Читать книгу Cry Myself to Sleep: He had to escape. They would never hurt him again. - Joe Peters - Страница 11

Back out on the streets we started hunting behind the buildings, riffling through the big metal bins that were being put out by the shops, hotels and restaurants, and searching for anything that might be useful or that we might want to eat if we got peckish later that night. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, so I just followed everyone else’s lead. The stores were the best places: they threw out food that was a day past its sell-by date but still perfectly good. As it got colder I pulled out of my bag all my spare clothes, which were only a couple of jumpers and another pair of trousers, and put them on over what I was already wearing. I must have looked a right sight, but I didn’t care, because at least I was warm and I knew none of the people I was with were making any judgements about my appearance–they were well past the stage of even noticing.

The others were also collecting up any flattened cardboard they could find, opening it back up to rebuild the boxes, which must have been used to deliver goods to the shops earlier in the day. Everyone was calling out to one another, competing to see who could find the best box. I wasn’t as quick as the others and didn’t really know what I was looking for, so by the time I realized that what I needed was something I could sleep in for the night, I only had something tiny.

Once everyone had what they needed, we wended our way back down to the park, which was now finally empty of other people and filling up with an eerie, makeshift city of cardboard as everyone set about constructing themselves some sort of shelter for the night, covering them with plastic to protect them from the damp that was bound to descend before morning.

Everyone was huddled in the small groups that they had been in all evening, avoiding encroaching on the territory of anyone else who might be angrier, more violent and more drunk than they were, and staking a claim to a patch of land that was going to be theirs for the night. As everyone got settled, the odd fistfights would break out when one group felt that another had crossed over their boundary, and there were a few squabbles for the best, most sheltered sites.

Gradually, as exhaustion and alcohol took their toll, people began to fall asleep, pulling blankets and sleeping bags up over their heads and disappearing from the world for a few hours. As we all crawled into our shelters, the sounds of shouting and fighting become more intermittent as more people surrendered to sleep. Every so often a policeman or two would wander past the park, but they didn’t seem to be too bothered about anything that was going on. I guess it was easier for them to have all the homeless people corralled behind railings in one area than to have them curled up in shop doorways and back alleys all over the place, causing complaints from local residents and shopkeepers when they came to open up in the morning.

I managed to get my box together and put some plastic over it as the others showed me, but when I came to lie down it was impossible to curl all six foot of me into it, so I had to leave my legs sticking out, using my bag as a pillow with the handles looped round my wrist to make sure no one nicked it in the night.

Jake arrived back from wherever he had been with the man in the Mercedes and didn’t have any trouble finding us. He had picked up some cardboard for himself on the way.

‘What you doing with that box?’ he said, laughing, when he saw my legs sticking out. ‘You don’t fit in it.’

‘The others got the best ones.’

‘You’ve got to be faster than that, mate.’

‘Where have you fucking been, Jake?’ Jock growled from near by in the dark.

‘I had to do something for Max,’ Jake said, obviously not wanting to talk about it.

‘That fucking bastard! Why do you do whatever he tells you?’

I didn’t understand why Jock felt so strongly about this Max guy, but I was too tired to ask any more questions. Now that I was no longer moving about to keep warm, I was regretting not picking up one of the blankets at the centre. The others had put up another plastic sheet and tied our boxes together so that when it started to rain most of the water could be kept off us, but I was still feeling cold and damp. I would organize things better the next day, I told myself as I dozed off, now that I knew what was needed. Things would get steadily better from here on–I was confident of it. I could still hear the odd raised voice in the distance but it didn’t bother me any more; I felt safe enough to sleep. Here and there muffled giggles came from other boxes, and the sounds of couples having sex.

It must have been just after midnight when I was woken by the sound of voices.

‘Hello? Hello? Come on. We’re here. Hello? Does anyone want blankets?’

That was exactly what I needed, so I wriggled out of my box to see what was going on. A middle-aged woman was standing outside with her arms full of old-looking blankets, passing them out to anyone who asked.

‘Do you want something to eat?’ she asked as I went over to her. ‘The van’s just over there.’

