Читать книгу Cry Myself to Sleep: He had to escape. They would never hurt him again. - Joe Peters - Страница 10

We pulled into Paddington station around lunch-time and I strolled out into the streets of London, amazed to think that I was now in the famous city that I had heard so much about and that I was free to wander wherever I chose without having to worry about who I might bump into. It felt as if I had travelled all the way to the other side of the world.

One of the people I had been babbling to on the train had told me I was going to have to get ‘the Tube’ to Charing Cross. This was another new concept I was having trouble getting my head around. Was I really going to be able to travel under the streets and buildings in a train? I looked around, trying to work out where I should go next. I had never seen so many people rushing around in different directions at once. The level of activity all about me took my breath away. I tried to ask several people to help me find the right entrance to the right line for Charing Cross, but no one even paused or caught my eye–they were all so busy going about their business, bumping into me every time I paused to try to work out what I should be doing and where I should be going.

Maybe they were worried I was going to ask them for money or would try to steal something off them.

Eventually I found the entrance and went underground, but there were still signs to different lines and I didn’t know which ones to follow. There were maps on the walls, but my reading skills were not the most brilliant and the complexity of the diagrams made my head spin. I began to feel panicked and kept plunging around asking people for help until I found someone willing to spare me a few seconds of their valuable time. After what seemed like an age I found myself crushed on an underground train, hurtling along through tunnels in completely the wrong direction, having no idea how I would get back out again through the crowd when I reached the next station. I felt as if I was trapped in a nightmare, becoming disorientated and frightened and wondering how I would ever find this wonderful place that the other runaways had told me about. So far I hadn’t seen anyone who looked as if they were likely to be living like me, or who would want to be my friend.

Every time the train stopped I would ask if the station was Charing Cross and someone would shake their head. I couldn’t work out whether I was getting closer to my destination or further away, but eventually a woman told me that I was there, and I jumped out on to the platform quickly before the doors had a chance to snap shut and carry me away in the wrong direction again. The station was called Embankment, not Charing Cross, but a man in uniform assured me I was in the right place and showed me which exit to go through.

I think I expected to walk straight out and see a paradise of young homeless people all hanging out together around camp fires built amongst makeshift cardboard homes; but as I came out into the daylight, just across the road from the Thames, the street seemed to be like any other busy city street, with everyone dashing about, trying to get to somewhere important. There was a small park with a bandstand on one side, behind some railings, but I couldn’t see anyone in there who looked like me either, and in the other direction there were some railway arches, which merely led to another street full of rushing traffic. Apart from the people manning the flower stall, or selling the evening papers from metal stands, everyone else was moving about purposefully between the Tube and what I soon discovered was the mainline station at the top of the hill.

Where was this community of carefree runaways that I had been led to believe would be there to welcome me into their arms? There was no option other than to tramp around the streets to see if I could find some secret entrance to this world I had come searching for.

I started walking, looking round every corner for one of these places where I had heard a homeless boy could find a meal or pitch a bed, but I couldn’t see anything. All the shops in the Strand were brightly lit and full of people spending money. None of them seemed as if they would welcome someone as scruffy and disreputable looking as me, so I stayed on the outside, staring in. I still couldn’t see any homeless people anywhere, just normal citizens going about their daily business, all of whom I assumed would be returning to their homes and their comfortable beds in a few hours. What was I going to do then, when the streets were suddenly empty? Was I just going to have to huddle down on my own in one of these shops’ doorways once the staff had pulled down the shutters and gone home? Or should I go round the back of the buildings and see if I could find an air vent which would provide me with a bit of warmth against the night air?

I had probably been walking for an hour or more before I came across a lad who looked about my age and was sitting on the pavement begging off passers-by. He was scrawny and rough looking, but his clothes looked as if they had once been better than mine, although they were now dirty and worn. He had a young, pretty-boy’s face but his expression was furtive, like that of a wary little wild animal, poised to either attack or run. He didn’t look like someone who could be trusted. He was sitting on a sheet of cardboard with a sleeping bag over his lap and a pot in front of him, holding up another piece of cardboard scrawled with the one word ‘homeless’.

‘Spare any change?’ he asked as I drew near, staring at him curiously.

There was no way I was going to give him any money, being sure I was going to need every penny of the sixty quid that Mohamed had given me in order to survive, but I still wanted to strike up a conversation with him.

‘I’m homeless too,’ I said by way of an apology as much as an explanation.

‘What do you mean?’ he demanded, seeming quite angry despite his soft way of talking. To me he sounded quite well spoken, as if he was more educated than me, but maybe it was just a regional accent I was unfamiliar with. ‘You look all right to me.’

‘Just telling you,’ I said.

‘How long have you been here?’

