by Julia Romp
“Ben wants me to be a soldier in the army when I’m eighteen,” he said. “He thinks I’d be a good soldier. He was until he went to war, but it’s not easy, you know, having to run with a gun and shoot people. He didn’t shoot. He don’t like shooting. He just made bang bang and they all run away.”
“Where did they go?”
“He don’t know. But he got shot in the arm and foot. It blew his boots off. He has a hole in his hat. He lost his best friend and they was young and now their family cries.”
“Are they sad?”
“You have to march and polish your boots and sleep in a tent and drive fast away from bombs. You have to hide down holes in the ground. You can’t join the army if you have ADHD. You can’t join the army. I could because I don’t have ADHD any more, do I, Mum?”
I looked at George, who turned his face away from me.
“You’re much better now,” I told him. “You’re a good boy.”
He didn’t say any more as he stared out the window, but I wanted to get back to our conversation, see if I could keep it going, because time had stopped as it always did now when we talked and lost ourselves together.
“Why did Ben leave the army?” I asked.
“He was musical and played the trumpet,” George told me. “But he got hurt and he’s not going back because they’re bossy bossy.”
George often repeated words like that—it was something he’d always done.
“He don’t like jogging and he can’t lay in at the weekends in the army,” he said. “He’s not stupid. He loves laying in.”
“What did he do after the war?” I asked.
“He did work on the gate at the barracks,” George told me, looking at the army buildings. “But someone called him Kitty Kitty and he didn’t like it. His gun got heavy and he dropped it. It went off. Someone died but it was an accident. No crime, no murder. That’s why Ben is at home right now.” He stared at the barrack buildings.
“Salute the guard!” George suddenly shouted. “Salute the guards! March two, three, four, march two, three, four.”
He started to chant over and over as I got out of the car to run into Mum’s.
“Here’s your shopping,” I shouted to her.
“Want a cuppa?” Mum asked as she came to meet me.
“No! I’ve got to go. George is talking.”
“What do you mean ‘talking’?”
“I mean talking. Really talking. He’s telling me about Ben.”
I didn’t stop to hear Mum’s reply and I ran back to the car, where George was still chanting. I had to try to catch his attention again.
“I used to go to discos over at the barracks when I was young,” I said loudly.
George stopped shouting. “I know,” he said. “You was spoiled. Your name was bossy boots.”
I laughed as I started up the car. “Look at that cat up in the tree,” I said, pointing to an imaginary one that both George and I would see for real as we talked. “I hope he don’t fall.”
“He will. Ben knows him. He is always up the hospital. He falls out every week. He is a stupid climber. He likes his mum having to call the fire brigade out every week. He thinks he is a hero. He likes attention.”
Soon we were turning into the narrow lane that led down to the stream at Cranford and the familiar road stretched in front of us.
“Granddad always said we had to beep the horn when we got to the bridge to let people know we was coming,” I said in my cat voice. “And if someone beeped when we was fishing, we always got excited because we thought they was saying hello to us.”
George didn’t say anything as I slowed up to go over the bridge, but as I drove on to it, he suddenly sat up.
“Beep beep!” he cried. “We’s coming. We can hear the fish under the bridge. Ben knows the fish. He comes over the bridge on his bike. But he always puts the fish back.”
I could have laughed out loud now that George had started the conversation again. He really wanted to talk today.
“Does he?” I asked.
“Yes. Him and his friends meet up to fish. But he always catches the most. His great-uncle used to fish. The ducks come and watch him fish. They want his jam sandwiches. His friend has ham but the ducks want Ben’s jam because they’re vegetarian ducks.”
We started laughing, both giggling our heads off as I parked the car.
“The fairies do live under the bridge,” George told me. “They only come out when it’s peaceful. The beep makes them jump. They can fly and they make bright lights. But you have to look hard to see their faces and wings. They laugh and giggle all the time. They love the sun. It makes them happy happy.”
I wanted to grab George and squeeze him with pleasure. It was as though we were in our own world together and he was showing me the way into it. He was telling me a story about all the thoughts and pictures in his head—the fairies and soldiers, Ben’s great-uncle and the vegetarian ducks—everything inside him so vivid and real.
I didn’t want it to end.
“Does Ben have a rowing boat on the stream?” I asked.
“He does.”
“And what does Ben do in the boat?”
“He has the fish jumping up to say hello as they pass. There’s frogs and rats along the bank and they all look up to say hello. They love living here with no cars. It’s all untouched and peaceful. Ben pulls over for lunch and shares his picnic basket.”
“What does he have in it?”
“He don’t travel light. He has the best big brown basket to open full of lovely foods. Jam, biscuits, prawn cocktail crisps, strawberry drink and ice cream. And a big flask of tea. He has a big red and white tablecloth. Just like Mum has.”
“Does he?” I said, trying hard to keep my voice steady as emotion filled me.
