This Too Shall Pass (9 page)

‘Thanks, that's all folks.'

I had the strange sensation of having been in a propaganda session with a smiling despot. Damn the public system: services needed to be incorporated and privatised. They needed to be made viable. The words “bottom line” had finally jumped the chasm into the public domain. We were a business and as a business we were to tighten our belts, give more for less, cut corners without losing quality and promote our successes, not our failures. We were, in essence, to adopt a competitive edge.

TWENTY-ONE

I
was determined to pay a visit to Marcus's new school. Since Dave had moved from the country house we'd lived in and was now in town, Marcus's small rural school had been too far away for him to keep going to. ‘The school in town is bigger,' Dave had told me. ‘He'll have more stimulation, greater choice. It'll be good for him.'

Marcus hated the idea of changing schools but, understanding not to push against life too much, he accepted it with stoicism. It helped that he was going to be put in the same class as Mia, who he'd known for years, her mother and I having been good friends. I rang the school. Renny and I were to visit on a Friday morning.

The school was on the main street, his classroom a small portable at the back right corner of the property. The teacher met us at the door. Marcus was standing at the large low desk where he'd been seated beside Mia, excitement making him outwardly shake.

At first we didn't notice anything untoward or unusual. ‘Marcus is an angel,' the teacher said, pushing her large glasses over the bridge of her nose. ‘He and Mia, they're both angels.'

Marcus had seated himself again when I looked back – the model child, re-engaged with his drawing. Renny and I made our way between the furniture and children who were sitting at various angles, some at their tables, others not.

‘That looks good,' I said, pulling a small chair into a spot that allowed me to see his work. As I marvelled at his determined concentration for the task, his drawing with its mountain and grassy foreground well formed, I saw a large child move about clumsily, holding his chair against his bottom as he did so.

‘Nathan!' The teacher's shrill voice cut a sharp, reedy tenor across the room. Renny and I exchanged a look that galvanised our simultaneous feeling of uncertainty.

As we tried to ignore what had just happened, and have as normal a visit as possible with Marcus, the chaos grew so that at one stage the same boy got into a kicking match with another and, missing the kid's leg, sank a boot into Renny's calf.
HEY
!' she yelled from reflex. ‘
Excuse me!
' She sounded fierce and the kid paused, half defiant, half unsure.

The teacher's voice skirled. ‘Nathan, go to your seat.' Nathan made a few steps towards another table. Renny rubbed her leg, squaring her eyes at me. The teacher was attending to the other boy, the victim, by bending over him, saying something we couldn't hear, something tender. Both Mia and Marcus, finishing their drawings, saying things every so often about what they were doing, seemed,
incredibly,
to be oblivious to what was going on. Taking shape, his snow-capped mountain with fire coming out of it – Krakatoa perhaps? – was absolutely absorbing him. In fact, both of them seemed unfazed at the outburst that had gone on not six feet away. I concluded that they must be used to it. The second boy, having wormed out from under the teacher's bent frame, screwed his drawing up and threw it across at Nathan, who responded by aiming a pencil like a dart back at the kid.

I couldn't help but call out, one hand clamping my mouth a moment after the word had escaped.
‘Woah!'
I had also raised my finger to the child, frowning. This was outrageous behaviour, and any sympathy I'd had for the teacher was quickly falling away – she was clearly out of her depth. Both Renny and I were unable to draw our eyes away from the other children for fear of what they'd do. They were only a small class of perhaps fifteen, but even so, the teacher dealt with five or six other behavioural incidents while we were there, including: pushing off a large girl who'd draped herself over the woman's knees; confiscating a pencil from a child who was drawing on another child's drawing; and unsuccessfully trying to stop a child from singing some unasked-for song. Still, when we looked back, Marcus and Mia were immersed! But how long would that last? It just wasn't possible to think this was okay.

‘She had to push the kid onto the floor in the end,' I said to Renny as we tromped across the asphalt courts to the administration building.

‘That teacher,' Renny said, ‘will be lucky to get through another week.'

