The Switch (5 page)

“Medicine.” Solo muttered the single word and nodded at the bottle.

“What do you know about medicine?” Eric sneered.

Doll snatched the bottle from him. “Shut up!” she exclaimed. “That old geezer ’e works for . . . Aftexcludor. ’E’s a doctor, innee?”

“Medicine,” Solo repeated.

“I ’eard! I ’eard!” Eric muttered sourly. He turned to Doll. “’Ow do they even know the boy’s ill?” he whispered. “We didn’t tell no one.”

“What does it matter ’ow they knew?” Doll uncorked the bottle and smelled the contents. She wrinkled her nose. “It smells all right,” she said. She nodded at Solo. “All right, you can shove off, shorty!” she said. “And tell your boss thanks, all right?”

Whether Solo had understood or not, he turned and walked away.

Doll turned to Eric. “Get me a glass!” she ordered. “And make sure you wipe it first with your sleeve.”

Dr. Aftexcludor’s medicine was the first liquid that Tad had accepted since he fell ill. Even the smell of it seemed to revive him a little and he emptied the glass in one swallow. After that he slept again, but his breathing seemed to have steadied and a little color crept back into his face. Then, that evening, quite suddenly he woke up. The fever had broken.

“My baby!” Doll threw her arms around Tad and burst into tears.

“Be careful!” Eric muttered. “You’re so fat you’ll smother ’im!”

Eric and Doll Snarby were so relieved to have their son back with them that later that evening they went out and bought fish-and-chips for him—although Doll Snarby ate most of the chips as she carried them home. That night Tad ate properly for the first time. And when he slept again, it was a normal, healthy sleep.

With the change in Tad’s health came a change in the weather. The sun shone and the crowds came out, enjoying the first weeks of the summer holidays. When she was sure he wouldn’t collapse on her, Doll Snarby set Tad to work on the Lucky Numbers booth.

It wasn’t difficult to run. All Tad had to do was to sit in front of the stuffed gorillas holding a big basket of tickets. And as the crowds walked past, he would shout out a patter he had quickly learned from his new father.

“Come on! Try your luck! Three tickets for a buck. If it ends in a five, you’re a winner! Lots of chances! Come on, sir! See if you can win a nice cuddly toy for the missus!”

This is what Tad did for the next four days. He felt safe in the booth, sitting on his own, and he even enjoyed the work, sitting out in the sun, watching the crowds go by. There was one thing that puzzled him to begin with. Not one single ticket that he sold actually ended in a five and soon he was surrounded by hundreds of colored scraps of paper—torn up and thrown away by the losers. The gorillas stayed where they were. But it didn’t take him long to work out the answer. There
were
no fives. No fifty-fives, no sixty-fives, no hundred and fives. They had never even been printed. And the punters had as much chance of winning a cuddly toy for the missus as they did of waking up on the moon.

But Tad didn’t mind. He didn’t feel a twinge of guilt. Eric Snarby was giving him five cents out of every dollar he made and the money was quickly mounting up. Tad felt better with coins in his pocket. He felt more like his old self.

Before he knew it, he had settled into a routine. The fair closed just after midnight and Tad shut up the booth and crawled into his bed at the back of the caravan after quickly swallowing down a meal. The Snarbys bought him take-out Chinese, take-out Indian, take-out fish-and-chips. And the cost of each meal they took out of his earnings. Bed was the worst time for him. Lying curled up on the lumpy mattress, he would think back to his life at Snatchmore Hall. He had been away from home for just over a week, but somehow home had already become a distant memory. As he shivered in the damp air, Tad would remember his electric blanket, the chocolate that Mitzy placed on his pillow last thing at night, the Jacuzzi waiting for him in the morning. Could he go back? Tad doubted it. If he turned up at Snatchmore Hall looking the way he did now, talking the way he did, smelling the way he did . . . they wouldn’t even let him through the gate.

That was what Dr. Aftexcludor had told him and Tad believed him. He
was
Bob Snarby. He had no choice.

 

 

Another week passed and the fairgrounds prepared to close. Eric and Doll Snarby were planning to travel north to join another, larger carnival in Great Yarmouth. Tad had almost laughed when he heard that. Great Yarmouth was only forty miles from Snatchmore Hall. He was actually moving closer to home! But at the same time he knew that it might just as well have been four hundred miles for all the difference it would make.