‘I’ve just arrived and I don’t know no one.’

He looked exasperated, as if he knew I was one more stupid kid expecting pavements of gold and not knowing what to do next now that I had actually arrived.

‘Sit down then,’ he said, gesturing to another grubby sheet of cardboard beside him while he continued to hold his sign up at the passers-by, most of whom ignored him. ‘Spare some change?’

In between begging, he told me his name was Jake, and once he’d got used to the idea he seemed to like teaching a newcomer the rules of the street. He told me that I should avoid the police because they would have me down at the police station in a van if they could get hold of me, and then I would be shipped straight back to where I had come from.

‘You need to stick with the same bunch of people all the time,’ he explained, ‘because that way you’ll be protected from the rest.’

I had heard from other runaways about how homeless kids got together into little social pods for self-protection. I liked the idea of being a member of a gang instead of always being on my own.

‘So where do I meet these people?’ I wanted to know.

‘You have to be careful,’ he warned. ‘They get quite funny with new people coming in. They’ll see you as an outsider and they won’t want to take responsibility for new people.’

I must have looked a bit crestfallen.

‘You’d better stay with me for now,’ he said, ‘and we’ll go from there.’

All the time we were talking he was shaking his pot at people and asking for change. I was surprised how many of them actually gave him something and every so often he would empty most of the contents of the pot into his pocket and then go back to shaking and asking. One or two people would annoy him by refusing to give him anything and he would get quite cheeky with them, which made me nervous. I didn’t like the idea of attracting the outside world’s attention if I could avoid it–not till I knew my way around a bit better. He told me about the outreach centre, which was a project for the homeless run by volunteers, where I could get something to eat and some warmer clothes and a blanket for the night.

‘They’ll give you a list of hostels if you want and if they aren’t full. You can have a shower there, too, and clean yourself up a bit. I’ll take you there now.’

But when we got there we found it was closed for the night. Jake didn’t seem bothered and just started introducing me to a group of homeless people who were sitting around outside the centre, killing time. If you have no home and no job and no family, killing time is pretty much all you ever do.

Now that the city workers were beginning to disappear off the streets and into the stations, it became easier to see the homeless community that they left behind. A lot of the people Jake knew appeared to be paired off in boy–girl relationships, which seemed a bit strange to me. They were a bit like a normal group of young people meeting up of an evening and having a few drinks together, except they were doing it in the street rather than in a bar or a pub. It wasn’t what I had been expecting, but the pairing off was encouraging because that was what I wanted: a nice girlfriend who I could love and be loved by, someone who would understand me and always be there for me and who I could look after.

Everyone seemed to recognize Jake, which made me think he must have been living on the streets for a while and knew his way around, but I got the feeling they didn’t particularly respect him. The first people were a bit wary of me, but then he found a group who were more relaxed. There was a lad they called Jock, although I think that was just a nickname given to him because he was Scottish, not his given name. He was older than Jake and me, probably eighteen or nineteen years old, and seemed to be really wised up to everything, as if he was a sort of leader amongst the rest of them. He looked even older than his years because his teeth had already started to rot–not that mine were too clever at that stage, since I’d never been near a dentist and had suffered from malnourishment for most of my life. After Dad died I wasn’t allowed to see daylight most days, let alone be taught how to use a toothbrush. Jock and his friends seemed happy for me to hang around with him and so his other friends automatically accepted me. I had found a gang I could be part of and I started to relax and enjoy the adventure.

As we all strolled from one place to another, as normal teenagers might wander from one person’s house to another or from one pub to the next, we talked all the time. They all asked me questions about my past and initially I was a bit cagey, always finding it hard to talk about how I had been treated by Mum and my brothers and all the men who she had sold or given me to. It seemed like a shameful and humiliating thing to have had happen to me, and anyway I didn’t like to think about it.

‘My dad used to rape me all the time,’ one girl told me, shocking me with the ease with which she found she could talk about it but at the same time making me feel good that I wasn’t the only one such things had happened to. It was almost as if it was something normal for her. As the hours passed and I listened to more and more of their stories, I realized that many of them had had similar experiences. As the evening wore on and the drink eased my tongue, I opened up more and more. I started by telling them about Dad burning to death in front of me and about how much he had meant to me, being my champion and my hero and my protector, and how his death had left me dumb and unable to speak for years. That story got a shocked reaction, but when I went on to tell them how Mum had locked me in the cellar for years they were truly amazed.

‘What?’

‘You’re joking, man.’

‘I couldn’t have handled any of that.’

‘That’s so unreal,’ a girl called Charlotte said. ‘I always thought my mum was a bitch but she never did anything like that.’

