The Changeling Read online

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Let’s see your hands.’

  Todd examined them carefully. They were not clean, they were calloused and scarred, but they had no red ink on them.

  ‘Now,’ said Todd, about to produce his master-stroke, ‘the soles of your shoes.’

  Like an obedient dog tolerant of its master’s foolishness, Curdie turned his back and held up his right foot so that the sole of his sandshoe could be seen. In it there was a hole, with the skin visible; but there was no trace of red ink. Nor was there any on his left.

  ‘You’re smart, Curdie,’ said Todd.

  The boy seemed to bow his head a little in acknowledgement. ‘But, by God, you’re not taking me in,’ cried Todd. ‘I know you’re guilty, and I’m warning you, your life in this school won’t be worth living till you own up.’

  Suddenly Todd banged on the desk. It shocked his superior more than his victim. As Mr Fisher jumped, Curdie picked up some papers that had been sent flying.

  ‘You’re a born thief and liar, Curdie,’ roared Todd. ‘You’re a credit to the slums that bred you. Now get out of my sight.’

  Curdie stood his ground, waiting till the headmaster dismissed him. His exit was as composed as his entrance.

  Instantly Forbes was across the room.

  ‘Mr Fisher,’ he cried, ‘you heard the threat that was offered to that boy.’

  ‘It’s all most unfortunate,’ murmured the headmaster.

  Todd sneered and lit a cigarette.

  Forbes faced him. ‘I warn you,’ he said, ‘lay a finger on that child, and I shall personally charge you with assault. Good God, he’s here to be educated, not terrified, humiliated, and bullied. We are supposed to be his allies, not his enemies.’

  ‘Charlie,’ said Todd, ‘I’ve been too long at the game to be taken in by such guff.’

  ‘Mr Todd, why do you have such a grudge against the child? He lacks every advantage in life, including a decent home. You saw how he avoids the very word.’

  ‘A neat trick, typical of Curdie.’

  ‘If you mean he did it to win pity, how wrong you are. No child in this school, in this whole city, seeks pity less.’

  The headmaster held up his hand. ‘Gentlemen, please remember where you are. It does seem to me that the boy’s a disturbing influence. Perhaps the best solution would be to have him transferred to Brian Street.’

  ‘That’s where he should have been sent to in the first place,’ said Todd.

  Forbes was aghast. Such a transference would be educational chicanery. Brian Street was where pupils of low mental calibre were sent. Yet it would be easy enough to transfer Curdie, whose parents would certainly not object.

  ‘It would be scandalous to send him there,’ he said. ‘The boy’s got a first-rate intelligence.’

  ‘I’ll tell you this, Charlie,’ said Todd. ‘He’s guilty.’

  ‘You have no right to say that. You produced absolutely no proof.’

  ‘I could feel it. It’s a knack I have, Charlie: a tingle runs up and down my spine. And while I’m at it, let me tell you something else. You don’t take anybody in with your blethers about principle. You’re as much on the make as any of us. The difference between you and me, Charlie, is this: if I passed a blind beggar with a tinny I’d drop in a couple of coppers and pass on, without giving him another thought; but you’d be so damned indignant at such public misery and so busy blaming everybody else for it that you’d pass by without putting anything in at all.’

  Forbes was astonished. On the surface it was an accurate enough description.

  ‘I’ll tell you how I know, Charlie. I was just behind you once going up Buchanan Street. There was an old fellow with no eyes in his head and a row of medals on his chest. You gave him bags of sympathy, I could see that; but I had the feeling you were pretty displeased with him for sporting medals that he probably never won. It was a complicated business for you getting past him. For me it was easy; I just dropped in twopence. You were noble-hearted, I was callous and mercenary. But, by God, if we’d asked the old chap to choose between us I doubt if he’d have chosen you. We’re all humbugs, Charlie; it comes so natural to us, it seems damned odd you should have to work so hard at it. No hard feelings, Charlie,’ he called, as Forbes stalked across the room and left.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Todd, grinning at his chief. ‘I’ve been wanting to say that to Charlie for years. But I suppose I shouldn’t have said it here.’

  ‘He means well, William, particularly as regards Curdie.’

