Читать книгу A Friend Like Ben: The true story of the little black and white cat that saved my son - Julia Romp - Страница 9

Even when you live on £85 a week you can still afford a tin of paint, so that’s what I bought when I moved into my own flat with George, because I wanted to brighten up the place. I had left Mum and Dad’s, because families are a bit like balloons, in that they’ll expand and expand to fit but there comes a point when too much pressure might make them pop. I knew that everyone I loved was getting stressed by George, however much they didn’t want to tell me. So by the time he was six months old, I had decided to put my name down on the council housing list, because our house was packed to the rafters.

Mum didn’t just have Lewis to worry about now, either. My dad had developed rheumatoid arthritis when I was a teenager, but I hadn’t known then just how much his illness affected him because my parents never hinted at their problems in front of us. I thought life was perfect as I sat on the sofa watching Superman. But as I got older, I could see for myself just how much Dad was suffering. By the time I got pregnant he had given up full-time work, though he still sometimes had huge steroid injections to stop the pain for long enough for him to get out of bed and into a cab to earn a few quid. But even that had stopped when I brought George home. By then Dad’s hands had curled in on themselves like claws, his back was arched and he had to use a stick to walk.

That was why I knew I had to get a place of my own, however much I hated the thought of being a single mother living on handouts, and in January 1997 I was given the keys to a two-bedroom house on an estate a couple of miles away. I arrived with a pram, a bed, a fridge and cooker Mum and Dad had bought me and a sofa covered in blue cord. I was happy to find the house immaculate. The old man called Bob who’d lived and died there had kept it well – if I heard once from the neighbours that he’d haunt me if I didn’t keep his woodwork nice then I heard it a thousand times. But even Bob’s neatness couldn’t hide the fact that there was a bare concrete floor and I could have grown mushrooms in the darkened rooms.

I knew what Mum and Dad were thinking when they dropped me off: as sad as they were to see me go, I was an adult and had made my choices. Now I had to live with them, and while I knew they were right, I still wanted to chase after them as they drove off and beg them to take me back home. I just could not believe that this was actually real. It was a world away from all the dreams I’d had.

Even though my new house was dark, I could make it colourful at least. Bob might have kept everything neat, but he was too fond of magnolia walls for my liking. So, with my family’s help, I painted the living room yellow, the corridors light green and my bedroom pink. I didn’t go near the wallpaper covering the walls of the back bedroom, though. It was so old it must have been worth something and was covered in huge blue psychedelic flowers. I’d have had to do a hundred coats to cover it up and couldn’t face being trapped in the room while I tried to transform it.

The new coat of paint in the rest of the flat definitely raised my spirits, as did the fact that Howard and his mum lived near by. Even though Howard and I were no longer together, I wanted George to know his father and I’d take him to see his dad and grandma Zena. I also visited Mum and Dad every day because I was glad of the company. But although I saw people and tried to make the best of things, life didn’t get any easier with George, and looking back I realise those first few months with him alone were the time when I began learning to hide my worries. You can’t keep moaning, can you, bursting into tears when people ask how you are and all you want to do is cry? I could have told them my life felt like a nightmare: I was alone with a baby who cried day in, day out, and who at times felt like a visitor I could not make happy instead of my own child. But it wouldn’t have done any good, so I didn’t.

Besides, I was sure the reason George wasn’t happy was that I was making a mess of things. I could see for myself that other women did a much better job than I did. Watching their babies smile or gurgle at them, I longed for George to do the same. But he didn’t want to shake rattles or be cuddled, and when I took him back to the doctor the answer was always the same.

‘It’s your first child,’ he would say. ‘Don’t worry so much, Julia. You’re a great mum. Just relax a bit and the baby will too.’

So after being told I was worrying about nothing a hundred times, I pushed down the voice inside that was telling me something was wrong; it’s amazing just how much you can kid yourself. Each night when I tried to get George to sleep, knowing it would be hours before he dropped off, I’d tell myself that things would improve the next day. Each morning when he woke up and started crying, I’d vow that I just had to get through this one because tomorrow was another day. Scarlett O’Hara didn’t have a patch on me when she grubbed in the dirt outside Tara.

