The Lost Child

by Julie Myerson

  Julia pulls her bag up on her knees and shows me what she's brought. First, her copy of Florence's book, which I'm welcome to borrow. No more having to go and read it in the British Library. I tell her I'll take huge care of it.

  And two smallish watercolour paintings in frames - not the original frames, she points out quickly - both clearly and recognisably Woodton Hall. There's a little bit of land in front and it looks as if the view is probably done from just here, by the church. On the back of one a typed white sticker:

  Taken from an album . . . this book was given to me by my dear amiable daughter Mary Yelloly in April 1838 and is now sent to my dear son Samuel Tyssen Yelloly in memory of her who was so deservedly and so truly beloved. 17 July 1838.

  I've never taken it out of the frame, but I'm presuming that's what it says on the back of the painting, Julia says.

  I look carefully at the picture. Misty grey-green Norfolk copses, brush-blobs of colour - a suggestion of brightness and wetness in the air. Given to me. . . in April 1838 . . . who was so deservedly and truly beloved.

  Painted just weeks before your death.

  It must be one of the very last things Mary painted before she died, I say.

  A moment's pause as we both think about this. In the foreground of both pictures is a small male figure, red waistcoat, a dark hat and what looks like a gun.

  Do you think that could be one of her brothers? Julia says. Or else may be a servant?

  Nick was already dead, I say. It could be John or Sam.

  I ask where she got the pictures.

  Would you believe, I was just given them, she says. It was so lucky. I was on my way to see Cavendish Hall, you know where my father's family had lived? And I stopped off at an antique shop in Long Melford to ask directions and when the man heard I was a Yelloly he said: 0 h well, then you'd better have these. He just gave them to me!

  I smile. She has the same bright, frank warmth as her father. I wonder if it's a Yelloly quality. Were you like this?

  Well, that's it, she says. That's all I've got.

  Feeling slightly awkward because it still doesn't really seem right that I should have looked at it first, I ask her if she knows about the box her father has lent me. I tell her it contains some wonderful stuff It's funny, she says with a little frown, I never even knew anything about it. He's never ever mentioned it to me.

  I'm not sure he knew he had it, I tell her. Or at least he'd never really looked at it. Not until I came to lunch and he got it down.

  It's incredible what families can sit on for hundreds of years, she says, smiling.

  I tell her I still haven't managed to find your grave even though I've tried so hard, searching this whole churchyard more than once.

  She thinks about this.

  Well, I was pretty sure my father knew. But now I think he was perhaps referring to the other graves, you know, the ones at Stansted. That's Stansted in Suffolk, by the way, not Essex.

  We decide to go and walk around the churchyard anyway - see If we can tell where the pictures were done from - and, as we walk out into the weak winter sun, I realise what's been bothering me about Julia's face.

  That portrait on your parents' landing, the one of Mary's sister Sarah, with the long gold earrings. It's just so incredibly like you!

  Really?

  Seriously. The expression, the colouring, everything. I can't believe no one's ever said it before.

  She laughs and shakes her head and tells me no, no one ever has, but, out here in the chilly spring light, it's true. If your sister Sarah had hennaed her hair and worn a red fleece, turquoise hood and blue combat trousers and come straight from triathlon training at Bungay, this is exactly how she would have looked.

  The ground in the churchyard is hard to walk on - soggy and muddy. Fleshy turf caving in underfoot.

  Because of all the snow that's melted, I expect, says Julia. A couple of weeks ago this must have been several inches deep.

  And now it feels almost like spring, I say.

  Blinking in the sunshine, we make our way across to where the older graves are, each of us carrying a framed picture done by you in our hands. We're facing out from the back of the church now, away from the road, looking out towards where Woodton Hall must once have stood.

  Wow! Look at that! Julia shouts as something flaps away. A bam owl!

  We watch as its dark shape disappears between the trees.

  Definitely a bam owl, she says again. A good omen!