  Todd laughed. ‘Now normally I wouldn’t send a dead dog to Towellan for a holiday, but it might almost be worth while going there myself, just to watch the fun. Talk about the cuckoo in the nest!’

  ‘Well, William,’ asked the headmaster, ‘do you want me to send for the rest of these boys?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. We must be impartial. But Curdie’s the culprit.’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m like Charlie, I’m not at all convinced. The boy seemed to me to answer very candidly.’

  Todd shook his head at such credulity.

  Chapter Six

  At the bus-stop Gillian and Alistair were waiting in freckled excitement to inform him, before he was on the pavement, that their grandmother had arrived while he was out, she was in the house now, and she was going with them to Towellan tomorrow.

  This news so disconcerted him he forgot to introduce Tom.

  ‘But she said she couldn’t go this year,’ he said, as if they were to blame.

  ‘Yes, but she’s able now,’ replied Gillian, who kept glancing aside at Tom. ‘She said she’d managed to get Mr Treel to take his holidays later.’

  ‘She’d bully him into it,’ muttered Forbes.

  Treel was the manager of Mrs Storrocks’s large furniture shop in Hamilton.

  ‘What about him, Daddy?’ whispered Gillian.

  ‘Good gracious, yes.’ Forbes halted. ‘How silly of me. I forgot you’ve never met. Well, children, this is Tom Curdie.’

  He felt proud of Tom: that morning had seen a transformation; a bath and some new clothes had turned him into a boy that even Todd must have approved.

  Fair-haired Alistair, in many ways so like his mother, shook hands with a cheerful squirm of embarrassment. But Gillian, dark-haired, dark-eyed idealist, was aggressive in her curiosity. She did not offer her hand; she merely gave a quick nod and a smile; but her eyes, in their nests of freckles, were as sharp as beaks.

  ‘I’m Gillian Forbes,’ she said.

  Her father laughed. ‘I’ve just told him that,’ he said.

  ‘I wanted to tell him myself.’

  Her father didn’t quite understand. He would have to keep an eye on Gillian and make sure she didn’t tease the poor lad. There was a little streak of her Grandmother Storrocks in Gillian, though it was true, as Mary often said, that she was mostly a Forbes.

  As they walked on Alistair carried Tom’s small case, but it was Gillian who walked by his side.

  ‘Can you row?’ she asked.

  ‘A wee bit.’

  ‘Where did you learn?’

  ‘Rouken Glen.’

  ‘That’s not the sea.’

  Though he smiled, Tom knew he would have to watch carefully this girl in the blue dress and with the blue, fiercely inquisitive eyes. She would try to worry all his secrets out of him.

  ‘Can you swim?’ she asked.

  ‘Only three strokes.’

  ‘Then you can’t swim.’

  Her father intervened tactfully. ‘Tom hasn’t had your opportunities, Gillian.’

  ‘I just wanted to find out what he can do,’ she replied, blandly. ‘If he wants to learn to row and swim, I’m willing to teach him.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, Gillian.’

  ‘Some hopes!’ said Alistair, a victim of his sister’s tuition.

  Gillian returned to Tom. ‘Do you know anything about wild flowers?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Can you name ten?’ She held u
p all her fingers.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Five?’ She dropped one hand.

  ‘Just three.’

  ‘What three?’

  ‘Daisies, buttercups, dandelions.’

  She was about to smile at such a silly answer, when she suddenly suspected irony. Was he laughing at her? Though she looked hard she could not say for certain.

  ‘When we’re at Towellan, Gillian,’ said her father, ‘you’ll take Tom out and show him all the wild flowers you know.’

  ‘Yes, Daddy.’

  Then she retreated into a silence as deep as Tom’s.

  At his gate Forbes paused to inspect his protégé. Outwardly all seemed passable, but was the dark quiet hair really depopulated? Into his mind jumped the absurd name that the English Royalists, in elegant satire, had given to lice: Covenanters. So at his gate, with his children waiting, and with his wife watching from the window, and with neighbours watching from theirs, Forbes, seeing a small boy’s hair, saw also lonely moors where men had been killed for their faith and where whaups now flew about their memorials. It was not altogether irrelevant. Seated at this moment in his own armchair was one who, had she lived in the seventeenth century, would have justified the murder of an archbishop with a text from the Old Testament.

