Mara and Dann

  He said, in the patient, watchful way he now had with her, ‘You exaggerate everything.’

  ‘That’s a good word – for this situation! Congratulations! Exaggerate!’

  ‘Oh God, Harriet,’ he said differently, helplessly, ‘don’t let’s do this – if we don’t stand together, then…’

  It was at Easter that the schoolgirl Bridget, who had returned to see if this miraculous kingdom of everyday life was perhaps still there, enquired, ‘What is wrong with him? Is he a mongol?’

  ‘Down’s syndrome,’ said Harriet. ‘No one calls it mongol now. But no, he’s not.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him, then?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ said Harriet airily. ‘As you can see for yourself.’

  Bridget went away, and never came back.

  The summer holidays again. It was 1975. There were fewer guests: some had written or rung to say they could not afford the train fare, or the petrol. ‘Any excuse is better than none,’ remarked Dorothy.

  ‘But people are hard up,’ said David.

  ‘They weren’t so hard up before that they couldn’t afford to come and live here for weeks at a time at your expense.’

  Ben was over a year old now. He had not said one word yet, but in other ways he was more normal. Now it was difficult to keep him in his room. Children playing in the garden heard his thick, angry cries, and saw him up on the sill trying to push aside his bars.

  So he came out of his little prison and joined them downstairs. He seemed to know that he ought to be like them. He would stand, head lowered, watching how everyone talked, and laughed, sitting around the big table; or sat talking in the living-room, while the children ran in and out. His eyes were on one face, then another: whomever he was looking at became conscious of that insistent gaze and stopped talking; or turned a back, or a shoulder, so as not to have to see him. He could silence a room full of people just by being there, or disperse them: they went off making excuses.

  Towards the end of the holidays, someone came bringing a dog, a little terrier. Ben could not leave it alone. Wherever the dog was, Ben followed. He did not pet it, or stroke it: he stood staring. One morning when Harriet came down to start breakfast for the children, the dog was lying dead on the kitchen floor. It had had a heart attack? Suddenly sick with suspicion, she rushed up to see if Ben was in his room: he was squatting on his bed, and when she came in, he looked up and laughed, but soundlessly, in his way, which was like a baring of the teeth. He had opened his door, gone quietly past his sleeping parents, down the stairs, found the dog, killed it, and gone back up again, quietly, into his room, and shut the door…all that, by himself! She locked Ben in: if he could kill a dog, then why not a child?

  When she went down again, the children were crowding around the dead dog. And then the adults came, and it was obvious what they thought.

  Of course it was impossible – a small child killing a lively dog. But officially the dog’s death remained a mystery; the vet said it had been strangled. This business of the dog spoiled what was left of the holidays, and people went off home early.

  Dorothy said, ‘People are going to think twice about coming again.’

  Three months later, Mr McGregor, the old grey cat, was killed in the same way. He had always been afraid of Ben, and kept out of reach. But Ben must have stalked him, or found him sleeping.

  At Christmas the house was half empty.

  It was the worst year of Harriet’s life, and she was not able to care that people avoided them. Every day was a long nightmare. She woke in the morning unable to believe she would ever get through to the evening. Ben was always on his feet, and had to be watched every second. He slept very little. He spent most of the night standing on his window-sill, staring into the garden, and if Harriet looked in on him, he would turn and give her a long stare, alien, chilling: in the half dark of the room he really did look like a little troll or a hobgoblin crouching there. If he was locked in during the day, he screamed and bellowed so that the whole house resounded with it, and they were all afraid the police would arrive. He would suddenly, for no reason she could see, take off and run into the garden, and then out the gate and into the street. One day, she ran a mile or more after him, seeing only that stubby squat little figure going through traffic lights, ignoring cars that hooted and people who screamed warnings at him. She was weeping, panting, half crazed, desperate to get to him before something terrible happened, but she was praying, Oh, do run him over, do, yes, please…She caught up with him just before a main road, grabbed him, and held the fighting child with all her strength. He was spitting and hissing, while he jerked like a monster fish in her arms. A taxi went by; she called to it, she pushed the child in, and got in after him, holding him fast by an arm that seemed would break with his flailing about and fighting.

  What could be done? Again she went to Dr Brett, who examined him and said he was physically in order.

