Shtum (21 page)

I am indignant. ‘Hold on, I did that for you.’

‘For me? How? It was just another stick to beat yourself and everyone around you with.’

‘I did it so we could afford to have Jonah.’

‘Did I ever once ask you to do that?’

‘No, but it would have meant …’

‘Me giving up work? Is that what you were going to say? Did you ever ask what I wanted?’

I look up at Jonah and before I realise it I’m halfway across the water garden – my shoes sloshing through standing water. Jonah is jumping up and down in a puddle, his skin turning browner before my eyes. I reach out for him, but he bats away my hand and skips to another part of the circle where he stands, playing with his hair, while a knot of toddlers splash nonchalantly beside him. Emma is at my shoulder.

‘He was a gift for you, wasn’t he?’

‘Not for you?’

‘Yes, of course, but I’m talking about you. He’s been a gift to your sense of self-loathing. Because as soon as Jonah arrived, as soon as his autism became apparent, he became your mission. You had the perfect excuse not to look at yourself ever again. Just focus on your son, your poor autistic son and nothing else. Forget about me, I should understand where the priorities lie, shouldn’t I? I too should give up on myself. Isn’t that right, Ben? I should give my whole life to Jonah too. But I need something back. I know you think I’m selfish, but I want to be loved back. And you just stopped. You always fall back on your devotion to Jonah. But in what sense did your self-piteous drinking help Jonah with his autism?’

‘My drinking did not cause Jonah’s autism.’ There, I’ve said it out loud, as if the volume will convince me that I completely believe it.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ she says softly. ‘But how present were you? How useful could you be, half-cut most of the time? It couldn’t all just be cuddles, kisses and laughter. You forced me to be the serious one.’

My daydream of this meeting was one of emotional reunion or, at the very least, a tearful exclamation of eternal love fucked by the fickle finger of fate. I want to find the words, but I am scared they will wreck my fragile equilibrium.

‘I just wanted to be his father.’

‘Ben, you wanted to be everything to him that didn’t involve any thinking ahead. So you made me be Jonah’s secretary and press officer.’

‘So, what, you thought you’d just dump us? Make up some bullshit story about single fathers being more likely to win a tribunal. I can’t believe I fell for it. Throw us out of the house, dump us on my dad, make me ask him – no, beg him – for the money to fight for Jonah. You sent me back there, Emma, and I had to wipe his arse before he died.’ My sunglasses are blurring. The tears are hot and burn my shaven cheeks.

‘I was desperate, Ben.’ She’s digging at her cuticles with her thumbnails; the ends of her fingers are bitten and sore.

‘You couldn’t have been that desperate if you made it to Hong Kong! Emma, I …’ Her face has turned strawberry-mark crimson. ‘You weren’t in Hong Kong, were you? My God, you weren’t! Well, Emma, Jesus …’

‘I had to, Ben. I had to go away, I had to find a way, it was all I could think of. Georg, he …’

‘He knew? My dad knew?’

‘I was ill, Ben! I’d been sick for years.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about, ill? You’ve never taken a sick day from your precious job in your life. No, I would have noticed. You looked fine. If you were ill you would have told me.’

‘I couldn’t even admit it to myself. So how could I have told you? It was all I had left that was mine. You’d stolen my peace of mind, I thought it was keeping me alive …’

‘You’ve lost me.’

‘Pills, Ben, bloody pills.’

‘I couldn’t sleep,’ she says, stirring her coffee and picking at a blueberry muffin. We are alone, for now, in the park café.

‘I remember, but didn’t the doctor give you something that helped?’

‘Yes, it solved
all
my problems.’

‘But the doctor gave them to you, it’s not like you were snorting cocaine. If you were taking that many, wouldn’t you have been asleep all the time?’

She holds her mug with two hands and lets the steam creep through her eyelashes. ‘Zopiclone. A feeling of well-being, followed by a yummy drift into sleep. I liked the feeling, more than the sleep …’ She sips from her mug. ‘Especially in the mornings. I’d wake up with a feeling of impending doom. The prospect of Jonah, his moods, the smell, the rush, what I hadn’t managed to do the night before, the day ahead, you – and I found the tablets helped. Just the one, as I woke up, got me over the hump. And it was fine, for a long time, but I’d begin to run out before the end of the month and the edginess I felt before I could get another prescription – God, I can’t tell you.’