I looked over to where she was pointing and saw a van parked outside the Tube station, with a table set up beside it doling out soup and rolls to warm us up.

‘Come on,’ she said, putting a blanket round my shoulders. ‘It’s a cold night. Wrap up well. We need to look after you. You’re a new face. My name’s Sarah. What’s yours?’

‘Joe.’

‘Come on then, Joe.’

She took me over to the van with the blanket round my shoulders and gave me some soup. Jock came ambling over and she obviously knew him well.

‘You’ve been drinking again, Nigel,’ she said, wagging her finger at him. ‘Haven’t you?’

I looked up in surprise, startled to find out this hard man’s real name. Jock did not look like a ‘Nigel’ to me.

‘I wouldn’t do that, Sarah,’ he said, grinning like a little boy being told off by a popular teacher.

‘Don’t you tell me any of your fibs, Nigel. How old are you then, Joe?’ she asked.

‘I’m sixteen,’ I said, more aggressively than I probably should have done, but I was fed up with people thinking I was younger.

‘Are you sure?’

‘’Course I am, you mad woman.’

‘Oh, now,’ she clucked. ‘I don’t want to upset you, lovey. How long have you been here?’

I was getting tired of all the questions and said nothing. I just wanted to get some soup inside me and go back to my cardboard box for more sleep.

‘Is anybody looking after you?’ she asked, looking across at Jock as she spoke.

‘Yes,’ Jock sighed. ‘I’m looking out for him.’

‘You make sure you do, Nigel. He looks very young to be down here. Who else have you met?’ she asked me.

‘Jake.’

‘Oh,’ she said, pursing her lips. ‘The less said about him the better.’

Just at that moment Jake came stumbling over for his soup and I could see she was trying to pack him off back to the boxes again as quickly as possible so that she could get back to talking to Jock and me.

‘Keep Joe away from him, Jock,’ she said once Jake was out of earshot. ‘That boy is confused. And that Max! You stay away from him, Joe, or he’ll get you into a lot of trouble.’

‘I fucking told him today, Sarah,’ Jock assured her.

‘You keep him in your sight all the time, Nigel. And don’t let Jake anywhere near him.’

I felt comforted by this kindly woman’s obvious concern for my safety, but at the same time her words of warning worried me. I had met enough violent and dangerous men during my childhood to know that I didn’t want to meet any more. Standing in the middle of a strange city in the dark and cold made me feel suddenly vulnerable, and anxious to hurry back to my box so that I could curl up under my blanket to hide from the world until morning. I moved off but found Sarah was coming with me.

‘Is that your box?’ she asked, obviously horrified.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s OK.’

‘For goodness sake!’ She turned to Jock. ‘Nigel, find Joe a decent-sized box. He can’t sleep in that little thing.’

‘He can have mine,’ Jock muttered grudgingly, wandering off to find himself something else while Sarah settled me in and made sure I was as comfortable as I could be, like a mother tucking in her child even though he was too old for such attention. It was an experience I had certainly never had with my own mother and I didn’t know how to react to it. She took no notice of my protests that I wasn’t a kid. By the time she had finished, every part of me was as warm as toast apart from my nose.

The next time I woke up it was morning and Jock had already disappeared. I felt a momentary lurch of anxiety at having lost my protector, but I knew I couldn’t really expect him to look after me just because some mad old woman had told him to in the middle of the night. Jake was the only one of our group still around.

‘Where have they all gone?’ I asked.

‘Up the centre. Want to come?’

Although Sarah’s warnings about Jake were still ringing in my ears, I didn’t think I had any choice, unless I wanted to stay in the park on my own. The park workers were already starting to clear away the cardboard debris of our almost abandoned camp. I decided any company was better than none and went with him. As we made our way through the streets, I became aware of a car drawing up beside us and I recognized the old Mercedes I had seen Jake getting into the previous evening. Jake stopped as the man I now knew was Max got out and came round to talk to him.

‘Hiya, fella,’ Max said to me. ‘You all right?’

‘Yeah,’ I nodded cautiously.

There was something about this man that told me I shouldn’t give him any cause to get angry. I noticed the big gold sovereign rings on his fingers, and he had the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’ tattooed on his knuckles, as well as the illustrations I had already noticed on his neck.

