Shtum (8 page)

‘Could be worse.’

‘How do you figure that?’

‘You could be a balding middle-aged Jew with a failing business and marriage, and a cock the size of a button mushroom.’

‘Where would I be without your pep talks?’

‘Uncle Ben, Uncle Ben! Can we go to the playground?’

Jonah’s already taken off. Not to the nearest spring-loaded gate, but to the one on the other side of the red circle of railings that encompasses the playground. He always does this, he seems to miss the connection between opening the nearer gate and the apparatus inside. It’s like his memory can’t handle binary solutions, as if he’ll only gain the sensation he’s after through one definite action. I can still see him trotting round awkwardly with his hands in the air.

‘Come on,’ I say to Johnny and Amanda, ‘let’s go with.’

Tom swings next to Jonah, but they could be in separate playgrounds. I move to sit next to Jonah, but as I do he’s up and off to the slide. He climbs to the top and stops, blocking the path of the children behind him. Eventually, he backs up to the steps and tentatively makes his way down again. He never goes down the slide.

‘Uncle Ben, I’m really sorry.’

‘Sorry for what, Tom?’

He starts to cry, so I kneel in front of him and place my hands on his thighs.

‘I should have watched him when we went to the toys, I’m so sorry …’

‘Tommy, it wasn’t your fault. You mustn’t feel guilty.’

‘But he’s my best friend and I let him down.’

‘You’re not responsible for Jonah, Tom.’

‘But he can’t talk, so I have to talk for him. I’m trying to teach him, though, Uncle Ben, so that we can go to the same school next year.’

‘Tom, I …’

Amanda is behind me and takes over. ‘Tommy, Jonah’s going to a wonderful school where they’ll teach him all he needs to know, but you’ll always be his best friend, okay? So come, give Uncle Ben a hug.’

It feels strange to have a ten-year-old hug me back.

Last night I rehearsed for the worst, but this morning, Dad comes through the automatic doors clutching his bag like a returning package tourist. He has a large dressing on the side of his neck. Jonah bounces and smiles when he sees him. He lets me take his bag and we walk silently to the car and climb in.

‘Feeling okay then?’

There is silence as we leave the hospital grounds.

‘Well?’ I ask.

‘Well what?’

‘What did the doctor say?’

‘Didn’t say anything, just stuck a needle in my neck and made me wear a nightie with my
tochas
hanging out,’ says Dad.

‘What did they find?’

‘Have to wait for cytology, histology or something.’

‘But were they concerned?’ I ask.

‘Why should they be concerned? I’m the one they stuck the needle into. I’m starving, you can’t eat the food in there, take me somewhere for lunch.’

‘Wouldn’t you rather go home and rest up?’

‘I’ve been lying down for two days and I’m hollow, I need food. Let’s go.’

Of all places, he chooses Goldberg’s, on a Sunday, at lunchtime. The tables are packed so tightly together they almost have to hoist the customers into their seats by crane – and the noise is insufferable. This is the place to go to air your resentments and hope that the person you resent is at the next table. It’s where the waiters – all ancient and Greek and freelance – are taught to grimace, spill soup, crack bad jokes and pinch the cheeks of fat grandchildren, a little too hard.

But he wants salt beef – nuclear pink and cut like boot leather – oil-oozing latkes, pickled cucumbers, borscht and, most significantly, an argument, a loud argument with plenty of finger pointing. This is a restaurant that keeps an ambulance on constant standby.

‘I’m not sure this is the place for Jonah,’ I say.

We are queuing. Jonah doesn’t understand the concept. ‘Dad, he’s going to flip if we stand here much longer, can’t we go somewhere else?’

Dad looks down at Jonah, who has his hand in a death grip. ‘Maybe you’re right. You can make me a sandwich at home.’

But all at once, bentwood chairs are hoisted into the air. ‘Here we go. Follow those,’ says Dad, squeezing between two tables where a gap doesn’t exist. ‘Just hang on.’

