The Lost Child (27 page)

I can’t sleep, so I just sit on the settee and listen to the noises of the night and finally decide that I can’t possibly spend another moment in a house with a dead person, so I put on my coat. When I get to the phone box, I dial my friend’s number and wait, but nobody picks up, so I put down the receiver and try again, but again nobody picks up, so now I don’t know what to do except walk the streets. It’s soon lunchtime, and there’s hardly anybody in the pub, so I buy a half of lager and take it to the table in the corner and drink it slowly, and then fetch a few more, and nobody bothers me. When I’ve finished, I go and call yet again, and this time he answers the phone, and I can hear it in his voice that he’s surprised to hear from me. He tells me that he’s positive that the old lady is fine—she sure as hell understands what is meant by a sitting tenant—then he says that maybe I should think about finding another place, for it’s clear that his flat doesn’t suit me. I don’t know what to say, for I was only trying to be helpful, and I certainly wasn’t expecting this. Look, I’ll come by on Saturday or Sunday and we can talk about it. Maybe go for a drive, he says, and this makes me feel better, although I can tell that he’s just rushing me off the phone.

The weekend is finished, and he didn’t come. I go and knock at the old lady’s door again, and this time I can hear her moving about, and so I definitely know now that she’s not dead and she’s just avoiding me. Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to ignore her, but I stand outside of her door, for I know that at some point the woman has to come out. So, I’m outside of her door waiting, like the time in January that I stood up outside of Ben’s school and waited for him to come out, and all the other boys came out, but not my son. And then a red-faced teacher marched across the playground and told me that I had to go now or they would call the authorities, whoever they might be, and he folded his arms, and I didn’t really see any point in causing a scandal and making life uncomfortable for anybody, including Ben. The next day I could see that Denise was annoyed when the social worker turned up at the library and whispered to me that we had to talk. We went into the staff room, and she read me the riot act and tried to get me to agree that what I did was out of line. Apparently, I can’t wait for my own son after school, it’s not allowed. After my social worker left, Denise gave me my final warning.

A few days pass, and I decide to go back to the phone box down the road. I dial, but nobody picks up the phone, so worried that maybe I called the wrong number, I dial again, but again it just rings out, and so I stand there listening and wondering what I should do now. I don’t have enough money to go to the pub, but I need something to help me sleep, for it takes me ages to nod off, and no sooner have I nodded off than I find myself suddenly awake again, for any little noise or movement seems to disturb me. The day before yesterday I went to the small library opposite the tube station and asked the man behind the returns desk if he would give me a job as I had experience in library work. I told him, I like the smell of books, but he looked at me as if he hadn’t the foggiest idea what I was on about. He was a young bloke, definitely younger than me, and he asked me about my previous employment, but I just stared at him because it got me remembering. About a month after the social worker came to the library, Denise called me into her office and asked me to close the door. Then she just asked me straight out if I’d been around to a Mrs. Gilpin’s house this morning, because she’d just had her on the phone. That’s when I understood what was going on. I didn’t deny it, and I told her that I’d gone around there and knocked on the door and told this Mrs. Gilpin that I wished to see my son, but she just looked me up and down like my label had fallen off and told me that I had to go, but I let her know that I’d go only once I’d seen my son, and that’s when she started to get nasty and said she’d be calling the police if I didn’t leave. Not wanting to provoke a full-scale row, I gave her a piece of my mind and left, but apparently she thought better of calling the police and chose instead to phone my job, and that was all the excuse Denise needed to tell me that I couldn’t work there anymore. Despite our friendship, she said, which made me bite my tongue. What friendship? Ever since I came back from convalescing, she’d kept her distance and treated me like a leper. Monica, despite our friendship, I can’t overlook the fact that you’re habitually late and you just don’t seem to be able to keep your mind on the task at hand. I had to calm this Mrs. Glipin down, as she was ready to send the police around to have a word with you. Now you know that I can’t have police officers coming into the library, you know this, don’t you? I started to tell her that this wasn’t fair, but she told me that she’d already spoken with the council head office, and with my social worker, and everyone was in agreement. They were going to pay me till the end of the month, but as it turned out, they did have a part-time position in another library, if I was willing to think about that, but as of now I was free to leave. And so that was that, and although I didn’t tell the nice young man at the library the whole story, I did tell him that since moving to London, I’d worked at a community centre, but my heart was really in the library profession. Well, he said, but I could see that he was talking and thinking at the same time, we don’t have anything at the present, but if I wanted to try again in the autumn, he happened to know that one of the part-time staff would be on maternity leave. He lowered his voice as he said this, and I thanked him but it didn’t seem right to let on that I’d be back at university in the autumn, so this wasn’t going to work.

