Читать книгу Call Me Evil, Let Me Go - Sarah Jones - Страница 7

I was born Sarah Alice Weston, the third child and second daughter of Pamela and John Weston. My father worked as an electrician in the Merchant Navy, my mother was a florist. Home was a spacious three-storey, semi-detached, five-bedroom house with a large garden in a market town in the Pennines.

Apart from me, my family consisted of Kerry, who was 11 when I was born, and Roy, 12. My sister was easy-going and well behaved, but there was something not quite right about my brother. I couldn’t have known then that he was to affect my life profoundly.

Roy was by all accounts an adorable baby and grew into a bright, intelligent little boy much praised for his all-round ability by his teachers at his local school. My doting parents took great pride in his success, and not too much notice when his teachers added that he was a bit of a loner and didn’t mix well. He was, after all, the first child in our family and Mum didn’t know what to expect. She assumed he was taking after her and she was not one to go out with a crowd of girls. She didn’t even worry that he kept himself to himself at home too, putting it down to the fact that he was behaving like any boy with two younger sisters.

Certainly Roy didn’t take much notice of me when I arrived, but Kerry was delighted to have a little sister. Roy’s life and that of my family changed dramatically almost overnight one day when I was just a sweet, bubbly toddler. Many parents worry about their child turning into Kevin, the iconic teenager created by comedian Harry Enfield, when they reach their teens, but Roy’s transformation was far more extreme. He stopped being the loving lad who was good at so many things, and turned into an impossible rebel with an explosive temper who screamed and shouted at the least thing.

He used to be immaculate and tidy, but became extremely scruffy and left his bedroom in a terrible mess. Worst of all he no longer wanted to go to school and began playing truant. It was shortly after his birthday that we had the first clear sign that something was seriously wrong. He was playing rock music so loudly in his bedroom that the house started to reverberate. Dad went in and asked him to turn the volume down. To his horror, instead of replying Roy jumped up and down on his bed with his fingers in his ears, screaming. Now, when most children of that age start screaming in a tantrum they stop pretty quickly afterwards, but Roy scream lasted for over ten minutes. It was then that my parents knew for certain that their son’s behaviour had gone beyond that of even the most difficult teenager.

Mental health was very poorly handled in the sixties and seventies, with little diagnosis and even less support. When my parents took Roy to see our trusted family GP they believed everything he said implicitly and didn’t query his diagnosis that Roy was just a typical adolescent. He said that, of course, it was unusual behaviour, but ‘these things happen and they shouldn’t worry’. They did worry, of course, and felt very guilty about his obvious unhappiness, racking their brains to remember something they might have done that triggered this change in him. But they couldn’t come up with anything.

Roy was particularly awful when my widowed maternal grandma came to live with us that year. He started screaming at her so much her that my parents dared not leave her alone with him and, although we all wanted Grandma to stay with us permanently, after a few months Mum and Dad felt she had to leave for her own safety. Roy also insisted on eating his meals alone in his bedroom, which upset Mum and Dad greatly because we liked to eat together as a family.

Over time, Roy’s behaviour grew even worse and he spent ever longer periods alone in his room. Kerry, who is now an occupational therapist working in Canada, worried that he didn’t have any friends and lived in an imaginary world where he often put himself in charge of military battles. Although some days passed calmly, the unpredictability of his moods and his anti-social behaviour kept me on a knife edge of anxiety. I never knew when he was going to start screaming again and hated the stormy and tense atmosphere at home. It was like living with a time bomb. Kerry sometimes locked herself in her bedroom when she heard him shouting and we all felt increasingly scared.

As well as making life difficult for me and Kerry, Roy was also wearing Mum and Dad down. They nevertheless tried to look for positive things about his behaviour and took heart when he visited Uncle Roger, Dad’s brother, who lived in a nearby village, because it put him in a better mood. Sadly, once he was back home, he’d usually run up to his bedroom, put a record on and start on his screaming all over again.

He also enjoyed coming on our family weekend camping trips to sites in the North York Moors. We had a large tent with a separate section for each of us. Roy seemed happier in the fresh air, and nothing like as disruptive as he was at home.

