Or perhaps Joe’s outburst was simply resistance to something he didn’t like – a common reason for hitting himself in the past. Perhaps he felt his objections were ignored. They might have been; it’s often right to ignore Joe’s objections, even though to do so might make them more explosive. But then, Joe often objects, often says ‘no’, it’s one of the few words he can articulate clearly and life affords plenty of opportunity, for finding out what he wants means putting a great many choices to him.
‘Do you want chips, Joe?’
‘No.’
‘A sandwich?’
‘No.’
‘Toast?’
‘No.’
‘Baked beans?’
‘No.’
‘Yoghurt?’
‘No.’
‘Yes’ can be a while coming. On a good day, Joe’s ‘no’ is merely put-upon, a mildly truculent ‘no’, a ‘no’ that seems to say ‘what are you bothering me with that for?’ or ‘don’t be ridiculous’.
On a bad day, his ‘no’ rattles defiance, a spitting little Alamo to your theoretically mightier but fainter-hearted ‘yes’. On a very bad day, ‘no’ becomes a growl, a javelin thrower’s Neanderthal grunt. The sound he makes begins like the nasal whine of a distant small aircraft closing swiftly and climaxes with a bark of menacing, teeth-baring ferocity.
‘NnnnAGH!’
When wielded with real intent, he somehow blends in a screech. The overall effect, I say it with pride, is awesome: ferocity mingled with fear, hostility with deep grievance as we move with instant escalation from my harmless question to his rabid stand-off. Of course I wish he didn’t but, since he does, I can’t help admiring the conviction.
Language is said to be a human instinct. To see something of the basis of this instinct, the skills on which it depends, and how falteringly for Joe, we need think only of the character of his ‘no’, think of his response to the most elementary yes-orno questions. Only then do we appreciate that the linguistic distance between Joe and everyone else is not due only to his limited vocabulary, only then do we see the bear traps in every encounter.
His pantomimic over-reactions suggest he misjudges questions offering a direct choice of the most basic kind, however simply phrased. ‘Would you like X?’ is a neutral inquiry, it has no emotional emphasis – though it might arise from concern or compassion – and the answer doesn’t particularly matter; we want merely to establish Joe’s preference. Joe doesn’t trust that modest ambition. Not to him well-intentioned or openended, questions must often be a declaration of evil intent, the start of immediate hostilities, no pause for diplomacy. He meets such confrontations, as he must judge them, with the sharpest rebuff. When he gets the wrong end of this stick the misunderstanding needs correcting fast, lest on a false premise he start beating himself up, or worse, someone else.
‘OK, Joe, OK, no baked beans.’
‘Baked beans gone. Look gone. Baked beans not a threat. Only asking. Gone, Joe. Away, yes. Baked beans away!’
That dealt with – you can see how cravenly – he subsides in a blink. Sometimes it’s easy for me to surrender like this; at others, when Joe’s preference for doing nothing is not an option, I hold my breath for his reaction. Strongly inclined not to put on any clothes before we go out, to sit in the car for hours on end after we arrive at our destination, to say no to every turn as we drive in search of whatever it was he was agitating to get in the car for, his choices can at times be impossible. A yes of some kind is non-negotiable. If I’m unusually lucky, the confrontation will be over quickly with a sigh, and he’ll bow to my insistence, but always with the kind of look that tells me he’s keeping his powder dry. ‘I could make your life hell, for that’, his eyes suggest, ‘but frankly, can’t be bothered.’ Otherwise, if his switch is tripped, if he can be bothered, if he determines to stand his ground, it’s a determination you’ll regret and every ounce of the ferocious promise of his ‘no’ will be royally delivered in a fierce physical rebellion of knuckles to his own face, of things thrown and broken, of endless piercing shouts and distraught lunges to the floor or into chairs, while I decide whether to wrestle him to stillness or ignore him and let the tantrum burn out.
