The Lost Child (3 page)

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Soon after Monica’s birth, his wife had dropped a few broad hints that she wouldn’t mind having a second child, but Ronald Johnson had determined that one would suffice. After all, there was a war on, and it was incumbent on all English families to make sacrifices of some kind. Monica had arrived in 1937, when it looked as though Chamberlain, whom Ronald greatly admired, was well on the way to securing some semblance of peace. Three years later, any mention of his affection for the former prime minister caused him to go beetroot red, and so his wife knew full well to avoid this topic. By 1940 the whole country was hunkered down and silently preparing for the worst, so he thought it unnecessary to engage with Mrs. Johnson on the question of a second child, and the idea was quietly dropped.

A teenage bout of pneumonia had left him with a shadow on his chest, and so he was deemed unfit for active duty and therefore able to continue with his career teaching geography to boys, whose only real interest in their studies seemed to relate to troop movements in various corners of the globe. At a time when the duties and obligations of war were causing many families to temporarily break apart and accustom themselves to the novelty of female leadership, Ronald Johnson was able to continue to exercise a benevolent patriarchal authority over his household and therefore take a keen interest in the development of his daughter.

From the moment she was born he had tried to please Monica. During the day he often found himself ignoring the rows of pupils ranged before him, preferring instead to stare out the window and ponder what trinket or sweets he might bring back for her that evening. Even in the most austere of times there were shopkeepers who knew how to track down scarce commodities, and he had forged a good relationship with one or two of them who seemed to be able to get their grubby paws on chocolate or licorice. As soon as he reached home and pushed his way through the door, there she would be staring up at him and patiently waiting for her goody. When she was a little older, and her school held a VE Day pageant, it was Monica who wore the Union Jack robe and tinsel crown and proudly held aloft the placard proclaiming “Peace,” and he almost burst with pride when he read the letter from Monica’s headmistress that confirmed that his daughter was one of the three “specially talented” girls chosen for music lessons.

Ronald Johnson had carefully mapped out a postwar career path for himself that would accommodate only fee-paying or grammar schools, for he was sure that his spirit would wilt in the barren world of the new secondary modern schools that the local council, in keeping with government guidelines, was rapidly establishing to accommodate those who had failed the Eleven plus examination. However, despite his achieving some success and securing a junior master’s position at the local Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, money remained tight. Nevertheless, when Monica was ten, he declared that this was the right time for the family to buy their first house, a small terraced affair in a better part of town, but he wasn’t prepared to put Monica’s future, to say nothing of her happiness, at stake. This being the case, he funded her piano lessons with extra money that he earned giving Saturday-morning instruction to the twin Shadwell boys, who he knew stood absolutely no chance of passing the Eleven plus. Monica, on the other hand, sailed through her examination, and she began to win certificates and the odd trophy at music festivals all over the north of England. The mantelpiece and sideboard in the new living room supported a sequence of expensively framed photographs of his daughter flowering into a beautiful girl, and late at night, after everyone had gone to bed, he liked to sit alone and marvel at the images that showed off her poise and self-belief to best advantage, although occasionally he did find himself irritated by the seemingly nonchalant path that his daughter seemed to be steering between his own indulgence and his wife’s silent pride.

“Daddy,” she had once asked him, “are you happy?” She was barely twelve at the time and was balanced carefully on the arm of the settee with her legs dangling over the side. The question disturbed him, for he didn’t know just what it was that his daughter was seeing that prompted her to ask such a thing, but he simply swirled the ice in his drink so the cubes tinkled together like the percussion section of a band. Then he leaned over and snaked his hand around her midriff and tried to tickle Monica, but she pulled away, and the unanswered question hung in the air between them.