Sometimes, though, after days of George’s crying I’d feel so close to breaking point that I’d leave him in an upstairs bedroom to wail. Closing the door, I’d go downstairs just to be away from the noise, and guilt would fill me that I wasn’t giving George the happiness that I’d had as a child. I knew it wasn’t the same for him to have a mum at home and a dad who lived down the road, and his cries were his way of telling me that I just wasn’t enough. But then I’d go back upstairs, look at George in his cot, so small and perfect with his round, chubby cheeks and puff of blond hair, and wonder what kind of mother I was. Bit by bit, I shut myself away as I started to hide both George and myself from the world, and our tiny house began to feel like a prison.

The estate where we were living didn’t exactly help keep up my spirits either. There’s good and bad everywhere, from the Hollywood Hills to the slums of India, but let’s just say there was a lot more bad than I was used to where I was living now. Shouts would echo at night as people argued, and I’d hear the smack of punches thrown in drunken fights. Or there’d be a knock on the door as one of the stream of men who hired out one of my neighbours by the hour mistook my house for hers. The grey concrete estate looked like a jail and some of the people living there knew that from experience.

It was then that I also saw for the first time just how much drugs affect some lives. I’d never even had a cigarette, but now I saw people with eyes that were blank and desperate at the same time. Most days there would be a knock on the door and I’d open it to find someone offering to sell me wrinkle cream or baby clothes, whatever they’d managed to steal in the hope of getting whatever they could for it in order to pay for a fix.

I hated being in the pathway of all the trouble, and so six months after moving on to the estate I leaped at the chance to swap my house for a second-floor flat in another block. So what if the ceiling was covered in nicotine stains and the front door didn’t lock? I could see blue sky outside my windows and soon made my first friend on the estate – a woman called Jane, who came to introduce herself one day after Dad, who had taken enough steroids to fell a horse so that his hands would work long enough, put on a new front door with Nob’s help.

‘Don’t go answering the bell at night,’ Jane told me as we had a cup of tea. ‘Just keep yourself to yourself and you’ll be fine.’

Jane was tall and slim, and I never saw her without full make-up and a pair of high stilettos. She always looked as if she was about to be whisked off to Harvey Nichols in a limousine instead of going up Hounslow high street. She seemed to like keeping an eye on me and so did her boyfriend, Martin, who was just as kind. Sometimes he would appear at the door with a slice off one of the pig’s heads they cooked in a pot, which I took with a heavy heart because I didn’t like to tell Martin that I was vegetarian. Those were the kind of people he and Jane were: kind and generous, good neighbours who kept an eye on me and did whatever they could to help. Yes, I quickly realised they had a bit of a liking for Diamond White, but it didn’t worry me because who was I to judge? As a single mum on a council estate without a penny to her name, there wasn’t exactly much for me to get uppity about.

George was sitting beside Lewis in front of the television at Mum and Dad’s house.

‘Look at the two of them, Ju,’ she said with a smile.

Lewis and George were watching Tots TV, just as they always did, because neither of them could get enough of the three rag dolls called Tilly, Tom and Tiny.

‘He’s a good boy, isn’t he, love?’ Mum said as she looked at George, who’d got up to follow Lewis out of the room now the programme had ended.

It was 1998. George was two and he’d started walking and crawling just as he should have done a few months after his first birthday. A year on he followed Lewis around like a shadow and my mum and dad were still trying to encourage me with him. I didn’t say too much when they did. I knew everyone was being kind, but I was beginning to feel sure that my problems with George weren’t just of my own making because although I did everything I could to make him happy, it was like living with a stranger. He could change from happy to raging in the blink of an eye and as much as everyone tried to pretend that normal rules applied to George, I knew they didn’t.

