Caryl Phillips - The Lost Child

However, it didn’t take long before I began to get the message that she wasn’t interested. I steered Beverley Armitage towards a double seat at the back of the front circle, but I didn’t lay a finger on her during the film. I just sat ramrod still and stared at the screen. I didn’t even offer her a spice, even though I had a packet of fruit pastilles in my pocket. The couple beside us seemed intent on getting thrown out as they were all over each other, and it was pretty distracting, as you could actually hear them kissing and their tongues were involved. I didn’t want to look, and it was sending me spare just thinking about it, but I realized that Beverley Armitage didn’t seem to be put out by their snogging, and I even caught her sneaking a peek at the courting couple. We both stood up for the national anthem at the end, and then I walked her home and started to make small talk about the film, and she tried to look interested in whatever it was that I was going on about.

It was still light when we got to her flat. I stood by the door, but I didn’t know if I should ask her out again, because it’s not like she’d been acting completely offhand or anything. However, she didn’t give me much of a chance to properly weigh things up in my head. She leaned forward and pecked me on the cheek and said good-night in a kind of cheerful voice as though the whole evening had been okay, and then she disappeared inside. And so that was it, but there was something about the way she kissed me that let me know that she didn’t want to go out with me a second time. Once was enough, and I knew I wasn’t going to embarrass myself, or her, by asking again. It was only later that night, as I looked over at our Tommy, that I began to accept what was going on. I may have been a bit older, but I was a crap substitute. From her point of view, it was all a big mistake. It was our Tommy she was smitten with, and maybe she thought she could get his attention if she was nice to his brother. The Beverley Armitages of this world were not interested in boys like me, but I decided that when Steve Pamphlet asked me if I’d got anything from her, I was going to tell him, yes, a quick feel, and then shrug my shoulders and say she wasn’t my type of lass, and try and leave it at that.

“Band of Gold”—Freda Payne

Things began to deteriorate after the fostering with Mrs. Swinson didn’t take. At the end of the day Mam was always tired, and sometimes she didn’t even have the energy to talk to us, so to my way of thinking, she needn’t have bothered making the effort. Most nights Tommy was at football practise, and so I was left by myself with her as she poured a drink, then scribbled a bit at her stories, then poured another drink. It was painful to watch, and I was always happy when she gave up and just went to bed. I worried a bit about Tommy, for he didn’t seem to have any time for Mam, and he even told me that he wished he was an orphan. Apparently there was a lad in his class at John Wardle’s who lived in a children’s home, and according to Tommy, he had more fun than we did. In fact, some of the grown-ups from the children’s home even came to watch Tommy’s mate play football. The one bright spot in all of this was that I managed to get a job delivering the Evening Post , but not before I had to practically beg the newsagent to give me the round, and even then I got myself a lecture. You just shut your gob and listen to me. I’ll not tolerate any slacking. You’re an estate lad, and it’s a scab of a place. There’s well-brought-up lads from farther out who’d kill for this job, and I always have to keep an extra bloody eye open with you lot. Always on the cadge, aren’t you? I mean, face facts, nothing good will ever come of you kids. They should build a trunk road between that estate and the local lockup because that’s where most of you are heading. And just because your lordship’s at the grammar school, don’t be thinking that you’re any better than the rest of them, because you’re not. I’ve got your bleeding number.