‘I didn’t know,’ I say, as much to myself as to her. She waves it away.

‘Then I had the bright idea of ordering some more from the internet, just in case, to cover the shortfall. But as soon as they arrived, I took two. I’d never done that before, but it felt good – and it was something for me, you know?’

I knew.

‘It felt risky and naughty and I just thought: fuck it! If this is what it takes to live my life then so be it.’

‘How long?’ I ask, and her face changes. The bravado that heralded this revelation has dissolved, the anger she expressed in the water garden has passed and now I have this alter-Emma opposite me, vulnerable, diminished and a mirror for my shame.

‘Five years, give or take.’

‘Five years!’ I’m stunned. How could I have spotted nothing? Five fucking years. ‘And work? Did they not notice?’

‘I hid it from you, didn’t I?’

She drinks some more coffee and opens a bag of mini cookies that Jonah has purloined from the café counter. I spy the café owner jotting it down in a notebook.

‘I began to make mistakes. Nothing serious, but it made me paranoid. I wanted to sleep all the time. So I made the decision that I had to give them up, when the last batch ran out I wouldn’t order any more. The first day without was unimaginable. It was like waking up in a hurricane, I could hear every sound in hi-definition and at full volume, I was hopelessly paranoid, thought I was going to die. So I told work I had flu.’

‘I remember now.’ And I did. A week of dirty nappies, takeaways and curses. I couldn’t get to the pub or sneak booze back into the house and I resented every day of it.

‘I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear the anxiety. Couldn’t take the reality. Getting the prescription from the doctor was like winning the lottery and I was off and running again, only worse.’

My hands are over my face, my sunglasses over my hands.

Her voice is faltering. ‘The week before you left, I almost killed Jonah. You were out and I’d just bathed him and washed his hair and I only left him for two minutes, to turn the oven off, and I could smell him before I saw him and it was everywhere, Ben. In his hair, down his legs, on the carpet, his mattress, the walls. His handprints were on the walls, Ben, and he just laughed at me and I found myself throwing things at him, anything I could find – toys, clothes, CDs – and he began biting his hand and jumping angrily and I just couldn’t stop swearing at him. I was out of control and I looked down and I had the glass vase in my hand and …’

I have never seen her cry like this, with her whole body.

‘And I took two pills and showered him – which he hated – and filled him full of Calpol and gave him melatonin to knock him out and stuck him on the sofa while I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and struggled to pick him up and put him to bed and hoped he wouldn’t wake in the morning and then you came in and all you had to say when I told you was
you should have put a nappy on him.
A fucking nappy, Ben.

‘And the saddest part of all was that I felt guilty. While you polished off half a bottle of whisky, I sat in my drug-induced stupor full of guilt and shame and planned the least disruptive way to kill myself – to unburden you and Jonah of the weight of my hatred and incompetence. I wasn’t even going to end my life for
me
, I was planning to do it for the men in my life – neither of whom even spoke to me.’

I need to get up and walk. ‘Give me a second,’ I say. Jonah has his back to me, he is gripping the green playground railings. I quietly walk up behind him and lean down to kiss his brown neck. He doesn’t flinch. The sun has warmed the air and the children’s cries have dampened in the rising humidity. I take my glasses off and turn my closed eyes skyward. But a vision of my father in his hospice bed forms on the inside of my eyelids and I reach for my son and bathe his cheek and his neck with their torrent. He stands rigid.

My tear ducts have acted as pressure valves and I feel calmer as I walk back to her and sit down.

‘They call it a moment of clarity. It was after I spoke to Georg about you and Jonah moving in with him. It was something he said that triggered it. I’ll never forget it,’ she says.

‘What was it? Ben’s a
shmock
?’

She smiles. ‘No, he said I shouldn’t make the same mistake as him. He said that I must love myself and forgive myself, or life will get stuck, like a record, in a groove. That same day, I made an appointment to see a psychiatrist and told her everything. Three days later, instead of checking in for a flight, I checked myself into rehab.’

