Shtum (6 page)

I read it over and over, zoning in on ‘need’ and ‘tomorrow’ like a whirring Enigma machine. She ‘needs’ to see me tomorrow. Needs: desires, desperate longing, misses me, can’t live without me. Tomorrow: can’t wait another day. I daydream about my own bed, satellite TV, the sole burden of Jonah’s future removed. Stomach acid bites at my tonsils as the inevitable negatives shoulder their way in like party gatecrashers – the What Ifs Posse from the wrong side of the tracks. I shall retreat into oblivion until I no longer feel their blows.

Four fingers of Scotch help me drift off easily. I doze and wake, dream and doze and wake dehydrated and irritable and Jonah is tugging at my hand.

‘Oh, go away, please, Jonah, go back to bed.’

But he won’t go, will not budge.

‘Look, just fuck off and leave me alone. If you want something, get it yourself.’ I jerk my hand away and turn my back to him and doze again. I am vaguely aware of him coming and going, of cupboards opening and closing, of laughing and jumping. Deep down I know I should investigate, but I resent the burden tonight, I’m comfy and he’s not driving me mad and I’ll deal with him later. The hours pass.

‘What is this? I’ll kill him!’

I’m jolted awake and remember with horror what I haven’t done and what he’s probably found. I use the lounge doorframe to prop myself up and try and look awake.

‘Benjamin, what is this?’

The hallway is littered with ground-in Oreo cookies, spat-out lumps of bread and what look like thousands of tiny insects, which – on closer inspection – are sesame seeds. At the bottom of the stairs sits a sodden, shit-stained nappy; I watch Jonah tread in it on his way up to his bedroom.

Dad follows him up as I pretend to know where to start. He stops halfway and I sense his glare.

‘How dare you allow this to happen, lying drunk on the sofa while your son could have done God knows what to himself. Useless boy. Now turn down the television and leave us to sleep. I’ll clean up in the morning.’

I stand with my head against the wall for what seems like an eternity, but my drunkenness, distilled down to dehydration and edginess, forces me up and, as I pick my way to the kitchen for a glass of water, the full force and devastation of Hurricane Jonah is revealed.

Half-eaten apples on the floor like a deserted game of petanque, dismantled bits of garish feathers glued to the lino with the remains of tortured grapes, a wedge of Parmesan with teeth-marked sculpture, a dozen packets of crisps – their innards ripped violently out, now solidifying like concrete in the sink.

The wall cupboard doors are all gaping. He’s been climbing, sweeping tins of fruit, tuna and sardines to the floor like a burglar searching for diamonds. Dare I check the fridge? At first, all looks relatively unscathed – apart from the bag of apples that is now just a bag. There are the telltale teeth marks in an onion – serves him right, that little git – and a banana that looks like it’s been through a mangle, but …

‘Oh, shit.’

The chicken is gone, he’s eaten the chicken. Four raw chicken breasts from the top shelf. Now I panic.

I take the stairs two at a time and burst into his room, but he’s not there.

‘Dad,’ I scream, as I open my father’s door. ‘Dad …’

Dad is on his back on the right of the giant bed, and a filthy-faced Jonah has his head on Dad’s chest. Dad stares me down, his mouth is upturned and his amber eyes burn – get ready.

‘Raw chicken, Dad. The raw chicken in the fridge?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘The chicken, in the fridge …’

From nowhere, a paperback hits me hard across the top of the head. ‘Ow!’

‘It’s in the freezer, klutz. What do you take me for? Go away.’

We meet in a Starbucks in Holborn. She is warm in her cashmere, and I hold her until she pats me on the back.

‘I’ve got twenty minutes.’

‘How was Hong Kong?’

‘Fine.’

‘How are you coping?’

‘Fine.’

But as she takes her coat off, I wonder. The shoulders of her tailored jacket fit less snugly and as she fiddles with her wedding ring it rolls too freely.

‘I miss you,’ I chance.

