I think so, I say. I smelt it just now. It's not cannabis.
And a part of me thinks how it's quite funny really - his father and I have never smoked cigarettes in our lives, and I never dreamt the day would come when we'd both be openly, innocently relieved that our baby was inhaling tobacco smoke.
He sits outside in the sun and smokes and writes poetry in a red leather-bound journal.
Where did you get that book? I ask him, because it looks expensive and we know he has no money.
He smiles. His eyes are as frank and blue as when he was five years old. He hesitates a moment.
I helped myself to it, didn't I? he says.
You mean you stole it?
He shrugs. Call it that if you like.
That's the only thing I can possibly call it.
He shrugs, carries on writing.
Do you mind? he says. You're disturbing me. I really need to get on with my work.
Sometimes we try to talk to him.
We can't live like this, we tell him.
What do you mean? Like what?
You're disrupting family life. Making life impossible for all of us.
Oh yeah? So what're you gonna do? Kick me out again?
You know that's the very last thing we want to do, we tell him.
He says he wants money. He needs money. He says that if he just had some money, everything would be all right. He'd feel more relaxed and he'd be able to behave. So we try to draw up a contract.
We'll give you a generous allowance (so you don't have to steal) and total freedom at weekends to do what you want, stay out all night if you like. In return, you stay at home in the week, eat supper with the family, do some studying, don't wake your brother and sister, get to bed on time.
He tells us these conditions are cracked, warped, insane. He calls us cunts. He says our standards are ludicrous, restrictive, monomaniacal, middle-aged and middle class.
We plead guilty to the last bit.
All we want, we tell him, is for you to be able to fulfil your potential.
He laughs. He says it's up to us. If we don't give him money, he'll take it anyway. He'll help himself. And by the way, it's no good our putting locks on our study doors. Because he'll just kick them down anyway. A few cheap little locks aren't going to stop him.
Please don't make threats like that, his father says.
But a few days later he does exactly that. Takes a running leap with his foot up the way he's seen them do in the movies. Our nice Victorian bedroom door is broken, a jagged fist of splinters sticking right out. I pull the lock out of the wood and lay it carefully on the windowsill. Then I go on making the bed.
Everyone in the house is exhausted now. Everyone is having trouble getting up in the morning.
We ask for a meeting with his teachers. He hardly ever gets to school on time now and - unsurprisingly - we keep on getting phone calls, warning notes.
We sit in a little room in the art block, sunshine pouring in.
Please, we tell his warm, open-faced young tutor, be as tough with him as you like. We'll support you all the way. He needs to know that the rules still apply, that he isn't special, that he can't get away with this kind of behaviour.
She and her colleague hesitate, glance at each other. They speak very carefully, clearly anxious to handle this matter as sensitively and appropriately as possible. They say they do know there have been some problems at home of late. They know, for instance, that he was out of the house for a while. That must have been very traumatic for him. They hear what we are saying, but at the same time they know we'll understand that they want to be as supportive as they possibly can.
I tell them that we do understand this. And I mean it. I think how glad I am, really, that our boy has these sympathetic, nurturing people behind him.
But, the boy's father tells them, his voice cracking slightly, that's all very well, I do understand where you're coming from. But the trouble is we're pretty sure he has a drugs problem.
He shoplifts, I tell them then - because a part of me wants so badly to shock them, to make them see how dramatic and sad all this has become. He just can't stop smoking cannabis and he's reached a point where he'll do anything to enable himself And we just don't think him getting away with coming to school so late is helping.
He needs clear boundaries, adds his father. I'm not saying we're managing all that well to set them at home. But it would help so much if school could be firm with him.
His teachers regard us with real concern. We can see they are trying so hard to keep an open mind and it's hard to blame them. They are exactly where we were a year or so ago. While they know what cannabis is, I'm not sure they know about skunk.
His father tells them some facts. The strength of it. The mental health implications. The fact that we only know all of this because we've been forced to educate ourselves so fast. I glance at his face - taut, sad, a touch too passionate - and hope they won't think he's lecturing them.
If they do, they don't show it. They regard us both with real sympathy. I feel tears springing to my eyes but I swallow them back. And his tutor explains - carefully, diplomatically that our boy is incredibly bright, really seriously intelligent, and they've known other boys like him go through similar phases and come out the other end. She really does want to reassure us. She and his other teachers fully understand that his behaviour at the moment can be, well, challenging. But If we don't mind her saying so, she's known a lot of seventeen-year-old boys.
And I've spoken to him, she says. We've had two long chats. He's been very receptive.
Receptive, I think. Of course. His biggest skill.
Please don't believe everything he tells you, I say and my heart sinks as I realise how cold, how destructively unmaternal and unsupportive I must sound. He's so plausible. Everyone wants to believe him. Everyone does believe him. The denial, the self-delusion. It's his biggest problem, in a way. I mean I love him so much, I add, but I just think it's time someone saw through him.
The look of careful kindness she gives me makes tears of frustration spring to my eyes.
