The Lost Child

by Caryl Phillips

  Charlotte guides the spoon into her sister’s mouth. At the foot of the bed the maid is unfolding an extra blanket to assist against the day’s raw chill. The busy woman works swiftly, aware that her presence in the room is an intrusion best kept to a minimum. The door is partially ajar, and as Charlotte redips the spoon into the broth, they both can hear Papa preparing tomorrow’s sermon in his study. She is her tall, gangling father’s child, unlike Charlotte, who takes after the mother whom neither sister can fully recall. The numbness of loss followed them out of childhood and pursued them into adulthood. Again Charlotte proffers the spoon, but she now turns away and looks at the wall. Anne will be in the kitchen either sewing or reading her Bible by the hearth, and waiting for her eldest sister to return and report on the condition of their poor Emily. And then perhaps later one of them will convey to Papa the news that there has been no restoration of health, but only after he has finished committing his sermon to memory. Only then may Papa be disturbed.

  Again she turns her head and rejects the spoon and its watery contents. The maid removes the tray from her lap while Charlotte takes a lace napkin and dabs prudently at the corners of her mouth. A deft expression of caring. She can now see that the morning light is already fading and the afternoon is preparing to set in misty and cold. Beyond the swaying tree, beyond the church, are the wild moors that call to her to rise from this confinement and race purposefully into the December wind and observe the landscape in its winter colours. I must go. Let me go. But the blundering sound of the maid edging her way out of the room breaks the spell. She is now released from the moors and delivered back to a place where a shadow cavorts on the wall as the tree continues to sway.

  Charlotte speaks soothingly, but with a tone of fearful imploration elegantly threading its way through her sentences. Her sister wishes to know if her constitution remains obstinately weak, or does she detect any renewal of strength? I am stricken and sinking fast. My hands tremble, and there is little feeling in my lower limbs. Would it help to make complaint and declare with resignation that I am permanently out of health? Charlotte persists. Perhaps she might welcome a visit from tenderhearted Anne? Surely only the most desperate would interpret the spectre of my pale, thin figure as being suggestive of a return to natural exuberance. Emily stares at her somewhat overdressed sister, who is now perched solicitously on the edge of the chair with a familiar gloom in her aspect. The plump one. No, that will not do, Branwell. Drunkenness is one vice, cruelty another. Her brother stopped abruptly by the tall wall, leant his head against the cold stone, and emptied his stomach down towards his boots. Please, Branwell. Papa keeps a respectable house. He stood straight and gracelessly wiped his mouth with the tail of his coat, and then moved off boldly as though resolved to prove that he was now able to walk without assistance. She followed, watchfully maintaining a dignified distance, enough to create the illusion of independence. However, she remained close enough that she might intervene with haste should her stumbling brother scuff his freshly stained boots against a protruding cobble and lose his footing.

  Charlotte repeats the question. Anne? Graceful Anne, forever suffering from a troublesome cough or a malady beyond known remedies. Wise Anne. She has no memory of denying Anne access to her room. The full grip of the sickness has occasioned days and nights to swim away from her and be lost, but she would never agitate to keep dear Anne at a distance. Perhaps Charlotte has misinterpreted some half sentence mumbled in the depths of delirium and relayed this careless utterance below? She stares at Charlotte’s round, tired face and then closes her eyes and lets her brother’s name form on her lips and tumble out into the world. Her sister takes her hand and almost inaudibly reminds her that he has gone, but where she refuses to say. To Leeds or to Halifax perhaps? To London again? This unkind paucity of information is now Charlotte’s way, and a small surge of despondency begins to crest within her. Surely, after all these years, Charlotte cannot still be holding bitterness in her heart because she refused to return with her to the Continent. Or is it simpler than this? Perhaps the evidence of this emaciated object has frightened her sister and made a leaden weight of her tongue? Where is Anne? Is she basking in the warmth of a lively fire by the hearth? She feels Charlotte squeeze her hand with an unexpected urgency and then release it. And now her suddenly voiceless sister sits back in the plain wooden chair and anxiously knits her own hands together. Her sister seized her with some violence, and the perplexing memory of Charlotte’s impulsive gesture can still be felt as a warm imprint.

