Daniel Isn't Talking (21 page)

‘You must hate me,' says Penelope now.

‘No, not hate,' I say. She nods. I don't like to admit it, but she has really a rather appealing face, a kind of regality. Her cheeks are sharp points, her eyes theatrical and large beneath the solid weight of her heavy fringe.

‘Do you remember when I met you that day in Camden Town?' she asks me. Her voice is kind. Her attention is all mine.

‘Was it Camden Town?' I say. ‘I can't see you in Camden Town.'

‘And why is that?' she smiles. She is genuinely surprised. She is stunning. Over the past few years she has become more rounded in the hips, a bit chunkier in her upper
arms, her thighs, but she is a gracious and commanding woman. A beauty, I have to admit, making me seem by contrast a dry and angular creature no more appealing than a paper fan.

‘Never mind,' I say.

‘Now look, you need to speak to Stephen. We would
both
like to talk with you. Don't you think it's time?' she says.

Perhaps it is. I don't know. All I can think is that I am looking at my children's future stepmother and that she seems an awful lot more engaging than their real mother. I can picture Emily and Penelope exchanging tales of headmistresses and hockey teams, discussing the pressures of GCSE exams and Christmas balls. My daughter, whose colicky newborn stomach required me to pace for hours every evening, for whom I played patient to her doctor, pony to her rider, who I taught to pedal a bicycle by holding on to her seat and running, over and over again, until I had no more breath. It seems somehow unfair that Penelope is so well mannered and so English, and so everything that I am not. Still, here she is. There is no escape from her. Not by me. Not by Emily.

‘I think you should babysit Daniel,' I tell Penelope now.

‘Oh,' she says, a little taken aback. I've never let the children near her. ‘What a lovely idea,' she says flatly.

‘We
think
he can use a toilet now,' I say, as though this is a grand, scientific discovery. ‘But then again, maybe not.'

‘I see,' she says, fingering her pearls.

‘You just have to watch his willy,' I say. She swallows, coughs softly, tries to smile. ‘But as for number two, you have to get there before his hands do, that is my advice. Unless, of course, you have a lot of time and disinfectant.'

She has no answer to this. I spot Stephen coming through the doors from the hotel's reception. ‘Excuse me,' I say, and Penelope steps aside.

Stephen's tie has come slightly loose. His eyes have a heaviness to them as though he has not been sleeping well. He runs his hands through his hair and I see, through the cascade of sandy locks, the scar from a rugby game a dozen years or more ago, and I notice, too, that his hair is thinning. Still, he is a beautiful man.

‘Very nice,' he says. ‘Very nice of you to come.'

‘I'm sorry about your father.'

‘Doctors didn't give him the right heart medicine. I blame them, you know. He was on that rat poison but not beta blockers. I can't remember what excuse they gave. Something about a stroke.'

He looks away from me, over my shoulder. It occurs to me, now that I notice such things, that he has not looked me fully in the eye for many months.

‘Where are the children?' he asks.

‘With Veena. With Andy.'

‘You mean that guy who helps Daniel to play? That Andy?'

I nod.

Stephen lets out a long breath. ‘He seems to know what he's doing,' he says,

‘He's Irish,' I say, just for something to say.

‘Yes, I think I remember that,' says Stephen tartly, and I realise my statement is not so innocent as I would like to think. Stephen hasn't been married to me for five years without picking up on the habits of my thoughts, the meaning of isolated tones in my voice that others would scarcely notice. What I meant was, He is Irish, not like you, Stephen. He is with the children, not like you. He is
good at playing with kids, not like you. He is in my life, not like you. None of this is lost on Stephen, who is at times a cantankerous and insular man, but not stupid.

I say, ‘Stephen, I would like to take the children on a holiday somewhere. Summer is almost over and all we've done is hang around London.'

‘What about Ireland?' he says now. ‘Ireland in your plans at all?'

‘I would like just a little bit of money, you know? Just to take them to the beach?'

‘I'll take them to the beach,' says Stephen. ‘If that is where you'd like them to go.'

He leaves me there and I feel like shit. He walks off in long, confident strides back to Penelope who glances into his face as though she's seen something holy there, something glorious and sacred. Perhaps she has.

