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TRACK TWO

Prokofiev, Piano Concerto No. 2, Finale

Evgeny Kissin, Piano

Sergei Prokofiev was one of the great musical revolutionaries. He wrote his first opera at nine, and by the time he was a teenager at the St Petersburg Conservatoire he was already established as one of the great enfants terrible of music, composing ferociously dissonant, virtuosic music that smashed down existing conventions around tonality and kicked music violently into a new direction.

I love him even more because he got reviews like this one from the New York Times: ‘The House of Bondage of normal key relations is discarded. He is a psychologist of the uglier emotions. Hatred, contempt, rage – above all, rage – disgust, despair, mockery and defiance legitimately serve as models for moods’

Awesome.

In 1912–13 Prokofiev wrote a piano concerto to the memory of a friend of his who had sent him a farewell letter and committed suicide. The music is so jarring, so angry, so overwhelmingly insane that when he gave the premiere many in the audience thought he was making fun of them. It remains one of the most difficult pieces of music in the repertoire, with only a handful of pianists being brave enough to perform it. One broke a finger while playing it live.

It is the most accurate musical depiction of helter-skelter madness I have ever heard.

I’M AT SCHOOL AND A bit fragile. It’s ‘big school’ after all. I’m a nervous kid. Shy and eager to please and be liked. I’m slight and beautiful and look a bit like a girl. The school itself is posh, expensive, on the same street as our house and, to my tiny eyes, huge. I am five years old. I have few friends and don’t really mind that. I’m ‘sensitive’ but not retarded and awkward. Just slightly apart. I like dancing and music and have a vivid imagination. I am free of much of the bullshit that adults seem to be weighed down by, which is as it should be. My little world is growing and unfurling in front of me and there is much to explore at school. Again, as it should be.

One day (I was going to say ‘one Tuesday’ but it was over thirty years ago and I haven’t got a fucking clue what day of the week it was) I went to the gym with the rest of the class. My first gym class scares me. The other kids seem to know what to do. They can climb ropes, hurl themselves at footballs and shriek with delight. I’m more of a ‘watching from the sidelines’ kind of kid. But Mr Lee, our teacher, doesn’t seem to mind. He keeps giving me encouraging, kind looks. Like he knows I’m a bit self-conscious but he’s on my side and doesn’t mind at all. It’s all unspoken, but it feels clean, defined, safe.

I find myself looking towards him more and more during the class. And sure enough, every time I look up I catch his eye, and they sparkle a little bit. He smiles at me in a way none of the other boys would notice, and I know at some deep and untouchable level, it is a smile just for me. I feel like the noise and hustle and crowd recedes when he looks at me, and there’s a rainbow-coloured spotlight shining on me and only he and I can see it.

It happens every time I go to his class. Just enough attention to feel slightly special, not enough to stand out. But enough to get me excited about gym class. Which is a pretty epic achievement. I keep trying to be nice for him so he’ll give me a little bit more attention. I ask and answer questions, run harder, climb higher, never complain, make sure my gym kit is clean and smart. I know one day he’ll come through. And sure enough, after a few weeks he asks me to stay behind and help him tidy up. And I feel like I’ve won some kind of lottery where self-esteem is the jackpot. A special ‘you’re the best, cutest, most adorable and brilliant child I’ve ever taught and all your patience has now paid off’ prize. My chest feels swollen and alive with pride.

So we tidy up and talk. Like grown-ups talk. And I’m trying to be all nonchalant like this happens to me all the time and all of my friends are 130 years old and adult. And then he says to me, ‘James, I’ve got you a present’, and my heart stops for a second. He takes me into the walk-in gym cupboard where they store all the equipment and he has his desk and chair and he rummages around in his desk drawer. And then fuck me if he doesn’t pull out a book of matches. In a bright red sleeve. Now I know I’m not allowed to touch matches. And yet here’s this (achingly cool) man giving me some and telling me it’s A-OK to light a few of them.

Kids are fucking stupid; it’s why they’re kids. He was overweight, balding, at least forty and far too hairy. But to me as a five-year-old he was ripped, strong, kind, handsome, dashing and totally magical. Go figure.

I ask him if he’s sure it’s OK and he again tells me to go ahead and light one up. So that’s what I do. I light one and wait for the trouble, the shouting, the drama to start. And when nothing happens, when it’s clear there is no trap, I go to town. Giggling, striking match after match, eyes wide and bright, smelling the sulphur, hearing the rip of the flame, feeling the heat on my little fingers.

Parenting tip – if you want a quiet half-hour to have a nap, give your toddler a book of matches. They’ll be captivated.

It’s the best thirty minutes of my short life. And I feel things that all little boys ache to feel – invincible, adult, 6 feet tall. Noticed.

