Space Race Read online

  Patrick nodded. It was a fair enough complaint.

  “You're right,” he said. “I'll have to tell you everything. But let's wait now till we are indoors and settled down to dinner. Then, after Stella goes next door, we'll talk.”

  Stella was waiting in the cottage. The table was set for two and as soon as she heard the key in the door she lifted the casserole out of the oven and began ladling the food onto plates. The kettle was boiling. There was tea in the pot. Here was comfort after a cold, cold walk.

  “You must be perished,” she said as they came into the room, bringing a chill with them. “Come and sit down. The dinner's all ready.”

  She noticed that something other than the chill of winter was hovering in the air. Then she too began to wonder whether Thomas's fears had some basis in fact. I hope not, she thought. I do hope not.

  Thomas watched her as she prepared to go. Never to see Stella again would break his heart. Everything about her seemed to him so perfect—her hazel eyes, her bright smile, even the autumn colors she nearly always wore. The children at school had mothers. Secretly Thomas thought of Stella as his own special mother, though he knew she would never be his father's wife. It was more as if she were mother to both of them.

  “I'll be going now, Patrick,” said Stella. “Good night. Good night, Thomas. See you tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” said Thomas emphatically, and he put his arms round Stella's neck and gave her a strong hug. To her this was another indication, a sign that something was not quite as it should be. Six-year-old Thomas had often hugged her. By the age of eight he had come to regard such demonstrations as babyish. Stella returned the hug but had the tact not to comment.

  “Good night,” she said, “and God bless.”

  After Stella left, Thomas looked anxiously at his father, waiting for him to begin the promised talk. But Patrick was still working out what to say and, more importantly, what not to say. His son must not know too much too soon.

  “Do y'think the snow will last till Christmas?” said Thomas at last. He could have been any boy hoping that Christmas day would look just like something out of a storybook. But it was a trick question. Thomas was consciously probing, and Patrick knew immediately what he was up to.

  “I don't think so,” said his father very deliberately, “but if it does, we will not be here to see it. That is what you want to know, isn't it?”

  Thomas put his fork down noisily on the table. For the first time ever he felt some understanding of what made Belthorp children stand and fight. It was something he had never been trained to do, and it was totally against his nature.

  “We go before Christmas ?” he said, outraged. “You should have told me sooner. How long have you known?”

  Patrick sighed and knew the time had come for all those long explanations.

  “I am sorry, Thomas, truly sorry. I have known the date of our departure ever since we came here. It was one of the things that I was not at liberty to tell you. It was essential to the experiment.”

  “One of the things?” said Thomas sharply. “What else do I not know?”

  “Not a lot,” said Patrick. “Just bits and pieces. Everything kept back from you has been kept back of necessity. Now I can tell you more, and I want to tell you more. I don't enjoy keeping secrets.”

  Thomas suddenly did not want to hear any more, not just yet. Another thought had come to mind, a far more important, Belthorp thought. He was not just pretending to belong here. He had acclimatized. Environment had won out.

  “I can't go before the end of term,” he said in nearpanic. “There's the Nativity play. I'm the youngest shepherd. Get in touch with them, whoever they are. Tell them your work's not finished. Tell them you need another year.”

  “I can't get in touch with anyone yet,” said Patrick. “I have had no contact with Ormingat since we came here. That's how it is. That's how it was meant to be. Besides, the work is yours even more than mine. You have supplied five years' data on what it is like to be a boy in an English village. You have lived the life and written the accounts. That is what we are here for.”

  “But why do they want to know?” said Thomas, thinking of all the ordinary things he had written about, not things really worth putting into a book. He knew that, even if he was only eleven. “What use is it to them?”

  “Something else I can't really explain yet,” said his father. “It is to do with things that might happen perhaps a hundred years or more from now.”

  Thomas gave him a look of wonder. He was an eleven-year-old boy to whom centuries were history. Time extending into the future went not much further than the day after tomorrow.

  “I don't understand,” he said, struggling with the idea. “A hundred years is a very long time.”

  “A thousand years is even longer,” said Patrick cryptically, and at that Thomas gave up all effort to make sense of it. They ate for a while in silence, each in his own way perplexed.

  If anything, it was even worse for Patrick than for Thomas. He was facing the awareness that what he had done in allowing the experiment was something he should perhaps never have undertaken. I was too young to know, he thought. Keldu was not there to protect our son. They should have warned me better.

  Now there was no choice. There was nothing for it but to carry it through to the end. Patrick could not and would not be disloyal to Ormingat no matter how sorely tempted he might be. So he would have to talk freely to Thomas about what was happening and what would happen. He would have to try to make him understand.

  “Have you ever told anyone about your journal?” he said at length, coming at the subject from an angle.

  “I told Mickey once,” said Thomas defensively. “You didn't tell me not to tell anybody.”

  “And what did Mickey say?” said his father.

  “He didn't really believe it. He thought all I was doing was keeping a diary and he said I was daft for bothering. He didn't believe that I had to do it. He never believes anything I tell him. He loves to hear about the spaceship, but he thinks I am just making it up.”

