Johnny Swanson (11 page)

T
he weekend came and went, and the Langfords were still away. Nobody apart from Johnny and Winnie seemed bothered, so Johnny decided to use his new advertising skills to try to find them. He was already intrigued by the ‘personal columns’ in the newspapers, where people put in strange messages that meant nothing to anyone but themselves. He’d seen:
Masham. Contact Dawkins. Something to your advantage
, and,
Cad. I don’t care. So there. Flopsy
. Now he composed one of his own:
Langford. Please contact Swanson. Worried
. At threepence a word, he had to drop something to get the cost down to a shilling. He decided to lose the ‘please’, but keep ‘worried’, which he had already substituted for ‘urgent’. Even at a shilling it was expensive compared with his other adverts, because of course it wasn’t going to bring in any money. He knew from his deliveries that the Langfords read the
Stambleton Echo
and the
London Times
. He put his advert in the London paper, since
they could get that anywhere, and he was pretty sure they weren’t in Stambleton.

A fortnight later, there was no response.

But the rest of Johnny’s advertising business was booming. Letters were still coming in from the lovelorn and the poets, one of whom was now writing to ‘PO Box 9’ with a new creation, and two shillings, every few days. A new advertisement –
Make Your Shoes Last Twice as Long –
was a big hit in a Norfolk newspaper. There were no complaints about the answer:
Hop everywhere. Remember to change legs
.

The rabbit on top of the wardrobe was becoming quite heavy with money. One Tuesday in December, almost a month after the Langfords had disappeared, Johnny thought he would cheer up his mother on her night off from the pub by spending some of his cash on a cake for tea. He told Hutch that Auntie Ada was paying for it, but he planned to knock it about a bit on the way home, and pretend to Winnie that Hutch had sent it because it was damaged and would otherwise be thrown away.

Both Hutch and his mother had forbidden him to approach the doctor’s house, and for weeks Johnny had gone home the long way round; but tonight it was raining and the wind was rising, and he couldn’t
resist taking his old route past the Langfords’. The days were so short now that it was dark whenever he wasn’t at school, and he was sure that in the bad weather Miss Dangerfield wouldn’t be outside to spot him, even if she still cared what he did.

Did he imagine the light? He walked up the hill into the December gale, with his head down most of the time to keep the sharp sleet out of his eyes. But he looked up now and then, trying to make out the shape of the Langfords’ house against the moonless sky. He’d always thought that the house must have been built by someone who’d made up the plans as he went along. From one side it appeared to have four floors; from another, only two. Wings stuck out in all directions, each with its roof sloping at a different angle. By day it was easy to spot the house, but in the dark, with nobody home, nothing was clear.

But maybe the Langfords were back? Johnny was sure, even from halfway down the hill, that he saw a glow in one of the upstairs windows. He started running towards it, but it was gone. Then it was back again, lower down now, and moving. He caught a glimpse of a silhouette. Was it a person, or the shape of one of the branches between him and the house, bouncing in the strengthening wind? He ran to the front gate.
Usually it squeaked as it opened, but tonight the sound couldn’t be heard above the din of the storm. There was a noise from the back of the house. Was it a car, or another blast of wind? The gale was so strong now that Johnny struggled simply to walk forward, clutching the cake inside his coat; trying to keep it dry.

He banged on the front door. There was no answer, and the shutters were still closed across the windows, but he had a feeling that something had changed – that someone had been there just before him. The drift of leaves that had collected on the front step over the past month had almost disappeared. Had it been blown away by the storm, or had somebody kicked it aside to open the door?

Johnny thumped again, rang the bell, and waited. But nobody came, so he set off for home, still protecting the cake, and bursting to tell his mother that someone might have been inside.

He arrived dripping wet and full of babble. Winnie stood silently by the table as he jabbered about what he thought he had seen. At first he didn’t notice that she wasn’t speaking – that she didn’t seem to be taking in what he was saying about the Langfords and the light. Then he sensed that she was angry. Of course! She had told him not to go there. She must
be cross. He stopped talking. She still just stood and stared down at the table.

It was laid for three. That was strange. They never had visitors. It was always just the two of them, if that. More often these days they each ate alone, because Winnie was out at work so much. Johnny looked around. There was no one else in the room.

