Shtum (7 page)

‘So that is the tribunal thing you have been spitting at me day and night?’

‘Yes, Dad.’

‘Ben, you find a school like this near Muswell Hill and we’ll talk.’

Dad likes Highgrove Manor, I can tell. He’s laid out the dining table for the first time this millennium and, instead of forking out food from containers on the pan-scarred kitchen table, we’ve been honoured with plates, serving spoons and wine glasses. Jonah refuses to sit with us, preferring to bounce between sofa and table, grabbing handfuls as he goes. Dad seems preoccupied, tutting, sighing, half smiling and teary-eyed as if reminiscing. His melancholy is affecting me, affection for him the result.

‘Tell you what,’ I say, ‘why don’t you take it easy while I clear up and sort Jonah out.’

My voice acts as a hypnotist’s click of the fingers. He blushes as if he’s been caught.

‘No, Benjamin, it is a kind thought, but you have been driving all day. Just clear the table while I take JJ up and we can do the washing-up together after.’

‘Why don’t we both bath Jonah?’

‘No, no, we will be fine.’

I hear the slightest rising tone of panic in his voice, but he is right, I am dog-tired, so I suppress my curiosity. ‘Okay, but let me do the washing-up too, all right?’

‘You know where the tea towels are?’

‘Yes.’

‘The washing-up liquid?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay, but don’t get water everywhere. Come, Jonah, let’s go up for a bath.’

The washing-up takes me thirty minutes, mopping up the kitchen floor another twenty. The bath is obviously over because, as I trudge up the stairs to kiss Jonah goodnight, I make out my father’s voice drifting from Jonah’s bedroom. Curiosity overcomes me, so I take the final few stairs on tiptoe and slide down the adjacent wall where I can sit and listen without being seen.

‘When I was born in 1934 – that’s many, many days ago, my lovely boy – it seemed very good to be a Jew. My father and my mother, Edit, loved me very much and they loved my brother, Jonatan – your great-uncle – too. I worshipped my brother, he was three years older than me, tall and dark with a beaming smile that was always shining on me. But in other ways he was different. Like you, he was a boy of few words. He would often wander off if he wasn’t watched carefully and sometimes got so upset that even I couldn’t calm him down … JJ? Maybe we’ll finish tomorrow?’

I can hear Jonah snoring lightly. Any fleeting affection has gone. A brother? I knew he had parents, it’s a biological certainty, but an older brother? Jonatan? Why could he not have told me? Jonah gets the story, but not me?

I’ve got used to the paranoia of my father’s ‘mistrust’ all my life, chewed on it like pep pills, but now I discover it hasn’t been paranoia, I feel misplaced. A mother in the Arctic and a father who seems incapable of defrosting. Will I have to eavesdrop like a KGB agent every night to find out where I come from? My own personal ‘Book at Bedtime’. I hear the kisses, the soft lullaby and rustling of duvet as Dad tucks him in, and I pad downstairs to the lounge and climb aboard the sofa before he leaves Jonah’s room. Dad comes in and stares at me quizzically.

‘I thought I heard you upstairs,’ he says.

‘Jonah all right?’ I ask, shrugging.

‘He is in bed, he is happy.’

‘Good, thanks for doing that. Well, did he like your story?’

Dad raises his hand to dismiss it. ‘Pass me my
Daily Mirror
.’

I throw it and it falls apart at his feet, but I get no reaction, he just calmly picks up the sheets and neatly puts them back together before sitting down.

‘Am I adopted?’ I spit.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

He turns to the centre double-spread that holds the television listings, where he has ringed various programmes with red pen like he’s chosen horses at a race meeting. It’s the first thing he does in the morning after completing the
Guardian
crossword. He sits in the armchair and flicks on the TV with the remote, silence descends and I cannot be here with this adrenalin coursing through me. I need to find an outlet.

‘I’m popping out.’

‘Do not do it, Ben.’

‘What are you talking about?’ God, does he spy on me into the small hours from his bedroom window?

‘You’ll drive yourself
sedrate
.’

‘I’m just off to get some fags.’

‘If you say so.’

My car knows the route; I’m just a passenger as it accelerates on to the North Circular, heading east for five minutes and then off, toward Wynchgate. Her car’s not there, so I sit in a fog of panic and anger. Ten is late enough on a weeknight; I allow a ten per cent margin for error and Tube delays, but at eleven minutes past, my stomach falls into my arse.

I try to control my breathing, take my own pulse and plot a release of nervous energy through an imagined attack on her hapless passenger. By twenty past I’m talking out loud, shadow boxing, sipping from the flask of whisky warming gently between my thighs. On the half hour, I’m inconsolable, hyperventilating and whimpering.