Talking to Joe has always taken sudden, combustible turns we’ve quite failed to anticipate. One stray word is all it takes to light his fuse. Being so constantly on edge, wondering if lightning will strike, is emotionally exhausting, a perpetual state of resigned anxiety: it’s going to happen, you know that, know you’ll have to face it and maybe face it down, but you don’t know when, and so must stand prepared to summon your spirit at a moment’s notice for a trial of strength with a merciless bully. For sheer apprehension, life with Joe when he was at home sometimes felt as I imagine a midnight stroll through an inner-city nogo area, wondering when the blade will flash in the moonlight.
Those of us who know him fancy we’ve learnt to minimise, though not eliminate, accidental confrontations with Joe, but when other adults unfamiliar with what’s at stake find themselves talking to him alone, the result is unpredictable.
Not far from our village there’s a swimming pool, never too busy, a little stark, cold and functional, but perfectly full of water. Better still, it has wonderfully understanding staff … and a slide. A slide! You can’t know what magic there used to be in that word, what manic excitability it conjured in Joe.
‘Weeee,’ he’d say. ‘Weeee!’
‘Yes, Joe. Slide.’
‘Weeee,’ pulling my head round to see the words formed. ‘Look me in the eye, let me see your lips move and tell me it’s true,’ he seemed to ask.
‘Yes, Joe! Swimming. Slide.’
In his most eager years, aged six or seven, we’d often go on a Saturday morning. ‘Ets,’ says Joe, over and over again. We think the word began as an attempt at ‘wet’. Before long ‘ets’ began to turn up for swimming as an activity, any large body of water, rain, the bath.
Joe pulled the bag from the kitchen cupboard and made for the front door, barking ‘ets!’ and ‘weee!’ while I gathered towels and costumes. And if I didn’t answer promptly: ‘Dee!’ ‘Deee!’
‘Dee!’
‘Yes, Joe?’
‘Ets!’
‘Yes, Joe.’
Answers have a short shelf-life for Joe. It’s as if they vanish from thought as soon as fade from the air, lasting no longer than the sound in his ears before the anxious desire swells again, often seconds later, and with the returning thought comes a new need for reassurance that it will truly, very shortly, be his.
‘Weee!’
‘Yes, Joe.’
Twenty minutes’ reassurance later, we had changed and shivered up draughty stairs to the poolside. The slide was already open, a fifty-foot meander of orange and pale-blue high-sided plastic with water flowing from the top, pitching through bends down to an eighteen-inch drop into the pool below.
Children, and now and then an adult, trotted wet foot up the stairs, sat, slid, whooped, splashed, swam out and did it again, and again. A parental ‘Don’t run!’ anxiously bossy; the children in insistent rhythm: trot, climb, slide, splash. Trot (‘Don’t run!’), climb, slide, splash.
Joe watched for a moment, tempted, excited, flapping as each child lurched off the end, and then pattered along to join in with arms waving gently. I took my position in the pool a few feet beyond the end of the slide to catch him on impact, before he had time to be panicked by the rush of water over his head. For the first half-dozen goes he was part of the herd: trot, climb, slide, splash, watching others in the queue, taking his turn, his excitement delicious and intoxicating.
‘Genn!’ he shouts, within seconds of splash-down.
‘Genn!’
‘OK, Joe. Again.’ And I shove him up onto the poolside.
And again. Euphorically, transcendentally again, high on a rush of sensation. I love his exuberant happiness; nobody can match Joe for giddy excitement; no one has this much sheer gusto.
‘Genn!’
Trot, climb, up to the top, hands on the rails, sit. It could go on for an age. But this time, abruptly, he stops. He bum-shuffles slightly to one side. He looks down along the slide, contemplates, and doesn’t move. Head tilted, he gazes vaguely into space and begins chirping to himself. Behind him the queue of children becomes a sudden concertina of impatience.
The others stop at the top step to register the absent-minded boy sitting legs outstretched just to the side of pole position. Charming in hesitation, they glance about for guidance, unsure whether going down before the boy in front still constitutes a misdemeanour if he doesn’t seem inclined to go down at all. Manners: so head spinning, so inconvenient when haste is the game. Between guilt and impatience they dither: ‘Can we? Are we allowed to … ?’ True, he didn’t seem bothered, but what was he doing there? And then they go anyway, doubt overcome by energy, squeezing past, putting aside etiquette. Once one child has taken the lead with impunity the rest follow with little more than a glance. And still Joe sits.
