The Changeling Read online

  Remembering his despondency in the boat last night, the quarrel with Mary, and the spoiling of the visit to the castle, Charlie wondered whether after all Todd was not right and he was a fraud: if his roots were healthy, would his flowers of joy, here in Towellan, wither so soon?

  At last they were spewed out in Dunroth, near the pier domed like a Turkish mosque. It was very warm, but there was a pleasant breeze off the water, which was alive with little boats. The promenade was crowded. Mrs Storrocks was paradoxically pleased; instead of grumbling that all the seats were filled, and that there was scarcely room to move, she declared it was a relief to see so many people enjoying themselves after the trees and rocks of Towellan.

  Music was heard from the Castle Gardens.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do, Charlie,’ said Mary, ‘but we’re going to listen to the “Go-as-you-please” for a little while.’

  ‘I want to go out in a “drive-yourself ” motor-boat,’ said Alistair.

  ‘Well, your daddy can take you and Tom.’

  ‘Good. Come on, Pop.’

  The last time Charlie had been in command of such a boat it had broken down; he had had to be towed in. It happened fairly often, it could happen to anyone, even to the chief engineer on the Queen Mary; but he had felt disgraced in the eyes of his son.

  ‘Later,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s go with the others first.’

  ‘Ugh, I don’t like it,’ cried Alistair.

  ‘I thought your father didn’t like it, either,’ said Mary.

  ‘I can put up with it.’

  ‘Well, remember, Charlie, we enjoy it and we don’t want our enjoyment spoiled.’

  ‘Am I such a hoo-doo?’ he muttered.

  She laughed. ‘You can be, at the “Go-as-you-please”.’

  As they walked through the gardens below the castle towards the music that grew louder Alistair kept on grumbling that he would rather go out in a motor-boat.

  Gillian turned sharply on him. ‘Don’t be a pest, Alistair,’ she said. ‘Daddy said he’d take you. We’ve just arrived, haven’t we? You’re a little nuisance with your harping on all the time.’

  Her reward was to have her brother’s tongue put out at her; and from her father’s expression it seemed that he would have liked to put his out too.

  Mary noticed and laughed.

  He paid the money which let them through the barrier to the seats. A large number of the audience hadn’t considered the entertainment worth the sixpence for a seat. Dozens of them remained outside the enclosure and sat on newspapers in grassy nooks among the trees and flowers. When they departed at the end they would leave those newspapers behind. While they were there they would eat sweets and lick ice-cream: wrappings and cartons would also be left, so that the whole area would be littered. It seemed to Charlie that the garbage was symbolical of the cultural rubbish that for the next hour or so would torment his ears and desecrate the sunny air. But he kept the opinion to himself this afternoon.

  The first call from the platform was for competitors between the ages of five and ten. The master of ceremonies didn’t have to do much coaxing. Within a minute or two a stream of volunteers, some younger than five, headed for the platform, eager to parade themselves. Charlie, disgusted by this mockery of Scottish pride and reserve, noticed how in most cases the children were abetted by their mothers.

  Mary, like everybody else round him, was applauding and laughing in delight at the antics of one toddler, who couldn’t have been more than three, and who went forward to the contest with pink breeks showing under her white dress, and with a pink ribbon as large as a propeller in her hair. Better, thought Charlie, if she should fly off, above the heads of these who were encouraging her to prostitute the daintiness and quaintness of her infancy, above the monkey-puzzle tree in front of the castle, and over the sea to Arran.

  The performance began. First was the mite with the big ribbon. The microphone couldn’t be lowered far enough so that she had to stand on a chair. With consummate showmanship she clapped her hands before she began, in a self-congratulatory fashion, and then, while the audience was convulsed with affection, she broke into shrill solemn song about a baby’s dimple. Once or twice she forgot the words and gazed round blandly until she remembered again, whereupon she resumed without a flicker of embarrassment. When the audience joined in the chorus, she frowned and waggled her hands in protest; they were, it was obvious, stealing her thunder. They loved her all the more, and at the finish, when she had gently to be forced to abandon the microphone, she was rewarded with applause that might have been heard by passengers in a liner at that moment steaming down the Firth.

