Mrs. Straw appeared in the doorway. “Miss Musgrave asked me to bring Naomi here.” She made it obvious from her tone that she thought the headmistress must have flipped. She still harbored some resentment at the way Diamond had bluffed his way into the school. However, she produced Naomi from behind her skirt and ushered the child to the chair.
Composed as usual, Naomi sat facing Diamond. She was wearing the red corduroy dress and black tights.
“She’ll be all right with me,” he assured Mrs. Straw. “You don’t have to stay.” When she continued to linger he added, “Would you mind closing the door as you go?”
Left alone with Naomi, he tried what he thought was a reassuring smile. The small girl didn’t alter her expression or her gaze, which seemed to be focused on the far end of the room, regardless that Diamond’s substantial form blocked (he view.
A number of times in his police career he’d interviewed shy or disaffected children. None had succeeded so successfully as Naomi in making him feel not merely small, but imperceptible. She sat demurely, hands together on her lap, feet crossed at the ankles, showing no interest whatsoever in the unfamiliar surroundings.
Diamond reached for his coffee and was taking a sip when it occurred to him that Naomi might appreciate a drink. Orangeade and other soft drinks were banned in the school for the effect certain additives were supposed to have on children, but milk was permitted. He got up and half-filled a paper cup from the carton beside the kettle. He handed it to Naomi and she took it with both hands and put it to her mouth.
It wasn’t a breakthrough, he knew. She must have been eating and drinking these past weeks to have stayed alive. But at least it was a positive action. He watched her drain the cup.
“More?” he enquired, pointing to the carton. “Naomi.’
No response.
He held out his hand for the cup. She ignored it
“All right,” he said evenly. “Hang on to it if you want.” He topped up his own cup with coffee and returned to the armchair. Faced with such indifference from one so small, he felt more than usually gross. Partly to restore some self-esteem, he privately declared time out while he finished drinking.
Under the fringe of black hair, Naomi’s almond eyes gazed steadily ahead, rarely blinking. If she saw anything of Diamond, it was the area where his tie met the lapel of his jacket, but in fact her eyes weren’t focused there. Even if he contrived to slide down in the armchair to get on a level with the child, he still wouldn’t achieve genuine eye contact.
The absence of eye contact was, he knew, a characteristic of the autistic behavior pattern. Taken together with Naomi’s refusal to speak and her indifference to what was happening around her, it made a diagnosis of autism more likely than any other. Diamond knew from conversations with Julia Musgrave and from his reading that parents, and sometimes teachers, had the greatest difficulty in accepting the reality of the condition, still less its inflexibility. Tantalized by evidence that these children were unimpaired in many respects and normal in appearance, the people who cared about them tried unavailingly to unlock the personalities imprisoned by the illness. Quite possibly he was engaged in the same futile exercise.
The coffee finished, he sat forward in the armchair and extended his right hand towards the child until his forefinger lightly touched her chest.
“Naomi.”
She didn’t react in any way.
He brought the hand back and reversed the finger to indicate his own chest. “Diamond.”
This establishing of identities was the first step in understanding. A baby learned to say “Mama,” “Dada” and “Baba” before anything else. Once the concept of meaning was grasped, the world of language opened up.
Still no response.
He repeated the actions and the words several times without result If she wouldn’t respond verbally, perhaps he could coax her to make a significant gesture. He reached out and removed the empty paper cup from her hand. Then he took her fingers in his hand, feeling their warmth. Leaning towards her, he pressed her hand against his chest and spoke his name.
Not a flicker of comprehension. He let go of her hand. It dropped limply in her lap.
Without much confidence that she would get the idea and point to his chest, he said, “Diamond.”
Nothing.
If only he could elicit some response, it would be a platform to build on. He squirmed to the edge of the armchair and leaned so close that all she had to do was lift her hand to touch him. He repeated, “Diamond?”
Naomi dipped forward and for a moment he thought she had twigged what to do. Her eyes were on him. Then she sank her teeth into his nose. She bit hard.
“Jesus Christ!”
The pain was severe. Diamond yelled and pulled away. He clapped his hand to his nose. She’d drawn blood. It started dripping steadily.
He got up and looked around for something to staunch the flow. Finding nothing, he went to the door, leaving Naomi self-possessed again, still on the chair, her hands resting in her lap.
Mrs. Straw, in the kitchen, didn’t disguise her amusement. “What’s she done-bashed you on the nose-a scrap like her?”
He ran the cold tap and dipped his face under it
Presently Mrs. Straw produced cotton wool and liquid antiseptic from the first-aid cabinet Diamond asked her to take Naomi back to Miss Musgrave. The one-to-one was over for today. First blood to Naomi.
What was it about noses, that nobody took them seriously? If the point of his chin had been covered with Elastoplast, people wouldn’t have grinned at the sight of him. He knew he looked ridiculous, but the plaster was necessary. The bleeding had persisted, in spite of the smallness of the cut. Naomi’s sharp front teeth had opened a flap of skin at the tip and it was most reluctant to dry up.