When I feel I can finally leave, having said something to David, to Cath, again to Daphne, who this afternoon looks suddenly older, suddenly frail, after I have chatted at least briefly with those who knew me and who made their best efforts to incorporate me into their family – for some of them did – I go to Stephen and say goodbye. I hope not to upset him, or disturb him, or anger him, or annoy him. Just to say goodbye. I find him beside his brother, talking about the cricket.

‘Goodbye,' I say, nodding. He nods back, murmurs, ‘Bye,' then with hesitation and a hardness in his eyes, he leans forward and kisses me drily on the cheek. The kiss is performed quickly, dispatched. This kiss is meant to be,
what
? Polite? It is an affront, painful in its isolating effect, like a slap on the face. I have been dismissed. I stumble away from him out through heavy double doors which have been propped open, leading into the hotel foyer. I
am wishing I'd never come, wishing I weren't so ‘nice' as Cath says, wishing I were someone else entirely. I pass a pair of mustard-coloured tassled ropes connected to slim, silver stands. I pass the lifts, pass the reception area with its tidy employees in their uniforms. I am thinking, Just Go Home. Then I hear a voice behind me. I hear Stephen call my name, hear the muffled clap of his hard shoes against the hotel's carpet, which I realise all at once is the exact same carpet that covers Daphne's living room.

‘Wait,' says Stephen. He touches my elbow, turns me gently toward him. It is exactly the same gesture he made the first night I met him, when he told me how I must not, under any circumstances, leave without him.

‘Here,' he says now, pulling money from his wallet, note after note, twenties and fifties. ‘Take them to the beach, Melanie,' he says, his face looking slightly crumpled, not like him at all. ‘Tell them I love them, OK?'

The Welsh cottage is not what you'd call a holiday destination. Formerly a sheep shed, it was converted sometime in the seventies during what must have been a dizzy moment for interior decorating. The kitchen's linoleum floor has been laid across several previous linoleum floors, and is a brown-and-orange pattern that repeats so often you cannot look at it without feeling your pulse rise. The carpet is a dull green, high-pile affair that is faded where the bay window – OK, the pane of ordinary glass looking like what you'd find in a shopfront – lets in the alarmingly infrequent Welsh sun. The bathroom fixtures are a deep brown, which I must point out is very useful at disguising the need to clean it, and the fireplace is a brick monster that looks something like a cross between a beehive and a bread oven, and suffers from an overload of what can only be described as decorative cement. Then there is the garden, its beauty spot. The garden is described in the estate agent's details as ‘a patch of native grasses and wild flowers', but what is really at work here is an overgrown patch of unkempt grass strewn with poppies,
enhanced in its fertility by a dodgy septic tank that appears to leak, judging from the boggy soakaway at the edges of the back wall, and that at certain times of year gives off the scent of sulphur.

‘Well,' Stephen had said when he first observed the cottage, which I have to admit was a bit of a purchasing error on my part. ‘Now we know what primitive man endured.'

But the reason I have my attention drawn to the cottage now is that the estate agent has rung me with what is not exactly good news.

‘Mrs Marsh, I'm sorry to tell you, but it seems that someone has deposited a whole pile of unauthorised dung in the back of your cottage. We're not sure how or why, but we can't show the cottage with all the dung like it is, so perhaps you or your husband could come down and sort it out for us.'

A pile of dung? Cow dung? Horse? Sheep? Dung from the stinking goat farm adjacent to the cottage? Dung doesn't come from nowhere. And what does he mean by unauthorised? Would it be possible to get authorisation for this dung, in which case, would that make it all right?

‘What kind of dung?' I ask. It turns out that nobody is quite sure what kind of dung it is, though smells have been reported and steam has been seen rising from it.

‘You really need to sort it out,' insists the estate agent, a man named Robert who has what I'm sure his mother finds an endearing stutter. When he tells me about the dung he says it's a ‘who-ho-ho-hole pile of dung'. But he also warns me that it would not help matters on his side if the parish council got involved with the cottage. ‘You're at the end of the selling season as it is, Mrs Marsh. This manure is not w-w-w-working in your favour.'

