Between My Father and the King (25 page)

Then the hotel, six storeys high, burst out of the dark like a sparkler, with all its windows blazing and the paint new and glistening. Charles blinked, and shivered, and smiled. The windows were on fire. Music came from up on the roof; a silver aeroplane swung in the air outside the door. The higher up Charles looked, the brighter the hotel seemed; at his own level, it seemed quite dark. There was a nasty smell like a lavatory; and further along there was a man hosing the footpath — a dirty old man in a black coat.

Charles looked up once more to the windows that were burning.

And then he knew.

He had arrived at the Big Money itself. That, hanging, was not a fire escape, but the stairs that would have a button somewhere to whizz people to the top, without any walking. And while you looked down on the world a band would play music to you, celebrating — a band playing, and the trumpeter jigging up and down like Bluey outside the Men's.

Take your time, son, there's no hurry; the biggest are for you.

Thanks, Charles,
starting from tomorrow
we're going to have a rare time; I'm glad you rescued me from this hut, my boy.

Sure, Charles, we're after something bigger than peanut butter this time, and you can come along with us. Sure, I know you're not the sort of person who would tell on me. Mum must have found out some other way. Sure I believe you. Here, meet the rest of the gang.

Charles pushed at the door, and it opened, just as he knew it would. He walked past a row of velvet chairs, and the blonde girl sitting at the switchboard.

‘Hello,' she said, catching sight of him, ‘it's your bedtime.' She must have thought he was staying there, at the Big Money. Charles breathed in with delight. They must have been expecting him for days.

He pushed the other door, and it too opened. He walked along a corridor that had stairs at the end: some stairs going up, the others going down. Now the thing was to decide which stairs to take. Where would Bluey be? Perhaps he should go to Bluey first. On the other hand, what about the diamonds, and them waiting for him to choose? It was so hard to decide. Charles looked from one stair to the other; he was not used to the kind of buttons they have on whizzing staircases, so he couldn't find the one on this one. The stairs going up, as was to be expected of them, were covered with a soft carpet, like a bright green swamp, and you could sink into it; the stairs going down were skinny and cobbled and dark. But what if he went to the top and missed what was down below? Or, perhaps, what if he went straight home again? But that was only teasing.

So he went down the narrow stairs, wondering if Bluey would be there, and feeling the pocket-knife in his pocket — though he knew he wouldn't have to use it, and dig it through Bluey's heart to stop him from braining him — yet he felt to see if it was still there, and arranged it, in case he had to protect Bluey's life as well as his own in a dash for the top. Yes, he hadn't thought of that.

Suddenly he emerged in a place full of steam whirling round
in a hot damp fog, and the smell of food cooking; and ladies in white running backwards and forwards with plates; and a huge stove sweating and steaming, the whole place on dirty fire.

‘Out of the way,' said a fat woman with her belt drawn tight around her waist. ‘Soup three,' she called out, leaning against the slide. She picked up three soup plates, and was about to charge back into the dining room when she saw Charles, and she must have thought he was one of the children belonging to somebody just booked in, because she didn't bawl at him, ‘Out of the way,' but took a little invisible smile, cut out ready, from her pocket, and put it on.

‘Hello,' she said. ‘Have you lost your way?'

Two other women came, and others crowded round him, and one said that he was the little boy belonging to the people just over from Australia in the best suite. They began to fight with each other, then, over who should take him back to his parents, and get the tip for being so kind and thoughtful; and fighting over him, they forgot about him, and he looked round for Bluey, but he knew Bluey couldn't be here with all of this cooking and clanging, and dishes whirling round and round, knocking against each other, and a silver-haired woman wiping plates, and two old men wolfing a meal as if they had had news it was the end coming, and to get their share in.

Or perhaps it
was
the end coming? A smart woman put her head around the door; ‘Hurry up with orders,' she called out. Charles saw in the next room, ladies and men sitting with pearls and diamonds and gold. That made him understand about the two old men in the dirty white coats, wanting to get their food, for he remembered the diamonds, and he knew it was time he was whizzed to the top for his share, but where was Bluey?

