A Friend Like Henry

by Nuala Gardner

  “But it’s not like he really hurt Henry,” said Jamie, still trying to absorb the news. “It’s probably just a one-time thing.”

  “We can’t risk it happening again,” I disagreed. “Ever.”

  Both of us were at a loss as to how to get this across to Dale; and if we couldn’t, then for his own protection our beloved Henry would have to go.

  Sometimes the best ideas are born out of despair. As I stood in the kitchen unable to face the thought of losing Henry, I happened to glance at the cupboard where I kept the first-aid kit containing the Mickey Mouse band-aids. This simple act inspired the makings of a plan, which I cautiously explained to Jamie. We worked up the idea together, but then as I started to realize the potential implications, I began to have doubts.

  “We have to be sure about this, Jamie. Otherwise I’m not going to be able to go through with it.”

  Jamie considered a moment, then replied, “I’m sure. This is too important—we have to give it a try.”

  Anxious but determined, we went through to the lounge, where Dale was sitting in the armchair, calmer now, but still crying. Jamie went over to Henry in the corner and knelt down beside him to comfort him. Then, using Henry’s voice, he said, “Dad, please help me. I’m so sad. Dale hates me. He hurt me—my back is very sore.”

  I slipped out into the hall and returned with a suitcase that Dale knew we used when we went away. I placed it on the sofa and started to fill it with Henry’s things. In went his food bowls, his toys one at a time, and his grooming tools. Dale sat and watched, teeth clenched, swaying back and forth, moaning. I picked up the phone and, while Jamie continued to collect items for the case, pretended to call Val, feeling terrible about what we were doing, but knowing we had to see it through.

  “Hello, Val,” I lied. “It’s Nuala here. Something terrible has happened. Dale has kicked Henry and hurt him. He hates his dog.” I paused and gestured to Jamie, who disappeared into the kitchen, knowing what I wanted from him. “Val, poor Henry is very sad,” I continued. “His back is so sore.”

  Jamie returned with a big adhesive dressing on which I’d drawn a felt-tipped Mickey Mouse face, and he proceeded to stick this on Henry’s back where he was kicked.

  “We’ll have to bring him back to live with you, Val,” I concluded into the phone.

  Neither of us could possibly have been prepared for Dale’s reaction. To this day, we remember vividly how he screamed in shock and ran over to Henry, frantically cuddling him, burying his head in his fur and crying hysterically, “My dog, my dog, what have I done to my dog?”

  Although shocked at seeing Dale in this state, we nervously carried out the rest of our plan. In a subdued voice, Henry said, “No, Dale, you hurt me and hate me. I want to go back to live with Val.”

  Desperately distressed, Dale started kissing Henry on the head, telling him, “Henry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Please don’t leave me—you’re my dog.” He collapsed again against the dog’s fur, and his next words left us gaping in disbelief. “I love you, Henry. I love my dog.”

  We looked on, quietly stunned. Dale had never before expressed sentiments of love, and it mattered not a jot to us that it was a golden retriever who received them first. We also realized that Dale did understand what he had done and so Henry told him forgivingly, “I love you, Dale, and want to live with you.”

  I sat consoling Dale, with Henry beside us, while Jamie unpacked the suitcase and returned Henry’s things to where they belonged. I made sure Dale felt better, though he still seemed a little shocked as I pretended to call Val back, telling her that Henry was going to stay with Dale, who had promised he would never hurt him again.

  Over two hours had gone by since the onset of this nightmare, and Jamie and I felt drained, mentally, physically, and emotionally. We sat trying to reassure Dale for what seemed like ages, but he remained upset, and we tucked him in with Henry on the sofa, wrapping the cozy train blanket around them. “Dale, Henry will always be your dog,” we told him, “and he will never leave you.” We managed to get him to take a drink and a cookie, and Henry listened attentively as I read them a story of Dale’s choice, to try to regain some sense of normality.

  By the time we took Dale up to his room to settle him for the night, he was much calmer, although he insisted that Henry stay with him at all times. Even when Henry was lying beside him on top of the blanket, Dale still needed reassurance that his dog was not going away and was feeling all right. I had an idea and whispered to Jamie, who then said in Henry’s deep voice, “Dale, I’m feeling much better now. Please take my band-aid off.”