‘How’s Jonah?’

‘Enjoying Dad’s attention, I think.’

She smiles, faintly. ‘I bet.’

‘Do you want to see him?’

She bites the inside of her upper lip. ‘How can you ask that?’

Her anger causes panic. I don’t know which words to choose to avoid her ire, to impress her with my stoicism, to placate her.

‘It wasn’t loaded, Emma. It’s been over a month. Tell me when and where and I’ll bring him. This weekend?’

‘I’m in Geneva this weekend.’

‘But you’ve only just got back.’

She sips from her latte and passes me a sheet of notepaper. ‘I’ve found a barrister. Here are her details.’

I fold it and slip it into my pocket, obediently.

‘It’s a conference. Don’t you have plans for the weekend?’ she asks.

‘Thought I’d take Jonah to Paris.’ It’s meant to sound lighthearted, but escapes the leash and barks sarcasm instead.

She leans across the table and stares me down. ‘For God’s sake, Ben, do you think this is easy for me? I still have to get up every morning, without seeing my husband, without seeing my son, and get on with everything and try and concentrate on my job so that when this bloody business is over at least we’ll both have enough money to finally have a life again. Get out of the victim role.’

She sighs deeply as she looks away and murmurs, ‘I’m sorry.’ On these morsels I shall build my days.

‘It’s okay,’ I whisper and, for a moment, loosen my grip on the bag at my feet, but if it’s not possible for me to speak to her when I need to, I’ll be wreckage without the reassurance. I place the two identical boxes on the table in front of us.

‘What are these, Ben, for God’s sake?’

‘Pay-as-you-go mobiles. They can’t be traced, all we have to do is set a date and time to talk. They’re untraceable.’

‘You said that already.’ She looks weary. ‘This is not some covert MI5 mission. Come on, get a grip.’

‘I need to be able to talk to you, Emma.’

‘Stop wasting your money on toys and take them back to the shop.’

I try to hide the shaking – and my face – as I fake a gulp from my large Americano. I’m behaving like an insecure teenager.

‘I had a meeting at the school. They’re still going on about Maureen Mitchell, Jenny Porter won’t back us. Even if she agrees with us, she’s just toeing the party line. I went to see it. It’s no good.’

She reaches into her briefcase and passes me a large buff pocket file.

‘You’ll need these – every document about Jonah from his birth until last week. They’re in chronological order and I’ve made notes, so don’t lose them. And anything else that’s generated you must keep and you must file – do you understand? There’s also a document providing you with temporary custody. You need to sign it and return it. I’ve already signed.’

‘Keep and file, sign and send. I think I can manage that.’

‘Now, phone the barrister, I’m told she’s the best. You’ll need to have detailed reports on Jonah from a speech therapist, educational psychologist, occupational therapist, child psychiatrist, and anybody else that can add to the case. I know this is not your forte …’

‘But you’ve already been away for a month.’

‘I just can’t do it. Not now. I’m already under huge pressure.’

‘They on your case at work, then?’

‘More than you could know. They have me working all God’s hours, meetings every night. I don’t have the headspace.’

‘But—’

‘Ben, you’ll just have to cope for once.’

She stands and pulls on her navy coat and picks up her case. I move round the table and reach for her. She kisses me tenderly, but not, it feels, without an invoice.

‘You’ll have to lay out the money.’

‘Why?’ I ask. ‘Surely we don’t have to pretend you’re broke as well?’ I stare into her eyes as she answers.

‘About six months ago I put my available cash into a high-yield bond. It doesn’t mature for another year.’

‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that when we’d decided to go to tribunal?’

Emma picks at her cuticles. ‘It was earning nothing where it was, I couldn’t let it just sit there.’

‘But you knew we were going to need it.’

‘I thought the council might buckle,’ she says.

‘Really? That’s not like you. Not your way of planning. What’s going on, Emma?’ Her eyes wander, I’m conjuring visions of dashing international lawyers and luxury hotel suites. ‘What happened in Hong Kong?’

