He, too, was worn out. It was irrelevant. If this after-hours meeting was what the principal wanted, this was what he’d have to do. He’d telephoned Jenny. Thank God for Jenny. What other wife…?
There was a significant difference between this morning and this evening. This evening Mrs Ryan was finally crying quits.
‘Fay Clark is emotionally disturbed,’ she declared. ‘She needs psychiatric assessment. Treatment. We’re not qualified. This is not where she belongs.’
He protested. ‘Fay’s not emotionally disturbed.’
‘You have to be joking.’
‘No joke. She’s not emotionally disturbed. Not how you mean. Not pathologically. She’s a lot of things, any teenager…. Fay’s had a hell of a time. She’s reacting as any other teenager would. That’s not sick, that’s sad.’
‘There’s no place for her here.’
‘She’s been let down for years. The system owes her.’
‘The system?’ She was totally without emotion. ‘We are not some amorphous charity that owes this child anything. On the other hand, neither are we a mental institution for the mentally disturbed. We are a training centre for retarded children. You will respect the distinction.’
How could he argue? The distinction was clear. So where did Fay fit? In a mental institution for the insane? Never. She was unhappy in the extreme, but not insane. Under the care of some local social welfare body? They’d be out of their depth. This Centre? Mrs Ryan was right. For basically different reasons, he had to agree. She did not belong here either. So where did he think Fay Margaret Clark belonged?
Responding to his silence, the principal nodded. ‘I see you agree. You will also no doubt agree that this training centre has more than done well by Fay Clark. We have over-stepped our own boundaries. It ends today.’
‘We let her down! We’re supposed to know what we’re doing. We let her down. We can’t just throw her out. You can’t! You can’t do that! You…!’ Aghast, he stopped. Was it tiredness, or guilt, that had released the brakes and pitched him headlong into confrontation with his boss? ‘I’m sorry. I…’
‘Enough, Mark. Enough.’
Enough! Enough for who? For her? Or for Fay?
‘The fact is,’ she continued, ‘Fay would have been better off if she’d never come to us. However appropriate the original placement may have seemed at the time.’
‘There’s no argument from me about that.’ Fighting to regain control, he pleaded: ‘Please… Think what she was like. Remember…. She has come a long way. You have to admit that. Think of what she was like.’
‘Agreed, Mark. Agreed. She had improved. Temporarily. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that her current behaviour is abnormal.’
‘So you don’t think she’s improved overall?’
‘Ask the bus driver.’ She reached for the phone, lifted the receiver.
‘I have to protest. Fay has matured. She has improved on every front. We need to know more. Surely…? Couldn’t the overdose be a typical teenage cry for help?’
She hesitated, then replaced the receiver in its cradle.
Again, he forced himself to silence. Mrs Ryan’s personal insecurities, hidden under all that chilly bluster, were on his side. She, too, was out of her depth. Give her time.
‘Very well,’ she tiredly conceded. ‘I’ll go this far. When she recovers she’ll be listed to see Miss Evans.’
‘Do you honestly expect her to front up? After last time?’
‘No, I don’t. She’ll be given no choice. Her mother will be given no choice. We’ll make it perfectly clear to both of them. Submit to assessment by Miss Evans -or leave.’
He’d pushed too hard. ‘Which means she’ll be back to sitting at home.’
‘Not our concern, Mark. Fay’s had every chance. More than her share, a great deal more than her share in fact. The waiting list….’
‘We owe Fay Clark.’
‘As you keep insisting.’ She frowned, looked at her watch, and lifted Fay’s file from the steel cabinet. ‘So let’s get this out of the way once and for all.’
The file was waiting. So was Jenny. So was Mrs Ryan. He pulled his chair closer to the intervening desk. The interview had shifted ground. The argument had been resolved, for the time being. It was down to specifics.