I promise him I will do something about it, get off the phone and drop on to the floor with Daniel and Andy, who are watching a video that shows you how to make robots out of paper bags. On the television, the camera focuses on a pale table on which rest a pencil, some crayons, a set of bright red buttons, some shiny paper, glue and of course the bag. And now, a pair of human hands which I recognise immediately as Andy's hands. While we listen to the voice – Andy's voice – explaining what needs to be done to make a robot puppet, the hands go about cutting shapes, positioning, gluing down, all of which leads us eventually to the creation of a convincing robot.

‘First, we will make the robot's eyes,' says the voice. ‘We will use buttons for that. And we will need glue …'

It's what Andy calls a ‘play video'. Because Daniel learns more easily from things he sees on television, Andy has put on to the television the thing he wants him to learn, which is craft-making, normal kids' stuff, paste and glitter and googly eyes. ‘When did you do this?' I ask him.

‘While you were out,' he says. Nobody is allowed to say funeral any more. Emily gets a little too weird with her Mickey Mouse, having it die and brought back to life again, when we mention Bernard's funeral.

The play video works a treat. Daniel watches it, mesmerised by the creation of the puppet, then turns to discover that the exact same materials that are in the video are now here, on our table at home.

‘We will use buttons for eyes,' says Daniel, parroting the video.

Andy will not allow Daniel simply to memorise and repeat. So he asks Daniel, ‘What kind of buttons should we use?'

‘Red buttons,' says Daniel, ‘for the eyes.'

‘Perfect,' says Andy.

But wait a second. There is something that requires explanation. I touch Andy on the arm and he looks at me, his face bright with the success of the play video. ‘Andy,
where
did you find the video camera?' I ask. It's about the only thing of value I haven't sold, and I keep it secreted away in case a burglar comes.

‘In your underwear drawer,' says Andy without a moment of hesitation.

‘And what – what
exactly
– were you doing in my underwear drawer?'

‘Looking for the video camera,' he says, trying not to laugh.

Veena, coming to me now with a mug of tea, says, ‘I was telling him I thought you had one, but might have sold it. It's my fault.'

I look at Veena, then at Andy, who seems so innocent standing there, a pair of blue plastic child's scissors in his hand.

‘Anyway,' Andy whispers to me now, ‘I wanted to know if you were a thong girl or a panties girl.'

And then he turns away, cutting as Daniel directs him, and won't be disturbed or even interrupted as I swat at his back, pull the ends of his T-shirt until it makes a bell shape round his waist, or even when I reach under the belt line of his jeans and yank the elastic band of his shorts until it snaps against him.

Late one night, just after I have finally fallen asleep, the phone rings. I think it's my brother so I pick it up and say, ‘Larry, what disaster has struck such that you are willing to spend actual real live money to call me?'

‘It's not Larry,' says the voice. It is Stephen.

I sit up in bed, hug my knees to my chest. Months ago I'd have given anything for him to call me late at night. Now I'm not even sure what to say to him. ‘You miss your dad?' I say.

‘Yeah, that.' There's a pause. Then, ‘You never liked him.'

I sigh. ‘This is the worst time. It will get better. After my mother died I kept dialling her phone number and then I'd remember all over again that she wasn't there. And I kept seeing people who looked like her. But over a few months that faded. About a year later I was more or less OK again.'

‘You don't miss her now?'

I consider this. It sounds so awful to say you get over something as dreadful and final as a parent's death. But you do. The only time I've missed her in recent years was when Daniel was diagnosed. She'd have loved Daniel just as he is, autistic or not. I tell Stephen, ‘I think of her but it doesn't hurt any more.'

‘I keep thinking about Daniel,' he says.

‘Yeah, well.'

‘You don't get over that, do you?' he says.

No, you don't get over that. Daniel has his good days; he has his bad days. Yesterday morning Andy and I took the children to a big adventure playground and lost him. I was helping Emily out of the swing. Andy was answering one of the many SOS calls he gets from autism mothers on a daily basis. I looked up and couldn't see Daniel, motioned to Andy to look for him. He circled the playground and came up with nothing. Within minutes I was running all over screaming Daniel's name. Andy charged over to a groundskeeper to ask him for
help. We rounded up several mothers to help search for him. While giving them a description of him – brown eyes, blond hair, green shorts and a yellow T-shirt – I had a sudden moment of nausea as I realised it was like giving a missing person's report to the police. It all felt so hopeless. I burst into tears and looked to Andy but found he couldn't really comfort me. All he could do was what we were doing right then, asking people to help.

