The Lost Child (10 page)

In the end he told me that he'd been cutting something out of his
Beano
with scissors and he'd suddenly got the idea of trimming Kitty's fur. Just a little bit. A little haircut. But he'd done the little bit, and then a little bit more until suddenly he saw that he'd gone too far and now there were great chunks of her fur all over the floor and she had a bald patch. He showed me, sobbing harder.

I'm so worried I've hurt her.

Kitty was fine and I showed him that she was. I told him the fur would soon grow back.

But you frightened yourself, didn't you? I told him. And that's a good thing really, because cats don't need their fur trimmed and you might have hurt Kitty and you don't want to hurt her, do you?

He looked at me and shook his head, still sobbing silently, a thin line of snot hanging down.

And I kissed him and he kissed his cat, who pushed her face into his hands, as trusting as ever.

You're good with animals, I told him. You're a good owner and a kind person. And you learnt something today and you won't forget it. You won't cut her hair again, will you?

He said he wouldn't and he never did.

He never did, but a whole six months or so after that night of the knives and the kitchen towel, a whole six months later when he's long gone from our home and just been evicted from that flat after neighbours have complained to the police about noise and fighting; a whole six months later when he's briefly had Kitty living there with him, but has finally absconded and left town; a whole six months later, when we go to that place one sticky summer's night to see if she's all right, I find her huddled alone on the bare floor, facing the wall, no food or water. Hunched and resigned, a prisoner doing time.

I lift her gently and she doesn't make a sound. I lift her and her black legs with the little white socks hang heavily. I put her in the cat basket and drive her back home. There, after a drink of water and some gentle stroking, I persuade her out into the garden. She wobbles down the back steps like a drunk.

She left him at 4 a.m. on a balmy August night with a removal van, while he was away on holiday with us. She took exactly half the furniture and all the pets - dog, duck, budgie and hamster - to a secret address, a house in the red-light district of town which she'd bought and done up on the quiet. Then she came and collected us. It was easy to do this because it was her turn to be on holiday with us. That was how they did holidays by then - taking it in turns. So he said goodbye and drove home, unsuspecting, to find half of everything gone. He was furious.

Meanwhile she took us to the secret address. We cried all the way. Actually my middle sister and I cried. My littlest sister cheered up once we stopped for fish and chips.

It was the summer holidays and our mother said she just wanted to spend a few weeks with us without our father knowing where we were. A few weeks of calm. After that, the courts would sort everything out and it would be fine, we could visit him.

It was fun in the new house, even though we didn't have a TV. We went for walks and bike rides, played charades, stayed on a caravan site with a swimming pool. It was a great relief not to live with two people who were always crying and fighting.

But I thought about my father in that half-empty house and wondered what he was doing. Drinking? Smoking? Watching TV?

I didn't miss him but I worried about him.

I can't believe I'm actually finally shaking the hand of a real live Yelloly, I tell him and he laughs and leads me to the car, which is even more of a mess than our own - dog hair, leaves, dried mud.

As we drive to Dog Lane
(Dog Lane, ha.!)
he tells me all about their dog Fred, a rescue greyhound who was discovered in a miserable state, completely emaciated, abandoned and cowering in someone's greenhouse.

Outside their cottage, primroses and snowdrops stand up stiffiy in the cold. The air is blue and clean, hardly a cloud.

Here you are, here you are, he laughs as we stand shyly for a moment in the hall and his wife Bryony emerges from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel. More shaking of hands. For a second or two we all just stand there.

Now - goodness, sorry! - would you like to use the cloakroom?

I say I would. I go in and shut the door. It's an old-fashioned bathroom - reminds me of the wonky 1960s bathrooms of my childhood. I play for time. Flush the 100. Take a breath. I turn on the cold tap and the handle falls off I put it back on carefully, wipe my hands. I go back in the kitchen to find Bryony struggling to open the apple juice.

Can I do that?

Oh would you? Thanks, it's very stiff.

Fred the greyhound sticks his silky snout in my hand.

What a lovely dog, I say as he gazes at me. Hello, boy - oh, isn't he nice! What an amazing coat.

Bryony looks pleased.

Well, we do actually wonder if he's part Saluki.

As I put down my bag and sip my apple juice, Tony takes me straight into the dark hall - coats and photographs of daughters - and points out a large oil painting high above the front door. We both tilt our heads back.

There he is. Dr Yelloly!

Wow.

He's handsome, definitely, but fatter-faced than I'd imagined. Stouter, better fed? This is the man who was given the purse and poems. Dark, clever eyes. The lover, the doctor, the dad.

He vaccinated them, you know, Tony reminds me. He introduced vaccinations. Very ahead of his time, he was.

He takes me upstairs then, to the top landing. Fred follows, his long, loping heaviness making the stairs creak. Right at the end of the landing, we stop and look at a small oil painting. I peer at a woman's lit-up face.

Sarah Boddicott Yelloly, Tony says, gently triumphant.

Mary's sister?

The same.

I go in closer. She's really lovely, your sister, dark, wispy-curly hair, the same strikingly round and rosy face as Tony, in fact. Thin arched brows and delicate features. A real, timeless sparkle in her eyes. Even by modem standards she'd be pretty.

It's not the original, Tony says. It's actually a photograph. My cousin Margaret has the original. And look what she's wearing, though. Could those possibly be the earrings?

I'd told him on the phone about your earrings, the long gold ones mentioned in Anna's will.