  Living in the twentieth century Mrs Storrocks shared its prejudices. To her Jews were the wolves of business that devoured the profits she ought to make. Communists were anti-Christ; but she did not accept the corollary that Americans were pro-Christ; these, principally for their gum-chewing, their actresses’ breasts, and their men’s haircuts, she distrusted. South Africa, she believed, would never be a happy country until all the blacks were exterminated; but she was also convinced that its leaders ought to be exterminated too, for wanting to be republicans. Above all, however, she had been prejudiced against Charlie; right from the beginning she had regarded him as a poor match for her only child. His youthful ideals, those white does skimming through the greenness of his marriage, had found in her an insatiable tigress. Now here he was, in his unsuccessful middle-age, leading home another such doe.

  In the tiny living-room Mrs Storrocks sat facing the door. Her hat, like a blue helmet with white plume, was square upon her head. Two rings glittered on her fingers; a necklace of blue stones sparkled; blue earrings twinkled; but her eyes resolutely gave forth no light. She had always been a handsome woman, with healthy pink complexion and well-fed robustness. Now the whiteness of her hair gave to the tightness of her lips a matriarchal assurance; this was assisted by her thousands in the bank and her certainty of heaven.

  Mary, often his ally against her mother, was in this present contest unreliable. She wore an apron and had been cooking the lunch. When Tom was presented to her she stood in silence for a second or two, looking like her mother as she made swift calculations, which involved human affections, however, and not sums of money. Then she took the boy’s hand and gave him her friendliest smile, which, as Charlie often boasted, would civilise headhunters.

  ‘So you’re Tom Curdie?’ she said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you. I hope you’ll be happy with us, Tom.’

  Her glances, maternal in their sympathy, were no less so in their vigilance, as they took in his ears, neck, and hair.

  ‘Thanks, Mrs Forbes,’ he murmured, and faintly blushed.

  ‘Well, lunch is ready,’ she said. ‘Alistair, will you take Tom up and let him see where to wash his hands?’

  Alistair eagerly agreed: it was a step towards eating, and besides, he felt sorry for the strange boy. Both went out.

  There was silence until the bathroom door upstairs was heard closing.

  ‘Well, Mary, not such a monster after all?’ said Charlie.

  She had to smile. ‘He seems a nice enough little boy. What about his hair, though?’

  ‘Attended to.’

  ‘By whom? I thought his mother was a slut who couldn’t keep her own head clean.’

  ‘You’ll find his hair all right.’

  ‘You will, Charlie. I’m leaving that part of it to you.’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to like him.’ It was Gillian who spoke. ‘He never says what he’s thinking. He’s laughing at us all the time.’

  ‘Hold your tongue, miss,’ cried her father. ‘If you can’t find anything hospitable to say, please have the charity to say nothing. And don’t try to be smart at somebody else’s expense.’

  His wife thought that that smartness was really an attempt to copy him.

  ‘Be quiet, Charlie,’ she said. ‘She’s just a child.’

  ‘So is he.’

  ‘Children are seldom fair to each other.’

  ‘Yes, children who know each other, Mary. But this boy’s hardly five minutes in the house.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Gillian.

  Her father stared at her with fondness flooding his large, sad face. ‘So am I, Gillian. Our nerves are all strained. We need our holiday.’

  ‘Your nerves must be very bad indeed, Charles,’ said his mother-in-law, ‘seeing they’ve prevented you from saying you’re glad to see me.’

  ‘That goes without saying, Mrs Storrocks.’

  ‘Still, I like to hear it. The weather looks settled, Charles, so I thought I’d join you at Towellan for a week or two. That’s to say, if there are no objections.’

  ‘We’ll be delighted to have you with us, Mrs Storrocks.’

  He spoke cordially. After all, she was the owner of the cottage at Towellan. The cousin who usually lived in it rented it from her.

  ‘Mary’s been telling me about this boy you’re taking with you.’

  He waited, but instead of snarling she smiled.

