The Lost Child (23 page)

I soon discovered that he was a retired copper, and he was trying to be liberal and all nice, but I could tell that he was as thick as two short planks. Half his clients were Pakistanis and Indians dressed up in all the gear, but he tried too hard when they came in, and he was always putting it on. They smiled sweetly, but I could tell that, like me, they didn’t think much of him. His other clients were corporate accounts types, ill-mannered buggers who just signed for their petrol and wanted to be treated as though the sun shone out of their arses. They were the ones who got shortchanged, because I soon learned how to fix one particular pump so that the meter wouldn’t clear. If the smarmy bastards asked for five gallons and the pump already had on two, I’d give them three gallons, and they’d have to pay for five. Naturally I’d keep the cash for the two gallons, and nobody was the wiser. I was skimming off at least a tenner a week, and then towards the end of September I quit with nearly a hundred quid in the bank. I packed up my things at the Gilpins’ and rented a van so I could drive south to university, but I decided to wait until Helen and Louise were at school before taking my leave.

That morning I could see it on Mrs. Gilpin’s jaundiced face that she was hoping that my going to university would be the end of everything. Good riddance to bad rubbish. Both she and her husband stood by the door and watched me lift the last box into the van, and then I came back into the front hallway, where Nancy Gilpin leaned in and gave me a pretend hug like she didn’t want to catch anything. Her husband offered me a firm handshake, and he wished me good luck, and I said thanks, and that was it, they were rid of me. I could tell that Mr. Gilpin wanted to say something more to me, but he could never come straight out with anything, he always had to go all around the houses, and now, with his wife gaping at him like a pit bull, there was no time. As usual, he’d missed the moment. I drove away from the Gilpins’ house on Manston Drive, and I took care not to look into the rearview mirror. Once I was sure that I was out of sight, I sped up and turned the van towards the moors, which was the opposite direction to where I should have been going.

I stopped by the side of the road and stared at the depressing landscape. Bloody hell, I thought, even with a full moon it must be pitch black up here at night. And cold, and our Tommy didn’t have his duffel coat with him. I shouted. Tommy! I walked a few paces away from the van and looked out into the distance. Tommy! Tommy! But it was no use. I should have done more for Tommy, and that’s what had been keeping me awake for years now: the feeling that it was my fault. As a family we had nothing, so of course it was straightforward enough for somebody to turn our Tommy’s head. It’s easy to turn a kiddie’s head when he has nothing. I’m sorry, our Tommy. Sorry for laughing at you at Silverdale when you wet the bed. Everyone laughed at you, but I shouldn’t have. However, I had no idea what was going on. Honest, not a clue. I took a few steps onto the actual moorland. There was nobody around, which was just as well, but I really wasn’t ready to climb back into the driver’s seat and point the van south. Not just yet. I wasn’t ready to abandon our Tommy again, so I made up my mind to stay put on the moors. Hours passed as I walked for mile after mile, and as the daylight eventually started to fade in the sky, I could feel the moors closing in on me, and for the first time in ages I began to feel close to my brother.

VII

FAMILY

Ronald Johnson carefully put the cup of tea back into the circle of the saucer and placed the unfolded newspaper on the tabletop. That was his grandson; he was sure of it. The boy was taller than he had imagined, and although he moved quickly past the window, he could see his daughter’s face in the upper lip and the eyes. There was a girl with him who was small and blond, with a kind and smiling face, and it looked as though they were holding hands, but everything had happened so fast. One second they were passing the huge glass window, so close that he could have reached through and touched them, and the next they were swallowed up by a crowd of jabbering, nervously excited students, who, once the traffic lights had turned red, streamed across the road towards the imposing nineteenth-century building where they would be taking their final examinations.

