Shtum (18 page)

‘What’s so important?’

‘I need to talk to you.’

‘That much you said, so?’

‘Can we go to the pub?’

Valentine kissed his teeth and Dad checked his watch.

‘Half an hour …’

One pint downed and one in front of me.

‘I want to come and work with you.’ He left me to fester in the silence, while he cracked his knuckles.

‘You want to work for me all of a sudden? Why now, after all these years? What have you done?’

‘You keep saying that it’s getting too much for you.’

‘You honour me with your concern …’

‘Dad. Emma’s pregnant, you’re going to be a grandfather.’

‘Have you told your mother?’

‘No, I’m telling you. I need the stability, Dad, I need to provide properly.’

‘Emma provides, stay at home and look after my grandchild. That is what this is about – all of a sudden you’re too proud. What’s wrong with the job you have?’

‘It’s not pride, it’s responsibility. I’m just not earning enough yet.’

‘And whose fault is that? You too would have a stable profession like Emma if you had only applied yourself.’

‘Okay, fine, forget it.’ But I knew I had to swallow that, it was the price of his patronage, the hard lessons he predicted. I stood still, with my head down.

‘Why should I rescue you?’

I could have given him a million reasons. ‘Because I need you?’

‘Because you need my money, as ever. I need to get back, come over tonight at seven and we’ll discuss it.’

‘So that’s a yes?’

‘Come over, do not forget, and congratulate Emma for me.’

The phone wouldn’t stop ringing and it was only eight-thirty in the morning. I sat there, fending people off, when my mobile rang and flashed ‘Valentine’.

‘Van’s broken down.’

‘What do you mean, broken down?’

‘Dead, nothing.’

‘Where are you?’

‘Southbank.’

I felt the lack of sleep and anxiety rush to my tear ducts. I let the phone drop to the desk.

‘Pull yourself together, Benjamin.’

‘But Dad …’

‘How will this help?’

‘All these Christmas orders …’

‘Stop crying, please. Always I have to wipe your nose.’

LACK
,
Speech Therapist:
Jonah began using words at a year and eleven months, but these were sporadic, and then lost his speech when he was around two and a half years. Jonah never progressed to using sentences.

Why? It just keeps haunting me, why, once he’d started, did he just stop? Could we have done any more?

Tom and Jonah sat side by side in the bath, bubbles so thick and high that only their heads were visible. ‘Peter Pan, Peter Pan,’ Tom shouted, raising his hands to Johnny.

We lifted both boys out of the bath, their chubby, two-year-old bodies glistened with water. The towel wrapped around Jonah radiated warmth, his head smelled of baby shampoo. Emma and Amanda reached the top of the stairs carrying coffee.

‘Peter Pan, Peter Pan,’ Tom cried again, and Johnny unwrapped him, gripped him around the waist and started flying him round the landing, crying high and loud: ‘Peeeder, Peeeder, Peeeder …’ Tom laughed and, by my feet, Jonah laughed too and stretched his arms out toward Johnny.

Amanda took Tom in her arms. ‘Johnny, look, Jonah wants a go, do it with Jonah.’ Johnny was about to pick Jonah up when Emma stepped in.

‘No. Make him say it before you do it, Johnny. Make him say Peeeder.’

‘Come on, Emma, that’s cruel, look at him,’ I said. Jonah was more desperate than ever. Emma crouched on the floor with him. ‘We’ve got to push him, Ben. It’s the only way.’

And she began to call to him: ‘Come on, Jonah, if you want to do it, say Peeeder, come on, Peeeder, Peeeder, Peeeder.’

I hated it. Jonah bounced up and down on his backside and Emma wouldn’t let it go. I was about to intervene when a shrill cry filled the air.

‘Peeeder, Peeeder, Peeeder.’ It was Jonah, and the words were not just identifiable, they were pitch perfect, tone perfect like a recording of Emma’s version. We all looked at each other, stunned. Johnny picked him up and flew him round, crying Peeeder himself. Jonah had said a few words before – bubble, door – but that was months earlier and we had begun to question whether he’d really said them at all. But this felt different, like a spiritual moment, an awakening. The evening was a joyous one, full of laughter, hope and relief. The breakthrough had come and we went to bed happy.