‘Rehab,’ I repeat. ‘With heroin and cocaine addicts?’

‘Yes. And alcoholics.’

I change the subject. ‘What did work say?’

‘I signed off with stress. They all know about Jonah, but I didn’t want them to know about the drugs and I didn’t want it on my medical record either. I didn’t use the company health insurance, I paid for it myself.’

‘So that’s why you couldn’t pay for the tribunal upfront? Dad knew all this, too?’

‘He had to, Ben. I needed him to look after both of you and I needed him to lend us the money for the tribunal.’

‘He agreed to lend us the money? Before? But he put me through hell.’ I shake my head. ‘At least he was consistent.’ I stare at the floor; honesty begets honesty. ‘I didn’t leave marketing, I was sacked. They caught me drinking. Dad, as ever, was my last hope.’

‘No, Ben, I should have been your last hope. Why didn’t you confide in me?’

‘I thought you’d leave me. And you? Why didn’t you tell
me
?’

‘I didn’t think you cared.’

We look closely at each other and embrace. It’s miserable and summons up the grief like a catalyst. In the end it isn’t words – either written or spoken – that convince me my marriage is over – it’s the feeling of being embraced by a stranger.

‘I should really get back to the house,’ I say.

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

‘No, no need.’

‘Well then, can I take Jonah? It would make life easier for you.’

‘Yes, thank you.’

So we arrange ourselves, pick up phones and keys, finish off our drinks and linger, both in contemplation and – in my case – huge regret.

‘Ben, look at Jonah!’

A blond boy, no taller than Jonah’s knee, has caught his attention. We watch as Jonah drops to his haunches, looks the child directly in the eye and treats him to a glowing, sparkly-eyed grin.

‘I’ve never seen him do that before. Have you ever seen him do that before?’

‘No,’ I nod in wonder, ‘I never have.’

Summer

Dad leaves me the house – which is more than I expected. If I thought he had no idea what was going on at the warehouse, I was wrong. He left it to Valentine, it turns out – who has postponed his Caribbean return – and I’m glad for him. I offered my help and he laughed at me. There was a private pension and life insurance that leaves me debt free, and with a little in reserve and with Emma’s promised half of the tribunal cost, the house can be properly childproofed and Johnny’s cheque torn up.

The summer holidays are in full swing now. It’s late August and I’m simply biding time. Jonah and I are in a rhythm. The council grudgingly agreed to three days’ a week holiday club for him – which he is enjoying. And on the other days, we hit the park, McDonald’s, then the park again – we do what he wants to do, life is easier like that. His mood is eerily calm, a calm before the storm, but who knows? I don’t know if he misses Dad, whether he remembers him, even. Maybe he was just another adult there to meet his needs, which are and will remain – in material and social terms – very simple. Although it’s strange that Jonah has made a unilateral decision to sleep in Dad’s bed. He may find the remaining scent comforting, or he may just like the bed, or the shadows in the darkness. Again, it’s a mystery. But he wakes less often.

Maurice has been round regularly and I haven’t had the heart to ask for his key back, so he just arrives. He has taken some mementos – wrapped them in oil-cloth like precious gems.

Emma and I have agreed an informal, workable arrangement around Jonah and she’s back in his life on a regular basis. He saw the sea for the first time this summer and I can imagine him, in later life, tanned and carefree, wandering along the sand pulling seaweed and shells and twiddling to his heart’s content.

I am beginning to accept my part in all these troubles, to find some compassion, to think about making amends, to think about starting again. Still, in the forefront of my mind is the outcome of the tribunal and I can’t begin to think of a life ahead until then. So I’m on hold a bit.

Currently, I’m listening to Radio 4 on my back on the sofa, having given up the
Guardian
crossword with just one clue solved. Jonah is off at club – they picked him up an hour ago and he skipped to the bus with a smile.

I can feel my eyes closing as the doorbell rings.

‘Maurice, use your key.’

But the bell rings a second, third, fourth time.

‘Fucking hell.’ I slide from the sofa and head to the front door. I see his shape through the stained-glass window and open the door.

‘Maurice, why didn’t …’

It’s not Maurice.

It is the postman with a recorded delivery letter.

It’s arrived.