  Harriet described his behaviour and the doctor listened.

  From time to time, a well-controlled incredulity appeared on his face, and he kept his eyes down, fiddling with pencils.

  ‘You can ask David, ask my mother,’ said Harriet.

  ‘He’s a hyperactive child – that’s how they are described these days, I believe,’ said old-fashioned Dr Brett. She went to him because he was old-fashioned.

  At last he did look at her, not evading her.

  ‘What do you expect me to do, Harriet? Drug him silly? Well, I am against it.’

  She was crying inwardly, Yes, yes, yes, that’s exactly what I want! But she said, ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘He’s physically normal for eighteen months. He’s very strong and active of course, but he’s always been that. You say he’s not talking? But that’s not unusual. Wasn’t Helen a late talker? I believe she was?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet.

  She took Ben home. Now he was locked into his room each night, and there were heavy bars on the door as well. Every second of his waking hours, he watched. Harriet watched him while her mother managed everything else.

  David said, ‘What is the point of thanking you, Dorothy? It seems everything has gone a long way beyond thank-yous.’

  ‘Everything has gone a long way beyond. Period.’ Said Dorothy.

  Harriet was thin, red-eyed, haggard. Once again she was bursting into tears over nothing at all. The children kept out of her way. Tact? Were they afraid of her? Dorothy suggested staying alone with Ben for a week in August while the family went off together somewhere.

  Neither Harriet nor David would normally have wanted to go anywhere, for they loved their home. And what about the family coming for the summer?

  ‘I haven’t noticed any rush to book themselves in,’ said Dorothy.

  They went to France, with the car. For Harriet it was all happiness: she felt she had been given back her children. She could not get enough of them, nor they of her. And Paul, her baby whom Ben had deprived her of, the wonderful three-year-old, enchanting, a charmer – was her baby again. They were a family still! Happiness…they could hardly believe, any of them, that Ben could have taken so much away from them.

  When they got home, Dorothy was very tired and she had a bad bruise on her forearm and another on her cheek. She did not say what had happened. But when the children had gone to bed on the first evening, she said to Harriet and David, ‘I have to talk – no, sit down and listen.’

  They sat with her at the kitchen table.

  ‘You two are going to have to face it. Ben has got to go into an institution.’

  ‘But he’s normal,’ said Harriet, grim. ‘The doctor says he is.’

  ‘He may be normal for what he is. But he is not normal for what we are.’

  ‘What kind of institution would take him?’

  ‘There must be something,’ said Dorothy, and began to cry.

  Now began a time when every night Harriet and David lay awake talking about what could be done. They were making love again, but it was not
the same. ‘This must be what women felt before there was birth control,’ Harriet said. ‘Terrified. They waited for every period, and when it came it meant reprieve for a month. But they weren’t afraid of giving birth to a troll.’

  While they talked, they always listened for sounds from ‘the baby’s room’ – words they never used now, for they hurt. What was Ben doing that they had not believed him capable of? Pulling those heavy steel bars aside?

  ‘The trouble is, you get used to hell,’ said Harriet. ‘After a day with Ben I feel as if nothing exists but him. As if nothing has ever existed. I suddenly realize I haven’t remembered the others for hours. I forgot their supper yesterday. Dorothy went to the pictures, and I came down and found Helen cooking their supper.’

  ‘It didn’t hurt them.’

  ‘She’s eight.’

  Having been reminded, by the week in France, of what their family life really was, could be, Harriet was determined not to let it all go. She found she was again silently addressing Ben: ‘I’m not going to let you destroy us, you won’t destroy me…’

  She was set on another real Christmas, and wrote and telephoned to everyone. She made a point of saying that Ben was ‘much better, these days.’

  Sarah asked if it would be ‘all right’ to bring Amy. This meant that she had heard – everyone had – about the dog, and the cat.

  ‘It’ll be all right if we are careful never to leave Amy alone with Ben,’ said Harriet, and Sarah, after a long silence, said, ‘My God, Harriet, we’ve been dealt a bad hand, haven’t we?’ ‘I suppose so,’ said Harriet, but she was rejecting this submission to being a victim of fate. Sarah, yes; with her marital problems, and her mongol child – yes. But she, Harriet, in the same boat?

