Owning Jacob (1998)

by Simon Beckett

  'I doubt it. I don't think it was something she even acknowledged to herself. Not consciously. And if her parents ever suspected anything, I'm pretty sure I'd have picked something up from them before now.'

  Colin pulled absently at his lower lip. Ben could see him beginning to sift and arrange the information, applying himself to it like any legal problem. 'Have you thought about what you're going to do?'

  'I haven't thought about anything else. But I still don't have a fucking clue.'

  Colin's hand unconsciously went to straighten his tie, entirely the solicitor now. Ben had always envied the way he could calmly tackle problems. 'I don't think you need to decide anything straightaway. At this stage the main thing is not to go off half-cocked. You need to make sure that whatever you do is best for everyone concerned. For a start, have you considered that Jessica might be lying?'

  'She wasn't.'

  'I'm not saying she was, only that it's a possibility you shouldn't overlook. I mean, what have you actually got? Some old clippings, and the story of someone who, let's face it, isn't exactly out to do you any favours. Can you be one hundred per cent sure that she's not making this up just to cause trouble?'

  There was nothing Ben would have liked to believe more. But, tempting as it was, he couldn't bring himself to accept it. 'She wouldn't do that. Not when it means incriminating Sarah.'

  'Are you sure? She might not expect you to tell anybody. And you said yourself that Sarah had more or less lost touch with her. You might have handed her a way of getting back at you both.'

  'I know what you're saying, but I can't—'

  Colin held up his hand. 'Just think for a second. What actual confirmation have you got that what she said is true?'

  'None, but—'

  'That's right, none. Have you checked to see what else might have been in the papers about the story afterwards?' Uncertain now, Ben shook his head.

  'So for all you know, little Steven Kale could have turned up safe and well a week or two later. And Sarah might have just put the cuttings into a box and forgotten all about them. The point is, you don't know. If you go to the police or social services now you could be letting yourself in for a whole lot of trouble for no good reason. And Jacob as well, don't forget. All because of some vague suspicions and a story you were told by someone who hates your guts.'

  Ben rubbed his eyes. He didn't feel any more hopeful, but he knew what Colin said made sense. 'I suppose you're right'

  'Okay, then. So what we've got to do now is find out if the Kales' baby ever turned up again. And also if its parents are still alive themselves.' The look he gave Ben was cautious. 'If they aren't, you might want to think again about what you're going to do. Regardless of whether their baby was found or not.'

  He knew what Colin was hinting at. He didn't know how he felt about it, though. 'How do I go about finding out?'

  'It'd mean a lot of digging around.' Colin sucked air through his teeth as he considered, making a tiny whistling noise. 'It'd probably be best to hire someone to do it for you. It'll cost, but it'd be faster and less trouble.'

  'Do you know anyone?'

  'Not personally, but I could ask around. We sometimes have to use private detectives at work.' He gave a dry smile. 'You'd be surprised the sort of messes musicians can get themselves into.'

  Not only musicians, Ben thought. 'How soon can you let me know?'

  'Tomorrow, probably.' Colin looked uncomfortable. 'Look, this might be jumping the gun a bit, but depending what the detective finds, perhaps you should start thinking about consulting a lawyer who specialises in family law. My field's entertainment. I haven't a clue what the custody situation would be if…well, if the worst came to the worst.'

  Ben nodded.

  Colin looked across at him. 'I'm assuming you'd want Jacob to stay with you?'

  Ben studied his beer can. 'Let's wait and see what the detective turns up.'

  The traffic seemed even heavier than usual, or himself less patient, as he drove Jacob to school the next morning. The car sat in the meandering lines of vehicles as they crept forward, snarling into knots at junctions. Early as it was, the June sun was already baking down, indistinct through the purpling haze of smog.

  He made no attempt to talk to Jacob. He'd hardly spoken to him at all the night before, even when he'd bathed him and put him to bed. Whenever he looked at him he felt such a turmoil of emotions it was impossible to see past them. He knew he wasn't being fair, knew that whatever had happened wasn't the boy's fault. But telling himself that nothing had really changed didn't help. Everything had changed.

