Shtum (14 page)

Cheque book

My solicitor, Georgia Stone, has applied to the Tribunal Service for a date and, through a cancellation, has secured July 28 – two months from now. I mention this casually to Dad and reiterate my promise of halting the tribunal. ‘Really,’ he says.

‘Are you calling me a liar, Dad?’

‘That is what you are, even if you don’t know it.’

I feel caught in a trap. ‘Dad, that’s just—’

‘True? It doesn’t matter, Ben. You promised something you could not possibly keep to. We both knew that at the time. What should a dead man do?’

‘I wanted you to have the treatment, Dad.’

‘But you want what you want for your son as well. Ben, we are both fathers and fathers have always, since the dawn of time, been squashed between their own fathers’ dreams for them and their dreams for their own children. It is folly to believe that you can carry both in outstretched arms like the scale of justice. Maybe I forgot that myself, but you haven’t. That is as it should be, so we’ll say no more about it.’

I feel like hugging him, but grip his forearm instead.

The twenty-eighth is already after Jonah leaves Roysten Glen and only three days before the Tribunal Service begins its month-long summer recess. I begin tapping out Valetta’s list of ‘crucial’ experts like a stenographer. She is right, of course, the experts are booked up months in advance and I start to despair. I try pleading by email, then phone again, then email again, then phone Valetta.

‘They’re all booked up, it’s hopeless.’

‘Leave it to me.’

The following day the phone calls start to arrive, cancellations have suddenly multiplied like a flu epidemic and Jonah’s assessments and visits can miraculously be fitted in – just.

I phone Valetta to thank her.

‘Thank me when we win,’ she says.

A subsequent invoice reveals that the plea and thank-you phone calls cost me fifty pounds each.

I have opened a separate bank account for the tribunal costs and the money Johnny and I collected is safely deposited; the solicitor’s monthly £500 standing order set up. I promise myself to fill in the cheque book stubs and keep an up-to-date record of the financial situation. I also resolve to keep chasing the remaining outstanding debts owed to Jewell’s Catering Hire.

I even buy a diary.

Dad is weakening, the chemo has taken over as his sole chance of extended survival and his hair is littering the house, being twiddled by Jonah and ignored by my father.

He refuses to sit in on the experts’ visits to Jonah; refuses to read their reports when they arrive. He may be dissolving, but when I offer him Anne Birch’s educational psychology report on Jonah, he bats it away angrily.

‘No one,’ he tells me, ‘can see anything in my grandson that I cannot see.’ He goes back to his crossword.

As the weeks wear on, the reports pile up, as does my workload, the cost and my stress level. I am forcing myself to be forensic in the study of the reports and forthright when making notes when I disagree, or feel that the wording could be stronger.

There is iteration, after iteration, after iteration. Filing them is a nightmare. Every piece of correspondence is sorted by date and sender. Each paid invoice bears the payment date, and a running total, each cheque stub covered in information.

After Jonah has gone to bed, we sit together in the lounge while I do this. Most evenings, Maurice joins us, ferrying tea and coffee to us and unpacking containers of pre-prepared deli food that, for Dad, he cuts and mashes so he has a chance of swallowing it. Radio 4 is the soundtrack to this operation. The television on only when Jonah gets home from school.

I, of course, have to read the reports on my son and there are no punches pulled, adjectives are plucked from the more emotive pool of synonyms. These three expert women are Jonah’s generals; Valetta his field marshal. They are the top brass of our tribunal army and their services do not come cheap.

I find myself writing cheques in my sleep: £850, £975, £650, £1,050, £975, £1,150, and stare at my laptop when I’m awake, watching the balance in the account dwindle.

This is a full-time job. If I hadn’t killed the business and driven Valentine back to Barbados, I could never have run it in parallel with this tribunal preparation. It’s the hardest job I’ve ever had, by far, but the one I’m doing the best at – because it has meaning and purpose. The future of Jonah Jewell, the future of Ben Jewell – currently employed as professional son-lover and father-carer.

