The Lost Child (17 page)
Authors: Caryl Phillips
“Is that right, Thomas?”
He nods, but he can’t take his eyes from his impassioned brother. Mrs. Swinson snorts, then laughs.
“The pair of them must think we’re simple. I mean, come off it, look at them. Getting the truth out of kids like them is like trying to get blood out of a stone. They’d steal the milk right out of your coffee. Somebody’s parents will have saved like billy-o to buy that watch as a birthday present or a Christmas gift.” She glares directly at Tommy. “You can’t just take it and not expect consequences.”
Mr. Hedges looks at the woman and tries to work out why she’s so angry. She’s not exactly acting like a guardian, but he generally does everything possible to avoid extracurricular situations, which is why he was so taken aback that this woman thought it perfectly fine to come hammering on the staff room door with her loud demands that he listen to what she had to say about one of “his boys.” She points at Tommy. “Honestly, Mr. Hedges, I think that one’s a bit funny in the head, and if you ask me, they both want a good clout to brighten up their ideas.” Mr. Hedges considers the red-faced woman, then looks at the two resolute boys, who sit quietly behind the small desks, and then at the watch in his hand.
“You know, perhaps you two boys should step out into the playground.” He addresses Tommy. “Is it alright if I hold on to this watch for now?”
Tommy nods and stands.
“I’ll have a word with you both, in here, at dinnertime, alright?”
They look at Mr. Hedges, whose stony face flashes them a quick smile as they file past him and out of the classroom.
* * *
Ben and Tommy stand together in the playground. They watch Mrs. Swinson pass slowly through the school gates and then turn left. It has started to rain again, but she walks with the umbrella still rolled up as though she has forgotten she has it with her. More pupils seem to be milling about now, for there are only ten minutes to go before the bell that will signal the start of the school day. As Mrs. Swinson finally disappears from view, Tommy recognizes Simon Longbottom loping towards them with a huge grin on his face, but Ben speaks before his new friend can say anything.
“I’m talking to my brother. I’ll see you inside.”
Simon Longbottom looks thrown, so Ben repeats himself.
“I’ll see you inside. I won’t be long.”
They both watch as Simon Longbottom uses his forefinger to push the wire frames of his rain-spattered glasses a little farther up his nose. Then Ben’s new best friend reluctantly moves off, all the while casting disconcerted glances over his shoulder. Ben turns to face his brother.
“Is Mam coming this Saturday?”
“I think so.” Tommy coughs and then offers further clarification. “She said she was if she can get time off from the library. But I suppose it all depends on her nerves.”
“I know.” His brother pauses. “I’ll see you at dinnertime. And tonight I’ll meet you over by the gates.” Ben quickly gestures with his head. “Four o’clock sharp.”
Tommy hears the bell for registration. However, he waits until the last boy has dashed out of the toilets and in the direction of his classroom. He bends over and puts his mouth to the tap and starts to drink the icy water, and when he’s finished, he draws the arm of his blazer across his mouth. Alone in the toilets, the only noise he can hear is the sound of a broken lavatory constantly flushing and the squeak of his rubber-soled shoes as he moves anxiously from one foot to the next. Today is his second day at this school, but he’s hopeful that it will be better than the first. And it could be that this Mr. Hedges is alright. Not as bad as he thought.
“Leaning on a Lamp-post”—George Formby
It’s years since I’ve seen one of those tellys. They look like a brown ice cube, and all the edges are rounded, and the screen’s a bit like a goldfish bowl. These days you never see them in people’s houses, and I bet they don’t even have them in museums. The old-fashioned tellys are so strange that most people coming across one might well be inclined to think, bloody hell, what’s that? That said, were I ever to clap my eyes on one of them, I’d be fascinated because of the memories it would bring up. I remember watching our set with Mam. Just the two of us on a Sunday afternoon, sitting in the living room of the new flat in Leeds and our Tommy asleep in the bedroom. I don’t know why, but I like to imagine a scene where I’m standing up tall in a cot and clinging to the top rail and peering in fascination at the flickering black-and-white images, but I know that, being six years old, I was sitting bolt upright next to her on the settee, my little legs sticking out, and I had both hands threaded neatly together in my lap as though I was trying to please her.