  The traffic thinned out as he neared the school. It was in Islington, and getting there and back twice a day, five times a week, was often a nightmare. There was a special-needs school closer to where they lived in Camden, but it catered for children with a variety of learning difficulties, not just autism. The Islington school was one of the few that was only for autistic children. He and Sarah had decided that the benefits of Jacob being given specialist education and treatment outweighed any inconvenience of transport. Sarah had even insisted on taking and collecting him themselves, an arrangement Jacob soon regarded as inviolable. He could stretch his acceptance to include Maggie, but not to the local authority's minibus, with its roundabout route as it collected other children.

  They had been lucky to get him into the school at all .

  Jacob had been almost school age before he had finally been diagnosed, and it had taken letters, pleas and numerous phone calls to the educational services to enrol him in time for the next term. But if nothing else it had given Sarah—and Ben as well, he remembered—something to do to help ease the shock of the doctor's verdict.

  The memory of the afternoon in the specialist's office had, until now, ranked along with his mother's death as being one of the worst moments of Ben's life. He had held Sarah's hand as the man had explained that, while Jacob wasn't mentally retarded, he had a disability which prevented him from communicating or relating to the people and world around him in the usual way. There were, he had said, wide-ranging degrees of severity in autism, and, while Jacob didn't exhibit as extreme signs as some, he would still need special education and care. They had listened, numb, as he told them about the behavioural problems they could expect, from an obsession with apparently senseless, repetitive activity to the fact that Jacob would find it difficult to understand normal human interactions, or even fully recognise how to use language to communicate. Ben had asked if there was a cure.

  No, the doctor had said. Autism could be helped, improved, yes, but not cured.

  Sarah had looked over at where Jacob was playing with a toy abacus on the floor, sliding the beads around on it as though he knew exactly what he was doing.

  'What causes it?' she had asked.

  The doctor had spoken at length about brain development before, during and after birth, about genetic traits and childhood illnesses, and in the end shrugged his shoulders and confessed that no one really knew. And Sarah had stared at Jacob with a look in her eyes that Ben hadn't been able to fathom, but which now, he thought, he was beginning to understand. That night, as they lay sleepless in bed, she had stared up at the ceiling and said, 'It's a judgment.'

  'Oh, come on!' Ben had been disturbed by the way she had withdrawn into herself since leaving the specialist's office.

  She kept her gaze on the ceiling. 'It is. It's my fault.' The matter-of-fact way she said it had frightened him.

  'How is it your fault?' She didn't answer. 'Thinking like that isn't going to help,' he persisted. 'I know it's hard, but it's just something we're going to have to come to terms with. It's no good blaming yourself.'

  For a long moment she didn't reply. Then tears had run out of her eyes, trickling sideways towards her ears as she lay on her back, and she had turned to him and sobbed until, at some point, they had both drifted into an exhausted sleep.

  Next morning Sarah had begun determinedly telephoning around autistic schools. She had never
mentioned judgment or responsibility again.

  Ben thought about what she had said as he parked the dusty VW Golf outside the school gates. He turned to where Jacob was belted into the back seat. The little boy had one hand close to his face, moving it from side to side as he stared out of the window through his spread fingers.

  'We're here, Jacob. Are you going to undo the seat belt, or shall I?' There was a momentary hiatus in the swinging hand, then Jacob carried on as before. Suppressing his anger, Ben climbed out of the car and opened the back door. Jacob peered up at him through his fingers, and continued to do so as Ben unbuckled him from the seat belt. Holding his free hand, Ben led him towards the school gates, and it wasn't until Jacob gave a grunt and began tugging at him that he realised he had forgotten the routine.

  'Okay, okay, I'm sorry.' Ben let the boy pull him towards an old postbox set low in the wall surrounding the school.