Although I was too young to have any real concept of what was going on, I could sense the dark cloud that hung over the family. I was so frightened of Roy’s strange behaviour I often shook like a leaf. My parents did their best and took him back to the doctor countless times. They tried a child psychiatrist too, but, as extraordinary as it may seem, his diagnosis remained the same – a bad case of adolescent behaviour – and they were told repeatedly that the best way to deal with their son was to keep reassuring him of their love. Dad even took up kite-flying so that he and Roy could share an activity together, but it failed as Roy would always intentionally get their kites entangled, which was disheartening to Dad, to put it mildly.

One example of his strange behaviour occurred at one of my birthday parties. Dad was in hospital after a fall aboard ship when he’d hit his head on a bulwark, and was expected to stay in for two weeks, but Mum invited twelve little friends round for me and prepared egg, banana and ham sandwiches, jelly and ice cream, and a birthday cake with pink icing. I was very excited but sad too that Dad wasn’t with us. It was hard work for Mum to do on her own, but she organized lots of fun games, like Pass the Parcel and Musical Chairs. We were all having a lovely time when, about halfway through the party, Roy came out of his bedroom, walked down the stairs and threw his dinner of meat, potatoes and lots of gravy right across the room. He then started yelling unintelligibly before going back to his room. I was petrified and so upset that my special day was ruined.

Dad’s niece Belinda, who had brought her daughter, who was my age, along to join in the fun, was really shocked too. She’d never seen Roy behave like that before and said she’d had no idea that he could be so awful. I could tell Mum was really upset as she cleared up his mess from all over the carpet and armchairs. When everyone had gone home she put me in the bath, read me a story and tried to settle me down for the night. I was still quite disturbed, so it all took a while.

When peace finally reigned, Mum wondered yet again what she and Dad could have done to Roy that he hated them so much, and why such a loving child now seemed like a stranger. She also felt very nervous about what he might do next, but eventually went to bed. She woke up in the small hours with an anxious start, feeling that everything was hopeless. Grandma, whom she loved very much, had died several months previously and she was still in mourning for her. She was also worried about Dad in hospital. It all seemed too much and suddenly she felt she couldn’t cope a moment longer. She’d been prescribed Mogadon, a sleeping pill, by the doctor because of the strain she was under and on impulse swallowed all twenty or so tablets left in the container. She left a note on the mantelpiece for Kerry, saying she had gone away, and when we woke up we should all go to our next-door neighbour, whom we knew very well.

She then got into our trusty Morris Traveller and drove off with no idea where she was going. All she knew was that she had to get away. She was not fit to drive and went through several red lights, although luckily there was no one about. Two miles further on the car stalled, which somehow half brought her to her senses. She realized she had to get help, got out of the car and walked unsteadily towards a stationary ambulance parked at the side of the road. The driver got out at the same time and, as fate would have it, it was one of her friends, Billy. When he asked her why she was out in the middle of the night, she told him she had taken an overdose. He immediately drove her to the local hospital in his ambulance, which fortunately was empty.

Mum didn’t have to wait long in Casualty. Her stomach was pumped and she was given a bed in one of the wards, but she couldn’t sleep and lay shaking and shivering all night. She was in such a state that she didn’t think about us poor children left behind, who would wake up with neither parent at home.

Before she was discharged later that morning, she rang a neighbour to ask her to drive her home, and decided not to tell Dad what happened until he came out of hospital. She was in no fit state to go and see him and, so that he didn’t worry, left a message with the nurse on his ward that she wasn’t very well and couldn’t visit him for a couple of days.

When Dad got home he was very shocked and upset to hear what had really happened, but by then Mum was feeling much brighter. Dad had always been an upright, hard-working man who tried to be the husband and father that we could all rely on, but the strain of living with a seriously disturbed teenager was taking its toll on him too. Several days after Mum was discharged, he snapped.

