Filthy Water Cannot be Washed

A sleepy staff member, wearing the most welcoming smile she could manage, let Karl and his social worker into the hall. The adults exchanged whispered greetings, and Karl was led into a vast and striplit kitchen where he was given milk and biscuits. Files were handed over in the next room. The social worker’s face appeared in the kitchen doorway, wishing Karl a cheerful but noiseless goodnight. The house mother quickly reappeared with stiff pyjamas which smelled of boiling water, and together she and Karl crept upstairs.

The child was installed in his own bed, in a bedroom where another boy was already sleeping. There had been no time to make the bed without disturbing the room’s occupant, so there was just a sleeping bag on the mattress, and no case on the pillow. Karl’s room-mate was the first to wake in the morning, and screamed in terror until someone came to explain that the intruder was Kyle, and Kyle had been very tired last night, and needed to find somewhere to sleep in a hurry.


Everyone was very kind to Karl. They were careful always to treat him as an individual, instead of a case study. No-one look at his file for weeks, because they wanted to concentrate on the real person and his immediate needs. They gave him good things to eat, nice clothes, toys and other children to play with. They taught him how to write his name.


Kyle lived in a house with an elderly couple. The two men owned a publishing business, and spent much of their time correcting proofs. Kyle was interested in the business, and they paid him to take charge of delivery and packing. He carefully copied addresses on to labels, not knowing what he was writing. In the evenings, the publishers took turns to read to Kyle, and soon the letters on the labels started to take on meaning.


Karl was happy in front of the cameras. The children’s home was being used in a toy commercial, and Karl was playing the child who put the final piece into the plastic construction.


“Great work, Kyle!”, said the director, delighted with the boy’s triumphant smile and air-punch. The marketing campaign was very successful, and Karl was a celebrity at school. In his room at the home, he had a life-size cutout of himself punching the air. He kept it there until he was twice its size.


The home was allowed to keep all the filming, and the latest house parents were given some money to put away for Karl. It was saved in his new name, and stayed in safe keeping until Karl left to join the army, and for many years afterwards, because Karl did not come to get it.


For Christmas, the older men bought Kyle a copy of Peter Pan. He was able to read it himself now, with its fly-leaf dedication:   It is the stars; the stars above us govern our condition.


Every six weeks, the social worker returned to take Karl to see The Man. The Man lived in a prison now, and Karl was pleased about that. Karl found it easy to say nothing. He ate the social worker’s sweets, stared at the Man, and kicked the table leg until a buzzer sounded. Sometimes the Man and the social worker made conversation, but Karl took no notice of either of them. After a few visits, the social worker said he did not have to visit his father any longer. Karl was pleased about that, too.


The army did not know, or care, that Kyle could not read or write anything apart from his name. If the recruiting sergeant noticed that the names on the application form and birth certificate did not match, he did not mention it. The army knew that Kyle could run very fast, and needed him for its bobsleigh team. One day, in many years’ time, Kyle would outrun a tsunami, and save a woman’s life. The woman looked on speechlessly as Kyle dug graves for her children, and for the other people he had not been able to save. When he left to go back to England, she clutched his arm and cried for the first time since the wave had claimed the lives of her friends and family.






Only once, Karl entered the swimming pool with the other children. Stimulated almost to the point of frenzy by the deafening noise and activity, he could barely wait to get into the water with his friends. But once there, it did not feel as he had expected. There seemed to be nothing to enjoy here; the splashing and clamour quickly made him anxious, and anxiety was soon replaced by terror. By the time the lifeguard noticed his screaming, and lifted him from the water, the elated yells of the other bathers had stopped. They watched in silence as Kyle was carried, writhing and sobbing, to the changing room. Kyle could not tell the pool attendant or the carers at the home why he was so frightened, because he could not quite remember himself. He recalled that the Man had once tried to drown him in the bath, but that memory only returned to him at the time of the tsunami. In the intervening years, he just accepted that he hated the water.






Kyle needed an operation to remove some scar tissue. He had not been able to forget that the Man had been responsible for these scars. Anybody Kyle got close to eventually asked him about the injuries.

The operation would make the marks less visible, and his friends were around his bedside as he came round from the anaesthetic. Kyle was very happy indeed. He looked at the bandages and screamed with laughter. He tried to get out of bed to dance around the ward, and his friends began to be frightened. They had to pin him down to stop him hurting himself and reopening his fresh wounds. Kyle was very strong, and they weren’t managing very well. Kyle’s giggles and shrieks were those of a child, tickled for too long.