  Really?

  Of course.

  Afternoon sun falls in slants over the grass. I ask her if the pinkish wall we can just glimpse through the trees was once part of the old hall.

  Yeah, I think so. I'm pretty sure. My father and I had a look quite a few years ago. We just went a little way up the path.

  I tell her I did exactly the same a few weeks ago.

  I didn't go far, though. I wasn't sure if people lived there or not. There's a house up there that looks like it's been recently done up.

  Now julia glances at the path.

  God, I'd so love to go and see where the Hall stood, she says.

  I know. So would I.

  She gives me a look and I begin to laugh.

  Well, I don't see what's to stop us going a little bit further up the path than we've already been, she says.

  The worst that can happen is we just have to apologise and leave, I agree.

  She looks triumphant.

  And look, we don't even need to go round, we can easily get over here.

  And she hands me your picture to hold and begins to hoist herself up, easily, gracefully, over the grey stone wall, stopping only to cast a critical glance at my clothes. They're not exactly urban, but they weren't put on with wall-climbing in mind.

  Will you be able to do it? she asks me.

  Of course!

  She slithers down on the other side and laughs. I hand her the pictures and follow her over without too much difficulty, keeping quiet as a nettle licks my shin.

  Together we walk over a carpet of snowdrops towards the space once occupied by Woodton Hall.

  * * *

  Reaching the top of the path, we find ourselves under the spreading branches of the old cedar I found before. We stare up into it. It has to be hundreds of years old.

  So why isn't it in either of Mary's paintings? I say.

  julia holds hers out at ann's length and squints.

  Maybe she was standing more to the right when she painted it?

  It's either off the edge of the picture, or the tree's not as old as it looks. Maybe it was a small tree back then.

  Do they really grow that fast?

  I've no idea. I doubt it.

  Beyond the cedar, directly in front of us now, there's a drive and some cars and a low gabled cottage on the left and, to the right, the old garden wall and a curl of smoke someone's having a bonfire. A glimpse of a man.

  oh God. julia touches my ann. Are we going to have to say something?

  The man hasn't seen us. He's walking in the other direction.

  I hesitate.

  Shall we just go and knock on the door?

  Do we dare?

  I dare if you dare. I mean at least you are a real Yelloly. You have every reason to be here.

  But it's you who's writing about Mary!

  But even If we wanted to change our minds, we couldn't. Already there are faces at the window. Small white faces. Kids? Still clutching your paintings, we knock on the door.

  Two women, one of them wiping her hands on a tea towel, look a bit startled when we say the name Yelloly. They wave at the bonfire man, who's walking towards us in his wellington boots. They take the paintings from us and study them carefully, wordlessly, and we ask if they know that Woodton Hall once stood here.

  They're still staring as I continue to explain.

  I'm Julie and I'm trying to write about it. But this is Julia, and she's a real Yelloly.

  The women and the man all look at each other for
about three seconds, then they start to laugh.

  You'd better come in, says the first woman. Yes, we know all about the old Hall and the Yellolys. It's just - well, this may take some time.

  Elaine and Steve Hill have Sunday lunch all laid on the table a low-beamed kitchen, an Aga, checked tablecloth, glasses, dishes, mats. The friend is helping and there are teenagers around, sloping in and out in their socks.

  Oh dear, I say. You're just about to have lunch.

  We've come at a terrible time, says Julia.

  Not at all, Elaine says. This is exciting!

  We follow her through a dim corridor into a dark and elegant wooden-floored dining room.

  What a beautiful room, says Julia and we stare around us while Elaine bends down to the low sideboard and pulls out box files, piles of papers, spreads them on the table.

  This is all that's left of the Hall, Woodton Hall, this bit where we live, she says. We did this place up ourselves, from scratch. It was quite derelict. We think it was the stables or the servants' quarters or whatever.

