The Runaway Summer Page 6

He said, ‘I am not from Pakistan.’

  Mary looked at him with her mouth open.

  He said, ‘I am from Kenya. My name is Krishna Patel. And I am a British Subject.’

  He stood up, wearing her jersey, and looking, not thin and frightened anymore, but rather angry and proud, and suddenly Mary began to get angry too. He was such a cheat! She thought of all the things she had said to him—silly, gentle, soothing things that she would never have dreamed of saying to anyone who could understand her—and felt cold and humiliated.

  She said, ‘I think you’re rotten! That was a rotten, mean, sneaky thing to do!’

  She took a threatening step towards him, but he didn’t back away, just stood quite still, his eyes widening with surprise.

  She said, ‘What did you do it for? Pretending …’ but there was no time for him to answer her, because at that moment Simon appeared, bursting on them suddenly from the space between the huts. He was panting for breath and so pale that the freckles stood out on his face like stones.

  ‘They’re coming,’ he gasped. ‘They’re coming along the beach …’

  And when Mary and the boy stood motionless, he took the boy by the shoulders and pushed him into the hut. ‘Get in,’ he said. ‘Behind the door. Hide …’

  FIVE

  Against the Law …

  SO WHEN THE policemen came, trudging along the beach, all they saw were two children, sitting on the steps of an open hut and sorting out a pile of pretty shells.

  They looked innocent enough. The only odd thing, perhaps, was that they didn’t look up, even when the two men stopped in front of them.

  ‘Bit old for shells, aren’t you, Simon?’ one of them said. His voice was friendly but his eyes were sharp. He looked, over the children’s heads, into the hut.

  Mary saw Simon’s hand tighten on his knee, and knew he was going to blush. She tried to stop him, concentrating hard and saying, in her mind, Don’t blush, don’t blush, but it was no use. The colour swept up his neck, over his face, and disappeared into his hair. He said, ‘Oh, Mr Peters! I didn’t see you! This is my friend, Mary. I’m just helping her with her shells.

  It sounded so false that Mary despaired. She said, ‘It’s for a Project at school. Life on the Seashore. I have to collect seaweed and shells and things. It’s frightfully boring, and I’m rather behind hand, that’s why Simon’s helping me.’

  She spoke in a lively, natural tone, but without much hope. She was a better liar than Simon—who hadn’t had much practice, by the sound of it—but she doubted if she had been convincing enough to distract attention from that blush. They would have to be imbeciles, or blind! Any minute now one of them would push them aside and march into the hut, and drag the boy from his hiding place behind the door.

  She sat rigid, not daring to raise her eyes above the middle button of Constable Peters’ waistcoat, waiting for a heavy hand on her shoulder and an angry voice, shouting.

  What she heard, instead, was a chuckle. She looked up and saw that both men were grinning broadly.

  Constable Peters had a red, sweaty face, with small, brown eyes sunk into it, like currants in a bun. He smiled at Mary. ‘This your hut?’

  ‘My grandfather’s.’

  ‘Lock it up when you go. Otherwise you might get unwelcome visitors. You’ve not seen anyone, I suppose? No suspicious characters hanging about?’

  ‘Only you,’ Mary said, which made them laugh. They walked off, laughing and talking to each other.

  When they were out of earshot, Simon said, ‘I can’t help it. It’s having a thin skin. The blood shows. And the more you think about it and try and stop it, the worse it gets.’

  Mary, who had been holding her breath, drew in a deep gulp of air and felt dizzy. ‘I thought they’d be bound to know. Once you started. They couldn’t not notice.’

  ‘They noticed, all right. They just thought it was something different, that’s all.”

  ‘What?’

  He gave her a shy look, picked up a small pink and brown shell and began to examine it with great attention.

  Mary jabbed her elbow into his arm and he dropped the shell into the pile at his feet.

  She said, ‘What did they think?’

  He sighed. ‘They thought it was because I was with you. With a girl. Some people have queer ideas of what’s funny.’

  In the circumstances, Mary thought it was fairly funny herself.

  ‘They’d laugh on the other side of their faces, if only they knew.’

  She hoped this would cheer him up, but it didn’t seem to. His expression remained glum.

