Listen to thisThe important thing, in this game, is not to get involved. Or so they say. By all means care for the child, make him feel secure and wanted but never get too close. And to some extent they’re right. In a short term unit the child will move on sooner or later and relationships which become too intense will only cause pain to both of you. At least, that’s the theory. It’s not always so easy!
I first met Alan shortly after I started at Bracken House. I had taught for five years in a large secondary school and had become thoroughly fed up with the system I saw operating there. Above all I found that whatever I did with the children in my class, the effect had been nullified when they returned to school in the morning. All sorts of events could, and often did, happen to them in their home environment, events over which I had no control but with the effects of which I had to cope the following day.
Then, in The Times Educational Supplement, I saw an advertisement for a teaching post at an Assessment Centre for adolescent boys. I applied for the job and came for interview full of doubts and misgivings, not only about my ability to do the job but also about the type of boy I would find there.
"Delinquent, maladjusted, deprived, depraved,” said the Deputy Principal as I sat in his office waiting to be interviewed. “You name it, lad, we've got it!”
“But what do you do with them? Why are they here?” I asked.
"For assessment. They’re sent by the courts or by their social workers. We work out what’s wrong, why they’re causing problems, and then send them somewhere they can be helped – a special school or a children's home, whichever they might need. Sometimes they go straight home.”
I got the job and started at Bracken House one day in September. My initial settling in period was far from easy but I survived, somehow, and was beginning to find my feet when, one day towards Christmas, the Principal came into my classroom.
"Got a new boy joining your group,” he said. “The housemothers are getting him changed now. He’s a little 12 year old, called Alan. Just been thrown out of his Children's Home – they say they want a reassessment!”
“What’s he done?” I asked.
The Principal grinned and lit his pipe.
“What hasn’t he done! We know him fairly well – he was here a couple of years ago. Got a long history of disturbed behaviour. Last night, for some reason, he went berserk, broke every window in the Home. Don’t ask me why, he just smashed the whole place to bits systematically, piece by piece! They 'phoned the police who sent a few blokes along to calm it all down. Anyway, one of the policemen turned his back on the boy and got hit by a hammer! Fractured his skull!”
“Bloody hell!” I gasped. “How old did you say he was?”
* * *
Yet when Alan arrived his appearance totally belied his history. Under five feet in height, golden brown hair fringing his pale blue eyes. Quiet and a little overawed. For an hour he sat at a table in the corner, drawing and talking occasionally to the other boys and me.
When we returned to the classroom for the afternoon session – decorating the room for Christmas – he was excited and happy. He still seemed far from sure about the other boys but appeared to be reassured by my presence.
“Can I put up the paper chains?” he asked.
I gave him the long arm stapler and showed him how to use it. For ten minutes he was content, happily banging staples into the ceiling. Then the staple gun jammed.
"Give it a bang to clear it,” I called.
It was one of those frozen moments when I suddenly, clearly, knew exactly what would happen but was powerless to prevent it. Rooted to the spot, I watched him place the stapler on top of a fire extinguisher and bang down with his fist.
The next second the whole corner of the room exploded into a seething, pillowing mass of foam. By the time I reached Alan we were knee deep in the rapidly expanding mixture. I dragged him off the radiator where he was standing and grabbed the extinguisher.
As if in a dream, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gavin, the class clown, jump to his feet. Realisation burning in his eyes, he leapt for the other extinguisher, and the next second a high powered jet of water struck me squarely in the back.
“Open that bloody window!” I screamed at the nearest boy.
I pointed the spitting extinguisher out of the window and began to fumble for the emergency exit doors. Turning to see what was happening in the room, I saw Gavin, his extinguisher empty and his part in the affair conveniently forgotten, cross the room to where Alan stood.
"You stupid bastard!” he shouted. “What did you do that for?”
Helpless, I watched Alan raise the staple gun and strike downwards. As if by magic a six inch red gash appeared across Gavin's forehead and he collapsed into the foam.
When I had finally managed to carry the extinguishers outside and extracted Gavin from the foam I was able to survey the debris of my classroom.
