Caryl Phillips - The Lost Child

Moonlight streams through the bedroom window, but sleep refuses to soothe his weakened body, and he stares unhappily at the timepiece on the plain mahogany dresser. Outside, he hears the hooting owls as they swoop and hunt near the pile of manure to the back of the barns, and he listens to the high wind as it continues to sob and wail through the flailing trees. In the grate a childish fire sputters and makes one final attempt to snap to feeble life, and as it does so, he again rehearses the events that have propelled him to undertake this inauspicious expedition. He remembers the financial prattle of his Liverpool colleagues’ being irksome to his ears, and as they continued to pontificate, he sat rigid and forlorn as though occupying a church pew. Excuse me, I shall take some air. They watched him leave, knowing that one among them would soon be appointed to counsel their partner on the dangers of a surfeit of melancholy, but at present Mr. Earnshaw’s state of mind was the least of their worries. Once he was out in the street, his gloomy cohorts felt liberated, and they continued to scrutinize the carefully composed entries in the large dusty ledger that lay open before them.

She walked towards him with head held high, but it was obvious that the beguiling woman saw no one. And then, as she turned onto Rope Street, she felt his captivated glow upon her, and she began to fly down the road as if the devil himself were giving chase. Madam, please. Madam. Passersby glowered, but as she slowed to a lively walk, her haughty pout signaled that she cared little for people’s opinions. Will you not simply speak with me for a moment? My God, she misunderstands. The woman suspects that I am proposing a transaction. He laughed, which triggered a spasm of disdain to blemish the woman’s face. Please let me just walk with you a little way. He talked incessantly and marched by her side and attempted to create a great thaw in her defences, but she acted as though she had no perception of what it might cost a man to disclose his affection. My children mock my stubborn choice of clothes. And he talked. I come from a place where a surgeon, two grocers, a confectioner, a butcher, a cabinetmaker, and a wine merchant all ply their trades within a reasonable distance. He talked.

He is assaulted by the noise of clattering clogs that rises from the courtyard below, and then he listens to the ceaseless stamping of restless horses as, eager to step out of the cloud of their own steamy restlessness, they shudder and heave. Moonlight continues to stream in through the uncurtained windows, but he knows that he must soon depart if he is to reach his destination by sundown. Beyond the woman, his two children have populated his dreams and conspired to treat him unfairly. Despite his pleadings, the dreamworld son seems determined to emphasize that his father no longer retains his favour. Meanwhile, the girl has frightened him with her indignant outbursts, and demanded to know why he has not done his children the kindness of consigning both son and daughter to a foundling hospital. Still clad in his stockings, he rubs his eyes to wakefulness and remembers that the children have asked him to buy them gifts in Liverpool, and he hopes that the purchase of a fiddle for the boy and a riding whip for the girl might, on his return, enable him to pass future nights unperturbed by their hectoring.

* * *

Suddenly the day yields to darkness, as though it no longer has the will to continue. With a wet cloak upon his back and a carpetbag over his shoulder, he enters the seafaring town and begins to pass through the less public lanes and alleyways where the corpses of dogs and cats rot in the gutters. A shared journey in a post-chaise would have spared him the unpleasantness of proximity to people who are not overclean in either their habits or their persons, but his gruelling trudge is now reaching its conclusion, and there is no reason for him to confuse his mind by speculating on what might have been. Putrid vapours stupefy his senses, and as he proceeds deeper into this area of shameful squalor, his hand habitually hastens to his mouth to prevent his succumbing to a choking fit. All about him, in the very shadows of the port’s abundant wealth, it is impossible to ignore the evidence that the greater part of this town has a face that appears to have been exhaustively bruised by misfortune. He lowers his damp head and enters a court where the dwellings sag indifferently, one supporting the next, and where he can see offal-choked, verminous rooms — doors unlatched to all — that he knows to be peopled by men and women who nurse a lifelong commitment to quenching their thirst and who will fly into a murderous rage should they feel slighted.

A dirty-fleshed, drunken fool emerges suddenly from the shade and sneers at him, and then the man’s eyes flash and he laughs. (Her gentleman, if I’m not deceived. The stuck-up bitch is where she should be, but it is not this court.) The scruffy brute staggers in all directions, his head bobbing in the heavily fermented mist that he replenishes with each rasping statement. We must go next door, he insists. The dreary wretch then obliges him to drop a coin into his blackened palm in order that he might conduct his guest no more than ten faltering paces down the lane, where they both bend double and pass through the tunnel-like entrance to a closed-in court. There are six houses in the yard, each boasting two stories, all of which give out onto an unpaved central area that is littered with bodily refuse. A water pump has long ago given up service, but on the wall above it a dog has been hung for amusement, and it squeals and tumbles helplessly at the end of a piece of frayed rope. The half-witted man smiles toothlessly and points to an open door in the corner.

He carefully edges his way up the unstable staircase and enters the foul-smelling attic room, which boasts not a single stick of furniture. The air sits sluggishly in the abandoned quarters, and he steps carefully, for some seepage stains the floor and appears to be still leaking between the ill-matched boards, no doubt soiling the inhabitants below. He looks up, for he hears footsteps in the stairwell, and then a lamplit face appears and greets him with a cheerfulness so out of keeping with the environment that he wonders if this intruder is in full possession of his faculties. (Kind sir, the severity of the season has caused great distress to those already beset with ailment and pain. It is all part of this dreadful infestation that has reduced so many of my tenants to the severest condition imaginable with no prospect of relief.) The landlord advances boldly into the room, the light from his lamp pooling unsteadily on the floor, and he stands close by, which merely confirms his lack of fellowship with either soap or water. (Once she began to flounder, vitality rushed suddenly from her body and left behind an empty vessel. Thereafter the Lord ushered her out of the misery of the present world and delivered her into the everlasting glories of the world to come.)

They sit together in the quietest corner of the raucous Flying Horse Inn, and he listens to the landlord’s dull sermons as the man swills his beer with a hand that trembles on the glass. It is true, he thinks; some of these people have no more civility than the swine in their pens. (But she’d neither been baptized, nor was she of this parish, so I paid a man to swaddle her in a tight sheet, but as you have discovered, the detestable odour still triumphs. Soon after, the cart raced to the burial ground on the far side of the extension of the town, and I guarantee that once there she found some rest.) With comical impatience, the man signals for another flagon of beer, and then he lowers his voice. (You do understand that the woman was given to blatant falsehoods. The artful minx affected a superior attitude, but when her stomach was empty, she would walk through the streets seeking those like yourself, with elegant shirts and silken breeches, and murmur a wistful account of having fallen on hard times.) The landlord laughs, but then his expression grows grave. (Believe me, sir, there were many men conversant with her merits, for eventually she gave free admission to her bed, but I swear I was never one of those who sent the boy out while they took advantage.) A buxom woman well past her first bloom thumps the beer down onto the table, but the landlord ignores both the woman and the beer and produces a slip of paper from his waistcoat. (I would truly like to be in better favour with the goddess Fortune, but I have a final reckoning. I take it you’ll be settling her accounts.)