Hush, Little Baby

by Shane Dunphy

I turned him to face me fully. ‘Listen to me, Clive. I don’t doubt someone did something really awful to you. But whoever did those things, whoever hurt you so badly, was a man or a woman. There are no demons, at least not like you’re describing. The only real monsters out there are people who want to do evil things.’

  Clive shook his head, and turned from me. ‘See,’ he said in a small, defeated voice. ‘Even you don’t really believe me.’

  7

  It became obvious within a week that the family-mediation sessions with the Bassetts were a waste of everyone’s time and energy. Despite the tasks I had left them to carry out, the second visit I made to their bizarrely decorated house proved to me that this was not going to be the simple, open-and-shut case Marian had led me to believe I was taking on. In fact, I began to suspect things had the potential to get very challenging indeed.

  The first sign that my hopes for a constructive and productive session were ridiculously optimistic came when I sat down and suggested everyone take out the written work I’d asked them to prepare – their wish lists: how they would like things to be if we had a magic wand and could miraculously make everything perfect. Gertrude was so excited that I decided to just let her go first. I thought that having her express a desire to make things right and achieve a sense of harmony would be a nice way to set the tone for the rest of the session. With a contented smile, she opened her notebook: a pink hardbound volume with some kind of purple fluffy trim about the edges.

  ‘If a fairy could come and make our lives right again,’ she began, ‘the first thing I would like would be for Patrick to realize what an awful time he’s put us through this past year and give a heartfelt apology. Then I would like him, for the first time, to keep to his word and never raise his hand to me again, never stay out long into the night hanging out with juvenile delinquents in gambling houses and dens of iniquity –’

  ‘Gertrude, I have to stop you there,’ I said, trying to keep the temper out of my voice. ‘That is not what I asked you to do. This was meant to be an exercise in being positive. It certainly wasn’t meant to be about attacking Patrick.’

  Gertrude stopped and looked at me in surprise. ‘But you said that we were to write about what we would like to see happen if everything was made good. That’s what I did.’

  There was a palpable sense of tension in the room. I was focused on the matriarch but could feel the eyes of Percy and the two children glued on Gertrude and me. I knew exactly what she was doing – I had established myself in the previous session as being in charge, as the authority within the realms of these meetings. She wasn’t having that. Gertrude Bassett’s entire persona was wrapped around being the supreme leader within her home. She could not bear to share that position, even in a situation where she had actually asked for help. Perhaps that was what had caused her to complain about, and finally to usurp, the previous social worker. At any rate, she had decided conclusively to knock me back down to size, and her tool was the very task I had set her to do.

  ‘Gertrude,’ I said with a smile, to ensure that I was being unthreatening, ‘maybe I didn’t explain myself adequately. What I wanted was for you to picture your relationships as if all the problems you’re now experiencing were gone. Now, for us to get to that point, there may, or indeed may not, have to be apologies and expressions of regret. But I don’t want to focus on that. I want us to get a good, clear picture of how you would all be – of how you could be. ’

  Gertrude did not return my smile. Instead she closed her fluffy pink notebook and crossed her arms across her ample bosom. ‘I am sure, Shane, that you have plenty of training and experience in these types of situations.’

  I shrugged. I wasn’t going to be baited into a discussion of my qualifications.

  ‘Well, what I have is a degree in motherhood. Do you have any children, Shane?’

  I shook my head. I could see where this was going but wasn’t yet sure how I was going to respond. Interactions like this require a deftness of touch. I had to get Gertrude to understand the necessity for working with me if we were to save her family, but I didn’t want to embarrass her or make her lose face in front of her husband and kids to achieve that. I let her continue to talk while I considered my next move.

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. You people never do. You think you know it all, that you can come into people’s houses and lay down the law. Let me tell you – I know Patrick. For there to be any hope of us getting to a place where we’re in good shape as a family again, he will need to admit that he has been totally in the wrong, and that the absolute misery he has put us all through will never happen again. Then, for me to be satisfied that he has truly turned over a new leaf, there will have to be a consistent period of exemplary conduct. I cannot see beyond those things just now. I’m sorry, but I can’t.’

