The Lost Child (19 page)

She trips down the stairs, smiling and yawning. Slept-on hair, slim body wrapped in acid-bright clubbing gear.

Hi, she says, pulling down her stretchy skirt and adjusting her bra straps with a little smile.

I tell her I want to take her to Marie Stopes for a pregnancy test. I tell her - as gently as I can - that she hasn't got to cope with this mess all alone, that I'm going to help her sort it out. I tell her I'm truly sorry that my son has behaved so uncaringly.

She gazes at me.

OK, she says.

I'm really sorry I haven't got your phone, I add, but I'll find it and bring it to you later this afternoon, OK?

OK, she says again and then she asks if she can just go and get her shoes.

Of course, I tell her, surprised, because I expected more of a fight.

(She can go either way, the boy has told me, really calm one moment and completely fucking out of it the next.)

She reappears a moment later with a pair of shiny red high heels, hopping from foot to foot as she tugs them on.

I feel a bit funny going along in these, she says, laughing. Last night's gear, but they're all I've got.

We book a termination for first thing Monday morning - the earliest possible appointment. It's private but we don't dare wait for an NHS appointment. Her mood could change at any time.

I fill in some forms. At every moment I keep expecting her to change her mind. To throw a tantrum, to walk out. But she doesn't. The termination will cost more than £700. The girl is shocked at the price. She thanks me for paying.

Don't be silly, I tell her. All I want is for you to be OK.

It's not true. It's not all I want. All I want is for this to be over before she has time to change her mind.

After that, because it feels too cold just to drop her back, I take her to Cafe Rouge and insist she eats something nice. She orders a Diet Coke and a chicken baguette with chips but leaves most of it, pulling out the cucumber first and piling it on the side of her plate.

She asks me what happens in a termination. I try to answer in a way that's honest but reassuring. But when I start talking about uteruses and eggs and placentas, the drinking straw falls from between her lips and her eyes widen. Has no one ever talked to her about sex before?

We tell the boy the termination's booked and we beg him to stay away from her all weekend. We just can't risk him getting into an argument with her. But he refuses. He says it's not convenient for him. That he needs to go to a party that night which she may well be at. We plead with him to miss the party. It's just not worth the risk of getting into an argument with her. What can be more important than this?

This termination is costing £700, I tell him. And as I say it, my voice sounds different - dirtier, harsher. Has it really come to this?

He shrugs and says it's not his fault that she's half-crazy. He's not going to let that get in the way of his social life.

I was going to take the girl to the termination, but in the end someone she knows better kindly steps in and offers to take my place. Relieved, I sit all morning and watch the clock.

It's not until I get the call to say it's all over and the girl is fine that I feel it: a surge of dark, dark mourning for what just occurred. The termination of what was almost certainly my embryo grandchild. I also feel incredibly tired.

CARELESS

It would be careless not to say,

my heart has gone astray,

and now it flies to you.

7

Dear Mrs Myerson,

Yes, I know all about the Sucklings and Yellolys at Woodton. My great-grandmother was Fanny Jane, daughter of Alfred Inigo Suckling. Do come and see me on my return. Where do you live?

Patrick Baron

Dear Mrs Myerson,

I am at sea on the Arcadia and will not be home next week. Will ring you when I am. Have the paintings of Woodton Hall on my stairs.

Regards, Pat Baron

Hello, hello, how are you? How do you do?

A tall, well-groomed man shakes my hand. Elegantly dressed and, I would guess, quite a bit older than he looks. We stand diffidently for a moment or two in the dim carpeted hallway - a crowd of silver-framed family photos gleaming from the gloom - before he ushers me forwards and shuts the door.

Straight away I catch a glimpse through into the sitting room - enormous panoramic windows.

Hey, I say, what a view.

He walks me through and over to the window.

Yes, yes, isn't it? Look, you can see right over Norwich from here.

I gaze out over the pale rooftops.

I love being high up, I tell him, lucky you. And you live in the Canary Islands too?

Yes, half the year there, half here.

What a great life.

He laughs.

Well, yes, yes, it is, oh yes.

And you really are a direct descendant of Lord Nelson?

That's right, yes. Absolutely. Nelson's mother, you see, she was a Suckling.

And so - what do you do?

Did. Merchant Navy. Retired now, of course.

The apartment's immaculate - gleaming surfaces, polished wood and silver and glass, all reflecting back at each other. Lots of heavy dark old furniture, coffee tables and vases. In the little kitchen at the end, a youngish woman with glamorous hair is making coffee. I try to decide whether she's his wife.

Patrick introduces us and she shakes my hand, smiling, but I don't catch her name and before I can ask her again she's vanished, leaving us a tray on the dining-room table.

You want to see the pictures?