‘Do you need any money?’ he asked.

I couldn’t understand why he would be offering money to someone he didn’t even know. Then I remembered how Mohamed had given me money for nothing and told myself not to be so suspicious, and that maybe people were nicer than I had been led to believe by my childhood experiences. I took the fiver he was offering and slid it into my pocket.

‘If you need anything, you come and see me,’ he said with a wink that should have seemed friendly but didn’t.

The following days fell into a routine. We would go to the centre in the morning to get something to eat and have a shower. The volunteers there were always really good with us and helpful. There was a doctor there each day, who checked us over and gave us prescriptions if we needed them. I had always had trouble with asthma, so they gave me a prescription for an inhaler. It was nice to know there was someone to go to if I got ill. Then we would wander out into the streets, buy something to drink and drift around from place to place getting pissed and begging, going back to the centre for an evening meal and then settling down under whatever cardboard we had been able to find for another night. I never needed to touch the money in my bag because everything was provided or could be bought with the change that people gave us.

I frequently ended up spending most of my time with Jake because Jock and his girlfriend, Charlotte, were always drunk and stoned and hanging out with the tramps and winos around the Strand, while Jake and I didn’t want to be doing that the whole time. Charlotte was a really pretty girl and I never worked out what she was doing with Jock and the other losers. Jake and I got bored with their company quite often and wanted to see different things and different places, so we would go off begging together. Jake knew all the different outreach centres where we could get food through the day and my initial wariness after Sarah’s warning faded as I got used to him. He seemed pretty harmless to me. It wasn’t such a bad life, I told myself: better than being locked in a cellar and continually beaten up and raped, and better than being in a care home with everyone bossing you about and treating you as if you were some kind of problem.

Some nights Jake would disappear and not turn up again till the following morning.

‘Where have you been?’ I’d ask.

‘Oh, I just stayed at Max’s for the night,’ he would say, obviously not interested in saying any more.

I’d been in London for a week and a second weekend had come round when Jake told me that Max had asked to have a word with me, to check that I was OK. I wasn’t that keen, but I remembered he had been friendly and given me a fiver the last time we had spoken, so there didn’t seem to be any reason to worry about it too much. It was broad daylight in a busy street anyway, so what could happen?

‘Why’s he so interested?’ I asked.

‘He’s just worried about you,’ Jake said, shrugging. ‘Because you’re a bit young he wants to check that you’re OK.’

The Mercedes pulled up beside us again as it had before and I saw that there was another guy with Max, who looked like a minder, with an evil fighter’s face that had taken a few punches over the years. They told me his name was Brad.

Max greeted Jake effusively and handed him a bunch of cash. ‘That’s for the other night,’ he said, patting him on the back as if they were the best friends in the world. The previous times I had seen Max he had been dressed smart casual, as if he was going out somewhere. This time he was just wearing trackie bottoms and looked more relaxed, as if he had just got out of bed.

‘How are you doing, fella?’ he said, turning his unconvincing charm on to me.

We chatted for a bit and then he turned back to Jake.

‘Fancy coming back to the flat for a bite to eat?’

‘We’re just going to the soup kitchen,’ I said.

‘Oh, that’s fucking horrible food,’ Max said. ‘Come back and have something to eat with us. I’ll drop you back–don’t worry.’

The threatening look of the minder as he got out of the car brought Sarah’s warning words back to me. But at the same time I was nervous that if I said no they would be insulted and get angry. They hadn’t done anything bad to me–quite the opposite–so what right did I have to judge them just because they looked a bit rough? And I did fancy a decent meal. I was torn in my mind, and in that moment of indecision the minder opened the back door of the car and I panicked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to go in the back. No way.’

‘That’s all right, fella,’ Max said. ‘You can sit in the front next to me.’

He opened the passenger door and I allowed myself to be steered into the seat. The minder and Jake got into the back and everyone chatted away as we drove across London. They were so friendly I felt my fears settling and I began to feel foolish for making such a fuss and being so suspicious of their motives. I started to look forward to having a decent meal.