Then the local authority drops its atom bomb.

Bull

They’ve added a third school into the mix – a residential school, The Sunrise Academy. It’s autism accredited and – significantly for the LA and its case – vastly cheaper than Highgrove Manor. Valetta says this is a serious challenge.

I’m apoplectic. ‘So, let me get this straight, if they can convince on Maureen Mitchell, Jonah will go there, but if not he ends up in this, this, what? Counterfeit good? Emma visited the place a year ago and said it gave her the creeps. I’ve looked at its website, it’s surrounded by dual carriageways. I can’t see Jonah there.’

‘You’ll need to visit it, Ben,’ Valetta says, ‘and so will our edpysch, Anne. Of course, this makes things harder, but not insurmountable.’

Valetta is calm. I am not. What if I do like it when I get there? What if I think it will be difficult to argue against it?

‘With two weeks to go?’

‘It’s a strategy.’

‘To save money.’

‘Of course, but the LA is also tacitly admitting that they feel they will lose with Maureen Mitchell, so now we concentrate on The Sunrise Academy. When you see it, you may even change your mind.’

‘Bollocks, Valetta.’

‘They will try to deal, Ben. It may be in all our interests.’

In whose? I think, as I imagine the fifty green acres of Highgrove turning into the over-extended semi of Sunrise.

How proud Emma and I were on Jonah’s first day at nursery. I remember taking photos of him in his uniform – navy blue sweatpants and bright orange polo shirt, matching orange Converse high-tops, a mop of light-brown hair and a nappy. We both took him that first morning, watched him stroll in nonchalantly while the other children cried and clung to their parents. Johnny and Amanda lived close by at the time and we were heartened because Tom would be with him, on that first day and – we hoped – throughout his school years.

I recall watching through the window as Tom took Jonah’s hand, so protective, seeming so much older. I smile to myself at the memory. Tom’s speech had an amazing fluency, while Jonah was wordless, but Tom believed that he could translate Jonah’s guttural lexicon – which only he understood – and would concentrate, with his ear close to Jonah’s mouth, before regaling us with extraordinarily detailed accounts from our poet, astronaut, secret-agent son.

It turned out to be the only year they spent together. Jonah repeated nursery before transferring to Roysten Glen, while Tom graduated to reception class and upwards. Jonah had lost his translator and protector and time stood still for us.

And now here I am, sitting next to Tom’s father in his BMW, struggling around the North Circular Road to see another school that believe they can help Jonah more than anywhere else and for less money. It seems as if Jonah’s been put out for tender like the East Coast mainline.

The lights finally change and we crawl across Kew Bridge.

‘South London, passports at the ready,’ Johnny announces.

‘Thanks for doing this, Johnny, I really couldn’t face it by myself.’

‘While we’re down here, any punters we can call on who owe you money?’

‘No, I think we’ll leave the debt collecting for today. God, I hate South London. It’s all causeways and British Rail and concrete.’

‘Never been to Greenwich, or Dulwich Village?’

‘Don’t contradict me, I’m venting.’

‘Fair enough.’

We sit in silence while the SatNav commentates. Eighteen miles to go, forty-eight minutes.

‘Where are we heading to first? The school or the accommodation?’

The school and accommodation are six miles apart – which is a boost to my fault-finding agenda, given Jonah’s difficulty with transitions in his daily routine. Hence the beauty of Highgrove Manor – it’s a rural campus where his movements will be minimal.

‘The school first. And look, even if you like something, don’t say so, please,’ I say.

‘Okay, whatever you want.’

Johnny makes a final left turn and pulls into a car park adjacent to the metal gate of The Sunrise Academy. Surprisingly, I hate it on sight. It’s a single-storey mashup of cubes and covered walkways. We’re buzzed in through the gate and again into the school with little question and, once inside, no one seems overly eager to meet us. Finally a slender blonde in a sports tracksuit and trainers arrives.