  I looked over at Patrick. He was, as I expected him to be, gazing down at his hands, rigid and impassive. Percy was once again staring at the carpet. Bethany looked as if she were about to start crying. Gertrude’s annoyance radiated from her like heat. She sat like an angry Buddha, challenging me to defy her.

  While I was definitely aggravated by Gertrude’s determination not to cooperate, I felt genuine sympathy for her. Despite the silly, girlish demeanour and the nonsensical furniture, Gertrude was inherently a good person, and far from stupid. I decided to take a leaf from Patrick’s book and adopt a passive–aggressive response. I would pretend I was completely unaware of the challenge and continue the session as if nothing had happened.

  ‘Okay, thanks, Gertrude, for that, and for your honesty. Percy, how about sharing what you wrote?’

  I wished that I had the time, and the gumption, to enjoy the expression of disgust that spread across Gertrude’s face. I heard Bethany gasp, and Patrick suddenly looked up, as if someone had kicked him. Percy started and sat bolt upright.

  ‘Oh, ummm … okay, so. Yes, I’ll read my essay. Where are we, now …’ He noisily unfolded a little wad of paper he had been holding in his hand. ‘Right. Now what I would like to see happen if our family was to get better would be for Patrick to say he was very sorry for what he’s done. I would like for him to understand that he has been a great strain on his mother –’

  ‘Percy, this bears a shocking resemblance to what Gertrude has just read.’

  Percy stopped and flushed a deep scarlet.

  ‘Did you and Gertrude collaborate on your wish lists?’

  ‘Yes, we worked on them together.’ Gertrude was not even trying to contain herself. ‘I thought that it was important we were all singing from the same hymn sheet.’

  I nodded. ‘And was Bethany also involved in this group effort?’

  ‘We worked on it together, like on a project in school,’ Bethany beamed. ‘Mammy told us what to write.’

  ‘Now, sweetie, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that –’

  I held up a hand to silence her. ‘Please, Gertrude, I get the picture.’ I could not suppress a sigh. I was getting a sinking feeling, a sense I was in quicksand, and that struggling would only cause me to submerge faster. ‘Patrick, let’s hear what you wrote.’

  ‘I didn’t write anything.’

  Patrick sat hunched over, seemingly trying to protect himself from the barrage of antagonism that had been directed at him since we sat down.

  ‘Why didn’t you do the exercise? You seemed fairly enthusiastic the last time I was here.’

  The boy shrugged, a barely perceptible movement of his right shoulder. ‘What’s the point? I knew they were all getting stuck into me in the kitchen. I could hear her giving orders. It didn’t matter what I wrote or didn’t write.’

  I couldn’t argue with him. Somewhere, in a distant part of my mind, I could hear Gertrude declaring that this proved conclusively that Patrick was a hopeless case, but I was scarcely listening. Gertrude had beaten me. Despite my best efforts, she had shown that she was, in reality, in control of the family-mediation sessions.

  I gave it one more chance, but t
he following meeting was even worse. I had set no tasks and went in with an open agenda, but this time I was treated to a lesson in all the ways that Bethany was a much superior child to her errant brother. I was, once again, powerless to intervene. Every time I pointed out that such negative comment was out of bounds, and that all that was being achieved was an even further alienation of Patrick, Gertrude or Percy stopped momentarily, only to continue seconds later, as if I had not spoken.

  I did the only reasonable thing and discontinued mediation. Gertrude was delighted, although she pretended to be irate when I phoned her the following day to give her the news.

  ‘So he’s too much for you, too, then. Leaving us in the lurch, are you, just like that other fella? Well, don’t concern yourself. We’ll struggle on, somehow.’

  ‘I’m not giving up on Patrick, or you, for that matter, Gertrude. I’m just going to try another tack for a bit. I’d like to see Patrick and Bethany, together, outside the house.’

  Silence emanated from the other end of the line. ‘Bethany doesn’t need any work, Shane. What do you want to see her for?’

