shook with the vehemence of her trembling, and implored her first, and then ordered her, just as ineffectively, to be calm and matter-of-fact, and take the whole thing easily. Hadn’t they agreed from the beginning that with a child not your own you must take nothing for granted, that you had to exercise twice as much care and self-control as natural parents, and earn every morsel of your gift-son’s affection? Restraint, no too greedy love, no too lavish indulgences and no too exacting demands, that was the way. If she let herself go now, she’d push the boy right over the edge, and break something.
“Here they are,” said George at the wheel, and drew the Mini in to the kerb just below the square, the dilapidated trio before them caught and dazzled in its lights. A slim, taut, brittle figure toiled up the hill between two muddy supporters just recognisable as Tamsin and Dominic. He had been drooping badly a moment before, but now he was braced to meet them. The moment was on top of him; he wasn’t ready, but he never would be ready, it might as well happen and get it over. A pale, grime-streaked face stared, all enormous, shocked eyes. Phil lunged for the doorhandle and was half out of the car before it came to a halt.
“Phil, you must be
“To hell with being calm!” shouted Phil, in a splendid flare of wrathful joy, and hurled herself upon her stray in a flurry of abuse, endearments and reproaches.
Paddy’s parent problem was swept away in the warm, sweet hurricane. After all, he didn’t have to make any decisions about how to behave, he didn’t have to do anything at all. The meeting he had been dreading was taken clean out of his hands. He was plucked from between his henchmen, hugged, shaken, even he seemed to remember afterwards with respect and astonishment, slapped, a thing he couldn’t remember ever having happened to him before in his life. Tim snatched him from Phil to feel him all over, swear at him heartily, strip him of his wet and filthy sweater, and bundle him into a warm, dry sportscoat much too big for him. He could hardly get a word in edgeways, all he managed was: “I’m sorry!” and: “I didn’t mean to!” and: “I couldn’t help it!” at intervals. And he had been shrinking from the thought of moderated voices and careful handling, into which he would inevitably have read all sorts of reservations! There weren’t any moderated voices round here, he couldn’t hear himself think; and the way he was being handled, he was going to start coming to pieces shortly. This sort of thing there was no mistaking. He was loved, all right. She was frantic about him, and Dad wasn’t much better. This, he thought, hustled and scolded and abused and caressed into dazed silence, this is
“Into that car,” ordered Tim, growing grimmer by the minute now that he had satisfied himself that he had his son back with hardly a scratch on him. “You’re going to apologise to Mr. Hewitt for all the trouble you’ve caused everybody, and you’d better make it good.” And when he had him penned into the back seat, with Phil to cushion him comfortably, he had to rummage out the old car rug and tuck him into it like a cocoon, and all to go the two hundred yards to the police station.
The rest of the evening always remained to him a crazy confusion, from which fleeting remarks emerged at times to tickle his memory. The one overwhelming thing about it was that all of it, every bit, was good, better than anything had ever been before, or perhaps ever would be again. To have happiness and know that you have it, and know how wonderful it is to know it, that’s almost too much for any one day.
He was bundled into the warmth and light of the police station, blinking and exhausted, and made his apologies with quite unexpected grace, out of the fullness of his own plenty. He said thank you to everyone who had gathered there from the great boy-hunt, and requested that his thanks be conveyed to all those who were not there to hear for themselves. Hewitt received the offering with considerable complacency, out of pure relief, but maintained a solemn face.
“Don’t you think you’ve heard the last of it, young feller-me-lad. Your next six months’ pocket-money’s going to be needed to pay for police shoe-leather. I’ll be sending you in a bill.” He grinned at Tim over the tow-coloured head that was beginning to be unconscionably heavy. “Take him home, clean him up and put him to bed, Mr. Rossall. I’ll talk to him in the morning, he’s out on his feet now.”
He remembered looking round a whole ring of faces when he said good-night. Mr. Felse was there with his wife, Tamsin was there, and Dominic, and the Vicar, and Uncle Simon. Uncle Simon was looking at him in an odd sort of way, smiling, but without the sparkle, and twice as hard as usual. And he didn’t come with them. Why didn’t he? Oh, yes, of course, he probably had his own car here, so he had to drive it home. But it didn’t look as if that was in his mind, somehow, when he shook his head at Dad, with that odd, rueful smile on his face, and said: “No, I’ll follow you down later, old boy. This is a family special.”
That reminded Paddy of how this extraordinary day had started. There were things he still had to know about himself, but somehow all the urgency was already gone. In the back seat of the car, rolled up again snugly in the rug, with Phil’s arm round him, and Phil’s shoulder comfortable and comforting under his cheek, he drowsed gloriously, too tired to know anything clearly except the one wonderful, all-pervading fact that it was all right. That everything was all right, because his belonging to them was everything.
And whoever he might have belonged to in the beginning, he was certainly theirs now. Heaven help anyone who tried to take him away from them, or them from him!
“I’m glad you know I know,” he said out of his pillows, bathed, fed, warmed and cosseted, and drowning in a delicious, sleepy happiness. “It did come as a bit of a shock at first, that’s why I sheered off from Aunt Rachel’s without telling anybody. I wasn’t trying to frighten anyone, or run away from home, or anything daft, like that. Honestly! I’m not such a clot.”
“I should hope not,” said Tim.
“No, but I was afraid you might think—I just felt shaken up, and not wanting to see anybody, or be talked to. You know! I started for home, and then I couldn’t face it, not until I’d had time to think. I went up on the Head, instead, but it was
Having, thought Phil, who had not failed to distinguish the tear-marks from the general stains of sea-water and cave-grime, an entirely visible and possibly temporarily uncontrollable distress to hide by then.
“Never mind now, darling, you go to sleep. There’s time for all that to-morrow. You’re home, and that’s all that matters.”
“Yes, but I just wanted you to know I wasn’t sulking, or anything childish like that. It was just by accident I happened to find this passage in the top end of the cave. Only a low sort of hole, you have to crawl through it on hands and knees. I was backed up into this corner, and I shoved my shoulder through it in the dark. It goes a long way. That’s how I lost time, having to be careful because of not having a light. In the end I did call it a day and decide to come back some other time with a torch, but what with not being able to see my watch, and forgetting because I was interested, by the time I crawled back through the hole I’d had it. The water was almost up to the top of the cave mouth, and I didn’t dare dive for it, it was too rough. I had to lie up and wait, there wasn’t anything else to do.” He looked up with the remembered terror suddenly brilliant in his eyes, squarely into Tim’s face. “I was scared green,” he said.