I tried the other branch library, but I lasted only a week. It was located on a side street behind an out-of-date shopping centre. Today nobody would think of building a shopping complex that didn’t have a roof, and piped music and warm air, and places to sit down, but this concrete monstrosity was arranged in a big L shape around a huge car park. At one end of the place was a post office, a newsagent’s, a shoe mender’s, a bookie’s, and a dry cleaner’s; at the other end was a supermarket, and hugging the right angle in between was a secondhand charity shop, a maternity boutique, and a council office where you could pay your rent. On the far side of the car park, where the main road was at the farthest point from the shopping centre, there was a row of bus stops with identical plexiglass shelters, and a few seats on which the shoppers could sit themselves down while waiting for their buses to appear.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon was when the first of the men liked to wander into the library. By four o’clock all three of them had arranged themselves around the central reading table, and they busily flicked through the daily newspapers whose spines were wooden sticks. It took me only a day or so to realize that their preferred seating matched exactly where the large clunky radiators were located. It was February now, and the weather was chilly, and these three men liked to spend their afternoons idling in the warmth before I imagined they took themselves back to the pub for the evening. I was pretty sure that their mornings would most likely have been wasted in the bookie’s, before a lunchtime packet of crisps and a pint of beer and then a slow trundle around to the branch library, where they would make themselves at home for a few afternoon hours. Not that I cared, but my new boss clearly did, for I caught the woman glaring at the men and making little attempt to disguise her contempt for them.

By the time the large clock above the door—with roman numerals decorating its face as opposed to numbers—showed five o’clock, I’d have already finished my reshelving, collected my handbag from its peg in the seedy staff room, and be heading out, having nodded a sociable good-night to my boss. But the woman never said a dicky bird in reply, nor did she raise her head up from the checkout desk to look me in the eyes. Resentment, I assumed, at the fact that the local council had placed me in her library as though I were some kind of dodgy gift, and she’d therefore not been given the opportunity to do a conventional interview. Besides me there was only Miss Williamson, who had officially retired five years earlier but who had agreed to help out from time to time, for she was both familiar with the place and had little else to do. However, my sour-faced boss need not have worried herself, for I’d already decided that I wasn’t staying. I’d made up my mind on the very first day that this depressing branch library wasn’t going to be in my future, and on the Friday afternoon I handed in my cards.

I pour the whisky into a cup, but I know that it’s not going to agree with me. However, I need something to help me sleep. When I wake up, it’s bright in the room, and once again I’ve no idea where I am or how I got here. I remember losing Tommy, and the hospital, and then Bridlington, and Christmas Eve at the Mecca, and then trying to see Ben, and Denise getting rid of me, and the useless branch library, and catching the train to London. I remember the room at the top of the house, and the American man in his pinny who’d run away from fighting in the war. I dash into the bathroom, and I’m sick all over the place. I’m feeling too ill to do anything but a little wiping off with some toilet paper and then a quick flush. I drag myself back to the settee and lie down and close my eyes, but my head’s still pounding, so I sit up and try and steady my nerves. I suspect that it’s warm outside, for the daylight bleeding around the corners of the curtains is getting in my eyes. I don’t have a bathing costume, but I reckon if I take off my shoes and strip down to my bra and pants, then I’ll still be respectable. I stand up and hide the bottle of whisky back in the cupboard, and I open the last can of beer and drink it quickly and leave the empty tin on the kitchen counter.