Take sleeping. At night George would lie awake in his cot for hours, and the moment he learned how to climb out of it, he’d get up every few minutes and scream without stopping if I tried putting him back down. It wasn’t that I was afraid of his temper or making rules. But I could see in George’s eyes that he just didn’t understand what I was trying to teach him. So I had no other choice but to let him toddle around the flat until he finally fell into an exhausted sleep. We must have walked a fair few marathons doing laps of our tiny flat, and even when I did get him into his cot, he often lay awake, chanting words and phrases over and over.

‘Buzz Lightyear, Buzz Lightyear, Buzz Lightyear,’ he’d say again and again, because those were two of the handful of words that he used now, along with ‘Dad’, ‘Mum’ or ‘Batman’.

‘It’s just not possible,’ the doctor would tell me when I went to see him, almost beside myself. ‘Everyone needs to sleep – especially children.’

‘But George doesn’t.’

The doctor looked at me with a slight smile. ‘I think you must have fallen asleep yourself, Julia, so you didn’t realise that George had as well.’

I knew I hadn’t, but I was learning to keep quiet, and although I still took George to the doctor when something new happened, because I wanted to make sure there wasn’t an obvious health problem, I didn’t keep asking questions when I was told he was fine. I’d been brought up to trust doctors, after all, and everyone kept telling me his behaviour was down to me.

That’s why I was doing everything I could to make a better life for us and had signed up to do the Knowledge, the exams that license people to become London cab drivers. I wanted to go back to work and provide for George, so I’d been studying every spare moment for the past eighteen months, with Dad encouraging me. ‘Driving a cab would be the perfect job for you, Ju,’ he’d tell me. ‘You can study for the Knowledge at home and then go to work when it suits you, just like I did.’

But, like a lot of things in life, learning the Knowledge was easier said than done. Driving for a living might sound simple, but if you want to pick up passengers in central London you have to memorise all the streets within a 6-mile radius of Charing Cross station near Trafalgar Square – and there are 25,000 of them. Training for the Knowledge is so hard it’s been proved to make your brain grow, and it doesn’t just end at learning the streets one by one. You also have to know the ‘runs’. These are set routes that get you from any A to any B – lists of streets so long that they fill entire books. I wasn’t sure my brain could fit all that in, and the other big problem was that I hated driving in central London.

‘Faster, Ju, faster,’ Dad would shout when I took him up the Great West Road in his old silver Mustang.

But as soon as I pressed my foot on the accelerator and felt the massive old car almost take off, I’d slow down again in fright. I was too slow for central London, so I decided to study for a suburban licence, which would allow me to pick up passengers in the suburb that included Hounslow. It would still mean memorising thousands of streets, though, so after having an interview and being accepted to train for the Knowledge, I began studying for it at home with George. Putting him in a bouncy chair, I’d sit down surrounded by maps and stare at them as I tried to memorise the roads and runs while he cried fit to burst.

‘New Brentford cemetery to Hounslow railway station,’ I’d chant to myself. ‘Left Sutton Lane, forward Wellington Road, left Staines Road, right Hibernia Road, left Hanworth Road, right Heath Road, right Whitton Road, pull up on the left on Station Road. You are now at your destination.’

That was an easy one, mind; there were up to 50 streets in some of the runs. But in a strange way having something else to concentrate on made it easier to cope with George. I’d check that his nappy was dry, he was warm and his tummy was full, and he would still scream; but as I looked at his tiny red face, I’d tell myself that the Knowledge was going to get us out of this life. When I passed it and started working, I would earn enough money to get us a better one. Somehow I had to give that to George, because as he got older, his behaviour had got even more unusual: if someone arrived unexpectedly at the flat, he’d curl up into a ball and rock; when we were out he’d bang his head against the sides of the pushchair so hard that I had to cover the bars with soft blankets which he’d pull over his face to hide. I’d even started supermarket shopping at night because there were fewer people around then to upset him.

