by Casey Watson
‘Of course, thank you. I’ll ask him about it. What did he do?’
‘Just a squabble with another boy – and between you and me, the consensus is that the other boy provoked him. But since Jenson, being Jenson, was about to fly off the handle, and given what’s happening at home right now, the teacher thought it best to remove him from the lesson, so he wouldn’t get himself into any more trouble.’
‘I see …’
‘Just so you know. Anyway, I’ll leave you in peace, then.’
And that was that. No big thing, but it niggled at me even so. Because though I understood the reasoning – what with his mum being AWOL, and his apparent history of disruption, perhaps that was the best approach to take in such a situation. But was it? Surely it should have been the other boy who missed his maths lesson? Surely there was a case for that as well?
And it continued to niggle at me when I put Jenson to bed. I felt I should mention it, if not least to hear what he had to say about it. I also wondered about whether the school routinely rang his mother to report his apparent regular transgressions.
‘It weren’t my fault!’ he protested, even before I’d said anything. Before I’d got much beyond ‘Miss Cappleman called’.
‘I know,’ I said.
‘You do? She said that?’
‘Miss Cappleman – we don’t use “she” – said the other boy was teasing you.’
‘He was! I didn’t do nothing! He’s just a knobhead. He needs a pasting.’
‘Which sort of talk is why your teacher thought it was you she’d better remove.’
‘But it weren’t my fault.’
‘But you still have to learn how to control your temper, Jenson. Or it’ll always be you that ends up in trouble, whoever it was that started it.’
Jenson looked down into his lap. ‘I always end up in trouble anyway,’ he grumbled. ‘It’s always’ – he lifted his hands suddenly, to form quote marks – ‘“Jenson’s fault”.’
Which would have been a pretty unremarkable thing for an average 9-year-old boy to say when he got told off, but for one thing. The flash of something in Jenson’s eyes, which caught mine, and seemed to be saying so much more.
I didn’t know what, but I also knew my radar for such things worked. There was something more here than the usual boyish ‘it-wasn’t-me’ whining. I might not have him with me for long, but I was intrigued about it. What?
Chapter 5
Saturday morning dawned, and that meant football. Football figures large in the Watson family – always has done. And always would do, as well. Our son Kieron loved it, and he was a good player, too. And I could probably count on my fingers the number of Saturdays when Mike hadn’t gone to watch him play, while he was growing up. And if there was no match on, then football would be on the agenda anyway – Mike and Kieron would simply watch a game together instead. And since Kieron had moved in with his girlfriend Lauren, the ritual had changed only in that, these days, he would turn up on our doorstep to meet his dad, rather than stumbling downstairs, bleary eyed, from his bed.
At the moment Kieron was playing for his own team. It was the team he’d set up for the teenagers who attended the youth centre he worked for, and who otherwise would probably just be mooching round the streets. Needless to say, we were as proud of him for doing it (given the challenges of his Asperger’s) as he was of the bunch of lads he played with.
Lauren didn’t usually come with him – she generally spent Saturdays shopping with her mum – but as we had a new kid in, she was keen to come and meet him first; like Kieron, Lauren had a bit of a fondness for our ‘waifs and strays’. Though she was doing dance and theatre studies at college, she seemed to have the same interest in working with young people. Her course finished in the summer and she’d already secured a job at a local dance studio, teaching dance to young girls.
‘Easy,’ said Jenson, meeting Kieron’s outstretched fist with his own.
‘Easy,’ responded Kieron, much to my amusement. I must be slightly out of touch with modern boy-speak, I decided. This was obviously the cool way to meet and greet.
‘So, you must be Jenson, I take it?’ Kieron continued. ‘Well, I’m Kieron and this is Lauren. Which football team do you support?’
‘Dunno,’ Jenson shot back, as quickly as you like. ‘My mum says I should support my legs because they support me.’
‘Ah, a joker, eh?’ Kieron joshed, though managing to look slightly disapproving with it. ‘Well, in this house we love footie, which is where I’m off to soon. Got a match. So I’ll see you later on, yeah?’
