The Runaway Summer (4 page)

Mary ran through the huts and on to the promenade. There were people about now, but they were some way away, by the pier. She went down the next flight of steps where there was a woman sitting in a deck chair, hidden from sight until now by a high breakwater. Mary started towards her but stopped almost at once. The old woman was lying back with her eyes closed, her shabby fur wrapped round her. It was the woman she had pulled the mad face at, this morning …

She couldn’t wake
her.
And ask her to help …

Whimpering in her throat, Mary went back to the hut. The boy hadn’t moved. A little wind had got up—no more than a gentle breath—and was stirring his limp, dark hair. His hands lay palm down on the shingles, the thin fingers loosely curled. One foot seemed to stick out at an awkward angle, and the side of his head was jammed up against the bottom step of the hut.

Mary knelt beside him. She thought she ought to turn him over and make him more comfortable, but she was afraid to touch him.

She thought—Perhaps he’s dead! And then—
If
he’s dead, I killed him!

She began to shake, crouching on the pebbles with her arms hugged round her. She looked up and down the beach. No one had seen her; if she locked the hut and went away, no one would ever know. She could go home for tea and say—
if anyone asked her—that she had been playing at the other end of the town, where the shell beach was. Aunt Alice and Grandfather would believe her. Whatever lies she told, they always believed her.

But this was one lie she couldn’t tell! Suppose, after all, he wasn’t dead? She couldn’t just leave him here! She gave a little groan and put her hand down to his face. His cheek was warm and his breath fluttered against her palm like a bird’s wing.

She stood up. Her stomach felt hollow and her legs seemed to be moving independently, like someone else’s legs. They carried her up the steps, on to the promenade and towards the pier.

Just before the pier, there was a small crowd of people. She thought perhaps there had been an accident: there was a policeman there, though he wasn’t in the crowd but on the edge of it, standing and looking out to sea.

Mary began to run towards him but slowed down when she was a few yards away. She remembered, with awful guilt, the Crunchie Bars she had stolen. Perhaps the man at the kiosk had missed them and told this very policeman. Perhaps he was looking for her now—for a dirty-faced girl with long, black hair. Forgetting she had washed before lunch, Mary pulled out her handkerchief, spat on it, and scrubbed at her mouth. She hesitated, gulped, went closer to the policeman—and then stopped dead.

The crowd beyond him had thinned and she could see, at the centre of it, the two men who had been in the boat with the boy. Another policeman was talking to them and a third was holding their arms just above the elbow, which was rather silly, Mary thought, because neither of them looked as if they would run away. They seemed far too sad and bewildered, and so out of place, somehow, standing on the sea front in dark
suits, with small, shabby suitcases in their hands. Someone near Mary said, ‘Poor devils …’ and she looked up at the faces round her, but no one else seemed sorry: they were just staring and staring as if they were expecting—or hoping—that something exciting would happen.

But nothing did. There was a police car at the kerb, and as Mary pushed her way through the crowd, the two men and one of the policemen got into it, and drove away.

Mary wondered what they had done wrong. They had come from the sea, so perhaps they were smugglers, smuggling gold watches or diamonds. Or burglars—perhaps the boat that had landed them would call for them on the next tide to take them and their loot right away, where the police couldn’t catch them. If they were burglars, it would explain why they had brought a boy with them. She remembered Oliver Twist, and how Bill Sykes had taken him burgling because he needed a boy small enough to get through a window and open the door from inside.

If the boy was a burglar, it was no good asking a policeman to help him. Or any grown-up, for that matter …

Mary had a sudden, awful feeling that everyone was watching her. She ducked her head, turned, and cannoned straight into the cushiony stomach of a large lady in a flowered dress. Her husband said, ‘Watch out, can’t you?’

Mary was going to say she was sorry, but then she saw Simon beyond them, on the other side of the road. He must have been standing there all the time, watching like the others, and now he was walking away.

Mary dodged round the large lady and flew across the road, looking neither to left nor to right—Aunt Alice would have had a fit if she’d seen her—and called, ‘Simon, Simon, wait for me.’