‘Is someone coming to supper?’ he asked. Then he saw a chance to get back his mother’s favour – he unbuttoned his coat and took out the cake. ‘What a stroke of luck!’ he said. ‘Hutch gave me this as I was leaving the shop. He was throwing it out because – well, you can see. It’s got a bit squashed. No one would want to buy that now, would they?’ He knew he was talking too much – saying too many words too quickly to sound as casual and convincing as he wanted to. But at least the cake really was soggy and deformed after its journey home in the rain.

Winnie still said nothing.

Johnny felt he had to fill the gap. ‘Who’s coming, Mum? Who’s the extra place for?’

‘Can’t you guess?’ said Winnie, in a voice laced with a bitterness Johnny seldom heard.

Johnny was stumped. How could he know who she’d invited to share their meal?

Winnie’s voice had a note of sarcasm now. ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult for you. After all, you know her better than I do.’

‘Who? I don’t know, Mum. Tell me. Don’t make me guess. I can’t think of anyone.’ His mind raced through the women they knew, but none of them ever came inside the house, let alone to tea. Could it be someone important? One of his teachers perhaps? Please, no. Not that. Mrs Slack? Or worse, Miss Dangerfield? Was Winnie trying to make peace with her?

Winnie stood still, stern and smouldering. Then she snatched the cake from Johnny and slid it out of its wet paper bag straight onto the table. She picked up the bread knife and thrust it towards him so hard that for the first time in his life he thought she might really want to hurt him. ‘You cut it,’ she spat. ‘Does she like cake? How much does she want? You decide. You’re the one who knows all about her.’

With a blow of physical horror, Johnny realized why his mother was so angry. A few days before, in the shop, Hutch had named the sensation that Johnny was experiencing now. They had been quietly unloading a delivery when Hutch had stopped dead and clapped his hand to his mouth. Johnny had wondered if he was ill, but Hutch explained that he wasn’t unwell, he
had just had a terrible ‘clong’. A ‘clong’, he said, was ‘a rush of cold sick to the heart’. It was what happened when everything was going well, and you suddenly realized that you should be somewhere else, or had let somebody down, or were about to be found out. For Hutch, that day, the clong came when he recalled a promise to provide refreshments for the Mayor and Mayoress as they paid an official visit to the Chamber of Commerce. The event had already started, and Hutch had done absolutely nothing about it. It had slipped from his mind completely. Until the clong.

Now Johnny felt that same chilly, electric sickness. There was a metallic buzz in his joints, and his body seemed to be gearing up to run, though his feet were too heavy to move. He could feel his brain lurching to invent explanations, but failing to find even two coherent words. He wished he was still outside, with that wonderful expectation of how happy his mother would be to hear about the lights at the Langfords’, and to see the wonderful cake. But there was no chance of happiness now. Because before his mother spoke again, Johnny knew what she was going to say:

‘Go on, Johnny,’ she shouted, with a catch of hysteria in her voice. ‘Cut her a slice. Go on. Cut a nice slice of cake for your Auntie Ada!’

‘H
ow could you?’ cried Winnie. ‘What were you thinking of? How could you make me look so …’ She couldn’t find a word for the humiliation she had felt when she’d run into Hutch in the street, and he had asked after her invalid sister. ‘I didn’t know what he was talking about.’

‘He didn’t tell me that he’d met you when I did the papers after school,’ Johnny mumbled.

‘Well, let’s hope that means he doesn’t know you’re a liar. But he must have thought I was terribly rude.’

‘What exactly did he say?’

‘He said that Ada’s needlework seemed to be selling very well. I just stood there, wondering who Ada was. Then he said how good I was to take my sister in when times are so hard. I thought he’d mistaken me for somebody else.’

Stupidly, Johnny seized on that as an opportunity to try to wriggle out of trouble. ‘Maybe he had. Maybe there’s someone else with a sister called Ada—’

‘Someone else! Someone else who also has a son called Johnny who delivers Hutch’s papers for him? Oh, and who also, I hear, sends letters for this Auntie Ada, and deals with all her money.’