Reactions to Joe are unpredictable, but most commonly of two kinds: (1) ignore the weirdo or, to put it a more forgiving way, sensitively avoid intrusion – ‘Don’t point; don’t be rude’; (2) feel provoked, sometimes to aggression, sometimes by an instinct to help or protect.
Occasionally, children are better at ignoring Joe than adults. At the top of the stairs to the slide in the swimming pool the crocodile queue is content to slither past. If he’s not part of the game, leave him be, they seemed to reason, being flexible at that age about what constitutes proper behaviour, and so finding him less of an affront to their norms.
So once in a while when a well-intentioned adult butts in, escorting her own angel, she becomes a giant of moral authority among the little people and with all that bulk stops the queue in its tracks.
‘The little boy first! Let the little boy go first!’
Joe himself could easily be sidestepped. It’s because he’s such an insouciant obstacle, careless of the swimming pool code, breaking the rhythm, beyond rules, suddenly dozily indifferent to what we think is pleasure, that he seems to incite attention. There must be something wrong, so we prod him. This is not what little boys do; he’s broken down so fix him, nudge him, make him work again like the rest of us. Paradoxically, it’s being different but unobtrusive that causes greatest provocation to strangers. The ranting drunk in the marketplace seeks an audience while watching people turn their backs. When Joe takes a quietly eccentric path of his own, he won’t be left alone for long. Loud difference scatters the crowds; quiet difference incites them. Tantrums in Sainsbury’s clear the aisles; strange placidity in the playground invites bullies. I remember one boy who wanted Joe to go with him down a wide bouncy slide but finding Joe dull and unresponsive at the top, wrapped an arm round his neck and hauled him head-first to the bottom, Joe tumbling, terrified, crying hopelessly where he landed in the ball pit, the little boy scampering off. His mother wanted to know what on earth I thought I was doing, bringing so incapable a child to such a place.
On other occasions, offended by his stolidity, little children hit or push him for a reaction. I can see how Joe’s ability to make others feel invisible through guileless indifference causes offence. There are times when he seems not to care whether you or anyone else in the outside world exists. ‘Look at me, look at me,’ says the child. Joe hears not and sees not, though only for so long. Then he gets upset.
‘Are you all right, little boy?’ says the lady on the slide.
Joe gazes into the middle distance. Though I feel a mischievous urge to watch the scene unfold, watch as adult conviction, adult norms and expectations collide with the immovable, apparently irrational blob that is Joe’s oddness, it’s time for me warily to intervene.
The potential for things to go wrong like this, for language to fail, comes from Joe’s inability to judge intention, one of the critical facets of our language instinct. The lady means well, and most of us recognise what a well-meaning person sounds like. We’re generally exceptionally good at guessing motivation – at least where there is no deliberate deception, and even then we’re no pushover. Indeed, whenever we describe communication we imply some sort of state of mind: laughter considered only from the outside, for example, only by what passes on the surface, is merely a distinctive sound, a bit like a saw. But when we say ‘he laughed’, we mean far more than that he made a strange noise, for we’ve judged his mood and his intention too.
The philosopher Mary Midgley says the noise alone means nothing, and on the contrary: ‘someone who has not had this noise made at him at all, but has been treated with complete outward courtesy and perfectly suppressed smiles, can still have every justification for saying “they were all laughing at me” and can be right’.
If we want to understand such notions as laughter, she says, or indeed anger, tears, smiles, winks, grunts and so on, there is no substitute for grasping the underlying subjective, conscious state of mind from which they all emanate. That is arresting, for it implies that in order to understand language, we need to be able, in a modest way, to mind-read. When Joe sees me wink, he watches a man close one eye to no purpose. Without a sense of what I mean by a wink, of my underlying consciousness, he can’t make sense of the gesture. Critical to our understanding of what others mean is a sense that they are conscious beings with intentions. This is at least as important to communication as the literal meaning of the language.
‘Are you all right? Do you want to go down the slide?’ I see her asking and pointing.
