The Fifth Child (13 page)

“It’s very nice for him,” a cousin might say, hearing that Ben
was off to the seaside—just as if this were a normal thing, a little boy being taken off for a treat.

He would come in from a day of safety and enjoyment with John and his mates, where he was teased and roughed up, but accepted, and stand by the table, where his family was, all looking at him, their faces grave and cautious. “Give me bread,” he would say. “Give me biscuits.”

“Sit down, Ben,” Luke, or Helen, or Jane—never Paul—would say, in the patient, decent way they had with him, which hurt Harriet.

He scrambled energetically onto a chair, and set himself to be like them. He knew he mustn’t talk with his mouth full, for instance, or eat with his mouth open. He carefully obeyed such imperatives, the energetic animal movements of his jaws confined behind closed lips, waiting till his mouth was empty before saying, “Ben get down now. Ben wants go to bed.”

He was not in “the baby’s room” now, but the one nearest to his parents on the landing. (The baby’s room was empty.) They could not lock him in at night: the sound of a key turning, the slide of a bolt, made him explode into screaming, kicking rage. But the last thing before they slept, the other children locked their doors quietly from inside. This meant Harriet could not go in to them to see how they were before she went to bed, or if they were sick. She did not like to ask them not to lock their doors, nor make a big thing of it by calling in a locksmith and having special locks fitted, openable from the outside by an adult with a key. This business of the children locking themselves in made her feel excluded, forever shut out and repudiated by them. Sometimes she went softly to one of their doors and whispered to be let in, and she was admitted, and there was a little festival of kisses and hugs—but they were thinking of Ben, who might come in … and several times he did arrive silently in the doorway and stare in at this scene, which he could not understand.

Harriet would have liked to lock their door. David said, trying to joke about it, that he would, one of these days. More than once she woke to see Ben standing silently there in the half dark, staring at them. The shadows from the garden moved on the ceiling, the spaces of the big room emptied into obscurity, and there stood this goblin child, half visible. The pressure of those inhuman eyes of his had entered her sleep and woken her.

“Go to sleep, Ben,” she would say gently, keeping her voice level because of the sharp fear she felt. What was he thinking as he stood there, watching them sleep? Did he want to hurt them? Was he experiencing a misery she could not begin to imagine, because he was forever shut out from the ordinariness of this house and its people? Did he want to put his arms around her, like the other children, but not know how? But when she put her arms around him, there was no response, no warmth; it was as if he did not feel her touch.

But, after all, he was in the house very little.

“We aren’t far off being normal again,” she said to David. Hopefully. Longing for him to reassure her. But he only nodded, and did not look at her.

In fact, those two years before Ben went to school were not too bad: afterwards she looked back on them gratefully.

In the year Ben was five, Luke and Helen announced they wanted to go to boarding-school. They were thirteen and eleven. Of course this went against everything Harriet and David believed in. They said this; said, too, that they could not afford it. But again the parents had to face how much the children understood, how they discussed, and planned—and then acted. Luke had already written to Grandfather James, Helen to Grandmother Molly. Their fees would be paid for.

Luke said, in his reasonable way, “They agree it would be better for us. We know you can’t help it, but we don’t like Ben.”

This had happened just after Harriet had come down one morning, Luke and Helen, Jane and Paul behind her, to see Ben squatting on the big table, with an uncooked chicken he had taken from the refrigerator, which stood open, its contents spilled all over the floor. Ben had raided it in some savage fit he could not control. Grunting with satisfaction, he tore the raw chicken apart with teeth and hands, pulsing with barbaric strength. He had looked up over the partly shredded and dismembered carcass at Harriet, at his siblings, and snarled. Then Harriet saw the vitality die down in him as she scolded,
“Naughty
Ben,” and he made himself stand up there on the table, and then jump down to the floor and face her, the remains of the chicken dangling in one hand.

“Poor Ben hungry,” he whined.

He had taken to calling himself Poor Ben. He had heard someone say this? In the group of young men and their girls, had someone said, “Poor Ben!”—and he had then known it fitted him? Was this how he thought of himself? If so, this was a window into a Ben concealed from them, and it broke one’s heart—broke Harriet’s heart, to be accurate.

