Little Boy Lost Read online

  Lonnie chuckled merrily, and clapped his hands in glee. ‘You’re funny fellas,’ he said in his strange guttural manner. ‘And we’ve all had a nice visit and a bit of a laugh. But I don’t want none of what you’re selling.’

  Tristan motioned at me with his head. I stood up.

  ‘All right. We’ll leave you to your solitude. But I would like you to at least think about what I’ve said.’

  Lonnie remained seated. ‘Maybe,’ he said.

  ‘So what did you make of Lonnie?’ Tristan asked as we drove home in his Citroën.

  ‘I think that dude thinks he’s much taller than he is,’ I said, rubbing my throat.

  ‘He does, doesn’t he?’ Tristan said. ‘And that gives us something very useful to work with.’

  That evening, as the clients all queued to climb onto the bus which would take them home, a filthy tractor, which had some random bits of red paint showing here and there through the mud that caked it, rolled up outside, and the enormous figure of William Kelleher unfolded itself from the seat.

  He seemed to be wearing the same overalls he’d had on when I met him that night at his home. I was struck yet again by the raw, glowering presence of the man. Annie, who had been just about to get onto the bus, stepped back down, and skulked over to him. He had still not said a word, just stood, waiting for her to come to him. Tristan, who had been sitting in the driver’s seat of the bus, hopped out, and went over to the enormous man.

  ‘William, nice to see you. We haven’t had the pleasure in quite some time.’

  Annie’s father did not look at Tristan. ‘Been busy.’

  ‘Your daughter is a constant joy to us,’ Tristan said. ‘She is quite a talented young woman, you know.’

  ‘She’s simple,’ William said in his rumbling baritone.

  ‘She sees the world in a different way to you and I, but that doesn’t make her any less of a person,’ Tristan said, gently.

  ‘Mmm. She helps me about the farm, at least,’ William growled. ‘I need her now.’

  ‘There she is,’ Tristan said. ‘It was nice of you to drop by.’

  William Kelleher said not another word, just squeezed himself back into the ancient vehicle. Annie put one foot on the step and hung onto the back of her father’s chair, and off they went.

  ‘Warm fella,’ I said when Tristan came back over.

  ‘He’s a cold one, all right.’

  ‘Yet she seems happy, most of the time.’

  ‘Annie is a free spirit,’ Tristan said. ‘Even the darkness he carries about with him can’t contain her.’

  ‘And thank God for that,’ I said.

  17

  Max was having a bad day. Which meant everyone was having a bad day.

  During news he belittled every single comment anyone made, and when Elaine started to tell us about a visit to the dentist the day before, where she had exhibited particular bravery in the face of many needles and pointed implements, he decided to start singing ‘The Whole of the Moon’ by the Waterboys at the top of his voice. When Beth took the group for a cookery lesson, in which she demonstrated a simple recipe for chicken curry, Max decided it would be a good idea to pour sugar into the pot when her back was turned, and the entire dish was rendered inedible. During art he drew a series of phalluses in various colours and of various sizes. I suggested to Millie that this might be a Freudian thing, and she retorted that perhaps Max was going through the ‘arsehole complex’. When no one paid any attention to his efforts, Max grabbed a brush and started to paint a penis in bright yellow on the wall. Tristan removed the brush from his hand and stood over him until the image was cleaned off.

  Lunch proved even more challenging. An important reason for us all to eat together was so the clients could mirror the correct table manners of the staff. Max spent the entire meal wandering from place to place, a chunk of a sandwich clutched in his fist.

  ‘This is really regressive behaviour,’ Valerie said to me. ‘I haven’t seen him like this in ages.’

  ‘What do you think set him off?’ I wondered.

  ‘Probably something at home,’ she said. ‘His mum drinks, so maybe she fell off the wagon. Oh, we’ll find out sooner or later. He tells us everything, eventually.’

  The afternoon proved just as difficult. The group was to go to the gym, but Tristan, wisely, felt that Max was too much of a risk in a facility with weights and other implements that could either be damaged, or used to do damage to others. As insurance dictated that Tristan had to be on site when Drumlin used the gym (among all his other skills, Tristan was a qualified physical trainer) we had to draw straws to determine who would stay with our errant friend. As I had suspected would happen, I drew the short straw.