  ‘She’s Patrick’s sister – they’re both fostered. She’s been living with you all during these difficult times. She’s bound to have a perspective on what’s been going on, but without the politics the power struggle has created between you and Patrick. So, I’ll pick them up tomorrow, after school, if that’s all right.’

  Gertrude seemed lost for words: the only response I received was a grunt before the receiver was slammed down.

  Both children were waiting when I arrived at the house, already out of their school uniforms and with coats and hats on. Gertrude had recovered, and quietly (but loud enough for Patrick to hear, of course) told me that she thought I was absolutely right to adopt this approach, as I could experience just how bad the boy was for myself, without the protective barriers of her, Percy and their home. I thanked her, and left, feeling a sense of untold freedom as we closed the gate at the end of the drive and walked to the Austin.

  I am ashamed to admit that I had an overwhelming urge to take the kids to an arcade to play video games, but knew that to do so would be an unforgivable flouting of Gertrude’s rules, and would send a clear message to the children that I had picked sides. So, at Bethany’s suggestion, we went for ice-creams instead.

  I’ve taken countless children out for countless sundaes throughout my career, and the experience never fails to make me smile. It also causes me to wonder at the perversity of ice-cream-parlour owners. When kids go into one of these establishments, they are always met with photographs of the different confections on offer – it is as much a visual experience as one of flavour. The rooms themselves are usually pretty much the same: black and white tiled floors, wooden ceiling fans, booths with red seats, a juke box with music from the fifties and sixties. To the front is a tall counter and, above it, the menu, beside which are the pictures of what you can buy – food pornography, in other words.

  These photos depict enormous, towering glasses filled with cream – both iced and whipped – fruit, chocolate syrup, cake, biscuit, jelly and all sorts of other delectable edibles. The child ogles these works of frozen art with barely concealed covetousness, and finally chooses one. Most kids go for a Knickerbocker Glory on their first visit. It is, after all, the ice-cream of myth and legend, the one you see children in movies and on television shows digging into. When the waitress brings this monstrosity of a dessert to the table, there is always a gasp of surprise and anticipation – it looked big in the photo, but in reality it is huge. Impossibly big, way too much for any adult, let alone a child, to finish.

  The psychology behind taking the first spoonful from your virgin Knickerbocker Glory would fill a thousand tomes on Freudian psychoanalysis. Do you simply take a shallow portion of whipped cream from the top? Do you plunge the longhandled spoon deep into the glass, getting a mix of all the contents? Do you take the cherry from the top first and eat it? The possibilities are many and varied – I probably haven’t even seen them all yet.

  One thing, however, is certain. By the time that glass is half empty, the child will be covered in a sticky mess of jelly and cream, and will have developed a greenish tinge. Yet the challenge of the Knickerbocker Glory for a child is something akin to the unspoken draw of the Antarctic to Ernest Shackleton: despite massive odds and untold adversity, they just cannot abandon their goal.

  I have long since stopped suggesting kids leave the glass midway and just allow them to gorge themselves into oblivion. I have also stopped marvelling at the fact that on subsequent visits they will actually order another Knickerbocker Glory and have a second attempt at reaching the Pole – with the same results. I always have an image of a 1950s-era ice-cream vendor, striped apron, paper hat and all, somewhere at the back of the shop, poring over closed-circuit TV monitors, laughing maniacally: ‘Eat, eat, my pretties!’

  My visit with Patrick and Bethany was no different. I had somehow expected that Bethany would avoid getting covered in food, but she didn’t. To my surprise, she threw herself into the experience with whole-hearted gusto and actually ate more than Patrick.

  Our conversation was light and pleasant. I purposely steered away from anything heavy – we’d had enough of that during the oppressive, abortive family mediation. So we talked about school, about sports (Patrick was a huge Manchester United fan, I discovered), about toys (Bethany was a closet Bratz fan – she admitted to me that she was a little afraid to tell Gertrude, who she felt, probably correctly, would not approve of the sexually precocious dolls) and, finally, about the children’s birth family.

