On the Education of Gifted Children

My so-called biographer, Nina Kelly, writes that as a child I possessed a ‘vast, wall eyed face, bulging from the pram like a malevolent planet.' Photos from the time of my infancy tend to vindicate her unnecessarily cruel assessment. According to my mother, my appearance was only slightly less alarming than the hoarse bellow with which I remonstrated against the encroachment of unfamiliar parties. While I'm sufficiently robust to enjoy a joke at my own expense, I feel a retrospective sorrow on my parents' behalf. All they wanted was for the world to love their son. How terrible it must have been for them to see him rejected on account of the very attributes that made him special! While there is no professional support network available to the parents of unprepossessing children, the tendency to automatically condemn them helps no-one. We should be considerate toward people whose offspring squawk, kick and sulk until we've established the cause of the child's discontent. Then we might apply compassion or condemnation, whichever is appropriate. Even though I was in my infancy when my powers became apparent, I can still vividly recall the ostracism to which I was subjected as I struggled with the initial confusion familiar to any child of enhanced intuition. These problems were merely compounded by the matter of my personal appearance.

The ability to look into men's hearts is often dispiriting. What some people blithely refer to as a ‘gift' is, actually, a terrible thing to bear. The depiction of young detectives in popular fiction tends to be misleading. They're popular and constantly surrounded by admirers. Did either Hardy boy resort to going to the prom with Aunt Gertrude? Of course not! This is a popular misconception. In reality, the young person who exposes wrong doing is shunned, ridiculed and dangled from the flagpole with the word “spy” daubed on his torso. And this human aversion to the truth-teller doesn't take into account the fear inspired by the supernatural elements of clairvoyance. The average child is intolerant and cruel. He detests anyone who's different. If another, more sensitive, child intuits that his father beats his mother or stays out late with other women, he doesn't acknowledge the truth in the revelation or even accept it as a possibility. Instead he points his finger and shouts “freak!” encouraging his friends to surround the truth-teller and pummel him.

I can think of few more damaging environments for a sensitive child than a 1970's Scottish primary school. Teachers, circumscribed by their own limitations, have always championed nonentity. Whatever the weapons at their disposal, tawse, indifference or withering rebuke, they have proved themselves the age-old enemies of promise. This has always been the case. Had Mrs Black, headmistress of Drumfeld Primary at the time of my attendance, even attempted to comprehend the problems unique to clairvoyant children, my school career might have been entirely different. With reference to the guidelines supplied by the Gibson Institute (and binned in my presence), my fellow pupils might have been coached in their dealings with the special individual in their midst. On reaching adulthood, they might have remembered their assocation with Hamilton Coe with pride and affection. Instead, I suspect, the mention of my name might rouse the inconsolable hounds of conscience.

As is often the case in such circumstances, my rejection was preceded by a brief period of popularity. An article about my endorsement by the Gibson Institute which appeared the Drumfeld Gazette ("Hats Off to Hamilton, Drumfeld's Very own Boy of Mystery!") initially encouraged my classmates to consider me someone to be admired rather than detested. For the first months of my school career the role of class scapegoat was occupied by Heather Spink*. In the interests of candour, I have to confess to responsibility for identifying Heather as an undesirable. She immediately attracted my notice as she skipped around the playground, her blonde fringe ringed by a garland of daisies. To the untrained eye, she gave impression of harmlessness. Softly spoken and shy, her imposture might have been effective anywhere else. She had not, however, reckoned on the presence of a classmate with enhanced intuition. A vivid, red birth-mark on the back of her left hand, throbbing with malign energy, alerted me to the fact that simpering Heather was not as she appeared. Later persistent impressions of semi-transluscent fat flies hovering around her, gorged on blood caused me further concern. The final, and as far as I was concerned, conclusive piece of evidence against Heather came in the vision of a tiny old woman who crawled behind her, dragging herself by her knuckles.

Naturally, I was eager to warn our classmates of these presentiments. One might argue that I acted rashly, but circumspection only comes with age. For Heather, the consequences of exposure were immediate: found guilty of witch-craft in a playground trial presided over by Judge Hamilton Coe, the first and last time I assumed such a role, she was immediately ostracised. This was never my intention. I'm not, by nature a cruel person: regardless of the shadow that clouded her personality, the pain Heather endured on account of her isolation gave me no satisfaction. As far as I was concerned, it was sufficient for our classmates to be forewarned of the potential repercussions of her friendship.