She had forgotten he was bossy and inquisitive. She thought, a long time afterwards, that she must have known Simon would be a good person in an emergency, but in fact she couldn’t possibly have known it then. She just acted without thinking, and when he stopped and she saw there was someone with him, she came to a halt and couldn’t think what to say.

‘Hallo,’ Simon said. He looked shy for a minute, and then he said, ‘This is my Gran. Gran—this is my friend, Mary.’

‘Hallo, Mary.’ Simon’s Gran had a thin, merry face with a long, pointed nose, rather like a cheerful witch. She was pushing a pram with a baby in it. Mary thought it was the fat one she had seen in the play pen.

‘That’s Jane,’ Simon said. ‘And our new baby’s called Jenny.’

Jane blew a large bubble and laughed when it burst.

‘Four sisters,’ Simon’s Gran said. ‘Poor, down-trodden boy. Still, I suppose he’ll live.’

Simon looked at Mary. ‘Were you coming to see us? You came earlier, then you went away.’

So he
had
been watching from a window! For a second, Mary felt horribly embarrassed, then it didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was to get Simon alone, to tell him about the boy. She had the feeling—and it was growing stronger and stronger—that he would know what to do.

But how to get him alone? His Gran was smiling and saying, ‘Well, why don’t you come and see us now?’ and she set off at a good, smart pace, without giving Mary a chance to answer. She couldn’t even drop back and catch Simon’s eye, because his Gran was talking to her, telling her that the new baby weighed eight and a half pounds, which was two pounds more than Jane had weighed when she was born and three pounds more than Polly-Anna, who were naturally smaller, being twins, but Simon had weighed more than any of them: nine
pounds, three ounces exactly. ‘
And
his Mum only a little thing, knee-high to a grasshopper!’ she said proudly.

Mary tried to think of a polite remark on this subject, but failed. All she could think of was to ask Simon’s grandmother how much
she
had weighed when she was born, but that didn’t seem the right sort of question, somehow.

‘You sound like a cannibal, Gran,’ Simon said. ‘Working out which of us would have given you the biggest dinner!’

‘Horrible boy,’ his grandmother said calmly. She turned the pram into the front garden of Harbour View and began to unfasten the baby’s harness. ‘Come along my duckie-doo. Tea time now.’

‘Roast baby with mint sauce,’ Simon grinned at Mary. ‘Are you coming? Tea time with the Trumpets is a
very
special occasion.’

Mary giggled. Then she shook her head. ‘I can’t, just now. There’s something I’ve got to do …’

She looked helplessly at Simon who was capering round the pram, rolling his eyes and smacking his lips. ‘Something awfully special …’ she said, speaking loudly and willing him to stop acting the fool and pay attention …’

But he barely glanced in her direction. He was too full of himself and his silly joke. ‘We don’t say
what’s
cooking in our house, we say
who’s
cooking,’ he said, bounding up the steps in front of his grandmother and flinging the door wide. She pretended to box his ears as she passed and he doubled up, laughing. He shouted, to Mary, ‘Of course, you can always have a peanut butter sandwich, if you don’t fancy what’s on the menu!’

Mary clenched her teeth. It was no use. When people were in this sort of mood, you could never get them to listen.

‘I suppose you think you’re witty,’ she said. ‘Mister Too-clever-by-half!’

She stumbled out of the gate her eyes scalding with disappointment. It had been a mistake to think Simon would help. He was too stupid, too cockily pleased with himself and his beastly family to bother about anyone else. She had been wasting her time.

And not only her time, she suddenly realised. The boy’s time, too! While she had been chasing around, silly enough to believe she could find someone to help her, he might have been dying! She should never have left him alone, not without looking to see where he was hurt. Suppose he had cut himself when he fell, and was bleeding to death!

Fear grew as she ran. By the time she reached the bathing hut, she was so panic-stricken that she could hardly believe what she saw. Or, rather, what she didn’t see …

The hut was as she had left it: the door standing open and the sun streaming in. But the boy had gone.

