B002RI919Y EBOK

by Peters, Joe

  ‘What will you do now, Joe?’ he asked.

  ‘I need to get back to England,’ I replied, ‘but they’ve taken all my money, so I don’t know how to get across to Italy.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You stay in here. We’ll be leaving for Brindisi again very soon.’

  Not only did he give me a free trip back, but he also provided me with lunch and insisted on filling my bag with food and drink for the next stage of my journey. During lunch he even offered me a job on the ship, but I’d had enough of that ship by then and I didn’t fancy the idea of spending the next few months going back and forth across the same stretch of water. He seemed disappointed by my refusal and gave me a huge bear hug when we docked.

  I left the ship nervously, expecting the Italian police to jump on me at any moment and drag me off to the cells, or send me back to Greece again, saying I wasn’t welcome in their country. But this time no one took any notice of me as I walked away from the docks and went in search of the road that would lead me north.

  Over the following days I hitched all the way up to France and then ended up back in Spain. Now that I was free of the police, I found that my urge to get back to England and risk being taken into custody again seemed to fade, although it wasn’t replaced by anything else. I was a truly free spirit, drifting where life took me. What was there in England to go back for? I asked myself. And the answer was ‘nothing’.

  The food in my bag was running out by the time I got to Spain and since I had no money I knew I was going to have to find another job. I crossed the border into Gibraltar again, thinking it would be easier to find something in a country where English was widely spoken; it was hard work trying to make myself understood all the time in languages where I had no more than a few words. I went knocking on doors, asking if they had any jobs, and got one collecting glasses and wiping tables in a pub, which gave me a bit of money and a roof over my head. The landlord was a good bloke and I really enjoyed myself, feeling like part of a little community again. I worked hard and my boss was pleased with me.

  One day, a few weeks after I arrived, there was a drunk in the pub who was bumping into everyone and spilling his beer all over the place. The other customers were getting really fed up and my boss asked me to do something about it because he was busy with something else. I was quite happy to handle the situation and walked over to the drunk.

  ‘Can you leave, please?’ I asked politely.

  He wasn’t shifting, so I put my hand on his shoulder and tried steering him gently towards the door. To my relief it worked and he moved, but as soon as we got outside he took a wild swing at me. That made me cross and I gave him a quick wallop, sending him to the ground, and someone called the police. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but what I hadn’t realized was that the police in Gibraltar were part of the British force, so the moment they fed my details into their system my whole past record in England popped up. My heart sank.

  I’d made friends with an ex-copper while I was at the pub and he came into the police station to see me.

  ‘Please help me,’ I pleaded, terrified of what would happen to me now. ‘Please get them to let me go.’

  ‘I can’t do anything, mate,’ he said. ‘I wish I could. You’re a wanted man.’

  The landlord from the pub came in too, telling me how bad he felt that he hadn’t dealt with the drunk himself. He tried to reason with the police on my behalf and hired me a solicitor, but it was too late by then: the authorities all wanted me back in England to answer all the various charges.

  ‘There’ll always be a job here for you if you want it,’ he promised.

  The police put me on the next plane to Gatwick and the British police met me as soon as I came out through customs. I had been away from England for a year by then. I was twenty-two years old.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Boy Meets Girls

  The officers at Gatwick were pretty friendly and they just took me to a cell to wait for some others from Watford to drive down and pick me up. It seemed I was finally going to have to face the music for the time I hit the cheese man with the vodka bottle.

  ‘He’s a good kid,’ one of the Gatwick officers told them as I was handed over. ‘He won’t give you any trouble.’

  They still handcuffed me to get me to the car, although they took the cuffs off once we were driving. They were very friendly all the way back, chatting about my situation and what I should do.

  ‘Just explain everything to the magistrate,’ one of them said. ‘They won’t be too hard on you because you’re obviously a nice lad.’

  It was kind of them to say so, but I didn’t share their optimism, given my past experience.

  By the time I was standing up in court, the authorities had uncovered the outstanding fines from the smash and grabs as well, which I still hadn’t done anything about. They did notice, however, that I had done very well during the period when I was on probation in Cornwall, so they decided to give me another two years on probation, with a suspended sentence should I get into any trouble during those two years, and told me to pay £1,500 compensation to the cheese man, even though I didn’t have a penny to my name. It was a big relief not to be going back to prison, but it still seemed like a major restriction after all the freedom I had experienced abroad. It also meant that under the terms of my probation I had to stay in Watford.

  I had gone back to the YMCA building that I had stayed in before, so they bailed me to that address. One of the first people I bumped into there was Colin, who was still not happy with me for driving off and leaving him in Bradford about two years earlier.

  ‘You bastard,’ he said, the moment he saw me.

  ‘You’re a twat, you,’ I said, thinking quickly on my feet. ‘How long were you in that shop for? I was waiting and then coppers came along and booked me.’

  ‘Oh.’ He stopped shouting. ‘I didn’t know that, mate. What happened then?’

  ‘They put me back in a mental hospital,’ I said, reverting to the true story now that he had calmed down.