If Joe is paying the least attention, this kind of gentle pestering might, before long, set him off. I feel a small knot of urgency in my chest, wondering how wrong this could go, and I’m out of the pool – hoping Joe doesn’t choose the moment to change his mind and launch himself down the slide – and by now into the ‘not running really’ poolside trot.
‘Is something the matter?’ asks the moral authority, but Joe has no idea that she intends him a kindness, takes no clue from the earnest anxiety in her voice, or at least, if he does, takes the wrong one, for it turns out to be a question too far, and here it comes, Joe’s ‘no’:
‘NnAGH!’
‘It’s all right, Joe!’ I call, unheard above the jangle of echoing voices in the pool. In common with many autistic children, Joe’s words can lack proper volume control: ‘yes’ might be virtually inaudible, ‘no’ can thunder in response to the most timid inquiry. ‘A touch disproportionate, Joe, don’t you think?’ I want to say as he roars my head off. Somewhat put out by this dose of Joe’s ferocity, the good lady on the slide nevertheless feels a duty to persist.
‘Do you want to go down the stairs?’
‘NnnnnnAGH!’ – This time with a lifting screech.
What does she do when every option is contradicted? When offered baked beans, Joe hears the words ‘baked beans’ but has no sense that they’re being suggested rather than imposed and so hears this option as a threat. When the woman on the slide bends towards him with raised eyebrows, he’ll probably be picking out one or two words – slide, stairs, for example – but most words and some whole phrases will be unrecognisable. So it is not that he fears or resents the options she puts – he probably can’t make any sense of them – rather that he fears and resents her simply as a stranger and her benign tone is no help to her, being no clue to Joe of her good intentions. He has no idea from her words alone whether she means him help or harm.
She winces. ‘Is there someone with you?’ – reaching out to touch his shoulder and scanning the pool.
‘NnnnnnnnnAGHHH!’ flapping away her hand, turning heads and with a frantic shaking of his own.
By now I’m barging my own apologetic way up the steps: ‘It’s all right, he’s OK!’ I call ahead. ‘He’s OK, don’t worry, he’s fine just there.’ Well, he’s fine just being there, being Joe, it’s just that others aren’t fine with him just being there.
‘Oh, is your daddy here?’ Once ready to impose order, now anxious for rescue she fe
els her merciful moment has turned more militant than could ever have been predicted.
‘NnnnnnnnAGGGHHHH!’ screams Joe, reaching a pitch of desperation, and the first slap to his own face.
When gentle solicitation fails, there follows either withered embarrassment, smooth social confidence sloughing off in a heap, or something more resentful. ‘Well, stuff you!’ the affronted expressions seem to say. Joe forfeits his right to their concern for failing to cooperate with their expectations, the stubborn little shit, careless of the decent instincts of decent people. And so, compassion rebuffed, perplexed huff fills in. ‘Sod the little boy who’s first; you go down, darling.’
I don’t blame them; I wish they’d take that view sooner, before Joe, now hot, miserable and bristling defensively, decides to smack one on the little angel. She, shivering and bewildered, does as she’s told, her own awkward moral confusion swept away in a rush of flailing limbs and water.
Our language instinct depends on a feeling for tone of voice at least as much as it does on one for literal meaning, and tone derives from our intentions. Goodwill is not evident from words alone and we are rightly suspicious if fine words seem at odds with a careless manner. Sarcasm, humour, impatience, resignation, bitterness, as well as tenderness; any mood or emotion you care to name depends on what we guess from tone of voice to be the ‘true’ intention of the speaker. Between Jeremy Paxman’s ‘Yes’ and David Frost’s is all the difference in the world. I’m fond of the joke that two of the most aggressive phrases in the English language are ‘sorry’, pronounced with a lingering sneer and the implied parentheses ‘how ridiculous your sense of offence is, you small-minded whinger’, and the deeply affronted version of ‘excuse me!’ (‘so you think I’m in the wrong?!’). So heavy with irony, these are the kind of apologies that throw down a gauntlet. The occasional error aside, we measure tone, like intention, correctly across a wide range of subtle inflexions. Yet here is a child who seems to mistake pity for aggression. Where perfect pitch is the norm, Joe is tone deaf.
Joe Page 6