It was the last word he ever spoke.

BIRCH:
Jonah has a diagnosis of ASD, but, in my view, this does not convey the severity of his condition and it should be noted that he is at the most severe end of the Spectrum and, as such, falls within the small range of children displaying complex ASD.

And then it just got worse and worse and worse. No words, no eye contact, no bodily control, no physical affection …

I watched him play inside the plastic Wendy house, opening and shutting the windows, through the door, round the back and in again, back to the windows. Emma chewed her nails, crossed and uncrossed her legs. The door opened and we were called in. I called Jonah, but he ignored me. I put my head through the Wendy house window and tickled his tummy. Finally, he took my hand and allowed himself to be led into the office. He started flapping his hands as if he’d been engulfed by a cloud of midges.

The consultant was small behind his desk, near to retirement, his accent sing-song Indian.

‘So, you must be Jonah?’

Jonah ignored him.

‘And how old are you, Jonah?’

‘He’s two and a half,’ Emma said.

‘No language at all?’

‘He had some, maybe forty words or so.’

More like six, I thought.

‘But he just stopped using them.’

‘How long has it been since he spoke?’

We looked at each other, Emma answered. ‘A year, maybe.’

The consultant made some notes. Jonah was fighting to get off my lap.

‘I have the report from his school. I have also observed Jonah on two occasions.’

We didn’t know this.

‘Mr and Mrs Jewell, all the indicators suggest strongly that Jonah is autistic.’

‘But he had words, he had words.’

‘This is common among autistic children, Mrs Jewell.’

I watched her eyes redden, but I felt calm, somehow, like I’d already known.

‘But why? Why?’

The consultant scanned some more paperwork and looked up at me.

‘You have an alcohol problem?’

‘Had,’ I said.

‘But you were drinking heavily around the time of conception?’

‘Yes, I suppose so.’

‘You are aware that this could have caused Jonah’s autism?’

Could have. God knows I’d trawled the internet until the Google logo was burnt on to my corneas and couldn’t find any evidence that it was my fault. But despite that, after hearing someone say my worst fear out loud, I walked from the office overcome by shameful tears.

Minutes later, Emma and Jonah followed me out. I watched her as she picked Jonah up and marched to the lift. She couldn’t bring herself to look at me.

PRICE:
Mrs Jewell was out with Jonah on Sunday 5 June last year and experienced the worst, most aggressive public outburst she had seen from Jonah since Christmas the previous year. Lasting approximately twenty minutes, Jonah attacked her and two strangers (who tried to help) as well as self-harming. The key point here, according to Mrs Jewell, is the suddenness of this meltdown – ‘although he had clearly not been in the best of moods for a few days prior’ – as well as the severity of the aggression. It shook her terribly and left her in no doubt that she could no longer manage these outbursts on her own in public owing to Jonah’s size and strength.

What’s going to happen when he’s older? When he’s too big for even me to handle. Will he kill someone? Maim them? What happens when I’m dead? Where will he go …?

‘Don’t come back until five,’ Emma had said.

I’d been driving for forty minutes and I had an hour left. We’d been to the park, we’d been to McDonald’s, we’d been back to the park, back to McDonald’s. I had a Costcutter bag on the passenger seat. Contents: ten apples, six bags of Quavers, a loaf of white bread, eight tubes of Smarties, a large bag of Minstrels, a bottle of water, forty Camel Blue and half a bottle of vodka for luck.

My left leg was cramping from the incessant clutch use, so I pulled over – careful to ensure I was not overlooked by a house. Then I spun the bottle lid and drank. In the back, six-year-old Jonah pulled apart the feather duster I had bought. I had given up feeding him individual Smarties and he had emptied the tube beside him on the seat; he banged on the sprung cloth like a bongoist and the bright tablets jumped up and down in time.

How long would I get? Two minutes, ten? Thirty, sixty? Each movement, each exclamation made me flinch. I tossed food back at him like a zookeeper feeding a lion. I dropped the window and felt my face spotted by rain. I lit a cigarette and furtively took another swig while the digital clock flashed the seconds and the radio banged on about Manchester United.