  I really didn’t want to stay in Watford because it felt like taking a step backwards when what I wanted was to make another fresh start. I’d been told that Hereford was nice and since I didn’t know of anywhere else I asked the probation people if I could move there. They were a bit doubtful, since I had no one to go to, but they could see the sense of me making a new start away from Colin and the rest of them in Watford and arranged a hostel for me down there.

  Yet again I was starting over in a strange town where I knew no one. Was this going to be the pattern for the rest of my life? Or was this going to be the place where I would finally meet the girl who would prove to be the love of my life?

  After a few days I got myself a little ground-floor flat on Green Street, where the landlord was willing to accept people who were on social security. I got another job in a pub and started to make some friends around the area, including a guy called Patrick and a pretty, suntanned girl called Jenny who I dated a few times. Eager to court her properly, I would buy her bouquets of flowers every week from a sweet Welsh florist who had the loveliest lilting accent.

  Jenny’s dad was a retired SAS officer, which scared me a bit but also impressed me a lot. They were a really nice family and there were pictures all over the house of him with his fellow soldiers. I think it was because of Jenny’s dad that I developed an interest in firearms and the army. I got an SAS tattoo and started collecting replica guns, just as a hobby, putting them up on the wall of my flat in their cases. Patrick used to love these guns and in order to wind him up I pretended they were real.

  ‘How did you get them then?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Oh, I know a few people in the arms business,’ I said casually.

  He was swallowing everything I told him, so I kept making up more and more stories just to see the look on his face. When it was announced that the Queen was due to come to Hereford to open something or other I developed my stories to a whole new le
vel.

  ‘I’ve got a contract to take her out,’ I told Patrick, with a totally straight face.

  The next thing I knew armed police officers were kicking my door in on the day before the Queen was due to arrive, telling me they had information that I was planning an assassination. I tried to explain that the guns were just replicas and that I was joking, but they weren’t taking any risks. They kept me in custody until the royal visit was over and they took away the guns to test, which involved drilling holes in them. In the end they released me without charge, once Her Majesty was safely out of the town. They knew all about my record and informed my probation officer of the incident. My probation period had been just about to end but they extended it because of that, which struck me as ridiculous, although I could see that I had brought it on myself by winding Patrick up without thinking what the consequences might be.

  Jenny and I went out together for a good four months before she met someone else and dumped me. It was perfectly predictable because she deserved better than me, but I was still gutted. Every girl I ever liked ended up rejecting me when the one thing I wanted and needed more than anything else was to feel loved and secure. Convinced yet again that I was too ugly and bad for anyone to ever love me, I plunged back into the same dark places I had been to before and took an overdose, wanting yet again to escape from the pain.

  As usual I messed it up and found myself waking up, still alive, in the hospital. Jenny’s mum came to see me, which was a sweet gesture, but not enough to make me feel any better.

  ‘You’re young,’ she said, guessing why I had done it, even though I didn’t say anything. ‘There will be plenty more fish in the sea.’

  It doesn’t matter what people tell you at moments like that: you still don’t believe things will ever work out or that you will ever feel happy again. At the same time I did know she was right and I really didn’t want to be going back into psychiatric units. I wanted to cope with this setback like a normal person, have a cry, pick myself up and get back in the race. I was supposed to be seeing a psychiatrist in the hospital but I decided not to do that. I knew that once they started asking questions I would have to go over all the old stuff yet again and since I’d messed up killing myself yet again I just wanted to have another go at getting on with my life. I discharged myself, walking out of the hospital and going back to my little flat on my own.

  Patrick knew what I was going through and was a good friend. He kept me cheerful and did stuff for me like teaching me how to drive properly by introducing me to his uncle, who was a driving instructor. Because of them I actually took a test and got a licence. I now had a passport and a driving licence, and with each of these little steps forward I was learning how to be a functioning member of society, being taught all the things that my mum and dad should have been able to help with if Dad hadn’t died and Mum hadn’t hated me with such a vengeance and wanted to do nothing but hurt me.

  Another of my friends was designing and selling graphics and he gave me a job, teaching me how to work with computers. I found I had a bit of a talent for that and started to actually make some money at it. After a while I set up on my own, with the help of this friend, and became a full-time freelance graphic designer. I wasn’t making loads of money, but I was earning enough to support myself, which was a good feeling.

  That side of my life was all going well, but I still felt there was a hole at the centre of my existence because I still hadn’t found anyone to love me or to share my life with. Having broken up with Jenny, I wanted to move on again, as I always had in the past, imagining that despite all my previous disappointments I would find what I was looking for in the next town I landed in.

  I had finally worked out that whenever I turned to drink to escape from my depression I ended up in more trouble, so I fought really hard to stay off it. It had been drink that had fuelled me to go out smashing windows the night after I had held my baby, and it had also led to me hitting the cheese man and to stabbing myself and ending up in the psychiatric unit. Over and over again I had repeated the same pattern of behaviour and I knew that I couldn’t afford to risk it any more. I had to learn to face life without the help of that deadly crutch.

