The Fifth Child Part 9

"He hasn't hurt anyone for a long time."

After that weekend Dorothy said to Harriet, "I wonder if Ben ever asks himself why he is so different from us."

"How do we know? I've never known what he's thinking."

"Perhaps he thinks there's more of his kind somewhere."

"Perhaps he does."

"Provided it's not a female of the species!"

"Ben makes you think ... all those different people who lived on the earth once-they must be in us somewhere."

"All ready to pop up! But perhaps we simply don't notice them when they do," said Dorothy.

"Because we don't want to," said Harriet.

"I certainly don't want to," said Dorothy. "Not after seeing Ben.... Harriet, do you and David realise that Ben isn't a child any longer? We treat him like one, but ..."

Those two years before Ben could go to the big school were bad for him. He was lonely, but did he know he was? Harriet was very lonely, and knew she was....

Like Paul, when he was there, Ben now went at once to the television when he came in from school. He sometimes watched from four in the afternoon until nine or ten at night. He did not seem to like one programme more than another. He did not understand that some programmes were for children, and others for grown-ups.

"What was the story of that film, Ben?"

"Story." He tried the word, his thick clumsy voice tentative. And his eyes were on her face, to discover what she wanted.

"What happened in that film, the one you've just seen?"

"Big cars," he would say. "A motorbike. That girl crying. Car chased the man."

Once, to see if Ben could learn from Paul, she said to Paul, "What was the story of that film?"

"It was about bank robbers, wasn't it?" said Paul, full of scorn for stupid Ben, who was listening, his eyes moving from his mother's face to his brother's. "They planned to rob the bank by tunnelling. They nearly reached the vault, but the police caught them in a trap. They went to prison, but most of them escaped. Two of them were shot by the police."

Ben had listened carefully.

"Tell me the story of the film, Ben?"

"Bank robbers," said Ben. And repeated what Paul had said, stumbling as he reached for exactly the same words.

"But that was only because I told him," said Paul.

Ben's eyes flared, but went cold as he told himself-Harriet presumed-"I mustn't hurt anyone. If I do, they'll take me to that place." Harriet knew everything Paul was thinking, feeling. But Ben-she had to try to guess.

Could Paul perhaps teach Ben, without either of them knowing it?

She would read a story to them both, and ask Paul to repeat the story. Then Ben copied Paul. But inside a few minutes he had forgotten it.

She played games like snakes-and-ladders and ludo with Paul, Ben watching; and then, when Paul was with his other family, she invited Ben to try. But he could not get the hang of the games.

Yet certain films he would watch over and over again and never tire of them. They had hired a video. He loved musicals: The Sound of Music, West Side Story, Oklahoma!, Cats.

"And now she is going to sing," Ben told her when she asked "What is happening now, Ben?"

Or, "They are going to dance around, and then she will sing." Or, "They are going to hurt that girl." "The girl ran away. Now it is a party."

But he could not tell her the story of the film.

"Sing me that tune, Ben. Sing it to me and Paul."

But he could not. He loved the tune, but could bring out only a rough, tuneless roar.

Harriet found Paul teasing Ben: asking him to sing a tune, then taunting him. Harriet saw fury blaze in Ben's eyes, and told Paul not to do that ever again.

"Why not?" cried Paul. "Why not? It's always Ben, Ben, Ben ..." He flailed his arms at Ben. Ben's eyes glittered. He was about to spring on Paul ...

"Ben," warned Harriet.

It seemed to her that these efforts she made to humanise him drove him away into himself, where he ... but what?- remembered?-dreamed of?-his own kind.

Once, when she knew he was in the house, but could not find him, she went up from floor to floor looking into the rooms. The first floor, which was still inhabited, with David and herself, Ben and Paul, though three of the rooms were empty, their beds standing ready, spread with fresh pillows and laundered duvets. The second floor, with its clean empty rooms. The third floor: how long since children's voices, their laughter, filled that floor and spilled out of the open windows all over the garden? But Ben was not in any of those rooms. She went on quietly up to the attic. The door was open. From the high skylight fell a distorted rectangle of light, and in it stood Ben, staring up at dim sunlight. She could not make out what he wanted, what he felt.... He heard her and then she saw the Ben that this life he had to lead kept subdued: in one leap he had reached the dark at the edge of the eaves and vanished. All she could see was the obscurities of an attic that seemed boundless. She could hear nothing. He was crouching there, staring out at her.... She felt the hair on her head lift, felt cold chills-instinctive, for she did not fear him with her mind. She was rigid with terror.

"Ben," she said softly, though her voice shook. "Ben ..." putting into the word her human claim on him, and on this wild dangerous attic where he had gone back into a far-away past that did not know human beings.

No reply. Nothing. A blotch of shadow momentarily dimmed the thin dirty light under the skylight: a bird had pa.s.sed, on its way from one tree to another.

She went downstairs, and sat cold and lonely in the kitchen, drinking hot tea.