The children had not commented at all on this scene. They had sat themselves around the table for breakfast, looking at each other, not at her or at Ben.

There was no way Ben could get out of going to school. She had given up trying to read to him, play with him, teach him anything: he could not learn. But she knew the Authorities would never recognise this, or acknowledge that they did. They would say, and rightly, that he did know a lot of things that made him into a part-social being. He knew facts. “Traffic lights green—go. Traffic lights red—stop.” Or, “Half a plate of chips, half price big plate of chips.” Or, “Shut the door, because it is cold.” He would singsong these truths, imparted to him presumably by John, looking at Harriet for confirmation. “Eat with
a spoon, not with fingers!” “Hold on tight going around corners.” Sometimes Harriet heard him singing these slogans in bed at night, thinking of the delights of the day to come.

When he was told he must go to school, he said he would not. Harriet said there was no way around it, to school he must go. But he could be with John at weekends, and on holidays. Tantrums. Rages. Despair. Roars of “No! No! No!” The whole house resounded with it.

John was summoned; he arrived in the kitchen with three of his gang. John, instructed by Harriet, said to Ben, “Now listen, mate. You just listen to us. You’ve got to go to school.”

“Will you be there?” asked Ben, standing by John’s knee, looking trustfully up at him. Rather, his pose, the set of his lifted face, said he trusted John, but his eyes seemed to have shrunk into his head with fear.

“No. But I was at school. When I had to be.” Here the four young men laughed, for of course they had played truant, as all their sort did. School was irrelevant to them. “I was at school. Rowland here was at school. Barry and Henry were at school.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” they all said, playing their parts.

“And I was at school,” said Harriet. But Ben did not hear her: she did not count.

It was finally arranged that Harriet would take Ben to school in the mornings, and that John would be responsible for picking him up. Ben would spend the hours between school’s end and bedtime with the gang.

For the sake of the family, thought Harriet; for the children’s sake … for my sake and David’s. Though he seems to come home later and later.

Meanwhile the family had—as she felt it, saw it—fallen apart. Luke and Helen had gone to their respective boarding-schools. In the house were left Jane and Paul, who were both at the same school Ben was at, but being in higher classes would not
see much of Ben. Jane continued solid, sensible, quiet, and as able to save herself as Luke or Helen. She seldom came home after school, but went to friends. Paul did come home. He was alone with Harriet, and this, she thought, was what he wanted, and needed. He was demanding, shrill, difficult, often in tears. Where was that enchanting, delicious little child, her Paul, she wondered as he nagged and whined, now a lanky six-year-old, with great soft blue eyes that often stared at nothing, or seemed to protest at what he saw. He was too thin. He had never eaten properly. She brought him home from school and tried to make him sit down and eat, or she sat with him, and read, and told him stories. He could not concentrate. He mooned restlessly about, and daydreamed; then came to Harriet to touch her, or climb on her lap like a smaller child, never appeased or at rest or content.

He had not had a mother at the proper time, and that was the trouble, and they all knew it.

When he heard the roar of the machine that was bringing Ben back home, Paul might burst into tears, or bang his head on the wall with frustration.

After Ben had been at school for a month, and there had been no unpleasant news, she asked his teacher how he was getting on. She heard, to her surprise, “He’s a good little chap. He tries so hard.”

Towards the end of the first term, she was summoned on the telephone by the headmistress, Mrs. Graves. “Mrs. Lovatt, I wonder if you …”

An efficient woman, she knew what went on in her school, and that Harriet was the responsible parent of Luke, Helen, Jane, and Paul.

“We all find ourselves at a loss,” said she. “Ben is really trying very hard. He doesn’t seem to fit in with the others. It’s hard to put one’s finger on it.”

Harriet sat waiting—as she had done, it seemed to her, far too often in Ben’s short life—for some kind of acknowledgement that here might be more than a difficulty of adjustment.

She remarked, “He has always been an oddball.”

“The odd man out in the family? Well, there’s usually one, I’ve often noticed it,” said affable Mrs. Graves. While this surface conversation went on, the sensitised Harriet was listening for the other, parallel conversation that Ben’s existence compelled.

