Caryl Phillips - The Lost Child

Two high-backed chairs flanked the roaring fire, and the stranger invited both man and bedraggled boy to each take a seat and warm themselves. The sparse, low-ceilinged room contained a wooden dining table with a set of poorly matched stools, and little else. The walls had no experience of paint, the windows were deprived of the indulgence of curtains, and the stone floors were blessed by neither carpet nor a scrap of rug. In the corner stood a second door, through which the stranger soon passed, leaving his visitors alone. The man looked at the shivering boy; then he travelled back in his mind to his first encounter with the child’s mother. Despite her headstrong nature, it was evident to him that the woman was ill-suited to be a mother. It wasn’t her fault, but life had ushered her down a perilous course and delivered her into a place of vulnerability. At the outset, he had felt a kinship with her, although he could never be sure what her feelings were towards him, but it didn’t matter now. She was woefully distracted, that much was clear, and it was his responsibility to step forward and act. It was his duty to take the scruffy lad into his care and protect him.

The boy is still unwilling to look at the wispy-haired man, and he continues to stare at the space between his soiled feet. A few hours ago, when the storm began to break all around them with volcanic anger, the man took the boy’s hand and urged him to rein in his fear, but the lad wrenched his hand away. Suddenly, white scars of lightning began to run from sky to earth, but the man remained unaware of the full extent of the boy’s consternation until the lad began to cry out for his mother. The agitated man looks all about the stranger’s spartan room, and then he takes a log from on top of the pile to the side of the hearth, and he tosses it onto the flames, which immediately leap to new life. He resists the temptation to extend his legs in front of the blaze, and then he is momentarily overwhelmed by a sudden bellowing of thick, stifling smoke. The boy inches forward to the edge of the chair and begins to rub his eyes and then cough. Outside, beyond the asylum of this old man’s cottage, dusk is falling and they both can hear the relentless malice of the storm as it continues to wail. The man waits a moment, then risks leaning over to touch the boy’s arm, but the angry lad pulls away.

The stranger returns and pulls up a stool, and joins them by the fire.

“Are you lost?” The man shakes his head and assures his host that as a rambler he is very familiar with the region.

“It’s just the weather that places us at your mercy. That said, we’re both grateful.”

The stranger looks now at the silent boy and smiles.

“Is the boy hungry? I have only a little food, some dry bread and milk, but whatever I have I’m disposed to share.”

The man laughs now, as though keen to draw attention away from the boy.

“Thank you, you’re too kind, but we won’t intrude upon you any more than we’ve already done. This unpleasantness will soon be over, and we’ll be on our way.”

“I see.”

“It’s been a troublesome evening for both man and beast.”

The stranger listens to his guest’s cautiously expressed sentiments, but he finds it difficult to give credence to anything that falls from the lips of this anxious man. He starts to wonder if he ought to offer the child a bed for the night, but he senses that the man would be loath to allow his charge to fall under the dominion of another without some kind of struggle.

As the storm finally begins to abate, the man glances impatiently in the direction of the window, intent now to end this charade. There is a difference between shelter and hospitality, and the stranger has offered both, but the man has been content to take only the former. He stands.

“Thank you, but it sounds like it’s starting to blow itself out, and so we should be on our way.”

The stranger also stands, but he says nothing. The boy seems reluctant to relinquish his seat, and he looks directly at the wizened old stranger, who now finds himself trying to banish from his mind the full significance of the boy’s panic-stricken demeanour.

“The child is welcome to stay.”

* * *

The man and boy stop to rest at the summit of a hill from whose vantage point they can discern a brick farmhouse in the valley below. A lamp burns in each one of the downstairs windows, and the man imagines a family sitting cosily by a warm fire. High on the hill, however, the surging blasts can occasionally still bear the weight of a man, but the frenzy is weakening by the minute, and so there will be no need for them to enter this valley and again seek refuge. They have survived the worst of the upheaval, and the man knows full well that their odyssey across the inhospitable moors will soon be at an end. He seizes the exhausted boy’s hand in his own and focuses his attention on the ghostly blackness before them. Let’s go now. As they move off, the boy feels the man squeezing his hand ever tighter. Let go of me . The rain has stopped, and the clouds are clearing, and above them it is now possible to see a constellation of silver stars in the night sky. We’re going home. And then the man repeats himself. The boy looks into the man’s face, and again he asks him to please take him to his mother. Home. Quick, come along, let’s go. Between sky and earth the boy skids and loses his footing, and the man stoops and picks him up. For heaven’s sake, one foot in front of the other. The boy stares now at the man in whose company he has suffered this long ordeal, and he can feel his eyes filling with tears. Please don’t hurt me. Come along now. There’s a good lad. We’re nearly home.

Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including Dancing in the Dark, Crossing the River , and Color Me English .

His novel A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and his other awards include a Lannan Foundation Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Britain’s oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in New York. Sign up for email updates here.