The Chinese Egg (3 page)

If she hadn't been the prettiest girl Stephen had ever seen, he wouldn't have stayed. He wanted to get away and try to sort out what had happened. Since that wasn't possible, he ordered three coffees and waited while the other girl, the not pretty one, sighed and sat up. She looked awful, dead white, with black shadows round her eyes and the hair on her forehead damp with sweat. He preferred to look at her friend.

“Drink your coffee, Vicky. You'll feel better then,” the pretty one said, and the other girl obeyed without speaking, as if she hadn't the will to do anything else. “Gosh, I needed that! Thanks,” the pretty one said to Stephen. When she smiled she was prettier than ever.

“What happened?” Vicky asked Chris.

“You fainted. Well, nearly. He helped me get you in here.”

“There was something else. I saw something.” She shivered suddenly and said to Stephen, “Why did you call out?”

He'd hoped no one had heard above the noise of the traffic. He said, “What do you mean?”

She didn't answer. She had taken a handkerchief out of her pocket and was wiping her forehead on it. She put her hand into her pocket again and took out something else. She held it out to the pretty girl and said, “There was a shape like that round what I saw.” She held the thing up and looked past it at Stephen. He saw, incredulously, an angled piece of wood with a polished surface at either end. He said, “Where did you find it?”

“In the road.”

He said, “It's mine!”

“What d'you mean, it's yours?”

In order to keep the egg in its perilous, incomplete shape, Stephen had wrapped it in a plastic bag. He took it out of his pocket now, extracted it from the bag and laid it on the table.

“You see? It's a piece out of this.”

“How'd it get into the road, then?”

“I dropped it. I couldn't find all the pieces when I looked for them.”

“I only found it yesterday,” Vicky said.

“That's when I lost it.”

“It is his. You ought to give it back to him,” Chris said.

Vicky didn't either offer Stephen the piece or put it back in her pocket. Looking at him hard, she said, “You did call out just now. You said, ‘Look out!' Why?”

“I heard too,” Chris said, not liking it.

“I suppose I thought. . . I thought there was someone on the crossing.”

“That's what Vicky said. Some old lady, she said. I couldn't see anyone.”

“The blue van was right by us,” Vicky said.

“No, it wasn't. It was a bus, when you said that.”

“It was a blue van. Like that one,” Vicky said, pointing through the window at a van standing stationary farther down the street. As she spoke, it pulled out and came towards them. It slowed as it approached the crossing. This time the picture wasn't nearly so bright, the sky was grey and there was beginning to be a thin drizzle, but again Stephen had cried, “Look out!” and the brakes screamed again, and Vicky's eyes shut in a convulsive effort not to know. But this time when she opened them all the traffic had come to a standstill, people were running, there was already a crowd round something lying in the middle of the road.

“Come on. Let's get out of here,” Chris said, as white and shaking as the other two.

Stephen said, “I'd better see you back.” They left their coffees half drunk and made for the open door. The ambulance had come ringing its urgent warning before they had left the busy street.

“I don't like it,” Chris said, back at home. They were sitting in the kitchen after a dinner they'd neither of them been able to touch.

“You don't think I do?”

“Did you really see the blue van that first time?”

“Yes, I did. And it was a car just like the one that—that did it, the first time too.”

“A Jag.”

“I don't know. You know I'm no good at cars.”

“And you saw an old lady. It was an old lady that got knocked down. I heard them say so.”

“Do you know how bad she was?” Vicky asked.

“They must've taken her away in the ambulance.”

“Perhaps she was just stunned.”

“I don't know.”

They sat and looked at each other.

“D'you think that boy saw it too?”

“I don't know.”

“He didn't want to say why he'd said ‘Look out', did he?”

“I don't know,” Vicky said again.

“You never did give him that bit of the thing he said he'd lost and you found in the road.”

Vicky took it out of her pocket and put it on the table.

“What did you mean when you said there was a shape like it round what you saw?” Chris said.