  Jamie gently removed the band-aid, saying, “Dale, I’ll put this in the trash—we won’t need it any more.”

  Dale’s face immediately flooded with relief, and Jamie left me to say goodnight to him.

  “Dale, give Henry his nighttime kiss,” I told him. “It’s time to sleep.”

  He turned and did so, saying, “Night, night, Henry. Love you. See you in the morning.”

  I tucked Dale in and kissed him, saying, “Goodnight, Dale,” as I cautiously turned to leave.

  Then came his quiet, upset little voice, wanting more reassurance: “Mummy, Dale loves his dog.”

  I didn’t want to make any more of a fuss and carried on, saying, “Yes, darling, and Henry loves Dale.”

  As I opened the bedroom door wider, Dale repeated softly, “Mummy, Dale loves his dog.”

  “Yes, that’s good,” I replied, still trying to leave. Then I stopped dead in my tracks as his next words hit me.

  “And Dale loves his mummy.”

  Just five little words, yet I was numb, paralyzed with shock. Then somehow my brain started to function again, although my heart was pounding—I desperately didn’t want to get this wrong. I turned around and knelt down beside Dale’s bed, where I gave him a cautious and gentle hug, telling him, “Mummy loves you, too. And Daddy loves you. Goodnight, Dale.”

  His sweet, small voice replied, “And Dale loves Daddy.”

  I kissed him on the head, quietly left the room, and wept—copious, silent tears. Through this mist I noticed Jamie, who had been waiting on the landing to see whether Dale had settled. We just gazed at each other, disbelieving. Then he took me in his arms as I continued to weep.

  Downstairs, we badly needed a cup of tea—a remedy for shock, like after an accident. We spoke about what had happened over the previous four hours and acknowledged just how precious Henry had become to Dale and all of us. While we thought we had understood our son’s condition to date, we had abruptly learned a lot more about both him and his autism that night; it was as though this traumatic episode had given us the final piece of the jigsaw we needed. Now we had been shown so dramatically just how important Henry had become to Dale, and that he did love us and understood the meaning of love, we felt the sky was the limit in terms of what we might be able to unlock deep within him.

  A few days later, with the stress of that night behind us, we headed off to the supermarket, with Henry in the backseat of the car, strapped into his seat-belt harness. Once there, as I was scanning the shelves, Dale ran ahead to collect dog biscuits for Henry. In the maze of aisles, he disappeared out of sight and Jamie hurried after him, leaving me anxious as to whether he would get to him before something dastardly happened. Next thing I knew came a voice across the aisles as loud as the shop PA system: “Mummy!”

  “I’m here, Dale,” I had to reply loudly, “but you need to talk to my face.”

  This prompted one or two strange looks from other shoppers, and not least a response from my son for the whole world to hear: “Love you, Mummy!”

  I ran around to the aisle where Jamie was staring at our little lad in amazement, and knelt down, arms wide open in delight. “Dale, come here,” I shouted back, “I want a big hug. I love you, too.”

  At the checkout, Dale helped me put the groceries on the conveyor belt, while Jamie packed the bags. To my great surprise, Dale suddenly leaned forward and kissed the top
of my left hand, which was resting on the bar of the cart. The lady behind us in line couldn’t help noticing and commented, “I’ve never seen a child do that before—it’s lovely. He must love you an awful lot.”

  I smiled and carried on, thinking, “My God, if only she knew the half of it!”

  Sometime after the shopping trip, our friend Lindsey arrived for the weekend with her near-white golden retriever, Ollie. For an English-bred dog, he was remarkably similar to Henry in both looks and temperament, and definitely a real geezer. Dale took an immediate interest in this new dog, but none of us could have anticipated how bringing Ollie into the house would again illustrate Dale’s blossoming understanding of his emotions.

  As Dale was cuddling Ollie on the floor, being really affectionate with him, I couldn’t resist observing, “Dale, you love Ollie, don’t you?”

  “No, Mum,” came his emphatic reply. “I like Ollie. I love Henry.”