She sits down again and her anger sharpens my sordid vision. ‘I worked and I worked and I slept and I missed home. That’s all,’ she says. ‘Do you think I was having fun? I can promise you I wasn’t.’

I feel my face set into a Pierrot frown.

‘What?’ she stabs. I back down, as I always do in the presence of her irritation. We both stare at the table until the air between us cools.

‘The money?’ I remind her.

‘Around thirty thousand pounds.’

‘What! You know I haven’t got that kind of money.’

‘I’ll pay you back, don’t worry.’

‘It’s not that, I just don’t know where I’ll get it from.’

‘Ask your father.’

I imagine Dad’s twitching fists. ‘Emma, come on, that is not going to happen.’

‘Why? You keep telling me that he owes you.’

‘Yes, but he doesn’t agree – there’s no fucking contract, after all. It’s not written on paper, it’s written in years of psychotherapy and washing-up. I am not asking him.’

‘For Jonah, you won’t ask him?’

‘That’s low.’

‘No, it’s just the truth …’

I’m wounded and my head drops. ‘He doesn’t want Jonah to go. He says you don’t give up your children. Which is a bit rich coming from him, don’t you think? Every time I ask him for something, it’s like giving up a little piece of my soul.’

‘Ben, I can’t cope with being your emotional punchbag. We need to win this and we both need to recover, do you see? Everything else is secondary. That is my reality. I cannot be responsible for yours.’

‘What is all this psychobabble? You blame Jonah.’

‘No, Ben, no. I love and adore Jonah, but I’ve forgotten how to love myself and I’m not sure you ever did.’

‘Love you?’

‘No, yourself, you fool.’

We smile at each other and she takes my hand. ‘Who will fight for Jonah if we’re both wrecked? Where’s the sense in it? Now, Georg?’

‘I have to tell you he’s not keen on Jonah moving away.’

‘Then persuade him. He’ll come round.’

‘Persuade Dad?’

‘All right, grovel – I don’t care.’

I put the phones back in my bag and we both stare at the table. My Americano has gone cold. It’s a strangers’ silence, an awkward blind date silence filled with an imbalance of desires – one to leave, the other desperate to prevent departure. It’s all businesslike again.

‘Now, what are you going to do this afternoon, Ben?’

‘Phone the barrister.’

‘Don’t forget.’

‘I won’t. I’ll call you when I have some news.’

‘Okay, but can’t you just email me? It’ll be better if you email, practically speaking. Can’t always get to the phone.’ She sees my face drop and puts her hand on my cheek. ‘This is the best way, trust me, it will all be worth it.’

She blows me a kiss from the door and is gone, striding back to her legal bolt-hole where she claims to clean up other people’s mess and shit just like I do, yet hers is just a euphemism. And I think about money and I think about work, but like an angry reminder of a bill unpaid, which if I ignore it long enough will miraculously disappear, the warehouse is a personal hell I also push from my mind.

She was here and now she’s gone again and I’m a worm dangling on a line. I wish I’d recorded the conversation, so I could type it up and pore over the transcript, a proofreader genuinely searching for proof.

Excited

HIGHGROVE MANOR SCHOOL

FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS WITH AUTISM

Highgrove Lane, Highgrove, Oxfordshire OX7 3RG

12 March 2011

Dear Mr Jewell

Our head of school, Linda Phillips, has now had the opportunity to observe Jonah during a day at Roysten Glen School and I would like to invite both you and Jonah to Highgrove Manor, so that our teaching and therapy teams can assess him and his suitability, while I will give you a tour of the campus and talk you through our role in the tribunal process.

I have set aside March 19 and if you could arrive by 10 a.m. it would be appreciated.

I enclose a map.

Kindest regards

Susan Atwater
Director of Education

‘Oh my God, this boy’s
tochas
is a shit cannon. Ben, get me a plastic bag, quickly. That’s the third today, already.’

