by Julia Romp
But as the months went on, I began to realize that he was far more selective than that. You know those people who always seem to have a problem and need endless cups of tea while they talk it over? I’d met such a woman—we’ll call her Sue—who always seemed to be in trouble and I was usually the person she wanted to talk to about it all. Sue would turn up day or night, quite often a bit worse for wear, and I’d sit on the sofa listening while George paced around. He didn’t often take against people, but he really didn’t like Sue because her fake tan and tattooed eyebrows made her look like a clown to him and he didn’t like that at all.
Ben never went near Sue either, and I wondered if I’d ever have the courage to tell her that her visits weren’t always welcome. As it happened I didn’t get the chance, because one night when Sue turned up and lurched toward George, Ben dug his claws into her, defending his friend, and we never saw Sue again after that night. Maybe it was just a coincidence, but I’ve always wondered if it was because she realized that her number was up. I’d always been too soft to turn Sue away, but Ben had told her how we all felt in no uncertain terms. As much as I knew he shouldn’t go around attacking people, I was just a tiny bit grateful that he’d stood up to Sue on behalf of us all. If only he’d have been a bit nicer to cats and dogs life would have been perfect.
Lots of people have a special voice for their pet. Sometimes it’s high and squeaky, sometimes low and gruff. Whether it’s dog talk, hamster talk or whatever-pet-it-is-that-they’re-chatting-to talk, most use it only when they’re alone with the animal, for fear that other people will laugh at them. But I didn’t worry about that; George and I used our cat voices to talk about anything and everything under the sun. Cat talk was giving us a happy life, a fun one, and drawing us closer together all the time, so that’s why people like Mum, Boy, Nob and Tor heard us cat talking when they came to visit. Instead of wondering if I’d finally lost my marbles, they started using it too when they saw the good it was doing George. Imagine Nob and Boy doing it; one’s a cab driver, the other one’s a drainage technician for the local council, yet they both spoke in high-pitched voices because they wanted to do anything that would bring George out of himself. None of us understood why cat talk worked, but we could hear for ourselves that it was helping George say things he’d never said before.
“My nan’s a pensioner,” he’d say in cat talk to Ben when Mum was visiting.
“Yes, I am,” she’d reply in her special voice.
“She’s old,” George would say. “Anything that happens my mum rings her mum because she’s a pensioner and knows everything.”
Cat talk gave us all a window on to George’s world, as he started asking questions—and listening to answers—in a way he’d never done before. Previously when Mum had tried telling him the odd thing about me as a child, George had never responded. Now he laughed when she told him what I’d got up to. He loved hearing how Granddad had once had to bash me on the back when I swallowed a balloon by accident or how I’d tied one of the cups from my plastic tea set to a helium balloon and cried for days when it floated off into the wide blue yonder.
“You should have seen her face,” Mum would cry with laughter as George giggled.
Cat talk allowed George to speak about and through Ben, which was easier for him than talking about or as himself. And as we got to the end of our first year with Ben, I began to wonder if I could use it to speak to George about other things as well. Discipline was one thing I decided to see if cat talk could help with. Telling George off had never got either of us anywhere, because many rules just did not make sense to him and over the years I had begun to understand why.
Some rules are clear cut, aren’t they? For instance, George had to understand that he could not hurt someone, so when he was little I’d bitten him when he did it to other kids, trodden on his foot when he’d gone through his stamping phase and pulled his hair when he kept tugging on ponytails in the playground. Usually it had taken a couple of years to get George to learn what I was trying to teach him, and I lost count of the times when I’d tried to show him that something hurt—not too much, of course, but just a bit—and he’d lain on the floor telling me to call an ambulance because I’d broken his arm or sprained his foot. But while he learned such rules eventually, with other rules it was harder to teach him, because a lot of them are more about feelings and niceties than black and white facts, so they didn’t seem logical to George; explaining those kinds of rules made about as much sense to him as saying that the sky was pink with green spots. Now, though, I had Ben to try to teach George.
I started with burping. George had a terrible habit of doing it really loudly, which had always bothered me because I wanted him to understand manners as much as possible. Whatever I’d said about burping, though—and I’d said a lot over the years—George wouldn’t stop doing it, so I decided to try a different approach.
“Ben don’t like that,” I said one day after George had burped as we sat at the table.
His face didn’t flicker as I spoke and he was silent for a minute as he thought.
“Don’t he?” George asked eventually.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because he thinks it’s rude and Ben don’t like being rude.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Ben is a very polite cat. He don’t agree with burping.”
George did not say anything else but soon after that conversation, he started running out of the room to get some toilet paper whenever he wanted to burp. Putting the paper in front of his mouth, he’d still let out a noisy one but it was a start at least. I had to laugh, though, when he began to go that extra George mile with the new thing he’d learned. After realizing that Ben was a very polite cat, he started letting anyone who accidentally burped in front of him know that it wasn’t on.
“Ben don’t like that,” he’d say seriously. “He thinks it’s very rude.”
