Caryl Phillips - The Lost Child

We were back living with Mam now. One Saturday morning she’d just turned up at the foster home. She barged in past Mrs. Swinson and stood in the hallway and told us to pack up our things as we were leaving. Mrs. Swinson went to sit in the kitchen with the three dogs and slammed the door in behind her. Mam came up to the bedroom and stood over us and said we had to hurry, so we just chucked our things into the one big suitcase. She had come to visit us the previous weekend, and she’d waited until the three of us were alone in the sitting room before asking me what I thought of things by Mrs. Swinson, and I said everything was alright as I didn’t want to upset her. She just nodded but said nothing. Then, when I went to the toilet, I had a suspicion that she talked to our Tommy by himself. When Mam left, I asked Tommy what she’d said to him, but he just shrugged his shoulders.

Once we were packed, me and Tommy lugged the suitcase down the stairs and into the hallway. Mam had already made her way back downstairs, and she was waiting for us. You two got everything? We nodded, and that’s when Mrs. Swinson burst out of the kitchen and started on about how she’d tried to make allowances, but we were dirty, and we bolted our food, and we had no manners, and she went on about how she had no time for kids like us who’d been dragged up. Borstal material, she said, if not worse, but she was adamant that she couldn’t lay all the blame at our doorstep. She leered at Mam: I can’t abide women who are all over the shop when it comes to their responsibilities. On behalf of the blessed council, I seem to spend half my life mopping up the mess people like you make. I mean, look at how you’re all tarted up, and a mother too. Conceited bugger. Why don’t you just buzz off, she said, which seemed a bit soft after everything she’d blurted out. Go on, sling your hook and go elsewhere. Mam could have just walked away at this point and decided that there was nothing to be gained by getting into a fight, but that’s not how Mam worked. She started to yell at the woman and she gave as good as she was getting and the two of them went at it hammer and tongs while me and Tommy just stood there next to the suitcase, wondering when we were going to be able to go.

On the Monday morning I started up at the grammar school again as though nothing had happened. Our Tommy found out that he hadn’t made it off the waiting list, and so he’d soon be going to John Wardle’s, but he didn’t seem concerned. Steve Pamphlet was also in my house at the grammar school, and he interrogated me as to where I’d been for the past month. I was tempted to tell him America, to see my dad, but I just said, “Around.” There was a new music teacher, Mr. Hall, who asked me if I could play the descant recorder, and when I said I could, he called me out to the side of the piano and put some sheet music on a stand and made me play “Greensleeves” in front of the whole class. He seemed a bit peeved that I did alright, and when I finished, he told me to sit back down, and he didn’t look in my direction for the rest of the double music period. By dinnertime there were no more questions from anybody, just the odd glance from one or two of the teachers who probably hoped they’d seen the back of me. And then Terry Neat invited me to a party on Saturday afternoon at his house and so I went and I found myself half listening, half singing along to Mungo Jerry.

That night, back at the flat, I lay in bed across the room from our Tommy, and I told him about the song and how I wanted to nick the record out of Terry Neat’s house but I dared not in case somebody caught me. He propped himself up on one elbow, and he seemed a little put out. I could tell by how he was looking at me, but he knew full well that I nicked records, so what was his problem? We didn’t get pocket money because Mam couldn’t afford it. This also meant that we didn’t have Levi’s or Ben Sherman shirts or anything decent to wear. We had nothing. Nicking odds and sods seemed alright to me so long as you didn’t get caught. I told this to our Tommy, but he just kept looking at me and saying nothing, and so I changed the subject. I tried to get Tommy talking about football, but he still said nothing, and that’s when I began to feel sad and a little bit ashamed. I watched as my brother lay back down and pulled the blanket up to his chin. Good night, he said. See you in the morning. I listened to Tommy’s breathing becoming deeper as he fell asleep, and then I realized that I was actually angry with the bed wetter. If I wanted to nick stuff, I’d nick it. Who cared what he thought?

“Maggie May”—Rod Stewart

Beverley Armitage was the name of the first girl I ever kissed. She lived in the same block of flats as us and she went to John Wardle’s. She used to come and knock on the door and wait for our Tommy so they could go to school together, but he started to leave early so that he didn’t have to be seen with her, and I started to miss my bus into town so that I could be there when she came knocking. After the third time that it was me who opened the door, I could see that Beverley Armitage was getting the idea that our Tommy was doing his best to avoid her. She was twelve, a year younger than me, but I’d noticed that the age gap didn’t make much difference with girls. With a lad a year could be a massive gap, but lasses always seemed a bit older than what they really were. I’d also noticed that Beverley Armitage had started to develop a chest that I couldn’t take my eyes off, and I reckoned I’d better ask her out before she stopped coming around. So after failed attempt number three, and just as she was turning away to go back to the lifts, I blurted it out and asked her if she’d seen Diamonds Are Forever . She looked at me as if she hadn’t heard properly, and so I had to go on. It’s showing at the Clock Cinema, I said. We could go on Friday. She still didn’t say anything, so I thought I’d better finish. If you’re not doing anything, that is. Like most thirteen-year-olds, I was the bashful sort when it came to girls, and a smug, grinning Steve Pamphlet had summed me up in front of the whole class: too slow to catch a cold, let alone a lass. Of course, I had to pretend that I was in on the joke, so I laughed, but inside of myself I knew he was right. However, that morning on the doorstep, I surprised myself. In the afternoon, during the boring chemistry double period, I wrote “Beverley Armitage” on my exercise book in big swirling letters and coloured her name in with red, green, and blue felt-tipped pens. Inevitably, I missed everything that the teacher was going on about. Something to do with potassium and copper, or something like that, but having finished my doodling, I was busily now trying to work out how to pay for Friday night without it coming over like I was Mr. Moneybags.

It turned out that I needn’t have worried so much, for when we got to the head of the queue, she stepped in front of me and said that her grandma had given her half a crown and told her that she had to go dutch and pay her own way. I didn’t argue, but I was a bit surprised. I’d managed to save up about two pounds over the past year, mainly by nicking money out of kids’ pockets when we got changed for games. I’d go to a lot of trouble to make sure that I was the last out of the changing rooms, or first back in, or both, and I soon learned whose pockets were worth going through. To start with, I’d use the money to buy comics, usually Hotspur or Victor , but sometimes The Dandy too. But then I decided I wanted a red Chopper bike, and so I stopped buying comics or going out anywhere, and I started to save up, but I quickly cottoned on that it was going to take me forever to save up enough money for a Chopper, or a bike of any kind, and that’s when it became clear that stopping in and saving every penny for a bike I’d probably never own was a waste of time. I’d be better off buying a bag of chips and hanging out by the off-licence and watching the older estate boys smoking Woodies and doing their impressions of Rod Stewart singing “Maggie May.” Getting together two pounds hadn’t been easy, but every time I saw Beverly Armitage’s chest, I knew that I’d be prepared to spend whatever it took to impress her.