I remember the Arnhem Croft flat really well, but it sometimes makes me sad that I can’t remember that much about where we used to live in London. I know that it was small, and I’m sure that it had an inside toilet because in those days having a toilet in the house was still something of a big deal. Mind you, I can’t see Mam ever putting up with sharing a privy with other people. She seemed to take a lot of pride in insisting that we might not have had much, but at least we had standards, repeating it like it was a piece of scripture. What I do remember is that in the London living room there was a cupboard with a wooden train set that was stashed away, and I had to reach up and open a door and grab it from a shelf if I wanted to play with it. I wasn’t supposed to do this, but if nobody was looking, I knew that I could just about reach it. I don’t remember ever playing with the train set in Leeds, for after all, we had a telly now. Come Sunday afternoons it was just me and Mam, and sleeping Tommy, and the telly and the sharp smell of the gas fire if it was really cold out. I remember us once laughing together at a film that starred George Formby, who was gormlessly dashing about all over the place on a motorbike. He was funny, and we both loved the fact that he was behaving like a clot, but when the film was over, I’ve not got a clue what we did. Truth be told, I’ve no idea what we’d have done before the film, although I do know that, despite the evidence of a nice new bathroom in the flat, at some point every Sunday Mam stood me on a chair in the kitchen and gave me a strip wash, reminding me all the while that cleanliness was next to godliness.
What I do remember about London is that life was better outside the flat than in it. Our London street was quite wide, with tall houses on both sides and a café opposite us that we looked down on. There was a wall at the far end of the street, and if you got on your tiptoes and pulled yourself up, no doubt chafing the tips of your shoes as you did so, then behind the wall you could see slack water. I thought it was a river, or maybe a canal, but it was probably just the filthy runoff from some factory. However, as a child, I thought it looked splendid. After all, there was this mysterious body of water, and it was right at the end of my street. Of course, I’m pretty sure that I wasn’t allowed to go to the far end of the street by myself, so it must have been Mam who took me. I also remember going with her to a park that was under a bridge at the end of a main road. The park was little more than a steep, grassy hill that you walked up, and when you got to the top, you could look down and see right into a football ground. If it was a Saturday afternoon, then you could hear the noise and see the little spindly men running crazily around like clockwork toys, and I loved this and used to try and follow the match. Mam would smile and ruffle my hair. You’ve got lovely hair, Ben, but you’ll have to be careful that you don’t catch nits when you start up at school. If you do, they’ll shave it all off, and you’ll feel a right charlie. I looked up at Mam, who would usually be staring off into the distance, and then the sudden roar would tell me that somebody had scored a goal. You like your football, don’t you? And you know the names of all the players, don’t you? I’d nod confidently, but she’d just smile and say, give over with your fibbing.
On the way back to the flat she’d take it upon herself to remind me of the players’ names. Morrison, Chapman, Harvey, Connolley, Adamson, Connor, Firth, Young, Lewis, Appleton, and Smith. She’d laugh and then tickle me. Come on, you big soft lump, I know you can remember them, although come to think of it, I’ve no idea how
she
knew them. I suppose she must have memorized them from the papers, and she probably thought it was the sort of thing that boys ought to know. She’d make me practise the names till I got them right, and then she’d give me a gobstopper or an aniseed ball as a reward as we made our way back home. Come on, we’d better get a move on. Mam would reach down and take my hand, and with her other hand she’d push Tommy in the pram, and together we’d head off in the direction of the main road, where, during the week, the lollipop man patrolled the crossing when the children started to come out from school. This was the same school I was slated to attend come September. Once, when we were crossing the road right by the school, I noticed that one of my shoelaces had come undone, and so I stopped, and Mam bent down to tie it for me. Of course, in the end, I hardly spent any time at that school because we moved north to Leeds and left Dad behind.
