Listen to thisOut of all the faces which swim before my eyes in those free, irrational moments on the edge of sleep, Stephen stands out like a harsh and bitter memory of youth. Being realistic, I suppose our successes were all too often outweighed by failure and so, for that brief spell when, for some unaccountable reason, he seemed to epitomise all our inward ideals, we clung to Stephen like a shipwrecked sailor to a life-raft.
Our initial impressions had not been all that promising. I admitted him one wet and bitterly cold January day when the rain streamed in unbridged rivers down the window panes. The social worker and I exchanged glances and grimaced. I turned towards the slim figure, shivering, as grey and beaten as the day, in the chair next to the radiator, and tried to look into his eyes.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Stephen.”
The voice was a whisper. He was cold and terrified, totally unaware of what was happening to him. I tried, carefully, to explain the situation. “Well, Stephen, do you know what type of place Bracken House is?”
No response.
"It’s called an Assessment Centre. you’re going to stay here for a few weeks while we decide ...”
My voice droned on. I don’t think he took in a single word. While I spoke I studied the boy – about sixteen years old, five foot six of skin, bone and grease coated hair. He wore a pair of brown trousers which looked as if they had been pulled out of the dust cart. A once-white shirt and a pair of torn gym shoes completed the outfit. And for all the response I received I might have been talking to the wall.
When the Housemothers came to kit him out in some decent clothes, to bathe and to change him, Stephen shrank away and tried to run out of the door. I grabbed him and roughly pushed him back into his chair. It had finally taken both Bill, the Group Leader on duty, and myself to get him bathed and changed.
"He’s going to cause you a few problems,” the social worker said. “Family’s bloody awful – squatting in a slum in the east end of the city. No electricity, no running water, human faeces all over the place. Mum’s on the game, dad's a drunken bastard who beats them all to a pulp three or four times a week! Anyway, it’s all in my report.”
Two hours later I was on my way home for lunch. I had reached the front door when Tony, one of our older boys, came panting after me. “Phil! Chris says can you come back. It’s the new kid; he’s going crazy.”
When I reached the dining room Chris, one of our social workers, was holding Stephen at the front of the room. The boy was struggling – lashing out with both hands and feet.
"He’s just gone berserk!” panted Chris. “Soon as he saw the food – just dived at it and started ramming it into his mouth. Bloody violent as well – damn near knocked me for six when I tried to stop him. I don’t think he’s eaten in a month.”
I looked at Stephen. He was certainly skinny enough, emaciated almost. I took hold of his arm.
“Calm down,” I said. “Are you hungry?” There was no answer but renewed strugglings from Stephen. “Put him in the common room,” I said. “He can eat out there.”
I sat with him as he ate. Whatever else was wrong with the boy he was certainly ravenously hungry. He swallowed the food virtually whole and only after twenty minutes did he lie back, contented.
"Had enough?” I asked.
He nodded and for the first time gave the hint of a smile. I brought him back to Chris and went home.
* * *
Over the next few weeks Stephen began a slow and often painful process of socialization. He learned how to eat properly and what a knife and fork were for. He learned how to be polite and, perhaps more importantly, what it was like to be treated as a human being. He learned how to share his possessions. It was a task he found far from easy. Never having been allowed to own anything he now found it unbelievably hard to share the things he was given.
Slowly and gradually, however, he began to pick things up. In many cases it was the hard way. One evening after tea Tony, the biggest and oldest of the boys at the Centre, offered him a cigarette. Stephen took the packet, slipping them surreptitiously into his pocket. Tony reacted in the only way he knew and the result was a bloody nose for Stephen. But it was a lesson learned and one never forgotten.
After the initial few upsets we began to look for his good points. “He’s a great kid,” said Chris. “He really appreciates what you do for him.”
He was right. When we took him on trips he was amazed, hardly able to believe his luck. He stood for hours just looking at our mini bus, desperate to be taken for a ride.
When we presented him with a brand new pair of fashion trousers – only too often refused or laughed at by other boys – he could not believe it.
"You mean I can keep them?” he kept repeating. “Really keep them?”
Until he had come to us Stephen had never owned anything. When social services bought him clothes his father had simply sold them to buy drink.
Pocket money, when it came, was miraculous. On the first Saturday he returned from town, money spent and pockets bulging with sweets and cheap toys. He sat there for ten minutes showing me what he had bought.
"Look at these,” he said. “Look at my aeroplane. Look how it works. Look at my sweets.”
Above all he was loveable. Our female staff took to him like mother hens. They fussed him and spoiled him, cuddled him and scolded him. But above all, like the rest of us, they loved him.
* * *
Then, in time, it all began to pall. From the moment he first arrived we had given Stephen all he had ever desired and more besides. Now he began to expect it. If the attention he demanded was not given when and where he wanted, he would sulk. If that was not successful he would throw a tantrum.
One evening I walked into the senior boys' common room and found Stephen pounding a billiard cue onto the table. The other boys sat around the edges of the room like patient, watching seagulls, fascinated yet appalled by the performance.
"Hey!” I shouted. “Pack it in.”
Stephen did not answer but continued to pound the table. I dragged him away and held him until he had calmed down.
“What the hell happened?” I asked, eventually.
"He just went mad,” sneered Tony. “Because none of us wanted to play snooker with him. He’s a bloody looney.”
On two occasions he ran off and hid in the grounds because he had been reprimanded. Once he absconded and stole food and cigarettes from a shop before the police could pick him up. Very little was safe from his grasp – if he wanted an article then he took it, regardless of the owner.
Gradually, he became more and more aggressive, attacking other boys either because they were receiving the attention he wanted or simply because they were in his way. With staff he grew to be offhand and insolent, wandering in or out of their work groups as he wanted. In time staff began to dislike him while the boys, in their turn, avoided him, deliberately rejecting him from their groups.
And of course, people began to rationalize.
"Little bastard!” said one. “He’s had it too bloody easy.” “He’s been here too long,” said Chris.
"How can he be anything but bad?” said one of the Housemothers. “I mean; just look at his background.”
In reality, however, the fault lay not with Stephen or his family but with us. He had never had anything – not security, not possessions, not even love. We had given him all of those. Not carefully, not wisely, but indiscriminately. We had given with all the joy of giving and had asked for nothing in return. We had given too much, too quickly.
We had ruined him as surely as if we had pushed him under a double-decker bus. Sometimes I wondered if it would not have been better to have left him at home. At least he could cope there, in his own way. He was accepted and had his own place. As long as he provided food for himself and stayed out of the way when his father was drunk, then no-one would bother him. And he would have survived, somehow.
But we had made him into a nomad for he could never go back to his world and he would never fit into ours.
* * *
Bill, the Group Leader, and I were in the office when the day came for Stephen to leave. He had completed his assessment and been placed in a nearby children's home.
“Cheerio, Steve,” said Bill. “Good luck.”
“Thanks,” he replied and turned for the door.
“Come back and see us sometime,” I said.
He paused and looked back over his shoulder. “Maybe.”
Then he left. Bill pushed back his chair and shook his head. “He’ll be back. There’s no way he’s ever going to make it. they’ll call it a bad decision or a failed placement but he’ll be back for re-assessment. We’ll have to do the whole damned thing again – within six months.”
I looked at him.
"He’ll be back in under three,” I said.
“Want a bet?” said Bill. “Fifty pence.”
"Done,” I said.
This feature from Carradice. P. (1985) The Hour of
the Wolf and other short stories. Surbiton: SCA
