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Uranus

THE SUNRISE ACADEMY

Autism Accredited School

Mr B Jewell

Flat 4, 97 Rutland Road

London N24 3RS

25 July 2011

Dear Mr Jewell

Based on the current evidence, Jonah will be offered a residential placement starting from September 2011, on a standard package reviewed during the first six-months assessment.

Yours truly,

Julia Makarova

Lead Psychologist

120 Hopewell Lane

Hopewell

London SE32 9DX

So here I sit at the dining table the night before battle. In front of me lie eighteen inches of A4 paper, binders, wallets, folders, emails – £24,000 worth of words that could mean nothing by this time tomorrow night. An unauthorised biography of Jonah, of God only knows how many words, certainly more than the Bible. All this for one not so little boy who couldn’t give a shit what anyone else thinks.

All that money, the price of a terraced house in Sunderland, has bought me just one episode of
LA Law
. Whatever the outcome, I can’t claim any costs back; however thin the council’s argument – and its pile is anorexic by comparison – not a bean will come back my way. But at this moment, just like Jonah, I couldn’t give a fuck.

I’ve already fantasised about occupying the council offices should the worst happen. The truth is that I can’t afford the second appeal I’d be entitled to, so this is Jonah’s golden shot, the last arrow left, bullseye or bust.

This is a racket, a gravy train, a lot of people are making a lot of money off the back of my son – I recognised this months ago – but again, I am entering willingly. I am, I suppose, an independent expert on fucking up marriages and businesses – but I don’t see anyone employing me at a thousand pounds a day to advise them.

I think what I find most difficult – as I begin scanning the reports on Jonah for the last time – is that the local authorities don’t recognise this, or worse still, they do and have some geeky maths turd in a back office somewhere telling them it’s still better value than treating a vulnerable child correctly – all vulnerable children correctly. That’s what I hate the most about this process, the selfishness it forces on me. At this point, I’m not thinking of Jonah’s classmates at Roysten Glen, many, if not all of them, as bad as Jonah. It’s hard to admit that I don’t give a shit about them. Some of them have existed in space and time with Jonah for six years. But they’ve ignored him, as he they, apart from the odd physical attack. I don’t know them, couldn’t tell you their names, or the names of their parents, and they’ll all be off to Maureen Mitchell for another seven years’ babysitting until it becomes adult services’ problem.

Whatever others may think, Jonah’s tribunal and his possible victory is only for those with the capacity for all-out war, for those with the acceptance and knowledge of their children’s true condition, and those who have the requisite cynicism to identify officialdom’s true strategy: divide and conquer. What could be an easier enemy to defeat, a community to corral and pacify, than those who lack the basic skills to interact with each other? Autistic children have no field radios, not even the antennae.

I sit at the dining table with a whisky next to me and keep scanning. These pages are my son’s behaviour writ large, acceptable exaggeration in the face of enemy disinformation. And tomorrow I will hear this argued over. I will sit there, hands clasping the sides of the chair, no doubt listening to a justification of incompetence, the description of my living, breathing, loving son in terms of ‘scales’ and ‘cognitive age’ and ‘levels of continence’. I will also have to listen to the truth and bury deep the yearning to jump up and punch the opposing barrister in the face.

I feel the anticipation rising, I imagine my last meal with Jonah, my life alone, and out comes the exhaustion and fear. I have spent the best part of a year hammering away at the walls that keep my son at home, close to me, while in my heart I’d rather have been building watchtowers and laying barbed-wire. What the fuck is that all about? I see no prospect on the horizon other than solitude. I feel such bitterness. If I believed in a god, I’d be railing at him daily.

My mother has hardly entered my thoughts at all, but occasionally – as now – one of her bloody platitudes arrives like a neon sign: Growth Through Pain. ‘Thank you, Myra, and fuck off,’ I say to myself.

