Читать книгу The Twinkling of an Eye - Sue Brown - Страница 8

This tale of claws, which disturbed me so much, should only have filled my heart with tenderness and pity.

– The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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The year 2010 is ushered in with great excitement by eleven-year-old Craig, beginning the six-month countdown to the Soccer World Cup kick-off in Cape Town. The soccer-loving boy expresses his delight by simultaneously blowing two vuvuzelas in anticipation of seeing his soccer idols performing in the flesh – until I beg him to take his noisy effervescence outdoors, to the garden.

Red-and-white posters have appeared at Craig’s school at the start of this new year – sporting a picture of Dr Seuss’s smiling ‘cat in the hat’, and inviting grade sixes and sevens to audition for parts in Seussical the Musical.

Thrilled to at last be eligible for the school show, Craig has memorised the required lines in a frenzy of enthusiasm, and is rushing off to sing and dance out his heart with all the other young hopefuls. I am bracing myself to help him cope with disappointment, but he comes home proudly announcing that he is through to the second round of auditions, and then to the third.

It is a sunny, early autumn afternoon when I collect him from the hockey astro, pink-faced and sweaty – even he looks a little amazed at the news he has to share. That he is to be the baby kangaroo from Horton Hears a Who! – a solo role, and that his dream of singing and dancing centre stage, under the bright lights, is to come wondrously true. And my mother-heart is glad that always being the shortest in the grade is at last proving to his advantage.

Day after day he runs off to endless hours of rehearsals. His ceaseless enthusiasm is partly due to his barely disguised adoration of his mother in the show: the ‘Sour Kangaroo’. A year his senior, she is a beautiful, golden-haired girl, whose shoulder is level with the top of Craig’s head. Smiling up at her, he is quaintly protective of her in front of all her bigger, older suitors, and beside himself that his costume includes a velvet bowtie made from the fabric of her gown. Thankfully not a childish kangaroo suit, he is to wear gold-coloured shorts, and I am to make him a gold brocade waistcoat, topped off with a borrowed Andy Capp-style hat, and the final touch all Craig’s own – gold laces in his black school shoes.

June of 2010 arrives, marking the start of an extra-long school holiday to accommodate the Soccer World Cup. The traffic-light vendors are selling festive regalia in the colours of all the competing teams, and it seems as if clip-on South African flags flurry manically from every car window. The air is filled with the hooting of ubiquitous vuvuzelas – one of which is Craig’s, from our own flag-bedecked balcony, at any pedestrians coming past. They smile and wave back at him standing there.

My son’s buoyancy seems quite in keeping with the fever-pitch excitement and patriotic fervour gripping our city. He revels in the novelty of train trips, and strolls on the Fan Walk, the treat of fast food and ice-cream suppers along the way, all to watch his soccer heroes in action, in the flesh, before his incredulous eyes. He arrives home way past his normal bedtime, soaked to his underpants by the Cape winter showers, the remnants of face paint leaving brightly coloured smudges on his pillow.

The third term of the school year brings Craig’s twelfth birthday on 18 August – amid final Seussical the Musical rehearsals.

I am also becoming aware of a disturbing undercurrent of symptoms in my son; and a sense of disquiet in myself that something is wrong with him. Something unfamiliar, but ugly, that has no definable shape or form.

I find him sitting on the bottom stair when it is time to walk to school, leaning his head into his hands.

‘I feel sick,’ he complains. Assuming tiredness from the play, and with nothing else to indicate illness, I persuade him to go. His rounded face emerges pale within the stream of khaki uniforms leaving the gates at the end of the day – devoid of his usual grin and chatter.

The nausea, he discloses, lasts until first break, and now he just feels tired.

I had taken Craig to our GP a few months earlier – also after complaints of nausea. Dr Mike had diagnosed the anxiety of a high-achieving child in a competitive school. Always happy to talk about himself at length, Craig had enjoyed speaking to a child psychologist to whom he was referred, and was now happy to return to her.

I brief the psychologist that Craig has been noticeably argumentative. I was distraught to receive two angry calls from the mother of his friend Adam, accusing my son of verbally bullying hers. Craig has always been forthright and outspoken – but I have never known him to be unkind – which he is, undoubtedly, now being.

‘Why,’ I confront him, ‘can you not stop yourself from saying these things? You are usually so clever with words.’ His response is to become tearful, frustrated and clearly unhappy, but utterly unable to account for his behaviour.

I e-mail Craig’s housemaster and principal to apologise, and offer our full support of any disciplinary action the school might feel appropriate. The calm and rational school counsellor, Janice, muses that she has seen Craig be a good friend to Adam, and has no idea why he would now be maligning him. Besides, Craig has always hated getting into trouble, having cried uncontrollably after getting his sole ‘pink paper’ – a minor punishment, for talking in line.

Janice calls in Dylan, Boyd and Taahir, Craig’s closest friends. Dylan says, ‘This is not the Craig we know.’

‘He seems to be digging a hole for himself to fall into – against his will, but for some reason unable to stop,’ ponders Janice. This image resonates with my own image of my son: he is behind the car wheel driving at full speed towards a wall, unable to apply the brakes even as we frantically put down speed bumps and arrestor beds ahead of him. I am beside myself – Neil, never one to overreact, seems less so.

One midday the home telephone rings. I feel sick to hear the voice of Craig’s housemaster. On the edge of our bed in tears, I learn that Adam has again accused my son of unkindness, to which he has confessed. Detention and social suspension, as per the school rules, are his punishment. A father of four himself, Craig’s housemaster reminds me that all children make mistakes, and that this kind of behaviour is not uncommon among boys of twelve or thirteen.

Neil sounds surprised when I call him to ask – for the first time in our married life – to please come home early from work. Having ascertained that there is no physical emergency, Neil assures me that he can manage this at about 5 pm.

I walk to meet Craig from the tennis courts, interrupting his greeting, and storming angrily ahead of him on the way home. My raw hostility is a far cry from the even-tempered response with which I had always planned to parent my children. I can see that I am not helping my son, but I am too angry to behave better myself.

Dave, the tennis coach who has known Craig for several years, sees my distress, and interjects: ‘But Sue, he is a good child.’

I call his psychologist – perhaps we should consider behaviourmoderating medication for our son?

Craig spends the next five break times seated behind the small desk at the staffroom door and brings home the picture that he has completed sitting there: a large circle crammed with an incredible number of deeply drawn, bisecting pencil diagonals.

It is a diagram with such intensity and focus – what is going on inside this child’s head? He describes to me his acute shame at the averted eyes of some of his favourite teachers – who have always tended to be the ladies – as they walk past him for their tea.

This seems disgrace enough to finally curb his uninhibited words.

He e-mails apologies to the school, and to Adam and his mom. I do not trust my son if provoked, and suggest that he gives Adam a wide berth – but avoidance has never been in Craig’s nature, and he goes out of his way to make amends, joining Adam in the library at break time once the suspension is over.

Neil collects Craig from detention on the Saturday afternoon, driving him to Simon’s Town to belatedly join the other soon-to-be grade sevens of Charlton House for their leadership camp. Craig tells his dad fascinated stories of the detention ‘regulars’, impressed that they pre-arrange who will bring the sweets, and who will organise the chips.

He has onerously copied pages out of an economics tome – realising later that others simply ignore their tasks. He also acknowledges to his dad that he has blown his chances of being chosen for 2011’s coveted leadership positions, but still runs off excitedly to join the other boys when Neil deposits him at the seaside camp.