  Next came a boy with a tartan shirt, blue jeans, sly grin, and snapping fingers. At once he burst into a shrieking, wailing, sobbing cacophony, with his arms now held out in passionate entreaty, now clasped in front of him in prayer, and now flung above his head in dramatic sorrow. But all the time his face remained cool, deliberate, crafty. At the end he, too, was clapped like mad. As he slouched off the platform, swaying his shoulders and chewing gum, he jerked his thumb upwards to someone in the crowd, perhaps his proud mother, with a flick of his head as if to indicate how easily triumph came to him.

  Charlie saw, with gratitude, that Mary wasn’t clapping very loudly.

  ‘I can’t be bothered with that,’ she remarked.

  The next performer was a girl of about eight. She made her face as expressionless as a corpse’s, and then, in a voice as soothing as a shovel being scraped across a stone hearth, she began to shriek about her heart being lost, and all the time waggled her backside as if, Charlie thought, she wanted to lose it, too. Here was an imitation of what she had seen often in films: all the sordid frustration of night-club cocktail-swilling adulterous society was expressed by her with shocking expertness. She ought to have been received by a profound mourning silence, broken perhaps by sighs of pity; on the contrary, hands everywhere among the flower-beds flashed like the wings of butterflies. She acknowledged them by clasping her hands above her head and ogling the whole concourse.

  Mary was laughing, and clapping temperately.

  ‘Silly wee besom,’ she said.

  ‘She could do with her bottom skelped, that one,’ said Mrs Storrocks, and won a smile from her son-in-law.

  Another diminutive crooner was offending the air; and so it went on when it was the turn of the age group ten to fifteen.

  Charlie rebelled. Forgetting his huff with Gillian, he whispered to her: ‘How would you like to go up there and play some Scots melodies on the piano?’

  She smiled but shook her head.

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Mary.

  ‘What would be daft about it? Is there to be nothing native? Are we to be swamped by this rubbish?’

  He glanced at Alistair, but saw no hope in him: Alistair had inherited musical obtuseness from himself.

  ‘I’ll go and sing a Scots song, if you like, sir.’

  It was Tom who offered. Charlie remembered that Miss Chisolm, the music mistress, had once remarked on the excellence of the boy’s singing voice. He would, she had said with ironic giggle, have made a fine leading choir-boy in an English cathedral.

  He hesitated to accept the offer. ‘What Scots song do you know?’

  ‘“Turn ye to me”, sir.’

  It was one of Charlie’s favourites: loneliness, unhappy love, sea-sorrow. Perhaps it was too good for this audience. At the same time he remembered Mary’s warning last night about keeping Tom at a discreet distance. Gillian too was looking at him strangely.

  ‘All right, Tom,’ he said, recklessly. ‘Go and sing it, for my sake.’

  Politely Tom slipped out and joined the queue waiting to perform.

  Mary was astonished; she hadn’t been listening to the conversation. ‘What’s he up to?’ she asked.

  ‘He’s just gone to sing, that’s all.’

  ‘Did you give him permission?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She gave him a look
then, which plainly asked if he had already forgotten all that had been said last night in their bedroom. It was an unjust look, as he indicated.

  ‘Wait and see how he does,’ advised Mrs Storrocks. ‘One thing I’ll tell you, he’ll not be nervous.’

  She was right. None of his predecessors, not even the nightclub queen, had shown more assurance. When the microphone was lowered for him, he adjusted it a little more. Though he had never sung solo to the accompaniment of a piano, he arranged matters with the pianist without fuss. When the name of his song was announced, there was only one guffaw of derision, but it was from a mop-headed teddy-boy, who was immediately rebuked by an old woman sitting beside him. Charlie saw the incident and was elated. He flexed his fingers ready to clap like Goliath, even though Tom should break down after the first few words.

