The Cat Who Came Back for Christmas

by Julia Romp

  Anxiety was still one of George’s biggest problems and even Ben hadn’t rid him of it completely when it came to the outside world. George was happy at home but things were different when he left it, and as his physical tics like humming and tapping got worse, I could see for myself that he felt more and more under attack from the world around him. When George walked down the school corridor, the kids who brushed against him were bashing into him; when they came too close, they were trying to scare him; if they licked their lip, they were sticking their tongue out. So although I’d always made sure to take him out and about, I knew I had to do it even more now to stop him hiding.

  So in the summer before George started secondary school, we went to even more places: to Bournemouth beach because he loved the sea or into town to Madame Tussauds or the London Aquarium. It wasn’t plain sailing, because George didn’t like all the people or eating when we were out. The one place we’d always been able to go was a nearby garden center with a café because the lady who ran it was kind enough to make toast just how George liked it—not too warm and served with gloves so that he knew no one had touched it. But now I learned to persuade him to eat when we were out by taking a packed lunch and making sure that no one came close enough to breathe on it; and if he got anxious when there was too much of a crowd, I would stand in front of him while he hid in a corner until the knot of people had passed by; or when he got angry because it had all got too much, I’d let him get it off his chest.

  “I hate you,” he’d scream again and again as he lay on the floor and I waited for him to calm down enough to get him back on to his feet. “Why did you make me come here?”

  I knew I had to keep going to stop George building a shell around himself. But if dealing with him myself was one thing, other people’s reactions were quite another. George looked like any other child at first glance and that meant strangers felt able to say whatever they liked when they thought he was being naughty.

  “How can she let him get away with it?” I’d hear them say as he lay on the floor kicking and screaming. “It’s disgusting.”

  “Parents these days. Don’t know how to control their kids.”

  “Look at that boy. What kind of kid is he?”

  Another day we were at an amusement park and got on a boat ride. George sat in his seat, looking as he always did when we were out—completely serious with a straight face and a tense jaw—and a man leaned toward him.

  “Happy kid!” he said. “Don’t look so miserable. It might never happen.”

  George didn’t take a blind bit of notice, but I suffered the pain for him, feeling angry that people could be so judgmental. Why did they think it was OK to be so cruel about a 10-year-old boy?

  I worried all the time that George was taking it in and hoped that some of the nice things we saw and did went in as well. When we got home after all those stares and sniggers, I’d tell George that I loved him again and again, as if to try to wash away any bad memories he might have kept. He didn’t say anything back, but he’d bash into me when he walked past, which was his way of telling me that he’d heard.

  The problem of school still had to be solved, though, and when Michael Schlesinger, George’s educational psychologist, told me about three that he thought might be good for George, I decided to visit them to see for myself. The first was in south London and Mum came with me. The place was like Fort Knox—all locks and doors—and from the moment I stepped inside, I knew it wasn’t where George would want to be. The teachers seemed very good and they obviously controlled the classes well. But when a boy wanted to hug me and started screaming when he was stopped, something just didn’t feel right. I couldn’t tell you exactly why I knew I didn’t want George to go to that school, but I didn’t. The second place I visited was just the same and I was beginning to wonder whether I’d ever find the right school for George when I went to visit the final one that Mr. Schlesinger had suggested—Marjorie Kinnan in Feltham, about 5 miles from home.

  What can I say? The moment I walked in, I knew it was right for George. Marjorie Kinnan took kids with all sorts of learning difficulties, from the not so bad to the extreme. But it wasn’t a sad kind of place at all; in fact, that was the last thing it was. The rooms were light, there was color everywhere and you could tell from the way the classrooms had been laid out that someone had thought about making kids with special needs feel comfortable. There was no huge echoing hall to scare them or rooms so small they’d feel trapped. Instead the school was divided into classrooms and spaces just big enough for children to feel safe. There was a music room stuffed with equipment and a soft playroom filled with bean bags. The teachers were quiet and calm, and there was no restraining. It was lovely and there was happiness in the air, which was all I wanted for George. But although I wanted him to go to Marjorie Kinnan, he still had to be assessed by one of their staff to make sure he was suitable.

  “There was a woman watching me today,” he told me after a Marjorie Kinnan teacher had gone into his primary school to observe him.

  I wasn’t sure how much she could have found out about George, as he told me he’d pulled his jumper over his head and refused to show his face again after cottoning on to what was happening. So I decided to try to encourage him.

  “She’s not there to look at you,” I said. “She’s there to look at the out-of-control kids, not you.”

  A few days later I got the good news that the woman had been back to see George again and he’d been accepted at Marjorie Kinnan. My little white lie had done the trick.

  Chapter 12

  George was sitting in the bath and Ben lay in the sink, keeping watch over him just as he always did. As a wasp flew past, Ben tried to bat it with his paw but missed.