And so it carried on. For weeks. Smiles, winks, encouragement, pen knives, lighters, stickers, chocolate bars, Action Men. A Zippo for my sixth birthday. Secret presents, special gestures, and an invitation to join the after-school boxing club.

Which is where everything went bad.

Now it’s important to acknowledge that I chose to do boxing class. was asked and I said yes. It was very much a conscious choice. It was not something that was foisted upon me. This guy, this movie star who I wanted to get closer to because he liked me and made me feel special, invited me to do something after school with him and I agreed to it.

You might think my five-year-old mind is a little unreliable. Not quite fully formed, not yet capable of accurate recall. So I’m going to let the head of the junior school speak for me. That way you’ll know it’s properly legit. It’s from a police report she filed in 2010 and is unedited.

In September 1980, I was appointed Head Teacher of the Junior School at Arnold House, a Preparatory School for boys in St John’s Wood. It was there that I first met James Rhodes. He was a beautiful little boy, dark haired and lithe, with a winning smile. He was bright, articulate and confident for a 5 year old. From the earliest of ages, it was clear that he had a talent for music. When he was 6, in about 1981–2, he was in my form (I was a teaching Head in those days). His parents were lovely people, themselves high achievers and they lived just down the road from the school. Although they recognised James’ talents for music, I suspect they wanted him to have an all round experience in education and sporting activities were to be included. They signed James up for the extra curricular boxing activity. This was a paid activity and once ‘signed up’; the parents committed to at least a full year of coaching.

Boxing was a popular activity with boys. It had been added to the curriculum by the previous owner of the school, George Smart. Many shiny silver cups were awarded for boxing at the annual Prize Giving. In the absence in those days, of a real Physical Education programme and having no Games field on site, as we were in the middle of St John’s Wood, boxing in the early 80s was the only physical activity on offer and many parents opted for it for their sons.

The Boxing coach was a man named Peter Lee and I believe he worked at school on a part time basis in the late 10’s. He hailed from the Margate area of Kent. He was a powerfully built man, but not very tall and was probably then in his late 40s. He seemed very ‘old’ to me! In 1981, the new Gymnasium was opened and Peter was in his element. He claimed to have been involved all his life with boys clubs and I clearly remember him boasting of his friendship with Jackie Pallo, who I gathered was a famous wrestler.

Quite a few of my boys from my Junior School were sent to Boxing to be taught by Peter Lee. Some appeared to really enjoy the activity and I do remember that in the beginning, James did too. However, fairly soon after he had joined the activity, I noticed a change in James’ demeanour. He became rather withdrawn and appeared to be losing his sparkle. The boys who were down for the Boxing activity would change into the white shorts and coloured house T shirts in their class room and then I would escort them over to the Gym and then collect them 40 minutes later.

It became clear to me that James was becoming reluctant to attend this activity. He would take ages to change and often keep the rest of the group waiting. I remember so clearly the time he asked me to stay with him in the Gym. I didn’t. I thought that he was being a bit of a wimp. However, every Boxing day, usually twice a week, James would play up and I realised that he really didn’t want to be there. On many occasions, I did stay with him. I hated the whole thing. These very small children were positively encouraged to be aggressive. James was a thin little boy and it was clear that he was very uncomfortable. I thought at the time when Mr Lee asked James to stay behind to help him clear up the equipment that he was trying to make the child feel special. When I took the rest of the group back to change, it was always James who had to go with Mr Lee and help him clear up. I allowed this to happen on many occasions. This happened more than 25 years ago, long before Child Protection became an issue, but there seemed to be an element of trust between colleagues, and children being alone with an adult was never really questioned.

One day, James came back to the classroom to change having been with Peter Lee and he had a bloody face. When I asked him what had happened, he burst into tears and I went straight back to the Gym to question Mr Lee. I was told that James had fallen. I didn’t believe him and at that point, I suspected that the man was being violent in some way to James. The next day, I shared my concerns with my colleague, who was the Headmaster looking after the Senior School. I told him about James’ personality changes, that he seemed reluctant to go to the Boxing activity and that I was worried that Mr Lee was in some way frightening the child. He told me that I was over reacting and that little Rhodes needed toughening up.

I can’t remember exactly how long James continued the activity, but I do remember him begging me not to send him to the Gym on more than one occasion. I also remember explaining, that because his parents had opted for this paid activity, I couldn’t take him out of it without their permission. I spoke to James’ Mum about this and she too had noticed that he wasn’t particularly ‘himself’ and that he appeared withdrawn at home. She was a lovely lady who adored her 2 sons but I can’t remember the activity being cancelled for him. I sat in that Gym week after week. I thought I was protecting him. One day he returned to the classroom after having helped Mr Lee tidy up and he had blood on his legs. I questioned him, but he never said a word, just cried quietly. I took him home that day and we played the piano together.

