The Lost Child

by Caryl Phillips

  When I wasn’t watching films I went to concerts by myself. Elton John, the Faces, Supertramp, Emerson Lake & Palmer: I saw loads of gigs. Even Joan Armatrading, which felt odd. A kid at school called Patrick wanted to see her, and I suppose she was okay, but there wasn’t much in the way of a drum solo. It just wasn’t my type of music, and I had a feeling that I shouldn’t have gone with somebody as I much preferred going by myself, so the next time Patrick asked me to go with him to a gig I just made up some pathetic excuse. Patrick wanted to do law at university because his dad was a solicitor and his grandfather had been a barrister. He said he didn’t have any choice in the matter. I applied to university to do history, and was soon asked to attend two interviews. The first one was a joke. I took the bus to Durham and walked around a bit until I found the university history department, only to be told that the interview was the following week. I’d got the date wrong.

  I was surprised when Mr. Gilpin said he’d drive me to the second interview, but I said I didn’t mind taking the bus or the train to Oxford. Which? he asked. I said the train, and he opened his wallet and handed me a fiver. He did so in a way that made me realize that we were to keep quiet about this. The night before the interview I was watching telly and Helen and her boyfriend came in from the pictures and told me to budge up on the settee as they plonked themselves down next to me. Lester Nisbett had on tragically unpolished brown platform shoes that were even bigger than hers, and a whisper of hair where he hoped a moustache might one day grow. He also had that “some bird’s gonna get lucky tonight” kind of cockiness about him, and judging by the fresh love bites on Helen’s neck, he had every reason to be confident. He asked me if could I tell him what the lyrics of that Pluto Shervington song meant. No, I said, I couldn’t. I hadn’t got a clue. Come on, Benny boy, of course you do. He winked at Helen and started to laugh, and suddenly it was clear that they’d both been on the lager and limes. He’s not telling the truth, you know. You know that, don’t you? Helen tried to suppress her giggles, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes. Tell me something, why are your lips so fat? And it’s like you’ve got wool on your head instead of hair. And what’s that white stuff on your skin? By your elbows. It’s all ashylike. Jesus, you look like a fucking burned sausage. Helen burst out laughing, but she still wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Bohemian Rhapsody”—Queen

  I had to stay overnight at the college as they did two interviews for candidates, one in the afternoon and then another one the next morning. I was told that dinner would be served in the dining hall at seven precisely. The first interview had gone badly. In fact, I was sure that the three lecturers could see that I was out of my depth, and I decided they were basically taking the piss out of me and couldn’t wait for me to leave the room so they could collapse into heaps of laughter. The main one of them had on a cravat, and everything about him suggested swellhead, especially the way he was twirling his propelling pencil in between his fingers like it was the simplest thing in the world. Why shouldn’t one walk naked in the streets on a hot day? Any thoughts on that, young man? What kind of question was that? You shouldn’t walk naked in the streets because you’ll look like an arsehole and offend people. I didn’t say that, but whatever it was that I said in response obviously didn’t impress them. All of them did that thing where you nod and make some notes and kind of hum like you’re really thinking about what was said, but it’s transparent that you’re not. And then I got the next question. To whom does a member of Parliament owe his loyalty: his party, his constituents, or his conscience? Depends, I said. Depends on what the issue is. I waited, but their silence let me know that I was supposed to expand on my answer, which was when I started to waffle and get all confused.

  There was no way I was going into the dining hall, so although it had changed from spitting rain to a downpour, I went wandering up the High Street until I found a fish-and-chips shop. The wind was brutal, and the cold was cutting right through me as all I had was a thin jacket and my old United scarf. Fish and chips once, please. With scraps. But I didn’t say the part about scraps because I knew they wouldn’t get it. By the time I got back to the room I was drenched to the skin, and so I turned on the two-bar electric fire and sat and ate the fish and chips right out of the paper and listened to the tranny I’d brought with me. The song went on for ages and sounded more like a piece of classical music than a pop song. When it was over, I screwed up the fish-and-chips paper and rammed it into the bin and then thought of our Tommy, which I did pretty much every day.

