The Lost Child

by Julie Myerson

  Is it true? we ask our boy. Is it really possible that he did such a thing?

  He shrugs.

  Oh, those police, they're so fucking over the top. I don't know If he did it or not, but If he did it was just a bit of fun, that's all.

  He did it, his father sighs, eyes on the floor.

  And they say he called your downstairs neighbour a cunt and yelled at her that he hoped she got breast cancer, I continue. Please, please at least tell me that's not true.

  Our boy chuckles.

  That woman downstairs is so fucking crazy. She so totally hates us.

  And have you said anything to her?

  Hey, don't look at me. You've no idea how hard I try - I'm the fucking peacemaker around here.

  By the fifth week, the boy and his flatmate are evicted. We're told by the (very reasonable and communicative and, we think, remarkably patient) landlord that, if they don't move out by the Monday, we'll be liable for another month's rent. Which of course doesn't bother the boy, who, it turns out, has already left town.

  He calls me from the train.

  Hey, Mum.

  I've been calling and calling you. Where are you?

  On a train to Sheffield. Just had to get out of town for a while. The whole thing of the flat and all that, it was doing my head in. And there's this girl I met -

  But - my head is spinning - you can't just go. Today is Friday and you know bloody well that we've got to move all your stuff out by Monday -

  Yeah, well, I was going mad in there. What the fuck was I supposed to do? And anyway this girl -

  Who?

  We only met a week ago, but it's pretty serious and she's in Sheffield. Look, Mum, sorry, I've got to go, but I'll call you, OK?

  But -

  Next time I try his phone, it's off again.

  That's when I rescue his cat.

  Saturday morning we spend in pouring south London rain, stuffing his things into black bin bags and driving them back to our house. The things we only drove there less than six weeks ago. It takes two trips with a full car.

  Even though we'd worried he might not, Ginger does at least turn up to deal with his stuff, accompanied - bafflingly, surreally - by the girl. The girl I last saw when I sat with her in Cafe Rouge as she picked at her chips and I attempted to describe what it would be like when my embryo grandchild was sucked out of her.

  She has on high-heeled boots, brand new and unscuffed, and a powder-pink dress with a matching zip-up jacket and she is as smilingly polite as ever.

  I go back to Mary Sanders-Hewett's house in Northamptonshire on a dark wet pouring day in late July.

  The two red leather-bound books are waiting for me on the dining table. She makes me coffee and chats to me from the kitchen while the two collies bump around my chair, sneezing.

  Then she leaves me to it.

  First I look at the photographs - endless dark Victorian photographs of mostly Tyssen relics. Jewellery and silverware, purses and knives, needle cases, buckles, thimbles, bracelets. All of them carefully arranged for the camera and caught - still and hard and cold.

  I feel I ought to be interested - because most of this at some point belonged to your family, some of the items possibly even belonged to you - but it's relentless stuff The true deadness of old lives when all that's left is pot and plate. I realise that a real historian, a proper biographical researcher, might find significance and interest in each and every one. But they're not what I'm after. What am I after? Some emotion? Some clue that you really did once exist? A flavour of your face, your breath, your hair?

  The collie who has settled at my feet heaves a sigh.

  There are some small paintings similar to all those I've seen before. Interiors of rooms which mayor may not be Woodton. Not as clear or vivid as the ones that hang on Patrick Baron's landing.

  And there's a nice little watercolour of a house in Epping Forest. I know about this house. In 1813, a couple of years before you are born, your older brothers and sisters are struck down by a bout of whooping cough, and your parents whisk them all away to Epping. Out of London, away from the germs.

  But they recover from the whooping cough only to contract measles and, somewhere in the middle of all that, Nick is born - Nick, who is so poorly for the first part of his life that they have to wait six months before baptising him. Poor Nick, whose existence begins pretty much exactly as it ends. Three months after that, in the August, your sister Anna is born, there in that same pretty watercolour house. Then they all return, parents and eight children, back to Finsbury Square, where you come into the world. Ellen, as we know, is born at Carrow.