His daughter seemed to take it in her stride that an Oxford college had accepted her without any stipulation that she achieve a particular set of grades. It had been her own idea that in addition to applying to redbrick universities she try both Oxford and Cambridge, but her headmistress had called him in and warned him that the school had no history with either university. She also reminded him that familial ties appeared to count at both places, and Monica would not be able to point to any relative who had attended either institution. Nevertheless, he let the headmistress know that he fully supported his single-minded daughter in her application, although he never mentioned anything to Monica about going into the school. On the morning she received the letter announcing her acceptance, Monica reluctantly shared the news with her parents over tea and toast and then trotted off to school as though this were just an ordinary day. Her father, on the other hand, drove to work with his briefcase deftly balanced across his knees, and he utilized the whole journey planning how he might break his news to the staff room in a casual manner so it wouldn’t come over as though he’d joined up with the boastful brigade. However, by the time he began the long walk down the corridor towards the staff room he realized that it was going to be impossible to contain himself. When Miss Eccles, the French mistress, asked him if he would like a cup of instant coffee, he just blurted it out: “Our Monica’s going to Oxford.” He immediately felt his face colouring up, for after all, he spent most of his working day trying to exhort boys to speak grammatically correct English, and now listen to him. “Our Monica.”

Miss Eccles beamed. “Well, Mr. Johnson, that’s marvellous news. Just marvellous. Congratulations.”

Given all her advantages and ability, it made absolutely no sense to him that Monica should be throwing everything away by getting involved with a graduate student in history nearly ten years her senior who originated in a part of the world where decent standards of behaviour and respect for people’s families were obviously alien concepts. She never bothered to send letters or postcards home to them, and so once again he had been forced to write asking how she was, and by return of post Monica had given her parents the disturbing news, delivered, unsurprisingly, as a fait accompli. Naturally, he had little choice but to share the disconcerting information with his wife, and then he began to make plans to undertake the four-hour drive sometime in the next few days in order that he might lay down the law. When he eventually knocked at the door to Monica’s college room, he discovered his daughter, far from giving out any impression that she might be pleased to see him, to be in a particularly truculent frame of mind.

He had stared out of the queerly shaped window that afternoon and listened to Monica’s increasingly strident voice as she talked openly of being with this man. Quite unexpectedly, he realized that her flat vowels had, if anything, become more pronounced, as though she were now trying to flaunt her northern origins. In fact, were he to close his eyes he would no longer be able to swear that it was his own child speaking.

“Look, you haven’t even met him. How can you judge somebody that you don’t even know?”

“I want you to understand that your mother and I are concerned about
you
, not some Tom, Dick, or Harry. I haven’t motored all this way to waste time talking about somebody else.”

“Okay then, why
have
you come all this way? It’s not like you to take a day off school.”

And so there it was, she had put him on the spot before any tea could be poured or cake eaten, and it looked as though he was going to have to tell her that it was either this man or her parents. Monica was going to have to make up her mind. He drew himself upright and began by letting her know that he had given the matter a great deal of thought. Inwardly he was devastated, for this wasn’t how he wanted it to go. He had hoped that there might be some preliminary discussion in her room, with perhaps a glass of sweet sherry, and then a walk around the college grounds or maybe down along the banks of the Cherwell. In his most optimistic moments, he pictured her excitedly begging him to hire a boat and smiling at his attempts to punt. That would be something, punting down the river with his daughter, the Oxford student. But now there would be none of this, for things had rapidly collapsed. When she once again insisted on introducing her friend’s name into the proceedings, he had little choice but to deliver his prepared statement that contained the word “sadly,” and thereafter they both had plunged into an abyss of silence. It had all happened too quickly. He wasn’t naive: he knew that girls of her age went giddy over romance and probably talked extensively about the opposite sex; no doubt a small number of young women, finding themselves beyond the parental home, were quite possibly active and prepared to risk the ignominy of landing themselves in the family way. But nothing in Monica’s upbringing had ever led him to imagine that his daughter might turn out to be loose.