  ‘So, what do you want to do this afternoon, then?’ I asked, when the others were gone.

  Max was striding up and down by the far wall, banging a table with his fist every now and again, bouncing on the balls of his feet in a show of how wound up he was. He shot me a look at the question, but didn’t answer.

  ‘Last chance to tell me, Max,’ I said. ‘If you want to come up with an idea, great. If not, well, I’ve got stuff to do and you can amuse yourself.’

  ‘F… fuck off,’ Max said.

  ‘Your call.’ I shrugged, and sat down to write up a report on Tristan’s and my visit to Lonnie the previous day.

  Max made his way to the reading corner and threw himself on a beanbag. Ten minutes later, I heard an intermittent thump, thump, thump. Looking up, I saw that he was tossing books off their shelves on to the floor.

  ‘You can knock yourself out doing that, Max,’ I said. ‘But you will put them back when you’re done.’

  Thump, thump, thump.

  I looked back down at my report and decided to leave him to it. Five minutes later a book sailed through the air and hit me smack on the top of my head. It didn’t hurt so much as surprise me. But that was it: I would have to go over and deal with Max. He stood to meet me as he saw me approach, his face flushed and his fists balled.

  ‘Max, if you are trying to be a pain in the arse, you have well and truly succeeded,’ I said.

  Pop!

  I didn’t see the punch coming – but it was a beauty. Max must have balanced himself well, and he managed to put all his considerable weight behind the blow. It connected squarely with my jaw, and lifted me completely off my feet. I sailed backwards and – at least there was one positive in the whole affair – landed with a soft thud on a beanbag. Bells rang. Stars wheeled before my vision. I was vaguely aware of scuffling movement, and by the time my head cleared, Max was nowhere to be seen.

  I pulled myself up and checked the kitchen, the office and the bathrooms, but there was no sign of him. I went to the door, which was standing ajar. Max’s bicycle was gone, and so was he. I walked out to the road, and could just see a figure that I took to be him disappearing into the distance. I rubbed my jaw, which I could already feel swelling.

  ‘You’re going to have a bruise on that,’ a voice said.

  Startled, I looked down to see Lonnie Whitmore scowling up at me. ‘When did you get here?’ I asked.

  ‘Just as the mongoloid boy was running out.’

  ‘We don’t use that word,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s offensive.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Would you like it if I called you a dwarf?’

  ‘Why would I care? I am a dwarf. I’ve been called worse.’

  He was not dressed to avoid attention. He had a wide-brimmed red slouch hat on his head, and a green cape-coat that trailed along the ground after him. Under his arm was a brightly coloured floral shopping bag. He had a pink umbrella in his other hand, which he carried across the shoulder that was not hunched.

  ‘Well, the right way to talk about someone like you is to say a “little person” or a “person of small stature”.’

  Lonnie laughed. ‘Snow White and the Seven Persons of Small Stature? It’ll never catch on,’ he s
aid.

  I had to laugh, too. ‘No. I don’t suppose it will.’

  ‘Is the grey-haired fella here?’

  ‘No. They’ve gone out. He’ll be back later, though.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘In an hour or so.’

  ‘Can’t wait. Tell him I called.’

  ‘Why don’t you come in and wait?’

  Lonnie considered this for a moment.

  ‘Because I don’t really like you,’ he said, and, turning on his heel, headed back towards town.

  Convinced that volunteering at Drumlin might just have been the worst decision I had ever made, I went back inside and found some frozen peas to put on my jaw.

  I told Tristan about Lonnie’s visit when he got back, and also about Max’s departure, leaving out the details of my first-round knockout. My jaw was red, but my beard covered most of it, so out of simple embarrassment I thought I’d keep that little nugget of information to myself. We were all having a mid-afternoon cup of tea before the final module of the day.

