Caryl Phillips - The Lost Child

It was Victor who suggested that they go for a drive in his Ford Cortina and look at the moonlight on the river. Pamela jumped in the front passenger seat while Monica slid into the back next to Derek, who kept both hands on his knees and gazed out of the window. She was adamant that she didn’t want to do this, but nobody would listen to her when she muttered that she ought to be getting back. Before the car engine even started, Victor grabbed hold of Pamela and they began to engage in a bout of quick, open-lipped palaver that was only interrupted by Derek’s half-pleading, half-laughing “Hey, come on.” Pamela collapsed in a fit of giggles, and Monica closed her eyes and listened to the laboured cranking of the car engine as Victor tried to start it up. When they got to the river, Victor peeled Pamela from around his neck (“Chuffing heck, pack it in for a minute will you, Pam?”), and the two men excused themselves and began to stumble towards the water. In his haste Victor had left the driver’s door wide open, so Pamela reached over and pulled it shut and then hoisted herself around so that she was facing the back seat.

“They’re alright these two, aren’t they? And they’ve got brass.” Monica shifted her head so that she was now looking in the direction of the two men, who stood on the bank of the river clearly competing to see which one of them could pee the farthest. Pamela began to shriek. “I mean look at them, pair of daft clots. What are they like?”

This was a question that a confused Monica was beginning to ask herself, for in her presence Derek seemed reserved and almost timid, but with Victor he appeared to willingly take on the role of comic sidekick as though the pair of them were some out-of-date music hall act. As far as Monica was concerned, Victor just didn’t come up to scratch. She opened the back door and stepped out of the car, and careful to make sure that she wasn’t facing the river, she began to gulp the warm night air. She looked up at the stars in the black sky, and then she asked Pamela if she could see the clouds moving. Monica began to turn in a circle, and again she asked Pamela the same question, and then she asked it again, but Pamela wouldn’t answer, and then she felt Derek drape his arm around her neck like a warm scarf, and then he moved it down across her moist, sweaty back and lifted her into the rear seat of the Cortina. She heard him tell his friend that they’d best be going as it was getting late.

Victor searched through the cupboards in her kitchen, noisily pushing cups and saucers to one side until he found four ill-matched glasses, which he placed on the small table.

“You don’t mind, do you, Monica?” Pamela was smiling at her. “I told Victor about the brandy, for I’m not sure what I’ve got at my place.”

Victor paused before pouring, as though he had suddenly remembered something. Then he reached over to the stove and hauled himself up and onto his feet.

“What happens at the end of the picture before you go out?” Victor didn’t wait for an answer. “National anthem. Let’s have a good rousing singsong to show some respect.”

Victor began singing, but Derek lunged across the table and pulled him back down and into his seat.

“The children, Victor. We’ll have to keep it down, alright?”

An annoyed Victor smiled sarcastically and began to pour, but Monica took this as her cue to stand up.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go and make sure they’re still asleep.”

Derek also stood up. “Shall I come too?”

“No, please. I won’t be a minute.”

Pamela giggled. “Our Lucy can sleep through a thunderstorm and not twitch a muscle, isn’t that right, Monica?”

Monica stopped and, looking at her friend, noticed that she could now see the black roots of Pamela’s “Autumn Sunset” hair beginning to emerge like blighted crops.

She quietly cracked the door and peeped through the darkness at the two boys, whose breathing was shallow but regular. Some days it felt as though the two kids were drawing the stamina right out of her body, for she was forever chasing them, or picking up after them, or placating one or the other, or simply begging them, but for better or for worse they were all she had, and not a single day passed when she didn’t remind one or the other of them that they had a responsibility to look out for each other. Ben’s arms were splayed above his head as though he was waving to a friend with both hands, while Tommy was curled into a tight ball with one half of his face entirely buried in the pillow. Between them, on the makeshift bed on the floor, Lucy slept on her back with her thin lips parted so a discordant nasal whistle sang out with every breath. Jesus Christ, what was Pamela thinking of? When they pulled up at Arnhem Croft, her friend didn’t say a word, and she just led the way until they all were standing on the walkway outside of Monica’s flat.

“Well,” said Victor, “are we stopping out here all night waiting for the tooth fairy?”

For some reason Pamela found this side-splittingly funny, and because she began to roar loud enough to wake all of the neighbours, Monica decided that she had no choice but to quickly find her keys and open up the door, feeling, not for the first time, that Pamela had let her down.

When she walked back into the kitchen, only Derek was there. He was sitting at the table and quietly drumming his fingers against the side of the half-empty bottle.

“Where did those two go?”

Derek half stood as she took up a seat, which struck her as an oddly polite way of going about things. However, she had to admit that she quite liked it.

“They went to your friend’s flat to see if she can find anything else to drink. Victor’s not much of a brandy drinker.”

She eyed the bottle and arched her eyebrows. “Really? You could have fooled me.”

She wanted to ask him why he went along with playing second fiddle to his obviously more idiotic friend, but this wasn’t the time.

“What about you?” he asked. “Are you partial?”

What kind of an antiquated phrase was that? It was like this Derek Evans was talking to somebody twenty years older. She guessed that he probably spent a lot of time with his father, or grandfather, down the allotments or going to dog races, or engaged in some other manly pursuit where the vocabulary of one generation could be casually absorbed by the next without any regard for its relevance to the present time.

“I’m not much of a drinker as I don’t get out that often.”

“I see.” He pushed the bottle away from them a little; then he looked at her and smiled. “I meant to say, back there at the Mecca, that I thought your dress was smashing. But seeing it now, in the light, so to speak, it’s even better.”

“I bought it when I went to university. Or more accurately, my mother bought it for me, but I felt a bit out of place in it tonight.”

“No, you weren’t.” He stopped suddenly, as though aware that his response might be interpreted as being overenthusiastic. “You looked grand, but I didn’t know that you went to university. It’s just that you don’t meet many lasses, or lads for that matter, who’ve been to university. Well, at least I don’t, although we’re beginning to get some applications now from students who want to begin on a regional newspaper and then work their way down to London.”

“Is that what you’re hoping to do? Work your way down to London?”

He laughed nervously, but Monica could see she had put him in a bit of a bind, for his eyes made it clear that he was trying to work out what it was that she wanted to hear. Either he wanted to go to London, and he therefore viewed the north as inferior, a kind of stepping-stone, or he was happy to stay put, which might give her the idea that he was a bloke without any kind of ambition. She regretted putting him in this predicament, and wished that she could take back the question.