Caryl Phillips - The Lost Child

Miss Eccles beamed. “Well, Mr. Johnson, that’s marvellous news. Just marvellous. Congratulations.”

Given all her advantages and ability, it made absolutely no sense to him that Monica should be throwing everything away by getting involved with a graduate student in history nearly ten years her senior who originated in a part of the world where decent standards of behaviour and respect for people’s families were obviously alien concepts. She never bothered to send letters or postcards home to them, and so once again he had been forced to write asking how she was, and by return of post Monica had given her parents the disturbing news, delivered, unsurprisingly, as a fait accompli. Naturally, he had little choice but to share the disconcerting information with his wife, and then he began to make plans to undertake the four-hour drive sometime in the next few days in order that he might lay down the law. When he eventually knocked at the door to Monica’s college room, he discovered his daughter, far from giving out any impression that she might be pleased to see him, to be in a particularly truculent frame of mind.

He had stared out of the queerly shaped window that afternoon and listened to Monica’s increasingly strident voice as she talked openly of being with this man. Quite unexpectedly, he realized that her flat vowels had, if anything, become more pronounced, as though she were now trying to flaunt her northern origins. In fact, were he to close his eyes he would no longer be able to swear that it was his own child speaking.

“Look, you haven’t even met him. How can you judge somebody that you don’t even know?”

“I want you to understand that your mother and I are concerned about you , not some Tom, Dick, or Harry. I haven’t motored all this way to waste time talking about somebody else.”

“Okay then, why have you come all this way? It’s not like you to take a day off school.”

And so there it was, she had put him on the spot before any tea could be poured or cake eaten, and it looked as though he was going to have to tell her that it was either this man or her parents. Monica was going to have to make up her mind. He drew himself upright and began by letting her know that he had given the matter a great deal of thought. Inwardly he was devastated, for this wasn’t how he wanted it to go. He had hoped that there might be some preliminary discussion in her room, with perhaps a glass of sweet sherry, and then a walk around the college grounds or maybe down along the banks of the Cherwell. In his most optimistic moments, he pictured her excitedly begging him to hire a boat and smiling at his attempts to punt. That would be something, punting down the river with his daughter, the Oxford student. But now there would be none of this, for things had rapidly collapsed. When she once again insisted on introducing her friend’s name into the proceedings, he had little choice but to deliver his prepared statement that contained the word “sadly,” and thereafter they both had plunged into an abyss of silence. It had all happened too quickly. He wasn’t naive: he knew that girls of her age went giddy over romance and probably talked extensively about the opposite sex; no doubt a small number of young women, finding themselves beyond the parental home, were quite possibly active and prepared to risk the ignominy of landing themselves in the family way. But nothing in Monica’s upbringing had ever led him to imagine that his daughter might turn out to be loose.

Whenever he thought the blubbing was over, the tears would come again, each time with a greater vigour. He now found himself clinging to the steering wheel with his gloved hands in an attempt to stop shaking, but he realized that this was no good, and he would have to pull over into a lay-by. He sat perfectly still as a platoon of lorries thundered by and shook the Wolseley, and then he reached for his handkerchief and blew his nose with a loud, messy snarl. He would have to sort himself out, for he couldn’t allow his wife to see him like this. Alone in the house, she would be eagerly anticipating some account of their child’s situation, and it was his responsibility to report the events of the day with a sobriety tinged with an appropriate degree of sorrow. He dried his eyes and quickly checked in the rearview mirror to make sure they were not bloodshot. He adjusted his tie and then took one, two, three deep breaths, and each time he was careful to exhale slowly. Then he lowered his head onto the steering wheel and began once more to sob.

* * *

After her father left her standing outside the oversize door to the college, Monica decided to go to Julius Wilson’s basement flat and tell him what had happened. Having assumed that he would have the whole afternoon to revise the footnotes to his doctoral dissertation, he was clearly surprised to see her, and for a moment she couldn’t tell if he was pleased or put out. He was wearing that enigmatic grin she couldn’t always read, but he was not the type of man to play games, so she guessed that he would tell her if he needed some more time to himself, and she would happily read until he was ready. However, once she had kicked off her shoes and curled herself up in his cosily padded armchair, he began to relax and carefully placed his papers in a large grey box file and then turned off the desk lamp. He crossed the room and perched on the edge of the armchair before slowly unfastening the yellow bow so that her hair tumbled out across her upper back and shoulders.

“Would you like me to make you a cup of coffee? Or I could go out and get something stronger.”

She looked up at him and offered a forced smile, but it was still too soon for her to talk.

Julius Wilson was a tall, gangly man who had spent the greater part of his short adult life cultivating a patina of gravitas that might belie the boyish smoothness of his face. In his private moments, when he felt safe, he was capable of a giggly skittishness that suggested one drink too many, but he would never let this aspect of his personality out in public, having invested too many years perfecting his air of studious severity. “I am not here to play; I am here to make the most of this opportunity” was his stock answer to his fellow students who pointed to the fact that, as secretary of the Overseas Student Association, he might wish to take advantage of his position and socialize a little more often. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I have no interest in chasing girls. I had plenty of girlfriends before I came to this country, and if I am lucky, I might have one or two more before it is time to renounce my bachelorhood.” Julius would offer a brief chortle, yet deep down he would wonder why these people didn’t understand that he had sought the position as secretary of the association as a way of making contacts that might aid him in years to come. But six months ago his world had been shaken when, at the association Christmas dance, a curious-looking undergraduate actually approached him and asked if he would care to take the dance floor. At first he thought there might be something wrong with the girl, for she had a lethargic, expressionless gaze that was a little off-putting, but he didn’t want to be rude so he took her hand, knowing that she would soon discover she had chosen an uncoordinated man who didn’t really dance. By the end of the number it was discernible that she too took no real pleasure in dancing, so he offered to buy her a drink and they found two seats at a table near the bar and she prevailed upon him to tell her all about how he had come to be in England as a scholarship student. Throughout Christmas and New Year he had found it impossible to banish strange Miss Johnson from his thoughts, and by the time students were once again rattling through the city’s broad streets and narrow lanes on their clanking bicycles and readying themselves for the new term, he had made up his mind that this oddly intense northern girl had the right resources of strength and courage to make the journey with him.