‘Hey, control the little
shmerel
!’

I look down at Jonah, who’s wedged between Dad and me, munching on a fist full of someone else’s salt beef. Then he grimaces, spits out his mouthful, dumps the rest back on its owner’s plate and grabs a neighbouring latke.

‘What is this? The kid’s a pig, a pig.’

Dad turns round and pokes the finger. ‘That’s my grandson,
shmock
.’ He waves his hand in the air and catches the eye of a waiter. ‘Over here. Another plate of salt beef and latkes for the
Yiddische
Kojak. Happy?’

‘Dad, let’s go.’ News of Jonah’s latke larceny has spread like a virus.

‘Our table’s ready,’ Dad says.

‘I’m not hungry any more.’

‘Did you just come out of hospital? Sit down, you’ll eat.’

The table is tiny and round and I grab Jonah’s hips to manoeuvre him into the chair. Through his jogging bottoms I can feel the curve of his arse cheeks. I shouldn’t be able to feel his arse cheeks. In the rush to leave the house to pick Dad up from the hospital, I have forgotten to put a nappy on him and I didn’t grab his changing bag. The best I can hope for is a piss. I go hot and cold.

‘Dad, can you ask the waiter for some serviettes?’

‘Here, there are napkins on the table.’

‘No, I need serviettes, paper napkins, lots of them, or kitchen roll, toilet paper, anything.’ I’d go to the toilet myself, but I can’t move. ‘Please.’

He looks at me and closes his eyes, contemptuously, then summons the waiter and whispers in his ear. The waiter rushes off.

‘How could you?’ Dad spits.

‘I was worried about you,’ I say.

‘Useless,’ he says. ‘A simple bag of things for him you can’t remember.’

The waiter returns with a roll of kitchen towel. It is impossible not to draw attention to the process, as I tear single sheets from it and form a multi-layered pad, coax Jonah off his chair and push the hastily constructed pad down the back of his joggers and between his legs.

‘How could you humiliate him like that?’

‘I’m sorry, I was in a rush.’

‘Benjamin …’

That’s all he manages. His chin is on his chest. The use of my full name wounds, deeply. It’s a childhood admonishment, an expression of the deepest disappointment. Not anger – that is defendable – but a real, winding, draining dismissal that corrodes my soul. It’s a hideous realisation that I still care.

And then the smell.

And the darkening stain.

And the two hundred raised noses.

And the heaving.

And the rushing waiters.

And the struggle with Jonah’s exploring hands.

And the smearing.

And the frantic wiping.

And the parting of tables like the Red Sea.

And the shame.

The fucking shame.

And the dressing on his neck.

And the panic of what if?

And the silent drive home.

And the only words he utters before retiring to his bedroom with a sigh: ‘You pay. You’re his father. I gave you the business, Ben, make it pay. If this is truly what you want for your son – work for it. Now bath him, properly.’

I have been in disgrace all week, wandering between the pub, the warehouse and home.

It’s Friday and I’m at my catering-equipment-hire empire. I spend the morning daydreaming. For the first time I’m glad that hours of washing-up need to be done. It feels therapeutic, the repetition of cloth on wine glass, watching steam rise from white china plates. Valentine stands opposite me mirroring my movements. He doesn’t like to talk – doesn’t like me – so it suits us both to keep our own counsel.

The phone rings.

‘Jewell Catering Hire.’

‘May I speak to Mr Ben Jewell, please?’

‘Speaking, how can I help you?’

‘This is Valetta Price’s secretary. I know it’s short notice but Ms Price has a cancellation at four p.m. today …’

‘I’ll be there.’

Valentine stops glass polishing. ‘You leaving?’ he asks me after I hang up.

‘Yes, need to see my barrister about Jonah.’

He kisses his teeth. ‘Deliveries, you know.’

‘You can do them, Valentine.’

He puts the glass down and stares at me. ‘Aren’t you gonna do some? Can’t do them all by myself.’

