by Peters, Joe
‘Bit of a little Houdini, aren’t we?’ one of the officers joked as the information kept on coming through. I rather liked the idea that I could escape from anything. At least it meant I was good at something and it seemed to quite amuse the coppers. It was better than just being someone who robbed commuters at stations. I spent a few hours sitting in a cell while they tried to work out what everyone wanted to do with me.
‘Apparently we’re going to have to take you to a psychiatric unit here,’ they told me eventually.
I shrugged, thinking I would just walk out again the moment their backs were turned.
‘You won’t be getting out of this one quite so easily,’ they said, as if able to read my thoughts.
When we arrived later in the day, I could see what they meant. This was a secure unit and it was on the second floor of a tall building, so there wasn’t going to be much chance of me making an escape through a window or a hole in the wall. Still feeling cocky from my previous successes at escaping, I tried walking out the front doors on the first day, but they were made of steel and firmly locked and guarded. There was no chance of getting out that way.
When they contacted the doctor in Bradford, she said she wanted me to go back there to continue with my therapy. I suppose she wanted to see the job through to the end, which was fair enough. The doctors were happy to do that because they wanted to save the money and get me off their patch. I wasn’t averse to the idea myself, as this place seemed to me to be full of serious nutters, but I also knew that if they got me back to Bradford they would be watching me much more closely and I might not be able to get away again for a long time.
‘We can’t get you back there for a couple of days,’ the doctor told me, ‘because they haven’t got a car to spare and they need to send a couple of nurses as well to make sure you get there.’
All I could think was that I wanted to get free again before I had a pair of big psychiatric nurses escorting me back to Bradford. I set about re-checking the whole of the unit for possible escape opportunities. None of the windows opened more than a couple of inches and it would have taken more than a screwdriver to get out of them. As I wandered around, trying to look casual, I saw the cleaning lady unlocking the door to her laundry store and disappearing inside, leaving the door ajar. I went over, pretending to be asking for something, and spotted a different sort of window on the other side of the room. It too was standing ajar, letting in a light breeze from outside, and it looked big enough for me to be able to get through. The cleaner was a lovely Jamaican lady and she didn’t think anything was strange as I stood there chatting to her, eyeing up the window. There were piles of sheets and towels everywhere and I wondered if it would be possible to tie them together to make a rope I could climb down on, as I’d seen happening in movies sometimes.
On the second day I managed to slip into the room with my precious bag and hide while the cleaner was looking the other way. My heart was thumping so loudly I was sure she would be able to hear me as she bustled about before going out and locking the door behind her. I listened to her footsteps disappearing down the corridor before setting to work. I had a go at tying some sheets, but I wasn’t sure that the knots were going to be strong enough to hold my weight. Although I was desperate to get out, I didn’t fancy plunging two storeys down to the street below. I went over to the window and opened it wide, leaning out and looking around. I couldn’t believe my eyes: there was a sturdy-looking steel waste pipe beside the window, running down the side of the building to the ground. I should be able to slide all the way down, like a fireman down a pole.
I clambered up on to the windowsill, forcing myself not to look down and concentrating on the pipe. With my bag over my shoulder, I gripped it hard and began the long climb down, sliding and bumping and trying to cling on, every muscle in my body screaming in protest. Once I had started, there was no going back, but as I got to the first floor I felt something slippery under my hands and realized the pipe had been greased with some black substance. I suppose it was to stop people climbing up and breaking in. Unable to keep any grip, I picked up speed at a terrifying rate, landing on the grass with a crash, my ankle buckling agonizingly under me.
The pain was terrible, but I could see a couple of hospital security men coming out of a door and running towards me from the other side of the building, and my urge not to be caught was stronger than my urge to avoid the pain. Since it was a secure unit, I knew from previous experience that they might really hurt me if they caught me. I ran and hopped, driven by a mixture of adrenaline and fear, and succeeded in getting away from them.
When I was finally able to stop and draw breath, I felt quite pleased to think I had managed to escape from a unit that everyone had said would be impossible to breach. Maybe I really was a modern-day Houdini. Since I had only just arrived in the town on the train a couple of days before, I had no idea where I was or what direction to head in. I just kept walking the streets and asking people where the station was until I eventually found it.
The first train was going to Gatwick and I wondered if I would be able to buy an air ticket to fly somewhere. I still had a couple of hundred pounds on me, which I had been planning to put in the bank, and I had my passport. I’d heard about how it was possible to pick up seasonal work in countries like France and Spain quite easily in order to earn enough to live.
Once I got to the airport, I went around the desks finding out how much the flights were and realized pretty quickly that £200 wasn’t going to get me very far. Every way I looked I saw policemen with machine guns and bulletproof vests, and they all seemed to be looking directly at me, as if they knew everything about me and were just playing cat and mouse, biding their time before picking me up again.