  7

  Make or Break

  There was no doubt that on that fateful night of the kick, Dale had through Henry taken two enormous steps. For him to have the ability to empathize, let alone love and be loved, was more than we could possibly have hoped for. With all the progress and breakthroughs we had witnessed, it seemed reasonable now to take Dale even further. I had learned from the early days of the tree that there was no harm in trying for more, because if necessary we could always rein things back in again. Better this than never to have tried at all.

  Days were spent with Jamie and me talking via Henry virtually throughout. As time passed, I was gradually able to decrease the emphasis on the voice—for example, starting a conversation through Henry but then throwing in little snippets of my own voice. In this way, without even realizing it, Dale would not only communicate with me directly, but also correctly—just as he would speak to Henry at the right distance and with appropriate eye contact, he began to do this with me, too, with the result that his confidence in talking to another person soared.

  I could also use Henry’s voice to show Dale that I was even more interested in what he was doing than Henry was; Henry would simply ask Dale to involve me. If Dale was engrossed in drawing, he always involved Henry and showed him the picture, so I took to suggesting through Henry, “Dale, show Mum the drawing, see if she likes it.” Dale naturally complied, but whereas Henry would only sniff at the picture and wag his tail, I would go over the top in my enthusiasm, sometimes even rewarding Dale with a chocolate from his Thomas tin. The resulting masterpiece would always be put up on the wall.

  Over time, Dale learned that he got more attention and response from me than he did from Henry. As he continued to do anything the dog asked of him, through this technique Jamie and I were both slowly able to get him to accept us into his world. We could see Dale gradually becoming the little boy we had always dreamed of and hoped we would soon be able to wean him off Henry’s voice completely. But such was Dale’s anxiety about nonverbal and direct communication that we hadn’t really appreciated quite how bonded he had become to communicating through Henry. It was to take quite a while longer before Henry ceased to talk.

  After such an intense summer, Jamie suggested that we have a weekend away, but wasn’t sure where we should go. For a variety of reasons, I thought of Blackpool. There would be no flights involved, which was all to the good as we still could not be sure Dale would go on an airplane without immense preparation, which at this point we did not have time for. I also thought that, Blackpool being famous for its trams, we could continue helping Dale to learn by using his obsession with transport themes. So once we had found a nice boarding house in the Saturday paper and booked their traditional September weekend package, we were all set.

  We told Dale that Henry was taking a weekend break of his own, and when the big day arrived, we stopped by Val’s to drop off Henry. We couldn’t bear the thought of putting him in kennels, and after all he really did deserve a vacation. From then on, Val always came through for us and Henry never spent a single night in kennels.

  Six hours later, after a couple of pit stops to refuel ourselves and the car, we arrived at the B&B. Dale demanded we instantly get out. “Look, Mum, trams!” he exclaimed excitedly, as he spotted one at the end of the street.

  That first evening, we took Dale to the Pleasure Beach, where he went on all of the rides he was tall enough for, as long as Jamie accompanied him. Not surprisingly, his favorite was the miniature railway. The next morning, we all went down for breakfast, to be greeted by the landlady in her northern English accent, “Morning, love.” She made a special effort for Dale, saying, “Morning, duck, what would you like for breakfast?”

  Dale replied crossly, banging on the table, “I’m not a duck, I’m Dale.”

  After breakfast, we ventured out along the promenade to the North Pier, where we knew from some brochures that there was a Venetian carousel which was accessed by a little train. At the end of the pier, there was a nice lounge where we could have lunch. As we made our way along the seafront in the autumn sunshine, being buffeted by strong winds, we noticed above us a whirring sound. Dale looked up and cried, “Mum, Dad, look—it’s Harold,” his inspiration being of course a certain helicopter from Thomas the Tank Engine.

  A little further along, I noticed a board advertising pleasure flights in the helicopter we had been watching. These left from the North Pier. As we were heading there anyway, Jamie and I looked at each other, the same thought going through our minds.

  Then Jamie shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “It’ll be sixty pounds for me and Dale for just five minutes.”

  “If he goes up in that helicopter with you,” I replied, “I’ll give them a thousand pounds.”