“Yes,” George said. “The sun is shining on the stream and he looks up at all the big weeping willows hanging low into the water. It’s bumpy sometimes but he sings his heart out when he’s floating down the stream. He can sing so loud through the woods it echoes. He sing sings while he goes down the stream nice and slow.”
“What does he sing?”
“‘Why’ by Anthony Newley.”
“What did you say?”
“‘Why.’ Your song.”
I did not say a word. I’d always loved old crooners like Frank Sinatra, and “Why” by Anthony Newley was a song I’d sung a lot to George over the years, repeating the lyrics to him again and again, and hoping that on some level he would hear them and understand. But although I had sung it a thousand times, he had never shown me in any way that he did. I still loved those lyrics though because they told him all he needed to know:
I’ll never let you go—why?—because I love you, [I’d sing to him]
I’ll always love you so—why?—because you love me.
I looked at George and held my breath. “Ben sings ‘Why’?” I asked quietly.
George got out of the car and walked over to the stream. I got out and stood beside him.
“‘Why,’” George said. “The song you have in the car. The song. “Because I love you.”’
It was the first time I’d ever heard him say those words, and the world seemed such a distant place as we stood together in that moment.
“That’s right, darling,” I told George. “‘Because I love you.’”
Chapter 11
George had been so determined to make his 11th birthday a double celebration for him and Ben that I’d had to buy him a fishing rod with a play mouse on the end. He’d decided that his big day was Ben’s too after I’d told him that we didn’t know when Ben had been born. We’d just had a tea party for the two of them in the garden. Mum, Boy and his children, Tor, Del and Nob, had all come over and George had insisted that I bought a chocolate birthday cake as well as a jam sponge because Ben liked both of them just as much. Now they were sitting on the lawn together and George picked up a can of string foam. He’d always loved it and every year on his birthday, I let
him spray as much of it around the house as he wanted to, even though I always regretted it for days afterward as I kept finding bits all over the house. George’s other favorite was party poppers, and we’d let off so many that the garden was covered in bits of multicolored paper.
“Are you ready and steady?” George said to Ben.
Ben rocked his head from side to side as George spoke and waited for the fun to start.
“Then go!” George shrieked and pressed the top of the can.
Pink string foam rushed out of the can and Ben made a run for it. But George was up and after him and string foam began flying around the garden as he sprayed wildly. Ben raced up on to the trampoline and George ran up to him. In seconds the trampoline disappeared under a mound of string foam. I could not stop laughing.
It made my heart sing to see the two of them together like this. Ben wanted to be a little boy so much that he’d recently even started climbing on to the pool table George had been given for Christmas, and whenever George took a shot, Ben would lie on a pocket before walking into the middle of the baize and batting a ball with his paw. He’d also decided that he wanted to go on the exercise treadmill I’d been given as a present because I couldn’t leave George to go to a gym: when George walked on it, Ben took a stroll beside him. I giggled without stopping as I looked at them.
Ben was always finding new ways to get attention and his latest one was maybe the best. When he’d first come to live with us, I’d taken Ben back to the vet for check-ups, because I’d been warned that the cyst he’d had removed could mean he’d developed cancer, and when he came home George always made a fuss of him. When Ben had been given the all-clear, we’d all breathed a huge sigh of relief and he hadn’t gone back to the vet until I’d noticed a lump behind his ear. The vet had diagnosed an abscess, which had to be lanced, and when Ben had come home stitched up and very quiet, George turned into Florence Nightingale for a whole week. Now I was sure that Ben was sometimes pretending to be under the weather just to get attention.
“He needs to rest,” George would tell me seriously if Ben went quiet, and he would sit him down on the sofa with a pillow to lie his head on.
George didn’t want Ben to be touched by anyone else if he thought he was ill and Ben was quite happy to be wrapped in blankets and cuddled for hours on end.
“Shall we watch a film?” George would ask him. “Would you prefer Big or Garfield? Or would you like a drink?”
Sometimes I’d catch Ben yawning, as if he was almost bored of the attention, but it usually took several days until George would begin to wonder if Ben might be having him on.
“Are you putting it on, Baboo?” he asked. “Are you really still sick?”
Each time he asked, Ben would give a pitiful miaow and George went straight back to loving him. It often took a few more days for Ben to finally get his fill of attention but when he did, he’d mysteriously wake up the next morning as right as rain.
Now I ran inside to get my camera as George and Ben played together. Running back out into the sunshine, I took a picture of the two of them together. I wanted to capture the smiles on both their faces forever—even though I knew there would be many more birthdays to celebrate together.
One of the questions George’s psychiatrist asked him most often was about school.
“What do you think of big school?” she’d ask and George would usually refuse to say a word back to her.
Each time we left her office, George would tell me he hated his doctor but what he really hated were the questions she asked about big school because he knew it meant one thing—change. Moving from primary school to secondary school in September 2007, a few months after his 11th birthday, was going to be the biggest change he had ever known in his life and it frightened George, just as it frightened me.
