The Fifth Child (14 page)

“Is Mary Jones going to hurt me?”

A silence. John was nonplussed.

“Take me to the caff with you? Take me now, take me away now.”

She heard John looking for a clean pair of dungarees, heard him persuading Ben into them. She went down into the kitchen. John came down the stairs with Ben, who clung to his hand. John gave her a wink and a thumbs-up sign. He departed with Ben on his motorbike. She went to bring Paul home.

When she asked Dr. Brett to arrange an appointment with a specialist, she said, “Please don’t make me out as some kind of hysterical idiot.”

She took Ben to London. She left him in the care of Dr. Gilly’s nurse. This doctor liked to see a child first, without its parents. It seemed sensible. Perhaps she is sensible, this one, thought Harriet, sitting by herself drinking coffee in a little café, and then wondered, What do I mean by that? What am I hoping for, this time? What she wanted, she decided, was that
at last
someone would use the right words, share the burden. No, she did not expect to be rescued, or even that anything much could change. She wanted to be acknowledged, her predicament given its value.

Well, was it likely? In conflict, half full of a longing for support, half cynical—
Well, what do you expect!
—she returned to find Ben with the nurse in a little room off the waiting-room. With his back to the wall, Ben watched the nurse’s every movement, as a wary animal does. When he saw his mother, he rushed to her and hid behind her.

“Well,” said the nurse tartly, “there’s no need for
that
, Ben.”

Harriet told Ben to sit down and wait for her: she was coming back soon. He got behind a chair and stood alert, his eyes on the nurse.

Then Harriet was sitting opposite a shrewd professional woman who had been told—Harriet was convinced—that this was an unreasonable worrying mother who couldn’t handle her fifth child.

Dr. Gilly said, “I’m going to come straight to the point, Mrs. Lovatt. The problem is not with Ben, but with you. You don’t like him very much.”

“Oh my
God,”
exploded Harriet, “not again!” She sounded peevish, whiny. She watched Dr. Gilly noting her reaction. “Dr. Brett told you that,” she said. “Now you are saying it.”

“Well, Mrs. Lovatt, would you say it is untrue? First I must
say it is not your fault. And then that it is not uncommon. We can’t choose what will turn up in the lottery—and that is what having a baby is. Luckily or unluckily, we can’t choose. The first thing you have to do is not to blame yourself.”

“I don’t blame myself,” said Harriet. “Though I don’t expect you to believe it. But it’s a bad joke. I feel I’ve been blamed for Ben ever since he was born. I feel like a criminal. I’ve always been made to feel like a criminal.” During this complaint—shrill, but Harriet could not change her voice—years of bitterness came pouring out. Meanwhile Dr. Gilly sat looking at her desk. “It really is extraordinary! No one has ever said to me, no one, ever, ‘How clever of you to have four marvellous normal clever good-looking children! They are a credit to you. Well done, Harriet!’ Don’t you think it is strange that no one has ever said it? But about Ben—I’m a criminal!”

Dr. Gilly enquired, after a pause for analysis of what Harriet had said, “You resent the fact that Ben isn’t clever, is that it?”

“Oh my
God,”
said Harriet violently. “What
is
the point!”

The two women eyed each other. Harriet sighed, letting her violence subside; the doctor was angry, but not showing it.

“Tell me,” said Harriet, “are you saying that Ben is a perfectly normal child in every way? There’s nothing strange about him?”

“He is within the range of normality. He is not very good at school, I am told, but often slow children catch up later.”

“I can’t believe it,” said Harriet. “Look, just do something—oh all right, humour me! Ask the nurse to bring Ben in here.”

Dr. Gilly considered this, then spoke into her machine.

They heard Ben shouting “No, no!” and the nurse’s persuasive voice.

The door opened. Ben appeared: he had been pushed into the room by the nurse. The door shut behind him, and he backed against it, glaring at the doctor.

He stood with his shoulders hunched forward and his knees
bent, as if about to spring off somewhere. He was a squat, burly little figure, with a big head, the yellow stubble of his coarse hair growing from the double crown of his head into the point low on his heavy narrow forehead. He had a flattish flaring nose that turned up. His mouth was fleshy and curly. His eyes were like lumps of dull stone. For the first time Harriet thought, But he doesn’t look like a six-year-old, but much older. You could almost take him for a little man, not a child at all.