  As soon as Tom began, Charlie’s hands relaxed. Here, he knew, was a song and a singer that every Scottish heart must love. Without the slightest flamboyance of gesture, and yet with proper pride, Tom sang so clearly and so movingly, that even the mop- headed teddy-boy began to contemplate the brass rings on his shoes with almost aesthetic appreciation. Everywhere people’s faces lit up, their mouths smiled, their hearts yearned.

  ‘Hushed by thy moaning, lone bird of the sea,

  Thy home on the rocks is a shelter to thee,

  Thy home is the angry wave,

  Mine but the lonely grave,

  Ho ro Mhairi dhu, turn ye to me.’

  The applause was spontaneous and prolonged. Again the white butterflies flashed among the flower-beds; everywhere faces were like flowers of peace and happiness. Charlie wanted to shout out how he loved them all, and how he repented having misjudged them: they were not cultural degenerates, they were not mercenary pleasure-seekers, they were not litter-louts, they were human beings, lovable, mortal, and susceptible to true sorrow. While he thought thus his hands banged like carpet-beaters.

  But one pair of hands did not clap; one face stayed dour: hands and face belonged to his own daughter.

  ‘Why don’t you clap, Gillian?’ he asked, passionately. ‘It was beautifully sung. Are you paralysed with jealousy?’

  ‘That’s enough, Charlie,’ said Mary. ‘Surely she can clap or not clap, as she wants?’

  ‘I didn’t think any daughter of mine would be so consumed by jealousy.’

  ‘There’s no jealousy in it,’ said Mrs Storrocks. ‘Maybe she’s like me and thinks the song was a bit on the sad side for an occasion like this.’

  ‘You wouldn’t clap, Gillian,’ he murmured tragically, ‘you wouldn’t clap.’

  ‘You’re being childish, Charlie,’ said his mother-in-law. ‘There are times when it seems to me that clapping’s a heathenish sort of thing, not much better than rubbing noses together.’

  ‘I’m terribly disappointed in you, Gillian,’ he said.

  She sat pale-faced and miserable, but without a tear.

  When Tom came forward to rejoin them he was complimented by several people, all of them elderly.

  Charlie heard with full heart. His own gratitude was simply expressed. ‘Thank you, Tom,’ he said. ‘That was delightful.’

  ‘Very nice, Tom,’ murmured Mary.

  ‘You’re a good wee singer,’ said Mrs Storrocks, ‘but you should have chosen a cheerier song.’

  Charlie shook his head and smiled. Tom smiled in return, but—or so Mary thought, watching as closely as Gillian the spy ever could—his smile was by no means conceited or confident or proud; nor was it a toady’s smile. It seemed to her, indeed, to have hidden behind it a great deal of anxiety and unhappiness. Perhaps, then, this was the boy’s true state all the time: his reserve and reticence did not, as she had thought, conceal slyness and deceit. She would have to try to be warmer towards him.

  They made for the main street.

  ‘What about the “drive-yourself” motorboat?’ demanded Alistair.

  ‘I think we should have tea first,’ said his mother.

  His father agreed.

  Mrs Storrocks took out her purse and handed a half-crown to each of her grandchildren. ‘Buy what you want,’ she said. Then she turned to Tom. ‘I suppose you know how to spend money too?’ And she handed him a half-crown.

  From his expression Mary thought for a moment he wouldn’t take it or else would take it and throw it down; but she was wrong; he took it much more politely than Alistair or Gillian had done.

  She was annoyed with herself for that quite unnecessary comparison. She had scolded Charlie for it, and now it was becoming an obsession with her.

  ‘Let’s go into Woolworth’s,’ said Alistair.

  They followed him in.

  Chapter Eleven

  Despite his anger and disappointment, Gillian was still devoted to her mission as her father’s protectress; even more so now, because only when Tom Curdie was found out, would he become as close to her again as he had been last summer.

  Accordingly, when they went into Woolworth’s, which was packed with sauntering holiday-makers, it suited her when Tom at once let himself be separated from the others. She was sure this separation was deliberate on his part, as if he did not want any of them to see what he was going to buy. Likely it was sweets or chocolate which he would eat selfishly in the hut at night. Or perhaps, in the furtherance of his scheme to suck in, he intended to buy a present for her father and wanted it to be a sly surprise.