Jenson’s face fell. Not a lot, but it was sufficient for me to spot it. Did he want to be asked along, I wondered?
‘I’m good at footie,’ he responded. ‘An’ I got a new football as well. So maybe we can have a kick-about when you get back.’
Kieron glanced at his watch, then back at Jenson’s eager face. ‘I’ve got twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘You want to have a kick-about now instead?’
Jenson’s grin answered for him, and I smiled to myself. Here was a boy who could really use a dad or a big-brother figure. I wondered if mum’s boyfriend fell into that category. ‘I’ll get my ball,’ he said, turning to go and fetch it. Kieron followed. ‘Can you moonwalk?’ I heard him ask as they headed off.
‘He’s a funny little lad, isn’t he?’ Lauren said, while Mike caught up with some telly and the paper and the boys kicked the ball around the garden. Which was fine – with two energetic grandsons in my life, I kept all my planting aspirations strictly out the front.
‘Funny as in ha ha, not peculiar,’ she added. We were both sitting by the patio doors, sipping mugs of coffee, watching them. Kieron was peeling off his sweatshirt to make a makeshift ‘goalpost’ to match the one he’d already made from Jenson’s hoodie. Jenson, meanwhile, was trying to scuff up his trainers. I winced, but only slightly. He was a boy of a certain age and disposition. What had to be done had to be done.
‘He is,’ I agreed. ‘Though from what I’m hearing he has something of a temper. I’ve not seen it myself yet, and perhaps we won’t, either. We’ve probably only got him for ten days or so.’
I filled her in on the circumstances, and watched her grimace, just as we had. ‘How incredibly selfish,’ she remarked. Then she laughed.
‘What?’ I said, following her gaze but not understanding what she was laughing about.
‘Look what he’s doing,’ she said, pointing towards Jenson.
‘What?’ I said again.
‘Look. I’ve been watching him. He’s done that twice now. Look – see where Kieron’s straightening out his sweatshirt? Look, there. Well, just wait. I bet he’ll do it again … there, see?’
I watched as Jenson, while Kieron, busy retrieving the ball, had his back turned, ran across to the tidily folded sweatshirt and kicked it. Not aggressively. Just to muss it up a little bit.
And the next thing, of course, what with Kieron being Kieron, was that he saw it and went back over to fold the sweatshirt up again, because he always needed things to be tidy. Only this was obviously the third time it had happened and he’d cottoned on that it hadn’t been accidental.
‘Hey, you,’ we could just hear him saying. ‘Cut that out, okay?’
To which Jenson grinned, and they got on with their game.
Lauren and I exchanged grins of our own. That was classic Kieron behaviour. With his penchant for neatness that sort of thing would really wind him up. But what was interesting was the sharpness of Jenson’s mind, in catching on to it, and I wondered if he’d seen such behaviours before. Maybe not – maybe he was just a very observant boy. And also cheeky. I’d have to keep an eye on that.
Once Lauren had gone to meet her mum and the boys had gone to football I wondered how I should spend my day with our intriguing new charge. And he was intriguing; every new child that came to us was intriguing. That was why I loved what I did so much. It was the appeal of the new and challenging. It was a privilege, opening
up your home to these children, every bit as much as it was a paid job of work. More privilege than anything, I reckoned, because it taught you so much, and made you feel connected to the wider world. I had always remembered something a school friend’s father told me, about why he’d decided to be a doctor. I’d thought – as I suppose we all do – that it was about being clever, and using your skill in order to make people better, but though it was partly that, he explained, there was something much more instinctive. He’d first got a glimpse of his fledgling career when he spent a night shadowing a young doctor in A&E, and the thing he’d taken away from it was this sense of incredible excitement – and, of course, privilege – at being present, and of use, at a time in people’s lives when they were at their most scared and vulnerable. He’d said it made him feel alive in a way nothing else quite did.