You don’t know what lengths you’ll go to though, until you’re tested. All I knew was that things had to be a very specific way for George to be anything close to happy, so I gave him what he needed, just as any mother would. Otherwise his emotions were like a boiling kettle he couldn’t control and I had to protect him from them or else he would hurt himself – biting his arm until he drew blood, pulling his hair until his scalp was raw. Even when George was a toddler, I still carried him a lot, because it took only a few seconds for him to hurt himself.

Some days it felt as though we were both drowning, and the moments I held on to were when I curled myself around George’s small sleeping body after he’d finally fallen asleep and we lay together – the calm after the storm. It was the closest I got to touching him, and as I gently twisted a small curl of hair on his forehead, I’d look at George, so peaceful, and wish I could find a way to make him feel like that when he was awake. He seemed almost tormented by life, and that’s any mother’s worst fear, isn’t it?

Now I watched as Lewis walked back into the room, trailing the long tube that still fed him oxygen from two prongs underneath his nose. They had slipped out of place and as Lewis sat down to play, George kneeled down and gently pushed them back into position. It was something he did with Lewis a lot and whenever I saw him do so, I knew there was love inside George.

‘He’s going to need a nappy change before we go,’ I said to Mum as I got up off the sofa.

I walked over to George and took a deep breath before picking him up, knowing I had a split second before his screams started. As I carried him to the changing mat I’d spread out on the floor, he started twisting and turning in my arms. Kicking and biting, he roared with rage as I laid him down with one arm across his chest and used my free hand to take off his nappy. George’s face was bright red with anger, but I didn’t look at him or try to make him laugh with words and smiles. It would only make things worse if I did, because George hated making eye contact with anyone. It was just one of the things I had had to learn: no one could comfort him with a kind look – not even me.

One year on the estate turned into two and I carried on studying for the Knowledge. Now don’t go thinking because it took so long that I’m daft. I might not have been top of the class at school, but most people need at least a couple of years to pass the Knowledge and I was no different. Dad had managed to borrow for me an old cab to practise in, instead of going out on a moped as most people do, so a couple of times a week I’d go out and drive the runs, trying to drum the routes into my head.

All that practice had to be tested, and for that I had to make what’s known as appearances at the public carriage office in Penton Street, north London. Think of it as what White Hart Lane is to Tottenham fans – the place where everything really important happens. Licensed drivers go there to have their cabs checked or for paperwork to be done, while trainee ones go there to be tested on their runs.

You could have cut the tension in the air with a knife as we all waited in a grey room to be called in one by one by two middle-aged men in suits, who asked us to recite runs before grading us on them from A to D. It’s known as calling over a run, and you always knew how well you were doing by the marks you got and how quickly you were called back for another appearance. If it was 14 days you were getting better; if it was more than a couple of months you still had a long way to go. The worst bit, though, was that there was no definite end to it all, no set list of grades you had to get to pass the Knowledge. Instead, you just got called back again and again until one of the men in suits decided you were ready. It was like running a marathon with no idea of where the finishing line was.

I went up to London about every month to be tested and it terrified me. If the men in suits had shone a light in my face and told me I had to sleep on a bed of nails, I wouldn’t have been surprised. They really knew how to lay down the law and they wanted to see a good attitude, nice manners and confidence: if you hesitated or got in a muddle as you called over a run, they’d give you a D grade without blinking; if someone’s tie wasn’t straight, they’d tell them to come back another day; and one bloke who swore in the middle of being tested got sent away in disgrace. We were all scared stiff of them, and you could hear a pin drop whenever one of the testers walked into the room where we all had to wait. Some women drive London cabs but not many, and I didn’t meet any when I was studying. It was a world full of men, and those in suits stared at my curly hair, which always had that just-stuck-my-fingers-in-a-socket look however much I brushed it. Sometimes I wanted to scream when they looked at me like that. What did they know? I had George at home, I’d hardly slept and I was doing the best I could. But they didn’t want to hear excuses.

Dad encouraged me every step of the way, though.