  It was easy in the crowd to keep behind him, seeing but not being seen. He halted beside a counter full of small household articles. Gillian’s view of him was momentarily blocked by a stout woman in a red dress, but she did not worry as it was hardly likely he would buy anything there. Then the massive red barrier moved away just in time for her to see him snatch up some small object and walk away, slipping it into his trouser pocket in the least suspicious way possible.

  Shocked, fascinated, and in a dreadful way satisfied, Gillian looked round to see who else had seen. She expected a dozen customers and every attendant to be glaring and shouting at him, and at her, too, for she could not help feeling guiltily involved. But there was no one glaring, no one shouting ‘Thief!’ The girl who attended to that particular counter was busy at its other end serving a lady who seemed hard to please, and no shopwalker was near. As Gillian walked on, her legs felt weak and her hands trembled, as if they too had just stolen. So far as she could make out in her agitation, what he had lifted was either a tin-opener or a thing for mending holes in pots. Even as presents for her mother, these were surely stupid thefts, especially as he had plenty of money to buy them.

  Following him now in terrible anticipation, she saw him steal only once more: this time she was sure it was a tin of ointment. Again it seemed to her incredible that he should have wanted to steal that, unless, of course, the ant bites he had got yesterday were still painful, and he thought the ointment would ease them. She felt then even more implicated, for if she had let him get rid of the ants immediately, the bites wouldn’t have been so serious. But the half-crown which her grandmother had given him would have bought both tin-opener and ointment, with change over; and he also had the money given to him by the people in the train.

  To her alarm he halted at the jewellery counter and openly examined the brooches. The attendant was standing right opposite, watching him. Gillian had to restrain herself from rushing and dragging him away; if he was caught, all of them would be shamed, her father especially. But when he began to speak to the girl and she spoke back, smiling, Gillian grew calm again and walked along to him, as if the meeting was casual.

  ‘Is this the lady?’ asked the girl.

  He glanced up, saw Gillian, and blushed faintly.

  ‘No,’ he whispered.

  Gillian smiled brightly. ‘What is it you’re thinking of buying, Tom?’ She tried to put no peculiar emphasis on that second-last word.

  ‘A brooch.’

  ‘Is it for some girl-friend at home?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s for your mother.’

 
; ‘Oh.’ Although she smiled, still more brightly, she hated him then more than she had ever done. With his hands which had so recently stolen he was coolly touching these brooches, one of which he was going to give to her mother.

  ‘She’d like this one,’ she said, picking up one shaped like a butterfly.

  He shook his head.

  ‘He seems to know what he wants,’ said the girl.

  ‘This one.’ It was in the shape of a heart, and though Gillian did not think it as pretty as the one she’d recommended, it was three shillings dearer.

  ‘Can you afford that?’ she asked.

  Ignoring her, he handed it to the girl.

  ‘Would you like me to put it in a wee box for you?’ she asked.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  When the girl had gone for the box, Gillian was tempted to whisper to him that she had seen him stealing. It irritated her almost beyond endurance to see him so calmly count out the money for the brooch.

  The girl returned with the brooch in a little tartan box. Tom again thanked her and paid. Then they made for the door where they had seen the others waiting for them.

  Out on the sunny thronged pavement they saw the others looking into a shop window a few yards along.

  Gillian could withhold no longer.

  ‘I saw you,’ she whispered. ‘I saw you stealing.’

  She had feared he would deny it with his customary impenetrable coolness, giving her no glimpse behind; but she did catch one glimpse, and it dismayed her. What she had seen was not a sneak and toady found out, but only a boy of her own age, smaller even than she, and much more perplexed and unhappy. She noticed, too, for the first time that one of his ears was slightly larger than the other.

  Yet he was a thief.

  ‘A tin-opener and a tin of ointment,’ she said.

  He put up his hand and slowly pushed his hair back from his brow; it was a gesture of despair.

  ‘I’ll have to tell,’ she said, and then hurried to join her parents. ‘Tom’s got a present for you, Mummy.’