She walked out and left me, left us, and yet all I wanted was the opportunity to be the kind of parent I never had. And the only way to be that now is by letting my son go. Of all the fucking ironies. It seems so Victorian, so unenlightened and punishing, so personal. There are moments when I feel so unneeded that a quick morphine high followed by a swift death seems logical and appropriate. Growth through pain? Yeah, right.

Whack! Dad slaps a notebook on to the table next to me as he lowers himself tentatively into a chair.

Why are you crying?

The cancer has finally pilfered his vocal cords and he’s taken to pad and pen. Conversation is laborious and irritating – even more irritating than normal.

‘Have you read these? It’s hard to see Jonah in black and white like this.’

Why read them then? it makes no sense to me. Who are you crying for? What do you think these words are? They are nothing. Listen carefully to me, just for once, sit quietly without that pitiful look on your face and listen.

He puts his hand up to stop me and carries on scribbling. It takes a minute.

Words are just shapes, one squiggle after another. And you think people are so clever to use them this way and that way; stitch them together and shoot them like bullets and watch them wound or caress, hurt or disgust?

The hand again. This is torture.

Then more scribbling and it’s thrust at me once more.

Let me tell you, I have heard enough words to last me this lifetime – words in Hungarian, in German, in French, in Dutch, in English, in Yiddish. So I have enough. Did I understand all of them? No. And I’ll tell you why: because I’m deaf to anything I don’t want to hear and most of what I’ve heard in my seventy-eight years is other idiots like me using words to tell other idiots what they want by using words that mean the opposite of what they truly mean. Are you following me?

I shake my head and he snatches back the pad. He writes more slowly, he is getting tired.

Still no? Because you’re an idiot too. How many words do the Eskimo or Inuit or whatever they’re called this week have for snow? Thirty-two or so. Idiots! Move somewhere warmer and have done. The Japanese and Chinese waste their time drawing pictures – ach, no! Not pictures, pictograms, because one word isn’t enough. Maurice speaks five languages and he’s the biggest fool I know. Spent his whole life making shmutter dresses for fat women who think they’re ‘voluptuous’, or ‘zaftig’.

This time he bats my hand away in frustration and continues to scribble.

That Rosetta Stone – they should have smashed it up, saved us all the trouble of understanding what any of those ancient shmocks didn’t mean. Your Ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Sumerians, they are laughing at us. And don’t get me started on the Bible.

You and your words, Ben. What are you today? Devastated? Bereft? Heartbroken? Broken? Melancholy? Distraught? Does it matter? Why on earth do we need all these words – especially you – when you can be described by just two of them: self-pity. There, I even gave you a hyphen for free.

It’s not words. It’s not words. It’s actions. But you don’t see with your eyes, like every other fool you see with your ears. You heard love from Emma, you heard devotion from Emma, you heard yourself tell yourself that you love Emma, but what did you see? What did you do?

‘You know nothing about my marriage.’

He scribbles.

You think so? Why? Because I never interfered?

‘Because you didn’t care.’

He scribbles.

Because it wouldn’t have mattered.

‘You never liked her.’

He scribbles.

Not true.

‘Then what? You pitied her for marrying me?’

He scribbles.

No, I like Emma. But you, I have watched you for thirty-seven years and you have never finished or taken responsibility for anything. Even as a child you would never wipe your tochas properly. If you crapped in your nappy you would deny it was you. Never a jigsaw, a game, a model, your homework. You are not a finisher.

‘I’m sorry I am such a disappointment.’

Here he is again with the self-pity. You are not a disappointment, you are a positive reminder.

‘Of what?’

Of the utter pointlessness of expectations.

‘So you had no expectations for me?’

Not one. So how could I be disappointed? But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.

‘Then I’m confused. Why are you so opposed to the possibility of Jonah going away?’

Dad pauses and looks at me, his eyes bloodshot, his pen hovering.

Look at that pile of paperwork in front of you again. Tell me, what does it represent to you?

‘Jonah, you know that,’ I say immediately.

Nothing else?

‘Oh fuck off with your quizzes, please, Dad. So what else does it represent then? Half a rainforest?’

