The Lost Child (21 page)

But now he's aimless and angry and she's tired. Too used to living alone, more and more inflexible by the day, she frets about doors opening and closing, mess, the sound of the TV, anything in fact. And he does nothing but open and close doors, turn on the TV and make noise and mess. They love each other, but they're hardly well suited. She warns us that it can only be a temporary arrangement. She doesn't think she can have him and
all his stuff
there for all that long.

Her son tells her she shouldn't be having him there at all.

You're padding his comers - making it so he doesn't have to face up to the reality of who he is, what he's done - don't you see that? He has to be forced to face up to reality.

Oh well, it's all very well for you to say that. But what do you expect me to do? Send him away? Please don't ask me to put him out on the streets.

It's his own choice. He has a perfectly good home with us but he chooses not to live in it like a decent human being.

Oh well, all that's between you and him. All I said was I'd have him here for a short while, until he finds somewhere to stay.

All right, but make sure you hide your purse. You're not still keeping your pension in that absurd place in the kitchen, are you?

Don't worry, I won't do that.

And don't leave valuable jewellery lying around.

Oh, he wouldn't take my jewellery.

Mummy, he's a drug addict. He wants cash. He'll take anything and justify it later. I don't know how to make you wake up to this.

Oh goodness, there's nothing wrong with that boy. You're so intolerant. You're always shouting at him, that's the real problem. He's told me so.

A pause. A deep breath.

All right, forget that. Just tell me this: is he going to school?

Ooh, yes. He went yesterday. He hasn't gone in today though because he's got quite a sore throat. But I phoned the school and told them, so that's all right.

But you mean to say he's been in every day except today?

Not quite every day.

How many days has he been in?

I'm losing track a bit but I do know he's been in at least once this week.

But, Mummy, it's Friday!

I know that our boy needs to bottom out now. I know he needs to be thrown out of school, to run out of money, to be cold and hungry, to be forced perhaps to live rough and may be be in some kind of physical danger, in order to make him understand for once and for all that he has a serious problem with cannabis and we can only help him if he acknowledges this and agrees to accept that help.

But I am just so relieved that, for the moment at least, he's sleeping on Granny's sofa bed.

I wasn't going to tell you this, he says, but I bumped into Janice the other day. She told me that Charlie has just got a place at Oxford.

To do what?

English, I think she said.

I lower my paper. Charlie's a year older than our boy, but, back when they were babies, they were friends for a while, pushed together by the parents but well matched all the same.

Both obsessed with
Thunderbirds,
both naughty, bright, sweet, advanced for their age.

And she told me about some of the others, too. Remember Danny? Sarah's boy? He's doing VSO and going to Manchester next year. And his sister's already in her first year reading Russian somewhere.

I think about this. All of these kids, all of our babies, our toddlers. One summer we all went away together, rented a house. And back then all our problems were exactly the same: how to get them off to sleep, how to relax about the pond at the bottom of the garden, how many cartoons to let them watch on a Saturday morning.

That's great, I tell him, and then after a pause: What do you mean you weren't going to tell me?

He stares ahead and sighs.

I don't know. Just - I suppose I thought it might be hard to hear.

I think about this.

It is hard to hear, but that doesn't mean I don't want to hear it.

He sighs again.

OK. Good.

He takes up his book.

The church clock strikes eleven. I put the paper down, sort out my pillows, turn off my light. His father continues to read. As the last strike of the clock sounds, the room slides back into silence.

I miss him so much, I say after a moment or two, even though I know this is absolutely the wrong time of night to start something like this.

His father says nothing.

I wish I could talk to him right now.

I shut my eyes, open them again. Still his father says nothing. But what exactly do I want him to say? OK, ring him then. Or, I wish I could too?

I'm just so - oh I'm missing him, I say again, feeling a tear sting my nose.

His father puts his finger in the book, turns to me.

But, look, would you be feeling like this if he was, say, away on his gap year? he asks me.

For a second or two, I'm confused. I see a strong tanned boy in a T-shirt picking grapes. Or standing by a truck in the middle of a desert somewhere. He looks happy. He doesn't look like my son.

No, I say.

Well, then.

He goes back to his book.

I didn't put it exactly like that. But after I'd described to him as meticulously as I could some aspect or other of the pure, lurching grief I'd been experiencing, I turned to him and said: But I don't think you feel it like that at all, do you?

And he was silent for a quick moment. And then he told me how when he went alone to Lord's the other day to watch the Test match, he could hardly bear to look at all the other fathers coming in with their seventeen- or eighteen-year-old sons. He felt so jealous and lonely and sad that it almost broke his heart.

It took every ounce of strength I had not to burst into tears right there in the pavilion, he said.

I reached for his hand and held it tight.

What is it? he says glancing sideways as I grasp the door handle. What's the matter with you?

Nothing's the matter, I'm OK. Could you drive a tiny bit slower, please?

I'm not even doing 60.

I know. It's just -

He flicks another look at me. Tries to smile.

Come on, he says. Relax. I mean it. You've got to stop this. We're not going to crash. What is it exactly that you're worried about?

What is it? What am I worried about? Where is it coming from, this feeling of being so exposed to - harm?

