Читать книгу Cry Silent Tears: The heartbreaking survival story of a small mute boy who overcame unbearable suffering and found his voice again - Joe Peters - Страница 11

From the moment we walked in the door of Mum’s big end-of-terrace Victorian council house, I was under no illusions at all about my place in the family pecking order. Far from being special, I was relegated to bottom of the heap. Larry and Barry appeared in the hall, and Larry’s first words were ‘I see the little bastard’s back,’ before he kicked me and Barry punched me on the arm.

Mum called Wally downstairs and explained to the three of them that I had been spoiled rotten by my dad and needed to learn my place in the family as the lowest of the low. Having been Dad’s favourite I was seen as being part of his betrayal of her, and it wasn’t hard for her to persuade the others that I was a spoiled brat who thought he was better than them.

Whereas Wally, my eldest brother, now aged seventeen, was inclined to be sympathetic to me because I was such a small child who had been through such a terrible trauma, Larry and Barry, aged fifteen and fourteen respectively, were more than happy to be given permission to indulge the vicious streaks that ran through their natures and to treat me as badly as possible. They were like bloodthirsty soldiers who had been given permission by their commanding officer to rape and pillage an enemy they had been brainwashed into believing was subhuman. Mum made it clear that showing me sympathy was not allowed. If Wally wasn’t going to join in my persecution he could expect to be on the receiving end of beatings himself. It all seemed very simple to her; if you weren’t on her team then you were obviously with the enemy.

Ellie and Thomas (then aged four and three) were still too little to play any part in my humiliation. I guess to their wide, innocent eyes it all seemed like normal family life because they had never known any different. In fact I was the only one who had lived with anyone else, the only one who realized that life didn’t have to be this terrifying and this painful all the time.

‘He’ll sleep on the floor in your room,’ Mum told Larry and Barry. ‘He’s not good enough for a room of his own. Take him up there and get him out of my sight.’

They were happy to oblige, kicking and punching me all the way up the stairs before pushing me into their bedroom.

The house was four storeys high, as tall as a tower to a small, frightened boy. It had a railway line running directly beside it, the trains making the sturdy walls tremble every time they rattled past. I crouched by the window, shaking, and gradually my fear was turning to anger. The only thing I wanted was to see my dad again and the frustration at not being able to do that was building inside my head like a volcano waiting to erupt. When Larry and Barry came to fetch me for dinner, I lashed out at them, biting, kicking and punching, earning myself a clout round the ear and, I suppose, fulfilling Mum’s description of me as a spoiled brat.

The family dining table was made of glass, with steel legs attached to the underneath by what looked like giant suckers. I went to sit down at it that first evening and Mum sneered, ‘No, you’re not good enough to sit with us. Get down on the floor, under the table, and we’ll feed you scraps, like a dog.’

Larry and Barry wrestled me to the floor, and thus began a new pattern in which this was how all my meals were fed to me. As I crouched under the table, they would kick out at me and drop scraps on the floor, grinding them into the tiles with the heels of their shoes and then ordering me to lick them up with my tongue. They would actually make me jump up and down and beg for my food like a dog.

I might have fought back if it was just my brothers but with Mum I already knew I had to be more careful how I behaved because of the fearsomeness of her violence and the willingness with which she would dispense it. After a few more beatings for looking at her the wrong way, or answering her back, the message got home to me once and for all and I realized I was not going to get any preferential treatment just because I had lost my father – quite the opposite in fact. I quickly learned not to do anything to antagonize her any more than I did simply by being there. My very existence was a constant reminder of Dad and his treachery, but even doing nothing wasn’t going to save me from what was to come. To the outside world she seemed like a tragic grieving widow coping with a traumatized child; to those of us who lived with her she was a vindictive, vengeful, violent force of nature.

‘You’re nothing special,’ she kept reminding me, over and over again. ‘Don’t you fucking forget it.’

The day after Mum brought me back to her house, I overheard a conversation on the phone between her and Marie. My ears pricked up when I heard her name, hoping that she was going to come and fetch me back to hers, but it wasn’t to be.

‘I tell you what,’ Mum said to her, unable to resist another round of gloating. ‘You can fucking have him now. He’s no use to anyone any more, is he? I’ll let you take care of the funeral.’

