The Lost Child Read online

  Ten children, running around in Suffolk. But, though you all survive childhood, only three of the ten live into ripe old age. Florence Suckling tells us that the family has a foe: consumption.

  It begins at Woodton. Your brother Nick goes first at twenty-two. Followed, the next year, by Jane, thirty, and you, Mary, twenty-one, on consecutive summer days. I think your parents must really hope that Sophy, who has hung on this long, might pull through but no, a year or so later, she also succumbs. She is twenty-nine. Harriet, Sam and Ellen all hang on till middle age, but the foe gets them in the end. Sarah, John and Anna live to see them all buried.

  When your mother Sarah Tyssen is twenty-two - already a whole year older than you will ever live to be - she knits a small brown purse with two gilt tassels and rings attached. With it, a letter:

  April 30th

  My dear Sir,

  Burns' poems and a little purse are scarcely worth your acceptance, but I offer them to you as a trifling remembrance of this day, of which, that you may enjoy many returns in health and happiness is the most sincere wish of your affectionate friend,

  S. Tyssen

  When she wrote the book about you all, Florence must have either seen or had possession of this purse, because she describes it exactly:

  The paper is worn and yellow but its neat seal of S.T. Is intact. The wrapper enfolding this letter and purse was written outside in a bolder hand - 'For dear Sarah - an old relic from "Miss Tyssen" in the spring of 1806 - July 31,1841.'

  The carefully preserved purse and letter were given back to her thirty-five years after her marriage, when she was fifty-seven years old Gust a year before her husband's death); so the little packet has a lifetime of romance between its leaves.

  A lifetime of romance. An old relic. A knitted purse with two gilt tassels and rings. Paper that's worn and yellow. It's easy to imagine your mother, the young Sarah, passionate and 'sprightly' as Florence describes her, knitting the purse, wrapping it and shyly handing the package to her darling, her future husband, your future father.

  Does she know he likes poetry? Has he even perhaps expressed a particular fondness for Burns? Is that how they get to know each other, earnestly and passionately sharing the verses that they both love? Or may be it isn't like that at all. may be your father, poor man, is beginning to regret the depth of enthusiasm he originally, in that first flush, expressed, since science, not poetry, is really his thing. He's a medical man, after all. And he fears he may have overdone the poetry thing, anxious to appeal to this accomplished and creative young woman with the interesting eyes. The woman who will one day be your mother.

  And what about your mother? Does she offer the gift shyly, cautiously, with the slight trepidation those words suggest? Scarcely worth your acceptance. Trifling. Or is that modesty all an act? Is she secretly confident that her touching, home-made gift will be very welcome since it's already quite clear that John Yelloly, the man who will one day be your father, likes or may be even loves her? Does she hope that he will not only accept, but treasure it too? That he'll take it out again and again in private, unfolding those poems, inspecting them for clues, a shy but certain happiness fizzing in his limbs?

  I made this for you because I like you. I give it to you as a way of telling you that. I like you. I love you.

  But then, thirty-five years later - when your father gives it back to her, what is it then but a dry and dusty thing, a relic? Half of their children already under the earth, DrJohn himself only months from his grave. A lifetime of romance. But is that really any consolation for what came next?

  I have a relic, we have a relic. It's our son's Kangaroo - a soft toy given to his sister when she was a baby. A toy which (at not quite two, having no idea of why it should be hers not his) he straight away stole and slept with for the next fifteen (though he would deny it was that long) years. I keep Kangaroo on a shelf with my sweaters. His drooping, overwashed, overslept-with body can transport me straight back to warm, safe things: nights of tucking my boy up in his bed, making him safe. Nights when I knew exactly where he was. Nights when I knew where I was too.

  I rescued Kangaroo. When our boy, evicted from his disastrous and briefly lived-in flat, absconded, leaving us to move his possessions out in a hurry, I rescued him from the chaos and filth. I remember how I stood there in the middle of a room full of rubbish - shrugged-off underpants and jeans and unopened bills, Rizla papers, sticky beer glasses rimmed with ash - and saw Kangaroo lying there, helpless, on an old stained mattress.