Other people in the room started to become concerned, and nurses joined the group around the bed. A doctor arrived, and somehow persuaded Kyle gave up his attempts to arise. His friends stood guard for an hour before Kyle stopped crying with laughter. He awoke later as if nothing had happened.


The army taught Karl to live a healthy life. Immediately after basic, he became part of a training programme for elite athletes. Within a year, the recruiting sergeant took delivery of posters showing pictures of him hurling something – it could have been a javelin, or a grenade. He had the upright arm the TV director had been so pleased with, and the same triumphant look, but this time without the beaming smile. For their campaign, the army wanted focus, resolve, athleticism and glowing good health.


Often, prospective parents came to visit, and the children became vibrant with excitement. Like all the others competing for attention, Karl was noisy, energetic , talkative and physical. He made sure he suggested a game of football with the potential father, and used his widest grin and most polite voice for the woman. All the visitors smiled back, and hugged him tightly when they left, but Karl was never chosen. After a few couples had come and gone, Karl found that he was rarely at the home when adopters called round . He usually joined the group of children who were taken out for a cinema trip, or he watched through the glass as the others playing at the pool.


Kyle was writing a syndicated column, giving amiable advice on healthy living. He looked after the mews house of a friend who was abroad for most of the year, and hosted parties around the basement swimming pool, although he still wouldn’t go in the water himself. Whenever anyone visited for the first time, Kyle entertained them in his cosy, book-lined living room . When his guest’s attention was distracted, Kyle would slip stealthily through a hidden door in a bookcase, so when the visitor turned around, the room was empty.



Speaking to someone at the institute which ran the children’s home, Kyle learned that his mother had never given her permission for him to be adopted. But neither had she ever visited her son . Kyle had no memory of his mother, and seldom thought of her. But he was interested by the apparent contradiction- if she didn’t want me, why didn’t she let someone else have me? The only way to find out, said the institute, would be to ask her. They had her address.


Kyle was shocked. They’d had the information all along, but the charity had not been allowed to pass it on to him unless he specifically asked for it. His mother had kept them updated with her changes of address for many years, in the hope that he would try to find her.


They offered him counselling to prepare him for the meeting. He went along, and a pleasant therapist asked him what he thought his mother would be like.  The question puzzled Kyle.   Until recently, he had given no thought to what sort of person had given him up.


From the viewing gallery, Karl saw that it was time for the other children from the home to get changed. The soaked boys and girls disappeared into their separate changing rooms, and were followed at a respectful distance by the carers. The youngsters always got dressed on their own. The staff were highly trained, and very careful to afford them privacy. At the age of fifteen, one of the girls collapsed suddenly and was taken to hospital. There, doctors discovered that she had been born without a vagina, and had reached puberty without anybody being in a position to notice that the menstrual blood had no way of escaping her body.






Kyle’s mother was overjoyed to see him. She had prayed and prayed for this for so many years and always knew that God would send her son back to her. Several years after he had been handed over to the local authority, she had remarried and had three more children. By the time she was in a position to have Karl back, he had already joined the army. Her new family had always known that they had a brother called Karl. Everyone welcomed him warmly, and he politely let them call him Karl, even though the name had nothing to do with the man he now was. They all remembered the toy advert, but no-one, even his mother, had realised that Karl was the boy on the screen.


The Man had not been Karl’s father, it turned out. His wife had tried to convince him he was, but the Man guessed differently, and had treated Karl accordingly. The moment when his mother said that the Man was not his father was the happiest moment of Kyle’s life. If he had not sought her out, he would never have known. It took him several days to start crying with relief.


Kyle’s mother was not a woman who had led a healthy life. She was overweight and diabetic, taking very little exercise and eating badly. His new brothers and sister were delighted when Kyle offered to help her take control of her lifestyle, and encouraged their mother to co-operate. She had no commitment to the new regime, but looked forward to every moment spent with her talented, professional son. Her hopes had been fulfilled from the first moment she set eyes on her grown-up boy. Within a month of the first meeting, she was dead.


Had he known, when he arrived at the children’s home, that he was not going to see his mother again for thirty years, and then only for a few short weeks, Karl might have started grieving that night.   In the weeks that followed, he could have asked when she was coming back for him, but if he was honest with himself, he could not remember whether he had actually voiced the question or not.


Karl comforted his sister at the funeral, and put his arms around his brothers to try to share a grief he couldn’t feel. The card on his flowers read God gave us memories so that we might have roses in December. His new family wept with the beauty and appropriateness of the message.


Kyle has learned to swim now, and Kyle’s friends, who kept him safe after his operation, each have a copy of Peter Pan, inscribed with the message second star  to the right and straight on til morning, and signed with a single letter K.