The Lost Child

by Julie Myerson

  And then one of the guests, a sharp, attractive woman with fair hair, whose job is something to do with theatre in education, asks if our eldest has applied to university yet.

  I try to do what we always do with strangers. Tell just enough of the truth not to have to tell a lie, then move on.

  Actually, the boy's father often doesn't even do this much. Often he's all for saying nothing, or even lying if necessary. What's the point? he says. Why should we let this become the narrative of our lives?

  He's right, of course. All he wants is some time off But I find it very hard to lie successfully.

  He's dropped out of school, I hear myself telling her. And he's not living with us at the moment. He has quite a big problem with cannabis.

  The table goes quiet. I realise how what I just said sounds.

  Just cannabis? someone says, as they always do. And I can feel it starting. That's not so bad then, someone else will say. It's a phase they all go through, another will add. All well meant. Intending to reassure. Instead:

  Does their school have a drugs problem? someone asks me and I think for a moment.

  Not really, no. There are drugs, yes, obviously, as in all secondary schools, but I wouldn't call it a problem.

  Oh come on, says the theatre woman, I know that school. I've done some work there. It's full of drugs -

  Oh no, I reply, I really don't think so. And anyway that's not where he started smoking -

  It was some kids from a public school, a boarding school, actually, his father tells them with a bitter little laugh. People he hooked up with in the holidays.

  But the woman insists she has good reason to believe the school does have a significant drugs problem.

  But surely no more than any other London secondary school? I hear myself protest.

  Oh, yes, I would say so.

  And my heart sinks and I can't work out why. Does she think she's somehow doing us a favour, shifting the blame on to the school? I think of the calm, hard-working, sedate and thoughtful place we've been sending our children for the past few years. Then I remember the blank, well-meaning faces of the teachers as we tried to tell them how worried we were about our child. I push that thought from my mind as a hard lump of panic rises in my throat.

  I just don't think we can blame the school in this, I say and I throw a beseeching look at the boy's father, who, to my dismay, chucks it straight back.

  And I see that he's listening hard to what the woman is saying now and, arms folded, frowning and nodding. How can he do this? I hear him telling her he thinks she may be right. may be the school has had a role to play.

  But, I begin to say, it's not the old-style cannabis but skunk we're talking about.

  Oh yes, someone agrees. That stuff is lethal.

  Lethal, yes. Suddenly I feel so tired.

  And maybe she notices the expression on my face, because now she's telling me that her own children are younger, admittedly, they haven't hit that age yet.

  So you see, she continues, her eyes alive and ready for more, this is all very interesting to me.

  Go away, I think.

  She waits for me to say something.

  I'm finding this quite hard to talk about right now, I tell her. I'm sorry, but I can't tell you how stressful and sad all of it has been for us. There's so much other stuff - stuff that you don't even know.

  The whole table is silent and the boy's father is looking at me. The look is the equivalent of a kick on the shin.

  I'm sorry, I say.

  And I pick up a napkin and put it to my eyes because for some reason now I'm crying. How did that happen? Our hostess reaches out and rubs my shoulder.

  Hey. I'm so sorry, she says.

  And theatre woman leans across and also gives me a kindly look.

  It's OK, she says,I do know how you feel, you know. My son's dyspraxic. What I mean is, I know what you're going through.

  The boy's father says I behaved badly. In the taxi home, he's cool with me and, when I demand to know why he didn't stick up for me, he tells me that my reaction was completely over the top.

  But she was attacking me, I say, feeling the frustration rise again. I didn't mean to be rude but I just couldn't take her fucking superior attitude.

  She wasn't attacking you at all and you were rude. You brought the subject up -

  Only when she asked me -!

  Yes, but you didn't have to tell her anything at all and yet you chose to. You can't blame the poor woman for not knowing the whole story. She was just trying to engage with you, that's all.

  Hmm. Well, may be I don't want to be engaged with.

  Silence as the red and blue lights of late-night London arc and bend across the cab.

  I still think you could have stuck up for me, I tell him. Whether or not you thought I was right. Couldn't you see I was upset?

  Yes, I could see that and I was trying to calm you down.

  Oh great. Thanks very much.

  Come on. He puts a hand on my knee. There's no need to be like that.

  I pull my knee away and sigh.

  I'm just so sick of trying to explain this thing to people. I don't want to know what they do or don't think. I just don't want this to be the story of our lives.

  It's not the story of our lives. Don't be so dramatic.

  OK, I don't want it to be how things turned out, that's all.

  He looks at me for a moment in the half-light and I've no idea what he's thinking.

  Back in Suffolk, I finally call Monica Churchill, the former church warden of All Saints, Woodton, whose number Steve and Elaine Hill gave me back in the spring. I ask her if she has any idea where the Yellolys were buried.

  Well, let me see, she says, there were, if! remember rightly, two charts. One I think was made in the 1960s and another in the 1980s. We tried hard to do an updated version - some of the stones are really incredibly hard to decipher - but we tried. I'll look on the charts and see if! can see any Yellolys, and if! can, well, you're very welcome to borrow them - the charts, I mean. I expect you'd want to go up to the church and have a look, wouldn't you?