‘You’ve read this,’ he indicated the relevant points in Fay’s record. ‘It’s unequivocal. She was so shy. We set this chain of events in motion. It’s down to us that she stopped being so shy, began to co-operate, to talk, even to be a leader of sorts. That’s not bad. If it also triggered these negatives it’s also down to us.’
‘So far, you’re correct. But consider your methods! So much freedom!’
‘My methods are not without risk. I know that. Yet if these kids are to move into the real world….’
‘Ah!’ She pounced. ‘Here we have the crux, the central issue! Are they to actually move into the real world? We’re talking about handicapped children. It is the nature of their condition. They will never – never ever – successfully move into the real world. Not the world as people like us know it.’
He blanched. Indeed, here they were at the central issue. They had arrived at a crossroads. Mrs Ryan was walking down a dead-end road he could never tread. Never. Although he wasn’t sure of where he was going, he was sure of where he was not going.
How could he possibly concede that Fay or Peter or Trixie or Meryl or any of his students would not move into the real world? Working with them, in this segregated place, had convinced him that people with intellectual disability were bright with promise. Why should their potential be limited by uninformed judgements which ordained they were incapable of learning above a pre-ordained limit? Why should their potential as human beings be frustrated by a system which denied them the opportunity to learn?
People, children, are not simply intellectual beings, they are so much more. They are not simply their brain power, or their muscle power or their beauty or ugliness or…. Each person is the sum of an infinite complexity of individual circumstances and conditions, and of the infinite complexity of their interactions. It was so often declared, it was a cliché. So why had it come to this? Why was he here, sitting in the office of this ‘caring place’, having to confront what everybody said and few actually accepted? He was here because here each complex individual had been imprisoned in a cage labeled ‘Retarded – can’t learn.’
Yet Mrs Ryan had a point that needed to be considered. There were the expectations of the world as she knew it, of the society in which they lived. How many societies embraced difference? How many societies were capable of learning the lessons of tolerance, warmth and compassion which he was learning from these people in this rural outpost? Did any of the individual people of Glenlea acknowledge the richness and depth these courageous youngsters at The Glenlea brought to the lives they touched? Would they ever?
He thought about Peter. Peter would live his life in his particular world - the world of farming and farm families and farm family expectations. He’d not only survive, he’d flourish. In many ways, Mark guessed, Peter would fare more successfully than many reputedly normal kids with reputedly superior intelligence. Because Peter knew his limitations. He’d recognised them, accepted them, and was getting on with life according to the hand fate had dealt him. Because Peter had been given a rare gift. Peter had been given common sense.
‘As you see,’ Mrs Ryan continued, ‘we are philosophically opposed. Real world or no real world, there is one thing we have to agree on. They are handicapped, they cannot survive without protection. The logic is indisputable.’
He shook his head.
‘Think about it, Mark,’ she was merciless. ‘Can you honestly see Clem in the outside world? Or Don? Or Trixie?’
‘I’m thinking of….’
‘They have to be sheltered. Protected. If you will, Fay is clear evidence of the damage the outside world can do. Think about what it must have been like for her in that mainstream school. The teas
ing. The overcrowded classrooms. The teachers ill-equipped to cope with special needs children. Why do you think we are here? We’re here because they cannot survive in an unsheltered world of competition and harassment. Fay did not survive in an unsheltered environment.’
She’d given him an opening. He took it. ‘We owe Fay.’
‘Your opinion, Mark. Not mine. However we’ll leave the issue as it stands until next year, when she’ll see Miss Evans. On one condition, when she’s back there’ll be no more dramas.’
‘I’ll talk to her.’
‘We shall talk to her.’
Chapter Eleven
March 1976
The new year, Easter a week away. Chill mornings, autumn suns melting frozen paddocks, summer creeks thirsting for winter rain, distant mountains stretching to clear blue skies, migrating birds exiting the valley, cattle exhaling clouds of steam -and the Centre bus scampering like a mechanical toy through the narrow lanes.
