by Shane Dunphy
‘From the dead?’
‘Yes. The social worker on the case spoke to both children at length about it. It seems the two boys often go to play down the bottom of their garden, and when they do, every day, from what they have said, their father appears to them. They both see him and speak with him.’
‘Does the mother see him too?’
‘No, but she hasn’t gone out of her way to discourage the fantasy. She seems to be buying into it, finding comfort in it almost.’
‘I take it that Mrs Walsh is still grieving?’
‘Very much so. She has most certainly not moved on.’
‘It’s not an unusual childhood fantasy though, is it? I mean, it’s simply a form of imaginary friend.’
‘I’d tend to lean that way myself, except that the boys’ behaviour has become increasingly erratic and violent since the alleged visitations began. The social worker was unsuccessful in breaking the pattern of behaviour. A therapist from child psychiatry made a few visits, and reports that, rather than this being simply a case of, as you so reasonably say, imaginary friends, the boys are having visual and auditory hallucinations. They have had to be removed from school because of their outbursts of violence. Biddy is now saying that she cannot manage them. They have even had to be kept inside the house and garden because of their attacks on local children.’
‘And this all began when they started seeing their father? There was no aggression before that?’
‘No. The boys say that he is actually telling them to behave in this way. Their behaviour was always reserved before this, according to teachers and neighbours.’
‘So we’re probably looking at some kind of repressed anger. They need their dead father to give them permission to act out just how devastated they feel at the loss.’
Ben grinned. ‘That seems a good place to begin. But use it as a starting point, no more than that. I want you to do some simple play work with these boys, and see what comes out. Who knows, we might all be surprised.’
Haroldstown was five square miles of housing estates built like a patchwork quilt on the north side of the city, with no particular thought to consistency of architectural style or even to quality of building materials. Some of the houses were constructed to last: solid, angular blocks of stone work, created in the late nineteen fifties and still standing firm and strong, while others were more elaborate, wooden-framed concoctions that had degenerated into crumbling wreckages within a bare five years, seeming to have been moulded from papier-mâché. The vast majority of the structures were built by the local authority, and, while not nearly as devoid of redemption as the Oldtown flats, the area had long been run by a series of criminal gangs. These groups operated pretty much in full view of everyone, including the police. Ask any family in Haroldstown and they could tell you who was the leader of the Northside Bandits, or the Haroldstown Tribe. The gangs were given these lurid titles by the tabloids, and their commanders were all christened with similar nicknames – the Captain, the Rottweiler, the Accountant. It made you feel as if the whole thing was part of the sixties’ Batman TV show.
The problem was that this was real, and, as easy as it was to poke fun at the inherent silliness of it all, these groups were menacing. Execution-style shootings were becoming more and more common. Feuds now ended in deaths on an all too regular basis. Some saw the gangs as the people’s way of reacting to the abject poverty they lived in, but that was an overly simplistic analysis of the situation. The gangs may have started out that way, but they had degenerated into a cycle of self-perpetuating violence, and the people they preyed on were not the wealthy or those who had some hope of altering the status quo. Drugs were peddled to young people right there in the estates. Prostitutes were recruited from the scores of young women unable to earn money to feed their fatherless babies. And the bodies that were found in ditches or lying in the gutter, shot at close range in the base of the skull, were all unemployed Haroldstown residents, usually ‘known to the police’ as active participants in organized crime.
Toddy Walsh had been one of these young men. I remembered the newspaper reports of his death. He had been the equivalent of middle management in one of the ferocious, smaller groups, dubbed by a local journalist as the ‘Twilight Posse’. Obviously an ambitious individual, Toddy had attempted to stage a hostile takeover of the Posse’s board. The problem was that his supporters were easily swayed from their purpose and he had been sold out. He was found on a patch of wasteland not far from where he lived. He had been shot in the back of the head at point-blank range with a heavy-gauge shotgun, but not before he had been tortured viciously. The Gardaí had to identify him from his dental records.
The Walshes lived on a narrow street deep in the heart of Haroldstown. Each side of the road was lined with terraced houses, pressed upon each other as if they were seeking comfort or warmth. I parked up on the cracked footpath outside the tiny, overgrown garden of the Walsh residence. Women, still clad in dressing gowns at ten thirty in the morning, were standing at their gates chatting. They stared at the strange car and the unknown man arriving outside the hard-luck house. What further misery was being brought upon this sad little family? A dozen eyes followed me up the short pathway to the warped front door. I knocked smartly and waited, ignoring the accusing eyes and mutters.
Biddy Walsh looked like someone who’d had every last vestige of joy wrung from her. A tall, thin woman with stringy black hair and hollow, pockmarked cheeks, she had probably once been very attractive. Now she carried the shadow of her pain around like the walking wounded. She looked me over with resentment, coupled with what seemed to be almost relief. I could tell that she was close to breaking point and was well aware that she needed help, but that a redundant sense of etiquette would stop her from giving me too much information. Like it or not, I represented everything that had kept her people, the population of this ghetto, subjugated for so long. I was The Man, or at least his cipher, and therefore not to be cooperated with.