  I thank her and arrange to phone on Thursday morning before I set off- just to check she's actually found the charts.

  It's all very exciting, she tells me. I only hope I can be of help to you, that's all.

  But Wednesday night she calls me to say she's already looked at the charts in detail and there's not a single Yelloly on them.

  Really? I can't hide the disappointment in my voice. Not a single one?

  I simply can't understand it. They have to be somewhere, don't they? Well, I'm stumped, I really am. It's a complete mystery. So frustrating. Oh dear, you've really got me guessing now.

  Well, it's very kind of you to have gone to this much trouble, I tell her.

  But it does seem strange, she goes on, because the oldest graves, you know, the ones in the long grass - someone's supposed to be cutting it but Of course they haven't - well, all those ones right at the back of the church - it's a conservation area, that bit now - are from 17-something and therefore far pre-date your Yellolys.

  So - what? You'd think the Yellolys would be round the front.

  Exactly. You know, near the porch, near the entrance. Lots of the graves nearer the front of the church seem to date from around the early 1800s.

  So that really is where Mary's should be.

  Exactly, yes.

  I ask her then if she thinks there might be some kind of family tomb or crypt in the church. Because the plaque for Jane does say near this place and in the same tomb. The question is, how near? And Florence's book does also state that Nicholas was buried in All Saints, Woodton among the old Suckling tombs.

  That's very interesting, Monica agrees.

  But are there any tombs actually inside the church? When I was there looking around, I couldn't see where there would be the space for any.

  Well, she agrees, I was warden there for all those years and certainly I never came across one. But
then again - I know there are a lot of Suckling stones in the floor near the altar, for instance.

  But would Sucklings actually have been buried under there, I mean actually under the floor of the church?

  I've really no idea. I suppose I ought to know, but I don't. But even so, none of the stones say Yelloly.

  That's true, I agree.

  Monica sighs.

  How very frustrating, she says again.

  I thank her anyway and we agree we'll keep in touch and she'll certainly call me if she comes across any new information, but there's probably no point in my coming to see her tomorrow.

  But next morning, at nine o'clock sharp, the phone rings.

  Monica Churchill here. Well! I have to say, this is quite exciting. Because, you see, I'm a bell-ringer, and last night I was up at the church for practice as usual. And I was feeling so curious about everything we'd talked about and so, in our break - they don't give us long - I went in and had a good look around and just on impulse I pulled up a piece of carpet on the floor near the aisle and, would you believe it, there they were -!

  There what were?

  The two names!

  Which names?

  Dr John Yelloly and his wife!

  Really? You mean - what? Right there under the carpet?

  Yes, right there in the aisle. After all this time! You'd never have known it but there's definitely some kind of a large Yelloly gravestone under there - and I really think it may be more than just the two of them. And, well, you see I didn't have long to look as they don't give us much time off from the bell-ringing, but you might want to go and have a look yourself.

  Is that OK?

  Certainly it is. You're very welcome to roll back any carpets you like and if anyone queries it just say that Monica Churchill gave you permission.

  I drive back to All Saints, Woodton that afternoon. Drive through the quiet, pale streets of Bungay, past the roundabout where there are always chickens pecking, and up along the Norwich road. The air is soft and bright and the late-June countryside is perfect - poppies and cow parsley in the hedgerows, specks of birds sailing high in the heat haze.

  I park by the verge as usual. Deep tyre marks in the dried mud. Very different from when I came here with Julia in the winter. But just like on that day, there's no one around as I walk up the gravel path, past the graves from the early 1800s, no sound but the faraway putter of a tractor or combine.

  I put my hand on the skinny metal latch. It lifts and falls with a satisfying clang. The porch gate with its wire mesh shudders behind me and I push open the familiar heavy door, catch the warm, waxy scent of flowers. The dim, muted silence of a church on a summer's afternoon. Lilies and dusty kneelers.

  The first thing I notice is that there are actually several carpets. Leading from the door where I'm standing now and right up the aisles. Why have I never thought to look under them before? And how do I know which is the one that Monica pulled up?

  I go right up the aisle towards the altar and start by pulling back the rubber edge of a smallish carpet to reveal - yes - a Suckling stone underneath. You can tell by its length that it's a grave. Another very long red carpet that goes all the way down the aisle, but looks as if it would be heavy to roll back.

  So I decide to start again somewhere else. There's a much smaller blue carpet that leads horizontally from the door of the church as you go in. Might as well try that one. Not so heavy and easy to flip the edge of it back, so I walk over and do it.

  And straight away there he is: Nicholas Yelloly.

  I continue pulling the carpet back.Jane Davison Yelloly. And a couple of feet further along: Mary Yelloly.

  You.

  Just under the carpet, just behind the pew where Julia and I sat and talked on that winter's day. One long gravestone with three names clearly carved into it. Nick, Jane, Mary.

  After all this time. Here you are. Here you always were. After all my wondering, all my searching, it really is this easy. I get down on my hands and knees and run my finger over those letters - the M, the A, the R, the Y.

  But what are you? What exactly is under here? Teeth, hair, bones? Dense, hard, porous. Calcium. Phosphorus. Or dust?