It represents YOU, Benjamin, and your love for your son. All that paper? Your determination, your single-mindedness. This whole thing was never about convincing me, it was about convincing yourself that you can decide on something and see it through to the end whatever happens.

I was wrong to say that you never finish anything, you have finished this and I’m proud of you. Now you must tell the Gansa Macha lawyers to win so I can go with visions of my JJ skipping around that beautiful school, laughing.

I can’t identify
all
the feelings, but these tears are of relief and regret. Relief that I have finally seen him as a father and regret that it should come so late and at such a price. He is still scribbling furiously and it’s difficult to read through the water, so I wipe my eyes with my sleeve. There is the pad and a separate leaf lying next to my elbow.

Here
is all the pad says. But the other cream-coloured note is made out to Mr B Jewell. It is a cheque for £40,000. Elation? Yes, but still the shame that I couldn’t have written the cheque myself. I have his agreement, it’s worth more than money, it justifies everything I’ve done. Now he is with me, I can be right.

‘Thank you,’ I say, leaving the table to sit near to him on the sofa. We both stare at the silent TV screen and I lean across and squeeze his hand and, in this new era of Glasnost, I chance another question.

‘Dad, why tell Jonah your life story, my history, when you’ve always refused to share even a speck of it with me?’

He stands, shuffles to the sideboard and returns with two brandies, his with plenty of water. Then he sits and grabs the pad.

You didn’t need to know. I have protected you from my agonies as best I could.

‘But you gave me no choice?’

He ponders, takes a sip and scribbles

Be patient.

It is a full stop.

‘Come on, it’s one o’clock, we should go to bed. How are you feeling?’

Scribble.

Tired, sore.

Then a virtually inaudible croak creeps up from deep inside him. I can see the effort on his face as he speaks.

‘Nu? Jonah, did we wake you? Come and sit with us,’ says Dad.

Jonah’s waiting hopefully at the door. So we sit, three generations of Jewell men around a fat, dark, ugly oak table – a séance of silence. Dad and I simultaneously reach for one of Jonah’s hands, but we don’t complete the circle with our own, as if it would release something too powerful – like love. I can’t resist pushing him, just once more tonight.

‘He’s the last Jewell, you know, Dad, that’s the end of the line. No more. It’s sad.’

He reverts to his pad, his voice now nothing but fetid air, and with his free hand writes:

Peh! I changed it from Friedman in 1945, but you know that anyway, from all your eavesdropping, so what‘s the difference?

‘I guess I should thank you for that morsel at least.’ I have so many questions, but I’m tired, nervous and panicky. I’ll save them for after the tribunal, I think. I need an hour alone now to prepare myself and what I need to say tomorrow, to calm down before I try to sleep.

Jonah frees his hands and picks up the crystal paperweight, summoning the colours like a wizard, while I try to summon the courage to study my father’s grotesque neck, ignoring its pus-yellow colour like a coward.

‘I’ll change him,’ I yawn, ‘but let’s get you to bed first.’ His energy appears to have eloped with his voice.

Need something to help me sleep. In drawer of sideboard.

‘Lorazepam?’ I ask, searching through the boxes of drugs.

Yes, two.

‘It says one on the prescription label.’

Give me two! Are you the one dying of cancer?

So I give him two – each cut in half so they can pass through the capillary of his throat – and a glass of water. Still, it takes him fifteen minutes to force them down. Without his pen and notepad, without me, he is totally helpless. Without my help he wouldn’t eat, be able to make it to the bathroom or sleep comfortably. I take the notepad to bed with me and re-read his scribbling, then turn to a clean sheet and begin, once again, to write my submission for tomorrow’s tribunal. I’ve had weeks to do this. I’ve started, scrubbed out and started again on numerous occasions. Emma will speak and I must find the words to make them understand, to tell them what Jonah would want to say. What would he say?

I hear the thump at 3.17 a.m.

‘Not now, Dad, please, not now. I have the tribunal in the morning, please …’