I have a really clear picture in my head of the day a red double-decker bus got stuck under the bridge near the park, and how everyone came out and stood in the street and gloated. I don’t think anybody was hurt, but you’d have thought that the circus had come to town, for people were standing on the pavement and just gawping. I also have a good picture in my head of the rag-and-bone man trundling by our London flat with his horse and cart. Any old iron? I’d rush to the window and hop from foot to foot and beg Mam to take me downstairs and let me see the horse, and the few times that she did I could see that the horse looked even sadder and more clapped out than the rag-and-bone man. The man would slowly take his cart up the end of the street by the wall that held back the water and then do a clumsy U-turn and come rattling back with the same sad clip-clop sound. Any old iron? We never had anything to give him—nobody had—which makes me wonder why he bothered. At night Mam sometimes gave me an extra-big hug as she tucked me and Tommy into bed, and I liked that. I remember the train set, and the park and the slack water, and the rag-and-bone man, and the names of the footballers, and our Tommy in his pram, and the occasional extra-big hug. I also remember Dad. However, when we moved to Leeds, it was just me and Mam and Tommy and the telly, and George Formby behaving like a clot, and me and Mam used to laugh together on a Sunday afternoon while Tommy slept, and George Formby seemed to make her happy.
“My Boy Lollipop”—Millie Small
We soon got used to the fact that we didn’t have a dad, but it’s not like we saw that much of him when we lived in London. Me and Tommy used to go outside and kick our football on the grass that was beneath the balcony, before the council gravelled it over to make a play zone. When we finished, we’d go over to the side of the lifts where a rusty tap poked out of the wall, and we’d take it in turns to cup our hands and drink water until we couldn’t swallow anymore. One night we were asleep in our bedroom, and the next thing I knew I could feel Tommy shoving me, and when I opened my eyes, I could hear Mam crying, but I didn’t know what to do. I was the eldest, but I didn’t have any answers for this situation. Eventually I whispered to Tommy, let’s just go back to sleep. I was nearly seven and trying to be responsible. She’ll be alright, I said. Try not to fret. Things will be better in the morning. Tommy rolled over in his bed and closed his eyes, but I got my tiny transistor out from under the pillow and turned it on. I remember the song that was playing was “My Boy Lollipop,” but it’s a happy song and Mam wasn’t happy, so I quickly shut it off. I lay in bed with my eyes open, and I didn’t sleep that night as I was really worried about Mam.
“The Time Has Come”—Adam Faith
Every Sunday afternoon, me and Tommy used to sit cross-legged on the bright orange wall-to-wall carpet and watch the three o’clock film on the telly. Actually, first we’d watch the programme that showed the highlights of the best of Saturday’s football matches, and then we’d watch the three o’clock film. Mam would be lying on the settee resting. I’m tired, so you two please behave yourselves. After the film we’d go out and play football, as we had no interest in
Songs of Praise
, or any religious programmes. Because it was just the two of us, we’d play shots-in with jumpers for goalposts, and if the ball went anywhere near a jumper, we’d always claim it was a goal, arguing that if it had been a real goalpost, it would have gone “in-off.”
The film I remember the most was called
What a Whopper
, and it starred somebody I’d never heard of called Adam Faith. Mam slept through it, but me and Tommy both liked it, and I loved one of the songs even more than I liked the film. I was about nine, and I decided that I wanted the record, but this was going to be tricky as me and Tommy didn’t get pocket money or anything like that, and so nicking it was most likely going to be the only option. On Saturday mornings I played football for an Under-10 side that met up in the city centre. I’d become accustomed to getting off the bus a stop early and then making a detour through the open market. Not the covered market, for that was always just setting up, and it was like Aladdin’s cave in there with a game row, a fish row, a butcher’s row, and even a pets row, which was actually my favourite. If, for some reason, I wanted to explore the covered market, I’d do that on the way home, but the open market was always set up before the covered one, and so I fell into the habit of pottering around there, and soon made myself familiar with nearly every stall, particularly the record shop that sold 45s with the centre bits missing. Thinking back, I reckon they must have been rejects from a jukebox or something, but they seemed okay to me, and I learned to idly flick through a few racks, and then, when the bloke wasn’t looking, I’d slip one or two 45s inside my jacket and trap them against my side by tucking in my elbow, but not so that it looked like I’d broken my arm or anything. I’d carry on looking for a while, and then casually lean down and pick up my kit bag and saunter off out of the market and in the direction of the team bus. I must have been quite good at this thieving because I never got caught. One morning I was looking through the records, and in amongst all the stuff by Blue Mink and Herman’s Hermits and The Small Faces, I saw “The Time Has Come” by Adam Faith, and I remembered it from the film.
