Читать книгу No One Is Sacrosanct - David Balaam - Страница 12

1985

When the day is warm and the sky blue, playing football on the large garden lawn is always a good day. I suppose most days are good really. I have my own bed, although I share a room with three others. I get three meals a day and we get to go to the zoo and the seaside once a year. I have known this way of life for five years now - since I was eight. My parents separated - well mum died actually which separated her from my father who couldn't handle bringing up an eight-year-old. Not that it mattered. One year after mum died he was jailed for burglary, and with no close relations to take me in, I was put into this ‘home’ for orphans.

For many years the home was run by friendly staff, who were kind and thoughtful about our predicament. We had school lessons like any school. We did games and PE and had picnics in the garden under the old oak tree. All that changed, however, two years ago when the council placed the running of the home with a local Church Trust - everything changed - for the worse. They brought in new staff having sacked most of the old staff. We had only one lesson a day, which was a plus according to some of the children, but worst of all, all outings were cancelled. Morale among the younger kids was low. Where, previously, staff had played with the youngest - four to six-year-olds, they were left alone in small groups and watched over by one uncaring adult who read magazines and smoked most of the day.

My closest friends were Anna, aged nine, and Simon who was eleven. Although I had never had a younger brother or sister, I knew they would have been exactly as I had imagined. We were best friends and spent all day together - playing, reading, drawing - just doing kids stuff, although I was thirteen and nearly six-foot-tall, they didn't care. But all that changed under ‘New Management’. Within two weeks of the new rules, everyone had to attend church on Sunday, the only outing we got; plus visit a room during the weekday evenings in the basement of the home that was designated a church. It was laid out with chairs like a church, and a trestle bench covered with a red velvet cloth was the alter table. The priest was tall and spoke with a stern voice when giving out his sermon, which seemed to be the same each week. “Obey the word of God - obey your elders for we are the word of God.” They drove fear into the children and gradually governed without question or reproach.

I saw the change in Anna first. “Hi, Anna. Want to come outside. It’s stopped raining.” She was lying on her bed, face down. “No thanks, Liam. I’m too tired.” She said in a muffled voice. That was not like her - she loved the outdoors.

“OK,” I said. “Maybe later.” And I left her lying there.

On the following Sunday evening, after prayers, I noticed the priest, Father Dunfold was his name, asked two or three of the children to stay behind, to help tidy up the books and straighten the chairs. One of them was Simon. Monday morning he didn't show for breakfast or then lunch, so I slipped out of the dining room and walked up to the third floor to his bedroom. He was sitting on his bed reading. “Hey, Si. Are you OK? You missed two meals - that's not like you.” He closed the book hurriedly and placed it behind him. “I’m OK. Just not hungry, Liam.” His face was red with embarrassment and he avoided making eye contact with me.

“What’s that you’re reading?” I asked out of interest, and with some concern.

“Nothing.” He answered too quickly. Being tall can have its advantages. I towered over him, not in a threatening manner but enough to know he would never win a fight with me if it came to it. I reached around his back and picked up the small book. The Common Book of Prayer.

“What the fuck is this, Si?” But before he could answer a hand grabbed me on the shoulder.

“Liam Sullivan. Back to your room now. You know the rules.” I turned to see part-time caretaker Harry Wentworth standing there.

“I’m talking to my friend. There's no harm in that.” I replied defiantly. Wentworth looked taken aback at my boldness, but my height and physic, coupled with my genuine expression of anger and confusion, told him to back off. I handed the book back to Simon. “Are you sure you are OK?” I asked again in a softer tone. He nodded sheepishly giving me a not very convincing half-smile.

“OK. I’ll be in my room if you need me.” And went to pat his shoulder as friends do, but he pulled away at the last moment. I didn't think much about it at the time, but later, much later, it all made sense.

1996

I thought I knew my two best friends during those days at the home, but obviously, I didn't. Anna, I found out quite by accident, hanged herself on her sixteenth birthday. We had always tried to keep in touch after leaving the home although that had never been easy for Simon. If any of us moved we always put our new address on the next birthday or Christmas Card. As it was Anna’s sixteenth, a special day so to speak, I had sent a card with a cheque. I was doing well in business as a salesman and wanted her to buy something special for herself. A week later I got a call from her adopted parents, Joe and Sandra, who had taken Anna in at the age of twelve. I don't remember everything they said after telling me she had hanged herself on her birthday, except she had left a note which they could not understand. ‘I cannot live with the guilt anymore’.

I asked what in hell that meant but they and the police had no idea. The funeral was to be the next day and asked if I wanted to be there. Of course I did. I wanted answers.

Apart from a few friends and family probably a dozen people in total paid their last respects to Ann Kale, aged sixteen. No one from the care-home was there, although she had spent most of her life living under that roof. Anna’s adopted parents invited me back for tea and sympathy, giving me a chance to see how she had spent her last few years with normal people.

Her adopted dad, Joe, said she had always been a quiet child, but a happy one. She had made new friends in the small village and seemed to appreciate the country life after spending so much time in the city care-home. The only thing she would not accept or explain was that she refused to attend the local church. “She would always run-up to her room when the Vicar came to call,” Sanda explained. “Which did surprise us,” Joe added, “as the care-home mentioned she was a regular at bible-studies back there.”

Now it's 1996 and will I be twenty-four in a few days so a good excuse to go out on the town with some friends. I phoned Simon who lived a few miles south of me in a rented council flat. He had not faired well over the years after leaving the home, drifting in and out of jobs - mainly low paid work; cleaning or kitchen work as a skivvy. “Come on, Si,” I said, trying to persuade him to join me.”

“Don’t think so, mate. Not really the sociable type, you know.”

“Rubbish. It’ll be fun, and it’s on me, so no worries.” I knew offering to pay could be a barrier, but we both knew he was always strapped for cash. I was about to turn up the persuasive charm when he suddenly asked, “Did you see that piece in the paper about Father Dunfold?”

“No,” I answered cautiously. “What about him?”

“He’s been arrested for child abuse, and,” Simon paused.

“And what, Simon?” I insisted.

“ . . . it’s all true, Liam. We were there.”

*

What I didn't know until I probed further was that Harry Wentworth, the care-home caretaker committed suicide the previous year - coincidence? Perhaps, but I needed to find out more regarding what Simon was going on about - ‘We were there’.

I found his apartment on a run-down estate in Vauxhall, South London. The twenty-story block oozed depression, but more worrying, danger. Shadowy figures eyed me as I climbed the stone steps to level nine, and found door number 93. Simon didn't answer at first. “Simon. It’s me, Liam. Let me in, mate, it's freezing out here.”

Gradually the door opened and I saw someone I didn't know, or so I thought. The dim hall-light threw a shadow over the pitiful creature standing in front of me. Having recognised me he slowly turned and walked a few paces to the kitchen at the end of the hallway. The kitchen light was a little brighter, so it was then I noticed he was wearing pyjamas and a faded dark green woollen dressing gown. The man in front of me could have been forty-one, not twenty-one. His face was sullen and unshaven. His once thick gleaming dark hair was lank and hung over his collar. He looked half the weight he should have been.

“Simon,” I started to say, sitting opposite him at the small kitchen table. “What happened to you, man?”

“It’s going to be fine now, Liam. I am going to make them pay for what they did, all of them.” His voice was calm and measured, in a strange way. Almost hypnotic as he stared straight through me.

“Who is going to pay, Simon? And what for. What do you mean?”

Although he was staring at me, he blinked as if seeing me for the first time.

“All of them, Liam. The ones that buggered and abused us, year in year out.”