‘His arse is as unpredictable as he is.’

Dad washes his hands like a surgeon and repeats the process with Jonah. I get him coated and shod while Dad wastes half a tin of air freshener.

‘He’s no worse than you,’ I quip.

‘Really? When you get to my age things tend to slow down.’

Jonah is secure in the back, with an apple in one hand and a feather in the other. The sky is clear, the sun low and I blow smoke into its rays before getting in the car. ‘What’s the postcode? It’s on the letter.’

‘OX7 3RG. Do you want me to direct you?’

‘No, it’s fine, I’ll use the SatNav.’

‘Again with the Satmap.’

‘It’s great for deliveries.’

‘Does Valentine use one?’

‘I bought him one.’

‘Ha, he has probably given it to one of his kids.’

After refreshing and refreshing, the screen finally becomes a full-colour map of the surrounding area and calculates both distance and arrival time. Dad’s interest is piqued.

‘Let me look at this Satmap.’

‘SatNav.’

‘That is what I said.’ He slips his reading glasses from his blue blazer pocket – for Dad, any car outing requires dressing up – and leans close, poking the screen with his finger. ‘This is my road. How does it know this is my road?’

The SatNav pipes up: ‘Proceed along this road for three hundred yards and take the next left.’

‘He’s Australian? The one in the box. How does he know our roads?’

‘It’s a computer-generated voice, Dad – there’s a whole selection of languages and accents.’

He seems impressed. ‘So how much is a thing like this?’

‘Fancy one now? You only go to Maurice’s, Waitrose and Florsheim’s kosher deli.’

‘Just interested.’

We enter the M25 and merge into a traffic jam. I glance back at Jonah – he’s finished his apple and is taking the feather to pieces. The plan is to keep him in food and twiddlies for the whole journey and pray his own internal SatNav doesn’t object to the computer version. The outcome is never pretty.

‘So, where’s Mum these days?’ I ask.

‘You don’t know?’

‘How should I know?’

‘I just assumed you speak to her, occasionally.’

‘Not for a couple of years. Had a postcard from the Maldives.’

‘Always such a boaster, Myra. No, your Uncle Matthew told me in his monthly duty call that she is currently living in Norway or Sweden, or some other part of the frozen north. The weather should suit her there, nice and cold.’

I laugh. ‘Seriously, though?’

‘She always had a thing for herring, maybe that’s it,’ Dad says.

‘Is she with anyone?’

‘What is this? Twenty rhetorical questions?’

‘No, just wondered.’

The traffic is starting to spread like a drawn-out concertina, which brings bouncing and laughter from the back seat. Dad reaches back and hands him another apple, then puts his hands behind his head and shuts his eyes.

Do I miss my mother? I think about her, not sure that’s the same as missing. I was very young when she left and, as my father never tires of telling me, self-obsessed, irresponsible and an embarrassment.

What happened? We’ve only ever had a single conversation about it and – as ever – he was evasive, fending off my pointed questions like a fly swatter. Did he drive her out? ‘I would have happily driven her wherever she wanted to go and dumped her there – but I did not drive her out.’ That’s what he said. But, apart from this, everything I know is supposition – the result of voyeurism and stealth.

My father is fourteen years my mother’s senior. They met, she told me once, through her brother – another Maccabi footballer – and she fell for his no-nonsense manner and his stoicism. There was passion at the beginning, but I remember many nights as a child with her lying next to me, crying into my shoulder. It wasn’t long before she was railing against his lack of emotion. Most of their life together was an endless ceasefire.

As I recall, we were poor, then we weren’t poor. She wanted, he gave. She wanted more, he gave more. Then she wanted private schooling for me and he put his foot down – it went against everything he believed in, and I never got to choose.