Then I hear a car, feel its lights silhouette me as it indicates and pulls into her parking spot. When she gets out alone it’s like a shot of heroin. Everything calms, euphoria overcomes me and I watch and wait until she wearily opens the front door and begins to climb the stairs. As the light goes on in the lounge window, I turn the key and pull away. I love her like a junkie loves his dealer and yet I want to catch her in a lie.

Worried

Wynchgate and Carlton NHS Trust
Department of Oncology

Mr G Jewell
14 Oakfield Avenue
London N10 4RG

12 March 2011

Dear Mr Georg Jewell

An appointment has been made for you to attend Wynchgate Hospital on the following date: [3 April 2011]

You will be required to attend the Department of Oncology in the Heston Building (map enclosed) at 10 a.m. Please be advised that the procedure – biopsy of thyroid gland – will be carried out under local anaesthetic, but it is the hospital’s policy that anyone over the age of seventy requiring this procedure is kept overnight for observation.

Keith Waters-Long
Administrator

Jonah’s laughing. He’s been laughing since 4.30 this morning. He laughed while I cleaned him up and bathed him, laughed as I dried and dressed him and now he can’t eat for laughing. I’m not laughing, I’m knackered. It’s Saturday morning, it’s not yet 8 a.m. and the day feels half done already. Dad is showered and shaved and stands by the kitchen door with a grubby canvas holdall in his left hand.

‘I’m going away for the night. Will you be okay?’ he says.

Jonah laughs at him and Dad kisses him on the top of his head and ruffles his hair.

There is something shrunken about him, less straight. His eyes have changed from amber to red.

‘Where are you going?’

The doorbell rings and then I hear a key turn in the lock.

‘What’s going on?’ I ask Dad, before Maurice saunters in.

‘Southend,’ Maurice says. ‘Kalooki tournament.’

‘You hate Kalooki. You hate old Jews. What’s going on, Dad?’ He can be so inscrutable sometimes, most of the time, in fact, but Maurice is an open book. ‘Maurice?’

‘Don’t look at me.’

‘Dad?’

‘It’s nothing.’ There is anger and fear in his voice. ‘Doctor Frankenstein wants a bit of my flesh, that’s all.’

He hands me a sheet of paper with the royal blue NHS logo in the top right-hand corner.

‘A biopsy? You’re having a biopsy today? On your neck?’

‘No, on my
schlung
. Of course on my neck, fool. Once you start with these doctors they are not happy until they have made you ill. It is nothing, I’ll be back tomorrow – and if not, cremate me.’

‘For God’s sake, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Are you a surgeon? No. So what could you do?’

‘I’m coming with you. I’m not a child.’

‘You’ll stay here. It’s a nice day, take JJ to the park. Let him destroy some plants. Maurice is coming with me.’

The doorbell rings again.

‘That will be the cab, Maurice, get the door.’

‘Why did you call a taxi? At least let me drive you there?’

‘You can pick me up tomorrow if you have to. I don’t want to come home to a mess.’

I sit nursing a coffee after they go. Jonah is spinning around in the garden, pulling a pigeon feather to pieces. His clothes are in a pile by the back door and the remnant of a wedge of Cheddar is on the floor by the open fridge.

I stare at Emma’s number on my phone. Already I hear my heart thumping in my ear; with each pressed digit it grows louder. As I stall at the eleventh I feel sick. I press ‘call’ and it takes an eternity to connect, then rings and rings and rings and rings and goes to voicemail and I hang up.

I’m in the back between Jonah and Tom, pretending to share the latter’s obsession with football cards.

‘Just need to pop into Brent Cross to change something,’ Amanda says airily from the passenger seat.

‘Can’t you do it afterwards?’

‘It’ll only take twenty minutes, only John Lewis,’ she says. ‘Johnny’ll park outside, won’t you, darling.’

‘Sure,’ Johnny says.

These simple things, little detours, cause me untold stress. Now all bets are off. ‘If you have to.’

‘We’ll be in the park in half an hour. Promise,’ Amanda says.

I monitor Jonah’s face. So far, so good. His attention is focused on the fur around the collar of his parka. He is plucking and twiddling furiously. As the car comes to a halt in a disabled bay and Johnny releases his seatbelt, Jonah climbs out and grabs my hand like an angel. The only thing predictable about Jonah is his unpredictability.

Johnny grabs a bag from the boot and we troop in after him towards women’s wear.

‘Uncle Ben, can I take Jonah up to the toy department?’ Tom asks.