‘And the kids? One of them's going to get hurt.'

Through the door, we made our way down the hallway to the front desk.

‘Hi,' I addressed the woman behind the desk, her silver lanyard sending spangling shards of light onto the walls as she turned from the computer screen to talk to us. ‘I wanted to give you my address so I could receive the school newsletter.'

‘You don't get one?'

‘My son lives with his dad—'

‘We only send out one per child. We expect the parents to make sure both of them are seeing it.'

I blinked and shook my head, as if this double-take might reset the woman's words and she would correct herself. ‘Well, that's a little tricky.' I could have gone into magnificent detail about recent and past difficulties revealing what Dave and I had experienced, but, under the circumstances… ‘So there's no way I can get a newsletter sent to me?'

She bridled. ‘No.'

‘Just checking,' I said, trying to keep myself nice. ‘What about the principal? She wouldn't happen to be available, would she?'

She held my stare for a moment then slewed her eyes to Renny, who was looking distractedly up and down the hallway.

Without answering, she picked up the phone and spoke inaudibly into the receiver. ‘Her office is at the end of the corridor to the left.'

I smiled and we went towards the door, the stakes getting exponentially higher. I was hoping I'd recognise the woman. I'd visited kids at this school often over the years in my previous job. That's what was a little disconcerting; I'd never seen what I'd just witnessed in that classroom.

She opened the door before we arrived, stepping into the corridor. We wrongly assumed she'd come out to meet us. After some awkwardness had abated – a little shuffling on our part, the frowning and pulling up of her head on hers – I introduced myself and Renny to the stocky, impeccably dressed woman. ‘I'm Marcus Ashcroft's mother,' I said. ‘He's just started in 1G and we've just been to visit him in class.'

She looked at me expectantly.

‘We've never met, but I've seen quite a few students at this school over the years. I was with the mental health team up at the hospital, but.… I wanted to introduce myself and be sure Marcus had settled in. 1G seemed somewhat hectic this morning.'

‘Marcus Ashcroft.' She nodded, assessing me, perhaps not as favourably as I'd hoped she might. She certainly made no attempt to invite us into her office.

My own professionalism having kicked in, I wasn't flummoxed by her stalwart look at all. ‘It'd be good for him to have some stability, be with a teacher who has some experience.'

‘I'll make a note of it,' she said, understanding, I think, that this was the beginning of my not backing down. ‘Ms H has a composite class. It's large but she's a very experienced teacher.'

‘Well, if there's a possibility, he and Mia Alberici… I know it's not easy to move kids, and I don't expect the impossible. But, to be honest, seeing you're here I can't let the opportunity go. I hope you understand, I have to advocate for him.'

She looked at me. I had to extract myself before I drove the nail home with a more detailed description of what had just gone on. This woman was onto it. The less she said, I told myself, the more her mind ticked over. I thanked her and she shook both our hands.

I felt somewhat oversized as we left the school grounds, as if someone was observing our departure. More than that, they were commenting on it.

TWENTY-TWO

I
t was another term before Marcus and Mia were shifted: Marcus into Ms H's monstrous domain of twenty-eight children, where he'd be for two years; while Mia went to another class. Mia's mum and I weren't in contact by then. Like so many other things in my life, the fabric of the relationship had worn to the point of no return. I didn't have the energy to knit enough back into it to rejuvenate it. It was a little sad – something else scythed away. But friendships are never as pliable as we experience them to be. And when they start to decay often the only alternative is to let things be. In fact, in my experience, the closer the friendship, the quicker it is dismantled, and rebuilding it – as much as we might like to, as much as we might even know how – feels oddly pointless.

Impossible or not, the moral support friendship can offer should not be underestimated. About a month after the classroom shift took place, I made the three-hour trip east to hear Marcus play in the school orchestra. He was playing a big glockenspiel, under which they'd set a little box that he was to stand on, making his runners appear oddly huge on the ends of his spindly legs. Due to it being midweek, I was on my own, and so excited to finally be seeing him partake in an activity, it never occurred to me that Dave and Sue would be there too. We'd carefully and endlessly talked about the arrangements and I had assumed they would have the nous to let me enjoy the moment in the small hall, under full light, without them being there. But the two of them turned up, standing at the side of the hall, where they could, unashamedly, look both at Marcus and at me.