“Sort of jagged bits, like this, only dark. In the middle I saw the accident.”

“Suppose you really could see what's going to happen next?”

“I don't want to. It was a lousy thing to happen.”

“But suppose you could see something nice? Like who won the Derby. We'd all get rich. That wouldn't be bad.”

“It won't happen again.”

“You mean you hope it wont.”

“It won't.”

Mrs. Stanford came in and sat down.

“Might just as well not have cooked any dinner for all the appetite you two had. Three-quarters of it gone into the dustbin.”

“You didn't, Mum! Waste,” Chris said.

“Toad-in-the-hole's never the same warmed up. And don't you say Waste to me. You should have eaten it, if you didn't want it thrown away.”

“Couldn't. Not if you'd paid me.”

“Upsetting, seeing an accident,” Mrs. Stanford agreed.

“Vicky saw it twice.”

“What do you mean, saw it twice?”

“Saw it before it happened.”

“You didn't, did you?” her Mum asked Vicky.

“I don't know.”

“But Vicky, you said. . . .”

“I could have made a mistake, couldn't I?”

Chris always knew when Vicky didn't want to go on talking about something. She got up now from the table and said, “All right if I wash my hair now, Mum? Will you come up and rinse me when I'm ready?”

“You washed your hair two days ago. What're you doing it again for now?”

“Wasn't two days. Was Wednesday. That's three.”

“Once a week used to be good enough for me when I was a girl.”

“‘Friday night's Amami night. Take me out and make me tight,'” Chris sang. Adding, in her ordinary voice, “Laurie's coming to take me out tonight, that's why I've got to wash my hair.” She ducked her mother's pretended swipe and left the kitchen laughing.

“Well, I don't know.” Mrs. Stanford said. She looked again at Vicky, sitting across the table and said, “What's up, love?”

“Nothing.”

There was a pause, then Mrs. Stanford said, “It was the accident, was it?”

“Made me feel shaky, a bit.”

“Is that all?”

“Mm.”

A pause.

“Vicky? There's something wrong, isn't there?”

“I just don't feel too good, that's all,” Vicky said, looking at the table instead of at her mother.

“Is it the old thing?”

“What old thing?”

“You know. Worrying about your father?”

“Not specially. Not more than usual.”

“I've often thought he very likely didn't know.”

“Didn't know what?”

“About you. Your mother might not have told him.”

“Why wouldn't she?”

“Girls don't always. Not if they're not seeing the fellow any more, I mean.”

“She didn't tell you?”

“Not really. There wasn't all that time. She went so suddenly. That morning she'd been all right, as far as anyone could see. That evening she'd gone. Haemorrhage, it was. They put six pints of blood into her, but they couldn't save her.”

“Did she think about what was going to happen to me?”

“She did once say she wished someone like me could look after the baby. Not thinking it would be me, I don't think.”

“Was it because you and she were in bed next to each other?”

“I s'pose that's how we started talking. And she liked the way I made a fuss of Chris. Cuddled and talked to her. Silly, I suppose. Some of the mothers in there, they hardly used to look at their babies. Couldn't wait to get out of hospital, put them on the bottle and hand them over to someone else. Perhaps it was because Chrissie was my first, I acted like I did.”

“Did my mother cuddle me?” Vicky asked. She'd often nearly
asked this question before, but never quite. Now it came out easily. That was the sort of person her Mum was, warm and easy.

“As if she could eat you. You were what I'd call good-looking for a baby. Neat little face, you had, and thick black hair. Quite long, it was. I remember your mother showing me how it was almost long enough to plait. About half an inch.”

“Was Chris pretty then too?”

“I've never seen such a little horror. Bald, and her face sort of squashed up sideways.”

“Did you mind?”

“After all that trouble? I wouldn't have changed her for the world.”

“What did my mother say? About my father? Or anything?”

“Told me she hadn't seen him for months. That was when I asked if her husband was coming at visiting time. Silly question, I should have known better.”