  This room was definitely stables, says Steve, who has taken off his wellingtons and padded in. Just there where you're standing was a kind of a byre. And there was a great big pile of manure the very first time we walked in here.

  All right, Steve, thanks very much, laughs Elaine.

  You mean you put down this floor? says Julia. But it looks so original.

  Steve looks pleased.

  Now take off your coats, sit down, he says, and I slip my coat off and sit next to Julia, who's already settled herself at the dining table.

  Cup of tea anyone? offers Steve and Elaine's friend, who has just popped her head round the door. Julia and I look at each other.

  This is so kind of you, says Julia. But aren't we keeping you from your lunch?

  Lunch can wait, says Elaine firmly.

  We say that in that case we'd love a cup of tea.

  This is turning out to be the strangest day, I tell Steve.

  It's so lucky, Julia adds, that we came and knocked, because you see we so almost didn't -

  Oh but you shouldn't have hesitated! Steve says and he beams at us. Now, which one's Julie and which one's Julia?

  We tell him.

  And are you sisters?

  We laugh.

  We actually only just met this afternoon.

  Now Steve and Elaine look at each other. You're not serious? You two have only just met?

  About half an hour ago. It's quite funny, isn't it? says Julia.

  And I look out of the window at that view which is straight out of your album - the hazy greens and greys of Woodton, the ragged, windblown skies - and I think, Yes, it's funny.

  Elaine puts some more documents on the table. A view of Woodton, 1842, Dilapidated.

  It was pulled down soon after that, she says. You do know about the curse?

  Julia and I flick a look at each other. The tea arrives and is put down on the table.

  What curse?

  Ah well, you should get in touch with this man Patrick Baron Suckling, Steve says. It was nothing to do with the Yellolys really. It was the Sucklings, so he knows all about it. And they - what was his daughter called? Wait a minute, it'll come. He lives in Spain but she's in Norwich, I think. Or she was. Here you go - Caroline. Caroline Suckling.

  Suckling. Your sister Anna married the Revd Robert Suckling. A descendant of theirs, then. I write down the names and phone numbers.

  There was this family called Fellowes - lived at Shottisham Castle. Still do, some of them. An amazing place not far away, you should go. And sometime I don't know when - 17­something, certainly, there was a row over a woman and he­Fellowes, I think - kicked a Suckling down the steps of Woodton Hall. And he put a curse on the place and said he wouldn't rest till it was pulled down, brick by brick.

  And this was before the Yellolys came?

  Oh yes, goodness, long before. And every Suckling started to die after that. They died young, all the men did anyway.

  What a horrible story, julia says.

  Elaine and Steve say they need to go and eat lunch now, but we're very welcome to sit and drink our tea and look at the documents.

  Take your time, says Elaine. It's no trouble at all.

  And if you've got time, after lunch I'll show you round if you like, Steve says. I can show you exactly where the walls of the Hall stood.

  Left alone, julia and I start sifting through the papers on the table.

  I wonder if the Yellolys knew about the curse, says Julia. I mean they were fine when they came to Woodton, weren't they - and then they all started dying.

  I tell her this had crossed my mind too.

  I ask her if it feels strange, to be a Yelloly sitting here in the very house - or the stables anyway - after all this time.

  She sips her tea, thinks about it.

  Not really. Because you see I'm just me really. I mean the past, it's interesting, I'm very interested in it, but at the end of the day, it's not what I am. It's just the past, isn't it?

  As the sun gets low and the light turns silvery, Steve takes us on a walk right around the edges of his land, pointing out the depressions in the earth - now tangles of bramble and thicket - where the foundations of your home once stood.

  It's amazing that you can still see them so clearly, says Julia.

  Oh, they're very obvious when you know what you're looking for.

  It's so much bigger than I'd pictured it, I say.

  Oh yes, look - he indicates the sweep with his arms - you can tell, it was a vast pile.