Paper streamers hung in ribbons from the ceiling and pictures, drawings and wall charts peeled like lichen from the walls. Pots of paint and glue, knocked over by the blast, were still spilling their contents onto the carpets while the water dripped down the blackboard and windows as if it was a wet Saturday afternoon. Then there was the foam. Tinged red with blood it covered half of the room, climbing up the walls and corners like snow drifts.
And standing in the middle of it all was Alan, looking for all the world like a little boy lost in a big city store, totally terrified by what he had done.
"I’m sorry,” he kept repeating. “I didn’t mean to do it!”
* * *
That was our introduction to Alan. Things did not really improve very much from there, either. We had a hectic time of it – climbing out of the dormitory windows three floors up and breaking the window of the Principal’s car with a stone were just two of his more acceptable adventures. He was a real victim of circumstances, as things just naturally went wrong for him. But, despite the fact I knew there would be chaos every time he came into my classroom, I could not help liking him.
There was something very appealing about the boy and I suppose I came to view him as rather special. Perhaps it was his helplessness, his inability to control even the slightest aspect of his destiny. But whatever it was I now found myself becoming more and more involved. I took him on trips to town, to museums, to the pictures and, on several occasions, I brought him back home with me after work. I knew it was wrong, that over involvement with any boy is against his best interests, but my desire for a close and rewarding relationship pushed all the logic and training into the background.
At the end of his period of assessment we held the statutory review on Alan. He was placed in a junior community home for delinquent boys and, within weeks, left us to begin his time there. I thought that was the last we should see of him. I should have known better!
* * *
The following Summer the Deputy Principal broke the news that Alan was coming back to us. I was in the camping store, coiling climbing ropes, when Jack, the Deputy, came through the door.
"Got a friend of yours coming in this afternoon,” he said, smiling. “Young Alan.”
What had happened was that after six months in the community home Alan's parents decided they wanted him home. As he was only on a Voluntary Care Order, home he went. Within three weeks the situation had broken down and his parents were screaming for Social Services to remove him.
"It does cause something of a problem, though,” said Jack. “With most of the boys on leave next week and you taking the rest climbing in North Wales, he’ll have to stay here on his own."
"No need,” I said. “I'll take him with me. He knows me well enough and Jock and Karen as well. He’ll be alright. And he’s got the rest of the week to get to know the boys.”
In truth I was more than content to have Alan back. The period in North Wales would mean we could re-establish our relationship. Even then alarm bells were ringing at the back of my head – a throbbing message telling me to leave it alone before someone was hurt – but I paid no attention.
When he arrived at Bracken House we discovered Alan hadn’t changed very much. A little harder, perhaps, a little less trusting, but, by and large, the same accident prone character he had always been. He spent the week helping me prepare the tents and climbing equipment, talking excitedly about the prospect of “going abroad”, as he called it.
"I’m good at climbing,” he said. “Going to be a cat burglar when I grow up!”
We left the Centre on a wet and grey Friday morning, six boys and four members of staff. The journey to Snowdonia was slow and uneventful; we arrived in time to pitch our tents at the foot of the Oromlech boulders in Llanberis Pass. After a hurried meal we turned in for the night.
On the second day we went climbing at Cwm Idwal. The slabs lie grouped around the lake, falling back at an easy angle and towering up for three or four hundred feet. It is an ideal training ground for novice climbers and, as long as care and all normal safety precautions are taken, should cause few problems.
“What about the Ordinary Route?” suggested Jock.
It’s not a particularly good climb although reasonably exposed in parts but it would do to start with.
"I'll take my group up first,” I said.
I moved carefully up the first pitch, looped a sling around a spike of rock and belayed on. I had brought up the first of the boys and was in the process of showing him where to stand while the third man came up.
Suddenly, I heard Jock shout. I looked down and there, halfway up the adjacent climb – known as “Tennis Shoe”, very severe and very exposed – was Alan.
"Get down, you bloody fool!” I yelled.
It was a mistake. He looked up, saw me and froze.