  She said to her own children, ‘Please look after Amy. Never leave her alone with Ben.’

  ‘Would he hurt Amy the way he hurt Mr McGregor?’ asked Jane.

  ‘He killed Mr McGregor,’ Luke said fiercely. ‘He killed him.’

  ‘And the poor dog,’ said Helen. Both children were accusing Harriet.

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet, ‘he might. That’s why we have to watch her all the time.’

  The children, the way they did these days, were looking at each other, excluding her, in some understanding of their own. They went off, without looking at her.

  The Christmas, with fewer people, was nevertheless festive and noisy, a success; but Harriet found herself longing for it to be over. It was the strain of it all, watching Ben, watching Amy – who was the centre of everything. Her head was too big, her body too squat, but she was full of love and kisses and everyone adored her. Helen, who had longed to make a pet of Ben, was now able to love Amy. Ben watched this, silent, and Harriet could not read the look in those cold yellow-green eyes. But then she never could! Sometimes it seemed to her that she spent her life trying to understand what Ben was feeling, thinking. Amy, who expected everyone to love her, would go up to Ben, chuckling, laughing, her arms out. Twice his age, but apparently half his age, this afflicted infant, who was radiant with affection, suddenly became silent; her face was woeful, and she backed away, staring at him. Just like Mr McGregor, the poor cat. Then she began to cry whenever she saw him. Ben’s eyes were never off her, this other afflicted one, adored by everyone in the house. But did he know himself afflicted? Was he, in fact? What was he?

  Christmas ended, and Ben was two and a few months old. Paul was sent to a little nursery school down the road, to get him away from Ben. The naturally high-spirited and friendly child was becoming nervous and irritable. He had fits of tears or of rage, throwing himself on the floor screaming, or battering at Harriet’s knees, trying to get her attention, which never seemed to leave Ben.

  Dorothy went off to visit Sarah and her family.

  Harriet was alone with Ben during the day. She tried to be with him as she had with the others. She sat on the floor with building blocks and toys you could push about. She showed him colourful pictures. She sang him little rhymes. But Ben did not seem to connect with the toys, or the blocks. He sat among the litter of bright objects and might put one block on another, looking at Harriet to see if this was what he should do. He stared hard at pictures held out to him, trying to decipher their language. He would never sit on Harriet’s knees, but squatted by her, and when she said, ‘That’s a bird, Ben, look – just like that bird on that tree. And that’s a flower,’ he stared, and then turned away. Apparently it was not that he could not understand how this block fitted into that or how to make a pile of them, rather that he could not grasp the point of it all, nor of the flower, nor the bird. Perhaps he was too advanced for this sort of game? Sometimes Harriet thought he was. His response to her nursery pictures was that he went out into the garden and stalked a thrush on the lawn, crouching down and moving on a low fast run – and he nearly did catch the thrush. He tore some primroses off their stems, and stood with them in his hands, intently staring at them. Then he crushed them in his strong little fists and let them drop. He turned his head and saw Harriet looking at him: he seemed to be thinking that she wanted him to do something, but what? He stared at the spring flowers, looked up at a blackbird on a branch, and came slowly indoors again.

  One day, he talked. Suddenly. He did not say, ‘Mummy,’ or ‘Daddy,’ or his own name. He said, ‘I want cake.’ Harriet did not even notice, at first, that he was talking. Then she did, and told everyone, ‘Ben’s talking. He’s using sentences.’ As their way was, the other children encouraged him: ‘That’s very good, Ben,’ ‘Clever Ben!’ But he took no notice of them. From then on he announced his needs. ‘I want that.’ ‘Give me that.’ ‘Go for a walk now.’ His voice was heavy and uncertain, each word separate, as if his brain were a lumber-house of ideas and objects, and he had to identify each one.

  The children were relieved he was talking normally. ‘Hello, Ben,’ one would say. ‘Hello,’ Ben replied, carefully handing back exactly what he had been given. ‘How are you, Ben?’ Helen asked. ‘How are you?’ he replied. ‘No’ said Helen, ‘now you must say, “I’m very well, thank you,” or, “I’m fine”.’

  Ben stared while he worked it out. Then he said clumsily, ‘I’m very well.’