This is two floors up. Amanda is remonstrating with a sales assistant, Johnny hovering awkwardly behind. ‘Come on, I’ll take you both,’ I say.

I study them standing next to each other on the escalator. Jonah is taller, his hair longer, his fingers squeezing and rubbing the handrail. Tom looks up at him, talking incessantly, desperate for a reaction. They were born three days apart, Jonah the older. Johnny and I had plans for both of them, they were to be best friends or else and Tom has kept his side of the bargain. He never leaves Jonah out, always invites him to his birthday parties, is always excited to see him. Tom wants a friendship with Jonah like Johnny and I have. So do I.

Toys share the second floor with technology, so while I keep one eye on Jonah and Tom, I investigate the latest gadgetry. Jonah joins me, fascinated by the colourful movements of a laptop screensaver. I reach for his hand and hold it gently. My phone rings.

‘We’re done, where are you?’

‘Upstairs, with the boys. I’ll bring them down.’

‘Okay, see you in a minute.’

I reach for Jonah’s hand again, but it’s gone. I can see Tom’s head above a display of Star Wars figures and wander over, assuming Jonah is with him.

He is not.

‘Tom, where’s Jonah?’

‘He was with you.’

I scan the floor on tiptoes, holding back the sickening panic with imagined sightings of his long, tousled hair. My feet begin to move, carrying me forward, up and down aisles in expectation of relief.

‘Uncle Ben, where is he?’

There’s panic in Tom’s voice. ‘I don’t know. Tom, go and get your mum and dad for me, please. Now.’

He runs off down the escalator as I collar a besuited floor-walker, but as I try to explain, my words come out like a stroke victim’s – confused, disordered.

‘My son is missing, he’s autistic, doesn’t speak, no sense of danger.’

Then Johnny is standing above me. My legs have succumbed first and I sit, cross-legged, on the floor waiting to be saved. I wish Emma was here. My hearing goes sub-aqua, cries of ‘Jonah’ reach me slowly, I am set apart. Amanda sits next to me and puts both arms round me.

‘Sir, please don’t worry, we have well-rehearsed systems for this.’

Men with walkie-talkies appear above the water line, I feel hands lift me to standing and lower me into a chair. Tom sits next to me, he’s crying. Johnny is describing Jonah; his description is broadcast across the shopping centre.

‘We post staff at every exit, he won’t be able to leave the centre.’

Johnny puts a reassuring hand on my shoulder. I should be running, sprinting up and down the walkways, shouting his name, screaming at the top of my voice, but I’m frozen because my mind has created scenarios too hideous to live with. He is vulnerable, too vulnerable, so vulnerable. My breath won’t escape, it catches in my throat. I am sobbing and will wail, I feel it in my diaphragm; in the reptilian core of me something is building that will shatter glass and level buildings.

My eyes fix on the up escalator. It reveals head after head; body after body. Each stranger’s face is ugly to me, contorted, devilish and mocking.

‘Ben, don’t worry, they’ll find him,’ Amanda whispers to me.

Tom has burrowed into Johnny’s midriff.

The heads of two women appear inch by inch from the escalator and, as their uniformed torsos rise into view, so does a scruffy mane standing between them, one hand held, the other gripping a bright-red cone.

Johnny tells me later they found him in McDonald’s. As the relief at Jonah’s safe return takes over, I hear nothing.

Amanda and I sit on the bench while Tom and Johnny try valiantly to engage Jonah in duck feeding. Her legs stretch way beyond mine and her near-black corkscrew curls cover her eyes and tickle her nose in the breeze.
Different looking
, that’s how Emma describes her. Different looking and striking. Tom tears chunks of bread from the loaf in its plastic bag and hands them to Jonah and Jonah eats them himself. I admire Tom’s devotion. I know this park is a little boring for him now, the playground’s brightly coloured apparatus unchallenging and the swings too low for his feet to clear the ground, but his presence feeds my illusion of Jonah having friends, of maybe one day kicking a football back and forth. There will come a time, I accept, when even Tom will become frustrated with Jonah’s insouciance and visits will become a duty, like a visit to a younger cousin or – and the thought makes me shudder – to an aged uncle.

‘Have you stopped shaking yet?’ Amanda asks.

‘Just about. I could murder a drink.’

‘He’s fine, Ben. Look at him, doesn’t even know there was a fuss.’

‘I feel like a criminal.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, it happens all the time,’ she says.

‘It’s never happened when he’s been with me before. Anything could have happened.’

‘But it didn’t.’

Amanda offers me a cigarette and I take one and light them both.

I feel so raw, that even this gesture of friendship threatens to bring on the waterworks.