“He was her husband, then? I mean, was she married?”

“I told you, might have been. She called herself Mrs., but then they mostly do. The nurses like it better.”

“She didn't say anything else about him? My father, I mean?”

“Said once you didn't look like him. Like her, you were. Dark hair like yours, she had. Lovely girl. I cried so much when she went, I almost couldn't feed Chrissie.”

“When did you decide you'd take me too?”

“I wanted to as soon as I heard she'd gone. But of course I had to ask Dad. It was his business just as much as mine.”

“What did he say when you told him about me?”

Mrs. Stanford unexpectedly laughed. “You know Dad. First thing he asked was, what class did your mother come from.”

“And what did you say?”

“I told him your mother was a nice girl. Well spoken. Might have been a secretary or something like that. But she was a working girl. Working class like us. Then he wanted to know about her family, and I told him your mother said she hadn't any.”

“What did he say then?”

“Said he supposed I meant to have you and he wouldn't stand in my way. It wasn't as if I could have any more of my own, you see.”

“Did you mean to? I mean, if you hadn't had to have all that done after Chris was born, would you have had another?”

“Always meant to have six. Well, four at any rate.”

“Did Dad want six?”

“I don't think I ever got as far as asking. I think he's quite happy with just two of you.”

“If my father did know about me, I suppose he could have found me? If he wanted to, I mean?”

“If your mother changed her name I don't see it would be easy for him.”

“But if he really wanted to, he could have?”

“I don't see how.”

“So he might have tried and never found me?”

“You shouldn't go on worrying about it, Vicky. You know Dad and I think just as much of you as of Chris. You're just the same as if you were our own.”

“It's not that. It's just not knowing.”

“What do you want to know then?”

“I don't know. What he's like, I suppose. I mean if I knew what sort of person he was, I'd know more about me, wouldn't I?”

“I don't see that. The way I look at it, it's the people who've brought you up, who've had everything to do with you since you were a baby, that make most difference to what you're like. Not a man you've never even seen.”

“I might have seen him. He might live round here. He may be someone I see every day and don't know about.”

“You'll only make yourself unhappy if you. . .” Mrs. Stanford began, but was interrupted by Chris's voice from upstairs.

“Mum! Mum! I'm ready for the rinse.”

“Coming!” To Vicky, Mrs. Stanford said, “Just make up your mind you're our Vicky, and don't bother your head about anyone else.”

Vicky still sat on at the table when she'd gone. She knew that what her Mum had said was sense, but it didn't stop her wondering about her real parents. Not so much about her mother, that lovely girl who had proudly plaited her half inch of dark hair and who had loved her enough to “want to eat her”. More about the
father who hadn't known, or if he had known hadn't cared. Or perhaps had cared, but couldn't find his daughter. She wished she knew who he was, what he did, what he looked like. Without knowing anything about him, she felt somehow incomplete. She would like to be like Chris who could count back in a family rich with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and see exactly where she fitted in. Vicky hadn't got a frame like that to explain her to herself, she had only Mum and Dad, who, however much they loved her and pretended she was their own, couldn't give her the confidence of an unbroken tradition. It was silly, as her Mum had said, to go on and on about it, but she did just wish she knew.

Her eye fell on the piece of the wooden egg on the table. It reminded her of the morning's incident. Uncomfortable. She didn't want to have to think about it. It must have just been a coincidence, like Chris had said. You couldn't really see the future, things that hadn't happened yet, unless you were a fortune teller, one of those who looked into crystal balls, or could read the stars. If the egg that boy made such a fuss about had been a crystal ball, she might have thought there was something in it, perhaps. Or perhaps not. There was nothing mysterious about just a wooden egg. But the dark shapes around the bright picture—and she knew she had seen it, whatever anyone told her—had looked like this bit of wood. She held it up as she had over the table in the caff so that it half framed the kitchen doorway. Bright sunlight from the passage outside made the shape very dark.