  “That is why you were allowed to tell,” said his father. “It was well thought out. The only things I taught you never to repeat were our real names and the name of Ormingat. It was all that could be expected of a sixyear-old. Other things you did not know and were not told.”

  “Like the date of leaving?” said Thomas resentfully.

  “Yes,” said Patrick, “and the location of the spaceship.”

  “We left it in some soil,” said Thomas triumphantly, “underneath a sort of monument, a big stone monument. I remember that, so there!”

  “And in what town is the monument, Thomas?” said his father, smiling for the first time in this strained conversation.

  Thomas frowned and tried with all his might to remember anything at all about the landing site. He could see it quite clearly: a large tree, green grass, a city full of shops. Something like a castle high up on a hill. Only the name of the city escaped him.

  “The spaceship came down,” he said, “but it was the wrong place and we had to get the train. And the spaceship looked like a golf ball, though I didn't know that then. We came out of it somehow and grew to the size of things on Earth. Then we walked along a main street and looked in mirrors and that was where I saw myself for the very first time.”

  “That's good,” said Patrick. “I didn't know you remembered so much. What about the time aboard the spaceship—our three years in space?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “Not much,” he said, struggling. “Videos of some sort. Paper and writing, printing Thomas Derwent in capital letters on sheets of paper. Then reading books about Janet and John. And playing games and learning when to sleep. Why did I have to learn to sleep?”

  “We live differently,” said Patrick softly. “Verleel mongoo, Tonitheen. Vateelin millistig thent.”

  Thomas struggled to make sense of his father's words, but all he could make out were the names: Tonitheen and Vateelin.


  “I don't understand the Ormingat words,” he said crossly. “You must know I don't. I recognize our other names, but nothing else.”

  “You will learn,” said his father. “You are a good scholar. In the three years it will take to travel home again, you will come to know the language of Ormingat as well as you know English—better. It is, after all, your mother tongue. You began to speak it in your infancy.”

  “So we really are leaving?” said Thomas. “Leaving before Christmas?”

  “We are,” said father. “But now you have heard enough for one night. Finish your dinner and then get ready for bed. Tomorrow there is much more I need to tell you. It's not easy for me, Thomas. It's not easy for either of us. Leaving is a new idea for you. I want you to get used to it.”

  There was something about Patrick's words that told Thomas that it would be in vain to ask anything else just now. Besides, he wanted to be alone. Getting used to the idea of leaving Belthorp would be very, very difficult.

  Patrick went to tuck his son in, as usual, and say good night. The boy looked as if he were sleeping.

  Patrick bent over him.

  “Nallytan, Tonitheen ban,” he said quietly.

  The boy stirred, yawned, then murmured, “Nallytan, Vateelin mesht.”

  On Sundays Patrick always made a proper English breakfast. Thomas went early to church with Stella and shared the meal with his father after he returned.

  The next morning being Sunday, Thomas got up later than on weekdays and had, as usual, to wash and dress straightaway so as not to keep Stella waiting. There was no time to continue the discussion of the night before.

  Patrick was in the kitchen making a pot of coffee when Thomas came downstairs.

  The doorbell rang and simultaneously a key was turned in the front-door lock.

  “Here's Stella come to fetch you,” Patrick said. “We'll talk later.”

  It was the beginning of what felt to both of them uncomfortably like a conspiracy.

  * * *

  The congregation sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful” and then, with regard to the season, “See amid the Winter's Snow.” Outside the little church, the snow in fact was rapidly melting and would soon be gone. Thomas stood up and sat down in all the right places, but his mind was definitely elsewhere.

  It was a relief when Stella left him at his own front gate.

  “Lunch at three-thirty,” she said. “See you then.” She knew that Thomas hardly heard what she was saying. Stella Dalrymple was very perceptive but also very patient. There was a mystery, but mysteries tend to be far less important than children think. Lunch would be at three-thirty in her house as usual. Perhaps there would be some indication then of what was troubling Thomas, perhaps there would not.

  When Thomas went into the house, his father was busily setting the table for breakfast.

  “The snow's nearly gone, I see,” said Patrick.

  “There's still plenty up on the hills,” said Thomas, “but it's all turned to slush in the village.”

  They sat down at the table and looked at each other awkwardly, neither quite knowing how to begin.

  Thomas ate his cereal in what became almost a sulky silence. Then he said abruptly, “Well, when are we going? And you haven't told Stella yet and I think that's horrible.”

  “I'll tell Stella today,” said Patrick. “I'm not happy about that either. I would like to have told her months ago, but it wouldn't have been wise. Your reports had to be kept going for as long as possible. You had to forget that this was not our permanent home.”

  Thomas was angry. It was an alien emotion, one he had learned to recognize in others but till now had hardly experienced for himself.

  “That was deception,” he said, using one of the words he had learned from his father, a word he valued as sounding much more important than simply “telling lies.” “I thought, I have always thought, that we did not deceive. It is what you have taught me.”

  “There was no deception,” said his father defensively. “I always told you the truth, but not all of the truth.”

  “And what will you tell Stella?” asked Thomas, seeing the flaw, the point where anything but deception would surely be impossible. “You can't tell her the truth.”

