school photos 37

I peeked into Mr Williams’s office. He hunched forward on his chair, one knee pointing beneath his desk, his torso slightly off kilter with his foot tapping, and he was peering down and reading some dry old file with  such concentration that he seemed one of those blokes that wandered around in the words, got lost in sentences and real life was an intrusion. I wasn’t sure whether to clear my throat or if the SEN standing behind me was going to use professional practice and push the small of the back and bully me forward into the room, but his sharp little face, fuzzed up by facial hair, turned to face me and his eyes narrowed. The sound of Myra’s feet sloping off along the corridors  made me feel isolated and, I realised with a start, that it had been my file he’d been reading.

          ‘Come in.’ He raised his arm, flapping his wrist rather effeminately and curled his fingers into an invitation, waving me into the room.  

          It was a narrow office space that smelled lived in. He flicked shut the tan folder on his desk and, gripping the underside of his cushioned seat, rocked its legs backward in a segmented circle, so I could get squeeze past. His chair was facing mine and, when I sad down I felt boxed in. My hands were cradled in my lap, our knees almost touching and our eyes met briefly, before flickering away, him to the scattered papers on his desk and the ashtray filled with dog-ends beside it, me back to my lap.

          Mr Williams cleared his throat. I expected him to ask me, in his plummy accent, about why I’d run away from Gartnavel, but he surprised me by asking a different question.

          ‘Why do you think you are here?’

          I frowned and after a few seconds of his intense gaze, shrugged my shoulders.

          He rephrased the question. ‘Why do you think you are in this ward?’

          ‘And not another?’ I said, finding my voice.

          He gave my throwaway remark more attention than I expected. His white coat stretched creating a slight gap with the back of the horizontal bar in his chair rest as he leaned across scutinising my face, the Biro pens in the front pocket tipped forward threatening to fall to the scuff- marked floor,  his hands pressed down on his knees, lips puckered in concentration as he looked over my shoulder and he considered his answer. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘one of my favourite films is Harvey.’ He nodded to himself and included me in it, as if we both knew what he was talking about. ‘Harvey was a six-foot rabbit that few people could see.’

          ‘I don’t see six-foot rabbits.’ There was exasperation in my voice, but he held the palm of his hand up in a placatory manner to hush me so that he could continue.

          ‘Harvey had a friend Elwood P Dowd who he sometimes lived with and they liked to go out for drinks. They didn’t really bother anybody and were well liked, but soon people began to talk.’ He paused, leaning  forward again and his index finger flicked out and pointed at me, ‘what does the world do with an Elwood P Dowd?’

          I felt like it was one of those Bruce Lee, Kung Fu, moves when the opponent had swept the feet from under me. The fluorescent light above our heads buzzed and clicked as if the lumisient plastic frames was clock full of cicadas  marking Summer time.  I took a deep breath, chewed my lips and my feet shuffled backwards and forwards as I tried to think and explain. ‘I don’t see big rabbits. I see a little girl.’

          ‘What’s the difference?’ His eyes were soft and his wrinkles crinkled into a smile.

          ‘Well,’ I smirked, ‘one’s a rabbit and one’s a girl.’

          ‘How do you know that?’

          I shook my head. ‘I know the difference between a girl and a rabbit.’

          ‘So if you were walking down the road and met a giant rabbit, you’d find that strange?’

          ‘Yeh,’ I laughed.

          ‘But if you meet a little girl that no one else could see? What’s the difference?’

          ‘Dunno.’ I shrugged my shoulders, sick of being caught out and his stupid games.

          ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘why do you think people get so exasperated with you seeing a little girl?’

          ‘Dunno.’

          We sat for a few moments, but it seemed to stretch out and go on and on.  I found myself saying, ‘you mean the police?’

          His fingers played with the wisps and shadows of hair underneath his chin and throat, but he said nothing more, waiting for me to speak.

          ‘They probably think I’m doing things to the wee school kids.’

          ‘What kind of things?’

          My face became flushed and I studied my thumbs in my lap.  I felt as if I’d a handful of pebbles from Rothesay beach rolling about my mouth before I was able to spit it out. ‘Sex things.’

          ‘And did you?’

          ‘Naw. Don’t be daft.’

My voice climbed up a few octaves in anger and I stared across at him, suddenly bold, challenging him.  His head bowed slightly, whether this was in acknowledgement of my outburst I wasn’t sure, but the gaze of his dark eyes remained  level and his jaws clenched in a little smile that disarmed me.

‘So you’ve never hurt, or had sex, with an underage girl or boy?’ His words were very precise as if he’d been reading it off from some legal document pinned to my forehead.

‘I would never dae anything like that. No. Never.’ I looked away from him and he seemed to catch something in my voice. When I looked back up at him I knew that he knew and I bumbled on. ‘I sometimes just have these mad dreams.’

He gripped the side of his chair, the cushion squeaking and farting as he pushed his bum back in his seat, so he was sitting up straighter. ‘Tell me about them.’