I peer at them. They're certainly long and gold.

But then it was your Mary who had them, not Sarah, wasn't it? Tony says.

I look into Sarah's smiling eyes. She's not telling.

May be they each had a pair, I say.

Now don't worry, says Tony, we've remembered you don't eat meat -

Oh I really hope you didn't go to too much trouble, I say, even though it's obvious that they did.

Not at all, not at all. It's not every day we have someone here who's interested in Yelloly history!

Tell her the story about Mary dying, Bryony says, moving the apple juice out of the way to put the peas down, the awful story -

Oh, but that's not her. That's Mary Webster, Tony says.

Mary who? I scuffle in my bag for a pen.

Mary Webster - she married John Samuel de Beauvoir Yelloly, my grandfather, who was the son of Samuel Tyssen and his second wife.

You mean the Samuel Tyssen who was Mary Yelloly's brother? There are so many Samuel Tyssens -

That's right. Well, Mary was the mother of Claude and Sam - Claude was my father. And she was diabetic, you see. And anyway, she was lying there dying of puerperal fever after giving birth, poor woman, and it was a snowy day and the boys were making such a noise outside her window that they were told to play more quietly, but they didn't and then she died. Poor boys, can you imagine that?

At the other end of the table where we're eating lunch is a large wooden box covered in faded tattered paper, enticingly old. Also, a big pile of papers. Tony is sifting through these papers now with great enthusiasm. Unable to bear the sight of his elbows swishing up and down, I move both his and my glasses of apple juice out of the way. Fred, quickly seeing my hands are occupied, takes the opportunity to sidle straight in close to my plate.

I'd watch your salmon, if I were you, Julie. That dog is a thief, I told you. Get down, Fred!

I stroke Fred's silky head.

Good boy, I say.

Now you're encouraging him!

Sorry.

Of course my main claim to fame, Tony continues, giving up on the papers for the moment, is that I once had tea with Beatrix Potter.

You didn't!

He grins.

Oh yes, yes, I did. I was all of eight years old and we were up near Alnwick in Northumberland, you know, which was where the Yellolys came from, and I was taken to see her by some member of the family or other. And she arrived riding side-saddle, I remember, and really did manage to dismount very gracefully, given that she must have been quite an old lady by then.

I gaze at him, my pen in the air. Even though this has nothing to do with you, still I can't resist the picture. The stout, elderly Beatrix Potter looking down at a small male Yelloly.

And what was she like? I ask him. I mean was she friendly? Was she nice? Did she even like children?

Children? says Tony. Oh no, I shouldn't think so, not very much, not at all really. She certainly didn't want to have to hear us make a noise or anything like that. Children weren't really interesting to anyone in those days. But I still do remember one amazing thing - that in her cottage there was Tom Kitten's fireplace!

Bryony is smiling. She tells me she saw the film with Renee Zellweger, and I'm about to ask her if it was as bad as it sounded, but manage to stop myself just in time.

I really enjoyed it, she says.

Now this. Tony hands me a tiny ancient book. You use it for writing blank verse in Latin, I think. And look inside, look who it belonged to.

I open the flyleaf John Yelloly, 16 August 1826. I feel its impossibly small weight in my hands. This book would have been in your house. Your father's book.

Dr Yelloly, I say.

Exactly. And do you know how I got it? A friend at school found it in a second-hand bookshop, would you believe, and fleeced me for it. Really fleeced me. Seriously! I dread now to think how much I paid but I had to have it. I just had to. It's one of my most treasured possessions, you can imagine.

I can see why you had to have it, I tell him and he smiles.

But, I say, reading the name inside again, I still don't understand - what do you mean your friend found it? I mean how come he had it in the first place? You mean by accident?

Tony nods.

Complete coincidence. Can you believe it? He just came across it and bought it. Funny, isn't it? Incredible really. Just one of those strange things that happen. I mean it's no use to anyone really, he says happily. Unless of course you have a sudden desire to write blank verse in Latin, that is!

We eat our lunch. Fred comes and plants his nose on the table. Tony chuckles.

Look at that dog. He's a thief, a total thief He can't help it, poor boy, can't even disguise it - look at him.

He shakes his head.

Bryony offers me more potato.

I don't think he'll ever stop thieving, she says. I suppose when you've had to scavenge the way he did -Just to stay alive, poor chap, Tony agrees. And he pours more juice, and I look at the dog, who sighs a sigh of pleasure, relieved to be understood.

Jane Yelloly, female, single woman, 30 years, died 21st June 1838. Cause of death: [?] eterus together with affections of chest and head.

Tony and Bryony are making startled noises. He bites his lip, emotion on his face.

They're just copies I ordered up from the Family Records Centre, I tell them gently. But Tony holds them in his hands, the entries that recorded your deaths. He holds them and looks from one to the other for a very long time.

Goodness, he says at last, this is very - I mean, it's very affecting. Very sobering indeed to see these.

He looks at me as he hands them to Bryony, who also inspects them carefully.

No doubt those children, he says steadily, they all had TB. There's no doubt about it whatsoever in my mind. They'd have caught it from the milk, from a family cow. That was how you caught it in those days, you see.

Was it? I ask him, not sure whether I already know that or not.

Well, it was certainly one of the ways.

Tony had it, Bryony says then, putting the certificates back down on the table, and I wonder for a second if I've heard her correctly.