I introduced myself.
She said nothing. I waited for what seemed like a polite amount of time and then cleared my throat.
‘Er, can I come in, Mrs Walsh? If I’m to do some work with Bobby and Micky, I’ll have to be able to see them, won’t I?’
She stepped aside and allowed me in, but her eyes were full of suspicion and anxiety. The hallway was dark and gloomy and a stale smell of cooking hung in the air, even though it was only ten thirty, and I doubted very much that she had been cooking since the evening before: fried breakfasts were a luxury few in Haroldstown could afford. The walls in the hallway were covered with photographs of Biddy and her family, but I was not invited to stop and admire them. Still unspeaking, she brushed past me through a door to my left. I followed.
The living room was moderately better lit but would still be difficult to read in. The curtains were only partially open, and a sheen of dirt coated the windowpane. Biddy sat on a grimy couch and stared into space. I looked about and saw an armchair covered in unironed clothes. I picked them up, made as neat a pile of them as I could and placed them on a coffee table. Then I sat down. The walls of this room were also completely hidden by framed photographs – hundreds of them, in fact. I could see Biddy in some of them, looking young and happy, beside a dark-haired, dark-eyed man who was looking into the camera with a steely gaze. He was not handsome: there was something cruel about the set of his mouth, and his eyebrows met in the middle, but he certainly looked striking. This, I assumed, was Toddy Walsh. As my eyes travelled around the countless images, I saw that he was in almost every single photograph. With him and Biddy in some of the snapshots were two little boys. I could trace them through infancy and into early childhood. The boys were both dark, like their parents, although the older one seemed to resemble his father more, while the younger mostly took after the mother.
‘Where are the boys, Mrs Walsh?’
Slowly, she turned to look at me.
‘They’re with him.’
‘I�
�m sorry …’
‘They’re out the back with their father.’
A sense of dread washed over me. I pushed the feeling aside and smiled.
‘Great! Well, that’s perfect. Can I go out and meet them? It would be great to see exactly what they’re doing. It’s a good place to start actually.’
A look of horror spread across her face at the prospect.
‘No! No, you stay here and I’ll go and get them, bring them to you!’
I’d like to go to them …’ I pressed, sensing this was a sore point, but wanting to see where it would lead.
‘No! I said no.’
She stood up, trembling now. As she walked to the door, I called after her: ‘Mrs Walsh, can I ask you why you don’t want me to go out to the boys?’
She stopped with her back to me, her head lowered.
‘Because,’ she said, her voice a whisper, ‘you’ll frighten him off. I want the boys to get better, not to be so wild. They’re being eaten up by what’s happening – they don’t understand it. I’m terrible worried about them, so I am. The social workers tell me you can cure them. I want you to do that for me. For them. Give them peace. But you’re not to drive him away. Not now that he’s come back to us.’
Then she was gone. I sat for some minutes, considering what had just passed between us. There was a lot I still didn’t understand, so I decided to simply focus on the boys for the time being.
I stood up and opened the curtains to better let the daylight in and then went back out to my car and got a box of tissues. I cleaned the window as best I could. When I was finished, the room, while far from pleasant, was reasonably bright. It was a start. I then brought in a box, from the boot of my car, which contained a few simple toys and some felt-tip pens and paper.
Five or six minutes later, Biddy came in with the two boys. I felt like I knew them already, even though it was only from the countless pictures that were all around me. Bobby was six years old and taller by a head than his brother. Size aside, they were very similar, except that Bobby had the hard, adversarial gaze and firmly set mouth of his father, while Micky retained the melancholic, gentler visage of his mother. They stood in the doorway of the room, side by side, watching me with exactly the same trepidation and worry their mother had displayed on my arrival. I had the toys (mostly cars and figurines) and drawing equipment spread out on the floor before me.
‘Boys, I’m glad to meet you. Come on over and let’s have a chat.’
The children did not move, but Biddy gently pushed them towards me. Obediently they moved forward and stood in front of me. I smiled at them and motioned for them to sit. I was already cross-legged on the floor. Bobby threw a look over his shoulder at his mother and, when she nodded, lowered himself to the carpet, followed by Micky.
‘You can leave us, Mrs Walsh. Keep the door open, please. I’ll give you a shout when I’m done.’
She left. I looked at the two boys.
‘Well, lads. I’m Shane. You‘ve met some other people, haven’t you, who’ve come to chat with you since you’ve started having some problems at school and whatnot?’
The boys listened, wide-eyed. Micky gave a slight nod.
‘I’m not really here to talk. I’m going to be meeting you every day for the next few weeks, just to play. We’ll have one hour every day at this time, and in that hour you can do whatever you like. It’s your time. I’ve brought some toys and games with me, as you can see, but we can use your toys too, if you want. We can play in here or in the garden; it’s completely up to you. This is your special time, and my job is just to be here and make sure you have the best time you can.’
The boys looked at me, still keeping whatever they were thinking or feeling to themselves, although I could see Micky eyeing the toys longingly.