  As I drove home from work one night, another driver ran into the back of my car really hard, giving me a nasty case of whiplash, which led to me ending up in hospital again. Because of the injury I’d had before to my collarbone, I was in agony. This time, however, because I was all legal, I was paid a few thousand pounds’ compensation, which gave me a little bit of money in the bank for the first time ever. I felt rich.

  The girl with the pretty Welsh accent in the flower shop had made a big impression on me and I decided that I would like to go to Swansea next, where all the girls would sound like her. I had a little trailer for my graphics equipment, which was painted up with my logo and mobile number. I gave up the flat in Hereford, hitched the trailer to the car and headed off through Monmouthshire, once more on the road in search of something or someone that would bring me happiness. I was close to twenty-three by then.

  Although I had Swansea in my head because of the florist, I was still open to any other ideas that might crop up along the way, so when I saw a signpost to Barry Island I decided to take a little detour and find out more. There’s something very romantic about the idea of any island, whether it’s Crete or Barry, and even if it is attached to the Welsh mainland by a bridge.

  Barry Island is a holiday destination with a beautiful beach, an amusement park, a promenade and all the other trappings of fun. It had a really nice relaxed feel to it, so I decided to stop there for a while and find a place to rent. Using some of my compensation money, I took a cheap, run-down flat on the promenade and settled in.

  My graphics business fell to pieces a bit after that, but I wasn’t too bothered. I had met a couple called Dean and Sharon, who were really good to me and introduced me to all their friends. Suddenly I was meeting girls and they seemed to be interested in me. Maybe I was finally maturing a bit and growing into my gangling frame, or maybe it was the holiday atmosphere of Barry Island, which loosened everyone up, but I actually found I was able to pull women successfully. I had a flash car and my own flat; I was made. I was able to push my depression to the back of my mind with a frantic whirl of sex and socializing. For a while it went to my head and I wasn’t always as nice to the women I went out with as I should have been, using them in much the same way I had used drink in the past, as a distraction and a consolation. All my life I had been controlled and rejected by a variety of women, starting with Mum, and now that I’d broken the cycle I was enjoying my run of luck too much. And in the excitement I forgot that what I had been craving ever since I could remember was to find someone who would love me and who I could share my life with, not just a series of people I could sleep with and then send home.

  One of the girls I really liked was mixed race and I was shocked by how many people seemed to have a problem with that. By that stage I had completely got past the racist feelings I had been left with by my childhood experiences and I found it hard to understand why I couldn’t make other people see how wrong it was in the same way I had been shown when I first came down to London.

  There was also a girl called Michelle who had recently separated from her partner. She was celebrating her twenty-first birthday in a place I used to go to called Al’s Bar when I first noticed her and was struck by how pretty she was. I bought her a drink and she told me she had seen me around in a few clubs in Barry.

  ‘I even bumped into you once or twice,’ she said, ‘on purpose. But you didn’t notice.’

  I was surprised by that, because she was strikingly beautiful. I certainly wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. I wanted to take her back to the flat there and then, because all the other girls I had been seeing had been perfectly willing to do that, but she wasn’t having any of it. She made it very clear that she was not ‘that kind of girl’, which I respected, just as I had when I met Lisa. Unlike Lisa, h
owever, she stuck to her principles and wouldn’t let me get anywhere over the next couple of weeks. I was becoming both frustrated and fascinated. This girl was very different to the others that I had been going out with recently. I also discovered that she already had two sons, a three-year-old and a one-year-old, who she was bringing up on her own. The more I found out about her the more I could see to admire.

  When I met her I’d just booked myself a holiday in California, staying at a hotel across the road from Disneyland.

  ‘Are you going to be coming back?’ she asked when I told her about my plans.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I might just stay there. I’ll see what happens.’

  I did actually have a return flight booked, because you had to in order to be let into America, but I was planning to just wait and see what happened, taking each day as it came, as I had in Europe. I was also being devious and hoping that maybe Michelle would agree to give in and sleep with me if she thought it might convince me to come back. It worked and she came back to the flat with me on the night before my flight.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  California Dreaming

  Arriving in California was like a dream come true. I could hardly believe that I was actually there, and being amongst the palm trees and sunshine I found it hard to imagine the darkness and misery of my early years. It was as if I had been reborn and was being given a chance to start my life afresh in an entirely different world.

  The first week out there I went to Disneyland and did all the things I had been dreaming of doing for years, making up for some of the childhood I had missed out on. It was the best time of my life, and the more I did the hungrier I became for new experiences. Once I had exhausted the possibilities of Disneyland, I decided I wanted to see the real Los Angeles and hired a cab to take me to a nightclub in the city, armed with my passport so that they would know I was over twenty-one and allowed to drink, because I still looked a good few years younger than I was. I had to queue to get into the one I had heard about, but eventually I was admitted and had a fantastic night. The Californian women seemed so beautiful it was hard to believe they were real, which a lot of them weren’t of course, this being the world capital of plastic surgery.