  I also thought about Mam and the business of her not showing up that Christmas and then waiting outside the school for me. The posh social worker woman had come around a second time in order to explain about Mam’s behaviour and she said that in time she thought that things would probably be alright between the two of us, but she reckoned it best if Mam just gave me some space. I remember I didn’t say anything, so she went on and told me that Mam had been going through a rough patch, but she was getting better and onto the right track. And then later, the same woman came to the Gilpin’s a third time, and told me that apparently Mam was planning on leaving the library and going down to London to try and start to put her life back together, whatever that meant. I listened to the woman but there was only one thing I wanted to ask Mam and that was, What about our Tommy? But I knew Mam wouldn’t want to deal with this, and so I looked blankly at this posh woman perched on the Gilpins’ settee in her familiar fancy twinset and decided that until Mam did want to deal with this, then there really wasn’t anything to say as far as I was concerned. I’d be concentrating on my school work, and hopefully one day getting a place at university, and then clearing off out of the Gilpins’ house.

  “Dancing Queen”—Abba

  The summer before I went to university was the hottest on record, and Abba were at number one for nearly two months. Even now when I hear the song, I start to sweat. Every morning was a scorcher, and there was no need to check the weather or wonder when it was going to break. It wasn’t going to change. It was like Spain. Or what I imagined Spain to be like. I was still living with the Gilpins as I didn’t have anywhere else to go until university started. I had no money for a flat, and so I just tried to stay out of their way. I’d sneak in from the pictures long after everyone had gone to bed, and I’d hide out in my room until they’d all gone out in the morning. Eventually I got a job in a dingy backstreet garage, pumping petrol and checking water and oil levels. It wasn’t a summer job, so I had to tell the bloke who interviewed me that I had ambitions in the auto trade and one day I hoped to own a petrol station; otherwise he’d have never given me the time of day. He made a steeple of his hands and asked me if I had a driving licence, and I said yes, I did, for I’d passed my test first time. My would-be boss nodded approvingly and made a cat’s cradle of his fingers as he stood up from behind his desk. I looked at him, then back down at the desk, where I couldn’t credit the state of his blackened ashtray; it was a dirty metal contraption with a button on top that you plunged and two little trapdoors that flapped open and prompted the ash to drop inside. How could anybody run a business with something that filthy on his desk?

  I soon discovered that he was a retired copper, and he was trying to be liberal and all nice, but I could tell that he was as thick as two short planks. Half his clients were Pakistanis and Indians dressed up in all the gear, but he tried too hard when they came in, and he was always putting it on. They smiled sweetly, but I could tell that, like me, they didn’t think much of him. His other clients were corporate accounts types, ill-mannered buggers who just signed for their petrol and wanted to be treated as though the sun shone out of their arses. They were the ones who got shortchanged, because I soon learned how to fix one particular pump so that the meter wouldn’t clear. If the smarmy bastards asked for five gallons and the pump already had on two, I’d give them three gallons, and they’d have to pay for five. Naturally I’d keep the cash for the two gallons, and nobody was the wiser. I was skimmi
ng off at least a tenner a week, and then towards the end of September I quit with nearly a hundred quid in the bank. I packed up my things at the Gilpins’ and rented a van so I could drive south to university, but I decided to wait until Helen and Louise were at school before taking my leave.

  That morning I could see it on Mrs. Gilpin’s jaundiced face that she was hoping that my going to university would be the end of everything. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Both she and her husband stood by the door and watched me lift the last box into the van, and then I came back into the front hallway, where Nancy Gilpin leaned in and gave me a pretend hug like she didn’t want to catch anything. Her husband offered me a firm handshake, and he wished me good luck, and I said thanks, and that was it, they were rid of me. I could tell that Mr. Gilpin wanted to say something more to me, but he could never come straight out with anything, he always had to go all around the houses, and now, with his wife gaping at him like a pit bull, there was no time. As usual, he’d missed the moment. I drove away from the Gilpins’ house on Manston Drive, and I took care not to look into the rearview mirror. Once I was sure that I was out of sight, I sped up and turned the van towards the moors, which was the opposite direction to where I should have been going.