The doctor looked at Ben. Harriet watched them both. The doctor then said, “All right, Ben, go out again. Your mother will be with you in a minute.”

Ben stood petrified. Again Dr. Gilly spoke into her machine, the door opened, and Ben was hauled backwards out of sight, snarling.

“Tell me, Dr. Gilly, what did you see?”

Dr. Gilly’s pose was wary, offended; she was calculating the time left to the end of the interview. She did not answer.

Harriet said, knowing it was no use, but because she wanted it said, heard: “He’s not human, is he?”

Dr. Gilly suddenly, unexpectedly, allowed what she was thinking to express itself. She sat up, sighed heavily, put her hands to her face and drew them down, until she sat with her eyes shut, her fingers on her lips. She was a handsome middle-aged woman, in full command of her life, but for the flash of a moment an unlicensed and illegitimate distress showed itself, and she looked beside herself, even tipsy.

Then she decided to repudiate what Harriet knew was a moment of truth. She let her hands fall, smiled, and said jokingly, “From another planet? Outer space?”

“No. Well, you
saw
him, didn’t you? How do we know what kinds of people—races, I mean—creatures different from us, have lived on this planet? In the past, you know? We don’t really know, do we? How do we know that dwarves or goblins
or hobgoblins, that kind of thing, didn’t really live here? And that’s why we tell stories about them? They really existed, once.… Well, how do we know they didn’t?”

“You think Ben is a throwback?” enquired Dr. Gilly gravely. She sounded as if quite prepared to entertain the idea.

“It seems to me obvious,” said Harriet.

Another silence, and Dr. Gilly examined her well-kept hands. She sighed. Then she looked up and met Harriet’s eyes with “If that is so, then what do you expect me to do about it?”

Harriet insisted, “I want it
said
. I want it recognised. I just can’t stand it never being said.”

“Can’t you see that it is simply outside my competence? If it is true, that is? Do you want me to give you a letter to the zoo, ‘Put this child in a cage’? Or hand him over to science?”

“Oh God,” said Harriet. “No, of course not.”

Silence.

“Thank you, Dr. Gilly,” said Harriet, ending the interview in the regular way. She stood up. “Would you be prepared to give me a prescription for a really strong sedative? There are times when I can’t control Ben, and I have to have something to help me.”

The doctor wrote. Harriet took the bit of paper. She thanked Dr. Gilly. She said goodbye. She went to the door, and glanced back. On the doctor’s face she saw what she expected: a dark fixed stare that reflected what the woman was feeling, which was horror at the alien, rejection by the normal for what was outside the human limit. Horror of Harriet, who had given birth to Ben.

She found Ben alone in the little room, backed into a corner, glaring, unblinking, at the door she came in by. He was trembling. People in white uniforms, white coats, in rooms that smelled of chemicals … Harriet realised that without meaning it, she had reinforced her threats: If you behave badly, then …

He was subdued. He kept close to her; no, not like a child with its mother, but like a frightened dog.

Every morning now, she gave Ben a dose of the sedative, which, however, did not have much effect on him. But she hoped it would keep him damped down until school ended and he could roar off with John on the motorbike.

Then it was the end of Ben’s first year at school. This meant that they could all go on, pretending that not much was wrong, he was just a “difficult” child. He wasn’t learning anything, but then plenty of children did not: they put in time at school, and that was all.

That Christmas, Luke wrote to say he wanted to go to his grandparents, who were somewhere off the coast of southern Spain; and Helen went to Grandmother Molly’s house in Oxford.

Dorothy came for Christmas, just three days. She took Jane back with her: Jane adored the little mongol child Amy.

Ben spent all his time with John. Harriet and David—when he was there, but he worked more and more—were with Paul through the Christmas holidays. Paul was even more difficult than Ben. But he was a normal “disturbed” child, not an alien.

Paul spent hours watching television. He escaped into it, watching restlessly, moving about as he watched, and ate, and ate—but never put on weight. Inside him seemed to be an unappeasable mouth that said, Feed me, feed me. He craved, every bit of him—for what? His mother’s arms did not satisfy him, he was too restless to stay in them. He liked being with David, but never for long. It was the television that quieted him. Wars and riots; killings and hijackings; murders and thefts and kidnappings … the eighties, the barbarous eighties were getting into their stride and Paul lay sprawled in front of the set, or wandered about the room, eating and watching—being nourished. So it seemed.