‘Look, it’s fine, I’ve already routed them for you …’

‘Too many drops, won’t be finished by six.’

‘Valentine, can’t you just do an extra couple of hours, please? I’ll pay you extra.’

‘What do you think I’ve been doing all these weeks?’ he asks.

‘I’ve been busy.’

‘I know, in the pub.’

‘Now listen—’

‘No you listen, I’m sick of this.’

I put my hand to my forehead. ‘Look, just do as many as you can and I’ll cancel the rest.’

Valentine goes back to his glasses and drops his gaze. ‘Okay,’ he says.

How much?

HIGHGROVE MANOR SCHOOL

FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS WITH AUTISM

Highgrove Lane, Highgrove, Oxfordshire OX7 3RG

24 March 2011

Dear Mr Jewell

Having assessed Jonah, both in his present school and here at Highgrove Manor, I am delighted to inform you we are confident we can meet Jonah’s needs and have therefore reserved a place for him, subject to the successful outcome of his planned educational tribunal.

I wish you luck and look forward to Jonah joining us here in September.

Kindest regards

Susan Atwater
Director of Education

Lincoln’s Inn Field. In a former life, one with aspirations and arrogance, I worked five minutes from here as a marketing assistant. In those days, the hideous recession of the early nineties, the perimeter was choked by multi-coloured one-person tents like bunting and hastily built cardboard shacks in a bizarre pastiche of a rock festival. Right in the heart of London’s legal grandeur, the homeless had set up home. It was an affront to the pinstriped barristers who treated the field as their private garden, and when the tennis courts on which they played their lunchtime sets became out of bounds, it was the final straw. One day the tents were there, the next they were gone, the park’s gate chained and the rats moved in. The barristers’ preference for rodents over people has always amused me.

It’s back to its immaculate, manicured splendour now as I stroll through it on the way to the Lloyd Chambers to meet Jonah’s prospective barrister, Ms Valetta Price. Barristers don’t like to advertise, it seems, for each grand door off the quadrangle is identical and each building’s occupants denoted by postcard-sized brass plaques. I walk all four corners and am sweaty before I stumble on the inscription ‘Ms Valetta Price’ by chance and with relief.

The reception area is surprisingly modern, not at all Rumpole, all shining oak veneer and black leather. I am led down a hallway to an open oak-effect door and ushered through into an equally ascetic office. The desk is pale and huge; Valetta Price small and dark behind it. Her hair is cut in a severe pudding bowl and it’s clear from the off that she takes no prisoners.

‘You’re from Malta, then?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Valetta, the Maltese city?’

‘Shall we start again, Mr Jewell? Jonah?’

‘Yes, of course.’

Valetta Price is recommended for her tenacity, I keep reminding myself. She is leafing through the folder her assistant asked me to prepare on Jonah when I first contacted her, and it irks me that she hasn’t read it before.

‘Are you fully aware of what you are letting yourself in for?’

I am beginning to wonder.

‘Well, I know it’s going to be expensive.’

‘This session’s for free, but it’s the one and only – so it’s only fair I provide you with the worst-case scenario.’

‘I’ve experienced a few of those …’

‘Indeed. If you are one hundred per cent committed to gaining a place at the residential school then you will do exactly as I say, have Jonah seen by all the experts I name and be ready for a fight.’

‘Would you like to see a picture of Jonah?’

‘No, thank you. You need to understand this case is not personal to me and you cannot take anything personally, either. Do not expect the local authority to lie down and roll over, they won’t. There is nothing in what you have sent me here that suggests that for one second. The burden of evidence lies with us, Mr Jewell, this is not a “guilty, not guilty” scenario, because the local authority – which is?’

‘Wynchgate.’

‘Oh, how lovely.’

I try my hardest to detect even a jot of sincerity in her tone.

‘Wynchgate, as I was saying, only have to prove that Maureen Mitchell is
appropriate
for Jonah.’