He sold almost two hundred tickets on the last day. It was a weekday afternoon and he had been left on his own. Eric and Doll had opened a bottle of wine at lunchtime and had gone back to the caravan to sleep it off. He had watched the caravan shaking on its wheels and had heard their screams of laughter as they chased each other around the bedroom, but now it was silent and he imagined they were asleep. Tad picked up the bucket of tickets and shook them.

“Come on! Try your luck . . .” he began. Then stopped.

A man had limped up to the stall and was standing in front of him, looking at him strangely. Tad’s first impression was of a shark in human form; the man had the same black eyes and pale, lifeless flesh. Although he wasn’t physically huge, there was a presence about him, something cold and ugly that seemed to reach out and draw Tad helplessly toward him. The man had gray hair, cut short to match the gray stubble on his chin. He wore a shabby suit and a pair of perfectly round wire-frame spectacles.

And then he turned his head and Tad gasped. His face was normal on one side, but the other was completely covered by a tattoo. Somebody had cut an immense spiderweb into the man’s white flesh. It stretched from his ear to his forehead to his nose, to the side of his mouth and down to his neck. The tattoo was livid black and—most horrible of all—it seemed to be eating its way into the man’s flesh. Somehow it was almost more alive than the face on which it hung.

“Try your luck . . . ?” Tad muttered, but the rest of the words refused to come.

“Hello, Bobby-boy!” The man smiled wickedly, revealing a line of teeth riddled with silver fillings. He had more fillings in his mouth than teeth. “I hope you’re well.”

“I’m okay.” Tad looked at the stranger warily.

“I asked if you was well,” he said. “Are you one hundred percent? ‘Okay’ is not good enough!”

“I’m fine,” Tad answered, mystified.

“That’s good. Because I hear—I’m reliably informed—that you been ill,” the man said.

“What about it?” Tad had learned that the ruder he was, the more people would accept that he was Bob.

The man smiled again. He had been leaning on a black, silver-capped walking stick, but now he leaned it against the stall. “Glue was what I heard,” he murmured.

“What about it?”

The man shook his head slowly. “You modern kids,” he said. “When I was your age, you wouldn’t have found me touching stuff like that. No. Gin was good enough for me. A half bottle of gin in my schoolbag, that’s what got me through the day.” He took out a cigarette and lit it. “Mind you,” he went on, “gin could be a treacherous friend too. It’s gin I got to thank for this . . .” He tapped the tattoo on the side of his face.

“What happened?” Tad asked, feeling queasy.

“I was drunk. Drunk as a lord. And some mates of mine took me down to the tattooist for a laugh. When I woke up, this was what he’d done to me. The web and the spider.” Tad glanced at the tattoo. The man laughed. “One day I’ll tell you where he put the spider,” he said. He blew out smoke. His eyes behind the round lenses were suddenly distant. “Anyway, I had the last laugh, so to speak. I went back to the tattooist and gave ’im what you might call a piece of my mind.”

“You told him what you thought of him . . .” Tad said.

“I
wrote
him what I thought of him. That’s what I did. I tied him to a chair and wrote it all over his body. Used his own needles. Oh yes. I turned that man into a walking dictionary—and not the sort of words you’d want your mother to hear. He went nuts in the end, I understand. He’s in an institute now. An institute for the insane. The other inmates never talk to him. But sometimes they . . .
read
him.” The man broke off and laughed quietly to himself.

There was a commotion as the caravan door opened and Eric and Doll Snarby appeared, hurrying across the fairgrounds toward them. Eric was half dressed, his shirt out of his trousers and the sty under his eye throbbing in time with his breath. Doll was also a mess, her lipstick smeared and one earring missing. Tad had never seen them like this. They were, he realized, terrified.

“Finn!” Doll exploded. “What a pleasure to see you! What a joy!”

“We wasn’t expecting you till later,” Eric added. “Or naturally we would ’ave bin ’ere to welcome you.”

“Please, my dear Snarbys!” The man called Finn positively beamed at them. “No need to get your underwear in a twist. I’ve had all the welcome I need, thank you.” He nodded at Tad, and in that moment it was as if a conjuror had waved a silk scarf over the man’s face. Suddenly the smile was gone and in its place was a leer of such force and ugliness that Tad shivered. “The boy’s not ’imself,” he snapped. “What have you done to ’im?”