  Patrick clasped both hands on the table in front of him.

  “I will never be other than honest with you,” he said, “but you are right, I shall be forced to deceive Stella. I'll somehow imply that I have been transferred to Winnipeg. I'll tell her as little as possible but whatever I do say will be less than true. That is very, very difficult. I don't want to do it, but the only alternative is to leave without a word. And that, I believe, would be even worse.”

  Patrick took away the empty cereal bowls and put down plates of bacon, eggs, and mushrooms.

  The question that had begun this discussion was still unanswered.

  “When do we leave? What day? What time? How do we travel?” said Thomas, growing impatient.

  “We leave Belthorp by train on the morning of the eighteenth of December,” said his father.

  “So I will miss the Nativity play,” said Thomas.

  He was not an astronaut, nothing like it. He was an eleven-year-old schoolboy and had been given the part of the youngest shepherd with a lamb to carry as a gift for the Baby Jesus. It was not a big part, but he wanted so much to do it. Patrick saw the disappointment in his face.

  “I'm sorry,” he said. “Truly sorry. We'll be on the train to Casselton then. There is nothing, absolutely nothing I can do about it. These dates and times were arranged years ago. We need time on the spaceship before we quit Earth and head off for home. There will be a course to plot and news to gather. Eight years is a long time.”

  “And then?” said Thomas.

  “If all goes well,” said Patrick, “we shall begin our real journey at midnight on the twenty-sixth—the day after Christmas. No significance in that. No one on Ormingat has a special regard for Boxing Day or, if you prefer it, the Feast of Stephen!”

  “What do I tell Mickey?” said Thomas as he thought of the only friend who really mattered. “I've never told him a lie. He's my best friend.”

  “That is why I can't tell you the exact location of the spaceship. Place names are dangerous. What you do not know you cannot tell. And if you tell Mickey the truth as you know it, there is little risk of anything going wrong. Remember how much he enjoys your stories— and how little he really believes.”

  Thomas looked across at his father. Breakfast continued as if everything were normal. Thomas, without thinking, spread marmalade on his toast. Patrick poured them each a cup of coffee, half filling Thomas's with milk.

  “I shall ring the school tomorrow,” said Patrick, “and tell the headmistress that you will be leaving. I shall say that you are not happy about going and that I would prefer her to ask you no questions.”

  “You've thought of everything,” said Thomas resentfully. “Will you tell Stella to say nothing to me?”

  “I won't need to,” said Patrick, rather shamefaced. “She is discretion itself. If she asks you anything about Canada, you will tell her the same as you tell Mickey— the absolute truth—that you are flying in a golf ball to your home in outer space. Then she will conclude that you are fantasizing again and will ask no more. She will simply believe that you are too upset to talk about it.”

  Stella Dalrymple might be one of the most perfect of human beings, but that did not prevent her being both upset and annoyed when Patrick broke the news. They were seated at the dinner table and had just finished their soup. A pause between courses, a meal never hurried and usually happy.

  “Leaving in two weeks' time!” she said. “Leaving for good! You might have told me before now, Patrick. I don't mean because I work for you. I never think of myself as your employee—you have never made me feel that way. I am first and foremost your friend and neighbor. I will be very sad to see you go. It would have been kinder to have given me more time to get used to the
idea.”

  “I told you, Father,” said Thomas vigorously. “Didn't I tell you? You should have given both of us more time. I don't want to go, Stella. This is where I want to live for always.”

  At this, Stella had some notion of what had been happening next door and some idea of why Thomas had seemed distressed before he even knew of the move. She removed the soup plates and carried them to the kitchen corner.

  “You must have your reasons, I suppose,” she said with a sigh. “Did your company give you such short notice, Patrick?”

  Like everyone in the village, Stella assumed that Patrick was an executive with the chemical company in Casselton. He had never said so, but it was a natural assumption—a newcomer, a professional, transferred from Hemel Hempstead, was it?

  Patrick looked at Stella and shook his head. He was unused to lying. The big lie was rehearsed. Smaller lies were still a stumbling block.

  “I have known for some time,” he said clumsily, “but I kept it to myself. Perhaps I couldn't face up to it. I love Belthorp too. I would like to stay here longer.”

  What Stella thought at that moment she too kept to herself. It was not her place to criticize. She even regretted her initial outburst.

  “I'm sorry,” she said, looking directly at Patrick. “If I have said anything to upset you, blame it on the fact that I really shall miss both of you. Thomas has been like a son to me.”

  Dinner plates were brought to the table. Stella was serving the meat, large, thin slices of pork. She smiled wistfully as she passed a plate to Thomas.

  Thomas gulped and reddened. Patrick also had a childlike sadness in his face. Clearly neither of them was happy to go. Stella looked at them both with growing pity. One son? Two sons. Patrick never seemed to her to be quite grown-up.

  “You must not forget me,” she said gently. “You must both write to me from Winnipeg and I shall write to you and tell you all the village gossip.”

  Lunch was proceeding as if nothing untoward were happening. Stella, as she spoke, was ladling vegetables onto Thomas's plate.