I’d started talking about it all with the experts nearly two years before George was actually due to move, because it takes that long to get all the assessments done for a child with special needs. There are so many forms and reports that need to be done to make sure they get a place at the right school. Although it was clear that George couldn’t go on to a mainstream secondary, because he’d struggled so much at primary, I still lay awake thinking about it night after night. How was he going to cope? George had found it hard enough to adjust when Miss Proctor had gone on maternity leave, so how was he going to react to a new place with new children?
The other thing that concerned me was this: as much as I knew George couldn’t go to a mainstream secondary school, I was worried about sending him to a specialist one for children with learning difficulties. Until now, he had been with average children, and I could not help but worry that sending him to a specialist school would both label him as different forever and teach him new unusual behaviors. After all the progress he’d made I did not want George to go backward, and I wondered if sending him to a specialist school might only make things harder for him.
George picked up on all the meetings and discussions and got more and more anxious—chanting or talking endlessly to Ben about it all.
“I want to go to a normal school,” he would say. “I’m not going to a special one. I’ll get myself a book. I’ll learn myself.”
But although I understood how he felt, I knew that when push came to shove the best thing for George would be to go to a specialist school. So much had happened at his primary—the fights and misunderstandings, playground trouble and anger from parents who felt he was a bad influence—that it was impossible for George to feel settled and safe in that environment. I felt sure this was why he still hadn’t learned to read or write properly, and although George was so good at maths that I could send him into shops with money from the age of five knowing he’d come out with the right change, it wasn’t enough for him to cope with a mainstream school. The other problem was that George needed to be in a really contained environment, not a school where kids came and went, because he still had little sense of danger and had once even wandered out of school. I’d found him by pure luck when I was out in the car with Mum and saw a blond boy walking down a main road.
“Is that George?” I said.
“It can’t be, Ju,” Mum replied. “He’s at school.”
“Well, if it’s not him then it’s a boy who looks exactly like him.”
I slowed down to get a better look. The boy was walking along the pavement with cars rushing on the road beside him and as I pulled up I could see that it really was George. My stomach turned over as I looked at him. He was out on a main road, among cars and people he didn’t know or understand, when he should have been safe at school, and I felt angry that he’d been able to wander off.
“George?” I called out of the window.
He stared at me.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to the shop.”
“I thought you were supposed to be in school.”
He didn’t say anything.
“I’m going to the shops, so why don’t you get in with me?”
George got into the car and my heart hammered as I wondered how long he’d been out.
“When did you leave school?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
But as the conversations went on about exactly which was the best school for George, I felt more and more confused. It’s hard to know what’s best when you’ve coped on your own for so long and then a stream of people start telling you what they think. On top of that, I’d had another run-in with the experts, which had knocked my confidence a bit. It had happened because George’s sleeping problems had got so bad that he now got up in the middle of the night to do things, while asleep, and it wasn’t just simple sleepwalking: he would take out his Legos and separate out the colors, or get a pack of cards and sort them all—still asleep but with his eyes open. He did it night after night, and it almost scared me when I saw him like that—like a ghost I couldn’t talk to.
The doctors knew all about it and as George started his last year at pr
imary school, they suggested that we visit a special center in central London, which helped children with sleeping and behavioral problems. I wasn’t too keen, but I agreed to go and have a look, because I knew I had to try to keep an open mind. When we got there the center seemed nice enough. The building was big and airy, the kids had a pet rabbit and there was a lovely big art room full of brightly colored models stacked neatly on shelves. Then George and I were shown a room that had walls padded in blue and red and I was told it was the restraint room.
“When a child fights or punches we take them here,” a man told me. “It’s the best way to keep the children safe and contained until they calm down.”
I thought of what George’s psychiatrist had told me—that sometimes being a parent was about making a difficult choice for your child when it was best for them. But I wasn’t sure this was the kind of thing she meant. Could I really allow George to be held down and put into a padded room? The thought of it made me feel sick. I knew the damage it would do. A few months before, George had told me that a teacher had locked him in a cupboard and although she said she hadn’t, something had terrified him. George kept talking about the dark cupboard and the smell of paint, describing how he stood in the blackness and closed his eyes. I knew that he could interpret innocent incidents as threatening because he’d done so with me before. But when I looked at the restraint room, I knew that if he was held down and touched, however kindly or professionally, he would never recover from it.
After we were shown around the center, George and I went into a room to meet the people who worked there. Once again, they seemed as nice as all such people do, and they told us about what they did and how much they could help children like George. But as he sat in a chair and rocked, clicked his fingers and hummed, I could see the place scared him. I wasn’t going to send him there. The psychiatrist was right: sometimes being a parent is about making really hard decisions and going against all the professional advice you’re given if it feels wrong. It’s all down to you and your child: what you know to be true and the instinct you have. I couldn’t bear to cause George pain, even if some people thought it would help him in the long run, and as we left I told myself I’d find other ways of helping him. Now we had Ben I was sure I was going to keep finding them.