‘Can I help you?’

‘Ben Jewell, we booked a tour of the school?’

‘Oh. Tribunal. I’m Julia Makarova, chief psychologist. Follow me, I’ll show you around.’

Johnny and I troop off behind her. I’m a veteran of this by now and know our educational psychologist will do the proper grilling, so I’m half bored, feeling mildly belligerent, and I know what to spot.

A loud bell rings.

‘What’s that for?’

‘This is the change of lesson bell.’

The walkway we were strolling down alone just moments before is now heaving with students – autistic students – desperately trying to avoid each other and find their way to the next class. Some have carers with them, others not. It’s like central Rome on a Friday afternoon. Johnny is taking it all in like a meerkat. I have to shout above the noise.

‘Why don’t the kids stay in the same class all day?’

‘This is secondary school curriculum, this is what we model.’

‘And they have different teachers for each subject?’

‘Yes, of course.’

I feel my confidence growing every minute as each checkbox of negatives is ticked. I look at Johnny who, with his knowledge of Jonah, also appears to share in my scepticism. I ask leading questions, like a paperback detective, eliciting the answers I want to back up my case.

‘How do they deal with the transitions?’

‘They stay in their classroom and wait for children to join them.’

I don’t bother clarifying my question.

‘You want to see a classroom?’

‘Yes, please.’ We walk through a door which no children are queuing outside. Tables.

‘Tables?’

‘Yes, as you can see.’

‘Individual workstations?’

‘No, as you can see.’

‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ I have seen enough. Even objectively, this place is unsuitable. It assumes a level of awareness and understanding that Jonah just does not have.

‘Come to my office, I have ten minutes.’

‘I only need one.’

The din evaporates as she closes the door behind Johnny and me.

‘How much does it cost?’

She sits at her desk, mousing and tapping, then without looking up states: ‘Eighty-six thousand four hundred pounds per academic year.’

‘Fucking hell.’

‘Johnny!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Thanks, I think we have everything. Could you show us the way out.’

Back in the car he’s still aghast.

‘Eighty-six grand? You’re expecting the council to pay eighty-six grand a year to send Jonah to school? No fucking way.’

‘No, I’m asking the council to lay out nearly two hundred grand a year to send Jonah to school.’

‘That’s more than double.’

‘I know – and that’s the problem.’

‘I never realised …’

‘No, no one ever does,’ I tell him. But how much is Jonah worth? Thirty thousand, eighty-six thousand, two hundred thousand. These are just numbers, but to those who will decide his fate, so is Jonah.

I’m hoping that the accommodation will be equally unsuitable, but the massively extended Victorian house halfway down a leafy suburban road appears quiet and comfortable. But it has taken us twenty-five minutes during the middle of the day to get from the school to here along some major roads, so during rush hour? Forty? Fifty? An hour? I make a note in the back of my diary.

A lady greets us with a smile, older, maybe fifty-five, and she can’t wait to extol the virtues of her house, but the stairs are narrow and steep, with half-landings and turns everywhere – a Jonah nightmare – and when she reveals that they only take weekly boarders, I’ve seen enough.

It takes us ninety minutes of hell to get home.

After kissing Jonah goodnight, I head for the lounge. Dad is asleep in his chair. Maurice is on the sofa, watching Dad sleep in the chair. The radio is down low, but ‘The Archers’ is still faintly audible. I take a beer from the fridge, I feel dirty, my throat dusty and my head now horribly conflicted.

After what I saw and heard today, given the choice, I know I’d prefer Jonah to join Maureen Mitchell rather than Sunrise, but I don’t know if I’ll be given the choice. All the groundwork is now laid. Some of the reports have still to come in and will need to be read, reread and redrafted before the tribunal – only two weeks away. Somehow we have got this far. Soon, it will be time to climb aboard the troop carriers and head for the beaches.