Just before Ben went to the local secondary modern school, the only school of course that would have him, there was a summer holiday, almost like those in the past. People had written each other, had rung: "Those poor people, let's go there, at least for a week...." Poor David ... always that, Harriet knew. Sometimes, rarely, poor Harriet ... More often, irresponsible Harriet, selfish Harriet, crazy Harriet ...

Who had not let Ben be murdered, she defended herself fiercely, in thought, never aloud. By everything they-the society she belonged to-stood for, believed in, she had had no alternative but to bring Ben back from that place. But because she had, and saved him from murder, she had destroyed her family. Had harmed her life ... David's ... Luke's, Helen's, Jane's ... and Paul's. Paul, the worst.

Her thoughts circled in this groove.

David kept saying she should simply not have gone up there ... but how could she not have gone, being Harriet? And if she had not, she believed David would have.

A scapegoat. She was the scapegoat-Harriet, the destroyer of her family.

But another layer of thoughts, or feelings, ran deeper. She said to David, "We are being punished, that's all."

"What for?" he demanded, already on guard because there was a tone in her voice he hated.

"For presuming. For thinking we could be happy. Happy because we decided we would be."

"Rubbish," he said. Angry: this Harriet made him angry. "It was chance. Anyone could have got Ben. It was a chance gene, that's all."

"I don't think so," she stubbornly held on. "We were going to be happy! No one else is, or I never seem to meet them, but we were going to be. And so down came the thunderbolt."

"Stop it, Harriet! Don't you know where that thought leads? Pogroms and punishments, witch-burnings and angry G.o.ds-!" He was shouting at her.

"And scapegoats," said Harriet. "Don't forget the scapegoats."

"Vindictive G.o.ds, from thousands of years ago," he hotly contended, disturbed to his depths, she could see. "Punis.h.i.+ng G.o.ds, distributing punishments for insubordination ..."

"But who were we to decide we were going to be this or that?"

"Who? We did. Harriet and David. We took the responsibility for what we believed in, and we did it. Then-bad luck. That's all. We could easily have succeeded. We could have had just what we planned. Eight children in this house and everyone happy ... Well, as far as possible."

"And who paid for it? James. And Dorothy, in a different way ... No, I'm just stating facts, David, not criticising you."

But this had long ago ceased to be a sore point with David. He said: "James and Jessica have so much money they wouldn't have missed three times as much. Anyway, they adored doing it. And Dorothy-she complained about being used, but she's been Amy's nursemaid ever since she got fed up with us."

"We just wanted to be better than everyone else, that's all. We thought we were."

"No, that's how you are twisting it around now. All we wanted was-to be ourselves."

"Oh, that's all," said Harriet airily, spitefully. "That's all."

"Yes. Don't do it, Harriet, stop it.... Well, if you won't, if you have to, then leave me out. I'm not going to be dragged back to the Middle Ages."

"Is that where we've been dragged back to?"

Molly and Frederick came, bringing Helen. They had not, would not, forgive Harriet, but Helen must be considered. She was doing well at school, an attractive, self-sufficient girl of sixteen. But cool, distant.

James brought Luke, eighteen years old, a handsome boy, quiet, reliable and steady. He was going to build boats, like his grandfather. He was a watcher, an observer, like his father.

Dorothy came with Jane, fourteen. Non-academic, but "none the worse for that," as Dorothy insisted. "I could never pa.s.s an exam." The "and look at me" was unspoken; but Dorothy would challenge them all simply by her presence. Which was less substantial than it had been. She was rather thin these days, and sat about a good deal. Paul, eleven years old, was histrionic, hysterical, always demanding attention. He talked a lot about his new school, a day-school, which he hated. He wanted to know why he couldn't go to boarding-school like all the others. David said, forestalling James with a proud look, that he would pay for it.

"Surely it is time you sold this house," Molly said, and what she was saying to her selfish daughter-in-law was "And then my son can stop killing himself working too hard for you."

David came in quickly to support Harriet, "I agree with Harriet, we shouldn't sell the house yet."

"Well, what do you think is going to change?" asked Molly, cold. "Ben certainly isn't."

But privately David said something else. He would like the house sold.

"It's being with Ben in a small house, just the thought of it," said Harriet.

"It wouldn't have to be a small house. But does it have to be the size of a hotel?"

David knew that even now, though it was foolish, she could not finally give up her dreams of the old life coming back.

Then that holiday was gone. A success, on the whole, for everyone tried hard. Except for Molly-so Harriet saw it. But it was sad for both parents. They had to sit listening to talk about people they had not met, only heard of. Luke and Helen visited families of school friends. And these people could never be asked here.

In September of the year Ben became eleven, he went to the big school. It was 1986.

Harriet prepared herself for the telephone call that must come from the headmaster. It would be, she thought, towards the end of the first term. The new school would have been sent a report on Ben, from the headmistress who had so consistently refused to acknowledge that there was anything remarkable about him. "Ben Lovatt is not an academic child, but ..." But what? "He tries hard." Would that have been it? But he had long ago stopped trying to understand what he was taught, could hardly read or write, more than his name. He still tried to fit in, to copy others.

There was no telephone call, no letter. Ben, whom she examined for bruises every evening when he came home, seemed to have entered the tough and often brutal world of the secondary school without difficulty.