  It doesn't matter. Right now, crouching here on this floor on a hot, light summer's day, I'm the closest I'll ever be to what is left of you.

  * * *

  I'd always imagined your burial takes place outside - at night in that quiet churchyard, somewhere under those trees, Woodton Hall silhouetted against a dark navy sky. Dark-clad figures. A slice of moon illuminating the flat side of a shovel.

  But I was wrong. That's not how it is at all.

  Instead they must all come in here. Must all somehow file in and crowd round, standing right here in the cool heart of the church where I'm kneeling now.

  But how? Are these pews here, or are they added later? And isn't it difficult to prise up Nick's heavy stone barely eighteen months after it's laid? How do they do it? Do they have to break the floor to lift it, to get it up?

  And how does it feel to be your mother, your father, your brothers and sisters? To stand here and watch as the deep, dark space they haven't glimpsed in more than a year is smashed right open all over again and you and Jane are lowered in?

  I'm thirteen, then fourteen. At night when we're staying there, Daddy comes to say goodnight and he asks me if I've started my periods yet.

  I'm not quite sure about this question. Part of me understands perfectly that he might want to know - so many details of my life he never gets to hear about these days, so many things he's shut out of But another part of me feels it's none of his business, it's my business. The secret velvety workings of the insides of my body are a mystery even to me and certainly not for anyone else to know.

  I glance away and bite my finger. Not yet, I say.

  Another thing he does that I don't like: when he kisses me goodnight - he's always kissed me goodnight and there's nothing wrong with that - he sort of half kisses and half breathes in my ear so it tickles. He always did this when I was little - it was one of our special jokes - but now I'm getting too old and I don't like it, but it's hard to know what to say. I don't want to hurt him. I'm so glad he's in a good mood. But I don't really like the smell of him any more and I don't like the wet feeling in my ear either.

  After he's been to me, I hear him go and do the same to my sisters and I hear the shrieks of laughter. But it's easier for them, I think, because they're still young and they share a room.

  I'm fifteen and I start my periods, but I don't tell him. At home, Mum's really good, just the kind of mum you need when your periods start. Coming to stay with him and managing all that stuff - sanitary towels and pains in your stomach and all that - is a bit hard, but I do it somehow. And I've started wearing make-up. A bit of kohl and mascara. He says nothing but I feel him looking at me and I know what he's thinking. He's thinking I look like my mother. He always said she wore too much make-up and somehow, in his head, I think he thinks that has something to do with why she left him.

  I'm fifteen and at weekends there are quite often parties and, when I stay with him, I have to miss them. Part of me doesn't mind because I'm still quite shy about boys, but another part of me would really like to go.

  Can't you ask your dad to pick you up? my friends say.

  They ask it impatiently, innocently. It's the kind of thing their fathers would do, but their fathers are tall, smiley, stooping and kind. They don't realise what a big deal it would be for me, what a non-starter it is. Can I imagine my father doing that? Taking or fetching me from a party the way my mother and my stepfather do? Can I imagine even asking him? I tell my friends I don't mind missing the parties. It's quite nice actually to have a weekend off, relaxing and doing nothing much.

  I take my O levels and I'm expected to do well. I work hard, I'm good at English, languages. I'm a linguist. You could do anything, says my mum. Be a bilingual secretary, work in Europe!

  Sixth form will be great because I'm going
to do just English, French and German and an extra 0 level in Spanish. No more sciences. And you get to wear your own clothes. We've already been allocated our tutor groups.

  But at the end of the summer term, the headmistress - who I've never spoken to in my life except to shake her hand on speech day - asks to see me in her study. I go in, my face red and my limbs fizzy with nerves. I've almost never been in trouble in my life. The only school rule I've ever broken is the one about not eating your sandwiches on the tennis court. What can I have done?

  She's standing there in the window, framed in sunshine. Her little dog at her feet. She looks just like the Queen and it's not just me, everyone thinks so. It's a school joke that she looks like the Queen. She waits a moment before speaking.

  I'm so sorry, Julie, to hear that you will be leaving us, she says. We'd all rather hoped you'd stay on and go into the sixth form.

  I stare at her. I don't know what to say. A whole new wave of blush rises from my chest and up my face.

  But - I'm not leaving, I say, hearing how stupid the words sound as they come out.

  She looks surprised and she goes to her desk and picks up a letter.

  You don't know about this?

  I shake my head.

  Well, your father has written to say you're leaving at the end of term. I think you'd better speak to him. He's obviously in some financial difficulty. He says he can't afford to pay the school fees any longer.

  Our boy is homeless again. He's moved out of his Brixton bedsit, leaving a guitar as hostage for the rent he owes his landlord. It's worth about £600, he assures me. No it isn't, his father says. I bought it for him. It's worth £200 new. The way he's treated it, probably a lot less.

  The boy has become very hard to get hold of Most of the time his phone is turned off I try him all day and finally at 9 p.m. he answers.

  Hey, Mum.

  Are you OK? Why don't you ever answer your phone?

  It's not fucking well charged. The charger's somewhere else. It only gives me about two minutes then it cuts out.