  And we all stop for a moment and take in everything that's around us. And just like before there's that sudden odd quality to the air - a strange skittering lightness and a sense of grandeur, or height? - that makes me feel I can almost sense the Hall still standing there around me.

  It's a funny old place, says Steve, it's got this - atmosphere.

  I nod because that's exactly what I'm thinking.

  We walk on, the dog sniffing eagerly, then tearing off to chase a scent, while Julia lags slightly behind taking photos.

  My Dad will want to see, she says.

  Steve tells us that the road used to run right up here, between the Hall and the church. But the original owner, Alfred Inigo Suckling - the man who rented the Hall to the Yellolys - didn't like it being so close to his property.

  So he had it moved – ha! - just like that, right down there, to where it is now. You could in those days, if you were rich. You could do anything if you had the money and the clout.

  We walk through mud and leaves. In the middle of all these trees there's no wind whatsoever. Though the sun has gone, the sky's still smudged with brightness.

  I ask Steve how they came to live here and he says they saw an ad in the Eastern Daily Press.

  And how long did it take to do it up? asks Julia.

  Five years. Us living in a mobile home with the three kids. It's my life's work really. Not much fun sometimes in the mobile home either.

  I bet it wasn't, says Julia.

  Must be an amazing place for the kids to grow up, though, I say, reminded for a moment of Joanne Sandelson's kids and the mad white puppy in the earthworks at Narborough.

  Yeah. Yeah, it is. Ah, now here's the well - look.

  The original well?

  Yup.

  He pulls a cover off the side and we look down. I can see nothing, just a long drop into darkness. But Julia leans in and takes a photo and shows me - it shows up perfectly on her camera. Pale brickwork going round and round, down and down. A glimmer of something shining at the bottom.

  It still has water in it?

  Oh yes. The Yellolys would have used this well. Their servants would have, anyway.

  We walk back up to the house past stagnant ponds, petrified trees. The air is so still.

  I ask Steve what he does for a living.

  Teacher, design and technology. In Bungay.

  He asks Julia what she does.

  Com
puter analyst, she says, making a face.

  And she's a serious athlete as well, I tell him. She competes in triathlons.

  The very last thing Steve shows us is the Yelloly coach house - still intact - where the primrose-coloured Yelloly coach would have been kept. He shows us the little alcoves in the wall where the coach lanterns would have been placed and I hold my fingers there for a second on the rough old brick.

  And beyond the coach house is the walled garden - he tells us proudly how he's been repairing the walls gradually all by himself, a bit at a time - a painstaking process, exhausting at times, but quite satisfying all the same. Little piles of pink bricks waiting to be slotted back into a several-century-old wall.

  Before we leave, we go back up to the house to say goodbye to Elaine. She gives me a phone number.

  Monica Churchill, she says. She used to be the church warden. She might well know where your poor Yelloly girl was buried.

  It's almost dark now - the kind of creeping gloom that turns black as soon as you go inside and turn on a light. In the kitchen, the table's empty except for a couple of place mats and the dishwasher's on. The corridor's dark and the TV flickers in the sitting room and two teenagers loll on the sofa. A girl, and a boy in a hoodie - half-watching TV, half-strumming a guitar.

  Oh, my kids play the guitar, I say. My eldest's got one just like that, I think.

  Electric? says Steve and the boy looks up, half-interested. Yeah, it's a bit of an earful, isn't it?

  It is if you use an amp, I say.

  And Steve folds his arms and lets out a big sigh and for the first time I think I detect a flicker of stress in his eyes.

  Oh my God, he says. Just tell me about it!

  The court said we were to visit our father every other weekend and more time to be agreed between them in the holidays. I didn't know how this would be agreed as he refused to speak to our mother except through a solicitor.

  The first time he came to pick us up - it must have been September - we hadn't seen him for about three weeks, not since our mother left. I was looking forward to seeing him and to seeing our old house again (I'd lain awake so many nights trying to remember every single square foot of it) but I was also terrified. It was like being picked up by a stranger.