‘Have you been out to practice, Ju?’ he’d ask when I went round for a cuppa. ‘Are you going up the carriage office soon?’

I tried the best I could, but after more than two years of studying I had almost had enough of the whole thing. By April 1999 my grades had got better and I was being called back more quickly for appearances, but I was so exhausted by trying to study and coping with George that I just wanted to give up. The other thing that was putting me off was Dad’s illness, because he was so bad by now that he was in and out of hospital. All I really wanted to do was be with him, not staring at road maps and trying to get somewhere I was beginning to think I’d never reach. So one day when I was due at the carriage office for an appearance, I went to visit Dad in hospital instead.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asked as he lay on the bed. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be in Penton Street?’

‘I can’t face it today, Dad. I’d rather just see you. I’ll go another time.’

‘What are you on about?’

‘I’m not going in.’

It was as if a bomb had gone off under him.

‘You’re having a bloody laugh, aren’t you, Ju?’ Dad cried as he started struggling to sit up, wriggling around as he tried to get out of bed. ‘Get me up! Get me stuff! Get me tobacco tin! Don’t forget me matches.’

‘But you’re not allowed to leave the hospital, Dad.’

‘Well, I am if that’s what it takes to get you to that appearance.’

‘Don’t be stupid, Dad. You’re in no fit state to go anywhere.’

The furthest he ever went was downstairs to have a fag, and even then I had to push him in a wheelchair. He was never going to make it 10 miles into central London.

‘Don’t you go telling me what to do, my girl!’ Dad cried. ‘We’re going into town.’

There was no arguing with Dad when he got an idea into his head. He wasn’t even supposed to leave the hospital, but he had decided he was going to. We didn’t quite have to dig our way out like they did in The Great Escape, but I still felt like a prisoner on the run as Dad told me to get him into his wheelchair, out to the car park and into the passenger seat of my car. We both knew the nurses would go mad if they knew what we were up to.

‘I’ve got a good feeling about today, I have,’ Dad kept saying when we finally left. ‘You’re going to do it, Ju. I’m sure of it. They’re going to pass you today.’

But no matter what Dad said, I was still panicking by the time we got into central London. I hadn’t prepared myself for an appearance and didn’t know if I could face it. I felt flustered and worried sick as Dad lay beside me in the front seat, which I’d had to push all the way back because it was too painful for him to sit up.

‘I don’t know where I’m going,’ I wailed as I drove towards a massive roundabout.

‘Hold on!’ Dad said. He lifted his head just enough to see over the dashboard and knew instantly where we were. ‘Over to the right, Ju.’

I tried to pull across.

‘Right, RIGGGHT,’ Dad shouted.

I pulled the car across three lanes of traffic and prayed for the best.

‘Left,’ Dad said with a puff of exertion and pain.

We made it to the carriage office, but I was in a daze by the time I walked in for my appearance. I must have reeled off my runs like a robot, because the man in a suit looked a bit dazed himself when I’d finally finished.

I looked up at him and waited to find out when he’d want to see me next.

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘You’re out.’

I stared at him. I’d done it? I’d got the Knowledge?

I could hardly believe it was all finally over as I walked outside to the car. I’d left Dad in his seat, but as I got into the car I saw a livid red burn mark on his chest. He’d dropped his cigarette while I was away and hadn’t been able to pick it up with his crippled hands. He’d had to lie all alone while it burned a hole in him.

‘Oh, Dad!’ I said, as tears rushed into my eyes.

‘All right Ju?’ he replied and smiled.

‘Your chest, Dad. Are you OK?’

‘Don’t worry about it, love. It don’t hurt.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Forget that and tell me how you got on.’

As I looked at him lying there, I felt so full of love for him. ‘I did it, Dad, I did it.’

A huge smile stretched over his face. ‘I knew you would,’ he said.

With a sigh, Dad lent his head down against the seat. ‘Now let’s get back to the hospital. Those nurses are gonna have my guts for garters.’