"Do you like this school, Ben?"

"Yes."

"Better than the other school?"

"Yes."

As everyone knows, all these schools have a layer, like a sediment, of the uneducable, the una.s.similable, the hopeless, who move up the school from cla.s.s to cla.s.s, waiting for the happy moment when they can leave. And, more often than not, they are truants, to the relief of their teachers. Ben had at once become one of these.

Some weeks after he went to the big school, he brought home a large, s.h.a.ggy dark youth, full of easy good nature. Harriet thought, John! And then, But he must be John's brother! No; Ben had been drawn to this boy, it was clear, first of all because of his memories of that happy time with John. But his name was Derek, and he was fifteen, soon to leave school. Why did he put up with Ben, years younger than he was? Harriet watched the two as they helped themselves to food from the refrigerator, made themselves tea, sat in front of the television, talking more than they watched. In fact, Ben seemed older than Derek. They ignored her. Just as when Ben was the mascot, the pet of the gang of youths, John's gang, and had seemed to see only John, now his attention was for Derek. And, soon, for Billy, for Elvis, and for Vic, who came in a gang after school and sat around and fed themselves from the refrigerator.

Why did these big boys like Ben?

She would look at them, from the stairs perhaps, as she came down into the living-room, a group of youths, large, or thin, or plump, dark, fair, or redheaded-and among them Ben, squat, powerful, heavy-shouldered, with his bristly yellow hair growing in that strange pattern, with his watchful, alien eyes-and she thought, But he's not really younger than they are! He's much shorter, yes. But it almost seems that he dominates them. When they sat around the big family table, talking in their style, which was loud, raucous, jeering, jokey, they were always looking at Ben. Yet he spoke very little. When he did say something, it was never much more than Yes, or No. Take this! Get that! Give me-whatever it was, a sandwich, a bottle of c.o.ke. And he watched them carefully all the time. He was the boss of this gang, whether they knew it or not.

They were a bunch of gangly, spotty, uncertain adolescents; he was a young adult. She had to conclude this finally, though for a while she believed that these poor children, who stayed together because they were found stupid, awkward, and unable to match up to their contemporaries, liked Ben because he was even clumsier and more inarticulate than they. No! She discovered that "Ben Lovatt's gang" was the most envied in the school, and a lot of boys, not only the truants and drop-outs, wanted to be part of it.

Harriet watched Ben with his followers and tried to imagine him among a group of his own kind, squatting in the mouth of a cave around roaring flames. Or a settlement of huts in a thick forest? No, Ben's people were at home under the earth, she was sure, deep underground in black caverns lit by torches-that was more like it. Probably those peculiar eyes of his were adapted for quite different conditions of light.

She often sat in the kitchen, by herself, when they were across the low wall in the living-room, watching the box. They might sprawl there for hours, all afternoon and evening. They made tea, raided the refrigerator, went out to fetch pies, or chips, or pizzas. They did not seem to mind what they watched; they liked the afternoon soap operas, did not turn off the children's programmes; but best of all they enjoyed the b.l.o.o.d.y fare of the evening. Shootings and killings and tortures and fighting: this is what fed them. She watched them watching-but it was more as if they were actually part of the stories on the screen. They were unconsciously tensing and flexing, faces grinning, or triumphant or cruel; and they let out groans or sighs or yells of excitement: "That's it, do it!" "Carve him up!" "Kill him, slice him!" And the moans of excited partic.i.p.ation as the bullets poured into a body, as blood spurted, as the tortured victim screamed.

These days the local newspapers were full of news of muggings, hold-ups, break-ins. Sometimes this gang, Ben among them, did not come into the Lovatts' house for a whole day, two days, three.

"Where have you been, Ben?"

He replied indifferently, "Been with my friends."

"Yes, but where?"

"Been around."

In the park, in a cafe, in the cinema, and, when they could borrow (or steal?) motorbikes, off to some seaside town.

She thought of ringing the headmaster, but then: What is the point? If I were in his place, I'd be relieved they took themselves off.

The police? Ben in the hands of the police?

The gang always seemed to have plenty of money. More than once, dissatisfied with what they found in the refrigerator, they brought in feasts of food, and ate all evening. Derek (never Ben!) would offer her some.

"Like a bit of take-away, love?"

And she accepted, but sat apart from them, for she knew they would not want her too close.

There were rapes, too, among those news items....

She examined those faces, trying to match them with what she had read. Ordinary young men's faces; they all seemed older than fifteen, sixteen. Derek had a foolish look to him: at ugly moments on the screen he laughed a lot in a weak excitable way. Elvis was a lean, sharp blond youth, very polite, but a nasty customer, she thought, with eyes as cold as Ben's. Billy was a hulk, stupid, with aggression in every movement. He would get so lost in the violence on the box that he would jump to his feet and seem almost to disappear into the screen-and then the others jeered at him, and he came to himself and sat down. He scared her. They all did. But, she thought, they weren't all that intelligent. Perhaps Elvis was.... If they were stealing (or worse), then who planned it all, and looked after them?