Finding You (33 page)

49 - Julia

Eva’s back.

When she comes looking for me in the garden with arms piled high full of John Lewis bags, I can tell she’s been making the most of her time in London with Rob since the funeral. And she’s come bearing gifts.

‘Some of these little outfits are so cute.’ She plonks the bags down on the wooden garden table, pulling out some fashionable children’s jeans to show me. ‘My nephew is going to have all the little girls after him ...’ she asserts. Then she stops abruptly, seeing my face. ‘What? You don’t like them?’

‘I like them,’ I tell her, pulling a smile. ‘You’re just ... too kind. He’s going to look very stylish in these.’ But he isn’t going to have all the little girls after him. I can’t imagine it. Not anymore. I clear my throat as a strange pain comes into it now, a pain that reminds me of the grief I felt when I lost my nana Ella. Charlie’s dad was buried a week last Wednesday and I know everyone thinks I’m going round looking so subdued right now because of that but—sad though I was for Charlie—I barely knew his dad. It isn’t that.

I know it isn’t that.

‘Do you want to try them on him?’ Eva pulls a few more items out of her bags, ‘We’re in central London with the kids till Friday, so I can take anything back for you that doesn’t fit.’

‘Um. Sure. But shall we wait till just a little bit later, Eva?’ I’m trying to drum up some enthusiasm, really I am, because I know this won’t do. ‘It’s just ...’ I trickle to a halt and she follows my gaze over to where my son is playing. He’s back in the re-instated sandpit this afternoon, not very enthused at all by the fuzzy felt I was attempting to interest him in, and I’m the one who’s been left picking up all the little coloured pieces of felt. It was a very large box and there are a lot of little shapes of people and the tools they work with, all based on the ‘helping professions’.  For some reason, sticking all the pieces back into their right plastic indent in the box feels very therapeutic to me right now. The two nurses go back into the nurse box. The firemen in their yellow trousers are going in the fireman bit. Ah. I’ve lost a fireman’s helmet. I push back from the garden bench, searching in the grass, and Eva senses that I’m not quite here today. 

She shoves the baby clothes—for her grandchild that will be—back into their dainty bags and sits down on the bench opposite me. While she sits there silent for a bit, trying to work out what to say, I’m at the same time furiously trying to work out what to answer. She’s going to ask me if everything’s been okay since the funeral. She’s going to ask me if there’s been any more trouble with Lourdes—she knows all about that, what happened. She apologised profusely for even suggesting that the papers come over by that route in the first place. Is she going to bring that up again now? We’re over that; it isn’t that, but people on the outside looking in, they can’t always quite see all the delicate threads of another person’s pain, can they? It’s not her fault.

We took Hadyn back to see the paediatric team on Monday after Charlie spoke to Colette in the park last week. They confirmed a lot of things they’d suspected on his first visit. They told us a lot more about what they felt was really up with our son. There are some things about that visit that I’m still coming to terms with, that’s all. Some things, I didn’t expect to hear, even though Charlie had already been as good as told it by a mum in the park.     

‘You know,’ Eva says after a bit, taking what seems to her the most logical route into my depressed state. ‘I was very glad when they read out Tony’s will, that he left his whole estate for the grandchildren, and not for his two boys. Rob and Charlie don’t need the money, do they? It’s the young people, just starting out who have nothing, that need it.’

‘Yes,’ I agree quietly, my head down. I find the fireman’s helmet amongst a clump of speedwell under the bench. Eyes closed for a second, I rub it for a moment, between forefinger and thumb as I’ve seen Hadyn do, and the fuzzy felt is comforting between my fingertips. Is this what it feels like for him, with his heightened tactile perception? Is this why he’s always stroking the label on his blanket? Why he loves labels on clothes—any clothes—but especially the ones he’s had a chance to rub at till they’re almost frayed away? Now that he’s got his diagnosis, a whole lot of things are falling into place ...   