  She said, reproachfully, ‘You wouldn’t rather they’d guessed right, would you?’

  He gave her a brief, scornful glance. ‘I came back, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’ But this needed an explanation, she thought. She said, to his sullen profile, ‘Why did you? I mean, after all you said about sending people back where they came from. It was the law, you said.’

  He got up quickly, as if he didn’t want to answer her question, and went into the hut. He said, ‘Well, for crying out loud! His Nibs is asleep!’

  The boy was curled up in the small space behind the door, his head dangling loose on his frail neck, like a heavy flower. He was snoring a little.

  Simon said, rather uncomfortably, ‘It’s different with someone you’ve seen.’ He looked at her for a minute, and then began to grin. ‘Besides, I suddenly thought what we could do with him!’

  They sat on the steps. He couldn’t stay here, Simon explained, because the police kept an eye on the huts. Tramps often broke in and slept in them.

  ‘So I thought of my Uncle Horace’s shop,’ Simon said. ‘He’s not there and it’s locked up, but I know a way in. We can take him after dark. After supper.’

  ‘I have to go to bed after supper,’ Mary said.

  Simon looked amused. ‘You can get out though, can’t you? You’ll have to come, you’ve made friends with him.’

  ‘He speaks English,’ Mary said. She had forgotten this. ‘Just before you came back, he talked to me. And you were wrong about Pakistan! He comes from Africa—from Kenya. His name’s Krishna Patel.’

  From the hut behind came a small, creaky groan, as if Krishna had heard his name spoken in a dream. They went inside and he was stirring, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘Shut the door,’ Simon said, and Mary pulled it to, so that only a little light came in, through the cracks.

  The boy lurched to his feet and tottered, moaning.

  ‘Cramp,’ Simon said. He rubbed the boy’s legs with his knuckles. ‘Stamp your feet. It’ll bring the blood back.’ But the boy was too sleepy. He stood, swaying and yawning.

  ‘Let him lie down,’ Mary said. There were bathing towels on the hook: they smelt musty, but they were better than nothing. She spread them on the floor and put Krishna down. He curled up, thumb in mouth, like a baby.

  ‘Out for the count,’ Simon said. He knelt, and spoke in his ear. ‘We’re going to lock you in. But we’re coming back. If you wake up, just wait. No noise!’

  ‘You don’t have to shout at him,’ Mary said. She touched his cheek and he opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you spoke English?’ He took his thumb out of his mouth. ‘I was afraid,’ he said.

  *

  Mary was a bit afraid, too. It was all very well for Simon to talk so calmly about getting out after dark: he didn’t know Aunt Alice who prowled the house at night, bolting doors and windows against burglars, and who always came into Mary’s room, last thing, to see she was safe in bed. It would be easier to escape an armed guard than Aunt Alice’s vigilant eye! ‘She’s afraid I’ll run away and tell someone about the way she treats me,’ Mary said, eating her supper by herself in front of the television, because by the time she had got home, Grandfather and Aunt Alice had finished theirs, and Aunt Alice had been putting on her coat to come and look for her.

  Mary had explained that she had been playing with her new friends and forgot
ten the time, and Aunt Alice had said, ‘Don’t your friends have homes to go to?’ She was only cross because she had been worried, but remembering it now, Mary scowled at the television and said to herself, ‘She doesn’t want me to have friends because she’s afraid I’ll tell them about her. She’d really like to keep me locked in my room, but she doesn’t dare, because the woman who comes in to clean might think it funny …’

  Coming in just then, Aunt Alice saw Mary’s scowl and said nervously, ‘Finished, dear? Do you want anything else?’

  Mary said nothing. She wished there was a lock on her door. Then Aunt Alice couldn’t come in …

  ‘No answer came the stern reply,’ Aunt Alice said brightly. ‘Not an apple, dear? An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’

  Mary’s scowl grew fiercer. Sneaking in after I’m asleep, she was thinking. Like a thief, poking and prying.

  She said, ‘Aunt Alice, I wish you wouldn’t come into my room, after I’ve gone to bed.’

  Aunt Alice looked so hurt, that even Mary felt sorry.

  She said, ‘I only meant—it’s sort of scarey, lying there and knowing you’re going to come, creeping in and looking at me when I’m asleep.’