By the time Heather's parents removed her from the school some of the other children had become dependent upon the presence of a whipping boy. After a week of simmering resentment, they turned on me. The trial of Hamilton Coe was brief and brutal, the verdict 'Guilty' and the sentence that I be tied to a tree and pelted with mud, the first of several mortifications that eventually led to my own removal from Drumfeld Primary.

* * *

In the 1930's, Gideon Kester, arriving in Britain from Berlin where he had established a reputation as an iconoclastic but brilliant lecturer, established the world's first Kester school in Kent. A residential facility, the school, in keeping with Kester's philosophy, was devoted to nurturing the diverse talents of gifted pupils which had been stifled in more traditional estblishments. Over the next twenty years, five more Kester schools opened across the country. In 1979, after a stringent interview and background checks, I was accepted as a day pupil in Meredith House, the only Kester endorsed institution in Scotland. This offer was subsequently withdrawn when the school's headmaster, George Findlay, was placed on a sabbatical amidst rumours of alcoholism and nervous collapse.

Naturally, this was devastating. My imminent enrolment had already been featured in the Drumfeld Gazette accompanied by a photograph of me in my distinctive Kester uniform of neckerchief and liederhosen. My subsequent rejection was noted by a malevolent sub-editor who ran a story headed "Hamilton Coe - Not Even Remotely Gifted", this apparently being a quotation from the school's interim headmaster. Drumfeld Primary School's headmistress, Irene Black, a woman who had singularly failed in her duty to protect me from the vengeful incomprehension of my classmates, was also quoted saying, "I find it inconceivable that Hamilton would have been considered in the first place." For the next five years, the Coes' lawyers pursued an apology from the Kester Foundation and a retraction from Ms Black. Neither was forthcoming. My education, in the meantime, was delegated to a succession of tutors, culuminating in the monstrous Ronald Beith.

At the time of Beith's employment, my own stock was low. Ridiculed in The People Who Saw Tomorrow television series and widely ostracised in the wake of the Karen Gardner affair, my judgement was considered flawed. My parents, beleaguered by public disapproval were determined to curb my investigative instincts while my aunt, normally my staunchest supporter, was absent, suffering the effects of nervous exhaustion. Beith's interview was further complicated by the presence of a social worker who turned out to be a relative. “Stop staring at Ronald like that,” she snapped as I struggled to intuit something more specific than the overwhelming sensation of dampness prompted by his presence. As Beith stammered and compulsively swallowed his way through the interview, I tried to interject with questions of my own: “Who is Nicola?” I demanded. “Why is her tongue so dry?” Before I could reach a satisfactory conclusion, though, Beith's relative intervened. I was ordered from the room – my own family sitting room! – and he was employed in my absence. Thus began a relationship that, in its way, was as intimate as any marriage. Until his demise in a fume filled garage five years later, Ronald Beith was to establish himself as my Moriarty. Without my constant attention, Beith, whose malign genius ensured brief careers in St Andrews, Durham and Swansea, would have attained a position from which he might have wrought chaos on a grand scale. Legal constraints and the discretion essential to any effective investigator prevent me from being more specific. When eventually submitted to the public domain, however, my complete Beith files will present a portrait of a monster.

* Throughout my teens, I closely monitored the behaviour of Heather and her younger brother Declan. My early intuitions were entirely vindicated as their transgressive behaviour led to both being expelled from a succession of schools. Declan, with whom Spencer, always attracted to bad character, attempted to forge a friendship, attained notoriety as Drumfeld's first teenage Hitlerite, shaving his head and strutting around town in bovver boots. I suffered more than one pummelling at his hands, indignities reversed when my investigation was instrumental in his apprehension for substance abuse, assault and twenty seven separate counts of vandalism. Relocated to a residential school and surrounded by more accomplished thugs than himself, the menace was menaced and eventually broken, returning to Drumfeld a stammering advocate of sandals and non-confrontation.

Heather, however, persisted in transgressive behaviour. When she was eighteen, she moved to Glasgow, ostensibly to study but, as it turned out, to pursue a drug habit and immerse herself in the city's netherworld. Ten years ago, I adopted the persona of 'Donald the Druid' in order to investigate her activities. After inadvertently rendering myself insensible with a drug-spiked cake, I came within seconds of being subjected to a facial tattoo, emerging from my trance as the needle whirred hideously over my left cheek.

Three years ago, Heather returned to Drumfeld suffering the effects of septicaemia caused by a profusion of bacteria on her numerous facial piercings. Rendered hideous by her seeping wounds, she is largely housebound.

** It's essential that the effective investigatory eschew any notion that he represents the spirit of revenge. His primary interest must always be in truth. Once the facts have been established, his role is over.

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