‘There are so many expenses that these young people are going to encounter,’ Eva runs on. ‘When they go to college—the fees, and so on. When they want to set up their own home.  You don’t
mind
, do you?’ she worries.    

‘No.’ I stifle a little laugh inside. Not a happy laugh, a helpless one.

‘I mean, you don’t mind that we have three children the estate has been divided into and you have only the one?’

And ... there will be only the one. That’s what she’s really saying, isn’t it? But no. I don’t mind that Rob’s side of the family stands to benefit more because they have more kids.

‘The money will come in useful for Hadyn’s school fees, too,’ she’s hurrying on, a little breathless. I suspect Eva feels
guilty
about what she sees as the unfair inheritance split, but she has no idea. I really could not give a damn about the money.  ‘None of mine ever went to private school, as your son will,’ she’s saying now. ‘Rob tells me Charlie has already secured a place for Hadyn at Trinity-St Marks?’ Her voice inflects at the end by which means she conveys her enthusiasm and approval at the choice. ‘They tell me they produce a lot of medic students, there? Is Charlie hoping that his son will continue in the family medical tradition?’ She looks at me brightly.

‘Hadyn won’t be going to Trinity-St Mark’s, Eva.’ I look up at her now. ‘He won’t be going to any public school. He won’t become a surgeon  ...’ I put the fireman’s helmet back into the box, and a tear falls onto the nurse’s powder blue skirt. ‘It may turn out,’ I tell her very quietly, ‘that he doesn’t even make ordinary state school. We’ve been told—depending on how things develop—he may require specialist educational provision.’

‘He ...’ The rest of her sentence gets choked up in her throat and Eva just stares at me for a minute. She doesn’t know what to say. Eventually, ‘
Why
, though?’  Her face looks slightly white. Her face looks like my mother’s face looked when I told her; uncomprehending, a little shocked, full of questions about
how
and
why
and
what
that I have no answers for myself yet and I don’t want to be bombarded with.

‘We’ve been told Hadyn has autism,’ I say. The words still sound strange to me. This diagnosis, of autism. Everyone has sort of heard of it. Or knows someone whose son or cousin or neighbour has been diagnosed with it, all in varying shades and degrees. It’s a broad church, it seems. Everyone has their opinion on what it means, on what it
might
mean.

All I know is that right now, what it means is that we have to learn how to handle this strange and beautiful child we’ve been given; how to handle him with kid gloves.
These children are like hot-house orchids,
the consultant said to me
. Delicate, special, with the potential to blossom into the most wonderful beings, but they have to be given the right conditions. If the conditions are not right for them, they will not flourish; you will not see the best of them. If the conditions are right, you may get the most special, precious blossoms of all.

Charlie had read up so much on it before we even went there. He had so many questions.  Dr Noble had spoken to Charlie and me about the autistic person’s finely tuned nervous system, how they may have a tendency to easily become overanxious. How they may have no intrinsic coping mechanisms like the rest of us do to cope with this feeling of anxiety. How this is thought to give rise to actions such as spinning—in a child, you might see them spinning marbles or some such, to induce a state like a semi-hypnotic trance that alleviates that anxiety
. So many of those funny little things we see these children do, they’re often a way of them calming themselves down. That’s how you have to see it,
he’d told us. 

Otherwise, he’d said, this anxiety would overwhelm them to the state of almost total social paralysis. He stressed how our social contact with others is one of the most delicate tasks we can perform as humans; how most of us develop the ability to do this instinctively, naturally, but for those to whom it does not come naturally, for those who do not even know where to begin and are never taught, it
could
eventually spell social isolation and a deep existential loneliness and depression. Strong words from Dr Noble. Perhaps stronger than he might ordinarily have used when explaining the situation to parents with a newly diagnosed child, but Charlie had pressed him:
What will it mean? What can we expect? Can we hope for any improvement?
And the guy had clearly wanted to paint an honest picture; improvement can be hoped for, certainly. Help and information is at hand. But what Hadyn’s got is a lifelong condition and he will need lifelong interventions to support him.
   
