Finding Davey (14 page)

The child was abnormal, Bray thought, guiltily but with qualification. He looked up terms: autistic, autism, dyslexia, dyslectics. Then borrowed McKeith’s
Numbers
, and two computer paperbacks.

“Normality” was in the eye of the beholder. He realised that here he was, mostly self-educated but still a so-say respected craftsman, unable to tackle even elementary computers. This, note, when the whole world used them. And when a strange youngster blithely overcame her atrocious handicap, making the damned things the easiest gadgets imaginable.

Grim for Kylee, poor child, unable to read. Yet she ruled a whole mess of hieroglyphics with her mad keyboard colours. She made the computer speak aloud. She had a phenomenal memory, could make her scanning device absorb anything and hear it read back. She was brighter with her disability than he was without.

Who then was “normal”?

Her black moments disturbed him. She would go mute, stand unmoving then slowly shift, sometimes after twenty minutes. And then repetitive movements would begin.
Tapping, rocking slowly for maybe a full hour before she’d speak, then blurt out a gross incongruity. If he was too baffled to reply, she would erupt with snarled abuse. Astonishingly, Buster tolerated these moods of hers with a casual eye.

On occasion, she revealed a compassion that moved him.

He was examining a sample of Kauri Pine in the shed when she walked in. She asked what it was. He started to explain. She sat to listen.

“It’s
Agathis australis
,” he explained. “From New Zealand. A sample, hoping we’ll place an order. See its lustre? I’ve always liked it. It has few defects, but it’s a devil. Patchy as anything, with its absorption. Good in joinery, but don’t let the straight grain deceive. It can warp…”

He noticed she was asleep, lolling on the stool.

Wryly he smiled. She must be worn out, or he was being boring again. He edged round her, sat at the computer, and switched a tutorial on. After an hour she roused, instantly pushed him aside and brought up e-mails as if nothing had happened, nodding as the computer spoke them out.

“Sorry I sent you to sleep.”

“I didn’ wanter know about your fucking plank,” she told him casually. “I felt sorry coz you’ve nobody to tell about it.”

She paused for so long he began to wonder. Then she said, “It’s Dad.”

“Mr Walsingham? Is he still angry that you come here?”

“Wants me to go to a special school. I’ve had them up to my tits. It’s that probation fucker. Doing the world a favour.”

“He must think he’s doing the best for you.”

“Don’t talk like I’m as thick, Owd Un. He wants to get rid.”

“Look, Kylee.” Her pale eyes were rock hard. “Can I do anything? Get you a job somewhere? There’s computer firms. Look how clever you are. Good heavens, you invent things!”

“Whaffor?” She leaned away, vixenish, ready to run.

“Frankly,” he admitted, “to keep you here. I need your help. I’ll try to find a firm.”

And pay them to keep you on
, he thought but did not say.

She gazed at him. “Honest?”

“I’d be lost without you, Kylee.” Into the silence he said, “You know it’s true.” He almost thought she’d slipped into one of her trances when she came to.

“That’d be one up their pipe, eh?”

“Try to behave, if I get us an interview.”

“If you want,” she said offhandedly, turning to the screen.

Next day, he phoned around.

The school they passed was clean. Pop’s automobile was smooth. You could hardly feel bumps in the road, like a ship.

“Pop,” he asked, so many children playing. “Have I been on a ship?”

“Not yet, son!” Pop grinned at the boy. He liked to drive these educational trips round Tain. “Want to go on one? Ask Mom.”

Pop notched the question into his mind. He’d give Doctor a call, ask the significance of that. Clint’s queries were down to two or three a day. This familiarisation was all expected, Doctor had explained. Next, a ball game, select a decent diner, show the boy culture.

“Thank you, Pop.”

Thanks was the proper response, Clodie decided, listening. One more mention when Hyme spoke to Doctor, that wonderful but expensive expert. Doctor ruled that there was no such thing as a
small
variation. Conformity must be hundred per cent. Doctor had been in child provision for years, every one a winner. No evidence, no police trails.

Doctor’s words set the rule: “Those original parents failed the boy, let him get abducted by my finders, right? The parents didn’t
lose
the boy. They
abandoned
him. Follow my
rules
and you can’t go wrong.”

And here Clint was, perfectly adjusted to his Mom and Pop, driving about their new home town.

“Like the ride, son?” Pop asked.

Clint said, “Can we stop at the corner by the shop?”

“By the
store
?” Pop asked, notes for Doctor. “Sure, son.”

At Concorde and Vine, Tain’s main superstore boasted a CD place. Youths congregated on the sidewalk. It didn’t appear very edifying.

“You want anything, son?”

Sound spilled out, some heavy metal. Youngsters moved in desultory synchrony. Two garish displays acclaimed new videos, discs, tracks. Window posters had fanciful cartoons in outlandish colour. Pop thought the scene decadent.