"I can’t!” he shouted. “Help me.”
“Bloody hell!” yelled Jock from below. “He’s gripped.”
The third man was now up to my stance. Quickly, I roped him onto the rock and untied myself.
“Stay here!” I snarled. “And don’t move.”
I traversed the rock, not without difficulty as the holds were sparse, sheer unadulterated fear forcing me across the face. When I reached Tennis Shoe I moved down to Alan who was now sobbing uncontrollably on the rock. Reaching down I held him close to the slab and waited for Jock who was coming up the climb behind him with a rope. Within seconds he had reached the sobbing boy, had tied him on and was slowly bringing him down while I belayed them from above.
Ten minutes later I abseiled down with my party, my heart still pounding, rattling like a Salvation Army tambourine. I found Alan unrepentant, sitting on a rock in front of Jock and Karen.
“What on earth did you do it for?” Karen was saying.
“Because I was fed up! Why can’t I climb where I want? I can do it, I won’t get into trouble.”
“But that’s not true”, said Jock. “You just got yourself stuck up there. And it’s not safe to go climbing wherever you want. When you’re climbing you've got to do it properly, obey all the rules. Otherwise ... “
“Oh, piss off! Leave me alone!” Alan shouted and leapt to his feet.
Karen grabbed his arm and in an instinctive movement Alan lashed out with his foot.
I grabbed him and turned him over my knee. Four times I slapped him squarely on his backside and then lay him down on the grass.
"Leave him for a moment,” I said. “Let’s just stay where we can see him."
We sat on a large boulder about twenty yards away while he lay and cried. Then, suddenly, he rose to his feet. He looked hard down the path past the lake and for a moment I thought he would run. Then he shook his head and marched purposefully across to where we sat. Quite deliberately he put his arm around my neck and began to cry once more.
"I’m sorry,” he said.
“That’s O.K., Alan. But what Jock said is true. You can’t just climb wherever and whenever you want. we’re responsible for you – if anything happened to you, how do you think we’d feel? Your mum and dad wouldn’t be very pleased if we brought you back dead, would they?”
He looked up at me and said, softly “I wish you were my father.”
After that the rest of the holiday passed off without incident. Alan followed me around like a second shadow and I was quite happy to take him under my wing. After a fortnight we went back to Bracken House. I think the trip had done Alan a great deal of good – not just the slapped backside and all the attention he had received, but the whole trip. The discipline involved in climbing, in hill walking, in simply keeping the camp site clean, was exactly what he needed.
Above all Alan had never known where to stop. His parents had never corrected him and so he had never known his limits. And he needed to know them, was desperate to know just how far he could go. That was why he had broken all those windows in the Children's Home – they were frightened of him and nobody had tried to stop him.
Looking back on it now I think I did, in fact, see myself as a father figure for the boy. I fulfilled a need in him, a need for a strong, protecting male figure. At the same time the relationship gave me more than a little pleasure. It gave me, I think, a sense of purpose. And when, in this work, you get kicked in the teeth nine times out of ten, it made the job all the more rewarding for me. In truth, I suppose I was flattered he had picked me out as the leading figure in his life.
Three weeks after we returned from Wales Alan went off to another community home. He cried when he said goodbye to me and, quite frankly, I felt like doing the same.
* * *
Three months later Alan re-appeared. He had not really settled at the new Home and Social Services, in their wisdom, had decided what he really needed was fostering. He came back to us on a holding placement and seemed happy to be back.
During his absence I had been promoted. The Third-in-Charge had left the Centre and I was appointed to his post. It meant a fancy title “Assistant Principal “with more responsibility and considerably less work! Also, I was given an office of my own.
"Very nice,” said Alan as he swivelled round in my new chair. “You’re going up in the world.”
More than ever he was the little boy lost, totally out of place and desperate for love and attention. While he had been away I found myself wishing more and more often that he would fail at his placement so that he could be returned to us. I had become so wrapped up in my own ideals and needs that Alan's had gone by the board. So when he did, indeed, return to us I was more than content.