  I snatched him up. An old friend.

  If I hadn't snatched him up, that might have been the end of him. He might have ended up in a bin bag, in a dustbin, on a dump. I wouldn't have wanted that.

  What happened, Mary, to your mother's little knitted purse? How long before it was finally forgotten, thrown away, or else left to disintegrate in someone's attic? may be it ended up in a house clearance. may be it was bombed in a war, destroyed in a fire.

  And how long will Kangaroo last? How many times anyway can a thing be rescued before there's no one left alive to remember why it was so precious in the first place? Bones dissolve in the earth, love turns to dust, and even relics imbued with so much love and hope and memory - lose the meaning invested in them, once the investors are gone.

  The Reading Room is very quiet now. Just the muted rattle of keyboards and the breathing that goes with so much concentration. Lamps illuminating each desk, each space, each bent head. Outside it will be dark already, spitting with rain. Feeling my mood drop, I yawn and decide I've had enough for one day.

  I can't think about you any more. I can't think about anything. I give the book back in and get the 68 bus home.

  Suffolk, June 1838. The road to Woodton. But who's to say it's such a perfect summer's day? may be it's tearing down with rain and wind - one of those grim, wintry June days we've had so many of recently, days when the whole world has a tight lid of darkness on it from dawn to dusk, frequent showers bashing the trees, melting the countryside to mud.

  A hard wind blowing. And Sam's lodgings quite cold and gritty and not very comfortable at all. Sparse furnishings, sour grey air, a meagre fire in the grate. No kind doctor to certify the death and offer reassurances.

  Maybe the coach has to stand for a little longer than it should at Ipswich while they load you on, and may be the coachman gets soaked, struggling not to swear as the rain trickles down the back of his neck.

  Taking you home. Would you even have had a coffin? How long to get one made? Sarah's face glimpsed through the grey sheet of the rain, raw with tears.

  Mud on her boot and the hem of her skirt.

  I'll do it, she says. I'll take her home.

  Funny, but you won't go away.

  I have this image of you, sitting on a stone wall in breezy, dappled sunshine, legs swinging, eating apples. I don't know why apples. Apples that have ripened in a hayloft somewhere. A barn full of straw and sunshine and you outside, striped skirts, a thin shawl flung around your shoulders, long fair hair falling into your eyes.

  And it's a chilly day, a bright blue windy day, almost spring but not quite, the air not quite warm enough, goose-pimpling your arms. Children are shouting. Sam and John doing something with sticks. Baby Ellen crouching for a moment then plopping backwards to sit. And you pushing yourself off the wall with your hands, kicking your legs out to jump down, apple finished, pushing the core between the hard cracks of the wall, pushing your hair out of your eyes.

  Pushing your hair out of your eyes.

  I go back to the British Library. Stomp up to the main counter in Humanities r and ask if it's possible to get Florence Suckling's book about you photocopied so I can take it home.

  No, they say, it isn't. I take it to a desk and carry on reading.

  It's 1816. You are born. The ninth child. But your mother Sarah Yelloly - a comely, dark-haired matron - is busy. She runs both nursery and schoolroom herself Writing and drawing and painting with her older children. Teaching sums,
grammar, geography.

  Just like me with my kids, just like so many mothers for years and years, she keeps almost every little thing you children do. Every little scrap you write or draw, every letter, every bit of needlework. She keeps it. I keep it. I have Manila boxes marked Kids and Baby Stuff. In them, Mother's Day cards, yellow, poster-painted daffodils made from egg boxes. Tiny notebook stories, folded and stapled. All the little love notes they ever wrote me. Puppies and kittens, kisses and stars. The polythene hospital bracelets with their surnames on them, snipped off with scissors when we brought them home.

  We keep these things because we have to. Because we want to. Because it would be impossible not to. Florence Suckling knew that your mother kept these things because, in 1898 when she wrote her family history, she clearly had access to them. She held them in her hands.