  He waited while Jacob stood on tiptoe and inserted both hands, first his right, then his left, into its slot. Jacob had seen someone posting a letter in the box not long after he started at the school, and since then insisted on performing the ceremony every morning before he went in. Not when he came out, though; when school had finished he had to walk down the length of the car, top to bottom, brushing his left hand against it. Ben had learned from experience that, no matter how much of a rush he was in, it was better to let Jacob complete his rituals than try to interrupt them.

  The formalities completed, Jacob took Ben's hand again and they went through the gates.

  The Renishaw School was set in the grounds of an old vicarage. The vicarage itself had been demolished long since, but most of its garden remained, except a small area that had been asphalted to serve as a carpark. Tucked behind the chest-high stone wall, it formed a small oasis of shrubs, trees and lawn in the surrounding desert of brick and concrete.

  Someone had cut the grass, and the rich scent of it masked the petrol fumes from the road and hit Ben like an essence of childhood. The nostalgia eased past his defences and deepened without warning into the poignancy of loss. Angrily refuting it, he took Jacob over to the prefabricated units that stood on the site of the old house and went into the second one.

  At first glance it seemed like any classroom; childish paintings on the wall competing with colourful posters full of bold lettering. But it was a much smaller group than a normal class, only eight other children in it besides Jacob, and only two of them girls. The other thing that set it apart was that there was less chatter than usual. Unless they were encouraged, the children tended to play by themselves instead of with each other, and when Ben had first taken Jacob there the classroom's relative quiet had struck him as eerie. Now he barely noticed.

  The teacher, Mrs Wilkinson, smiled at him over the head of a little boy who was standing in front of her. He was talking almost without pausing for breath, all the time looking down at the wheel of a toy car he was spinning instead of at her.

  'Excuse me, Terence, Jacob's here with his daddy,' she said, easing past. The narrative continued without a break as the boy turned and followed her, still concentrating on the car wheel.

  'Morning,' she said to Ben over the top of the monologue.

  She was a plump woman in her forties, with a saint-like patience that made Ben feel both envious and mildly guilty. 'Terence, why don't you and Jacob go and see what Melissa's doing?' The teacher gently ushered the boys towards the other children, and Ben tensed as he saw what was coming next.

  'I was so sorry to hear about your wife,' she said, and the sympathy in her voice almost choked him.

  He nodded, retreating from it. 'Thanks. I, uh, I've arranged for someone to pick Jacob up this afternoon. Anyway. Got to dash.' He gave her the best smile he could manage and headed for the door before she could say anything else. He couldn't bear to see the understanding look he knew she would be giving him. It was a look he was beginning to know well.

  He hated it.

  Outside the sun was still shining, and the air was still thick with the smell of cut grass. Ben took deep breaths as he walked through the peaceful scene. He felt he had no right to be in it. He kept his head down as he went back to his car. When he reached the gates he looked up and saw Sarah coming towards him.

  It wasn't her, of course. The impression lasted only an instant, the woman's hair and clothes giving a fleeting illusion, but Ben felt as though he had been kicked in the heart. The woman gave him an odd glance as she came through the gates, and he realised he had stopped and was staring at her. He went quickly to his car and got in. He gripped the steering wheel and banged his head softly up and down.

  'Oh, fuck, Sarah, why did you do it?' He sat with his head resting on the wheel for a while longer, then started the engine and drove away.

  The studio was on the top floor of an old factory. He had taken a lease out on it when the lower three floors were almost derelict. Since then they had been split into units and let out to design companies, marketing agencies and recording studios, and Ben paid less for nearly twice as much floor space than any of the tenants in the cramped, post-renovation quarters.

  He let himself in and turned off the alarm system. The sunlight was dazzling through the three large skylights he'd had fitted to replace the rotting originals, and through the floor-to-ceiling windows that ran the full white-painted length of the east-facing wall. In the afternoon it would be equally bright through the windows on the other side. One of the reasons he'd taken the place was because it was perfect for shooting in natural light; the only way he could have got more would have been either to go outside or have the roof taken off.