  It was Bethany who brought up the last subject. There had never really been any mention of the kids’ previous lives before this, and I was unprepared for it. She had finally conceded defeat to the ice-cream, and sat back, looking exceptionally cute with her face now almost completely obscured by the amount of food she had managed to attach to it. ‘I cannot eat another thing!’ she said, holding her distended belly. ‘If I do, I think I’ll explode.’ She seemed to find this hilariously funny but was too stuffed to be able to laugh, so she ended up groaning instead.

  ‘You’ll be sick,’ Patrick said.

  Throughout the hour we had spent in the café, he had been polite and had responded perfectly appropriately to any questions addressed to him, but I still felt there was something missing. It was as if he was just not fully there with us: some part of him was cordoned off and inaccessible, possibly even to him. He never smiled, never laughed, and his eyes were dull and lifeless. The pressure he was living under in the Bassett household was taking its toll on him.

  ‘I’ll be sick all over you,’ Bethany retorted, still half laughing, half moaning.

  Patrick snorted at that, and looked out the window at the crowds of Christmas shoppers that barged past one another outside.

  ‘How come Mammy never brings us here?’ Bethany asked.

  ‘Gertrude doesn’t think we should eat sweet things,’ Patrick said.

  ‘Stop calling her that,’ Bethany said, her tone changing quickly from fun to anger. ‘She’s your mother.’

  ‘No, she’s not.’

  ‘Is too! You can’t remember our real mother, so you can’t.’

  Patrick sighed and glanced at his sister, who had tears in her eyes now and was gazing at him with a hurt expression. ‘I can remember her,’ he said, and returned to his people-watching.

  I knew that this was an opportunity to learn something about the children’s lives before they were fostered, but I could also see that it was a hugely sensitive issue for Bethany. I didn’t want to upset her or to kill the happy mood we had managed to maintain so far, so I laughed and patted the girl on the hand. ‘Hey, it’s all right that Patrick remembers his birth mother, Beth. It doesn’t mean he loves Gertrude any less. Your lives before you went to live with her and Percy are still a part of who you are. You shouldn’t just forget about them.’

  Bethany looked uncertain. ‘Mammy says we’re
lucky to have been chosen by a good family,’ she said. ‘She says God wanted her and Daddy to bring us up.’

  ‘That’s nice to think, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘That you were all meant to be together.’

  The little girl nodded. ‘She says that I was always her daughter, we just had to find one another.’ She paused, seemingly unsure of how to continue. ‘Sometimes I wonder what my other mammy was like, though. I don’t remember her, even a little bit.’

  Patrick smiled wistfully to himself. ‘She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,’ he said, and I knew immediately that they had been over this many times together, probably during the dark of night in whispered conversations. The words I was hearing were well rehearsed. ‘She had long blonde hair and the sweetest, kindest face. She looked just like you, Beth, and, just like you, everyone who knew her loved her.’

  ‘Tell me about my other daddy.’

  ‘Our daddy was a motorcycle stuntman in a circus. He wore an amazing costume, with stars all over it and a bright red helmet, and the sound of his bike was so loud you could hear it ten miles away. He was so brave, even the ringmaster got scared sometimes by the stunts he’d do, but our dad was the best there was. He knew what he could do, and how far he could push that motorcycle.’

  ‘And my little sister?’

  I began to make rapid mental notes. There had been no mention of a sister on the children’s file. Could Patrick be mistaken? Was this whole thing a fantasy the children had concocted in the first days of their being fostered, to make the experience easier?

  ‘She looked like you too, Beth. She had a head full of golden curls, and she used to sit on my knee and laugh when I told her stories. She was just lovely.’

  ‘What was her name, Patrick?’ I asked, unable to remain silent any longer.

  Patrick sighed, and fiddled with the strap of his watch absently. ‘I can’t remember. It was so long ago, and we haven’t seen any of them since we were fostered. Gertrude won’t allow it. But that’s okay, ’cause as soon as I’m old enough, I’m gonna find them. She won’t be able to stop me for ever.’