I once confronted him about the unfairness of living according to his ideals, having no choices myself, and his answer:

‘Well, let’s see. You have two eyes, two ears, a nose – definitely a mouth, and that –’ he poked my head hard with his forefinger ‘– that gives you all the choices you need.

‘You’ve managed to do enough damage yourself. You are the laziest bastard God ever put breath into and you want for nothing. Tell me you were ever hungry or cold and I will cry crocodile tears for you and find you the number for the Samaritans.’

I look across at him and he looks back.

‘What?’

‘Are you happy, Dad?’

My question is a simple one and yet I sense his answer will be obliquely delivered – in his own image.

‘I don’t like being happy, it makes me nervous.’

We sit in silence for a while, digesting. He breaks the silence.

‘Do you love Jonah?’

I’m disoriented by the cynical tone. ‘Of course, how could you even ask such a thing? I love him with everything I have.’

‘Then prove it to me.’

‘What? Using your counterintuitive method? Is this a riddle, Dad, some kind of trial by fire? What about you, do you love Jonah?’

‘Jonah, I love,’ he says, with fully downturned grin.

There is silence, while I fight the tears.

‘Does the affection gene skip a generation then?’

But he’s closed his eyes and his head is lolling and I have a motorway to negotiate. For once, I’m in control.

Bruce the SatNav swings us off the M25 and on to the M40 heading west, but Jonah disagrees. He’s been babbling to himself sweetly, but his tone is now gruffer and his bouncing more aggressive. I try to pacify him, but he’s gone, shoots forward and clamps his hands around Dad’s neck, yanking his head back and forth against the headrest.

‘Pull over.’

‘I can’t, I’m in the outside lane. Hand him a feather, a feather, in the glove compartment.’

Dad is choking and can’t reach. When Jonah grips on it’s like a hangman’s noose. I reach across and flick the catch, just managing to keep my eyes on the road as I locate the bag of feathers and toss them over my shoulder like a hunk of meat into a lion’s den. Jonah releases his grip and grabs a feather. It is immediately the focus of my son’s left eye. It calms him.

‘You okay, Dad?’

‘I’ll live. Luckily I have four chins.’

‘Is his seatbelt still on?’

‘Yes, it’s still on.’

There’s a bottle of water in your door pocket, see if he needs a drink?’

Jonah finishes it in one go, bits of feather stuck to his lips. He smiles again and laughs playing pat-a-cake with Dad’s hand. I breathe heavily.

‘After four hundred yards, turn left.’

It’s a long, sweeping drive leading to high wrought-iron gates. I buzz the intercom and announce our arrival, the gates swings away from us and a Georgian manor house comes into view. As we crawl towards it, open fields, a wood and a stable appear to the right and a collection of lower, modern buildings to the left. The rearview mirror reveals Jonah’s face stuck to the window. I park the car outside the manor house.

‘Is this what you imagined?’ I ask.

‘Don’t push me.’

‘I’m not pushing, Dad, I value your opinion.’

‘My opinion is you talk too much, so be quiet and let me make up my own mind.’

A young, casually dressed woman approaches from the manor house.

‘Hi, I’m Susan Atwater, director of education, and this must be Jonah?’

Jonah’s still fiddling furiously. ‘He may be a little tetchy still from …’

Susan Atwater offers Jonah her hand and I watch, spellbound, as he takes it.

‘If you’d like to come inside we have an itinerary arranged for you.’

Through the double doors of the elegant house is a large panelled lobby with a staircase directly ahead. There are corridors to left and right. From a door off the left corridor a young man appears. He is dressed in a navy sweatshirt and matching jogging pants with the school crest emblazoned on it.

‘This is Mike. Mike, this is Jonah’s father and grandfather. Mike will show Jonah around while I introduce you to our senior team and show you the facilities.’

Mike pulls a block of laminated cards from his pocket, sorts through them until he finds one bearing a picture of a ball pond and hands it to Jonah. Jonah hands it back and takes Mike’s hand and off they trot. Again, compliance.