‘I
WAS ONLY
trying to make you
laugh
,' Simon said. He sounded reproachful and slightly out of breath. When Mary didn't answer, he sat down beside her on the hut steps and pretended to be more puffed than he actually was, blowing out his lips and fanning himself. ‘You run pretty fast for a girl,' he said.

Mary gave him a withering look and stuck her nose in the air.

Simon said, ‘I know it wasn't a very good joke, about eating people, I mean. But it wasn't so terribly
bad,
either. Not bad enough to make you run away. Unless you believed it, of course …'

Mary knew he was expecting her to laugh. But she couldn't. She couldn't even smile. She just sat, hunched up and staring at the sea. Perhaps the boatman had seen what happened and come back and fetched the boy? But if he had done, wouldn't the boat be still in sight? She stared until her eyeballs ached. The sea was as empty as the sky.

‘
Did
you believe it?' Simon was peering at her, leaning so close that she had to look at him. His face was wide open with laughter and his eyes seemed to reflect the speckles of light from the sea. ‘You didn't really think we'd eat
you
?'

‘Don't be
potty
.' Mary's voice was so frantic, he stopped smiling at once.

‘Why did you run away, then?' He sounded surprised: he was the sort of boy, Mary thought, who would always expect an immediate and reasonable answer to everything. But she couldn't give him one, not now the boy had disappeared, because he wouldn't believe her. People
never
believed her, she thought miserably, and of course, quite often they were right not to, since she was always making up stories. Sometimes people said, ‘Don't tell lies, Mary,' and sometimes, when they were kinder, ‘Oh Mary, you have such an imagination!' As if imagination were a disease, like chicken pox, or measles.

Mary thought she wouldn't be able to bear it, if Simon said something like that. She clenched her fists and held her breath, almost as if she expected him to.

But all he said was, ‘I'm sorry. I suppose it was the twins, then. I thought it might be. But you shouldn't have worried, honestly. I know they're awful, but they're not
sneaky.
Least, not when they understand. They wouldn't have
said
anything …' Mary stared at him and he blushed and added, lamely, ‘About this morning, I mean …'

This morning seemed a long way away and a long time ago, like a dream she had almost forgotten. Remembering it now, Mary hung her head. ‘It wasn't
that,
stupid.'

‘What was it, then?' Simon's voice was still patient, but Mary thought she could detect a sharper note, as if in a minute or two he would begin to get bored with this one-sided conversation.

She looked at him quickly, prepared to be angry, but he only looked puzzled and interested and kind. Suddenly, she wished she could tell him. ‘You wouldn't believe me if I told you,' she said, and stood up because she couldn't bear to sit still any longer. As she stumbled down to the creaming
edge of the sea, her heart was beating fast and the palms of her hands felt sticky. Perhaps a policeman had found the boy! Perhaps he was even now shut up in jail, in a dark, airless cell! Or worse, dying in hospital with a doctor standing beside him and shaking his head and saying,
Of
course,
if
we
had
found
him
earlier,
we
might
have
saved
his
life
…

‘How d'you know I wouldn't believe you?' Simon said, behind her, and all at once the guilty fears that were simmering inside her seemed to bubble up and spill over. She turned on him furiously.

‘Oh do shut up talking—talking's no
good—
we've got to
do
something quick.' Hot tears came into her eyes and blurred her vision. ‘It's awful,' she said, half-sobbing, ‘anything might have happened to him …'

‘Who's him?' Simon said, and when she didn't answer—she tried to, but her throat seemed to have swollen up—he took her by the shoulders and shook her, quite hard. Then he let her go and said, ‘Come on, tell me! Who's “him”, and what's up?'

He had spoken in a jollying uncle-ish voice, as if Mary wasn't a girl his own age, but someone much younger—Poll, say, or Annabel. Another time Mary might have resented this, but now it comforted her. His sounding so calm and grown-up brought back the feeling she had had earlier; that here was someone who would know what to do.