Walking stiffly with his stick, Patrick leads me out of the dining room and back into the hall where a smooth flight of carpeted stairs leads down to another floor.

There you go, he says and he turns on some lights so I can see better.

Eight large framed watercolour paintings hang on the landing and stairs walls.

Oh! I say, I didn't think they'd be so big!

He leans forward.

Hmm. Pretty large, yes.

As well as being double or may be three times the size of any Yelloly paintings I've yet come across, they're also somehow different in style. Unexpectedly lucid, smooth and highly coloured. Very deftly executed, the detail is incredible.

The first is of the now very familiar view of the exterior of Woodton Hall standing just behind the church. I don't think I've ever seen it so close up. I count the windows - fourteen of them, with five chimneys on top. A great big impressive pile of a place. Beneath darkening skies, inky with rain, sheep and cows graze in the field in front. I could almost put my finger on the path which now leads up to Steve and Elaine Hill's house.

Recognise it? Patrick asks me, holding on to the banister, watching my face and smiling.

I do, I tell him, Of course I do. I was there just a few weeks ago.

The other seven paintings are interiors of the Hall as I've never yet quite seen it. Immediate, specific, well lit. Intimate, too. In one or two of the pictures, All Saints Church tower can be glimpsed, grey as a shadow, through the windows.

They're alive with furniture - elegant tables and chairs, paintings, statues, vases, mirrors. Two birds in a cage. A guitar laid down on a chair as if someone had just that second stopped playing it. Even if there were no people in the pictures, you would sense them. These are rooms where life is going on, has just been going on.

But there are people. In almost every picture there are young women - two, three or four. Yelloly girls. But which one is which? Which one is you?

Do you have any idea who did them? I ask Patrick.

He waves his hand.

Oh, please, take them off the wall, if you like. I seem to remember there's something written on the backs.

Very carefully, I take each one down and turn it over. The pictures aren't dated, but each says
Done by the Yellolys while they lived at Woodton.
One of them says it's by your sister Anna.

They really do all look like they were done by the same person, I tell him as I replace each one on the hook and take the next. So I suppose if one says
Anna,
then it probably means she did them all. And I suppose it would explain why you have them too - handed down the Suckling line, I mean.

He nods.

Ah. It would, yes, it would.

But what's really amazing for me, I tell him, is to see so many of the Yelloly girls.

Several of the pictures feature two dark-haired girls with centre-parted hair and ringlets. In another painting a much smaller girl - could it be Ellen, who was only eleven when you moved to Woodton? - plays with a dog, making it sit up and beg.

In a drawing room, two dark-haired girls sit at tables opposite each other. One looks as if she is writing, the other - because you can see the splodges on the paper - painting. Dresses that look like they would rustle if the girls stood up. Long, curled ringlets hanging down over their ears. The girl in the foreground wears dark drop earrings, and both girls' feet are propped on tiny footstools as they lean intently into their work.

In the portrait of your sister Sarah that Tony Yelloly showed me, the one that reminds me of Julia, she's definitely dark-haired. But the pencil sketch of you that I found in the trunk, the one done after your death, the one without a face, suggests a girl with fair, even blonde, hair. Are none of these girls you, then?

In another picture, what look like the same two girls are joined by a third. Here the guitar - is it a guitar? - is picked up and played, while another girl works at something large - it could be a painting but looks more like a screen or tapestry, balanced on the back of a chair. The third girl crosses the room with a small pot or vase of flowers. Through one window you can see the church, and through the other sash flung wide open - the fields loom warm and delicious. A breathless summer's day.

In a high-ceilinged bedroom, a fire crackles in the large stone hearth, and the four-poster bed has a heavy ornate canopy fringed with tassels. Rich rugs - may be Indian or Persian? - and bare floorboards. A washstand with pitcher and bowl. An older woman, wearing a bonnet and shawl, is getting something out of a small trunk which is leaning on two chairs pushed together.

Another lady - also older and bonneted - carries a garment in her arms. Is this your mother? Her slim feet are in dark pumps with a criss-cross strap like ballet shoes. Her cool, placid face looks both purposeful and ever so slightly tired. Some kind of a heavy stole or scarf hangs round her neck, almost to her feet. In the far-left corner of the room, a door stands tantalisingly open to a room beyond.

Or, in a sunny breakfast room a table is laid for a meal- white linen and ten place settings. Silver coffee pots and buns, and ajar of what look a lot like sweet peas in the centre. A woman in a frilly bonnet stands at the open door looking out on the blowy Norfolk countryside - is she calling people in to eat? - whilst two younger girls chat at the table. Chat about what?

The paintings offer up so many clues that I ought to be satisfied. So why, instead of feeling invited in, do I somehow feel excluded, pushed out?