I didn’t understand what they were talking about but I found out later from Wally that Mum was refusing to pay for a funeral and insisting that Marie covered it. Marie had her own little market stall at the time selling perfumes and cosmetics so Mum knew she had a bit of money and she knew she wouldn’t want to refuse to do something for Dad. But even at that stage Mum still wasn’t going to let go of her powers as the legal wife that easily. Although Dad had always believed in having a burial, she insisted that his body be cremated.

‘She may be paying,’ she told the poor embarrassed funeral directors, ‘but I’m his wife so I get to say what happens, and I say he goes to the crematorium.’

Marie put up a bit of a fight. ‘But William always believed in burial,’ she protested. ‘You know that.’

‘If you don’t agree to the cremation,’ Mum replied, ‘I’ll pay for the fucking funeral myself and I won’t be letting you through the fucking doors.’

Even though she knew Mum didn’t have the money, Marie was aware that it wasn’t an idle threat. If she wanted to say her last goodbyes to Dad she had no choice but to do as Mum wanted.

After Wally had explained to me what a funeral was, I begged Mum to let me come along to Dad’s, but there was no chance of that. She was playing the role of grieving widow and I suppose it would have spoiled the act if I had run over to cling to Marie during the ceremony rather than her.

‘You all right, Bro?’ Wally asked me now and then, giving me a comforting cuddle if no one else was watching, and I would nod gratefully, even though I wasn’t all right at all. I felt that he understood a bit of what I was going through and I wished it was just him and me living there with the little ones.

Being only five years old I’d had no concept of death until I was told that Dad had gone. Marie had talked about heaven, but Mum said he’d gone to hell. I’d never even had to think about it before. So my way of finding out about it was by discovering that the one person in the world I loved above all others had gone for good; that I was never going to see him again, or talk to him, or ask him any questions or take shelter behind his long legs. It felt as though I had been hit with a sledgehammer, the weight of my misery crushing me into the ground.

Occasionally Wally would try to put things right for me in a hushed whisper when he was sure Mum was out of the house. ‘Don’t listen to Mummy,’ he would say under his breath, ‘she’s wrong. Your dad has gone to heaven, not hell.’ I wanted to believe him, but I was afraid he was just being kind and that it was Mum who was telling the truth. She was the grown up after all, I reasoned, and she was my mother; why would she lie to me about something so important? Nothing made any sense any more.

Mum kept the house in immaculate condition, obsessively cleaning and tidying all day long. It was a show home although hardly anyone other than her and her children was ever allowed to set foot through the door. None of us dared to make a mess because it could result in her exploding with fury. Apart from drinking and beating her children about, housework was all Mum ever did. It was as though she was trying to control every object and every speck of dirt in her little kingdom. Each morning she would be up at half past five sweeping round the paths outside the house and vacuuming every dustless room. The towels in the bathroom were lined up in perfect sequence and even the bar of soap by the bath would be positioned at exactly the correct angle. No one was allowed to sit on a chair or settee in case they dented the cushions; we all had to sit on the floor. Before she went to bed at night she would lay out all the breakfast bowls for the morning, every setting lined up and every portion of cereal measured out and ready. The immaculate state of the house added to the image of her as the admirable mother in the eyes of any visiting authorities. If she was looking after her home this well, they must have reasoned, she must be caring for her children with equal passion and dedication.

As my overwhelming grief and anger began to erupt as tantrums, in which I threw cups and plates across the room, and lashed out, kicking and biting my brothers, Mum stepped in quickly. Having a disturbed five-year-old smashing the place up in temper was far more than she was ever going to be willing to tolerate. I had to be brought under control instantly and completely, so that I would obey her as readily and blindly as the others did. She didn’t intend to teach me how to behave better with love and encouragement, which is how most mothers would have approached the problem; she intended to break my spirit in every way possible. She couldn’t be bothered to try to find out what was troubling me and work towards helping me come to terms with the shock that had traumatized every atom of my body.

To achieve instant results she needed first to isolate me from the rest of the world, from anyone who might disagree with her methods and might show some sympathy for me rather than for her. In the early days some of Dad’s family came round hoping to visit me and see how I was getting on, but Mum wouldn’t allow any of them through the door or anywhere near me. She wanted to keep prying eyes away from what was really happening inside her home, inside the kingdom that she ruled with a rod of iron. If they came knocking she would order them off her property with a stream of threats and obscenities.

‘Fuck off out of it,’ she screamed into their faces, ‘or I’m calling the police. Go on, fuck off out of it!’