  It's dark in the dining room. Squalls of chilly summer rain batter the window. One of the dogs has gone, but the one that settled under my chair is now snoring quietly. I carry on reading Florence's hand-typed text. Though much of it is identical or similar to my published version, now and then something stands right out. An extra sentence or paragraph. A little footnote. Pieces of information which, for whatever reason, were edited out of the published book.

  Some enticing detail, too. Describing the house in Finsbury Square where your parents begin married life and where you are born, Florence notes that:

  They finished this house at great expense. The family bedstead where most of the children were born cost £100 and Mrs Suckling (Anna) was born in it at Walthamstow in Essex and her daughter Constance was also born in it at Cavendish Hall 1849. It was hung with chocolate-coloured chintz that cost 7s 6d a yard.

  Chocolate-coloured chintz. You are conceived and born into a bed hung with chocolate-coloured chintz. Your newborn eyes struggling to focus on cocoa-coloured drapes, rich brown fabric swathes.

  She goes on:

  The drawing-room chairs were black, elaborately gilded, they cost 72s apiece and were sold by Mrs Seveme at Cavendish Hall. A mahogany bookcase with drawers under it was bought at Seddon's, and it is represented in one of the bedrooms at Woodton (sketched in watercolour by Anna).

  The front of the bookcase is lined with yellow. This was left to Mrs Suckling by her mother and sent to Barsham. She also had from her mother 2 inlaid card tables that were bought at Seddon's for the Yelloly wedding, the table belonging to this set was left at Cavendish for Mrs Seveme.

  If the bookcase ended up at Barsham then it's very likely it's now one of the pieces in Patrick Baron's apartment.

  I read on. Now and then names jump out at me. William Harris is one. Harris. It's the name I wondered about at Yale. And now I remember why I knew it, because here it is, on the little card written to your brother, Uncle Sam, from some unknown nephew or niece. The original is in the Yelloly box but here it is again, reproduced:

  I have got the toothache and couldn't eat no dinner hardly. I am very sorry that I didn't say goodbye and I'll ask him where he was that I didn't say goodbye. Which station did you stop at and how did you find your chicken and grandmamma's horses and how is Harris and please how is Phyllis and Vilet and I forget the others and how is Aunt Sarah's room . . .

  How is Harris. In the Yale picture, Harris, with his blue breeches and pitchfork, looks a lot like a farm labourer. But he must be more than that - he must be known to your family in some more personal way, if the young letter writer enquires after his health. In the next paragraph, I get my answer:

  William Harris was the old Yelloly coachman and he survived beyond and into the days when young Sucklings delighted to play hide-and-seek in the old disused chariot.

  The old disused chariot. Fun and games and hide-and-seek in the old primrose Yelloly coach. I think of the coach house Steve Hill showed us with its little alcoves in the brick wall where the lanterns were put. And then I think of something else. If Harris is the old and trusted family coachman, then does he do that terrible midsummer's drive to Ipswich to collect your grieving sister? Is it Harris - faithful servant, patient with you all when you are children - who is trusted with the task of bringing your poor body back to Woodton for burial?

  I've ima
gined that drive, that journey several times, but suddenly I can't imagine it any more. It's gone. I can't see it. It was easier when I had less detail. This is why I can't get close to you, Mary. The more I know, the less I seem to see.

  Another name: Sarah Rhodes. I haven't come across that name anywhere before but it turns out she is your nurse, another trusted servant, and she dies at Carrow. There's a tablet to her memory in Trowse Church:

  Sacred to the memory of Mrs Sarah Rhodes

  Who died at Carrow Abbey on 6 April 1831

  After a long and severe illness in the 65th year of her life Much and sincerely lamented, she was for many years the respected and faithful nurse in the family of Dr and Mrs Yelloly of Carrow Abbey.

  Their ten children whom she nursed with the greatest care and affection have erected this stone as a tribute of their regard.

