"I think enough is enough young man."
Harold's voice was louder and angrier than he wanted it to be. Dave stood in the corner, beating the wall with a small wooden car. He was not crying. At least he was not crying with tears. His distress was apparent to even the most hardened observer. Harold had shared it many times before.
"You can have another go this afternoon," Harold uttered with his enviable patience, "you cannot swing all day. Go and have a shower."
Dave did not move from his spot, the banging seemed to step up a notch. Faster and louder. Harold knew this was the usual pattern and chose to ignore it. He removed the upturned plate and cup from the table and placed them in the sink with his own. They were rinsed and placed without words in the dishwasher ready to be run through later in the day when the machine was full.
"The shower!" he pointed with force towards the bathroom door. Dave looked but did not move. The banging slowed and then stopped.
"The shower!" Harold's voice though firm had regained its sense of composure and with it a forcefulness that Dave recognised. He shuffled towards the door.
"Don't shuffle, Dave. You are not a helpless idiot. Don't make yourself into something you are not, you have enough to endure without accepting the burden of idiocy. You are not an idiot!"
He smiled at him and pointed at the bathroom.
Dave caught his eyes and pursed his cheeks, to show that he agreed. In his way he was apologising, though he knew this was not necessary. Harold didn't need him to apologise about anything. As long as he had been with him he knew that his mate Harold would care for him. Sometimes he hated him, he made him do things he didn't want to do.
Without the words to tell him it was not always easy to communicate, but Harold usually got the point eventually.
This morning Dave had got up, gone to the toilet by himself. This was not always possible, but this morning he had managed to urinate for quite a long time and not splash any drops anywhere. Harold wouldn't say anything, but he knew it would not go unnoticed.
Pleased with himself he had carefully washed his hands, twisting and turning them ten times to make sure the soap got all through the creases and the cracks and then got rinsed off again. This is what Harold had taught him to do each time he toileted himself. It had been straight forward this morning. He smiled, proud of himself and made his way to the garden swing where he often sat first thing to celebrate a successful beginning.
His motor skills were not so good that he could swing high without assistance, but good enough to give him a sense of control and induce an ease that permeated his whole body making him feel as though the world was his oyster today.
Then Harold had broken the reverie.
"Shower!" he had shouted as he put his head out of the door. And hooked his thumb to indicate the bathroom, and that time for swinging was over.
Dave did not obey immediately. Though with the suggestion having been made he began to realise he felt sticky and prickly. The spell had been broken, and he now just felt as though there was a job to be done.
He flopped off the swing and picked up the wooden car that was sitting in the middle of the lawn, and began his solitary journey to the bathroom. He felt sad.
He hit the side of the wall with the toy. The noise was enough to catch Harold's attention.
Harold flicked his thumb again to indicate that this was not a negotiation it was a job that had to be done.
Dave struck the wall again, and again. Harold didn't react. This was par for the morning course and reacting only made it worse. The steady thud of the car struck again and again. Thud and thud!
Harold continued his cleaning.. Thud! Thud!
There was a slight frown. Thud!
Harold put down the tea towel. Turned and stared at Dave.
"Enough mate! Off you you go"
There was one last bang.
"I think enough is enough young man."
This was almost a morning ritual, though sufficiently different each day to not permit the title "routine". It was routine, it was always slightly different but always evocative of the same deep principles.
Harold would declare that there was a job to be done. Dave had to get ready.
Dave would assert that he would do it, but in his own time. Harold would accept that proposition but keep a watchful eye to make sure the job actually got done.
Dave would push to the point where he felt he was at the outer limit of tolerance, Harold would be as tolerant as he could and then nudge his charge in the right direction.
It seldom got to the point where Dave would not do as he was asked, or where Harold would propel Dave against his will.
Harold gave Dave the time and the space that meant the need to be somewhere at some particular time was largely avoided and so their days together rolled on in a harmony that deepened the more they lived together.
This was not articulated in fine terms. Dave's inability to speak in any meaningful way made that impossible. That he understood seemed certain, how much he understood varied from day to day.
Debriefing with his sister Penny in the early days, a process that had seemed essential if he was to take up this challenge that he believed was his human duty, he had told her that he finally understood how to approach the jumbled chaos that Dave spoke.
"I am sure that when I was talking to him I could understand what he way saying"
"How do you know that in any way for certain?" she had demanded.
"Well I just relaxed in to it, and allowed myself to feel what he was saying"
"Oh yes, Vanar de dra per ram termum tee well a som sum css css css"
"But he repeats the sounds...you know this css, css css"
"But it doesn't mean anything" she exclaimed.
"But as I relaxed rather than thought" Harold persisted with his disbelieving sister, " I was sure he was telling me about a dream he had last night"
Penny looked at him as though he was talking nonsense.
"I just talked with him as though that was he was talking about you know...did you feel frightened, were there other people there? And it seemed to hang together"
He had found this breakthrough exciting and thought that things were on there way up.
"Of course, " Penny interjected, holding her empty wine glass out for him to fill, "he could just have been telling you that he had lasagna for the first time last night"
Harold's balloon popped. She was of course right. He had no way of knowing that her explanation was not just as valid as is, and ina way it seemed more likely that he was talking about food than about the esoteric nature of his dream