She’d always hated them all, particularly Aunt Melissa, and now Dad was gone she felt she didn’t have to put up with any of them sticking their noses into her business any more, telling her how to bring up her children. I was her son and as far as she was concerned it was nothing to do with them how I was getting on. I was more than just her son; I was her sole property now that Dad had gone, to do with as she pleased.

Within a few days of me arriving, I was told that I was only ever allowed to wear my underpants because I didn’t ‘deserve’ to have any clothes. If I refused to obey any of her orders I would be violently punished, so I quickly learned always to do as she told me.

I was only allowed to use the bathroom when she said I could so I soon became unkempt and dirty, in contrast to the immaculate cleanliness of the rest of the house. Then because I was so dirty I wasn’t allowed to use any of Mum’s crockery in case I spread my germs and diseases to the others.

‘You’ve inherited the “dirty disease” from your filthy fucking father,’ Mum told me. ‘I don’t want you infecting the rest of us.’

When you’re little you believe whatever your mother tells you, so I assumed it must all be true, that I must be inferior to the others in some way. The fact that I was the family dog became a standing joke and later they bought me a metal dog’s bowl for my Christmas present, laughing happily at their own wit as they gave it to me. It was as though I was there to entertain them. They were constantly thinking up new ways to amuse themselves, like offering me my meal in the bowl and then throwing the food at me anyway, or spitting on it before making me eat it up, saliva and all. They called me ‘Smelly Woof’ when they were pretending I was their pet, and I knew I did smell, mostly of my own wee, which would escape me involuntarily when fear overcame me and I lost control of my bladder. If I had been allowed a bath occasionally maybe I wouldn’t have stunk the house up and made them all so disgusted with me.

As the days went past a mixture of shock, fear and grief was taking control of my head and sometimes it wouldn’t let the words come out of my mouth. There were so many things I wanted to say but when I tried to talk the muscles in my throat would seem to freeze, refusing to obey me, making me stammer and stutter as I attempted to force the words out. It felt as though someone was trying to strangle me into silence. All I could think about was my dad. I was constantly seeing the pictures of him burning and Mum’s words going round and round in my head. I tried to say, ‘I want to see my dad’, even though I knew the words would earn me another beating, but as I struggled to find them my tongue would stumble. Wally was the first to notice that I was stuttering.

‘I’m worried about Joe,’ he said to Mum.

‘What’s fucking wrong with him now?’ she wanted to know.

‘He’s not talking.’

‘It’s probably a throat infection,’ she said. ‘He’s fine.’

Over the following week the stutter became worse and worse. By the end of it my brain had completely lost control of my voice and I fell totally silent, unable to form even single words like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘help’. Mum thought at first that it was just me messing about and being difficult but eventually she had to admit that Wally might have a point and agreed to take me to see the doctor. Sitting in the surgery she related my story to him, giving it all the necessary drama and pathos to make it clear that she was really the one who was suffering the most, having lost her husband and been left with six children to bring up.

‘The poor boy was there to witness it,’ she told him, her voice catching on the tears she was pretending to swallow back. ‘He saw his lovely father going up in flames in front of his eyes, just a few weeks ago. The two of them were so close, it’s hit him hard.’

The doctor examined me and listened to everything she had to say and then explained what he thought had happened.

‘I believe Joe has been struck mute from the shock of what he’s witnessed,’ he said gently.

He was obviously as concerned about upsetting her as he was about whatever was wrong with me.

‘William was such a good husband and father,’ she started up again. ‘This is a tragedy for the whole family, but especially for Joe. And now my little boy has been struck dumb as well. How long will it be before he can talk again and get back to his normal self?’

‘It could just be a short-term condition,’ the doctor said doubtfully, obviously not having a clue. ‘Or it could be a long-term problem. We’ll just have to see how things develop.’

By the time we left the surgery the penny had dropped in Mum’s head that I actually had become mute, and it wasn’t just an act. She was partly annoyed with me for causing her yet more inconvenience and for trying to draw more attention to myself, but I suspect there was a part of her brain that was already beginning to see the possibilities, even at that stage. If I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t tell any tales.

It would be four and a half years before I was able to speak properly again and by striking me mute my brain had finally delivered me completely into Mum’s power. I was totally helpless. Now that I couldn’t speak, my frustration grew even greater, exploding out into uncontrollable physical tantrums and I started hitting furniture, throwing things and kicking doors in my silent rages. I didn’t realize it, but the worse I behaved the more I was playing into Mum’s hands, proving just what a difficult child I was and what a wonderful woman she was to be bringing me up on her own, especially when she had so many other children to care for at the same time.