  1831. I think back to the entry I read in your mother's pocket almanac for that year:

  Accept oh Lord my humble thanks for all thy mercies particularly for preserving to me my dearest husband and children, though Thou has pleased to call away one of our household, yet let me acknowledge thy wonderful goodness in suffering 24 years to pass over without visiting our house with death!!

  Twenty-four years - that's a reference to your parents' wedding in 1806. Snow Hill. The twenty-two-year-old Sarah, alone in the world but full of hope. Not alone any more.

  Twenty-four years without death. And then, 1831. The year your nurse dies at Carrow is the same year that you all pack up and move to Woodton. Over the next eleven years your mother will lose four of her children, and then her husband. I wonder if she ever looks back on that year, and the move to Woodton, as the beginning of the end. The beginning of her loss. Her losses. I think I would.

  And what about you children? Are you sorry to leave Carrow? Do you miss those pretty lawns, those ancient ruins, that enormous fat blazing tree? Or are you relieved not to have to creep along those shadowy corridors any more? Are you glad to quit those dark and creaky rooms, which will one day in the faraway future contain flip charts and sales teams? And have you seen the ghost who pushes her way into the Prioress's bedroom? Or does she only start making her presence felt later, when you're gone? In which case, who is she?

  And then I come across something else - a sliver of emotional detail about your parents, which is so surprising it makes me sit up. Something that was cut from the published book:

  Sarah had a lover who was loved in return, but his suit was rejected by a Guardian. Dr Yelloly, a friend of Sir Joseph Banks and an ardent admirer of Miss Tyssen, had been rejected by her but was chivalrous enough to say to her:

  Madam,

  If I can forward your suit in any way, you have only to command me. . . If your surprise is called forth at the address of one who has had the honour of an acquaintance with you of some years standing, let not your anger be raised at presumption, nor your displeasure construe the intrusion into an impertinence. The subject on which I am about to address you has for a length of time been the source of much anxiety to my mind, the disclosure may perhaps put an end to hopes with which I have long flattered myself, but can never erase the sentiments of respectful regard I entertain towards you. Since your [...] you can be no stranger to my [...] and if you think me worthy of my attention and one to whose care you would with safety confide your future prospects it shall be the present pride and chiefpleasure of my life to contribute to your happiness.

  The many amiable qualities I am convinced you possess, among which politeness of manners and sweetness of disposition must be conspicuous to everyone who has the pleasure of your acquaintance, induce me to hope, whatever may be your opinion of the step I have taken, you will indulge me so far as to favour me with an answer. You will not be displeased I trust at my subscribing myself with very great esteem and respect, Your faithful and devoted servant,

  J. Yelloly

  I am holding my breath. This is not what I imagined. Your mother's reply is shown beneath it:

  Sir,

  Allow me to express the high sense I entertain of the honour you have conferred on me, of which I am fully sensible, though I have not at present any wish or intention of changing my situation in life, pardon me if I add that it appears to me that our acquaintance has been too short, or in any degree not sufficient to develop the temper or habits of either of us, which are so essential to be fully known before a subject like the present be properly considered. This reason will, I flatter myself, be deemed a sufficient apology for my declining the honour he has done me. I trust too much candour to do me so great injustice as to construe my conduct on this occasion into the slightest mark of disrespect. I earnestly hope that this occurrence may and will be buried in oblivion and never in the smallest degree interrupt that sociability and harmony which for my part I shall always be happy to maintain and which the close connection between our families renders so desirable.

  I remain with great respect,

  S. Tyssen

  PS A brother who has ever been accustomed to share my confidence is the only one that has the smallest idea of what has passed and I feel not in the least hesitation in giving my word that he will continue to preserve the most absolute silence on the subject.

  May be I shouldn't be amazed at this, but I am. The sense I have of your parents' relationship, of their meeting and eventual union, is so - solid. Because of the purse, I suppose. That one small knitted purse - a lifetime of romance! - has coloured my whole view of your parents' marriage.

