B002RI919Y EBOK

by Peters, Joe

  She didn’t have to worry about that. I had seen how hard she could hit, so I wasn’t planning to do anything that might incur her anger. Despite my reservations, I was grateful to her for the offer and tired enough to take it up without any further argument. I kept my clothes on and climbed into my own grubby sleeping bag, which I had brought down with me from London. Lisa didn’t undress either. She was wearing a long kaftan and a pair of socks and had a double sleeping bag that she wrapped herself up in beside me.

  ‘You go by the wall,’ Lisa said, ‘because I don’t like being closed in.’

  Nor do I, I thought, but I didn’t dare say anything since she was giving up half her bed and I didn’t want to seem ungrateful or to have to go out into the cold now I was so cosy. Although I knew she had been teasing me and pretending to fancy me, I had never felt so safe and secure with anyone before in my life. There was a warm glow inside me like I sometimes used to get when I thought about my dad and how he used to be with me. I guess it was love, but I didn’t know it at the time; I just knew it felt really nice.

  I had turned to face the wall and was about to drop off to sleep after a long and eventful day when I felt something tickling the back of my hair. Thinking it might be a spider, I went to brush it away and found Lisa’s fingers there. She didn’t make any attempt to move them away, coming closer instead and kissing the back of my neck. I froze, not sure what to do. I wanted to turn round and kiss her back, but I was frightened of doing it wrong and getting hit as Jake had got hit earlier. Terrified of misreading the signals, I decided to stay very still and pretend I was asleep. She moved a few inches closer and started nibbling my ear.

  ‘Are you asleep?’ she whispered.

  I scrunched my eyes as tightly shut as I could manage.

  ‘I know you’re awake,’ she said, and she started tickling me and making me laugh.

  ‘I’m asleep,’ I protested.

  ‘Oh, are you?’ she said, laughing.

  ‘You woke me up.’

  ‘I’ve got a little problem,’ she said. ‘I’m really cold in this sleeping bag. Why don’t you come in and keep me warm?’

  ‘Can I put my sleeping bag in yours?’

  ‘No, that won’t work. I need you to cuddle up to me to warm me up. Before you get in, take that shell suit off because it’s not very nice material, is it?’

  ‘Can I keep my trousers on?’

  ‘No, take them off. You’ll get really hot in here.’

  Unbelievable though it seems as I write these words now, I genuinely thought in my innocence that because everyone had told me how she didn’t sleep around, she actually wouldn’t try anything on if I did as she asked. I completely believed that she just wanted me to get into her sleeping bag in order to keep her warm.

  Once I had done everything she instructed, we lay together, scrunched up close, me with my back to her again and her with her arms round me. It felt like the best place in the world to be. When her hands started to roam down my body, I was genuinely shocked but excited at the same time. She started trying to turn me around to face her and I tried to resist. I didn’t want her to think that I was jumping on her at the first opportunity. I still thought she might be testing me and I was determined to prove that I was no slag either.

  I held out for about half an hour and then we made love. It was the most beautiful experience I had ever had, even though it was quite physically painful because of my lack of technique and experience. I was used to being raped and abused, not to being loved and encouraged to take the lead. By the end I was crying, partly from the pain but mainly from the emotion of having someone treat me like a person for the first time rather than a lump of meat. Lisa was so sweet and understanding and kind that I was deeply in love from that night onwards. I felt I had met the person I had come south to search for.

  The first thought that came into my head when I woke up the next morning with Lisa in my arms was that I had given her HIV. In the excitement and confusion of the previous night I had completely forgotten that I was waiting for my test results and only a few hours before had been worried sick that I was infected. A terrible sense of dread took hold of my heart.

  She could see something was worrying me and asked what was wrong. When I told her she just laughed, as if I was being silly.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be all right,’ she dismissed my fears. ‘Everyone has to do those tests and I’ve never known anyone be positive.’