Mum actually seemed to enjoy violence, relishing watching it almost as much as she relished doling it out herself. She used to rig up a sort of boxing ring in the second lounge at the house and make my three oldest brothers fight each other, with her as their coach and cheerleader as well as their audience. The room was not as smart as the rest of her home since she displayed all her best furniture in the other lounge. It was a part of the house that no one from outside the family would ever be invited into. It contained just an old fire and a tatty settee and chair. It would have been a comfortable ‘family room’ if we had been the kind of happy family to have such a thing. It was certainly a place where Mum could relax and unwind and not worry if there was some blood spilled on the carpet. There were always curtains drawn across the windows, with nets pulled tight behind them for extra protection against prying eyes. Even if she opened the windows to let in some air she still wouldn’t part the curtains, not wanting anyone from the outside world to be able to glimpse into her private fiefdom and witness what she was getting up to. When she felt like some entertainment she would sit down in that room with a cup of tea, pushing the older boys on and on like gladiators in Ancient Rome, until one of them drew blood.

‘Go on,’ she’d jeer at them, ‘punch him! Fucking kill him!’

If they tried to refuse they would get a beating from her, which would be far worse than anything they could do to each other. It didn’t matter if they were really hurt, she would insist they continued to fight until blood had been spilled, beating them with a garden cane if they tried to stop. She couldn’t allow any disobedience, couldn’t show a single moment of weakness or kindness in case it undermined the terror that she relied on in order to reign supreme over us all. Once one of them was bleeding she would allow him to come out of the ring and she would bring in another to take on the winner. She would tell them that she was just trying to teach them how to fight, toughening them up so they would be able to look after themselves in the outside world, but it seemed more like she did it to indulge her own blood¬ lust. The only person they really needed to protect themselves from was their own mother.

Most of the violence in the house was inflicted directly by her. If any of us dared to disobey her, or even just looked at her in the wrong way, she would immediately lay into us in a blind rage. Sometimes she wouldn’t even need to have a reason; she would just become angry and take it out on whoever was nearest. She would grab Thomas and me by the hair and literally swing us round by it until our feet lifted off the ground, sending us hurtling into the walls. Her strength sometimes seemed superhuman. If she didn’t manage to get a satisfying liftoff first time she would repeat the manoeuvre until she got it right.

As part of her hard-done-by widow act, Mum successfully sued the garage for several thousand pounds in compensation for Dad’s death, and Graeme closed the business down soon afterwards. Dad’s best friend Derek felt so guilty about not being able to save Dad when the flames were engulfing him that he wrote a suicide note and drove his car off the motorway, killing himself in the crash. It seemed as though the repercussions from that little gust of wind were going to go on forever, like ripples on a pond disturbed by a stone.

Mum was determined to crush my spirit and put a stop to my disruptive behaviour once and for all and she beat me up so violently, so often, that I finally understood I must never question her or so much as look at her directly again. She was constantly warning me that next time I annoyed her she would kill me and as I lay on the floor in a battered heap I had no reason to doubt her. She made no effort to hold back the full force of her strength when she hit out; there was no self-control, no fear of causing damage, no worries about killing someone. It had become normal for me to be punched in the head or kicked over and over again for no reason at all. Even if I was behaving myself I still drove her mad, just because I was there and because I reminded her of the humiliation Dad and Marie had put her through.

The fact that I was now virtually silent, making only little squeaking noises instead of speaking, seemed to fuel her annoyance even further. It was as if she believed I was mocking her with my whimpering, my pleading eyes and frantically shaking head as I tried to dissuade her from hitting me any more. As far she was concerned I was no longer a human being; I had degenerated into a hated animal to be kicked and punched and abused at every opportunity, like a beaten dog slinking around in the shadows with its head down and eyes to the floor.

When I first lost my voice I found other ways to communicate. If I wanted something I would point at it and grunt and even that would drive her mad and so soon I stopped communicating at all. She made no secret of the fact that she detested me more and more every day; nothing I could have done would have made any difference by that stage.

‘Don’t fucking point,’ she would snarl, giving me such a hard slap I would be knocked off my feet.

‘Don’t fucking look at me!’

‘You smell fucking terrible!’

Everything was an excuse to hit me. It went on and on and on. She channelled every ounce of anger and disappointment she felt towards the world in general and my father in particular, and took it out on me. She would encourage the others to do the same and Larry and Barry were happy to cooperate, delighted to have someone so much further down the family pecking order than themselves. They always wanted to do things to please her, and they soon learned that any humiliation they wanted to inflict on me would earn her approval as well as satisfying their own sadistic instincts.

