The Boy Who Fell to Earth (6 page)

Meanwhile, I kept on bankrupting myself with experts who swished in and out of doors in their white coats. But all the doctors with their stethoscopic minds couldn’t really diagnose my son. The word ‘Asperger’s’ was now being bandied about.

‘Asperger’s is a form of autism, but at the high-functioning end of the spectrum,’ it was explained to me at £245 an hour. ‘People with Asperger’s are often of above-average intelligence. They have fewer problems with speech but still have difficulties understanding and processing social situations.’

I burst with optimism. It felt like getting an airline upgrade. Or a prison reprieve. Or choking in a restaurant and it’s George Clooney who gives you mouth-to-mouth. It also proved Jeremy wrong. It had been worth spending all that money on specialists. (My son’s naïve but oddly perceptive definition of a specialist is simply a doctor whose patients never get ill at night or at the weekends.)

‘Asparagus Syndrome’, as Merlin called it, definitely explained why, despite showing many signs of autism, like the misreading of emotion and repetitive, compulsive, ritualistic behaviour, my son was always bounding up to me with Labrador-like affection, percolating with chit-chat.

But my euphoria was short-lived. Every expert agreed on one point – only in a small classroom with specialist teaching could Merlin ever reach his potential. Doctors, nurses, teachers, therapists, social workers, ed psychs and council officials all agreed that this was the case. But nobody wanted to pay for it.

All I could do was step up my lobbying of the local educational authority. (I was now purchasing arse-kissing ChapStick by the containershipful.) Finally, aged ten and a half, his name came up on some mysterious waiting list. Merlin and I practically skipped with joy to a grey office building in a grimy Southwark backstreet for the big interview. The electronic door
pssschsss
ed open. We watched people scurrying down a warren of corridors with
white-rabbit
expressions. Eventually we were greeted by a forty-year-old woman with a mopey face whose nametag read ‘La–ah’. ‘The dash is not silent,’ Ladashah explained loudly.

She ushered us into a beige office, where we sat beside a pencil-poised male trainee. In some futile attempt to relieve the penal-institution atmosphere, La–ah’s desk was smothered in smurfs, Gonks and stuffed animals. It was to this menagerie I tried to explain how my son’s understanding of the world was spinning round and round like a coin tossed in the air. I wanted Mopy Face, the trainee and her Gonks to comprehend that Merlin’s mind was a flutter click snapshot roll of Shakespearean quotes, cricket scores, music, facts, figures, dates and numbers, numbers, numbers – but numbers which didn’t really add up to anything, as yet.

Throughout the consultation, Merlin gave the smile of an angel, benign but remote, the conversation going not over his head but around it somehow. His only contribution was to enquire what colour a smurf would go if choked to death.

It was impossible to pinpoint the exact tone of the official’s smile, but surely La–ah, with the non-silent dash, could see beneath my son’s shifting surface to the brilliance below? But the colourless dough of her face and cold, indifferent gaze could have won her a bit part in
A Zombie Ate My Baby
.

‘Well, thank you for coming.’ She looked at my son as though he were some strange science experiment. ‘There’ll be a multi-agency meeting to discuss your case and then we’ll get back to you as soon as a decision is made.’

I knew from my time in the teaching profession that a ‘multi-agency meeting’ is a gathering of Important People who think that individually they can do nothing … and together decide that nothing can be done.

‘Can’t we attend this meeting …?’ I asked.

‘No, I’m afraid not.’ She said this as though it were an edict from the Vatican.

‘Why? … I mean, murderers at parole meetings get fairer hearings.’

La–ah was not used to parental insubordination. Her eyes slid over me like cold egg yolk. ‘Don’t you think discussing your child in front of him constitutes emotional abuse?’ She threw a meaningful glance in the science experiment’s direction. Merlin sat upright with rigid grace as he was dissected.

‘
Emotional abuse
is leaving us out of the decision-making process.’ I too glanced at my son. It was as though his face was a burden to wear. He kept rearranging his facial features into smiles or expressions of absorption as though practising being human. ‘Well … okay. I could always come on my own,’ I conceded.

La–ah’s nose, which was ample and slightly pocked, was now seriously out of joint. ‘We often find that mothers self-diagnose. Which not only clouds the issue but is usually the very cause of the child’s emotional delays … Perhaps the divorce is to blame? His behaviour could merely be a result of parentis incompetus,’ she condescended with light malice. ‘Which raises child-protection concerns …’ the official added ominously, throwing her weight around, of which there was a hell of a lot. La–ah was the perfect weight … for a 25-foot-tall woman.