Once she had begun to tell him, she couldn't get it out fast enough. ‘You know those two men the policeman took away—well, there was a boy, too—he was running on the beach and—and I jumped at him and he fell over Grampy's stick. Then he didn't move and I thought—I thought he was dead—and I went to find someone and I saw the men with the policeman and I couldn't tell them because of Bill Sykes and Oliver
Twist and—and then I wanted to tell you, but you wouldn't listen—you just acted silly so—so I ran back and—and he's not here anymore … He's
gone
…'

She was out of breath and her legs felt funny, so she sat down on the breakwater.

Simon said slowly, ‘Well, he can't be dead then, can he? I mean, corpses can't walk!'

Having made this practical point, he stopped and looked at Mary, frowning a little. Then he said, ‘But I don't see—I mean, what you said about Bill Sykes and Oliver Twist. I don't see what that's got to do with it.'

Mary smiled. She was beginning to feel ashamed of her babyish behaviour—almost crying and being unable to get her story out sensibly—and was glad to find something Simon didn't know. She said, ‘Bill Sykes was a burglar and he always took a boy with him when he went burgling to get through the windows he was too fat for and open doors for him. Haven't you read
Oliver Twist
?'

Simon nodded, but he still looked puzzled. He said, ‘Don't
you
read the newspapers?'

This question didn't make much sense to Mary—unless Simon was just trying to get his own back! But she was going to answer it, all the same, and say that she didn't read them very often because her grandfather only took the
Financial
Times
and that was a dull newspaper without any pictures, when she remembered that her grandfather was supposed to be blind and weak in the head as well! Things had been happening so fast that she couldn't remember for the moment whether this was something she had actually told Simon, or something she had been going to tell him, so she shook her head and said, ‘I'm not allowed. My Aunt doesn't allow me.'

Simon opened his mouth and shut it again. Then he said,
‘Oh. Well, it doesn't matter. We'd better
find
him—that's the first thing. If he's hurt, he can't have gone far.'

‘I looked in our hut,' Mary said. ‘Only in ours, but the others are mostly shut up.' Simon began to walk purposefully up the beach and she ran after him. ‘There wasn't anyone else near, except the old lady, and she was asleep. And I couldn't have told the policeman, could I?' Simon had stopped by the hut. He didn't seem to be listening, so she plucked at his sleeve. ‘After all, if he's a burglar, they'd have locked him up too!'

Simon looked at her. He was grinning. ‘So that's what you thought, is it?' he said. And then, ‘You silly nit.'

Mary said indignantly, ‘What d'you mean?' but he shook his head at her and put his finger to his lips.

She said, ‘Silly nit yourself,' but softly, under her breath, because the grin had gone from his face now and he was holding his breath, as if breathing distracted him.

They both stood quiet. At first Mary could hear nothing, except the sea sucking at the shingle. Then she heard something else. A tiny, scrabbling sound …

Simon whispered, ‘Did you look
underneath
the hut?'

*

And underneath was where they found him, scrooged up in a tight ball and as far away from the hut steps as he could get. He made no sound or movement as they crawled towards him, just stayed still, with his knees drawn up to his chest and the whites of his eyes showing, but when they were close enough he gave a choky gasp and hit out. His fists were hard as little rocks.

They slithered backwards, on their stomachs, out of range.

‘Well, he's not hurt as bad as all that,' Simon said, rubbing the side of his head where a elancing blow had caught him. ‘I
suppose he must've knocked himself out when he fell, and then come round and crawled in here …'

‘His foot's hurt,' Mary said. ‘It looked twisted round.' She looked at the boy and said, loudly and clearly, as if, being foreign, he must also be deaf, ‘Does your foot hurt?'

The boy stared. He was shivering all over like a wet dog. His eyes were enormous and the colour of plums.

‘I don't suppose he speaks English,' Simon said.

‘Do you speak English?' Mary asked, but the boy didn't answer. Only his eyes showed that he had heard her speak: they moved from Simon's face to hers. He looked very small and harmless now, but he reminded Mary of her cat, Noakes, when he had been given to her as a kitten. He had looked gentle and quiet enough, but as soon as anyone touched him, he had turned into a spitting bundle of fur and rage.