Cat talk wasn’t just about me communicating better with George: it was about him communicating better with me too. Although he had never been interested in books, George was showing me more and more that he had stories inside him—they just had to be told in a way that didn’t use paper and words.
“Do you do or do you don’t like sand castles?” George asked Ben as they sat in the sand pit together, Ben looking up at him.
“I do but I love Windsor Castle the most and that don’t have any sand,” George said as he pretended to be Ben.
“Well, I’m going to build you a castle,” George said back to him. “And you must stand on the bucket because if I open the gates then the water will come rushing round the castle and you might get wet feet. OK, mister?”
Once again he replied as Ben. “Well, I do and I don’t like getting wet, so don’t get me wet, please, George. I only get wet when I wear my diving suit and it’s packed for my holiday.”
“But don’t you like swimming with the fishes under the sea?” George asked him. “I’ve been and seen them. All the fishes swimming in the blue, blue sea.”
Lewis was with us that day and had dressed up in a pirate suit before climbing up on to the trampoline.
George looked solemnly at Ben. “You’ve got a pirate suit like Lewis, don’t you?” he asked. “But yours is the real thing because you were a Johnny Depp stunt cat, weren’t you?”
Lewis started bouncing up and down as George carried on talking.
“Ben was Superman’s double, you know,” George told Lewis. “And he will get his wings and save you, Lewis, if you fly off the trampoline because you’re so skinny. Ben is not a cat. Ben’s a stunt cat.”
Lewis started laughing along with me as George told us his story, and even though he did not look at us, I could see he liked hearing us enjoying what he was saying.
“I will show Lewis how he is supposed to fight like Johnny Depp,” he said for Ben. “George loves it when we fly so high we can touch the moon. Mum don’t know we’re pirates. But we do, don’t we? We know that we are.
George and me.”
Chapter 10
The thing about being a single mum is that it’s always one on one with your child. You’re the only person in the world who lives with them day in, day out, the only one who completely understands their needs—and if your child is autistic there are a lot of those. Howard was a good dad to George: they went swimming or to the cinema together, he would look after George for a couple of hours if I needed him to and he’d spent our first Christmas in the new house with us. But we still didn’t do the parenting together day to day, which meant I had no one to chat to about a bad day, leave in charge for a few minutes when it all got too much or have a good cry on. At least not until Ben came along.
Before he became part of the family, George and I were together every minute of every day when he wasn’t at school and there were times when I’d wondered if I had the strength to answer another of his questions or the patience to listen to more chanting. If George got something into his head he couldn’t get it out and on days like that he would follow me around like a shadow as words rushed out of him about whatever was on his mind. Food was one of the things he talked about a lot and time was another.
“When will I be eating my tea?” he’d ask as soon as he got in from school.
“In just over an hour,” I’d tell him.
“What time is that?”
“Five o’clock.”
“What will I have?”
“Egg and beans.”
“How many eggs?”
“One.”
“Not too crispy?”
“No, George. Just right.”
“Will the yellow be runny or hard?”
“Hard around the edges and runny in the middle,” I’d tell him, knowing that was the way he liked it.
“Will I have chips with one egg and beans?”
“If you like.”
“Will the white be big?”
“Not too big.”
Then George would think for a minute. “Stop!” he’d exclaim. “I want pasta and sauce.”
“OK.”
“Will it be the normal sauce?”
“Yes, George.”
“No. I want chips and egg.”
“OK.”
If George ever stopped talking, it was only for a second before he began again.
“Mum, mum, mum, mum, mum,” he’d chant as he followed me from room to room. “Mum, mum, mum, mum, mum.”
“Yes, George?”
“I want egg and chips.”
“OK.”
“What time will I have it?”
“Five o’clock.”
“How many hours is that?”
“It’s one hour and twenty-nine minutes.”
“How many minutes?”
“Eighty-nine.”
“How many minutes and seconds?”
“Eighty-eight minutes and forty-five seconds.”
“I didn’t like my lunch today.”
“Why not?”
“The yogurt was funny.”
“Was it?”
“It was a different yogurt to what I like.”
“I don’t think it was, George.”
“Yes it was.”
I’d once given him a raspberry yogurt instead of a strawberry one and had never heard the end of it.
“My apple wasn’t crunchy like yesterday’s.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“My juice tasted different.”
“Did it?”
“Warm.”
Sometimes I’d try to walk away, but George wouldn’t stop talking.
“The butter came out the side of my crackers. I don’t ever want them again.”
“You don’t have to have them, then.”
“I don’t want them again.”
“I know, George.”
“I don’t want crackers again.”
“OK, George.”
“I don’t want crackers.”
On and on it went, and if I tried telling George that I had a headache or had answered as many of his questions as I could for that day, it didn’t make a difference.
“Mum is a bit tired,” I’d say.
“Ryan breathed on me in school. He smelled of cheese and onion crisps.”
“Did he?”
“Yes, and James pushed me.”
“Did he?”
“In the hall. In the hall. In the hall. He has yellow in his ears. It makes me sick. I can’t look.”