  I stopped by the side of the road and stared at the depressing landscape. Bloody hell, I thought, even with a full moon it must be pitch black up here at night. And cold, and our Tommy didn’t have his duffel coat with him. I shouted. Tommy! I walked a few paces away from the van and looked out into the distance. Tommy! Tommy! But it was no use. I should have done more for Tommy, and that’s what had been keeping me awake for years now: the feeling that it was my fault. As a family we had nothing, so of course it was straightforward enough for somebody to turn our Tommy’s head. It’s easy to turn a kiddie’s head when he has nothing. I’m sorry, our Tommy. Sorry for laughing at you at Silverdale when you wet the bed. Everyone laughed at you, but I shouldn’t have. However, I had no idea what was going on. Honest, not a clue. I took a few steps onto the actual moorland. There was nobody around, which was just as well, but I really wasn’t ready to climb back into the driver’s seat and point the van south. Not just yet. I wasn’t ready to abandon our Tommy again, so I made up my mind to stay put on the moors. Hours passed as I walked for mile after mile, and as the daylight eventually started to fade in the sky, I could feel the moors closing in on me, and for the first time in ages I began to feel close to my brother.

  VII

  FAMILY

  Ronald Johnson carefully put the cup of tea back into the circle of the saucer and placed the unfolded newspaper on the tabletop. That was his grandson; he was sure of it. The boy was taller than he had imagined, and although he moved quickly past the window, he could see his daughter’s face in the upper lip and the eyes. There was a girl with him who was small and blond, with a kind and smiling face, and it looked as though they were holding hands, but everything had happened so fast. One second they were passing the huge glass window, so close that he could have reached through and touched them, and the next they were swallowed up by a crowd of jabbering, nervously excited students, who, once the traffic lights had turned red, streamed across the road towards the imposing nineteenth-century building where they would be taking their final examinations.

  He took a deep breath and then picked up his cup and finished his tea before pouring himself a refill from the faux Wedgwood pot. The waitress arrived with his order of crumpets, and having put down the plate, she fished into her apron pocket and produced three miniature jars and gave him a choice of raspberry or apricot jam or marmalade. He was stumped and looked inanely at the poor young woman, who eventually took pity on him and left all three. Retired now, and in his late sixties, he often found himself worrying about the possibility of losing dignity, and these days he tried doubly hard to keep up standards. He always made an effort to dress properly in a jacket and white shirt and one of his wide selection of ties, none of which had stripes. In the past, he had tried blue shirts, and even pink, but anything but white made him feel like a dandy. He was a stickler for sturdy black shoes with a nice high polish, but since he’d lost his wife, he’d begun to experiment a little with his trousers, and he’d become fond of both turnups and flannels, so one or the other, or a combination of both, might appear, depending on his mood.

  A new batch of kids were jostling around and waiting for their chance to cross the road. As he took them in, it suddenly occurred to him how light, almost weightless young people are, innocently floating along, unburdened by any experience of life’s sudden twists or turns. These students have joy, without fully understanding the prized nature of such a commodity, but soon enough they will be packing up their things and leaving the safety of their university years and setting out on their journeys. As he butters his first crumpet, he reminds himself of how important it is that he make contact with his grandson while he knows where he is, and before he loses sight of him completely. Once he graduates he’ll no doubt be off, and heaven only knows if he’ll ever be able to track him down again. Yesterday evening, after he’d found a place to park the car and checked in at the hotel, he took the pleasant walk across the centre of the town and presented himself at the porter’s lodge and asked if it might be possible to see Benjamin Wilson. The man ceased his form filling and peered up at him over the top of his reading glasses. In a sympathetic voice, he let him know that the college was closed to visitors, but told him that he was free to leave a message. He could see that the porter wanted to press him, and would most likely have flouted the rules and ushered him in and in the direction of the boy’s room had he shared more information, but he thanked the man and turned to leave. “Hang on a minute.” The porter opened the door to his small room and stepped out in front of him. “They’re all doing exams in the morning, over there.” He pointed across the street. “If you don’t want to leave a message, you can always see him either before he goes in or after he comes out.”