‘Which it clearly isn’t.’

She pulls down a book from the shelf behind her desk. Licks her thumb and opens it toward the front and starts leafing through.

‘Appropriate:
Suitable, fitting, apt, proper, right, correct, applicable
. Appropriate, in legal terms is not definitive – it’s woolly, general, vague.’

She raises her eyes and tasers me.

‘And therefore buggeringly hard to prove. Why do you think they chose that word?’

‘So it’s a fix.’

‘No,’ she states and leans back in her upholstered chair, placing her hands behind her head. ‘Not a fix, more a term alighted upon by the legal equivalent of an insurance actuary. He or she knows they will win some and lose some, but has to pitch their premiums at the right level to maintain a positive balance sheet by attracting the right number of clients. It’s quite clever really.’

‘A fucking outrage is what it is.’

‘Remove the outrage, Mr Jewell. That’s why you’re here.’

‘No, I’m here to provide the best possible future for my son and so my wife and I can finally share a home again.’

‘That’s not something I can help you with, I’m afraid.’

‘But the fact we’re apart will help Jonah’s case, won’t it?’

‘Not in the least, Mr Jewell. This is about Jonah’s education only. Your home situation is a social services issue, therefore immaterial. Divorce law is not my speciality, although I could point you in the right direction. Mr Jewell, are you still with me?’

‘Immaterial? I’m sorry but you’re wrong.’

‘Excuse me.’

‘My wife has taken advice on this. Being a single father is one of the commonalities of successful appeals. We’ve been living apart for two months on the basis of—’

‘I’m sorry, but I think she’s been badly advised. Maybe you should phone her and tell her to come home. Mr Jewell?’

Valetta’s look is knowing, the sympathy ersatz.

What kind of an expert has Emma been speaking to? This whole charade, avoidable. How could Emma not know, how could …? I am in agony.

‘Will you excuse me for a second, Ms Price? I need to visit the gents.’ I don’t wait for a reply. I tunnel through the corridor and out into the sobering air. I am sweating and nauseous – staggering between the homicidal embraces of humiliation and rage, I dial her number. Answerphone. I dial her number again, blocking my caller ID. Answerphone. I call her office: she’s not in. I call home: answerphone. Her mobile again: answerphone. Message: ‘Fucking phone me back, please. Why did you lie to me? All that shit about single parents, commonalities. Shit! And don’t try and pretend you didn’t know, you’re a fucking lawyer. You’ve made a right dick of me. Why, Emma? This bollocks is over now, do you understand?’

I end the call, yet part of me wants to take the message back, or send another, placatory and grovelling – which only increases the cycle of rage and humiliation. I breathe in deeply as if I’m about to dive underwater, release the air and repeat and repeat, massage my neck. Back inside the building I splash water on my face, pat down my hair and draw from my hip flask. Jonah, I remind myself, this is for Jonah.

Back in Valetta’s office, my cup vibrates in my hand. I try to put it down but tea sloshes on to the desk. I’ll do anything to get out of here right now. I repeat ‘Jonah, Jonah’ in my head as a mantra and feign control.

‘Thank you for the offer, but I don’t need a divorce lawyer, we will be back together soon.’

‘Well, good for you,’ Valetta says, nonchalantly. ‘But let’s concentrate on Jonah, shall we? I’ve already told you, should I be engaged by your solicitors, that will be my job.’

‘I don’t have a solicitor.’ Another blinding piece of ignorance.

‘Then you should use these.’

She passes me a glossy A5 folder, with a business card stapled to the top right-hand corner.

‘Curran and Partners, Manchester? How am I supposed to travel up there?’

‘You won’t. Everything will be done via phone and email. Shall I phone them for you now?’

She begins dialling before I open my mouth. Whatever Valetta Price says, I’ll say yes to. I feel my will ebbing away as all the anger makes a U-turn and bears down on me. I want to punish myself, sink into a bath of vodka and scrub myself with wire wool. Obliterate myself, feel nothing. Force everyone away from me, care about nothing and have no one care about me.

