The Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire (53 page)

‘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…

‘Ben!’ said Harriet sharply. She saw those cold eyes turn towards her, caught a gleam of pure malice.

The dog, alerted, scrambled up, and his hair stood on end. He whined anxiously, and came into the part of the room where they all were, and lay down under the table.

Everyone had seen this, and sat silent, while Ben came to Dorothy and said, ‘I want milk.’ She poured him some, and he drank it down. Then he looked at them all staring at him. Again he seemed to be trying to understand them. He went into the garden, where they could see him, a squat little gnome, poking with a stick at the earth. The other children were upstairs somewhere.

Around the table sat Dorothy, with Amy on her lap, Sarah, Molly, Frederick, James and David. Also Angela, the successful sister, ‘the coper’, whose children were all normal.

The atmosphere made Harriet say defiantly, ‘All right, then, let’s have it.’

She thought it not without significance, as they say, that it was Frederick who said, ‘Now look here, Harriet, you’ve got to face it, he’s got to go into an institution.’

‘Then we have to find a doctor who says he’s abnormal,’ said Harriet. ‘Dr Brett certainly won’t.’

‘Get another doctor,’ said Molly. ‘These things can be arranged.’ The two large haystacky people, with their red well-fed faces, were united in determination, nothing vague about them now they had decided there was a crisis, and one that – even indirectly – threatened them. They looked like a pair of judges after a good lunch, Harriet thought, and glanced at David to see if she could share this criticism with him; but he was staring down at the table, mouth tight. He agreed with them.

Angela said, laughing, ‘Typical upper-class ruthlessness.’

No one could remember that note being struck, or at least not so sharply, at this table before. Silence, and then Angela softened it with ‘Not that I don’t agree.’

‘Of course you agree,’ said Molly. ‘Anyone sensible would have to.’

‘It’s the way you said it,’ said Angela.

‘What does it matter how it is said?’ enquired Frederick.

‘And who is going to pay for it?’ asked David. ‘I can’t. All I can do is to keep the bills paid, and that is with James’s help.’

‘Well, James is going to have to bear the brunt of this one,’ said Frederick, ‘but we’ll chip in.’ It was the first time this couple had offered any financial help. ‘Mean, like all their sort,’ the rest of the family had agreed; and now this judgement was being remembered. They would come for a stay of ten days and contribute a pair of pheasants, a couple of bottles of very good wine. Their ‘chipping in’, everyone knew, wouldn’t amount to much.

Full of division, the family sat silent.

Then James said, ‘I’ll do what I can. But things are not as good as they were. Yachts are not everyone’s priority in hard times.’

Silence again, and everyone was looking at Harriet.

‘You are funny people,’ she said, setting herself apart from them. ‘You’ve been here so often and you
know –
I mean,
you
really know what the problem is. What are we going to say to the people who run this institution?’

‘It depends on the institution,’ said Molly, and her large person seemed full of energy, conviction: as if she had swallowed Ben whole and was digesting him, thought Harriet. She said, mildly enough, though she trembled, ‘You mean, we have to find one of those places that exist in order to take on children families simply want to get rid of?’

‘Rich families,’ said Angela, with a defiant little sniff.

Molly, confronting impertinence, said firmly, ‘Yes. If there is no other kind of place. But one thing is obvious: if something isn’t done, then it’s going to be catastrophic.’

‘It
is
catastrophic,’ said Dorothy, firmly taking her position. ‘The other children…they’re suffering. You’re so involved with it, girl, that you don’t see it.’

‘Look,’ said David, impatient and angry because he could not stand this, fibres tangled with Harriet, with his parents, being tugged and torn. ‘Look, I agree. And some time Harriet is going to have to agree. And as far as I am concerned, that time is now. I don’t think I can stick it any longer.’ And now he did look at his wife, and it was a pleading, suffering look.
Please,
he was saying to Harriet.
Please.

‘Very well,’ said Harriet. ‘If some place can be found that…’ And she began to cry.

Ben came in from the garden and stood watching them, in his usual position, which was apart from everyone else. He wore brown dungarees and a brown shirt, both in strong material. Everything he wore had to be thick, because he tore his clothes, destroyed them. With his yellowish stubbly low-growing hair, his stony unblinking eyes, his stoop, his feet planted apart and his knees bent, his clenched held-forward fists, he seemed more than ever like a gnome.

‘She is crying,’ he remarked, of his mother. He took a piece of bread off the table and went out.

‘All right,’ said Harriet, ‘what
are
you going to tell them?’

‘Leave it to us,’ said Frederick.