            

‘He will most likely need specialist schooling,’ I tell Eva dully now. She may as well know. ‘He may need speech therapy. He may need other physical interventions if his gait does not develop properly, or if he displays clumsiness. The list of things they told us ... it went on and on. I can’t remember half of it.’ I stumble to a halt and she puts her arm across the table to cover mine.  I don’t want to remember half of it! I sink my head into my hands and the pain in my temples, it feels very real. It feels like I might explode.
Why ... why did this have to be the case with my son, after all I have been through? Have I not been through enough?
When I first realised that Hadyn wasn’t pining for Illusion, that there was something else the matter, had I even suspected that it might be something like this?

I guess I had. I just hadn’t fully realised what it would mean. Or how it would hit me, on so many levels, having to let go of all my own expectations; all the dreams I’d once had for my child.  At his age, it’s early days, Dr Noble said. Some improve beyond recognition with the right support. It’s possible. Some autistic people go on to achieve great things, but not without a huge amount of work and a desire to do so.  They do not all improve.

‘Since we had the diagnosis, I’ve been in a bit of a stupour,’ I admit to Eva now.  ‘Everyone we’ve spoken to so far keeps rushing to give us hope and advice ...’ I trail off, not wanting her to think that I am not grateful for people caring, wanting to help. Alys went and found some lovely websites with loads of fantastic advice, wonderful people. She bought me the latest, best-rated books. ‘Naz put me in touch with his mother’s cousin, who has not one, but two little guys in her household with ASD, and he assures me they lead a wonderful life,’ I tell Eva brokenly. 

I’m sure they do. They lead a wonderful life. Of course; they are still just kiddies with supportive, loving parents and family, and Hadyn will have nothing less, but the truth is I am scared. I can’t speak to Eva of this. These things, I will need to unpack slowly, with Charlie, with other people who know more and who can help us, over time. I am scared of the future I can no longer predict for my son. I am scared I can no longer say, with any measure of hope in my heart,
Oh, yes, with his background, we have high hopes that he will go on to do very well, maybe even become a surgeon like his dad and granddad; he’ll maybe travel the world one day, helping the poor and afflicted just like they did.
   

How can I now say any of that?

The truth is, I don’t know what I can say. What I can expect. All I have is a gap, there in that fertile space in my heart where my hopes for my little boy were once planted. A big, huge, gaping wound of a space that I don’t know how to fill. 

Not yet.

And here is Eva, whose face is creased in such pain and sympathy for me, I know what she’s going to say next. You will get the very best help for him, she’ll reassure me. And Hadyn could not be a luckier little boy, having parents like you. You have been blessed, but he is truly blessed to have you, too. She’ll say something like that. Something that is well-meant but does nothing to alleviate that dark empty space where his future has gone.

She looks down and fumbles about in her handbag. What now? I wipe my face, waiting for her to bring out a prayer card for St Jude, Patron Saint for the Impossible, or something like that which she’ll have picked up in church, but she doesn’t. She gingerly brings out a carefully wrapped little oblong object and places it in my hands.

Another gift she’s just acquired from John Lewis?

I sniff, wiping my eyes on a tissue. Carefully unwrap her offering. Then I lean in, so startled to see what she’s brought me, it could be the horn of a unicorn.

‘
Abuela
wanted you to have it,’ Eva smiles encouragingly.

I lift it up to the light. The little statue of the Madonna that once belonged to Charlie’s
abuela’s
Christmas nativity set, the pride-of-the-piece statue that I’d once accidentally broken and they’d thought she’d never be put back together again. When I look at her now, in the sunlight, I can see all the little lines where she’s been lovingly restored.

‘They fixed her?’ I say wonderingly, my moroseness forgotten for a moment. Eva nods, smiling gently.

‘I can’t take this,’ I swallow. ‘She’s the hand-me-down-to-the-daughters piece of the set. The special one. I’m not even a daughter-in-law yet.  And ... Charlie and I will have no daughters for me to keep it for, Eva.’