‘Georgia, hi, yes good thanks. Have a potential client, an autism Part 4 placement. I know it’s a bit late in the day, but …’

Now I’m sitting forward on my chair clasping my sweaty hands together. Late?

‘Yes, I’ll pass him over now.’

She thrusts the receiver at me.

‘Hello?’ I say.

‘Hi, Mr Jewell. This is Georgia Stone here at Curran. Valetta is going to get your paperwork copied and emailed to me now. Really, you should have started this process last year, but don’t fret, we could still make it by July the thirtieth if we gather everything we need and can get a tribunal date that suits everyone. Mr Jewell?’

Georgia sounds young and disarmingly sympathetic.

‘Yes, I’m listening.’

‘Okay. Do you have any questions?’

‘What happens if we don’t get a date before July the thirtieth?’

‘Then unfortunately we’ll have to aim for a date in September when – thankfully – things are a lot quieter, and Jonah will have to remain out of school until the tribunal has been held and the result delivered.’

I’m doing the computation in my head: that’s six weeks of summer holiday, plus probably the whole of September. That’s ten or eleven weeks, alone with Jonah and Dad. No. Emma will have to have Jonah for some of the time now.

‘We have to get into this session. It’s a must.’

‘We’ll all do our best for you, Mr Jewell. But the quicker we start the more chance we have. Would you like me to advise you of our terms?’

‘Yes, I suppose you better had. No, wait, wait a second! What is the overall cost likely to be?’

‘They average at around twenty-five thousand pounds. It depends on the local authority, time required by ourselves and Valetta, expert witnesses, etc., but it should be no more than thirty thousand. Mr Jewell?’

No more than thirty grand! Which planet … ‘Yes, I’m listening.’

‘Our terms?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘We require an initial deposit of ten thousand pounds and a monthly standing order of five hundred pounds that will be held in your client account. I could get the ball rolling now if …’

Now this I haven’t planned for either. Sickened, I pull out my wallet and check through my credit cards. Could any of them possibly pass muster at credit control – the business credit card definitely won’t. I may have to call Johnny, if all else …

‘Do you take credit cards?’

‘Certainly. Is it a Visa?’

‘Three of them are.’

Valetta takes the phone from my sweaty palm, as I wait for the sugary-sweet excuses of dodgy card readers and downed internet for my cards being spat back like a dose of poison.

‘So, Mr Jewell, all systems go then.’

I laugh at the shock of it. ‘They went through, all eight of them.’

‘It appears that way.’ She passes me a sheet of paper.

‘These are the experts I need to have see Jonah. Some will need to observe him at school and at home, but they will advise you of that. Again, we have had a bit of a false start so need to catch up and, as these names are the best, they’re probably booked up by now. I would begin phoning as soon as you get home and tell them I’m acting on your behalf. If they tell you they have no availability, refer them back to me. Any last questions?’ she says, glancing at her watch. ‘Okay, then I’ll see you at the tribunal. Oh, and by the way, the experts will invoice you separately.’

‘Of course they will.’

She shakes my hand limply and I’m back in the courtyard without a memory of leaving the building. Somehow I feel I’ve just been sold a timeshare or joined the Church of Scientology.

Outside, I find a bench and slump down on to it.
Commonalities
, that’s what she said. Being a single father would greatly help Jonah’s case. I am bored of this sick feeling, this weird haunting ectoplasm that engulfs me the further from Emma I move. Is it possible her colleague was wrong, or misled?

It’s only been a couple of months and I’m having trouble summoning the sound of her voice – how can things decay so quickly? How can my senses and memories have such a short half-life? Should I phone her again and give her the ‘good news’, that Jonah and I can come home? Pretend I do not question her motives? Maybe Jonah and I should just move back into the flat, buy some balloons and cupcakes, a bottle of wine? Surprise her? Yes, won’t that surprise her.