  He watched the children, particularly Luke and Helen, all the time. He studied how they moved, sat down, stood up; copied how they ate. He had understood that these two, the older ones, were more socially accomplished than Jane; and he ignored Paul altogether. When the children watched television, he squatted near them and looked from the screen to their faces, for he needed to know what reactions were appropriate. If they laughed, then, a moment later, he contributed a loud, hard, unnatural-sounding laugh. What was natural to him, it seemed, in the way of amusement was his hostile-looking teeth-bared grin, that looked hostile. When they became silent and still with attention, because of some exciting moment, then he tensed his muscles, like them, and seemed absorbed in the screen – but really he kept his eyes on them.

  Altogether, he was easier. Harriet thought: Well, any ordinary child is at its most difficult for about a year after it gets to its feet. No sense of self-preservation, no sense of danger: they hurl themselves off beds and chairs, launch themselves into space, run into roads, have to be watched every second…And they are also, she added, at their most charming, delightful, heart-breakingly sweet and funny. And then they gradually become sensible and life is easier.

  Life had become easier…but this was only as she saw it, as Dorothy brought home to her.

  Dorothy came back to this household after what she called ‘a rest’ of some weeks, and Harriet could see her mother was preparing for a ‘real talk’ with her.

  ‘Now, girl, would you say that I am interfering? That I give you a lot of unwanted advice?’

  They were sitting at the big table, mid-morning, with cups of coffee. Ben was where they could watch him, as always, Dorothy was trying to make what she said humorous, but Harriet felt threatened. Her mother’s honest pink cheeks were bright with embarrassment, her
blue eyes anxious.

  ‘No,’ said Harriet. ‘You aren’t. You don’t.’

  ‘Well, now I’m going to have my say.’

  But she had to stop: Ben began banging a stone against a metal tray. He did this with all his force. The noise was awful, but the women waited until Ben stopped: interrupted, he would have raged and hissed and spat.

  ‘You have five children,’ Dorothy said. ‘Not one. Do you realize that I might just as well be the mother of the others when I’m here? No, I don’t believe you do, you’ve got so taken over by…’

  Ben again banged the tray with his stone, in a frenzy of exulting accomplishment. It looked as if he believed he was hammering metal, forging something: one could easily imagine him, in the mines deep under the earth, with his kind…Again they waited until he stopped the noise.

  ‘It’s not right,’ said Dorothy. And Harriet remembered how her mother’s ‘That’s not right!’ had regulated her childhood.

  ‘I’m getting on, you know,’ said Dorothy. ‘I can’t go on like this, or I’ll get ill.’

  Yes, Dorothy was rather thin, even gaunt. Yes, Harriet thought, full of guilt as usual, she should have noticed.

  ‘And you have a husband, too,’ said Dorothy, apparently not knowing how she was turning the knife in her daughter’s heart. ‘He’s very good, you know, Harriet. I don’t know how he puts up with it.’

  The Christmas after Ben became three only partly filled the house. A cousin of David’s had said, ‘I’ve been inspired by you, Harriet! After all, I’ve got a home, too. It’s not as big as yours, but it’s a nice little house.’ Several of the family went there. But others said they were coming: made a point of coming, Harriet realized. These were the near relations.

  Again a pet was brought. This time it was a big dog, a cheerful boisterous mongrel, Sarah’s children’s friend, but most particularly Amy’s. Of course all the children loved him, but Paul most of all, and this made Harriet’s heart ache, for they could have no dog or cat in their home. She even thought: Well, now Ben is more sensible, perhaps…But she knew it was impossible. She watched how the big dog seemed to know that Amy, the loving little child in the big ugly body, needed gentleness: he moderated his exuberance for her. Amy would sit by the dog with her arm around his neck, and if she was clumsy with him, he lifted his muzzle and gently pushed her away a little, or gave a small warning sound that said, ‘Be careful.’ Sarah said this dog was like a nursemaid to Amy. ‘Just like Nana in Peter Pan,’ the children said. But if Ben was in the room, the dog watched him carefully and went to lie in a corner, his head on his paws, stiff with attention. One morning when people were sitting around having breakfast, Harriet for some reason turned her head and saw the dog, asleep, and Ben going silently up to him in a low crouch, hands held out in front of him…