I would never have been so lofty as to say what we did was quite in that league. I couldn’t imagine the stress of having to save someone who might be dying in front of you, but it had always stayed with me, that, and now I was living my own version. Every child who came to us was vulnerable and scared in some way. And winkling out all the whys and wherefores in order to try and help them was a job I thought I’d never ever tire of.
That said, right now I had an energetic 9-year-old to entertain, and a one-on-one session of gentle probing would be the last thing he wanted. I did toy with the idea of sending him off with Mike and Kieron, but in the end I decided against it. Much as I imagined Jenson would have enjoyed watching a football match, I decided it wasn’t fair on Mike to have to take him. He’d had a hard week at work and he looked forward to relaxing with Kieron. Jenson being a largely unknown quantity, and with us being in loco parentis, being responsible for him out and about definitely wouldn’t be that.
And I was happy enough to entertain him myself anyway, because I was still intrigued by the shadow that had crossed his face the previous evening. We might not have him with us long, but I couldn’t switch off my curiosity to find out more about what made him tick.
So once Lauren had gone as well, I told him to turn off his DS (he’d been quietly playing on it since Mike and Kieron had left) and come into the kitchen for a chat.
‘So,’ I said, ‘what do you think you’d like to do today? Go to town for a wander? Go for a walk here? We’ve got some woods just across the green there, and there’ll be baby frogs down there by now …’
Jenson shrugged. ‘Don’ mind. Casey? What’s up with your Kieron?’
‘Pardon?’ I said, surprised by the question.
‘You know. He just seems, like, a bit weird.’
I laughed despite myself. ‘Is that right? No, love. He’s not “weird”, as you put it. Why d’you ask anyway?’ I said, thinking back to my chat with Lauren.
And it seemed Jenson was as well. ‘Cos of the way he kept freaking out every time I moved his hoodie.’
‘Well, perhaps he’s just particular about things being nice and tidy. Nothing wrong with that, Jenson. It’s a skill you should try to cultivate, come to that.’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Jenson answered, having digested what I’d said. ‘But it’s still a bit weird …’
‘Which is presumably why you kept doing it then, is it?’
Jenson looked at me sharply. He obviously hadn’t clicked that we’d seen what he’d been up to. ‘To wind him up?’ I asked mildly.
‘Anyway,’ he said, rapidly changing the subject, ‘shall we go down the woods, then? I hate goin’ round shops. Goin’ round shops is for girls.’
I’ll bet you hate it, I thought. And not just because it might be a ‘girl’ thing. With no money to buy stuff, why would he want to go shopping? And as a boy with just a sister and a mum to grow up with, my hunch was that he’d spent more time than he wanted doing just that.
‘And we’ll take a picnic, I think,’ I decided, having checked the sky for rain clouds. There were none. ‘You like picnics?’
‘I love picnics,’ Jenson said delightedly. Which delighted me as well. ‘An’ we can maybe catch some frogs?’
I smiled. ‘We’ll see. But no crabs.’
‘Definitely no crabs,’ he agreed.
Biology not being my strong point, I wasn’t sure if we could expect to see any crabs anyway – they lived on the coast, in the main, didn’t they? Anyway, we didn’t see any, edible or not. And we didn’t catch any frogs, either, except to hold in our hands briefly, as I managed to persuade Jenson that, much as I understood his wish to keep one, I didn’t have a frog aquarium knocking around at present, and that he’d be going home soon, in any case, so there wouldn’t be a lot of point.
By the time we’d finished our pond dipping and picnic, his trainers were good and filthy, and, though I knew this was the outcome he’d hoped for on this occasion, I decided I should stock up on wellies for my future foster children, as the proximity to the wood and stream meant we’d need them. It was such a wonderful thing to have within walking distance of the house, and I envisaged spending lots of happy hours there.
And the day passed as calmly as did any other Saturday; the evening too. Lauren returned, and she and Kieron stayed for a take-away, and once they headed off, and Jenson trotted up to bed with his DS, I reflected that this might be what mainstream fostering might be like. Relaxed, non-confrontational, nice.