‘I just need to get to Spain or somewhere,’ I told one of the women on the desks. ‘Aren’t there any cheap flights?’
‘Have you thought of getting a ferry?’ she suggested helpfully. ‘They are much cheaper.’
Of course–why hadn’t I thought of that?
‘Where should I go for them?’ I asked.
‘Dover is probably your best bet,’ she said.
I went back down to the train station and a few hours later I was sitting on a boat going across the English Channel to Calais. I couldn’t believe that it could be this easy to escape from England when there were so many people after me. It felt brilliant to see the white cliffs disappearing behind me. It was as if I was wiping the slate clean and starting all over again. I was going to a new country with new people, who would know nothing about me and the great pile of records that had been following me from one secure unit to another. This was my chance to disappear from sight in England and start a new life.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Surviving Abroad
When I walked off the ship at Calais, I found the main road going out of town and settled down to hitch, hoping I would have better luck than I had had when I first left home. I was prepared for it to be hours before anyone picked me up, remembering how long I had sat beside the road before, but it didn’t worry me. If the police came along, I had money and a passport and there was no reason for them to take me in. I had hardly been standing there any time at all before a car drew up and the driver offered me a lift. It was all going so smoothly I could hardly believe it. Maybe people are in a more open and generous frame of mind when they are coming out of a port like Calais.
Over the following few days I headed south and then west, across to Spain, really enjoying myself in the warmth, even though I couldn’t speak a word of French or Spanish. The further south I travelled the easier it became to get lifts, as everyone seemed to become more relaxed and welcoming and willing to take a little time to help a young traveller on his own. I was living mainly on packs of digestive biscuits that I had stocked up on in Dover, and bottles of water, although some of the people who gave me lifts would buy me meals or share their sandwiches. I was amazed how open and friendly and helpful everyone was. I ended up in Gibraltar a
bout ten days later. It was a place I had heard of, although I didn’t know anything about it.
I had been sleeping rough all the way down, trying to make my money last as long as possible, but it was so warm at night it wasn’t a problem. I was having such a good time I didn’t want to stop. Having heard people talk about Italy, I decided I would like to go there next and see some of the sights I had heard other travellers describing. I hitched all the way back through Spain and France, along the Riviera and past Monte Carlo. It took a week to get there, mainly because some of my lifts would drop me off on little country roads and it would take me a while to find my way back to the main routes, holding up a bit of cardboard with ‘Italy’ written on it, but I wasn’t in any great hurry. Sometimes I was even picked up by tractors and dropped just a few miles further down the road with no idea where I was or which direction I should be heading in.
Once I got to Italy, I hitched all the way down to the south. I had been trying to find jobs as I went, because my money was beginning to run low even though I was sleeping rough and mainly eating biscuits, but without any success. It seemed everyone had already hired as many people as they needed for the sort of casual jobs that I was after. Someone told me there was a lot of work to be had on the Greek island of Crete. I discovered that in order to get to Crete I needed to catch a ferry from Brindisi to Athens, and then another out to the island.
The day I arrived in Crete it seemed to be market day, so I just kept going from stall to stall, asking if anyone knew of any jobs going. Most people didn’t speak English, of course, and I only had about three words of Greek by that stage, so it was starting to look like an impossible task. I was beginning to despair of ever finding anything.
‘Are you looking for work?’ an English voice asked.
I was shocked to find that the couple behind the next fruit stall were both English. They told me they had a fruit farm and needed some help. I accepted happily, remembering the good times I’d had on farms in England, and they took me back with them at the end of the day.
It was another happy phase of my life despite the hard work, with a room of my own and plenty of sunshine, food and friendly people. I think part of me assumed that in such a lovely, happy-go-lucky place I was bound to finally find the love of my life, but it still didn’t happen, the language barrier making everything even more difficult than usual. I stayed for about six months and managed to save a bit of money before I found myself growing bored with the idyllic lifestyle. I was surprised to realize I was feeling lonely and a bit homesick for England. Having been away for so long, I thought that maybe the police and the doctors would no longer be looking for me. My self-confidence had also grown while I was travelling around Europe. I wanted to have another go at making a life for myself in England and renew my search for an English girl who spoke the same language as me and wanted to share my life.
One of the locals I became friendly with on Crete was a man who ran a car hire business. He rented me a jeep, which I really liked driving around the little winding roads with the top down and the wind and sun on my face. I decided to use it to drive myself back to Italy and on home to England, rather than going back to living my life at the side of the road again. Despite everything that had happened to me over the previous few years, I still had a bit of Mum’s influence in me, a belief that if I really needed something it was all right to just take it and face the consequences later, just as I had with the pig’s head.