Mum had organized a family Halloween party, hoping Roy would join in the fun. Kerry and I were having a great time, roaring with laughter as we ducked apples and played party games. Roy refused to join in and started annoying us by putting his fingers in his ears and screaming. As we were so used to this by now it wasn’t a big deal for us, but it was the last straw for Dad, who broke down in floods of tears. This was so out of character for him that Mum called the doctor, who diagnosed a nervous breakdown caused by stress. He prescribed tranquillizers and Dad took a month off work.

Dad had at that time left the Merchant Navy and had been building up his own electrical business, fixing televisions, radios and the like, and occasionally rewiring houses for friends. It was going very well but Roy’s erratic behaviour had become too much for him. He couldn’t concentrate on his work and sold the business, which was a pity. Instead he got a job as an electrician at a school in a nearby town, and we bought a four-bedroom semi-detached house close by.

Roy refused to go to school following that incident at my birthday party and, after a nightmare year of having him at home, all our hearts lifted when he suddenly told Mum and Dad that he wanted to follow in Dad’s footsteps and join the Merchant Navy. He had been a naval cadet at school and enjoyed it, so we were delighted with his choice. Although we worried a bit about how someone who had such difficulties socially would cope with the other cadets, overall we felt that at long last there was light at the end of the tunnel.

The mood of the house always lifted when Roy wasn’t around and this time Mum, who had been so focused on him, started to give us girls, and especially me, more attention. But far from feeling neglected, I enjoyed it when I wasn’t the focus of Mum’s attention. Instead I had a free, unrestricted childhood, although at times I bubbled over with too much energy and curiosity and was probably a thorn in my elder sister’s sides.

Two years after Roy joined the Merchant Navy he was discharged on medical grounds, no doubt because he was acting bizarrely, and our family life once again became a roller-coaster ride. Mum and Dad thought that perhaps he would be happier if we moved to a different house in another part of the Pennines, one that didn’t have so many bad memories for him – and for us. So Dad got a job as an electrician at a technical college, and we soon settled into a four-bedroom house in a charming village. Unfortunately the move didn’t change Roy’s behaviour at all.

I loved being at the new primary school in the village. The teachers were great and made everything fun. I went to Brownies and the Christian Union, enjoyed gymnastics and was quite a tomboy. I had loads of friends, both in the village and at school. I loved climbing trees and fighting with boys but I especially liked going to the local forest to collect the cartridge cases left behind by clay-pigeon shooters. They were all sorts of different colours and I lined them up on the window sill in my bedroom. That summer my friends and I saw a wild horse in a field and the farmer said that whoever could ride it could keep it. We tried all summer but none of us managed to mount the horse, let alone ride it.

Another favourite pastime was our family camping holidays, particularly when our relatives came to join us. Best of all was going fishing with Dad. He was a true family man, a passive and loving father who was very funny and never once smacked me. He had an enduring passion for Austin Minis and, to add to his rather modest income as an electrician, he would often have up to six of them, belonging to various friends, in our garden waiting for him to repair them.

At that time religion wasn’t playing a big part in family life. Mum occasionally went to the local Anglican church and even became a Sunday School teacher for a short while, but she found neither peace nor comfort there. Instead both Mum and Dad turned to alcohol as a way of finding relief. They felt better once they were drunk, even though everything became twice as bad the next morning when they were hung-over. On Fridays they drank all night. It was well before the licensing laws changed, so they started at the pub and when it closed they moved on to the nearest hotel with a late-night licence. Dad drank beer and Mum drank white wine. Dad was regularly downing at least eight pints during a session, and by the time he came home he was absolutely reeling and as daft as a brush. He was also chain-smoking and on a Friday would get through about sixty cigarettes during the evening.

Alcohol became Mum’s anaesthetic: it helped drown her sorrows and stopped her thinking. I was still young when I became aware that my parents were drinking heavily. Soon after we moved to the Pennine village Mum invited the local vicar to tea. I told him that Mum had been really drunk the previous night. He didn’t respond, no doubt because he was trying to be tactful, so I kept saying it and the more Mum tried to shut me up the more I went on and on. His visit didn’t last long.