Johnny stuttered out the beginning of a limp explanation: ‘It’s not … I haven’t … It’s just …’

His mother kept talking. ‘I just stood there. What could I say? Thank goodness it was raining. In the end I rushed away, pretending I was cold. How could you, Johnny? How could you lie like that?’ She didn’t wait for an explanation, but carried on. ‘Do you think for one minute that I would have stayed in this town if I’d had family somewhere else? Do you think I would have let old Mr Bennett put me in this cheap house if I’d had relatives to help me pay my own way properly? Oh, I wish I’d had a sister – or anyone to help me out when your dad was gone. Now everyone will think I was turned out by my own family. They’ll think you’re a …’ She paused and wiped some spittle from her mouth. ‘They’ll think I had you without being married at all. They’ll think that’s why I’m on my own.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Johnny weakly. ‘I was trying to help.’

‘Help? How does it help to invent an extra person?
What were you trying to do? Did you make up this story to get Hutch to give you all that food you’ve been bringing home from the shop?’

‘No!’ Johnny was outraged at the idea that he’d been begging for charity. ‘Not that. Hutch hasn’t …’ He was about to tell her that he’d been buying the extra food. But then he realized that would mean revealing another lie – about the adverts and the money he’d been making. Instead, he tried to explain how the myth of Ada had come about. ‘It just got out of hand. I needed a postal order—’

‘A postal order? What would you need a postal order for?’

How could Johnny explain it all? How could he tell her about sending off for the Secret of Instant Height? About stealing from the Peace Mug? About telling Hutch that the money was for Auntie Ada’s ticket to visit them? How could he account for all the other postal orders, or admit that, for more than three months, he had been placing trick advertisements in newspapers all over the country?

His mother kept on at him. ‘What does a postal order have to do with this “Auntie Ada”?’

‘It’s just … It’s just … It’s just I said to Hutch that we needed to send her some money, so she could get
a train and come to stay, because she was ill. And stamps for the letter. He wouldn’t have opened the post office specially if it was just for me.’

‘Opened up specially? What on earth did you need the post office for anyway? You’re a child, Johnny! Children don’t need postal orders and stamps. What were you up to?’

Johnny decided to tell part of the truth. ‘I needed to place an advertisement,’ he said.

‘A what? You?
You
needed to place an advertisement?’

‘A personal message. I’ve seen them in the papers. It’s how people get in touch with each other when they don’t have an address.’

‘But why would you want to send a personal message?’ She changed her voice to make ‘personal message’ sound la-di-dah.

‘To find the Langfords,’ said Johnny. ‘I asked them to contact us.
Langford. Contact Swanson. Worried
. It cost me a shilling.’

‘A shilling of your own money?’

Johnny, his heart pounding with guilt, stood still, staring at his feet, letting her believe it was.

‘And you told Hutch it was for this auntie – this Ada?’

‘Yes,’ muttered Johnny, still not looking up.

Winnie thumped the table. ‘Well, you shouldn’t have. You mustn’t tell lies, Johnny. I’ve always told you that. It only leads to trouble.’ She was still cross, but she was calming down. ‘First thing tomorrow you’re going to put this right. You’re going to tell Hutch what you’ve done, and you’re going to apologize. Do you understand?’

Johnny sniffed. ‘Yes,’ he said, though he had no idea how he would find the words to untangle everything. ‘I was only trying to help. I thought if the Langfords came back you could get your wages and have your job with them again. I’m sorry.’

Winnie picked up the knife and fork she had set on the table for Ada. She turned to put them back in the drawer. ‘Well, perhaps you thought you were doing your best,’ she said. ‘But it hasn’t worked, has it?’

‘What?’

‘The advertisement. The Langfords haven’t been in touch?’

‘No.’ Johnny slumped down into a chair.

Winnie took the seat on the other side of the table. Her voice was almost normal now. ‘I’ve been trying to find the Langfords too, you know. When I ran into Hutch today I was on my way back from the
sanatorium. I went there on the bus after you’d gone to school.’

‘You didn’t tell me you were going,’ said Johnny, hoping to switch the blame and make Winnie feel guilty now.

‘I wasn’t sure I would go until the last minute,’ she said. ‘I thought they’d just turn me away and say I was being nosy if I asked if they knew where Dr Langford was. But then I had an idea. I had that letter of recommendation from Mrs Langford. I could pretend I was going to see if they had any cleaning jobs.’