“No, thank you, Pop.”

Pop felt an irritation. Chrissakes, Clodie’d got what she wanted. Couldn’t she make the boy talk right yet?
Thanks
, not thank you. How much longer? Pop itched to return east, put the block on the sister company, goddam regulations crippling entrepreneurs every fucking where.

The auto moved serenely off.

“We’ll take in the school again, Clint, see how you like it, okay?”

“Okay, Pop.”

There! Pop thought. That sounded better. Headway!

Things came to a head with Kylee.

Bray tended to think more in sayings. His old Gran came to mind. “Can’t,” she’d say, “means won’t.” She had a catalogue of expressions. Occasionally as a child Bray had tried to give them back to her. Each time she’d cap him. “Rome,” he told her once, unknowing, aged five, “Rome wasn’t built in a day!” He’d heard two nuns say it in the playground. Gran returned, “Who said it was?” which stumped him.

So things “came to a head”, first with Kylee who suddenly turned on him one evening while culling e-mail.

“We’re flogging some crappy books, is that it?”

“Er, I hope to. They’re for children.”

“Whaffor?”

“Well, I’ve had them printed. It seems a waste not to.”

“How much?”

This worried Bray. He sat behind her as she “bled” – her term – messages.

“Listen.” She’d been out for a smoke in the garden, where Porky was watching some football on a hand television. Porky too smoked odd cigarettes and
sometimes seemed hardly able to stand. “Not knowing what you’re fucking
doing’s
a frigging waste. How much is this costing you?”

He had some idea.

She grinned at him, elfin but wicked. “It’s naff, innit?” And translated, “Illegal. Snuff? Drugs?”

“Certainly not!” He continued grandly, “They contain nothing hidden, if that’s what you mean.”

“Porn?”

He hitched closer, not wanting Porky to hear.

“No. Look. I wrote this children’s book. And a second one. I had it printed. I’m trying to sell it. A London publisher’s gone quiet on me. I’m hoping your computer net thing —”

“How many we got?”

“A thousand.” A real thousand, he thought ruefully.

“Fuck them. I’ll do it.” She shoved him. “Where d’you want it sold?”

“Where?” He blinked. “American schools, maybe. Little children.”

He was astonished at Kylee’s alacrity. She talked at the computer, worked from a United States map she got from the computer’s innards. Somehow she made that speak, too. In an hour she had an endless list of American schools. She laughed helplessly when he asked her to print it for him. (“Why
print
any fucking thing?”) They’d not enough paper anyhow, so shut up. He obeyed, and watched his plan unfold.

She was right. Forget everybody, start selling.

Late that evening, Kylee having left with Porky on some coughing scooter, he phoned George Corkhill to ask how books were actually sold.

“I can ship to a bookseller, Bray. The US customs are
sticky. Small prints like yours we’d ship to a bookseller, bookshops order from him. He pays you monthly.”

It was suddenly too fast.

“Want me to arrange it, Bray? I don’t want to come at you like a salesman.”

“Please.” The looming vision of thousands of envelopes, and Customs and Excise forms, faded. The printer seemed so matter-of-fact.

“By tomorrow night?” George paused. “It costs, Bray. Small distributions are notoriously unprofitable.”

“Hang that.”

They rang off. Geoffrey was standing in the doorway. He’d heard every word.

Did mothers and daughters have these turgid moments, just as fathers and sons? The two of them sat like bookends. They no longer had a fire. Bray thought fires a woman’s thing; maybe anciently fires signalled the male?

“I’m lost, Dad.” Bray knew not to interrupt. “Shirley’s proving unresponsive. Now you’re worrying me sick. This thing you’re up to. It’s not Gilson Mather, is it?”

“One is. And I’m trying to develop something myself.”

Geoff looked away. “I came out earlier. That young lout looked drugged. You were telling that slut about selling books in America. Am I in the dark, Dad?”

How often does a father find he’s kidding himself?

“Everything is taking me by surprise, Geoff.” No acting now. Bray decided on honesty. “I found myself writing a children’s tale. A printer says he can make it like a real book.” Not complete honesty, but close, the characteristic of sound and trustworthy lies.

“What for?”

“To sell, give away. Who knows? I can’t even say it’s
sensible.” Bray grimaced. “Maybe it’s primitive, making amends for God-knows-what. Psychiatrists might say it’s an act of reparation.” He tried a frank smile. “Spending my pension!”

“Compensation.” Geoff spoke dully, notching points of recognition. Bray hoped he’d got away with it. “I do it too, take on something bizarre and not knowing why. I did a scan of Thailand investments. It’s not my field. I barely made the last train.”

Bray remembered. He’d assumed Geoff was at the hospital.