His life could be so great, I tell her. He has so much life ahead of him.
I know that, she says.
OK, says the boy's father a touch harshly, so, cutting to the chase, how're we going to get him to come to school?
Calmly, the tutor shows him a piece of paper. Squares and boxes. A series of targets. He has to report in each day to various different teachers. They will all have to sign a sheet of paper. He will be encouraged very strongly by her to meet these targets.
I gaze at the boxes and squares.
Very strongly?
We'll be monitoring him very closely.
And if he doesn't meet the targets?
She blinks.
Let's just give him a chance first, shall we?
As we walk back to the car, I tell the boy's father off How on earth can we hope to get the teachers on our side If he loses his temper and shouts like that?
I didn't shout, he says, jutting out his bottom lip. And anyway you cried.
I didn't cry. I nearly cried but I stopped myself
I saw tears in your eyes.
OK, but I didn't let them come right out.
You nearly did.
I nearly did. OK, great, thanks, punish me for that.
We drive home in depressed silence. We know our son well enough to know that a set of targets will make no difference whatsoever to his attitude to school. But we also know the school well enough by now to understand that his teachers are doing all they can - doing everything they can to support this bright, like able, plausible boy who has experienced a traumatic time at home. Because no one can say that being thrown out of your home isn't traumatic. I think of how that fact must shock them.
I understand why they want to give him a chance, I tell his father. I just wish I still felt optimistic enough to want to give him one.
His father says nothing. I see tears standing in his
eyes.
What none of us know at this point is that by April he will be stealing from us again and we'll have to put locks back on our doors. By early May he will have punched his father, who was, yet again, trying to stop him kicking one of these locked doors open. And by late May he will have hit me so hard on the side of my head that I'll find myself in A & E with a perforated eardrum.
CYCLONE
I'm a cyclone,
making trouble wherever I go.
I'm a cyclone,
I end up hurting whoever I know.
Just scratching at
the essence of life,
to see what lies beneath,
but all I find
is grey tarmac streets
that never end.
Under my feet, a trail
of destruction follows me.
Smashed feelings,
splintered fragments,
of other people's lies.
Why won't you please leave me behind?
I'm a cyclone, problem child wherever I roam. I'm a cyclone, the only thing I'll ever know.
Regret is slow
In coming,
but it knows the truth
from lies,
same way I always did,
when I looked in your eyes.
I'm a cyclone,
I know it now and I've known it before.
I'm a cyclone.
3
ONE NIGHT ON the Internet, hopping between drug-information websites and Yelloly-related searches, I find something interesting. A page from the East Cambridgeshire News dated December 2003, with the headline Cromwell Returns After Three Hundred Years But Keeps His Silence on Mystery Message:
A unique oak carving of Oliver Cromwell said to have been sculpted from life has been donated to the Cromwell House Museum in Ely and will be put on public display for the first time next year. The ancient statue, carved at least three hundred years ago, is reputed to possess a centuries-old unsolved secret involving a mysterious silent message meant to be sent to Cromwell's generals. The distinctive two-third life-size statue, the only one of its kind known to exist, was presented to the museum on Friday by Tony and Bryony Yelloly from Warwickshire, who said that the carved figure of the man who signed the death warrant of Charles I and became the Lord High Protector of the Commonwealth after a bloody five-year Civil War had been passed down through his family over five generations, although the carving was much older even than that . . . Mr Yelloly said the statue is known to have been a treasured family possession at the time his ancestors lived at Cavendish Hall in Suffolk . . .
Yelloly. Cavendish Hall. Your parents later moved to Cavendish and your sister Ellen was married there. Definitely the right Yelloly, then.
I call Directory Enquiries and give the name, the initial (A for Anthony?) and the area and am immediately given a telephone number. Before I can lose my nerve, I dial it and when I get a man's voice on the answer phone I leave a quick, apologetic message.
He calls back the very next day.
Tony Yelloly here.
His voice is warm, friendly, he sounds about fifty.
This is all very exciting, he says.
I try to explain, better than I did on the answer phone, my interest in his family.
Well, he says, I can tell you right away that John Yelloly came from Alnwick in Northumberland and there are certainly plaques in the church there put up by his family. And he was a surgeon and I know that he had all his children immunised against smallpox, which was a very new thing to do in those days.
He did?
Yes. Dr Jenner. He was famous for developing the vaccine. I think he was a friend of the family or something.
That's strange, I say and I tell him how I read in Florence's book that smallpox was brought into the house and that Jane died of it. He agrees that doesn't quite make sense. But then may be the childhood vaccination only protected a person for so long? He says I should talk to his daughter Julia.
We're in our seventies, Bryony and me, but Julia knows an awful lot about the family history. She's definitely the one to talk to. Oh and by the way, I have a couple of oil portraits one of Dr Yelloly and another of his daughter Sarah.
Oh, I say, I'd really love to see them.
Well, you can, you can. I think I also have some pictures by Sophy Mary Yelloly.