The patterns for the family had been set: and so the future would be.

Luke always went for his school holidays to Grandfather James, with whom he “got on” so well. He liked his Grandmother Jessica, who was great fun, he said. His Aunt Deborah was fun, too: her attempts and failures at matrimony were a long-running serial story, presented comically. Luke was living with the rich, and thriving; and sometimes James brought him home to visit his parents, for the kindly man was unhappy at what went on in that misfortuned house, and knew that Harriet and David yearned for their eldest. They did visit him at his school for Sports Days; and Luke sometimes came home for half-terms.

Helen was happy at Molly’s house. She lived in the room her father had once made his real home. She was old Frederick’s favourite. She, too, sometimes came for a half-term.

Jane had prevailed on Dorothy to come and reason with Harriet and David, for she wanted to live with Dorothy and Aunt Sarah and the three healthy cousins and poor Amy. And so she did. Dorothy brought Jane home sometimes, and the parents could see that Dorothy had “talked” to Jane to make her kind to them, and never, not ever, criticise Ben.

Paul remained at home: he was there much more than Ben.

David said to Harriet, “What are we going to do with Paul?”

“What can we do?”

“He needs treatment of some kind. A psychiatrist …”

“What good is that going to do!”

“He’s not learning anything, he’s a real mess. He’s worse than Ben! At least Ben is what he is, whatever that may be, and I don’t think I want to know. But Paul …”

“And how are we going to pay for it?”

“I will.”

David now added a part-time job teaching at a polytechnic to his already heavy load of work, and was hardly ever at home.
If he did come home during the week, it was late at night, and he fell into bed and slept, exhausted.

Paul was sent to “talk to someone,” as the phrase goes.

He went nearly every afternoon after school. This was a success. The psychiatrist was a man of forty, with a family and a pleasant house. Paul stayed there for supper, and even went over to play with the children when he did not actually have an appointment to talk with the doctor.

Sometimes Harriet was alone in that great house all day, until Paul came home at about seven to watch the television—and Ben, too, though his television-watching was different. His attention was held by the screen unpredictably, and according to no pattern Harriet could see, usually only for a minute or two.

The two boys hated each other.

Once, Harriet found Paul in a corner of the kitchen, stretched up on tiptoes, trying to evade Ben’s hands, which were reaching up to his throat. Short powerful Ben; tall spidery Paul—if Ben wanted to, he could kill Paul. Harriet thought that Ben was trying to frighten Paul, but Paul was hysterical. Ben grinned vindictively, full of triumph.

“Ben,” said Harriet. “Ben—
down.”
As if to a dog, warning it.
“Down
, Ben, down.”

He turned sharply, saw her, dropped his hands. She put into her eyes the threat she had already used, her power over him: his memories of the past.

He bared his teeth and snarled.

Paul screamed, his terror bursting out of him. He raced up the stairs, slipping and falling, to get away from the horror that was Ben.

“If you ever do that again …” threatened Harriet. Ben went slowly to the big table and sat down. He was thinking, so she believed.
“If you ever do that again, Ben
 …” He raised his eyes and looked at her. He was calculating, she could see. But what? Those cold, inhuman eyes … What did he see? People
assumed he saw what they did, that he saw a human world. But perhaps his senses accommodated quite different facts, data. How could anyone know? What was he thinking? How did he see himself?

“Poor Ben,” he would sometimes still say.

Harriet did not tell David about this incident. She knew he was at the edge of what he could stand. And what was she going to say? “Ben tried to kill Paul today!” This was a long way beyond what they had set for themselves, outside the permissible. Besides, she did not believe Ben was trying to kill Paul: he was demonstrating what he could do if he wanted to.

She told Paul that Ben was absolutely not trying to hurt him, only to frighten him. She thought Paul believed her.

Two years before Ben was due to leave the school where he learned nothing, but at least had not harmed anyone, John came to say he was departing from their lives. He had been granted a place in a job-training scheme in Manchester. He, and three of his mates.