  In the silence, Aunt Alice’s stomach made a bubbling sound. Then she said, ‘I never meant to frighten you. Only to see you’re all right …’ She looked at Mary quite sharply. ‘I didn’t think you were a nervous little girl.’

  ‘I’m not’ Mary tried to think how she would feel if she were. ‘It’s just that things look different in the dark. Clothes on a chair and on the peg on the door. And if you’re half asleep, and the door opens slowly, you’re scared of what might come in …’

  Aunt Alice smiled at Mary. “Well, I won’t, again. I used to be frightened of the dark, too. When I was a little girl, I had a nurse who used to lock me in the cupboard under the stairs when I was naughty. It was black as pitch.’

  ‘Why did you let her? I’d have screamed.’ Mary said.

  Aunt Alice sighed. ‘She said there was a crocodile there who would eat me up at one bite, if I made any noise.’

  Mary thought it was typical of Aunt Alice to be so stupid. Perhaps what she was thinking showed on her face, because Aunt Alice said, ‘Of course I knew there wasn’t a crocodile. But only in the way you know the clothes on the back of the door are just clothes. That’s why I always leave the light on the landing for you.’

  Leaving the light on the landing seemed an odd jump from crocodiles in the cupboard, but it gave Mary something to think about. When she went to say goodnight a bit later on she kissed Aunt Alice as well as her grandfather. This was something she had avoided up to now, hating the idea of Aunt Alice’s glasses and the stiff hairs on her chin. The cold rim of the glasses bumped her nose and the whiskers pricked her, but she minded less than she had expected and Aunt Alice seemed pleased: she gave one of her high-pitched laughs and said, ‘Well, what an honour!’

  Mary said, ‘I think that was beastly, about the crocodile,’ and backed away before Aunt Alice could kiss her again.

  ‘Crocodile? What crocodile?’ Grandfather said, but Aunt Alice only laughed again and said that was a secret, between her and Mary, and just look at the time! Didn’t Grandfather want to watch that old war film on television? It was called The Sinking of The Bismarck, and he had definitely said, this morning, that he wanted to see it!

  She sounded flustered. Of course, Mary thought, as she went upstairs, Aunt Alice would never have told Grandfather about the nurse and the crocodile, and she would be embarrassed if he found out now. She would be afraid he would blame himself for employing such a horrible woman to look after his daughter. At least, that was half of it. The other half was shame: she would hate him to know that something that had happened so long ago was still important to her.

  Mary was surprised how sure she was about this. She didn’t just understand how Aunt Alice felt, she knew. It was rather as if she had suddenly acquired a magic eye that could look into Aunt Alice’s mind.

  In much the same way—knowing, not guessing—she was sure that Aunt Alice would not look into her room again, not tonight nor any other night. Not because she had said she wouldn’t, but because people creeping in was something she had been afraid of when she was a little girl.

  Knowing this, Mary felt mean, but only for a minute. There was no more time to think about Aunt Alice. She had promised Simon to meet him at nine, and it was nearly that already.

  She stood on the landing and listened. Stirring music rose up the stair well, followed by the sound of gunfire. Aunt Alice would not want to watch, Mary knew, she hated noisy war films, but she would sit with Grandfather all the same, in order to wake him when he dropped off to sleep because he hated to miss anything. And the film would last about an hour and a half …

  Mary crept down the stairs, out of the front door, and into the gusty dark.

  Simon was waiting by the bathing hut. He said, ‘I though you weren’t coming.’

  ‘I had to wait till the film started. Have you got him?’

  From the dark shadow between the huts, a darker shadow emerged. Mary giggled. ‘He doesn’t show up in the dark like you do.’

  ‘The whites of his eyes show more, though,’ Simon said.

  Krishna was shivering. Mary took his hand and it felt cold and damp.

  ‘If we run he’ll get warm,’ she said, but Simon shook his head.

  ‘Just walk natural. It’s better.’

  It was more alarming, though. Once up on the promenade they seemed so exposed. Naked, like shelled crabs. The line of houses facing the beach showed only an occasional light: anyone could be watching from a dark window. And side turnings could shelter policemen … Mary longed to take to he heels and run, and she knew from the way Simon looked around him, that he was scared, too. Only Krishna seemed calm.