It took every ounce of self-restraint not to beat her to death with one of her beanie babies. ‘Look, I’m a teacher myself,’ I entreated, sick of the sound of my own pleading voice. ‘Overcrowded classrooms demand conformity. Children on the autism spectrum are complex. Mainstreaming them doesn’t work … And getting help is a postcode lottery.’

But being white and middle class put us at the bottom of
her
list. If only I were a one-legged, lesbian, epileptic, agoraphobic Inuit who was also afraid of heights, I thought bitterly.

‘There are two million children in Britain – that’s one in five – with special needs.’ A glance at her watch signalled that it was time for me to leave. ‘The government believes that many of these children are wrongly classed as having learning difficulties to boost schools’ league table scores, secure extra money or cover up poor teaching.’ When I didn’t take the hint she lumbered up from her desk and wrenched open the door. ‘Very often a child’s difficulties stem from problems in the home …’ she concluded coldly. This was a woman who curled her lip for a living.

In the corridor outside, a row of empty chairs lined up against the wall like a firing squad. After the interview, I sat there deflated for a good ten minutes. No doubt my ex-husband’s New and Improved lover Audrey would have used the time productively to do 200 triceps dips and 3,010 bench presses, but I just watched the other dejected mothers filing past me. They all had the cheery look of people who’ve been wrongly condemned to a life sentence in a Congolese prison. The day was damp and dreary, grey as a graveyard. From behind La–ah’s door came the indistinct murmur of voices deciding my son’s future. Despair welled in my chest. I was failing my son. When it came to parenting, I obviously needed to wear a paper hat marked ‘trainee’.

During the four-week wait for the department’s verdict, I felt so relaxed I was only changing my underwear every half an hour or so. Minutes crawled past on their hands and knees gasping for water while we waited for the coveted placement.

When the letter with the cellophane window finally
plopped
on to the mat, I tore it open. Stark black type explained that there were just not enough places to go round at this time. My arms flopped at my sides. I began squeaking like a lost kitten. My eyes began to burn and my chin trembled. I packed Merlin into our decrepit VW, barrelled towards the Thames, double-parked and stormtrooped back into Mopey Face’s building. Her office exhaled a stale, exhausted breath.

La–ah looked up, startled. ‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘An intelligent person, or even a reasonably bright fungus, can see that my son has special needs,’ I blurted, tossing her letter of rejection on to the table. ‘Unless you are wearing autism filters on your glasses, that is.’

‘
Do
you have an
appointment
?’ Mopey Face kept repeating like a dalek.

Merlin’s expression was one of dizzying incomprehension. He gave the woman his famous candid stare, the pale-blue eyes wide, then frowned as though mentally calculating whether e really did equal mc
²
. The kid could have been cracking the human genome for all I knew. My son was on the same planet as the rest of us, but in a different world.

‘I’m at my wits’ end … and it hasn’t taken me that long to get here, either,’ I carried on caustically. Merlin’s now startled expression alerted me to the fact that I must have been talking more loudly than I realized. Loudly? Hell, judging by the amount of people gathering by the open door, I think I must have sounded as though I was in the final stages of labour.

Mopey Face nodded, but from a great distance. Like all flat-shoed, pudding-haircut bureaucrats, she did a great line in sympathetic head tilts and nodding. She could have been employed on the back shelf of a car, in lieu of a plastic dog. ‘Well, I’m sure you can appreciate that there are a lot
of
children on our books’ – her voice had a peculiar ventriloquial quality, as though someone else was pulling her strings – ‘and only so many places on offer. The government wants to take at least 170,000 children off the special needs register.’

This made no sense to me, possibly because I’ve never been bludgeoned over the head repeatedly with a blunt instrument. ‘But how can you take him off the special needs register when he has special needs?’

‘We also think mainstreaming is a viable system.’ She canted her head once more and kept on with the nodding. ‘And possibly the best option for …’ she glanced down at my crumpled rejection letter, ‘Merlin …’

‘The best option for Merlin is to find a place where he won’t be beaten up or left staring out of the window all day. I know times are tough, but what a waste of his extraordinary intellect. With the right teaching, this is a child who could contribute to society.’ My anger was bitter enough to taste. Unused to my raised voice, Merlin’s smile was now flickering on and off like a faulty light bulb.