  ‘It might turn out to be a sound idea,’ she said. ‘If it doesn’t help you in your career, I don’t see how it can hinder you.’

  ‘It’s for the boy’s own sake, Mrs Storrocks.’

  Mary shook her head at him: the signal meant that now, just when she was about to serve lunch, wasn’t the time to instruct her mother as to his true motive.

  Mrs Storrocks seemed satisfied. She rose as the two boys returned to the living-room.

  ‘I want you, boy,’ she said to Tom, ‘to sit beside me and tell me all about yourself.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ he replied, though what he meant to tell her was no more than what she already knew.

  ‘No, mother,’ said Mrs Forbes. ‘I’ve set his place between Gillian and Alistair.’

  Her husband looked at her in gratitude.

  Chapter Seven

  The taxi took them right into the crowded station, close to the platform at which their train was waiting. Unfortunately, when Forbes came back from paying the driver it was to learn that Alistair, whom excitement always affected in that way, needed to go to the lavatory. His mother and grandmother were scolding him for such inopportuneness.

  To be setting out on holiday was to have left blame behind. Forbes remembered that he, too, as a boy had had that weakness, if indeed it was a weakness. Rocks did not have their insides stirred by anticipations of joy and loveliness.

  ‘Plenty of time,’ he said calmly. ‘The train doesn’t leave for another quarter of an hour.’

  ‘We happen to want seats,’ said Mrs Storrocks, ‘and there are thousands pouring in.’

  Though she exaggerated, it was true that many people were going for their train. All the seats might well be taken. Nevertheless, he would not be panicked into being cross; instead, he stroked Alistair’s head.

  ‘Off you go, son,’ he said. ‘We’ll wait.’

  ‘But we’ll not get seats,’ cried Alistair.

  ‘Never mind about that. Just you go and make yourself comfortable.’

  ‘You’d better go with him,’ said Mary. ‘He’ll get lost in this crowd.’

  ‘Certainly. Come on, Alistair.’

  ‘You go too, Tom,’ said Mary. ‘And give us our tickets, Charlie. We’ll try to keep your seats.’

  ‘Very good, de
ar.’ He handed over the tickets.

  ‘Hurry, please,’ pleaded Alistair.

  ‘You should have gone before you left the house,’ whispered Gillian.

  ‘I did, twice.’

  Frowning, she sought an answer to that. ‘Baby,’ she said.

  ‘My tea was too hot,’ he protested.

  Then off he had to race, to keep up with his father. Tom Curdie raced too. Many people, clumsy with heavy cases, staggered into them on the way to the Gourock train. Bound for that same train, Forbes chuckled at thus heading in the opposite direction; it was Columbus-like daring.

  He halted at the top of the lavatory steps.

  ‘There’s no need for me to go down,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait here. Got a penny?’

  ‘Sure, pop.’ Alistair had been holding on to it like a talisman.

  ‘Go with him, Tom. Speed’s the thing. But don’t panic.’

  But as soon as they had vanished impatience like a dog came to sniff and then snarl at his heels. He could not keep his eyes off the big clock. Every engine that screamed he was sure was the one pulling the Gourock train; it was warning him it was ready to be off. He began to think the boys must be dawdling, but in fairness he reminded himself of the delays encountered in the mechanics of modern relief: locks jammed, buttons were intractable. Fear made him foolish: he envied gulls that defecated flying, and he saw the limitations of being human. Proof came suddenly; his own bowels heaved. ‘Good God,’ he muttered. Though he smiled, as he must at the triviality of his predicament, there was no quelling that riot within. At forty-nine he was being attacked by a weakness of boyhood. Was not adult life a series of such ambushes from the past?

  As the boys panted up, he went racing down. They were astonished.

  ‘Wait here. Won’t be a minute.’

  And he was hardly a minute. In and out of that cubicle he rushed, galloped upstairs, seized the boys, and raced for the train.

  Gillian’s head stuck out of a compartment. She called to them.

  Drenched with triumph, he pushed the boys in and then entered himself. He sat down not noticing his wife’s embarrassment at her mother’s brazenness in reserving that seat for him.