On the matter of Fay’s re-enrolment, Mrs Ryan had held her ground. Although she’d eventually backed away from mandatory reassessment with Miss Evans, she’d insisted that either Fay conform to Mr Withers’ rules which in reality ‘are too lenient’, or she would be expelled – forthwith.
At the formal early February re-enrolment interview, Mark had been surprised. Initially by Fay’s appearance. Dressed in a colourful floral cotton summer frock, her hair had been sleek and shining and her skin tanned and healthy. More significantly, when she’d been summonsed to the office, her eyes had been keen and alert and unafraid.
The second revelation had been her mature acceptance of the principal’s ultimatum. Hearing Mrs Ryan’s order to conform or be expelled, she’d quietly answered. ‘I understand, Mrs Ryan.’
The overdose of barbiturates stolen from her mother’s medicine cabinet, the time in hospital, the Christmas holidays, and what he judged to be her intense compulsion to learn, appeared to have worked a startling feat of magic.
Was it possible that Fay had taken yet another step up the tall ladder of self-knowledge and self-acceptance? Her subsequent behaviour was consistent evidence that she had.
What had caused it? Though the intention of the overdose remained unclear, the effect was undeniable. Whatever her reasons for taking it, whether attention-seeking or more sinister, it seemed to have been a cathartic experience. Why? Was it the attention of the kindly nurses? Or the palpable evidence of the love of her mother, who’d spent devoted hours at the bedside? Equally, it could just as easily be that she was simply reacting to the long boredom of the summer holidays and her thirst for knowledge. More likely was the fact that no single one, but all of these and other things no one knew about, seemed to have fused to bring about this transformation.
The group had settled into a comfortable pattern, quickly accepting Don who had moved up from Miss Turner’s class. Not that this was easy. Hyperactive and unpredictable and accustomed to Miss Turner’s overly-strict supervision, Don was having trouble adjusting to the freedom, and to the concomitant responsibility for self-control. The result was that, though the group accepted him for the likeable fellow he was, there was continuing pressure on their patience.
There was also continuing pressure on him. Working with Don and the other new students, encouraging them to happily fit into this different relationship between them and their teacher, guiding them so they did not abuse it, and at the same time stimulating interest and enthusiasm and everything else associated with what he was trying to do, forced any lingering problems with Fay into the background.
A fortuitous development, it had the happy side-effect of encouraging her to further maturity. Gradually gathering momentum, she began to assume leadership of the females in the group. Only weeks into the new year, she was already explaining difficult concepts, organising excursions, accepting responsibility for supervision of the health and cosmetic-related tasks assigned by Jenny and filling Ruth’s role when the aide was unavailable.
It was also Fay, following a long period of supremely patient lessons, who successfully taught Laura to utter her first spoken sentence.
The day Laura said ‘Good girl Laura’ was a red-letter day. Fay was justifiably proud. It had been a prolonged and arduous climb from over a year ago when she’d run from the room rather than tolerate Laura. It had been a tragic climb, perhaps even a near-fatal climb. But she’d climbed. After all the near misses and falling downs and upsets, she’d bounced back. Most importantly, this time she seemed to be staying put. No falling down. No going backwards. Each morning she came in looking forward to learning, to organising or planning or helping. For at least half an hour of each morning and each afternoon, with utmost consistency, she worked with Laura. If Laura was asleep, she’d wake her up. If someone else needed her, she’d tell them to wait. If she was engrossed in a book or a painting or anything at all, she’d leave it to work with Laura.
So just how significant was her work with Laura? For Fay, the few rewards of teaching Laura had been her fleeting smile, the light of recognition in her eyes, her lengthening attention span and her eagerness to please her new friend. It had culminated in Laura clearly uttering the three words she’d so often heard Fay say: ‘Good girl Laura.