I said as much to Mike. ‘It would just be so different, wouldn’t it? Like having a succession of chirpy, pint-sized lodgers in the house. And you could easily have more than one, couldn’t you? I can so see that.’
‘Love,’ Mike said, ‘have you been watching that Sound of Music DVD again?’ he laughed. ‘Pint-sized lodgers! What are you like?’
I hit him with my copy of the Radio Times. ‘Cheeky so-and-so!’
‘Come on, Case,’ he persisted. ‘That’s so not your thing. I know you. You’ve never been any different. You get that glint in your eye and you’re off –’
‘What d’you mean, “off”?’
‘Off on one of your save-the-world projects. Love, if you haven’t got a problem kid to straighten out, you’re bored.’
And he was right, of course. When you’re young you don’t always know what job’s best going to suit you. But when I hit my thirties and got the role running the ‘unit’ at the comprehensive, it was like a light had pinged on in my brain. I’d come home from work in the evenings, and poor Mike wouldn’t get a word in. I would always be ‘You won’t believe what’s happened with this kid’, or ‘Her mother did this to her – God, I’m horrified’, or ‘And this one kid said to the other … and then this other one did so and so …’ Yes, on reflection, perhaps Mike was right.
Still, I thought, sometimes a rest was a bonus, and we’d definitely had that; so far it had been a perfectly pleasant weekend.
Sunday continued in similar fashion. This time Riley and David and the little ones had come over, and we enjoyed a big family mid-afternoon roast – with Mike’s special gravy, of course – all of which seemed to delight Jenson.
‘I like little ’uns,’ he said, in response to my comment about how patient he had been with Levi and Jackson.
Once the meal was over, we’d all assembled back in the living room, where he’d spent ages trying to teach Levi how to moonwalk.
‘I can tell you do,’ I said. ‘You’re a natural, you are, Jenson. You’d make a brilliant teacher, you know. Because you’re patient. And that’s a very important thing to be.’
He swelled with pride. Literally. Puffed out his chest and lifted his chin up. Then he seemed to think for a minute, watching me getting out one of my cigarettes. My first of the day. A real treat. ‘You know,’ he said, gesturing towards it. ‘If you ever want me to keep an eye on them for you – you know, while you go an’ smoke that …’
I laughed. What a quaint and random thing to say, I thought. ‘No need,’ I told him. ‘It’s not a real cigarette, see?’
I handed it to him. It was a plastic one – a nicotine inhalator. The only kind I ‘smoked
’, since making the momentous decision to absolutely, definitely, completely give up smoking. And I’d been doing well so far. Fingers crossed I could keep it up.
Jenson inspected it for a moment before handing it back to me. ‘That’s weird,’ he said.
‘Yes, but weird in a good way. Weird in a brilliant way. And listen, don’t you ever think taking up smoking’s big and clever. Once you start, it’s very, very, very hard to stop. Anyway,’ I said, ‘time for a bath for you, I think. School in the morning –’
His face fell. ‘Do I have to?’
‘Yes, Jenson, you definitely have to.’ I popped my ‘cigarette’ onto the coffee table. ‘Because those are the rules in this house. And I’ll come up with you, if you like. Pop your new pyjamas in the airing cupboard so they’re nice and snug and warm to put on afterwards.’
‘Aww, okayyy,’ he said. And there was something about the smiley way he said it that told me he quite liked having rules after all. Especially when they came with warm pyjamas.
Sorting the pyjamas out, while Jenson took himself off reluctantly to the bathroom, I wondered again about that. Had he ever had his jim-jams warmed before? And what was his mother doing right now – right this minute? Having her first cocktail of the evening? Still lying on a beach somewhere? Canoodling with the boyfriend? But my reverie was interrupted by the house phone.
‘Can you grab that, love?’ I called down to Mike, knowing it would probably be my mum. She and my dad were pretty much the only ones who ever called the house phone. Among friends and family, at any rate. And who else would be calling on a Sunday evening?
Silly me. Naïve me, not to expect the unexpected. Because it wasn’t Mum, wanting to hear all about our new temporary house guest. It was John. With some stuff to tell us.