Mary's sister?
That's right or - I'm getting confused here - they could be by Mary herself Anyway I know for a fact that some years ago my daughter swapped some old surgical instruments that belonged to Dr Yelloly for a book of pictures, a sort of album, it was.
You mean there's another book of pictures? By Mary?
Oh dear, I don't know who it's by. I'm afraid you'd have to ask Julia.
And do you know who has them now, the surgical instruments?
I've no idea. Again, Julia might know. They weren't very interesting. Just some old bits and pieces, you know. The pictures are much nicer.
I ask him what they're like.
Watercolours of Woodton, I think. But I'm really not sure which family member it was who did them. Mary was the youngest, you say?
The second youngest.
Oh well, you'll have to ask Julia.
I tell him that any paintings done by the Yellolys are probably quite valuable now.
Valuable? Oh I doubt it. Of limited interest, I imagine.
I can't resist telling him, then, how much Mary's book went for at auction. I hear him take a breath.
That's very interesting, he says and then, after a little beat: You're not serious?
He tells me that his grandfather was born at and lived at Cavendish Hall and the place definitely still exists.
A nice lady lived there, an American, I think, called Mrs Matthews or something beginning with M. And I dropped by one day a long time ago and she very kindly let me look around. She was very cordial and she said we must have a party in 2002 as the Hall was built in 1702! But I never did hear back from her. I expect she must have died.
He asks if I've been to Woodton. I say I have, a couple of times. But I don't know exactly where Woodton Hall was in relation to the church. Is it all gone now?
Well, Woodton Hall was just behind the church. Pulled down eventually, yes. But there's the remnant of the garden wall still there. It's perfectly visible if you know what you're looking for.
I tell him I never noticed it.
Oh well, you have to know what you're looking for, you see.
For a moment I remember the suggestion I sensed - the immensity of the Hall's great bulk - on that icy day.
I tell him I've been trying hard to find the graves. That I've looked everywhere. Does he have any idea where they are?
Oh, he says, the graves are there. I can't remember exactly where. I know they take some finding but they're definitely there.
I ask him then If he knows of Florence Suckling's book, the one I've been reading in the British Library.
He laughs.
Oh yes, we have a copy of that. A very treasured volume, but you'd be most welcome to borrow it. I think Julia's got it.
He tells me he's amazed I'm so interested in all of this.
Well, it's pretty amazing, I tell him, to be talking to a real live Yelloly.
He chuckles.
Well, we'll have to meet. I haven't got much but I'm more than happy to show you what I've got.
He invites me to lunch in three weeks' time. He says he'll pick me up at the station. I tell him that's really kind but there's no need to do that. I'll get a taxi.
Oh no, but I insist.
Only a day later, a casual late-night Google on the Internet throws up something else. A page from Yale University:
Yale Center for British Art, 2003 Acquisitions: three sketchbooks by Miss J. Yelloly, with drawings of London tradesmen and nearly eighty watercolours of Norfolk (1831-40) Paul Mellon Fund.
Is it really possible? Can there be Yelloly paintings over there as well? I send off an email and
get an almost instant reply:
Dear Ms Myerson,
Amy McDonald has passed on your inquiry to me. I realize the press release you saw online is not quite accurate; the three sketchbooks are not all by Miss J. Yelloly and I apologize for any confusion. We do have three albums by members of the Yelloly family, dating from 1827-45, and only one is by Jane. We have the following in our collections (these are the labels for a display we just did of our Recent Gifts and Acquisitions):
Three albums by members if the Yelloly Jamily if Noifolk, 1827-45. Paul Mellon Fund
1. Sarah Tyssen Yelloly, 1785-1854. Sketchbook, 1827.
2. Jane Davison Yelloly, 1808-1838. Sketchbook, 183 138.
3. Sophy Mary Yelloly, 1811-1840. Sketchbook depicting local tradesmen and villagers of Norfolk, 1839.
I saw the Grenville album last year at a bookseller's shop in London but it was too expensive for us. Do you know where it has ended up? In any case, you are welcome to come and consult these works. We have only begun doing the research on them and anything you can tell us would be marvellous. I think there was another sketchbook that appeared on the market some years ago but I don't have access to my notes on that as I'm working at home today (24 inches of snow is blocking my door!). I can pursue that if you'd like and let you know.
Best wishes,
Elizabeth
On a bright, warm, early-summer evening, we drive to see the addiction counsellor that the Manhattan psychiatrist originally recommended. She lives some way out of London, in the country. Because of work, we end up having to go at rush hour and we drive for ages, getting lost in the country lanes.
For a while - me reading the map and getting it wrong, him pulling in so he can have a look, me complaining that he never trusts me to navigate him anywhere, him saying: Yes, and I wonder why not - it almost feels like fun. Long-ago carefree holiday afternoons when getting lost didn't matter. When we had no one else to look after and weren't due anywhere and could make life up as we went along.
The Lost Child Page 7