  “You’re out of control, you are,” George told him. “And you’ve got learning needs. You can’t talk to people. You don’t like peoples. You is not a people’s person. But you don’t have to go to school, do you? You work in China.”

  Chatting to Ben was for George now what having a cuppa with Mum was for me—a way to make sense of things. One day Ben was the manager of a shop in Hounslow high street and the next he was working in Outer Mongolia. But throughout all George’s imaginative talk, tiny bits of the information he was picking up at his new school were pouring out. He’d been talking to Ben a lot like this since starting at Marjorie Kinnan, because his first few months there had been hard and George needed to make sense of it all. Everything was new—buildings, faces, smells, voices, lights, toilets, even the height of the chairs at the desks—and with all those unfamiliar things to get to know it was no surprise that he’d found changing schools difficult.

  At first, George’s new class teacher, Miss Worgan, had told me that he was withdrawn and uncooperative. George had refused to look at her or do any work, sit still or answer questions, and although I knew this was all part of the process, it had worried me when I was told that he’d started copying behaviors he saw in the kids around him. George was doing things he had not done for a long time, like making sudden animal sounds to make his classmates laugh, and I knew I had to sort it out quickly or else it would just get worse.

  “You have to stop copying and start showing who you really are,” I told him. “You must show your teachers that you’re sensible and kind because I know you are, and if you act sensibly the other kids will follow. I bet Miss Worgan would love to see the real you, not the naughty you, and I think Ben would like that too.”

  “Would he?”

  “Of course. Ben knows what a good boy you are. He wants other people to see it too.”

  It was a step forward in itself that George and I could have conversations like this now. When George and I had started using cat talk, I’d sometimes wondered if I was doing the right thing encouraging it, because I did not want him to stop using his own voice. But as time had passed he was using cat talk less and speaking to me more in his own voice, which was how he told me some sad news when he came home from school. As the months had pass
ed and his behavior had settled, George had made great friends with his learning support assistant, who was called Mrs. Ward, and although the only thing I knew about her at first was that she smelled of coffee—but then again most adults seemed to smell of coffee to George—he’d started telling me more. Mrs. Ward talked to him about everything from what she’d done over the weekend to where she went on holiday, and George had clicked with her because she spoke to him like a real person. So when Mrs. Ward told him that her dog had died, he was upset.

  “Mrs. Ward is sad,” George said when he got home from school.

  “I’m sure she is. I’m sure Mrs. Ward loved her dog.”

  “She did. I wanted to tell her that her dog is in heaven.”

  “Well, you can tomorrow if you want to.”

  “No. No. You don’t tell anybody.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just don’t.”

  George couldn’t quite bring himself to say the words out loud, but just the fact that he’d wanted to say them was encouraging. And Mrs. Ward wasn’t the only person he was showing concern for. The longer Ben was with us, the more George was getting well-known at Marjorie Kinnan for sticking up for his classmates. The kids there had problems of all kinds, physical disabilities as well as learning difficulties, and took the mickey out of each other as all children do. George had started to step in if he felt one was being particularly unfair to another.

  “You need to take a look in the mirror at yourself,” he told a girl who was taunting another.

  Her mum complained about what George had said, but I was quietly happy that he was speaking out. Plain speaking had gotten him into enough trouble in the past; at least it was being put to better use now.

  Miss Worgan, Mrs. Ward and all the other teachers at Marjorie Kinnan were the best thing that could have happened to George. They had endless time to talk to him, but all the practical things they did made just as much of a difference. George was given Blu-tack to hold in his hands to help him stop tapping them, which helped him concentrate; he had his own table, chair and drawer for school things, which solved his anxiety about people touching his things; he was allowed to change for sports lessons alone instead of in the changing room, which he’d always hated. The teachers even learned the fine art of being able to tell when George was really stressed and when he was just trying to push their buttons, which meant they could discipline or reassure him according to what he needed.

  Each child at Marjorie Kinnan was treated as an individual and the patience everyone showed was getting real results: something had begun to click inside George when it came to learning and he was finally showing an interest in his lessons. It was happening very slowly, and I had to be careful not to ask him too many questions because he didn’t want to talk about it too much. But after a day at Marjorie Kinnan, George went up to his bedroom when he got home and sat down with Ben. Then he’d get out a book and talk to Ben as he turned the pages, while Ben watched. Sometimes George would tell his own story to go with the pictures, but sometimes he would even try to read the book itself.

  “Aaaannnnd,” George would say, as he stared at a page.

  Each word would be drawn out almost forever, but as I peered quietly around the door to watch him with Ben I’d feel full of hope.

  The combination of Ben at home and a school that suited him so well were having a knock-on effect on other things too. George had started wanting to make decisions for Ben about when he should have food or when it was time for them to play, which I hoped would help him make more for himself; and talking to Ben was stopping him from bottling up his worries, which had made him calmer.