  Your mother's system of education is strict - passionately felt and well organised, but strict. Each day's work is clearly written out, every single hour timetabled and accounted for. And when she can't be there with you, notebooks are given out and your older brothers and sisters are expected to keep daily journals which are then forwarded to her. This way she keeps an eye on your progress.

  Around this time, you all get sick with whooping cough and Nick and Anna also have measles. Your parents, anxious about your health, decide to move you all from London to a place called Carrow Abbey in Norwich.

  Sarah is fourteen, Jane thirteen, John twelve, Harriet eleven, Sophy ten, Sam nine, Nicholas eight, Anna six, you are five, Ellen not quite born. It is your first real taste of outdoors, of fresh sharp country air. But even in the country, education continues:

  Monday, Tuesday etc.

  To walk for an hour and a half after breakfast, at the expiration of that time, the school bell to be rung, everyone to come in and go to lessons in the following manner:

  Sarah to teach Sophy to read. In the meantime Sam to write and sum, Sophy to do the same whilst Sam reads.

  During this time Harriet to teach the little ones, and Jane to do two long division sums.

  After this Harriet to do her French, writing and sums and hear Sam and Sophy parsing and geography. Sarah and Jane to do exercises and translation and a French verb.

  On Friday and Saturday, if Miss Davidson is here, Sarah will only hear Sam and Sophy read; and on those days, Jane will translate Prince Chesi into English and French.

  If the weather is not fine, then business is to commence immediately after breakfast; and if, in an hour's time, the weather becomes fine, they may then walk for one hour, but all at the same time, and resume lessons immediately after coming in again, which they are to do upon nurse's ringing the school bell. If the weather does not permit of going out, then business is to be gone on with immediately after breakfast, and the children may run and play for an hour and a half before tea, in the dining parlour. John to be allowed one hour and a half and two hours from the time he comes in before reading begins.

  Four children to breakfast, two dine in the dining parlour.

  To be up and dressed at half past eight o'clock every morning, if later a black mark.

  Lessons to be done in the schoolroom, except on those days that the rooms are cleaning, and on that day in the dining room.

  Go to bed at nine o'clock.

  No one to go up the best stairs whilst cleaning.

  If the weather is not fine, business to commence immediately after breakfast. How you must wish for fine weather. How your hearts must sink if you wake up to a black sky and the steady beat of rain. And what about the best stairs? Is there a mad, naughty morning when, giggling, you tiptoe up all the same, trying not to leave a footmark on the freshly mopped wood?

  Another journal, kept by your sister Sarah during one of your mother's absences in July 1821, with answers scrawled in pencil, goes like this:

  'Did you order dinner before breakfast?'

  'Yes.'

  'Have you got up in proper time?'

  Sarah: 'Yes.'

  Jane: 'Yes.'

  Harriet: 'Yes.'

  'Have you walked five times round the garden before breakfast?'

  Sarah, Jane, Harriet, Sophy each signs: 'Yes.'

  'Were you ready for breakfast?'

  'Yes.'

  'At what time did you begin your French and did you do it well?'

  Sarah: 'About half past nine but I read before breakfast.'

  Jane: 'Ditto. Ditto.'

  'Have you taught Anna and Nick and Harriet their lessons?'

  'Yes.'

  'Did the little ones do good lessons?'

  'Pretty well.'

  'Have you been ready for dinner?'

  All: 'Yes.'

  'What time did you breakfast?'

  'Nine precisely.'

  'What time did you dine?'

  'Half past three.'

  'Have you been agreeable and polite to Mademoiselle and to each other?'

  Sarah: 'Yes.'

  Jane: 'Yes.'

  John: 'Yes.'

  Harriet: 'Yes.'

  'Have you behaved well in every respect to nurse?'

  Nicholas, Anna, Mary: 'Yes, very well, all.'

  And I stop right there. Because this is you. You just moved into the frame. Here you suddenly are, five years old and standing there just behind Nick and Anna, plump hands folded behind your back, joining in: Yes, very well, all. It's the very first time I've heard your voice.