At least Julia Musgrave’s smile was accompanied by sympathy. “It’s one of the hazards of the job, I’m afraid. I’ve been bitten in most places, but my nose has escaped up to now. How did she do it?”
When he’d explained, she said, “You invaded her space. They have a pathological fear of anyone getting too close. You’ve seen how Clive runs to the bookcase the minute he comes into my office.”
“When you say ‘they,’ you mean autistic kids?”
“Well, yes.”
“Naomi isn’t like that,” Diamond insisted. “She sits where she’s told. She doesn’t run off.”
“Didn’t I warn you that their behavior isn’t all the same? It’s a mental condition, Peter, not a physical thing like mumps which always produces the same symptoms. With some of them it takes an aggressive form, while others are passive.”
“You explained this to me the other day.”
“Well, then.”
“So why did she bite me? Hasn’t anyone invaded her space before?”
Julia Musgrave nodded. “I see what you mean. This is the first time she’s bitten anyone, or shown any tendency to fight”
“Is it possible she learned it from Clive?”
“The biting? I suppose it is, but they don’t imitate each other much. They’re too independent”
“You keep saying ‘they,’” Diamond objected testily. The bite, and the amusement it had created, had made him irritable. Some of his old colleagues in the police would have said his true character was beginning to emerge. “Let’s suppose Naomi isn’t autistic. Suppose she has some other problem that stops her from speaking. Mightn’t she be influenced by what the other kids do?”
Julia Musgrave sighed. “I can’t help thinking you’re heading straight up a cul-de-sac. People find it so hard to accept that their kid is autistic.”
“Naomi isn’t mine.”
She gave him a long look, not without sympathy, but accompanied by the slight smile that hadn’t left her lips since she’d seen the injury. “Let’s say that you’re taking a special interest. That’s the agony with these children. They look bright They can show glimmers of intelligence, even of brilliance in some cases. The textbooks call such
children idiot savants.”
“Cruel,” Diamond commented.
“It’s a cruel condition.”
“For the parents, I mean.”
“Oh, yes. It’s harder to accept than having a child who is retarded. Some autistic children can sing quite intricate tunes before they’re a year old. I’ve known a four-year-old who remembers every bar of a Beethoven symphony. They can do incredible things with numbers. They can hide some favorite toy and then weeks, months later, go straight to it People marvel at such things and persuade themselves that there’s a genius trying to get free, that it’s simply a matter. of finding the miracle cure. It isn’t so, Peter. These kids are impaired for life. The memory may be functioning with superefficiency, but the rest of the brain isn’t. They can’t reason as you or I can. They can’t interpret the facts they know to any purpose. It’s incredibly frustrating, but you have to accept it if you work with them.”
“Of course.”
“You’re not discouraged?”
“I’m not a quitter, Julia. I’m ready for the next round.”
She regarded him with a kind of pity. “It isn’t a boxing match, in spite of the evidence to the contrary.”
He peeled off the Elastoplast on the way home in the tube, not wishing Stephanie to see it. The small cut had dried, but the area still felt sore. It was too much to hope that Steph wouldn’t notice the minute he stepped through the door.
She said, “Lunchtime drinks today?”
“Naomi.”
“I thought you told me she was only this high.”
“Yes, but I was sitting in an armchair.”
“With the child on your lap?” She paused. “Have you got a lap these days, my love?”
“Not on my lap, for God’s sake. I don’t want child molesting added to my record. No, I was leaning forward in the chair, trying to get her to touch me.”
“Pete, that sounds even more deplorable.”
‘To identify me. To show that she understood my name.”
“She’s Japanese, my love.”
He switched on the TV.
Later she said, “Maybe you ought to try a different approach.”
“Such as?” He spoke sharply. He was still feeling frayed.
“You seem to be trying to get through to her on the basis that she isn’t autistic. Have you thought of doing the other thing? In other words, testing whether she is?”
“How do I do that?”
“Better ask.”
After two more arid sessions in the staffroom with Naomi (keeping his distance) he was close to being persuaded that no progress was possible, and he admitted as much to Julia Musgrave. They were in the school garden during what was wishfully described in the timetable as playtime. Rajinder and Naomi were seated on swings of the kind that had side supports and safety bars, being kept in motion by Mrs. Straw. Not one of the trio seemed to be taking any pleasure in the exercise. Tabitha, sucking her thumb, was watching dolefully and Clive was hiding behind a sack of grass seed in the gardener’s shed.
“I’ve got to admire your persistence, Peter,” Julia Musgrave told him, “but I have to say that I think you’re right You’re up against a brick wall. Have you talked to the police? They took away the clothes Naomi was found in. I wonder if they found any clues.”
“You can stop wondering,” he told her. “I know one of the inspectors there. The kid’s things were sent off to the lab, and after a couple of weeks a five-page report came back, saying-in a nutshell-that they appeared to have been worn by a dark-haired female child. Oh, and they had the Marks and Spencer label. That cuts it down to five million, I should guess.” He picked a sprig of lavender and rolled it between his finger and thumb, watching the bits drop on the path. The scent was a favorite of Steph’s. “My wife thinks I’m going at this the wrong way round.”