My new job meant that my wife and I had to move onto the site, occupying a house some hundred and fifty yards away from the main building. On several occasions Alan came across to play with my eldest son. After an initial quarrel over a disputed toy they became the best of friends. Above all else he knew exactly where he stood with my wife and me; he knew just how far he could go before we called enough.
"You know,” said Elaine, one evening, “all that kid needs is a decent home. There’s nothing else wrong with him. If he was ours “
“What do you mean?” I asked, startled. “Foster him?”
“Well, yes. Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. He’s all you've talked about for the past few months.”
In all honesty I hadn’t given it much consideration. You get used to the general coming and going of boys; boys who desperately require a little love or care – care you are usually too hard pressed or self indulgent to give. I had wanted Alan to come back but I had not really considered giving him a home.
"I don’t know,” I said. “I need time to think.”
For the next few weeks I turned the idea over and over in my head. Every time I looked at Alan I became more conscious of the boy’s prime needs – a stable home environment and someone who could give him all the attention he required. Not an ever-changing succession of residential homes – hell, that was the last thing he needed, the very last. No, he needed a home and I was in a position to give him one.
I was not sure what I felt for the boy. Love, perhaps? Or was it just pity? And then, nagging away at the back of my mind, was the thought that possibly, just possibly, I was not concerned with Alan's needs at all. It was an idea too troubling to give serious consideration and so I pushed it away and promptly forgot about it.
We talked it over, my wife and I. Late into the night we sat and wondered. And then, eventually, we decided. We would foster Alan, take him in and give him the home he needed. Curiously, I don’t think I even considered how the boy might feel.
For three days I sat in my office, trying to pluck up the courage to tell the Principal what I had in mind. Then, one morning, Alan's social worker appeared at the door.
"I’ve done it,” she said. “I’ve fixed up foster parents for Alan.”
I was stunned, scarcely able to believe it. Alan was full of doubts; he did not know the foster parents and wasn’t sure if he would like them. He raised hundreds of tiny points about which I should have been able to reassure him. But I did nothing. I was too wrapped up in my own self pity and that made it much harder for him to get used to the idea. When I should have been supporting him, helping him through the most traumatic period of his life, I was thinking instead of what I had lost.
His initial day’s visit ended in disaster. He ran out of the foster parents' house and was missing for several days before the police picked him up. Back at the Centre, we had hours of hysteria with Alan screaming over and over again that he did not want to leave, that he wanted to stay with me. To be fair to the foster parents they put up with it all. They visited him and ignored his rudeness and threats, telling him how much they wanted him to live with them.
In time it began to pay off. He spent a weekend with them and came back happy; everything had gone well. Further visits resulted in the cautious belief that it was going to be wonderful. Yet, I knew from the way he still clung to me, that I had a claim on him, that I could still take him away from them – if that was what I wanted.
Finally, however, the day came when the foster parents arrived to take him home for good. We stood in the front hall, two separate groups. The social worker and foster parents by the door, the Principal and myself by the opposite wall; and Alan, somewhere in the middle, torn two different ways, not knowing which way to turn. I was helpless, unable to push him across the gulf, to sever the ties which still held him to me.
Then the Principal put his hand on my shoulder.
"Let him go, lad.”
Those four words seemed to break the spell.
"Go on, Alan. Write and let me know how you get on.”
I turned and walked out of the door. Out of his life, as well.
* *
*
It would be good to say everything worked out. Yet inside two years Alan
had estranged his foster parents and served a three-month spell in
Detention Centre. I have not seen him since the day he left us for the
last time – he wrote once or twice but things were never the same. The
last I heard, he was committing offences again, progressing down the
line to Borstal.
Unfortunately, so much of it is my fault. I had put false images into his head, held onto him when I should have let go. In reality the fostering was doomed to failure before it even began. Of course there were other elements involved in his failure but I knew then, and know now, that a large portion of the blame must be mine.
If it taught me anything, the whole affair showed me what they say is true – you cannot become too involved with the children. In the end it does neither of you any good.
But then, as I say, it’s not always that easy.