Who, he wondered, was learning the most? Laura? Or Fay? Fay, of course. He was again confronted by a remarkably enlightening insight. It was absolutely indisputable that Fay was learning more from Laura than Laura was learning from Fay. In a memorable way, it was Laura who was proving to be one of Fay’s most effective teachers. Because, when she’d chosen to become Laura’s mentor, Fay had chosen to learn tolerance, patience, acceptance of difference, caring, even loving – with no possibility of material reward. The marvel was that Fay had not walked away. The fact was she hadn’t. Was Fay also learning that Laura’s small gifts, a welcoming smile, a light in her eyes and a few precious words strung together, were priceless?
Meanwhile on the male side, though not as intellectually advanced as Fay, it was Peter who was learning about himself through the strengths of helping, caring, nurturing, teaching. It was Peter who, though inevitably dominant, was learning to monitor Don, assist Clem and the Down Syndrome fellows with their studies, and captain team games in a gently considerate and empathetic way.
Amazing! These two who, at least theoretically, could probably more successfully profit from mainstream education, were being immeasurably enriched by their experiences here in the despised Glenlea Training Centre.
Not perfect. Far from it. But it asked questions that screamed for answers.
***
The day was cosywarm. Outdoors the sun was high in the early noon sky; inside the group was seated in the discussion circle. Mark sat apart, working on reports.
Today’s chairman was Clem, who was having a difficult time maintaining order. His grandiose pontifications, seldom well-received, were in full flight.
Mark was loath to intervene. Finally he caught Fay’s eye. She in turn whispered to Peter.
Waiting until Clem paused for breath, Peter interrupted: ‘You can only be chairman if you let other people talk. You’re hogging it.’
‘I am not!’
‘You are so.’
‘I am not.’
Mark left his desk; this could go on forever. ‘Peter’s right, Clem. You know the rules. You helped make them. Chairman monitors the discussion. He helps other people to talk and think.’
‘He shuts up!’ Don bellowed.
‘No swearing!’ Clem thundered.
‘That’s not swearing.’
‘Don! Sit still.’
‘He can’t.’
‘He’s a nuisance.’
‘He talks too much.’
‘He won’t shut up.’
‘No swearing!’
Mark slapped his hands together, a sharp rap which compelled immediate attention.
They stopped talking.
‘When you’re quiet,’ he lowered his voice, ‘we’ll continue.’
‘But Don….!’
‘Quiet!’
Hushing, they fidgeted restlessly.
‘Sit still!’
They sat still.
Don wriggled. Peter nudged him.
Mark waited a moment longer, though not too long. More than a couple of seconds of total stillness was unhappily beyond Don’s capacity. Softly, he ended the silence. ‘You may continue. But Clem, please remember a chairman’s duties. Try to stick to them.’
‘Yes, Mark.’ Clem watched Mark retreat to work on his reports. ‘I was talking about going to work.’
Peter’s mouth opened.
‘It’s okay, Pete,’ Clem was magnanimous. ‘Now it’s your turn. What job are you going to do when you finish school?’
‘You know what job.’
‘I do,’ Clem agreed. ‘But Don doesn’t. Besides, it’s a good discussion thing.’
‘All right,’ Peter acknowledged. ‘When I’m twenty-one next year I’ll be working on the farm with my dad. I can drive the tractor. Dad’s going to teach me to drive the motor bike. I’ll get my license.’
‘You can’t read good enough.’ Don exclaimed. ‘You won’t get no license.’
‘I’m practicing.’
‘Thank you, Peter.’ Clem was very formal. ‘Now, Don. You can have a turn.’
‘I’m only seventeen,’ Don reported. ‘I’ve got lots of years to wait for a job.’
‘You can think about it,’ Fay suggested. ‘Seventeen’s not too young to think about it.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if you start thinking about it, you’ll be ready in case a job comes up.’
‘I’m not getting a job,’ Meryl drooped.
‘Why not?’
‘My mum says I can’t work a full day. I’m not strong.’
‘I’m not neither,’ Linda mourned.
‘I’m going to work in my mum’s hair shop,’ Trixie preened.
Fay Page 16
