The President’s Child

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‘Perhaps that’s what Dr Gregory pointed out,’ said Homer, patiently.

‘She’d have probably stopped anyway,’ said Isabel. ‘You don’t meet that many adults who bang their heads – or bite people’s ankles, for that matter.’

‘You do in mental homes,’ observed Homer. It was the last protest Isabel made. She rang Dr Gregory. The only appointment he had available was at three the following afternoon. Isabel accepted.

She had forgotten, of course, that she would have to fetch Jason out of school before time. In so doing, she encountered Mrs Pelotti.

‘Jason? Leaving school early to see a psychiatrist? You astound me. Why are you doing it? Did the recommendation come from the school? No? Then what are you doing to the child? Jason is a great trial to all of us, but he isn’t disturbed. There is nothing wrong with Jason that shouldn’t be wrong with all of us. Are you a cabbage? No! Is your husband a cabbage? No! Then why expect your unfortunate child to be a cabbage?’

Mrs Pelotti had a low opinion of parents, who seemed to her, from her long experience of them, to have their children’s worst interests at heart. The middle classes over protected; the working classes were themselves a source of actual danger to their progeny. She took children in from the age of three – all of them, selection being by catchment area alone. She took in the backward and the brilliant, the sickly and the healthy, the mad and the sane, the poor and the rich, bullies and victims – and wherever her eye fell there was health, sanity and energy. The red-brick building, with its high echoing walls, rang to the sound of child music and was brilliant with child art, and where she trod flowers, both artificial and natural, bloomed. If her eye could not fall upon, her foot could not seek out, every corner of the school; if bullying and misery and meanness of every kind swept in with the litter off the street, blown in by winds of urban discontent, it was not her fault, nor her predecessors', nor those who would come after her, when finally she lay down exhausted and died.

Of Mrs Pelotti’s pupils one out of every five came from homes where there was a mother at home and a working father. The rest had empty houses to return to; or were brought up by mother or father alone; or by grandparents or elder brothers or sisters; or by foster parents. All had roofs over their heads, and shoes, usually sneakers, on their feet; but seldom the roof they wanted, nor shoes that fitted.

Isabel and Homer sent Jason to Mrs Pelotti’s school because they thought they should, and because he was happy there. Friends had children who went to schools where fees were paid and blazers worn and feet clipclopped in polished lace-up shoes, and these parents blamed Isabel and Homer for sacrificing Jason on the altar of socialist, or whatever, principle. Isabel and Homer said they didn’t want Jason growing up fearful in a world in which he didn’t participate. And how could society ever be changed for the better, they asked themselves and each other, if the middle classes reserved privilege for their children? Mrs Pelotti, they reasoned, needed their help.

Mrs Pelotti this morning, seemed in no need of help.

‘You see,’ said Isabel, ‘he’s taken to biting!’

‘So?’ said Mrs Pelotti. ‘So would I if I were him. You talk to him too much. You ask his advice. You forget he’s too young to give it. You treat him as if he were grown-up. He’s only six. Of course he bites. He could never talk his way round you lot. What else is he to do?’

‘Anything else we do wrong?’ asked Isabel.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Pelotti, ‘you’re always late. Bring him in on time and collect him on time. You and your husband spend so much time discussing whose turn it is that the child gets forgotten. But take him to a shrink if it entertains you, and you’ve got the money. I don’t suppose it will do much harm. If you have things to throw away there’s a jumble sale next week. I have become more a fund raiser of late than an educationalist. I have no choice.’

‘Mrs Pelotti,’ said Isabel, surprised. ‘I’m never late.’

‘One of you is,’ she said. ‘Perhaps it’s your husband. You’re both so busy you never notice anything.’

That over, Isabel went to work. Mrs Pelotti had been unfair. Jason was almost always delivered and collected on time, but Mrs Pelotti’s way was to brisk up both parents and children by brutal overstatement, and send them away with some kind of achievable, practical mission. If you were five you learnt to tie your shoelaces; if you were thirty-five you aspired to get up on time.