‘We better think what to do,' Simon said.

Being bigger than Mary, he was more uncomfortable under the hut: to get out, he had to wriggle backwards, pushing with his elbows. Mary stayed behind and said to the boy, speaking quietly so that Simon shouldn't hear and laugh at her, ‘I didn't mean to hurt you. Or frighten you, even. I was just being silly.'

He had stopped shivering, almost as if he understood. She said hopefully, ‘What's your name?' and then pointed to
herself
and said, ‘I'm Mary,' but there was no response. He just watched her, and then began to cry silently. The tears that welled up in his plum-coloured eyes and slipped down the side of his nose, were shiny and solid-looking, like lumps of mercury. Almost as if someone had broken a thermometer, Mary thought.

Simon called her from outside. She said, to the boy, ‘Don't cry. I'll come back. Don't be frightened. I'll come back.' She
knew now that Simon was right, and the boy couldn't understand what she was saying, so she spoke in a crooning sing-song, trying to calm him with the sound of her voice, as if he were a wild animal or a baby. ‘I'll look after you,' she said, and wished she could put her arms round him and hold him tight and safe. He was so little, so thin …'

Simon said, ‘Mary …' and she crawled to the edge of the hut and looked up.

‘I got him an ice-lolly,' Simon said. ‘I heard the van going by.' Mary stared up at him, squinting because it was so bright, after the darkness under the hut, and he held out the lolly. ‘Just to show him we're friends,' he said.

The lolly was wrapped in paper. Mary wriggled back under the hut and tossed it towards the boy. He watched her for a minute, not crying now, and then one small, brown hand crept across the stones. He unwrapped the lolly and took a bite, his eyes still on her face. ‘Go on,' Mary said. ‘It's nice.'

He took another bite, and was immediately sick. Mary crawled out from under the hut, holding her nose. ‘He's been sick. It's an awful smell.' She felt she might be sick herself. ‘What are we going to do?'

‘I've been thinking,' Simon said. He stopped. ‘But I haven't thought of anything yet.'

‘We ought to clean him up,' Mary said. She fetched a bucket from the hut and went down to the sea. The sun was low and red in the sky now, and a chilly breeze whipped off the water. She climbed back up the beach with a full pail and said, ‘We've got to think of something soon. He'll catch cold if he stays here all night.'

Simon bent down and called. ‘Come on now, come on out. We won't hurt you.'

‘I don't suppose he'll come for you,' Mary said.

Simon stood up. ‘Perhaps not. You try. He won't be so scared of you because you're a girl and smaller.'

“In a minute.' Mary said. ‘First, we've got to make up our minds. I mean—what are we going to do?' She wondered if she could take the boy home with her and then dismissed the idea. Aunt Alice got into what Grandfather called a ‘fine old state' if someone just came to tea. Mary said, ‘Could you take him home with you? There's a lot of people in your house, one more wouldn't make much difference.'

‘I can't. My Dad's a policeman.' Simon went red, as if this were an embarrassing thing to admit.

‘What difference does that make? When I told you about the burglars, you said I was a silly nit.'

Simon went redder still. ‘So you are. Or a plumb
ignorant
nit, anyway. He's breaking the law, all right, but he's not a burglar. He's an—an illegal immigrant.'

Mary stared. Simon said, ‘Didn't you really know? Not even when I asked you if
you
read the newspapers?'

Mary shook her head. The truth was, she was usually so busy with her own thoughts and with what was happening to her, that what went on in the newspapers, or on television, seemed boring and far away, like grown-up conversation.

Simon sighed. ‘I suppose you know what an immigrant
is
?'

‘Someone from another country who comes here to live. That's not against the
law
!'

‘Well. Sometimes. I mean, there's lots of people who want to come here, or go to America, because they can't get jobs in their own countries. But not everyone can come who wants to. There's what's called a quota—just so many foreigners let in every year. And sometimes people who can't get a place on the quota try and sneak in some other way. Like those two men. Quite a lot land here because it's near to France. They
get to France and then they pay someone to bring them across the Channel.'