I want to walk right in there and smell the coffee, the flowers, feel the Norfolk breeze from the open window on my cheek, the well-beaten rugs under my feet. I want to sit you all down and make you stay and answer all my questions:

So where's Sam? Is he in Ipswich now? And Nick and John, where are they? What year is it? Who's the girl playing the guitar? Do you all play? Is the small girl with the dog Ellen? And can you tell me which of you is Mary?

Silence.

Mary? Are you there?

Nothing.

Silence again. The sound of a door closing.

If it was at Barsham, I say to Patrick, then is there any chance it could still be in the Suckling family - in your family, I mean?

Oh yes, he says, indicating with his stick. Lots of the furniture in this apartment came originally from Barsham.

I look around me and suddenly see the place - this modem apartment in the centre of Norwich with its polished, dark tables and chairs - in a whole new light. Your furniture. The pieces that stood in your home, in your life.

Oh certainly. Nearly all of the bigger pieces. And the chairs. I know a lot of the chairs came from Barsham.

He says he's never looked all that closely at the furniture in the pictures, but now he leads me into a little study off the landing. Against the wall stands a grand sort of cabinet.

Could this be it? he says.

I take a breath. It's the one in the picture.

It belonged to my grandfather, he tells me. That's all I know really.

I put a finger on its gleaming polished surface. The wood is cool and hard.

But he also gives me something else: some folded sheets of yellowing paper, well preserved and neatly drawn out in brown (or was it once black?) ink - ruled lines and careful annotations, measurements in feet and inches. It's a set of plans for Woodton Hall - ground floor, first floor, attics, and the gardener's cottage. Each floor plan is precisely measured and shows stairs, doors and the position of windows, fireplaces and even cupboards. For instance, I'm able to read - because someone has added it on in pencil- that the schoolroom is 21 feet square and
Mrs Y's
room 10 feet square.

But even if it weren't for that dead giveaway, that
Mrs Y,
I'd still be able to guess that these were Yelloly plans. Because on the large plan of the ground floor, that same pencil person has been unable to resist doodling a neat but romantic little sketch of the front of the Hall, perspective perfect, with its thirteen windows and the curling flourish of a nearby tree. The style is instantly recognisable. A Yelloly tree.

And I think that's all. But it's only when I get back to London that, inspecting the photographs of the paintings, I notice something else. That in your sister Anna's picture of the grand sweeping staircase and entrance hall at Woodton, there's something I'd managed to miss completely when I looked at it on Patrick Baron's landing.

As well as the half-dozen or so oil portraits hung above the stairs, a dark grandfather clock, two chairs, a table and a sort of cartwheel lying on the floor, there's a statue, clad in a suit of armour and brandishing a sword. It's about three-quarter life-Size.

It's the precise object that led me to Tony and Bryony Yelloly: the oak carving of Oliver Cromwell that they donated to the Cromwell House Museum in Ely in December 2003.

We feel it would be the right place for all three of them, but more than anything that our boy will feel at home here. It's the kind of school where you don't stand out for being interested. And he's always interested.

But you have to sit a test to get in, and the verbal- and nonverbal-reasoning questions are the kinds of things our boy has never come across. Neither have we. Without some preparation, he won't stand a chance. So we buy the papers and, for a few weeks, we practise. Every day after school he walks round to the flat where I write, and together we spend an hour or so going over the methods and then doing timed tests.

We don't make him do this without an incentive - he gets extra time on his PlayStation as well as a rise in pocket money. But the truth is that, once we've fallen into the routine of it, we both find ourselves quite enjoying these sessions together. Me timing him with the stopwatch and marking him while he tots up how much money or PlayStation time he's earned.

Sometimes I'll have a snack all ready waiting for him when he arrives. Other times, after we've worked really hard for an hour, I take him out to the cafe down the road for a muffin and a chocolate milkshake. And one time there's a massive thunderstorm while we're in there - bursts of thunder and lightning across the rooftops of Lavender Hill. Rain so heavy that we have to wait in a shop doorway before we can even make a dash the few yards back to the flat. We're so wet we have to dry ourselves with towels.

And for a long time afterwards, he'll ask me if! remember the time with the milkshake and the thunderstorm and us getting so soaked. And I'll laugh and say weren't those days fun and weren't you great, working so hard to get into your school.

When we open the letter offering him a place (which means his siblings will get in too) I burst into tears. The children stare at me.

That night, to celebrate, we take our boy out to a posh Italian restaurant, just him and us. He wears a sunshine-yellow cotton shirt bought specially that afternoon at Peter Jones, because he doesn't have a single smart thing to wear. He looks so grown-up in the shirt. Almost eleven and on the edge of a whole new phase of his life.