  Once he arrived back at the hotel, he asked at the desk if there were any messages for him, half expecting Mrs. Barrett to have phoned, but the waistcoated receptionist shook his head and smiled, and then wondered if Mr. Johnson might be dining with them this evening. It had been a long drive, and he had completely forgotten about food, but he realized now that he should probably eat something despite feeling in no mood to sit alone in a dining room full of people. “Perhaps you might prefer to see the room service menu?” Indeed, he did prefer this, and an hour later he finished his platter of trout, new potatoes, and peas and stacked everything neatly back onto the tray, which he set down on the spare bed beside the large envelope of letters, and an assortment of her other writing, that represented all that he had left of Monica. For a moment he couldn’t work out whether to call downstairs and ask them to come for the tray or if he should just leave it be for the night. Either way, he knew that he needed a bit of peace and quiet so that he could peruse the contents one final time before giving the large buff envelope to his grandson, believing, as he did, that at this stage of the game that’s where the material rightfully belonged.

  * * *

  Ben looked across the examination hall and saw Mandy scribbling away at her paper, and he was once again conscious of the fact that he had nothing to offer her in exchange for the ongoing gift of her family’s warmth and generosity. Since they had started going out with each other at the beginning of their second year, he had spent every vacation with her folks in Wiltshire. Her older brother was away in the army in Northern Ireland, and her father always reminded him that while Michael was fighting the good fight, they had plenty of room in the house. Ben had explained to Mandy about having been brought up in a foster home, and presumably she must have said something to her parents, for they had never asked any questions. If they were nonplussed by anything, he knew they would be respectful enough to ask Mandy and not him, but he wasn’t sure how much she would be able to help them out. She seemed to understand that talking about his mother and father, or his br
other, was difficult for him to deal with, so she never raised the subject. When Mandy’s granny died, and she had to go back home for the funeral, he did, however, tell her that he had just the one memory of his own grandparents on his mother’s side. He must have been about six, and both he and his brother were tired out when they got to Wakefield, and so, even though it was still light outside, they both were bundled upstairs and into bed. Then, before either of them knew what was happening, they were soon back on a train again. Tommy fell fast asleep, but Ben remembered looking up into his mother’s face.

  “Doesn’t your mam and dad want us to stay with them?”

  His mother pulled him closer to her side.

  “No, love, we were only visiting. We just popped in to say hello, and now we’re off to our own flat.”

  Having announced this, his mother slammed the door shut on any further discussion of his grandparents, and as both he and Tommy eventually discovered, the idea of talking about family in general was completely off the agenda as far as their mother was concerned.

  * * *

  The waiter asks him if the food is to his liking, and he simply nods, for his mouth is full of pasta and meatballs. The fellow couldn’t have chosen a more inopportune moment to start quizzing him, but he doesn’t seem to notice and offers a quick, self-satisfied grin and then moves on to the next table, where he presumably asks the same question. Having walked around the town for the best part of two hours, during which time he kept himself mentally spry by browsing the displays in bookshop windows, he hurried back to the main street and took up his watch across the road from the examination building. He positioned himself halfway between the college and the teashop where he had ordered breakfast, but it soon dawned on him that either his timing was off and the students had already finished for the morning, or perhaps they were exiting out of some back entrance that he was unaware of. When a bus pulled up beside him, and an excitable driver shouted, “Well, you getting on or what, mate?” he registered that he should move. He mumbled an apology and took a step back from the bus stop, and then watched as the elaborate doors concertinaed shut with a cushioned thud. There was no point to his dilly-dallying in the street, so he decided to go and find the rather unpretentious-looking Italian restaurant overlooking the river that he had walked past this morning. He hadn’t troubled himself to inspect the menu, but the presence of a blackboard on the pavement in front of the establishment convinced him that the food would be fresh as it looked as if the chalked-up offerings changed from day to day.