He took a deep breath and then picked up his cup and finished his tea before pouring himself a refill from the faux Wedgwood pot. The waitress arrived with his order of crumpets, and having put down the plate, she fished into her apron pocket and produced three miniature jars and gave him a choice of raspberry or apricot jam or marmalade. He was stumped and looked inanely at the poor young woman, who eventually took pity on him and left all three. Retired now, and in his late sixties, he often found himself worrying about the possibility of losing dignity, and these days he tried doubly hard to keep up standards. He always made an effort to dress properly in a jacket and white shirt and one of his wide selection of ties, none of which had stripes. In the past, he had tried blue shirts, and even pink, but anything but white made him feel like a dandy. He was a stickler for sturdy black shoes with a nice high polish, but since he’d lost his wife, he’d begun to experiment a little with his trousers, and he’d become fond of both turnups and flannels, so one or the other, or a combination of both, might appear, depending on his mood.

A new batch of kids were jostling around and waiting for their chance to cross the road. As he took them in, it suddenly occurred to him how light, almost weightless young people are, innocently floating along, unburdened by any experience of life’s sudden twists or turns. These students have joy, without fully understanding the prized nature of such a commodity, but soon enough they will be packing up their things and leaving the safety of their university years and setting out on their journeys. As he butters his first crumpet, he reminds himself of how important it is that he make contact with his grandson while he knows where he is, and before he loses sight of him completely. Once he graduates he’ll no doubt be off, and heaven only knows if he’ll ever be able to track him down again. Yesterday evening, after he’d found a place to park the car and checked in at the hotel, he took the pleasant walk across the centre of the town and presented himself at the porter’s lodge and asked if it might be possible to see Benjamin Wilson. The man ceased his form filling and peered up at him over the top of his reading glasses. In a sympathetic voice, he let him know that the college was closed to visitors, but told him that he was free to leave a message. He could see that the porter wanted to press him, and would most likely have flouted the rules and ushered him in and in the direction of the boy’s room had he shared more information, but he thanked the man and turned to leave. “Hang on a minute.” The porter opened the door to his small room and stepped out in front of him. “They’re all doing exams in the morning, over there.” He pointed across the street. “If you don’t want to leave a message, you can always see him either before he goes in or after he comes out.”

Once he arrived back at the hotel, he asked at the desk if there were any messages for him, half expecting Mrs. Barrett to have phoned, but the waistcoated receptionist shook his head and smiled, and then wondered if Mr. Johnson might be dining with them this evening. It had been a long drive, and he had completely forgotten about food, but he realized now that he should probably eat something despite feeling in no mood to sit alone in a dining room full of people. “Perhaps you might prefer to see the room service menu?” Indeed, he did prefer this, and an hour later he finished his platter of trout, new potatoes, and peas and stacked everything neatly back onto the tray, which he set down on the spare bed beside the large envelope of letters, and an assortment of her other writing, that represented all that he had left of Monica. For a moment he couldn’t work out whether to call downstairs and ask them to come for the tray or if he should just leave it be for the night. Either way, he knew that he needed a bit of peace and quiet so that he could peruse the contents one final time before giving the large buff envelope to his grandson, believing, as he did, that at this stage of the game that’s where the material rightfully belonged.

*   *   *

Ben looked across the examination hall and saw Mandy scribbling away at her paper, and he was once again conscious of the fact that he had nothing to offer her in exchange for the ongoing gift of her family’s warmth and generosity. Since they had started going out with each other at the beginning of their second year, he had spent every vacation with her folks in Wiltshire. Her older brother was away in the army in Northern Ireland, and her father always reminded him that while Michael was fighting the good fight, they had plenty of room in the house. Ben had explained to Mandy about having been brought up in a foster home, and presumably she must have said something to her parents, for they had never asked any questions. If they were nonplussed by anything, he knew they would be respectful enough to ask Mandy and not him, but he wasn’t sure how much she would be able to help them out. She seemed to understand that talking about his mother and father, or his brother, was difficult for him to deal with, so she never raised the subject. When Mandy’s granny died, and she had to go back home for the funeral, he did, however, tell her that he had just the one memory of his own grandparents on his mother’s side. He must have been about six, and both he and his brother were tired out when they got to Wakefield, and so, even though it was still light outside, they both were bundled upstairs and into bed. Then, before either of them knew what was happening, they were soon back on a train again. Tommy fell fast asleep, but Ben remembered looking up into his mother’s face.

“Doesn’t your mam and dad want us to stay with them?”

His mother pulled him closer to her side.