  “Do you know we’re going to run out of oil one day and then all the lights will go black?” George would tell Ben. “Do you know that swans get caught in plastic bags and die?”

  As George talked, Ben would look at him very seriously, his bright eyes shining with interest in what his friend was telling him.

  No, I didn’t. That’s awful, George. I don’t like swans because they hiss if I get too close, but I still wouldn’t want one to be hurt.

  Another topic they went over regularly was the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

  “There’s a war,” George would say to Ben. “And soldiers die. Bang bang. In the sand. People are killing each other. They need to stop. The guns need to be taken away like the cars. Guns kills people like cars kill the trees.”

  Or we’d be watching the news and George would see pictures of children orphaned by famine or disease.

  “Look at the children,” he’d say to Ben. “It’s sad. Why is that happening? Mum says them people haven’t even got fresh water.” Then George would look at me. “Can’t we give the children a home here, Mum?”

  “I’m not sure we could fit all of them into our house,” I’d tell him.

  “But we should help them, shouldn’t we?”

  “I hope we can.”

  “So do I, Mum. Help the children children.”

  “Is that what you’d like, George?”

  He looked at me as if I was completely mad. “Of course, Mum. It’s good to help people. Don’t you know that? I thought everyone knew that.”

  George could not stop laughing. I had gone out for an hour and Mum had been sitting with him, and he’d complained of a headache. So she’d gotten the sticky liquid medicine I gave George, because he couldn’t swallow pills, but he had gotten the giggles as she tried to give him a spoonful. Just as Mum had gotten the medicine nearly into his mouth, George had moved and her hand had slipped. As usual, Ben was sitting below them, watching what was happening, and now his back was matted with sugary medicine and I was chasing him around the kitchen trying to get it off with a wet cloth.

  “At least he won’t get a headache,” George shrieked.

  I didn’t have time for this. We were having a Halloween party, a really big one, and people were going to start arriving soon. George was dressed up as a devil in a red cape and horns with a face to match, I was a dead bride and Ben? Well, Ben wore a dinner suit every day, thanks to his white nose and chest, so he didn’t need to dress up. As I made a grab for him, he ran off again and I wondered if he thought I was just playing with him—or whether he knew he was playing with me.

  There was still so much to do because this was going to be a party that everyone would remember. I’d had big ideas about how I was going to celebrate the Halloween of 2008. I’d had a small do the year before with family and it had gone so well that this time I wanted to do something even better. I’d been thinking back to the gardening and games nights on the estate and had decided that lots of people we knew should get involved.

  I’ve always loved a get-together—from the birthday parties I had as a kid, when Mum would buy me a lovely dress and invite all my friends over for Coke floats, to the bashes Michelle and I had with our neighbors and the kids when we’d dance to Dolly Parton as she wanted, or Elvis as I did, and all the children would plead for something a bit more up-to-date. I like everything that a party involves, from buying food and decorating to getting dressed up and dragging out all the old CDs, because when the house fills up with people and I hear the sound of them laughing, I know there’s nothing better in the world than everyone enjoying themselves. Life’s so full of trouble that we all need those times when we let our hair down and just have fun, don’t we?

  George wasn’t so sure, though, when I told him what I wanted to do.

  “Why don’t you invite some friends from school?” I said. “It’ll be fun.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Go on, George.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll make sure Lewis dances for you.”

  If anything was going to persuade him, that would. Over the years, George had had to get used to parties because our family got together at any chance. But George had a mixed relationship with our celebrations. Although he loved getting ready for them, decorating and planning what we were going to do, as the party started he’d usually
go to his bedroom or stand on the sidelines, unsure of what to do with all the people and noise. Lewis’s dancing, though, was the one thing George always loved watching, and he wanted everyone else to like it as much as he did.

  “Turn the music down,” George would shout when he’d decided it was time for Lewis to show us his moves. “Everyone move back. Lewis is the best dancer there is. He can dance just like Michael Jackson. He loves Michael Jackson. I do too.”

  Then when he was sure that everyone was gathered in a proper circle, George would hit the button on the stereo and Lewis would start dancing. He could zombie walk to “Thriller” like the King of Pop himself and George would tap his foot to the music as he watched everyone looking at Lewis.

  “Did you see Tor clapping her hands to Lewis’s dancing?” he’d ask me afterward. “Boy said ‘Woo’ when he finished, which means he must have liked it too because that’s what people say when they like something.”

  Lewis danced at every party and even if George then went back to stand in the corner and wave people away when they got too close, I was glad he had a way of being at the center of things for a few minutes. A lot of parents with children like George might not throw parties because they think it would be too much. But just as learning to say please was important for George to learn, so was understanding that fun was a part of life. I’d always believed George would learn things by seeing them, and getting as comfortable as he could among people was one of the lessons I wanted to teach him.