  * * *

  Really, had they ever delighted in a close intimacy? Truly close? Six years ago they left Yorkshire and journeyed south to London before continuing on to Belgium. Two moderately impetuous maiden sisters travelling together, submitting themselves to a heroic adventure in the hope of acquiring an improved proficiency in the French language. They fully understood they were neither attractive nor fashionable, but they had been raised to eschew the approval of others. Papa had reluctantly given his blessing, and he hoped that they would watch over each other and safely deliver themselves back to his doorstep. After all, what could he do? Perhaps journeying was in the girls’ blood? His own pilgrimage had taken him from the Ireland of his birth to Cambridge, where he had studied with anxious intensity as a shy and stammering commoner. His transformation from Patrick Brunty to Patrick Brontë fooled no one, and his attempts to scour the Irish brogue from his tongue and his halfhearted endeavour to dress above his station provoked ill-suppressed laughter. His priggish mien grew more intense and silent as he became aware that to his contemporaries he was an object of entertainment, and the handful of undergraduates he regarded as potential intimates soon began to avoid the ignominy of being seen in his orbit. The final stage of his own adventure saw him migrate north to Yorkshire, where he felt no inclination to impress any among his flock, and where he maintained an aloof and zealously gauged distance from the people of Haworth.

  She peered into the churning waters of the tempest-tossed English Channel and realized that with this moonlit voyage she was now roaming beyond her dear father’s imagination. The waves lashed the sturdy vessel, and she clung with wet hands to the rail and reeled back and forth, allowing herself to be baptized by the haze of briny spray. Charlotte was held securely in the clench of seasickness, and lay below deck, turning restlessly on her bunk, but she understood there was little she could do to alleviate her sister’s turmoil. Charlotte had dropped and declined hurriedly, but Emily knew that this affliction would soon be resolved after a short, hard conflict that, at this stage, would benefit little from the consolation of human empathy. Above her the black sky was choked with stars, the same glorious constellation that jolted her sensibility on her late-night walks behind the Parsonage. She greeted her familiar heavenly companions and ignored the cry of yet another crew member who urged the long-legged woman to leave the deck. Ma’am, please. It will be safer for a lady down below. No doubt, no doubt. She offered the terrified young man an upwardly tilted chin and the faintest trace of a smile, before familiarizing him with her willowy back. She was travelling home tonight in the company of a forbidding wind. Young man, if it will bring you peace, then you must take shelter. Again she lifted her head to the skies. Let those who need shelter seek it out. She whispered, Go, seek it out.

  Through the bleary windows of the carriage the sisters could see little but flat, ill-manicured land swimming out in all directions, and only the occasional scruffy village disrupted the monotony. After some time the villages began to embrace one another and form a town, and suddenly the town began to grow into a city. Brussels revealed itself without the fanfare of London’s vociferous certitude. A continental city, melancholic in appearance, apologetic in tone, it remorsefully busied itself as though afraid to be discovered slacking. Her sister retained a pallid countenance from the exertions of the crossing, and once again she closed her heavily lidded eyes and allowed her head to loll sideways against the glass. Then Charlotte blinked furiously, as th
ough embarrassed to have been caught in a moment of weakness, and she watched as her debilitated sister adjusted her slumped posture and readdressed her attention to the spectacle of the somewhat overcast city they had now entered.