The air is dark. Thick. Everything moving backwards so fast. Everything moving past us. The road swallowed up before I can register it.

I just feel I'd rather be in the back, I tell him, but even as I say it I'm half laughing, because I know how ludicrous it sounds.

In the back?

Yeah. It just feels kind of safer. It's like I want to have something between me and the point of impact.

He laughs too and then he stops.

Impact? What sort of impact exactly are you expecting?

I have no answer to that.

Wednesday evening, seven o'clock, birds singing outside. An easy drive, but I park the car reluctantly. I don't want to go. I'm only going because I just can't find a reason not to go any longer.

We sit around a table, not that many of us, just seven or eight, men and women, the warmth palpable. I'm the youngest there, the most obviously nervous, the newest. The one finding it hardest to reach out. Which surprises me, because I always thought of myself as someone who could do just that. But then I used to think of myself as lots of things.

We go around the table introducing ourselves.

When it's my turn, I tell them the barest facts. Our boy's age. His choice of drug. That he's not living with us any more.

Silence.

So I hear myself telling them that he got a girl pregnant. That he stole from us. That he gave his younger siblings skunk. That he hit me. (Always a gasp when I admit this to anyone.) I tell them that I'm not sure where he is right now but I hope he's OK. That I love him deeply. Deeply.

It's just, I say, my voice wobbling, it's just that I miss him so much.

When I feel the tears start to come, I stop. Bite my lip till it hurts. Wait for the next person to speak.

But it doesn't work. These people are unembarrassed. They're used to listening - making space for people to talk, however long it takes. And the silence goes on long enough to make a tear slip down my cheek.

I took the train here. I haven't driven anywhere out of London in months.

And it's a warm, windy day and in the car, one hand all the same discreetly holding on to the edge of my seat, I keep on sneaking glances at her pretty face with its straight, slender nose and fine, fair features.

Here I am, sitting in a fast car next to the very last Tyssen. Your mother's family. Energetic, creative, distinguished - and fast.

Mary pulls in on a slope next to their wisteria-covered cottage and jerks on the handbrake and we climb out, squinting in the sunshine. Then into the cool, flower-scented darkness of the hall, where two large collies hurl themselves at our legs.

There there, down, down, calm down, both of you!

Mary hushes but they keep on going. She explains which is the older one and which the younger and which one came first. I make a fuss of both. They don't exactly calm down. I follow them all through into the long, low sitting room carpets and cushions and an even headier flower-petal smell.

On a low polished table, two red-bound volumes are waiting. My eyes go straight to them.

Here you go, says Mary. And she hands them to me then perches at the front of an armchair to my left, holding one of the dogs against her legs and patting it.

I open what I quickly realise is the original manuscript of Florence Suckling's book. A manuscript containing all the visual elements - photographs and even little paintings - that were omitted from the published version.

Is it what you were hoping for? asks Mary with a smile.

It's - oh it's incredible, is all I can say.

Some of the pictures I recognise as being simply photographs of the original drawings in Tony Yelloly's box. Others are of objects I'm looking at for the first time. A great deal of jewellery, minutely captioned. And objects from your home. A photograph of a china christening bowl, for instance - chipped and with a large crack in it.
Last used to baptise Constance Suckling,
notes the caption. I know that Constance was another of your sister Anna's daughters. Another of your nieces, had you lived.

There's so much in here, I tell Mary. Even without looking through properly, I can tell there's so much in here.

I read through some of the text. Part of it very familiar exactly the words I've already read in Florence's book. Other parts absolutely fresh.

She must have edited it for publication, I tell Mary. Cut stuff out.

So there's stuff in there you haven't read?

Lots! My God, I'm going to have to read the whole thing.

And she smiles.

Her two dogs are nudging at my legs as I struggle to ask her: I don't suppose - I mean, is there any chance you'd let me borrow these for a week or two? If I brought them straight back afterwards?

She takes a breath and looks uncomfortable.

Oh dear. It's just - well, they're so very precious to me. I look at them all the time. They're irreplaceable.

A thud of disappointment as I tell her I quite understand, of course I do. I quite understand, I tell her again. It's a big thing to ask and I'm sure I'd feel exactly the same If they were mine - please don't worry.

Oh dear, Mary says again, I'm so sorry.

I ask her whether in that case it would be OK for me to come back some other time and perhaps spend a morning alone with the books, making notes. I'd probably only need an hour or so.

She beams.

Of course, I don't have any problem with that!

She tells me she's about to go away on holiday. I tell her not to worry as I'm off to Yale next week to see some other Yelloly sketchbooks. I tell her about them and she looks interested.

You're going specially?

I have to really, don't I? Anyway, the kids are pleased. We're taking our two youngest for a half-term treat.

We make a date for me to come back in three weeks' time.

Before I leave, she shows me the portrait of your grandfather Samuel Tyssen on the landing - a grand and portly gentleman in a blue silk waistcoat and powdered wig.

This is the one your daughter doesn't like?

She laughs.

It's the eyes. Just look at him. You can see what she means, can't you?

You're not doing him any favours. Let him come to us. He really has to get to a place where he realises how much he needs us.