5. 8 Stubborn as a Mule
It isn’t in Jonah’s nature to allow a little thing like being paralysed from the neck down to get in the way of him doing what he wants! As Lucy’s tenth birthday approached, he made it clear that he was determined that he was going to turn up at our house with a present for her, exactly as he had done every year since she was born. I think that he would have liked to have organised it without reference to us, so as to appear out of the blue the way he always used to, but Margaret insisted that Bernie had to be involved, seeing as it might require her house to have alterations done to enable his wheelchair to get inside. Besides, it was one thing for Jonah to arrive unannounced, it was quite another to have him rolling up accompanied by Margaret and some of the nursing staff from the ward to take care of him.
I’ll never forget Lucy’s face when she came in from school and saw him there in our living room. And even I felt a lump come into my throat when she opened up the birthday card that he’d bought her and saw that he’d managed to scrawl a message to her himself. Actually, the writing wasn’t that much worse than it always used to be before his injury, but now it was a much bigger achievement because he had managed it with only his first two fingers and thumb. Lucy still has that card tucked away in the drawer next to her bed. It’s a symbol that Jonah wasn’t going to take things lying down and was still a force to be reckoned with.
It’s also a symbol of how much Lucy means to him and I’m surprised really that, for the first time, I didn’t feel at all resentful of him taking such an interest in her – and the way she made it clear that she looked forward to seeing him. At one level, you’re probably saying to yourself that it isn’t that odd because how could I be jealous of a man who’s almost completely paralysed and dependent on other people? But that’s not the point. I’ve come to realise that Jonah never was any threat to my relationship with Lucy – or Bernie, come to that. I suppose it all started out with him wanting to do something to show his appreciation for what Richard did for him – no, it wasn’t as calculated as that; it was more about wanting to demonstrate his esteem for Richard. And then, like practically every adult who ever met Lucy, he fell in love with the little girl. I hope it’s nothing to do with her blue eyes and golden curls – Bernie would go ballistic if she thought that was what attracted everyone to her daughter! – but I have a suspicion that those things do help. It’s a wonder she didn’t become a spoilt brat, with everyone fawning over her the way we do, but then, it’s probably the fact that she never appears aware of how much everyone admires her that keeps us all in her thrall.
Getting back to Jonah, the birthday outing was just a preliminary to his return home from the hospital, which happened gradually over a period of a couple of months. As soon as he was home, in the care of Margaret and their younger son, Nathan, with help from some professional agency staff, he started talking about getting back to work. Reactions to his stated intention of returning to his DCI job ranged from incredulity through laughter to anxiety that he was in denial and would suffer when he realised that his hopes could never be fulfilled. Within the police service there was initially an assumption that he would take early retirement, and senior officers were completely wrong-footed when he insisted that he wanted to come back to his old job. However, he was persistent and they had to listen and to start thinking of reasons for refusing his request – which wasn’t that hard really.
I could see both points of view. I understood Jonah’s determination not to allow himself to be thrown on the scrapheap, and I shared his love of the job itself; but I could also see why people found it hard to see how he was going to manage it in his current state – or why he would want to try. It came as no surprise to me that senior officers struggled to see how a man with Jonah’s disabilities could possibly succeed in a profession that traditionally required a minimum level of physical fitness. Moreover, he was fifty-two, and many police officers retire at fifty-five as a matter of course, so it was only natural to imagine that he would take the offer of an enhanced pension and go quietly. Some of his colleagues actually said to his face that they envied him being able to retire early and they wished they could afford to do so – which just shows how lacking in imagination they were.
What they failed to appreciate was how different it is to choose to retire from being told that you have to go. Effectively, what they were saying to Jonah was that he was now useless and that he ought to hide himself away in a nice comfortable care home somewhere out of sight and let other people look after him. Most people, when they retire, take up new hobbies or voluntary work and do all the things they never had time for when they were working. Jonah wasn’t in a position to take up new activities. His main hobby had been gardening, which was quite impossible in his condition – apart from in an advisory capacity, which he does very well now, but that’s another story! So I could completely understand why he needed to prove that he could still contribute to society and that he would want it to be by returning to being a full-time detective.
Jonah’s son, Nathan, was positioned right at the extreme of the anxious end of the spectrum. His father’s injury hit him very badly and he became very protective of him. He got quite angry with Margaret and Bernie when they wouldn’t back him in trying to persuade Jonah to give up his campaign to be reinstated. He thought that it was unkind to allow Jonah to continue deluding himself that he could get back to normal life and to his old job. Looking back, I think we could probably have been more understanding towards the boy, but we were all more concerned with helping Jonah come to terms with his disability. I’m afraid that Nathan’s attitude drove a wedge
between him and Jonah, which they’ve found difficult to shift.
With Bernie on Jonah’s side, the police authorities had no chance of winning the argument. When she sets her mind to getting something, it’s pointless trying to oppose her for long – not that Jonah isn’t a formidable force to be reckoned with in his own right! It took a good few months, but eventually the powers that be succumbed to the inevitable and granted Jonah a trial period of three months to prove that he could still do the job. Five years on, he’s still there and still irrepressibly enthusiastic about tackling each new case.