“No, love, we were only visiting. We just popped in to say hello, and now we’re off to our own flat.”

Having announced this, his mother slammed the door shut on any further discussion of his grandparents, and as both he and Tommy eventually discovered, the idea of talking about family in general was completely off the agenda as far as their mother was concerned.

*   *   *

The waiter asks him if the food is to his liking, and he simply nods, for his mouth is full of pasta and meatballs. The fellow couldn’t have chosen a more inopportune moment to start quizzing him, but he doesn’t seem to notice and offers a quick, self-satisfied grin and then moves on to the next table, where he presumably asks the same question. Having walked around the town for the best part of two hours, during which time he kept himself mentally spry by browsing the displays in bookshop windows, he hurried back to the main street and took up his watch across the road from the examination building. He positioned himself halfway between the college and the teashop where he had ordered breakfast, but it soon dawned on him that either his timing was off and the students had already finished for the morning, or perhaps they were exiting out of some back entrance that he was unaware of. When a bus pulled up beside him, and an excitable driver shouted, “Well, you getting on or what, mate?” he registered that he should move. He mumbled an apology and took a step back from the bus stop, and then watched as the elaborate doors concertinaed shut with a cushioned thud. There was no point to his dilly-dallying in the street, so he decided to go and find the rather unpretentious-looking Italian restaurant overlooking the river that he had walked past this morning. He hadn’t troubled himself to inspect the menu, but the presence of a blackboard on the pavement in front of the establishment convinced him that the food would be fresh as it looked as if the chalked-up offerings changed from day to day.

This morning, before he left the hotel, the lady on the front desk had handed him a folded piece of paper that contained a message from his next-door neighbour Mrs. Barrett. Would he please, when he had a spare moment, telephone her? But, the message reassured him, there was “Nothing urgent.” Last year he had finally come to the conclusion that rattling around in a big semidetached house by himself was more aggravation than it was worth. It was the postman who, having witnessed him struggling down the driveway towards the rosebushes with his secateurs at the ready, pointed out to him that the pain in his knees might be alleviated by considering the advantages of a bungalow. His home had barely been on the market for a week before he found himself at the centre of a bidding war, which eventually concluded with his being offered well above his asking price. For a man now living on the combined efforts of his state and his teacher’s pensions, the added sum of money was a great bonus and enabled him to buy into a new development that was in a small village to the west of the town, where he soon discovered that most of the newcomers were either retirees like him or first-time buyers looking to get a foot on the bottom rung of the housing ladder. The bungalow next to his was occupied by a Mrs. Barrett, who had moved in a week prior to his arrival. Recently widowed with no children, and never having had to work a day in her life, she seemed a little lost, but she was very nicely mannered and had obviously been accustomed to having access to the resources necessary to keep herself looking in tiptop condition.

To begin with, she asked him if he’d be interested in joining her at church on Sunday morning, but he had to tell her straight that this wasn’t his thing. He did, however, suggest that he’d enjoy her company for an evening stroll to The Bulldog, where they might enjoy a half-pint, or whatever took her fancy. A month or so later, when his chest problems began to flare up again, a hangover from his childhood pneumonia, she began to regularly bring him soup and sandwiches with the crusts cut off, and she insisted on faffing about and doing the occasional bit of tidying up around the bungalow. He was soon back on his feet, but he now found himself taking her for a twice-weekly run out in his Ford Escort, usually to the supermarket in the town centre, where the prices were better, and as a result, he was forced to listen to her going on about her Alfred as if he had been the thirteenth disciple. Some part of him knew that he should be grateful that he had such a caring neighbour who clearly enjoyed his company, but this woman had bullied her way into his life, and he simply wasn’t ready to deal with another person and all her needs and foibles. While he was wrestling with his concern over how best to bring this up with her, he noticed that certain items were starting to disappear from his place and were suddenly making an appearance over at Mrs. Barrett’s bungalow. First, a carriage clock, and then the silver tankard that the school had presented him with on the occasion of his retirement, but because, during his illness, he’d given Mrs. Barrett the spare key to his bungalow, it was no mystery to him how his things were getting over there.