Caryl Phillips - The Lost Child

Monica kept this news, and all her other business, from her boss at work. Denise wouldn’t shut up about how smart the city was getting, especially down by the river, where a cake shop and a place that sold flowers had recently opened up. Some of the greasy-looking blokes who liked to come into the library with the express purpose of trying to chat her up, they too wouldn’t give over about the virtues of the newly revitalized city centre. However, she felt that if you’ve never been anywhere, then you don’t know, do you? And what’s more, it was all well and good talking big about a place if you didn’t have children to bring up. She assumed that anywhere, even this dump, could look acceptable to you if you didn’t have kids.

Ben kept hold of Tommy’s hand as instructed, but he tugged at her skirt with his free hand.

“I’m hungry, Mam.”

“Well, we can’t stop now, understand? I don’t want to get wet, and your brother’s tired.”

They waited by the side of the dual carriageway, which ran like a scar through this part of town. On one side were the older terraced houses and run-down factories, including the town brewery, which they were now standing beside, but the sharp, sweet smell of malt and hops turned her stomach, and so she was always anxious for the traffic lights to change. A brand-new footbridge spanned the road at this point, but hardly anybody used it as you had to climb up two dozen steps to reach the bridge proper, and in her own case how were you supposed to do so with two kiddies who treated it like something you’d find in a playground? The cars and lorries thundered by in both directions, but once the lights turned green they hastened over to the far side, where the houses had been knocked down and replaced with a warrenlike collection of grey low-rise flats that the council had named after battles in the Second World War. On this far side of the road the only evidence of the past was the decrepit redbrick swimming baths building, which stood out like a rotten tooth all by itself. If you looked at the estate from a distance, you might easily imagine the swimming baths to be some weird architectural reminder of the Edwardian past, but despite the fact that it was falling to pieces, most mornings of the week school kids still used the place. When they first moved in there used to be a grassy picnic area and a place for kids to kick a ball outside of their range of flats — Arnhem Croft — but the council had decided to gravel it over and make a stab at a play zone. Of late, teenagers had claimed the area, and from dawn till dusk they colonised the place and exchanged their cigarettes and swigged cider, and occasionally a boy and a girl would slip into the tunnels of the concrete castle for a snog, but the adults just watched and left them alone as long as they didn’t bother anybody.

It was always hit or miss as to whether the lifts would work. Monica pushed a button, and as she waited, she heard the thunderous clamour of debris tumbling down the central rubbish chute.

“Mam, I’m really hungry.”

The lift doors opened, and she looked at Ben and nudged him forward. Truthfully, she was too tired to scold him, so she jokingly pinched his mouth shut and gave him a fatigued smile. A few moments later they all stepped out of the lift, and she looked down over the balcony to the gravel pit of a play area three stories below, where she could now see one of the teenagers urinating behind the slide. She had spent her first month in Leeds in a mournfully stark one-bedroom flat that Denise had arranged for her, but the council then informed her that because she was one of their employees, and a single mother, they could relocate her to this award-winning estate without her having to spend any time on the waiting list. The woman at the council office told her this in a manner that made it clear that Monica was to regard this as a great privilege, but from the moment she pulled up in Denise’s Mini and squinted out of the window at the bleak, characterless landscape of this new community, she instantly knew she would never be happy in such a place.

But she was stuck, for Julius never sent her any money, and she couldn’t afford to move out into private accommodation, so she reckoned she’d just have to make the best of things. The elderly man next door, who said he’d retired from the merchant navy, but who had no stories to tell — real or invented — of adventures he had experienced, or far-flung places he had seen, was forever taking the heel of his shoe and banging on the wall and complaining that the kiddies were making too much bleeding noise. At first she took it personally, imagining it to be a vendetta that was aimed at her, until she met flashy Pamela at the rubbish chute and discovered that she lived on the other side of the retired seaman, and being a single mother with a nine-year-old daughter, she too was receiving the same treatment with, no doubt, the heel of the same shoe.

By the time she had manhandled the boys into the flat and closed in the door behind her, Ben was once again moaning about how hungry he was, and so she reached into her bag and pulled out the sandwich, which she thrust into his grateful hands. It wasn’t until she had got Tommy out of his coat that she realized the flat was cold and the pilot light to the boiler must have gone out again. For the past fortnight she had arrived at work each morning and immediately called the council office and asked them to send somebody to fix the boiler, but their excuses were becoming increasingly abrupt, and she had now accepted that she would just have to wait until they were ready. A box of matches lay on the kitchen countertop for exactly this situation, and as she removed the glass panel and struck the match, she wished, above everything else, for somebody to help her out, for she knew that things couldn’t go on like this for much longer.

On the third match she managed to light the damn thing, but by then something had broken inside of her, and she stopped and stared into midair.

“Mam, what’s the matter?”

She looked down at Ben and smiled.

“Is something the matter again, Mam? Are you alright?”

“Your mother’s just tired, that’s all. You just go and squeeze up next to your little brother and give him a warm, there’s a good lad. I’ll put the kettle on.”

She heard the impatient clatter of the letter box, and as she moved to answer the door, she pointed Ben in the direction of Tommy.

“Go on, give him a quick rub.”

“Alright, Monica,” said Pamela, in her overly familiar way as she pushed her daughter forward and into the flat. The walkway was covered, but it had started to pour now, and the wind was sweeping the rain in towards the flats so that it made a light tapping noise as it struck the walls and windows. Monica closed in the door and then turned to face her neighbour, whom she might normally avoid, but on this wretched late Saturday afternoon she was glad for the company.

“The kettle’s just on. Do you fancy a cup of tea?”

“Well, I’m not stopping, but if you’re having one. It’s been a bugger of a day.” Pamela cast a quick glance at Lucy, whose mouth was smeared with chocolate. “Now,” she said, “I don’t want to hear you using any rude words.”

“I don’t know any rude words.”

“No, you don’t, and let’s keep it like that. Go and play with Ben and Tommy.”

But Tommy immediately bent over and picked up the toy train that he had inherited from his brother and clutched it to his chest, clearly aware of what might happen next.

“Well, Ringo Starr’s been giving it with the drumming on the walls again, so I went round and gave him a gobful, but you’ll never guess what he tells me. The cheeky bleeder says he’s reporting me to the council because I have too many visitors late at night. Like who? I said, not that it’s any of his business, but he just kept insisting that we understood each other, gormless sod. I was steaming, but I couldn’t just sit in the flat, so I went to the bingo with Lucy, and we were dead jammy and we won. Two quid. Amazing, isn’t it? I keep telling you, you should come with me. Perhaps we’d get lucky and win some money, and then maybe we could go on holiday together.”