  As they approached the pier, he said in a clear, penetrating voice, ‘Is it far to London, from this town?’

  ‘I don’t know how many miles,’ Mary whispered. ‘It’s about two hours on the train.’

  ‘I should like to go to London now,’ Krishna said. ‘My Uncle is in London. He was to meet me at the airport.’

  ‘Shut up,’ Simon said. ‘Look …’

  Just beyond the pier, a long, black car was parked at the side of the road.

  ‘Police,’ Simon said. ‘No, don’t stop. Keep walking.’

  Mary felt as if her legs were bending under her. She clutched Krishna’s hand.

  Simon said suddenly and loudly, ‘Do you know about the monk who was frying chipped potatoes?’

  ‘No,’ Mary said. She thought it seemed an odd time for jokes.

  ‘Well. This other monk came up to him and said, are you a friar? And he said no, I’m a chipmunk.’

  It was an old joke, and it hadn’t been very funny when new. All the same, Mary laughed politely, and Simon laughed too. They were drawing level with the car, and Mary could see the nearest policeman’s face, a pale blur turned towards them.

  ‘Up here,’ Simon said, and they turned up a side street. It was narrow and winding; as soon as they were round the first bend Simon said, ‘Run now,’ and Mary and Krishna ran until he burst between them, breaking their clasped hands, and wheeled them into an alley.

  The alley was full of dustbins. Mary stumbled against one, hurt her knee, and said crossly, ‘What a time to make jokes!’

  ‘I had to do something. There was that policeman, looking out of the car. So I told a joke, and all he saw was just three kids, telling jokes and laughing. It was a sort of camouflage.’

  Mary rubbed her knee. Were they really looking for us?’

  ‘Not for us, just for someone. My Dad was in, supper time, and he says they caught the boatman out in the Channel and found out he had three passengers. He didn’t say anything about a boy, so they’re looking for another man.’

  Krishna said, ‘Why did we run? My foot hurts …’

  He was leaning against the wall by the dustbins, one leg drawn up
, like a stork.

  Mary said to Simon—accusingly, because she had forgotten about it herself—‘I told you he hurt his foot when he fell.’

  She knelt down and felt the boy’s ankle. It was swollen; hard and smooth as an apple. ‘It must have been agony to walk on, even,’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

  For answer, he gave a little sob and Simon said, encouragingly, It’s not much further. Just over the wall, and then it’s quite easy.’

  They had to stand on a dustbin. Simon got up all right and sat straddled on the wall to help Krishna, but the first time Mary climbed on to the dustbin, the lid tipped and she landed inside. The bin was full of squashy rubbish that felt slimy against her ankles and smelt foul.

  ‘My God, you do pong,’ Simon said, when she managed the climb on the second attempt, and sat on the wall between them. ‘Wish I’d remembered to bring my smelling salts,’ he went on, fanning his hand and pretending to feel faint.

  ‘Witty, aren’t you!’ Mary said sourly, but Krishna laughed. It was such an odd, shrill sound, that they did not realise what it was at first. Then they saw that he was convulsed with laughter, rocking backwards and forwards on the wall and cheeping thinly, like a baby bird.

  Somewhere a sash window went up with a rattle, and Simon said, ‘Ssh … get down.’

  He dropped into the yard on the other side of the wall and put up his arms for Krishna. Mary heard him gasp as he took the boy’s weight. Then she jumped down beside them, and felt her bones jar.

  There were more dustbins. ‘Your Uncle must have an awful lot of rubbish,’ Mary said.

  ‘That’s his business,’ Simon said, and giggled faintly. ‘Watch out, there’s steps here.’

  The steps led down to a dark area where there was a door and a barred window. Simon felt the bars and seemed to shake them gently.

  ‘Who d’you think you are? Tarzan?’ Mary said.

  ‘My secret is discovered,’ Simon said. He gave a little grunt, and two bars were swinging free. He glanced at Mary, grinning; then reached through to ease the window up.

  He climbed in first, then Krishna, then Mary. It was dark and smelt of mice. ‘Where are you?’ Mary said, and walked forward, hands outstretched. She touched Krishna’s jacket which was dry now, but stiff with sea water; then Simon’s arm.