After school, I’d get off the bus and then chase home to the flat and drop off my briefcase and get changed out of my blazer and shirt and tie. Then I’d run back up the hill to a fence by the side of the church where the newsagent’s van would have left the bag of papers. I soon got to know the round like the back of my hand, and I’d jump over fences, cut through alleyways, all the time working out even quicker ways to get the papers delivered. Some people got fed up with me because they used to be early in the round, but now, because I changed things to make the round go faster, some of them were getting their Evening Post up to half an hour later than usual. The only bit that really slowed the round down was when I had to go into the new sixteen-storey block of flats. If a flat was below the fifth floor, then I’d forget the lifts and just race up the stairs. Above the fifth floor it wasn’t worth it; it was better to just wait for a lift, but they were really unpredictable, and usually at least one of them was out of order. If I had to use them, I’d start at the top and leave my bag blocking the lift door and work my way down. Once in a while I’d get caught by a resident who wanted to know what the hell I thought I was playing at messing around with the lifts. I’d have to use the stairs after that, but sometimes, maybe once a week, I’d get all the way down to the ground floor without being interrupted by anybody, and that sped things up a lot. I gave Mam most of the money from the paper round, but I don’t remember her ever saying thank you. Twelve and six, and then when the new money came in, I got a pay rise to thirteen bob because it was easier to give me sixty-five pence as opposed to sixty-two and a half pence. Six nights a week I did the round, and I got it down to just under an hour. However, after I’d given Mam her fifty pence, I was left with pretty much sod all, and so I began to think about getting another job, and then I got lucky.

One day, when I was picking up the bag of papers from beside the church, Father Hanson asked me if I wanted to be an altar boy on a Sunday, which not only meant dressing up in a white surplice and following him around with a goblet of wine and some wafers, but it also meant handling the collection plate. A lot of people gave money in envelopes, and after the service was over, it was my job to take the collection plate into the vestry. I thought, well, God helps those who help themselves. Mam was pleased that I was going to church because it got me out of the flat on a Sunday morning, and it gave her some time for herself. Occasionally her friend Derek Evans would come to visit, and the two of them would be off out to the moors for lunch. He’d often knock on the door and then use his own key to let himself in and wait in the kitchen until Mam was ready. He usually dressed well, in a jacket and shirt and tie, but for some reason he shoved too many things in his pockets so he always looked as if he’d slept in his clothes. He didn’t have much to say to me because he could see the way I looked at him, but he liked football, and he always had a word for our Tommy about United’s latest game or some such thing. Even though he was only eleven, Tommy had been recruited by Farsley Celtic, and he was doing really well and playing with kids two years older than him. I was proud of him, and on Sunday mornings I liked to stand on the balcony and watch when the minibus came by to pick him up, and then I’d be off out to my collection plate caper. Whenever I left the flat for church, Mam had real peace and quiet and the place all to herself unless, of course, her podgy-faced friend had come around.

I remember it was a Monday night when the two scouts from Pudsey Juniors turned up and knocked at the door. Mam was in her bedroom, and Tommy and me were watching telly, although I was also trying to do my homework at the same time. Tommy had a feeling some scouts might be around as he told me that two men had spoken to him after Sunday’s game and asked him where he lived. He’d scored twice and made the third goal, and according to him, he’d played a blinder. I called Mam and went back into the living room while she stood at the door and spoke to them both. Me and Tommy sat on the settee and looked at each other, and then we heard the door slam shut. Mam had a tube of lipstick in her hand as she came through into the living room. I told them no, you’re concentrating on your schoolwork, alright? Our Tommy nodded his head. And besides, we’ve already spoken about you playing for Uncle Derek’s team, haven’t we? She puckered up without waiting for an answer, and then lobbed the lipstick onto the sideboard. For heaven’s sake, be good. And don’t be up when I get back. She snatched up her coat and closed in the door behind her, and it was then that our Tommy began to cry. A single tear ran down the full length of his cheek, and eventually he pulled himself together enough to speak to me. She says Uncle Derek’s involved with Scott Hall Juniors, and he wants me to play for them. But they’re crap, I said. There was no need for me to say that, but I couldn’t help myself, and it just slipped out. What I really wanted to say was I could tell the beady-eyed bastard wasn’t treating Mam right, for she always made an effort to look nice for him, but he still had a wife. He was just using her to get at Tommy, for he liked nothing more than to impress kids, and football was his way of doing so. Without football he was nothing but a sad, desperate balding fucker who liked rambling on the moors with an anorak and compass, and he knew it. Our Tommy said nothing, and he just got up and went out. I heard the front door click shut, and I knew that he’d be off down the garages with his football until it got too dark to see.