One of the nicest things about our move was to discover we lived close to a large limestone quarry. As well as being able to play amongst the rocks and pools of the quarry – rather dangerously perhaps, but this was the era before our modern obsession with health and safety – the quarry-workers’ families were very friendly and soon began inviting us to various parties. I had countless sleepovers with lots of children in various family bedrooms and it was enormous fun. I was very proud that, although I was one of the youngest there, I was put in charge of making toast for all the children in the morning.

Mum and Dad occasionally went to the local hotel for a posh dinner, and I loved looking at Mum when she was beautifully made up and wearing a smart dress, and thought she was absolutely stunning. When we were at home the family liked to play cards and above all Pit. It’s a very old game that simulates the activities on the floor of the stock market, and specifically the commodities market. Everyone would yell out the number of cards they wanted to trade at the same time, and the action was fast and furious. There was so much laughter and shouting going on that I got really cross when my parents sent me to bed, especially as I couldn’t sleep for ages because of the noise.

These light-hearted interludes brightened our mood for a short time but didn’t provide a permanent solution to the nightmare we had with Roy. He kept thinking people were after him and often woke me at night with his shouting. Although I had my own bedroom I often rushed into my parents’ room, where I’d lie on the floor beside their bed, almost too scared to breathe. Sometimes Mum gave me warm milk with a drop of brandy in it to help calm me down. At other times it was really so unpleasant for me to be in our house that Dad called one of our neighbours and asked if I could stay there for the night.

It was around that time that Mum decided once again that life was too much and she couldn’t cope with Roy. She’d been secretly going into his room and taking a handful of Valium, which she washed down with sherry, but this time she deliberately took too many and I came home from school to find her flat out on the floor of her bedroom. I was very scared and shook her hard. When she still didn’t move, I rang Dad at the college and, after a long wait for him to be found, was eventually put through to him. He rushed home and I stood with my back against the wall in the corner of the bedroom, barely daring to breathe, as I watched him slap her face to try to bring her round. Before long the ambulance arrived and she was taken to hospital. I was completely traumatized by what I had seen and had awful nightmares. Yet I don’t think it was a serious suicide attempt. It was more a sign of her desperation and her way of blotting everything out. She was again discharged within a day and not given any medication or a further appointment.

It was the last straw and finally Dad decided, with a heavy heart, that Roy had to move out as he was very worried about the damaging effect his behaviour was having on the rest of us. But it was one thing coming to a decision and quite another finding the courage to tell Roy to his face. He was so volatile it could have easily triggered a serious outburst.

Dad eventually mustered up courage, explained to Roy that he was being rather disruptive and told him gently that he had to go. He added that he was a much-loved son and although we couldn’t have him living with us all the time, he wasn’t banning him from visiting us. To our surprise Roy wasn’t at all bothered and shortly afterwards moved into a squat in a local town that was frequented by homeless people and drug addicts. Life calmed down and one summer’s day Roy came round to tell Mum and Dad that he had found what he described as a ‘fantastic new church’ close to where he was squatting. He asked Mum if she’d like to come with him. She immediately said yes and seemed so happy to find something she could do with Roy that could give them a shared interest and topic of conversation.

Bethesda Charismatic Church was run by Pastor Edmund Collins, a charming, modest young man of 28, who had been building up the congregation from scratch. Mum found her first visit rather strange. She was an Anglican and found the hymns were very different to those to which she was accustomed. The congregation also clapped, which she was not used to. Nor had she ever shouted out ‘Halleluiah’ before. But the service lifted her spirits and helped her feel peaceful, and she believed that God was there for her to cling on to.

After a few more visits she tried to persuade the rest of the family to join her. Kerry refused, while Dad was so deeply into drink and anti-religion that he said he’d rather spend his time at the pub. But I went along. It was a lovely, lively service, much friendlier than the Anglican church, and I even started going to the Sunday School. Mum became a regular churchgoer and soon wouldn’t miss a single Sunday service. She told us that she could sense God’s presence within her, felt safe in His hands and suddenly for the first time believed our family would come through our difficult times.