Caryl Phillips - The Lost Child

It was later, after she had accommodated her gentleman’s devotion on a half-dozen separate occasions, that she discovered herself with child and, thereafter, her circumstances declined. (We’ve no work in this place for a woman with child.) She felt bereft of mettle in her increasingly tattered clothes, and shame began to regularly flicker across her face. (No, miss, we’ve no work for you.) No longer a bewitching presence, her reduced self aged a year with each dismissive glance, and she wept bitterly at the thought that she would most likely never reestablish herself in employment. Occasionally he still came to her with tender warmth and a charitable heart, and he appeared to look upon the child with genuine regard, but she could see it in his eyes that despite her attempt to maintain some grace to her natural movements, his zeal for her had been extinguished. Mother and child were now little more than a burdensome secret, and although her benefactor continued to press money upon her, it was manifest that he was growing progressively detached. And then meetings with the gentleman ceased, and other assignations commenced as the curse of destitution began to pollute her life. (No, please, no! No!) These scowling men revelled in improper conduct and were prepared to pay to have brisk knowledge, and once their joyless noises were at an end they dropped a coin on the way out as they stepped over the pile of tatters that was her child. Her poor son, who lay with his body curled tightly and his desperate hands clasped over his ears. (My child what have I done to you in this place? Will you ever forgive me?)

At dawn he appears before her and can see she is enduring a resurgence of distress. He looks across at her sleeping child but knows that there is little to be gained by waking the boy. The stench of decay torments the room, but it is illness and misfortune, not idleness, that has enabled this malodorous atmosphere to flourish. Her cheeks radiate heat like tiny twin furnaces, and blood leaks steadily from her nose. He sees the yellow tarnish to her defeated eyes and listens to her breathing in low, labored gasps. It is clear that the conflict will soon be at an end, so he will not reenter her delicate body. The woman is powerless to rise and meet the day, and it is time for her to pass safely over the threshold and be on her way. The woman opens her eyes and looks lovingly in the direction of her peaceful child. She taught the boy how to walk, and now she must walk away from him. She must go. A skeleton hung with rags. Another journey, another crossing.

Towards the end of her second year at university, Monica Johnson listened as her father told her that he had given the matter a great deal of thought, but sadly he couldn’t be expected to tolerate her behaviour for a moment longer. He cleared his throat and wondered if he had soft-soaped things by using the word “sadly”; she was staring at him with those large, unblinking brown eyes of hers and waiting for him to continue. He had misjudged things, for he had anticipated tears, but instead of a torrent of emotion his twenty-year-old daughter continued to grimace and wait for him to explain himself. Being a schoolmaster in one of the most highly considered grammar schools in the north of England, he was, of course, used to making advanced concepts intelligible to young people. However, they both knew that this was a subject upon which there really was no need for him to expand any further. After all, standards were standards, and although it disappointed him to have to take such a stance, Monica knew full well that once he’d made his mind up that was it.

They sat together in her room at the top of a narrow nineteenth-century staircase in the back quad of one of Oxford’s smaller and less prestigious women’s colleges. Between them a fully laden tray sat atop a rickety wooden table, which rose little more than a foot above the threadbare rug. Two untouched pieces of Dundee cake decorated a white china plate, which was flanked on one side by a bright red teapot and on the other by two ill-matching cups stacked one on top of the other. She had thought long and hard about what to wear and had assumed that her father, who had fixed ideas about how women should present themselves, might even be expecting her to be decked out in her tutorial garb — a nice dark sensible skirt, black stockings, and a crisp white blouse. She had chosen instead to wear a sloppy grey pullover and tan slacks but further confused the issue by tying back her long, straight hair with an incongruously cheerful yellow ribbon. Although she knew full well that she wasn’t much to look at, this year men had begun to notice her and even if she couldn’t prove it scientifically, she was sure that the more she dressed like a townie , the more attention she received. But she certainly didn’t want scrutiny from this warped man, who had already bullied his wife into near-mute submission. By the time Monica was a teenager she was fairly sure what type of person she was dealing with, and it was she who had decided to generate a distance between them, which she closely monitored, carefully widening the gap with each passing year.

Having ushered him into her room and hung his overcoat and hat on the back of the door, she directed him to a chair that offered a view, out of the sloping attic window onto the somewhat hideous modern red tiles that crowned the college annexe. The four-hour drive from Wakefield had provided him with the opportunity to reflect and choose precisely the right words, and once he was seated he came straight to the point, which he knew would leave them ample time for debate or, if his daughter so wished, time for debate and refreshment. But as she continued to stare at him with that particularly rebellious sneer she seemed to have cultivated in her sixth-form years, he began now to question his tactics and wondered if he should have taken a cup of tea and a piece of cake before easing his way into the assignment.

She looked at him, fully aware of the fact that to open her mouth right now would only result in her coming out with angry and resentful words, so she bit down hard on her bottom lip. Monica wasn’t in the habit of revealing emotional vulnerability to this man, for she knew that the end result of such stupidity was having your wings ripped off. As she tasted the first sting of blood, she reminded herself of her promise to keep things nice and steady.

“So that’s it then? You’re washing your hands of me?” She swallowed hard but didn’t take her eyes from him. “Well?”

He raised a warning finger. “Now then, there’s no need to take that tone with me.” And then he realized how he must appear, with his finger dangling foolishly in midair, and so he quickly swivelled his wrist and opened his palm. “I could pussyfoot around, but to whose benefit would that be?”

“So that’s it then?”

He looked at the pot and imagined that the tea must now be cold. Why did Monica always have to be so bloody wilful? No matter what he did she seemed set against him. She’d been stubborn as a girl, but nothing out of the ordinary — as far as he could tell — until she started budding. That’s when his daughter went from diffident to downright disobedient. One day she was prepared to answer his admittedly tedious questions about what classes she liked best at school or if she’d be interested in coming with him to a musical concert at the Town Hall (the answer was always no), and then the next day it was as though all communication between the two of them had totally broken down. He knew that she liked Wordsworth, so he broached the idea of a walking holiday in the Lake District, just the two of them, but Monica rolled her eyes and said, “No thanks.” And then after she’d been accepted at university, when he made it clear that he’d love to motor down and explore the place with her, she just laughed and carried on watching a programme on the newly purchased television set.