  My boy at five years old. Five and a half Summer mornings before school, we have a little routine. After his father has dropped the other two - the two babies - at nursery, we have half an hour in hand, so we have breakfast outside in the garden together - French breakfast! - him drinking hot chocolate and eating baguette, me drinking coffee and reading aloud a chapter of whatever novel we're in the middle of Five Go Off in a Caravan Together. James and the Giant Peach.

  I read and he drinks his pink-brown chocolate from a big yellow cup and watches me over the rim. Serious and intent. The sun is hot on the metal table. He has a scratch on his hand. He wears an Aertex shirt. Birds are singing and the underneaths of the leaves are lit up, the lightest summeriest green, and bees are already crawling in and out of the roses.

  It's going to be a boiling hot day.

  I look at my watch.

  When it's time, we go inside - the kitchen suddenly full of shadows, cool and dark - and I wipe his mouth with a flannel and we get his bag and we walk to school together, hand in hand.

  He asks me questions about the world - questions he's asked before, and new ones too. I try to answer. When I don't know an answer, I tell him so and he squeezes my hand. He doesn't mind when I don't know things.

  I squeeze his hand back.

  And I am entirely happy. I think these days will probably go on for ever, that this is how life will be from now on, will always be. I think I will have this same experience with his brother and sister, that I will go on having it, that I have got it all to come.

  But in fact that was it. I didn't do the same thing with them. And it was just that one summer when he was five. In fact, I say summer but it was probably just a few weeks of warm weather that particular term. It might not even have been weeks, it might have been days. How many days? How many days did we do this thing of French breakfast in the garden and reading aloud, and why is it so important to me, now, to know?

  And then I get to it. The page I've been dreading:

  The pocket almanac for 1836, January 11, has the following prophetic entry in Mrs Yelloly's hand: 'This year seems to begin cloudy and overcast. Oh! Let it by Thy pleasure to turn these shadows to our eternal benefit.'

  1837 - This prayer was answered in the following year for at least one of her children, for Nicholas passed from the night of clouds and sickness of this present world into the brightness of that land which has no need of the sun.

  That land which has no need of the sun. Victorian euphemism at its finest.

  Time passed and the New Year of 1838 opened on the party assembled at Wood
ton for the Christmas season, and Mrs Yelloly' s almanac opens with its accustomed prayer of thanksgiving and of hope, and with never a foreboding of the shadows of Azrael's wing which must even then have been hovering over her home, for Mary at that time must have been ill of the fell consumption which was so soon to terminate her young life.

  'In the spring John came home with the germs of smallpox, and Mary, to escape infection, was hurried off to Sam's bachelor quarters at Ipswich. John had long been consumptive but the fiercer microbe of the fever prevailed over its brother phthisis and, after his recovery from the smallpox, John was a hale man to the end of his days. Less fortunate was Jane, who succumbed to the infection on 21st June, and was buried at Woodton by night.

  'Anna and Harriet were both ill of the disease at the same time and, to add the culminating blow to the poor, distressed mother, Mary died of the shock of her hurried removal, at Ipswich, on the very day of Jane's death, and was brought home to Woodton by Sarah (who had nursed her) within the week, and the funeral sermon was preached for both sisters on the same day.

  'At the funeral sermon at Woodton, when Jane and Mary were buried, the preacher said: "Both were young and lovely; the one asked for, and had, the blessed sacrament on her deathbed, the other was delirious, but in her wanderings all her ravings were of singing hymns and pious words.'"

  Which of you is it who has the sacrament, you or Jane? And which of you is delirious and raving? If Jane dies of smallpox, then is it more likely that she's the feverish one? Or does it work the other way in that, understanding she's going to die, she has time to request a blessing?

  But you - you die of shock. It's not expected. Something in you just bends and snaps. One moment you're weak, you're ill, but still very much here. Next moment, you're gone. They can't think you are going to die or they would never send you off to Ipswich. Dying in Sam's bed, away from home. Breath stopped, goodbyes unsaid. Singing hymns and saying pious words - that seems unlikely. Are you delirious? Do you even know what's happening?