Diamond Solitaire

CHAPTER NINE

"What exactly do you do in that school?" Stephanie asked one evening as they waited to eat A chicken casserole in the oven was sending out a rich aroma, but the vegetables still required their seven minutes in the microwave.

"A lot of sitting around."

"Can't you make yourself useful in some way?"

"Occasionally. Today I was doing the job I do best-putting a jigsaw together. An eight-piece jigsaw." Diamond offered the statement blandly, knowing Stephanie would pounce on it. Sometimes he took a wry pleasure in being the prey to his wife's sharp remarks.

"How many pieces went missing?"

"Unkind! Not a single one. They're the size of your hand."

'This is for the children's benefit, I take it?"

'Naturally."

"So you work with them, fitting the pieces together?"

He smiled. "Some hope! I fit them together and they pull them apart."

"Does Naomi join in?"

His voice altered, the byplay over. "Naomi? No."

"Why not? Jigsaws are pretty basic, when all's said and done. Language isn't involved."

"She doesn't join in anything. She's completely passive."

"Maybe she's terrified of the others."

"She was like this before she was brought to the school."

'Terrified?"

Diamond nodded. She was almost certainly right.

"But they insist she's autistic?" Stephanie asked.

"The diagnosis isn't carved in stone," he said. "Anyway, as far as I can tell it's a convenient label for a pretty broad spectrum of maladjusted kids. Give, for instance, has these tantrums and has to find some corner of the room he considers the safest from invasion. Naomi's not like that She'll sit where she's told. She's silent. Totally switched off. Her behavior is nothing like Clive's, but they're both thought to be autistic. Is that ready?"

He'd been interrupted by five electronic bleeps. The microwave oven was a symbol of more affluent times. He'd bought it on the day he resigned from the police, but it looked older than that, copiously speckled during the redecoration of the kitchen. Some of the marks had been impossible to remove.

"Standing time," Stephanie reminded him. "The veggies need their standing time. I don't know if you remember Maxine Beckington, one of the Brownies. She didn't last very long with us, but she was a bright little thing."

"That was probably why," said Diamond.

"Why what?"

"Why she didn't last. If she was as bright as you say, she probably objected to dancing around the toadstool on the grounds that it was a phallic symbol."

She gave him a glare. The Brownie movement wasn't a topic for levity. "I was about to tell you that Maxine's mother had another child, a boy, and he was the envy of all the other mothers because he was such a contented baby, willing to lie in his pram for as long as they left him. I saw him myself-a beautiful child with gorgeous big blue eyes. He never cried. They never missed a night's sleep. But after a time, this angelic baby started to make them uneasy. They realized he didn't cry even when he was hungry. If they hadn't fed him as a matter of routine, he would have starved, still without complaining. It was uncanny. What started out as a blessing turned out to be deeply worrying, and with good reason. He was eventually found to be autistic. Your Naomi sounds similar."

Diamond pondered the suggestion. "Yes, I can imagine her as a baby acting like that, but we shouldn't make these comparisons."

"Why not?"

"It's unscientific, that's why. One thing I've learned from Julia Musgraye is that autism has to be diagnosed by an expert. You can't pick out a single symptom as typical. Any characteristic you name-the aloofness, the odd movements some of them make, the difficulties with speech-could be the result of some other condition. You recognize autism by a whole range of things. And they vary. Not all autistic babies behave like the kid you just described. Some of them fight and scream from day one and refuse to be comforted."

"Dreadful for the mothers," Stephanie concurred. "And they look like normal children."

"Prettier, sometimes. You used a word to describe that baby: angelic. Autistic kids tend to have large eyes and remarkably symmetrical features. They really seem to be otherworldly."

"Is Naomi like that?"

"Well, yes."

"Does she scream and fight?"

"Never."

"What if she's provoked?"

Diamond frowned at the idea. "No one wants to give the kid a hard time. She's had enough shocks already."

"Don't the other children sometimes bother her?"

"They don't fight each other. They're too enclosed in their own worlds."

Stephanie picked up the oven gloves and took out the casserole. Together they served up the meal. When they had savored a few mouthfuls, Diamond said, "I'd like to know how the geniuses at the Police Training College would cope with young Naomi. She'd test their information-gathering techniques all right."

"It sounds to me as if you're warming to the challenge."

"Me?" He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.

Stephanie said, "You and this kid remind me of something my science teacher told us at school, about when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. How do you resolve it, then?"

Julia Musgrave was more amenable to his proposal than he felt entitled to expect. The ten days he'd spent observing the class and occasionally assisting had disposed of any fears she may have had that he was a potential nuisance. After classes and in the staffroom he'd shown by bis questions that he was quick to appreciate the difficulties of teaching handicapped children.

The staff, as one would hope in a special school, were strongly committed. They amounted to four full-time and three part-time helpers, plus the redoubtable Mrs. Straw, who besides guarding the front door had a list of duties that included playtime supervision, first aid, general filing and heating up the lunches supplied by the meals-on-wheels service.

Diamond had persuaded Julia Musgrave to release Naomi from class for the last hour of Friday afternoon. In a one-to-one situation, he would try patiently to dismantle the child's wall of indifference. They would have the staffroom to themselves. This small room at the back of the house doubled as a work and rest area. Desks were ranged along the walls and mere was a table with coffee-making facilities under the window at one end. Three armchairs were grouped around a low table on which were scattered magazines and newspapers. Diamond had brought in one of the small chairs and spent some time deciding where to place it Eventually he settled for a position facing one of the armchairs. He poured hot water onto instant coffee and sat in the armchair.

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 autistic 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.

"Is anything known about the cause of the condition?"

A laugh came from deep in Ettlinger's throat "The cause, 70 you say? Nobody knows. No known cause and no cure. There are theories. More theories than I have time to list, my friend. Personally, I am inclined to believe that the problem is organic, rather than emotional. It has nothing to do with the way the children are reared, as was once suspected. It goes back, in my opinion, to pre-, peri- or postnatal injury or illness affecting the brain. And don't ask me what can be done. Every week, practically, I read of some Svengali claiming spectacular success. Cures, even. You can hug these children, reward them, punish them, isolate them, put them on diets. They can be trained to some extent. I don't deny it. But so can chimpanzees. Personally I would rather train a chimpanzee. They're capable of affection, you know. Autistic children give none. They are tyrants."

Diamond had heard all this with mounting distaste. "That's hardly a scientific word, is it? Tyrants?"

The little doctor glared. "Think of a better one. Spend as long as you like observing Naomi and think of a better one-if you can." He turned his back on Diamond and went over to talk to someone else.