‘You think he's getting much better, right?' says Stephen. I know that tone of voice so well and all the feelings behind it. It's usually me who asks this kind of thing, begging a particular kind of answer. Stephen wants me to say yes, of course he's getting better. It will all be fine. There's nothing to worry about.

‘You bet,' I tell him. I don't tell him that Andy and I were both hysterical by the time we finally found Daniel. He was sitting inside a play tunnel tapping a stick against its side. There had been a half-dozen people screaming his name all around him, and yet he had not answered or even seemed to notice.

After Stephen hangs up I call Andy. It is after midnight so, of course, Andy doesn't answer. All I get is his voicemail asking me to please leave a message.

On Andy's voicemail I say, ‘I was just thinking of you. Thought I'd say hello.'

Andy is here most evenings now, stopping by after work. He arrives in jeans and trainers, a rucksack slung over his shoulder his hair standing up. He seems always to be smiling. Emily plays a game where she ties his laces to a kitchen chair and he pretends not to notice, then falls down comically when he stands. Daniel brings him trains
and says, ‘Play with me,' just as we've taught him. Andy is a part of the household. A nice part, I think.

‘Not so bad,' is Veena's estimation. I think it's the nicest comment she's ever made about a man.

Tonight, after the children have fallen asleep, we are having a discussion about religion – well, as close as you can get to religion in my household.

‘We weren't really religious. My father was Jewish but my mother was an atheist,' I tell Andy and Veena.

‘Didn't that pose a problem, your parents having different religions?' asks Andy. ‘Near where I come from they'd have to kill each other.'

‘Well, no. The two positions are strangely compatible. After Dad died my mother's one concession to Judaism was to hate anything that was definitely not Jewish while not actually teaching us about Judaism either. Because, of course, she didn't know. So, for example, if she saw a statue of a Virgin Mary in someone's garden, which is not so unusual a sight where I come from, she would say something mildly disapproving about it. But at Hanukkah and Passover she merely announced the day and then proceeded to ignore it. I think she gave us a dreidel once, but no one knew how to play.'

‘We get Lent,' says Andy. ‘You have to give something up.'

‘What do you give up?' Veena asks him.

‘Not a damn thing,' he says.

‘So I take it you're not a practising Catholic?' Veena deadpans. To me she says, ‘Were your mother's parents atheists?'

‘Quakers,' I say.

‘That sounds like a person with a palsy,' says Veena.

‘I think it just means you're nice to people.'

‘Hindus are nice to people,' says Veena. ‘Unless the people are Muslims.'

‘Nice to cows,' says Andy.

‘What do you know about Hinduism?' Veena says, looking at him as though the notion that he could know anything at all was utterly impossible.

‘Nothing,' says Andy, ‘except they like cows.'

‘What do you believe?' Veena asks him now. She looks at him squarely. She is a woman who thinks only uneducated people believe in God. Only cretins. She says such people are happier than she is, such people are blessed.

Andy flushes, then meets her challenge. ‘I believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,' he says. ‘In the whole Holy Works. I believe it all, but not the Pope. The Pope can kiss my arse.'

Veena turns to me now. ‘And what about you, Melanie? Any leaders of world religions you feel ought to make contact with your arse?'

I shake my head as though declining an offer of tea. ‘No,' I say. ‘I'm good.'

‘She doesn't like the Pope either,' Andy says to Veena, watching me as he does so. ‘She told me that, you know, secretly,' he says.

‘Oh, so now we have secrets, do we?' says Veena.

Another night, just as we are about to eat dinner, I hear Stephen's voice from the answering machine. ‘Look, Melanie, I think you should call me,' he says.

He speaks in a kind of office tone and I think I know what
you should call me
is all about. He's obviously heard from the estate agent about the dung pile that is preventing the sale of the cottage, which he didn't know was on the
market. So now he's figured out what I'm up to and he undoubtedly has his opinions on the matter.

‘Don't pick up the phone at all tonight,' I say. We are taking our food out to the garden for a picnic. All five of us carry plates or spoons or glasses. Even Daniel carries something, a single straw. ‘Stephen must have been informed about the dung situation.'

‘The dung situation?' Veena says.

Andy says, ‘Did you just say dung?'