  But it isn't like that at all. It doesn't happen that way - the two orphans meeting, the sudden swift recognition, the uncomplicated comfort of making a home, a family. No. Your mother turns your father down. She loves someone else.

  She loves a man who is considered unsuitable and who she is somehow prevented from marrying. Who is it she loves? What happens to him? Where does he go?

  And, though she thinks of John Yelloly as a friend, may be even a dear friend - one who has had the honour of an acquaintance with you of some years standing - she cannot consider him as a husband, a lover. And she tells him this, quite bluntly, confiding at the same time in your Uncle Sam. Sam, I don't know what to do. I've had this letter from John Yelloly. I don't know what he means by it. I can't possibly marry him!

  How is she feeling when she writes that letter? Does she hate to disappoint him, to hurt him? Or is she so deep in love with the other man, the Someone Else, that she hardly cares?

  Hot tears cried into her pillow at night. That tearing feeling in her chest.

  She'll get over it, say the guardians. may be Sir Joseph Banks tries to talk her round - Banks, who has a vested interest in promoting Yelloly's cause. Banks, who, like Yelloly, is a scientist, a botanist, famous throughout the country ever since as a young man he went on Captain Cook's first voyage. Banks, who by this time is old and suffering badly from gout and has to be wheeled around in a chair.

  What exactly is wrong with the Someone Else? Why is he so unsuitable?

  And anyway, does she get over it? How long before she changes her mind enough to make the little purse for John, hoping it might rekindle something?

  And meanwhile your poor father. How deflated he must feel. The honour you have conferred on me. . . buried in oblivion. I can be your friend, but never your wife. Friendship. A word that's full of good intent, but devastating if you love someone and want them to love you.

  But the text goes on:

  His devotion to her interests and unselfishness won her in the end. Many years afterwards, she gathered her sons about her and said, 'I married your father because he was an honourable man,' and gave them a homily in manly honour.

  An honourable man. Manly honour. Well, it could mean anything. It might be true - there's nothing wrong with honour. Or it could be the thing you tell yourself, the story you weave to make it all OK. And most of the time, the story works. It's more or less true, so it works its careful, reasonable magic. Until you glance out of the window one day at a smudged sky an
d your heart just implodes with loneliness.

  Mary Sanders-Hewett's dog breathes a long, hard sigh against my foot.

  The published version of A Forgotten Past quotes at some length from a letter written to Florence by a Mrs Jane Coulcher, who was a friend of your family.

  In it, she talks about going over to Carrow Abbey and seeing your older sisters all looking so pretty in their white muslin dresses with coloured sashes. Their lovely complexions. She's a bit judgemental about your brother John, saying that, when he went up to Cambridge, he was a rather uninteresting young man. Though she hurries to add that, in later life, he became a charming-looking old man. Like everyone else,Jane Coulcher is full of praise for your mother - so highly educated, such a charming Shakespeare reader and accomplished artist, but who also makes a point of teaching her daughters ornamental cookery.

  In her letter, Mrs Coulcher also writes this:

  His [...] first call at Woodton (when he was staying with his grandmother Mrs Fox who lived at Woodton Old Hall) on a later occasion, and the walk in the woods, and the engagement. Dear beautiful Sophy was engaged to Mr Groome, afterwards, Archdeacon Groome. Sophy's and Harriet's engagements were I think the two first to the two clergymen, brothers Groome, sons of Mr Groome, Rector of Monk Soham and Earl Soham in Suffolk. They were college friends of John and were introduced to them at Carrow. Sophy remained engaged and with very warm affection on both sides until her death at Dawlish.

  Next to those words Sophy's and Harriet's engagements, there's an asterisk and a revealing footnote that was left out of the published version:

  *Harriet's engagement to John Groome, brother to Robert. During the course of this engagement his affections passed to Sarah, and Harriet released him, but Sarah never allowed any approaches to be made to her. The sisters never spoke of it to each other.