  When we arrived at the North Pier, the helicopter could clearly be seen and heard, as it waited on the helipad ready for the next trip. Jamie knelt down beside Dale and asked him, “Dale, would you like to go on Harold with me?”

  To my eternal surprise, Dale instantly replied, “Yes, Harold, Harold the Helicopter.”

  Was Thomas once again going to help Dale achieve a major breakthrough?

  Jamie headed off to buy the tickets for Dale and himself, and I explained to Dale, “It’ll be very noisy, but Dad will be there and you’ll see all the trams in Blackpool from Harold in the sky.”

  Jamie returned and let Dale see the tickets. Then the two of them were shown to the helipad. I was back behind the barrier, about twenty-five meters away. Because of the noise of the helicopters, I couldn’t hear what was going on. I saw a party of four adults and Dale, the only child there, being fitted with bright-yellow life jackets. Only then did I fully realize the enormity of what was unfolding. A few minutes later, to my horror, I saw this little figure beside Jamie start to bounce up and down, just as he did sometimes when heading into a tantrum. I feared the worst, but I couldn’t hear what was happening over the noise. Then as some returning passengers disembarked and passed between me and the helicopter, I lost sight of Jamie and Dale. When the way was clear again, my two boys were nowhere to be seen. I went over to the stairs, but there was still no sign.

  Because history had dictated that if I feared the worst there was generally a good reason, it was not until the helicopter had actually taken off that I realized the only place they could be was on it. I couldn’t control my tears of joy and excitement at the thought of my incredible boy up there in Harold. Though they were only away a few minutes, to me it seemed longer. Then, suddenly, the familiar whirring of the rotors signaled the end of the circuit of the Blackpool seafront and yet another amazing achievement for Dale.

  After their life jackets had been returned, Dale was given a certificate to prove he had flown in a helicopter. He still has it to this day.

  When they got back to me, I asked Jamie, “Why was he jumping up and down? Was he scared?”

  “He was beside himself,” said Jamie. “He was going to fly in a real Harold!”

  Over a celebratory drink in the hotel lounge that evening before dinner, Dale
was still buzzing with excitement about his trip. “Mum,” he said joyfully, “Dale wants to tell Henry about Harold.”

  “Henry’s not here,” Jamie told him. “You have to be in the same room to talk to him.”

  Our son’s retort took us both by surprise: “All right, Dale will phone him.”

  With that, Jamie pretended to dial a number on the pay phone in the hall and answered in Henry’s voice. “Hello, this is Henry, who is it?”

  “It’s me, Dale. Dad and me were up in Harold,” came the ecstatic response.

  “Do you mean Harold the Helicopter? That sounds very exciting. Was it good?”

  “Yes, it was great,” replied Dale.

  “Excellent, Dale,” said Henry, adding in case we were there all night, “I must go now, it’s my dinnertime. Goodbye, Dale.”

  From then on, Dale would frequently phone Henry, which meant of course that he was continuing to communicate with us via Henry’s voice, so we knew it would take a lot longer to wean him off it than we had originally thought. Still, as we now only used it when he called Henry, and Dale had previously shown real signs of accepting the weaning process, we felt we would get there eventually.

  Despite all the wonderful things that were taking place, we knew that nothing could compare to Dale getting a brother or sister. It was painfully clear by now, however, that we would need a specialist’s help. One evening in October 1995, Jamie and I had a consultation with an infertility consultant at the private Glasgow Nuffield Hospital. It was decided that we should try a procedure known as intra-uterine insemination (IUI). I would be stimulated by the drug Clomid to produce extra eggs, then artificially inseminated at the peak of a cycle. We went through this process the following month, but sadly it did not result in a pregnancy.

  Dale’s second year at St. Anthony’s went well and he made steady progress, particularly in relation to his drawing ability. In his pictures at school and at home he began to develop a sense of perspective, his railway tracks disappearing into the distance and the trains themselves making obvious eye contact. This was the period during which he started doing what we called his “Xerox drawings.” They always had the same background and composition, two different trains facing forwards, with distinct facial expressions. Dale would reproduce five or more of these drawings at a time if you let him. More encouragingly, he also began to draw more pictures of people, starting with an easily identifiable likeness of Granny Madge, who was delighted to be one of his portrait subjects.