“We looked after him!” Doll wheezed. “You know how precious he is to us, Finn. He was ill . . .”

“. . . ’E made ’imself ill!” Eric interjected.

“What are children coming to?” Doll Snarby trilled. “You beat them senseless and it doesn’t do any good at all! I don’t know . . .”

“He got at the glue?” Each word was a bullet, fired at the Snarbys.

“It wasn’t our fault, Finn!” Eric had gone chalk white.

“Oh Gawd! Please, Finn . . . !” Doll tried to slide herself behind her husband, but he pushed her away.

Finn thought for a moment. Then he relaxed and his face rippled back to what it had been before. “I’m taking him with me this evening,” he explained in a gentler voice. “A little business engagement. A business enterprise. I need my partner.”

His partner? Tad heard the word and swallowed.

“Is he ready?” Finn asked.

“Of course he’s ready, Finn,” Doll croaked. “We wouldn’t let you down!”

“That’s settled, then,” Finn said. “I’ll be back for him at nine o’clock.”

He picked up his stick and used it to unhook one of the gorillas. The gorilla slid down the length of the stick and into his hand. Finn smiled. “My lucky day!” he exclaimed. “It looks like I won!”

Holding the gorilla, he turned and limped away.

There was a full moon
that night. As Finn and Tad crossed the empty square, their shadows raced ahead of them as if searching for somewhere to hide. It was a few minutes after midnight. Tad had heard the church bells toll the hour. They had seemed far away, almost in another world. Here, everything was pale and gray, the buildings like paper cutouts against the black night sky.

Nightingale Square was in Mayfair, one of the trendiest areas of London. Tad had been here before and now recognized the square. Sir Hubert Spencer had friends here and had once brought Tad here for tea. Tad scanned the handsome Georgian houses with growing discomfort. He already had a nasty idea just what sort of “business” Finn had in mind. But what would he do if the chosen house was the very one where he had once been a guest?

Finn leaned against a metal railing in the middle of the square and raised his stick. “That’s the one,” he whispered. “Number twenty-nine. That’s my lucky number, Bobby-boy. It’s the number of times what I been arrested.”

Tad glanced at the house. It was tall and narrow with classical white pillars and wide marble steps leading up to the front door. It was on the corner of the square with an alleyway next to it leading, presumably, to a garden at the back. Thick ivy grew up one side of the house. Tad followed it with his eye. The ivy twisted past three windows and a balcony, stopping just short of the roof. At the very top there was a brightly colored box with a name and a telephone number. A burglar alarm.

“It’s the London home of a real milord,” Finn explained. “A member of the harry stocracy. ’Is name is Lord Roven.”

At least it wasn’t one of his father’s friends. But Tad still couldn’t relax. He listened with dread as Finn went on.

“I seen ’im in the papers, Bobby-boy. Lord Roven and his lovely wife, the two of them dripping with diamonds and gold and mink.” Finn’s eyes had gone dark now. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his head. “It’s not fair, is it?” he hissed. “Them so rich and us so poor. I never had no education, Bobby-boy. Okay. It’s true. I did burn down the school. And maybe it was wrong of me to lock all the teachers inside it first. But I never ’ad a chance. Never! And that’s why it’s all right, you see. To break into ’is ’ouse and steal ’is things. Because he’s got everything and we got nothing and stealing is the only way to make things change.”

Breaking in. Stealing. Tad’s worst fears had been realized. His mouth had gone dry and it took him a few moments to find his voice. “How do you know Lord Roven won’t be in?” he asked.

“’E always goes out tonight,” Finn replied. “Tonight is ’is bridge night. It’ll be four in the morning before ’e gets home.”

“And Lady Roven?”

“In the country.”

Finn licked his lips, then pointed again with the stick. “There’s the window, Bobby-boy. Up there by the alarm. You can get in there.”

Now Tad understood why he had been chosen. A man wouldn’t have been able to climb up. The ivy wouldn’t hold him. He needed a boy. “How do you know the window will be open, Finn?” he asked. His mind was desperately searching for a way out of this nightmare.