My God. It. Was. Hard. How could I explain it to anyone? The feeling of utter failure, the battle that raged in my head between love and desolation. I could abuse him like that because he couldn’t tell anyone. I could sit in my car inhabiting a different universe, not engaging with him and dreaming of solitude and the end of fear, because he was locked away elsewhere and knew no better. We would arrive back home at the appointed hour and I’d make up some drivel about how great a time we had, list the places and activities encountered, how good he had been, and he couldn’t contradict me.

What did that make me? A bad father or a prison-camp guard? A fantasist or a simple liar?

He started to laugh and bounce on his seat – this might have given me another ten minutes, or his mood could have changed in three. It was the constant uncertainty, the unpredictability. It was the way I felt when I walked past a pit bull terrier on the street or in the park, primed for an expected attack.

But Jonah wasn’t an animal. This was a vodka conversation, self-pity and self-loathing all wrapped up in one easily breakable package.

Thirty minutes left. I would start up when there were ten.

My phone rang: ‘Could you make it six?’ she said.

‘No problem,’ I said – although it was, I knew it was, but the words were out before I had a chance to think. It was always like that, I was unable to say no, then I was cursing Emma, and myself, for being so weak.

An hour and thirty minutes was left. Too long to drive, too long to sit. I flicked through the contacts on my phone; was there anyone I felt comfortable just dropping in on? My father? Johnny? I’d try Johnny. My finger hovered over the call button, then my heart thumped as I pressed it and it rang. I was just about to hang up when he answered.

‘Sorry, mate, you should have called earlier, we’re off to the cinema. Why don’t you meet us there?’

Then I cursed Johnny too. Didn’t he realise? Jonah wouldn’t sit in the cinema. I was as lonely as I’d ever been, with just a silent boy and a bottle of vodka for company.

‘We are not wanted, sweet boy,’ I told him. I couldn’t face Dad because he’d guess why I was there. He’d shame me more than I’d shame myself. He’d smell the vodka.

And then I felt his fingernails in my neck and I cried in pain. Jonah’s eyes were glowing, he took another swipe. I grabbed his wrist and squeezed harder than I needed.

‘Will you just fuck off and leave me alone!’

Tears erupted from his eyes and mine caught on like a yawn. Where could we go from there?

PRICE:
If it pleases the tribunal, Mrs Emma Jewell would like to address the tribunal.

Oh.

Emma stands and opens the leather-bound folder in front of her. I have never seen her in action before. In all these years I have never once visited her at her offices, met her colleagues, joined her at functions. This Emma is a stranger to me. She is tall and elegant and poised. I do not recognise the line of her lips or her eyes as they cast around for an audience. They alight on me briefly and in that instant I believe I know how it must feel to be prosecuted by her. She holds it within her power to flay me, she always has, but now I feel that she will expose me. I cannot show my face. I bury it in my hands and await the knife as she coughs and closes her folder. I anticipate the words she delivers now will pierce my carefully constructed stoicism. There it is again,
words.
If nothing else, I have come to this moment of clarity: I fear words more than anything. I can find whatever meaning in them I wish, twist them for my own purposes, beat myself up with them, use them as an excuse to drink, to rage against the world, to withdraw from the world. If only others would use the words I want to hear, I’d be happy – but there’s as much chance of me successfully willing Jonah to speak as there is of Emma or my father speaking the words I feel I need. Even if, by some miracle, Dad expresses remorse for my shitty childhood, or Emma begs me to take her back, I would find alternative motives for their words. But, just by looking me straight in the eyes, or inviting some physical contact, in a moment Jonah informs me of his true feeling without words and I believe him. Words become meaningless if you don’t tell your truth and they become weapons if you try to tell someone else theirs. Through his silence, Jonah allows me to listen to him – there is no wall of words to clamber over, no self-defence of the reality of him. I need to follow his example; silence will allow me to evade the internal clamour for regret and retribution. As Emma clears her throat, I try to clear my head.