, her mouth full of pins.

“Super! Who for? You?”

“Wait a minute while I get these pins in.”

She anchored one of the extraordinary-shaped bits of paper on to the blue. It looked like a pale island in a sea of blue and pink. Then she said, “For you. Summer dress.”

“Can I see the pattern?”

She saw it and was pleased. Her Mum generally chose well, and her dress-making, if not professional, almost always had a sort of style. She never finished the seams off inside as you were supposed to, and sometimes, from not reading the instructions carefully enough, she made silly mistakes, Once she'd made the whole dress back to front, puzzling all the time why the darts came in such funny places. Even so it had turned out all right. She had a good eye for colour, often adding extras, a braiding, big buttons, cuffs of a different material, which turned the clothes she made into something special.

“Are you making one for Chris too?”

“Not out of the same material I'm not.”

She never did. Vicky and Chris hadn't been dressed alike ever since they were tiny. It was only sense. They looked quite different.
Chris was slender, with mid-brown to reddish hair, and she was pretty. No, she was more than pretty, she was fabulous. Boys took one look at Chris and then pursued her. Vicky was not fat, but beside Chris she looked big. She had big bones, too much nose, too big a mouth, long hands and feet. Her hair was dark and absolutely straight. Chris's was just wavy enough never to look untidy, Vicky's always did. Chris's skin was fair, Vicky's was dark. Chris's eyes were a wonderful clear blue, Vicky's were greeneryyallery. People often said in surprise, “Are you really sisters, you aren't a bit alike?” Then after they'd seen the girls' father they often said, “Of course. Chris is just like her Mum, isn't she? And Vicky's like her Dad.” Sometimes Chris and Vicky agreed and let it go, sometimes they explained. There'd been a time, when Vicky was small, when she'd explained every time, thinking it was fun to surprise them. Now she wasn't so sure.

Chris came into the room and said, exactly as Vicky had done, “What's that you're making?”

“Dress for Vicky.”

“Can I see the pattern?”

“Help yourself. And don't upset my pinbox.”

“Super!” Chris said, just as Vicky had done.

“Glad you like it.”

“Going to make one for me too?”

“If I've time before the summer comes.”

“I don't think it ever will. You'll have plenty of time. It's freezing for April.”

“Only just April today.”

“Spring holidays start next week. It ought to be warmer now.”

“May's often a nice month,” Mrs. Stanford said hopefully. She pinned a long wedge-shaped piece of tissue paper to a length of the material and said, “That's the three skirt pieces. I'll clear off and get tea.”

Tea was high tea. Sometimes Mr. Stanford got back, in time for it, sometimes he didn't. This was partly because he worked on shifts, partly because Mrs. Stanford kept irregular hours herself. She was good about getting the girls' breakfasts when they had to get to school on time, but for the rest of the day she pleased herself.
It wasn't unusual for them to come back from school at half-past four and find that she'd only just got herself lunch. High tea could be any time between five and nine in the evening; it depended on friends, on shopping, on Mrs. Stanford's own appetite, on television programmes, on the day of the week. Vicky and Chris were so used to it that when they visited houses where meals were always at fixed hours, they were faintly surprised. If tea was late and they were hungry, there were always biscuits in a battered red tin, coke in the fridge and often bits left over from the night before in the larder. Chris ate everything and never put on an extra pound; Vicky had to watch her weight. She was the one who sometimes rebelled against the endless meals of baked beans, cold sliced ham and sliced white loaf, spread with lashings of butter. Not that she didn't like it, but it put pounds on her.

Tea today was tinned red salmon and salad, followed by red jelly. Plus bread and butter of course. Vicky was ravenous, the school lunch had been more uneatable than ever. She and Chris ate a huge tea, then sat round groaning.

“I'm too full. Wish I hadn't eaten that second lot,” Chris said.

“What're you going to write about for English?” Vicky asked.

“They're a rotten lot of subjects. I don't want to do any of them.”

“I don't mind the one on Macbeth.”

“You must be crazy! It doesn't mean a thing.”

“What is it?” Mrs. Stanford asked, licking a thread before putting it into the eye of her needle.

“About how the witches knew Macbeth was going to kill Duncan,” Chris said.

“No it isn't. It's whether Macbeth would have done anything about it if he hadn't been told he was going to be king,” Vicky said.

“What's the difference? They told him the future, didn't they?”

“But what's interesting is whether he'd have murdered Duncan if they hadn't said anything.”

“But he did murder Duncan. He couldn't have been king without,” Chris said.

“Only did the witches make him do it by telling him first?”