  Like a prison, she wrote. Dear Anne, Monsieur Heger’s school is like a prison with its high stone walls and heavy press of silence. I feel an iron weight constantly anchoring me to the earth. He simply wishes me to imitate the style of others, thus obscuring my own vision. I am twenty-four years of age and see no reason to stoop before the tyranny of this senseless man. In this school of learning I learn nothing except how to retreat into myself and survey the world about me with apathy. I am stimulated by little except the unwelcome aroma of one tedious day exhaling into the next, and time carries me forward against my will. She informed her fragile sister that her French had improved considerably, so much so that she was able to think and even dream in the language, but Monsieur Heger was almost certainly not the cause of her advancement. She characterized him as a young man who exuded an elaborate sincerity that was ruined by his determination to grin and display his polished teeth. She read constantly, and having made a selection from the books in the small library at the back of the single classroom, she would bustle back to the tiny quarters that she shared with her travelling companion and once again indulge herself. A freshly rejuvenated Charlotte regularly volunteered for extra lessons with the master, and Emily therefore often enjoyed sole occupation of their room and was able to fully embrace her moody solitude. Occasionally she would venture forth and stroll in the gardens, where she risked encountering her captivated sister listening attentively to whatever it was her master was saying to her, the pair of them oblivious to her ghostly presence. At such moments, she made it her business to seek out the shadow of a broad tree that might enable her to linger unobserved. Poor Charlotte, who gazed upon the professor with ill-disguised ardour, was abandoning the modest dignity of an inner life for the farce of a fluttering heartbeat. In Brussels.

  On Sundays they travelled out into the city and visited with a family with whom their father had connections, the origins of which were buried beneath any clear understanding on the part of either sister. However, after a half-dozen Sundays, the visits began to corrode into an obligation, which Charlotte tried desperately to make light of by taking control of the conversational territory. While riding the carriage towards their destination, her sister regularly compiled a list of topics to be discussed, and she rehearsed the order in which the subjects were to be raised. On encountering this insipid continental family, whose cakes and teas they both found unspeakable, it was Charlotte alone who made the effort to rescue the afternoon from catastrophe, while Emily retreated into an implacable silence that hinted at shyness, although her lustreless eyes invariably betrayed boredom, and her general demeanour indicated that she cared little for anyone else’s opinions.

  Late on Sunday night, the two sisters would prop themselves up in their uncomfortable beds and read their grammars. She oftentimes stole a look at Charlotte and silently apologized for her behaviour. She understood that her well-practised hostility made it impossible for Charlotte to engage in elegant repartee with their hosts, and the deathly quiet return journey in the lumbering carriage would be interrupted only by Charlotte gathering herself and then meekly scolding her headstrong sister. As daylight began to fade and their passage home continued, she would glance briefly at a discomfited Charlotte but say nothing, which seemed to temporarily satisfy her older sister, who, for some reason, always appeared to be transfixed by the cheerless views of the streets of Brussels through the begrimed windows of their carriage.

  She stood in the cooling shadow of a spreading beech tree, her back to the pitted bark, her toes steadfastly gripping the soles of her shoes, which, in turn, marked the grass. The master was once again displaying himself in an immaculately tailored suit of clothes, and encouraging the overly studious gazing of the young woman who sat obediently next to him. It was unmistakable, to all but the besotted, that his allure was undermined by his inability to move beyond his charm. He stood and took his leave, playfully lacing his way through a line of trunks and ambling towards the elegantly carved door. He threw a quick, final glance in the direction of the bench, a look calculated to cast himself in a kindly light, before nimbly mounting the three steps and disappearing into the house where his wife would no doubt be waiting patiently for him. She watched Charlotte lift the plain envelope to her face with both hands and then smell its scent. This man was operating upon her with a fully conscious determination. Once again her sister drew the perfumed air to her and allowed it to overwhelm her senses. A fragrance meaning what exactly? From her concealed location, she witnessed poor Charlotte drift.

  It was the week before Christmas, and they were squeezed together in the back of a post-chaise that haltingly picked its way across the solemn moors in the direction of Haworth. This was the season when the desolate light of day simply expired and was quickly swallowed up by a sudden tide of blackness. It had been a tiresome journey, and her troubled sister had travelled with a sorrowful, closed heart that she knew would refuse any sentiments of sympathy. To offer solace would be to irritate, and so she had resigned herself to watching the dispiriting drama of Charlotte’s further relinquishing governance over her emotions. Driving rain began to lash down and beat an impatient cadence on the roof of the flimsy box, but mercifully it was now possible to see the beacon light of a solitary candle sputtering in an upstairs window of a far-off inn, and the horses begin to trip with renewed verve. Charlotte, however, remained consumed by her deep melancholy. Her sister’s petals had closed in upon themselves. She was returning to Papa as less than that which she had been.