Getting to the mainland was no problem. On the ferry from Athens to Brindisi my spirits were high from being on the road once more and I got talking to a young American couple. I told them what my plans were, not really thinking that I was doing anything particularly wrong. They could immediately see that I shouldn’t have taken the car off Crete without permission and told me off in no uncertain terms. I think they must then have grassed me up to the ship’s captain, because as I drove off the ferry at Brindisi I was pulled over by the police, who dragged me out of the car and took me into custody. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying and they kept punching me and pushing me around, hitting me with a baton during the interview process. I’d heard from other people that Italian prisons were a lot more violent than British ones and I started to feel really nervous that I might end up in a Brindisi version of Lewes, unable to speak the language and not understanding any of the rules or customs.
I was angry with myself for yet again messing things up when they had looked as if they were going well for me. Why could I never be satisfied when I found honest employment in nice places, as with Andy in Cornwall and with the couple on the fruit farm? Why did I always have to be searching for something more, something to fill the empty void in my heart? Was I never going to be able to break this cycle of behaviour, which kept pulling me back down? I could feel the familiar black cloud of depression rising inside my head, making me want to find a quick way to put an end to my own life.
To my relief the police decided in the end to put me back on the ferry to Athens so that I could face the music there. Because of my time in Crete I felt that I understood the Greeks better than the Italians, but I was still very frightened at the idea of ending up in a Greek prison.
The ship’s captain came to see me as they brought me on board and seemed to be really sorry about what had happened.
‘Why did you do this?’ he asked, and I couldn’t really come up with an explanation.
‘Please don’t take me back,’ I pleaded after we had been chatting for a few minutes.
‘I have to,’ he said, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. ‘It is the law.’
‘I bought a ticket,’ I protested.
‘But you took a vehicle,’ he said, as if trying to explain it to a child.
‘I rented it.’
‘That had expired. You are not supposed to take it out of the country.’
Although he looked very regretful, the captain had to lock me into the cabin while he went off to prepare the ship to sail. I couldn’t believe that I had got myself back into such a mess after things had been going so well for a year. Yet again I was imprisoned in a small room, my fate to be decided by other people, and I had brought it all on myself. My initial relief at getting free of the Italian police was now replaced by an increasing anxiety at what might lie ahead of me when we docked at Athens and they came to get me. The thought of having to deal with Greek police and prison, and maybe ending up being deported back to England and having to face all the charges that were waiting for me there, was more than I could bear. The depression was now boiling up and mixing with anger at myself and the whole world. In a fit of temper I smashed a mirror, picked up one of the jagged slices of glass from the floor and slashed wildly at my wrists.
By the time the captain had come back in to tell me that we were about to set off, there was blood all over the cabin. It was obvious they couldn’t proceed with me in this state and he shouted orders for the ship to stay where it was. There were sailors running back and forth at his command. They had to get me off the ship again quickly so that it could sail with the other passengers.
Back on shore, an ambulance was called to take me to hospital in Brindisi while the ferry sailed off without me, so that my wrists could be stitched up, extremely roughly, before they chucked me back into a cell to wait for another sailing.
When the ferry was back the next day, the captain came to visit me and I could see that he felt bad about the way I was being treated. Maybe he also felt bad because he already knew that this time they were going to sedate me for the journey to make sure I didn’t do the same again.
There was a doctor waiting for me on the ship this time who stuck a needle in me while the policemen held me down, so that I slept all the way across and didn’t give them any trouble. When I came round, I found myself in front of the Athens police and the guy from the car hire company in Crete. Everyone was angry and shouting at me as I tried to wake up and clear my thoughts. It was like being trapped in a nightmare.
They knew I had my earnings from the fruit farm on me, so they insisted that I paid it all over as compensation to the rental company. I think I would have owed him only about £100 for the time I’d actually had the car, but they made me empty my pockets, so in the end it cost me about four times that, which taught me a good lesson. They then kicked me out of the station with nothing–no money, no return ticket, nothing.
The only person I knew in the whole hot, busy city now was the captain of the ferry, so I went down to the docks to see if he would give me a free lift back to Italy, where I could hitch my way back to England. Wandering along the quay, having no real idea how to get on to the ship without a ticket, I heard my name being called.
‘Joe! Joe!’ I turned to see the first mate of the ferry running after me. ‘How are you, Joe?’
‘Can I go and see the captain?’ I asked, still feeling groggy and confused from everything that had happened.
‘Yes, of course,’ he said, as if we were the oldest of friends. ‘The captain feels bad for what happened to you.’
He put his arm round my shoulders and steered me on to the ship and along to the captain’s cabin. The captain actually seemed pleased to see me, shaking me enthusiastically by the hand, sitting me down and getting me a cup of coffee. He seemed relieved that I hadn’t been thrown into prison again.