‘Why wasn’t she here with us, Amanda? She should be here.’

‘Ben, I know you’re angry and confused …’

‘So unconfuse me.’

Amanda draws on her cigarette. ‘I’m not condoning the way she’s behaving, Ben, but she loves Jonah.’

‘Then, why?’

‘You have to allow her some time,’ Amanda says. ‘You’ve both been living in a pressure cooker for so long, one of you was bound to explode. If you ask me, you both have.’

‘I haven’t,’ I say.

‘Oh no? I’ve known you since you were sixteen, remember.’

She pauses as we both pull on our cigarettes.

‘Do you know when I first realised you were in trouble, Ben? With the booze,’ she continues.

I shake my head.

‘You phoned to speak to Johnny and got me, about six months after you joined your dad’s business. You were sitting in the car park at Ikea and you dared me to guess what you were doing.’

‘And what was I doing?’

‘You were working your way through a pack of assorted-flavoured miniature vodkas and you thought it was hilarious.’

At the time, it was. ‘I remember now. I went to buy some children’s furniture.’

‘It was ten in the morning,’ Amanda points out.

I pause to light another cigarette, exhale and turn my face from her. ‘Bad days,’ I say.

‘Yes, bad days,’ she says, ‘And not just for you. Ben, I love you, but you take some looking after. I warned Emma when you first got together, I warned her.’

‘Thanks,’ I mutter.

‘No, really,’ Amanda says. ‘I told her then if she expected the next Bill Gates, she’d be sorely disappointed. She said you made her laugh and you were kind.’

‘Amanda, were we ever right for each other?’

‘Life takes over, Ben. Let’s be honest, you’ve not exactly excelled yourself in the responsibility stakes.’

I wince and she strokes my cheek.

‘And then, of course, that wonderful lump called Jonah came along and you made Emma suffer for your own misplaced guilt. Give her some space, Ben. Emma’s been shouldering the burden for too long. I know it’s hard to hear this from me, but step up! Johnny and I will always be here to help you.’

I stare at my feet.

She asks, ‘We still okay?’

Johnny arrives, puffing, with the boys following behind.

‘So what’s with your dad?’ Johnny asks.

‘It’s a biopsy of a lump in his neck.’

‘Probably nothing, usually is,’ he says.

‘Mmm. They might even strike oil.’

‘Or sulphuric acid. He’s a tough old bastard, your dad.’

‘Uncle Ben,’ Tom calls, ‘Jonah’s off to the café.’

I begin to sprint after him, but Johnny stops me.

‘Go with him, Tom, there’s a good lad.’

‘But I haven’t got any money on me.’

‘It’s all right, Jonah’s got a tab,’ I say. ‘Just ask Marie to keep a note and I’ll pay her later – and have what you want for yourself.’

‘Okay.’

I watch them safely into the little single-storey building and keep staring at the door.

‘Seriously though, Ben, your dad’s made of Kevlar. It’s probably just a glandular thing,’ Johnny says.

‘Probably, yeah.’

I’d boxed up the feelings of last night, but this talk of my dad has unwrapped them. I watch the reflections of the willows on the surface of the lake, how they change as the sun burns through the light clouds. Focusing on the water is meditation, Jonah does it sometimes too. I sense that Dad is ill, or is it just my natural pessimism? I think it’s normal to imagine your reactions to a loved one’s death, rehearsing the stoicism, identifying who’ll be there to support you.

‘And how are you doing?’

I blow out a ‘fine’ with my first exhale.

‘And your mum, does she know?’

‘That’s all I need. No, I don’t even know where she is. Scandinavia or somewhere, apparently.’

‘Emma’s mum and dad?’

‘Murray and Evelyn? I don’t know. They only leave Florida if someone dies.’

‘And the tribunal?’

‘Still need Dad to cough up the money.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Yep.’

‘What about you?’

‘You mean apart from the bollocking your wife just gave me?’

‘Ben—’ Amanda objects, as I pull her head to me and kiss her on the forehead.

The boys are strolling back down the hill from the café, Jonah in front eating an apple, Tom following with gaudy orange ice lolly stuck to his mouth.

‘Me? What do I matter? It’s not in my hands, is it? Dad decides whether we fight the tribunal, because I haven’t got a pot to piss in. Emma seems to have gone AWOL, as you know. I haven’t seen or spoken to anyone but you in ages. If we don’t fight or fight and lose, the rest of my life is dictated by the bowel movements, sleeping pattern and aggressive mood swings of my son; if we win, my son leaves home at the age of eleven probably never to return, I’ll owe my dad for life and I’ll be alone and homeless.’