  Her confidence made me feel a bit better for a few minutes, but once I was out of the warmth of the sleeping bag my doubts and fears soon crept back into my head. I was still convinced that it was going to be bad news and when I got a message at the centre four days later telling me to go and see the doctor urgently I felt sick with fear and certain he was going to tell me I was dying. I went straight round with Jock, leaving him in the waiting room as I went in.

  ‘Sit down, Joe,’ the doctor said, getting out my notes. I forced myself to sit and stay silent when I actually wanted to scream at him.

  ‘Have I got it? Have I got it?’

  ‘Panic over,’ he smiled. ‘Your tests have come back clean. It’s very unlikely you have anything, but there is an incubation period, so we will need to test you again in a few weeks.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, doc’

  I’d stopped listening by that stage, my thoughts overwhelmed with a mixture of joy and relief. I had been terrified to let Lisa even touch me after the first night in case I was positive, certain in my mind that I would soon be wasting away with full-blown AIDS. Suddenly the weight of the whole world seemed to be lifted from my shoulders. Life seemed so sweet as I danced out of the surgery through the waiting room full of people, shouting out loud to Jock and the whole world.

  ‘I don’t have HIV! I don’t have HIV!’

  I could see looks of apprehension passing over the faces of some of the women. I must have looked like a madman, but I just couldn’t hold in my joy. I couldn’t wait to get back to Lisa at the house to tell her that I was all clear and to repeat the joys of our first night together.

  In the following weeks she continued to make it very clear to everyone that I was her property and the rest of them had to keep their hands off, which made me feel loved and secure and cared about for the first time in my life. It was the most wonderful feeling to wake up each morning next to her, knowing that I wasn’t alone in the world any more. My only complaint was that she was very bossy, always telling me what to do all the time. Having been controlled by other people all my life, I found it hard to take orders from anyone, particularly a woman, without feeling the same fears and resentments and hatreds that I had suppressed for so many years when I had been beaten into subservience. There were moments when I would feel a glimmer of the anger I used to feel for Mum when she forced me to do whatever she wanted, but then Lisa would do or say something so sweet to me that my anger would melt away again as quickly as it had risen. I knew that the problem was mine and not hers, and I struggled to control my temper and my instinct to fight back and argue every time she told me to do something. I never wanted to do anything that might endanger our love for even a second.

  It was as if I had found my soulmate, which was an amazing feeling for someone who had always felt isolated and threatened by everyone around him. She was the first person to love me since my dad had died more than ten years earlier.

  The others used to go out during the day, begging on the streets, but Lisa and I didn’t want to do that. We believed we had all we needed in the way of food and extra clothes from the centre, and the house was perfectly warm and comfortable, so we didn’t need money badly enough to demean ourselves by asking for more charity.

  The other lads in the house were always giving Lisa a share of their money anyway because they liked her, so she was never short of cash to use to buy the drink that she liked. I had thought Jock was a big drinker, but Lisa was worse than him, and always on hard stuff like vodka. She didn’t seem to be able to function at all without a few shots inside
her. Because we spent all our time together it wasn’t long before I had a regular habit too, both drinking and smoking. It’s hard to live amongst people twenty-four hours a day and not start to behave like them. As a result I was constantly getting headaches and then taking another drink to try to get rid of them. Everyone in the house was pretty much the same, so there was no one to explain to me that the more I drank the worse I was making things for myself.

  Despite the quantities that she drank, Lisa never seemed to be drunk like Jock, though, falling about the place or slurring her words; she would just be constantly pouring herself another shot. I guess it was her way of dealing with the pain she was carrying around inside her head from the things her dad had done to her. I could completely understand that. She self-harmed as well, slashing at her wrists–a habit I wouldn’t pick up till later. When I first saw her doing it, I couldn’t see why she felt the need and asked why she did it.

  ‘It’s like a release,’ she explained. ‘Like relieving all the tension that builds up inside my head.’

  As I say, it was as if we were soulmates.