  ‘And Lonnie didn’t feel like waiting?’ Tristan enquired.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It was quite a thing for him to come at all,’ he said, sounding pleased. ‘We must have made more of an impression than we thought.’

  ‘I know. I’m not sure he’s as terrified of everything as Aisling thinks.’

  Tristan thought about that. ‘The truth is probably somewhere in the middle,’ he said. ‘He’s been locked away for so long, it’ll take time for him to get used to being around people.’

  ‘Will he fit in here?’ I asked. ‘I mean, he doesn’t seem to have an intellectual disability, per se.’

  ‘Don’t get caught up in seeing disability so two-dimensionally. From the newspapers and prayer books and things in his house, it’s obvious that Lonnie can read, and he seems to have at least an average vocabulary. But his social skills are sorely lacking, and I would have severe doubts that he could do some basic tasks like doing his own shopping, or going into a café.’

  ‘I’d say you’re right there.’

  ‘So you see, disability comes in all shapes and sizes.’

  ‘In this case, it comes in the shape of one mean little guy, with very odd fashion sense.’

  Tristan looked at me questioningly.

  ‘You’ll see, if he ever comes back,’ I said, and went to set up the last module of the day, which was art.

  We were completing our map of the town’s main street. Elaine and I were working on her contribution, a florist’s shop which would fit in about midway down the street. It was a lovely building, in actuality – an old town house from the nineteenth century, which had been maintained with the original brickwork and windows.

  Because the finished map (if you could call it that – portrait might be a better description) was going to be so large, we had spread our work across the entire room, with all the tables covered. Elaine and I had found a spot on the floor.

  The project was being completed in a variety of materials and media. Elaine had gone to great lengths to press flowers for the window boxes of her piece, and she was now painstakingly gluing each one on. I had to admit that she had an amazing eye for colour. The picture was shaping up to be really beautiful.

  The room was a buzz of activity. Our newly repaired radio was playing some light classical music Tristan had found, and everyone was happily busy with their projects. Everyone except Dominic, that is.

  ‘My daddy picking me up at four o’clock,’ he declared every five minutes or so.

  Valerie was working with him, but it seemed she was doing most of the work.

  ‘Come on, Dominic,’ she urged. ‘This is supposed to be your shop, not mine.’

  ‘I. Am. Tired,’ Dominic said firmly, and put his head down on the table.

  ‘Well, don’t you dare complain if you don’t like what I’m doing here,’ Valerie said.

  ‘My daddy picking me up at four o’clock,’ Dominic said resolutely, and continued to sit with his chin on his hands, his eyes fixed on the door.

  I was only peripherally aware of Dominic’s protestations, and had more or less forgotten about him when the door opened, and Leroy came in.

  ‘Must be four o’clock,’ I said to Elaine, who looked up, spotted Leroy, and said: ‘Leroy always picks Dominic up at four o’clock,’ without any sense of irony.

  ‘There’s my daddy,’ Dominic said, as if this vindicated him fully.

  ‘Hello, Dominic,’ Leroy said, grinning at his son.

  Seeing as he already had his coat on in preparation for his departure, the lad flung back his chair and strode straight for the door. Unfortunately his rapid trajectory brought him right past where Elaine and I were working.

  I have long hair – have had since I was a teenager. If I am doing something physical, or working with a child or an adult who is going to be potentially violent, I tie it back in a ponytail, but the rest of the time, I wear it down. Doing a piece of art hardly ranks as physical, so my hair was loose – this proved to be very much to my detriment.

  Dominic swept past us on his relentless path toward his dad and home. As he did, one of the buttons of his duffel coat somehow managed to get tangled in my hair. I noticed immediately, and jerked backwards, calling: ‘Hey, Dominic, hold up there a mo,’ but my young friend was not to be stopped.

  ‘I. Am. Going. Home,’ he said, and kept going, not slowing his pace one iota.

  Before I could do anything to prevent it, I was being dragged across the floor by my hair. I would like to say I handled this indignity manfully. It would be nice if I could report that I stoically held out until somebody detached me. But neither of these things would be even close to the truth. In reality, I howled.