‘Well, I’m sorry. But due to cutbacks, your son cannot be re-schooled at this juncture.’

‘Really? Well, even though my son hasn’t been accepted into a special school, which we’ve been endlessly promised for five bloody years, I feel no resentment towards the education authority, who are obviously a
bunch of hypocritical twats
!!’

Watching his mother transmogrify into Attila the Hun made Merlin’s knee jerk nervously, like the terrified beating of an insect’s wing.

‘Of course, if you’re not coping’ – the dough-faced woman stuck out her many chins and the hammocks of her arm fat
wobbled
with indignation as she reached for her phone – ‘I could contact social services …’

Oh, was there anything as much fun as being condescended to by a woman who obviously uses her body as a repository for fast food?

‘I notice that he has quite a few bruises on his arms …’ she noted menacingly.

Outside the window, the grey winter sky was low and bulging with dampness, but I was red-faced with indignation and rage. ‘The bruises are from where he punches himself, through frustration about how much he hates his bloody awful school.’

‘Many children who exhibit challenging behaviour end up on child protection plans, and care proceedings often follow,’ said La–ah, with sinister sincerity. ‘Violent behaviour means your son will be made the subject of a DoL – Deprivation of Liberty order – and taken to a care unit …’

I wanted to suggest that she sit on the paper shredder while it was going full speed, or perhaps just go bobbing for piranhas, but instead took Merlin’s shaking hand in mine and strode to freedom, feeling her righteous gaze on the nape of my neck.

On the drive home I was in grave danger of feeling seriously sorry for myself. I could definitely compete in the Women’s Long-distance Cross-bearing Competition. Life had lost its humour. Hell, the evening news was getting more laughs than me. ‘
Think negative and you have nothing to lose
’ became my motto. Even my imaginary friend found me dull and ran off to play with somebody else. I reminded myself that I had a lot to be grateful for – Merlin wasn’t vegetative, incontinent or in a wheelchair. But he still needed and deserved help and, if I didn’t fight for his rights, who would?
With
the onslaught of cutbacks, kids with less severe disabilities like Asperger’s or autism were losing out in the scramble for funds, which meant a future wasting away in a bedsit on benefits. I tried to rally my flagging spirits. Perhaps my luck would change? If so, I wouldn’t just need a rabbit’s foot but a whole
hare
dangling off a key-chain. But then, why bloody well bother? After all, it’s not as though the rabbit’s foot worked for the poor old rabbit.

To lift my mood, I spent an hour in front of one of those Jerry Springer-type ‘I’m pregnant by my own son who is really an alien’ TV shows, just to be reminded that there were people out there far worse off than us. And it calmed me, it really did. Our little drama wouldn’t even rate on the Oprah-o-meter.

Relieved to be home again in ‘our castle’, as Merlin called our humble home, he pranced into the living room as though fresh from the Grand National. ‘So, Mum,’ he exclaimed, exuberantly, ‘are you living the dream?’

The incongruity of his query made me splutter into a chortle.

‘Mum, I have something on my mind I need to talk to you about …’ Merlin lowered his voice and looked at me with searching eyes.

I girded my loins for a serious inquisition on his psychological condition, Deprivation of Liberty orders or his missing father. ‘Yes, darling,’ I replied gravely.

‘Would you rather be buoyant or flamboyant?’

It was definitely a question I’d never been asked before. With his sky-blue eyes, wistful and wondering expression, blond curls and ruby-red lips, Merlin looked like an angel who’d fallen out of the frame of a Botticelli painting. ‘Flamboyant,’ I decided, and laughed out loud.

To celebrate our flamboyancy, I told him we could eat our spaghetti bolognese in front of the television. But just when I did actually start to feel more buoyant, a quick channel flick plunged me back into despair. The low, seductive voice of Tawdry Hepburn oozed through the TV screen and looped across the living room. This was how the husband-poaching predator lassoed her prey. My eyes darted to the screen and there she was, the curvaceous little writher, writhing after her own success with every sinew in her protein-only, no-carbs, silicone-coated, beautifully buff body. For the delectation of male viewers, she provocatively licked crème fraîche from her manicured fingertips before running her tongue over a hand-rolled sausage. ‘
Now, add a soupçon of innuendo, a pinch of double entendre and start stirring, until simmering
.’