“The psychiatrist wants us to attend as a family.” To his father’s sceptical expression Geoff said quickly, “We never have yet. He wants to give us proper guidance.”

Expectations of grim tidings? The doctors must simply be going by odds. They were preparing Geoff and Shirley, as they had done bereaved parents before. Jesus, he wondered, how often did this happen?

“Right, son. I’ll come.”

“One seemed to know a doctor you saw, Dad. Asking about memory.”

“Oh, that.” He had this lie ready, thank God. “I thought I was losing my mind.”

“It might mean we’ll move house, Dad, for Shirley’s sake.”

“Whatever it takes.”

For a while they talked quietly of Officer Stazio’s retirement, and came to no conclusion. Geoff had stopped ringing Florida, left it to Bray, insulating himself.

There, Bray told himself as Geoff went home next door, it had been surprisingly easy. Geoffrey must still be shellshocked or he’d have spotted the mistakes. He sat before the cold grate. No news from Lottie Vinson about
the books. And he’d already finished writing – copying really – Davey’s third story. Were they becoming easier, or was he somehow learning to cope with the grief?

The alarming thought was that he might be making new stories and not replicating Davey’s own imagination, which would never do. He had to keep faith to the images.

By the time he locked up and took Buster out he’d made up his mind. He would take Kylee on permanently, and simply give the girl her head while he turned the books out one after the other, until his savings ran out.

Next morning at Gilson Mathers he was summoned to Mr Winsarls’s office and invited to go to the USA.

Imbalance.

Life, Bray realised when Mr Winsarls spoke about America, could take over. It moved time in patches. Some periods it simply ignored, so that whole days sped by unremarked, then slowed so you wondered why time was frozen.

Mr Winsarls began the oddly convoluted conversation.

“Would you be willing to visit North America, Mr Charleston? Represent the firm?”

“I’m not ready, Mr Winsarls,” Bray replied, getting over the astonishment. Shock settled into surprise. It was exactly that episode with Rewa-rewa wood,
Knightia excelsa
, all over again.

He’d been seven years into his articles, when he’d had to work with some of that lustrous New Zealand wood, scarlet-russet, of inordinate weight. A craftsman told him the piece was spare. He’d not checked further, used it for a simple batten and so earned the derision of the firm’s three master joiners. Hadn’t he bothered to look it up when he felt its turgidity and innate strength as he’d cut?
For the precious antipodean Honeysuckle wood resisted fires, and was of giddy value. He’d known he was encountering something unique, but had ignored the signs in his excitement.

He’d never made the same mistake since.

Now the sense returned. He’d been here before. He almost smiled at the image of New Zealand’s lovely Honeysuckle wood and its exquisitely mottled silver grain. He’d learned once from that catastrophe. He must learn from it again, this time in connection with something else far more vital.

“I rather thought the opportunity,” Mr Winsarls replied, clearly disappointed, “ahm, of a means of, ahm, perhaps…?”

The English trick, the cause of so much humour among Caribbean folk – of lifting the chin with a concealed sigh to show exasperation – was Mr Winsarls’s habit.

“Perhaps in a while, Mr Winsarls.”

“Of course, Mr Charleston! We must send somebody. There’s only James.”

“Is it to do with the history booklet?”

“Sort of. It’s rather grown.”

“Grown, Mr Winsarls?” Though Bray knew.

“To do a tour, several centres. Talks. At least three American societies.”

James Coldren was older than Bray, somewhat arthritic, and now mostly supervised the younger workers. He had joined the firm after service in the Royal Engineers. Highly skilled and with natural aptitude, he lacked Bray’s flair. He could not, Bray heard Mr Winsarls say, “put it over with the Yanks.”

“But you could, Mr Charleston.”

“I need a little more time, sir.”

The honorific tended to signal the end of formal conversations.

“How long, exactly?”

Bray hadn’t thought it out, but now knew with a terrible certainty that it was a precise duration or none at all.

“Can I say within fifteen months?” Mr Winsarls winced. “I know, Mr Winsarls. It’s when I shall be ready.”

“Ready?” the owner picked up sharply.

He quickly made calculations on his desk blotter. Bray himself had made that desk, using
Xylocarpus
wood for its figure. Let botanists argue about
Carapa
names. The beautifully fine rays showed a curious ripple that had made him late home to Emma the day he’d first cut and seen the precious wood’s gleam. Ignore the dull russet, one edge showing sombre gum streaking to perfection. He thought it blindingly gorgeous. Wood was sanity, in a world gone mad.

“No later?”

“Definitely not,” Bray promised with grave conviction. “The reason is, I rather understated the case. Gilson Mather’s work might need quite a book.”

“I don’t want to press you, Mr Charleston.”

Bray managed a smile. He was the one making haste, no one else.

“I shan’t complain, sir.”