  ‘Dominic, my hair!’ I shouted. ‘Stop, for fuck’s sake!’

  Dominic, still moving forwards at exactly the same momentum, looked over his shoulder, saw me, and giggled.

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ he said, and kept going.

  I felt my hair starting to rip at the roots. Thankfully, Leroy had rushed over by this time and stopped his son. A little quick surgery with a pair of scissors, and I was free, if with yet another aching spot to show for my day’s work. Dominic was completely unapologetic.

  ‘I done nothing,’ he said, and swept out the door.

  18

  Max was waiting at the gate the next morning when I arrived looking tearful and chastened. As he didn’t say hello, or sorry, or try to punch me out again, I ignored him and went on inside.

  Turning up to the unit that day had not been easy. My initial thoughts had been to call Tristan and tell him I had reconsidered my situation, and that it was just not working out. After all, my reason for volunteering in the first place was to leave a back door to escape through if necessary.

  But then, I had received the occasional thump before in the line of work, and I knew that I had not done anything wrong in the way I had dealt with Max. He had never been violent towards anyone in Drumlin since I had started going there, so I’d had no reason to be wary of him. I thought I’d face the music.

  Despite the fact that I was quite clear that what had happened was not my fault, I still felt like an idiot. Part of me thought I should have been able to avoid it in some way. I was just glad no one had seen me getting the hiding.

  News proved to be the nightmare I expected it to be. As soon as Millie declared the session to be open, Max raised his hand.

  ‘Me talk.’

  ‘Okay, Max.’

  With a trembling lower lip, he went around the group, naming everyone in turn: ‘Millie, Beth, Tristan, Glen, Elaine, Annie, Dominic…’

  When everyone had been acknowledged, Max put his head into his hands, and moaned. ‘Yesterday, me not feeling very good in myself.’

  ‘I think we were all aware of that, Max,’ Tristan said.

  ‘Was mean to Elaine in news.’

  ‘You were mean,’ Elaine agreed.

  ‘Drew dirty pictures,’ Max continued.


  Every single trespass was listed. If I was a cynical man, I might have thought Max was getting a certain degree of entertainment out of recalling his litany of offences. As was inevitable, he reached his final transgression: ‘I boxed Shane.’ As he said it, he made a punching motion in the air.

  ‘Yes, I see he has something of a crumpled look this morning,’ Tristan said, suppressing a smile. ‘Hit him hard, did you?’

  ‘Boxed him in the face,’ Max said, and I felt myself flushing redder by the minute. ‘Knocked him down.’ He illustrated this in the air with his finger, whistling to demonstrate me sailing through the air, and then making an exploding noise as I impacted.

  ‘And did you say sorry to him?’ Tristan asked.

  ‘No,’ Max said. ‘Me ran off.’

  ‘I see,’ Tristan said. ‘I think you have some work to do, young man, don’t you?’

  Max nodded. ‘Want to say sorry to the group,’ he said. ‘Let meself down. Let all of you down.’

  ‘Okay. And I think there’s someone else who deserves a special apology,’ Tristan said.

  Max stood up, and looked at me. ‘Shane,’ he said, and burst into tears. With his arms wide, he rushed over and gave me a bear hug.

  I didn’t know what to do. I did not believe for one moment that this apology was even vaguely genuine, but Max had stage-managed his performance so well, I was trapped into accepting his theatrics – and I had had no time to think about a more appropriate response. Max broke off the hug, and went back to his seat, sniffling and wiping his eyes, but looking extremely smug. I sat where I was, feeling thoroughly used and not a little bit stupid. For all that Max was supposed to be the one with the intellectual disability, he had outsmarted me brilliantly.

  One of the parts of the programme that happened every day without fail – and sometimes more than once – was called craft. Tristan explained to me that there were good reasons that it formed a bedrock of what was done at Drumlin, as the various skills it involved (everything from weaving to woodwork, embroidery to etching) helped develop fine motor skills (all those little, precise movements), hand–eye co-ordination, not to mention concentration over an extended project. The problem I had was that, no matter how hard I tried, I just didn’t like craft, and had absolutely no talent for it.