Somebody had put a piece of sponge cake in his hand, and he was eating it, looking around and wondering, when he saw a skinny man with a white swallowing apron around his waist
and his sleeves rolled up, standing in the far corner in front of a machine that was spitting out peeled potatoes.

And it was Bluey. His face looked tired, and the sunburn had gone, as if it hadn't liked the look of him. Sometimes he yawned, and the yawn, like something sour, went up over the potatoes, and joined in the steam floating around the ceiling. Bluey was helping the potatoes to pop out of the machine and jump themselves into a tub of water that was thick with grey scum. Then Bluey wiped his hands on his apron, and sat back for a breather. Someone called out, ‘Soup, soup,' and he sprang as if he had been whipped, and fetched a long ladle and dipped out soup for the ladies in white.

And then he saw Charles. And his face had the same look that it had when he turned to Charles, on the motorbike, and spoke like God.

‘Excuse me, a moment,' he shouted, and it sounded as if he was talking to the potato machine, that it was his boss. ‘Excuse me. There's my brother. Be back shortly.'

‘Your brother,' said the fat woman with the tight belt. She turned to Charles. ‘Hop it,' she said.

So many people saying, ‘Hop it,' that Charles did not know which way to turn; but he wasn't entirely afraid, because he had his secret. No matter what was down here, he knew that upstairs the Big Money was waiting.

‘Leave him,' Bluey called out. ‘I'll see to him. Anyway, it's time I had a spell.'

Bluey came through into the pantry, and grabbed up a sandwich from the bench where a small neat man in a white starched front and neat black pants was spreading dainty sandwiches, without crusts, on paper doyleys, and putting them, fancily, on a silver tray.

‘Hi,' the man said. ‘You kitchen louts. We stewards shouldn't have to mix with the likes of you.'

Bluey seemed suddenly to want to show that he was smart.

‘Snow again, Blackie,' he said, ‘I missed your drift.'

Then he put the sandwich longways in his mouth, and pretending it was a mouth organ, he played a tune on it, closing one eye so he could get the tune right.

‘I had a pal, Blackie,' he said, ‘so dear to my heart, But the warders they shot him . . .'

The small man gave him a sour look, and moved away, his hand tipped back, ready to carry the sandwiches to the guests.

Bluey, with the sandwich still in his hand, jerked his thumb for Charles to follow him into the small cloakroom. When they were there he sat down on a stool.

‘Well,' he said.

Charles didn't know what to say. He just couldn't think.

‘What's in the sandwich?' he asked, to get talking.

‘What do
you
want to know for?' Bluey said.

Charles thought that if perhaps they kept talking about the sandwich they wouldn't have to talk about anything else.

‘Oh do tell me, Bluey,' he pleaded.

Bluey stopped eating, and with the sandwich half-finished, he looked like God at Charles.

‘Well I won't tell you,' he said. ‘And what are you doing here?'

Then Charles said suddenly, ‘I didn't tell, Bluey. She found out somehow, I didn't tell about the stealing. Believe me.'

Then Bluey, more fierce than Charles had ever known him, gripped Charles' arm.

‘Believe you!' he shouted.

‘Let me go, I didn't tell.'

‘You little tell-tit, you heard what I said I'd do.'

‘Oh Bluey, Bluey,' and in his voice Charles tried to say that he was sorry for Bluey, that Bluey was a pal of his, and when they got the diamonds and bought their father back, he, Charles, would see that Bluey got taken away from the potato machine that bossed him, and not have to be down there in all the steam.

But Bluey didn't see things that way. He let go of Charles' wrist, and felt in his pocket, looking for something, and Charles knew what.

He was looking for the gun, that would blow Charles' brains out. So Charles had to do what he had been frightened to see himself do when he looked in the mirror.

Quickly he took out his pocket-knife, and with all the dig he had saved up, and more, he dug the knife into Bluey's tummy. Then he closed his eyes. The knife wasn't in his hand any more, and he started to cry. Poor Bluey had fallen back among the white coats hanging there, and already blood was coming from his stomach, and he was making a groaning sound. His face was turned Charles' way, and had on it a surprised look, then the look changed to the tired one he had when he was guarding the potato machine, and he closed his eyes. Charles didn't know what to do. He heard, close in his ear, a sound of someone chewing, and then a clattering sound like the potatoes going round and round, and it was his heart beating. He was crying, too, and he knelt down by Bluey and said, ‘Bluey, Bluey,' the way he had said it before. The sandwich was spilled and not secret any more. It was egg, boiled, with green stuff sprinkled on it.