  The girls were back home, and on their first afternoon Papa extended an invitation for them to take tea with him. The house was empty, for according to Papa, Anne’s teaching duties would delay her return until Christmas Eve. She assumed that Branwell was out frolicking with his friends, but they would not speak of the brother and the son, for the strain of doing so would cause Papa pain and embarrassment in equal measure. The son had become an object of scorn in the village; he was no longer a carefree young man with an untidy mop of red hair and a convivial face that radiated optimistic goodwill to all. Papa’s son was a drunk who appeared intent on punishing himself for having squandered his talents and abandoned any ambition, and Anne’s letters had been charged with an anxiety that Branwell might soon be found residing beneath the church flagstones. Apparently, when their brother was not swilling gin or begging threepenny packets of opium pills, he had taken to charging about the countryside in a filthy cart pulled by a wild horse in a manner that implied he knew of no other world beside that of the farm.

  But they would not speak of the son. The maid had spent the afternoon baking, and she generously laid out the cakes and poured the tea. Emily could hear an excited Keeper barking and agitating for her company, for according to Papa, he had truly languished during her absence. However, the dog need worry no more, for she had no intention of returning to Brussels after this Christmas break, and Keeper would once again have her by his side. She glanced at her sister, who had no experience with the art of dissembling, and whose brown eyes brimmed constantly with tears. Regretfully, she accepted that the blame for this pitiful display could not be entirely borne by Monsieur Heger, for she had come to believe that, prior to their departure, her sister’s condition was such that her poor heart was ready to be cleaved by any man wielding interest. A bewildered Papa smiled at his daughters, and took his tea in silence.

  Her bed felt strangely uneven, and the room was cold, but after the frustrations of the Continent she was relieved to have returned to the Parsonage. The rigours of travel had incited her hair to curl uncooperatively into an unruly, tangled ball, and the whole knotted mess nested uncomfortably on her head as though unfamiliar with the scrutiny of a comb. A sideways glance in any looking glass simply confirmed her irregular features; the sharply angled no
se and the unappealing protrusion of her mouth were distinctions she had learned to live with, but she would always quickly avert her eyes. Through the slither of window, she stared at the brooding black sky and promised herself that never again would she range beyond this world. Her confidence had been much improved by exposure to the mediocre abilities of the dull girls at Monsieur Heger’s school, but now she was home and able to issue out for a walk on the moors whenever she wished. Her poor sister would shortly discover that she must make her return journey alone, and risk having her heart truly shattered by the triumph of her own foolish urgings over the reality of her mentor’s situation. Emily drew a strand of corkscrewed hair away from her eyes and continued to stare into the darkness, knowing that she would not sleep until she heard dear Branwell staggering up Church Lane. However, while she waited, she once again climbed the short, steep staircase of her imagination, and again she found herself dreaming of the boy who came from the moors, and she listened to the sound of pebble-dashed soil drumming hard against the lid of a plain coffin, and she turned over and curled up in her mind and began to search for her boy.

  * * *

  And now she hears her sister quietly rise to her feet and begin to sidle her way out of the room. Poor Charlotte. Her second year in Brussels poisoned her fortitude, and she returned home with eyes that flashed in all directions without ever alighting upon a single object, and an agitated disposition that refused to be drawn into any conversation on the wretched subject of her professor. She wrote increasingly imploring letters, but the master’s wife eventually answered, and then there were no more letters and Charlotte finally released this man whom she had foolishly captured in her thoughts. Indeed, her sister did allow herself to grow plump, but time eventually took her in hand and by degrees soothed the pain of her loss. However, while Charlotte gradually recovered her equilibrium, Emily continued to wander in her mind out onto the moors, where she pulled the landscape gloriously tight around her like a worn green blanket and hid herself away. When she returned to this world, she took charge of the maintenance of the Parsonage, while her eldest sister looked on in puzzled amusement that Emily might find contentment in cooking and cleaning. Once she had finished performing the household obligations of a servant, however, she would again balance her portable desk upon her knees and exchange the sterile pleasure of this life for the soaring joy of her heather-clad world.