They kept pumping me for more stories and once I realized they weren’t going to judge me it was a sort of relief to actually put into words the things I had been storing up in my head for so long, suffering so much pain as a result. It was as if it was no big deal to any of them, even though it was shocking, and we were all there together to talk and support one another.

‘Have you got any money on you?’ someone asked. ‘Because we need to buy some booze.’

My guard immediately went back up again. There was no knowing how long I was going to have to survive on the wad of notes Mohamed had given me. I could see that if I owned up to having it now it could all be spent within a few hours and I would be left with nothing. I was keeping a hold on my bag as if my life depended on it and when someone started trying to rummage around in it I snatched it away.

‘We share everything here,’ someone said.

‘That’s my property,’ I insisted. ‘It’s private.’

On my search through Mum’s house before leaving I had managed to find my birth certificate, which I had never seen before and somehow knew was going to be important to me, and also my dad’s watch, which I knew he would have wanted me to have and which was all I had left of him. I don’t know why Mum had even kept it, considering how much she hated him for leaving her–perhaps she thought she would sell it one day. Sometimes, when I felt unsure of myself, I would just hold it for comfort, as if I was holding my dad’s hand. Sometimes I would talk out loud to him, just as I had done in my head when I had been on my own in the cellar in the dark, which made other people think I was talking to myself. I guess they thought I was a bit touched in the head, and maybe I was.

Realizing that I was willing to fight to protect my possessions, the others backed off, but then I felt mean and guilty for lying because they all started rummaging around in their own bags and pockets, finding bits and pieces of food which they shared with me.

As it grew darker, we continued to move around in a group, trying to keep warm, talking and laughing all the time, sometimes shouting out to people as the drink made us bold and foul mouthed. I was surprised by how many people were still coming and going from the stations on their way to theatres, hotels and restaurants in the Strand, or maybe some of them were on their way home after working shifts. I hadn’t realized that big city life went on so late, and I liked the buzz and the constant distractions. It made me feel safe to have people around, even though they were strangers and could for all I knew have been predators. I knew from experience that some of the most perverted and heartless men looked completely normal and respectable on the surface, often well dressed and sporting wedding rings. Any one of the men walking past could have been the sort of man who visited the places where I had been kept as a child and continuously raped and abused.

We went on asking for change from everyone we passed, but no one handed any over, probably because they could see we were drinking and guessed that was what we wanted the money for. The others were becoming quite loud and intimidating, which was making me uneasy, but I didn’t want to leave the group and end up on my own. I felt that at least Jock and the others offered me a little protection against the rest of the world. I wanted to belong.

Everyone living on the streets in that area seemed to know Jock, not just the kids but the old winos as well, and they would call out to him as he passed, or come over to pay their respects, offering to share their cans of cider or whatever they had.

‘Jake!’ a voice called from across the Strand. ‘Come over here.’

I looked across and saw a man in an old Mercedes, which had pulled up at the kerb. Even in the dark he looked sinister and swarthy, much older than anyone in our group. There were two other guys in the back of the car, but I couldn’t see them clearly.

‘It’s Max,’ Jake said, and I thought he looked nervous suddenly.

‘Don’t fucking go to him, you fucking idiot,’ Jock snarled, holding him back.

‘No, Jock, I’ve got to go,’ Jake said, wriggling free.

‘Oh, fuck off then.’ Jock pushed him away angrily. ‘Go be Max’s bum-chum.’

I watched as the man they called Max got out of the car to talk to Jake. He was tall and rangy and looked strong. I could see tattoos creeping up his scrawny neck from his collar. He looked dangerous and I felt a shiver of apprehension. Max opened the back door of the car and Jake jumped in with the other guys without glancing back at us. It was as if the car swallowed him up, the doors snapping shut like jaws.

‘Fucking idiot.’ Jock spat and took a swallow from his can as the Mercedes drew away and disappeared towards Trafalgar Square.

‘Let’s get something to eat,’ he said, leading the way to what I assumed would be a café or takeaway.

‘I’ve got no money, Jock,’ I reminded him, not able to admit to my secret store of notes now I had denied having them.

‘You don’t need money here, mate,’ Jock said, laughing at my naiveté. ‘It’s all free. It’s a soup kitchen.’

The homeless centre was open again, and the volunteers provided us with stew and bread and hot tea in plastic mugs. I ate as if I hadn’t seen food in a year, hardly able to believe that I could have as much as I wanted and all for free. The meal raised my spirits again as it warmed my insides. I was having an adventure in London with a group of new friends and no one to tell me what to do, and now I had a full stomach as well. Charing Cross really was turning out to be the homeless paradise I had been told about. The volunteers were offering blankets to anyone who wanted them, but I felt quite warm again now I’d eaten and I didn’t want to have to carry anything else around with me as well as my bag.