“These young men who come and collect Ben, it’s an unusual arrangement,” smiled Mrs. Graves.

“He’s an unusual child,” said Harriet, looking hard at the headmistress, who nodded, not looking at Harriet. She was frowning, as if some annoying thought were poking at her, wanting attention, but she did not feel inclined to give it any.

“Have you ever known a child like Ben before?” Harriet asked.

This risked the headmistress saying, “What do you mean, Mrs. Lovatt?” And in fact Mrs. Graves did say, “What do you mean, Mrs. Lovatt?” but quickly, and then, to stop Harriet telling her, she funked it with “He is hyperactive, perhaps? Of course that is a word that I often feel evades the issue. To say a child is hyperactive does not say very much! But he does have this extraordinary energy. He can’t keep still long—well, a lot of children can’t. His teacher has found him a rewarding little boy because he does try, but she says she has to put more effort into him than all the rest put together.… Well, Mrs. Lovatt, I’m glad you came in, it has been a help.” And as Harriet left, she saw how the headmistress watched her, with that long, troubled inspection that held unacknowledged unease, even horror, which was part of “the other conversation”—the real one.

Towards the end of the second term, she was telephoned: Would she come in at once, please? Ben had hurt someone.

Here it was: this is what she had dreaded. Ben had suddenly
gone berserk and attacked a bigger girl in the playground. He had pulled her down, so that she fell heavily on the asphalt, bruising and grazing her legs. Then he had bitten her, and bent back her arm until it broke.

“I have spoken to Ben,” said Mrs. Graves. “He doesn’t seem to be remorseful in any way. You might even think he doesn’t know he did it. But at that age—he is six, after all—he should know what he is doing.”

Harriet took Ben home, leaving Paul to be picked up later. It was Paul she wanted to take with her: the child had heard of the attack, and was hysterical, screaming that Ben would kill him, too. But she had to be alone with Ben.

Ben sat on the kitchen table, swinging his legs, eating bread and jam. He had asked if John would come here to pick him up. It was John he needed.

Harriet said, “You hurt poor Mary Jones today. Why did you do that, Ben?”

He seemed not to hear, but tore lumps of bread off with his teeth, and then gulped them down.

Harriet sat down close to him, so that he could not ignore her, and said, “Ben, do you remember that place you went to in the van?”

He went rigid. He slowly turned his head and looked at her. The bread in his hand was trembling: he was trembling. He remembered, all right! She had never done this before—had hoped she would never have to.

“Well,
do
you remember, Ben?”

His eyes had a wild look; he could have jumped down from the table and run off. He wanted to, but was glaring around into the corners of the room, at the windows, up the staircase, as if he might be attacked from these places.

“Now listen to me, Ben. If you ever, ever,
ever
hurt anyone again, you’ll have to go back there.”

She kept her eyes on his, and hoped that he could not know
she was saying inwardly, But I’d never send him back, never.

He sat shivering, like a wet, cold dog, in spasms, and he went through a series of movements, unconsciously, the vestiges of reactions from that time. A hand went up to shield his face, and he looked through the spread fingers as if this hand could protect him; then the hand fell, and he turned his head away sharply, pressing the back of the other hand to his mouth, glaring in terror over it; he briefly bared his teeth to snarl—but then checked himself; he lifted his chin, and his mouth opened, and Harriet saw that he could have emitted a long, animal howl. It was as if she actually heard this howl, its lonely terror.…

“Did you hear me, Ben?” Harriet said softly.

He slid down off the table, and thumped his way up the stairs. He left behind him a thin trail of urine. She heard his door shut, then the bellow of rage and fear he had been holding back.

She rang John at Betty’s Caff. He came at once, by himself, as she had asked.

He heard the story, and went up to Ben in his room. Harriet stood outside the door, listening.

“You don’t know your own strength, Hobbit, that’s the trouble. It’s wrong to hurt people.”

“Are you angry with Ben? Are you going to hurt Ben?”

“Who’s angry?” said John. “But if you hurt people, then they hurt you.”