  It also made it like a greenhouse. Ben turned on the big overhead fan, and as it cranked up like the idling blades of a helicopter, he went to the drawstrings that lowered the blinds over the skylights and windows. The sunlight was reduced to a soft, muted glow.

  He slipped off his shoes and socks, enjoying the feel of the varnished floorboards on his skin. He preferred working barefoot in summer, although Sarah had grumbled about the state of his feet when he got home and made him wash them before he got into bed. It gave him a sense of freedom that he knew was slightly ridiculous, as he was as much dependent on the income from his photography—and on pleasing his clients—as any office worker. But he felt it put him in contact with the studio itself; feeling the bare boards beneath his feet, he could walk around without taking his eye from the viewfinder, relying on their touch alone to guide him.

  He was arranging the big reflective screens for that day's shoot when the door opened and Zoe came in. She flung her canvas rucksack on to one of the two overstuffed couches.

  'Fucking Tube strikes.'

  'Morning, Zoe.' She fanned herself with the tight black T-shirt that showed a band of skin above her white jeans. 'I'm really sorry I'm late, but I was stuck in traffic on the fucking bus for nearly an hour before I gave up and walked, and now I'm sweating like a pig! God, what's happened to your hair?'

  'I felt like a change.'

  Zoe tilted her head to one side, considering it. She was in her early twenties, slim but without the angular shapeliness of a model. Her own hair was cropped and currently dyed black, although the colour changed regularly. Not long ago it had been blonde, before that red. Once it had been green, the accidental result of a cheap dye. She hadn't been fit to talk to for days.

  'Looks okay,' she said. Judgment given, she resumed the heated account of her journey. Ben took no notice. Zoe was bad at mornings, and in the twelve months since he'd hired her as his assistant he'd grown to ignore her pre-eleven o'clock tirades. It was just her way of geeing herself up for the day.

  He began sorting through a drawer for a screwdriver as she slammed around the studio. 'Oh, great! We're out of fucking milk!' The fridge door was banged shut. 'Have they phoned to say what time the clothes are going to arrive? What time is it? Half past ten? Shit, they should be here by now! Where's their fucking number?'

  The waterfall of words and curses was actuall
y quite soothing, a balm of normality after the solicitude he had been smothered in. The first day he had gone to the studio after Sarah had died, Zoe had awkwardly told him she was sorry, then crept around as though the slightest noise would make him shatter, shooting him anxious glances every few minutes until finally he had turned on her and told her to for God's sake stop it. She had looked hurt and shocked, and Ben had thought, Jesus, please don't let her start crying, because he didn't think he'd be able to stand it. Then her cheeks had flared red and she'd thrown down the armful of clothes she had been carrying.

  'Pardon me for fucking breathing!' It had put her in a bad enough mood to make her forget he was part of the alien species of bereaved and treat him like a normal person again, and pushed him back on to his precarious platform of self-control. Half-listening to Zoe berating the people responsible for delivering the models' clothes for the shoot, Ben closed the drawer and began setting up the lights.

  Thank God for this, he thought, fervently.

  It was after seven when he pulled up outside Maggie and Colin's house. They lived in a curving row of villas not far from the Portobello Road, with half a dozen steps running up to the heavy, lustrously-painted black front door. They had been there three years, and Ben wondered how soon it would be before they took the next step up the housing ladder. Not long, he guessed, judging by Colin's success in the music law business, and Maggie's capacity for advertising it.

  Ben pressed the stiff brass bell and yawned, though not exactly from tiredness. The shoot had gone well, but the sense of satisfaction he'd felt had been snuffed the moment he emerged from his universe of angles, light and shade to an awareness of the real world again.

  The door was answered by Scott, who greeted Ben with a brief lift of his chin before turning away and leaving him to come in and close the door himself. At nine he was already showing signs of being an objectionable little shit, although Ben wouldn't have dreamed of telling Maggie or Colin that. He suspected that Colin already knew, but Maggie was overseeing to the point of blindness.