James left my care in the July to enter the Senior department. He no longer had me to protect him. It was frowned upon when the boys became 7+ for teachers to ‘mother’ them. I saw this once happy, confident child become paler and paler as time went on. He was a very unhappy boy and didn’t stay the course until he was 13, but was moved to another school when he was about 9 or 10. My colleagues in the Senior School just said he was very unhappy – that was the reason for leaving.

I next saw James when he was 11 at Harrow School and competing in a Piano competition. My Godson was in the same competition. James struck me as a very troubled young man. I later heard he had had some sort of breakdown. I have recently read an article in the Sunday Times about James who is now an accomplished concert pianist. I was appalled to read that in the interview he referred to being seriously abused by a teacher at his primary school.

I felt sick with the remembrance of it. I am wracked with guilt for not realising the hell that James must have been going through. I tried to protect him from what I thought was physical nastiness. It never occurred to me in my naivety that anything of a sexual nature was occurring. I am in touch with James again. He has confirmed the sexual abuse and asked me to name the teacher who hurt him so badly. I got the name right.

Sadly, now I look back, James might not have been the only victim. There were several children who were fearful of Mr Lee and because of that I banned all children from my Junior School from going to his Boxing activity at the end of that year. I was regarded as an over protective female by my male colleagues. Thank God I was.

I am desperately sorry that James has suffered so deeply and for so long. I am also immensely proud that he has come through this and out the other side. He deserves every success and happiness in life. Scars and deep wounds sometimes make us stronger.

I write all this because I know I have to go to the Police. Mr Lee might still be alive. He might still be involved with children, even his own grandchildren. It is my view that he is a danger to young people. As a Minster in the Church of England and a part time Prison Chaplain, I see the effects that serious abuse has on the lives of young people. May God be the judge of these people who ruin the lives of others.

Chere Hunter

So there we are. My very own fight club. As Tyler Durden has taught us, the first rule of fight club is we never talk about fight club. And I didn’t. For almost thirty years. And now I am. Because fuck you if you’re one of the people who think I shouldn’t.

There’s quite a lot to unpack in the police statement above. There’s a lot of insinuation but no real facts about the abuse. Abuse. What a word. Rape is better. Abuse is when you tell a traffic warden to fuck off. It isn’t abuse when a forty-year-old man forces his cock inside a six-year-old boy’s ass. That doesn’t even come close to abuse. That is aggressive rape. It leads to multiple surgeries, scars (inside and out), tics, OCD, depression, suicidal ideation, vigorous self-harm, alcoholism, drug addiction, the most fucked-up of sexual hang-ups, gender confusion (‘you look like a girl, are you sure you’re not a little girl?’), sexuality confusion, paranoia, mistrust, compulsive lying, eating disorders, PTSD, DID (the shinier name for multiple personality disorder) and on and on and on.

I went, literally overnight, from a dancing, spinning, gigglingly alive kid who was enjoying the safety and adventure of a new school, to a walled-off, cement-shoed, lights-out automaton. It was immediate and shocking, like happily walking down a sunny path and suddenly having a trapdoor open up and dump you into a freezing cold lake.

You want to know how to rip all the child out of a child? Fuck him.

Fuck him repeatedly. Hit him. Hold him down and shove things inside him. Tell him things about himself that can only be true in the youngest of minds before logic and reason are fully formed and they will take hold of him and become an integral, unquestioned part of his being.

My mum, bless her, didn’t notice or didn’t want to notice anything was wrong. I don’t blame her. She was a young, naive mother, overwhelmed with life and desperately trying to keep her shit together despite being a Valium-resistant insomniac with a family to look after and no rule book. It was all she could do to get up in the mornings, get food on the table and stay upright until 11 p.m. She was and is an incredibly empathic, generous and loving woman, and she was facing a horrific situation in the best and only way she knew how.

I’m not going to write about the sex in detail. For a number of reasons. Some of you might read it and use it to fantasise about. Some of you might read it and judge me for getting a boner at the time (on occasion). Some of you will read it and just feel nauseous and indignant. But most of all I don’t want to go into detail because I don’t think I’ll make it out the other side if I do, especially when you can just buy a copy of the Daily Mail if you’ve the urge to feel titillated, nauseous or judgmental. Cheaper, quicker, less traumatic for me.

The point of sharing those sticky, toxic words is simply this: that first incident in that locked gym closet changed me irreversibly and permanently. From that moment on, the biggest, truest part of me was quantifiably, sickeningly different.