Then Charles didn't remember any more, except that a tall man with diamonds in his hands stood in the doorway, looking down at him, and crying out in a thin voice, over and over,

‘And all the little novelties, all the little novelties to put on their mantelpiece.'

Deceived by a sudden warm spring day, the hedgehog woke too early, walked a great distance, and became too weak to go further. It had no name. It was not Mrs or Miss Sparkles, Mr Spikes, Miss Brown-snout, Mrs Frilly-skirt, Mr Small-hog. None of its family had named it, and it hadn't named itself — it was a hedgehog in a hedgehog world.

It/she had walked around the flowerbeds where the daffodils were almost in bud, down the path to the street, out onto the footpath and the grass verge.

Two women walked by.

They laughed. ‘Look, a hedgehog. It's too early for it to be out.'

‘If they're out in the daytime, they're ill.'

A jogger came by. The two women stopped him.

‘Excuse me,' one said, ‘there's a hedgehog. Out in the daytime. They say if they're out in the daytime they're sick. It could get run over by a car.'

The jogger wiped the sweat from his face. He grunted. He was clearly not interested.

‘Well,' he called, as he jogged by, ‘if it's sick, it's just as well if it's run over, it's better dead.'

The two women looked knowingly at each other. The jogger was one of those who didn't care.

One of the women said, ‘He has a little girl. I thought she might not have seen a hedgehog. I thought he'd be interested.'

‘No,' the other woman replied. ‘He's one of those.'

She called softly to the hedgehog that was wandering dangerously near the road.

‘Hedgy hedgy!'

‘Look at its funny skinny legs and feet and its bunched body!'

The two women continued on their walk.

Later the owner of the house came outside to survey the scene and note how many buds were on the daffodils and what else was coming up in the small garden. The clump of snowdrops had almost finished blooming and the flowers were brown around their petals.

And there was the hedgehog coming in from the street, down the path and across the lawn, tottering on its thin legs seemingly under the weight of its ball of prickles. It stopped at the corner of the house and rolling itself into a ball, it seemed to go to sleep.

‘What should I do?' the woman wondered, for she also thought that hedgehogs must be ill if they come out in the daytime.

She heard the phone ringing inside and went to answer it and there was nothing on the lawn but the hedgehog and a blackbird prodding for worms. There was no wind and no sound from the virgilia tree, the pine tree or the gum tree; and the grass, as always, was too quiet to hear. Only the traffic surged up and down Queen and Bath streets.

Wishing to check once more that the world outside was still moving gently towards the spring season, and that perhaps another
bud was opening on a daffodil or snowdrop, the woman again opened her front door and looked out. She saw the hedgehog, still rolled in a ball, but now covered with blowflies.

‘It must be dead,' she thought. ‘I was right. It was ill.'

Fetching a spade from against the wall of the house, the woman dug a shallow grave next to a clump of snowdrops, unearthing a few waking bulbs as she dug . . . then lifting the hedgehog onto the spade, she carried it to the grave and lightly tipped it onto the soft fresh earth-bed. The hedgehog uncurled, waved its arms and legs wildly, and then recurled, while the woman stood trying to decide her next move.

‘It's not dead,' she told herself. ‘I'll leave it here to rest and cover it lightly with blades of grass, to keep the flies away.'

Then, satisfied that she had dealt with the pressing problems of the world outside, the woman returned inside, shutting her front door.

The image of the hedgehog covered with flies, dying but not yet dead, pursued the woman from hour to hour, and twice she went out to inspect the shallow grave for signs of progress; that is, to ascertain the death of the hedgehog. She poked the ball gently with a stick: the prickles rose in defence. The thing — she now called it a ‘thing', was still alive. Why didn't it die? Perhaps it was in pain? And why, she wondered, did it continue to dominate her thinking? She had so much work to do. Hers was a busy family household. She was also a part-time student and there was her homework to do, the essay on Ancient History.