He followed me everywhere: if I was in our tiny kitchen cooking, George would stand a foot away and I’d trip over him; when I went for a bath, he’d sit on the toilet; when I went to brush my teeth at night, he’d be right behind me. The only way to get him to leave me alone was by distracting him. Sometimes I’d suggest a game of hide and seek just so that I could lie under the duvet for a few minutes. As George ran around the house looking for me, I’d lie in the dark and wish it could swallow me up.
But just as Ben changed things for George, he changed them for me too. With him around, I started to get a few minutes’ break as he played with George, which meant that I could nip off for a quick bath or go into the garden to quietly deadhead the roses. And as much as Ben understood what George needed, he also knew when I was at my lowest, which was usually at the end of a tiring day. When George finally fell asleep, I would sit with him to make sure he had really settled and Ben would jump on to my lap.
“Another long day, Baboo,” I’d sigh as I stroked him and he’d look at me, starting to purr.
It’s amazing what that sound did for me. It was like the rhythm of the sea or the rumbling of a train on its tracks, regular and soothing. Every mother worries if she’s doing her best but it’s hard when you’re on your own and there’s no one to talk to about all those doubts and fears. The thoughts would whizz around my head as I sat in George’s bedroom with the low light of the lamp shining across his face and looked at him sleeping. But the sound of Ben’s purring as I stroked him made me feel better. It was as constant as he was: day in, day out, he was a reassuring presence watching over us and sharing our laughter and troubles.
When I was finally sure George was going to sleep for a few hours at least, I’d go downstairs and look around at all the clearing up that had to be done, with Ben weaving in and out of my legs.
Sit down a minute, Julia. Have a quick rest. It will all still be there in half an hour.
So I’d sit down, give Ben a cuddle and feel a bit more of the tension disappear as I stroked him.
How are you? Are you OK? Have you got a bit more of a hug for me?
Just those few quiet minutes with Ben were often enough to calm me down. Instead of worrying about my health and George’s, what was going to happen at school, whether he’d ever learn to let me hug him or say the words “I love you,” I’d chat to Ben and it would all feel a bit less frightening. Call me batty but that’s how it was.
The most important thing Ben gave me was his love for George. It was so strong that at first I had hardly been able to understand it; I’d even wondered if I was imagining the bond between the two of them to make myself feel better. I just couldn’t understand how Ben seemed to know things—if George was quiet, he’d jump around to cheer him up and if George was over-excited, he’d lie quietly until he sat down beside him.
But slowly I learned not to question their bond. It was there and it was slowly opening up something deeper inside George, teaching him to love another living thing and care for it. Ben loved George just as much back too. As we sat on the sofa together while George was asleep upstairs, Ben would jump on to my lap, put his paws around my neck and give me the kind of cuddle I’d always longed for before looking up at me and purring.
George is a lovely boy, you know. I can see how kind he is, how well he plays with me. We have so much fun together.
Ben was two different, but very important, things to us: to George, he was the playmate who brought him out of himself; to me, he was the friend who reassured me that even on the most difficult da
ys, things were just about OK.
George and I were in the car. It was a sunny day and we were driving to Cranford, a suburb just off the M4 motorway going out of London. It was only a couple of miles from Heathrow, but even though it was so close to the airport, you could still get away from it all in Cranford because there was a huge park, where we’d gone all the time as kids. After turning off the main road, Dad would drive down a narrow lane until we got to a bridge over a stream, where he’d park the car.
“Right, then,” he’d say to me, Tor, Nob and Boy as we sat in the back. “Let’s see who catches the most, shall we?”
Then we’d get out of the car, troop down to the stream and spend the next few hours catching tadpoles before running round the woods playing cowboys and Indians while Dad and Mum lay on the grass. When we’d all had enough, they’d call us together to count the tadpoles before telling us to let them back into the stream.
I’d been doing the same thing with George for years: when the weather was good, as it was today, we got into the car and headed off to Cranford to find that little bit of the country hidden by all the concrete. Today, though, we had to drop off some shopping with Mum first and George stared out the window as we drove past Hounslow Heath.
“Ben used to ride the heath with Dick Turpin,” he said in cat talk.
“Did he?” I asked.
“It was the most dangerous place in Britain, but Ben wasn’t scared. Dick Turpin was. They went for miles in darkness on horseback.”
George had never been able to get enough of the story of how Dick Turpin would ride across Hounslow Heath before stopping at the Bell pub so that he—and his horse—could have a drink.
“Ben and Dick Turpin were on the heath?” I asked.
“Yeah. They both had a gun.” He stared out the window. “But the heath’s been ruined now with a car park and rubbish. Most of the trees have been taken down and the traffic that drives around it gives the trees no good air, just fumes.”
George was getting more and more aware of the environment as he got older and we talked about it often—how plastic bags hurt the birds and fishes who got caught in them, how we all need to be careful about litter to make sure we look after the nature around us—because George took everything in, so many facts and figures. As I pulled up outside Mum’s house, he looked at the army barracks opposite.