I'm not sure what made me so unable to relax, but I found myself keeping my eyes away from them. I was very aware of all the chatter and warmth that was oozing from the little mushroom of activity they seemed to be creating around them.
Is this how people in the country socialise? At a child's school concert?

As the performance wove between old staples like
Click Go The Shears
and
Morning Town Ride
to something only mildly newer like
Mello Yello,
I tried to keep my mind off them. I was so happy to be there and so rapt to see Marcus juggling the big mallets, striking them down on the keys with the right pressure and timing, concentrating so hard on the teacher who was conducting the music even as it tilted with uncertain timing and discordant difficulties, it was easy to make myself focus solely on him. Yet, I can't say I was at ease. My face felt hot and I had developed a headache. I felt like the dyke who'd lost her son. I knew it wasn't true but I still had to sit through it, the feeling rippling in me every few seconds as I knew that from where Dave and Sue stood they would both have full view of me as they grinned with parental pride towards Marcus.

I thought Marcus might know or somehow understand that this was my night with him. But he ran to them after it was over and I had no choice but to wait it out on my own until he had finished with their effusive congratulations. Eventually, he turned to me, his infectious smile blazing. I took his hand, relieved, and we walked from the hall. I was brittle that night – I felt as if I could have snapped, all my limbs could have splintered from my torso and speared painfully back into me. I was grateful Renny hadn't been there. I never admitted this to her but the thought of the two of us on those seats, conspicuous and awkward, was worse than just my humiliation, and we would have fought, the pressures being too great to bear. On my own I only had one choice – to grit my teeth. And I did. I was stoic.

TWENTY-THREE

A
s senior clinician, Celia was supposed to give me supervision once a fortnight. It was, however, several months after I'd started at Marlowe Downs when we got into the rhythm of it. Celia would take on two of my cases, rip them apart and paste them back together in an odd-looking shape that sometimes made me feel unbalanced. Sure enough though, her observations and suggestions – no matter how obscure they seemed to be – consistently proved to be correct. People's behaviour started to alter with the changes orchestrated by her through me. Kids' symptoms improved so much that sometimes it seemed as if small miracles had taken place.

In keeping, sessions with Celia remained surprising, unexpected and at times remarkable. They comprised of identifying mysteries and then searching for the reasons they might exist. Choosing which way to bring these to the notice of the family was a little like choosing the least offensive way for them to swallow medicine. When the process worked it was a delight to see a child progress and the family's relief emerge. In the grand scheme of things it was often the smallest of changes that brought about the biggest differences.

One day she looked at drawings done by a seven-year-old boy called Tyler. Tyler had been born prematurely and had a range of developmental problems. But his most pressing difficulty was anxiety. He was anxious as a matter of routine and threw tantrums at the slightest provocation. In a classroom setting the possibility of this was quadrupled because of noise and visual stimulation. The first drawings done by Tyler on the day I assessed him were of a large house with a jagged and multi-peaked roof.

‘Poor little mite,' she said. ‘He's very distressed.'

‘How can you tell?'

‘His roof. See him for six months and get him to draw another house.'

‘See him and do what?'

‘That's up to him. As long as you let him choose, he'll get better.'

I nodded, knowing from her tone that Celia had closed the discussion.

I began to relay the next case to her, thinking that if I held onto the last pearl of imparted wisdom – a few words often go a long way – they'd sink in over the ensuing days and I'd be ready for Tyler by early the following week. As his appointment approached, however, the words seemed more and more distant. In the end I couldn't even remember if we'd talked about him; I checked the notes I'd taken during the supervision session. I found nothing. When I went to meet the family in the foyer, a smile stuck to my face – glued on – I didn't have a clue what I was going to do.