The Lost Child (30 page)

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.)

*   *   *

The handsome oak room is populated with men of commerce who customarily refuse the possibility of consensus, preferring instead to become heated with their own opinions, which they proclaim with a confident swagger calculated to override both logic and consideration. Their chief topic of interest is the fluctuating prices of sugar, rum, and slaves on the Exchange Flags, but on this blustery evening, the working day having been concluded, pipes and tobacco and newspapers and punch are much in vogue at the Kingston Coffee House, and no further industry is being conducted, as the men now sprawl with books bound in soft leather and stretch out before the fire. A jaded lodger, keen to impress upon onlookers the idea that no man need greet him cordially, sits at a table towards the rear of the room. Before him a knife is embedded in a slab of meat and candlelight plays on a silver goblet, and a rush of uncertain sensations courses through his body. Earlier in the evening, the landlord had set him down for an ass. After he had paid the man his money, the drunkard furrowed his brow in mock confusion and insisted there were no personal effects and claimed that he could offer no information with respect to the child.

His child. At the conclusion of their second dinner she slipped off her dress in the backroom of the Queen’s Head tavern, and his heart fell when he saw that she had been branded with the initials of another man. Suddenly he felt only tolerably well, and he became aware of tightness in his lips, and then his face began to colour and quiver uncontrollably. Once their enterprise was terminated, his conscience remained unsullied with regret, for although their union had not been sealed with missives sent by Cupid’s post, he had not stooped to using her brutally, and he understood that his wife would never inquire of him regarding time expended in Liverpool. Two days later he began the return journey across the moors, but long before he reached home, his mind had already turned back to Liverpool and thoughts of again entertaining this woman, who seemed willing to establish an arrangement by which she might call upon him at the Queen’s Head tavern whenever he had commerce to conduct in the town she now called home.

A year later their child was born. When she asked of him if he might arrange for her and the boy to return to the trafficking islands, he happily went in search of a captain he might trust. However, he soon divined them all to be testy, irritable creatures who tendered him no assurances that once at a distance from the laws of the land they would not use her and the boy heartlessly, and so he offered the woman money in exchange for the convenience of continuing their arrangement and sparing his soul the burden of worrying that he might have dispatched them both to a sad fate. But what hope now for the boy on the streets of this town? He knows full well that it will be only a matter of time before the child is propositioned with a tot of rum and overwhelmed and pressed to serve as a prize upon one of His Majesty’s ships, or else accused of thievery and snatched up and spirited away to a workhouse.

At the first light of dawn he leaves the Kingston Coffee House and makes his weary way to the docks. He stares intently at the bold shield of the moon that is still conspicuous in the sky, and he speculates that it must be the pulse of the sea that anchors the moon to the heavens and prevents it from wandering. At this hour of the morning the slumbering town appears ready to slide gracefully beneath the surface of the water and disappear from view. He mumbles to himself. And God’s cleansing shall be visited upon all. He looks out at the miscellany of docks that are carelessly cluttered with a jumble of masts and sails, swaying first one way, then back again. These murmuring pools are flecked with rotting debris, and the water is combed by the wind, gurgling and puckering when the breeze rises and then abruptly settling as though someone has swiftly drawn a thin oily skin across the surface and whispered, be still. The black-haired child is asleep but fitfully twitching, and then his eyes slowly open. Even at this tender age his sombre aspect suggests an abundance of pride. There is a luminosity to the boy, as though he is cognizant of something that others cannot see, and this knowledge bequeaths upon him a full awareness of his destiny. Come to me, young lad. We have no business meddling in the affairs of heaven. Come to me, son, and let’s go home.

X

GOING HOME

The rain continues to beat frantically against the window, and the peals of thunder grow menacing as though the storm is now passing immediately overhead. The frightened boy sits on the edge of the chair, but he refuses to look at the man with whom he is travelling, preferring instead to stare at the space between his muddied feet. Occasionally the boy throws a glance in the direction of the fireplace, as though he expects to find an answer to his predicament hidden away in the heart of the flames, but he quickly returns his troubled gaze to the floor. The man looks hopefully in the boy’s direction, and then he leans over to touch his arm, but the boy pulls away and casts him a look that is freighted with contempt.

The man had surmised that it would be possible for them to reach their destination before the storm broke. When they began their journey the first rumblings of the squall could be heard in the very far distance. The man gestured proudly to the gorse-stubbled landscape as though he owned it, pointing out birds and small animals and flowers and baptizing them with names that he was eager the boy should remember. However, before they had ascended the first gentle peak, the low, fast-moving clouds had bathed the whole moor in shadow, and it was apparent that the man had underestimated both the fierce weather and his own tired state. Once the driving rain began to lash down in earnest the man peered desperately into the gloom for any sign of a farmhouse or barn where they might find shelter. After struggling against the strengthening wind for what seemed like an eternity, he eventually made out a single light in a distant window and attempted to quicken his step, but he realized that he was in danger of leaving the boy behind. He stopped and took the distressed lad firmly by the arm, and with his free hand he brushed the rain from the child’s eyes and began now to drag him through the rumpus.

The stranger opened the door to his cottage and looked at the uneven apparition of man and boy that greeted him. The flustered man’s dripping clothes suggested some status in this world, but the ill-dressed child seemed adrift and lost. It occurred to the stranger that this boy might have been discovered upon the moors, a runaway of some sort, and perhaps the connection between the two had been forged in the adversity of this calamitous unrest. There was no time for speculation, however, for the wind was howling, and it took what little strength he possessed to hold open the door against the turbulence of the gale. The stranger stood to one side in order that his visitors might step clear of the gravel footpath and enter, and he watched as the nervous man gently pushed the boy ahead of him.

As the stranger closed in the door behind them, the man quickly removed his sodden jacket, but he decided not to suggest to the boy that he do the same. Instead, he surveyed their grey-bristled host, who was tall and gaunt and who looked as though nature had carved his dull features from the bark of a gnarled tree. The man noticed that there was moist life in the stranger’s dancing eyes, and a firmness to his handshake that defied his accumulation of years. He assumed that he was possibly a farmer of some kind, a stubborn fellow who scratched a meagre living from a carefully demarcated piece of rutted earth. Tending to sheep, and conceivably a few cattle, with some attempt made to raise poultry and collect eggs, most likely constituted the extent of this man’s lean agricultural world. No doubt the solitary rhythm of his life would be interrupted each Sunday, when the stranger would wash and change and reach for his Bible and stride across the moors to the village church, where he would be temporarily reacquainted with others in the human family. Thereafter he would probably return and quietly resume the bleak routine of his existence and simply wait for Sunday to once again announce itself.

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.