I was still sleeping on the floor in Larry and Barry’s room. Wally had his own room at the top of the house and Thomas and Ellie shared another room. I would have much preferred to have been in with them but I knew better than to argue with any decision Mum made. I had to stay in the bedroom all day long, except at mealtimes, but I wasn’t allowed to play with anything in there that belonged to my brothers. If I so much as touched one of their belongings I would be given a beating and I had nothing of my own to play with. The boredom of just sitting there all day long increased the feelings of isolation and frustration that were building up inside me, until I was just itching to break out into mischief or destruction but never daring to.

At night I had no mattress or pillow, only a single blanket. Larry and Barry shared a double bed and resented having me in the house as much as Mum did. They bullied me at every opportunity and whenever they made a noise that disturbed Mum they would make sure I took the blame. She used to put us all to bed by six or seven in the evening so that she could have some solitary drinking time for herself. We would usually be awake again at four or four thirty, itching to get up and move about. Larry and Barry would start messing around together, fighting in bed and farting on each other, and if they woke Mum up she would shout through the wall.

‘Shut the fuck up!’

‘It’s Joe,’ they would yell back. I would open my mouth to protest my innocence, terrified of the punishment I would inevitably receive, but no sound would come out and Larry and Barry would giggle triumphantly as they waited for the entertainment that would follow.

Furious at being woken and at the thought that I would dare to play up after all she had done to tame me, she would come storming in and give me another beating. The fact that I had no voice with which to plead my innocence was probably irrelevant as I doubt she would have believed me anyway.

Larry and Barry were thick as thieves and they used to order me to do things that they knew would get me into trouble. Being five, brimming with repressed energy and boredom, and eager to please my big brothers to avoid getting a beating from them, I was easily influenced and always ended up being the one who got caught. Whenever there was any trouble Mum would blame me anyway, even if it was obvious it couldn’t have been anything to do with me.

‘None of this ever happened till you came on the scene,’ she’d say about some minor infringement of her rules, and then she’d give me another battering, dragging me around by the hair with my mouth stretched open but the screams refusing to form in my throat.

One dark morning, just a few months after Dad died, Mum had finally had enough of me disturbing her sleep. She pulled me all the way down the stairs by my hair, shouting at the top of her voice.

‘This time you have gone too fucking far, you little bastard. You’ve pushed me too far. I’m finished with being patient with you. I’ve fucking had enough!’

I really believed that she was finally going to kill me. She’d told me often enough that she would do it one day.

There was a door under the stairs, which I had assumed led to a broom cupboard; I had never seen anyone opening it and no one had ever mentioned what lay behind it but I would be finding out soon enough. Dragging me behind her along the hall floor, Mum threw open the under-stairs door. I saw another staircase stretching down into the darkness below and I felt a terrible foreboding of what might be in store. Was this where she took people she was going to kill?

She punched a light switch and I saw for the first time what I would later understand was a basement. This was nothing like the clean, orderly world of the rooms in the rest of the house. There was a smell of mustiness and damp rising up from the shadows thrown by the single light bulb. Thick cobwebs clung to the rough brick walls and bare wood. She hurled me down the stairs, kicking and punching as she followed me down. At the bottom there was another door, a big solid Victorian timber one, which she opened and threw me through with one last mighty slap, as if I was no more than a sack of straw. She turned on another light and I could see the full horror of where she was putting me.

Inside was a cellar containing nothing but a filthy old mattress propped up against the wall. Unable to stand the sight of me for a second longer she slammed the door shut behind me and switched off the light from the outside. I could hear her jamming something under the door handle so I wouldn’t be able to get out. Then she stamped back up the stairs and there was silence as well as blackness.

For a moment it felt as though I was in total darkness, but as my eyes adjusted the few thin rays of light which filtered in through an airbrick high up in the wall once dawn broke gave me just enough vision to grope my way around. Even if she hadn’t jammed the door I knew better than to try to open it without her permission in order to reach the light switch. The cold began to creep into my bones and I just sat shivering in the dark, wearing only my underpants, waiting to see what would happen next. I listened to the trains rumbling past outside the airbrick, wishing I could climb into one of the warm, bright carriages I had seen passing so many times and travel as far as possible from that room.

I had entered a world I hadn’t even known existed a few minutes before; one that was to become my prison cell for the next three years.