‘So what do you want to do today? I thought you might like to play with the cars and trucks and things, or maybe we could do some colouring and drawing? It’s up to you.’
I did not want to prompt them any more than that. I stopped talking and watched. There was a great deal of communication going on between them, but it was all non-verbal. Micky, with his eyes, was imploring his older brother to give it a go, but Bobby was staunchly refusing, remaining po-faced and impassive. Micky reached out a hand and tugged his brother’s sleeve. The gesture was met by a very slight shake of the head. Micky sighed in exasperation and seemed to decide to take the situation into his own hands. On his butt, he scooted over to the toys and picked up a yellow truck. Casting occasional looks at his brother, who was observing him in disbelief and disapproval, he began to examine the vehicle. After a brief once-over, Micky started to push it on a winding path in and out of the other toys I had laid out on the floor, making a loud engine noise to accompany its progress. Bobby could not stand this mutinous behaviour any longer.
‘Micky, you shouldn’a done that! We said we wouldn’ talk to these peoples no more! They wants to take us away from Mam.’
‘I din’ talk to him, Bob. Looka the toys he’s bringed. None o’ the others bringed us toys. He said he doesn’ want to talk, anyway. All we gots to do is play. Come on. You take the digger!’
Bobby was jiggling up and down on his haunches at this stage, obviously really wanting to get involved in his brother’s game but feeling that he shouldn’t. Micky seemed to be enjoying his brother’s discomfort, and pushed the truck over so that it rolled right past Bobby’s feet. This was too much for the older boy, and he too scooched over and picked up the digger. The game was afoot.
For this first session I simply sat back and made very little comment about what the boys were doing. ‘Play work’ is about using children’s play as a kind of psychoanalytical experience, so the play-worker will record what has occurred and will then try to analyse any patterns or particular symbols that emerge. I did not want the boys to see me writing down anything, so I made mental notes, but to be honest it would take more than one session for any recurring patterns to evolve.
The play on that first day was rudimentary. The boys cleared a space on the floor, lined up some of the cars and trucks and made an imaginary building site, taking turns with each of the vehicles. The digger was used to make pretend holes and fill them in, so I suppose I could have posited that the boys were trying to ‘bury’ their feelings about the loss of their father, but that seemed too trite. They ignored me once the game began, and I was glad of that. It meant that I could sit back without interruption and observe. The dynamic between them was interesting. It had seemed at first that Bobby was in charge, but Micky had taken the lead and initiated the play. As the game continued, the boys took turns being leader, and it was simply impossible to discern who was the alpha male between them. They were both strong personalities, and they appeared to accept instinctively that each had character strengths that sometimes had to be brought to the fore. It was a surprisingly mature relationship for children of such young ages, but then, I mused, they had been neglected since their father’s death, left largely to their own devices. They had grown up much more quickly than many children.
With ten minutes remaining before the session was to finish, I interrupted the game. There was something I wanted to try.
‘Boys, I’d like you to draw something for me. Is that okay?’
Micky clapped his hands and laughed. ‘Yeah, sure! I’m a good drawer, I am. I always keep the colours between the lines. Don’t I, Bob?’
Bobby nodded and took the page I pushed across to him. I ripped open the package of felt-tip pens and handed them over.
‘Now. When I got here, you were both down the bottom of the garden, weren’t you?’
They nodded.
‘What were you doing?’
‘We were down talking with our daddy.’
There it was. As simple and open as that.
‘Right. I want you both to draw your daddy for me. What does he look like? Try and remember for me what he was like just now, when you were with him.’
Fantasies like the one the
boys were experiencing are often purely instinctive, an almost automatic response to a crisis. Making them put down on paper what they were seeing could be enough to cause the delusion to end. After all, they weren’t really seeing anything.
The boys looked at me with wide eyes, but nodded and grabbed the markers. They put their heads together, bending low over the pages on the floor. Another thought occurred to me.
‘Hey, how’s about we have a competition? Shall we see who can draw the better picture?’
I don’t usually encourage competitiveness in play situations, but I had an ulterior motive in this instance.
‘Bobby, why don’t you go over there, and Micky, you go over there.’
I put them at opposite ends of the room.
‘Now, when I say go, you both start drawing, and when I say stop, you have to stop, and bring the pictures over to me here, and we’ll see which is the best.’
‘I’ll win, I’ll win!’ Micky chanted, bouncing up and down.
‘Will not!’ Bobby retorted. ‘My teacher always told me I was a great drawer! I’ll win!’
‘Well, we’ll have to see,’ I said. ‘Ready, set … go!’
Both heads immediately went down and furious scribbling began. Five minutes later, Bobby looked over at me through slitted eyes.
‘What’s the prize for this?’
I grinned. ‘You just wait and see. It’s a good one.’
A shrug was my only response and the busy activity continued. After they had been drawing for ten minutes, I called time.
‘That’s it! Bring ’em over here and let’s have a look.’
Both boys bounded over, slapping the pictures down in my lap, eager looks on their faces. I laughed despite myself. No matter how tough the situation, no matter how disturbed the mind or emotions, children are still children.