“How do you mean?”
“She says instead of looking for signs that Naomi isn’t autistic, I ought to be examining all the evidence that she is. Normality is impossible to prove.”
“It’s a questionable concept anyway. She sounds like a bright lady, your wife.”
“Brighter than me, for sure.”
“Why don’t you talk to Dr. Ettlinger? He’s coining in to look at Naomi this afternoon.”
Ettlinger was a child psychiatrist attached in some unspecified way to the school, a short, troll-like man with a prodigious crop of wiry black hair. It wasn’t clear whether he’d been appointed by the local health authority or was a freelancer who had persuaded Julia Musgrave that there might be something in it for the children. As Peter Diamond was only mere himself by courtesy of Julia, he was in no position to object, but his private assessment was that Ettlinger ought not to have been let within a mile of young kids. The man was abrasive, opinionated and humorless. In spite of that, he seemed to have convinced everyone at the school that he was an international authority on autism, and presumably it was true.
“You’d better not waste my time,” he told Diamond waspishly when approached in the staffroom. “I’m Teutonic. I have no interest whatsoever in the weather, or cricket, or cars.” From anyone else, the remark might have been meant to amuse. Not from Ettlinger.
“It’s a professional matter, Doctor,” Diamond assured him, uncomfortably kowtowing. The days when he could pull rank on smart-mouthed forensic experts were just a memory now. “I’m interested in Naomi, the Japanese girl. She’s here because they believe she’s autistic.”
“Correct.”
“So you agree that she is?”
“I didn’t say that. I was merely confirming your statement” “But have you formed an opinion yet?”
“No.”
“Is that because you have doubts?”
“Certainly not,” Ettlinger snapped. “Dubiety is unscientific. I am open-minded. Do you understand the difference? You may harbor doubts. I am open-minded.”
Diamond was tempted to remark that the state of Ettlinger’s mind interested him less than Naomi’s, but he checked himself.
Ettlinger added, “I would need to study the child in a more systematic way than I can on occasional visits. She is not my patient”
“I understand she shows some of the classical symptoms of autism.”
“Classical?” Ettlinger almost choked on the word, he was so indignant. “Classical? The condition wasn’t given a name until 1943, and it wasn’t studied in a serious way until the 1960s. How can you speak of symptoms as classical?”
“Typical, then.”
“I could object to that as well.”
Diamond didn’t give him the opportunity. “She doesn’t speak. She avoids eye contact. Is that the profile of an autistic child? Because if it is, Naomi fits it perfectly.”
“What you have just described, Mr. Diamond, may be indicative of autism; it is also the appropriate behavior of well-brought-up young women throughout much of Asia. Have you thought of that? One cannot discount the possibility that her behavior is governed, to some degree at least, by her culture.”
A persuasive point that Diamond accepted. He supposed he had borne it in mind up to now without articulating it. “But not to speak at all, not even to the woman from the Japanese Embassy?”
“That, I grant you, is exceptional.”
“How do you recognize autism, then?”
Ettlinger sighed and glanced up at the staffroom clock.
“All right, how does anyone recognize it? Are there tests?”
“What do you mean?”
“X rays, blood tests, scans. I’m no expert.”
“There are no objective tests of that kind,” said Ettlinger with disdain. “One looks at the behavior. What I will say is that every child who fits this syndrome suffers from some degree of speech impairment, ranging from mutism to aphasia-which is confusion over the proper sequence of letters and words. Every child, Mr. Diamond.”
Diamond placed a mental tick against Naomi’s mutism.
“It is also true by definition that the auti
stic child is manifestly indifferent to other people, especially other children. Autism comes from the Greek, as you probably know. Autos. Self. Right?”
Another tick.
“However, one would expect to observe other impairments, such as problems of motor control.”
“Odd ways of walking, you mean, like Rajinder?”
“Yes.”
“Naomi isn’t like that She seems well coordinated.”
Ettlinger nodded. “Some of them are. Curiously, they sometimes have the ability to keep their balance better than other children. They climb on furniture and leap around in a surefooted manner. They could probably perform prodigious feats on a tightrope.”
Which wouldn’t be easy to test, Diamond thought.
“And they won’t get dizzy if they spin around.”
“That’s something I didn’t know.”
“It’s commonly observed.”
“Anything else?”
Ettlinger spread his hands. “Much else, Mr. Diamond. Repetitive behavior, such as head banging, or rocking, or staring into a mirror, or spinning things. The wheels of a toy, for instance. You must have watched Clive do that.”
“Of course. I don’t think Naomi does it.”
Ettlinger was already onto other symptoms of autism. “Abnormal reactions to sensory experiences, such as pain, or cold or heat. Hostility to being touched lightly.” There was the hint of a smile.
“You heard what happened to me?”
“I can see.”
“Was that to be expected of an autistic child?”
“They bite, yes.”
“I mean does it make the diagnosis more likely?”
“It’s a small indication. Next time you should try being more boisterous, and see if she responds to it They often enjoy a good romp.” The moral objection to a strange man “romping” with a small girl seemed not to have occurred to Dr. Ettlinger.
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