The Chinese Egg (35 page)

That was the road blocked by police cars, lights blazing, the van standing empty and unlighted among them. Stephen said, “That's it! That's the van!” Andrew pulled up. He asked, “Where? Have they found her?” But he knew from the silence with which they made room for him that they hadn't, that he'd have to go back to Sally with the news that they'd arrived too late, that her baby wasn't ever going to be found.

Price was there suddenly, his grave face confirming Andrew's fears.

“I thought you were going to stay. . .” he began, then saw Stephen.

“What are you doing here? I told you to stay in Brighton.”

“I brought him,” Andrew said.

“Vicky isn't here, is she? I promised her mother. . . .”

“We had to come. We're the only ones who've seen them. . .” Stephen began.

“All that's no good now. Purfitt's over there in custody. There's been some sort of fight, he's only half conscious. . . .”

“The baby?” Vicky said.

“I'm afraid. . . . If only we'd got your news five minutes earlier we might have saved them, got there first. He must have got them out of the van and. . . .”

“I saw someone moving about in the dark. When Stephen saw the edge of the cliff before the lights went off.”

“A struggle? Were people struggling in the dark?”

“Don't think so. Just one person. Crying. She might still be up there.”

“I'm afraid she isn't, Vicky. We've got men up there looking round where the van was when we spotted it first. Even if Purfitt didn't push her over, she might well have gone over the edge herself. It's pitch dark up there, and she wasn't very bright, poor girl.”

“But the baby?” She saw from the way Price glanced at Mr. Wilmington that he thought the baby had gone too.

“I want to go and look,” Vicky said, persistent.

Price looked at Andrew. Andrew, incredibly, looked at
Stephen. Stephen said, “I think she ought to go. We ought to try everything.”

Andrew said, “Get into the car. I'll take you up there.”

Vicky said to Price, “What's her name?”

“Maureen.”

Stephen got into the back of the car with Chris.

They climbed two hundred yards. Vicky said, “Here. Stop.”

Andrew stopped.

“Could you turn off the lights?”

“You won't be able to see anything.”

“I know. Only, don't you see? She could be hiding from that horrible man. If she sees lights she won't know it isn't him, she'll hide. If I call, she'll know it's a girl.”

Standing on the damp grass near the summit of the great cliff, Vicky put one hand on the bonnet of the dark car, to remind herself she wasn't alone. She wasn't surprised the girl was scared. Nothing but blackness and the waves beating on the chalk hundreds of feet below. She called into the still air, “Maureen! Maureen! You needn't be frightened any more! No one's going to hurt you. Won't you come out?”

No answer.

“Maureen! Please! You don't know me. I'm Vicky. I'm a girl like you. There isn't anyone else here except me and. . . friends. We've come to look for the baby. Maureen! If you're there, please come out.”

No answer. Vicky's heart sank. She made herself say what she hadn't wanted to.

“Maureen! Please bring us the baby. Her father's here. He's come to look for her.”

She'd begun to give up hope. She was prepared to turn back to Andrew and say that she'd failed, when a voice surprisingly near her said, “You sure Skinner's not there?”

“No one's here except me and my friends and the baby's father.”

Maureen sobbed as she crawled out from under the gorsebush next to the hummock where she'd been hiding. Vicky couldn't see anything except a dark bulky shape. She knew Maureen was fat, but was she as fat as that? She said, “Is the baby there?” and
Maureen sobbed, “Here, take her,” and Vicky found her arms full of a cold wet bundle which squirmed and fought and finally yelled. Andrew was out of the car in a moment. So it was, in fact, Vicky who put his daughter back into Andrew Wilmington's arms.

“Now!” Chris said.

Vicky took the piece of wood out of her pocket and put it, doubtfully, on the table of the coffee bar, between herself and Stephen.

“Steve? You have brought the rest of it, haven't you?”

Stephen pulled out the plastic bag and spilled the contents out in a jumbled heap of angles.

“Put it together! Make it a whole egg again,” Chris breathed.

Stephen looked at Vicky.

“You sure?”

She nodded.

“What good's one bit of it to Vicky? I don't know why she ever wanted to keep it in the first place,” Chris said.

“I told you. I liked the way it looked.”

“Do you still want to keep it?” Stephen asked.

“No. You can have it.”

The two girls watched Stephen's fingers taking up the pieces one by one. Delicately, gently, half knowing and half un-knowing, Stephen pieced the egg together. His own pieces he knew now. He put them against each other, balanced them so that each supported its neighbours against gravity and was in turn held in its own position in the whole. At last, with something of a flourish, he took up the remaining piece, Vicky's, and fitted it into its predestined place.

It fell in easily. Too easily. It did not fill the space left for it.

Stephen looked across at Vicky and she looked back.

“Then mine wasn't the last bit!” she said.

“I thought when I'd got yours, it'd be whole,” Stephen said.

“Won't the egg hold together now?” Chris asked.

Stephen released his finger-tip hold. The egg remained for a second poised, almost the shape of a perfect egg. Then it fell apart, littering the table with its spillikins of finely grained wood.

“There's still something missing,” Vicky said.

“What a shame!” Chris said at the same moment.

“One piece. We can find it,” Stephen said. He looked again at Vicky and knew that he was glad the egg wasn't whole yet He didn't want to stop looking. He wanted the search to go on.

This electronic edition published in 2011 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London
WC1B 3DP
Copyright © Catherine Storr, 1975
First published by Faber and Faber Limited
The moral right of author has been asserted
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication
(or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital,
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ISBN: 9781448207923
eISBN: 9781448207923
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