‘We’ll see him again in a couple of hours, don’t worry, he’ll be fine.’

Dad is looking uneasy, his eyes wandering up and down the stairs. ‘The dormitory, the ward, it’s up the stairs?’

Susan Atwater laughs. ‘No, Mr Jewell …’

‘Georg.’

‘Georg, this is simply the administration block, the children’s houses are elsewhere on the site. We will see them presently. First I thought we’d take a walk around the grounds while I explain a few of the basics.’

We step back outside and survey the view.

‘Our grounds extend as far as the wire fence you can see straight ahead, about five hundred metres. If you look to the right, you’ll see our Countryside Learning Centre where the students learn to interact with our animals – feeding the pigs and chickens, grooming the ponies and, of course, riding them, too.’

‘Jonah, on a horse?’

‘Yes, horses are highly empathetic animals. We find it a hugely successful therapy.’

‘I hope it’s a strong horse.’

I find myself unable to take it in. My mind is stuck like an old forty-five. He must come here, I want him here, I want this for him. Whatever it takes, whatever.

Ms Atwater and Dad have strolled off and I quicken my stride to rejoin them.

‘And this is our wood. There is a series of paths through it with benches and sensory statues for the students to explore.’

‘Jonah will love this,’ I hear myself say, like an alcoholic with his own whisky distillery.

‘In answer to your earlier question, Georg, we have seven houses that can accommodate up to eight children per house.’

She opens a metal bar gate, secured by a karabiner, and we find ourselves outside a building with a planed roof. She buzzes us in and through a second door lies a huge airy space, two storeys high, with plush sofas, bean bags, a television, kitchen and a wall of glass that opens on to its own garden.

‘This is Bell House, where the youngest live. There are currently seven children here. It’s empty because they’re all in class at the moment.’

The mixture of joy and trepidation is unbearable, like stumbling towards an oasis in a desert only to find it’s a mirage.

‘The bedrooms are upstairs.’

Dad’s stride has begun to spring as we pass through gate after gate, he’s like Charlie in the chocolate factory.

‘This is our most recent acquisition, the sensory pool. An indoor swimming pool, heated to bath temperature, with both sound and light therapies.’

Change the record;
I
want to move here. Susan Atwater draws our attention to a field, back towards the entrance to the grounds. The grass is cut short and there are what appear to be inflatable obstacles positioned at intervals around a track, like a kids’ steeplechase. I can see two figures making their way toward a giant red archway – it’s Jonah and he’s trotting. The fastest I’ve seen him move before is between the television and the fridge.

This school, this haven, is fifty acres of Jonahville. Fifty acres, fifty-four children and over two hundred staff on duty day and night. But this level of care comes at a price, so in some way Dad is close to the truth – it does come down to money. We researched these schools, Emma and I, and there wasn’t much of a shortlist. Emma visited three and chose Highgrove Manor, now I understand why: it fits our son like a glove. But there are so few spaces and so many children that only a tiny fraction are given what they need. Jonah leaving home makes me shudder, but Jonah not being here makes me shudder more. Him not making it here at all is unthinkable.

In his office, the school’s chief executive, Hugh Challoner, runs us through the challenges ahead.

‘A forty-four-week placement at Highgrove costs two hundred thousand pounds a year. If Jonah joins us in September and stays until he’s nineteen, that’s one point six million. We don’t accept private funding from parents or any other individuals, however wealthy. Each child here is funded by their local authority.’

‘And they pay?’ Dad asks.

‘Not willingly, no,’ I admit.

‘You surprise me.’

Mr Challoner smiles.

‘That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you for the last two months, Dad. We have to prove that Maureen Mitchell isn’t suitable for Jonah’s needs and that Highgrove is. Get it?’

‘And the rich can’t just pay to get in?’

‘No,’ Mr Challoner answers.

‘So this is a socialist school for children with autism?’

‘If you want to look at it that way, I suppose,’ the chief executive says.