Don’t you have any shame? When I open my eyes, I can see the man from next door staring at me, but I’m not interfering with him. I’m sitting on the small step by the French door minding my own business, and I ask him why he’s looking at me. Now he’s really got his mad up, and he’s shouting and calling me indecent, and why don’t I take a hint and clear off like the other slags? That’s what the man at the Mecca Ballroom called me on Christmas Eve when I wouldn’t let him take me home. You’re just a sorry old slag, he said, and I threw a glass of beer at him, and he said, You’ve bloody gone and done it now. I laughed at him, and then the manager came and asked me to leave. But I’m not going to give this man the satisfaction, so I just stare at him as though he’s talking a foreign language, and when he’s finished ranting, I tell him, all nice and quiet, Don’t talk to me. I can see it on his face that he’s still angry, but he gives me a dirty look, then turns and leaves, and I hear him slam his back door as he goes inside. I’m enjoying the sunshine, and I have a right to be here because my friend said I could stay as long as I wanted and he gave me a key.

I look at myself in the small bathroom mirror and set about putting on some makeup. I place the cup of whisky on the edge of the sink and make a mental note to be careful that I don’t knock it off and onto the floor. My mother gave me my first lesson in how to apply makeup when my father was away on a school trip to the Lake District. However, she warned me that I must never let him see me with mascara or lipstick on, for he’d take a wet flannel to me. It still makes me livid that in his letter he didn’t even tell me where she was buried, which would have been the caring thing to do, so at least I could go there and say a proper goodbye. In the morning I’ll make my way to Hyde Park, and at least I’ll look presentable, so long as I don’t smudge this mascara when I finally drop off to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll find an empty bench to sit on, and then I’ll devise a plan of action that will take me through the summer until it’s time to go back to university. I can admit it to myself now: waiting around in this flat for my actor friend to help me out has been a waste of time. I’ve made a mistake, but when I wake up, I’m going to clear off out of here and start to put things right.

In the morning the front doorbell wakes me up, but I decide not to get up and see who it is, for I have an ominous feeling. However, the person won’t stop pushing the bell, and then I hear loud knocking on the door to my flat, and I wonder if there’s a fire or something because the walloping won’t stop. When I open up, I see a policeman in front of me with his hat under his arm like it’s a rugby ball, and out of the corner of my eye I catch a glimpse of the old lady as she tries to disappear up the stairs before I can see her. The policeman tells me that I have to come with him to the station, for they want to talk to me about something. I tell the man that I have to get dressed, so he says he’ll come inside and wait for me while I do so. And then I see him lift his hand to his face as though he’d suddenly smelt something rank. I’ll wait out here, he says, but leave the door open a little. So he’s standing outside of the flat, and it doesn’t take me long to put on my slacks and jumper and smooth out my hair, but before I even have time to brush my teeth, he’s at it again, banging on the door and telling me to hurry up as he doesn’t have all day. I’m hoping that the officer has a car outside to take us to the station, for I really don’t want to walk down the street with a policeman so everyone can stare at me.

I seem to have been waiting forever in this big wood-panelled room with people sitting, then standing up, then sitting back down again. Everybody’s taking turns to speak, but even though their mouths are moving, I can’t hear any sound, and it’s almost as though I’m underwater. Three wise monkeys are sitting behind a bench, and they keep nodding and looking over at me, then listening to whoever is talking, and suddenly my ears pop and I can now hear the policeman who was knocking on my door talking about how I wouldn’t come out straightaway, and how I put up a bit of a struggle and tried to lock myself in the bathroom. I want to laugh because it seems funny that he should be making all of this up and fooling them, but I can see by the way they are looking at me that this is serious and his lies are making me look bad.

The man from next door has on his smart jacket, and he starts to talk now, and he says that I dance about naked in the garden, which is also a lie. I’m thinking to myself that this man must be sad and lonely to have to make up stories like this about a woman who hasn’t done him any wrong, but I know that I’m not supposed to say anything, so I just stay quiet and listen to one lie after another and I try and work out for myself just what is happening. Then things get really out of control. The old lady stands up and says that she tried to be courteous to me, but apparently I don’t have any decorum. One of the magistrates speaks to her directly now, and he asks the woman if I’ve ever harmed her in any way, and she shakes her head. He asks her if she has seen me wandering about naked, and again the old lady shakes her head, but she seems confused. Then she repeats herself, this time very slowly, and insists that I don’t have any decorum, as if this was some kind of crime.