  Chapter Twelve

  Street Crime

  There was no question that Ben was the boss of the house, and he made it clear that if Jake and I wanted to stay there we had to pull our weight and that we couldn’t just sit around the house all day enjoying ourselves, even though he was happy for Lisa to do whatever she wanted. I’d noticed that everyone let Lisa do what she wanted.

  ‘If you’re staying in my squat,’ he told us, ‘you have to work for me.’

  Jock and Charlotte were already earning their keep by doing a bit of thieving for him and he told us we had to do the same. Lisa wasn’t happy at the idea of me being involved in anything like that, but she seemed to think I didn’t really have a choice if I was going to stay.

  Ben was a broad cockney guy who was a lot more grown up and organized than the rest of us. I went into his room once and it was like a normal bedroom in a normal house, full of nice things and done up nicely. It was nothing like the other rooms in the squat. Because it was at the back of the house he had even taken the boards off the window, so he had curtains and natural light while the rest of us lived like moles. I thought perhaps if I could make a bit of money like him, maybe Lisa and I could do our room up as well and improve our lives as Ben had. I was already thinking as if I was part of a permanent couple, making plans and dreaming dreams of better things to come.

  Ben’s clothes were a lot smarter than anything the rest of us had too, all expensive brand names, which he had bought from proper shops and kept all the receipts for. If we had ever been raided, the police would never have found any stolen goods on Ben or in his room: he was much too canny for that.

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Lisa announced to the others the first night I was due to go out with them. ‘I’m watching over him. I don’t trust you lot to look after him.’

  ‘You don’t have to be attached to him every second of the day, do you?’ Ben protested.

  ‘I’m going to watch out for him. All right?’

  ‘No.’ Ben said. It was unusual to see anyone stand up to Lisa, even Ben. ‘You stay here.’

  Then Charlotte said she wanted to come to be with Jock, but Ben wasn’t having that either.

  ‘You stay here and keep Lisa company,’ he instructed and they both subsided, grumbling.

  As we lived inside a house with boarded windows, our days and nights all merged into one. We lived to a different schedule to that of the outside world, often sleeping through the mornings and coming alive in the evenings. So it was well past midnight by the time Ben, Jock, Jake and I sauntered out into the deserted town centre. My stomach was churning as we strolled around, like little kings of all we surveyed. I tried to look as if I was as confident as the others, but I was actually feeling horribly exposed and vulnerable, just wanting to be safely back in the warmth of the house, behind boarded windows with Lisa.

  Ben had spotted a kebab shop with a fruit machine and no visible security, which he said would be an easy target for us. I didn’t like the thought of stealing from anyone, but Ben managed to convince me that the guys running this business wouldn’t care because they would be able to make a claim on their insurance for anything that we took. It wasn’t like robbing someone’s house, he said. I allowed myself to be talked into it, convincing myself that I wasn’t actually taking anyone’s personal possessions. All through my childhood Mum had taught my brothers and me that if you wanted anything in life you should just take it. She had even had us robbing from the local church collection box at one stage, until the vicar caught us and she acted as if she was shocked and mortified by our actions. So although I did have a conscience squeaking away in the back of my head, I took no notice of it, telling myself this was just the way things were, that everyone was the same and that if I didn’t join in I was being stupid. I was also still feeling angry with the world for everything that had been done to me in my childhood and I was looking for a way to let the rage out, to take a bit of revenge. It was a confusing mixture of feelings, which left me vulnerable to Ben and his manipulating ways.

  The kebab shop was deserted and locked up like everything else. It wasn’t hard to kick out the bottom panel of the back door and then we were inside. Ben and Jock seemed to know exactly what they were doing as they broke into the fruit machine with a steel bar and scooped out handfuls of jangling coins. I had never seen so much money in one place. We filled our pockets until they were bulging, and then Ben told me to hold out the hem of my tracksuit top to make a cradle, so that he could fill that too. I could hardly move for fear of dropping the coins and I wondered if there might be a silent alarm going off in a police station somewhere and the cops would be waiting for us when we came out. There wasn’t much chance I could deny anything with so much of the evidence clutched to me, and I didn’t think I would be speedy enough to outrun anyone unless I dropped the lot.