Whenever he thought the blubbing was over, the tears would come again, each time with a greater vigour. He now found himself clinging to the steering wheel with his gloved hands in an attempt to stop shaking, but he realized that this was no good, and he would have to pull over into a lay-by. He sat perfectly still as a platoon of lorries thundered by and shook the Wolseley, and then he reached for his handkerchief and blew his nose with a loud, messy snarl. He would have to sort himself out, for he couldn’t allow his wife to see him like this. Alone in the house, she would be eagerly anticipating some account of their child’s situation, and it was his responsibility to report the events of the day with a sobriety tinged with an appropriate degree of sorrow. He dried his eyes and quickly checked in the rearview mirror to make sure they were not bloodshot. He adjusted his tie and then took one, two, three deep breaths, and each time he was careful to exhale slowly. Then he lowered his head onto the steering wheel and began once more to sob.

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After her father left her standing outside the oversize door to the college, Monica decided to go to Julius Wilson’s basement flat and tell him what had happened. Having assumed that he would have the whole afternoon to revise the footnotes to his doctoral dissertation, he was clearly surprised to see her, and for a moment she couldn’t tell if he was pleased or put out. He was wearing that enigmatic grin she couldn’t always read, but he was not the type of man to play games, so she guessed that he would tell her if he needed some more time to himself, and she would happily read until he was ready. However, once she had kicked off her shoes and curled herself up in his cosily padded armchair, he began to relax and carefully placed his papers in a large grey box file and then turned off the desk lamp. He crossed the room and perched on the edge of the armchair before slowly unfastening the yellow bow so that her hair tumbled out across her upper back and shoulders.

“Would you like me to make you a cup of coffee? Or I could go out and get something stronger.”

She looked up at him and offered a forced smile, but it was still too soon for her to talk.

Julius Wilson was a tall, gangly man who had spent the greater part of his short adult life cultivating a patina of gravitas that might belie the boyish smoothness of his face. In his private moments, when he felt safe, he was capable of a giggly skittishness that suggested one drink too many, but he would never let this aspect of his personality out in public, having invested too many years perfecting his air of studious severity. “I am not here to play; I am here to make the most of this opportunity” was his stock answer to his fellow students who pointed to the fact that, as secretary of the Overseas Student Association, he might wish to take advantage of his position and socialize a little more often. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, I have no interest in chasing girls. I had plenty of girlfriends before I came to this country, and if I am lucky, I might have one or two more before it is time to renounce my bachelorhood.” Julius would offer a brief chortle, yet deep down he would wonder why these people didn’t understand that he had sought the position as secretary of the association as a way of making contacts that might aid him in years to come. But six months ago his world had been shaken when, at the association Christmas dance, a curious-looking undergraduate actually approached him and asked if he would care to take the dance floor. At first he thought there might be something wrong with the girl, for she had a lethargic, expressionless gaze that was a little off-putting, but he didn’t want to be rude so he took her hand, knowing that she would soon discover she had chosen an uncoordinated man who didn’t really dance. By the end of the number it was discernible that she too took no real pleasure in dancing, so he offered to buy her a drink and they found two seats at a table near the bar and she prevailed upon him to tell her all about how he had come to be in England as a scholarship student. Throughout Christmas and New Year he had found it impossible to banish strange Miss Johnson from his thoughts, and by the time students were once again rattling through the city’s broad streets and narrow lanes on their clanking bicycles and readying themselves for the new term, he had made up his mind that this oddly intense northern girl had the right resources of strength and courage to make the journey with him.

During that first wintry night in his bed, he admitted to her that something about her quiet generosity and ability to listen made him feel safe and anchored in England. He whispered: “This is what you have given to me.” As she once again enticed him to cuddle under the blanket, he didn’t tell her that never before had he experienced what it felt like for a girl to be hungry for him and eager to please but equally keen to attain her own satisfaction. He had been in the country for seven years now, but possessing Monica Johnson signalled an arrival. They both wriggled out from beneath the blanket and listened to the sudden commotion of hectic, scurrying footsteps up above on street level, and then she pulled herself onto one elbow and simply looked down into his dark eyes.