  Coins were spilling out and rolling away as we crawled back out of the hole in the door and scurried home as quickly as we could, laughing and joking as we went. We divided the money up between us on the kitchen table and I gave my share to Lisa. I think it came to about fifty quid each. Looking back now, of course I can see that I was stealing in order to feed her drink habit, but at the time I was just a sixteen-year-old kid in love, who wanted to please the people who were taking care of him and making him feel better about himself. Despite her previous reservations, Lisa seemed impressed by what I had done for her, and her approval made me feel even better about myself.

  Having been reluctant to have anything to do with the venture at first, I was now buzzing with adrenaline and bouncing around with excitement, wanting to go straight back out and repeat the experience.

  ‘Whoa, mate,’ Ben said, laughing at my youthful exuberance. ‘That’s enough for one night. Maybe tomorrow we’ll get you doing a bit of smash and grab.’

  Smash and grab? I wasn’t sure what he was talking about, but it sounded both scary and exciting. One part of me was raring to go, while the voice at the back of my head was warning me that I was slipping out of my depth and about to get into serious trouble. But if I could get some more money to give to Lisa, then it was worth taking a few risks. I felt as if I had become a useful part of the squat community, as if I really belonged somewhere for the first time ever.

  The next night the others taught me the rules of ‘smash and grab’. The way it worked was that we would line up in front of a chosen shop with a brick each and we just kept hurling those bricks at the toughened glass until it started to crack. The moment a crack appeared we would keep battering at that weak spot. If the window didn’t break within a few seconds, we would make a run for it, because the alarms would always be going by then and we knew we only had a couple of minutes before the police arrived. In most cases the windows would go quickly and we would be in, grabbing what we wanted from the displays and shelves, cramming it into empty bags that we had brought with us. We would be back o
ut of the window and away again within a minute. It was amazing how much stuff you could snatch up in sixty seconds. Mostly it was jeans, jumpers and shirts that would be easy for Ben to sell in the pubs and to friends.

  As long as I ignored the little voice telling me I was stealing, the smash-and-grab raids were a real buzz and for a while we went out filling our bags virtually every night. There was one poor retailer in particular whom we used to hit over and over again. Every time they mended their window we would be back there a week or two later and the manager would have to be called back out again in the middle of the night to deal with the alarm and make the shop secure again until morning. We used to walk past later sometimes and see him slaving away, and I still feel guilty about that poor guy to this day.

  At the time it never seemed as if we were attacking anyone personally because those empty, night-time shopping precincts appeared inhuman, just part of a cold, empty, hostile landscape. Having got a taste for the excitement, and often becoming bored sitting around in the house when the others were all too drunk or high to make any sense, I started to go out with Jake pretty much every night, as we used to do when we were in London. Although I didn’t trust him, he was still quite good company. Everything we brought back from those raids would be passed on to Ben or Jock to get rid of and they would give us whatever money they thought we should have a few days later. Once they realized we were willing to do all the hard work for them, the two of them got lazier and lazier.

  ‘You two go out,’ they’d say. ‘You’re the pros.’

  Stupidly, I felt quite proud to think they were willing to give me so much responsibility. The other boys did one or two house burglaries in the area as well and asked me to go with them, but I never did.

  ‘What if they’ve got kids?’ Lisa asked them when they first suggested it, and I could immediately imagine that these houses might have children living in them. I could picture exactly how they would feel when they came downstairs in the morning and discovered someone had broken into their homes while they were sleeping and had messed up their things. Even with the upbringing I’d had, I could see that that would be a wrong thing to do. What happened if one of the kids came down while we were still in the house? How traumatic would that be for them? I wanted to restrict my criminal activities to the anonymous, empty shopping streets of the town centre.